9/11 Ten Years After

Perspectives and Problems

Rachel E. Utley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138109964
• eBook ISBN: 9781317188940
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Ten years on, what have been the principal impacts of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 on the external policies and international outlooks of the world's major powers, the range and scope of the international security agenda and on the capacity for states and international organisations to work together to combat the dangers of international terrorism? This book investigates a range of international responses to the events of 9/11, to evaluate their consistency over time; to analyse their long-term significance and impact and to consider both their implications for the international security agenda and the prospects for international cooperation in addressing the challenges posed. In particular, the book considers the perspectives of some of the world's major powers and international organisations on the question of international terrorism, and on its perpetrators, comparing their interpretations and responses and examining how these have changed over the course of a decade of conflict. This book is primarily directed at an academic market, and especially towards undergraduate and taught postgraduate students on courses in international politics, international relations, security studies, terrorism studies, and contemporary international history.

Chapter 1
Whatever Happened to the War on Terror?

Edward M. Spiers

Ten years after 9/11 represents a good time to review the war on terror and the role of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in the design, development and delivery of the Bush Doctrine. Reflection upon the response to the attacks of 9/11 is now assisted by the publication of several important memoirs – the combative autobiography of Tony Blair (2010), the splendidly candid reflections of President George W. Bush, who may have been in a ‘state of denial’ once (Woodward 2006) but is engagingly forthright in Decision Points (Bush 2010), the robust memoirs of Donald Rumsfeld (2011), and numerous accounts of the war, the weapon inspections in Iraq, as well as early reflections upon the style and substance of US foreign policy in the Obama era (Bergen 2011, Duelfer 2009, Woodward 2010). Questions about whether the Bush Doctrine would survive the Bush administration, about whether the United States would remain in a state of war, and about whether WMD would remain an issue after the failure to find any stocks of agent or munitions in Iraq can all be answered. Change might have seemed imminent when the Obama administration jettisoned the terms, ‘Long War’ or ‘Global War on Terror’ in favour of an ‘Overseas Contingency Operation’, and later when it stated in National Security Strategy 2010 that ‘this is not a global war against a tactic – terrorism or a religion – Islam’ (Wilson and Karem 2009, National Security Strategy 2010: 20). How far any change actually occurred is more evident now.

In examining the evolution of the war on terror across two administrations, some reflection is necessary upon the ending of the Bush administration and its depth of unpopularity. When George W. Bush left office in January 2009 he had a positive opinion poll rating of only 22 per cent in one poll, 34 per cent in another, either the lowest or the third lowest in the 70-year history of Gallup opinion polling on a US presidency (CBS News 2009, Saad 2009). Doubtless as Bush himself admits, the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina and the bankers’ bail-out compounded the lowly perceptions of the presidency. Yet the war on terror was the flagship policy of the administration, and the decision to jettison Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary after the disastrous mid-term elections of November 2006, underlined that this policy, and especially the foray into Iraq, had crippled the Bush administration (Bush 2010: 310, 318, 330–51, 371–2, 460).

Superficially this disastrous political outcome for the Bush presidency might seem to vindicate the many critics of the war on terror. For several European commentators, the fundamental notion of a warlike response was misconceived (Moens 2007: 256–7). Michael Howard, having addressed this issue in a lecture on 30 October 2001 that was later reprinted in Foreign Affairs, claimed that Bush by designating his response as a war had made ‘a very natural but terrible and irrevocable error’. He had created a war psychosis that stoked up unreasonable expectations, which were likely to prove counterproductive by conferring on the terrorists ‘a status and dignity that they seek and that they do not deserve’. Many, claimed Howard, would have preferred ‘a police operation conducted under the auspices of the United Nations on behalf of the international community’. Even worse he feared that if Bush followed up the war in Afghanistan by attacking other ‘rogue states’ beginning with Iraq, in the hope of eradicating terrorism, the policy was likely to prolong the war indefinitely and ensure that it could not be won (Howard 2002: 8–13).

