America Embattled

America Embattled

What causes anti-Americanism and where are its historical roots? What is the impact of September 11 on America’s sense of itself and its role in the world? Is America, paradoxically, a victim of its own political and economic power? This book seeks to understand the terrible attacks of September 11 within a broader historical, political and ideological context. Rather than drawing on simple “clash of civilizations” oppositions, the author argues that it is important to have an awareness of the complex historical processes that influence: • • •

America’s sense of itself and its changing view of the world How the world, especially the Muslim world, views America The changing nature of international politics and the global system since the end of the Cold War

Drawing on a wide variety of contemporary and historical sources, Richard Crockatt has written a balanced, subtle, and highly readable book which provides genuine insight into American foreign policy, anti-Americanism, and Islamic fundamentalism. It will be important reading for all those seeking to understand the background to the “war on terror.” Richard Crockatt is Reader in American History at the University of East Anglia. His award-winning The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941–1991 is also published by Routledge.

America Embattled September 11, anti-Americanism, and the global order

Richard Crockatt

First published 2003 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2003. © 2003 Richard Crockatt All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-30449-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-34559-2 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–28341–8 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–28342–6 (pbk)

This book is for Julia

Contents

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Contents

Preface Acknowledgments

ix xv

September 11, 2001

1

1 How America sees the world: historical perspectives America and the world: the perceptual gap 7 Patterns in the past 9 The question of isolationism 13 Expansion and growth 17 An American empire? 21 A democratic republic? 24 Government and the people or government versus the people? 34 2 How the world sees America: the causes and consequences of anti-Americanism A very British story 39 The meanings of anti-Americanism 43 Americanism and the nature of American nationalism 46 Americanization and anti-Americanism 51 Varieties of anti-Americanism and September 11 57 Conclusion 69 3 The roots of terror: Islam, the Middle East, and the United States The rise of political Islam 75 Palestinian–Israeli conflict 88

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viii Contents The Middle East and the American connection 93 The crucible of terrorism: the Afghan War of 1979–88 and its aftermath 98 Conclusions 106 4 The limits of governance: globalization, terrorism, and the transformation of international politics since 1989 The shock of the new 108 The end of the Cold War and its consequences: ideas of order and disorder 109 Globalization and its limits 115 Elements of instability 119 Governance and its limits 130 5 Responding to terror: George W. Bush and American foreign policy The office and the man 137 Bush in relation to his predecessors 141 September 11 and the war on terrorism 146 The politics of the coalition against terrorism 148 Complications in the war against terrorism 151 The war on terrorism and the nature of American foreign policy 160

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Conclusion

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Notes Bibliography Index

167 186 195

Preface

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Preface

There can be no doubting the enormity of the terrorist attacks of September 11, whether one is referring to their costs to human individuals or to their impact on the larger fabric of American life. America has been shaken to its core. Moreover, because the United States lies at the center of world politics and the global economic system, because the nations of the world are increasingly interdependent, and because the full horror of the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC was played out on television around the world, the impact of these events was inescapably global. People around the world have as much at stake in what happens now as do the people of the United States. No single analysis can hope to encompass all the ramifications of September 11. What follows focuses firstly on what these events reveal about the United States, its history, and present foreign policies, including American and overseas perceptions of the United States’ international role. Despite the vast volume of the information about the United States that daily floods our media, or perhaps in part because of it, America remains a baffling presence to many observers. In this book, I look behind some of the cruder stereotypes of the United States with the aim of understanding the country from the inside. The second area of concern is the global political system, the environment in which American foreign policy is pursued. The relationship between these two fields constitutes the subject of the book. The main claim of the book is that September 11 must be understood in the light of the interaction between America’s dominant international position since the end of the Cold War, the rise of political Islam, and the complex set of phenomena that comes under the heading of globalization. These are themselves admittedly large questions involving a range of themes, each of which merits book-length study. These include, besides the politics and history of the United States, globalization,

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terrorism, conflict in the Middle East, the nature of Islam, and the role of the United Nations and other international organizations. Each of these is discussed in the book, though no claim is made to definitive treatment. The justification for the ambitious approach adopted here is that the interplay between America and the world is of the essence in understanding September 11. Such an approach means crossing boundaries between fields that are often kept distinct. The first boundary is between study of the United States and study of the wider world. American studies often means study only of America and largely of its domestic history and culture. Even American foreign policy history, by the admission of some of its practitioners, is often characterized by parochialism.1 On the other hand, international relations frequently means study of the international system in isolation from the internal histories of the nations that make up the international community or with only perfunctory reference to them. Of course, nations, as we are repeatedly reminded, are a threatened species in the era of globalization, but they still constitute the primary loyalty of most people, and there is no avoiding the attempt to understand their workings; globalization does not mean that we can abandon this effort but rather that we need to develop more complex approaches to match the growing complexities of our world. In the following chapters, I draw on national, international, and global perspectives. If September 11 has taught us anything, it is that the internal histories of nations and the international environment are deeply implicated in each other. The second boundary is between study of the present and study of the past or, in terms of academic fields, between political science and history. For many, history is regarded as at best “useful background” to the present; for others, it is primarily an ideological battleground fought over by political groups who seek to exploit the past for their own ideological purposes. From this point of view, as one scholar has put it, “The past provides a reserve of reference and symbol for the present; it does not explain it.”2 Both these approaches have their place. It certainly is the case that a knowledge of the historical background to current events can be highly useful; among other things, it can prevent us from making gross misjudgments about the present. Concerning the view that history is ideology, there is undoubtedly also a sense in which parties in conflict continually invent and reinvent pasts for themselves to suit whatever political or cultural ends they have in view and, to that extent, they are not in dispute about what actually happened, only about what they would like to have happened. However, history plays a more organic role in the life of the present than either of these perspectives implies. The past is present not only as background or as ideology but as experience that has become embodied

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in assumptions, habits of mind and institutions, and ultimately in what we call culture. That is why it is so difficult to shift. I make no apology for delving deep into America’s past for clues to present dilemmas or for taking the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the wake of the First World War as the starting point for my discussion of the rise of political Islam. These are the methodological considerations that have guided the writing of this book. Before going on to outline the organization and themes, it is as well to acknowledge the dangers of attempting to draw conclusions too quickly while events are still in motion. Historians of all people know the risks of trying to second-guess the outcomes of current events. History teaches that unpredictability is the only real certainty. This book was written in the knowledge that a year from now (this is being written in June 2002) the world could be a very different place. While making judgments about policies and events on the basis of the materials to hand, I indulge neither in prediction nor policy recommendations. This book is rather a provisional map of the territory that will be filled in in greater detail as time goes on. There is the further risk in writing so soon after the event of intellectualizing a subject about which emotions are unavoidably deeply engaged. A British journalist resident in Washington, DC wrote shortly after the attacks, “On the campus where I am writing this, there are a few students and professors willing to venture points about US foreign policy. But they do so very guardedly and it would be profane apologetics if transmitted live. So the analytical moment, if there is to be one, has been indefinitely postponed.”3 Of course, the analytical moment cannot be postponed forever, nor has it been, though in the United States it has been approached much more cautiously than elsewhere, for obvious reasons. Some have argued that the controversy that arose in mid-May 2002 over whether or how much the White House knew about the risk of terrorist attacks prior to September 11 represented the return of politics as usual in the United States. From this point of view, the United States had now reached the point, which other countries had reached much earlier, at which September 11 could be examined and discussed almost like any other political event. Judgments about this will vary, but the evidence would suggest a complex picture. On the one hand, questions began to be asked in Congress and the media in the early summer of 2002 that could only with difficulty have been raised earlier, and to that extent September 11 had become “history.” On the other hand, there were few indications that the majority of Americans were prepared to declare open season on this issue. There was too much at stake, too many open wounds, and unresolved questions. Significantly, after initial attacks on President Bush himself by prominent Democrats, attention was

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quickly redirected toward the failings of the FBI and its director. President Bush’s reorganization of internal security, which involved the establishment of a new Department of Homeland Security, indicated an effort to draw a line under the issue. It may, as some suggested, have been politically motivated— an exercise in political self-defense on the president’s part with an eye on upcoming Congressional elections—but there was considerable caution among the American public about pushing this issue in ways that could have compromised the effectiveness of the war against terrorism.4 The sense of shock remained in America and continued to determine policy. The present book is that of an outsider but one concerned above all to understand rather than to judge or condemn. It is a continual source of surprise to me that so many commentators are willing to write off entire nations and cultures with the stroke of a pen on the basis of a very simple tool kit of moral ideas.5 This applies as much to judgments about conflict in the Middle East as to America and September 11 and, indeed, all conflicts in which deep questions of political identity and justice are involved. It should be possible to discuss these questions without becoming absorbed by the passions and viewpoints of one or another of the parties to conflict, important as it is to seek an understanding of these passions. Despite the temptation to let feelings rule, I want to advocate the virtues of a complex response to the events of September 11. By the same token, however, excessive detachment is probably as futile as an excess of passion, if less dangerous. Judgments are unavoidable. In this regard, I should make it plain that my motivation for writing this book came in part from an awareness of the hugely oversimplified images of the United States with which many media commentators were operating. There may be something in the way Americans present themselves to the outside world that gives rise to such caricatures and distortions, an issue dealt with in the second chapter of this book, but it is important to look beyond the stereotypes. There are many who insist, rightly in my view, on the need to acknowledge the complexity and diversity of the Muslim world but who are happy to traffic in the crudest images of the United States and its people. Those who have visited the United States know that it is a large and diverse country that tolerates ranges of lifestyles and social behavior that would be inconceivable in many other countries. They know that many of the images of the United States presented in the media are unrepresentative, that, for example, big-city America is only one facet of America and that a large proportion of Americans live in small and medium-sized towns. Those who have studied the United States know that for every supposedly typical image of America, one can find its opposite. Americans, we are told, are inveterate individualists, but they are

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also the most community-minded of peoples, a nation of “joiners.” America is the home of futuristic urbanism par excellence, but its heart—the “real” America, middle America—is in its small towns and farms. America is said to be an intolerant country full of bigots, but it has the strongest free-speech laws in the world. With its legacy of slavery and racial discrimination, America has been a byword for racial conflict, yet it has gone farther than any other nation to promote multiculturalism and racial and ethnic tolerance. Americans are devoted to materialist values and the cult of consumerism, yet America has a deep and abiding Puritan tradition. Few countries have insisted so rigidly on the separation of church and state, yet religious observance is higher than in any other advanced industrial society, and America’s public life is saturated with the language of religion. One could go on. Even these polarities scarcely meet the case; they are the beginning of analysis, not the end of it. The point should be clear. Simplified images are dangerous tools of analysis and are certainly dangerous politically. A number of questions have guided me in writing this book, each having a chapter devoted to it. First, what did the American response to September 11 reveal about America’s view of the outside world and why is there such an apparent gap between the scale of America’s influence in the world and Americans’ habitual perception of it? (chapter 1). Second, what are the sources of the radical alienation from the United States manifested in the terrorist attacks and among those who actively or passively endorsed them? More generally, how is the phenomenon of anti-Americanism to be explained? (chapter 2). Third, what are the reasons for the rise of political Islam and what are the connections between September 11, conflict in the Middle East (including the Palestinian–Israeli crisis), and American involvement in the region? (chapter 3). Fourth, what possible links exist between September 11 and changes in the international political and economic environment in recent years? More specifically, are there new elements of instability that help to explain September 11? (chapter 4). Fifth, did the Bush administration’s response to September 11 represent a shift from unilateralism to multilateralism? Was the war on terrorism effective both as a response to September 11 and as the basis for foreign policy as a whole? (chapter 5). The conclusion addresses the issue of whether the necessary political and other resources exist in the United States and the international community to make the world a safer rather than a more dangerous place. Among the questions raised here, which is adumbrated in individual chapters, is whether the sheer size and power of the United States creates an imbalance in international politics.

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The book begins with an account of the events of September 11 and its immediate aftermath, as much to remind myself as to remind the reader that what provoked all this talk about international politics was the brute fact of the destruction of human lives and buildings. As experience, the two things— the physical carnage and high politics—are incommensurable, but they are also irrevocably connected. I have sought to do justice to both.

Acknowledgments

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Acknowledgments

I sat down at my desk on September 10, 2001, to begin a year’s sabbatical leave with a brief to write a history of American foreign policy. The changes that the following day brought to my life were minute compared with those experienced by numerous others inside and outside the United States. This book, nevertheless, is the result both of that shock and of reflection upon it. The UK Government Department of Education and Skills, in the form of the Arts and Humanities Research Board, and the University of East Anglia not only provided the funds that enabled me to take a sabbatical year but responded quickly and positively to my request to change the focus of my research and writing. Warm thanks are due to both institutions. Over the years, furthermore, the University of East Anglia has provided me with an opportunity to teach both American history and international relations, without which a venture such as the present one would not have been possible. I am grateful also to Craig Fowlie at Routledge who helped to push me in the direction I wanted to go. His advice and support have been of great help throughout. Three anonymous referees of the original proposal gave encouragement and useful advice. At an early stage, conversations with a number of individuals were instrumental in helping me to get started. These include Chris Bigsby, Mike Bowker, Mick Cox, Adam Fairclough, and John Thompson. Vivien Hart, David Corker, Jacqueline Fear-Segal, Adam Fairclough, and Eric Homberger passed on references or provided answers to questions. Several conversations with Tim Lang helped to clarify my ideas. Joe Illick, Roger Thompson, and Jim Sumberg each read one or more chapters, and their responses were of enormous help. Regular conversations with Jim Sumberg and Roger Thompson were invaluable supplements to their reading of various chapters. I am extremely grateful to Fred Halliday and Avi Shlaim for reading and commenting on the Middle

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Eastern chapter with such care and saving me from some errors. Needless to say, neither they nor any of the other readers can be held responsible for the final result, which is mine alone. My deepest debt is to my wife Julia, whose love and support have been, quite simply, essential.

September 11, 2001

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September 11, 2001

On September 11, 2001, at around eight o’clock in the morning eastern daylight time, four passenger planes took off from various East Coast cities in the United States bound for destinations on the West Coast. Within an hour, all four had been taken over by hijackers and transformed into flying bombs, targeted at seats of American financial and governmental power. United Airlines flight 175, a Boeing 767 with 56 passengers and 9 crew, departed Boston’s Logan Airport at 7.58 AM; one minute later, American Airlines flight 11, also a Boeing 767, carrying 81 passengers and 11 crew, left the same airport. Both planes were bound for Los Angeles. At 8.45 AM, American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, to be followed 21 minutes later by United Airlines flight 175, which flew into the south tower. A third plane, American Airlines flight 77, a Boeing 757 carrying 58 passengers and 6 crew, departed Washington’s Dulles airport at 8:10 AM, flew some distance toward its destination of Los Angeles, reversed course, and at 9.40 AM crashed into the Pentagon building in Washington, DC, headquarters of the United States Defense Department. A fourth plane, United Airlines 93, another Boeing 757 with 38 passengers and 7 crew aboard, left Newark, New Jersey, at 8:01 AM bound for San Francisco. After flying westward as far as Cleveland, it turned eastward and, at 10:37 AM, crashed into open ground in rural Pennsylvania some 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. It is assumed that this plane’s intended target was another prominent building in Washington, possibly the White House or the Capitol building. It quickly emerged that passengers on some of the flights had been in contact by mobile phone with relatives in the minutes before impact, giving some insight into the methods, if not as yet the motives, of the hijackers. In some cases, passengers were told by the hijackers to contact relatives; in other cases, passengers locked themselves in toilet compartments and made frantic calls to

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September 11, 2001

loved ones to say goodbye. Each plane contained four or five hijackers who overpowered crews and resisting passengers with small knives, box-cutters (or Stanley knives in the United Kingdom), or razor blades embedded in plastic. Some crew members and some passengers were killed or wounded with these weapons. Threats that they had bombs were also used by the hijackers to take control of the crews and passengers. Among the hijackers, one or more on each plane, it later emerged, had received training in flying large jets and evidently directed the planes to their chosen targets. Aviation experts say that it is close to inconceivable that airline pilots would have flown the planes into the buildings in New York and Washington. While there is no definitive clue as to when the hijackers took over, expert opinion concludes that it was earlier rather than later, suggesting a high degree of piloting skill and training on the part of the hijackers. Conclusions such as these, in conjunction with the rapidly emerging information about the movements of the hijackers prior to the flights, suggested a high degree of planning and organization. Devastating as the attacks on New York and Washington were, it soon became apparent, in the light of names of analysis of passenger manifests, that at least two other planes may have been part of the overall plan. A plane due out of Boston around the same time as the two that hit the World Trade Center and also bound for the West Coast was grounded because of technical problems, while another flight from Newark to San Antonio was diverted to St Louis after news of the attacks on New York. The impacts of the planes on the twin towers of the World Trade Center did not initially, at least to the uninitiated, appear to threaten their collapse, but that is what happened within approximately an hour of the impacts. The south tower fell at 10.00 AM, trapping hundreds of rescuers in addition to unknown numbers of workers in the building. The north tower followed at 10.29 AM, raining more debris and rubble on rescuers and crushing several lower buildings in the immediate vicinity. Some hours later, at 5.25 PM, the adjacent forty-stor y World Trade Building collapsed. Meanwhile, in Washington, the Pentagon building had sustained serious damage to its west side containing the offices of many senior members of the American military. In the immediate aftermath, counting the cost in terms of human lives lost was a matter of pure speculation as desperate efforts were made to account for the whereabouts of employees of the numerous offices in the World Trade Center. A total of 50,000 was given as the possible maximum number of occupants of the towers, but this did not take account of the actual comings and goings of employees on that particular morning nor of the numbers who had managed to escape from the buildings between the impact of the first and

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second planes and prior to the collapse of the towers. Nor could precise numbers be established of rescue workers who had died in the attempt to save lives. Two weeks after the attacks, the number of dead and missing was given as in the region of 6,400, a figure that was based on matching of the names of the missing with those known to have been working in or visiting the towers.1 Few bodies were found, and it soon became apparent that few would be. Two weeks after the attacks, the New York Coroner’s Office announced that it was prepared to issue death certificates for those believed to have died in the towers, allowing relatives to end doubts about the fate of their loved ones and to make necessary financial and other arrangements. The losses at the Pentagon amounted to approximately 250, as against the 800 initially feared. On a day of the most extreme disorientation, government was as fully stretched as those involved directly in the rescue efforts. President Bush was visiting an elementary school in Florida when he was told of the attacks on the World Trade Center. He had been told of the crash on the first tower before entering a classroom to hear children read but, at this time, it was still thought possibly to have been an accident. News of the second plane reached the president when he was in the classroom in full view of television cameras and was clearly registered in his facial expression. After making a brief statement, he left Florida on the presidential airplane, Air Force One, bound, on the insistence of Vice-President Dick Cheney, for Offutt Air Force base in Nebraska, home of the United States Strategic Air Command. The advice reaching Bush from his closest advisors was that the White House and Air Force One were likely targets of terrorist attack. On Bush’s insistence that he issue a public statement, his plane touched down en route to Nebraska at Barksdale Airforce base in Louisiana, where he gave a brief statement before resuming his flight to Nebraska. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Colin Powell cut short a visit to Latin America, and members of both houses of Congress gathered on Capitol Hill, some expressing misgivings about the absence of the president from public view. In the early evening, President Bush finally returned to the White House and made a televised speech from the Oval Office. Nothing prepared viewers around the world for television images of the attacks except perhaps the wildest cartoon fantasies. From an early stage, discussion took place about whether these attacks represented a wholly new level of inhumanity, some insisting that populations in less favored nations than America had experienced greater catastrophes. Reports of air crashes in which hundreds die, natural disasters in which the dead are counted in thousands, mindnumbing acts of cruelty and destruction by individuals in all parts of the world, including vicious acts of terrorism: these have been a staple of news reports

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from all over the world in the last thirty years. Hijackings and attacks on passenger planes have been frequent enough to produce resigned shrugs rather than visceral shock. We have become partially anesthetized to disaster. After all, irrespective of threats to civilian order, war and the inversion of normal morality that so often goes with it are always going on somewhere in the world. In short, violence, destruction, cruelty, and death are givens in the modern world. Why should these acts have been regarded differently? The terrorists’ choice of targets was part of the answer. Within minutes of the attacks, television commentators were offering instant and somewhat crude and sensationalist cultural analysis of the symbolism of the destruction of the World Trade Center and the attack on the Pentagon. It is not necessary to indulge in such tasteless abstraction of the meaning of these acts from their human costs to be aware that the attackers chose their targets for maximum effect. These were attacks at America’s vitals with instruments of America’s own making, civilian airliners, which seemingly had nothing in common with weaponry. Some basic taboo was broken. Why would one seek to create defenses against a threat that could hardly be conceived to exist? The World Trade Center was designed to withstand all manner of likely threats from earthquakes to hurricanes, and it contained the full panoply of safety features associated with high-rise buildings, albeit over thirty years old. However, this was not a fortress. It was in the fullest sense defenseless against such concentrated human malice. The Pentagon, by contrast, had a military function and was secure against a greater range of threats than was the World Trade Center, though not evidently a determined attack using unexpected means from an unexpected quarter. Questions were quickly asked about the ease with which Washington, DC’s airspace was so easily penetrated; in the case of the Pentagon attack, it is more plausible to speak of a security lapse. There is enough evidence from the United States and other countries to demonstrate the vulnerability of government buildings to all kinds of attacks. Nevertheless, in conjunction with the destruction of the World Trade Center, the attack on the Pentagon was an act of the highest possible provocation, producing a corresponding level of shock. Nothing was more numbing that the recognition that a few well-organized individuals deploying surprise, targeted fanaticism, and relatively simple weapons could wreak such havoc on the world’s most powerful nation. There was also a sense that other boundaries had been crossed. One was between the serene normality of a working day and the utter chaos which resulted. The bonds between one day and the next, one moment and the next, had been broken. Moral boundaries had been crossed, too. The terrorists chose their own deaths, but the passengers were forced to participate not only

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in their own deaths but those of countless others, many of them their own countrymen and women. This was hardly war. Even war has rules of a sort. These acts went beyond war in that they exploited to the full the most vulnerable elements of civilian society in an atmosphere of total surprise. The immediacy of the television images breached another boundary—between reality and fantasy. In a disaster movie, viewers can enjoy letting the most graphic images lead the imagination on or they can look away if they are too much. On September 11, both options only reinforced the sense of actuality. There was the added horror of uncertainty about whether there was more to come and what form it might take. The human costs, or some of them, were visible at an early stage in the interviews with those who had been able to escape and with distraught family members and friends of those missing, in the sickening sight of human beings falling from the buildings or pitifully waving from high windows above the points of impact, from which there was no possibility of escape. The endless replays of the impact of the second plane, followed later by the broadcast of an amateur video of the first plane striking, and subsequently newly discovered footage of the impacts from a range of angles, all contributed to a sense of the enormity, the effrontery, of the events. The collapse of the towers was hardly credible to those without a knowledge of skyscraper construction; the fires seemed restricted to the upper stories. And then they were gone. Smoke and dust billowed out along the streets and avenues of New York while crowds of people struggled to outrun the cloud or find shelter in doorways or under vehicles, only to emerge like moving statues of dried clay. As if these sights were not enough, heart-rending messages left on phoneanswering machines by passengers on the high-jacked planes were soon broadcast, leaving listeners to imagine what the last minutes of those stricken passengers must have been like. No disaster can have been documented so fully or so painfully as this. And then came the questions. Who were the terrorists? Why did they do it? Who lay behind them? Why did the authorities fail to anticipate the attacks? How should America respond? In the following days and weeks, the answers given to these questions would reshape the agenda of American and global politics. At the root of these consequences was America’s visceral sense of being embattled. The weekly magazine US News and World Report’s main story in its first post-September 11 issue carried the headline “Under Siege.” The New York Times issued a separate section under the heading “A Nation Challenged,” which was discontinued only at the end of December 2001. Numerous other publications issued comparable sections and reports. Countless speeches and articles by American leaders and opinionmakers

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conveyed the same message. Into whatever rarified heights post-September 11 national and international politics might flow, they come down to the brute realities of September 11 and America’s sense of being embattled.

How America sees the world

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How America sees the world Historical perspectives

No insularity in the West, not even the English, has been so acute as the American: no international involvement, again not even the English, has been so deep. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America1

America and the world: the perceptual gap It takes little imagination to see that the events of September 11 delivered a profound shock to America’s sense of its relationship with the outside world. Commentators inside and outside the United States strove to find words to express their sense of the enormity of the attacks. The attacks were a “wakeup call for Americans.” They constituted the “end of American innocence,” a final blow to America’s privileged position of detachment from the messy and violent conflicts that blighted less favored countries. America had now once and for all entered the “real world” of international politics, its “illusion of invulnerability” finally shattered. An important assumption behind these reactions was that America’s stance toward the outside world could and must change as a result of these events. American isolationism (in so far as it still existed), its tendency to act unilaterally, indeed its famed “exceptionalism” itself must inevitably give way to an acknowledgment that the United States was just like any other power. What precise policy implications might flow from such a recognition were as yet unclear; it was enough that the events of September 11 constituted a turning point in American foreign relations. The world, it was said repeatedly, would never be the same again, and neither would America.2 It is not surprising that a shock of this scale and immediacy should incline people to reach for the most charged language. It seems intuitively right that

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there must be some correlation between the human cost of the tragedy and the wider historical and political significance of the event. It is surely too early to come to final conclusions about these larger issues, but American reactions to September 11 exposed, if nothing else, certain deeply held assumptions about America’s role in the world. Besides the obvious sense of horror at the scale of the human tragedy, which was shared by many non-Americans, most poignant of all was the sense of shock and bafflement expressed by Americans at the intense hatred of the United States that these attacks displayed. The sources of such hatred are the subject of future chapters. Here, we are concerned with the shock and bafflement and what they reveal about how America sees the world beyond its shores. Let us be clear at the outset that the claim is not that Americans should have expected or anticipated the attacks of September 11, far less that they should have shrugged them off as the price to be paid for world leadership.3 The point is rather the gap that these events exposed between America’s actual role in the world and America’s habitual perception of that role. Even those in other countries favorably disposed to the United States—and there were and are many—tended to comprehend the terrorist attacks within a framework in which American power was perceived to be a dominant—perhaps the dominant—force in world politics. By and large (and this is a generalization to be developed and refined in the course of this chapter), American reactions to September 11 betrayed a world view in which American global power, though a fact of life, was incidental to America’s foreign relations. Americans rarely see American power at work, with the consequence that foreign relations are perceived to be something that happens to America as a result of the actions of others rather than arising from the actions of the United States on others. To the extent that America is a world unto itself, by virtue of its size, geographical location, social diversity, and economic dynamism, it is often insulated from the reactions that its activity in the world arouses. From this point of view, September 11 was undoubtedly a profound shock to America at all levels but, to the extent that the attacks were perceived to have come “out of the blue,” arguably they reinforced rather than displaced the perceptual gap described earlier regarding America’s relations with the outside world. Where did these assumptions come from and how did they grow? They are evidently rooted in America’s past, and it is to history that we must turn to comprehend both the American reactions to September 11 and the significance of the attacks for American foreign relations. One preliminary point must be made. For much of this chapter, no distinction is made between the people of the United States and their government,

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as the concern here in the first instance is with broad attitudes. However, it is clearly wrong to assume a simple identity between the two when it comes to particular policies and decisions. How policy is made, what role public opinion and its political representatives have in the formation of policy, whether policymakers lead or are led by public opinion are all critical issues that are discussed later in the chapter. Patterns in the past In the struggle to understand the full dimensions of the blow to America’s sense of security in the wake of September 11, a number of possible historical analogies lie to hand, the most commonly invoked being the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The element of surprise was common to both attacks, and the sudden resolve of the United States in both instances to respond immediately and massively was in part a function of the absence of warning. The sense of America’s having been violated, resentment at the enemy for failing to play “by the rules,” the underhanded nature of the attacks, and the naked exploitation of America’s openness (its “innocence”) unified the country and all but silenced doubts about the need to respond vigorously. However, the differences between December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, are all too clear. Though on United States soil, the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii was remote from the continental United States and the main centers of population. Furthermore, the attack on Pearl Harbor was unambiguously an act of war by one state against another, the targets at Pearl Harbor were warships, not civilians, and there were fewer casualties than in New York and Washington. Finally, there was no doubt about the identity of the enemy or what needed to be done to defeat him. Having said that, there is one important similarity between the two cases to which I shall return. Both instances encouraged the view that once and for all American isolationism was finished. The Cuban missile crisis is another possible analogy, in the sense that the missiles in Cuba represented a direct threat to the American mainland and their use would have created the potential for catastrophic war with the Soviet Union.4 For thirteen days in October 1962, the world held its breath in horrified anticipation of possible destruction on a scale that would have dwarfed the attacks of September 11, 2001. However, once again, this was a state-tostate standoff, and the tension was generated by potential rather than actual destruction. Moreover, horrific as war would have been in the event of a breakdown between the United States and the Soviet Union, this crisis took

10 How America sees the world place in the framework of the Cold War, which was a familiar and, in a sense, rule-bound conflict, however oppressive and threatening. By contrast, September 11 seemed outside any known parameters. There have been other attacks on the United States. In 1942, a Japanese submarine shelled an oil refinery near Santa Barbara on the coast of California, one of the few cases in recent history of a direct attack on the American mainland. But this was a sideshow to the main theaters of war. If it had any direct effect, it was to confirm American opinion about the justification of interning Japanese Americans for the duration of the war. Looking further back into history, some commentators noted that the last (and only) time there had been, on a single day on American soil, casualties comparable to those of September 11 was the Civil War battle of Antietam (1862), in which an estimated four and a half thousand individuals died.5 This battle proved decisive in the Civil War, putting an end to the Confederacy’s ambitions of taking Union territory, but it also was a case of American killing American in the course of a long and bloody conflict, not a bolt from the blue from outside. The efforts of one newspaper columnist to draw lessons from Antietam about how the United States (the Union) might defeat terrorism (the Confederacy) strains credulity and illustrates the limits rather than the usefulness of supposed historical parallels.6 In some ways, a more apt reference point might be the razing of Washington, DC, by the British in the war of 1812, if only because it involved the destruction of American property by an outside force. But once again, this action took place during an already declared war, and besides which Washington at the time was an overgrown village rather than a major city, the government had already departed, and the action was not decisive militarily. The search for direct parallels, in short, appeared to lead to the conclusion that there were no meaningful precedents for September 11. It was apparently outside the framework of America’s historical experience. However, this is to look at the issue too narrowly. To say that there are no clear historical parallels is merely to confirm the familiar truth that history never repeats itself exactly. Patterns, however, do exist and it is these that we must examine. If a sense of vulnerability was the most damaging repercussion of September 11, then it must be pointed out that expressions of vulnerability to outside influence, whether in the form of ideas or physical attack, are discernible from the beginnings of American nationhood. America was born in war, and its first president was a general. America’s early diplomatic history, including the treaty with France in 1778, which was formed in order to achieve independence, and the treaty with Britain in 1794, formed in order to sustain independence, evidenced America’s relative weakness and vulnerability to the superior power

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of the “Great Powers.” America won the war and the peace in part by taking sober cognizance of its real and potential weaknesses. The Constitution of 1787, which replaced the original instrument of American government (the Articles of Confederation), was devised in part to remedy the frailty of American statehood and its consequent vulnerability to external pressures in a world of scheming nations.7 Moreover, a sense of vulnerability remained pervasive in American history, with peaks of intensity at moments of international crisis, suggesting that there has been no great transition as a result of September 11 from a secure America to an insecure and vulnerable America. Out of many possible examples, we can take the repercussions of the French Revolution, which caused political turmoil in America during the 1790s and led to the passage of Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798; a foretaste of similar efforts to insulate America from foreign radicalism in the Red Scare of 1919–20; and the anticommunist drive in the 1940s and 1950s. Anxieties about the spread of “alien” religious beliefs, not least Roman Catholicism in this predominantly Protestant country, colored American history throughout the nineteenth century. Vestiges of these fears were visible in questions posed to presidential candidate John F. Kennedy in 1960 about where his loyalty would lie in a case where his allegiances to America and Rome were in conflict with each other. In the field of foreign economic policy, efforts to stay neutral in global wars and to maintain America’s flow of overseas trade consistently failed, leading to more or less drastic measures to try to cut the United States off from the sources of conflict. During the Napoleonic Wars, American trading vessels fell prey to the depredations of Britain and France as each tried to deny goods to the other. However, American neutrality proved unsustainable, and the result was war with Britain in 1812, in this case a foretaste of comparable American efforts to remain neutral in 1914–17 and 1939–41. As the technology of war developed, so did the possible range of threats. Militarily, the advent of the airplane and later the intercontinental ballistic missile canceled America’s apparently supreme advantage of distance from potential enemies. American reaction to the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957 was only the most visible evidence of a more general anxiety during the Cold War about the Soviet threat. Sputnik quickened the pace of civil defense measures, including a crash program to build fallout shelters, and deeply affected other areas of American life, such as education, as the Federal government pumped new funds into the teaching of mathematics and science. In short, the sense of vulnerability, if anything, intensified with the growth of American power; indeed, it became a staple feature of foreign policy debates and was not confined to a few high-profile cases of obvious threat. Furthermore,

12 How America sees the world the problem of vulnerability typically provoked a quest for invulnerability, not least in the burgeoning defense budgets of the Cold War years. More specifically, this impulse drove the argument for a missile defense shield, from Reagan’s “Star Wars” scheme to the more recent proposals for NMD (National Missile Defense).8 On their own, these historical instances are not decisive. Historians make a habit of piling up historical precedents with the aim of proving that there is nothing new under the sun. What makes these instances significant is that they coexisted from an early stage in America’s history with an equally powerful sense of national confidence, or what one historian has called a “quest for national greatness.”9 Indeed, the coexistence of these two powerful and contradictory motions constitutes one of the chief paradoxes of American history. Both impulses coalesced in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which was both a piece of supreme bravado (given that the United States lacked the means to enforce it on their own) and an expression of concern about the threat of a reassertion of European power in the Western hemisphere. Seeking to preempt a possible attempt by Spain, with the help of France, to crush the newly established independent states of Latin America and also to challenge Russian power on the northwest coast of the continent, President Monroe declared that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition that they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European power.”10 As suggested above, the paradox deepened in the twentieth century when, despite the fact that American economic and military power began to dwarf that of rival powers, a sense of vulnerability persisted. Over the two hundred years and more of America’s national history, the interaction of these contrary impulses has manifested itself in the repetition of a particular—indeed, peculiarly American—response to external events: namely, the sense that each major venture in foreign policy, and particularly participation in war, represents a radically new step for America; that, however necessary such interventions might be for pragmatic reasons, they constitute deviations from America’s true destiny, which is to perfect its own society; and that, other things being equal (i.e., if the requisite international conditions exist), the correct path for America, once the crisis is over, is to resume its preferred position of detachment. The exposure to vulnerability invited a response to deal with the conditions that produced the threat, to be followed by a restoration of what an all-but-forgotten president in the wake of the great crusade of the First World War called normalcy.11

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It is as if with each new foreign policy crisis, the United States starts from a clean slate. America has thus “lost its innocence” on numerous occasions, not least in the First and Second World Wars and the Vietnam War, each case seemingly a renewed loss.12 A sense of vulnerability is regularly re-experienced as something radically new, particularly as the United States assumed a world role in the twentieth century. Above all, isolationism has been buried several times, most notably in the First and Second World Wars but most obviously in the Cold War, from which it appeared for several decades there could be no “return to normalcy.” Hence, despite past experience, America’s innocence is still there to be lost, and despite repeated experiences of vulnerability and measures taken to protect against it, the wound of vulnerability remains open. By the same token, isolationism is still there to be countered or promoted, depending on one’s political point of view. This old debate, which many had thought was long over, revived after the end of the Cold War and informed discussion about possible American interventions during the 1990s. It is still a factor in the responses to September 11 in ways that will become clear later. In short, the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on September 11 were in crucial respects unprecedented, but they struck at old fears in American society and triggered responses that go to the heart of America’s sense of its role in the world. The search for the roots of a “gap” between America and the world leads logically to the question of isolationism. Is this the key to understanding America’s relationship with the world? The question of isolationism There are huge difficulties with the term isolationism, not least because it was employed initially as a politically loaded term of abuse and it still retains some of its political freight.13 Few Americans, even if they held ideas that others would call isolationist, have been happy to accept the label; it smacks too much of a mindless ostrich-like attitude to the outside world. America’s isolationists of the 1930s, for example, preferred to march under the banner of “America First.” Historians have found it no easier to give a stable meaning to the term, though most accept that in common parlance, in the words of the leading historian of isolationism, it “coupled a determination to stay out of foreign wars with an unwavering refusal to enter into alliances.”14 If that can be taken as a working definition, considerable clarification is required if it is to be applicable to the realities of American foreign relations. The policy if not the term is said to have originated in George Washington’s

14 How America sees the world Farewell Address (1796) in which he stated that “the great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign relations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible.”15 This was followed up five years later by Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address, when he urged “equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”16 Certain qualifications to our initial definition of isolationism suggest themselves immediately. Evidently neither of these statements implied total isolation of the United States from the world community. Each envisaged maximum possible economic intercourse with other nations and, in the field of politics and diplomacy, the injunction was not against any or all contact but against commitments that would tie the United States’ hands. Even political isolation was heavily qualified. Thus, it has been argued that unilateralism may be a more appropriate term for what is commonly called isolationism.17 Furthermore, it seems clear that, even if the United States adopted a politically isolationist stance toward Europe for much of its history, toward Latin America, and the Pacific, activism and intervention have been features from an early stage. To that extent, if isolationism has existed, it has been applied differentially according to region and according to the United States’ capacity to exert power and influence. Further qualifications to the original definition can be made. The distinction between diplomacy and trade in the statements by Washington and Jefferson is surely significant. Indeed, revisionist historians of the United States have denied that isolationism has ever characterized American foreign relations, given the dynamism of American overseas trade and expansion and the activities of government to foster them. In that apparently most isolationist of decades, the 1920s, the American economy expanded on a global basis, and the policies of the Republican-led governments were expressly designed to promote it. Political isolationism, as represented in American nonmembership of the League of Nations, resulting from the Senate’s refusal to entertain Woodrow Wilson’s internationalist dreams in the wake of the First World War, was merely incidental. Of the essence was the United States’ consistent push for an “open door” for American goods around the world. Isolationism was merely a “legend.”18 It may be wondered whether the term isolationism has any utility left, particularly in the light of America’s apparently comprehensive burial of the Founding Fathers’ injunction against entering “entangling alliances” with the formation of NATO in 1949, to be followed by further treaties on the NATO

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model, including the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO). Arguably it has, not least because the term and the attitudes associated with it refuse to die. Isolationism apparently will not go away. A leading historian of isolationism, writing in the late 1950s, concluded that “authentic isolationism was all but gone” but added that “any number of possible foreign calamities could once more render isolationism a feasible and even an attractive policy.”19 History has proved him right. The issue of isolationism returned to the forefront of political debate in the Clinton years.20 Even if Clinton himself could not be described in these terms, in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War, many Americans assumed that America could yet again return to normalcy. However, there are other reasons for wanting to retain the concept of isolationism if not the term itself. Most importantly, isolationism can be regarded as a frame of mind rather than a policy, a cultural as much as a political expression of American attitudes toward the outside world, which exists to some extent independently of government policies. Reference has already been made to the sense in which the United States is a world unto itself—a consequence in part of the cushion of distance and time offered for much of its history by its geographical location and in part also of the possession of vast areas of land and natural resources, which allowed the United States to be virtually self-sufficient in vital goods. To these must be added the paradoxical impact of the vast flow of immigrants into the United States: namely, the pressures placed on immigrants to shed their “hyphenate” identities and become 100 percent Americans. Such pressures ebbed and flowed in American history; they were perhaps most intense during and after the First World War, which happened to be the time at which the proportion of foreign born in the American population was at a new high.21 America has always been by its natural composition a multicultural society, but that very diversity has placed a premium on adherence to symbols of national unity and national distinctiveness. These issues are discussed at greater length in the following chapter. For the moment, we must emphasize the extent to which these conditions and pressures fostered attitudes, not of exclusion from the world but of necessary and desirable insulation from many of its influences, especially those that might harm the United States. Isolationism is by no means uniformly distributed in the United States; it is correlated with certain regions— particularly the Midwest heartland of America—and with class and educational levels. Knowledge of and interest in foreign affairs similarly are distributed variously and tend to be the subject of continuous public attention only when American interests are directly involved. This in itself is not surprising. The

16 How America sees the world same conclusions could be drawn about the populations of many nations in the world. The significance of the American case is its association with a society that, at least since entry into the Second World War, has been continuously engaged as a major player in the affairs of other nations. American insulation may be put down in part to the presentation of news in the broadcast media in the United States. A British BBC journalist, admittedly displaying professional and possibly national bias, observed that “Americans settled for second best in their news broadcasting, which is why millions were so shocked by the terrible mass murder of September 11. Their journalists hadn’t prepared them to understand the great swings of history that are going on, the rage and frustration that exists in some parts of the world when people see an Israeli pilot in an American F-16.”22 This brings us back to the apparent contradiction noted by Louis Hartz in the quotation that heads this chapter: America has been at once the most insular and involved of nations. Isolation or insulation is evidently a matter not simply of attitudes but of experience and remained so even after the narrowing of physical gap between the United States and the rest of the world through air travel and global communications. To take only one measure, until September 11 the United States was effectively insulated, at least by comparison with most other nations, from the worst effects of war, as is apparent from a glance at comparative casualty figures for the most destructive of twentieth century conflicts: the Second World War. American battle deaths in the Second World War were 407,316, with around the same number of additional deaths in the armed forces from disease and other causes. The Soviet Union is estimated to have sustained 8 million battle deaths and at least the same number of civilian deaths resulting from the German occupation. Some estimates put the total Soviet war dead as high as 27 million.23 Whichever figure one chooses, at least one-tenth of the Soviet population died in the Second World War. Germany lost approximately 4 million in battle and a substantial number of civilians. Needless to say, the experience of invasion and occupation, which affected many societies in Europe and Asia, brought the war home in a peculiarly direct way. This is to leave aside the economic impact of war, which was devastating in all belligerent nations except the United States, whose economy boomed in wartime. To American families and individuals who lost relatives, the costs of war were high; to American society as a whole, the costs of American intervention in the Second World War and other conflicts were relatively limited. (It remains the case that no overseas conflict in which the United States has been engaged approaches the Civil War of 1861–65 in its impact on American society, whether the criterion is absolute numbers of casualties or the number

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of casualties in relation to population. ) The most costly of all post-Second World War interventions, the Vietnam War, resulted in a determination not to repeat the experience, not least because the costs were relatively high across the board—politically, economically, socially, and culturally. The “Vietnam syndrome” is testimony to the political risks for American governments of engaging in conflicts that might result in large numbers of casualties or that have no calculable time limit. One consequence, in the event that intervention is deemed unavoidable, is the use of overwhelming force with the aim of achieving goals in the minimum possible time, as in the Gulf War of 1990–91. Another is the resort to alternative forms of intervention—whether through covert means, support of proxy organizations, or air power—that do not incur the risks either of large numbers of casualties or politically damaging openended commitments. However, such means carry a cost to the extent that their full implications may be hidden from the American public. Americans may simply not know what is being carried out in their name, and reactions to such policies by groups or countries affected by American actions may seem to Americans to be both unreasonable and unjustified.25 Once again, it has to be said that these conclusions apply to some degree to all countries. Since foreign policy is closely allied with considerations of national security, all governments engage to a greater or lesser degree in secrecy, whether for genuine reasons of national security or for political reasons. Crucially, governments claim the right to decide where the line falls between these two. The American case is singular, however, because of the disproportionately large impact of United States policies on other nations. Thus far, we have emphasized America’s sense of vulnerability and isolationism, but these concepts evidently cannot encompass the full measure of America’s relations with the outside world. We turn now to the other side of the story, namely, the United States’ manifestly enormous influence on the world beyond its shores. After establishing the facts of America’s rise to world power, we shall examine different ways in which this story has been interpreted. In the end, the stories that people tell themselves about their past dictate the ways in which they interpret the present. Expansion and growth The indisputable reality of American history is the swift physical, demographic, and economic growth of the country. From its beginnings as a string of thirteen colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America in the late eighteenth century, peripheral to the politics of the Great Powers of Europe, the United

18 How America sees the world States expanded across the continent during the course of the nineteenth century and displaced the Great Powers of Europe by the middle of the twentieth century to become the chief global power of the twenty-first century. It is necessary to remind ourselves of the dimensions of this growth because it is so often taken for granted. One suspects that Americans are too familiar with it to give it a second thought, while non-Americans either do not know the story or consider that history irrelevant to the present. The current boundaries of the United States seem natural but they are the result of a series of conscious decisions, negotiations, wars, and annexations. The first boon was British willingness in the Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the War of Independence, to concede to the United States territory up to the Mississippi River, trebling at a stroke the area of the original thirteen colonies. This did not include the mouth of the Mississippi River or Florida, which were still in the hands of Spain, and indeed this was one reason the British were not too unhappy to make concessions on this scale. The territory between the Mississippi River and the Appalachian Mountains was held to be of limited value so long as the mouth of the river was controlled by another power.26 The British might have taken a different view if they could have foreseen the speed with which the Americans would acquire control both of the Mississippi and of Florida. The former came in 1803 with the purchase from France (Spain having been forced to concede it shortly before this date) of the territory known as Louisiana. Though now simply one of the fifty states and of moderate size relative to the others, at the time Louisiana referred to a vast area bounded on the east and west by the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains and on the south and north by the current northern state line of Texas and the current border with Canada. The Americans paid Napoleon approximately $1 an acre for this land, which doubled the size of the United States. Sixteen years later, following settlement of Americans in Florida and considerable American military pressure, the Spanish conceded Florida to the United States by treaty. Simultaneously, the United States made its first claim to a position on the West Coast when, in this so-called Continental Treaty with Spain, the boundary between American and Spanish territory was drawn right out to the Pacific Ocean. A generation later, the modern boundaries of the continental United States were effectively established by a mixture of annexation, war, and treaty. The annexation in question was Texas, which until its declaration of independence in 1835 had been the northern province of Mexico. Once again, as in Florida, American settlers had created a critical mass in a Hispanic territory, provoking initially a demand for independence and subsequently annexation to the United

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States. The United States’ annexation of Texas in 1846 brought the inevitable war with Mexico and, following Mexico’s defeat, the equally inevitable concessions of territory to the United States. The United States gained not only Texas itself but the whole of the Mexican southwest, the area covered now by the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and parts of New Mexico and Colorado. Indeed, some historians argue that the real American goal in the war with Mexico was California and, even more precisely, the huge natural harbors of San Francisco and San Diego, the inducement being the prospect of trade with the Far East.27 The United States’ ambition to be a Pacific power was reinforced by its 1846 agreement with Britain for the absorption of the “Oregon country” (the modern states of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho) into the United States. The process was completed, as far as the American continent is concerned, in 1867 with the purchase of Alaska from Russia. Territorial growth was only part of the story. By itself, land did not guarantee economic growth or political power. If the United States was a world power by the end of the nineteenth century, at least in economic terms, it was because immigration and industrialization (including the mechanization of agriculture) had combined to make maximum use of the land and its resources. The figures are indeed startling. Between 1890 and 1920, the United States more than quadrupled its steel output from 9.3 to 42.3 million tons, while Britain, Germany, and France showed only modest rises from roughly the same levels as the United States in 1890. On a broader index of total industrial potential, the United States’ increased tenfold between 1880 and 1928, while Britain’s only doubled. According to this composite index, by 1928 American economic power was equal to that of Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Italy, and Japan combined. Finally, America’s share of world manufacturing output increased from 14.7 percent in 1880 to 39.3 percent in 1928, while during the same period Britain’s fell from 22.9 percent to 9.9 percent.28 Perhaps it is no surprise that as the internal frontiers of the United States were pushed back, the land settled, cities burgeoned, and the nation knitted by railroads and communications networks, there should be a push outward to new frontiers beyond America’s existing boundaries. The 1890 United States census declared the frontier “closed” and, three years later, the frontier had its historian in the form of Frederick Jackson Turner, whose essay, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History,” was both an innovative theory purporting to explain the essence of America’s historical development and an elegy for a lost past. Within a few years, the nation became an empire when, as a result of its war with Spain in 1898 over Cuba, the United States

20 How America sees the world acquired overseas territories, not least the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the Pacific Island of Guam. Indeed, the United States had begun occupying small islands in the middle of the Pacific in the years immediately preceding the Civil War and subsequently acquired more in the following decades, including the Midway Islands (1867) and parts of Samoa (1889). The annexation of Hawaii in 1898, the most substantial of these chains of islands, and the acquisitions from Spain in 1898 left little doubt about the United States’ claims to be a Pacific power.29 There is no need to spell out the details of the United States’ emergence as a global power during the twentieth century, since they are familiar enough. American economic power and, in the last few months of the war, her military power too were enough to tip the balance in favor of the Allies in the First World War. In the Second World War, the United States’ role was so decisive as to encourage a prominent American publisher to announce that this was “the American century,” and even America’s enemies or those who doubted her right or capacity to take this kind of lead could not but be impressed by the fact that the Second World War ended with the United States in possession of half the world’s industrial productive capacity, to say nothing of its possession of the atomic bomb, its vast conventional military machine, and its virtually intact economic and social infrastructures. Even given that these relative advantages were temporary, these were precisely the years when the postwar global order was established, and the international institutions that resulted (the United Nations Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank) were to a substantial degree the creation of the United States and their headquarters located within its borders.30 In the following decades, the United States assumed the responsibility of containing communism globally, oversaw the readmission of Japan and West Germany into the international community, contributed to the economic recovery of Europe, and intervened on numerous occasions in numerous countries to safeguard what were perceived to be America’s interests and those of its allies. It even, for the first time in its history, entered into “entangling alliances,” the most significant being NATO, thus apparently denying a cardinal tenet of American foreign policy. There were between states few issues that could be described any more as being of purely local or regional significance; indeed, it was one of the defining characteristics of the Cold War that it transformed the local and regional into the global, such were the universalizing impulses behind the competing Cold War ideologies and the almost infinitely expandable definitions of American and Soviet “national” interests associated with them.

