United States

The United States occupies two roles in this account: a country shocked by the 2001 attacks on its territory, and a powerful state whose own military actions and political doctrines are examined under the same definition of terrorism invoked against its adversaries. The central argument is that this contrast matters not only to the interpretation of the attacks, but also to the legality, strategic purpose, and domestic consequences of the response that followed.

Territory and historical reversal

The attacks of September 11 are described as unprecedented for the United States because of their targets, not because of their scale or character. The interview contrasts them with the 1812 War, the last time the country’s national territory had been attacked or even threatened. It also rejects the common comparison with Pearl Harbor: on December 7, 1941, military bases on two U.S. colonies were attacked, but the mainland was not threatened. The distinction underlines how exceptional it was for violence to be directed toward the country itself.

That shock is set against a much longer history of American expansion and force abroad. The account points to the destruction of Indigenous populations, the conquest of half of Mexico, interventions across neighboring regions, and the conquest of Hawaii and the Philippines, where hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were killed. It describes the use of force as widespread across much of the world during the twentieth century and the number of its victims as enormous. Against that history, September 11 becomes a reversal of direction: the guns, in the interview’s image, were aimed the other way. The reversal is presented as spectacular precisely because the United States had so often been able to project violence beyond its borders.

Terrorism, force, and the legal record

The account challenges the assumption that terrorism can be defined by the identity of the perpetrator. It adopts an official U.S. definition centered on calculated violence, or its threat, used to advance political, religious, or ideological aims through intimidation, coercion, or fear. By that standard, the September 11 attacks were a horrific terrorist crime. But the same standard, it argues, must also be applied to state action. The official doctrine of low-intensity warfare is described as closely resembling official definitions of terrorism: coercive means directed at civilian populations for political or other purposes. Terrorism, on this account, is not simply an instrument of the weak; it can be embedded in state policy.

This claim is connected to the United States’ legal record. The interview cites the International Court of Justice’s 1986 condemnation of U.S. conduct against Nicaragua as an unlawful use of force, characterized in the account as international terrorism. It further notes that the United States vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on states to comply with international law. The same case appears as a practical alternative to retaliation: Nicaragua brought its complaint before the Court, which ruled in its favor and ordered the United States to stop its actions and pay substantial reparations. The United States rejected the ruling and intensified its attacks. Nicaragua then turned to the Security Council and the General Assembly; the United States vetoed the former’s proposed resolution, while the latter adopted a similar one over two consecutive years, with the United States and Israel voting against it both times.

The interview treats this history as relevant to what the United States could do after September 11. Rather than answer attacks with reprisals, it could identify suspects, produce evidence, and pursue legal accountability. The account invokes the postwar settlement reflected in the United Nations Charter: force is barred except in self-defense against an armed attack, pending action by the Security Council to protect international peace and security. It argues that reprisals are prohibited and that the United States could not invoke Article 51 unless the same basic principles of international law were understood to apply to it as to states it opposed. It warns that a general rule of answering attacks in kind would renew a cycle of retaliation, with potentially catastrophic consequences in a world possessing weapons of mass destruction.

The post-September 11 response

The interview argues that the attacks accelerated political trends already under way. The Bush administration’s doctrine is offered as an example, while governments elsewhere are described as using the attacks to establish or intensify repressive policies. Russia joined the counterterrorism coalition in hopes of gaining latitude for its actions in Chechnya, and the account says it was not disappointed. China also joined for comparable reasons. Turkey was the first country to offer troops for the new phase of the U.S. war on terror; its prime minister presented the offer as recognition of U.S. support during Turkey’s campaign of repression against its Kurdish population. The interview notes that Turkey had received substantial American arms and diplomatic and ideological backing, and had been praised for its conduct. Israel, it adds, acknowledged that stronger American support would enable harsher repression of Palestinians.

The argument also turns inward. In the United States and other relatively democratic societies, the fear and demand for patriotism that followed the attacks are described as conditions used to enact restrictive measures and unpopular laws. The interview portrays the Bush administration as exploiting the emergency to pursue policies that harmed much of the U.S. population, including future generations, while serving the narrow interests of large corporations that exerted unusual influence over the administration. Its concern is not only that security language can justify action abroad, but that it can also discipline the public and constrain opposition at home.

Military reach and strategic purpose

A major geopolitical consequence identified in the interview is the establishment, for the first time, of substantial U.S. military bases in Central Asia. The bases are linked to a wider strategic geography: the region’s resources, the prospect of placing multinational enterprises under U.S. dominance, and the effort to surround the world’s major energy resources in the Persian Gulf. Before the war in Afghanistan, the account describes Diego Garcia as the safest U.S. base in a system directed toward the Gulf and extending from the Pacific to the Azores. The new Central Asian presence, it argues, improved the conditions for forceful intervention if the United States judged one appropriate.

The Bush administration is said to have viewed the new phase of the war on terror as an opportunity to consolidate an already overwhelming military advantage and advance global dominance. The account links that approach to a meeting with Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia in April, when he urged the U.S. administration to take greater account of Arab reactions to its strong support for Israeli repression. A senior official reportedly responded that the United States did not care what he or other Arabs thought. The interview also relays a senior official’s comparison of U.S. force during the Afghanistan operation with its conduct during Operation Desert Storm, and a former military official’s expectation that firmness would earn respect and deter further challenge. These remarks are presented as evidence of a policy of demonstrating capability, not merely as incidental comments about military operations.

The purpose attributed to the Afghanistan bombing is explicitly framed as an interpretation rather than established documentary fact: the interview says there were no classified documents available, but considers it reasonable to suppose that consequences had been calculated and that a principal objective was to warn the world about the cost of defying U.S. rules. It compares this proposed logic with the NATO bombing of Serbia, which Tony Blair and Bill Clinton explained in terms of ensuring NATO’s credibility. The account argues that this meant, in practice, the credibility of the United States and its principal arms client, rather than that of individual NATO members such as Norway or Italy.

The article’s conclusion is therefore double-edged. The attacks did not, in this analysis, displace the basic problems of international politics; they accelerated existing trends and created new openings for military expansion, domestic restrictions, and the assertion of U.S. power. The country’s territorial shock and its global reach are held together as a tension: the response to an unprecedented attack is judged not only by its stated counterterrorism purpose, but by whether it respects the legal and moral standards the United States asks others to observe.