As the Iraq war enters its fifth year, discontent with the Bush Administration’s policy continues to grow. Wrong-footed in Iraq, for some months the Republican administration has taken note of growing public repudiation, and has undertaken some revision on the home front. Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation, the replacement of senior commanders in Iraq and a perceptible toning-down of official statements reflect the beginnings of a response to criticism. Are the most recent events–the nomination of Robert Gates to the Department of Defence, the January 2007 State of the Union Address, announcement of a new Iraq strategy–to be regarded as the embryo of a strategy review, or are they simply tactical manoeuvres which do not really modify overall US strategy?

The Shock of 11 September 2001

‘We are a nation at war’: President Bush’s antiphony alone sums up the United States’s strategic posture. Effectively, America sees itself as a country at war since the 11 September attacks, and this perception persists. That date, symbol of the brutal onset of awareness of the vulnerability of a nation convinced of its power, has deeply modified the United States’s outlook on the world. Belief in ‘a New World *Order’ overseen by a benevolent American hegemony collapsed at the same moment as the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. An event as traumatic psychologically as strategically, it highlights a world in which the threats are known and have almost all been anticipated, but which the tranquillity of the previous decade has quite simply led to a refusal to take them into account. Moreover, the event has induced a lasting mutation in the way in which the United States perceives its power in a world become alien and dangerous. It has also put paid to the notion of an American sanctuary, and consecrated terrorism as the primary threat to be prepared for. Terrorism is henceforth the metaphysical enemy of the United States, and the ‘War on Terror’ is perceived as the ‘Long War’ which America cannot allow itself to lose.⁽¹⁾ The country needs an enemy on which to inflict the entire weight of American power: it is Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.

However, 11 September had the advantage of opening up the field of strategic possibilities. As Donald Rumsfeld cynically put it after the attack, ‘Just like World War Two, 11 September offers some opportunities for remaking the world’. The Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) thereafter has become the primary strategic orientation constituting the ‘challenge for a whole generation’,⁽²⁾ at the same time creating the right conditions for perpetuating American hegemony. In the American view of the issues at stake and the threats, only American strategic hegemony is capable of guaranteeing national security. Preserving ‘leadership’, as the indispensable corollary of hegemony, is at the heart of the Administration’s preoccupations, magnified by the hubris of a nation bloodied and bent on obtaining, alone, its revenge. Since October 2001 and the Afghanistan intervention, the American administration has been at pains to assert its hold on the management of the fight against terrorism worldwide. In general terms 11 September has given the Americans the opportunity to redefine the very terms of their might at the heart of a world order that has finally left the Cold War frame of reference.