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It is hard to imagine what George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or John Quincy Adams would have made of Harry Truman’s speech to Congress in March 1947 announcing his policy of containment of communism or of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address or any number of comparable speeches by later presidents. In calling for military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey in March 1947, Truman said that “it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.” Kennedy, if anything, raised the stakes in his exhortation that the United States must “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” John Quincy Adams, by contrast, had declared in the 1820s, in turning down a request for aid from Greek insurgents fighting for independence from Turkey, that “America goes not in search of monsters to destroy.”31 The difference between Adams’ statement and those of Truman and Kennedy is a measure of the distance America had traveled in its first century and a half. The basic outline of American growth is not in dispute. Interpreting these events, however, has enlisted the attentions of scholars on an industrial scale. We are concerned here only with two broad orientations toward America’s growth. The first, which is a minority view inside the United States, regards America in imperial terms and emphasizes the self-interested exertion of American power; the second prefers the words republic or democracy and emphasizes limits to American power and consistency in the exertion of that power with America’s core values. Needless to say, this broad distinction cannot take account of many variations and complexities in the ways Americans regard their history. It is intended rather to illustrate a broad polarization of views that has long existed but has been intensified by the events of September 11. An American empire? As far as many historians are concerned, the United States has become an empire, no different in essentials from the great empires of the past—the Greek, the Roman, the British, and others. Indeed, for some historians, the United States had always contained within itself the aspiration to imperial status. According to Richard Van Alstyne, “The United States is by its very essence an imperial power. It is a creature of the classical Romano-British tradition. It was conceived as an empire; and its evolution from a weak state, strung out on a long exposed coastline in 1789, to a world state, with commitments which are truly Roman in their universality, has been a characteristically imperial type of growth.”32 A contemporary of Van Alstyne’s, William Appleman

22 How America sees the world Williams, gave this interpretation a sharper political edge in his hugely influential Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1959), which was to exert a profound effect on the generation that protested against the Vietnam War. “The philosophy and practice of secular empire” expressed in the policies of presidents McKinley and Roosevelt at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,” Williams wrote, “became the central feature of American foreign policy in the twentieth century.”33 Ronald Steel, another influential critic on the left during the 1960s, regarded the postwar international order as a “Pax Americana,” in direct refutation of President Kennedy’s claim that the kind of world the United States sought was “not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.”34 Such arguments did not necessarily entail the conclusion that American imperialism was designed to oppress. Some of the harshest critics of American foreign policy, including those quoted above, conceded that America might be acting from the best of intentions. “Nobody planned our empire,” wrote Steel, and it “has been maintained from a sense of benevolence.”35 Williams argued that one of the guiding conceptions of American foreign policy was “the warm, generous, humanitarian impulse to help other people.”36 Furthermore, most critics have noted that the United States sought economic influence rather than political control—the fruits of empire without the burdens associated with it. America’s was an informal rather than a formal empire.37 Nevertheless, the result, according to America’s severest critics, irrespective of America’s best intentions, was indiscriminate and excessive exertion of American power. The writings of Noam Chomsky have for a generation represented the most unadulterated version of the imperial interpretation of American foreign policy history.38 Nor has the language of empire been restricted to historians and commentators whose interpretations carried an explicit political message. It was present in a book referred to earlier, Empire on the Pacific (1955) by Norman Graebner, which argued that in the 1840s, the United States sought expansion to the West Coast with a view to using its harbors for trade and expansion in the Pacific. Taking a much longer historical perspective, Paul Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1988), though read in the United States primarily with reference to specific contemporary problems (the issue of America’s supposed decline), was in fact a large-scale historical work that placed the United States in a modern tradition of empires from the Spanish in the sixteenth century up to the present. Its significance from the point of view of the present theme is precisely that it speaks of the United States in the same breath as other empires of the past. By implication, the United States had no

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special destiny, no exemption from the material and moral dilemmas common to all imperial powers. The point needs emphasizing because of the powerful claim in American history to an exceptional status, conferred on it by its republican tradition, which is ostensibly wholly at odds with the idea of empire. The model for this contrast comes from Roman history in which the republic gives way to, indeed is effectively destroyed by, the advent of the empire. We shall be returning to the republican tradition but, for the moment, it is worth pointing out that many of those who have thought the term empire an appropriate description of America’s foreign relations also recognize that there is a need to reconcile this with the centrality of republicanism in American history. A recent survey of America’s early diplomatic history is entitled The Creation of a Republican Empire, 1776–1865, a formulation that neatly captures this central tension in American history: the coexistence of an ambition for power and growth with an aspiration to exemplary status as an ideal republic. Perkins chooses not to explore the tensions between the two terms in his title, while others have seen these two impulses as more obviously in confrontation with each other. Thus, James Petras and Morris Morley entitle their book Empire or Republic? (1995), and they answer their own question unambiguously, with direct reference to the presidency of Bill Clinton, in the assertion that “as the empire expands the republic declines.”39 There is no shortage of evidence in the documentary record of the language of empire. The phrase manifest destiny, which was first invoked in the 1840s, reflected assumptions about the inevitability and rightness (indeed righteousness) of American expansion. Secretary of State William Seward, described by one historian as “the central figure of nineteenth century American imperialism,” remarked on the completion in 1869 of the Union Pacific railroad linking the east and west coasts of the United States that “The world contains no seat of empire so magnificent as this which … offers supplies on the Atlantic shores to the over-crowded nations of Europe, while on the Pacific coast it intercepts the commerce of the Indies. The nation thus situated … must command the empire of the seas, which alone is real empire.” The jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes declared that “we are the Romans of the modern world, the great assimilating people.” The rhetoric of Theodore Roosevelt and many of his contemporaries was saturated with imperialism. It is no coincidence that it was at the turn of the century, as the United States occupied the Philippines and other former Spanish possessions, that an anti-imperialist movement grew in protest against what were taken to be new and damaging departures from America’s republican tradition.40

24 How America sees the world The developments and ideas described above demonstrate the centrality in American history of a dynamic, expansionist, and outward-thrusting drive that, however it is regarded, aligns the United States with any number of nations in the past that have grown from small beginnings to positions of power and even dominance. However, while the main physical facts of these developments are indisputable, interpretation of them is a matter of deep controversy. Nor are differences of opinion on these issues simply matters of academic importance; they go to the heart of the ways in which Americans understand their relations with the outside world. We need now to examine the other side of the history recounted above, because it is this other version which by and large is believed by the American people. A democratic republic? The United States may bear similarity to former empires, it may be perceived by other nations as having “hegemonic” power, there may be American academics and intellectuals who share the most damning criticisms by foreign observers of the record of American foreign policy, and yet most Americans scarcely recognize themselves in such portrayals. Most Americans tell themselves a very different story of their past. We can start with terminology. Few would dispute the applicability of the word expansionism to America’s growth but the term empire is a different matter. Indeed, the term was commonly used until the mid-nineteenth century as virtually a synonym for nation or sovereign state, which accounts for the prevalence of the term in writings of the Founding Fathers and political leaders up to the Civil War.41 Early uses of the term empire thus may not have implied what we now call imperialism. The more loaded, politically negative meaning now associated with the term grew in the late nineteenth century as the leading European powers embarked on a rash of colonial land grabbing, and simultaneously political theorists, particularly of the left, subjected these developments to scrutiny and theoretical analysis.42 Empire (or more commonly imperialism) now firmly denoted domination over newly absorbed territories, the economic exploitation of colonies for the benefit of the mother country, the treatment of conquered peoples as colonial subjects rather than citizens, and an emphasis on personal rule and blind loyalty on the part of the people to such rulers. It came to be associated with oppression rather than freedom, centralization rather than devolution or distribution of power. None of these features, the official history of the United States tells us, characterizes the main lines of growth of the United States. The obvious exceptions are the existence

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of slavery from the early colonial period and the fate of the Native American peoples. However, in the version of America’s past we are outlining, the treatment accorded to these peoples represents regrettable deviations from the central thrust of American development. They are exceptions that prove the rule. In any case, they are regarded as “internal” matters and not of direct relevance to foreign relations. As for the territorial growth of the United States, this was far from being a record of unchecked land grabbing. At various points during the nineteenth century, several ambitious proposals for expansion were checked by either internal opposition, governmental prudence, or fears of war. Among the aspirations of some Americans that were not realized were the call to take “all Mexico” in 1848, to annex Cuba in 1848 and again in 1854, and the desire to annex Canada, which went back to the invasion of Canada during the Revolutionary War and surfaced at regular intervals during the nineteenth century. American territorial growth certainly displayed a powerful dynamic but was also characterized by a sense of the limits to American power. The primary positive piece of evidence supporting the official version of the history of America’s foreign relations was the American Revolution itself and the establishment of the Federal Constitution in 1787. The United States was born in opposition to colonial subjection, its sense of nationhood was determined by that act of rebellion, and its founding institutions reflected the conditions and principles that gave birth to the “first new nation.” The instrument of American government, the Federal Constitution of 1787, embodies the idea of limits to power, whether exercised by government or the people; the mechanisms contained in the Constitution are designed to check the exercise of arbitrary or concerted power by any one branch. These provisions apply particularly in the field of foreign policy, not least the requirements that only Congress can declare war (the president may request such a declaration but not order it) and that treaties require the advice and consent of the Senate. These and other similar injunctions do not guarantee that actual policy will follow the word of the Constitution, but they can be and have been invoked to check the power of presidents on particular occasions. Above all, they reflect aspirations to constitutionally sanctioned ways of doing things. Given the profound significance ascribed by Americans to their founding documents, it would be rash to assume that, simply because practicalities (or politics) often prevented their literal enactment, they are therefore to be considered of no account. A second important piece of evidence for the official version is the mechanism for the admission of new states to the Union as new territories

26 How America sees the world were acquired. This procedure, which is set out in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, established rules for the governance of as-yet-unorganized territories and also ensured that once a certain population level had been reached, states would be formed that would enjoy the same political and civil rights as those of the original states. Far from being a recipe for empire, it was a recipe for the expansion of the republic on a democratic basis. Admittedly, new issues were raised by the acquisition of noncontiguous territories, as the United States joined other nations in the rush for empire in the late nineteenth century. However, it could be shown that in most cases, the United States applied its republican and democratic principles in the future disposition of these territories. Alaska and Hawaii became the forty-ninth and fiftieth states of the Union, albeit with some delay. The Philippines achieved independence in 1946, though again postponed from the originally projected date by the Second World War. That the United States continued to regard itself as an anti-imperial, anticolonial nation as it assumed global power is evident in a number of ways. The delivery to the major European powers of the “open door” notes of 1899 and 1900 illustrated the United States’ desire to dissociate itself, at least at the level of rhetoric, from the exploitive policies of the European powers and Japan toward China. Few historians now regard these professions of good intentions as being innocent of the same grasping and material motives as those of the Europeans and the Japanese.43 Nevertheless, it remains true that American policy makers and the public at large developed the legend or perhaps the myth that the United States had a special relationship with China based on America’s uniquely benign treatment of China.44 The continuing vitality of the anticolonial, anti-imperial idea is evident in the speeches and policies of Franklin Roosevelt during the Second World War. High on the list of problems in his otherwise positive and fruitful wartime relations with Churchill was Roosevelt’s wish not to be associated with Britain’s more nakedly imperial ambitions. Roosevelt’s position is indicated in the draft of a letter to Churchill: “There is no question in my mind that the old relationship [between the Europeans and Americans on the one side and the ‘variety of races’ in eastern and southern Asia on the other] ceased to exist ten or twenty years ago and that no substitute has yet been worked out except the American policy of eventual freedom … .”45 By the same token, Roosevelt, ever the pragmatist, was always ready to acknowledge practical limitations to his principles. While during the war he expressed the firm intention of resisting the desire of the French to resume colonial control over Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia), which had fallen to the Japanese during the war, as

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victory came within sight, he conceded that temporary French control, preferably in the form of a trusteeship, might be necessary. There is nevertheless little reason to doubt Roosevelt’s continued devotion to the principle of anticolonialism itself.46 Following Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, the French did return to Indochina—with the practical help of the British and the effective endorsement of the United States. As the Cold War took root, the principle of anticolonialism was forced to run the gauntlet of anticommunism, with consequences with which we are familiar. When war broke out in 1946 between the returning French and the Vietnamese nationalist movement led by Ho Chi Minh, the United States could not afford to put pressure on the French to give up its colonial ambitions, since solidarity with the French in the emerging Cold War in Europe was the overriding priority. As the French became ever more deeply embroiled in Indochina and Europe became divided ever more deeply and dangerously along the line of the iron curtain, United States’ aid to France grew correspondingly. The Communist takeover in China in 1949 and the beginning of the Korean War in June 1950 cemented the United States’ commitment to “containment” of communism in Asia in general and Indochina in particular. By the early 1950s, the United States was paying the lion’s share of the cost of the French war in Indochina. Roosevelt’s principles seemed firmly to have been overtaken by events. How is it possible to sustain the official picture of the United States in the face of the record not only of American experience in Indochina but of American policy as a whole in the post-Second World War period, which is one of active involvement at all levels of policy—economic, military, diplomatic, cultural—in practically all geographical regions? How can the realities of the exercise of global power and the massive apparatus associated with it, including nuclear weapons, substantial conventional arms, a network of overseas military bases, military and diplomatic interventions in numerous locations, aid programs, membership of international organizations, to say nothing of the power inherent in the global reach of the American economy—how can all this be rendered consistent with the self-image of the United States as a peaceloving beacon of democracy and a benign distributor of goods to a grateful world? The answer lies in the conviction that American principles as applied in the era of global leadership are consistent with those of its earlier history. Indeed, according to this view, the United States never sought global power; global power was thrust upon it, as a further glance at history tells. In purely economic terms, as we have seen, the United States was a world power by

28 How America sees the world the beginning of the twentieth century, but it chose not to exercise that power politically or militarily except where American interests were felt to be directly at stake. Until the First World War, this meant predominantly Latin America and the Pacific, including China, the European balance of power being largely a European matter. This policy was directly in line with the long-standing precepts of the Monroe Doctrine (1823), which insisted that Europe’s affairs were Europe’s, and America’s were America’s. The Monroe Doctrine was both a “keep out” sign to the Great Powers of the old world and an undertaking that the United States would not interfere with their spheres of interest. The “political system of the allied powers [the Holy Alliance],” Monroe declared, “is essentially different … from that of America.”47 In this respect, Monroe was echoing sentiments that had been common currency for more than a generation. In his famous pamphlet, “Common Sense” (1776), Tom Paine had declared that “it is evident that they [England and America] belong to different systems. England to Europe: America to itself.”48 The United States became directly involved in the European, and hence global, balance of power in 1917 and 1941 only because the Europeans proved incapable of maintaining it on their own, an incapacity that posed a direct threat to American security. America did not seek war in 1917; war sought America out in the form of the German submarine campaign that violated America’s chosen position of neutrality. “The status of belligerent has been thrust upon [the United States],” announced President Woodrow Wilson in his speech of April 1917 requesting from Congress a declaration of war.49 America did not seek war in 1941 and entered only under the extreme provocation of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. America was, in the words of one historian of America’s entry into the Second World War, a “reluctant belligerent.”50 The story of the Cold War is essentially comparable, according to this version of events. The Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and its threat to the political stability of Western Europe forced the United States into the role of counterweight to Soviet communist power and, by extension, other regions of the world as communism took hold in China, and Soviet or Chinese communism became a model for newly independent nations or for insurgent movements within them. America’s Cold War posture was a defensive reaction to communist aggression. Not to have responded to this threat would have been to submit to a siegelike existence. Old style political isolationism was not an option, but this did not imply an abandonment of cherished principles. According to this interpretation of American foreign relations, Americans could say in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries what John Quincy Adams had

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said in the nineteenth and with as much conviction: “America goes not in search of monsters to destroy.” Just as the United States did not rush to war in 1917 and 1941, it did not rush to take up a Cold War role, however committed it became (as in the cases of the two World Wars) once involved. The American Congress, listening hard to the people who voted them in in 1946 (a conservative Republican Congress as against a Democratic president), were slow to vote, for example, in favor of the Marshall Plan, debating the issue for long months and approving the bill only under the pressure of the communist coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948. A year earlier, Congressional agreement to aid for Greece and Turkey, arguably the turning point in the United States’ commitment to waging Cold War, was achieved only under the pressure of the famous Truman Doctrine speech in which the president painted the global situation in unprecedentedly apocalyptic terms. Truman had been told by an adviser that if he wanted to get those appropriations through he would have to “scare the hell out of the American people,” which he proceeded to do. In short, consent to the United States’ new global political and military role, as in previous instances, was given reluctantly and only under the pressure of circumstances. The requirements of defense, in the Cold War as in earlier times, justified such interventions and international involvement as the United States undertook. It was simply that the conditions of the Cold War required the United States to engage in continuous and apparently open-ended international commitments. The end of the Cold War, if anything, served to reinforce an older preSecond World War approach to American foreign relations. With the removal of the historic communist enemy and apparently of the need for the intense vigilance of the previous forty years, the United States, it was believed, could now scale down its military forces and be more selective about where and when it chose to intervene. The prospect of a “peace dividend” opened out to many the possibility of something like a return to normalcy in American foreign relations. In practice, the conditions of the post-Cold War world created numerous new pressures for interventions—the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the collapse of Yugoslavia being the most obvious cases in point—and old conflicts persisted, if in novel forms, in which an American role was scarcely avoidable. Here the Arab–Israeli conflict, to be considered at length in a later chapter, loomed largest. Nevertheless, the resurgence of isolationist sentiment in public discussion during the 1990s and the lengths to which officials in the Clinton administration felt they had to go to rebut it reflected the desire of many Americans, including some influential individuals, to redirect America’s priorities to its own domestic well-being. If this desire was based on an illusion,

30 How America sees the world it was nevertheless a powerful one, perhaps no less so than the opposite assumption that the new “unipolar moment” offered the United States a unique opportunity to remake the world in its own image or at least to ensure that global conditions could be rendered peculiarly favorable to the United States.51 Doubtless, all states regard their own foreign policies as springing from defensive motives. In the aftermath of the Second World War, there was a virtually unanimous move among the world’s nations to rename departments of war as departments of defense. After two horrendously destructive world wars, war could no longer be accepted as a legitimate means of advancing the national interest or, as early nineteenth century Prussian General Clausewitz famously put it, “merely the continuation of political activity by other means.”52 In signing the United Nations Charter, all nations committed themselves to seeking peaceful means of resolving international disputes. The United States is, therefore, not unique in regarding all its foreign policy activity, including resorting to arms, as defensive in nature. It is, however, unique in its capacity to influence other nations’ destinies simply by virtue of its size and the dynamism of its economy and culture. Anyone holding the position that has been outlined above is forced to acknowledge that American engagement (a favorite word in the Clinton presidency, perhaps because of its benign connotations as compared with intervention) since the Second World War has been both continuous and extensive and on a scale that makes it hard to sustain the picture of the United States as simply a victim of circumstances or the malign intent of other nations.53 Given that the United States manifestly has and does determine the destinies of many other nations, how is this fact of American and international life explained and justified by those who maintain the view of American “innocence”? One approach lies in the distinction established by Washington and Jefferson between political and economic contact with other nations. Implicit in their statements is the common assumption of Enlightenment thinkers, notably the economic philosopher Adam Smith, that trade and commerce were inherently peaceful activities while political and diplomatic relations, especially when formalized in alliances, led to war. To the extent that this assumption was sustained through later periods of American history, Americans continued to resist the notion that their overseas economic activity might pose a threat to other nations or might have political implications. The idea that economic activity is politically neutral is visible in the history of American attempts to stay out of three global conflicts: the Napoleonic wars and the First and Second World Wars. In the first two cases, the United States would accept little or no compromise to its rights as a neutral to trade with any other nations, including

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the belligerents. In the 1930s, as war loomed in Europe, recognizing that trade in arms with the belligerents in the First World War had compromised its political neutrality, Congress passed a series of neutrality laws forbidding the selling of arms to nations at war. They were designed to insulate the United States from growing conflict in Europe as Hitler’s Germany pushed ever harder against its neighbors. One of the latter in this series of acts, however, contained the key provision that trade in military goods with nations at war was permissible if belligerents collected the goods in their own ships and paid “cash on the barrel head.” This provision reflected, as one historian has put it, “the contradictory desire of the American people to remain economically in the world and politically out of it.”54 All three attempts to maintain neutrality broke down; in each case, the United States went to war, suggesting that the tactic of separating out economic from political realities was unsustainable. The evidence suggests, however, that the assumption of separate spheres for economics and politics dies hard. To the extent that America’s power and influence has rested on the dynamism of its economy and the reach of its trade and investment around the world, Americans themselves could hardly regard this as in anything but a positive light. The appetite for American invention, American products, and American investment exists all around the world and appears to suggest universality in what the United States has to offer. Critics of the United States, and Marxists in particular, have seen things otherwise, and a school of political economists and theorists of development both in the West and in developing countries have rejected this benign vision of capitalism. It is no accident that Marxism and socialism more generally have exerted such little influence in the United States outside fairly rarefied academic and intellectual circles. The United States’ core value system does not admit the possibility that the economic structure itself—the capitalist system—may exert a malign influence, that it may exploit what it appears to benefit. Individual malefactors may and do exist; evil is a fact of life. Indeed, Americans, with their adherence to religious belief and public morality on a scale that is unusual in Western industrialized countries, are perhaps more alert to corruption in high places than are the populations of other Western countries. The American political system and press laws encourage more openness than most other Western nations. However, to see the motor of the American productive system as inherently dangerous to the lives and liberties of other nations hardly enters into the consciousness of those who see its benefits in the form of high standards of living and consumption as self-evidently good and of benefit to all.

32 How America sees the world This conclusion leads directly to a further reason why most Americans find it difficult to regard their influence abroad as being anything but benign— namely, that America’s fundamental political, social, and moral values are regarded as being self-evidently true and right. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Thus the American Declaration of Independence, authored by Thomas Jefferson. The issue is not simply the content of these truths but their presumed selfevident nature. When tied to a sense of mission, which is to be found from the beginnings of American nationhood and gathers pace with the territorial expansion of the nation, this stance carries all before it. “We have it in our power to begin the world over again,” Tom Paine had written in his famous pamphlet of January 1776, “Common Sense.”55 Two generations later, that aspiration had been translated into certainty. “Our country,” wrote a journalist in 1839, “is destined to be the great nation of futurity. It is so destined, because the principle upon which a nation is organized fixes its destiny, and that of equality is perfect, is universal. It presides in all the operations of the physical world, and it is also the conscious law of the soul—the self-evident dictates of morality, which accurately defines the duty of man to man, and consequently man’s rights as man.”56 It is easy to see how such sentiments, growing originally out of a sense of America’s welcome detachment from the world, could be converted into a sense of duty to bring these same benefits to others. Once the United States had arrived at world power, national self-interest and devotion to principle combined to place the assertion of American values high on the list of foreign policy priorities. “The world must be made safe for democracy,” declared Woodrow Wilson in 1917.57 Implicitly, contrary or different sets of values lacked legitimacy. Given a free choice, most people would opt for liberal democracy. “We’re going to turn the Mekong into a Tennessee valley,” said Lyndon Johnson.58 In the wake of the Vietnam War itself and in the light of the growing sensitivity to issues of racial and ethnic diversity, such naked expressions of ethnocentrism became less acceptable, at least in the public domain. Nevertheless, it has remained the policy of the United States to promote the spread of its values. Among the most explicit expressions of this stance toward the outside world was a comprehensive policy statement of September 1993 by Anthony Lake, President Clinton’s national security adviser. Cold War and containment were things of the past; the collapse of the Soviet Union required the United States “to think anew because the world is new.” The chosen instrument was a policy of “enlargement” which had four components.

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The United States must “strengthen the community of major market democracies … which constitutes the core from which enlargement is proceeding; foster and consolidate new democracies and market economies where possible; counter aggression and support the liberalization of states hostile to democracy; help democracy and market economics take root in regions of greatest humanitarian concern.” Crucially, in this new world, the United States was compelled “not only to be engaged but to lead.” It is significant also that Lake should point up the continuity between this policy and that of Woodrow Wilson. “These dynamics [of enlargement],” said Lake, “lay at the heart of Woodrow Wilson’s most profound insights. Although his moralism sometimes weakened his argument, he understood that our own security is shaped by the character of foreign regimes.” Furthermore, Lake adds, virtual consensus has reigned on this issue throughout the twentieth century: “Most presidents who followed, Republicans and Democrats alike, understood we must promote democracy and market economics in the world—because it protects our interests and security; and because it reflects values that are both American and universal.”59 Opponents of these values are hence not merely enemies of the United States but of universal values. It is easy to see how an encounter between such a stance and similarly universal claims by nations or cultures that hold to different principles could develop into confrontation. It did so with communism; the potential is there with Islam. The clash of ideologies gives way, in the eyes of some, to the clash of civilizations.60 This issue will be taken up later. For the moment, it is important to stress the process by which a set of principles originally devised to bolster separation and a sense of difference can be transformed, under different conditions, into powerful tools of expansion or even exploitation. The potentially exploitative nature of these principles, however, is obscured for many Americans themselves because of their association with the founding principles of the United States. A sense of continuity underscores assumptions about the benign character of the American presence on the international scene. The view outlined above, which is a composite of popular attitudes and more or less sophisticated justifications of America’s record in foreign policy, does not deny the facts of American expansion or American influence in the world. On the contrary, it celebrates them but does so in a way that assumes continuities with the period when the United States was a relatively small power on the periphery of international politics. America, the twenty-first century superpower, the empire, the so-called world policeman, understands itself and its relations with the world in terms of assumptions formed in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

34 How America sees the world Government and the people or government versus the people? What has been said so far assumes an identity between government and the people. Even in a democratic system, however, it is rash to assume that policy and government actions are simply the expression of the will of the people. When possible gaps between policy makers and public opinion are taken into account, the dilemma outlined above—of the gap between America’s world role and the people’s perception of it—is deepened. Generally, popular opinion has been markedly more “isolationist” in all possible senses of the term than has government and the foreign policy elite. Indeed, governments have often had to work hard to make the case for intervention. While the record suggests that the American public will rally around strongly in cases of obvious national emergency—and no more so than when the United States has been directly attacked—it is also clear that given the choice, the American people would prefer not to be involved. The evidence from the history of electoral politics in the twentieth century is overwhelming. In 1916, Woodrow Wilson fought for presidential election on the slogan “He kept us out of the war”; in 1940, Roosevelt was forced to declare, in response to a question from a journalist, that he would not send “our boys” to fight overseas; in 1964, Lyndon Johnson presented himself as the peace candidate on the question of Vietnam (made easier for him because of the belligerent stance of his Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater); in 1992, Bill Clinton announced his determination to refocus the energies of government on domestic affairs. In each case, within more or less brief periods of time, these presidents had committed American troops overseas. The United States entered the First World War in April 1917 and the Second World War in December 1941. Within a few months of the 1964 election, Johnson had begun the “Rolling Thunder” bombing campaign and sent combat troops to Vietnam. Clinton’s interventions were much more modest, but the cases of Bosnia in 1995 and Kosovo in 1999 were significant, not least because, like the others mentioned, they were undertaken in the consciousness of isolationist sentiment among the American people. Generally speaking, presidential candidates cannot expect to win votes by promising high-profile interventions. Neither Wilson nor Roosevelt were comfortable with the stands they took and adopted them because they felt forced to do so for political reasons. The two postwar presidents who came into power with the most ambitious foreign policy agendas, including promises of substantial buildups in American military power—Kennedy in 1960 and Reagan in 1980—were noticeably cautious about actually

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intervening. Furthermore, it is evident that there have been votes to be won by candidates promising to end wars already under way. Eisenhower in 1952 and Nixon in 1968, both Republicans fighting Democrats encumbered by association with unpopular wars, promised to bring peace. Eisenhower did, as promised, “go to Korea,” and the war was over within six months of his coming into office. Nixon, via long and damaging detours into Cambodia and Laos, did eventually pull American troops out of Vietnam. Further examples of the American public’s reluctance to entertain the active foreign policies undertaken by the United States in the twentieth century could be added, but the point is surely clear: American presidents undertaking active foreign policies, as all have since the Second World War, must engage in extensive public relations exercises to make their policies acceptable to the public. This conclusion raises a number of important issues. In the first place, it would appear to bear out the conclusion of British historian John Thompson that emphasis on vulnerability stems primarily from government’s need to exaggerate it in order to get backing from the American people for policies it knows will be unpopular. The sense of vulnerability is, then, in part manufactured.61 Second, it might suggest that the high-sounding ideals invoked by presidents and other senior officials to gain support for their policies may be simply a matter of rhetoric designed to rationalize and justify policies that they believe are important on pragmatic grounds. Officials make the unacceptable acceptable by dressing it up in language sanctioned by American tradition. What I have called the official version of America’s history is thus, according to this line of argument, once again largely manufactured; it hides (not least from the American people) the real end of American power, which is one of pursuit of naked self-interest. Third, the well-known reluctance of the American public to be drawn into large-scale, open-ended overseas commitments may help to explain the resort by the executive branch of the government to various semiconstitutional and even, on occasions, unconstitutional means of conducting foreign policy. To take only one example, a formal declaration of war can be made only by Congress, though the president may request one. In fact, such declarations have been made on only five occasions in American history: 1812 (against Britain), 1846 (against Mexico), 1898 (against Spain), 1917 (against Germany and Austria-Hungary), and 1941 (against Japan and Germany). Such declarations involve extensive debate of the full range of issues involved, followed by votes in both houses. In the many other instances of American military action, the risks of seeking formal prior approval from Congress, with its attendant

36 How America sees the world full-dress debate and inevitable challenges to executive power, have evidently been regarded by American administrations as excessive. Most of the other wars or interventions in American history, including Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War, have been carried out on the basis of Congressional resolutions or executive orders, the latter stemming from the president’s constitutional role as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The case of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution of 1964, which sanctioned the escalation of the American commitment to Vietnam, illustrates very clearly the political significance of the procedural difference between a formal declaration of war and a Congressional resolution. Coming to Congress in August 1964 with information suggesting unprovoked attacks by North Vietnam on US war vessels, Lyndon Johnson received close to unanimous support from both Houses (two Senators opposed it) for a capacious enabling resolution.62 Only later did it emerge that the information was less than conclusive, by which time the key decisions on expansion of the war had long been taken. Congressional checks on executive power, especially in the field of foreign policy, are generally after the fact. Even the War Powers Act of 1973, which was designed to limit the power of the executive to commit troops, has turned out to set few real constraints on executive power and has even, according to some, given presidents new scope because of ambiguities and loopholes in the act. In a word, full democracy has rarely applied in the field of foreign policy. As for unconstitutional means, the executive branch has employed various methods of circumventing normal procedures, as was evident, for example, in President Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia in the spring of 1969 and the Iran-Contra imbroglio of the mid1980s, to give only two of many possible examples. That both of these ventures failed to achieve their ends and proved politically damaging to their promoters is less important in the context of the present discussion than the fact that they illustrate the lengths to which some presidents felt they had to go in order to bridge the gap between what they wanted and what they felt the American people were prepared to accept. The much discussed growth of the “imperial presidency” in the post-Second World War years was only partly a matter of a wilful aggrandizement of power by the executive branch; it was in part also a response to a structural problem: the gap between America’s growing role as a superpower and Americans’ disinclination to perceive themselves in this light.63 Do these conclusions imply that the American people are simply the dupes of their governments and that governments cynically exploit the symbols and traditions of the nation? The case is hardly that straightforward. It is true that governments sometimes manipulate public opinion in order to achieve support

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for their policies and that rhetoric drawn from tradition is often employed to disguise or soften the edges of policies that owe at least as much to Realpolitik as to Enlightenment idealism. However, it is not always or only a matter of governments pulling the wool over the eyes of the people, if only because there is plenty of evidence that it is not a one-way process. Governments are aware of their own political vulnerability and couch policies in language that speaks to nationally sanctioned values and symbols. Nor is it simply a matter of language. The American Constitution itself, though no guarantee of full governmental accountability at every step of the way, ultimately does set boundaries to policy making. Democracy does in the end exert some constraints on governments, try as governments on occasions will to circumvent them. The evidence suggests that American decision makers are vitally affected by what they think public opinion will stand. Contrary to the “imperial” interpretation of American foreign policy history and the views of some of America’s most strident critics abroad, it is not the case that the United States has rushed indiscriminately to intervene anywhere and everywhere it could in recent decades. Indeed, there are those both inside the United States and outside it who believe that the problem is that the United States is not imperial enough. If only the United States would conceive of itself as a true Great Power and assume the corresponding responsibilities, then its own policies would be the more consistent and more likely to promote international stability. “There is no excuse for the relative weakness of the US as a quasi-imperial power,” wrote a British professor at Oxford in the aftermath of September 11. America must make the transition from “informal to formal empire.” However, “it does not come naturally to the US … to act as a self-confident imperial power. The US has the resources but does it have the guts to act as a global hegemon and make the world a more stable place?” Another observer, writing in the influential American periodical Foreign Affairs, concluded that America’s “antiimperialist restraint is becoming harder to sustain … as the disorder in poorer countries grows more threatening.” He advocated the establishment of a new international body under United States leadership devoted to “nationbuilding.”64 Ultimately, the American government and the American people meet on common ground that is defined broadly by what I have termed the official version of America’s foreign policy history. Clearly, there is no total consensus. An American antiwar movement exists against the post-September 11 war in Afghanistan, as has been the case to a greater or lesser degree in all conflicts in which the United States has engaged. There are many shades of opinion. What is not in doubt is the allegiance of a majority of Americans to certain profoundly

38 How America sees the world unifying symbols, attitudes, and values that can collectively be called Americanism. There is no more eloquent expression of this sentiment, which is sufficiently potent and historically grounded to qualify as an ideology, than the unity displayed by the American people’s reaction to September 11. Equally clear is the curious mixture of attraction and repulsion that this ideology arouses in peoples around the world. This is the subject of the following chapter.

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How the world sees America The causes and consequences of anti-Americanism

America is solidly organized egoism, it is evil made systematic and regular. Pierre Buchez1

I have always believed that this anointed land was set apart in an uncommon way, that a divine plan placed this great continent here between the oceans to be founded by people from every corner of the earth who have a special love of faith and freedom. Ronald Reagan2

A very British story On October 4, 2001, the London Review of Books (LRB) published a collection of reactions to the events of September 11 by some of its leading contributors. One in particular, by a Cambridge academic, provoked an angry response from an American professor, setting off a debate that continued through several subsequent issues. It spread out to at least one daily newspaper, the Guardian, when one of its columnists reported on the furor. To that extent, this controversy became news and not simply a piece of academic infighting.3 The comments in the LRB on October 4 that provoked the most heated response were contained in a single sentence. Once the initial shock of the September 11 attacks had passed, wrote Mary Beard, a “more hard-headed reaction set in,” which included the feeling that “however tactfully you dress it up, the United States had it coming (emphasis added).” Beard’s phrasing allowed for the possibility that she was merely reporting what others believed, but the general tenor of her remarks suggested endorsement of this view. So, at any rate, it was taken by some readers. Many of the statements by other contributors, while expressing condemnation of the attacks and sympathy for the victims, were critical either directly or indirectly of the United States government’s

40 How the world sees America response. Most important, the tone adopted by a significant number of the contributors was one of deep skepticism about the United States’ ability to do the right thing. One contributor, in this case an American, wrote: “I’m not sure which is more frightening: the horror that engulfed New York City or the apocalyptic rhetoric emanating daily from the White House.”4 It was perhaps inevitable that the attention subsequently focused on some of the more provocative statements should have overshadowed the manifest variety of perspectives among the other contributions.5 The next issue carried an angry response by Marjorie Perloff, a professor at Stanford University in California. Expressing outrage at the seeming insensitivity of many contributors to the carnage at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, she rejected the assumption she took to be at the heart of the LRB statements: that what happened in New York and Washington could be blamed directly on the policies of the United States from the 1960s to the present. While conceding that “the US has committed some atrocities in the Middle East,” she asked, “Does it therefore follow that ‘the US had it coming’? And which of us in the US are included?” She concluded by saying that she planned to cancel her long-standing subscription to the LRB and would urge her students and colleagues to do likewise.6 In the usual way of such correspondences, participants and their supporters rushed to offer qualifications, clarifications, stouter defenses, and outflanking maneuvers. While Perloff ’s stance was warmly endorsed on November 1 by one letter-writer, the follow-up letters in the next two issues of the LRB suggest that Perloff was in a minority among readers of the LRB. Beard, whose words had originally kindled the debate, riposted that Perloff had distorted her views, and others rushed to Beard’s defense. Most bizarre of all was a short email from Minneapolis in response to the original statements: “When I visit England sometime I’m going to stop by your offices and shove your loony left faces into some dogshit.” The same correspondent offered in the next issue a somewhat cringing apology. “My e-mail was sent in a fit of passion,” he wrote. “This doesn’t help excuse my comment, just helps explain it,” to which he added that “you published it partly ironically, I’m sure, and partly to reconfirm your readers’ views of Americans as idiots. Well, I was idiotic with sadness and anger.” He concluded that, although he didn’t usually agree with publications such as the LRB, “I am glad they are around.”7 The passage of time evidently drove other readers in the opposite direction toward a defense of the United States and of Perloff ’s angry response to the September 11 issue. By the end of November, the majority of readers’ letters, several (though by no means all) from Americans, were deeply critical of the

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views expressed in the LRB’s September 11 issue, and the charge of “antiAmericanism” was raised more sharply than in earlier issues. One correspondent talked of the “fatuous, self-righteousness” and “reflexive anti-Americanism” of the LRB contributors, while another spoke of the “knee-jerk antiAmericanism posing as thought in your letter pages.”8 The LRB hardly commands a mass readership. Like the New York Review of Books (NYRB) on which it is modeled, the LRB services a small though influential class of intellectuals and academics toward the liberal end of the political spectrum. It publishes lengthy and thoughtful book reviews and also commentary on political, literary, and cultural issues of the day. Contributors to the LRB and the NYRB, like their readerships, are conspicuously transatlantic. Reviewers from Harvard, Yale, and Columbia rub shoulders with their counterparts from Oxford, Cambridge, and London. If there is such a thing as a “special relationship” of the intellect, it is to be found in the pages of these periodicals. It is partly for this reason that the LRB’s responses to September 11 are of particular interest. They raise the question of whether this special relationship of the intellect is at odds with the special relationship in politics. Is there some sort of elective affinity between liberal intellectuals and antiAmericanism? There is also the question of the relationship between critical opinion and outright prejudice. Where does one stop and the other begin? In short, in what sense is anti-Americanism an issue in the exchanges described above? First, there is the issue of timing. What provoked the reaction from Perloff and the e-mailer to the original statements was not merely the views themselves but the apparent detachment of some of the authors from the immediate human and emotional impact of the attacks in New York and Washington. Hence the distinctiveness of the e-mail from Minneapolis. Its rawness was out of keeping with the usual tenor of writing in the LRB, yet it was probably closer to the emotional response of most Americans to the attacks. The e-mailer sensed that he had broken the rules of a code and sought in the second letter to realign himself with the accepted discourse of the LRB. In doing so, he felt (or at least appeared to be) bound to adopt the prejudices that he assumed the LRB held toward America and Americans. The price of suppressing his original gut reaction was self-contempt. Here, rationality is associated with criticism of the United States or at least of being grown up intellectually; emotion with sympathy for it. However, this very rationality so soon after the events smacked of insensitivity to the human tragedy, to say nothing of a fundamental lack of sympathy with the United States.

42 How the world sees America The second sense in which the issue of anti-Americanism is raised lies in the political dimension in the LRB debate. The Left in Britain has never been unanimous in its condemnation of the United States. Indeed, until at least the end of the nineteenth century, the United States was regarded as a political model for many British progressives and liberals. Furthermore, the American dissenting tradition, including the civil rights and feminist movements, continues to attract the attention of British radicals. Nevertheless, with the United States’ rise to global power, not least in the period of Cold War, the association between a liberal or Left-wing stance and anti-Americanism grew strongly. The issue was not merely of criticism of American foreign policy but of a broader predisposition to doubt whether American power ever could be exerted for good overseas. The view that the United States had it coming, certainly in the context in which it was uttered, encapsulates views that have been current on the Left for a generation or more, both inside and outside the United States. They are represented in the more strident forms of the argument outlined in chapter 2, that America is an imperial power seeking hegemonic control globally, in the course of which it has generated numerous enemies whose opposition is both understandable and justified. The third level at which this debate can be discussed is cultural. Irrespective of political position, there exists a pervasive attitude of superiority among many in Britain toward the United States, perhaps best expressed by reference to the e-mailer’s assumption that LRB readers regard Americans as “idiots.” This question will be addressed at greater length later in this chapter, but it is worth stressing that despite the manifest reversal of power between the United States and Britain since the Second World War, vestiges of condescension toward the United States, which transcend party political lines, continue to exist in Britain and more generally in Europe. It is based in part on judgments on American popular culture and its influence, partly on its supposed naiveté and lack of statesmanship in international politics, and partly on a more encompassing suspicion of the exertion of American power, whether economic, political, or cultural. The above expressions of anti-Americanism, if they can be called such, did not cost lives or topple buildings, nor doubtless would the contributors to the LRB in question necessarily admit to the charge of anti-Americanism. What this debate illustrates very clearly, however, is the intensity of attitudes toward the United States. September 11 brought to the fore with peculiar force opinions about the United States that have long existed in one form or another. The debate in the LRB represents in microcosm a debate about America that

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has taken place on a global scale. What are the sources of such emotions and attitudes? What exactly is anti-Americanism? The meanings of anti-Americanism The attacks of September 11 expressed nothing if not hatred of America. In the aftermath of the atrocities, commentators and ordinary individuals both in the United States and outside it pondered the sources of a hatred so pure and so deadly that it would induce young men to spend years preparing to sacrifice their lives in the most spectacular possible manner. Bin Laden, wrote the French newspaper Le Monde, represented “un antiaméricanisme absolu,” while the American journal of opinion, the New Republic, had no doubt that “we are living in a new era of anti-Americanism.”9 As the debate in the LRB illustrates, almost as sobering for Americans was the realization, as reactions to the attacks were reported from around the world, that many groups and individuals who said they deplored the attacks and the loss of life nevertheless professed to understand the reasons why the United States was a target of such hatred. In between the extremes of the terrorist acts themselves and a detached understanding of them—which to many Americans amounted to apologetics for the attacks—was a full array of positions expressing a greater or lesser degree of alienation from the policies and, in some cases, the values of the United States. Anti-Americanism was both a cause and a consequence of the terrorism of September 11 and, as such, it is central to an understanding of these events. It is necessar y to put quotation marks around the term “antiAmericanism” because, like all essentially political terms, it proves difficult to define once you start peeling back the layers of meaning. One can take it that it implies something more sweeping and absolute than simply criticism of American policies, yet anti-Americanism may often begin in this way, hardening to an idée fixe only when such policies become routine or when a pattern of perceived exploitation and dependence becomes a permanent condition, as is arguably the case in American relations with Latin America. Anti-Americanism seems to imply also an element of irrationalism and resistance to facts that may run counter to prejudices. The French historian Theodore Zeldin writes that “to hate a whole nation, to love a whole nation, is a clear symptom of hysteria.”10 A leading American analyst of antiAmericanism, Paul Hollander, similarly puts irrationalism at the center of his definition. Anti-Americanism, he writes, is “an unfocused and largely irrational, often visceral aversion toward the United States, its government,

44 How the world sees America domestic institutions, foreign policies, prevailing values, culture, and people.”11 These definitions raise a number of issues. In their very comprehensiveness, they risk failing to account for the highly specific nature of many forms of alienation from the United States. Even Osama bin Laden’s apparently blind and extreme rejectionism, according to one of the few journalists who has met him, focused on specifics. Following an interview with bin Laden, the Pakistani journalist Rahimullah Yusufzai wrote that “There was … one significant element missing from his list of grievances: he did not say anything about the idea of America—its rights, its freedoms, its prosperity. It was in American foreign policy that he saw the greatest threat to Islam.”12 It is hard to know how much credence to give to this particular report. Judging by statements made before and after September 11, Osama bin Laden regarded all Americans as legitimate targets and made no distinction between government and people. The founding statement of Al Qaeda, dated February 1998, was effectively a fatwa against the United States and declared that “the ruling to kill the Americans and their allies—civilians and military—is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it … ”13 Nevertheless, the distinction between government policy and the wider American society is a familiar one among critics of the United States. Evidence from other parts of the Middle East and South Asia since September 11 supports the view that the most vitriolic criticisms of United States policies can be combined with goodwill toward individual citizens. A report from Islamabad on October 19 noted that “there is no personal animosity toward any American or Westerner from people they have met, only a strident political critique and resentment of American foreign policy, which is where the roots of antiAmericanism lie.”14 The British radical politician Tony Benn can stand for many on the Left in Europe who insist that to reject American foreign policy is not to hate America or its people and culture. There is little doubt, nevertheless, that Benn’s stance of firm opposition to the war in Afghanistan would be regarded by most Americans as anti-American, since his rejection of American policies seems unqualified and uncompromising. It is possible, however, to find the opposite case of distaste for American culture being combined with an insistence that American power is necessary as a counterweight to the threat of communism or Islam or terrorism.15 As we shall see in the course of this chapter, anti-Americanism assumes many forms and has many different roots. It is more useful to think of it as a family of related attitudes rather than as a single entity.

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The question of the unfocused and irrational character of anti-Americanism raises other important issues. The ascription of rationality or irrationality to the motives behind a certain act is partly a matter of point of view. The definition quoted above by American scholar Paul Hollander comes close to claiming that to be opposed to American core values is by definition to be irrational. Certainly, such types of anti-Americanism are to be found, notably the extreme conspiratorialism that sees the hand of the United States in every ill that befalls particular countries. However, Hollander’s approach risks blurring the already problematic distinction between anti-Americanism and a critical stance toward particular aspects of American policy or culture. Indeed, in Hollander’s book, anti-Americanism is associated with the entire range of critiques of American society in the 1960s, at home as well as abroad. Hollander employs the term anti-Americanism as a synonym for 1960s radicalism, which he regards as having undermined America’s traditional culture and values. Here, discussion of antiAmericanism has as much to do with internal American political debate as with foreign attitudes toward the United States. The political character of his conception is even clearer in comments he has made on this theme since September 11, 2001. “Intellectuals and quasi-intellectuals, college professors, ministers, and those nostalgic for the 1960s and their youthful ideals,” he writes, [the list includes “the usual suspects” Noam Chomsky, Paul Kennedy, Norman Mailer, Robin Morgan, Harold Pinter, Edward Said, Susan Sontag, and others] have come forth to affirm once again what they have always believed: that this country is a unique incarnation of injustice and hypocrisy.”16 There are, however, costs in employing such a sweeping definition of anti-Americanism. The phenomenon is more varied and complex than this usage suggests. Needless to say, some, and perhaps all, of the individuals named above would reject the view that they are anti-American. Hollander’s approach has at least this merit, however: it brings out important affinities between critiques of the United States among Leftists abroad and those by America’s own Left wing. A British journalist on a visit to a book fair in America some months after September 11 noted that among book-loving American intellectuals on the Left, “it is chic to disapprove of America, not only of its rulers or those who elected them, but of the idea of America itself.”17 American anti-Americanism does exist but, even here, there is a danger of oversimplification. If Left-wing criticism of the United States is to be considered virtually by definition anti-American, what of the views of the extreme Right, whose rejection of the American establishment is as least as sweeping as that of the Left? The confusions multiply when one considers that radicals of various stripes, whether on the Left or the Right, trace their lineage to the period of

46 How the world sees America the American Revolution, albeit in both cases selectively. All claim to be quintessentially in the American tradition.18 To follow through on these and other problems associated with antiAmericanism is to be aware that the term itself is a contested concept whose range of reference is wide and shifting. Though at the extreme there may be little ambiguity about what constitutes anti-Americanism, in the muddier middle ground, its meaning is a matter of perception and point of view. On occasions, the term is used as a political weapon to discredit an opponent rather than anything approaching a neutral term of analysis. Arguably, Hollander has taken this route. The way forward is not to deny the existence of antiAmericanism but to accept that it assumes many different forms, depending on historical contexts and political agendas. There are, furthermore, important practical reasons for insisting on a careful treatment of the term and of the phenomenon itself. In the absence of close attention to variations in attitudes, there is the danger of dismissing all criticism of the United States as the product of a mindless and homogenous anti-Americanism and thus of failing to address the issues that give rise to criticism of the United States. However, there is also the opposite danger of making too much of anti-Americanism. No nation or government can be expected to agree with, far less respond to, all negative judgments on its actions and policies, not least because many such judgments will inevitably be poorly grounded, at best partial, or just plain wrong. If there are perceptual gaps in the United States’ view of the world, the same holds true in reverse. What we are concerned with here is the other side of the material that we examined in the last chapter. There we looked at American foreign relations from the inside out; here we look from the outside in. Americanism and the nature of American nationalism The sources of anti-Americanism may be diverse, but it is important to account for the fact that, however defined and whatever form it takes, it should be so prevalent. Why America? The obvious answer is that as the leading world power, the United States inevitably attracts opposition. Anti-Americanism has grown in step with the rise of the United States to world power. Like imperial nations of the past, the United States wields disproportionate power that is an object both of attraction and resentment. Moreover, America exerts power at all levels. Its “soft power,” or cultural influence, is as potent as the “hard power” it wields through its military and economic might.19 Such power has often been an object of suspicion by America’s friends as well as by its enemies. Nations that rely on the United States for protection struggle also to assert a

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measure of autonomy. The story of America’s relations with Western Europe in the post-Second World War period can be told in terms of this tension between dependence and independence. European anti-Americanism has many other roots, but it lies in part in the field of power relations. In other parts of the world, American power has been exerted in a more naked and dominant fashion, and resentment is correspondingly more intense. More generally, relations with the United States are such a central element of the foreign policies of so many countries that anti-Americanism can become a factor in domestic politics.20 To the extent that it is exploited for domestic reasons, it may become virtually detached from the realities of relations with the United States and take on a life of its own. We shall be exploring these and other related issues in greater detail later. For the moment, it is enough to note that the United States is a target in part because it is there, because its influence is felt everywhere and can thus be blamed, whether justifiably or not, for any number of ills. Anti-Americanism is part of the language of international politics. There is more than politics at stake here. English poet Stephen Spender noted that “the Americans are the people other nationals feel they know most about.” People from all over the world feel free to venture opinions about the United States and its people “with an assurance which they would not have if talking about Russia and Russians, Frenchmen and France, or even English and England.”21 America appears transparent and knowable to people who may have had little contact with the United States beyond images culled from films, television, magazines, and books. Indeed, the image of America arguably is the reality for many people. What is the source of the peculiar power of the image of America? There is attached to opinion about the United States a special intensity that long predates the United States’ rise to world power. Anti-Americanism is inconceivable without “Americanism,” an expression of nationalism that is a product both of the United States itself and of others’ expectations of it.22 The quotations at the head of this chapter are expressions from opposite points of view of the familiar notion that America has always been an idea—an invention—as much as a place or a country. Before the United States existed, indeed before colonies were established in North America, America was already a place of myth, a screen onto which Europeans projected their imaginings. Fantasy blended with fact as the first explorers reported their findings of natural abundance and untold riches in the ground. Settlement of the New World was in part stimulated by such stories, and they were so effective because they fed an already existing appetite for Arcadian images. The discovery of America

48 How the world sees America coalesced with the Renaissance dream of Utopia and, in one of those examples of life imitating art, it has been said that the first English settlers in North America were powerfully influenced by Thomas More’s Utopia.23 By the time the first English colonies were established in the early seventeenth century, it was clear that the word America had entered everyday language; witness John Donne’s exclamation on going to bed with his mistress and exulting in her nakedness: “O my America! My new-found-land.” Later in the century, for John Locke to say that “in the beginning all the world was America” was to identify America with the state of nature before political societies were established. This America of the mind represented all that was new, abundant, fertile, free. Actual settlement brought the inevitable confrontation with reality, but the evidence suggests that hardship did not destroy the sense of mission that had brought the settlers to the New World. Rather the reverse. John Winthrop, about to land at Massachusetts Bay in 1630 and confront the reality of life on the outer reaches of the known world, contributed hugely to the idealizing drive behind the settlement of the New World when he counseled his fellow settlers to consider that “wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us.” America as Jerusalem placed a heavy burden of expectation on Americans. The seventeenth century Puritan sense of mission was the progenitor of nineteenth century ideas of manifest destiny no less than of Ronald Reagan’s notion that America had been placed between the oceans according to a “divine plan.”24 The American Revolution and the creation of the United States itself generated new sorts of perfectionist and universal claims, not least among foreign observers. Thomas Pownall, a British official who served as governor of Massachusetts and tried in vain to reconcile the colonies with the mother country, wrote of America in 1783 in elevated terms: “The genuine Liberty on which America is founded is totally and entirely a new System of Things and Men, which treats all as what they actually are, esteeming nothing the True End and perfect Good of Policy but that Effect which produces, as equality of Rights, so equal Liberty, universal Peace, and unobstructed intercommunion of happiness in human society.”25 Inflated as these sentiments appear, they were not untypical of the period. A French contemporary of Pownall, J. Hector St John de Crèvecoeur, famously asked in 1782, “What then is the American, this new man?” to which he gave the answer: “The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury and useless labor, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample subsistence.—This is an American.”26 A generation later, Goethe spoke

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for many who felt the old world had had its day and envied America its new beginning: “Amerika, du hast es besser/Als unser Kontinent, das alte, / hast keine verfallene Schlösser … ” [America, you have it better than our continent, the old one; you have no ruined castles … ]27 The crowning expression of the American national mission, however, was contained in the founding documents themselves. As G.K. Chesterton observed, following a visit to the United States shortly after the First World War, “America is the only nation in the world which is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.”28 As noted in the last chapter, it is the presumed self-evident nature of the truths asserted in the Declaration that is so striking and gives them their quasi-theological status in the development of American nationalism. The somewhat grandiose introductory phrases of the Declaration of Independence express a sense that, as an embodiment of new and enlightened values, the United States has a special destiny among nations. Foreign observers and Americans themselves have typically been preoccupied with identifying what makes America different from other nations and cultures. For many analysts, that difference is contained in everything implied by the “American dream” (opportunity, upward mobility, freedom). Even to utter the term is to be aware of something distinctive about America and “Americanness.” Who talks of the British dream or the French dream? Consequently, the distinctiveness of the United States, or American “exceptionalism,” has been the subject, possibly the only real subject, of many of the attempts to understand the basis of America’s cultural identity, whether by such foreign observers as Alexis de Tocqueville and James Bryce in the nineteenth century or by several later generations of American analysts of American culture.29 American nationalism has not always expressed itself so generously. Around the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the national mission came to be identified by some as Americanism. The term (including the expression “100 percent Americanism”) appears to have originated with Theodore Roosevelt, president of the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century. “Americanism,” he declared, signified “the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity and strength—virtues that made America.”30 At various times in America’s history, especially when there was perceived to be a foreign threat, Americanism has taken narrower, more exclusive, and even repressive forms. Sometimes—as in the 100 percent Americanism of the Ku Klux Klan— an extreme form of nationalism, or nativism, was the preserve of a group or party rather than of the nation as a whole. In other cases, as in the determination to root out “un-American” activity in the early Cold War, an intense

