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Epilogue: 9/11 and the Politics of Empire
- Baylor University Press
- Chapter
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The war between “civilization” and “terrorism” has emerged in the eyes of many as the greatest war of our time.1 Brought most dramatically into public view by the attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the “war on terrorism” has given rise in the United States to various pragmatic approaches to making the world safe from the threat of terrorist violence. The arguments reflected in the speeches, writings, and interviews of Paul Wolfowitz, Colin L. Powell, and Joseph S. Nye, Jr. represent three recognizably distinct schools of thought regarding the causes of terrorism and the proper character and projection of American power across the globe in response. While there is much discussion of the concept of empire, or a regime’s attempt to govern the world politically or culturally, there is little discussion of philosophy and the attempt to understand the world more generally. A brief consideration of these three approaches illustrates that contemporary reflections on the greatest war of our time tend to privilege pragmatics to the detriment of theory. I will also consider Robert W. Merry’s recent critique of the assumptions underlying the positions of Wolfowitz, Powell, and Nye as a representation of the growing body of opposition to mainstream American foreign policy in the post-9/11 era. Classical sources have been drawn upon by American statesmen and political theorists since the founding to key moments in her history. They can inform our understanding of the current international situation. Herodotus’ Histories, in particular—with its broad panorama of regimes and analysis of the imperialist impulse at the root of the Persian Wars, has much to teach 173 Epilogue 9/11 and the Politics of Empire us about the causes as well as the potentials and dangers of the pursuit of empire. Accordingly, I will conclude by exploring how the Histories can be understood to both reflect and transcend contemporary approaches to international politics, war, and global expansion. The guiding intellectual influence behind the first approach to the new international situation that we will consider is Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Secretary of Defense in President George W. Bush’s first administration and former President of the World Bank. Before serving in these positions he was the Dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Between 1989 and 1992, Wolfowitz served as the Undersecretary of Defense in the administration of President George H. W. Bush. It was in the waning months of George H. W. Bush’s presidency that Wolfowitz authored the 1992 “Defense Planning Guidance,” a classified set of military guidelines that is prepared every few years for the Department of Defense. Subsequently leaked to the New York Times and the Washington Post, it generated a swirl of controversy. The main sources of contention were the emphasis on maintaining America’s newfound status as the sole global superpower in the post-Cold War era and the need to promote America’s interests and values in different regions of the world through unilateral military action, if need be.2 However, it is in President George W. Bush’s new National Security Strategy, issued to Congress in September of 2002 in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001, where the ideas of Wolfowitz, first percolated in the 1992 “Defense Planning Guidance,” find their most robust manifestation.3 I will therefore explore Wolfowitz’s vision for America’s role in the world primarily through an analysis of President Bush’s National Security Strategy, known to the world as the Bush doctrine. The Bush doctrine begins with the claim that the defeat of Nazism in World War II and of Communism in the Cold War means that the West and liberal democracy have come out as the clear victor at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Thus only “a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise” has proven to be a viable alternative for organizing human life in the future.4 Not only is there one best political and economic model for the world; there is also only one right moral code for the world. According to the Bush doctrine, “the United States must defend liberty and justice” because these principles are “right and true for all people everywhere,” and although “different circumstances require different methods, [they do] not [require] different moralities.”5 These assertions of universal political and moral truths rest on an understanding of a universal nature that all human beings share. The...