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US national security in the 20 years since 9/11
Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, many people hoped that the death of Osama Bin Laden would signal an end to America's role as the de facto world police. Instead, 20 years later we are seeing the impact of US national security policy play out once more in Afghanistan. The Taliban is now back in control, a local ISIS group has claimed responsibility for the bloody attack on August 26, and big questions remain about what America's war there actually accomplished. America's image abroad has been hurt by high civilian casualties to torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, while policies implemented in the US in the name of security included huge (and at times even illegal) surveillance dragnets of US citizens and gave law enforcement unprecedented powers. But the United States has avoided another catastrophic 9/11-style attack on our soil. On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer explores the question: is the US actually safer today than before the towers fell?
Watch the episode: Is America Safer Since 9/11?
Enter China, exit policeman: How the world has changed since 9/11
The world has changed dramatically since the terrorist attacks on New York And Washington on September 11, 2001. Pop culture has evolved — significantly — as have the ways we eat, communicate, work, and get our information about the world.
Geopolitically, the past two decades have been transformative, and these developments have impacted how many observers reflect on the post-9/11 era.
Here are three examples of big geopolitical shifts over the past two decades, and how they may influence our understanding of global events today.
China got big. In 2001, China wasn't even a member of the World Trade Organization, and it was still considered a developing country that was largely closed off from the global economy. In 2001, China recorded a GDP per capita of $1,053 compared to $10,500 in 2020.
Today, China's leaders speak of "a new era" in which China will move "closer to center stage" in world affairs. President Xi Jinping now calls for a "Chinese solution" for the world's problems.
In 2001, China's geopolitical interests were not strictly defined in opposition to the US' (and vice versa). In the aftermath of 9/11, the former leader of China's Communist Party, President Jiang Zemin, expressed some sympathy with the US and supported a call for action at the United Nations Security Council. He also backed an anti-terrorism resolution calling for the ousting of the Taliban that had provided safe haven for al-Qaeda.
That spirit of cooperation is a far cry from what we've seen in recent years, when Beijing, a veto-wielding member of the UNSC, has used its power to thwart US-driven resolutions. When it comes to Afghanistan, China says it is open to recognizing the Taliban and is now working against US strategic interests in the region.
The US is no longer willing to be the world's policeman. In September 2001, the United States was at the height of its post-Cold War power. America was the unrivaled global hegemon, and despite arguments over how and whether to intervene in African conflicts and the former Yugoslavia, there was more domestic consensus across the political spectrum about how and when the US should deploy that power, particularly after the 9/11 attacks. Just one member of the US Congress, California Democrat Barbara Lee, voted against the war in Afghanistan.
American politics have always been acrimonious, yet in the immediate post-9/11 era, there was more bipartisan consensus about what the US mission in Afghanistan should be — and less opposition to the idea that America had a broader "responsibility to lead" to advance American political values. That's no longer the case. As Ian Bremmer recently pointed out, if there's anything that Democrats and Republicans agree on today — and there isn't much — it's that the US should withdraw from Afghanistan. Part of the reason for that, Bremmer explains, is that lawmakers — and American voters — no longer want to be "the promoter of common values."
In October 2001, 80 percent of Americans supported a ground invasion in Afghanistan to get the bad guys who wreaked havoc on New York City. Today, by contrast, there is very little appetite to send American troops to far-flung conflict zones while Americans at home grapple with COVID recovery, crime and other domestic political priorities. The recent killing of 13 US service members amid the hasty US withdrawal from Afghanistan is likely to reinforce that stance. That's not to say that the US is pursuing an isolationist foreign policy — far from it. But American assumptions about the role the US should play in the world have certainly changed.
What is a war anyway? Twenty years ago, a military offensive — a boots-on-the-ground intervention — was the primary way for the US to exert maximum pressure on an adversary. But the nature of war and combat has evolved dramatically over the past two decades. State-of-the-art pilotless aircrafts and "killer drones" can be used in surveillance missions and war, and from an army's perspective, can provide a more precise and less costly alternative to traditional aerial missions. Most militaries, including NATO, are looking at how to use technology to avoid casualties without compromising the mission's objectives.
The United States has been developing its drone tech for some time, but in recent years, China too has been increasingly focused on upping its drone game: China's state-run Aviation Industry Corps has sold advanced drone tech to at least 16 countries over the past decade, and is also building a drone factory in Saudi Arabia, the first in the region.
China, for its part, has pushed back on accusations that its drone production is fueling a new arms race, but the Pentagon is certainly on edge because more countries are developing drone technologies that are being used in war-like scenarios, sometimes by bad actors. (Azerbaijan used Turkish-supplied drones against Armenia in last year's conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, while the Kremlin has agreed to send drones to Myanmar's oppressive military junta.)
And future wars are more likely to be fought mainly with cyber-weapons than with air power projected by aircraft carriers. In fact, cyberspace is an increasingly dangerous arena for conflict. That's true not only for war, but for acts of terrorism — including the next 9/11.
