US Foreign Policy in the Wake of 11 September

Van Coufoudakis is dean of the School of Arts and Sciences and professor of political science at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.

The collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in the so-called New World Order, which consisted of a unipolar system with unchallenged American supremacy in the political, security and economic arenas.

However, in the absence of the Soviet threat, the United States found it difficult to define its national interest. Throughout the Cold War the Soviet threat had provided the framework for American foreign policy. Even though certain general principles emerged as the foundation of post–Cold War American policy, there was no global vision or unifying theme.

Globalisation, East European democratisation, the collapse of the socialist economic model, the technological and information revolution, the approval of the new charter of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) in 1999, the failure of the European Union to define a common defence and foreign policy—all these developments facilitated the American dominance of the post–Cold War international system. Democratisation, economic liberalisation, political reform and the rule of law became appealing foreign-policy themes. However, they failed to capture the imagination of the American public. Such themes were selectively applied and never provided the foundation of a new foreign policy.

The demise of the Soviet threat, and the fading of the threat of nuclear war, encouraged the United States to reduce military spending and overseas commitments, while the American public turned even more inward than in the past. The New World Order brought a re-evaluation of the role and mission of the American armed forces, which were recovering from the impact of Vietnam. Besides maintaining a level of forces designed to keep global peace and stability through deterrence and power projection, the American military was expected to deal with emerging threats from “rogue states” such as Iraq, North Korea and Iran, states that allegedly possessed or sought to develop weapons of mass destruction. “Rogue states” were also accused of supporting terrorism.

A Decade of Transition

The revival of nationalism in the Balkans and the break-up of multi-ethnic states created a new source of instability in the international system. Selective humanitarian interventions provided new policy challenges for the United States and Nato. The lessons of Vietnam guided the role and mission of the American armed forces in the post–Cold War era. Limited engagements, the use of high technology on the battlefield, operations of short duration and minimal American casualties became the basic guidelines of American military missions. The 1991 Gulf War was a classic example of this new outlook. However, new peacekeeping involvements, especially those in the Balkans, lacked an exit strategy, and their political goals evolved with each crisis. Despite Nato’s new charter, Washington continued to complain that the Europeans failed to carry their security burden. Washington encouraged the development of a European defence identity, as long as it was expressed through Nato and the United States was able to control its actions.

America’s ties with Russia and China also underwent a change as Washington sought a new comprehensive relationship with each of them. While welcoming liberalisation and economic change in Russia, Washington was troubled by the slow pace of reform and the high level of corruption. Russia’s independent actions in the transfer of weapons and high military technology to “rogue states”, its stance on Kosovo, Iran and Iraq, and its unwillingness to co-operate with the American nuclear agenda were also viewed with concern. By the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, “Russia fatigue” was evident in Washington. While Clinton believed that, by embracing the Russian reformers, progress could be made in bilateral relations, his successor as US president, George W. Bush, called for a more cautious and hardline approach to Moscow. However, both Clinton and Bush agreed that the greater threat to the United States was Russia’s weakness rather than its strength, and that Russia was not a strategic partner. Russia was excluded from Nato’s expansion, which extended the alliance to Russia’s doorstep.

The US attitude towards China was similar. China behaved cautiously at the international level, but acted as a regional superpower. Although Democrats and Republicans disagreed on the means by which Washington could influence progress on human rights and political liberalisation, the consensus was that China was neither a strategic partner nor a status quo power, given the unresolved issues of Taiwan, the South China Sea, and weapons and high-tech transfers to “rogue states” like Iran, and to other states such as Pakistan.

Finally, in the first post–Cold War decade, Washington enforced a double containment policy against Iran and Iraq. This policy has been questioned by most European states. With British support and occasional participation, the bombing and isolation of Iraq continue in the absence of an alternative American policy.

The rise of Balkan irredentism presented the United States with a major challenge, especially because Europe was reluctant to become involved and pursued objectives different from those of Washington. The United States considered itself the only power capable of deterring and preventing the expansion of hostilities and instability in the Balkans. Irredentist forces had little to lose in these conflicts. It was therefore harder to deal with such groups, not only in military terms but also in terms of American public opinion. Could such involvements be justified when the American public could see no direct threat to US interests? Washington addressed these problems as a question of human rights, the rule of law and the need for stability. It opted for the use of high-technology weapons to minimise American casualties and to bring hostilities to a quick end. The presence of coalition partners legitimised these actions.

