9/11 and US Foreign Policy

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Laura Weiderhaft International Relations Seminar Paper Draft 28 October 2011

The Implications of 9/11 in U.S. Foreign Policy

To what degree the foreign policy decisions of the United States have been shaped by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 is a compelling question. Undeniably, what transpired on September 11th has been a monumental influence on the evolving organism that is the United States. The sense of invulnerability enjoyed by the United States and its citizens in the 1990s—built by both the agreeable global environment in which the United States exercised a clear hegemony and by economic prosperity—collapsed alongside the two towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11. The replacement of invulnerability with anxiety about the apparent threat of terrorism has led to significant changes in American public opinion, inspired structural changes in the U.S. bureaucracy, and altered the way in which the United States participates in the international community.

In order to comprehend the far reaching ramifications that these terrorist attacks have had on the United States, we must go beyond observing the foreign policy decisions that the United States has made in the years since 9/11 and understand the psychology behind the reaction of both American citizens and the United States as an international actor to the threat of terrorism. While the United States considered counter-terrorism in its foreign policy decisions well before the terrorist attacks of September 11th, counter-

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terrorism now enjoys a centripetal presence in U.S. foreign policy decisions because of the psychological consequences of 9/11. Interactions with the international community are now processed through the lens of diverting the risk of terrorism and the United States has employed clear antiterrorist rhetoric and established new branches of government like the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration that combat the threat of violent attacks. Although the rhetoric and the policy decisions of the United States government have shifted in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, the underlying motivations that drive U.S. foreign policy decisions remain as they were prior to 9/11.

A PSYCHOLOGY OF REACTION Considering the nature of terrorism, the response by the United States and its citizens to the attacks of September 11th is not surprising. According to psychologist Lawrence Zelis Freedman, terrorism is defined as “the use of violence when its most important result is not the physical and mental damage of the direct victims but the psychological effect produced on someone else” (“Terrorism: Problems of the Polistaraxic”). The word terrorism itself implies a capitalization of “the human capacity to experience terror” (Pyszczynski, Solomon, and Greenberg 8). Groups and individuals that elect terrorism as a method of attaining political goals are well aware of the response that their violent activities elicit from the general public and states alike. Because of the strong responses that acts of terrorism generate, terrorism is entertained by political minorities as

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a method of bringing attention to their causes and as a method to induce states to act in a way that supports their goals. A terrorist might act to “provoke a brutal police repression that he believes will lead to political conditions propitious to revolutionary agitation and organization aimed at overthrowing government” or to provoke a government to “embrace draconian measures that damage [it’s] economy” (“The Strategy of Terrorism” and “Recalibrating Homeland Security”). It is these kinds of responses, rather than violence for the sake of violence, that are the ultimate goals of terrorists.

Terrorism is so effective because it exploits the American fascination with the extreme, the violent, and the pornographic by employing the theatricality and appeal to emotion that is inherent in the types of attacks that terrorists execute. The U.S. population is almost constantly exposed to media and entertainment that is riddled with violent and powerful imagery, and coverage of terrorism fits in seamlessly with the type of media that Americans are wont to consume. The strong responses that follow acts of terrorism and the publicity devoted to terrorism feed off one another. Media coverage of terrorism allows the powerful images that accompany acts of terrorism to be broadcast around the globe. Consequently, the reaction to these images can be experienced by a potentially infinite audience. Terrorism and the reaction to terrorism are codependent. Without the guarantee of a significant reaction a terrorist would have no interest in committing an act of violence, since it is the reaction that facilitates the terrorist’s purpose. Media coverage fuels terrorism by guaranteeing a significant reaction. It is the fact that “terrorism is rewarded by the virtual certainty of widespread publicity” that motivates terrorists to

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commit acts of violence and it is a result of the publicity that terrorism receives that such acts impact the public psyche so substantially (“Dialectic Interrelationships”).

