The United States in the Post 9/11 World, 2001-2019

Globalization defined simply as a “borderless world” (Chin and Mittelman, 1997: 25) was not just limited to spread of trade and investment but also spread of popular culture. It is based on the economic theory of comparative advantage (Mourdoukoutas, 2017). It was promoted by the United States as
rational, desirable and inevitable (Kurth, 2007: 148). Globalization, with the spread of capitalism around the world produced two groups of winners. The first group includes the very rich countries (top national and global income distributors) such as USA and England. The latter consists of middle classes of emerging market economies such as China, India, Indonesia and Brazil (Milanovic, 2012). This later on led to the simplistic idea that globalization equals or effectively meant Americanization (Nye 2002). On the other hand, the biggest losers of globalization or “non-winners” were those between the 75th and 90th percentile of the global income distribution which include some
former Communist countries and Latin America (Milanovic, 2012).

America’s supreme position in the world was mainly built on four dimensions: (1) the USA not only had the largest and most advanced economy within the global economy but it was also the driving force of globalization, (2) the USA was not only the sole superpower but it was also a hyperpower, (3) the USA was the only country with the high-tech military power within the globe and was, at the time ,“the leader in the revolution in military affairs”, and (4) the USA was a great example of not only a hard power but also a soft power as well. It was the disseminator of its popular culture throughout the world (Friedman 2015, p. 1).

We can identify four different American foreign policy traditions. These are: (1) Traditional Liberals (also widely known as the Jeffersonian tradition), (2) Traditional Conservatives (also widely known as the Jacksonian tradition), (3) Neoliberals (also widely known as the Wilsonian tradition), and (4) Neo-conservatives (also widely known as the Hamiltonian tradition).

Neo-liberals and neo-conservatives share a global perspective rather than a national perspective. Both of them consider the United States as a unique power in the world. Neoconservatives emphasize America’s role in global security, and they favor a world where the United States adopts a much more aggressive military posture. The Neoconservatives’ main concern is to eliminate all military or terror threats to American security and provide security of its allies (primarily Israel) while utilizing its military might to deter its enemies. It aims to eliminate threats such as rogue states, terrorist organizations or Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and force regime changes in regions like Middle East through taking on the task of nation-building in the name of creating a safer world for democracy. 

Neoconservatives were the ones who promoted the pre-emptive military action (Welch et al., 2018: 2). This tradition is specifically represented by the George W. BushDick Cheney administration where they were able to enjoy a robust period of influence.

Bush Administration pursued a policy of preemptive war which is different than preventive war. Pre-emptive war is conducted to repel or defeat a perceived imminent aggressive enemy who is preparing to strike right away in order to gain a strategic advantage in an impending or unavoidable war. On the other hand, a preventive war is conducted against an enemy who might pose a danger in the future (Gray 2017:1).

Traditional Liberals/ the Jeffersonian Tradition (The National Perspective)

• Central concern: American domestic economy enhanced by domestic social reform rather than engaging in foreign interventions that would disrupt economic prosperity.
• National perspective: The US foreign policy should be governed by the principle of national interest which is the promotion and protection of the interests of the Americans.
• Best represented by: Jimmy Carter administration

Traditional Conservatives/ the Jacksonian Tradition (The National Perspective)

• Central concern: American national security enhanced by national unity rather than engaging in foreign interventions that are remote from American vital interests.
• National perspective: The US foreign policy should be governed by the principle of national interest which is the promotion and protection of the interests of Americans.
• Best represented by: George H. W. Bush

Neoliberals/the Wilsonian Tradition (the Global Perspective)

• Global perspective: The US as a unique power within the global era.
• Central Concern: The US as the leader in the grand project of globalization (progressive elimination of borders and liberalization of societies). In other words; creating liberal democracies, free markets and democratic peace.  
• Best represented by:Clinton administration

The tenets of neoconservative foreign policy thought:

• America should preserve its military dominance in the post-Cold War world,
• Foreign Policy should be considered as a moral clarity between the forces of good (superiority of democracy) and evil and strong military should be advocated,
• America should not only leverage its military power, but it should also be eager to utilize its military force to pursue its interests,
• International institutions should not be taken so seriously

New challenges began to appear for US policy makers in 1970s. One was the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel on 29 March 1979.The other challenge was the Islamist revolution in Iran. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was also one of the important challenges for the USA. Finally, the emergence of Saddam Hussein as the sole ruler of Iraq and the takeover of the grand mosque in Saudi Arabia by Islamist militants were all concerning.

