Bridges, Bombs, or Bluster?

Madeleine K. Albright

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2003

Summary:  Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has pressured every country in the world to make a simple choice: Are you with the United States or with the terrorists? But by casting the choice so starkly--and expanding the war on terror to include its campaign in Iraq--Washington has alienated many natural and potential allies and made the fight against al Qaeda more difficult. It didn't have to be this way. The White House has acted as if it doesn't care what others think, and the country is paying the price for its mistake.

Madeleine K. Albright was U.S. Secretary of State from 1997 to 2001. She is the author of the forthcoming Madam Secretary: A Memoir.

EITHER, OR

Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.

There are only two powers now in the world. One is America, which is tyrannical and oppressive. The other is a warrior who has not yet been awakened from his slumber and that warrior is Islam.

Make no mistake about it: the choice for sure is between two visions of the world.

Few readers will fail to identify the first quotation cited above: it was uttered by President George W. Bush, speaking soon after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Few readers, similarly, will be surprised to learn that the second quote came from a Sunni Muslim cleric in Baghdad, Imam Mouaid al-Ubaidi. The third quote, however, may be a bit harder to identify: it was spoken by French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, describing the different world views now held by Washington and Paris. And it should remind us that not everyone divides the world along the same lines as the United States.

Framing choices is central to national security policy. Since World War II, no nation has played a more influential role in defining such alternatives than the United States. Today, however, the Bush administration purports to be redefining the fundamental choice "every nation, in every region" must make. America's radical adversaries -- eager to promote themselves as the United States' chief nemeses -- are echoing the attempt. Those caught in the middle, however, suggest the choices before them may not be quite so simple.

For President Bush, September 11 came as a revelation, leading him to the startled conclusion that the globe had changed in ways gravely hazardous to the security -- indeed, the very survival -- of the United States. This conclusion soon led Bush to a fateful decision: to depart, in fundamental ways, from the approach that has characterized U.S. foreign policy for more than half a century. Soon, reliance on alliance had been replaced by redemption through preemption; the shock of force trumped the hard work of diplomacy, and long-time relationships were redefined.

In making these changes, Bush explicitly rejected the advice offered by one senior statesman who warned, "this most recent surprise attack [should] erase the concept in some quarters that the United States can somehow go it alone in the fight against terrorism, or in anything else, for that matter." So said George H.W. Bush, the United States' 41st president. But his son, the 43rd president, offered his own perspective shortly before going to war with Iraq: "At some point, we may be the only ones left. That's okay with me. We are America."

The second Bush administration, believing that its perception of the meaning of September 11 is self-evidently right, has failed to make a sustained effort to persuade the rest of the world to share it. As a result, the world does not in fact subscribe to the same view. Certainly, most of the world does not agree with Bush that September 11 "changed everything." This is not to say the attacks were met by indifference. On the contrary, NATO, for the first time in its history, declared the crimes to be acts of aggression against the entire alliance. Almost every government in the Muslim world, including Iran and the Palestinian Authority, condemned the strikes. U.S. allies, from Canada to Japan to Australia, rushed to aid or complement the American military campaign against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Pakistan, properly confronted by the administration with a stark choice, chose to cooperate as well. Even China and Russia, plagued by Muslim separatists, pledged solidarity. For months after September 11, it seemed the Bush administration would harness these reactions to unite the world in opposition to a common threat.