But Some Things Are New

September 11, 2001, introduced or accelerated five factors.

1. Greater fear in the U.S. public and among foreign-policy decision makers.

Unfortunately, because we do not know a lot about how fear works, we have tended to miss, I think, the very important consequence of fear and other emotions in dampening our ability to challenge authority, in decreasing our ability to trust others and to make peace, and in seeing how we might be perceived by others as threatening.

When fear is on the tips of our tongues, as it was during the "code orange" alert in February 2003, we tend to discuss the effects of fear on individuals and generally fail to examine how fear affects foreign-policy decision making. For example, cover stories in Time, Newsweek, and New York Magazine, and op-eds in the New York Times, all during the week of February 22, 2003, emphasized personal fears and techniques for coping with anxiety.[4]

Why is fear so important?

At her sentencing hearing before the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, for war crimes she committed while she was president of Serbia, Biljana Plavsic told the court that she and other Serbs had been blinded by fear of their neighbors' intentions. She said, "Why did I not see it earlier? And how could our leaders and those who followed have committed such acts? The answer to both questions is, I believe, fear. A blinding fear that led to an obsession."[5] Plavsic told the tribunal, "In our obsession that Serbs should never again become victims of their neighbors, as they were in World War II, we allowed ourselves to become victimizers."[6]

Should we take such statements of victim turned victimizer at face value? If this is a process through which perceived victims become victimizers, it is one of the most pernicious remnants of political and cultural violence.

2. We have added terrorism to our list of immediate threats and now equate terrorists with rogue states.

The United States now argues not only that rogue states might pose a threat sometime in the future, but that they do pose an immediate military threat. In fact, instead of focusing on terrorists, we are using rogue states as a proxy for terrorists. This in part explains the focus on Iraq.

3. Also new is the political ascendance of the far-right hawks with an imperial agenda and a much greater concentration of foreign-policy information and decision-making power in the hands of the executive branch.

Congress and many intellectuals are self-censoring or are abdicating their critical role in the super-patriotic post-attack environment. Anyone who disagrees is portrayed as either mentally ill (e.g., Scott Ritter, the former inspector who disagrees with the U.S. march to war) or as just not patriotic enough.

4. The Bush administration has introduced three new military terms - preeminence, capabilities-based planning, and preemption.

Specifically, the articulated goal of U.S. strategy is maintaining "preeminence." As the president said at West Point, "America has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge . . . ."[7] The point of preeminence is to maintain a world economic and political order that the United States feels comfortable with, to support its expansive view of the American self. According to the Defense Department, the "enduring national interests" of the United States, which are to be secured by force if necessary, include "contributing to economic well-being," which itself includes ensuring the "vitality and productivity of the global economy" and "access to key markets and strategic resources."[8]

The second innovation is the shift from basing military planning on intentions and likely threats to the "capabilities-based approach," where the United States attempts to "anticipate the capabilities that an adversary might employ" and "focuses more on how an adversary might fight than who the adversary might be and where war might occur."[9]

Indeed, if one focuses on what might happen, the scenarios for threats proliferate. As General Ralph Eberhart, who is in charge of the military's role in homeland security, says of the possible threats, "the list goes on and on. We can all envision the terrible things that might happen."[10]

So military planning is based on what might happen, the capabilities that others have or might get, not necessarily on what is more or less likely, and what we know about the intentions of others. And the proliferation of scenarios tends to heighten our fear.

Worse, because the military has not really given up on threat-based planning, we have - from the military's perspective - the best of both worlds. We must meet the threats posed by certain adversaries, but we must also meet and exceed all potential threats with capabilities of our own.

The third innovation is the preemptive war doctrine. As the administration says, "the best defense is a good offense." The United States will use conventional forces and, if necessary, nuclear forces to dispose of imminent threats.[11]

Perhaps underappreciated about the so-called preemptive doctrine is that it is not only legitimate preemption - where a state acts in self-defense to preempt an immediate and certain assault - but a preventive offensive war doctrine. It is a policy of beating down potential allies before they can possibly challenge the balance of power.

Why is the distinction between preemption and preventive offensive war important? Preemption is legitimate, legal, and it can be prudent on the reasoning that to engage in preemption is to use force when you know that an attack is imminent and the other has the capacity to do great harm if you do not act right then. A preventive offensive war strategy is considered illegal, illegitimate, and imprudent because you start war to preserve a balance of power against a potential future adversary. They are not about to attack, they may not even have the means yet to attack, but a preventive war is begun to make sure they cannot pose a challenge in the future.

Again, the aim of preventive war doctrines is to maintain military advantage. You strike first because waiting means that you might lose your military advantage. You are not sure the other is going to attack. They may not even yet be capable of doing so. But you strike first to make sure they never get the capacity to harm you. The problem with this, of course, is that such a presumption of ill intentions may be wrong and war may become a self-fulfilling prophesy. It brings a war that might not otherwise have happened. It also makes everyone else nervous about your intentions and helps create a world of greater instability.

Our fear is institutionalized in these goals and policies - preeminence, capabilities-based planning, and preemption. Our empire is an empire of insecurity.