50 How the world sees America Americanism —here taking the form of anti-communism—became something like a national ideology. The concept of un-American activity itself suggests the quasi-theological character of American nationalism referred to by Chesterton. To be un-American is to deviate from some accepted notion of Americanism; it is a form of heresy. There is a close relationship between unAmericanism and anti-Americanism, the distinction between them being that the former is generally applied to Americans while the latter generally, though not exclusively, refers to non-Americans. What ties them is the peculiarly intense expression of nationalism known as Americanism. Americanism, however, is by no means only a matter of high politics or ideology. It expresses itself on a more homely level in, for example, devotion to the flag and celebrations of national events and heroes. Americans celebrate their nationhood with an openness and a fervor that embarrasses or even repels the citizens of many other nations. Flying the flag, even in normal times, is for many Americans an everyday patriotic duty. In times of crisis or national emergency, such as the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979–80, the Gulf War, or the terrorist attacks of September 11, the flag is invested with correspondingly greater significance. Americans “rally round the flag” as few other nations do, perhaps because in a nation composed of such diverse elements, the flag is a necessary unifying symbol. It is noteworthy that flag manufacturing was among the few businesses to flourish in the wake of September 11.31 In these and other ways, the United States presents a face of national cohesiveness that often obscures deep divisions along the lines of race, religion, politics, and social attitudes. To what extent the “American consensus” is genuine has long been disputed by historians. One tradition of interpretation has it that American society has always been characterized more by divisions than consensus, the elements of consensus being largely ideological and manufactured. By contrast, consensus historians do not deny that divisions exist in American society, but they regard them as taking place within a framework of common values and assumptions that determine the ways in which social conflicts are expressed. Without attempting to resolve this dispute here, it can be said that the balance between these two aspects of American society swings hugely toward consensus whenever a threat is perceived from outside. Generally speaking, furthermore, it is the consensual aspects of American society to which foreigners respond when they regard the United States from a distance. There are, of course, revealing exceptions. The themes in modern American history that attract most attention from overseas students of the United States are the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, both of which exposed fundamental divisions in American society. It would appear, though, that the

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attention paid to these and other dissenting traditions in American history often reinforces the sense of a powerful establishment that seeks to impose consensus. One conclusion to be drawn from this brief discussion is that projections of Americanism tend to invite all-or-nothing responses. Just as America—or rather the idea of America—has been the focus of utopian dreams and inflated expectations, it has been regarded as the stuff of nightmares too. The remark by Pierre Buchez at the head of this chapter, in its sweeping and abstract character, is a simple inversion of commonly encountered idealized images of America. In Kafka’s dystopian vision, “Amerika” is a hell of impersonal bureaucracy, the creation of an author who significantly never visited the United States.32 Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World takes place in the era A.F.—After Ford—indicating that Huxley’s chilling vision of the future takes its cue from the system of mass industrial production. In the 1960s, counter-cultural radicals in the United States and elsewhere used the German spelling—Amerika—on banners and posters, suggesting an equation between the United States and Nazi Germany. And so it goes on. These nightmare versions of America are mirror images of the idealizations already discussed and can be accounted for in terms of the same impulses that are, however, in these instances inverted. They may have little to do with flesh-and-blood America and everything to do with the aspirations and frustrations of the groups and individuals who promote them. Anti-Americanism does not attach only to the idea of America. It is a reaction also to the realities of the United States’ emergence as a major power and to the dynamism of its economy and culture. In this regard, an important target of anti-Americanism is “Americanization.” Americanization and anti-Americanism Anti-Americanism is in part a byproduct of the huge success of the United States as an economic, cultural, and political system. That dynamism generated a continuing flow of immigrants from generations of the discontented, the poor, and the persecuted all over the world. Between 1840 and 1920, the United States absorbed close to 35 million immigrants. Restrictive immigration laws were passed in the 1920s, designed to safeguard the European basis of the population, but these were relaxed in the 1960s, since which time the bulk of new immigrants have come from the Caribbean, Latin America, and the Far East. The American population increasingly reflects the ethnic diversity of the global population. There is no sign of the United States declining as the

52 How the world sees America first choice destination for would-be migrants. The figures for the period since 1970 show a rising curve across the board but especially for Asia and the Americas.33 In short, however intense the hatred of America in some quarters, it remains supremely attractive to many. Americanization began at home and was designed in the first instance to turn immigrants into American citizens, the instruments for which were work, education, and more diffuse forms of social pressure. On occasions, Americanization became a full-fledged program rather than simply a term for various social processes. During the First World War, anxiety about the loyalty of certain national origin groups—particularly German or Austrian—led to a national campaign to ensure conformity to American values. The superintendent of New York schools stated in 1918 that “we mean [by Americanization] an appreciation of the institutions of this country, absolute forgetfulness of all obligations or connections with other countries because of descent or birth.” Woodrow Wilson provided presidential imprimatur to the movement when he asserted that “America does not consist of groups … A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American.”34 Such a deliberate and potentially oppressive model of assimilation to American society was not the only one on offer. More generous and liberal methods also existed.35 However, at times of national emergency and social tension, the mechanisms of conformity tended to predominate. A similar duality between liberal and illiberal impulses was apparent when American influence was projected abroad. Americanization went international when the American economy went international, and that was a good deal earlier than is commonly thought. Early signs of Americanization were detected by foreign observers in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, during which time more than twenty American companies were established in Europe alone; American overseas investment was swiftly becoming global, as such companies as Standard Oil, Singer, General Electric, the United Fruit Company, Duke Tobacco Company, and many others grew into multinational giants.36 W.T. Stead’s The Americanization of the World was published in 1901, indicating that the theme was already current. The pace of Americanization was sharply stepped up in the new century. In the twentieth century, the United States became a major exporter not only of economic goods but of culture and political ideas. The value of American exports increased from $800 million in 1895 to $2.3 billion in 1914, the largest area of growth being in manufactured goods.37 The establishment in Europe in the 1920s of such giant companies as Ford, Proctor and Gamble,

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and many other household names represented a new chapter in the story of the American-owned multinational company. Furthermore, international economic conditions in the 1920s were highly favorable to American producers and traders. In the words of one historian of this movement, “The war weakened competitors yet stimulated America’s own industrial plant and enlarged its supply of investment capital.” 38 If the depression years forced a pause in the rate of the internationalization of American business, in the post-Second World War period, the process was resumed with new vigor. Emerging from the war far stronger economically than when she had begun it, in sharp contrast to virtually all other nations, the United States was presented with an international climate at least as favorable to its needs as after the First World War. With the further expansion of American multinationals, investment, consumer goods, advertising, and management styles, few parts of the world escaped the imprint of American capitalism. Those that did—or tried to—such as the Soviet bloc, had to resort to erecting walls, metaphorical and real, against American influence. Hollywood, Tin Pan Alley, Detroit, Nashville, the New York and Los Angeles TV studios and, perhaps above all, Disney brought the techniques of mass production and distribution into the field of popular culture and found eager customers in Europe and other parts of the world. Products from Coca Cola, McDonald’s, Levi, and countless others filled the world markets. Even American beers made inroads into consumption patterns in a sector where most countries had strong local products. There was no more astonishing symbol of the reach of American capitalism and popular culture than the elevation to global iconic status, courtesy of Nike, of basketball star Michael Jordan in the 1990s. As compared with other sports, basketball scarcely featured outside the United States, but Jordan’s image was everywhere.39 Equally important as the sheer growth of American influence and power was the fact that it was the subject of deliberate promotion by both private and public organizations in the United States. Successive American governments sought to promote optimum international conditions for American private enterprise, whether through tariff and taxation policies, incentives for overseas investment or, in the post-Second World War period, the establishment of international financial and economic agencies the functioning and resourcing of which relied heavily on the United States.40 The same principle applied to the cultural sphere, especially after the Second World War. A recent study of postwar American–Austrian relations talks of the “coca-colonization” of Austria, a theme that could be applied to several European countries during the Cold War. Indeed, the promotion of American culture and democratic values was integral to the Cold War political goal of rebuilding Western societies

54 How the world sees America in the face of the challenge from communism. Not least among these efforts was the promotion of American studies programs at universities in Europe and elsewhere and the establishment of Fulbright programs that brought overseas scholars and students to America and took American scholars abroad. Cultural diplomacy was an important tool of American influence.41 Government and private organizations often worked along parallel lines. Large philanthropic bodies, such as the Ford Foundation, the senior personnel of which had close links with government, became active in the promotion of American cultural values through funding of publications, educational ventures, conferences, and organizations of intellectuals. Americanization, as a recent historian of American cultural diplomacy in Germany has convincingly argued, is not to be summed up as an inexorable process associated with “modernization” but was subject to a “degree of conscious and pragmatic management.”42 In the field of political values, American influence, if not full Americanization, was manifest in the immediate postwar years through, for example, its role as the leading occupying power in Germany and Japan and as prime mover behind the United Nations.43 The German and Japanese constitutions reflect inputs from the United States during the periods of occupation, while the UN Charter bears the strong imprint of American constitutionalism, mediated through a combination of Wilsonian idealism and Franklin Roosevelt’s pragmatism. The Indian constitution of 1950 adopted virtually the whole of the Bill of Rights of the US Constitution. More generally, as a recent analyst of American foreign policy has pointed out, while Woodrow Wilson aimed to “make the world safe for democracy,” America’s postwar leaders aimed “to make the world democratic.”44 If democracy is now a term that all but a few nations claim for themselves, whatever the actual character of their politics, this is owed to a considerable extent to the influence of the United States. It is significant also that some Third World leaders believed that, in the light of its anticolonial heritage, America might support new states struggling to shed their colonial pasts. Tom Mboya, general secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labor, wrote in the mid-1950s that “through her history the United States is an inspiration to the African people in their struggle against colonialism.”45 Ho Chi Minh celebrated the liberation of Vietnam from the Japanese in 1945 by quoting from the American Declaration of Independence, an American army colonel at his side. Fidel Castro is reported to have thought that America would welcome his revolution carried out in the name of the people. In each case, these leaders were disappointed, but their expectations indicate the potential for a radical reading of America’s traditions with applications to the present.

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Exporting democracy was evidently not as straightforward as exporting consumer goods or popular culture but, if intentions and efforts count for anything, the goal of spreading democracy can be counted as one aspect of Americanization in the second half of the twentieth century. Above all, American leaders did not separate politics from culture and the economy when it came to spreading the word about the American way. When Richard Nixon visited the Soviet Union in 1959 as Eisenhower’s vice president, he stressed the connection between America’s uniquely high standard of living and its democratic system. The statistics for the American economy demonstrate, he suggested, that “the United States, the world’s largest capitalist country, has from the standpoint of the distribution of wealth come closer to the ideal of prosperity for all in a classless society.”46 However, if these aspects of American culture were loved, or at least copied, by many, they were also hated, resented, and resisted by some. From an early stage, many European observers of America adopted a superior attitude toward American culture, doubting whether anything substantial and rich could ever be produced by such an egalitarian and materialistic society. Those features of American society that Goethe and others found attractive—its escape from history, the practical bent of its people, the dynamic, future-oriented character of the nation—left others cold. After a visit to America in the 1790s, Chateaubriand remarked that “letters are unknown in America; the American has replaced intellectual preoccupation with practical activities.”47 Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America (1835) has remained the most influential analysis of the United States by a foreign observer, was both fascinated and repelled by the leveling effect of American democracy. For all its vital energies, American democracy bred a dangerous uniformity of opinion and an impoverished culture.48 Baudelaire’s vision two decades later was more apocalyptic. He associated Americanization with the end of civilization. “Mechanization” he wrote, will “Americanize” us; progress will “atrophy the spiritual side of our natures.”49 No less damning in its own very different way was Henry James’ listing of the things that America lacked, the absence of which denied to America any real culture: “No State, in the European sense of the word, and indeed barely a national name. No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages, no ivied ruins, no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches; no great Universities nor public schools—no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow; no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political

56 How the world sees America society, no sporting class—no Epsom, nor Ascot!” Without these things, little remained, and that was precisely James’ point.50 The above observations were all made before America had made a substantial impact on the world economically, culturally, or politically. Early warnings of Americanization were sounded at the close of the nineteenth century, but the alarm bells really began to sound in the 1920s. Anxieties focused, as in the nineteenth-century comments above, particularly on the presumed uniformity and vulgarity of American culture, but the accents now were characterized more by resentment than by a sense of superiority. The threat was now real and immediate. At a time when the ordinary people of Europe were flocking to see American films and listen to American jazz and dance music, the elites were up in arms. In 1928, British philosopher C.E.M. Joad asked, “Does England Dislike America?” and was in no doubt about the answer. After listing the reasons for his dislike under various headings—“American quixotism,” “so many sheep,” “rich but bored,” and “the new vandals”—he concluded that “in three hundred years, when England is an appanage of America, the English country will have ceased to exist; it will have been transferred into a gigantic pleasure resort for the solace and amusement of American businessmen on holiday.”51 Similar sentiments were expressed in France. In a book titled The American Cancer, published in 1930, the authors presented the United States’ “colonization” of France as destructive of French traditions. America’s mechanistic drive for efficiency and “its cult of blind reason and rational construction” were at odds with France’s revolutionary principles of individuality and human rights.52 The same lines of argument were reproduced after the Second World War with ever greater frequency from around the world. French anxieties about American cultural influence were particularly intense and inspired efforts to protect the French language, to put up barriers to Hollywood’s domination of the film industry, and to resist the “McDonaldization” of the French eating habits. French resistance to Americanization, however, was only a local variation on a global theme. The complaint of a Venezuelan journalist in the 1970s is representative of a wide body of opinion: “Americans have a mania for uniformity … Everywhere are the same gas stations, the same supermarkets, the same food, the same churches, the same press, the same people … Little by little all the nations of the world … are becoming more like one another in their Americanization.”53 The broad critique is clear: Americanization threatened to destroy the individuality of the world’s many cultures and to impose a homogenized and spiritually vacuous Americanism over them all. Nor is it perhaps surprising to find some

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Americans echoing these critiques. The song “Little Boxes,” popularized in the late 1950s by Pete Seeger, mirrored the concerns of a generation of sociologists who saw in America’s postwar suburban consumer culture the advent of a stupefying conformity.54 Americanization was as unpopular at home in some quarters as abroad. The above examples of anti-Americanism relate to rather broad critiques of American culture and society. To some extent, anti-Americanism in these contexts is a reaction to modernity rather than to America itself; indeed, it could be said to be a reaction to globalization, since the growth of American power and the spread of its influence coincided with the expansion of capitalism on a global scale. Separating anti-Americanism from a concern with these other aspects of modernity is thus not easy simply because, of all nations, the United States embodies modernity most completely.55 There is a sense in which the United States is a target for a host of anxieties the sources of which lie elsewhere. If, as was suggested in the last chapter, the peculiar blindness of Americans is to regard themselves as acted upon by the world rather than acting, the peculiar blindness of non-Americans is to regard America as the source of all the things they dislike in the contemporary world. We must now look beyond these broad expressions of anti-Americanism and examine its various forms in more detail. Varieties of anti-Americanism and September 11 Europe

When we turn from broad to more local and specific expressions of antiAmericanism, we find that it is inflected according to histories and traditions of individual nations. Nations express their identities through their attitudes toward the United States. No attempt is made in what follows to be comprehensive. What is offered is a selection of references to a number of countries that suggest the range of attitudes that exist. One common theme that emerges is that expressions of anti-Americanism and pro-Americanism can exist in the same culture, indeed in the same individual. The same Baudelaire who lamented the coming Americanization of the world in the 1850s was also a great admirer of American literature. Comparable splits are in evidence in many different countries, bearing out the point that anti-Americanism is no simple unitary phenomenon.56 Nor is it necessarily consistently held. Attitudes toward the United States can be extremely volatile, depending often upon the outcomes of particular political situations. One striking example comes from Italy in the wake of the

58 How the world sees America First World War. Italy had entered the war in 1915 on the side of the Allies but had experienced a crushing military defeat in 1917 at Caporetto at the hands of Austria-Hungary and Germany. Aspirations were thus high at the end of the war for the restoration of Italian honor. Prominent among Italy’s demands for territory was a questionable claim to Fiume, a strip of territory on the Croatian coast that had belonged to the now defunct Austro-Hungarian empire. Much confidence was placed in Woodrow Wilson’s ability to deliver what Italy regarded as its due in the peace conference that was to take place at Versailles in 1919. Prior to the conference, Wilson toured Italy, where he was received as a savior. Men and women knelt and crossed themselves as he passed. In the event at Versailles, Wilson refused to deliver Fiume to the Italians, and adulation turned to despairing contempt.57 In this case, as in others, opinions of the United States were determined as much by particular political situations or economic conditions as by broader attitudes or prejudices. Though less extreme, similar dynamics can be observed in the case of France since the Second World War. There is no doubt that French anti-Americanism was at its height in the 1950s and 1960s, fueled by conditions that angered all parts of the French political spectrum. The Gaullists, preoccupied by the need to reassert the greatness of France after the disaster of the German wartime occupation, resented both America’s lukewarm attitude to France’s desire to restore its colonial empire and its attempt to dictate France’s (and Western Europe’s) stance toward the Soviet Union. The Suez crisis caused a radical breach between France and the United States, which was followed up by France’s pursuit of an independent nuclear status and its partial withdrawal from NATO. De Gaulle’s personal dislike of America, stemming in part from what he regarded as slights from Roosevelt during the war, was legendary; his famous “Non” to the British application to join the Common Market was determined in part by his feeling that Britain was too much in the hands of the Americans. The French Left, meanwhile, whether in the form of the large and influential Communist party, fellow-traveling intellectuals, or Socialists, was stridently critical of the United States from the early phase of the Cold War through the years of the Vietnam War, when French anti-Americanism reached its height. However, as a comprehensive recent study of French anti-Americanism has shown, some of the animus behind political anti-Americanism evaporated when the issues to which it had given rise slipped back into history. By the mid-1980s, with the Vietnam War over, the colonial issue long past, and De Gaulle’s struggles with NATO mostly forgotten, the old battle lines of the Cold War were less clear. Above all, a new generation of intellectuals turned

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away from the engagement of Sartre and his contemporaries and embraced more esoteric and inward-looking philosophies. Perhaps surprisingly, Reagan’s America enlisted the enthusiasm of French people across the political spectrum, in large part because of the economic boom of the mid1980s and the evidence that, whatever one’s view of Reagan the man, the American way of enterprise apparently worked. America was now definitely chic.58 Broadly speaking, this situation remained true through the 1990s and into the new millennium, though the Gulf War of 1991 exposed deep divisions in French society, deeper, it has been said, than in most other countries in Europe.59 An assessment of French views of America published in early 2001 showed few traces of the strident anti-Americanism of the early postwar years. The United States continued to attract the French in some respects; Bill Clinton was immensely popular, and there were some regrets that Bush took the election of 2000. However, the old French suspicion of American consumer culture, distaste for the relative lack of commitment to social welfare, and concern about the death penalty confirmed that culturally the French were happy to affirm their “singularity.” France was the home, furthermore, of the most determined attack on globalization in the form of the movement led by French farmer José Bové, a movement which began with protests against McDonald’s restaurants in France. Ambivalence was and is the story of French relations with the United States.60 Reactions to the terrorism of September 11 amply demonstrate this. At one end of the spectrum of attitudes towards the United States lay Le Monde, which declared on September 13, echoing John F. Kennedy’s words at the Berlin wall in 1962, that “nous sommes tous Américains.” At the other end of this spectrum lay some members of the far Right. “One cannot conduct a policy of power which is arrogant and sometimes criminal,” said Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front, “without incurring inexpiable hatred.” This response was matched by voices on the Left, showing as ever that political extremes often meet. The author of an article published on September 18 observed that “without doubt anti-American sentiment … is alive and well in France,” and went on to quote a member of the Green party to the effect that “the reality is that American foreign policy and its military policy was bound to provoke the kinds of terrorism which we have just witnessed.” Inevitably too, Le Monde’s identification with the United States was taken as a challenge by some. “Personally,” wrote one journalist, “today I do not feel in the least American. On the contrary, I am confirmed in all my reasons for condemning a world which aligns itself with a catastrophic president.”61

60 How the world sees America Such expressions of opinion confirm the view that September 11 had the effect of bringing back to the surface attitudes that had remained dormant or marginal for some time. September 11, while generating broad sympathy and solidarity with the victims of the terrorist attacks, also polarized opinion about the United States. A similar pattern is apparent in Germany. There too, a legacy of anti-Americanism existed, stemming in part from a sense of cultural superiority going back to the nineteenth century and in part also from the special conditions of the early Cold War years. One analyst of German antiAmericanism suggests that “anti-American hostility lies deeper in the political mentality in Germany than elsewhere in Europe,” which he puts down to Germany’s defeat in two world wars.62 Certainly, the hiatus in German history produced by the catastrophe of the Nazi period followed by the Allied occupation placed Germany for a period of time in a position of nearly total dependence on the United States. That debt was productive of deeply ambivalent feelings, one of which was a sense that in being forced to submit to an alien power, Germany became alienated from its true self. According to this view, “Germans lost their authenticity and self-esteem through reeducation and imposed democracy.” As in France, Left and Right had reasons for resenting America: the Right because the German nation was politically humiliated and its culture devalued; the Left because, as the Cold War progressed, America seemed the epitome of imperialism and, in the most extreme versions of this view, had simply taken over the Nazi ambition to dominate the world.63 As compared with France, the nuclear issue in the 1980s and, in particular, the proposed deployment of cruise missiles in Germany, provoked widespread demonstrations against the United States. In response to September 11, Die Zeit expressed the same sentiments as Le Monde—“Now we are all Americans”—which, in the light of President Kennedy’s words at the Berlin wall in 1962, carried even more symbolic freight in Germany than it did in France. Many of Die Zeit’s contributors were convinced that once and for all Germany’s—indeed Europe’s—relations with America would never be the same again. The attacks, as one contributor put it, showed how indissolubly linked were the American and European democratic societies. And yet, proving that there were still some determined to resist this insight, there appeared “the familiar anti-American reflex” in some quarters. Another contributor, impressed by the way in which President Bush had recovered from his initial fumbling response on September 11 to produce an “astonishingly” powerful speech before Congress a week later, noted that this turnaround would never be acknowledged by those “European athletes of the beloved intellectual sport of America-bashing.”64

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Thus, in Germany, as in other countries, the attacks of September 11 exposed a deep-lying vein of anti-Americanism that may have served to influence the character of governments’ willingness to commit themselves to the American-led cause of fighting the war against terrorism. Certainly, as Le Monde reported a few days after the attacks, all the political parties in France wished to retain an element of distance from the policies of the United States, not least because of the memory of the divisions caused in public opinion by the Gulf War. These divisions, which were “larger than in most other European countries,” had “left their trace.”65 The British case shows its own distinctive characteristics while sharing common features with others. Historically, British anti-Americanism had some of the same roots as in other European countries and was visible across the political spectrum. It was expressed variously as an assumption of cultural superiority, a belief, stemming from resentment at Britain’s demotion to the status of a second-rate power after the Second World War, that the United States was a neophyte in international politics and needed guidance from surer hands, and the familiar critique from the Left that, in America, the interests of capital and property have always been placed before those of the people and that America has been the arch-imperialist power. Anti-Americanism was also rife in the higher echelons of the British army during the period of close collaboration with the Americans in the Second World War.66 The particular interest of British anti-Americanism lies in the fact that, whatever the strength of such sentiments, they have taken place in the context of a “special relationship” in diplomacy and arguably also the sphere of culture. This is not the place to explore that relationship and the many debates among historians and commentators about whether it really exists and, if so, what kind of relationship it is.67 Suffice it to say that it is a continuous subject of public debate and historical analysis. The record of British foreign policy in the postwar period shows a fairly consistent pattern of British alignment with American goals and numerous cases of close diplomatic and military cooperation. Of all countries, Britain, or at least its government, stood closest to the United States after September 11, giving close to unqualified support to the Bush administration. Yet, the record also shows, as is evident in the exchanges discussed at the opening of this chapter, that anti-Americanism was as alive and well among sections of public opinion in Britain as in other nations of Europe. Whatever the views of America in the corridors of power, on the street, according to New York-based novelist Salman Rushdie, many Brits showed little sympathy or solidarity with the Americans. “Night after night,” he reported in February 2002, “I have found myself listening to Londoners’ diatribes against the sheer

62 How the world sees America weirdness of the American citizenry. The attacks on America are routinely discounted (‘Americans care only about their own dead’). American patriotism, obesity, emotionality, self-centeredness: these are the crucial issues.” Furthermore, these sentiments stood in sharp contrast to the types of anti-Americanism in the Muslim world: “Western anti-Americanism is an altogether more petulant phenomenon than its Islamic counterpart and far more personalized. Muslim countries don’t like America’s power, its ‘arrogance,’ its success; but in the non-American West, the main objection seems to be to the American people.”68 It may be that affinities between British and American culture, based on common heritages and language, are more apparent than real or only selectively real. Closeness in some areas exposes differences in others. As Stephen Spender noted, Anglo-American relations were “love–hate relations.” Latin America

The reasons for Latin American resentment of the United States seem so familiar and so well-documented that it is important to acknowledge that there is also evidence for more positive relations. The example of the American War of Independence was an important source of inspiration for independence movements in Latin America as they struggled to break free from Spain in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. Subsequently, for some leaders of the newly independent states, American democracy was a model for their own futures. This was the case with Domingo Sarmiento, president of Argentina in the 1830s and an admirer in particular of the American education system. The United States, he wrote in 1847 during a period of political exile from his own country, “have made the most progress of any nation on earth today along the road to the unknown political solution toward which Christian peoples are groping, stumbling over the monarchy as in Europe, or overwhelmed by brutal despotism as in our own poor country.”69 A very different view, however, and one which became more common as the century wore on, was expressed around the same time by an author whose country—Mexico—had just experienced defeat in war with the United States. The cause of the war, wrote Ramon Alcaraz was “the insatiable ambition of the United States, favored by our weakness.”70 The disparity in power and wealth between the countries of Latin America and the colossus to the north grew substantially in the course of the nineteenth century. In Cuba, as the movement for independence from Spain gathered force in the 1890s, the Cuban leader Jose Marti warned of the need to “prevent the United States from spreading through the Antilles as Cuba gains its independence and from overpowering with that additional strength our lands of America. … I have lived

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in the monster [the United States],” he declared, “and I know its entrails; my sling is David’s.”71 The challenge presented to Latin America only grew with the new century, as the United States intervened on numerous occasions between 1900 and 1930 to assert American interests in, for example, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Haiti; and this is to say nothing of the economic and political power exerted by the United Fruit Company and comparable corporate giants.72 “Never in all human history,” wrote Argentinean author Manuel Ugarte in 1923, “has such an irresistible or marvelously concerted force been developed as that which the United States are bringing to bear upon the peoples which are geographically or politically within its reach in the south of the Continent or on the shores of the sea … North American imperialism is the most perfect instrument of domination which has been known throughout the ages.”73 A more moderately expressed view by a Spanish economist in the 1960s is nevertheless at least as devastating in its implications. “The power of the North is so huge compared to that of the South,” wrote Salvador de Madariaga, “ that, like a machine or a monster, it paralyses and devours the nearly defenseless South, so that all that remains free and independent there might be said to owe its freedom and independence less to its own exertions than to the moderation and wisdom of the North.”74 To be sure, a brief anthology of such statements as this cannot stand for an analysis of American–Latin American relations, nor is it intended to. Not only have the relations of individual nations of Latin America with the United States varied according to geography, economic conditions, and national traditions but relationships have been characterized by complexity even where domination seems to have been the reality.75 It is also the case that, whatever the depth of anti-Americanism in public opinion in Latin America, governments have had to work with the United States. The above statements serve to indicate merely that a continuous feature of US–Latin American relations has been the existence of a basic condition that has fueled resentment of the United States, that condition being the disproportionate size and power of the United States relative to the countries of Latin America. “Dependency Theory,” which in the 1960s and 1970s was a hugely influential Marxist model for relations between the First and Third Worlds, was developed in the first instance in relation to Latin America.76 Even if this theory is now less prominent, dependence on the United States or on American-led international institutions, such as the IMF, remains a fact of life for several Latin American countries. American military interventions in the 1980s and 1990s in Grenada, Panama, and Haiti demonstrate, furthermore, the continued willingness of the United States to assert its interests in the most direct fashion.

64 How the world sees America In the light of this legacy, reactions to September 11 were perhaps predictable. In early October 2001, Newsweek reported on a survey of opinion in Latin America under the headline “Take That, Gringos.” While Latin American governments, at the prompting of Brazilian president Fernando Enrique Cardoso, collectively backed the United States’ war on terrorism, on the streets the message was very different. “I’m not against the American people,” said a Brazilian student, “but the United States got what it deserved.” At a peace rally in Rio de Janeiro, banners read, “A MINUTE OF SILENCE FOR AMERICA’S DEAD. 59 MINUTES FOR THE VICTIMS OF AMERICAN POLICY.” “Maybe not since the 1970s,” concluded the Newsweek reporter, “when military men ruled the continent—often with Washington’s blessing— has Latin America seen such an explicit outburst of anti-Gringo sentiment.” The Economist (London) confirmed this judgment in a report that noted that “rather to the surprise of American officials, the attacks have laid bare the continuing strength of anti-American opinion in the region.”77 As in many other countries and regions of the world, September 11 intensified opinion about the United States, whether for or against. India

The case of India would seem to be far removed from that of the nations of Latin America. Population alone makes India something of a special case, giving it great potential for growth and independent action. It currently possesses 20 percent of the world’s population. To be sure, experts dispute whether India should be regarded as a “developing country.” On the one hand, as a recent study of Indian–American relations observed, “India is a backward, impoverished country, racked by political instability.” However, “it is also a rich and powerful country (especially when viewed from the perspective of its smaller neighbours) that has shown surprising political resilience over the past fifty years.”78 Furthermore, as compared with Latin America, India’s physical distance from the United States, even in the age of air travel and instant communications, has made the maintenance of political distance somewhat easier. In short, India possesses greater means than Latin America of resisting American pressure, and one would expect manifestations of anti-Americanism to take different forms. Such proves to be the case, but there is one feature they share, which is an interest in America’s revolutionary heritage as a model for the achievement of independence. An Indian academic visiting the United States in the 1950s suggested that Indians and others had underestimated the influence of the United States on the movement for independence in the subcontinent. “The

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example of America’s struggle for independence was a great source of inspiration,” he wrote. “Every contemporary of mine in school knew the main facts of America’s War of Independence and it was his ardent desire that his history examination would bear a question or two on this subject.” This same author went on to note that Indian–American relations were in a poor state, which he put down in the first place to the fact that America was not well-versed “in the arts of diplomacy” necessary for dealing with its new global interests. The key problem was America and India’s different perceptions of communism: “To the Indian mind Communism is more an internal threat in many east Asia countries than a threat from outside.” America, by contrast, saw communism solely “in terms of power.” The generous impulses that had given rise to the Marshall Plan and the Point IV aid program had seemingly disappeared. Now “only one thing seems to matter and that is American Security.”79 This author was writing at a period of high tension in the Cold War, during which President Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, famously opposed any attempts by such countries as India to maintain neutrality with respect to the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Neutrality, Dulles believed, was not possible in the Cold War. If this particular bone of contention became less urgent in the following decades, India nevertheless fell foul of America’s later Cold War strategies, not least the policies that led in the 1970s to America’s “opening to China,” a historic rival of India. America’s close relations with Pakistan, not least its tilt toward Pakistan in the Indo–Pakistan war of 1971, similarly exacerbated Indo–American relations. The disastrous chemical spill at Union Carbide’s plant at Bhopal in 1984 cost thousands of lives and gave rise to focused protests against the company and some wider anti-American feeling which continues today. However, it had little impact on political relations between India and the United States. American concerns about India’s nuclear weapons, matched by its concerns about Pakistan’s, have been a serious irritant in recent years, above all following the nuclear tests by both powers in May 1998. “American and Indian perceptions of India’s ‘rightful’ place in the world,” a recent analysis concludes, “have not been congruent for most of the past fifty years, and the end of the Cold War did not improve the situation.”80 Until, that is, September 11, 2001. In early November 2001, an Indian journalist reported the results of a poll that showed that 83 percent of Pakistanis were on the Taliban side and that only three percent supported America in its war with Afghanistan. “The opposite is true in India,” it was noted. “Except among Muslims of a radical bent and a small group of Left-liberal intellectuals there is general consensus that after September 11 the Americans had no

66 How the world sees America choice but to bomb Afghanistan.” Indeed, to the extent that anti-Americanism was an issue in India after September 11, it was so because of its obvious marginality. “Anti-Americanism, rejected by civil society, lives only in the mind of the civilisationally challenged,” wrote a columnist in the generally proestablishment weekly, India Today. A lecture tour in India in early November by dissident American scholar Noam Chomsky was dismissed by the same publication as a matter of “lecturing the trendy left in India.” The passage that followed this remark revealed much about India’s response to September 11. Chomsky was quoted as having called India “a terrorist state” because “I don’t think the Kashmir movement is terrorist. It is a resistance movement.”81 Such a statement could hardly have been more provocative in the circumstances. The Indian response to September 11, and its assessment of relations with the United States, were indissolubly linked to relations with Pakistan and the Kashmir issue. In the immediate aftermath of September 11, Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee committed India to “waging peace” along with the United States in its announced war against terrorism. Much was made in the Indian media of the fact that comparable acts of terrorism were familiar to Indians. “This moment of charred truth,” India Today editorialized, “is not America’s alone. We have been there before.”82 Solidarity with the United States was, therefore, conceived as being a logical extension of its own struggle against Islamic militancy. A huge complication, however, lay in relation to Pakistan. In the emerging American-led coalition against terrorism, Pakistan was a key player. To the extent that Pakistan was under enormous pressure to follow American priorities—not least in reversing its previous support for the Taliban in Afghanistan and resisting the demands of its own domestic Islamic militants—India could see only advantages to the closest possible alignment with the United States. To the extent, however, that Pakistan was able to reap benefits from its new relationship with the United States—in enhanced international credibility and, above all, in relation to Kashmir—there were dangers for India. India’s desire was that the United States and others should see the fight against bin Laden and Al Qaeda and the fight against Pakistanbacked terrorism in Kashmir as India saw it: namely, as one and the same.83 With these competing pressure at play, it is not surprising that Indian opinion should have been delicately balanced. On the one hand, moves toward closer relations were welcomed. The Times of India declared in late October that the United States and India had an “identity of interests” and that ties “can only deepen.” India Today pursued the same line but, if anything, wanted closer relations than were on offer and worried that, in spending so much time wooing

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Pakistan, America failed to see “who its true friend is” in the subcontinent. The visit of American Secretary of State Colin Powell to India in early November and his proposal of a military alliance with India focused these issues more sharply. In any event, the Indian government turned the offer down, but the Times of India’s verdict reflected a strong body of opinion: “Alliance or no alliance, India and the United States have a congruity of strategic interests, also shared with Russia in steering Pakistan toward moderate Islam.”84 In the other scale of that delicate balance, however, many Indians were aware of the fragility of relations with the United States and of the dangers of getting in too deep. “India is in an extremely vulnerable situation, both politically and economically,” wrote a columnist in the Times of India. “Our society too is not immune from social tensions which could arise out of India’s active participation in what many see as America’s war.” In these circumstances, while India must show solidarity with the international coalition against terrorism, “India’s immediate and most direct short-term national interest at this time may not in every significant detail or aspect coincide with America’s.” Even the generally strongly pro-American India Today was aware of the contingency of its new relationship with America. “India began the Bush era,” it was noted, “as an incidental blip on the margins of the radar screen—an unfamiliar place that could possibly serve as a counterweight to China. After September 11, it has re-emerged—at the center of a resurgent Pax Americana dream.”85 The violent and bloody attack on the Indian parliament building in December 2001 reinforced both strands of India’s policy, inclining it both to greater solidarity with the United States’ war against terrorism and also to an increased preoccupation with its own problems with Pakistan and Kashmir. As the Kashmir crisis worsened in the early months of 2002 and reached crisis point in May, the United States had every reason to cultivate closer relations with India, as with Pakistan, as the nightmare of a possible nuclear exchange loomed. Influential voices in the press in the United States and India welcomed signs of what one American commentator called “a nascent Indo–American alliance.”86 The Muslim world

American relations with the Middle East are dealt with at length in the following chapter. Here we need simply to indicate the broad outlines of opinion in order to allow a means of comparison with attitudes toward the United States described above. In 1968, one year after the disastrous Arab defeat in the Six-Day War with Israel, President Nasser of Egypt declared that “no one other than an obvious

68 How the world sees America agent can openly declare friendship for the United States.”87 Thirty years on, things were not quite so simple. Egypt made its peace with Israel within a decade of Nasser’s speech, and Egypt became an ally of the United States. However, peace and ally are relative terms in that conflict-ridden region, and successive Egyptian governments were faced with growing disquiet among the population. The phenomenon of “’anti-Americanism’ has become increasingly visible in the Arab world since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada on 28 September,” reported the leading Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram in the autumn of 2000. Opinion hardened further during the following year as the Israeli– Palestinian conflict became more intractable and the Oslo peace process ground effectively to a halt.88 The attacks of September 11, 2001, only reinforced such sentiments. In a speech made a month after September 11, President Bush asked why there was such “vitriolic hatred for America in some Islamic countries,” adding, “Like most Americans, I just cannot believe it because I know how good we are.” On the streets of Cairo, any number of answers were given. A student at Cairo University said, “People don’t like the Americans; the reasons for that are everywhere,” above all in America’s pro-Israeli and anti-Arab policies. Another gave the opinion that “only the Americans think they are intelligent. They have money. They have culture, they have the movies … and now they are looking for a new enemy, a scapegoat in addition to Iraq.” Some even doubted that bin Laden was the culprit. “Show us the proof,” said one; the attacks were “too well prepared not to involve internal elements of the [US] government.” Such anger and skepticism was clearly not confined to Egypt. A Turkish reporter, walking the streets of Istanbul after the attacks on September 11, was asked by one of his neighbors, “Sir, have you seen, they have bombed America,” adding “they did the right thing.”89 Doubtless, one should be cautious about ascribing too much significance to individual remarks. Widespread demonstrations are another thing. The day after Bush’s speech, anti-American protests took place in a variety of countries with large Muslim populations, including Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories. Furthermore, as a September 14 survey carried out by Le Monde of newspapers around the Muslim world showed, there was a common theme, even if not complete unanimity, in their responses to September 11. “The arrogance of America punished by an enemy without a name” (Beirut); “the American cowboy reaps the fruit of its crimes against humanity” (this one, perhaps predictably, from Baghdad); “Washington understands nothing” (Karachi); “The United States pays for twenty years of liaisons dangereuses (Oran, Algeria).90

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However, for all the manifest anger and frustration in these responses, there is little evidence that it is hatred of American culture or American people per se that is the main issue, though there are some indications of it. A common thread among virtually all responses from the Middle East and the Muslim world in general is the profound conviction that the United States has consistently pursued policies that were against Arab and Muslim interests and in favor of those of Israel. Even this, however, does not account for the full depth of feeling. According to a close observer of the Muslim world, “It is neither Islam nor even poverty itself that directly engenders support for terrorists whose ferocity and ingenuity are unprecedented in human history; it is, rather, the crushing humiliation that has infected the third-world countries.” The gulf between rich and poor globally is not only huge but is visible through television and films.91 Moreover, the voices of “the wretched of the earth” are scarcely heard and especially not in the United States. An African professor resident in the United States gave the view nearly twenty years ago that “the United States has perfected a special censorship to prevent itself from hearing distressing world voices,” the messages it was least prepared to hear being those of Marxism and Islam.92 Marxism, of course, is now largely a thing of the past, but Islam and the wider issues of deprivation and humiliation in many countries of the Third World remain. In short, anti-Americanism in the Muslim world is a special case of the general anti-Americanism in much of the Third World. Conclusion In one sense, anti-Americanism is nothing more nor less than the expression of an awareness of cultural difference and, to that extent, many of the sentiments expressed above are not peculiar to attitudes toward the United States. Crossing the boundaries between any cultures means being conscious of differences that may range from radical clashes of customs and behavior to milder and often picturesque variations on what one is used to. Such differences may be attractive or irritating or even repellent, depending on context and the attitudes one brings to them. Anti-Americanism represents a heightened version of such attitudes, expanded and intensified by the disparity in size, power, and cultural influence bewteen the United States and other nations. As has been observed in this chapter, anti-Americanism is the other side of the coin of the powerful attraction exerted by aspects of American culture on most other cultures. It is not a uniform phenomenon, however. On the one hand, cultural attraction can

70 How the world sees America coexist with profound antipathy arising from political relations while, on the other hand, it is not uncommon for countries to find it in their interest to align themselves politically with the United States but to maintain cultural distance, a good example being Saudi Arabia. What is clear is that changes in political contexts can effect swift changes in attitudes, which suggests that attitudes are not necessarily irrevocably fixed; they may even be to a certain extent “managed.” To some extent, therefore, the solutions to the problem of anti-Americanism lie in America’s own hands. However, the dangers of mismanagement, arising from misreading a situation, may make such a strategy risky. It is evident, for example, that dropping aid packages in Afghanistan at an early stage in the war was a public relations disaster; an apparent gesture of good will rebounded because of its manifest inappropriateness and inadequacy. On a larger scale, such failures and reversals may have large consequences. Looking at the question from the other side, it is clear that a reservoir of good will exists, or at least existed, in a number of countries based on America’s experience of overthrowing its colonial legacy. It was a point of identification by some former colonial nations with the United States; as we have seen, America’s founding documents and revolutionary heritage were taken by some leaders of independence movements in the Third World as being directly relevant to their own situations. That reservoir of good will has to a large extent been drained in the last half century because of the perception that the United States has failed to act in accordance with the principles on which it was founded. Indeed, the perception is not only that the United States has failed to act on those principles but that it has on occasions acted contrary to them, even betrayed them. In a word, power seems to have mattered more than principle. The empire has subsumed the democratic republic. If such criticisms seem overly harsh and based on unrealistic expectations about how any nation can be expected to act—surely all nations act on behalf of their own national interests—it must be said that the United States has itself continually raised such expectations. Few nations have ever set themselves such high standards. Few nations have ever aspired to so much or been in a position to aspire to so much. Few nations have ever been so successful or claimed so much for their own greatness, whether in the sphere of the economy, of cultural, or of social values. In few nations, inevitably, has the gap between the claims and the actuality been so visible and so politically consequent. A major source of anti-Americanism is the feeling, whether justified or not, that America wields power without principle but in the name of principle. In the end, we come back to a gap in cultural and political perceptions, based on history and experience. America has a long national tradition the

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history of which is known only sketchily by most non-Americans. What is generally known about America is based on the projection of American power overseas in the last fifty years and on powerfully promoted images of American popular culture. Small wonder that most Americans should wonder why antiAmericanism is so prevalent, since their own America is not the one most outsiders see. Small wonder, too, that outsiders should find so much to criticize in the projection of American power, since that is generally all they see.

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The roots of terror Islam, the Middle East, and the United States

The Middle Eastern sources of the terrorist attacks of September 11 have been firmly established. The evidence suggests that the attacks were carried out by terrorists from a number of Middle Eastern countries acting, if not under the direct orders of Osama bin Laden, then according to his publicly stated goals. Bin Laden’s primary aim, as announced in a statement issued by the Al Qaeda organization in 1998, was “to kill the Americans and their allies— civilian and military” as a matter of “individual duty for every Muslim,” this aim in turn being supposedly in line with the Quranic injunction to “fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together” and “fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in God.”1 Among the frequently stated grievances of bin Laden was the presence on Saudi Arabian soil of American troops, defiling the holy land of the Prophet; American support for Israel and, in particular, its policy toward the Palestinians; and finally, American policy toward Iraq. Bin Laden’s was at least nominally a pan-Islamic vision that linked the oppression of any one group of Muslims with the West’s oppression of Islam itself. Whatever doubts were expressed initially about the responsibility of bin Laden and Al Qaeda for the attacks of September 11 disappeared in most observers’ eyes with the release of a videotape in mid-December 2001, in which bin Laden was seen to exult in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and to show knowledge of the planning of the attacks.2 Investigations by the FBI and other organizations in a number of countries produced an evidence trail linking the perpetrators of the attacks with cells of Islamic militants in several European countries. Clear connections were established between these militants and Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, where bin Laden was based after the Taliban took power there in 1996. Bin Laden’s own actions and statements showed a consistent pattern of extreme rejection of the West and also of Arab governments, above all

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that of Saudi Arabia, which he regarded as having cravenly yielded to the infidel West, thus betraying true Islam. The attacks on New York and Washington, moreover, were in line with a series of terrorist incidents in the 1990s, the sources of which in the Middle East were established beyond any reasonable doubt. These included the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, of a military base in Saudi Arabia in 1996, of the United States Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and of the USS Cole in Aden in October 2000. While the above facts show clear connections between the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the Middle East, the question of what to make of them is not so straightforward. What, for example, of the relationship between the Palestinian issue and September 11? In the aftermath of September 11, many came to the conclusion that there was a direct causal link between the attacks and the failure to resolve this conflict. In the absence of full implementation of the Oslo Accords, movement toward Palestinian statehood, and a resolution of the issue of the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, there should be no surprise, many argued, that Islamic militants should vent their anger and frustration. The new intifada beginning in September 2000 was the inevitable response to deadlock, according to this line of argument, and the Israeli gover nment’s violent and disproportionate response only exacerbated an already inflamed situation. The election of Ariel Sharon, whose lack of sympathy with the Oslo peace process was well known, put the last nail in the coffin of reasonable relations between Israel and the Palestinians. In all these moves, the United States did little or nothing to restrain the Israelis and, in taking this passive line, much to provoke the Palestinians. Above all, it was said, whatever had happened in the past, there could be little hope of dealing with the causes of terrorism in the future without addressing the Palestinian issue. In response to these arguments, it was pointed out that Al Qaeda terrorism had flourished in the 1990s when hopes for a positive outcome of the Oslo process were at their height. The terrorists might use the Palestinian issue as a rallying cry for political purposes, but their primary agenda lay elsewhere. Nor was there any sign that bin Laden and his supporters would be satisfied with anything less than the destruction of Israel; Islamic militants had no time for the peace process. Besides, as one commentator pointed out, “the Palestinian–Israeli conflict affects Palestinians and Israelis profoundly, but it does not begin to explain the dire state of today’s Arab and Muslim world, nor why it has spent decades languishing in economic stagnation and political suffocation.”3 In short, there were many reasons to be convinced that, while

74 The roots of terror connections might exist between September 11 and the Palestinian issue, they were complex and indirect. A second set of questions is raised by the role of Islam in the terrorism of September 11. Again the connection seems obvious: members of a particular militant Islamic sect, regarding itself as representing the true faith, carried out the attacks in God’s name and with the expectation that their sacrifice would in the end help to destroy the world of the infidel. For many observers in the West and the Middle East, these acts were a new twist in the emerging “clash of civilizations” consequent on the ending of the ideological conflict between East and West in the Cold War. With the collapse of communism, older lines of conflict, which were cultural rather than national in character and long predated the battle between communism and capitalism, reemerged. In the words of the most prominent advocate of the clash-ofcivilizations view, Samuel Huntington, “the revitalization of religion throughout much of the world is reinforcing these cultural differences,” opening out the prospect that “the local conflicts most likely to escalate into broader wars are those between groups and states from different civilizations.”4 Objections to this interpretation of September 11 and the wider issue of relations between the West and Islam were widely voiced, not least by Muslims who saw in the thoughts and actions of the terrorists of September 11 a perversion of Islam rather than an expression of it. No one, it has to be said, was more patently an advocate of the idea of a clash of civilizations than Osama bin Laden. Furthermore, to identify Islam and the Muslim world in general with the terrorism carried out in its name was to put ordinary Muslims at risk in many countries where they are in a minority, to say nothing of the larger danger of self-fulfilling prophecy. To speak of a clash of civilizations may be to produce one. An understanding of Islam must surely play a part in explaining the events of September 11 but, once again, the precise nature of its role needs careful examination. A third set of issues revolves around the relationship between the United States and conflict in the Middle East. This question clearly enters into both topics discussed above but also deserves separate treatment. The Palestinian question and the emergence of Islamic militancy are the products in the first instance of local and regional conditions, and close attention will be given to these conditions in what follows. It is equally plain that the American connection is central to a consideration of both topics. What we should not do is collapse the one into the other and assume either, on the one hand, that the terrorist attacks are to be regarded entirely as a reaction to American policies or, on the other hand, that they can be explained in isolation from any actions by the

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United States. There are political reasons in various quarters for adopting either one of these positions. Disentangling these strands from each other is important not only in order to get the history right but because the success or otherwise of policies designed to deal with these problems depends on establishing what their sources are. With this in mind, we shall examine the following issues: first, the rise of political Islam; second, Arab–Israeli conflict, with particular reference to the Palestinian issue; third, the record of American involvement in the Middle East; and fourth, the issue of terrorism and its relation to conflict in the Middle East. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of the “first” Afghan war of the twentieth century, prompted by the Soviet invasion of 1979, since, as will become clear, Afghanistan was a crucible into which all the other elements in the tangled conflict leading to September 11 were poured. Needless to say, each of these topics is worthy of much more extended coverage than can be offered in this chapter. The aim here, however, is not comprehensiveness but the establishment of a number of contexts in which the attacks of September 11 may be understood. The rise of political Islam In 1925, the American philosopher John Dewey visited Turkey at the request of the ministry of education. As a leading proponent of “progressive education,” he had been asked to advise the government on establishing a new education system. Turkey was in the throes of revolution. In the wake of the First World War, the Allies had imposed the punitive Treaty of Sèvres on the Ottoman Empire, and Greece sought to take advantage of the moribund Empire by invading and seizing parts of Western Anatolia. Under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (later Kemal Atatürk), a Turkish resistance movement pushed back the Greeks and repudiated the harsh terms of the Treaty of Sèvres. In 1923, the triumphant Kemal abolished the Sultanate, which had been the ruling institution of the Ottoman Empire for close to a millennium, and declared a republic. A year later, he abolished the Caliphate, the office of the successor to the prophet Mohammed that, in name at least, embodied the unity and universality of the world of Islam. Kemal then embarked on a path of secularization and modernization with the aim of taking Turkey by forced march into the modern world. By the mid-1930s, he had brought religious leaders under government control, introduced the Gregorian calendar, abolished the fez and replaced it with modern Western headwear, established a new civil code based on the laws of Switzerland, abolished polygamy, replaced Arabic script with the Latin

76 The roots of terror alphabet, and introduced many other Western practices and institutions. John Dewey’s visit was one small part of that project. In the event, Dewey received a less than warm welcome. The minister who had invited him was no longer in office, and the new one did not seem very interested. However, Dewey wrote for the Turkish government a report that is still occasionally referred to by modern Turkish educationists. He also wrote reports on his visit to Turkey for publication in the United States, and these are of considerable significance in understanding the course of history in the Muslim world since then, and also Western perceptions of it.5 The most notable feature of Dewey’s reports is an absence of curiosity about Islam, coupled with an assumption that the modernization of Turkey was a virtual fait accompli. “The whole modern political movement in Turkey,” he declared, “strikes one as just a belated offspring of the principles of ’89 [i.e., 1789].” Moreover, in Turkey’s radical break with what he described as its dynastic and theocratic past, he sensed “a feeling of something familiar,” which was “akin to the work of the pioneer and the frontier in America.” The decision to move the capital from the ancient metropolis of Istanbul to the remote city of Ankara symbolized for Dewey the struggle and the promise of the new Turkey. In short, Turkey was setting out on the road on which other countries, not least the quintessentially modern United States, had started two centuries before.6 Left to itself, it was assumed, Turkey would develop broadly along Western or modern secular lines, and in this Dewey was at one with what would later be called modernization theory. According to this theory, progress toward modernity—industrialism, urbanism, secularism, and so on— was an inexorable process that some might attempt to resist but that could not ultimately be denied. Religion, in the view of modernization theorists, was essentially a regressive force, however valuable it might be as a source of moral values and individual consolation. In any event, as far as Dewey was concerned, the steps taken by the Turkish leader seemed to confirm his own assumptions. Turkey was in the process of remaking itself as a modern secular state and had put history firmly behind it. Among Near and Middle Eastern countries, Turkey was doubtless a special case. No other Muslim country made such strenuous efforts to shed the past and, in part, this reflected Turkey’s geographical and geopolitical position at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East. The Ottoman Empire had long straddled that divide and, although during the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the “sick man of Europe” had lost most of its European territories, the modern state of Turkey hung on to a piece of Europe on the western bank of the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara. The history of Turkey