As Al Qaeda, the terrorist organization behind the attacks of September 11th, intended, the psychological effect that the attacks of 9/11 have had on the American public is immense. A litany of dangers exist that pose a far greater threat to American lives than terrorism, but these dangers lack the intensity and appeal to emotion that makes acts of terrorism so memorable and so capable of inspiring outrage. Although it is more likely that an individual American would get struck by lightning than die as a result of terrorist violence, the media attention devoted to 9/11 and the inherently enduring nature of terrorist attacks have created an anxiety about terrorism among the American public. We have a “biological predisposition toward self-preservation” that drives our decisions and encourages risk-aversion and fear of death, and it is this predisposition that fueled the anxiety caused by the terrorist attacks of September 11th (Pyszczynski, Solomon, and Greenberg 13). This anxiety is an inevitable response to the threat of arbitrary, senseless acts of violence that are the lifeblood of terrorism. Our own human nature, developed from our ancestors’ competition to survive and reproduce, compels us to control our environment to ensure our survival. The nature of terrorist violence undermines our attempts to control the factors that pose a threat to our lives—a terrorist will target anyone, as long as they will be able to get their message across. Since terrorists employ violence capriciously, it is difficult for us to control our environment in a way that ensures terrorism will not be a threat to our lives.

It may be true that an individual American has about the same chance of being killed by international terrorism as being killed by a comet or meteor—about one in

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80,000—but terrorist attacks fit the profile of the kinds of threats that humans, by nature, have a need to control in a way that meteor strikes do not (“The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy”). Acts of terrorism, although they do not target specific individuals, do target specific entities, ideologies, or causes. In the case of the attacks of September 11th, Al Qaeda targeted both Americans and Western culture as a whole. The intent to threaten Americans and Western culture that lay behind the attacks on 9/11 posed a definite risk to both individuals and Americans as a group. September 11th also generated fears that the terrorists who planned and executed the attacks on September 11th or terrorists with similar anti-American inclinations could gain access to “highly destructive nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons” (“America’s Imperial Ambition”). If these terrorists were to use these weapons against the United States, the results would be catastrophic. Americans immediately identified the possibility that further acts of terrorism could mean a death of the society to which they belong and could even mean the death of themselves. The anxiety felt by individual Americans as a result of the identification of the risk that terrorism posed to their mortality and identity extends to Americans as a group. Although groups cannot “die” in the same way that individuals can, they are still motivated by selfpreservation. A group has values, customs, histories, and other common denominators that give rise to its identity as a group. A loss of these common denominators would be akin to “death”—the premises upon which the group had based its existence would be destroyed. Terrorism, especially given the potential of nuclear capabilities, has the potential to be devastating enough to threaten the common denominators that characterize Americans as a group.

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While all motivation may not be derived from the fear of death, it is safe to say that averting the imminence of death is one of the primary motivators of our behavior. The terrorist attacks of September 11th brought attention to both the possibility of unpredictable death and the vulnerability of the United States to unpredictable and potentially catastrophic attacks. With the invulnerability of the United States a distant memory, terrorism and national security have moved to the forefront of public interest.

The

destabilizing potential of further terrorist attacks after 9/11 has put the societal framework in which Americans are raised in jeopardy. Americans identify terrorism as a legitimate risk to their well-being and survival, and “as people become aware of new… risks, society and politics change [and] new modes of reflexive thinking emerge that aim to continuously identify potential risk and intervene in time to avert disastrous consequences” (“Risk Management and International Relations”). Inspired by the threat of terrorism, Americans reconsidered their values. Before 9/11, Americans “generally disapproved of extensive efforts at domestic security” and preferred to “enjoy the full extent of their accustomed freedoms” (“America the Vulnerable”). With the anxieties that became a constant in the days, weeks, and years following September 11th, national security replaced these “accustomed freedoms” as a priority for Americans and for the United States itself.

The Darwinian urge for self-preservation that applies to the human organism also applies to the organism of the state. The state is an organism that responds to incentives in the same way that any living organism would. As with humans, one of the primary motivators of state behavior is aversion to “death.” For the United States, “death” of the state could be interpreted in many ways.

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After 9/11, the possibility of further terrorist attack on U.S. soil, especially given that terrorists could eventually have access to weapons of mass destruction, led the United States to perceive a threat to its infrastructure, economy, and population. These three factors make up much of what comprises a state, at least on a superficial level. If the possibility even exists that anti-American terrorists could obtain the capability to stage a massively destructive attack on U.S. soil, the United States, as a death-averse organism, is forced to respond to this perceived risk.

