In the next pages, NEWSWEEK details the horrors of a late-summer day that showed how small our world has become. But what of America’s place in it? The experts predicted that September 11, like Pearl Harbor, would be a watershed, forcing the United States to rethink its role on the world stage. Peres envisioned a red-white-and-blue globocop. Other internationalists said the attacks would end America’s post-cold-war insularity, increasing sensitivity to far-off places and events. As the battle was joined for the hearts and minds of those resentful of U.S. dominance, a new weight would be given to “soft” foreign-policy issues: poverty, AIDS, Third World debt. None of that has happened. So far, there has been no realignment on soft foreign-policy issues, no change in funding priorities toward development and no reassessment of American methods and goals abroad. In fact, it seems that the governing principle of American foreign policy over the next year will be the security of Americans. Washington will seek to engage other capitals when it can further that aim–but not to craft a 21st-century Pax Americana.
That’s a mistake. Armies alone will not keep us secure in an insecure world. We’ll also need a broader, better understanding of how our policies affect other nations and peoples. The real politik of this new world order will demand nothing less. America’s future relationship with the world, says John Tusa, a BBC veteran, will depend on whether “it can be cajoled into taking a real international view, one that may not be the most convenient for [it].” Adds Victor Bulmer-Thomas, director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London, “The rest of the world will be watching.”
A world whose post-9-11 sympathy for the United States is already waning: Europeans now scoff at comparisons between the new era of American insecurity and the Blitz or the terrorist attacks that rocked Europe in the 1970s and ’80s. In the past few weeks the Bush administration has further spent international capital by reasserting its unilateralist bent (abandoning the antiballistic-missile treaty, establishing secret military tribunals for foreigners and vetoing efforts to send U.N. observers to Israel). In the wake of rapid progress in Afghanistan, concern is growing that in 2002 the United States will not re-examine its own actions, but–fearful and strong–rededicate itself to going it alone. In response, even in Britain, says Bulmer-Thomas, “we may see [anti-American] activism increase.”
Certainly, on the U.S. home front some things have changed. Americans watch and read more international news. The fashionable and the fabulous, like glitzy magazine editor Tina Brown, now attend policy debates at the stodgy Council on Foreign Relations. Fear of a hostile world–fed by almost monthly government warnings of possible terrorist attacks–has led to a whittling away of civil liberties considered inviolate four months ago. And public support for increased military spending has risen to levels not seen in 30 years. Nearly three quarters of U.S. women with children at home favor the deployment of a missile defense shield.
Many of the changes since 9-11 have actually damaged America’s image overseas. After the unifying sense of pride in the wake of the attacks, even many Americans were embarrassed by some of the excesses that followed. Critics, usually cautiously, decried secret military tribunals and racial profiling of Arab-Americans by police and intelligence services, as well as authorities’ widely expanded powers to spy on U.S. citizens. Not to mention an overweening message from some officials that to question or disagree with the government was unpatriotic. It didn’t help America’s image when the administration urged Americans to fight terrorism and the recession by going shopping. After Pearl Harbor, Americans girded for war and self-privation; now they gird for Christmas.
Every day, thankfully in many ways, Americans get closer to the way they lived before September 11. The television news programs once again feature sensational true-crime tales and lighthearted filler about animals and weather. The Friday before Christmas the venerable New York Times didn’t have a front-page story on Afghanistan for the first time since the war began. Speaking of New York, New Yorkers are once again being rude to one another. And everywhere, concerns about a weakening economy and increasing job loss are replacing talk of bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Consequently, much of President George W. Bush’s inner circle is pressing him to turn his attention to the economy lest he end up like his father–who won the Persian Gulf War, but lost his bid for re-election.
None of this bodes well for smoother relations with the world. After the attacks, the administration did seem to rethink its foreign-policy priorities. It took its time deliberating how to strike back at bin Laden; it consulted other nations. It paid most of America’s outstanding U.N. dues, lifted sanctions on Pakistan and some on Sudan and accelerated behind-the-scenes work on a rapprochement with Iran. Bush said the United States believed there would eventually be a “Palestinian state,” returning Washington to the position of Mideast middleman.
A new sense of cooperation with Russia and China led some observers to assert that Bush was reviving an international order built around Great Powers. But U.S. foreign policy post-9-11 was not aimed at repositioning the nation on the world stage–or even about U.S. interests in a new world order. It was about calling in diplomatic “chits,” as one U.S. official put it, to meet the immediate goal of containing terrorism. Even the war in Afghanistan was a continuation of Washington’s modus operandi: “The United States built a coalition [not] to be multilateral,” says John Chipman, director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, but to “lead others in a campaign that was American.”
Looking at the world solely through the military prism is dangerous. “It’s a Manichaean view that there are forces that are for and against the U.S.,” says Rifaat Hussain, an analyst at Islamabad’s Quaid-I-Azam University. During the cold war, America supported allies that oppressed their people but backed its policies. In an increasingly complicated world, such behavior could hurt U.S. interests. “In the long run,” says Anthony Lake, national-security adviser under Bill Clinton, “it is self-defeating to be complicit in perpetuating systems that are closed… People turn naturally to religion for expression of resentments because they cannot express themselves politically.” And America pays the price.
Administration supporters respond that all governments put the urgent before the important, and these are early days. They point out that it took years for the postwar paradigm of American foreign policy to take shape–a series of incremental reactions to everything from the Greek civil war to the Berlin blockade. “The policy of containment didn’t spring full blown,” says Michael Armacost, president of the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former U.S. under secretary of State. “It would be expecting a lot for a paradigm shift in a matter of weeks.”
But some in Washington say it must come urgently. Sen. Charles Hagel, a Nebraska Republican and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, believes the administration must oversee a historic shift in how American foreign policy is made: “We have disconnected international relations and national security… What we are going to have to do–and have never done before–is bring under this vast framework of international relations [the] cause-and-effect dynamic of the world order.” There is a developing sensibility in Washington, as Hagel puts it, that “making a more just world” is not just moral, but in America’s self-interest. But it has to be translated into policy–and administration officials aren’t sure whether or how to do it.
In the coming year there will be many opportunities for the White House to craft a new world order and show that the United States is a determined, yet humble, world leader. A few:
America must be seen as committed to engaging the world, but not bent on dominating it. American resistance to everything from Kyoto to an International Criminal Court should be reexamined and, at the least, alternative multilateral agreements proposed. That will not be easy. Domestic politics, for one, may get in the way–just as resistance to abortion rights and widespread support of the death penalty will continue to roil America’s relations with Europe.
In addition, the recession in the United States makes it less likely that Americans will commit billions for development, public diplomacy and aid. Despite calls by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet, there will be no Powell Plan on a par with the Marshall Plan to rebuild weak states any time soon. And there’s no guarantee that such a plan would make a difference. Egypt, for example, “is not noticeably freer than 30 to 40 years ago,” says Armacost–even though “it has one of the largest Agency for International Development missions in the world.”
Still, Washington must look at its strategic goals and methods anew. “Unless we have some vision here about where we want to go as leaders of the world, there’s very little hope we will in fact be able to make this a more just world,” says Hagel. “I have not seen that vision from [the administration] yet.” But winning over public opinion is as important as winning wars–and as vital to U.S. interests in a more interconnected world. “[The United States] cannot fight this threat alone. It can’t hide behind fortress America,” says Pakistani analyst Rifaat Hussain. “To get cooperation, the U.S. will have to rethink how it relates to and treats other countries.” The war on terror, to be successful, must lead to a lot of other changes.
