It was behind the failed attempt to blow up one of the towers of the World Trade Center
on 23 February 1993 (had this succeeded, it would have killed approximately 30,000
people, not the 3,000 of 9/11). Next, it could have claimed credit for the successful
assault on American soldiers in Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996, but it did not
do so. (At that time, it did not wish to attract the wrath of the Saudi government.)
Then, in 1998, it organized the lethal bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania. Finally, it was responsible for the deadly seaborne bomb attack on the USS
Colein the port of Aden in Yemen in 2000. Only with hindsight, however, did the scale
and true quality of the menace of al Qaeda become fully apparent. On 9/11 it was finally
recognized as the principal threat of the era.
The American response, and the international reaction to that response, has dominated
world politics since 2001. Whatever the precise combination of American motives,
American behaviour has been undeniably hegemonic in character and in declared intent.
The battle space, both as a focus of debate and literally for combat, shifted rapidly from
Afghanistan in 2001–2, to Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime had long been a
supporter of international terrorism, although it had little if any known connection with
al Qaeda. For a decade, however, it had flouted UN rulings, and its own legal under-
takings, with respect to the development and deployment of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). It had also murdered its own people, and viciously oppressed Iraq’s Shi’ite
majority and Kurdish minority. The United States, with British and Australian backing,
plus a few others, determined to flex its hegemonic muscles and demonstrate that the
global sheriff was on the job, regardless of whether the world as a whole approved. In the
face of considerable international disapproval, and in the absence of a UN Security
Council resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force, the United States and Britain
invaded Iraq on 20 March 2003.
The American superpower was acting precisely as a responsible hegemon should
act, or so one could argue. It was taking decisive action to remove a dangerous regime,
one that most people believed was in possession of WMD, and which had a record of
attacking its neighbours (Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990). The invasion was consistent
with a major policy shift in Washington: the superpower was now committed to reaching
far abroad to touch with deadly force threats to Americans, and others, before those
threats had time to be realized. In other words, the United States was assuming a
willingness to take pre-emptive, or even preventive, military action. This entails shooting
first, on suspicion, which will always be controversial. It is especially controversial in the
eyes of those who believe that any discretionary use of force must be authorized
explicitly by the UN Security Council. By its actions in 2003, the United States was
saying that it would do what it believed it must for the security of Americans, and also
on behalf of world order, and while it preferred to take action with the blessing of the
international community, if need be it would act in its absence. In case the full scope of
the shift in American policy and strategy had not been registered with sufficient clarity,
the most authoritative policy document of the Bush administration, The National Security
Strategy of the United States of America(September 2002), could hardly have been more
explicit.
We will disrupt and destroy terrorist organizations by... defending the United
States, the American people, and our interests at home and abroad by identifying and238 War, peace and international relations