Lessons from 9/11: Extraordinary power does not guarantee security in today's world

Thursday, 9 September 2021

Smoke rises from the burning twin towers of the World Trade Center after hijacked planes crashed into the towers in New York City on September 11, 2001.

OPINION: If 9/11 revealed anything, it was that extraordinary national power could no longer guarantee security in an increasingly interconnected world.

On September 11, 2001, America, the most military-capable state in the world, was powerless to prevent attacks on its soil by a transnational terrorist group, al-Qaeda.

The massive military response to 9/11 by the George W. Bush leadership and subsequent administrations has significantly shaped the development of the world, and New Zealand’s place within it.

Despite this response, successive US administrations have struggled to adapt counterterrorism strategy to a globalising world, and violent extremism now threatens to engulf the US itself.

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US President George W. Bush aboard Air Force One on September 11, 2001, following the terrorist attacks.

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The Bush administration framed 9/11 as a transformative event that required an all-out ‘war on terror’. In a massive expansion of the US national security state, it toppled governments in Afghanistan and Iraq and embroiled the US in two major conflicts.

The Obama administration pursued an aggressive counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan and killed 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden in neighbouring Pakistan in 2011. Nevertheless, the multilateralist tilt of the Obama team failed to break the Taliban’s resistance. Obama also struggled with the Syrian civil war, and was confronted with the emergence of the Islamic State.

The Trump administration, determined to bring an end to America’s “endless wars”, signed a deal with the Taliban in February 2020 for the complete withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan by May 2021. Trump also placed a travel ban on terror-prone Muslim-majority states as part of a drive against “radical Islamic terrorism”.

Joe Biden and his team shifted strategy to include combating domestic extremists as well as fighting foreign terrorists. Nevertheless, they were shocked by the speed of the recent Taliban victory.

Failures across all four administrations have been linked to a sense of US exceptionalism – the conviction the US has a special destiny among nations – and a burgeoning military-industrial complex. The total cost to the US government of post-9/11 conflicts is now estimated to be in excess of US$8 trillion (NZ$11.3 trillion).

Professor Robert Patman is a specialist in International Relations at the University of Otago.

During the last two decades, the US has managed to prevent a repetition of the devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks, but Washington’s response to this event has had significant costs for itself and the world.

First, the post-9/11 era has witnessed a relative decline in US global dominance. China, a rising authoritarian superpower, and Russia, a recovering authoritarian regional power, have benefited from America’s military over-commitment and preoccupation with the threat of transnational terrorism.

Second, the US-led international rules-based order has been eroded. Events such as the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, the 2008/9 global financial crisis, and the Syrian civil war all helped to undermine the legitimacy of international institutions, and the ideas and norms of neo-liberal economics, democracy and international human rights.

The resulting backlash included the rise of Islamophobia, anger about growing inequality, the emergence of the Islamic State, the growth of national populism, increasing attacks on multilateralism, the weakening of international law, and the reinvigoration of great-power rivalry, particularly between the US and China.

New Zealand has inevitably been affected by these developments.

On the one hand, 9/11 served to reinvigorate US-NZ ties after a period of strained relations dating back to Wellington’s non-nuclear security policy of the mid-1980s.

Helen Clark’s Labour-led government reacted quickly to Bush’s ‘war on terror’ pledge by providing material assistance through the deployment of an SAS unit and a peace reconstruction team to Afghanistan. It started what would be a 20-year New Zealand commitment in Afghanistan and the beginning of a road that ultimately led to the restoration of the US-NZ alliance by 2012.

On the other hand, a key lesson of the post-9/11 era for New Zealand is that problems like terrorism, which do not respect borders, cannot be resolved exclusively by the US or any other great power.

It is now incumbent on New Zealand to actively work with other small and middle powers to strengthen the fraying international rules-based order, so that states can more effectively deal with threats by Islamist or white supremacist terrorists.

Robert G. Patman is a Sesquicentennial Distinguished Chair and a specialist in International Relations at the University of Otago.