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since the foundation of the republic partly confirms but partly refutes the dreams of the modernizers. Atatürk’s revolution was to all appearances highly successful. It was effected from the top on the basis of authoritarian one-party rule and, following Atatürk’s death in 1938, his successor, Inönü, initially employed the same methods. In the wake of the Second World War, however, Inönü announced that opposition parties would be permitted. In conjunction with the establishment of multiparty democracy, Turkey’s Western orientation seemed assured when it was admitted to NATO in 1952. Since the 1950s, Turkey has oscillated between periods of democracy and military rule, but geopolitically Turkey has remained firmly a part of the West.7 Despite the European or “Western” dimension of Turkish history, however, the “Eastern” dimension was never far from the surface. Turkey was and is largely a Muslim country. Islam did not atrophy as a cultural force, however firmly it was marginalized politically. The first signs of a return were visible as early as the 1950s, but only toward the end of the 1960s did Islam appear fully resurgent in Turkey, as in other Muslim nations. In 1970, the Party for National Order was founded with the aim of promoting sharia law as the basis of Turkish political life, and soon the government felt the pressure to acknowledge the force of religious groups. In 1972, Turkey joined an international body known as the Organization of the Islamic Conference. A decade later, the ruling Motherland Party “introduced mandatory religious instruction in primary and secondary schools” and permitted the growth of Islamic schools and colleges, thus reversing the trend toward secularization of education to which John Dewey had contributed in the 1920s.8 Admittedly, Islamic parties still remained clearly in a minority. In local elections held in 1989, Islamic parties won only 10 percent of the vote, and this percentage appeared to represent the support for an Islamic political agenda in the nation as a whole.9 However, since the 1970s, political Islam has emerged with sufficient force as to require successive governments to respond. The authorities have swung between attempts to placate the Islamists and attempts to repress them. In the late 1980s, a member of the Islamic Welfare Party was prosecuted for declaring that he was neither a lay person nor an Kemalist but a Muslim.10 This brief account of the Turkish case will have served its purpose if it has indicated the transformation that the Muslim world has undergone in the last generation in the direction of a revival of Islam as both a social and a political force. Clearly, there are factors specific to Turkey that explain the particular form that the Islamic revival has taken there. However, the overall pattern is too obvious to be denied. If it has manifested itself in the most secular of Muslim countries, how much more significant a part has it played in countries

78 The roots of terror that never sought to go as far as Turkey toward secularization, to say nothing of those, such as Saudi Arabia, that always placed Islam at the center of national life. What are the sources of this profound historical transformation? First, some preliminary points must be made. Terminology in this area can be notoriously deceptive. The most commonly used word to describe the general phenomenon of Islamic resurgence is fundamentalism, but some scholars have voiced serious objections. Not only does this term fail to register the mixture of a return to roots and the embrace of modern technology and social practices characteristic of many groups, but the word is laden with associations with Christian movements and generally carries negative connotations. To that extent, it presupposes a judgement about the phenomena under consideration. Furthermore, it has been pointed out, many Muslims can be described as fundamentalist in the sense that they “accept the Quran as the literal word of God and the Sunnah (example) of the Prophet Muhammad as a normative model for living.” The term fails, therefore, to make necessary distinctions between different religious and politico-religious groupings. Here lies the critical point: To the extent that the term is used as a general label for broad changes in the world of Islam, it belies the diversity of groups involved and the different political consequences of Islamic revivalism in different countries.11 There is no simple solution to the problem of terminology. Some prefer the term Islamism as a label for Islamic political movements as distinct from the Islamic system of belief. Some use the term political Islam, while another makes the same distinction simply by use of quote marks: “Islam” as opposed to Islam. Finally, one leading scholar adopts the terms Islamic revivalism and Islamic activism to denote the emerging political significance of Islam.12 There can be no perfectly neutral or uncontentious terminology. The most important requirement is that the language we use should be able to support the distinctions we want to make. In what follows, a distinction is made between, on the one hand, the broad revival of Islam, as measured by increasing levels of religious observance, adoption of traditional dress, and number of publications and radio progams devoted to the Islamic faith and, on the other hand, the political expression of Islam that ranges from, at one extreme, conventional party political activity to, at the other end of the scale, extreme forms of terrorism and violence.13 Evidently, the social and the political are intimately related. Indeed, the ultimate goal of Islamist movements is to create the political conditions for the social practice of Islamic faith. However, because this goal for a variety of reasons is rarely achievable in its fullest sense, there exists large scope for frustration on the part of those for whom partial Islamization—or Islamization that is not on their own terms—is unacceptable. One of the

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sources of political Islam is this frustration. Islamic revivalism, however, may not or need not issue in political activism. There are many Muslims for whom the “private” realm of the family and other social networks suffice. From some of the commentaries in the media, one would think that the Muslim world in general had a predisposition to political extremism. In order to forestall such assumptions, I believe that it is important to maintain the distinction between specifically political efforts to promote Islam and efforts to promote Islamic faith. I adopt the terms political Islam and Islamic revivalism to describe these two tendencies. Even then, it must be acknowledged, as suggested above, that political Islam covers a wide spectrum of attitudes and activities. One further clarification is in order. Such formulations as the clash of civilizations foster the view that the Muslim world speaks with one voice and, indeed, advocates of this view could point to the aspiration of Islam from its beginnings to unity among all Muslims. That this has been no more than an aspiration is clear, however, from the history of Islam. Islam contains many tendencies and sects, the chief division being between the Sunni and Shi’ite branches of the faith, the sources of which lie in events in the generation following the death of Muhammad in AD 632. There are, however, many other branches of Islam.14 Nor have aspirations to Arab unity come to fruition, in part because of splits within Islam but even more because of tensions common to all secular state systems. Since the abolition of the Caliphate in 1924 and the rise of Arab nationalism over the following decades, even nominal unity in the so-called Arab nation has been absent, though attempts have been made to realize it. A United Arab Republic centered on Egypt and Syria was proposed in the late 1950s and another in the early 1970s, which included Libya and Sudan. Neither of these efforts came to fruition. The advent of the nation state has been at least as important in framing conflict in the Middle East and the Muslim world in general as have Islamic beliefs. Nor should this be a cause for surprise to Europeans whose own history showed comparable aspirations to spiritual unity and splits along national lines. Indeed, nationalism was a “Western” import into the Middle East; it is one of the modernizing forces that has been a source both of development and conflict. As previously suggested, Turkey represented a special case in a broad pattern of development in the Muslim world, as independence movements achieved their goals in the wake of the First and Second World Wars. Whether the former colonial power was the Ottoman Empire or one of the West European powers (or in some instances both in succession, given the colonial mandate system established after the First World War), colonial rule had introduced modern methods of administration and had created small but politically

80 The roots of terror powerful educated elites whose experience and skills were to be crucial in the coming of independence. It was natural that, for the most part, the newly independent nations should borrow institutions and practices from the West, including the continued use of Western languages for some purposes, especially English or French; legal and educational systems; and, not least, trading and commercial institutions.15 After all, the new nations were faced at the outset with the need to survive and compete in a world in which they played important economic and strategic roles. External pressures as much as internal needs, therefore, dictated “modernization.” Among the factors linking many Middle Eastern countries—most notably Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf States—into the global political economy was oil. The interests of large British and American oil companies were never far from the attentions of the British and American governments, both for economic and political reasons. As has often been pointed out, the first major clash of the Cold War took place over Iran in 1946, arising in part from American anxieties that the Soviet Union sought to annex the oil-rich northern Iranian province of Azerbaijan.16 The Middle East remained an important theater of Cold War conflict for the next forty years. Though oil was not distributed evenly throughout the Middle East, the geopolitical significance of the region ensured that the political alignments of all nations were matters of extreme sensitivity from the points of view both of the superpowers and of governments in the region. The Suez Canal made Egypt a pivotal state and, with the establishment of Israel in 1948, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt once again were on the front line of international conflict. In sum, oil, the Cold War, and the establishment of Israel ensured that the states of the Middle East would be subject to powerful external influences, all of which created pressure for the development of modern methods and institutions. There was no uniform political model for the states of the Middle East. John Esposito usefully distinguishes three types of state: Islamic, secular, and Muslim. Saudi Arabia represented the Islamic model in the sense that “the monarchy of the house of Saud based its legitimacy on Islam, claiming to govern and be governed by the Quran and Islamic law.” Turkey, as we have seen, lay at the other end of the spectrum, with the effective disestablishment of Islam and its restriction to personal life. Thus the secular model. In between lay the “Muslim states, in that the majority of its population and its heritage are Muslim, yet they have pursued a moderated secular path of development.”17 The most dynamic political ideology among this middle group of states in the Middle East was an amalgam of Arab nationalism, socialism, and charismatic leadership. All three elements were united in the figure of Gamal Abdel Nasser,

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leader of the military officers who overthrew King Farouk in 1952 and, from 1956 until his death in 1970, president of Egypt. Nasser’s revolution became the model for development in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, though each showed distinctive national features. Monarchies remained in Jordan and (until 1979) in Iran, though each in its own way embraced modern institutions. What can be said about this middle group of states is that each arrived at a more or less effective accommodation between secular rule and acknowledgement of the centrality of Islam in national life. In contrast to Turkey, most of these states’ constitutions contained clauses that required that the head of state be a Muslim or “that Islamic law be recognized as a source of law (even if this was not the case in reality).”18 In practice, this meant that leaders were free to exploit religion politically when necessary, for example to mobilize the people against an internal or external threat or to keep it firmly in the background at other times. From the point of view of the present discussion, the key point is that the terms of such calculations began to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Political Islam became a factor that Middle Eastern governments across the board could no longer ignore. Control of the religious factor in national politics became less secure. Above all, the assumption that had been made about the relationship between religion and modernization—namely, that as modernization proceeded, religion would decrease in political significance, however important it remained to individuals—proved to have been unfounded. Islam was resurgent not merely among the poor and dispossessed but among those educated in the fields of science and engineering. Furthermore, their commitments were explicitly political. What gave rise to the renewal of Islamic belief as a political force? In the first place, radical forms of Islam had never been far from the surface. Like all the world’s religions, throughout the centuries Islam had been subject to revisionary movements. Some, such as the eighteenth-century Wahhabi sect, were deeply conservative while others, such as the mystical form of Islam known as Sufism, had radical implications. The movements that had the most direct influence over the Islamic revival after the Second World War were the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaat-I-Islami (or Islamic Society). The former was founded in Egypt in the late 1920s and the latter in the Indian subcontinent in the same period. Both movements rejected the modernizing trends in Muslim countries and were at once theologically and political radical. While beginning as a reform movement under its founder, Hasan al-Banna, in the hands of its leading theorist, Sayyid Qutb (1906–66), the message of the Muslim Brotherhood soon spread far beyond the borders of Egypt. His goal was to reinvigorate

82 The roots of terror Islam by refocusing attention on the Quran and those hadith (or sayings of the Prophet), the sources of which could be unequivocally identified as the words of the Prophet. Only those should form the basis of the sharia, and only the sharia should form the basis of social and political life. Muslims had no need of either Western capitalist ideas of “Eastern” communism. All that was necessary was contained within Islam.19 Jamaat-I-Islami propounded a comparable message in the Indian subcontinent. These movements were conceived in the era of colonial rule in explicit opposition to Western imperialism and played an important role in the struggles for independence. Once independence was achieved, however, these radical messages ran against the political grain, and the organizations that promoted these views were brutally suppressed by the authorities in the two decades after the Second World War. Qutb himself was imprisoned and tortured and was executed in 1966. Ironically, at this very moment, conditions were changing in ways that would give Qutb’s revolutionary views new relevance. During the 1960s, internal and external problems surfaced, suggesting that the hopes of the 1940s and 1950s for political stability and economic growth were not being achieved. Internally, the demographic landscape was changing rapidly. Population increases and large-scale migrations of rural populations to the cities put enormous strains on urban infrastructures. Modernization was taking place at a dizzying rate, bringing in its train the decay of traditional social structures. At the same time, notes Olivier Roy, “the development of education, combined with budgetary restrictions, and thus a relative decrease in jobs offered by the state increased the number of intellectuals forced into the lower classes.” The consequence was a cohort of discontented and highly educated young people predisposed “to participate in various forms of protest.”20 It is worth pointing out that a comparable explosion in higher education in developed countries had comparable destabilizing effects. In the Middle Eastern context, however, the scale of the gap between classes, the relative absence of safety nets for the poor, and growing economic problems in the 1970s and 1980s put severe strains on societies and hence also on governments that often resorted to extreme measures to quell internal dissent. Attempts to placate Islamic radicals, such as Egyptian President Anwar Sadat’s adoption of the sobriquet “Believer President” and his toleration of radical Islamic activity, proved no more effective than suppression. Indeed, his efforts at toleration were greeted with suspicion and cynicism, and he resorted increasingly to suppression.21 As far as Islamic radicals were concerned, Westernized models had failed in the Middle East, including Arab socialism. “Re-Islamization” was the only answer for many,

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not so much from a desire to return to ancient roots but because of the conviction that Islam contained within it the solution to modern problems. The most visible and extreme manifestation of these pressures and frustrations was the Iranian Revolution of 1978–79, which overthrew the pro-Western Shah and installed an Islamic government under the spiritualcum-political leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini. This is not the place for a full account of these events. Suffice it to say that beyond the factors mentioned above that affected all Muslim societies, there were circumstances highly specific to Iran that account for the upheavals in that country. These include the detachment of the Shah and his government from the currents of Iranian society, the overt luxury and Western orientation of the Shah and his entourage, and his close connection with the United States. For our purposes, the significance of the revolution lies not only in the fact that, as Fred Halliday has suggested, “for the first time in modern history … a revolution took place in which the dominant ideology, forms of organization, leading personnel and proclaimed goal were all religious in appearance and inspiration,” but because the revolution in Iran became an important “external” influence over events in other Muslim countries.22 The demonstration effect of the Iranian revolution was of paramount significance, but its impact was not straightforward. On the one hand, the revolution was an inspiration to all Muslims who wished for radical change and for whom American influence in the Middle East was a satanic force. On the other hand, Shi’ism, which is the dominant form of Islam in Iran, is a minority branch within Islam as a whole and, to that extent, the Iranian revolution was a divisive force in the Islamic world. It posed particular threats to governments of Sunni Muslim countries that contained Shi’ite populations, an important example being Iraq, whose population is 60 percent Shi’ite but whose leadership is Sunni. While there were certainly other important political and economic causes of the Iran–Iraq war (1980–88), religion was one facet of the conflict between the two nations. Even Saudi Arabia, whose population is only 8 percent Shi’ite overall, experienced riots by Shia Muslims in areas where they were in larger concentrations.23 Perhaps even more significantly, in the wake of the Iranian revolution, Saudi Arabia embarked on a program of funding and support for Sunni Islamic networks in both the Arab and non-Arab worlds, the Muslim Brotherhood being among the most important beneficiaries of this policy. “The Iranian revolution of 1979,” observed Olivier Roy, “immediately contested the very legitimacy of the Saudi dynasty,” and its goal was to combat and isolate the “Shi’ite heresy.”24 In short, many Arab governments had little reason to welcome the triumph of political Islam in Iran.

84 The roots of terror In accounting for the rise of political Islam, a central role must be ascribed to the fallout from the Arab–Israeli conflict, in particular the shattering Arab defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967. The war radicalized Arab opinion as no other single event did. Military defeat was humiliating enough; if anything, more damaging was the evidence that Arab unity, such as it was, was ineffective.25 Two further developments ensured that the consequences of this catastrophe would be long-lasting. The first was American backing for Israel that had existed before 1967 but was markedly stepped up in the wake of the war. The second was the exacerbation of the Palestinian problem resulting from Israeli occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem. Both these topics are discussed later in this chapter. For the moment, it is enough to affirm that, combined with the military impact of the war, they provided additional targets for the frustration and anger of Islamic radicals for whom Israel was now unequivocally an agent of Western imperialism. Subsequent events confirmed the worst fears of Islamic radicals. In the aftermath of the next war with Israel—the October or Yom Kippur War of 1973—Egypt embarked on negotiations with Israel, brokered by the Carter administration, which led to the Camp David agreement of 1978. In addition to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, the agreement provided nominally for movement toward a comprehensive Middle East peace settlement and for self-government of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, including recognition of the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and their just requirements.” In practice, only the bilateral peace treaty between Egypt and Israel was realized. Neither Carter nor Egyptian President Anwar Sadat had wished for a separate peace between Egypt and Israel, not least because it would alienate the rest of the Arab world, but that is in effect what they got. “Once Egypt and Israel were at peace,” wrote William Quandt, who was both a participant in the Camp David process and one of its leading historians, “[Menachem] Begin had few remaining incentives to deal constructively with the Palestinian question.”26 In short, the Camp David agreement split the Arab world and left the Palestinian question not only unresolved but further inflamed. In breaking ranks with the Arab world and negotiating with the enemy Israel under the aegis of the United States, President Sadat paid with his life. He was assassinated in 1981 by an extremist splinter group of the Muslim Brotherhood. The assassination dramatically illustrated the pressure to which the leaderships of all Arab nations were potentially subject from the late 1970s onward. Islamic insurgency erupted throughout the Arab world and, indeed, beyond it in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia in countries with substantial Muslim populations. Even apparently solid and dictatorial

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governments, such as the Assad regime in Syria, experienced Islamic opposition in the 1980s that was brutally suppressed by government forces. Similar pressures existed in Qadaffi’s Libya, where Islamic militancy was put down with comparable ruthlessness.27 The most destructive conflicts took place in Algeria where, in 1991, the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) were poised to achieve victory in the first multiparty elections in the country since independence. The FIS had received the highest number of votes in the first round of voting but not sufficient for a clear majority. The second round was to be held in 1992, but the government declared the elections void and took steps to crush the FIS. Effective civil war ensued, with brutal atrocities, reprisals, and counterreprisals on both sides. Though the conflict moderated after 1999 with the election of more conciliatory leadership, the conflict has not to date been resolved.28 Several conclusions suggest themselves in the light of this brief overview of the resurgence of Islam and Islamism. Islam has undoubtedly undergone a period of profound revivalism on both the social and political levels in the last generation. If there is no such thing as a unified Islamic “threat” to the West, Islamic revivalism certainly posed challenges to Western societies both in the intensity and the geographical range of its effects.29 Furthermore, in the rush to counter the more questionable parts of Samuel Huntington’s clash-ofcivilization thesis, there is a danger of ignoring the very real cultural differences between Islamic and Western societies. This is not only or even primarily, however, a matter of international relations but one of internal relations. Significant numbers of Muslims living in Western societies feel alienated from the values of those societies and seek to insulate themselves from secular and permissive influences. There may be a long-term challenge to the West in the apparent dynamism of Islam as compared with Christianity, irrespective of whether Islamists wield actual political power. However, these conclusions must be qualified in several ways. First, as cannot be insisted too often, the world of Islam is no single entity but contains diverse theological and political tendencies. “There isn’t a single Islam,” writes Edward Said, “but ‘Islams’.”30 This does not mean that we should deny the existence of important unifying elements in Islamic cultures, nor does it mean that we should deny the existence of differences in culture, social practices, and attitudes among societies with Islamic and Christian heritages. It is clear, however, that political Islam is as divisive within the world of Islam as between Islam and the West. There is not and never has been an “Islamic International” along the lines of the Communist Internationals, though numerous transnational associations and networks exist at levels below that of the nation state.31 Many of the

86 The roots of terror conflicts inside the Islamic world or between Islamic countries and the West do not have their sources in religion per se. They are the result of states pursuing their national interests in the time-honored fashion of nation-states. Consequently, it must be affirmed that such differences as do exist between Islam and the West do not entail the conclusion that Islam is inherently incompatible with Western or Christian societies, even if it does involve the careful cultivation of toleration. Second, if one accepts the argument of the French Islamic scholar, Olivier Roy, the salient fact about political Islam is its failure to achieve its goals. Except for the short-lived Taliban regime, Iran and Sudan remain the only examples of the full takeover of a state by Islamists. “Political Islam is no longer a geostrategic factor,” he writes; “it is at most a societal phenomenon.” While “North–South tensions will long remain vital, fuelling a resentment that can easily take on the colors of Islam, the Islamic revolution is behind us.”32 In short, conflict between Islam and the West may be regarded as an aspect of the relations between the Third and First Worlds, not a Manichean struggle over theological principles. The point can be extended by observing that terrorism, devastating and indiscriminate as its effects can be, is generally the weapon of the weak and the politically dispossessed. It is typically the weapon of last resort by those who are unable or unwilling to work through legitimate channels of political expression. Nor, it hardly needs to be pointed out, is terrorism the reserve of extremist Islamic groups, as history attests (see below). Terrorism knows no international boundaries, even if its targets are individual national governments. Third, we return to the theme of modernization with which this section began. One implicit assumption of John Dewey, and no doubt of his modernist heirs, is that the West has successfully mastered the transition to modernity that others are still struggling to negotiate. Arguably, this is a rash assumption. While the manifestations of the strains of modernization may be different from those in developing nations, the prevalence of drug use, social violence, and cynicism about public life suggests that they do exist. Furthermore, in the United States if not in other Western countries, there is a correlation between, on the one hand, periods of rapid social and economic change and, on the other, levels of religious observance and the emergence of religious and political fundamentalism. Ironically, at the very time John Dewey was in Turkey, the economic and social explosion of the roaring twenties witnessed a revived Ku Klux Klan, a highly successful if short-lived organization (as far as achievement of political power is concerned) that promoted a combination of Protestant fundamentalism, racism, and profoundly conservative values. It is often

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interpreted as a revolt of Protestant rural America against the deracinated urban culture of modern industrial society. Upsurges in religious observance, if taking less extreme forms, were visible in the 1950s and 1970s and 1980s, in the latter case having considerable impact on the election of Ronald Reagan in the form of the Moral Majority’s support for his candidacy. Though Reagan by no means enacted the full Moral Majority agenda, the existence of such pressure groups can be taken as a sign of protest against modernity. Other manifestations in the United States of revolts against modernity are the militia movements that have emerged since the 1980s, advocating a return to the true American value of individual freedom that they regard as having been corrupted by big government. Some have used terrorism to make their point: witness Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma bombing; others have simply made a show of violence by stockpiling weapons and survival supplies in anticipation of the great showdown with the forces of evil.33 America’s fundamentalist movements, whether religious or political, have at least this in common with comparable Islamic movements: that they make sophisticated use of the most modern technology to convey their reactionary messages. In sum, modernization is an uncompleted and conflict-ridden process that affects all societies, not least the United States, where modernization has been embraced perhaps more fully than anywhere else. There are even those who characterize American culture as a whole as fundamentalist and would argue that the conflict between America and Islam is not between modernity and fundamentalism but between two forms of fundamentalism.34 Finally, there is the question of the relationship between the rise of political Islam and terrorism. The subject of terrorism is treated later in the chapter. Here, we need simply note that if one were to judge from the self-confessed motivations of bin Laden and his supporters, there then is an intimate connection between their acts of terror and their religious faith, as is evident from the frequency with which quotations from the Quran are used to justify their actions; witness bin Laden’s invocation (already quoted at the beginning of this chapter) of the Quranic injunction “to fight them [the pagans] until there is no more tumult or oppression and there prevail justice and faith in God.” That it is possible to quote other passages from the Quran enjoining moderation in war and limiting “just wars”—as in the Christian faith—to wars of defense would seem to undermine arguments that it is religious belief itself that lies at the root of terrorism. The invocation of the Quran seems to be merely instrumental on all sides. There are good grounds for arguing, as one analyst has put it, that the real causes of terrorism and the real motivations of terrorists have little to do with the religious legitimations that are provided for them.35

88 The roots of terror Unfortunately, the legitimations given by bin Laden and his supporters have had the effect of tarring Islam as a whole with the terrorist brush. The writings of the same Islamists who led the Islamic revival, notably Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood, laid the groundwork for a reinterpretation of the concept jihad that, in the hands of such figures as bin Laden, would permit violence against the state (including states that were nominally Muslim but were held to have departed in practice from the faith) and even against innocent civilians.36 Such a reading of jihad is a minority one and is hotly disputed in the Muslim world. According to Olivier Roy, bin Laden “is not a theologian or a jihadist in the traditional sense of the term”; he has simply “Islamized the traditional discourse of Western anti-imperialism.” More pointedly, some prominent Muslim spiritual leaders with long histories of support for terrorist activity (including the Hizbollah leader Sheik Muhammad Hussain Fadlallah) reject bin Laden’s innovative use of the Quran to justify the September 11 attacks as being “incompatible with Sharia law” and a product merely of bin Laden’s “personal psychological needs.”37 To those in the Muslim world, however, seeking reasons to express their frustrations with the West or with their own leaders, bin Laden’s innovation offers itself as a persuasive and convenient weapon; to those in the West and elsewhere seeking explanations for their own justified anxieties about terrorism, it is easier to take the terrorists at their word and regard the deed simply as the product of the word. Palestinian–Israeli conflict Our question is: what bearing does the Palestinian issue have on the terrorist attacks of September 11? The evidence suggests that Osama bin Laden turned his anger toward the United States initially because of the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia during and after the Gulf conflict of 1990–91. “That was a provocation to the entire Muslim world,” bin Laden is reported to have said in an interview conducted in December 1998. The same report goes on: “But once those early encounters in his homeland had stoked his feelings, he came to concentrate more on America’s involvement in the Middle East. He declared a jihad against America and Israel jointly, he said, because he believed Israel was killing and punishing Palestinians with American money and American arms.”38 In most statements issued since then by bin Laden or members of Al Qaeda, the Palestinian issue is cited as a central justification for jihad against the United States.39 One way of interpreting these statements is to say that bin Laden was a cynical opportunist who saw clear advantages in adding the Palestinian issue

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to his list of grievances in the knowledge that it would strike a chord not only with his existing supporters but with Arab and Islamic opinion that might not otherwise endorse his anti-American campaign. He doubtless also sensed that it would place Israel and its allies on the defensive, not least those in the West who were uncomfortable with Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians. An alternative interpretation is that bin Laden’s concern for the Palestinians was a sincerely held extension of the extremist logic underlying his broader view of American and Western “imperialism” in the Middle East, of which Israel was regarded as the prime instrument. The delay in his identification of Israel was to be accounted for in terms of the growth of his political views from a focus on issues of direct personal concern to him—the presence of American troops on holy ground—toward the wider sphere of Middle Eastern politics. There is no definitive way of deciding between these interpretations, though it is evidently easier to dismiss his claims if one believes that his motives are cynical and opportunist. Irrespective of bin Laden’s personal motivation, however, the use that is made of his claims matters a great deal. To reject them completely is to rule out important conclusions that are shared by many sober and well-informed observers, namely, that the failure to resolve the Palestinian problem is a source of continuing instability and conflict in the Middle East. To accept bin Laden’s logic in toto is to risk being identified with his murderous extremism. It is one of the consequences of his terror campaign and the propaganda associated with it that the terms of the debate on these important issues have been in part determined by bin Laden’s extremist logic. Public debate in the Western media in the wake of September 11 shows very clearly how this has happened. In the immediate aftermath of September 11, the letters pages of newspapers, contributions to radio phone-in programs, and TV chat shows were full of the view that American endorsement of Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians was a prime reason for the anger behind the terrorism of September 11, with the corollary that combatting terrorism would be ineffective without concerted moves to resolve the Palestinian issue. Powerful assumptions and interests were at play here, whatever the realities or “truth” of the case. Resolution of the Palestinian issue as a precondition for dealing with terrorism on terms that would satisfy critics of Israel and the United States clearly constituted a high political hurdle for both these countries. Above all, such a view would go some way toward accepting the assumption of bin Laden and his supporters that fundamental linkages existed between areas of policy that the Israeli leadership preferred to believe were distinct. From the Israeli point of view, the Palestinian problem was only incidentally an issue of general concern to

90 The roots of terror the Arab and Islamic worlds; it was primarily a matter of Israel’s national security. For the United States to accept the kind of linkage being advocated by bin Laden and his supporters would not only be seen to be giving in to terrorism but to be compromising its commitment to Israel. While, as we shall see, the United States has on many occasions sought actively to influence Israeli policies, it has rarely pressed Israel—certainly not publicly—to adopt policies that Israeli governments felt might endanger vital national interests. In this context, it is not hard to understand the howls of protest in Israel that greeted a statement by British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw during a visit to the Middle East in late September 2001. “I understand,” he said, “that one of the factors that helps breed terrorism is the anger that many people feel at events over the years in Palestine.”40 That this statement came from the United States’ closest ally shows the knife-edged sensitivity of this issue. Israel’s own strategy was to promote linkage of an opposite sort, namely, to associate Palestinian terrorism with that of bin Laden and Al Qaeda and thus to turn the American crisis to its own advantage. In fighting terrorism on its own doorstep, Israel was thus contributing to the larger American-led war against terrorism. The signs were that to a degree this strategy was succeeding. The government of Ariel Sharon felt able to respond vigorously to Palestinian terrorist attacks in the knowledge that the Bush administration was unlikely to pursue policies that might destabilize Israel. The cost, however, was to confirm the view of Israel’s opponents that it was not serious about according just treatment to the Palestinians. Objectivity and certainty on this fraught subject is impossible. Would September 11 have happened in the absence of the Palestinian problem? Would the solution of the Palestinian problem materially reduce the chances of terrorist attacks? The option of the natural scientist of factoring out one variable in order to gauge the significance of the others is not open to the historian. What can be done, however, is to examine the chief forces at play and hence identify the chief obstacles to change. In a sense, the issue comes down to the significance of the “Israeli factor” in Middle East politics. In the first place, the way in which the state was established had a profound influence on the future course of events in the Middle East and may even be said to have determined it. For neighboring Arab states and Palestinian Arabs living in the mandate, Israeli victory in the war that followed Israel’s declaration of statehood in May 1948 was a disaster. “No one can forget the shame brought by the battle of 1948,” said Nasser in a speech to Egyptian troops in 1963, adding that “the rights of the Palestinian people must be restored.”41 The failure to reach peace settlements (as opposed

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to armistice agreements) after the 1948 war left Israel and its neighbors in a state of effective Cold War. Not only did the establishment of Israel turn neighboring states and Israel itself into armed camps, it created a permanent and politically corrosive refugee problem. Those Palestinian Arabs who fled during the war of 1948—whether to the West Bank, Gaza, Lebanon, or Syria— from land that became part of the state of Israel were not permitted to return and thus became stateless refugees. The creation of Israel thus introduced in the politics in the Middle East after 1948 a major fault line that has continued through a succession of wars— 1956, 1967, and 1973—to say nothing of the border wars of attrition that took place between these conflicts. Because of the scale of the Israeli victory in 1967 and its territorial occupations—the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights—the Six-Day War in particular deepened the chasm between Israel and its neighbors while also exacerbating the Palestinian problem. Indeed, Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip created the problem in its contemporary form by making Israel directly responsible for the fate of a large proportion of Palestinian Arabs. Peace efforts had deeply ambiguous results, not least because progress in one area so often created new causes of dissension in others. Aspirations to a comprehensive Middle East peace have repeatedly proved to be chimerical. Egypt’s “separate peace” with Israel in 1978 divided the Arab world and had little carry-over effect on relations in the Arab world generally. (Since then, only one further lasting bilateral treaty has been made between Israel and another Arab state—with Jordan in October 1994.42) Only four years after the treaty with Egypt was concluded, Israel invaded Lebanon, which sharply set back the climate for peace negotiations. The idea of a comprehensive Middle East peace appeared to have receded into the background, given the complexity of the problems and the difficulty of drawing up an agenda that could hope to unite such diverse parties. If pragmatism has dictated a piecemeal approach, that approach nevertheless carried the cost of leaving a series of unresolved problems in its wake. As far as relations between Israel and the Palestinians are concerned, when negotiations did begin at the end of the 1980s, leading ultimately to the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995, the prospects for full agreement were compromised by a number of factors. One was the radicalization of Palestinian opinion in the intifada. Though arguably it was the pressure of the intifada (including American criticism of Israel’s treatment of the uprising) that inclined Israel to negotiate in the first place, the intifada also made sections of Palestinian opinion less inclined to compromise, placing moderate Palestine Liberation Organiza-

92 The roots of terror tion leaders under considerable pressure. New militant organizations, such as Hamas, were spawned by the uprising.43 Since the new intifada, which began in September 2000 and gained in intensity in the aftermath of September 11 with increased numbers of suicide bombings and shootings of Israeli soldiers and civilians, the problem of isolation of the Palestinian leadership from Palestinian opinion became ever greater. On the Israeli side, a policy of vigorous search-and-destroy actions against suspected Palestinian terrorists, combined with measures to humiliate PLO leader Yasser Arafat, showed a determination not to have the terms of a peace dictated to Israel. One further important factor limiting the possibility of compromise on the Israeli side was the continuing policy of establishing settlements on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, creating a patchwork of enclaves containing in all more than 160,000 Israelis.44 The result is that many key provisions of the Oslo process have not been implemented or have been only partially. Overall, the record suggests that in the search for peace, where one step has been taken forward, more often than not two have been taken backward. In light of these facts, can we answer the question we started with: what bearing does the Palestinian issue have on the September 11 attacks? If one could subtract the Palestinian–Israeli factor from the Middle East equation, what would be left to create resentment against the United States? The answer is—a good deal. The roots of many tensions and conflicts in the Arab world and in the Islamic world generally predated the creation of Israel. As we have seen, the problems of modernization and the development of radical Islamic doctrines and political movements were well established before the Second World War. Western interests in the Middle East, based on oil and strategic concerns, had deep roots in history. Arab independence struggles and resentment of neoimperialism once independence was achieved—all the issues associated with “conflict in the Third World” could be expected to have manifested themselves even in the absence of the establishment of Israel and the creation of the Palestinian problem. To the extent that the existence of Israel and the plight of the Palestinians is used as an explanation for all the ills in the Arab and Muslim worlds, there is evidently an element of scapegoating involved. It is a way of avoiding looking hard at internal problems and at broader problems in the relations between Arab nations and the West. However, there is a limit to how far one can push this line of argument. Israel does exist; the plight of the Palestinians constitutes a continuing humanitarian problem and generates continuous political crisis. Despite all efforts, including Israel’s bilateral treaties with Egypt and Jordan and efforts to resolve the Palestinian problem, dating from the PLO’s historic shift of 1988 toward

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recognizing Israel’s right to exist, relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians, remain conflict-ridden. In such circumstances, it is not surprising that Arab resentment should be focused both on Israel and on the United States, on whom Israel relies for substantial amounts of aid and political support. In short, resolution of the Palestinian issue would not sweep away all the problems of the Arab world, but it would allow Arab nations to focus their attention on these problems with less distraction. Not least, it might help to create conditions for greater political stability by taking one source of resentment and frustration away from the political agenda. There is no guarantee that such events as September 11 would not happen if the Palestinian issue did not exist, but its resolution would materially reduce the pretexts for terrorism. The Middle East and the American connection Nothing seems clearer than the fact that the United States was a target on September 11 because of its involvement in the Middle East. Discussion cannot end there, however, in part because most Americans reject the view that American policies were a sufficient explanation, far less a justification, for the motives of the terrorists of September 11. On the day after the attacks, President Bush declared that “this will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil,” and his words were echoed by other world leaders as they rallied around the United States.45 In the immediate aftermath, it is not surprising that the attacks should be presented in stark moral rather than political terms. To have presented reasons and explanations at this stage would have been humanly impossible. To some extent, however, the characterization of the war on terrorism as a moral struggle remained a feature of American policy, making it difficult to acknowledge that the reasons for the attacks might lie in past policies of the United States. Furthermore, the United States and key members of the postSeptember 11 coalition, such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, moved quickly to define the terrorist attacks as attacks on the entire civilized world, on all democracies, reminding the world that America was not the only nation afflicted by terrorism. In various ways, then, American and coalition leaders sought to broaden out the response to the terrorist attacks and, to that extent, deflected attention from possible connections between the attacks and past American policies.46 Admittedly, even to suggest such a line of inquiry is to risk being misunderstood. Explanation seems to tread perilously close to justification. Not to explore such sensitive areas, however, is to foreclose on full understanding and on options for change.

94 The roots of terror The first point to be made is perhaps obvious but needs to be emphasized: America has been an active agent in the Middle East balance of power since the Second World War. The American national interest has generally been held to be at stake in three areas: the securing of oil supplies, support for Israel, and (until 1991) containing Soviet influence in the region.47 All these interests, for different reasons, meant seeking good relations with Arab countries, and all three in combination necessitated a concern with overall stability in the region. A central American concern has thus been the Arab– Israeli dispute. Despite its clearly stated commitment to Israel, the United States has claimed the role of broker between Israel and the Arab nations. Contrary to popular myth, the United States has never offered a blank check to Israel, however strong has been the American commitment to Israel’s survival. At a number of points over this period, the United States intervened to restore the “balance” between Israel and the Arabs that in a number of cases involved placing pressure on Israel. (The quote marks around “balance” are necessary since, by and large, the Arab nations have not regarded United States policy as being impartial.) Among the most significant are the United States’ condemnation of the combined Israeli–British–French invasion of Egypt in 1956 over Suez, pressure on Israel to reach a cease-fire in the October war of 1973 in order to prevent the annihilation of the Egyptian Third Army, and criticism of Israel’s handling of the intifada in 1987–88. The United States was also instrumental in the agreements that eventually led to Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai following the 1973 war and the negotiations that led to the signing of the Camp David Agreement in 1978. The United States was the prime mover behind the Madrid conference of 1991, described by one historian as “the most serious attempt ever on the part of the United States to promote a comprehensive settlement of the Arab–Israeli dispute.”48 The United States presided over the Oslo Accord between Israel and the PLO in September 1993 and the Israel–Jordan peace treaty the following year. Furthermore, it was American policy to promote implementation of the complex Oslo Accord and its follow-up agreements, such as Olso II (1995), to which end American officials were continuously engaged in negotiations with both sides through the 1990s and beyond. If these activities constituted one strand of the American concern with stability in the Middle East, another was relations with other major powers in the region. From the time of the 1946 confrontation with the Soviet Union over Iran in 1946, Iran was perceived to be a key state, not only because of its oil resources but because of its strategic borders with the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf. In 1953, the United States, in conjunction with Britain,

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employed covert means to help to remove the nationalist Mossadeq from power in Iran and restore the rule of the Shah. Subsequently, following Britain’s announcement in 1968 that it was intending to withdraw from its commitments east of Suez, the United States shipped increasing quantities of financial aid and weapons to Iran in order to bolster the role of Iran as a regional stabilizer.49 Coupled with support for Iran, the United States cultivated good relations with states in the region, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States, that shared America’s concern to keep Soviet influence at bay. This policy was underpinned by a recognition of America’s increasing reliance on imported oil. American policy toward unfriendly Arab states, such as Syria and Iraq (especially after the coup by the Ba’ath party in 1968), was one of containment. These may have been the broad intentions of American policy for the first two decades of the Cold War, but they were seriously challenged both by events and by certain contradictions inherent in them. Three areas of policy will illustrate the fragility of American designs for the region. The first is the problem of balancing support for Israel against the need to maintain good relations with Arab countries in the region. We have already covered some of the main issues. What remains to be said is that the United States was always liable to be associated with Israel’s actions, even when it disapproved of them and made efforts behind the scenes to, for example, urge moderation on Israel in its handling of the intifada.50 By the same token, the American claim to the role of broker in the Arab–Israeli dispute was always open to the charge that its treatment of the parties was not even-handed. There were always limits to how far the United States was prepared to push Israel. Perhaps the most significant instance of effective American influence over Israeli policy was its urging of restraint in the face of Iraqi SCUD missile attacks during the Gulf War of 1990–91. In this case, however, Israel yielded to the overriding American interest of repelling Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. It is doubtful whether Israel would give way to comparable pressure in a case in which its own national survival was more tangibly at stake. According to some accounts, Israel reserves the “Samson option” (i.e., use of its nuclear weapons) for the ultimate case in which the existence of the nation was at risk. Even short of such an extreme event, it is clear that American influence has not prevented Israel from developing a nuclear capability. Israel remains an undeclared nuclear power and is still a nonsignatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.51 In short, the United States has influence, but not control, over Israel. The second illustration of the fragility of American designs for the region lies in the consequences of the Iranian revolution, an event of huge significance for the United States that gave rise, in the words of an American official, to “the

96 The roots of terror most emotional foreign policy relationship to confront America since the Vietnam War.”52 The shock to American policymakers of the overthrow of the Shah, followed by the long and drawn-out hostage crisis, generated a palpable sense of anger in the United States. One important consequence was an urgent preoccupation with “Islamic fundamentalism” both in public opinion and among policymakers. Not that this was entirely unprecedented. Libya’s Colonel Qadaffi had already sensitized American officials to the issue of Islamic extremism in the 1970s by his exploitation of Islam to bolster his own political power.53 Qadaffi’s invocation of Islam was little more than a ploy to reinforce his own secular rule. What was new in Iran was that Islam was not merely an adjunct to state power: it was the power of the state. It is true that, as compared with the international climate after the end of the Cold War, the 1980s were still dominated by an anxiety about the Soviet Union and, to that extent, Islamic fundamentalism was a secondary threat. Indeed, during this period, the United States lent support to the Mujahidin in Afghanistan precisely because they were resisting the Soviet occupation, of which more later. Nevertheless, the Iranian revolution was a blow to the United States, not merely because it was likely that the Soviet Union would be likely to gain from America’s discomfiture or even because revolutionary Iran posed a threat to friendly Arab states, such as Saudia Arabia, but because it introduced a disturbingly irrational element into international politics. The new Iranian leadership appeared to play by no conventional rules. Its virulent attacks on the United States as “the Great Satan” were different in kind from anything produced by the Communist bloc, whose terms of abuse were in any case familiar. American reactions to Iran set the mold for reactions to Islamic politics generally. In the words of a leading analyst of America’s response to political Islam, “the politics of Islam were confused with the politics of Iran, with many American unable to imagine relations with an Islamist government in which the United States was not cast in the role of the Great Satan.”54 In practice, the American response to political Islam showed a good dash of pragmatism. Opinion on Islam, it has been observed, has never been monolithic either in intellectual or policy circles.55 Islamic militance in Algeria, for example, which on the face of it was particularly threatening because Islamic parties seemed to constitute a majority, was never regarded by American policymakers with the same urgency as the Islamic opposition in Egypt, simply because Algeria was not regarded as a vital interest, while Egypt was.56 The fact remains, however, that the Islamic revolution in Iran brought a new and disturbing element into calculations about protecting and furthering American interests in the Middle East. It proved hard for American policymakers not to consider that relations with Muslim countries constituted a special case. The

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basic continuity of American policy toward Iran in particular was visible in the inclusion of Iran among the countries forming the “axis of evil” in George W. Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2002—and this after elections in 1997 had brought in a leadership that showed signs of wishing to take some of the heat out of relations with the United States and the West generally.57 In short, though American policymakers have in the main avoided invoking such concepts as the clash of civilizations, they have not been able to forget the images of the “Islamic threat” generated by the Iranian revolution. The Iranian revolution, however, set another precedent. Iran was arguably the first of what later came to be called rogue or backlash states: that is, in the words of a senior Clinton administration official, “recalcitrant and outlaw states that not only choose to remain outside the family but also assault its basic values.”58 Once again, it has to be said that until the Cold War ended, such states were as worrying to the United States for the aid and comfort they might give to the Soviet Union as for any intrinsic threat they posed to the United States. Nevertheless, Qadaffi’s Libya is a good example of how “outlaw” behavior, which included the sponsoring of terrorism, could provoke the wrath of the United States: witness the bombing of Libya in 1986. The focus on rogue or backlash states markedly increased after the end of the Cold War, since the collapse of communism seemed to represent a triumph of Western democracy and the possibility of international consensus on at least the goals of the political future. This, at any rate, was the assumption contained in the argument that the end of the Cold War meant the “end of history” in the sense of the end of fundamental ideological conflict.59 Identification of dissenters in the international community was all the easier now. They included Iran and Libya but also Cuba and North Korea, which held out as communist states while the others crumbled. The policy of the United States was to isolate such powers and, in isolating them, to contain their influence. Most notoriously, of course, this category included Iraq following the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Thereafter, the United States pursued a policy of “dual containment” of both Iran and Iraq.60 Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait constitutes the third disruption to America’s designs for the Middle East. The story of the Gulf War has been often told.61 For present purposes, the significant point is the transformation in American eyes of Iraq from a counterweight to Iran in the long and destructive war between those two powers (1980–88), to the status of prime enemy of the United States after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The sheer scale of the American commitment is of enormous significance since it registered in military hardware the huge political stake that the United States now had in the Middle East. The United States had always been wary of intervening directly in the Middle East. It

98 The roots of terror dispatched 10,000 troops to Lebanon in 1958 in a brief operation to uphold the newly minted Eisenhower Doctrine of using military means to contain Soviet influence in the region. Troops were sent again to Lebanon in 1982 in a peace-keeping role, initially to help to extract PLO fighters from Beirut, only to be withdrawn in 1984 following a terrorist attack on an American barracks in Beirut that killed more than 200 US Marines. Not only was the scope of the 1990–91 intervention of a different order; in its aftermath came an extensive and open-ended commitment to enforcing sanctions against Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein’s resistance to complying with UN resolutions on weapons inspections. Furthermore, in conjunction with the United Kingdom, the United States enforced “no-fly zones” in north and south Iraq inhabited respectively by minority populations of Kurds and Shi’ite Muslims. Meanwhile, the United States retained a large military presence in Saudi Arabia and a naval presence in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf. The decade or more since the Gulf War thus witnessed the largest single American military commitment since the Vietnam War, bringing the United States even closer to the heart of the regional balance of power. What conclusions do we draw from this sketch of American involvement in the Middle East? First, the American stake in the Middle East has become both extensive and multifaceted, which has undoubtedly served to make it a target for a range of antagonists. The complexity of Americans goals and the potential contradictions involved in, for example, pursuing simultaneously the roles of broker in the Arab–Israeli dispute and firm ally of Israel have often been productive of resentment and deep scepticism. However, even those who resent American power recognize that without United States’ backing, agreements in the Middle East are unlikely to be achievable or enforceable. Second, while the conflicts and power struggles we have looked at may explain in a general way why the United States might be regarded with suspicion or even hatred by elements in the Middle East, they do not of themselves explain the sources of the terrorist attacks of September 11. To come close to a full explanation, we need to examine what might be called the crucible of terrorism—the war in Afghanistan of 1979–88 and its repercussions in the 1990s. Indeed, we need to understand the resort to terrorism itself. The crucible of terrorism: the Afghan War of 1979–88 and its aftermath The use of terror as a political weapon is now generally associated with movements that oppose constituted governments but, in the modern era, the term

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was first applied to the revolutionary government in France that took power in 1792. When we mean this form of terror now, we commonly refer to it as state terrorism or (when it is a case of states encouraging groups to engage in terrorism against other states) state-sponsored terrorism. Terrorism is normally reserved for anti-government activity. This is how the term will be employed here with, however, due recognition that there are alternative or additional meanings. Needless to say, the term is a semantic minefield, and there have been few, if any, successful attempts to assign a fixed meaning to it. “In a real sense,” it has been said, “terrorism is like pornography: you know it when you see it, but it is impossible to come up with a universally agreed-upon definition.”62 If strict definitions are difficult to arrive at, we can list some of the features generally associated with it. At the very least, we can say that the term denotes the nonlegitimate use of violence that, in the words of French sociologist Raymond Aron, is designed to “produce an effect out of proportion to the means used.”63 An element of subjectivity will remain because some will insist that terror is a legitimate weapon when no other recourse is believed to be available or that what others call terror is in fact simply justified resistance to oppressive government. Such disputes give rise to the unhelpful conclusion that “one man’s terrorism is another’s liberation struggle”—unhelpful because it implies a total lack of determinacy in the term. Terrorism is often directed at civilians or at least frequently makes no distinction between civilian and military targets. Terrorism is a weapon used in the main by the weak and dispossessed against the strong and the rich, though the terrorists may not be from the class or groups they take themselves to be representing. Finally, terrorism is often opportunistic and chooses targets for symbolic as much as for strategic significance; it is thus intended to arouse fear and confusion rather than to achieve military goals. In this sense, terrorism is a political rather than a military tool. It is evident that terror is an old weapon, though it has achieved new refinements in the modern age consistent with advances in the complexity and vulnerability of modern societies. Above all, twenty-four-hour media reportage via satellites and other links allows the results of terror to be communicated instantly, multiplying its effects beyond the immediate situation and exerting correspondingly greater leverage on the targeted government. Nevertheless, terrorism always had some capacity to communicate itself beyond local circumstances. Indeed, as one analyst has put it, “terrorism has much in common with propaganda. Both are forms or vehicles of communication.”64 Modern terrorism dates from the mid-nineteenth century, in particular from the

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activities of such Russian anarchists as Nechaev and the People’s Will party, which mounted the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881. During this period, most terrorist acts were attacks on prominent individuals (including the assassinations of the Czar, the King of Spain, and three American presidents).65 The First World War was triggered by an act of terror—the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary—and there is no clearer illustration of the capacity of a single, dramatic act to bring larger political forces into play. Terrorism was a feature of independence struggles from Ireland to India, Israel, Algeria, and beyond, each of these cases providing plenty of ammunition, given the ferocity of government responses in many instances, to those who reject any attempt to restrict the word terrorism to the activities of opposition groups. In the period since the Second World War, terrorism became truly international as technological advances both increased the means of destruction and amplified their political effects. The philosophy of the Third World “liberation struggle,” forged in wars of independence and postindependence conflicts, provided ideological sanction for terrorism not only in Third World countries but in the developed world among dissident groups who identified with the “wretched of the earth.”66 In the 1960s and 1970s, terrorist groups operated in Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States, while Northern Ireland and the Basque region produced nationalist-inspired terrorism directed at the United Kingdom and Spain. Terrorist groups, shading over into guerrilla armies, operated in several countries in Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. This brief résumé of terrorism is sufficient to remind us that terrorism has been a feature of the modern world and not merely of the Muslim world. As far as the Middle East is concerned, those outside the region tend to identify the beginnings of the modern phase of terrorism with the attack by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) on an El Al airliner at Zurich in February 1969 or possibly with the hijacking by the PFLP of several planes to Dawson’s Field in Jordan in September of the following year. Terror had been used by both Zionist and Palestinian groups since the 1930s, with a marked stepping up in the number and scale of the attacks from the early 1940s onward. Terrorist incidents continued after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. What changed in 1970 was that Palestinians began targeting Western nationals rather than simply Israelis, in an effort to bring pressure on Western governments to force Israel to change its policy toward the Palestinians. Once again, the 1967 war was decisive in that, with the occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, Palestinian resentment of Israel sharply increased. The PFLP hijackings were but the prelude to a succession

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of such incidents in the 1970s. In the wake of the Iranian Revolution, an important shift took place in the direction of a religious basis for terrorist activity. The PFLP was a secular Marxist organization, while such new groups as Hezbollah, AMAL, and Islamic Jihad had explicitly religious origins and goals. In the 1980s, in the context of the worsening of the crisis in Lebanon, hostage-taking was added to the repertoire of terrorist methods. Less obvious from a Western perspective was that “Middle East terrorism” was directed at least as much at Arab governments and other internal targets as at Western targets. Most prominent among these acts were the assassination of President Sadat of Egypt in 1981, the attack on the Grand Mosque of Mecca by an extremist Muslim group in 1979, and the rash of attacks on Egyptian government figures in the 1990s. All this is to leave aside the countless acts of terror by Palestinian and extreme Islamic groups against Israel, acts by individual Israelis against Palestinians, and the Israeli government’s targeting of the leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian organizations in the new intifada that began in September 2000.67 The terrorist attacks of September 11 must be set against this background, but there are more specific antecedents also, and they lie in Afghanistan. For most of the twentieth century, Afghanistan hardly figured on the Western political horizon and then, on December 25, 1979, Soviet troops poured over the border in the first deployment of Soviet combat forces outside the Warsaw Pact area since the Second World War. Claiming that their intervention had been requested by the Afghan leadership, the Soviets quickly installed themselves in Kabul. Within a few hours, the regime of Hafizullah Amin had been toppled, Amin had been killed, and a new leader, Babrak Karmal, had taken power, accompanied with denials by both the Soviets and Karmal that he was a Soviet puppet. For close to ten years, Soviet troops remained there, increasingly beleaguered in Kabul, which remained their only solid point of occupation. The war cost the Soviet Union 14,000 combat deaths and, according to some reports, approximately the same number of noncombat deaths.68 Georgi Arbatov, a leading Soviet specialist on the United States, wrote that “we’ve sent our military contingent there for two closely related purposes: to help the government formed after the revolution in Afghanistan ward off aggression from the outside, and to prevent the turning of Afghanistan into an anti-Soviet base on our southern borders.”69 The revolution referred to by Arbatov took place in 1978, taking the form of a coup against the regime of Muhammad Daoud, a cousin of the former king of Afghanistan. Daoud himself had come to power in a coup in 1973 with the help of the Leftist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), but he soon repudiated his partners

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and the reform program he had promised. It was the PDPA who toppled him in 1978. Once in power, the PDPA, itself a coalition of two major Leftist groups, split into its constituent parts, with Hafizullah Amin’s faction gaining control. He subsequently embarked on a program of radicalization that included sweeping and disruptive land reforms and a campaign against manifestations of the Muslim faith, such as wearing of the veil and the Islamic green of the national flag. These changes produced violent popular reaction, intensified by the spillover effect among Shi’ites in Afghanistan of the Islamic revolution in Iran during 1979. “By the spring of 1979,” wrote one observer, “Moscow was already faced with the dilemma that eventually occurred in a starker form on the eve of their invasion. Should they cut their losses and withdraw support from an unpopular regime that was becoming increasingly unstable, or should they help to prop it up?” Sharp deterioration of the military situation during the summer and autumn of 1979 inclined the Soviets toward military intervention.70 It could be said that the characteristic conflicts of the Cold War were poured into the crucible of Afghanistan, out of which there emerged a decade later a characteristic conflict of the post-Cold War era. Ideology as much as a concern for security drew the Soviet Union in, and ideology as much as geopolitics dictated the American response. However, the ultimate outcome was a conflict driven by ethnic and religious forces. The Cold War had become history. The transformation took place at several levels. In the first place, the war in Afghanistan was instrumental in ending communism. The Soviet failure in Afghanistan was both a symptom of its long-term weaknesses and a cause of the collapse of the Soviet system. It would be too much to claim that Soviet intervention in Afghanistan of itself brought about the end of the Cold War, but it was certainly one crucial undermining factor. Afghanistan was the Soviet Union’s Vietnam, both in the failure on the battlefield and the collapse of consensus at home, the difference being that while the United States could afford such a failure, the Soviet Union could not. Furthermore, it was in the United States’ interest to increase the cost to the Soviet Union of its intervention, which was effected by providing covert funding to the Afghan opposition to the Soviet-backed regime. America’s covert intervention proved to be the second transforming element of the war. America’s backing for the Mujahidin was undertaken on both pragmatic and ideological grounds. Ideology dictated that the Soviet venture must be challenged; pragmatism dictated the means, which was to support the strongest and most active opponents of the Afghan government, namely, the Mujahidin, a composite of at least seven groups based in part on religious and

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in part on ethnic identities. What became apparent only some two decades later was that the United States began to support the Afghan resistance to the PDPA government several months before the Soviets invaded. Indeed, as President Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, told a French reporter in 1998, his proposal to fund the resistance was made in July 1979, in the expectation that “this aid would result in military intervention by the Soviets.” He added that “we didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we consciously increased the probability that they would do so.”72 As the sequel showed, the United States was playing a dangerous game in that the Mujahidin had their own agenda, the significance of which was masked so long as the common goal of pushing out the Soviets was uppermost. In the event, American support for the Mujahidin proved to be a spectacular case of what the American intelligence community calls blowback, which refers to “the unintended consequences of policies which were kept secret from the American people.”73 Even before the Afghan PDPA regime collapsed in 1992, elements in the Mujahidin were using resources received from the United States to undertake operations that directly opposed the United States and its interests. This development represents the third transforming effect of the war in Afghanistan, namely, the development of the anti-Soviet coalition from an organization with the specific goal of liberating Afghanistan from Soviet influence into, in the words of one observer, “a congeries of well-trained terrorists, bent on destroying secular societies around the world and replacing them with ‘Islamic’ ones.”74 Support for the Mujahidin was international from the start.75 The largest contribution came from the United States, but other states that helped in a material way included China, Britain, Pakistan, and even, on a selective basis (in the form of support of Shi’ite groups), Iran. (It will be recalled that, at this time, the United States was in the midst of tense, even inflammatory, relations with Iran.) Some of the support came in the form of funding and arms supplies, some in military training, including terrorist techniques. Some were trained in the United States by the CIA and by British special forces. Among the items found later by counter-terrorists in Mujahidin hideouts were CIA training manuals in a variety of terrorist techniques. The role of the Pakistan secret service (ISI) was central in funneling funds from the United States and elsewhere to training bases in northern Pakistan. However, the anti-Soviet effort in Afghanistan was international in another sense. Recruits to the Mujahidin came from all over the Muslim world. Indeed, the war in Afghanistan became the focus for a much wider struggle, or jihad, for the promotion of Islamist goals. The war in Afghanistan was comparable

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to the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, in the sense that the stakes of both conflicts were regarded as transcending local conditions, enlisting the support of young idealists from a wide variety of sources. Equally important was that when the war ended, many Afghan veterans returned to their own countries and continued the struggle. The attack on Western tourists in Egypt in November 1997, in which 58 died, was led by an Egyptian veteran of the Afghan war. The core of the militant Algerian Islamic organization, Armed Islamic Group (GIA), was composed of veterans of the Afghan war. Most notoriously, Ramzi Yousef, the leader of the bombers of the World Trade Center in 1993, and several of his coconspirators had their roots as terrorists in the war in Afghanistan. The somber conclusion of John Cooley, author of perhaps the most detailed account of these connections, is that “from Peshawar, Islamabad and Kabul to Cairo, Khartoum, Algiers, Moscow, Central Asia, Manila, New York and finally Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the trail of the Afghan war veterans was long and bloodstained.”76 The final transforming effect of the war in Afghanistan was on the career of Osama bin Laden.77 He was the Afghan war veteran par excellence, with the singular addition that his personal wealth, resulting from his father’s engineering business in Saudi Arabia, enabled him to take a leading role in funding the terrorist infrastructure and directing its efforts. He first made contact with Mujahidin leaders in 1980 and, in the following year, settled in Peshawar in Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan. From there, he helped to build the Khost tunnel complex just inside the Afghanistan border, which housed training and other facilities for the Mujahidin. The project received substantial CIA funding. He also engaged directly in the military struggle. Meanwhile, bin Laden was also supporting militant Islamists in a number of countries. At the end of the war, he returned to Saudi Arabia, where he witnessed the arrival of more than half a million American troops, invited in by King Fahd to repel Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. The experience comprehensively alienated him not only from the Americans but from the Saudi ruling family. Indeed, there are those who hold that bin Laden’s ultimate target was the Saudi establishment rather than the United States, a view that arguably carries an important truth too far.78 In 1991, bin Laden departed for Sudan where, following a coup in 1989, Islamists were close to the military leadership. He returned to Afghanistan only when the Taliban overthrew the increasingly fractious Mujahidin leadership in 1996. Under the aegis of the Taliban, bin Laden developed further the Al Qaeda network that mounted the devastating attacks on the Kenyan and Tanzanian embassies in August 1998, the USS Cole in Aden in September 2000 and, of course, the attacks of September 11, 2001.

