Robert J Taylor

Containment: A Viable Strategy for Success in the Gwot Robert J Taylor

Publisher Marketing: The purpose of this monograph is to investigate the nature of militant Islam in the context of a global ideological threat; to further examine the strategic concepts associated with the theory of containment developed to win the Cold War; and propose an alternative national strategy of containment to successfully execute the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The first section defines the nature of the global threat of militant Islamic fundamentalism, and its goals regarding expansion and the threat to the US and the West. The defined threat was derived through research of current US national strategy documents and the declassified national intelligence assessment, recent academic publications, and released statements and publications of militant leaders such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri. Once defined, key similarities of this current and future threat and the Cold War threat of Soviet Communism are identified from primary documents on American policy and strategy from 1945-1950, and secondary sources associated with the strategy of containment. The critical aspect of this comparison is the analysis of regional and global aims of the threat, and intentions for expansion. This comparison is not exhaustive, but merely adequate to ensure that a counter-strategy of containment is worth pursuit. The key element is the comparison of the similarities of ideological threats across all spectrums of international power and influence. The second section analyzes the successful Cold War strategy of containment and identifies key concepts that can be successful in the containment of militant Islam. The analysis focuses on former national programs designed to leverage the elements of power in support of containment of Soviet communism. Sources for this section are documents on American policy and strategy that originated between 1945 and 1950 that focus on containment strategy and secondary sources that analyze the concepts and doctrine of containment itself. The third sec Contributor Bio:  Taylor, Robert J On March 11, 1944, two months before I was born, my father was killed when his crippled B-17 bomber was shot down over the Adriatic Sea. He was 23 years old. Eleven months later, when I was nine months old, his younger brother and only sibling was killed when his P-51 Mustang fighter crashed in a cow pasture in Holland. He was 22 years old. We had met and played together while he was home on leave. I grew up hearing that my father was "such a nice person" from my mother and hearing little anecdotes about both boys from my grandmother. That sufficed until I was 36 years old. In 1980 the navigator on my father's plane and one of the two survivors contacted me. He lived near Boston. I worked in Boston. We began meeting regularly for coffee, and suddenly my father came alive. I heard about the back of his leather flight jacket soaked through with sweat after a mission in spite of the frigid temperatures at 20,000 feet in an unheated airplane; about his annoyance at the green "punk major" who tried to "correct" experienced combat pilots; about the time when returning with their plane shot full of holes, my father asked Stan (the navigator) where they were. Stan replied, "I don't know Bobby. As near as I can figure we should be over Filene's Basement." I wanted more. I became interested in WWII aircraft and studied Stan's diary of all their missions. My family travelled to a Confederate Air Force show and excitedly watched B-17s and P-51s and many other planes from WWII roaring around us. But I felt frustrated that I couldn't learn more about my father and uncle on a personal level. Then I discovered a treasure chest. In 1985 I came across a stack of neatly bundled letters in a drawer at my grandmother's house. Still in their original envelopes were over 200 letters that my father and uncle had written to her from the time they first left home until their lives tragically ended. Here was the insight to them as people that I so desperately wanted. As I read the letters their personalities jumped off the page. They became real. And even today, many years later, I get so caught up in their world when I read the letters that I momentarily forget that they aren't coming home. And that is always followed by a sense of the horror my grandmother felt when the letters abruptly stopped. I want people, especially my children and their children, to get to know these two young men who lost their lives nearly 70 years ago. I do not want them to be forgotten.