The United States, in order to remain a legitimate state must uphold its responsibilities as a state. The United States government, as it was intended by the Constitution, is bound by the Social Contract. In exchange for the right to exercise sovereignty over its territory, the United States must provide certain guarantees to its citizens. One of the guarantees that the United States must uphold is providing American citizens with protection from unreasonable harm. The United States is obligated to protect its citizens from potential serious threats to public safety (like the threat posed by terrorists with access to weapons of mass destruction) if it wants to protect its legitimacy as a state.

Since the government of the United States is a republic, it must also answer to public opinion if it intends to remain a legitimate state. After the terrorist attacks of September 11th, American citizens considered issues of national security to be a top priority. A policy direction opposed to public opinion would result in the “death” of the reelection prospects of the regime in power but also the “death” of the United States legitimacy as a state.

As a rational organism, the United States has an aversion to these types of “deaths” that can befall a state. The United States is not only averse to physical destruction and “death” of state legitimacy. The United States is also averse to a reduction in its status as

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the single leading world power. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has operated comfortably at the top of the hierarchy of states. The world order since the fall of the Soviet Union has been unipolar and stable, with the United States a dominant force economically, militarily, and politically.

Terrorism’s nature as a destabilizing force

threatens the world order in which the United States exercises a clear hegemony. The United States in the years prior to 9/11 pursued policy that would result in the establishment and preservation of hegemonic power. The threat of terrorism that exists in the post 9/11 international environment encourages the United States to more urgently pursue policy that ensures the preservation of its hegemony.

The foreign policy decisions of the United States following 9/11 were largely responses to these threats to the United States. The U.S. aversion to death ultimately amounts to a loss of power. If the United States undergoes physical destruction, loses its legitimacy as a state, or sees a reduction in its international influence, it will be far less powerful than it is today. The policies adopted by the United States following September 11th result from an underlying motivation to preserve the world order as it was before the attacks and preserve the United States’ dominant role in that world order. This assertion is not particularly innovative but it explains the behavior of the United States after 9/11 well.

THE U.S. RESPONSE TO A NEW THREAT If one considers the motivation of self-preservation, much of the behavior of the United States in the years following the terrorist attacks of September 11th can be

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elucidated. The United States government, after the attacks of September 11th, was forced to consider the possibility that terrorists could harbor weapons of mass destruction and use them against the United States. In order to preserve itself as a state and preserve the nature of the international environment in which it operates, the United States altered its grand strategy to combat the new threats that presented themselves to the world on the morning on September 11th, 2001.

Because of shifting public opinion and an urgent need to protect itself from further terroristic violence, the United States quickly made national security and counterterrorism a top priority both in domestic policy and foreign policy. The proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons allows for a new “apocalyptic character of contemporary terrorist threats” to which the United States is obligated to react because of its aversion to destruction, its responsibility to the American public, and its responsibility as the dominant global military power (“America’s Imperial Ambition”). Since terrorists commit violent atrocities “to advance a political, social, or bureaucratic agenda” and not for the purpose of destruction itself, an effective counterterrorism strategy is to deprive terrorists of the reaction that they are trying to provoke with their violence (“Facing the New Terrorism”). But “as technology increases, the range and magnitude of horrible possibilities also increase” making the threat of terrorism high and the cost of government inaction even higher (“Risk Management and International Relations”). Inaction when the perceived threat of terrorism is high would be considered by the public at large to be a miscalculation on the part of the United States government. The ever-present possibility of a destructive terrorist attack prevents the United States from pursuing an inactive approach to counterterrorism.

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In order to combat the destructive potential of terrorists, the United States has primarily conducted counterterrorism with new security, intelligence, and military measures. The security and military decisions made by the United States post 9/11 are aligned with its self-interests. The United States stands to gain power if it uses military power to assert itself internationally. Additionally, the United States’ spending on military and national defense has outpaced every other state in the world since the warming of the Cold War by orders of magnitude. Using the military to combat a perceived serious threat to security is an acceptable way to justify those expenses and further expenses on its military. In light of the potential terrorist threat, the United States government has spared no expense to preserve itself and its place in the international order, appropriating “tens of billions trying to protect against every conceivable kind of attack, no matter the scale or likelihood” (“Risk Management and International Relations”) In its expansion of military capability, the United States is taking an aggressive approach to pursuing its self interests of diverting the risk of destruction and ensuring its hegemony is preserved. The United States has taken further aggressive approaches in its changes to both domestic policy and foreign policy in its pursuit to impede terrorist capabilities and reduce the threat of terroristic violence.

