Nicholas Guyatt predicted the attack
The American military has overwhelmed its opponents abroad and an increasing reliance on air power and guided missiles has mini-mised disruption or even awareness of these conflicts at home.
Given the increasing pace of technological change, however, it is hard to believe that the United States will continue to go undisturbed in its repose over the coming decades. The American failure (or refusal) to engage politically with “rogue states” or disaffected populations will ultimately encourage a small minority to express their grievances in horrific ways: by attacking American interests abroad, and even targeting cities within the US.
In 1993 Egyptian terrorists protested against the iniquities of US foreign policy by bombing the World Trade Centre in New York City …. The American response … was to stress the fanaticism of the perpetrators, to depoliticise their actions, and to downplay the threat …
The American military has continued to arm itself with the latest weapons, to knock the “rogue states” into line, and to generate an aura of invincibility which reassures Americans of their own safety. Floating above American cities, the rhetoric suggests, will be planes, satellites and “kill vehicles” which can zap any “rogue” missile and underwrite the security of the American heartland. The US military thus promises a stable environment in return for massive defence spending: on conventional forces to contain and occasionally pulverise “outlaws”; and on “Star Wars” technology to insure against any nasty surprises …
Meanwhile, all of this spending offers little or no defence against the individuals or groups who may try to cause havoc inside the US, exploiting the relative freedom of movement within America and employing high technology to wreak terrible devastation. The US military is hardly an effective weapon against such people, and a system of missile defence however spectacular and expensive will be unable to contain the threat they embody.
The only effective deterrent would involve an effort on the part of the US to rethink its foreign policy fundamentally, and to minimise the many situations in which American military or economic power has led to profound and enduring suffering in other countries. As long as the US remains insulated from the effects of its actions it will have little sense of the true desperation they produce in others; and of the terrible predicament of those in Iraq, or Sudan, or the Palestinian territories who can find meaning and promise in an act of recklessness and destruction.
This is an edited extract from Nicholas Guyatt, Another American Century? The United States and the World After 2000, co-published by David Philip, Zed Press and other publishers