P7

• The end of the Cold War signified the beginning of a period in which there was only one true superpower remaining, a superpower that had no immediate or apparent challenger
• The dominance and to some degree the leadership of the United States was almost absolute
• The ease, rapidness and extent to which the United States was able to project its power around the World was unique
• George Walker Bush, son of former President George Bush Sr had won contested elections from Al Gore, Clintons's former Vice-President
• Barely eight months into his Presidency, this would all change when an extremely well-organized group of terrorist would shake the United States and the entire world, and eventually set in motion a number of events that would change the world and, eventually, weaken the image, leadership and dominance of the Unites States in the Global Politics
• The decisions to attack and invade Iraq will be highly contested and the combined operations in Iraq and Afghanistan will put a serious strain on the US' military and financial resources
• 19 terrorists from different nationalities, though most were Saudi born, hijack 4 planes 2 leaving from Boston, one from Washington and one from Newark
• A first plane from Boston is hijacked and flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Center


  8.46 am
• A second plane struck the other tower, the South tower, Both towers were now in flames and at this moment it became clear that this was no attack, but that the US was under attack

  17 minutes later
• About half an hour later, a third plan hit the pentagon, the American ministry of Defense
• A fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania

  10:03 am
• All in all, it is surprising that not more than approximately 3000 people died from the attacks
• The team in charge of foreign affairs and defense

  • Collin Powell, Secretary of State
  • Dick Cheney, Vice-President
  • George W. Bush, President
  • Condoleezza Rice, National Security advisor
  • White House Chief of Staff
  • George Tenet, Director of the CIA
  • Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of defense
• The team


  • They stand for a harsh, tough foreign policy and that do not shy away from actively intervening abroad and use military means to achieve their goals
  • They are opposed to what is referred to as Doves, who prefer diplomacy and multilateralism, making decision that are supported by a broader coalition of allied countries
• This team, and especially the havocs will put America to a very unpopular position that will severely damage its image and standing in the world
• Al Qaeda


  An extremist terrorist group
• Islamic terrorism was certainly not a new phenomenon and had become more prominent through Palestinian groups since the 1960s
• Not all terrorist attacks were aimed at making as much casualties as possible, and throughout the 1980s, for example, several planes were being hijacked by terrorists, not necessarily with the intention to kill all the passengers
• Several countries were confronted with extremist violence, and those who suffered the most, and still do, are Muslim countries themselves
• During that period, most terrorism was not Muslim, but nationalist or ideological extremist terrorism
• Al Qaeda


  Means 'the base' in Arab, and was created somewhere around 1988 by Osama Bin Laden
• Bin Laden had joined the mujahedeen to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan
• Bin Laden strongly opposed the American intervention, and especially the presence, of American troops in Saudi Arabia
• In 1998, two simultaneous attacks were carried out against American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
• Al Qaeda's signature


  • Simultaneous attacks to make more impact, attack symbols, the US embassies stand for attacking the US as a country, and total disregard for human lives; the more people die, the more successful the attack
• Al Qaeda attacked the American warship USS Cole in October of 2000 and at this point, CIA reports had already come in since 1998 stating that Al Qaeda was trying to organize attacks using hijacked air planes
• The initial American response was to go after those who attacked the US and hit them hard
• The problem with this, is that it only focused on hard power; the American government did not try to come up with a broad solution on how to prevent this in the future and try to find out why these people had attacked them and also find a response to that
• If you simply kill one terrorist, then another one will just take his place
• The US will claim that Islamic terrorists have a problem with our Western way of life. That some people hate the West for their liberal freedoms that do not fit with their conservative Islamic beliefs
• Many experts have argued that this makes absolutely no sense. People do not kill themselves and others for something that does not affect them directly
• Several experts have pointed to the damaging policies of the US, especially in the Middle East
• As long as the US does not actively work on improving its policies and image in the Middle East, there will be people trying to change it, with violence if necessary
• The US saw this as a triple threat from terrorist groups, the rogue countries that supported them and the dangers of the combination of these two if terrorist would get their hands on Weapons of Mass Destruction
• Terrorism became the new communism, the new concept that gave sense to global politics and that justified actions in different areas in the World
• President Bush also introduced the notion of pre-emptive strikes, meaning that he would not take a chance and wait until they would get attacked and would remove a potential threat by attacking a potential enemy before they could attack the US
• The Bush administration made relations between their traditional European allies very difficult
• For the first time in NATO's history, article V of the charter was activated. Article V stipulates that an attack against one member is an attack against all members
• Certain countries would take advantage of this focus on terrorism to justify a crackdown on regionalist groups and groups that contested the government and some of its policies, notably in China and Russia
• As the Taliban refused to surrender Bin Laden, air strikes began on 7 October 2001