Bob Beck's Foreign Policy Blog

Those of us who were of age on September 11, 2001 will never forget where we were or what we were doing when we learned of the terrorist attacks in New York city, Washington, D.C., and rural Pennsylvania. Al Qaida’s bloody introduction to the American public a quarter century ago was our generation’s Pearl Harbor, a once in a lifetime assault on our collective emotional security. As we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, it is instructive to analyze the long term negative effects of that horrendous event on U.S. foreign policy, which sadly endure to the present day.

President George W. Bush’s initial response to the attacks, which rightly focused on destroying Al Qaida’s safe haven in Afghanistan and bringing the organization’s commanders to justice, quickly expanded into a broader, more open-ended conflict, the consequences of which have defined our engagement with the world ever since. Before the mission was even close to complete against Osama bin Laden and his henchmen in their mountainous redoubt, Bush turned his attention to Saddam Hussien’s Iraq. That country, unarguably a thorn in America’s side in the Middle East for over a decade, was in no way a party to the 9/11 attacks, despite what some of the president’s senior advisors claimed. The Iraq war, which ran hot from 2003-2011, was the result.

Before dragging America back into the deserts of Mesopotamia, the junior Bush launched a “global war on terror” (GWOT) aimed at tracking down (mostly) Islamic extremists from Khartoum to Kandahar, Mosul to Mindanao, Sanaa to Sarajevo, Aleppo to Abbottabad, and beyond. Touting a muscular, militarized response to 9/11, President Bush succinctly described America’s new policy in a September 20, 2001 speech to Congress thusly; “”Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” 

What followed was effectively twenty years of non-stop war, pursued by presidents of both parties, in an ostensibly quixotic effort to wrap up all the world’s “bad guys” and, in the process, somehow strongarm disparate nations to jettison their historical and cultural pasts for the promise of American democracy. Over the course of those two decades, U.S. foreign policy became overly militarized, expending approximately eight trillion dollars on the war on terror. It should come as no surprise that the last U.S. balanced budget was at the end of the Clinton administration, just before 9/11. At the same time, critical U.S. embassies went without (and still do) Ambassadors for extended periods due to political squabbles in Washington. The Pentagon’s growing dominance in our overseas engagements represents a slippery slope to the geopolitical version of the saying “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

Notwithstanding the terrible material and human costs of the war on terror—Brown University’s “Cost of War Project” estimates that nearly one million were killed globally, including over 400,000 children, in the wider counter-terrorism efforts between 2001 and 2023—Washington’s preoccupation with the GWOT seriously diverted attention from our primary great power competitors who have, to put it mildly, run amuck in the interim. Although attributing causation in the international arena is not an exact science, Russia’s return to imperial aggression and China’s rapid emergence as a combative peer certainly benefited from America’s obsession with terrorism. 

With the bulk of the U.S. government’s foreign policy establishment working counter-terrorism, few were left minding the store on Russia and China. During the core period of the GWOT, from 2003-20015, Tsar Vladimir (I want to be) the great invaded Georgia (2008), occupied Crimea, and launched a separatist war in Ukraine’s Donbas region (both in 2014). In the same period, Beijing, under the leadership of Xi Jinping, introduced the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive economic development program which includes over 150 countries, resulting in the growth of Chinese influence across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. 

Meanwhile Washington’s propensity to sideline the diplomats and foreign policy experts and, instead, lead with B2 bombers has only intensified under the current administration. The “with us or against us” paradigm is plainly alive and well at the White House and Pentagon, calling into question the credibility of America’s most critical alliances. One need look no further than the current imbroglio in the Persian Gulf or the patently insensate threats to Canada and Greenland to understand the dangers of Washington’s post 9/11 proclivity for go-it-alone, lead with the military foreign adventures. 

The all muscles, few brains foreign policy has also seriously diminished one of the greatest strengths of America’s post-WWII international engagement: soft power. In the not-too-distant past we were still viewed by many as a beacon to the world, representing relatively stable democracy, economic opportunity, cultural and societal freedom, compassionate development aid, and reliability as an alliance partner. Although the current occupant of the White House has unquestionably done significant damage to our waning prestige across the globe, the decline has been gaining steam for years, starting with Bush junior’s fateful decision to invade Iraq in 2003. However one assigns the blame for the erosion of our global soft power accounts balance, the glow of Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on the hill” has dulled considerably.  

The long shadow of 9/11 has had an equally pernicious effect on American society writ large. “See something, say something,” a phrase that was introduced following the attacks, has morphed from its original objective to something more xenophobic. Our nation’s growing insularity is most obviously manifest in current immigration policies which have demonized entire segments of our population based on their “otherness.” What started in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 as a legitimate fear of Islamic extremists has grown to stereotype myriad other groups—Haitians, Somalis, Mexicans, etc.—as threats to “real” Americans, simply because of their country of origin. The Economist captured the contemporary mood cogently in a recent cover titled “The Unwelcoming States of America,”  

In closing, though America’s current trajectory towards a more distrusting, intolerant, and fearful society can not be totally pinned to the terrorist attacks from a quarter century ago, it seems obvious that 9/11 has had a long-term, deleterious impact on the United States. One might even imagine that Osama bin Laden, deep in his Arabian Sea grave, has the hint of a smug smile on his wretched face.

Note: This article was submitted to the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript and the Brattleboro Reformer on 6 September for consideration.