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Contents
  • A Century of History in Foreign Affairs
  • 01 The First Crisis in Ukraine
  • 02 A New Era for the United States and China
  • 03 India’s Fight for Independence
  • 04 Hitler’s Rise to Power in Germany
  • 05 9/11 Transforms U.S. Foreign Policy
  • 06 Africa Throws Off Colonial Rule
  • 07 The World After the Cold War
  • 08 Fascist Italy Invades Ethiopia
  • 09 America at War in Vietnam
  • 10 Building the Postwar World

9/11 Transforms U.S. Foreign Policy

The Growing Momentum Behind Military Action

August 1, 2022
The World Trade Center, New York, September 2001
Reuters
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The terrorist attacks carried out on September 11, 2001, by the jihadi group al Qaeda were the deadliest in U.S. history. Washington’s military response would follow swiftly—as Fouad Ajami noted in Foreign Affairs that fall, “there is now the distinct thunder of war.” The United States would be wading deep into a complex battle “over Arab and Muslim identity in the modern world,” Michael Scott Doran argued a few months later. “Washington had no choice but to take up the gauntlet,” he wrote. “But it is not altogether clear that Americans understand fully this war’s true dimensions.” 

Proposals advanced in Foreign Affairs mirrored—and, in some cases, accelerated—a broader shift in U.S. foreign policy. In early 2002, Martin Indyk contended that reducing the terrorist threat would require an overhaul of Washington’s approach to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab allies “whose policies are compromising U.S. national security.” And Kenneth Pollack urged the United States to “invade Iraq, eliminate the present regime, and pave the way for a successor”—even though, as he acknowledged, doing so was “not a necessary component of the war on terrorism.”

This building momentum also drew sharp criticism. As Washington “enlarged and complicated” its mission, Madeleine Albright wrote in 2003, it “needlessly placed obstacles in [its] own path” by failing to convince partners to back U.S. policies. G. John Ikenberry issued a more dire warning. What began with a response to terrorism was morphing into a “neoimperial grand strategy” in which the United States used force and meted out justice at will, he argued. Such a strategy would only “trigger antagonism and resistance,” leaving the country “in a more hostile and divided world.”

Book cover not available

The Sentry’s Solitude

By Fouad Ajami

Book cover not available

Somebody Else’s Civil War

By Michael Scott Doran

Book cover not available

Next Stop Baghdad?

By Kenneth M. Pollack

Book cover not available

America’s Imperial Ambition

By G. John Ikenberry

Book cover not available

Bridges, Bombs, or Bluster?

By Madeleine K. Albright

More:
United States GW Bush Administration U.S. Foreign Policy Strategy & Conflict 9/11

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