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Twenty years earlier, bin Laden had been the favored recipient of American funds and political support. By 1997, he was on America’s most wanted list. After September 11, the search for bin Laden and his network came close to being the raison d’être of American foreign policy. The transformation was the result in part of a war with an outcome, from the American point of view, that defied expectations about the political future of Afghanistan. Perhaps it would be truer to say that the United States had lacked any clear vision of the future of that nation. In the judgment of a close student of Afghan affairs, after the end of the Cold War, American policy toward Central and South Asia was “stymied by a lack of a strategic framework.” Policy toward the Taliban was “driven by domestic American politics or attempted quick-fix solutions rather than a strategic policy.”79 With the benefit of hindsight, the United States government, in the eyes of its domestic critics, was slow to read the signs of a growing terrorist threat. “Why was the terrorist threat allowed to grow unchecked?” asked one commentator after September 11. “Why were the military responses so lame?”80 However, irrespective of anything the United States government did or might have done, the war in Afghanistan also effected a sea change in the methods and resources available to extremist Islamic groups for whom terrorism had already proved to be an effective weapon against a superpower. That some of those resources had been supplied by the United States was only one of the ironies associated with the outcome. Another is that believers in a particularly reactionary and socially regressive form of Islam should have subsequently proved so adept at penetrating such a complex modern society as the United States and, moreover, at turning that complexity back on the United States with such destructive effects. The terrorists had the resources of modern education, generous financing, specialist training, and sophisticated forms of networking that eluded easy detection. Indeed, one of the strengths of Al Qaeda was its fluidity, its detachment from state organizations. It was a quintessentially transnational organization, a characteristic product of globalization. However, its infrastructure, unlike that of American democratic capitalism, was all but invisible. As a training ground, the blurred border between Pakistan and Afghanistan was ideal. Bin Laden exploited the resources of both countries but retained an element of distance from both, even from the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar. Al Qaeda itself was a shadowy, decentralized organization with cells that were capable of acting independently of bin Laden, albeit in line with his broad goals.81 Above all, this revisionist jihad was tried and tested against the Soviet Union. “Our brothers who participated in jihad against Russia managed to crush the greatest military machine known to mankind,” declared bin Laden in 1996, adding that “we

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think the US very much weaker than Russia.”82 It remained only to carry this momentum forward to other targets and ultimately, along with these possibly fatal illusions regarding American power, to New York and Washington. Conclusions We have seen, first, that an important underlying condition behind the terrorism of September 11 was Islamic revivalism that took various political forms throughout the Muslim world. Islamic revivalism, however, did not appear out of the blue. It was part of the response of Muslim countries to the stresses and strains of modernization going back several decades and cannot, therefore, of itself explain the specific acts of September 11. All Muslims experienced these processes, and only a small number resorted to terrorism. Islamic revivalism was thus a necessary but not a sufficient condition for the attacks of September 11. Second, we observed how the Arab–Israeli dispute in general and the Israeli– Palestinian conflict in particular have been a continuous source of anger and resentment throughout the Middle East and beyond in the Muslim world. Many Muslims, not least the Al Qaeda terrorists themselves, identify strongly with the Palestinians, seeing the Palestinian cause as their own. In addition, the plight of the Palestinians is widely invoked by observers all over the world as an explanation for the terrorist attacks of September 11. Nevertheless, the Palestinian issue was never the primary focus of bin Laden, and there was a sense in which this issue was exploited by bin Laden and his apologists for the political benefits that would inevitably accrue. A solution to the Israeli– Palestinian issue on terms that would satisfy the terrorists was hardly within the realms of political possibility. A resolution of Israeli–Palestinian tensions on terms that would satisfy both sides—admittedly a remote possibility from the perspective of the middle of 2002—could bring huge benefits to the parties involved and would have a moderating influence on Middle East politics in general, but even total removal of this crisis from the Middle East agenda would leave other important and long-standing tensions. Among these are tensions generated by oil and big-power interests in the region, not least those of the United States. American involvement in the Middle East was the third factor considered in accounting for the terrorism of September 11. The United States has been an active agent in the regional balance of power since the end of the Second World War in pursuit of a number of interests, some of which have been mutually contradictory. American power has been regarded both as indispensable (often by America’s antagonists as

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much as its friends) in reaching any sustainable solutions and as intrusive and imperialistic. These conditions, however, have existed for several decades and, of themselves, cannot explain the form that the terrorism of September 11 took. Attacks on Americans were not new but, until the early 1990s, they were generally restricted to targets overseas. The campaign that began with the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 and reached a new peak with September 11 had more specific antecedents, namely, the blowback from support for the Mujahidin in the war in Afghanistan of 1979–88. This is the fourth element in our explanation of the Middle Eastern factors in the terrorism of September 11. The military struggle of the Mujahidin and its backers, involving as it did many nations and organizations whose single unifying goal was opposition to the Soviet presence in Afghanistan, set off a series of chain reactions, one result of which was the attacks of September 11. Crucial to the sequence of events was the emergence of a cohort of dissidents from a number of Muslim countries for whom the struggle to purify Islam at home and the struggle against America merged into one. Terrorism, as we have seen, has a long history. Not least during the Cold War, numerous terrorist organizations operated in countries all over the world. Terrorism as such, however, did not dominate the political agendas of many countries, significant as it was in particular cases, or indeed of most students of international relations.83 In the United States during the Cold War, counterterrorism formed a small part of the overall foreign policy effort. Containing Soviet power was the top priority. Following the end of the Cold War, as the international political landscape took new shape, terrorism and other forms of political turbulence forced themselves on policymakers’ attention. After September 11, terrorism was catapulted to the top of the agenda. It was not simply the acts of terror themselves, however, that required analysis but the context in which they grew. Observers of international politics could be in no doubt that the end of the Cold War brought with it important structural changes in the international system. If not a new world order, it was, at least in important senses, a new and unfamiliar world. We must now examine these changes since they are part of the explanation of the terrorism of September 11.

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4

The limits of governance Globalization, terrorism, and the transformation of international politics since 1989

Order within the modern state is the consequence, among other things, of government; order among states cannot be, for international society is an anarchical society, a society without government. Hedley Bull (1977)1

The shock of the new Nothing was more astonishing or disturbing about the events of September 11 than the apparent ease with which a few individuals armed with some flight training and knowledge of airline procedures and schedules and in combination with highly focused fanaticism could penetrate to the heart of a great nation and challenge its entire sense of itself and its place in the world. The actions of the terrorists subsequently dictated the policy agendas of the United States government across the board and affected the lives of ordinary Americans in countless ways. Even the Soviet Union, with its mighty arsenal of weapons, its alien and hostile ideology, and its influence over anti-American and anti-Western movements around the world during the period of the Cold War, had never contemplated such a blatant and direct assault on America or, if it did, did so only at the level of contingency planning for an imagined catastrophic breakdown in relations. Even the most hardened American Cold Warriors had not realistically expected a Soviet strike on American soil out of the blue, even if they were required to act as if such an attack might conceivably take place. For all the dangers and crises of the Cold War—and there were many—there were counterbalancing elements of restraint in East–West relations that can be broadly defined in terms of deterrence. The knowledge that the other side might be capable of delivering a retaliatory blow even in the face of its own imminent destruction was a serious check on a pre-emptive first strike by any of the nuclear superpowers. “Mutually Assured Destruction”

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(or MAD) maintained a grisly sort of balance. Elements of symmetry in military capabilities and doctrines were crucial in maintaining “stability” in the Cold War, to the extent that the Cold War was defined by one influential analyst as “the long peace.”2 Nothing could be more remote from these arrangements than the attacks of September 11. Asymmetries abound between the terrorists and the target nation, and the absence of restraint on the part of the terrorists—the sheer implausible excessiveness of the acts—was at the root of their conception and effects. Besides evident asymmetries in power and resources between the attackers and the attacked, the concept of mutually assured destruction could hardly operate when one side not only risked its own destruction but openly embraced it. The problem for the United States was compounded by the fact that for most of the post-Second World War period, it had planned for very different sorts of conflict. Terrorism was by no means unknown, as we have seen, but it occupied a secondary or even peripheral position in policy planning. This situation began to change in the 1990s as terrorist acts targeted at the United States increased in intensity. Both the Justice Department and the foreign policy departments and agencies (such as the CIA) beefed up their counter-terrorism planning, and Congress stepped up its oversight of these efforts. Needless to say, after September 11, counter-terrorism moved to the top of the policy agenda. The outcomes of this shift in policy priorities are examined in the following chapter. What we are concerned with here are possible connections between the attacks of September 11 and broader structural changes in the international political environment. Did the end of the Cold War introduce an era of turbulence in world politics, or was the post-Cold War order rather, as one scholar has put it, typical of the peace-making phases that follow all major conflicts?3 What are the forces making for disorder and those making for order in the new world of international relations, and what bearing do they have on September 11? The end of the Cold War and its consequences: ideas of order and disorder Historical events do not come with labels on them telling us precisely how important they are. Only the passage of time can do that, and it may take years. Communist Chinese Prime Minister Chou En Lai is reported to have said, in reply to a question about the historical significance of the French Revolution, that “it’s too soon to tell.” Nevertheless, some events are sufficiently momen-

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tous in their immediate impact for us to be able to say with confidence that something important has happened, even if full explanations are as yet unattainable. The events from the collapse of the Iron Curtain in the autumn of 1989 to the dismantling of the Soviet in December 1991 represent just such a turning point, though interpretations of its significance vary widely. The initial surge of optimism that accompanied the dramatic events of 1989–91 was perhaps inevitable. It was evident in anticipations of the “peace dividend” that it was assumed would result from the disappearance of the old enemy. Now, at last, the nuclear danger would be over, and the nightmarish possibilities of MAD could be forgotten, swords could be beaten into plowshares, and national wealth could be devoted to improvement of the quality of people’s lives rather than to preparation for war. To the extent that superpower conflict had lain behind regional conflicts in various parts of the world, the end of the Cold War held out the possibility of peace breaking out. The United Nations could, it seemed, operate as a true collective security organization in the way that its founders had intended, now that the likelihood of an automatic Soviet veto in the Security Council or an automatic American veto of Soviet proposals was removed. The optimistic reading of the end of the Cold War was encapsulated in two highly influential conceptions that were current at the beginning of the 1990s: the elder President Bush’s “New World Order” and Francis Fukuyama’s idea of “the end of history.” Bush’s New World Order was announced in conjunction with the formation of the Gulf War coalition against Iraq in 1990–91. The war, he said, was about more than Iraq; it was about “a big idea, a new world order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind: peace, security, freedom, and the rule of law.”4 Fukuyama’s article—“The end of history?”—had been published two years earlier and provided an intellectual platform on which such visions as that of George Bush’s could be built. The collapse of communism, Fukuyama declared, represented a “triumph of the West, of the Western idea,” evident above all in “the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism.” “What we may be witnessing, “he continued,” is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such; that is, the end of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” Fukuyama was careful to offer some important qualifications to this imposing interpretation of the state of the world. In the first place, he insisted that the victory of liberalism was only at the level of ideas as yet; there would be plenty of events to report for years to come.

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Second, some parts of the world would remain “in history,” providing plenty of opportunities for conflict with the parts that were “posthistorical.” At bottom, however, despite these qualifications, Fukuyama’s vision was of a sea change in world affairs consequent upon “the triumph of the West.” The conditions now existed for a basic global consensus, on the West’s terms, on political and moral values.5 Both these conceptions of the global future provoked heated debate, with many, especially in the developing world, regarding them as recipes for renewed imperialism of a particularly pernicious sort because they envisaged the triumph of the West as a permanent and static condition. The end of history was an inversion, as Fukuyama himself noted, of Marx’s idea of a communist utopia.6 It is hard not to conclude, furthermore, that Fukuyama was guilty of grossly magnifying the significance of the moment through which he happened to be living. Bush’s New World Order, for its part, came to be seen less as a global version of the future than as a political tool to help to engineer a coalition for the Gulf War. To the extent that it was tied to those events, its universality was diminished. Having said that, it was to be expected that conceptions devised to meet a new situation, however generalized in form, would reflect the interests of their authors, but these ideas were not necessarily for this reason arbitrary or without foundation. The collapse of communism did suggest that the values and interests of liberal democracy had succeeded in ways that communism had signally failed—in production and distribution of goods, wealth creation, political stability, and adaptability to change. Arguably, Fukuyama was right to say that liberal democracy worked and had no serious rival in these fields. As for Bush’s New World Order, even if the Gulf War coalition was contingent on the specific requirements of that conflict and reflected American rather than universal priorities, there was some weight in the argument that collective security was now a real possibility, that the UN and other international organizations could achieve consensual decisions on major issues that had been virtually impossible for a generation. If one accepts that politics is the art of the possible rather than an arena for utopian projects, it can be said that in the 1990s, the UN did indeed gain new prominence in the fields of peacemaking and peacekeeping. New burdens and new expectations were being placed on the UN, evidenced by the extent to which governments around the world chose to legitimize their actions in relations to the UN and called on the UN to step in when states were failing. Cambodia is only one case among many.7 True, the effectiveness of the UN was and is conditioned by the fact that it is the creature of the nations that comprise it; it does not have a will of its own and necessarily reflects the will of the strongest members. To that extent, the UN is “used” by

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its members, not least the United States, but to say this is to say no more than that international politics is still to a large extent a matter of the balance of power. On balance, if there were as yet no fully achieved New World Order, there were the ingredients for revisions of world politics—or so the optimists could claim. Many observers, however, were far less optimistic about the prospects for world order than any of the individuals mentioned above. The case of the optimists often faltered on empirical as much as on political or conceptual grounds. The post-Cold War world just didn’t seem to be any more stable than the Cold War world had been and, according to some, it was considerably less so. One legacy of the Cold War was the eruption of a destructive nationalism as pent-up ethnic, national, and subnational identities sought expression. The disintegration of Yugoslavia and of the Soviet Union were the most obvious cases in point, most obvious at least to the Western media, because these took place in Europe or on Europe’s doorstep. Other nations, such as Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, Cambodia—many of which had been theaters of Cold War conflict for decades—entered the new category of “failed states” in the 1990s as the superpowers left them to their own devices, having no more use for them as pawns in a superpower game.8 Anxiety about global instability ran the political gamut, even if conservatives and liberals had different ideas about the sources of instability and the means of dealing with it. There was no common framework of analysis; the very terms of international politics seemed to be in question. Indeed, the word international itself was regarded by some as inappropriate because it gave undue prominence to the nation-state at a time when its status was coming into question. World or global politics seemed more apt.9 We shall return to this issue. For the moment, it is worth picking out some of the main arguments of those who emphasized instability in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, since they illustrate very clearly the strains of transition from the Cold War to something new but as yet not clearly defined. Among the most pessimistic, indeed alarmist, was John Mearsheimer, who set out explicitly to refute the optimists who thought the world was now due a period of peace and harmony. His focus was on Europe, which he believed had the prospect of “major crises and war” if the bipolar Cold War structure was swept away, resulting in a multipolar and inherently less stable Europe. Rough balance in military power between the two halves of Europe and the states that backed them—the United States and the Soviet Union—had kept the peace in Europe for forty years; the nuclear arsenals on each side had been crucial to the balance. Take away these props and you have chaos. His surprising

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and even shocking remedy was the “managed proliferation of nuclear weapons” to the major European powers on the grounds that nuclear weapons had been a “superb deterrent” since the beginning of the Cold War. Mearsheimer’s views were heavily criticized by fellow academics, not least for his narrow concentration on militar y power to the virtual exclusion of all other considerations.10 The European Union, for example, figured only perfunctorily in his analysis. In any event, the instabilities that did eventuate in Europe from the end of the Cold War—above all the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia— bore little relation to the crises that Mearsheimer anticipated. Intrastate rather than interstate conflict proved to be the chief fallout from the end of the Cold War. More than a decade on, his views are of little more than historical interest, but it is for that reason that they are referred to here; they convey very clearly the hold that Cold War thinking continued to exert as observers struggled to make sense of new realities. For another prominent analyst, Charles Krauthammer, the new reality was of a “unipolar moment.” The bipolar Cold War was clearly gone, but in its place, was not a multipolar world with power dispersed to various centers but a unipolar world in which “the center of world power is the unchallenged superpower, the United States, attended by its Western allies.” If this seems remarkably similar to Fukuyama’s end-of-history argument, it needs to be said that for Krauthammer, the prospect was not of consensus or peace but of “the emergence of a new strategic environment, marked by the rise of small aggressive states armed with weapons of mass destruction and possessing the means to deliver them [that] makes the coming decades a time of heightened, not diminished, threat of war.” In the circumstances, the United States must assert itself with “strength and will, unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them.”11 Alarmist in a different way was the clash-of-civilizations argument proposed by Samuel Huntington, first in an article published in the influential journal Foreign Affairs in 1993 and three years later in book form.12 If Krauthammer’s and Mearsheimer’s preoccupations were the traditional “realist” ones of politics, ideology, and economics, for Huntington the new reality was the at least partial displacement of these concerns by cultural conflict. While nation states “are and will remain the most important actors in world affairs,” he suggested, “their interests, associations and conflicts are increasingly shaped by cultural and civilizational factors.” In a manner reminiscent of Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History, Huntington identified nine contemporary civilizations, each having distinct characteristics based ultimately on religion.13 His scheme is complex and much open to debate; this is not the place to enter into a full

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examination. What we need to note is the emphasis on instability and conflict in his vision of the present and the future. He had at least this in common with Krauthammer: that security was a core concern. The declining prominence of the nation state did not mean that war was less likely. On the contrary, war between civilizations remained an “improbable but not impossible” outcome of cultural conflict. It is significant also that Huntington regarded the clash between Islam and the other civilizations as particularly intense, the result, he claimed, of “Muslim bellicosity and violence.” Islam, said Huntington in possibly his most notorious statement, “has bloody borders.”14 Evidently the overriding anxiety was what would replace the international political geography of the Cold War and, in particular, whether in the new world of global relations there would exist mechanisms that would help to restrain conflict. Of particular interest were the views of John Gaddis, who had invested a good deal of intellectual capital in the notion of the “stability” of the Cold War system.15 Perhaps predictably, he gave no unqualified welcome to the end of the Cold War. It brought “not an end to threats, but a diffusion of them: one can no longer plausibly point to a single source of danger, as one could throughout most of that conflict, but dangers there will be.” In the new world of international politics, a battle was raging between forces of integration and fragmentation. In many fields, especially in communications, economics, and ideas, the world was becoming more unified, and yet the disintegration of such states as Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, to say nothing of the prevalence of identity politics within many states, including the United States, suggested that fragmentation was at least as salient as integration. Nor were integrative forces necessarily benign. Such global processes as economic integration on a capitalist basis generated much opposition from have-not nations and groups, while ecological change, including global warming, created new dangers common to all the world’s inhabitants.16 In short, ambivalence about the nature of the forces at work and uncertainty about the directions they were taking was a major legacy of the end of the Cold War. The analyses discussed above smacked of anxieties, particularly American, over the immediate post-Cold War years; in their original forms, all were published between 1989 and 1991. They reflected a sense that there was a vacuum of power and a concern in particular with how or whether the United States might be called upon to fill it. The debate about globalization encompassed much wider considerations, representing a concerted effort to create a coherent new framework for understanding international politics. Clearly, we can only touch here on its main lines. Our object is to examine those aspects of global change that may help to explain such acts as the terrorism of September 11.

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Globalization and its limits Globalization is one of those words, of which we have found many in the course of this inquiry, that embodies both an attempt to describe a new reality and an attitude toward that reality. Much dispute surrounds the term. Some doubt whether globalization exists. Even the skeptics, however, are forced to discuss the term and the concepts behind it. Something evidently is happening, if only a new conversation about world politics, and it is of remarkably recent vintage. Odd references have been found to the word in the mid-twentieth century but it is not until the end of the 1980s that it appears with any frequency. In the 1990s, it became a vogue word used to explain the buzzing confusion of the post-Cold War world.17 It would be absurd to believe that the phenomena associated with globalization suddenly appeared fully formed at the end of the Cold War. What happened, rather, was that an older language of international politics associated with the Cold War became redundant or at least of limited applicability, leaving the field open to fresh concepts and terms. In a sense, it was a matter of language catching up with reality. Economic interdependence, the communications revolution, the re-formation of the role of the nation state, the diffusion of Western culture, and the growth of transnational movements, institutions, and quasigovernmental organizations—features that appear in all definitions of globalization—predated the breaching of the Berlin Wall, but collectively they became visible and dominant processes once the standoff between East and West was over. Arguably, indeed, the Cold War had long since become fossilized, and the wider processes associated with globalization had increasingly undercut the ability of the Soviet Union to function effectively, leaving it vulnerable to collapse. From this point of view, globalization was a cause rather than a consequence of the end of the Cold War.18 As the above list of features indicates, globalization influences all aspects of life—the economic, political, social, and cultural—with the revolution in communications perhaps being the single most important novel factor, since the increase in speed and volume of information underpins changes in all the other spheres. Multinational companies are not in themselves new, nor are international trade or financial dealings across national boundaries. Skeptics about globalization can find precedents for these in ancient times no less than in modern history from the time of the Renaissance. The sovereignty of the nation state has never been absolute, and the diffusion of culture from the dominant centers of civilizations is as old as human history. Were not the Roman and British Empires powerful engines of globalization? The Roman road, football (soccer), the Latin and English languages, and many other

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evidences of imperial might, such as Roman coinage and the pound sterling, were manifestations of global cultures in the making. What then is new about our modern version? As suggested above, the speed and volume of information flows across national boundaries have had a transformative effect on the other indices of globalization. Technological innovation drives the process forward, allowing for instantaneous transmission of countless millions of bits of information, visual images, money, shares, and numerous other digitally convertible items. Money values traded on the world’s currency markets rose from $100 billion per day in 1979 to $1.5 trillion in 1998. In the mid-1970s, 30 million shares was a record daily figure on the New York Stock Exchange; in the mid-1990s, 450 million a day was regularly exceeded.19 Similar increases took place on the other leading exchanges, a large proportion of the customers being global. Comparable growth can be found for an entire range of indices, including production and use of communications equipment, travel, global consumption patterns, and number of businesses trading across national boundaries.20 Increases in the volume of transactions across borders are only part of the story, however. Equally important are the many structural and organizational changes associated with these increases, to the extent that we can legitimately speak of qualitative and not merely quantitative change. Multinational companies, for example, not only became bigger and more powerful but were able to disperse their production processes and exploit their geographical reach to reduce costs and maximize profits. Their impact on many nations where they operate, not least those with gross domestic products that are less than those of the multinationals themselves, can be considerable. More generally, many of the transactions characteristic of the globalized economy escape the reach of national governments or are only minimally regulated by them. To the extent that national boundaries are increasingly less relevant to the transactions of some major companies and to many of the financial processes that serve the global economy, the focus shifts from international relations to global relations. Nation states do not become of no account—they remain key building blocks of world politics and the main reference points for individual citizens—but traditional notions of sovereignty become severely eroded. National governments are increasingly beholden to forces and organizations outside their direct or exclusive control, leading to a blurring of the boundary between domestic and foreign policy concerns. “Domestic politics,” it has been observed, “whether of private corporations or public regulators, now have routinely to take account of the international determinants of their sphere of operations

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… the national level is permeated by and transformed by the international.”21 Such transnational bodies as the World Trade Organization, established in 1995 as the successor to GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs), achieve correspondingly greater influence, even if it remains the case that such bodies are the creation of national governments. They are something less than autonomous regulatory agencies having the kind of power that comparable national agencies have within their own borders and something more than mere talking shops. They are, rather, in the new jargon of global politics, forms of “governance,” an issue to which we shall return. Thus far, we have emphasized globalization in the economic sphere, but the development of “global consciousness,” the sense of being involved in events that are physically remote from us and a more general sense that the world is “smaller” and increasingly interdependent, is at least as tangible.22 Television, the Internet, and travel cancel distance and time and grant at least the illusion of being directly involved in situations at several removes from us. Sometimes this may not be an illusion. Is the prick of conscience that makes inhabitants of the First World reach for their checkbooks or credit cards at the sight of the starving in Africa an echo of the actual implication of the rich in the plight of the poor in the real world of international economics? In any case, events such as the “Live Aid” concert of July 1985, the first of many such global fund-raising drives, would have been inconceivable without the immediacy and reach of satellite television. In the case of media coverage of wars and crises, there seems little doubt of the capacity of televised images to provoke governments into interventions that might otherwise not have taken place. The American intervention in Somalia is one example wherein a mediagenerated public opinion was instrumental both in pressing for intervention in December 1992 and the withdrawal in March 1994, which followed television coverage of the body of an American soldier being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.23 Global consciousness is promoted furthermore by the proliferation of globally marketed goods, television programs, celebrities, and music, many of “Western” origin, leading many to include homogenization of culture as one of the features of globalization. The spread of such diseases as HIV and AIDS, albeit unevenly, is another. Finally, and by no means least among the factors making for global consciousness, are the portents of ecological crisis as the pressures exerted by human beings on the natural world grow ever greater. They also grow ever more complex, both for scientific and for political reasons. What appear to be solutions, even if global political consensus is achievable, which it often is not, frequently bring new and unanticipated problems in their wake. The sense that the world is a delicately balanced system

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made up of highly interdependent elements that defy easy management underlies many of the anxieties about globalization. Because all these and other comparable processes incline people to think far beyond the confines of locality or nation, it has been said that the distinctive characteristic of globalization, the thing that distinguishes it from various modernization processes that have been present in one form or another for 500 years or more, is “supraterritoriality,” which involves a “reconfiguration of social space.” Inhabitants of the world, we are told, “now reside in the world as a single space.”24 As an attempt to pin down the unique features of the changes of our time, this formulation is as useful as any but, like all labels, it simplifies even as it tries to clarify. However it is described, globalization is a multifaceted phenomenon containing many and varied potentialities. The BBC Reith Lecturer for 1999, Anthony Giddens, chose to stress a different aspect of globalization, one that is equally apposite. He gave his lectures the title “Runaway World,” conveying graphically the shifting and indeterminate character of global change and the associated sense of a loss of control. The truth is that globalization is not a single or unidirectional process, as is apparent from the variety of forms of opposition to it. Antiglobalization protests against economic summits of the richest countries were a feature of the 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century. Less obviously targeted but no less significant was a reversion in many parts of the world to localism and a celebration of cultural identities in the face of a creeping homogenization from outside. The rise of religious fundamentalism in various parts of the world can be regarded as in part a revolt against globalization and in part, as Giddens has pointed out, a utilization of it.25 In the light of this observation, opposition to globalization can be seen as part of the process itself and not something extraneous to it. More generally, there is the question of the scope of globalization. It is clearly not spread uniformly throughout the world. Some parts of the world are more globalized than others. Is globalization just another word for Americanization or the spread of capitalism or a new phase of Western imperialism? Globalization, according to one African scholar, is not so much a matter of homogenization as of “hegemonization”: “What is globalized is not Yoruba but English, not Turkish pop culture but American, not Senegalese technology but Japanese and German.” In a word, globalization is unevenly distributed.26 Globalization, furthermore, raises questions about the ability of democratic institutions to ensure accountability, transparency, and the maintenance of rights when decision making is often highly dispersed among different institutional levels over which the citizens of individual nations

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may have no control. To that extent, resistance to globalization is as strong among sections of the winning countries in the globalization stakes as in the losing countries. These are only some of the questions raised by the globalizing trends of our time. Taken together, they indicate that there are as many tendencies toward disorder as toward order in the global politics of the twenty-first century. The issue is how far these developments can help to explain the terrorist attacks of September 11. Elements of instability It must be acknowledged that there is in such an inquiry a danger of stacking the cards in favor of the outcome one wants to produce: of saying that a) terrorism is clearly both a product of and productive of disorder; b) the post-Cold War world contains manifest elements of disorder and instability; and c) therefore, the one must be the result of the other. Evidently the terms of such an equation are too general to be of real use. That there is some connection between instability in global politics and the incidence of terrorism is a plausible conclusion to draw, but the nature of the connections remains to be established. Definitive answers are unlikely to emerge. If the links between terrorism and global political forces were absolutely clear, it would be possible to control terrorism and even eradicate it. The essence of terrorism, however, is its unpredictability and, in any case, it is hardly a monolithic entity. As one of the leading specialists in the field of international terrorism has observed, “Context is all in the analysis of political violence. In view of the enormous diversity of groups and aims involved, generalizations and evaluations covering the whole field of modern terrorism should be treated with considerable reserve.”27 September 11 cannot be regarded as a direct result of instabilities in the international system. As we have seen in previous chapters, there were a number of more specific causes. Nevertheless, the international context was at least an enabling one, and we must now look more closely at some of the elements of instability. Globalization and economic instability

The volatility of the globalized economy has been one of its most striking features. The volume of shares, currency, and other financial instruments being traded daily on the international exchanges creates in itself the potential for swift rises and falls in values. The proportion of such trade, which is speculative and designed to yield quick returns rather than being based on actual economic

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activity, increases the vulnerability of the system to sudden losses of confidence, to say nothing of the opportunities for errors and fraud on a massive scale. The collapse of Barings merchant bank in February 1995 was the result of the actions of one individual trader tempted by the enormous profits to be made on the so-called derivatives markets. Modern international finance has been termed casino capitalism and mad money by one economist.28 The results of modern global capitalism, though mixed, were regarded by many observers as broadly positive. “On the whole,” wrote one, “it has yielded investors many more gains than losses, and the structure of capitalism has emerged as the clear overall winner.” In a major survey of globalization published in late September 2001, The Economist concluded that “economic integration is a force for good.”29 Even the most sanguine observers conceded, however, that the rewards of globalized capitalism were not distributed evenly and that the volatility of international financial markets weighed more heavily on some countries and regions than on others. The Mexican peso crisis of 1994–95 illustrated very clearly the costs of globalization to a country the economy of which, though poised in the early 1990s to become more fully integrated into the North American economies, was vulnerable to short-term fluctuations in confidence. Investment had flowed into Mexico in advance of the signing of the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) in 1994 but flowed out again just as quickly shortly after the agreement was signed in response to reports that Mexico’s resources were insufficient to cover longterm debts. An American “bail-out” plan, involving a sum of $50 billion, resolved the short-term crisis but not the underlying structural weakness of the Mexican economy in relation to global capitalism.30 A comparable crisis in Southeast Asia, beginning in Thailand in 1997, led to a much wider collapse in the Asian economies as a whole, affecting even Japan, which experienced the first serious check to its economic growth in the long period of prosperity begun in the early 1950s. The collapse of the Argentinean economy in early 2002 similarly showed the vulnerability of some economies to forces beyond their borders. Indeed, like Mexico, Argentina had for some years been subject to a regimen of the International Monetary Fund austerity measures that were designed to ensure that these countries reduced public domestic debt with a view both to stabilizing the economies and enabling them to honor international debt obligations. Whether the remedies were as damaging as the disease, as some critics claimed, did not affect the reality that in these cases, the erosion of the boundary between the domestic and foreign economic spheres brought with it enormous economic and political costs. For weaker economies, interdependence in the

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global market meant a new form of dependence. Nowhere was this truer than in Africa, where a combination of chronic debt, low commodity prices on the international market, political instability, and corruption in many countries made for a vicious circle of dependence and frustration.31 The widespread media coverage given to antiglobalization movements, such as those that disrupted the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Seattle and the celebrity-supported “Drop the Debt” campaign in the lead-up to the millennium celebrations, reflected widespread sympathy for the “have-nots” in a globalized world, even if the violence at Seattle and later at the Genoa meeting of the WTO alienated many who supported the antiglobalist agenda. At bottom was the issue of inequality in the globalized world and, in particular, the recognition that it was increasing rather than decreasing. As a 1999 United Nations report showed, “the income gap between the richest fifth of the world’s population and the poorest fifth stood at around 3:1 in 1820, 11:1 in 1913, 30:1 in 1970, 60:1 in 1990 and 86:1 at the century’s end.”32 While it might be pointed out that relative figures do not tell the whole story—many of the poor are still much better off than they were because of general economic growth—there are two reasons for continued concern: first, many remain poor in absolute and not simply relative terms and, second, relative poverty can itself generate deep resentments, to say nothing of ethical problems.33 There was and is much dispute about the connections between poverty in the developing world and the globalization of capitalism. The Economist survey of globalization noted that “to its fiercest critics, globalization, the march of international capitalism, is a force for oppression, exploitation, and injustice. The rage that drove the terrorists to commit their obscene crime was in part, it is argued, a response to that. At the very least, it is suggested, terrorism thrives on poverty—and international capitalism thrives on poverty too.” The Economist scouted these possibilities only to dismiss them: “Globalization, far from being the greatest cause of poverty, is its only cure.”34 Others were not so sure. Joseph Nye, an influential American commentator who served in the Clinton administration, noted that “concerns about instability, inequality, and cultural identity are justified, even if overstated.” At the very least, it was clear that perception of global inequalities was central to the anxieties about globalization. The numbers of protesters in Seattle, Genoa, and other WTO venues may have been relatively small, they may have represented only an extreme point of view, but views broadly along those lines were much more widely spread; indeed, as Nye pointed out, “commonplace.”35 The discontents associated with globalization, especially its economic dimensions, were there for all to see. What of the connections with September

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11? There were signs in the immediate aftermath of September 11 that many supporters of antiglobalization movements were rushing to dissociate themselves from the more violent manifestations of the protests. A protester had been killed at the WTO meeting in Genoa a few weeks before September 11 and, after the attacks in New York and Washington, there were those who believed that the antiglobalization movement would be checked or even thoroughly discredited. Such seems not to have been the case. In a careful analysis written in the weeks after September 11, two scholars concluded that, on the contrary, “the events of September 11 have added momentum to the need to rethink the current international system.” The speeches and actions of some Western leaders indicated their acceptance of a possible connection between global economic inequalities and the rage manifested in the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, as also in the reactions among the public in some countries that evidently welcomed the attacks as a justified punishment of America. British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown called in November 2001 for a global “new deal.” Even more tellingly, the United States moved swiftly to pay its unpaid dues of $621 million to the United Nations. At a WTO meeting in Doha, the United States and the European Union “showed an unusual readiness to compromise in the interests of securing agreement with developing countries.”36 Taken together with the expressions of anti-Americanism that we noted in chapter three, it seems clear that, to the extent that globalization is identified in the minds of some with Americanization, there are connections to be made between September 11 and the inequalities and instabilities associated with globalization. Of course, there are exaggerations and distortions involved here. Americanization and globalization are not synonymous even if they are related. However, in this area, perceptions are often as important as realities. America stands for many as a symbol of globalization despite the evidence, historical and contemporary, that “globalization is more than just Americanization.”37 September 11 was not caused by globalization, but there was a consonance between the motives of the attackers and the more extreme rejectionist attitudes toward globalization. Weapons of mass destruction

On the one hand, the possibility of nuclear war between the major powers had, if not disappeared, at least been sharply reduced and, similarly, the plans developed by NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the event of conventional war in Europe were shelved. The Warsaw Pact was disbanded, and NATO was forced

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to redefine itself for a new and unfamiliar era. On the other hand, there remained important questions about how to manage and reduce the existing Soviet and American nuclear arsenals. Though both sides stopped targeting each other, they continued to modernize their arsenals while also continuing with Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). The figures for the number of warheads held by both sides in the year 2000 show that they still numbered in the thousands.38 The United States’ decision to press forward with research into National Missile Defense (NMD) sowed an element of distrust between the United States and Russia and potentially between the United States and some of its European allies. However, by the middle of 2002, the picture had changed substantially with the agreement between the United States and Russia to reduce their strategic nuclear arsenals by two-thirds. Nevertheless, growing stability at the center directed attention more sharply to the potential for instability at the margins. The issue of nuclear proliferation became if anything more urgent than during the Cold War for two reasons. There was, first, the task of trying to limit the spread of nuclear weapons to new states and of trying to convince declared and undeclared nuclear powers (i.e., those, such as South Africa, Israel, Brazil, India, and Pakistan, that have developed such weapons but have not officially declared so) to subscribe to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and to support the nonproliferation regimen established by the NonProliferation Treaty (NPT). Neither of these goals was easily achievable. India and Pakistan carried out nuclear tests in 1998 and, given the depth of their mutual antagonism over Kashmir, the potential for crisis was considerable. The likelihood of full implementation of the comprehensive test ban was reduced by the refusal of the United States Senate to give consent to such a measure, a decision that reflected the views of Senators and senior military figures that the United States must not be allowed to fall behind in modernization of weapons as long as others might be in a position to move forward. The 1996 CTBT remained formally in abeyance as of 2002, though only India and Pakistan seemed likely to breach its conditions. As for nuclear proliferation, the NPT was extended in 1995 for an indefinite period with provision for review every five years; at the 2000 meeting, the United States and Russia pledged to continue to seek total nuclear disarmament. However, there remained some nonsignatories—Cuba, Israel, India, and Pakistan— whose nonparticipation was a material loss to overall security in the nuclear field. Besides these problems, the difficulty of enforcing a weapons inspection regimen on Iraq illustrates the problem of ensuring compliance with international directives, even those with the sanction of the UN behind them.

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The second problem associated with proliferation was that of keeping nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction in general out of the hands of nonstate organizations, such as terrorist groups. Concerns about nuclear specialists from states of the former Soviet Union selling their services to terrorist groups and the possibility of trafficking in nuclear materials were widely voiced in the early 1990s. To some extent, these fears were calmed by the agreement, reached in the mid-1990s, that Kazakhstan, Belorus, and Ukraine would give up their nuclear weapons (they had been sited there as part of the integrated Soviet nuclear arsenal) to a centralized command in Russia, where they were dismantled. The United States provided funds for this to go forward. However, the growth of terrorism during these years, particularly terrorism targeted at the United States by Middle Eastern groups, kept alive the anxiety that resourceful terrorists with substantial financial backing could wreak havoc through nuclear blackmail or the use of small nuclear devices. Biological and chemical weapons were, if anything, a more potent threat since they could be produced and distributed more easily than nuclear weapons. In short, the destructive power potentially available to terrorist groups was not matched by means available to the international community for control of such threats. Uncertainty was a major ingredient of the general climate of insecurity in this field. From Cold War to “new wars”: local and regional conflict

In the Cold War system, conflict was a given both at the core in relations between the superpowers and at the periphery in countries the internal affairs of which were of concern to the superpowers for a range of possible reasons: strategic, economic, ideological, or a combination of all three. While the superpowers did not go to war directly with each other, despite close calls over the Berlin blockade of 1948–49 and the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, numerous “proxy” wars took place in the developing world in which the superpowers backed warring sides. Few of these conflicts originated in the Cold War per se; most had local causes onto which superpower interests were imposed, turning local and regional tensions into matters of global concern. The Cold War itself was one of the globalizing features of the post-Second World War period. The Vietnam War, for example, had local roots long before it was a theater of global Cold War. Historic differences between South and North Vietnam long predated the French occupation in the late nineteenth century. Subsequent conflict between the French and the communist-backed nationalists under Ho Chi Minh after 1945 and then between the Americans

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and the Ho government in the north represented the superimposition of colonial and then Cold War onto a local conflict of ancient standing. Indeed, the same tensions between north and south continued after the communists took over the entire country in 1975, “as Southerners, communists among them, balked at northern domination.”39 Many other local or regional conflicts that fell within the chronological boundaries of the Cold War had even less to do with direct superpower conflict, the India–Pakistan and Arab–Israeli disputes being cases in point. Nevertheless, both these conflicts became theaters of superpower struggle to the extent that, broadly speaking, the United States took the side of Pakistan and Israel while the Soviet union took the part of India and the Arabs. On at least two occasions—the Indo–Pakistan war of 1971 and the Arab–Israeli war of 1973—superpower interests had a significant bearing on the events.40 In numerous other instances, particularly in the developing world, superpower interests helped to fuel civil conflicts, including in the Congo, Angola, Ethiopia, and Somalia. When historians speak of the “stability” of the Cold War system, meaning the absence of war between the major powers, it must be remembered that, in many parts of the world, war and civil conflict were endemic.41 What, then, changed with the passing of the Cold War? In the first place, the withdrawal of superpower support from regimes and movements that had been considered vital to superpower interests reduced some nations to a state of chaotic disorder. Nowhere was this truer than in the Horn of Africa, where the tangled Soviet and American involvements in the affairs of Ethiopia and Somalia since the mid-1970s had created a substantial dependency on superpower aid. Not that aid from the superpowers brought an era of plenty; much of it was in the form of military supplies that fueled the conflicts both within and between these nations. Famine and social disorder were world news long before the end of the Cold War. Nevertheless, the withdrawal of aid after 1989 left the parties to the conflicts still with the same goals but with greatly diminished means. Above all, the governments of both countries lacked the resources to create order. Both Ethiopia and Somalia descended into civil war, and civil breakdown was assured by continued drought and famine in the early 1990s, which were only partially alleviated by international relief efforts.42 Somalia and Ethiopia were instances, according to one view, of a “disturbing new phenomenon: the failed nation-state, utterly incapable of sustaining itself as a member of the international community.”43 Comparable cases were Haiti, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire, and Cambodia. To be sure, not all the problems associated with these states can be put down to the impact of external factors, such as Cold War rivalry. The difficulties of creating

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viable economies and stable governments in the post-colonial period existed independently of the Cold War; they were part and parcel of the conditions under which decolonization took place and of the struggle of states with low resources to survive in a competitive world. However, there is little doubt that, in the wake of the Cold War, economic and political conditions in these countries dramatically worsened. Closely related to the collapse of political authority in many states, and indeed arguably a consequence of it, was the eruption of ethnic conflict as a force that in some cases overrode all others.44 During the Cold War, ethnic conflict had been held below a certain threshold; indeed, in the Soviet bloc, official ideology had dictated that class was the only meaningful form of social conflict and that, since class conflict scarcely existed any more under communism, no fundamental conflicts could be said to exist. That this was no more than a fiction became glaringly obvious once the Iron Curtain was breached. In fact, in Yugoslavia, the reemergence of ethnic conflict was apparent before 1989. Tito’s death in 1980 had given way to a rotating presidency based on the constituent republics, weakening power at the center and pointing up the ethnic differences within the federation as a whole. Furthermore, demographic change during the 1980s in Kosovo had sharply reduced the size of the Serbian minority from 25 to 10 percent of the population, producing pressure among the Albanian population for greater autonomy and fears among remaining Serbs in Kosovo and in the other Yugoslav republics that Kosovo Albanians would seek to join this historic Serb province to Albania.45 In addition, the priority on democratic elections in the post-communist era throughout Eastern Europe and the Balkans tended to produce voting on ethnic and religious lines. In the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechslovakia—all federations formed in the wake of the First World War and, in the latter two cases, reinforced by communist dictatorship in the wake of the Second—the sense of allegiance to the larger entity disappeared once the apparatus that had served to hold it together— the Communist Party—was removed. Among the most important destabilizing factors as far as the West was concerned was that these conflicts were taking place in Europe, the first extensive fighting on European soil since the end of the Second World War. Elsewhere, however, similar tragedies were being played out: between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi; between Pashtuns, Tadjiks, and others in Afghanistan; Azeris and Armenians in Ngorno-Karabakh; and Tamils and Sinhalese in Sri Lanka, to name only a few of such conflicts in states that were fracturing along ethnic and religious lines.

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Some observers have seen in the characteristic conflicts of the 1990s and beyond a new type of war, one that reflected the dynamics of globalization.46 Conflict now was less between nation-states than between factions or groups within states, less a clash over territory or ideology than over identities. The state’s monopoly of violence in many countries was now either nonexistent or severely limited. Ethnic cleansing was one feature of such conflicts, as was a relative absence of a sense of limits in the methods used by both sides; the rules of war, as prescribed by the Geneva convention and other attempts to promote “humanity in war,” scarcely applied. Characteristically, moreover, rebel groups managed to “sustain themselves by transnational economic activity —raising money from Diasporas … trading in raw materials and precious metals produced in their own areas … or producing and refining narcotics.”47 Paradoxically, the intense localism of many of these movements bore an intimate relationship to the apparently contrary process of migration of large numbers of people from the less developed to the developed world. The attempt of many to escape economic and political instability created Diasporas that were able to draw attention to the plight of their home countries; intense news coverage in the developed world of the new wars helped further to put them firmly on the political agenda. In that sense, the new wars were both reactions to and reflections of globalization. Finally, the methods of war were different: “In contrast to the vertically organized hierarchical units that were typical of ‘old wars,’ the units that fight these wars include a disparate range of different types of groups such as paramilitary units, local warlords, criminal gangs, police forces, mercenary groups and also regular armies including breakaway units of regular armies.”48 Of course, it is easy to exaggerate the distinctiveness of these forms of conflict. Ethnic cleansing is only a new name for a very old practice, witness the massacre of Armenians by Turks at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the Holocaust of mid-twentieth century. Civil wars have rarely followed the “rules of war.” Brutality, whether by states or rebel groups, is as old as human society. If there is a new feature, however, it lies in part in the immediacy with which such wars are reported and their capacity to influence the global agenda. The costs, whether material, political, or social, of major war between large well-armed nations are well-nigh unthinkable and have given rise to strenuous efforts to prevent such conflicts breaking out. The forces that drive the new wars, however, are less amenable to such forms of control and prevention since their sources lie in the sense of insecurity felt by many in states and regions where economic and political instability are endemic. The failure of political authority reduces the possibility of containment of violence.

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In a globalized world, disorder is imported and exported, like the trade in goods. This is one of the features of modernity that has led to a redefinition of “security” to include a variety of social, economic, and ecological values. Being secure means not just being safe from attack by another nation but secure against wild fluctuations in the economy, against poverty, crime, social disorder, and ecological disaster. The sense that the conflicts on the television screens of comfortable homes in the richer countries involve the viewers directly; that the boundaries between nations and even continents are as permeable in the area of violence as in financial and trading transactions; that risk is the chronic condition of the globalized world: all these contribute to the pervasive sense of a loss of control described by Anthony Giddens.49 A balance sheet of threats and risks would doubtless show that the postCold War world was not in an overall sense more unstable than the Cold War world but that there were some new ingredients and that they were mixed in new ways. The crucial point is the perception that there are new elements of instability and risk that are not easily subject to the means of control that currently exist. Nowhere is this truer than in the field of terrorism. Terrorism

The US Department of State’s office of counterterrorism issues annual reports on international terrorism, with accompanying statistical tables.50 Any notion of a simple statistical correlation between the end of the Cold War and the incidence of terrorism has to be thrown out by a reading of these reports. According to the State Department’s criteria, the overall number of international terrorist attacks (which includes nonfatal incidents and attacks on property) rose steadily from 1968 until the end of the 1980s, with occasional aberrant years, after which there was a general fall, though again with unusual peaks in particular years. In the 1990s, the highest figure was 440 (1995), and the lowest was 273 (1998). Indeed, the latter figure represented a 27-year low. For comparison, in 1987, there were 665 reported incidents. Figures for terrorist attacks on American targets show similar variations. For 1992, the US figure is 142; in 1994, it is only 66. (For comparison, in no year from 1970 to 1985 did numbers of attacks on US targets fall below 100.51) There is no clear pattern in the ratio of attacks on US targets to the world figures, though there is a slight lowering in the ratio toward the end of the decade: For 1992, the ratio is approximately 1:3; for 1993, it is 1:5; for 1995, it is 1:4; for 1998, it is 1:2.5; and for 1998, it is 1:2.7.