Looking back at the first decade of the post–Cold War era, one may safely conclude that this was a period of transition for US foreign policy. The harsh Cold War rhetoric declined. The imminent threat of nuclear war dissipated. However, US policy never acquired an over-arching consistent theme that captured the imagination of American public opinion. Thus, US policy moved from problem to problem.

After 11 September

The events of 11 September and the American retaliatory response generated instant assessments that we had entered a new era in international politics. The “war on terrorism” has become Washington’s latest foreign-policy theme and priority. I will argue in this paper that US policy remains in a state of transition. Whether this transition will lead to a new era of international politics will be determined by the evolution of the war on terrorism. However, as Stephen Walt suggests in a recent article, 11 September marked the “most rapid and dramatic change in the history of U.S. foreign policy” and has reprioritised that policy.¹

In the last US presidential election, foreign policy did not play a significant role. The pre-electoral positions of both major parties were concerned more with domestic issues. However, international events did not wait for Washington to organise a new foreign- and security-policy team, or to define a new framework for US foreign policy. Early in his administration, President Bush faced the Russian spy scandal, the election of Ariel Sharon as Israel’s prime minister, the collapse of the Middle East peace process and the spy plane incident with China. Moreover, the events of 11 September proved that even a superpower is not in control of the international agenda, and that an asymmetrical threat from a minor actor like Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network can rewrite the terms of a superpower’s foreign, security and economic policy. The Bush administration had opposed state interventionism in the economy, and in security policy had given priority to missile defence. These priorities have all changed in view of the economic, technological and security consequences of the war on terrorism.

A new development resulting from the 11 September events is the sense of vulnerability among the American public, which until then had been spared such a catastrophe at home. An overly apathetic public has suddenly been sensitised to the global threat of terrorism, which has become the unanticipated focus of US policy.

President Bush’s mobilisational rhetoric has depicted the fight against terrorism as a “protracted war” resembling the Cold War. Unlike Kosovo or Desert Storm, this war will be potentially costly in human and material terms. It will be a conflict “without battlefields or beachheads”. It will be a “just war” which aims to destroy bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network. Early on, Bush’s domestic rhetoric utilised terms like “crusade” and “eternal justice”. Such terms were quickly discarded once it became apparent that they lacked cultural sensitivity in a region where Washington sought allies for its global war on terrorism.

Another unifying theme, echoed in London, was that 11 September was an “act of war” requiring the marshalling of economic, military and political resources. For the first time in its fifty-two-year history, Nato invoked Article 5 of its founding treaty, according to which an armed attack against any one Nato member is considered an attack against them all. This strengthened the “global” aspect of the new struggle, which relied on a coalition of allied states. Political analysts spoke of the “Bush dogma” in this war against terrorism, a dogma that insisted “you are either with us or against us”. This was a clear link to the past, as Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, had used the same dichotomous rhetoric at the height of the Cold War.

So far, Washington’s mobilisational rhetoric appears to be holding, as the war against terrorism is being carefully presented by a media that have become partners in the war effort. In the absence of American battlefield casualties, and with a people on edge because of rumoured and actual terrorist threats against the United States, Bush’s policies continue to enjoy public support. How long this support lasts depends on the outcome of the struggle in Afghanistan in the post-Taliban/post–bin Laden period and on the possible expansion of the war to other countries. The precedent of President Lyndon Johnson and the war in Vietnam following the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident should not be forgotten.

Policy Continuities

Before the 2000 US presidential election, Bush and his advisers had concluded that peacekeeping commitments weakened the deterrent capability of the American armed forces. Humanitarian peacekeeping could be carried out better by regional actors, such as Australia in the case of East Timor. The events of 11 September provided a new justification for reducing the American peacekeeping role in the Balkans.

The American response to 11 September had other links to past policies. During the Gulf War, George Bush Sr. also relied on a coalition to counter the charge of American unilateral action against an Arab state. The present coalition-building has helped clarify that the war against terrorism is neither a Huntingtonian “clash of civilisations” nor a campaign directed against Arabs or Islam.