The structure of the U.S. government was altered as a part of the United States’ counterterrorism policy. The Bush administration created the Department of Homeland Security in 2002, to “develop and coordinate the implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks” (“National Strategy for Homeland Security”). The Department of Homeland Security’s pursuit of improved national security at the expense of civil liberties is indicative of the entirety of

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U.S. domestic policy response to terrorist threat. The institution of the Transportation Security Administration has led to significant privacy infringements for U.S. citizens and visitors to the United States who travel by air. The enactment of the Patriot Act “dramatically reduced restrictions on law enforcement agencies” including their ability to search “telephone, email-communications, medial, financial, and other records” and their discretion to detain immigrants “suspected of terrorism related acts” (“The USA Patriot Act”). With this legislation we see the United States government abandoning citizens’ and immigrants’ rights to privacy and rights of habeas corpus in pursuit of increased domestic security. The establishment of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is corroborating evidence for the security-based U.S. policy direction after September 11th. The use of torture and the suspension of the rights of habeas corpus in the Guantanamo Bay facility suggest that the United States not only favored national security and a pursuit of selfinterest over the rights and interests of its citizens, but engaged in morally reprehensible behavior in pursuit of stronger national security. Ultimately, the United States determined that national security was its priority given the potentially great threat of terrorist violence, pursuing its national security and military interests at the expense of several freedoms of its citizens.

As with domestic policy, in the last decade the United States has made counterterrorism and security its top priority in its foreign policy decisions. The United States has adopted a policy of preemption to combat the threat of terrorism. Because terrorist groups are small, operate in a multitude of locations, and remain largely under the radar, deterring terrorist attacks is nearly impossible. As a result, the United States “must be prepared to intervene anywhere, at any time to preemptively destroy a threat,” even if

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that means infringing on another state’s sovereignty (“America’s Imperial Ambition”).

Because the threat of terrorism is perceived to be so great, the United States, if it is to pursue its self-interest, cannot afford to respect the borders of states that do not cooperate in preemptive counterterrorism measures. If any governments harbor terrorists or do not cooperate with the United States in deterring or preempting acts of terrorism, they “effectively forfeit their rights of sovereignty” (“America’s Imperial Ambition”). This policy suggests that the United States will act unilaterally, if it must, against the threat of terrorism. Assassinations that target the leadership of terrorist groups are now commonplace. Acting unilaterally, the United States has staged attacks on the leadership of Al Qaeda, successfully assassinating several of the strongest members of Al Qaeda. In the last decade, the United States has been less inclined to pursue international agreements, sign treaties, and abide by international rules. If the costs of a terrorist action against the United States is high, the United States, acting in its self-interest, has no choice but to dismiss “multilateral norms and agreements that sanction and limit the use of force” and the Bush administration’s repudiation of a remarkable array of treaties and institutions – from the Kyoto Protocol on global warming to the International Criminal Court to the Biological Weapons Convention – reflects this new bias.” (“America’s Imperial Ambition”). U.S. foreign policy in the last decade has clearly been defined by a policy of acting unilaterally, particularly in the realm of military and security action. The Bush administration’s role in this paradigm of foreign policy in the post 9/11 world, has led this foreign policy direction to be termed “the Bush doctrine.”

Although the United States uses counterterrorism as a justification for its decisions in the last decade, if one looks at the entire spectrum of U.S. foreign policy decisions since

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9/11, it appears that U.S. policy decisions are constituted by a broader interest in maintaining hegemonic power in the international environment and using military dominance to administer order in and combat threats to this international environment.

This suggests that the United States has an intuition about the changing nature of the world order and its progression away from the unipolarity that defined it for the last 20 or more years. With rising economic powers, the United States is pushing to maintain its hegemony by flexing its unrivaled military capabilities. For the United States, the push to keep the United States as it currently exists alive and the push to preserve hegemonic power is the driving force behind U.S. self interest, and arguably the driving force in most U.S. foreign policy decisions.

SELF-PRESERVATION AS A PERVADING THEME Although the United States made many changes in its domestic and foreign policy decisions to combat the threat of terrorism, the motivations that underlie the behavior of the United States since 9/11 are no different than the motivations that underlied previous policy doctrines. Since the dawn of the Cold War, the United States’ domestic and foreign policy decisions have been driven by a self-preservation motivation.

