COVID- 19: A New September 12th
Each generation has had its own defining foreign policy moment; the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Suez Canal crisis and the collapse of the Berlin Wall. For those of us born in the 1990’s it would be easy to point to 9/11 as the defining foreign policy moment, that was until the beginning of 2020.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a new defining moment in foreign policy. Like other like defining moments, it’s pushing us towards a new approach; out of the shadow of 9/11.
In CIA HQ a sign reads “every day is September 12th”. While factually inaccurate, this reifies the foreign policy mindset of the US and its allies in the post-9/11 years. Western States have, since 2001, based their foreign policy on the central goal of fighting violent jihadism. This single goal lead directly to the NATO invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq but has also subsumed other foreign policy actions. For example, a number of violent or corrupt governments in North Africa, including those in Cameroon and Chad, have been supported by the US and their allies on the promise that they will counter violent terrorism. In North Africa this violent terror took form in Boko Haram, frequently the world’s most violent terror organisation best known for kidnapping 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, Nigeria in 2014.
While this response is understandable in the short term; precipitated by the shock and fear that the most powerful nation in the world had been attacked at home. The reflexive “hastily assembled”[1] doctrine is no longer appropriate to a world with complex threats like pandemics, declining human rights and troublesome Russia.
Nowhere is this shown clearer than in the changes that have come within the US system as the post 9/11 security framework is, slowly, being labelled unlawful and dismantled. The FBI’s Terrorist Screening Centre (established in 2003) with a database estimated to hold information on 1.2 million US citizens was found to violate the rights of 23 Muslim citizens who believe they’re on the list in September 2019. Similarly, Guantanamo Bay’s occupancy has been vastly reduced, the facility remains open only by executive order. While this dismantling of the post-9/11 security system in the US is welcome, it is not symptomatic of the wider reorientation of foreign policy that is necessary.
The threat of global jihadism is receding, the US and their NATO allies have fought successfully those who attacked them in 2001 and those groups who have filled the gaps, ISIS and others, do not have the strength to attack the US at home. But the NATO allies had no exit plan, from their post-9/11 foreign policy or the military action this precipitated.
The post-9/11 reflex was to treat terrorism as if it functioned in a vacuum; a single threat in an otherwise peaceful space. This fundamentally flawed assumption has weakened the response to other significant global challenges and undermined the Western liberal order.
Other Global challenges have not been able to produce a global response, in part because they’re not viewed as the same threat to international peace and security. Climate change and global pandemics do not result in pillars of acrid smoke above New York. As a result, precious time has been lost and other challenges have emerged. It is not surprising that after almost 20 years of fighting an ”other” there is a rise of xenophobia and isolationism.
The post-9/11 foreign policy of the US and its NATO allies has, therefore, hindered our response to a number or challenges as well as causing its own. This ‘group think’ has run its course. The world must no reorient itself away from this single threat thinking and isolationism.
We must make up for lost time on a number of issues; climate change and climate related emergencies. Perhaps, if they are framed properly, these issues may be able to induce the same global cooperation of the immediate post-9/11 response. We must also change what we are able to perceive as a threat to international peace and security. COVID-19 has clearly demonstrated that threats to citizens globally have changed and the soaring US death rate proves that states cannot handle global challenges alone.
The challenges facing the US, its allies and leaders globally have changed. The way we tackle them must change as well. So perhaps the CIA are correct when they say, ‘every day is September 12th’. Every day brings a new challenge, needing a new approach. What those constructing foreign policy must remember is that September 12th 2001 is long over, and September 12th 2020 needs a new approach.
[1] Rhodes, B. 2020. The 9/11 Era is Over. The Atlantic. Available Online: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/its-not-september-12-anymore/609502/ [Accessed: 3/5/20]