Even though most coalition partners have served nominal, symbolic, or logistical functions, their participation has legitimised Washington’s global war against a global threat that claimed victims from eighty countries in the World Trade Center. The resolution adopted at the Asia-Pacific Economic Conference in October 2001was a good instance of this largely symbolic participation. While containing an explicit condemnation of terrorism, the resolution avoided any endorsement of the American-led actions in Afghanistan.

However, coalitions are not cost free. Unholy alliances limit US options. Even before 11 September, Prince Abdul Aziz al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, in a letter to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, warned the United States about the consequences for US-Saudi relations, and for the long term military co-operation between the two countries, of the United States’ ties to Israel.

Coalitions involve compromises on human rights. Weeks after 11 September, President and Mrs Bush spoke about the violations of women’s rights in Afghanistan. Yet before 11 September they failed to evince any such concern, and have since said nothing about similar violations of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. (These violations are fully documented in reports by human rights organisations and even by the US Department of State’s Annual Report on Human Rights Practices.) Moreover, coalition partners like Turkey, Egypt and Israel have justified their human rights abuses in the context of America’s war against terrorism. The same is true of countries such as Russia and China. All used 11 September to advance their own interests and to deflect international criticism of their human rights abuses on the grounds of fighting terrorism. This was the case with Turkey and its treatment of the Kurds; Egypt and its handling of the Islamic and other opposition to President Hosni Mubarak; the Sharon government and its policy towards the Palestinians; Russia and its campaign against the Chechen separatists; and China and its dealings with its Muslim minority.

Another coalition “cost” for the United States concerns the scope of the war on terrorism. President Bush, up to his State of the Union address on 29 January 2002, was careful with his rhetoric about expanding the war to countries other than Afghanistan. Fragile coalitions, with Arab states in particular, would collapse if the war on terrorism expanded to include among its targets countries like Iraq, Syria, or Libya, as former CIA head James Wolsey, Assistant Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger have advocated.

Finally, coalition partners have their own agendas that often differ from Washington’s. The chief instance is Pakistan. New York Times journalist Tom Friedman perceptively concluded that while the United States is fighting bin Laden and Afghanistan via Pakistan, the Pakistanis are fighting India via Afghanistan and the United States. In addition, Pakistan’s dictatorship has been legitimised by Washington’s post–11 September policies, US sanctions imposed in response to Islamabad’s 1998 nuclear tests have been lifted and Pakistan has been granted $1 billion in American assistance.

The evolution of American policy since 11 September reveals other elements of continuity. First, Washington has made many compromises to gain short-term coalition support. There is no apparent concern about future consequences. The phenomenon known as “blowback” is not new. The United States supported Saddam Hussein against Iran; used the narco-terrorists of the Kosovo Liberation Army to topple Slobodan Milosevic; and trained the Taliban and other Afghan groups to fight the Russians. The separate agendas of each of these groups and individuals later came back to haunt Washington. Second, there is the demonising element in US foreign policy. Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network threaten American interests. Bin Laden has now joined a long line of demons that has included Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, Manuel Noriega and Milosevic. However, demons do not operate in a vacuum. Eliminating these individuals and their organisations, without addressing the causes that created them, will not solve the problem of terrorism. Third, national emergencies have led to violations of civil liberties at home. Under the impact of terrorism and with public support, Congress has adopted anti-terrorist legislation granting the president extensive authority, and the president has interpreted his authority in a broad manner that we may come to regret later on. The precedents of the First and Second World Wars and the communist scare of the early Cold War period are instructive examples.

What Next?

This paper has argued that there is inadequate evidence to suggest that 11 September has ushered in a new era in international politics. What we do have, however, is a clear case of a sudden change in the policy priorities of the United States. Thus, the war on terrorism is an evolving policy with no clear direction and whose ultimate objective has yet to be defined beyond the sweeping generalisations used by Washington insiders. Kissinger defined the goal of the war to be that of breaking “the nexus between governments and terrorist groups they support or tolerate”.²

This appears to be the view of other hardliners within the Bush administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, and Assistant Secretary of Defence Wolfowitz. In view of the president’s State of the Union address in January, during which he spoke of an “axis of evil” involving Iran, Iraq and North Korea, it appears that for the time being the hardliners are carrying the day and that moderates, like Secretary of State Powell, may have been sidelined.

