Is this WWIII: in a shadowy, new kind of war with a new kind of enemy, how will we know who's winning?

• Author: Apple, Jr., R.W.
• Position: News Analysis

WORLD WAR III? NOT REALLY. WORLD War I was essentially a struggle for Western Europe, fought primarily by massed infantry formations, in France and northern Italy and at Gallipoli on the Dardanelles. World War II covered the whole world, involving enormous fleets of ships and armadas of warplanes, with airborne drops and tank battles and amphibious landings on or near four continents.

President George W. Bush's campaign against terrorism will be nothing at all like that. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was busy recently trying to banish any such images from the minds of the American people. "There's not going to be any D-Day as such," he said. The American response would develop in a "measured" way.

This war will be more ambiguous, more shadowy. In at least one respect, it will resemble the French and Indian War of the 18th century, fought in the wilderness by small, mobile forces. It will be more like the war on drugs, or the war on poverty, or the ongoing war against crime, in that it is unlikely ever to be won decisively. Unconditional surrender by the terrorists is an unreasonable expectation, and the defeat of "every terrorist group of global reach," as promised by Bush, is a hugely ambitious goal.

In fact, this is a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy, and Washington unsurprisingly is still pondering how to fight it. Western European policy makers were similarly stymied for a time in 1938 and 1939. Janet Flanner, the great New Yorker foreign correspondent, wrote at the time that Hitler's "unpredictable mental processes and moves, being unlike anything that the chancelleries have for centuries considered part of the game, have left diplomats foolishly standing ready with bats and no ban."

This time the diplomats must figure out how to forge new alliances (with Pakistan, most importantly, but perhaps later on with Iran) and how to maintain old ones (with Egypt and Saudi Arabia, for example, where most of the suspected terrorists grew up). Placating Montgomery and de Gaulle during World War II was as nothing compared with the complications that might well arise in the Middle East if Bush decides to pursue terrorists beyond Afghanistan into other Muslim nations, as at least some of his aides have been advising. World War II finally lifted the United States out of the Depression. But this time there is every possibility that in the short term, at least, the country is heading in the opposite direction, into a recession. Some defense contractors will flourish by making helicopters, Kevlar, and ammo, but American industry will not be reorganized to turn out thousands of new planes and ships and tanks. They will not be needed; Rosie will not be asked to rivet.

Nor will a draft reach into the...