However prescient this analysis and these predictions might seem now, they were, as Howard ruefully assumed, unlikely to have taken root at the time. The attacks of 9/11 were unexpected (The 9/11 Commission Report 2004, Clarke 2004: 238) and unprovoked, killing 2,973 innocent civilians and costing at least $500 billion in economic damage. They brutally exposed the vulnerability of the United States and, by striking at her financial, defence and potentially political icons, challenged her sense of exceptionalism. As Bush reflected, 9/11 shook ‘the psyche of the nation’ and confirmed that ‘the law enforcement approach to terrorism had failed’ (Bush 2010: 139, 154, 443, Rumsfeld 2011: 342, 352). Tony Blair (2010 342) added that:

It was an event like no other. It was regarded as such. The British newspapers the next day were typical of those around the globe: ‘AT WAR’, they proclaimed. The most common analogy was Pearl Harbor. The notion of a world, not just America, confronted by a deadly evil that had indeed declared war on us all was not then dismissed as the language of the periphery of public sentiment. It was the sentiment. Thousands killed by terror – what else should we call it?

Moreover the events of 9/11 clarified the risks posed by WMD and the new forms of terrorism. If terrorists were now demonstrably willing to kill themselves in the hope of committing mass murder, what would they do if they acquired nuclear, biological or chemical weapons? Far from retaining the latter as weapons of last resort for the purposes of deterrence and defence of a homeland, as states had done during the Cold War, terrorists with no countries to defend, and with no compunction about inflicting massive casualties, might use them first. ‘The gravest danger in the war on terror, the gravest danger facing America and the world’, Bush (2003) averred, ‘is outlaw regimes that seek and possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. These regimes could… give or sell those weapons to terrorist allies, who would use them without the least hesitation’. Both Tony Blair and Barack Obama shared the same fear; as President Obama observed in quaint phraseology, nuclear weapons or a ‘weapon of mass destruction in a major American city’ would represent ‘a potential game changer’ (Blair 2010: 385–6, Woodward 2010: 363).

The Bush Doctrine that evolved over the eight years of the presidency (Krauthammer 2008) would in the wake of 9/11 involve a reassertion of US preeminence; a belief that the best defence against mass-casualty terrorism was a strong offense, including where appropriate preventive attack to spare the US homeland from another 9/11; selective multilateralism (coalitions of the willing); and the promotion of democratic transformation, especially in the Middle East. The techniques, as US Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld (2001) predicted from the outset, would involve ‘a war like none other’. Contrary to the assertions of some critics, he had asserted that the war on terror would require ‘floating coalitions of countries’ (later known as coalitions of the willing – a form of selective multilateralism); military force as ‘only one of many tools’ used, possibly involving the firing of cruise missiles into military targets somewhere in the world; the use of various uniforms, including ‘bankers’ pinstripes and programmers’ grunge just as assuredly as desert camouflage’; military engagement against the regimes that sponsored terrorism and making allies of the peoples that those governments suppressed (later abbreviated as regime change); no ‘exit strategies’ (a forecast of the ‘long war’); no fixed rules about how to deploy American troops (a formula subsequently expressed as preventive war); and one steadfast feature: ‘America remains indomitable’ (in other words, a reassertion of American primacy).