The events of 11 September forced Washington and American public opinion to re-examine what Stephen Walt describes as the post–Cold War hubris of “dominance without cost”.³ The success of phase one of the war in Afghanistan at minimal cost in American lives, along with continuous leaks about new terrorist threats against the United States, have given the president unprecedented levels of public support—this despite the recession, the Enron scandal and the return of budgetary deficits after the budgetary surpluses of the Clinton era.

Four points are likely to determine US policy and resolve the question of whether we have entered a new era in international politics or whether Washington is only addressing a long-neglected problem area. First, we need to consider not only the outcome of US policy in the war in Afghanistan, but even more importantly whether Washington and its coalition partners can agree on how to confront all forms of terrorism as well as the causes of terrorism. Second, there is the question of post-Taliban Afghanistan. Will the situation there result in a new civil war? Will it result in the partition of Afghanistan? Is there an exit strategy for the United States and its coalition partners? What will be the impact of some of these scenarios on neighbouring states, especially Pakistan? Third, will the American public continue to support President Bush’s policies if the war on terrorism expands beyond Afghanistan? Will the coalition partners accept the expansion of this war? Fourth, what will be the impact of this newly found co-operation on the United States’ long-term relations with China and Russia? Fighting terrorism may prove to be only a temporary and superficial foundation on which to try and build relations.

These four points are important indicators of how future American policy may evolve. Washington has come under increasing scrutiny and criticism by human rights organisations and its own allies over the treatment and classification of captives currently incarcerated at the Guantanamo base in Cuba. The issue of the applicability of the Geneva Conventions appears to have divided not only Washington and its European allies, but the Bush administration itself.

Coalition Durability

Washington continues to praise the support it has received from its coalition partners. But this may be an exaggeration of how widespread coalition support actually is. Earlier in this essay I argued that each of the allies may have its own motives for the support it has extended to the United States. Some of this support may be in anticipation of material and political gain, or may even reflect the need not to be on Washington’s bad side at this time, given President Bush’s “you are with us or against us” attitude. Over the long term, however, will Russia and China tolerate a permanent American military presence in Central Asia? Will the Europeans support the expansion of the war to North Korea or Iran?

Increasingly, European allies have been voicing concern over, and muted criticism of, Washington’s unilateral policies. The grievance list includes pressures for Nato expansion, the exclusion of Russia, the bombing of Kosovo and the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Others link US policies in Afghanistan and Central Asia to a “strategic power grab in Central Asia of epic proportions”⁴ that is motivated by energy needs and interests. Consequently, Washington should not expect that the open-ended support it has received from Nato allies and coalition partners will last. The real test will be how Washington translates into policy President Bush’s State of the Union rhetorical pyrotechnics about Iran, Iraq and North Korea. If the president adopts the hardline advice offered by Kissinger and Rumsfeld, namely, that he should use the current consensus to put an end to the geopolitical threat posed by Saddam Hussein and to send a message to other “rogue states”, European and Arab support and the toleration of China and Russia may quickly dissipate. Support for the war on terrorism does not translate into a blank cheque to settle American grievances elsewhere. Washington and its European allies already disagree on the double containment policy against Iran and Iraq, and such disagreements are likely to grow if Iran and Iraq become convenient targets even though their actions cannot be related directly to the war on terrorism.

The events of 11 September brought the United States into uncharted waters. Undoubtedly, the United States has entered a new era of insecurity at home and abroad. However, vulnerability is neither a substantive nor a coherent theme for a new American foreign policy, nor is it a unifying theme on which to base long-term co-operation among diverse societies. The threat of terrorism must not be underestimated, but the fact is that American foreign policy remains in transition, still looking for a unifying theme a decade after the end of the Cold War.

Endnotes

1. Stephen Walt, “Beyond Bin Laden: Reshaping US Foreign Policy”, International Security 26, no. 3 (winter 2001–2), p. 56.

2. Washington Post, 13 January 2002.

3. Walt, “Beyond Bin Laden”, p. 58.

4. Simon Tisdall, “Reaching the Parts Other Empires Could Not Reach”, Guardian (London), 16 January 2002.