ABSTRACT
Most Americans vividly recall where they were and what they were doing on September 11, 2001 when they watched the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York collapse in flame in the deadliest foreign attack ever on US soil. This personalized tragedy thrust Americans reluctantly into the unfamiliar world of international politics. It is understandable, then, that they are prone to overstate how much the events of that fateful day imposed new demands upon US foreign policy. Now, for instance, US adversaries are commonly presumed to pursue the same nefarious goal-inflicting maximum damage upon the US and to its interests, at any and all cost. Ungrounded assumptions are not confined to the public. The George W. Bush administration added to the confusion by repeatedly labeling Iraq (under Saddam Hussein), Iran, and North Korea “rogue states,” treating them as co-plotters in a global conspiracy (e.g. the “axis of evil”), and claiming proof of cooperation between Iraq’s former leadership and the al-Qaeda terrorist network to suggest that Saddam Hussein was behind the World Trade Center attack.1 The events of September only strengthened the administration’s view that the US is now facing adversaries that cannot be deterred-that is, dissuaded by potential costs-from pursuing their goals.