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The raw figures are deceptive. The State Department points out that the two highest overall figures for the 1990s ( 431 in 1993 and 440 in 1995) are to be accounted for by increases in attacks by the Kurdish people’s party (PKK) in Turkey and in Germany. Many were attacks on property and did not involve casualties. By contrast, the year with the lowest overall number of attacks— 1998—showed by far the highest numbers of casualties, both dead and wounded. In that year, 741 died from terrorist attacks, and 5,952 were wounded. By contrast, in the following year, 233 died, and 706 were wounded. Unpacking the statistics even further reveals the fact that the 1998 figures reflect the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The Nairobi bomb alone accounted for 291 deaths and approximately 5,000 injured, the embassy being located in a busy urban area. Most of the dead and injured were Kenyans, but the target was American, illustrating again the deceptive character of the statistics. In terms of the significance for the United States of terrorist attacks targeted against it, 1998 is the most important year of the decade; close behind it is 1993, the year of the World Trade Center bombing. The fact that 1998 represented an overall 27-year statistical low indicates the necessity of looking behind the figures. There is no sure or simple way to estimate the impact of terrorist attacks or to measure the costs of particular incidents to one country as compared to another. In purely quantitative terms, prior to September 11, there appeared to be no significant change in patterns of terrorist attacks on United States targets, except that there was an overall reduction. In qualitative terms, however, the picture is very different for two reasons. In the first place, the visibility and political significance of the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the USS Cole exceeded anything prior to 1993, with the exception of the suicide bombing of the US Marine HQ in Lebanon in 1983. Second, as we have seen, the international context changed in the 1990s, and this was reflected in US government assessments of its defense needs. Defense reviews in the 1990s, beginning with the BottomUp Review of 1993, began to switch emphasis from “old” security issues, identified as threats by other states of conventional or nuclear attack on the United States or its allies, toward “new” security issues, among which were terrorism, drug-trafficking, international crime, movement of refugees, and environmental issues. Such threats had no single geographical source, they were unpredictable, and they were highly asymmetrical in character; conventional defense planning was inadequate to meet such threats.52 To be sure, the bulk of defense resources continued to be devoted to old security threats but, given the changes in the international strategic environment, even here there

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were significant shifts toward highly mobile, rapid reaction forces and hightech weaponry, reflecting the impact of information-based technology on weaponry and strategy. This so-called Revolution in Military Affairs was manifested in American strategy in the Gulf War and later in Kosovo.53 Terrorism, then, was not a new threat in itself, but it occupied a new role in overall threat assessments and defense strategy. This in turn reflected a sense of new uncertainties and potentialities for instability in global politics. Needless to say, September 11 removed any ambiguity about the need for a revision of priorities involving the devotion of new resources to “homeland” defense as well as defense of American interests overseas. These subjects are discussed in the following chapter. Here, we conclude this review of post-Cold War international politics by considering whether there were counterbalancing forces for order in a world that seemed to be characterized increasingly by disorder. Governance and its limits What kinds of institutions and mechanisms exist to help to control the tensions and conflicts described above? What we do not have is either, on the one hand, world government or, on the other, pure anarchy (in the sense of a total absence of order.) When international order breaks down in a spectacular fashion, as in the two world wars of the twentieth century, there are regular calls for the establishment of world government with a view to preventing such events happening again. Just as regularly, such idealistic schemes are rejected in favor of less ambitious arrangements. It is not merely that world government seems a highly remote theoretical possibility in such a diverse world or that there are apparently insurmountable physical and other practical difficulties but that schemes for world government seem inevitably to require dictatorship for them to function. The question that will always be asked of any scheme for world government, indeed of any government, is: government on whose terms? If voluntary consensus does not exist, is it to be imposed? If so, order comes at the expense of all other goods, including justice, freedom, and equality. The truth is that proposals for world government reflected the depth of despair that world wars engendered, but there are echoes of these sentiments in the more modest internationalist schemes that actually emerged from the world wars. Even these were forced to run the gauntlet of reality. The peacemaking efforts at the close of both world wars show that schemes designed to institutionalize aspirations to new world orders either did not function as their founders wished or were trimmed to suit the realities of the balance of power. The League of Nations failed to live up to the idealistic

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hopes that had brought it into life; collective security foundered on the rocks of national self-interest. Furthermore, the nonmembership of the United States, of Germany, and later of the Soviet Union meant that the organization scarcely reflected the distribution of power in the world. If the United Nations was more successful than the League of Nations, it was in part because its structure reflected the important reality that some nations were more powerful than others. Giving a special role to the major powers in the form of permanent membership in the Security Council may have flown in the face of the universalist principles, but it allowed the organization to function more effectively than its predecessor. Needless to say, however, even this did not ensure a determining role for the United Nations in international politics because national sovereignty continued to dictate the behavior of nation-states. Such international order as exists, then, historically has owed little to organizations specifically designed to foster it, but the absence of overarching mechanisms evidently does not imply a complete absence of order. Historically, an element of order has been supplied by the distribution of power in the international system, generating various types of “balance of power,” depending on the distribution of power at any one time and the interests of the major powers. The system may be “multipolar,” as, for example, in the eighteenth century, or broadly “bipolar,” as during the Cold War. Though a notoriously slippery concept, the balance of power does at least indicate the complex and varying relationships between cooperation and conflict in international politics. The absence of international government does not imply a pure Hobbesian war of each against all in the international arena.54 What is proposed here is that in recent years, we have seen the growth of a variety of intermediate institutions and mechanisms that have collectively created at least the potential for more explicit forms of order. None of these bodies or mechanisms represents entirely new departures; there are precedents for all of them. Taken together, they constitute a quiet revolution in international affairs. There are at least four levels, outside that of the nation-state, at which we can see a growth of institutions of international “governance,” by which is meant more or less formal systems of rules, conventions, practices, and regulatory mechanisms. Some of these have the force of law; most do not. The first level is the United Nations itself, its associated agencies, and the leading international economic institutions. On the evidence of the decade or more since the end of the Cold War, the UN was increasingly called upon to perform a range of roles from peacekeeping (Bosnia), to overseeing elections (Cambodia), to brokering peace in situations of civil war (Angola), to providing overall

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authority for military actions undertaken by others (the Gulf War), and to sending fact-finding missions (Israel/the West Bank), to name only a few of the functions it undertook during this period. The UN passed numerous resolutions covering a wide range of topics and geographical areas in furtherance of its mission to maintain international peace and security and to secure human rights. Not all the activities undertaken by the UN in the post-Cold War period represented new functions for the UN, but some did. Increasingly, the UN was called upon to intervene in internal affairs of states that came close to violating the UN Charter’s insistence on respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. Examples are the resolutions enforcing no-fly zones in Iraq and the mounting of a humanitarian mission to Somalia, both of which involved acting without the consent of the governments of these countries. The United Nations pressed more and more at the limit of its Charter as it responded to ever greater pressure from the international community to provide means of bringing about order or governance that transcended the politicking of sovereign nations. The cynics might be right: that this was often a matter of powerful nations using the UN for their own purposes. The United States’ swift payment of its substantial arrears to the UN shortly after September 11 smacked too obviously of self-interest. Nevertheless, even this action indicated the desire for forms of legitimacy that went beyond considerations of power or national interest. A closely related set of transnational institutions were the economic bodies set up, like the UN, at the close of the Second World War: the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs, GATT), which after 1995 became the World Trade Organization (WTO). Their initial aims were reconstruction of devastated economies after the war, international monetary stabilization, and the promotion and stabilization of world trade. Development assistance became the central role of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in the last two decades of the twentieth century, as problems of debt in developing countries grew to crisis proportions, with aid generally being tied to reforms in the countries receiving assistance. Like the UN, these economic bodies increasingly intervened in the domestic affairs of recipient countries, raising questions about the terms on which such interventions were made, the erosion of sovereignty involved, and the unwelcome echoes of old-style imperialism that some saw in the relationship between rich and poor countries. Here too, though, the significant change, from the point of view of the present discussion, was the growing acceptance that the issue was not whether international institutions should step in but on what terms.

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The second level of transnational institutions creating new forms of governance are such regional groupings as the European Union (EU), the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Of these, the EU has gone the farthest in the direction of integration; the others are restricted to trade agreements and other forms of economic cooperation. In all cases, however, it seems clear that the move toward cooperation and integration has been related to globalization. The precise form of the relationship is a matter of some dispute, some seeing regional integration simply as a regional extension of a global trend, others seeing it as a defensive reaction against globalization.55 Either way, new forms of regional organization are being devised to meet new international conditions. The third level of international governance outside the framework of the nation-state, is in the form of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). These are generally nonprofit groups that perform a wide variety of functions, including disaster and famine relief (OXFAM, Save the Children), human rights (Amnesty International), medical emergency relief in war (International Committee of the Red Cross, Red Crescent, Médecins Sans Frontières), and environmental campaigning (Greenpeace). Numerous other NGOs regulate international conventions on such matters as bank clearance, meteorology, and aviation. It is safe to say that as the range of activities that cross national boundaries increases, the number of NGOs will grow correspondingly, bringing about what has been called a “global civil society.”56 To be sure, this is hardly an organized process. NGOs vary from, at one extreme, bodies whose regulatory provisions have the force of law within their own spheres to, at the other extreme, pressure groups whose only power is the power to persuade. Nevertheless, an increasing amount of transnational activity that affects the day-today lives of ordinary people is administered by NGOs. Finally, international law, while still in its infancy when compared to the role of law inside nation-states, is assuming an ever more important role in international relations. For many purposes, generally the less controversial, most nations abide by international law because it is in their interest to do so, for example in relation to the law of the sea or the laws governing the status of diplomats. However, as long as effective means of enforcement do not exist at the international level, in most areas international law will have primarily moral rather than strictly legal status; means of enforcement would imply the existence of a duly constituted and accepted international authority, which in turn would imply a large measure of international consensus on the values to be enforced. The world is a long way from that in most fields. Meanwhile, however, there

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are signs that in some areas, ideas are changing, particularly in the fields of terrorism and law relating to crimes against humanity. The trial of two Libyans for the Lockerbie bombings in a court in the Netherlands under Scottish law represented an intermediate stage between national and international justice. Of particular significance, however, is a move toward applying international law in certain fields directly to individuals rather than simply to states. As things stand, the International Court of Justice at The Hague handles only cases between states, but the newly established International Criminal Court (ICC) promises to apply law directly to individuals in the field of crimes against humanity. Hitherto prosecutions against, for example, Nazi leaders at Nuremberg and more recently against the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic have been carried out by ad hoc tribunals. By April 2002, the requisite number of countries had ratified the Rome Statute creating the ICC, and it was due to begin work in July of the same year. The establishment of the ICC was not, however, uncontroversial. UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan spoke for the advocates of the court when he said that “In the prospect of an international criminal court lies the promise of universal justice.” On the contrary, declared Henry Kissinger, expressing a personal view but one evidently in line with that of the United States government, the idea of universal jurisdiction was full of pitfalls; it risked “substituting the tyranny of judges for that of governments.”57 The United States, having originally signed up to the proposals for the ICC during the Clinton presidency, now refused to ratify the new body. We shall return to this issue. For the moment, it is enough to stress that in the legal field, as in the others we have surveyed, national boundaries mean less than they used to. These institutions, bodies of rules, and ethical norms do not command universal approval. They are most politically sensitive where their claims to universality are most firmly insisted upon. There remain practical and ethical problems about universalizing causes that may represent the interests of a particular nation or group of nations rather than a global consensus, if such a thing is conceivable. The globalization of these norms is at best incomplete; at worst, it represents the imposition of the will of the West over the rest or even, according to some, the will of the United States over the rest where it is not the case of the United States resisting the will of the rest. There are evidently clear limits to global governance. In the post-Cold War world, new elements of disorder frequently defy efforts to control them. Whatever new forms of governance are in the making, they cannot but reflect political realities, which is to say the existing global distribution of power. This brings us back inevitably to the global role of the United States. The world may not be “unipolar.” This

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formulation and others like it, such as “American hegemony,” ascribe far too much usable power to the United States. Nevertheless, there can be little dispute that American power and influence exceed that of any other nation or grouping of nations, including the European Union, which outdoes it in population and some other indices. In the concluding chapter, we turn to the question of what the United States did with that power in the ten months or so following September 11, 2001.

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5

Responding to terror George W. Bush and American foreign policy

My budget includes the largest increase in defense spending in two decades— because while the price of freedom and security is high, it is never too high. Whatever it costs to defend our country, we will pay. George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 29, 2002

John Adams, America’s second president and a considerable political theorist, defined a republic as “a government of laws, and not of men.”1 Government, he implied, should be administered without special favor to any individual or interest; it should embody the good of society as a whole and not any one portion of it. In a republic, the law was king. This became a key principle on which American constitutionalism was built. The US Constitution itself was designed to distribute power throughout the political system and to control its effects irrespective of whoever happened to be in power. The genius of the American Constitution was precisely that it rendered the effects of personality neutral. Curious, then, that judgments about American politics and foreign affairs should focus so sharply on the personalities of presidents.2 There are few modern presidents of note who do not have a “doctrine” to their name— from Monroe through Theodore Roosevelt to Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton—testimony to a public predisposition to personalize the remote abstractions of foreign policy. Presidents themselves know that to make their policies count, they must have brand recognition. Monroe may not have conceived of his own policy as a doctrine—it came to be referred to as such only in the 1850s3—but later presidents evidently strove to give their own foreign policies doctrinal status, and political scientists and historians willingly obliged. Notoriously, elections seem to turn on little but personality or, more accurately, image. Modern electoral politics, television,

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the cult of celebrity and many other influences have conspired to make Adams’ notions seem quaint and even irrelevant to the modern situation. It could be added that, even in his own time, he was often austerely out of touch. Nevertheless, his statement contains a truth that is important even today: as far as the American presidency is concerned, the office is at least as important as the man. Understanding the way in which George W. Bush responded to the terrorism of September 11 is only partly a matter of understanding Bush the individual; it is a matter also of placing him in his institutional and political context. The office and the man The temptation to focus on personality is all but irresistible. Television and the print media subject public figures to minute scrutiny, exposing faults and idiosyncrasies pitilessly. Quirks of speech, physical peculiarities, and mannerisms are magnified, endlessly repeated, and caricatured to the extent that public figures may come to be regarded as cartoon characters rather than as statesmen. Who can forget Richard Nixon’s five-o’clock shadow in his televised debates with John Kennedy in the elections campaign of 1960? For very different reasons, viewers will remember the nervous shift in George W. Bush’s facial expression as he received news of the planes crashing into the twin towers on September 11. Public figures, of course, have their own weapons, consisting of armies of media experts, speech writers, and image consultants who work to shape images of their clients that can stand up to the battering they will receive. They have much on their side besides skills culled from marketing and advertising. In the case of the presidency, they have the prestige attaching to the office and an initial predisposition on the part of the American people to trust the man they have elected. It takes a lot to destroy that trust. Richard Nixon managed it, not only by the acts of which he was specifically accused— conniving in the cover-up of the Watergate break-in—but by wrapping himself in the majesty of the office long after it was clear that he had violated it. In each phase of the rising pressure on him, whether to hand over the White House tapes or ultimately to resign the office, Nixon initially resisted on the grounds that to yield to those demands would be to undermine the office of the presidency. The dénouement was reached when it became clear that Nixon was invoking the office to cloak his own misdeeds. In the end, trust in the office was vindicated, if not overnight, as was Adams’ precept about government. The status and effectiveness of a president evidently relies on a delicate negotiation between the office and the man. How has George W. Bush fared

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in this process? Initial signs were not promising. The presidential election was decided by a narrow majority in the Supreme Court, a unique occurrence in American history and one that, on the face of it, hobbled Bush’s presidency from the start. The Bush camp could not fully dispel the charge that it had stolen the election through specious legal arguments; at the very least, such a disputed election could hardly create a solid platform for the Bush presidency. In practice, however, even in the months prior to September 11, despite much vocal opposition to Bush’s policies and considerable scepticism about his leadership qualities, the legitimacy of his presidency was not seriously held in doubt.4 In the first six months of his presidency, Bush’s political standing was probably more directly affected by the defection of a senator from the Republican ranks than by questions about the legitimacy of his election. Jim Jeffords’ departure from the Republican party to take up the status of independent (but voting with the Democrats) gave the Democrats control of the Senate and the chairmanship of several powerful committees.5 The fact is that in the American system, with its fixed-length presidential terms coupled with the independence of the executive from the legislative and judicial branches, the size of the mandate plays a much smaller role than it does in parliamentary systems. An American president is good for four years (barring impeachment), irrespective of how he got there or whether his own party controls the legislative chambers. It helps to have a large mandate and majorities in both houses of Congress, but even this is no guarantee of success. These favorable conditions can invite hubris, as was the case in 1937 when, with the largest popular vote to date in American history and solid Democratic majorities in both houses, Franklin Roosevelt embarked on a vain attempt to change the rules on appointments to the Supreme Court. He had his knuckles firmly rapped in that case. In short, Bush suffered relatively little from question marks over the legitimacy of his election. He embarked fairly swiftly on a domestic legislative program and made a number of decisive moves in foreign policy, as we shall see. Despite the advantages that the machinery of office supplies, many observers, especially from overseas, had doubts whether Bush had sufficient stature to be president.6 As a German newspaper editor observed, “Europeans love to reach for the imagery of the B-movie Western when criticizing a new American president—especially if he is a Republican from Texas. Accordingly, President Bush is portrayed as a dolt on a stallion, emptying his six-shooter every which way, mainly at peace and global understanding.”7 Few presidents so quickly became the butt of satire and ridicule, based on Bush’s lack of impromptu verbal skill, his seemingly inappropriately folksy way of talking about matters of high politics, and his apparent ignorance about the world

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beyond America’s shores. Bush was often pictured as a puppet, the mere mouthpiece of admittedly experienced Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, and others, including some of the powerful interests who had backed his candidacy. As far as most Americans were concerned, however, despite the air of panic surrounding the president’s flight to Nebraska on September 11, confidence was largely restored by his speech to the nation in the evening. In the ensuing days, weeks, and months, the general consensus in the United States was that Bush had risen to the occasion and acquired genuine presidential stature. The view from outside was less convinced, as might be expected, the reason being not merely skepticism about the content of Bush’s policies but a continuing reluctance by many to take Bush seriously as president. It is plausible to believe that the difference in reaction between Americans and many outsiders lay not merely in the immediacy of September 11 to the American people and the sense of national solidarity that it produced but in the fact that, while Americans took the institutional context of the presidency for granted, outsiders often did not. They continued to arrive at opinions based on a reading of what they took to be Bush’s character, shorn of an understanding of the office. Two important features of the American system of government have a direct bearing on these issues. First, few American presidents come to the office with experience of foreign affairs, and many had no national political experience at all. George W. Bush’s route to the presidency via a state governorship, was not uncommon. Looking only at the more prominent twentieth century presidents, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton all reached the White House by this route, though Roosevelt had been assistant secretary of the navy under Wilson and also a vice-presidential candidate in the election of 1920. None of these figures had a substantial national profile prior to their election except for Reagan, whose reputation was not in the field of politics. Franklin Roosevelt, winner of four presidential elections and a towering figure in the history of the American presidency, was generally regarded as a political lightweight in his first election campaign in 1932: “[A] pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President,” in Walter Lippmann’s scornful words.8 Carter and Clinton were political unknowns until the election campaigns that brought them to office. There does not appear to have been a high correlation between success in the presidency and prior national political experience. As regards officeholding at the highest level and experience of foreign affairs, the most experienced presidential candidate in the twentieth century probably was Richard Nixon, a former congressman, senator, and

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two-term vice-president (under Eisenhower), yet his presidency will forever be associated with the ignominy of its end.9 The American political system, at least at the presidential level, does not give preference to political experience, as do parliamentary systems, but to electability. Americans typically regard it as a positive feature of their system that potentially anyone can become president, and candidates frequently exploit this by presenting themselves as running against the Washington establishment. This is not the place to discuss the many obstacles to such optimistic assumptions, not least the amounts of money now needed to mount a campaign. What is important is the American will to believe that the individual they have elected is up to the job or will soon become so. That will to believe is a powerful engine of American democracy and helps to account for the apparent ease with which a newly elected president who comes into office with scant knowledge of foreign affairs can quickly start looking and acting like a statesman. There is no clearer instance of such a transformation than Harry Truman, thrust into the presidency in April 1945 on the death of Roosevelt and frankly doubtful about his capacity. “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now,” he said to some reporters the day after Roosevelt’s death; “I don’t know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars and all the planets had fallen on me.”10 In any event and in the face of deep skepticism among many erstwhile Roosevelt supporters, Truman made the transition. It was hardly a question of magic. Public confidence in the office cannot account for everything. Truman gathered round himself a group of powerful and experienced advisors and, against the backdrop of the epoch-making events of the early Cold War years, grew into the office to the extent that his standing grows ever greater as time passes. Whether George W. Bush will achieve such status depends on the times and the office as much as on the man. A second important feature of the presidency that helps to account for the public will to believe in whoever the incumbent happens to be is the fact, unique among political systems in developed countries, that the offices of head of state and head of government are combined in a single figure.11 Even the French system, which also has a political presidency, partially separates the two functions by the inclusion of a prime minister as well as a president. The American system more closely resembles, at least in certain formal senses, the systems of some developing countries where a powerful presidency embodies the national will and the national identity, the difference being that democratic accountability is much more firmly established in the United States than in, for example, the constitution of Zimbabwe.12 At any rate, to the extent that

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American presidents, once elected, are regarded as being above politics by virtue of being head of state, they receive an element of automatic credence that is scarcely accorded to prime ministers in parliamentary systems. Not that such credence is limitless. American presidents remain highly political figures even as they seek to trade on the mysteries of the office and can easily squander presidential credit. In the field of foreign affairs above all, however, presidential power is strong both because the president represents the nation as a whole to foreign states and because of the formal powers granted to the president under the Constitution as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Indeed, much of the authority for military actions undertaken by presidents in formally undeclared wars comes from this clause in the Constitution. In short, the office supplies presidents with a range of political, constitutional, and (to borrow a term from the British constitutional theorist Walter Bagehot), “dignified” powers that exist to a degree independently of the character of the individual. Bush in relation to his predecessors It is safe to say that incoming presidents, especially where a change of party is involved, are concerned to differentiate themselves from their predecessors. Not only will the electoral campaign have been built on such a tactic but political success in office will depend at least partly on the degree to which a new president can make a distinctive mark. This is more difficult when there is no change of party. George Bush Sr suffered by being the immediate successor to Ronald Reagan (as, for similar reasons, did John Major in following Margaret Thatcher). Bush Sr’s failure to gain re-election for a second term in 1992 can be put down to a number of reasons, most obviously the poor state of the American economy, but it was due also to the sense that, despite apparent success in the Gulf War, he failed to establish a distinctive presidential direction. In his own words, he lacked the “vision thing.” Bush Jr was better placed to make his mark simply by virtue of the fact that he was able to capitalize on the desire of America’s conservative constituency for a change of direction after two Clinton terms. Despite the handicap of the disputed election and despite his unpromising style and delivery, Bush managed to establish a fairly coherent political personality prior to September 11. Because September 11 came to dominate the agenda and inevitably also assessments of Bush himself, it is important to recall the events and policies of his first eight months in office. Bush has been described as a “big government conservative,” by which is meant that he believed liberal means could be used to achieve conservative

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ends. Backing from influential and financially well-endowed conservative pressure groups was important to Bush’s election campaign. These included lobbyists from big business, the media, the religious Right, the National Rifle Association, neoconservative intellectuals, and a range of other bodies fighting on behalf of such single issues as opposition to abortion.14 Bush’s early domestic policies showed the influence of such interests, though, as is commonly the case, actual results failed to satisfy the full panoply of demands from such groups. Conservatives are no more exempt than liberals from the general rule that achievement of office moderates promises made during election campaigns and thwarts the highest expectations of supporters. A major tax cut, the largest in American history, was manna to the conservative constituency, but Bush’s social policies appeared to represent a departure from the conservative agenda, especially regarding the traditional distaste for the use of government to advance social ends. Bush promoted a new federal education bill that included a 10 percent increase in appropriations, and this in the face of strong moves among conservatives from the Reagan era onward to scrap the Department of Education on the grounds that education was a local and state responsibility. Bush also proposed funding for initiatives to foster family values by encouraging married partners to stay together, and he advocated federal support for “faithbased” organizations to supplement the provision of social services in the cities. There were doubtless political as much as ideological reasons for such policies; they were designed to appeal to moderate Democrats and hence to seize the political center ground. However, their goals were wholly consistent with the conservative social agenda. At the core of the educational proposals was a voucher system designed to increase parental choice of schools. The other social programs aimed to restore family values and enhance the role of religion in American society. In any event, Congress amended his proposals fairly drastically, and the blow to Republican morale by the defection of Senator Jeffords in the summer of 2001 was considerable. On balance, during his first months in office, Bush made moderate progress in promoting his domestic agenda but failed to win high levels of approval from the American people. Hovering around 54–57 percent, the figures were neither disastrous nor highly encouraging. As he came into office, in the field of foreign policy Bush favored a militant form of “unilateralism” that certainly distinguished his administration from that of his predecessor. Clinton’s policy of “enlargement” had implied engagement in a wide range of fields overseas and a broadly multilateralist approach, though, despite the charges of his critics on the Right, this did not imply anything like automatic interventionism. Nonintervention in Rwanda and

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hesitancy with respect to Bosnia showed where the limits of intervention lay.15 In essence, though, Clinton embraced an almost Wilsonian mission for America that laid emphasis on the capacity of America’s peculiar virtues—democracy and economic dynamism—to have a transforming effect on the world. The character of the Bush administration was established in a sequence of decisions announced during his first few months in office. These included the withdrawal of foreign aid from programs in developing countries that provided funds for abortions and advice for those seeking abortions, the decision not to abide by the emission levels set by the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the withdrawal of United States troops from their peace-keeping role in Macedonia, the redefinition of China as a “strategic competitor” rather than a strategic partner (announced before the incident in April 2001 in which a US spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter), and a pledge to push forward with the national missile defense system (NMD). Taken individually, any one of these might have been pursued by any American administration. Taken collectively, and bearing in mind the assertive tone in which they were announced and a defense review that argued for a substantial overall increase in spending plus increases in several categories of advanced weapons systems, they indicated a determination to put US national interests first rather than to link US policy to any overall conception of international order. The Kyoto decision was perhaps the single most significant item. It was not only the refusal itself to entertain the Kyoto targets—there is no doubt that they would create problems for sectors of the American economy and for the American way of life itself—as the way in which the policy was announced and the initial lack of any alternative proposals. Kyoto is “dead,” declared Bush bluntly. The tone softened somewhat during the summer, and promises were made that alternative proposals would be forthcoming but, as yet, these were vague.16 Despite American disclaimers, the impression conveyed was that the United States had little interest in seeking joint solutions to global problems. In most respects, Bush’s foreign policy was in line with the Reaganite agenda, which placed emphasis on American economic growth and military security. In essence, it represented the projection of free-market ideas onto the international stage, though in the foreign as in the domestic sphere, pure market principles could be qualified where it was felt American interests might otherwise be damaged. American farmers continued to receive subsidies in order to maintain their competitiveness in international markets. In other areas, the Bush administration was prepared to adopt selective tariff increases to meet particular situations; witness the imposition of duties on imported steel products in early 2002. In this instance, as in others, the United States

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justified its actions on the grounds that other countries’ steel producers had already violated free-market principles by subsidizing production and dumping cheap steel on the international market. As for the issue of security, the defense review meant an emphasis on high-tech weaponry and on the militarization of space, at the center of which was the NMD.17 Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s proposals for reform reflected the impact of the debate about the revolution in military affairs referred to in the last chapter. They also meant a change in military doctrines and strategies that had dominated American thinking for more than a generation. Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” project had represented the beginning of the attack by the Right on the MAD strategy, but it took the end of the Cold War to make a move toward a strategy based on a defensive missile shield plausible. While Clinton himself was reportedly not in favor of the NMD, pressure from the missile defense lobby was strong and, in 1999, he approved the National Missile Defense Act.18 Clinton set stringent conditions before he would consider actual deployment and, by the time he left office, tests of NMD systems had not proved promising. Bush, however, openly embraced the NMD as the key to America’s future security, knowing, furthermore, that it would involve the abrogation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that had been a cornerstone of America’s relations with the Soviet Union and then Russia. Rumsfeld’s defense review was thus met with dismay by the Russians, President Putin making it clear that he viewed the ABM Treaty as a bulwark against the renewal of instability in the field of nuclear arms. Equally clearly, Bush regarded the ABM Treaty as of merely historical importance, a monument to the obsolete Cold War and an obstacle to the modernization of America’s defenses against a range of threats, including above all the possibility of missile attacks from rogue states. In the first months of the Bush administration, therefore, relations between the United States and Russia were cool, and talks on strategic arms reduction made only slow progress. Across the board, the Bush foreign policy placed emphasis on what the United States was bound by tradition and interest to do on its own rather than on what it might do in conjunction with allies. As in the case of Reagan’s, the Bush foreign policy represented a mixture of, on the one hand, a conviction of American power and greatness and, on the other, of America’s vulnerability to a wide range of threats from outside. Indeed, it reflected with peculiar force the central dynamic of American foreign policy, which is outlined in the second chapter of this book. The goal arguably was not hegemony as such, as outsiders often believed, but a position of ultimate security, defined not merely in military but in economic and ideological terms. What America sought was an international environment in which American values could flourish. “We will build

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our defenses beyond challenge,” Bush declared in his inaugural address on January 20, 2001, “lest weakness invite challenge. The enemies of liberty,” he went on, “should make no mistake: America remains engaged in the world by history and by choice, shaping a balance of power that favors freedom.”19 A useful historical perspective on the character of Bush’s foreign policy can be gained from a reading of two books written by the same author twelve years apart. Joseph Nye’s Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power was published in 1990 in the climate of uncertainty that followed the collapse of communism. His target was the “declinist” thinking among some scholars and intellectuals in the latter years of the Reagan administration, most notably Paul Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Nye’s message then was that America was “bound to lead” since only the United States had the power to create stability in a world that was full of potential for disorder. This was no argument for unvarnished unilateralism, but it did place emphasis on what the United States could and must do on its own initiative in the service of both American interests and global stability. It was also a warning to those who believed that with the old enemy gone, it would be possible for the United States to resume a detached stance toward the outside world.20 Twelve years on, in The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone, the emphasis had changed. The need now was for a recognition of the many ways in which America’s interests were tied into those of the wider world. At times, there would still be a necessity for America to go it alone, but “American foreign policy in a global information age should have a general preference for multilateralism.” What Nye termed the new unilateralists should not try to “elevate unilateralism from an occasional temporary tactic to a full-fledged strategy,” since they would be bound to fail. Not only did the new unilateralists fail to take account of new global conditions, including the transnational nature of many key issues and the complexities of sovereignty in a world where national boundaries were ever more porous, but unilateralism risked creating a backlash against America’s cultural influence abroad, or what Nye called America’s soft power.21 Nye could claim with considerable justification that his views had not changed on essentials but that different circumstances required a difference of emphasis. The second of these books was published three months after September 11, and one can assume that it reflected views formed prior to the terrorist attacks but confirmed and strengthened by them. Nye was less concerned with the details of policies undertaken by the Bush administration than with basic principles. Nevertheless, there was a clear identification of Bush and his advisers as “new unilateralists.”22 Our question must be: to what extent did September 11 make a difference to the Bush administration’s approach to

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foreign policy? To what extent did the coalition-building involved in mounting the “war on terrorism” reflect new multilateralist priorities and how evident were these priorities in other areas of foreign policy? September 11 and the war on terrorism The impact of September 11 on the United States’ relations with all significant powers, whether friends or enemies, was immediate and profound. If ever there was an occasion for a fundamental change in orientation, this surely was it. A powerful sense of solidarity with the United States was the first reaction in most countries. From governments across the globe came near universal expressions of sympathy for the victims of the attacks and pledges of support for what had within twenty-four hours been termed a war on terrorism. On September 12, the North Atlantic Council invoked Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which declared that, given certain specified circumstances, an attack on one member of the alliance should be regarded as an attack on all. On the same day, the UN General Assembly and the Security Council passed resolutions condemning the terrorist attacks and calling on all members to bring the perpetrators to justice. Messages of sympathy were received from President Assad of Syria and even from the Iranian government, though religious leader Ayatollah Khomenei continued to convey his familiar anti-American message. Libya and Iraq were among the few exceptions to the general chorus of support. Such expressions of feeling in the immediate aftermath of the attacks were one thing. Converting that into firm pledges of active support for military and other actions against the terrorists and harborers of terrorists was another. There would always remain a question in some cases about how deep such sentiments went. A flurry of overseas trips by heads of governments and senior officials in the days immediately following September 11, to say nothing of the almost continuous round of phone calls between Bush and leaders of numerous nations, testified to the sense of urgency on all sides. British Prime Minister Blair signaled early on his intention of playing a leading role in the emerging United States-led coalition by embarking within a week of the attacks on visits to Berlin, Paris, then Washington, DC where, on September 20, he pledged to stand “shoulder to shoulder” with the United States in the war on terrorism. On that same day, with Blair present, President Bush set the tone in his address to Congress: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”23

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From this baseline, the machinery of military action was set in motion. Indeed, six days before this speech and only three days after the attacks themselves, Congress had already passed by a majority of 420–1 in the House and 98–0 in the Senate the key resolution authorizing the use of force against the terrorists. The remit granted to the President was wide: “The President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations, or persons.”24 Pursuant to the resolution, an emergency appropriation of $40 billion was signed into law, and a military build up began with the dispatch of fighter aircraft to bases in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, a naval task force that included a carrier group to join the two carrier groups already in the area, and a force of Marines. Within a few days, Kazakhstan, Uzbekhistan, and Tajikstan had agreed to allow the United States to use bases in their territory for operations against the Taliban regime. In addition, under pressure from the United States, Israel and the Palestinians agreed to suspend military actions against each other with the prospect of a resumption of peace talks. In short, diplomatic and military preparations for “Operation Infinite Justice,” swiftly renamed Enduring Freedom on September 25 in recognition of offense caused to Muslims, were well under way by the end of the month. On October 7, the first attacks on Taliban targets in Afghanistan were carried out by American and British bombers. On the nineteenth day of the same month, ground operations began when US Rangers and Special Forces attacked the headquarters in Kandahar of Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader. The sequel is well known. Against expectation, bearing in mind the historical experience of the British and Russians in Afghanistan, within two months a major military and political objective was achieved: the removal of the Taliban regime from power. The important city of Mazar-I-Sharif in northwest Afghanistan fell to troops of the Northern Alliance on November 10, Kabul on November 12, Jalalabad on November 15, Konduz on November 25, and finally Kandahar, the center of Taliban power, on December 7. Meanwhile, on December 5, agreement was reached to establish an interim government in Afghanistan representing all non-Taliban elements, which would start work on December 22 and sit for six months until more permanent arrangements could be made. Put in such summary and schematic terms the story is of remarkably swift and coordinated progress toward achieving the main military and political

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objective of unseating the Taliban regime. However, the bare facts reveal little about the complexities of the war on terrorism. Numerous questions were raised about war aims, the conduct of the war, the character of the coalition, and the relationship of the war in Afghanistan to wider US foreign policy goals. Debate on these issues only intensified with victory over the Taliban. We begin with an examination of the coalition, since it was in this arena that all the other complications surfaced most clearly. The politics of the coalition against terrorism Given that interests generally predominate over sympathy or friendship in decisions about whether to join a coalition, it was inevitable that motives among the coalition members would vary widely. The coalition was hardly a formal organization. It was far short of an alliance and was based on a mix of understandings, more or less formal agreements, and pressure, entailing diverse levels of commitment according to America’s need for practical help and political support and on the willingness or capacity of nations to provide what America wanted. The first Western leader to go to Washington was President Chirac of France, who qualified his endorsement of military action (an endorsement that acknowledged that use of French troops was conceivable) with a question about whether the word war was correct in the circumstances. That element of detachment, fully in keeping with France’s past relations with the United States, was reflected in Bush’s decision not to take up offers of French combat troops for the war in Afghanistan, a decision that was repeated in the case of Germany, despite Chancellor Schröder’s pledge of “unlimited solidarity” with the United States. Evidently the United States was happy with these and other declarations of support but reserved the right to decide precisely what form that support should take. From this standpoint, NATO’s invocation of Article 5 was largely symbolic, important for that reason but not a prelude to a war against terrorism by NATO itself. In the months after September 11, some criticism was voiced both inside and outside the United States for its “pickand-choose” approach to its coalition members. An American commentator wrote that “the European allies gave Washington carte blanche by invoking the collective defense clause of NATO’s treaty in September. The moment was all but wasted.”25 Another report on opinion in Europe declared that “Many NATO countries were frustrated at being kept at arm’s length.”26 The truth is that Bush’s pick-and-choose approach was probably in keeping with Europe’s characteristic absence of a collective political will in foreign affairs. Whatever European leaders may have promised, there could have been internal

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problems in some countries had combat troops been deployed, not least in Germany, where Chancellor Schröder’s coalition was vulnerable.27 In any event, both France and Germany supplied some troops in a peacekeeping capacity, while the main outside military effort was supplied by the United States itself in conjunction with its closest ally in such situations, Great Britain. Prime Minister Blair offered unequivocal support for Bush’s practical and rhetorical war on terrorism and even arguably went beyond what Bush could have expected in his striking speech to the Labour Party conference on October 1, 2001. In a paean of praise to America’s historic values, Blair said, “I believe this is a fight for freedom, and I want to make it a fight for justice too, justice not only to punish the guilty but justice to bring those same values of democracy and freedom to people round the world.”28 A British historian asked at the time whether Blair more resembled Gladstone or Churchill in his stirring mixture of pugnacity and moral idealism.29 The truth is that Blair’s internationalist idealism was more reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson than either of these British statesmen. (Nor is it irrelevant that Wilson idolized Gladstone and borrowed much from him.) Blair was seemingly bidding for moral leadership of the coalition and implicitly reminding Bush of a central tradition of liberal idealism in America’s own past. There is some justice in Newsweek’s comment, in a cover story on Tony Blair in early December, 2001, that “George W. Bush may be commander in chief of the military campaign in Afghanistan. But Blair is its evangelist in chief.”30 Blair’s aim was evidently to exert maximum influence by placing himself unequivocally at the coalition’s center. It was a strategy not without political risks since nothing could hide the fact that in all essentials, America was in charge. As long as Blair could be satisfied that Britain’s goals were entirely coterminus with those of the United States, this need not matter. As soon as Britain was faced with a decision with which it might have difficulty, for example, to widen the war to include nations other than Afghanistan, Blair’s strategy might leave him with no way of saying no. His gamble was that his credit in the American bank would give Britain leverage. The fact that this was a familiar position for Britain to adopt both increased the leverage and lessened the risk. Meanwhile, at his back was a British public opinion that contained a significant and vocal minority of objectors to Britain’s role as “America’s poodle.” In other parts of the coalition, most obviously in the case of Pakistan, interests were more narrowly defined and pressure more obviously a factor. President Musharaff acknowledged that he had little choice about which way to turn, since he was faced with an ultimatum from the United States: join us or fight us. America needed Pakistan on its side not only because of its long

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and leaky border with Afghanistan but because of large sections of the population with Taliban supporters, making Pakistan a potential refuge for Taliban leaders and fighters. American pressure on Pakistan was irresistible but caused it acute problems domestically. The question of choice hardly entered into the equation for Pakistan, but there had to be some quid pro quo, and it came in the form of the lifting of sanctions imposed in 1998 when Pakistan undertook a nuclear test. Naked power politics was more obviously a factor in Pakistan’s relationship with the United States than was the case with most other coalition members. With other members, varied patterns of reciprocal need were to be found. Russia and China were important subscribers because of their status as permanent members of the UN Security Council, but Russia had a special role to play because of its influence with the central Asian republics wherein the United States required basing and over-fly rights. As a Muslim country and a NATO member occupying a strategic position, Turkey was an important coalition member. In all these cases and numerous others, not least Muslim countries in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, the American administration made it clear that what it most needed was intelligence on terrorists and help in stemming the flow of funds to terrorist organizations. In a feverish spate of diplomatic activity during the first month after September 11, involving countless air miles by American officials and as many by foreign leaders and officials, the framework of the coalition was established. Did this represent a conversion of the Bush administration to multilateralism? The level of diplomatic activity and the rhetoric of solidarity, especially the references to September 11 as an attack on civilization and not merely on the United States, would seem to suggest a basic change of tack on the part of the Bush administration. While American leadership could never be in doubt, there were ways of presenting, or rather re-presenting, that leadership in collective and cooperative terms. An American government official described the coalition as “foreign policy by posse,” meaning a “willing coalition … tailored to the crisis in hand instead of working through institutions such as the United Nations or NATO.” 31 The Western image itself, with its heavy overtones of individualism, perhaps betrayed limits to America’s conversion to multilateralism. A less benign variation on the same theme saw the coalition as “an exercise in unilateralism, with a few friends?”32 Nor was there any guarantee, according to critics inside and outside the United States, that America would treat its friends right. “As often before in NATO,” wrote an American liberal critic of American foreign policy, “the danger is that we will look at our allies as junior partners of our firm, asked to supplement our

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forces and to pay for the common good.” Other more strident voices saw the coalition as multilateralism in nothing but name, a “we’ll call you if we need you” war.34 Or was it simply a case of unvarnished American unilateralism, of a hegemonic power marshaling client states into line? The “coalition,” wrote one critic, “was an inch deep, in large measure a figment of American imagination, energy and money … the world was expected to place its faith in what amounts to American unilateralism, albeit in a very different key.”35 The truth is that the coalition was all these things and none of them in an exclusive sense. Tactics changed in line with developments on the ground in Afghanistan and in surrounding contexts, whether in the Middle East or South Asia, issues to which we shall return. The enveloping reality was that no power in the world besides the United States could have commanded such support, however conditional or temporary it proved to be. There was always a sense in which America would go it alone whether in company with others or not. Initially, the element of voluntarism prevailed; there was a rallying around in recognition of the scale of harm done by the terrorist attacks. Collective shock drove forward the world’s response with a certain inevitability and, to that extent, coercion was scarcely a factor or was heavily disguised. Coalition dynamics, however, were highly fluid and, as the war progressed, a number of influences combined to complicate, if not to undermine, the sense of collective purpose. Complications in the war against terrorism Conduct of the war

Doubts were raised in some quarters about the validity of a military response almost as soon as plans for the campaign were announced, though in the United States these came from what were regarded as the political fringe.36 Wider misgivings appeared in November and December as the bombing campaign and then ground operations proceeded. Doubts about US claims to pinpoint accuracy of its bombs, familiar from the Gulf War and the Kosovo conflict, emerged quickly as irrefutable reports of civilian casualties surfaced. In the eyes of America’s critics, the evident success of the military campaign to unseat the Taliban regime was compromised. Even among friendly nations, the media focus on “collateral damage” was bound to influence attitudes among the public and hence also among governments. A visiting American academic at Cambridge University noted the huge disparities in the reporting of the military campaign between the United States and Europe. “Even in its bleakest

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assessment,” he wrote, “American media have presented a balanced picture of the war. British media have been far more negative, increasingly adopting the role of designated war critic.” Specifically, on the prisoners’ uprising in MazarI-Sharif in early November 2001, the London Times and Paris’s Le Monde (neither of which could be regarded as liberal or anti-American papers) adopted a presumption of American guilt or incompetence, while American papers played the story as “an illustration of the dangers of trusting the most hardened Al Qaeda and Taliban units.”37 To be sure, the governments of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany continued actively to endorse the aims of the war, but small fissures appeared in the apparently united front with some regularity. At the end of November, the European Commission criticized America for distributing aid by air drops after an Afghan woman was killed by a bundle of humanitarian supplies that destroyed her home.38 Two weeks later, Britain’s chief of the defense staff rounded on the American government for its “single-minded aim” of destroying bin Laden “in a high-tech wild west” operation to the detriment of the wider and more important task of rebuilding Afghanistan. American policy risked further radicalizing Arab opinion and provoking further “wobbles” in the antiterror coalition. Behind this particular dispute was a larger conflict between London and Washington over priorities, Britain favoring the swift establishment of a stabilization force in Afghanistan and the United States concentrating on hunting down the Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders.39 Moral and legal issues

A second set of complications arose from legal changes in the United States designed to combat terrorism, from treatment of prisoners of war in Afghanistan and the detention of Al Qaeda prisoners who were transported to Cuba. As regards new internal security measures, many voices in America who had no qualms about the war in Afghanistan felt, in the words of one of America’s most respected journalists, that “some of the moral and military high ground secured by the United States is now being given up by another front: law.” Anthony Lewis was referring to an executive order allowing nonUS citizens resident in the United States and suspected of terrorist activity to be tried by a special military tribunal. “Sweeping millions of resident aliens under the order,” Lewis wrote, “seems to violate the principle that civilians should not be subject to military law in this country.”40 The conservative columnist William Safire, ever alert to potential violations of the US Constitution, put it more bluntly by describing these proposed tribunals as “Kangaroo courts”

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that represented a dangerous departure from the fundamental legal principle of due process. Indeed, it was liberals who had the greatest problems opposing the Bush administration’s legal innovations for fear of appearing to oppose the war on terrorism.41 More generally, concerns were expressed inside and outside the United States that traditional American liberties were being sacrificed in a climate of increasing anxiety and pressure for conformity. The proposal for military tribunals was only a highly visible instance of broader changes that gave the Justice Department and agencies responsible for law enforcement additional funds and powers potentially limiting individual liberties. The comment of one foreign observer (a former British newspaper correspondent in the Soviet Union) that “New York is starting to feel like Brezhnev’s Moscow” may have been hyperbolic but was only a heightened version of observations made by many others.42 Concern over the treatment of prisoners came up in two forms, first in relation to the siege of Konduz when Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld made a statement that could be interpreted to mean that he would rather see Al Qaeda and Taliban forces dead than in prison. Clarification of his remarks by unnamed sources in the Defense Department did not entirely remove concerns, especially among foreign observers, that Rumsfeld was “sailing close to the wind on this question.”43 More serious and more visible was the furor aroused by the treatment of Al Qaeda detainees in Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Pictures of chained and blindfolded prisoners kneeling in a compound of barbed wire, coupled with stories that prisoners had been denied permission to pray, aroused public opinion in Britain to the extent that Foreign Secretary Jack Straw felt bound to take up the issue with the US government.44 Similar concerns were expressed throughout the world, indicating, as Anthony Lewis noted, that the handling of the prisoners at Camp X-Ray had given America a “self-inflicted wound.”45 Brusque dismissals of international criticism—“It’s time to tap down some of the hyperbole,” said Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld —did nothing to dampen the controversy.46 A visit by a delegation from the US Congress perhaps predictably rejected concerns about treatment of the detainees. Moreover, questions about the detainees’ legal status remained unresolved. The US administration’s favored formulation, unlawful combatants, had no clear legal basis, while prisoners of war would entitle them to protections under the Geneva Convention that the US government was not inclined to grant. The question of what kind of court or tribunal should try them was similarly surrounded by confusion and controversy.47 Such disputes can be regarded as familiar byproducts of all coalition politics, reminders that such joint enterprises can never be expected to produce total

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unanimity. A glance at the record of full-scale alliances, such as the “Grand Alliance” that defeated Hitler in the Second World War, is enough to show that alliances can survive serious conflicts of interest as long as consensus on essential goals is maintained. The above problems related mainly to the means of fighting terrorism, not the ends. While for opponents of the war doubts over the means were themselves enough to damn the ends, for supporters of the war, a concern over mistakes and unintended side effects need not cast doubt over the central justifications for the war.48 Different sorts of issues were raised by other complications that appeared as the war progressed: the Palestinian–Israeli conflict and the widening of the war to include Iraq and possibly other countries. Both these cases raised questions about the nature and scope of the war on terrorism and about the dynamics of the coalition. Indeed, they became increasingly related. Palestinian–Israeli conflict

For all but a few days during the war in Afghanistan, conflict between Israel and the Palestinians was a continuous accompaniment. After what appeared to be token efforts on both sides in the third week of September to establish a truce, a familiar round of incidents resumed and even intensified in the last three months of 2001. The attempts to achieve a cessation of violence reflected intense pressure from the United States and Britain in recognition of the fact that the war against terror would be much easier to prosecute if the Palestinian– Israeli conflict simply melted away. Not only was it a distraction from the war against terror but it could be exploited by bin Laden supporters to inflame opinion in the Muslim world. Tony Blair took a high profile role in the attempt to uncouple the war against terror from Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Bin Laden, Blair suggested, had not hijacked just planes but a country (Afghanistan), a religion (Islam), and a cause (the Palestinian). At a joint press conference in the West Bank with President Arafat on October 15, Blair had apparently gone some way toward achieving his goal when Arafat declared that there was no connection between the Palestinian issue and September 11. Events conspired against such a neat categorization of the issues. For one thing, Prime Minister Sharon had strong reasons for linking Israel’s fight against Palestinian terrorists with President Bush’s war against the perpetrators of September 11. Indeed, Sharon provocatively cautioned Bush against being soft on Palestinian terrorism and appeasing the Arabs “at our expense” in his efforts to gain Arab support for his war on terrorism.49 However, Bush was also vulnerable from the other side. The greater the military force used by Israel

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on the West Bank and Gaza, the more open was the Bush administration to the charge that it cared little for the plight of the Palestinians. The situation spiraled out of control with the assassination of the Israeli Minister for Tourism in mid-October, Israel’s occupation of parts of the West Bank later in the same month, the killing of several Israelis in a gun attack in Hadera, Israel’s killing of a Hams military chief in November, suicide bombs in Jerusalem and Haifa in December, and Israeli attacks on Arafat’s compound in Ramallah, to which Arafat was now confined for a period of months. Preoccupied with the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the Bush administration was slow to seek ways of breaking the cycle of violence. As a former US government specialist in Arab–Israeli affairs put it in January, 2002, “The United States says the onus is on Mr. Arafat and passively looks on—occasionally dispatching its special envoy when the situation looks better, keeping him home as events take a turn for the worse.”50 And get worse they did in February and March, 2002, with a rash of suicide bombings killing scores of Israeli civilians and wounding and mutilating many more, to be followed by ever deeper incursions by Israeli troops into West Bank towns and cities, culminating in the bloody battle in Jenin refugee camp and the siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Stung by criticisms of American passivity in the face of such carnage, President Bush dispatched Colin Powell to the Middle East in the second week of April in an effort to seek a solution to the immediate crisis.51 The manner of his going and the Israeli response spoke volumes about their respective interests and expectations. Rather than traveling direct to Israel, Powell took several days to arrive, having talks with the leaders of a number of Arab countries on the way. Once in Jerusalem, Powell was confronted with an Israeli government intent on maintaining its own timetable for dealing with the sources of the suicide bombings. Israeli forces withdrew from the center of Jenin a few days after Powell’s departure, but he and the administration had to endure the humiliation of having had their calls for immediate Israeli withdrawal rebuffed. This is not the place for a general discussion of Israeli policy. In the following weeks, suicide bombings resumed, and Israeli military retaliation continued, though at a lower level. What is important for present purposes are the linkages between American policy toward the Palestinian issue and the war on terrorism. The evidence suggests that the way in which the United States defined the war on terror deeply influenced its capacity to respond to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. That terror was and is a major factor in this conflict was plain to see; it was clear that no settlement of the underlying conflict could be reached if it

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did not also deal with the immediate problems of security experienced by Israelis and Palestinians. However, American policy seemed perilously close to Prime Minister Sharon’s definition of the situation. Nor is it difficult to see why the United States should have been caught in this bind. Sharon was emboldened to pursue the policy he did in part by the example of the American war on terror. For America to question too deeply Sharon’s policy toward the Palestinians would have been to place a question mark over its own war on terror. True, Bush made attempts to keep the war on terrorism and the Palestinian–Israeli conflict distinct. He spurned Sharon’s request to be part of the coalition against terrorism, and he made it clear that he favored eventual Palestinian statehood, which Sharon opposed.52 The Bush administration also sought, as we have seen, to restrain Israeli incursions into the West Bank in the early months of 2002. Nevertheless, President Bush’s peace proposal of June 2002, in which he insisted that the desired progress toward Palestinian statehood was impossible without removal of the present Palestinian leadership, indicated that the President had gone a considerable way toward embracing the Israeli government’s view of the situation. British and other European leaders did not endorse this part of the peace proposal, suggesting that it was the Palestinians’ responsibility to choose their own leaders. How deep a rift this might cause in the coalition was not clear. What it did indicate, however, was that the United States was prepared to go it alone if necessary. We turn now to a fourth complication in the war on terror in which the same unilateralist impulse was evident—the possibility of its extension to Iraq and other nations. Extension of the war on terror to Iraq

The possibility of links between Saddam Hussein and September 11 were raised in American government circles and the media almost as soon as the attacks had taken place. On September 16, Secretary of State Powell said, in response to a question at a press conference, that no such link had been found, though in early October, the United States informed the UN that it would be seeking authority to extend military attacks to other countries in the event that it should prove necessary. In the ensuing months, intensive investigation of possible Iraqi collaboration with Al Qaeda proved no hard evidence of Iraqi complicity.53 The issue of Iraq focused rather on its presumed capacity to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction, whether chemical, biological, or nuclear. It had been three years since the last UN weapons inspection team had left Iraq, following Saddam Hussein’s refusal to comply with its demands.