The United States during the Cold War focused its foreign policy on maintaining the balance of power and offsetting the influence of the Soviet Union and working to prevent the spread of communism. After World War II, the United States saw the rise of communism and the growing power of the Soviet Union as serious threat to U.S. power

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and acted aggressively against communism, funding terrorist organizations and violent revolutionaries. There is evidence that the CIA funded and helped train terrorist organizations in Europe to prevent the rise of communism in Western Europe (Secret Warfare). The “stay-behind” armies that were trained and funded by the CIA committed acts of terrorism as a part of “the strategy of tension” that would destabilize leftist parties and keep Western European communist parties out of power. In Italy, these “stay-behind” armies were involved in a series of bombings that were initially attributed to leftist extremists (Secret Warfare). The United States also sponsored revolutionaries in Latin America who used violence to achieve political ends. When it was congruent with U.S. self-interest, the United States had no qualms sponsoring terrorist organizations or violent revolutionaries trying to overthrow democratic regimes. The United States also has a history of supporting undemocratic and often corrupt regimes if there is an economic, military, or political interest in supporting the leadership of those states.

The United States now pursues policy that is aggressive against acts of terrorism and terrorist organizations, but in the past the United States has been untroubled by terrorism and even supportive of violent revolutionaries and terrorist organizations. This indicates that the United States’ current push to combat terrorism with military force, preemption, assassination, and the pursuit of national security at the expense of civil liberties reflects a current trend in self-preservation rather than a reaction to terrorist threat and a protection of the American public from the threat of attack. Combating terrorism globally is unrealistic, and this is a fact of which the United States is likely well aware.

The United States is not conducting a war on terror, it is conducting a “war on threats to American power” (“Risk Management and International Relations”). President Bush’s

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rhetoric about the war on terror supports this claim. Bush’s quote “you’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists” reads a lot like “If you don’t support American hegemony, we will wage war with you.” With the rise of economic powers that could potentially overtake the United States in terms of economic influence, the United States is focusing on foreign policy that emphasizes an area in which it has an indisputable advantage—military power.

U.S. foreign policy decisions in the 1990s also corroborate the argument that the United States has been motivated by self-preservation since the beginning of the Cold War. The United States, during this time, emphasized alliance and partnership among states “built around common values, tradition, mutual self-interest, and the preservation of stability” (“America’s Imperial Ambition”). The U.S. pursued trade, growth, integration, and political stability in a way that would allow the international environment to remain favorable to U.S. hegemony. During the 1990’s the U.S. economy was flourishing and spending on military far exceeded spending by other countries. Cooperation, security partnerships, and trade only helped the United States get further ahead and allowed the United States to not only preserve its hegemony, but build upon it and solidify it.

THE UNITED STATES’ PLACE IN THE CHANGING ENVIRONMENT In many ways the United States’ reaction to the attacks of September 11th is much like the response that a terrorist hopes to receive with his violent actions. If a terrorist hopes to provoke a military or police crackdown that will create a rift between government

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and the public at large, then it could be argued that Al Qaeda was moderately successful in achieving this goal. The preference of national security over civil liberties, the pursuit of defense policies that are economically unsustainable, and prolonged engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to abysmally low approval ratings for both President Obama and Congress. Protests against an uneven distribution of wealth in the United States indicate discontent with the government and the police crackdowns across the country that controlled these protests indicate a willingness on the part of the government to subdue social unrest, often with brutal tactics. It is also difficult to calculate how much the war on terror has actually made us less vulnerable to unpredictable, violent attacks.

Although U.S. policy decisions are guided by self-preservation, by pursuing these policies, the United States may actually be creating a worse situation for itself. A recent U.S. preference for eschewing international norms and agreements will “usher in a more hostile international system” which will make it harder for the United States to pursue international interests that require the support of the global community (“America’s Imperial Ambition”). The United States’ liberal use of military force could also cause disenchantment with cooperating with the United States in the international environment.

As we have seen, the United States is motivated by a need to preserve its leadership role in the international community, but the massive amounts of resources that the United States has poured into the war on terrorism and associated campaigns (Iraq, Afghanistan) is threatening U.S. economic stability and U.S. standing with the international community more than preserving it.

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