ABSTRACT
In the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon (US Defense Department) outside Washington, DC, on 11 September 2001, US President George W. Bush declared war on ‘terrorism’. This, it has become clear, involves much more than simply going after those who perpetrated the attacks – the so-called al-Qaeda network of Islamic terrorists led by the Saudi Arabian millionaire Osama bin Laden. The result has been nothing less than a total reorganization of world politics, with the US government claiming the right to intervene militarily wherever and whenever it wants, initially in Iraq but without precisely defined geographical limits. Rooting out terrorism all over the world has now replaced older themes in the US foreign policy lexicon, working backwards from most to least recent, of ‘containing Communism’ (in the former Soviet Union and its sphere of influence), creating ‘collective security’ after the First World War, or helping to maintain the balance of power between the European Great Powers in the late nineteenth century. The US government is now able to do more or less as it pleases (at least militarily) because it has become the single superpower. Of course, it also sustained the attacks on its soil because of its global geopolitical centrality and support for governments – particularly those of Israel and Saudi Arabia – that excite much hostility from Muslim extremists.
