A stronger Uncle Sam

Eleven years have passed since 9/11, and they have not been kind to America. The war in Afghanistan did not go as planned. The quick decapitating of the Taliban regime — Kabul was liberated as early as November 2001 — was misleading.

The nation-building project, with some optimists dreaming of Afghanistan as a tranquil American ally that would be to Central Asia what Japan was to post-war East Asia, has scarcely worked.
The intervention in Iraq was a costly indulgence. It proved to be an overambitious attempt at social engineering in the Arab world. Finally the 2008 global financial crisis dented American confidence. A sense of decline, even defeatism, began to be conveyed in Washington, DC. All talk of the 21st century being an American epoch was discounted. Uncle Sam started to look over his shoulder, and saw the Big Panda.
America developed a walk with a slight limp. It’s difficult being the 700-pound gorilla in the room when you’re too used to being the 800-pound gorilla. It’s so difficult that you instinctively begin to act like a 400-pound gorilla, attempting to placate not just China and the Arab street but even North Korea and Venezuela. From unilateralism, the mood swung to that other default Middle American position: Isolationism. Of course, that should be isolationism insofar as it is possible in today’s world.
The two presidential elections that followed 9/11 reflected this. America looked inward and backward. It is not without reason perhaps that US President Barack Obama has made “Forward” the catchword of his re-election campaign. The elections of 2004 and 2008 were not quite about moving ahead; they were referendums on the immediate past. In 2004, issues of security and identity came to the fore and George W. Bush won a famous victory as a war-time President. Four years later, America buried ghosts of the past and elected its first African-American President, a one-term senator whose life seemed a Hollywood scrip-writer’s invention.
Finally that cycle seems to be ending, and America is preparing to vote this time for a new future, not a familiar past. There is also a cautious hope among Americanists that the worst is over and having come out of the post-9/11, post-financial crisis crucible, the United States still has a story to tell.
Is such optimism warranted? It depends on the parameters one use. For instance, have the military and security goals the US set itself after 9/11 been met? In terms of building model, market-friendly democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan, the answer would obviously be “no”. If measured more narrowly, the score is a little different. The American homeland is secure. Further attacks on American civilians and assets have been prevented. Afghanistan is still a mess but scarcely a sanctuary for intercontinental jihad. Finally, the Twin Towers have been avenged with the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Yes, American troops will begin to leave Afghanistan in 2014 without the Taliban completely liquidated. Nevertheless, the brunt of the war is now being waged in Pakistan, and a fire Islamabad lit is for its generals to fight off. The problem is no longer America’s.
After 2014, America will contract its expansive counter-insurgency mission in the AfPak region to a limited counter-terrorism mission. Its key instruments will be its drones and, more than that, its Special Forces. As the raid on Abbottabad in 2011 made apparent, America retains the resources and the right to mount an audacious attack deep in another country and destroy a single high-value target. If it has done this once, it will do it again — regardless of the national sovereignties it violates — should the cause be deemed important enough. Its enemies will have to sleep with that knowledge.
This does not amount to the unqualified and clearly defined military victory the US hoped for in 2001. Even so, it is the closest a foreign power has come to succeeding in the AfPak badlands in a long time.
The principal vulnerability of the US in September 2001 was its dependence on oil from West Asia. It could have responded to this in several ways. For example, there was talk of building massive public transport systems and reducing the use of private cars. In the end, technology came to the country’s aid and it began harnessing shale gas using the fairly new fracking process. It also started producing more oil from domestic sources.
In the middle of the coming decade US dependence on West Asian oil — its gets less than 15 per cent of its current supplies from there — will plummet. By 2030, this may well be reduced to zero. Much before that America will be a substantial exporter of gas to Europe. This will rewrite the postulates of American energy security, and allow the Pentagon to reduce investments in the Persian Gulf region and enhance them in the Eastern Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, where China’s star is ascendant.
What will happen to West Asia? It will see a scramble for influence involving Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, with China (and India) worried about their energy dependence on the region. America will retain its leverage without being susceptible to blackmail. It’s a very different scenario from September 2001, when the Saudi Arabian ambassador in Washington, DC, had enough clout to spirit away members of the Bin Laden family from the US without the media finding out.
What does all this mean for November’s presidential election? It is a reflection of how much America has changed that the two tickets comprise a Mormon, an African-American and two Catholics. President Obama, a Democrat, looks to Ronald Reagan, a Republican icon, for inspiration. The Republicans, on the other hand, realise they can only win if they take a moderate position on social issues. Their vice-presidential nominee in 2008 was Sarah Palin, the darling of the fringe; their vice-presidential nominee in 2012 is Paul Ryan, and his calling card is a small-government economy.
Who’ll win? Nobody knows. Chances are though the winner will be presiding over a relatively stronger and more prosperous America in the coming four years. That would be a fitting tribute to those who died on that crazy Tuesday morning, 11 years ago.