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In the meantime, it was believed by some US officials that Iraq was continuing research on nuclear weapons and that it retained a capacity to deploy chemical and biological weapons. In the absence of definitive evidence one way or the other, observers were free to draw their own conclusions. Vincent Cannistraro, director of intelligence at the National Security Council during the Reagan administration and chief of counterterrorism at the CIA from 1988 to 1990, concluded that it was “a dubious proposition, supported by little validated intelligence, that Saddam Hussein’s presumed weapons accumulation posed an imminent threat.” By contrast, Richard Perle, assistant secretary of defense under Reagan and now a fellow at a Washington think tank, concluded that “the US must strike at Saddam Hussein … the war against terrorism cannot be won if Saddam Hussein continues to rule Iraq.” Not only did Perle dispute the view that Saddam’s weapons program posed no threat to the United States; he believed there was plausible evidence of connections between Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda, to say nothing of Saddam’s long and continuing collaboration with a number of terrorist groups, his open support of Palestinian suicide bombers, and his praise for the attacks of September 11.54 In essence, Perle’s assessment was the one adopted by the Bush administration, though it showed some caution about converting that assessment into a firm plan for a campaign to topple Saddam from power. The clearest indication of Bush’s view came in his State of the Union address on January 29, 2002, in which he stated that “Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and support terror.” Notoriously, Bush included Iraq among a group of states that constituted an “axis of evil,” the others being North Korea and Iran.55 In the following weeks, there were indications that the United States was developing firm plans for an invasion of Iraq in 2003.56 As significant as the story itself, however, was the reaction in Europe and elsewhere to the axis-of-evil speech. European worries about the possible extension of the war brought to a head wider concerns about Bush’s foreign policy. Chris Patten, European Union commissioner for international relations, charged the Bush administration with having an “absolutist and simplistic” stance toward the rest of the world. European governments must speak up and make Washington listen. “I still hope that America will demonstrate it has not gone on to unilateralist overdrive.” Leading British political columnist Hugo Young complained of American “triumphalism.” Colin Powell retorted, in the face of a barrage of comparable accusations from European leaders and much negative comment in the European press, that “my European colleagues should be pounding on Iraq as quickly as they pound on us when the president makes a strong, principled speech.” Bush himself reportedly relished the furor his

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remarks had provoked and fumed about weak-kneed “European elites.” Richard Perle, known as the prince of darkness during his years with the Reagan administration, said, “If we have to choose between protecting ourselves against terrorism and a long list of friends and allies, we will protect ourselves against terrorism.”57 For many Europeans, this gloves-off American stance on Iraq was of a piece with a sequence of decisions that the Bush administration had taken since it came into office, including Kyoto, withdrawal from the International Criminal Court, the proposal to go ahead with the NMD, and abrogation of the ABM treaty. In addition, disquiet over what was perceived as the United States’ bullying methods of running the coalition and differences over policy toward the Palestinian–Israeli crisis stoked the fires of resentment. The US decision to slap tariffs on foreign steel was similarly regarded as highly provocative. The arrogant tone of some of America’s leading commentators, widely distributed or reported in the European press, did not improve the climate of relations.58 How deep did this rhetorical war go? Did it constitute a serious crisis in the coalition? Was it the case, as some suggested, that American–European relations were at a twenty-year low? Three conclusions suggest themselves. First, as far as the war in Afghanistan was concerned, including the wider effort to combat Al Qaeda, there is little evidence that the deep irritations on both sides had undermined the common resolve to complete the immediate tasks of removing the Taliban, rehabilitating Afghanistan, and formulating long-term plans to improve security against terrorism. Second, there were signs in May and June, 2002 of a shift of gear in US policy, certainly in rhetoric and also, to some extent, in substance. The United States showed renewed resolve to seek a solution to the Middle East conflict, and the question of a military campaign against Iraq appeared to have been placed on hold. The treaty with Russia on strategic arms, signed in May, was a considerable diplomatic coup for Bush and a substantial change in policy from his first months in office, when he held Russia at arm’s length. To be sure, America got what it wanted—above all, agreement to store rather than destroy decommissioned weapons—but the treaty, in combination with Russia’s new relationship with NATO, negotiated at the same time promised a reshaping of American relations with Russia. In May 2002, Bush embarked on a visit to Europe to try to convince skeptical Europeans that, in the words of a New York Times report, “he is willing to listen to—if not wholly accept—the advice of allies as he decides how to deal with Iraq, Iran, and the Middle East.”59 In a remarkably candid interview on the eve of Bush’s departure for Europe, Colin Powell expressed the view that Bush had learned a lot in his first year in office. “You

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need time for an administration to grow … I think as a result of September 11 particularly he [Bush] sees the value of coalitions and friends.” Specifically, Powell pointed to the lesson Bush had learned from the European reaction to the US decision to reject the Kyoto Protocol, which had not been “handled as well as it should have been … And when the blowback came I think it was a sobering experience that everything the American president does has international repercussions.” In other areas of policy too—not least on China and Russia— Bush had started badly, but he was now “learning what all presidents learn— that the world is a big place and you can’t row the boat alone.”60 Bush was apparently taking to heart some of the multilateralist advice he was receiving and resisting the more strident voices of the new unilateralists. There were even signs in June of a compromise on steel tariffs. The third conclusion about the overall orientation of Bush’s foreign policy points in a different direction. Some of the changes mentioned above were matters of tone rather than of substance. On Kyoto, for example, there was to be no compromise. Only a few days before his departure for Europe, President Bush confirmed that his administration would not consider signing up to the Kyoto Protocol before 2012, nor would an independent US initiative be assessed before that date.61 Bush’s June, 2002 plan for settlement of the Israeli– Palestinian conflict showed a determination to push forward on his chosen line irrespective of possible dissension among allies. On Iraq, the Bush administration’s position hardened in the summer and fall of 2002. In other areas, American policy was softened around the edges but, in essentials, the Bush administration’s definition of the international situation showed strong elements of continuity not only with the approach it had adopted after September 11 but with the actions of the months prior to these events. The war on terrorism provided a new focus for American foreign policy. September 11 was an all-consuming event that, for a while at any rate, reduced all other considerations to secondary status or lower. Bush, however, was able to adapt American policy to the demands of the war against terrorism so readily because, as was suggested in the second chapter of this book, the threat posed by the terrorism of September 11 was consistent with long-established patterns in the way America perceived its relations with the outside world. Indeed, the war against terrorism gave a meaning and a purpose to American policy that it had not possessed since the end of the Cold War, and it was a purpose based on specifically American experience. Despite agreement among coalition members on the basic aims of the war against terrorism, nothing could disguise the overwhelming reality of American dominance. The war on terrorism was defined in American terms and largely on American terms.

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The war on terrorism and the nature of American foreign policy The war on terrorism presupposes understandings of what is meant by war and terrorism and that the one is the appropriate means to deal with the other. As for war, while there were conventional military objectives in the first phase of the war against terrorism, Bush and his advisers made it clear from the outset that the war in Afghanistan was only the beginning of a much larger campaign that would go on for a long and unspecified period of time, have diverse objectives, and use a variety of means besides military. In the view of one influential critic, in declaring that it was at war with terrorism, the American administration made “a very natural but terrible and irrevocable error … To declare that one is at war is immediately to create a war psychosis that may be totally counterproductive for the objective being sought. It arouses an immediate expectation, and demand, for spectacular military action against some easily identifiable adversary, preferably a hostile state—action leading to decisive result.”62 Among the problems with the war on terrorism when measured against its stated objectives was the failure (as of June, 2002) to capture either bin Laden or Mullah Omar. Given the way in which the war on terror was defined, failure to capture or kill these key figures would represent a falling short from the objectives of the war. A wider problem would be of knowing when and whether the war had been won, given the diversity of trouble spots and targets, and the elusiveness of the perpetrators. How far indeed would the capture or confirmed death of bin Laden and Omar advance the war against Al Qaeda or the wider war against terrorism? These problems in turn raised the issue of whether, given the range and complexity of potential threats coming under the heading of terrorism, it could be considered a single issue. It was one thing in Kashmir and another in the Middle East, yet another in Colombia, Spain, Chechnya, Indonesia, Northern Ireland, Algeria, and so on. While the methods used might be similar and while there might be structural similarities and even cross-connections between terrorists in different countries, a solution in one area might have little bearing on one in the others. Each situation had its unique core elements, its own history and political dynamic. Was, then, the war against terrorism to be a war only against terrorists who attacked the United States? Clearly not, if the rhetoric about the threat to “civilization” was to be taken seriously. The validity of America’s war on terror relied in part on its collective purpose. The larger issue is whether the war on terrorism risked distorting America’s foreign policy as a whole. There was a danger of its taking the place of an

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overall strategic vision. For reasons that are wholly understandable in the wake of September 11, fighting terrorism became close to being the raison d’être of American foreign policy. Rather than effecting a fundamental change in America’s stance toward the rest of the world, it reinforced a native unilateralism and a tendency to define global problems in terms of American national needs. As has been emphasized several times in this study, the uniqueness of the United States is not pursuit of its national interests but its capacity to impose its agenda on others by virtue of its disproportionately large power and influence. From the point of view of many outside the United States, the allconsuming war against terrorism risked sidelining full consideration of global issues the solutions to which were not conceivable within that framework. These included environmental and climatic change, global economic stability, poverty and health, and nuclear proliferation, to say nothing of many unresolved political conflicts around the world. The rest of the world wants and needs American power to help to tackle these huge problems. “There is a deep yearning abroad these days,” wrote Paul Kennedy in early 2002, “for America to show real leadership.”63 However, the world is also suspicious of American power and worried about its style of leadership; it doubts whether America really wants to supply what the world needs. For its part, America often resents both the criticism and the expectations other countries have of America; they appear to grow out of a mixture of envy and weakness. As far as America is concerned, American strength and power carry their own justification; America’s essential goodness is rooted in its history and founding values. In the more extreme forms of this frame of mind, to question the war on terrorism is to question America itself. The dilemma for American foreign policymakers, and indeed for those in other countries, is how the gap between America and the world can be bridged.

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Conclusion

It is possible to draw only provisional conclusions about the larger significance of September 11, both because the events are still close and because the unforeseen always has the capacity to confound hasty judgments. Nevertheless, on the basis of the foregoing analysis, three conclusions suggest themselves. First, September 11 brought terrorism to the forefront of the global agenda. Since the end of the Cold War, no other single issue has proved so compelling. As far as America and its allies are concerned, the war against terrorism has served to structure foreign policy, indeed international politics as a whole, in the way that containing communism did during the Cold War, with the singular difference that the war against terror achieved wider consensus than the West’s fight against communism ever did. While communism had powerful champions in the form of the Soviet Union and China, to say nothing of their satellites and supporters inside other nations, few if any states openly champion terrorism. The states that the United States believe do back terrorism are relatively small and weak. On the face of it, then, the war against terrorism is a powerful instrument of international consensus. Dangerous and destabilizing as it is, terrorism apparently has the potential to unite governments and peoples as perhaps no other issue does. Who can be opposed to measures to deal with this most destructive and heinous of crimes? And that surely is the point. While communists may have committed crimes to further their causes, communism was essentially a political movement that carried legitimacy in the eyes of large bodies of population around the world. Terrorism is regarded by most as first and foremost criminal activity, albeit often carried out on behalf of political causes. Neat as these contrasts appear to be, the reality is more complicated. It is not clear how deep the international consensus on the war against terrorism goes. Only time will tell. As things stand, while there has been substantial

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agreement among coalition members on certain goals—pre-eminently the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the implementation of transnational security measures to fight terrorism—it is also apparent, as we have seen, that coalition members have their own interests that set limits to consensus. The possibility of extension of the war on terrorism to Iraq and other nations remains (as of June, 2002) a potentially divisive goal. Furthermore, levels of support for the coalition’s goals are often set by governments’ worries about internal dissent, above all in some Muslim countries where there is open or tacit support for attacks on the United States. Even in countries close to the center of the coalition, governments have had to take account of internal opposition or at least skepticism. Insofar as there is international consensus on the war against terrorism, it is in part manufactured and even imposed by the weight of American influence. There is an analogy here with the Cold War in both its international and its domestic dimensions. The war against terrorism separates the sheep from the goats: “Those not with us in the war against terror are against us,” said President Bush. There is no comfortable middle ground. Indeed, it is arguably harder to find middle ground in the war against terrorism than it was in the war against communism. That some middle ground exists is apparent—even some relatives of the survivors of the twin towers opposed military action in Afghanistan. That this position has been firmly marginalized is equally plain. In short, the war against terrorism is a powerful and dominant force in international politics and in the domestic politics of many countries, not least, of course, the United States. This has serious implications for the United States and the rest of the world. It is one of the most destructive consequences of terrorism that it becomes all-absorbing and takes over the public agenda. No government can afford to underestimate the threat of terrorism, since it strikes at the heart of people’s daily lives and threatens the larger fabric of social and political life. Nevertheless, there are huge costs involved—moral and political as well as financial—in the efforts to combat terrorism. The costs must be paid, we are assured, because the alternatives of doing nothing or of making concessions to terror are too awful to contemplate. However, there is more than one way of giving in to terrorism, one of which may be to allow it to dominate the public agenda to the extent that vital values are sacrificed. The hardest task for governments now may not be conducting the war against terrorism itself but maintaining positive national and global agendas while continuing to seek ways of preventing terrorism and bringing to justice those who carry it out. The second conclusion of this study follows directly from the first. For all the shock produced by the attacks of September 11 and despite the sense that

164 Conclusion September 11 represented a radical break in history, America rediscovered certainty about its values and national direction in the aftermath of September 11. America thrives on a sense of being embattled. That is why the frequent analogies made between Pearl Harbor and September 11, though historically inaccurate in important respects, conveyed an important psychological truth. The sense of being embattled lay at the root of American nationhood in the struggle first to establish independence between 1775 and 1783 and then to sustain it in the war of 1812 with Britain. That this orientation to the outside world should have been maintained through America’s rise to global power is one of the curiosities of world history—curious because it is at odds not only with the realities of American influence and power but with how the rest of the world sees America. In the wake of September 11, an embattled America arouses much sympathy in other countries but also arouses fear. Finally, linking the first two conclusions is the fact that September 11 confirmed America’s pre-eminent global status, already manifest in the collapse of communism. In the wake of September 11, America’s global agenda could carry only enhanced moral and political force, given the scale of the harm done to America; indeed, for a time, it was irresistible and set to continue so for at least the medium term. Many outside observers expressed deep worries about this consequence of September 11. Commentators who felt bound to preface their remarks with protestations of friendship for America and condemnation of anti-Americanism saw serious dangers in America resurgent. Under the headline “Only American national interest counts now,” British columnist Hugo Young lamented, with reference to Bush’s axis-of-evil speech that America’s go-it-alone policy “negates the notion of a world community of self-respecting nations, many of which have much to contribute in making this a safer place.”1 Timothy Garton Ash, a prominent British scholar and professed friend of America, wrote, “I love this country and worry about its current role in the world.” Ash added, however, that “the problem with American power is not that it is American. The problem is simply the power.” In a word, the world was dangerously unbalanced. Who could “check and complement” American power? Ash’s suggestion was that Europe was best placed to provide the necessary balancing force.2 This is a wholly logical conclusion based on traditional ideas of the makings of the balance of power; along with other proposals for balancing mechanisms, it will doubtless be widely discussed in the years to come. Indeed, it is the sequel to an older Cold War debate about the possibility of Western Europe acting as a “third force” between the Soviet Union and the United States. Whether Europe in the future will be able to exert the concerted political influence that its economic

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power appears to suggest it can is unclear. Precedents are not all good. More important for present purposes is the underlying problem to which Ash draws attention: the absence of effective regulating mechanisms in an unbalanced world polity. Notions of world community remain only half-formed. There are rules of a sort in the form of international law, however limited the enforcement powers; there are some principles of ethical behavior (naked aggression is commonly taken to be unacceptable), complex networks of relationships among nations at many levels, and numerous international institutions from high-level economic and trade organizations to international agreements; and there are accepted practices and “regimes” at more mundane levels. In the UN, there exists a potential framework for internationally agreed norms of behavior in many spheres of activity. However, as was pointed out in chapter four, there is nothing resembling world government and only limited means of enforcing sanctions against those who violate internationally agreed norms or resolutions. In a sense, the international community is back where the nation-state was before national governments had fully established power and legitimacy over their subjects. Theorists of international relations speak of “anarchy” as the defining characteristic of the international system, by which is meant not total disorder—there are, as we have seen, numerous elements of order—but an absence of government. In the absence of central or explicit direction, the system finds its own level based broadly on the existing distribution of power; stability is present when there is a “balance of power.” The question is whether the requisite elements for a stable balance exist in the world today and what America’s role in that balance might be. Because American power is so great, its role in the balance is crucial, though it is as easy to exaggerate American power as to underestimate it. The United States does not possess either the desire or the means entirely to dictate the terms of the global balance. Even America’s military power, vast and increasing as it is, is not always usable. Furthermore, Americanization is a fact of international life but has not destroyed all other cultures. All kinds of complex adaptations have taken place, some of them involving American adaptations to other cultures. Accepting all these caveats, American power is nevertheless frequently a dominant and decisive factor. To the extent that the United States rests on its national and unilateralist traditions, truly global solutions may not be forthcoming. At the very least, the United States may exert a veto power on global solutions. This applies especially to such issues as environmental and climatic change and an increasing list of problems the solution to which can only be global. America, the “first new nation” of the modern world, remains

166 Conclusion quintessentially that: a nation devoted to its independence in a world that is increasingly interdependent. Other nations are bound to accept limits on their sovereignty and room to move while America is relatively less bound by such ties simply by virtue of its size and success as an economy, a culture, and a political and military force. The rest of the world needs America and knows it does, much as it often resents that fact. America also needs the rest of the world but does not always know it.

Notes

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Notes

Preface 1 This is a judgment made frequently by American diplomatic historians themselves in recent years. See, for example, Edward Crapol’s essay “Coming to terms with empire: the historiography of late nineteenth-century American foreign relations,” in Michael J. Hogan, ed., Paths to Power: The Historiography of American Foreign Relations to 1941, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 79–116. On p. 79, he notes, “Over the past twenty years there has been a good deal of handwringing and soul-searching among historians of American foreign relations, about the dismal state of their craft. This self-criticism, increasingly seconded by specialists in international relations and international history, has centered on the field’s traditionalism, narrowness, parochialism, and ethnocentrism.” 2 Fred Halliday, Two Hours That Shook the World: September 11, 2001, Causes and Consequences, London: Saqi Books, 2002, p. 125. 3 Christopher Hitchens, “So this is war?” Guardian, September 13, 2001, G2, p. 4. 4 This controversy can be followed in David E. Sanger and Elizabeth Bumiller, “No hint of September 11 in report in August, White House says but Congress seeks inquiry,” New York Times, May 17, 2002; Alison Mitchell, “Democrats say Bush must give full disclosure,” New York Times, May 17, 2002; Patrick E. Tyler, “An eye on the ballot box in terror’s aftermath,” New York Times, May 19, 2002; Neil A. Lewis, “FBI inaction blurred picture before September 11,” New York Times, May 27, 2002; “Bush, as terror inquiry swirls, seeks cabinet post on security,” New York Times, June 7, 2002. 5 This applies in my view to Ziauddin Sardar and Merryl Wyn Davies’ post-September 11 book, Why Do People Hate America? Cambridge: Icon Books, 2002. While declaring (p. 209), “It is necessary to appreciate that the United States is a very complex country,” there is little indication in the rest of the book that they have followed this injunction. Sweeping judgments abound (e.g., the United States is “an empire unlike any in history that has systematically rubbed everyone else’s nose in the dirt;” p. 194)—of the sort that, if applied to other (e.g., Muslim) countries, would hardly be taken seriously and, indeed, would be regarded as the product of simple prejudice.

September 11, 2001 1 The final figure, not established until May 2002, was 2,823.

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Notes

1 How America sees the world 1 Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1991. 2 The evidence for these sentiments is so legion that it seems almost pointless to refer to specific examples. However, the following are representative. In one of the first extended analyses of American foreign policy after September 11, Joseph S. Nye echoed the words of countless politicians and commentators when he described the attacks as a “wake-up call for Americans.” See The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. ix. Fareed Zakaria in “The real world of foreign policy,” Newsweek, October 8, 2001, p. 2, noted that “during the 1990s the United States lived in a foreign policy funhouse. … Now we face a real crisis, a real threat and real, external constraints.” In an editorial headed “It happened here,” published on September 24, 2001, p. 10, The New Republic declared that “we must finally allow ourselves to be sobered out of our sensation of historical and geographical immunity.” British journalist Hugo Young spoke for many others when he said that September 11 “punctured the dream of isolationism.” See “The free world must decide how its values are protected,” Guardian, September 13, 2001, p. 21. A columnist in The Times (London) wrote that the result of September 11 will be “a loss of innocence that will change the way every one of America’s 280 million people think,” September 12, 2001, The Times 2, p. 2. 3 There is, of course, the separate question of intelligence failures by government organizations that were the subject of numerous reappraisals in the aftermath of September 11. See, for example, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, “A failure of intelligence?” New York Review of Books, December 20, 2001, pp. 76–80; and Joe Klein, “Closework: Why we couldn’t see what was right in front of us,” New Yorker, October 1, 2001, pp. 44–9. 4 Martin Woollacott explores the parallels with the Cuban missile crisis in “Don’t inflate the size of the enemy to fit the crime,” Guardian, September 14, 2001, p. 22. 5 See, for example, Nancy Gibbs, “If you want to humble an empire,” Time, September 11, 2001. 6 Matthew Engel, “Lessons from a bloody field,” Guardian, October 31, 2001, p. 19. 7 In his classic account of the diplomacy of the American Revolution, Samuel Flagg Bemis offers a vivid picture of the Hobbesian character of the international world that the United States entered. “The chancelleries of the powers acted according to the unblushing principles of Machiavelli— that the attainment of a good end justified the use of any means, however dirty. … It was a world of the survival of the strongest, or of the weak only with the assistance of the strong bought at a heavy price.” The Diplomacy of the American Revolution, Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1957 (first published 1935), p. 13; and see the whole of chapter one. If this is considered somewhat overdrawn, it can be compared with an evaluation by a more recent historian of European international politics that is more sober in tone but paints a comparable picture. See Paul Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994, pp. 5–11. See especially his comments about the rules governing the so-called balance of power, a doctrine that “was so often invoked” but “could serve as the basis for many arguments, filled with strange mixtures of sincere conviction, sophistry, cynicism, and hypocrisy, which served to justify open breaches of faith, naked aggression, and obvious imbalances of power” (p. 9). 8 On the theme of vulnerability in American history, see John A. Thompson, “The exaggeration of American vulnerability: The anatomy of a tradition,” Diplomatic History 16 (1), winter 1992, pp. 23–43. As his title suggests, Thompson has a thesis to propound, to which I shall return. For the moment, I want only to draw attention to the abundant evidence he provides of a concern about vulnerability. His focus is on the period since the 1890s, while I believe that such anxieties go back to the origins of the Republic. James Chace looks at the other side of the problem in “A quest for invulnerability,” in Sanford J. Ungar, ed., Estrangement: America and the World, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, pp. 225–52.

Notes

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9 Michael Hunt, Ideology and US Foreign Policy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987, p. 17 and ch. 2 passim. 10 In Thomas G. Paterson and Dennis Merrill, eds, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations: Documents and Essays: Vol. 1, To 1920, 4th edn, Lexington, MA: DC Heath, 1995, p. 179. 11 The president in question was Warren Harding. 12 See, for example, Henry F. May, The End of American Innocence, New York: Knopf, 1959; Denis Artaud, La Fin de L’Innocence: Les États-Unis de Wilson à Reagan, Paris: Armand Colin, 1985. 13 See Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse: The Twentieth Century, New York: Collier, 1961, p. 30; and Walter McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter With the World Since 1776, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997, pp. 39–40. 14 Adler, The Isolationist Impulse: The Twentieth Century, New York: Collier, 1961, p. 32. 15 In J.C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington, vol. 35, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1940, p. 233. 16 In S.K. Padover, ed., The Complete Jefferson, New York: Duell, Sloane and Pearce, 1943, p. 386. 17 McDougall, Promised Land, ch. 2. 18 William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, rev. edn, New York: Dell, 1972 (first published 1959), ch. 4. 19 Adler, The Isolationist Impulse, pp. 428, 432. 20 There is no question here of a return to isolationism on the part of the Clinton administration, not even in a wholesale way on the part of public opinion. There were, however, powerful isolationist voices in Congress and the press. See Michael Cox, U.S. Foreign Policy After the Cold War: Superpower Without a Mission? London: Pinter/Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995, pp. 18–20; and Godfrey Hodgson, “It’s foreign policy, stupid,” Prospect, January 1996, pp. 50–2. 21 See John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, New York: Atheneum, 1963, ch. 9; Adler, The Isolationist Impulse, ch. 4. 22 George Alagiah, Interview in Radio Times, 15–22 June 2002, p. 35. 23 Comparative figures for casualties in the Second World War can be found in Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, p. 894. For the high estimate of Soviet deaths, see D. Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991, p. 505. 24 Total Civil War dead are estimated at 498,332 as compared with 407,000 U.S. dead in the Second World War. The population of the United States in 1865 was approximately 35 million and, in 1945, around 140 million. 25 This is the theme of Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, New York: Henry Holt, 2000, though in my view his thesis is applied too sweepingly. The same goes for Nicholas Guyatt, Another American Century? The United States and the World After 2000, London: Zed Books, 2000; see especially pp. 149–56. 26 Bradford Perkins, The Creation of a Republican Empire, 1776–1865, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 36–46. 27 Norman Graebner, Empire on the Pacific, New York: Ronald Press Co., 1955. 28 See tables in Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict 1500–2000, London: Unwin Hyman, 1988, pp. 200–2. 29 Walter LaFeber, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, chs. 5 and 7. 30 Henry Luce, publisher of Life and Time magazines, was the originator of the term the American century. His article of that title was published in Life on February 1941. The article was reprinted along with commentaries by a number of historians in Diplomatic History, 23 (2), 1999, pp. 159– 71. Further evidence of interest in this theme as the century and the millennium drew to a close is to be found in Donald W. White, The American Century: The Rise and Decline of the United States as a World Power, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996; Olivier Zunz, Why the American Century?

170

31

32

33 34 35 36 37 38

39

40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

Notes Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998; and Nicholas Guyatt, Another American Century? The United States and the World After 2000, London: Zed Books, 2000. H.S. Truman, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1947, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963, pp. 178–9; J.F. Kennedy, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, 1961, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1962, p. 1; John Quincy Adams in William Seward, Life of John Quincy Adams, Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1849, p. 132. Richard Van Alstyne, The American Empire: Its Historical Pattern and Evolution, London: Historical Association/Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1960, pp. 10–11. Van Alstyne pursued the same theme at greater length in The Rising American Empire, New York: Norton, 1960. Also see Gore Vidal, Armageddon: Essays 1983–1987, London: Andre Deutsch, 1987, p. 118: “From the beginning of our republic we have had imperial longings.” Williams, Tragedy of American Diplomacy, p. 59. Ronald Steel, Pax Americana, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1968, preface. Steel, Pax Americana, p. 15. Williams, Tragedy of American Diplomacy, p. 13. Geir Lundestad, The American “Empire” and Other Studies of US Foreign Policy in a Comparative Perspective, Oxford University Press/Norwegian University Press, 1990, pp. 37–9. Among the works of Chomsky bearing on this theme are American Power and the New Mandarins, London: Chatto and Windus, 1969; Pirates and Emperors: International Terrorism in the Real World, Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1991; and Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs, London: Pluto Press, 2000. Most recently, Chomsky has published 9-11, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001. James Petras and Morris Morley, Empire or Republic? American Global Power and Domestic Decay, London and New York: Routledge, 1995, p. xv. See also Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, The Imperial Temptation: The New World Order and America’s Purpose, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1992. For “manifest destiny,” see John O’Sullivan in Paterson and Merrill, eds., Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, vol. 1, pp. 248–50; William Seward quoted in Van Alstyne, The American Empire, 1960, p. 21; Holmes quoted in LaFeber, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913, p. 46; for Roosevelt, see a letter published in the New York Tribune, later repeated in his annual message to Congress in 1904. The following sentence gives a flavor of the message: “Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrong-doing or impotence, to the exercise of international police power” (in William H. Harbaugh, ed., The Writings of Theodore Roosevelt, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967, p. 73). Van Alstyne, The American Empire, p. 10. John A. Hobson, Imperialism, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1902; V.I. Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1973. See LaFeber, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913, pp. 169–77. See Foster Rhea Dulles, American Policy Toward Communist China, 1949–1969, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1972, ch. 2. Roosevelt to Churchill, February 25, 1942, Warren F. Kimball, ed., Churchill and Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence, London: Collins, 1984, vol. 1, p. 400. See Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945, New York: Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 460, 512, 513. Paterson and Merrill, eds., Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, vol. 1, p. 179. Paine, Political Writings, Bruce Kuklick, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 23.

Notes

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49 The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 41, Arthur S. Link, ed., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, p. 521. 50 Robert Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent: American Entry into World War II, New York: John Wiley, 1965. 51 “The unipolar moment” is the title of a widely debated article by American columnist Charles Krauthammer, Foreign Affairs, 70, 1990–91, pp. 20–33. Krauthammer’s argument is discussed below in ch. 4. 52 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976, p.87 53 For a clear example of the Clinton administration’s conception of “engagement,” see Anthony Lake, “Remarks to Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies,” United States Information Service, U.S. Embassy, London, September 22, 1993, 22 pp. 54 Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent, p. 37. 55 Paterson and Merrill, eds, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, vol. 1, p. 33. 56 Paterson and Merrill, eds, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, vol. 1, pp. 248–9. 57 Arthur S. Link, ed., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983, vol. 41, p. 525. 58 Quoted in Loren Baritz, Backfire, New York: Ballantine Books, 1985, p 156. 59 Lake, “Remarks to Johns Hopkins,” pp. 1, 4, 5. 60 The most prominent proponent of this view is Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. 61 Thompson, “The exaggeration of American vulnerability,” pp. 23–43. 62 On the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, see David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000, ch. 11. 63 On the imperial presidency, see Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, The Imperial Presidency, New York: The Popular Library, 1974. 64 Niall Ferguson, “Welcome the new imperialism,” Guardian, October 31, 2001, p. 20; Sebastian Mallaby, “The reluctant imperialist: terrorism, failed states, and the case for American empire,” Foreign Affairs, 81 (2), March/April 2002, p. 2.

2 How the world sees America 1 Buchez quoted in Tony Judt, “America and War,” New York Review of Books, November 15, 2001, p. 4. 2 Reagan quoted in Lundestad, The American “Empire,” p. 17. 3 The London Review of Books appears twice a month. The statements appeared on pages 20–25 of the October 4, 2001, issue of the London Review of Books. Letters in response appeared on October 18, p. 4; November 1, pp. 4, 5, and 38; November 15, pp. 4, 5; and November 29, pp. 4, 5. Guardian column by John Sutherland appeared on November 12, G2, p. 5. Marjorie Perloff responded on Guardian letters page on November 26. 4 Beard in London Review of Books, October 4, p. 20; Foner, ibid. p. 21. 5 See, for example, Hal Foster, who observed that “the jingoistic talk of most politicians is awful, but the anti-American posturing of some intellectuals is inadequate,” London Review of Books, October 4, 2001, p. 22. Also Michael Rogin: “ … no political lessons, even accurate ones, no talk of violence coming home to roost, should confuse the government with the American citizens who died, or attribute to the mass murderers any goal but to harm the American hegemon symbolically by acts that are bloodily real. No political response should anaesthetise the shock of the catastrophe in all its singularity” (p. 24). Both these authors are American. 6 Perloff in London Review of Books, October 18, p. 4.

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7 Guy Deutscher’s attack on Beard was if anything more sweeping than that of Perloff. See London Review of Books, November 1, p. 4. Beard’s riposte is in London Review of Books, November 15, p. 4. The e-mail from Minneapolis was published on October 18, p. 4, and the apology on November 1, p. 4. 8 See London Review of Books November 29, 2001, p. 4. 9 Le Monde, September 13, 2001, p. 12; New Republic, September 24, 2001, p. 10. 10 Theodore Zeldin, “The pathology of anti-Americanism,” in Denis Lacorne et al., eds, The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism: A Century of French Perception, New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990, p. 35. 11 Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965–1990, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 334–5. 12 Rahimullah Yusufzai, “Face to face with Osama,” Guardian, September 26, 2001, G2, p. 2. 13 Reprinted in Fred Halliday, Two Hours That Shook the World: September 11, 2001, Causes and Consequences, London: Saqi Books, 2001, p. 219. Similar sentiments are expressed by bin Laden in a statement broadcast on Al-Jazeera television on October 7, 2001, reprinted in Halliday, Two Hours That Shook the World, pp. 233–4. 14 Mushahid Hussain, “‘Anti-Americanism’ has roots in US foreign policy,” Inter Press Service, October 19, 2001, and reproduced on-line in the Common Dreams News Center, December 7, 2001. 15 The French intellectual, Raymond Aron, is an example of someone who had reservations about the American way—at least in the sense that he worried about American vulgarity swamping French civilisation—but who was a convinced Atlanticist. See Richard F. Kuisel, Seducing the French: The Dilemma of Americanization, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993, pp. 47, 120. 16 Paul Hollander, “Anti-Americanism revisited,” Weekly Standard, vol. 7, No. 6, October 22, 2001. 17 Ian Buruma, “Why bashing America is chic … in America,” Guardian, May 7, 2002, G2, p. 5. 18 See, for example, the way the Declaration of Independence has been invoked by a variety of groups throughout American history. The women’s rights convention at Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 famously rewrote the Declaration to read “ … all men and women are created equal.” W.E. DuBois asserted in his Souls of Black Folk (1903) that “there are today no truer exponents of the true spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes,” Mineola, NY: Dover, 1994, p. 7. Finally, in this brief but easily expandable anthology, we can cite the invocation of the Declaration by the Militia of Montana (1995) in which, instead of altering the preamble, they amend the list of charges against George III to include the crimes of the Clinton administration. See Darren Mulloy, ed., Homegrown Revolutionaries: An American Militia Reader, Norwich: Arthur Miller Centre for American Studies, University of East Anglia, 1999, pp. 327–31. 19 See Joseph S. Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, New York: Basic Books, 1990. 20 See, for example, the case of Indonesia in the aftermath of September 11, as reported in International Herald Tribune, on-line, October 23, 2001. 21 Stephen Spender, Love–Hate Relations: A Study of Anglo–American Sensibilities, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1974, pp. 39, 40. 22 I do not pretend that what follows is a full discussion of American nationalism, merely some pointers to the growth of the idea of America. The best recent treatment is Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992, ch. 5. 23 Ellman Crasnow and Philip Haffenden, “New Founde Land,” in Malcom Bradbury and Howard Temperley, eds, Introduction to American Studies, 3rd edn, Harlow: Longman, 1998, p. 24. 24 John Donne, Elegie XIX, “Going to bed,” Poetical Works, Sir Herbert Grierson, ed., London: Oxford University Press, 1964, p. 107; John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, Peter Laslett, ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, p. 301; John Winthrop, in Thomas G. Paterson and Dennis Merrill, eds, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations: Vol. 1, To 1920, 4th edn, Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1995, p. 29.

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25 Thomas Pownall, A Memorial Address to the Sovereigns of America (1783), in G.D. Lillibridge, ed., The American Image: Past and Present, Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1968, p. 64. 26 J. Hector St John de Crèvecoeur, Letters from an American Farmer, London: Dent, 1973, p. 43. 27 J.W. Goethe, “Den Vereinigten Staaten,” in Werke, Kommentare und Register, Hamburger Ausgabe in 14 Bänden, Band 1: Gedichte und Epen I, Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 1981, p. 333. 28 Quoted in Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, New York: W.W. Norton, 1996, p. 31. 29 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, New York: Vintage Books, 1945; James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, 3rd edn, New York: Macmillan, 1896. Recent studies are Lipset, American Exceptionalism, and Deborah Madsen, American Exceptionalism, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998. 30 Quoted in Marie-France Toinet, “Does anti-Americanism exist?” In Lacorne et al., eds, The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism, p. 219. 31 On flag flying after September 11, see the report by Guardian’s US correspondent, Matthew Engel, under the headline, “No room for dissent as spirit of flag-waving sweeps the nation.” Guardian, September 17, 2001, p. 6. On the boom in flag sales, see Economist, September 29, 2001, p. 89. The report noted that “demand for Old Glory is at record levels, both in New York and nationwide. The five biggest flag makers are so swamped that they have stopped answering their telephones.” 32 It is, of course, the case that Kafka himself did not give his book the title Amerika; the title was supplied by his friend and editor, Max Brod. 33 The immigration figures (in millions) from the US Census for the three decades 1970–2000 are as follows (N.B. America includes North and South America):

1971–80 1981–90 1990–2000

Europe

Asia

America

(Mexico, not including illegals)

0.83 0.63 1.36

1.58 2.42 2.80

1.98 2.56 4.48

(0.64) (0.97) (2.25)

34 Quotations in Milton M. Gordon, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion and National Origins, New York: Oxford University Press, 1964, pp. 100–01. See also John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, New York: Atheneum, 1973, ch. 9. 35 See Gordon, Assimilation in American Life, chs 5 and 6. 36 See Lillibridge, The American Image, p. 131; and Emily Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890–1945, New York: Hill and Wang, 1982, pp. 23–8. 37 Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream, p. 16. 38 Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream, p. 122. 39 See Walter LaFeber, Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism, New York: Norton, 1999. Richard Pells’s fine study of the impact of American culture on Europe is encyclopedic in its coverage and contains many astute judgments. See Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II, New York: Basic Books, 1997, especially chs 7 and 8. 40 This theme plays a large role in Emily Rosenberg’s study, Spreading the American Dream, one of a small but growing number of studies that link economics and culture with diplomacy. See also the studies cited below by Berghahn, Pells, and Wagnleitner in notes 41 and 42. 41 See Rheinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-Colonization und Kalter Krieg: Die Kulturmission der USA in Österreich nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1991. Wagnleitner’s study focuses on Austria but contains lengthy introductory chapters on the ideas of America in European culture and on the history of American cultural diplomacy. On Fulbright programs, the growth of American

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42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54

55

56 57 58 59 60

Notes studies in Europe, and American cultural diplomacy in the Cold War, see Pells, Not Like Us, pp. 58–63, chs 3 and 4. Volker Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001, p. xix. On Japan, see Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan: The Origins of the Cold War in Asia, New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. On Germany, see Pells, Not Like Us, pp. 40–58; Hans W. Gatzke, Germany and the United States: A “Special Relationship,” Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ch. 7; and Reiner Pommerin, ed., The American Impact on Postwar Germany, Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995. On the United States and the UN, see David Armstrong, The Rise of International Organisation: A Short History, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982, pp. 49–53. Walter A. McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997, p. 174. In Lillibridge, The American Image, p. 207. Nixon quoted in Donald W. White, The American Century: The Rise and Decline of the United States as a World Power, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996, p. 221. Chateaubriand in Spender, Love–Hate Relations, p. 30. Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2, chs 2 and 9. Baudelaire in Spender, Love–Hate Relations, p. 28. Henry James, Hawthorne, London: Macmillan, 1883, p. 43. Joad in G.D. Lillibridge, ed., The American Image: Past and Present, Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1968, pp. 136–8. See Akira Iriye, The Globalizing of America, 1913–1945, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 114. See pp. 112–15 for a discussion of the Americanization of the world in the 1920s and 1930s. Venezuelan journalist quoted in Hollander, Anti-Americanism, p. 360. William H. Whyte, The Organization Man, London: Jonathan Cape, 1957, is representative of this line of argument. Among the best discussions of this trend of thought is Richard Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s, New York: Harper & Row, 1985, ch. 4. We think of globalization as a feature of the end of the twentieth century, but Akira Iriye makes the case for describing the first half of the twentieth century as “the globalizing of America” in his book of that title; see especially pp. 112–15. On the issue of the connections between modernization and Americanization, Raymond Aron made the point that “This process of ‘Americanization’ is looked upon by many with horror. But in some respects the battle is not so much against Americanism as against the universalizing of phenomena linked to the development of material civilization. If the effort toward increased productivity and the subordination of all usages to the imperative of greater output is termed Americanization, then the whole of Europe, including France, is indeed in the process of becoming Americanized.” In Kuisel, Seducing the French, p. 114. See also Joseph S. Nye Jr, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 78–81. See Denis Lacorne and Jacques Rupnik, “France bewitched by America,” in Lacorne et al., eds, The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism, p. 3. See Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, pp. 196, 197, and 249. See Lacorne and Rupnik, “France bewitched by America,” in Lacorne et al. eds, The Rise and Fall of Anti-Americanism, pp. 2–8; and Kuisel, Seducing the French, p. 223. See Le Monde, September 18, 2001, p. 17. See Lacorne, “Barbaric America,” Washington Quarterly, 2001.

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61 Le Monde, September 13, 2001, p. 1; for Le Pen, see Le Monde, September 16–17, p. 10; for Green Party member, see Le Monde, September 18, 2001, p. 17; for journalist rejecting the view that we are all Americans, see Le Monde, September 19, p. 14. 62 Dan Diner, America in the Eyes of the Germans: An Essay on Anti-Americanism, Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1996, p. 24. 63 Diner, America in the Eyes of the Germans, p. 134. See p. 107 for quotation beginning “Germans lost their authenticity … ” and the chapter titled “USA-SA-SS” for an elaboration of this theme. 64 “Vertraute Reflexe: der übliche Antiamerikanismus,” Die Zeit, September 27, 2001, p. 7; “Americabashing: Bush hat seine Kritiker Widerlegt,” Die Zeit, September 27, 2001, p. 6. 65 Le Monde, September 18, 2001, p. 17. 66 Brian Holden Reid, “Tensions in the supreme command: anti-Americanism in the British army, 1939–1945,” in John White and Brian Holden Reid, eds, Americana: Essays in Memory of Marcus Cunliffe, Hull: University of Hull Press, 1998, pp. 303–30. 67 See David Dimbleby and David Reynolds, An Ocean Apart: The Relations Between Britain and America in the Twentieth Century, London: BBC/Hodder and Stoughton, 1988; and Robert M. Hathaway, Great Britain and the United States: Special Relations Since World War II, Boston: Twayne, 1990. Nor should it be forgotten that American anglophobia was also a feature of the relationship, especially during the period of the transition of power. See John E. Moser, Twisting the Lion’s Tail: Anglophobia in the United States, 1921–1948, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999. 68 Salman Rushdie, “America and anti-Americans,” New York Times, February 4, 2002. 69 Sarmiento in Lillibridge, ed., The American Image, p. 103. 70 Alcaraz in Paterson and Merrill, eds, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, vol. 1, p. 257. 71 Marti in Paterson and Merrill, eds., Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, vol. 1, p. 387. 72 For US–Latin American relations, see Robert A. Pastor, Whirlpool: United States Foreign Policy Toward Latin America and the Caribbean, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. For US–Central American relations, see Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, New York: Norton, 1993. 73 Ugarte in Paterson and Merrill, eds, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, vol. 2, p. 85. 74 De Madariaga in Lillibridge, The American Image, pp. 190, 191. 75 See, for example, Sergio Aguayo, “Mexico’s new spirit,” Wilson Quarterly, 25(2), Spring 2001, pp. 72–6. 76 See J. Samuel Valenzuela and Arturo Valenzuela, “Modernization and dependency,” in Paul R. Viotti and Mark V. Kauppi, eds, International Relations Theory: Realism, Pluralism, Globalism, New York: Macmillan, 1987, pp. 452–77. 77 Newsweek, October 8, 2001, p. 44; Economist, September 29, 2001, p. 70. 78 Stephen P. Cohen and Sumit Ganguly, “India,” in Robert Chase, Emily Hill, and Paul Kennedy, eds, The Pivotal States: A New Framework for U.S. Policy in the Developing World, New York: Norton, 1999, pp. 41, 42. 79 V.E. Devadutt, “The American image abroad—India,” in Lillibridge, ed., The American Image, pp. 201–3. 80 Cohen and Ganguly, “India,” in Chase, Hill, and Kennedy, eds, The Pivotal States, p. 55. The view that the end of the Cold War did not change US–Indian relations fundamentally is disputed by other scholars. Gowher Rizvi notes that following the end of the Cold War, the “US attitude towards India appears to have become markedly conciliatory,” which is put down to the US desire to build up India as “one of the supporting pillars of the US-dominated international system.” See also “South Asia and the new world order,” in Hans-Henrik Holm and Georg Sørenson, eds, Whose World Order? Uneven Globalization and the End of the Cold War, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995, pp. 69–88. 81 Tavleen Singh, India Today, November 5, 2001, p. 13; S. Prasannarajan, India Today, September 24, 2001, p. 32; Editorial, India Today, November 26, 2001, p. 7.

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82 Editorial, India Today, September 24, 2001, p. 6. 83 See, for example, Tavleen Singh, India Today, November 5, 2001, p. 13, “The average Indian sees the American war on terrorism as an extension of our own against what we call Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir.” 84 The Times of India, October 22, 2001; India Today, October 29, 2001, p. 5; The Times of India, November 19, 2001. 85 “Clear and present danger,” The Times of India, October 16, 2001; “Falling back on India,” India Today, November 19, 2001, p. 11. 86 New Republic, January 14, 2002, p. 7; India Today, January 28, 2002, pp. 20, 21. 87 Nasser in Paterson and Merrill, eds, Major Problems in American Foreign Relations, vol. 2, p. 647. 88 Thomas Gorguissian, “A valid fear,” Al-Ahram Weekly Online, Oct 26–Nov 1, 2000. 89 Bush quoted in Mushahid Hussain, “Anti-Americanism has roots in US foreign policy,” Inter Press Service (Online), October 19, 2001. Cairo students quoted in Michel, Sailhan, “Anti-Americanism rises in Egypt,” Middle East Online, October 3, 2001; for Turkish reporter see Orhan Pamuk, “The anger of the damned,” New York Review of Books, November 15, 2001, p. 12. 90 “Dans le monde musulman: rage et désolation,” Le Monde, September 14, 2001, p. 19. 91 Pamuk, “The anger of the damned,” p. 12. 92 Ali A. Mazrui, “Uncle Sam’s hearing aid,” in Sanford J. Ungar, ed., Estrangement: America and the World, New York: Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 189.

3 The roots of terror 1 Reprinted in Halliday, Two Hours that Shook the World, p. 219. 2 Leading French expert on political Islam, Olivier Roy, affirmed as early as September 15 that he was persuaded that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks of September 11, Le Monde, 15 September, p. 5. The release of the videotape in December 2001 evidently put to rest the doubts of some American Muslim leaders, though skepticism about its authenticity remained in some quarters. See Laurie Goodstein, “Some Muslims say tape removes previous doubt,” New York Times, December 15, 2001. The transcript of the tape is available on www.fas.org/irp/world/para/ ubl-video.html. 3 Jonathan Freedland, “A socialism of fools,” Guardian, October 17, 2001, p. 19. 4 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996, pp. 28, 29. 5 For a fuller discussion of Dewey’s visit to Turkey, see Richard Crockatt, “John Dewey and modern revolutions,” REAL: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, vol. 7, 1990, pp. 203–6. 6 Crockatt, “John Dewey and modern revolutions,” pp. 204, 205. 7 A useful brief account of modern Turkish history is Peter Sluglett and Marion Farouk-Sluglett, The Times Guide to the Middle East: The Arab World and its Neighbours, London: Times Books, 1991, ch. 14. An excellent full-length survey is Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey, London: Routledge, 1990. 8 See Ritchie Ovendale, The Longman Companion to the Middle East Since 1914, Harlow: Longman, 1998, p. 116; and Olivier Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, London: I.B. Tauris, 1999, p. 127. 9 See Malcom Cooper, “The legacy of Atatürk: Turkish political structures and policy-making,” International Affairs 78 (1), 2002, pp. 120–2. Cooper suggests that some of the support for Islamic parties in the 1990s arose because of discontent with government management of the economy rather than for strictly religious reasons. He also emphasizes that “the secularist reaction to the religious challenge is complex and cannot be classified as simply anti-Muslim.” In short, religious factors cannot be considered in isolation. What cannot be denied, however, is that tension over the Islamic challenge is “very real, and is a salient feature of the policy environment” (p. 121).

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10 In Ovendale, The Longman Companion to the Middle East Since 1914, p. 119. 11 I am summarizing here the views of John L. Esposito in The Islamic Threat: Myth or Reality? 2nd edn, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 7, 8. John K. Cooley similarly finds the term fundamentalist “worn out and inappropriate.” See his Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, 2nd edn, London: Pluto Press, 2000, pp. 1, 2. Olivier Roy points out that most of the militants forming the core of the Islamist movements over the last half century “are rarely mullahs; they are the products of the modern educational system, and those who are university educated tend to be more scientific than literary; they come from recently urbanized families or from the impoverished middle classes.” Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, p. 3. Fred Halliday does employ the term fundamentalism but is careful to define precisely what he means by it. See Two Hours That Shook the World, ch. 2, especially pp. 52–7. Malise Ruthven, in his comprehensive study of Islam, notes that “I have … tried to avoid using the term ‘fundamentalist’. Most of the movements or responses in question, except for the ultra-modernist, which verges on the secular, are ‘fundamentalist’ in the sense that each seeks to assert what it regards as the essentials—making the term too generalized to be useful.” Islam in the World, 2nd edn, London: Penguin, 2000, p. 291. 12 For Islamism, see Halliday, Two Hours That Shook the World, p. 15; and Cooley, Unholy Wars, p. 1. Olivier Roy uses the term political Islam; see The Failure of Political Islam. For “Islam”/Islam, see Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics in the Middle East, London: I.B. Tauris, 1996, pp. 1, 2. John Esposito is the advocate of the terms Islamic revivalism and Islamic activism in The Islamic Threat, p. 8. 13 See Esposito, The Islamic Threat, p. 12, for suggestion that underlying the reassertion of Islam in political life is a growing religious revivalism in personal and social life. It will be apparent from the text and footnotes that I have relied heavily on Esposito’s excellent account in this section of the chapter. 14 For a clear exposition of the differences within Islam, see Ruthven, Islam in the World, ch. 5. 15 See Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 67, 68. 16 The best account of the coming of Cold War to the Near East remains Bruce Kuniholm, The Origins of Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in Iran, Turkey and Greece, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. 17 Esposito, The Islamic Threat, p. 78. 18 Esposito, The Islamic Threat, p. 78. 19 See Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 69, 70; and Ruthven, Islam in the World, pp. 327–34. 20 Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, pp. 48, 53, 54. See also Karen Armstrong, Guardian, October 13, 2001, p. 23, for a discussion of the strains imposed on Islamic societies by modernization. 21 See Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 94–7. 22 Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation, p. 43. The chapter from which the quoted remark comes provides an exceptionally clear and systematic comparative analysis of the Iranian revolution and its significance. See also Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, chs. 10 and 11. For American relations with Iran, including a detailed account of the revolution itself, see Barry Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions: The American Experience and Iran, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1981. 23 Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 19–22. 24 Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, p. 116. 25 See Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, p. 25; and Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 75, 76. 26 William Quandt, Camp David: Peacemaking and Politics, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1986, p. 323. The text of the Camp David Agreement is printed as an appendix to this book. 27 On Syria, see Sluglett and Farouk-Sluglett, The Times Guide to the Middle East, p. 264; on Libya, see Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 84, 85. 28 Cooley, Unholy Wars, ch. 9, covers Algeria and the whole of the Mahgreb. See also Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 163–83. 29 See Esposito, The Islamic Threat, pp. 247–53.

