Terrifying thoughts: Power, order, and terror after 9/11

Global Governance

Volumn 11, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 247-271

  Miller, Steven E ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Bush doctrine; Grand strategy; Terrorism war on terrorism; Terrorist threat; U.S. foreign policy

Indexed keywords

EID: 20144367741     PISSN: 10752846     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/19426720-01102008     Document Type: Review

References (13)

1. Podhoretz regards the Cold War as World War III. He has written a series of articles on the World War IV theme. See Norman Podhoretz, "How to Win World War IV," Commentary, February 2002;
2. Norman Podhoretz, "World War IV: How it Started, What It Means, and Why We Have to Win," Commentary, September 2004;
3. and Norman Podhoretz, "The War against World War IV," Commentary, February 2005.
4. Andrew Sullivan, "This is a Religious War: September 11 Was Only the Beginning," New York Times Magazine, 7 October 2001, available online www.andrewsullivan.com.
5. For an extended discussion of the problems that proliferators must surmount and their difficulties in surmounting them, see Alexander Montgomery, "Proliferation, Determinism, or Pragmatism? How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb Network," International Security (forthcoming).
6. This is particularly true with respect to securing nuclear materials that could facilitate nuclear terrorism. The Bush administration has been strangely desultory in pressing these programs despite its alarm over the global terrorist threat. For important recent analyses that include clear prescriptive agendas, see Graham Allison, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe (New York: Henry Holt, 2004);
7. and Matthew Bunn, "Preventing a Nuclear 9/11," Issues in Science and Technology (winter 2005): 55-62.
8. David Warsh, "Writing History," EconomicPrincipals.com, 23 January 2005.
9. For a taste of a contrary view from a regional perspective, see Abdel-wahab El-Affrendi, "Waiting for Armageddon: The 'Mother of All Empires' and Its Middle East Quaqmire," in David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, eds., American Power in the 21st Century (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2004). El-Affrendi asserts that what is particularly notable about the application of U.S. power in the Middle East is its "amazing ineffectiveness .... American influence here is far from proportionate to its muscle. In the Middle East, American power exhibits itself at once at its most ostentatious, as it seeks to 'shock and awe', but also at its most ineffective" (p. 253).
10. For a useful overview of the various groups that comprise the jihadist network, see Jonathan Schanzer, Al-Qaeda's Armies: Middle East Affiliate Groups and the New Generation of Terror (Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2005).
11. For an illuminating assessment of the situation in Iraq, see Anthony H. Cordesman, "The Developing Iraqi Insurgency: Status at End-2004," Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., 22 December 2004.
12. For Gaddis's thoughtful advice to the Bush administration, suggesting that "mid-course corrections" are in order, see John Lewis Gaddis, "Grand Strategy in the Second Term," Foreign Affairs (January-February 2005).
13. For another assessment of Lieven's book, see Brian Urquhart, "Extreme Makeover," New York Review of Books, 24 February 2005, pp. 4-5. Urquhart describes Lieven's book as "courageous, even foolhardy" because it is so "relentlessly candid" while discussing such a sensitive subject as American nationalism.