How far the war on terror evolved as Rumsfeld predicted may be a matter of genuine debate but nearly all the elements to which he alluded would manifest themselves in the different phases of a conflict that developed into the so-called ‘long war’, encompassing various fronts and a diverse array of military, diplomatic and other techniques. As many of these initiatives (detention without trial and enhanced interrogation) proved increasingly controversial, support for the war ebbed and criticism mounted. Yet the conduct of the war on terror never met the glib characterizations of its many critics. Stanley A. Renshon has rightly debunked myths that the policies of the Bush administration were driven by an arrogant unilateralism, or that they derived from a neoconservative cabal, or that they reflected imperial ambitions (Slocombe 2003, Rhodes 2003, Gordon 2003, Hurst 2005, Renshon 2007: 7–13, Lynch 2008, Rumsfeld 2011: 352, 355). The Bush administration did not merely deny any imperial intent but it also deployed relatively small forces initially – about 8,000 American forces in Afghanistan because ‘We were all wary of repeating the experience of the Soviets and the British, who ended up looking like occupiers’ (Bush 2004, 2010: 207). Similarly when the United States invaded Iraq with only some 125,000 American forces (Ricks 2007: 117), the paucity of the US commitment coupled with the lack of post-invasion planning, the blunders of disbanding the Iraqi army and de-Baathification, would soon be seen as contributing to the ensuing insurgency. In the critical period from May 2003 to June 2004, when L. Paul Bremer III served as the chief presidential envoy to Iraq, these blunders overlapped with the failure to find any WMD (Ricks 2007: 146–8, 158–65, 191, Gordon and Trainor 2007: 584–5, Bush 2010: 259, Lynch and Singh, 2008: 148–50, Bremer 2006).

Undoubtedly the failure to find stockpiles of WMD agent and weapons impaired the credibility of the war on terror. As confirmed in January 2004, this failure compromised the official casus belli, and, in reflecting upon the erroneous perceptions of the Western intelligence community, David Kay, then head of the inspections team, admitted before a congressional committee: ‘We were almost all wrong’ (Kay 2004, Blix 2005: 128). Bush concedes that ‘the failure to find WMD would transform public perception of the war… That was a massive blow to our credibility – my credibility – that would shake the confidence of the American people’ (Bush 2010: 262). However shaken, the American people were still not sufficiently stirred in the election year of 2004. Faced with the challenge from Democrat, John Kerry, the largest ever popular vote re-elected Bush in the November elections. Nevertheless, the mounting toll of US casualties – ultimately 4,229 died in Iraq during the Bush presidency – and what the president would describe as ‘the drumbeat of violence in Iraq’ ensured that this was one of the most damaging features of his presidency. It was so damaging that Senator John McCain challenged for the presidency in 2008 without seeking the assistance of the Republican incumbent (Bush 2010: 330, 394, 466). Indeed as criticism of the war on terror mushroomed, many erstwhile supporters of the war, including well-known Conservative pundits and Republican politicians in the United States, became deeply disillusioned (Buckley 2006, Gingrich 2006, Will 2009).

The war still had its advocates with President Bush by no means alone in claiming that the war had disrupted Al Qaeda’s bases in Afghanistan and elsewhere, apprehending or killing thousands of terrorists, including some key commanding officers; that the war had toppled dictatorships, prevented Saddam Hussein from ever reviving his WMD programme; and introduced democratic procedures in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush would assert, too, that the belated surge had dramatically reduced the levels of violence and sectarian killing in Iraq (Bush 2003, Bush 2010: 267, 270, 389, 410–11, Duelfer 2009: 383, K. Kagan 2009: 196–204, Wehner 2008, R. Kagan 2009). There were also those who endorsed the thesis of the neo-conservative, Norman Podhoretz, that the war should be carried on to restrain the nuclear ambitions of Iran. For likeminded pundits, there could be no turning back to the policies that had failed pre-9/11; the Bush Doctrine would outlive the Bush presidency; and Iran could not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons (Commentary 2007). In other words, as Rumsfeld (2002) had predicted, the United States was locked into a long war on terror and could not avoid acting over the proliferation of WMD: ‘Our principal goal in the war on terror is to stop another 9/11 – or a WMD attack that could make 9/11 seem modest by comparison – before it happens…’.

Moreover, the initiatives of the Bush administration in support of this objective were hardly bereft of international support. The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) launched by President Bush in Krakow on 31 May 2003, and codified by eleven founding members in Paris on 4 September 2003, represented a commitment to interdict WMD-related cargoes, whether by sea, land or air. It had an immediate success when vessels diverted the BBC China, with its cargo of centrifuge technology bound for Libya, to the Italian port of Taranto (October 2003) for inspection. Within three years over 70 states adhered to the PSI, which Stephen G. Rademaker, a State Department official, described as ‘not a treaty-based organization, but rather… an active security cooperation partnership to deter, disrupt and prevent WMD proliferation’ (Rademaker 2006, Winner 2005).