A year after the 9/11 terror attacks, the new National Security Strategy of America, also known as the Bush Doctrine, was presented by the administration in 2002.

The 9/11 attacks had significant consequences. One of them was the new “pre-emptive and unilateral strategy” developed by the Bush Doctrine and the first shift in US foreign policy since the Truman era. The second important consequence was the “one percent doctrine”. Although it is not one of the neo-conservative tenets, it was made by the Bush administration due to their feeling of vulnerability after the attacks. It also provided an “operational answer to a key element of the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive war (Allison, 2012: 261). Another consequence was the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan with the removal of the Taliban regime in 2001. Before 2003, Iraq had chronic weaknesses. The leader of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, only represented a small portion of the society. After 2003, the Baathist regime collapsed but Iraq became an arena for the regional struggles of other states and different sectoral groups(Fawcett 2013: 318).

The United States once had a positive and good image in the Middle East. However, this positive image has eroded due to rising nationalism in the Middle East, the US project for a Jewish state in Palestine, US eagerness to have access to oil and American concerns about Soviet Union in the region (Fawcett 2013: 318). These developments, combined with the anti-globalization movement, became the cause of International Terrorism. Globalization has produced its own winners and losers. The winners of globalization were mostly “businesses, professionals and even working classes that are competitive in the global market” while the winners of the Muslim world, Russia, Latin America and Africa consisted of only a small elite resented by the rest of the population. With the oppressive expansion of globalization, Middle Eastern society was overwhelmed by the American power within the region. By 2001, the resistance to globalization has reached its peak and was already widespread among the Muslim world (Kurth, 2007: 153).

In 1979, a new phenomenon emerged in the international system: Islamic extremism. Extremists in the Muslim world has two types. On the one hand, there are Shia-driven movements which are mostly sponsored by Iran and manifest themselves in Lebanon, and on the other hand, there are fundamentalist and Wahhabi Sunni Islam movements. Sunni groups that are mostly AntiIsraeli and Anti-American groups which resurfaced in 1970s in Egypt and Syria. Hezbollah can be given as an example of Shia-driven movements while the Islamist Hamas party in Palestine and ISIS can be given as examples to Sunni extremists (Fawcett 2013: 318).

In terms of the fight against international terrorism, 9/11 terror attacks changed the American way of war. An influential foreign policy doctrine was created by Powell and Weinberger. The Weinberger-Powell doctrine indicated that the United States should engage in military action only when it is vital to its national interests, it has a clearly defined exit strategy (Cohen 2009) and has the strong support of the American people (Kurth, 2007: 160)

George W. Bush announces that their war on terror begins with Al-Qaeda on 20th September 2001, but it will not end there until every terrorist group has been found and killed.

Why did the US fail in Middle East and specifically in Iraq? One of the reasons was the military transformation project by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Even though the US armed forces were very successful against Saddam’s army, they were unsuccessful in the counterinsurgency war and maintaining stability and security in the post-war period in Iraq. This was due to several reasons. Firstly, Rumsfeld’s forces lacked the necessary military personnel per civilian which was needed to establish security and deter the insurgency. The ratio was 20 soldiers for every 1000 civilian in Iraq. Secondly, the USA’s traditional allies were marginalized and insulted by the American administration during this period. Thirdly, one of the first things that US army did in this period was abolishing the entire army and other security forces of Iraq since they were believed to be Saddam’s instruments (Kurth, 2007: 164-165).

This failure in the Middle East had six significant consequences.

1. Before this failure, US had an image of invincibility in the Middle East. This image has not only been demolished, but the US also showed that it had vulnerability against asymmetrical threats as a consequence of losing peace in Iraq (Fawcett, 2013: 318).
2. he US’s failure in Iraq stipulated the perception of a systematically declining USA. America’s unilateral and unipolar actions in Iraq caused some existing and emerging powers such as BRIC countries to re-discuss US power (Fawcett, 2013: 307).
3. Third, the regime change in Iraq did not create a profound change and the war led to a rise of terrorism and instability within the overall region (Fawcett, 2013: 328).
4. A new initiative called “Neighboring Countries Initiative” was formed in order to contain the turmoil and instability in Iraq and limit the effect of this instability on neighboring states such as refugee flow to primarily Jordan and Syria, flow of radical ideas, violent spillover from Iraq into the neighboring states.
5. According to Kenneth Waltz, power begs to be balanced and for the region, it was rebalanced with the disappearance of Iraq. (Waltz, 2012).
6. The invasion of Iraq also shook the trust between the two strategic allies; USA and Turkey.

