Post-9·11 atmosphere of fear and patriotism

The post-9/11 atmosphere of fear and patriotism becomes, in the book’s account, a source of political authorization: governments invoke the threat of terrorism to strengthen coercive policies, while the label “terrorist” is applied unevenly according to political alignment. The result is a linked domestic and international pattern in which emergency language can discipline populations and help consolidate military dominance.

Fear as Political Authorization

The author argues that governments around the world treated the September 11 attacks as an opportunity to introduce or intensify severe and repressive policies. In the United States and other comparatively democratic societies, fear and demands for patriotism helped justify measures directed at their own populations, including laws the author characterizes as anti-popular. The climate did not simply express public alarm; it provided a political setting in which dissent could be cast as disloyalty and governments could pursue programs with less resistance.

The book also connects this domestic use of fear to the Bush administration’s broader political and economic agenda. It argues that the administration used the moment to advance policies serving the narrow interests of large corporations that dominated it, at a scale the author says went beyond customary practice. The atmosphere of patriotic urgency thus appears not as a neutral response to danger but as a means through which exceptional policies could be presented as necessary.

The Shifting Meaning of Terrorism

This argument rests on a distinction between a definition of terrorism based on conduct and a propagandistic use of the word based on who commits the act. The book cites the official U.S. definition as the calculated use or threat of violence for political, religious, or ideological ends, including through intimidation, coercion, or the creation of fear. By that standard, the attacks on the United States were unquestionably a terrible terrorist crime. The author insists, however, that acknowledging this does not require treating the term as applicable only to enemies of the United States or its allies.

The same distinction informs the discussion of state policy. U.S. doctrine of “low-intensity warfare,” the book argues, has definitions resembling official definitions of terrorism: coercive means directed against civilian populations to achieve political, religious, or other aims. It therefore treats terrorism not simply as a weapon available to weaker non-state actors, but as a practice that can be embedded in state action. Calling a campaign a “war on terror,” the author contends, becomes propaganda if it does not actually target terrorism and if the powers conducting it exempt their own conduct from the standards they apply to others.

The book illustrates this political reversibility through the Kosovo Liberation Army. The United States had condemned the group as terrorist in 1998 for attacks on Serbian police and civilians; after U.S. and British policy shifted toward attacking Serbia, the group was recast as a force of freedom. After the war, its members and allies were again described as terrorists, criminals, and thugs in connection with actions in Macedonia. The sequence shows how the atmosphere of threat can reinforce a vocabulary in which political convenience, rather than a stable standard of conduct, determines who is condemned.

International Repression and Military Expansion

The author describes the post-September 11 coalition as an opening for governments to pursue existing domestic agendas under the counterterrorism banner. Russia joined the coalition hoping to secure permission to continue its actions in Chechnya, and China did so for similar reasons. Turkey offered troops for the new phase of the U.S. campaign; its prime minister explained the offer as recognition of American support for Turkey’s campaign against its Kurdish population. The book emphasizes the contradiction of Turkey being treated as a partner in protecting Kabul from terrorism after receiving substantial U.S. arms and diplomatic support during its own repression.

The argument extends to Israel and Palestine. The book says Israel anticipated being able to intensify its repression of Palestinians with even stronger U.S. backing. Across these cases, the counterterrorism framework is portrayed as a means by which states could align their local campaigns with a new international priority, while the violence of allied governments received treatment different from violence attributed to adversaries.

The atmosphere also accompanied a strategic change in the U.S. military presence. The United States established major bases in Central Asia for the first time. The author links these bases to influence over the region’s considerable resources and to the wider strategic effort to surround the world’s major energy resources in the Persian Gulf. Before the war in Afghanistan, Diego Garcia was described as the most secure base in the system directed toward the Gulf; the new Central Asian positions, in the author’s account, made future intervention easier.

Power, Public Discipline, and the Aftermath

The book interprets the Bush administration’s new phase of the “war on terror” as a continuation, in many respects, of the Reagan administration’s earlier campaign, but also as an opportunity to consolidate an already overwhelming U.S. military advantage and extend global dominance. During the April visit of Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Abdullah urged the U.S. administration to take greater account of Arab reactions to its support for Israeli repression. The response, as recounted in the book, was that the United States did not care what he or other Arabs thought. Remarks by U.S. officials, including a comparison of the campaign’s forcefulness with Operation Desert Storm, are presented as evidence of a posture intended to communicate American capacity and resolve.

The author suggests that the bombings of Afghanistan may have been intended chiefly to warn the world about the consequences of failing to follow U.S. rules. He draws a comparison with the NATO bombing of Serbia, which Tony Blair and Bill Clinton had explained in terms of preserving NATO’s credibility—meaning, in the author’s reading, the credibility of the United States and its principal arms client. These strategic interpretations are presented as the author’s assessment, not as a claim based on access to confidential documents.

The domestic and international strands converge in the book’s account of the climate’s consequences. Fear and patriotism could discipline people at home, while counterterrorism rhetoric helped justify repression abroad and a wider military footprint. The author concludes that the initial predictions about these tendencies had been amply confirmed: the post-9/11 atmosphere did not remain a temporary public mood, but became a framework through which governments advanced policies of control and power.