Irrespective of the merits of the counter-proliferation aim, or the potential for extending the Bush Doctrine to include a response to Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, the Bush administration had compromised the credibility of its policies by repeated lapses in public relations. In a war on terror, which is by definition an episodic undertaking involving long-term counter-terror operations punctuated by incidents whereby terrorist attacks occur, or their alleged perpetrators are apprehended or killed, a premium has to be placed upon sustaining political support and credibility during the course of these operations. This became increasingly difficult as the president, his staff and the defense secretary employed language like wanting bin Laden ‘dead or alive’, challenging the enemy to ‘bring ’em on’ and presenting the president, apparently unawares, beneath a banner proclaiming ‘Mission Accomplished’ on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, when he announced an end to the conventional phase of the war in Iraq (1 May 2003). Although the president’s speech emphasized that America’s work in Iraq was far from done, the image of the banner, captured by the global media, did untold damage reflecting both a lack of awareness and a lack of control over events on the ground (Bush 2010: 140, 257, 261). Such sentiments had already been aroused by Rumsfeld’s slip under questioning about the perception of rampant looting in Iraq when he observed that ‘stuff happens’. Of the thousand words spoken at this press conference (11 April 2003) only two reverberated across the air waves, a blunder compounded subsequently by the failure of any senior official to take responsibility for the revelations of prisoner abuse from Abu Ghraib prison. These revelations, over which Rumsfeld twice proffered his resignation, became in his words a ‘metaphor’, symbolizing ‘the war many had come to oppose’ (Rumsfeld 2011: 476–7, 551).

Bush agreed that the administration had made strategic errors and alienated allies by its maladroit rhetoric, critical errors in Iraq, and reliance upon corrupt officials, notably President Karzai in Afghanistan (Bush 2010: 140, 211, 257, 259, 261–2). Yet both the inherent nature of the war on terror and the successes of the Bush administration counted against them, or at least seemed to minimize the significance of the war effort. As Rumsfeld (2006, 2011: 352–3) observed when he returned to the theme that this was a war like none other:

There’s no draft, there are no war bonds, no victory gardens. The movies don’t start with a newsreel showing the latest activities in the war… Newspapers don’t carry maps every day showing the latest allied activity. Because of the differences in this struggle, there’s not the same sense of immediacy as there was in other wars. It’s not, to many people, as personal…

This enemy is often located in countries with which we’re not at war… Because they cannot defeat our forces on the battlefield, they challenge us through non-traditional, asymmetric or irregular means…They have repeatedly proven to be highly successful at manipulating the world’s media…Because they lurk in the shadows without visible armies and are willing to wait long periods between attacks, there’s a tendency to underestimate the threat they pose.

Rumsfeld would claim, too, that the Bush administration had made it easier for critics to discount the danger of terrorism because it had succeeded in its prime strategic goal, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Whatever Happened to the War on Terror?
• 2 Ten Years of Britain’s War Against Al Qaeda
• 3 At War with Al Qaeda: France and International Terrorism, 2001–11
• 4 Russian Perspectives on the ‘War on Terrorism’ in the Decade since 9/11
• 5 ‘The Same Boat Under Wind and Rain’? China’s Anti-Terrorism Policies Since 9/11
• 6 Pakistan and the ‘War on Terror’
• 7 India’s Concerns and Responses to the ‘War on Terror’
• 8 NATO and 9/11 – Before, During and After
• 9 Rising to the Challenge? The State since 9/11
• 10 The Impact of 9/11 on the Use of Force in International Law: Ten Years On
• 11 The Economics of Terrorism and Conflict
• 12 The Media and Information Environments Ten Years After 9/11: Accidental Journalists and the New Information Landscape
• Conclusion
• Index