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37 38 39 40

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47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55

Notes Edward Said, “Islam and the West are inadequate banners,” Observer, September 16, 2001, p. 27. See Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, pp. xi, 112. Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, p. x. An excellent introduction to the world of the American militias is Darren Mulloy’s anthology of their writings, Homegrown Revolutionaries: An American Militia Reader, Norwich: Arthur Miller Centre for American Studies, 1999. The introduction provides an overview of the historical sources and beliefs of the militia movements. See Tariq Ali, The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity, London: Verso, 2002. See Halliday, Two Hours That Shook the World, p. 78. See Malise Ruthven, Islam in the World, p. 366, for this point and pp. 363–8 for a general discussion of Islam and terrorism. Malise Ruthven’s recent book, A Fury for God: The Islamist Attack on America, London: Granta Books, 2002 , ch. 2 , contains a full discussion of past and present interpretations of the concept of jihad. Roy and Fadlallah quoted in John F. Burns, “Bin Laden stirs struggle on meaning of jihad,” New York Times, January 27, 2002. Rahimullah Yusufzai, “Face to face with Osama,” Guardian, September 26, 2001, p. 2. Halliday reprints two such documents as appendices to Two Hours that Shook the World, pp. 217–9, 235–6. The full statement is given in Guardian, September 26, 2001, p. 3. Needless to say, Straw’s unguarded use of the term Palestine, which suggested the existence of a Palestinian state, was regarded as highly provocative in Israel. In Walter Laqueur and Barry Rubin, eds, The Israel–Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict, 4th edn, New York: Facts on File, 1984, p. 140. A treaty was also signed between Israel and Lebanon in May 1983, ending the war that had begun the previous year, but it lasted less than a year. On the intifada, see Avi Shlaim, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World, London: Penguin Books, 2000, pp. 450–60. Shlaim terms the intifada the “Palestinian War of Independence.” See also two graphically descriptive essays by Amos Elon in his A Blood-Dimmed Tide: Dispatches from the Middle East, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, chs 9 and 10. For a discussion of the geography of the settlements and the range of opinion among settlers as to the future of the settlements, see Aharon Klieman, Compromising Palestine: A Guide to Final Status Negotiations, New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, pp. 76–80. The Times (London), September 13, 2001, p. 1. Hugo Young discusses this issue in a Guardian column on October 9, 2001, p. 24. His main focus is on Islam, his theme being that “it may not be PC to say, but Islam is at the heart of this.” By way of introduction, however, he suggests that while one myth about September 11 is that it was “not about Islam,” the other is that “it is not about America.” See H.W. Brands, Into the Labyrinth: The United States and the Middle East, 1945–1993, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994, pp. xi–xiii. Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 485. See Brands, Into the Labyrinth, pp. 125, 153–5. Rubin, Paved with Good Intentions, ch. 6, details the astonishing quantity and variety of arms acquired by Iran from the United States in the mid1970s. See Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 455. See Seymour Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel, America and the Bomb, London: Faber, 1991. Quoted in Fawaz A. Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 126. See Gerges, America and Political Islam, p. 42. Gerges, America and Political Islam, pp. 44-5. See Gerges, America and Political Islam, ch. 2, especially pp. 35, 36.

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56 See Gerges, America and Political Islam, chs. 7 and 8. 57 See Gerges, America and Political Islam, pp. 139–42; and Fred Halliday’s essay on “Iran: The Islamic republic at the crossroads,” in Two Hours That Shook the World, pp. 151–8. The dateline of this report from Tehran is September 2000. 58 Anthony Lake, “Confronting backlash states,” Foreign Affairs 73 (2), March/April 1994, p. 45. 59 See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992. 60 The case for dual containment is set out in Lake, “Confronting backlash states,” pp. 48–55. The policy was controversial in academic and former government circles. See F. Gregory Gause III, “The illogic of dual containment,” Foreign Affairs, 73 (2), March/April 1994, pp. 56–66; and Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, and Richard Murphy, “Differential containment,” Foreign Affairs, 76 (3), May/June 1997, pp. 20–42. 61 Among the best accounts are Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict, 1990– 1991: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order, London: Faber and Faber, 1993; and Dilip Hiro, Desert Shield to Desert Storm: The Second Gulf War, London: Paladin, 1992. For a focus on Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi historical background, see John Bulloch and Harvey Morris, Saddam’s War: The Origins of the Kuwait Conflict and the International Response, London: Faber and Faber, 1991. 62 Christopher C. Joyner quoted in Charles W. Kegley, ed., International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, and Controls, Introd., Part I, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990, pp. 11, 12. This collection of essays provides a diverse set of perspectives on terrorism, including definitional problems, causes, and methods of control. 63 Aron quoted in R.J. Vincent, “Introduction,” to Lawrence Freedman et al., Terrorism and International Order, Chatham House Special Paper, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs/Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986, p. 1. 64 L. John Martin, “The media’s role in international terrorism,” in Kegley, ed., International Terrorism, p. 158. 65 The American presidents assassinated were Lincoln in 1865, Garfield in 1881, and Mckinley in 1901. Garfield was killed by a disappointed office seeker, who hardly qualifies as a terrorist. Arguably, John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Lincoln, does since he was acting on behalf of the political cause of the South. Leon Colgosz, the assassin of Mckinley, was an anarchist and also acted on behalf of a political cause. 66 The title of a book by Frantz Fanon, 1965. 67 Ovendale, The Middle East Since 1914, provides a most useful chronology of terrorism, sect. 1, ch. 4. 68 Stephen White, Gorbachev in Power, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 175; Marshall Goldman, What Went Wrong with Perestroika, New York: Norton, 1992, p. 198. 69 Georgi Arbatov, Cold War or Détente? The Soviet Viewpoint, London: Zed Books, 1983, p. 190. 70 Jonathan Steele, Soviet Foreign Policy: The Limits of Power, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985, p. 124. Also see pp. 121–5 for an account of these events. 71 See Cooley, Unholy Wars, pp. 63–5. 72 Quoted in Cooley, Unholy Wars, p. 19. 73 Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, New York: Henry Holt, 2000, p. 8. 74 Cooley, Unholy Wars, p. 63. 75 In this and the following paragraph, I rely heavily on John K. Cooley’s Unholy Wars, which brings together, though not always in the most accessible fashion, a mass of material on the many ramifications of the war in Afghanistan. Chapter 5 (“Recruiters, trainers, trainees, and assorted spooks”) details the involvements of the CIA, the ISI, and British intelligence in coordinating the recruitment and training of volunteers for service in Afghanistan, and he shows how geographically wide was the net they threw out. Chapters 9, 10, and 11 describe the “contagion” that spread from Afghanistan as veterans of the war returned to their own countries seeking to promote militant Islamism.

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76 Cooley, Unholy Wars, p. 247. For coverage of the attack on the tourists in Egypt, the GIA in Algeria, and the WTC bombing in 1993, see pp. 185–7, 203–12, and 243–7. 77 For details of bin Laden’s life, see Ahmed Rashid, Taliban: The Story of the Afghan Warlords, London: Pan Books, 2001, pp. 131–40; and Cooley, Unholy Wars, pp. 117–26, 225–33. Jane Mayer looks at the bin Laden family, including those members who live in the United States, in “The house of bin Laden,” The New Yorker, November 12, 2001, pp. 54–64. 78 See the views of Adil Najam: “His rampage is against the Saudi establishment, which he says is not Islamic enough.” Quoted in Mayer, “The house of bin Laden,” p. 55. See also Halliday, Two Hours That Shook the World, pp. 40, 41. Here, he makes the suggestion that “the main target of September 11 is not US power or a somewhat carelessly defined ‘civilized’ or ‘democratic’ world, but the states of the Middle East themselves.” There may be a danger in being too subtle about this. The attack was after all on the United States, not on Saudi Arabia. 79 Rashid, Taliban, p. 176. 80 Joe Klein, “Closework: why we couldn’t see what was right in front of us,” The New Yorker, October 1, 2001, p. 46. See also Gabriel Schoenfeld, “Could September 11 have been averted?” Commentary, December 2001, pp. 21–9. 81 For a discussion of the structure and operations of Al Qaeda, see Jason Burke, “Inside ‘the base’,” Observer, 16 September, 2001, p. 8. 82 Quoted in Observer, 16 September, 2001, p. 9. 83 A recent and highly successful introduction to international relations that was published in a second edition in the summer of 2001 has no separate discussion of terrorism and only a small number of index references to it. This seems to be representative of other texts in the field. See John Baylis and Steve Smith, eds, The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

4 The limits of governance 1 H. Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1977. 2 John Lewis Gaddis, “The long peace: Elements of stability in the postwar international system,” International Security, 10 (4), Spring 1986, pp. 99–142. 3 See James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester/Wheatsheaf, 1990; and Ian Clark, The Post-Cold War Order: The Spoils of Peace, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. 4 Quoted in Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, The New World Order and America’s Purpose, New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1992, p. 30. 5 Francis Fukuyama, “The end of history?” The National Interest, Summer 1989, pp. 3, 4, 18. Fukuyama expanded his argument to book length in The End of History and the Last Man, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1992. 6 Fukuyama, “The end of history?” p. 4. 7 For a useful discussion of the functioning of the United Nations in the 1990s, see Paul Taylor, “The United Nations and the international order,” in John Baylis and Steve Smith, eds, The Globalization of World Politics: An Introduction to International Relations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edn, 2001, pp. 331–55. 8 On the Soviet Union, see David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, New York: Random House, 1993; on Yugoslavia, see Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992; on failed states, see Gerald B. Helman and Steven R. Ratner, “Saving failed states,” Foreign Policy, vol. 89, winter 1992–93, pp. 3–20. 9 See Smith and Baylis, “Introduction” in Baylis and Smith, eds, Globalization of World Politics, p. 1 10 John Mearsheimer, “Back to the future: instability after the Cold War,” International Security, 15 (1), 1990, pp. 6, 7, 20, 31. Critical comments by Stanley Hoffmann and Robert Keohane, along

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with Mearsheimer’s reply, followed in the next issue of International Security, 15 (2), 1990, pp. 191–222. Mearsheimer applied the same logic to an analysis of the Ukraine in which he argued that the Ukraine should be encouraged to develop its own nuclear weapons. See Foreign Affairs, 72 (3), summer 1993, pp. 50–66. Charles Krauthammer, “The unipolar moment,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 70, 1990–91, pp. 23, 33. Samuel Huntington, “The clash of civilizations,” Foreign Affairs, 72 (3), summer 1993, pp. 22–49; and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, p. 36. The nine civilizations are shown on Map 1.3 and are described on pp. 45–8. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, pp. 258, 254–8 passim, for discussion of “Islam’s bloody borders.” See Gaddis, “The long peace.” John Lewis Gaddis, “Toward the post-Cold War world,” Foreign Affairs, 70 (2), spring 1991, pp. 108–13. For an extended analysis of international history in the twentieth century adopting a similar analytical scheme, see Ian Clark, Globalization and Fragmentation: International Relations in the Twentieth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. See Jan Aart Scholte, Globalization: A Critical Introduction, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000, pp. 43, 44; Anthony Giddens, Runaway World: How Globalisation Is Reshaping Our Lives, London: Profile Books, 1999, pp. 6, 7. Both these books provide excellent introductions to the subject of globalization, the first being an extensive and systematic analysis, the second a brief and highly suggestive essayistic treatment. See Richard Crockatt, The Fifty Years War: The United States and the Soviet Union in World Politics, 1941–1991, London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 369–71, for a fuller version of this argument. Scholte, Globalization, pp. 79, 118. See Scholte, Globalization, pp. 74–83. On p. 86, Scholte usefully summarizes the indicators of globalization in list form. Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson quoted in Hans-Henrik Holm and Georg Sørenson, eds, Whose World Order? Uneven Globalization and the End of the Cold War, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995, Introduction, p. 5. See Scholte, Globalization, pp. 54–6. See Richard Haas, Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the Post-Cold War World, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1994, pp. 43–6. Scholte, Globalization, p. 48. See Giddens, Runaway World, pp. 49, 50. Claude Ake, “A view from Africa,” in Holm and Sørensen, eds, Whose World Order? pp. 22, 23. Paul Wilkinson, “Fighting the hydra: terrorism and the rule of law,” in Charles W. Kegley Jr, ed., International Terrorism: Characteristics, Causes, and Controls, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990, p. 253. The economist in question is Susan Strange. See Scholte, Globalization, p. 119. Scholte, Globalization, pp. 119, 120; The Economist, September 29, 2001, p. 3 of special section. See Robert Chase, “International finance, trade and the pivotal states,” in Robert Chase, Emily Hill, and Paul Kennedy, eds, The Pivotal States: A New Framework for US Policy in the Developing World, New York: Norton, 1999, pp. 368–70; and Nicholas Guyatt, Another American Century? The United States and the World after 2000, London: Zed Books, 2000, pp. 15–21. See Guyatt, Another American Century?, pp. 21–6. Fred Halliday, The World at 2000, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, p. 66. For elaboration of both these points, see Halliday, The World at 2000, pp. 66, 67. Economist, September 29, 2001, p. 3. Nye, The Paradox of American Power, p. 110. Duncan Green and Matthew Griffith, “Globalization and its discontents,” International Affairs, 78 (1), January 2002, p. 64–6. Nye, The Paradox of American Power, p. 81.

182 38 39 40 41

42 43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50

51 52

53 54

55 56 57

Notes See Nye, The Paradox of American Power, p. 37. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984, p. 106. For brief accounts of these episodes, see Crockatt, The Fifty Years War, pp. 214, 215, 292, 293. See M. Brecher, and J. Wilkenfeld, “International crises and global stability: the myth of the ‘long peace,’” in Charles W. Kegley, ed., The Long Postwar Peace: Contending Explanations and Projections, New York: Harper Collins, 1991, pp. 85–104. For a summary of these events, see Crockatt, The Fifty Years War, pp. 283–6, 367, 368. Helman and Ratner, “Saving failed states,” p. 3 Michael Ignatieff makes the important and convincing case for seeing ethnic conflict as the result rather than the cause of political failure, in The Warrior’s Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience, London: Vintage, 1999, pp. 39–46 (but see especially p. 45). See Huntington, Clash of Civilizations, pp. 260, 261. See Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in the Global Era, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999. Halliday, The World at 2000, p. 50. Kaldor, New and Old Wars, p. 8. “Risk” is theme of the second chapter of Giddens’ Runaway World. See http://www.state.gov/s/ct/ The US Department of State’s Office of Counterterrorism publicizes its definition of terrorism in each annual report: “Any premeditated activity using force against noncombatants for political means involving the citizens or territory of more than one country.” This clearly excludes a large category of terrorist acts that are committed within individual countries. See tables 4.3 and 4.4 in Lawrence Freedman et al., Terrorism and International Order, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs/Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. Donald C.F. Daniel and Andrew L. Ross, “US strategic planning and the pivotal states,” in Robert Chase, Emily Hill, and Paul Kennedy, eds, The Pivotal States: A New Framework for US Policy in the Developing World, New York: Norton, 1999, pp. 388–91. See Elliott Cohen, “A revolution in warfare,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 75, March/April 1996, pp. 37– 54. There is no room here to give these issues the space they deserve. On the question of order, Hedley Bull is still the most suggestive guide. See The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, London: Macmillan, 1977. On the balance of power, there is still no better guide than Martin Wight in Power Politics, 2nd edn, London: Penguin, 1986. Paul Schroeder manages to say something genuinely new and enlightening about this subject in “The nineteenth century system: balance of power or political equilibrium,” Review of International Studies, vol. 15, 1989, pp. 135– 53. See Thomas Christiansen, “European and regional integration,” in Baylis and Smith, eds, The Globalization of World Politics, pp. 510–12. Halliday, The World at 2000, p. 136. Kofi Anan’s statement is printed on the UN’s Website: See http://www.un.org/law/icc/general/ overview For Henry Kissinger’s views, see “The pitfalls of universal jurisdiction,” Foreign Affairs, 80 (4), July/August 2001, p. 86.

5 Responding to terror 1 John Adams, Novanglus VII, in The Papers of John Adams, vol. 2, Robert J. Taylor et al., eds, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977, p. 314. 2 To offer an explanation of this would require a book on its own. Suffice it to say that the Founding Fathers could not foresee how democratizing forces would alter the nature of the presidency that they believed they had created.

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3 See Julius W. Pratt, A History of United States Foreign Policy, Engelwood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1955, p. 290, footnote 13, 4 A detailed analysis of the legal and political implications of the Supreme Court decision that decided the election is contained in Michael J. Klarman, “Bush v. Gore through the lens of constitutional history,” California Law Review, 89 (6), 2001, pp. 1721–65. Thanks to Adam Fairclough for drawing my attention to this item. 5 The Economist, May 26, 2001, pp. 55, 56. 6 Eric Alterman, “The right sort,” Guardian, December 15, 2001, weekend section, p. 45. 7 Josef Joffe, “Bismarck’s lessons for Bush,” New York Times, May 29, 2002. 8 Quoted in William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940, New York: Harper & Row, 1963, p. 10. 9 In recent years, some historians have sought to remind us that Watergate is not the entire story of the Nixon presidency. The latest is Iwan Morgan, Nixon, London: Arnold, 2002. 10 Quoted in David McCullough, Truman, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992, p. 353. 11 This uniqueness is discussed by Robert A. Dahl in How Democratic is the American Constitution? New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001, pp. 62–72. Thanks to Vivien Hart for drawing my attention to this item. 12 Most of the constitutions of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, have presidencies that (like the American) unite the powers of head of state, head of government, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The world’s constitutions are conveniently available at www.uni-wuerzburg.de.80/law/ 13 The Economist, April 21, 2001, p. 58. 14 See Alterman, “The right sort,” Guardian, December 15, 2001, weekend section, pp. 45–57. 15 See Richard Haass, Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the Post-Cold War World, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1994, pp. 43–9, 136. 16 See Bush’s speech of June 11, 2001, on US policy on Kyoto and climate change, available at www. whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/06/20010611-2.html 17 See The Economist, June 2, 2001, pp. 29–33, for a special report on America’s defense policy. The report stresses the potential obstacles to Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s proposals for change in the direction of (in Rumsfeld’s words) “a future force that is defined less by size and more by mobility and swiftness, one that relies more heavily on stealth, precision weaponry and information technologies.” Vested interests in the forces and in Congress were likely to raise objections where innovations threatened traditional roles and spending patterns. 18 See John Newhouse, “The missile defense debate,” Foreign Affairs, 80 (4), July/August 2001, p. 101. 19 Available on www.whitehouse.gov/news/inaugural-address.html 20 Joseph S. Nye, Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power, New York: Basic Books, 1990. 21 Joseph S. Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 163. 22 Nye, The Paradox of American Power, pp. 154–63. 23 Text available at www.msnbc.com/news/631906.asp 24 Text available at www.msnbc.com/news/629271.asp 25 Daniel Benjamin, “Get those allies into the tent,” Time, December 3, 2001, p. 40. 26 John Vincour, “America’s ‘we’ll call if we need you’ war,” International Herald Tribune, October 3, 2001, p. 2. 27 See Timothy Garton Ash, “Europe at war,” New York Review of Books, December 20, 2001, pp. 66– 8, for a thoughtful analysis of European approaches to the war on terrorism. 28 The full text was published in Guardian, October 2, 2001, pp. 4, 5. 29 Richard Shannon in Guardian, October 4, 2001, G2, pp. 2, 3. 30 Newsweek, December 3, 2001, p. 43.

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31 Quentin Peel quoting Richard Haass in “Analysis: The sheriff and the posse,” BBC Radio 4, November 1, 2001, broadcast transcript, p. 5. 32 Quentin Peel in “Analysis: The sheriff and the posse,” transcript, p. 4. 33 Stanley Hoffmann, “On the war,” The New York Review of Books, November 1, 2001, p. 6. 34 International Herald Tribune, October 3, 2001, p. 2. 35 Tony Judt, “”The war on terror”’ The New York Review of Books, December 20, 2001, p. 102. 36 See, for example, Noam Chomsky, 9-11, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001. 37 Peter D. Feaver, “Americans and allies are getting different stories,” International Herald Tribune, December 5, 2001, p. 8 38 Independent, November 30, 2001, p. 6. 39 Guardian, December 11, 2001, p. 9. 40 Anthony Lewis, “Right and wrong,” New York Times, November 24, 2001. Lewis returned to this theme in a column in the following week, entitled “Wake up America,” New York Times, November 30, 2001. 41 William Safire, “Kangaroo courts,” New York Times, November 26, 2001. For liberal responses, see Maureen Dowd, “Uncivil liberties?” New York Times, November 25, 2001. 42 Jonathan Steele, Guardian, May 16, 2002, p. 18. 43 Adam Roberts, “Crisis at Konduz,” Guardian, November 24, 2001, p. 20. Roberts is professor of international relations at Oxford University and a specialist on the laws of war. 44 Guardian, January 21, 2002, p. 1. 45 Anthony Lewis, “Captives and the law,” New York Times, January 26, 2002. 46 “Rumsfeld defends US treatment of detainees,” New York Times, January 23, 2002. 47 See Martin Thomas, “In search of justice,” Guardian, January 31, 2002, p. 17, for a discussion of these legal issues. 48 For a clear statement of the unjustness of a war that cannot avoid civilian casualties, see Howard Zinn, Terrorism and War, New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002. See especially the following: “… War becomes unacceptable and unjust because the principle of proportionality [one of the criteria for a just war] is immediately violated by the fact that the technology is so massive and the killing of innocent people is inevitable” (p. 79). 49 Avi Shlaim, “The United States and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict,” in Ken Booth and Tim Dunne, eds, Worlds in Collision: Terror and the Future of Global Order, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002, p. 179. 50 Robert Malley, “Playing into Sharon’s hands,” New York Times, January 25, 2002. 51 Criticism of US passivity is described in David E. Sanger and Michael R. Gordon, “Bush is criticized for Middle East role,” New York Times, April 2, 2002. 52 See Avi Shlaim, “The United States and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict,” p. 178. 53 See Vincent M. Cannistraro, “Keep the focus on Al Qaeda,” New York Times, December 3, 2001; and James Risen, “Terror acts by Baghdad have waned, US aides say,” New York Times, February 6, 2002. 54 Cannistraro, “Keep the focus on Al Qaeda”; Richard Perle, “The US must strike at Saddam Hussein,” New York Times, December 29, 2001. 55 Text of address at www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/01/20020129-11 56 Thom Shanker and David E. Sanger, “US envisions blueprint on Iraq including big invasion next year,” New York Times, April 28, 2002. 57 For Chris Patten, see Guardian, February 9, 2002, p. 1, and interview p. 8; for Hugo Young, see Guardian, January 31, 2002, p. 18; for Powell, see International Herald Tribune, February 18, 2002, p. 1; for Bush, see David E. Sanger, International Herald Tribune, February 18, 2002, p. 1; and for Perle, see Guardian, February 4, 2002, p. 12. 58 See, for example, Charles Krauthammer, “America rules o.k.” Guardian, December 17, 2001, p. 18; and Joe Klein, “It’s interrogation not torture,” Guardian, February 4, 2002, G2, p. 2. 59 Steven Erlanger and David E. Sanger, “Bush begins mission to assure Europeans he wants their advice,” New York Times, May 23, 2002.

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60 David E. Sanger, “Leaving for Europe, Bush draws on hard lessons,” New York Times, May 22, 2002. 61 See Guardian, May 16, 2002, p. 11, and article by Michael Meacher, p. 18. 62 Michael Howard, “What’s in a name? How to fight terrorism,” Foreign Affairs, 81 (1), January/ February, pp. 8, 9. 63 Paul Kennedy, “Does everybody hate America?’ Guardian Weekly, March 14–20, 2002, p. 26. Kennedy elaborates on the themes of American power and world leadership in “Maintaining American power: from injury to recovery,” in Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda, eds, The Age of Terror: America and the World After September 11, Oxford: Perseus Books, 2001, pp.55–79.

Conclusion 1 Hugo Young, Guardian, January 31, 2002, p. 18. 2 Timothy Garton Ash, “The perils of too much power,” New York Times, April 9, 2002.

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Index

195

Index

Adams, John 136 Adams, John Quincy 21 Afghan War (1979–88) 98–106; and antiAmericanism 44; antiwar movement 37–8; and causes of terrorism 101; India and Pakistan’s support for war 65–6; Islamic militants and war 105; Soviet Union’s occupation of Afghanistan 96, 101, 102, 107; US supports Mujahidin in war 96, 102–3, 107; war veterans support militant Islam 104 Afghan War (against the Taliban regime, 2001) 147–8, 151–6, 158, 160, see also war on terrorism Africa: and the global economy 121; superpower involvement in 125 Al-Ahram (Egyptian newspaper) 68 Al-Aqsa Intifada (2000) 68, 73, 92, 101 al-Banna, Hasan 81 Al Qaeda: and bin Laden 104–5; founding statement 44; possible links with Iraq 156, 157; prisoners in Cuba 152–3; structure of 105; and terrorism 73 Alaska 26 Albania 126 Alcaraz, Ramon 62 Algeria 85, 96, 104 Alien and Sedition Acts (1798) 11 AMAL 101 America see United States “American dream” 49 Americanism: cultural and historical views of 47–9; origins and meaning of

49–51, see also anti-Americanism; cultural difference; culture Americanization: and anti-Americanism 51, 55–7; immigrants and 52; internationalization of 52–6, 143, 144–5, 165, see also anti-Americanism; cultural difference; culture Amin, Hafizullah 101, 102 Anan, Kofi 134 “anarchy” 165 anti-Americanism: and Americanization 51, 55–7; British views 42, 61; and cultural difference 69–70; European views 56, 57–62; and globalization 57, 122; Latin American views 62–4; Left wing attitudes 42, 44, 45, 58, 60; meanings of 46; in the Muslim world 62, 68–9; and political power 46–7, 70; rationalism and irrationalism 43–4, 45; and September 11 8, 42–3, 59–62, see also Americanism; Americanization; cultural difference; culture; United States, attitudes towards Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty (1972) 144, 158 anticolonialism 26–7, 54 anti-communism 49–50 Antietam, battle of (1862) 10 antiglobalization movements 121, 122 anti-imperialism 23, 26–7, 88 antiwar movement 37–8 APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) 133 Arab unity, and Islam 79, 85

196

Index

Arab–Israeli conflict see Palestinian–Israeli conflict Arabs, Palestinian 91 Arafat, Yasser 92, 154, 155 Arbatov, Georgi 101 Argentina, and global economy 120 Aron, Raymond 99 ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) 133 Ash, Timothy Garton 164 Asia: central Asian republics 147, 150; economic collapse 120 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) 133 Assad, of Syria 146 Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) 133 Atatürk, Kemal (Mustafa Kemal) 75, 77 “axis of evil” 97, 157, 164 backlash (rogue) states 97 balance of power 108–9, 112–13, 117–18, 124, 131; role of the US xiii, 28, 47, 164–5, 165–6, see also instability; stability Barings merchant bank 120 basketball 53 Baudelaire, Charles 55, 57 Beard, Mary 39, 40 Begin, Menachem 84 Beirut 98 Benn, Tony 44 Bethlehem, Church of the Nativity 155 Bhopal, Union Carbide plant 65 bin Laden, Osama: and the Afghan War of 1979–88 104–5; aims of, and the September 11 attacks 72, 72–3, 88, 88–9, 154; anti-Americanism 43, 44; failure to capture 160; religious justifications 87; and the Soviet Union 105–6; supported by US 105 biological weapons 124, 156–7 “bipolar” power system 131 Blair, Tony 93, 146, 149, 154 Bosnia 34 Bottom-Up Review (defense review) 129 boundaries: crossed by September 11 attacks 4–5; territorial 18–20, 25–6 Bové, José 59 Britain: anti-Americanism 42, 61; and Iraq 98; support for war on terrorism 147,

149, 152; views of the US 39–43; withdrawal from Middle East 95 British Empire 115–16 Brown, Gordon 122 Brzezinski, Zbigniew 103 Buchez, Pierre 39, 51 Bull, Hedley 108 Bush, George Sr 110, 111, 141 Bush, George W.: European visit 158–9; inaugural address 145; portrayals of 138–9, 149; presidency of 141–6; and September 11, 2001 attacks xii, 3, 60, 68, 93, 137; State of the Union address (January 2002) 97, 136 Bush administration: conservative agenda 141–2; foreign policy 142–6, 150–1, 154–60, see also government, United States Camp David Agreement (1978) 84, 94 Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay 153 Canada 25 Cannistraro, Vincent 157 capitalism: and American values 31; global 120, 121 Cardoso, Fernando Enrique 64 Carter, Jimmy 84, 139 Castro, Fidel 54 casualties, Afghan War against the Taliban regime 151, 152 CENTO (Central Treaty Organization) 15 Chateaubriand, François Auguste René 55 chemical weapons 124, 156–7 Chesterton, G.K. 49 China 27, 143, 150 Chirac, Jacques 148 Chomsky, Noam 22, 45, 66 Chou En Lai 109–10 Civil War (American, 1861–65) 10 clash-of-civilizations 74, 85, 113 Clausewitz, Carl von 30 Clinton, Bill 34, 139, 142, 144 coalition against terrorism 148–51, 157–8 Cold War: Americanism and anticommunism 49–50; compared with war on terrorism 163; Cuban missile crisis 9–10, 124; end of and collapse of communism 74, 102; and German anti-Americanism 60; India’s neutrality and communism 65; post-Cold War situation ix, 29, 109–15, 125–6; Soviet

Index Union and communist threat 11–12, 20–1, 28–9; stability in the Cold War period 108–9, 124 colonial rule, and the Middle Eastern countries 79–80, 82 commerce see economics; trade communications revolution 115–16, 117 communism: Cold War and Americanism 49–50; collapse of and democracy 111, 126; collapse of and end of Cold War 74, 102; containment of 11–12, 20–1, 27, 28–9, 97; fight against and terrorism 162; India’s perceptions of 65 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) (1996) 123 Congress, approval of war measures 35–6 consensus: and Americanism 50–1; international, on war on terrorism 162–3 conservative agenda, Bush administration 141–2 Constitution, United States (1787): imperialism and democracy 25; and India’s constitution 54; power and personality 136, 140; unconstitutional acts and foreign interventions 36–7; and vulnerability 11 consumer culture, and France 59 Cooley, John 104 counter-terrorism 109, 128 crimes against humanity 134 CTBT (Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) (1996) 123 Cuba 62–3, 97, 152, 153 Cuban missile crisis (1962) 9–10, 124 cultural difference: and anti-Americanism 69–70; Islam and the West 85; and religion 74, see also Americanization; anti-Americanism culture: and British anti-Americanism 42; cultural conflict and international power balance 113–14, 165; cultural diplomacy 53–4; cultural identities 118, 127, see also Americanization Daoud, Muhammad 101–2 De Crèvecoeur, J. Hector St John 48 De Gaulle, Charles 58

197

De Tocqueville, Alexis, Democracy in America 55 debt, in developing countries 132 Declaration of Independence 32, 49 defense reviews and strategy 129–30 democracy: American values of 32, 33, 54, 140, 143; and America’s views of the world 23, 24–34; collapse of, and communism 111, 126; Western liberal democracy 110–11 Democrats 138, 142 Department of State (US) 128–9 “Dependency Theory” 63 development assistance 132, 143 Dewey, John 75, 76, 86 Diasporas 127 diplomacy, trade, and politics 14–15, 30–1, 54–5 disease 117 domestic policies 142 Donne, John 48 “Drop the Debt” campaign 121 Dulles, John Foster 65 ecological change 114, 117, 161 economics: and Americanization 52–3, 143; globalization and instability 119–22, 161; integration and interdependence 114, 115, 116; and military security 143–4; oil and the global economy 80; and political neutrality 14–15, 30–3; US economic growth 19, see also foreign policy; trade Economist, The (British periodical) 64, 120, 121 education: federal education bill 142; and modernization 82 Egypt 68, 80, 81, 84, 91 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 35 elections: legitimacy of Bush presidency 138; and personality 136–7 embassies, terrorist attacks on 73, 104, 129 embattlement, American sense of 5–6, 164; and vulnerability 10–12, 35 empires see imperialism “end of history? The” (Fukuyama) 110 Enduring Freedom 147 “enlargement”, policy of 32–3 environmental change 161 Eposito, John 80

198

Index

Ethiopia 112, 125 ethnic conflict/cleansing 126, 127 Europe: American attitudes towards 157; American imperialism and anticolonialism 26–7; antiAmericanism 56, 57–62; and balance of power 164–5; Bush visits 158–9; stability and military power 112–13; support for war on terrorism 148–9 European Union (EU) 113, 133, 135 Fadlallah, Muhammad Hussain 88 “failed states” 112, 125 fatwa 44 finance, and globalization 116, 120, see also economics; trade First World War (1914–18) 15, 20, 34, 52, 100 FIS (Islamic Salvation Front) 85 flag, American 50 Foreign Affairs (periodical) 37, 113 foreign aid 132, 143 foreign policy: and the American people 17, 36–7, 44; and American presidents 139–40, 141; of Bush administration 142–6, 150–1, 154–60; established nature of, and war on terrorism 159–61; and Iraq 72, 98, 159; and Islam 44, 69; mediation in Palestinian– Israeli conflict 95, 159; responses to September 11 attacks xi, 40; support for bin Laden 105; support for Israel 84, 93, 94, 95, see also economics; government, United States; trade; United States, how it views the world; war on terrorism France: attitudes to the US 56, 58–9, 61; and Indochina 26–7, 124–5; support for war on terrorism 148 French revolution (1789) 11 Fukuyama, Francis 110, 111 Fullbright programs 54 fundamentalism: and globalization 118; Islamic 87, 96; Protestant 86–7 Gaddis, John 114 GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) 117, 132 Gaza Strip 84, 91 General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) 117, 132

Germany 60–1, 148, 149 Giddens, Anthony 118, 128 global leadership 27–8, 135, 161, 164 global warming 114, 161 globalization: and anti-Americanism 57, 122; antiglobalization movements 121, 122; economic instability 119–22, 161; political stability 112, 115–19, 145–6; and war 127 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 48–9 governance 117, 130–5 government, United States: and the American people 8–9, 34–8, 44; Bush administration policies 141–6, 150–1, 154–60; and counter-terrorism 109, 128; defense review and strategy 129–30; global promotion of “Americanization” 53–4; and international law 134; Middle East policies 93–4, 155–6; and the presidency 139–41; response to September 11 attacks 39–40; and Russia 123, 144, 150, 158, see also foreign policy governments: Algerian and the FIS 85; anti-Muslim Afghan government 102; national, and globalization 116–17; and political Islam 83; and terrorism 101, 163 Graebner, Norman, Empire on the Pacific 22 Guardian (British newspaper) 39 Gulf States 80 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (1964) 36 Gulf War (1990–91) 17, 95, 97–8 Halliday, Fred 83 Hamas 92 Hartz, Louis 7 Hawaii 26 Hezbollah 101 hijackers (September 11) 2, 5 history: “end of ” and “posthistory” 110–11; and political science x Ho Cho Minh 54, 124 Hollander, Paul 43–4, 45 Holmes, Oliver Wendell 23 hostage-taking 96, 101 Huntington, Samuel 74, 85, 113–14 Hussein, Saddam 95, 98, 104, 156 Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World 51

Index ICC (International Criminal Court) 134, 158 ideologies 33, 38, 102–3, 149, see also values IMF (International Monetary Fund) 132 immigration and immigrants 15, 19, 52, 57–8 imperialism: and American views of the world 21–4; anti-imperialism 23, 26–7, 88; concepts of 24–5; and globalization 114–15; LatinAmerican attitudes to 63 India 64–7 India Today (newspaper) 66, 67 Indian subcontinent, and the Islamic revival 82 Indo–Pakistan War (1971) 125 Indochina 26–7, 124–5 industrial growth 19 Inönü, Ismet 77 instability: after the Cold War 112, 125–30; global and economic 119–22, 161; and terrorism 119; weapons of mass destruction 122–4, see also balance of power; stability integration and fragmentation 114 International Criminal Court (ICC) 134, 158 international law 133–4, 152–3, 165 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 132 international politics: after the Cold War 109–14; America’s views of the world 7–9; balance of power after September 11 108–9; economic instability 119–22; and globalization 115–19; governance 130–5; regional and local conflict 124–8; stability in the Cold War period 108–9, 124; and terrorism 128–30; weapons of mass destruction 122–4, see also balance of power; politics intervention: and American isolationism 34–6; and ideologies 102–3; and nonintervention 142–3 intifada 68, 73, 91–2, 94, 101 Iran: hostage-taking 96; oil and the global economy 80; political structure 81, 86; reaction to September 11 attacks 146; Soviet Union and strategic importance 94–5; US involvement 95–7

199

Iran–Iraq war (1980–88) 83 Iranian Revolution (1978–9) 83, 95–7 Iraq: invasion of Kuwait 95, 97, 104; oil and the global economy 80; political structure 81; possible links with Al Qaeda 156, 157; and September 11 attacks 146; US policy toward 72, 98, 159; war on terror extended to 156–7, 158, 159, 163; weapons inspection 123, 156–7 Islam: and American values 33, 69; antiMuslim Afghan government 102; and the Arab–Israeli conflict 84–5; and the Iranian Revolution 83, 96, 97; political Islam ix, 75–88, 103–4; political marginalization and revival 77–9, 81–2, 106; post-Cold War 114; religion and terrorism 87–8, 101; role of in September 11 attacks 74; sects and diversity of 78, 79, 81, 85–6; and US foreign policy 44, 69, see also Muslim world Islamic Jihad 101 Islamic militants: and Afghan War against the Taliban regime 105; sources of September 11 attacks 72–3, 73–4, 106 Islamic revivalism 78–9 Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) 85 Islamic states, Middle East 80–1, 86 isolationism 13–17, 34–6, 164 Israel: peace with Egypt 68; response to September 11 90, 147; state established (1948) 80, 90–1; support for war against Taliban 154, 155; US backing 84, 93, 94, 95 Israeli–Palestinian conflict see Palestinian– Israeli conflict Italy 57–8 Jalalabad 147 Jamaat-I-Islami (Islamic Society) 81, 82 James, Henry 55–6 Japan: attack on Pearl Harbor 9, 28, 164; and global economy 120 Jefferson, Thomas 14, 30, 32 Jeffords, Jim 138, 142 Jenin refugee camp 155 jihad 88 Joad, C.E.M. 56 Johnson, Lyndon B. 32, 34, 36 Jordan, Michael 53

200

Index

Jordan (country) 81, 91, 94 Kabul 147 Kafka, Franz 51 Kandahar 147 Karmal, Babrak 101 Kashmir 66, 67 Kennedy, John F. 11, 21, 137 Kennedy, Paul 45, 161; Rise and Fall of the Great Powers 22, 145 Kenya 73, 104, 129 Khamenei, Ayatollah 146 Khomeini, Ayatollah 83 Khost tunnel complex 104 Kissinger, Henry 134 Konduz 147 Korean War (1950) 27, 35 Kosovo 34, 126 Krauthammer, Charles 113 Ku Klux Klan 86 Kurds 98, 129 Kuwait 95, 97, 104 Kyoto Protocol 143, 158, 159 Lake, Anthony 32, 33 Latin America 62–4 law, international 133–4, 152–3, 165 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 59 League of Nations 130–1 Lebanon 91, 98, 101, 129 Left, political, and anti-Americanism: Britain 42, 61; Europe 44, 45; France 58; Germany 60; the US 45 legal and moral issues 93, 152–3, 165, see also law Lewis, Anthony 152, 153 Libya: political structure 81; Qadaffi regime 85, 96, 97; and September 11 attacks 146 Lippmann, Walter 139 local and regional conflict 124–8 localism 118 Locke, John 48 Lockerbie bombings 134 London Review of Books (LRB) (British periodical) 39, 40–1 Louisiana 18 LRB (London Review of Books) (British periodical) 39, 40–1 McDonald’s restaurants 59

McKinley, William 22 McVeigh, Timothy 87 MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) 109, 144 Madrid Conference (1991) 94 manifest destiny 23, 48 Marti, Jose 62 Marxism 31, 63 Mazar-I-Sharif 147, 152 Mboya, Tom 54 Mearsheimer, John 112 media: and anti-Americanism 47; communications revolution 115–16; and globalization 117; images of the United States xii; news broadcasting and isolationism 16; reporting local conflict 127, 128; reports of September 11, 2001 3–4, 5–6; reports of terrorism 99; reports of war against Taliban regime 151–2; representations of public figures 137, 138–9; and third world poverty 69 Mexico 18–19, 25, 62, 120 Middle East: conflict in and the US 74–5, 93–8, 106–7; and modernization 79–80, 82, 106; political Islam 75–88; political models of states 80–1, 86; sources of September 11 attacks 72–4; US involvement and September 11 attacks 93, 106–7, 154; US involvement and the Soviet Union 94–5, see also Afghan War (1979–88); Afghan War (against the Taliban regime, 2001); Palestinian–Israeli conflict military power: and economic activity 143–4; and European stability 112–13; isolationism and intervention 34–5; and presidential authority 141, 147, see also war on terrorism Milosevic, Slobodan 134 modernity 57, 128 modernization: and the Middle East 79–80, 82, 106; and religion 76, 81; in Turkey 75–6, 79–80; in the United States 86–7 modernization theory 76 monarchies 81 Monde, Le (French newspaper) 43, 59, 61, 68, 152 Monroe Doctrine (1823) 12, 28, 136 moral and legal issues 93, 152–4, 165

Index Moral Majority 86 More, Thomas, Utopia 48 Morley, Morris and James Petras, Empire or Republic? 23 Mujahidin 96, 102–3, 103–4, 107 multilateralism 142–3, 150–1 multinational companies 52–3, 63, 116 “multipolar” power system 131 Musharaff, Pervez 149 Muslim Brotherhood 81–2, 83, 88 Muslim world: attitudes to the US 62, 67–9, 163; political model of states 80–1; support for war against Taliban 150, 154–5, see also Islam Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) 109, 144 NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association) 120, 133 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 67–8, 80–1, 90–1 nation states 112, 114, 116, 125 National Missile Defense (NMD) 12, 123, 143, 144, 158 nationalism 112; Americanism 47–51 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 14–15, 20, 77, 122–3, 148 neutrality: American 11; and economic activity 14–15, 30–1; India’s neutrality and communism 65 New Republic (periodical) 43 “New World Order” 110, 111 New York Review of Books (NYRB) (periodical) 41 New York Times (newspaper) 5, 158 Newsweek (periodical) 64, 149 NGOs (nongovernmental organizations) 133 Nixon, Richard 35, 36, 55, 137, 139–40 NMD (National Missile Defense) 12, 123, 143, 144, 158 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) 123 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) 133 nonintervention 142–3 normalcy 12–13 North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) 120, 133 North Atlantic Council 146 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 14–15, 20, 77, 122–3, 148 Northwest Ordinance (1787) 25–7

201

NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty) 123 nuclear capabilities: India 65, 123; Iraq 123, 156–7; Israel 95, 123; Pakistan 123, 150 nuclear deterrents, European 113 nuclear proliferation 122, 123–4, 161 Nye, Joseph 121; Bound to Lead 145; The Paradox of American Power 145 NYRB (New York Review of Books) (periodical) 41 oil, Middle Eastern 80, 94, 95, 106 Oklahoma bombing 87 Omar, Mullah Mohammed 105, 147, 160 Organization of the Islamic Conference 77 Oslo Peace process 68, 73, 91, 92, 94 Ottoman Empire 76 Pacific sphere 19, 20 Paine, Tom, “Common Sense” 28, 32 Pakistan: borders a training ground for Islamic extremists 105; nuclear capability 123, 150; relations with the US 65–6, 149–50; supports Taliban 65, 66, 150; and US support for Mujahidin 103 Palestine: response to September 11 147; terrorism 154, 155, 157 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) 92–3 Palestinian Arabs 91 Palestinian–Israeli conflict 88–93; and Afghan War against the Taliban regime 147, 154–6; linked with September 11 attacks 73–4, 88–9, 92, 106; postCold War situation 29; and rise of political Islam 84–5; and superpowers 125; US mediation 95, 159 Patten, Chris 157 PDPA (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan) 101–2, 103 “peace dividend” 29 Pearl Harbor (1941) 9, 28, 164 Pentagon 3, 5 people see public opinion People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) 101–2, 103 Perkins, Bradford, The Creation of a Republican Empire, 1776–1865 23 Perle, Richard 157, 158

202

Index

Perloff, Marjorie 40 peso crisis 120 Petras, James and Morris Morley, Empire or Republic? 23 PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) 100–1 Philippines 26 PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) 92–3 political Islam ix, 75–88, 103–4 political models, Middle Eastern states 80–1 politics: of anti-Americanism 46–7, 70; coalition against terrorism 148–51, 157–8; diplomacy and trade 14–15, 30–1, 54–5; and history x; political isolationism 14–15; of terrorism 98–100, see also balance of power; international politics Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) 100–1 popular views see public opinion population: India 64; Middle East 82; minorities 98 poverty: and globalization 121, 161; and terrorism 121; third world countries 69, 132 Powell, Colin: Europe and the war on terrorism 157; and George W. Bush 139, 158–9; Middle East negotiations 155; seeks alliance with India 67; and the September 11 attacks 3, 156 power see balance of power; international politics; politics Pownall, Thomas 48 presidency: institutional context of 139–41; military authority of 141, 147; and personality 136, 137–8, 141–2 prisoners of war 152–3 Protestantism 11, 86–7 public figures, media representations of 137, 138–9 public opinion: Afghan popular reaction to PDPA 102; British 149, 153; on Bush’s domestic policy 142; images of America xii-xiii; and imperialism 24; international, war against Taliban 151–2; and the presidency 140–1; and US foreign policy 17, 36–7, 44; and

the US government 8–9, 34–8, 44; views of Islamic government 96 Putin, Vladimir 144 Qadaffi regime 85, 96, 97 Quandt, William 84 Quran 82, 87, 88 Qutb, Sayyid 81–2, 88 rationalism, irrationalism, and antiAmericanism 43–4, 45 Reagan, Ronald 39, 48, 59, 87, 139, 144 Red Scare (1919–1920) 11 refugees 91 regional and local conflict 124–8 religion: in American history xiii, 11, 86–7; the Bush administration domestic policy 142; and cultural conflict 113; and cultural difference 74; fundamentalism 86–7, 96, 118; Islamic revivalism 78–9; the “just war” argument 87; and modernization 76, 81; and terrorism 87–8, 101 Rice, Condoleeza 139 Right, political: and anti-Americanism 45, 60; in France 59 rogue (backlash) states 97 Roman Empire 115–16 Roosevelt, Franklin 26–7, 34, 138, 139, 140 Roosevelt, Theodore 22, 23, 49 Roy, Olivier 82, 86, 88 Rumsfeld, Donald 139, 144, 153 Rushdie, Salman 61–2 Russia: nuclear capability 124; and the United States 123, 144, 150, 158, see also Soviet Union Sadat, Anwar 82, 84, 101 Safire, William 152 Said, Edward 45, 85 Sarmiento, Domingo 62 Saudi Arabia: bin Laden’s links with 104; oil and the global economy 80; relations with the US 72, 73 Schröder, Gerhard 148, 149 SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) 15 Second World War (1939–45): battle deaths 16; post-war world 29–30, 53,

Index 77; and terrorism 100; US post-war Middle-East involvement 94–8; US role in 20, 28, 34 secular states, Middle East 80–1 security, collective international 111, 114, 124, 128; US defense review 129 Seeger, Pete 57 September 11, 2001: and the Al Qaeda network 104; and anti-Americanism 42–3, 59–62; and antiglobalization movements 122; the attacks 1–3; attacks linked with Islamic militancy 72–3, 73–4, 106; and bin Laden’s aims 72, 72–3, 88, 88–9, 154; British views of xi, 39–41, 42–3; Bush’s response xii, 3, 60, 68, 93, 137; choice of targets 4–5; defense reviews and strategy 130; impact of and reactions to ix, xi, 108–9, 146, 162–6; India and Pakistan’s attitude 65–6; Israel’s response 90, 147; Latin America’s response 64; linked with Palestinian– Israeli conflict 73–4, 88–9, 92, 106; linked with Saddam Hussein 156; media reports 3–4, 5–6; Muslim world’s response 68; Palestine’s response 147; US government’s response 39–40; and US Middle East involvement 93, 106–7, 154; and war on terrorism 146–8, 159 Seward, William 23 Shah of Iran 83, 95 Sharia 82, 88 Sharon, Ariel 73, 90, 154, 156 Shi’ite Muslims 79, 83, 98, 102 Six-Day War (1967) 67, 84, 91 social programs 142 Somalia 112, 117, 125 Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) 14–15 Soviet Union: and bin Laden 105–6; and the communist threat 11–12, 20–1, 28–9; dismantling of 110, 112; occupation of Afghanistan 96, 101, 102, 107; and the strategic importance of Iran 94–5; and US Middle East involvement 94–5, see also Russia Spender, Stephen 47, 62 Sputnik 11

203

stability: European, and military power 112–13; international, during the Cold War 108–9, 124; political, and globalization 112, 115–19, 145–6, see also balance of power; instability “Star Wars” 12, 144 START (Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) 123 State of the Union address (January 2002) 97, 136 state-sponsored terrorism 99 Stead, W.T., The Americanization of the World 52 steel production and tariffs 144, 158, 159 Steel, Ronald 22 Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) 123 Straw, Jack 90, 153 Sudan 86, 112 Suez Canal 80 Suez crisis (1956) 58, 94 Sufism 81 suicide bombings 129, 155, 157 Sunni Muslims 79, 83 “supraterritoriality” 118 Syria 81, 85 Taliban, Pakistan supports 65, 66, 150 Taliban regime 86, 104; war against in Afghanistan 147–8, 151–6, 158, 160 Tanzania 73, 104, 129 technological innovation 116, 130 television: and globalization 117, 128; representations of public figures 137; September 11 reports 5 terrorism: coalition against, and war on 148–51, 157–8; counter-terrorism 109, 128; defined and described 98–9; incidents before 2000 73, 100–2, 109; and international law 134, 152–3; issues and meaning of 160–1, 162–3; linked with September 11 attacks 72–3; Palestinian 154, 155, 157; political contexts 98–100, 128–30; and political Islam 87–8, 103–4; and poverty 121; State Department statistics 128–9; in the United States 87; as weapon of extremists 86–7, 100, 107; and weapons of mass destruction 124,

204

Index

see also military power; war on terrorism Texas 18–19 third world countries: and anti-colonialism 54; development assistance 132, 143; liberation struggles and terrorism 100; Middle East–West conflict 86; poverty in 69, 132 Thompson, John 35 Times (British newspaper) 152 Times of India (Indian newspaper) 66, 67 trade: exports and Americanization 52–3; globalization of 117; political and diplomatic contact 14–15, 30–1, 54–5; rebel groups and Diasporas 127; steel production and tariffs 144, 158, 159, see also economics trans-border communications 116 transnational institutions 117, 132–3 Treaty of Sèvres (1920) 75 Truman, Harry S. 20–1, 29, 140 Turkey 75–7, 79–80, 150 Turner, Frederick Jackson 19

perceptions of international politics 7–9; sense of embattlement 5–6, 164; the war on terrorism 157, 161, see also foreign policy; government, United States; war on terrorism US News and World Report (periodical) 5 USS Cole 73, 104, 129

Ugarte, Manuel 63 UN see United Nations unilateralism 142, 143, 145, 151, 161 Union Carbide plant (Bhopal) 65 “unipolar moment” 29–30, 113 United Fruit Company 52, 63 United Kingdom see Britain United Nations Charter 30, 132 United Nations (UN): after the collapse of the Soviet Union 110; condemnation of September 11 attacks 146; international governance 131–2; peacekeeping role 111–12, 131 United States, attitudes towards 164; Britain 39–43, 61; France 56, 58–9, 61; Germany 60–1; India 64–7; Italy 57–8; Muslim world 62, 67–9, 163, see also anti-Americanism; cultural difference United States, how it views the world xiii, 7–38, 161; democracy and republicanism 23, 24–34; expansion and growth 14, 17–21, 24–5; government and the people 8–9, 17, 34–8; historical attacks and vulnerability 9–13, 35; imperialism 21–4; isolationism 13–17, 34–6, 164;

Wahabi sect 81 war: antiwar movement 37–8; and cultural conflict 114; and globalization 127; “just war” argument 87; nature of, and US foreign policy 160–1; post Cold War period 124–8; regional and local conflict 124–8; rules and methods of 127 war on terrorism: coalition against 148–51, 157–8; compared with Cold War 163; conduct of the war 151–2; extended to Iraq 156–7, 158, 159, 163; India and Pakistan’s attitudes 66; international consensus on 162–3; Latin American attitudes 64; moral and legal issues 93, 152–4; and September 11 146–8, 159; and US foreign policy 159–61, see also military power; terrorism Washington, George 13–14, 30 Washington DC 10 weaponry: decommissioned 158; hightech, and space militarization 144; weapons inspection in Iraq 123, 156–7; weapons of mass destruction 122–4, 156 West Bank 84, 91

Vajpayee, Atal Behari 66 values, American xiii, 31–2, 37–8; and Americanization program 52; democratic 32, 33, 54, 140, 143; opposition to and rationality 45; perceived betrayal of 70; and September 11 attacks 164; the treatment of Al Qaeda prisoners 152–3 Van Alstyne, Richard 21 veterans, of Afghan War (1979–88) 104 Vietnam War (1964–75) 17, 35, 36, 124–5 vulnerability, American sense of 10–12, 35; and embattlement 5–6, 164

Index Williams, William Appleman, Tragedy of American Diplomacy 21–2 Wilson, Woodrow: and Americanization program 52, 54; foreign policies 14, 28, 32, 33; and Italy 58; presidency of 34, 139 Winthrop, John 48 World Bank 132 world government 130, 165 World Trade Center: 1993 bombing 73, 104, 129; September 11 attacks 2–3, 5, see also September 11, 2001 World Trade Organization (WTO) 117, 121, 122, 132

205

World Wars see First World War; Second World War WTO (World Trade Organization) 117, 121, 122, 132 Yom Kippur War (October War) (1973) 84 Young, Hugo 157, 164 Yousef, Ramzi 104 Yugoslavia 112, 113, 126 Yusufzai, Rahimullah 44 Zeit, Die (German newspaper) 60 Zeldin, Theodore 43