Starting in 2003, a dialogue began between BMENA countries, the United States and other G8 countries (Stanford, 2004).

The oil and gas from Middle East were moving from Black Sea via shipping lanes and pipelines to Europe and other Western countries. Black Sea region was not only connecting Europe with Asia but also Eurasia with Middle East (Rozoff, 2009). Being a major crossroads and critical intersection of east-west and south-north corridors, (NATO, 2018) the traffic of narcotics, persons including terrorists, conventional weapons and WMD were also conducted on these same shipping lanes. Hence, Black Sea region was strategically significant as a key transit route for Caspian oil. Due to this reason, America wanted to have a comprehensive regional policy in order to protect its national interests and security.

Between 1970-1979, the United States chose to pursue a rapprochement strategy. With an increasing Soviet threat and China’s enormous potential market, China and the US began to move closer to one another and the United States greatly benefited from close military and security cooperation with Beijing against their common adversary. China was resisting the pressure from the Soviet Union and the US did not want the Soviets to get stronger by keeping China on their own side (University, 2009).

After the establishment of People’s Republic of China in 1949, for the first twenty years (1949-1969) the US followed a containment policy vis a vis China (University, 2009). In other terms, the US tried to disrupt, destabilize and weaken the communist government by constructing an offshore line of military alliances along eastern and southern borders of China such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. In this period, the United States formed Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO) and signed the ANZUS Treaty. With these treaties and initiatives, countries like Thailand, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, South Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand were linked with the United States which established military bases and troops in these countries. The US not only involved in the Vietnam War but also prevented its allies entering into diplomatic relations with China, cut off its trade, and announced an international embargo on Beijing in this period.

April 1971. Ping-Pong Diplomacy: first public sign of warming relations between China and the United States happened when China’s ping pong team invited the members of the US ping pong team to China. After this, the US recognizes China. However, The US President Jimmy Carter grants China full diplomatic recognition and acknowledges China’s “One China Policy” by severing normal ties with Taiwan in 1979.

Arab Spring, which was a term, invented by an American academic (Simpson 2014) was a series of anti-government and pro-democracy uprisings due to lack of “bread and freedom” that spread across the Middle East in early 2011 (Gause, 2011: 81).

The protests began in Tunisia against former leader Zine el-Abidin Ben Ali after the death of Tarek al Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi, a street vendor in the town of Sidi Bouzid who burned himself as a protest against the government in January 2011. The suicide galvanized Tunisian protesters and took them to the streets. Within a month, the autocratic president Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia. Through the social media, the protests spread very quickly across Arab speaking countries including Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Syria, all demanding similar rights and demands (Manfreda 2019).

The results of the Arab Spring are still a passionately debated topic today. Due to the negative outcomes in many Arab Spring countries such Syria or Libya, many analysts prefer to call this social phenomenon as Arab uprisings as opposed to Arab Spring. These upheavals shared some features in common such as economic hardships and inequalities, unaddressed political grievances and the longevity of rulers who resisted evolutionary change (Keiswetter 2012).

The interests of the United States in the Middle East have been outlined by President Obama’s speech at the State Department on May 19, 2011. President Obama indicated that United States’ core interest in the region has been “countering terrorism and stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; securing the free flow of commerce (access to its oil and security of the Gulf) and safe-guarding the security of the region; standing up for Israel’s security and pursuing ArabIsraeli peace” and that they will continue to do these things. On the other hand, he also argues that the policy of the United States would be to promote reform across the region and to support transitions to democracy. The civil war in Syria provided a hub for some terrorist organizations that was interpreted as a threat to the United States or its allies in the region (Archives, 2011).

The US-China relations are experiencing its most daunting challenge since 1970s. The remaining unresolved challenges and especially the three major unprecedented negative sets of trends between China and the United States not only turned these challenges into hostilities but also damaged the positive momentum in the relationship of these two countries.

1. The first trend is about ethnic minority areas of Tibet and Xinjiang in China. The response of the Chinese government to the troubles in these regions not only undermined the United States’ expectation of China’s continued reform and opening but also aroused suspicions of the United States and other democracies. 
2. The second trend was the collapse of communist and authoritarian states. This has greatly increased the insecurities of China’s leaders and produced a self-fulfilling prophecy by causing CCP to strengthen overall party controls throughout Chinese society during Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao eras.
3. The third trend emerged during the 2000s. With the government deficits and economic recession that began in 2008, the US-China relations were influenced in a negative way.