- 20 years since 9/11 attacks - GZERO Media ›
- The Graphic Truth: The cost of America's post-9/11 wars - GZERO ... ›
- Farewell to the flip phone: How media has changed since 9/11 ... ›
- Hard Numbers: 9/11's enduring toll - GZERO Media ›
- 9/11 and after: A personal reminiscence from inside the machine ... ›
- The alternative versions of 9/11 - GZERO Media ›
- Podcast: A safer America 20 years after 9/11? Michael Chertoff and Rory Stewart discuss - GZERO Media ›
The alternative versions of 9/11
As pivotal as they were, there was certainly nothing inevitable about the September 11th attacks — or their aftermath. Here we imagine five separate scenarios for how things might have gone differently.
The social media 9/11
As the wounded Twin Towers belch smoke and flames into the sky, social media lights up with videos from people within the buildings, documenting their desperate final moments as they go "live." Within hours of the towers' fall, a Staten Island man uploads a shaky hand-held clip of the North Tower's collapse. The clip purports to show that explosives were used to weaken key structural points of the building, hastening its fall. Algorithms instantly spirit this lie to millions of other users, while thousands of anonymous trolls, in the US and abroad, begin fanning the flames of a conspiracy theory about who was actually responsible. By the time President Bush shouts through a bullhorn at Ground Zero three days later that "the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" it's not clear who "us" is. An anguished America is deeply divided about what happened, confused about what the government intends to do in response, and mistrustful of the mainstream media who seem to be towing the government line.
Of course, conspiracy theories and deep political divisions emerged in the years after 9/11 even without social media — but they bubbled up slowly and eccentrically, rather than with the furious immediacy made possible by smartphones and even smarter algorithms. If a similar attack were to occur today, would there be any real unity at all in the aftermath?
Drafting off of 9/11
On September 18th, 2001, just a week after the attacks, President Bush, riding a wave of patriotic unity and fervor, signs a new law reinstating the military draft for the first time in twenty-eight years. As the United States prepares to launch a retaliatory strike in Afghanistan against the Taliban and its al-Qaeda houseguests, tens of thousands of American men between 18 and 25 receive draft cards — they must either report for military service, or do a year of civic service. The stakes of the Global War on Terror, then in its infancy, are immediately clear for everyone, even across America's deepening geographic, political, and socioeconomic divides. There is broad support for the Afghanistan mission, but as the Bush administration begins laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq, there is more skepticism from the public. Because of that, the mainstream media applies more scrutiny to the administration's claims about WMDs, and the linkages between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Does the Iraq invasion end up happening? And, years later, is America a less polarized place because of the draft?
The Taliban hand over bin Laden, US doesn't invade Afghanistan.
Less than 24 hours after al-Qaeda attacks America, the Taliban don't even wait for the US to come knocking. They immediately offer to hand over Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's leaders to avoid an American invasion and a war they know will end with yet another foreign power occupying Afghanistan for years. Once in US custody, bin Laden and his lieutenants are sent to the US military base in Gauntánamo, Cuba, where they are interrogated for months before a secret trial. Meanwhile, the Taliban hold onto power, but only because the leader of their main enemy, the Northern Alliance, was killed by al-Qaeda two days before 9/11.
Does not getting bogged down in Afghanistan — and later Iraq — make it easier for the US to actually win the Global War on Terror? Do the Taliban stay in power in Afghanistan? And what happens to al-Qaeda once its leaders vanish?
The US does attack Afghanistan, but with a clear plan and exit strategy.
After the dust settles on the ruins of Lower Manhattan and the Pentagon, President Bush tells the nation he'll follow his dad's recommendation to respond to 9/11 like the US did to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait a decade ago. America will seek a UN resolution authorizing a US-led coalition to attack Afghanistan with the sole purpose of capturing al-Qaeda's leaders and putting them on trial in the United States. America wants to do things by the book, but is not keen on a lengthy legal process at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which cannot hand down the death penalty. US forces get ready to strike Afghanistan with a coalition of almost 100 countries, many of them Arab states angry at the Taliban for helping al-Qaeda commit such a massacre.
How would a truly multilateral, Gulf War-style plan have changed things in the Global War on Terror? And would backing from Muslim-majority countries have made a difference? What would have happened to Afghanistan after a US-led military campaign that ends without America as an occupying power?
It never happened.
On the morning of September 7, 2001, President Bush convenes a press conference with newly appointed FBI chief Robert Mueller and CIA director George Tenet. They announce that a massive terrorist plot against the United States has been uncovered and thwarted. So far, more than a dozen nationals of Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been arrested in three different states for planning to hijack airplanes and fly them into several, as yet unknown, targets along the East Coast of the US.
If the whole thing had never happened, what would have come next? Let us know what you think — if you do, be sure to include your name and location as you'd like them to be cited, just in case we decide to publish.