The Penguin History of the World

That United States policy abroad – above all, in support of Israel – had given much encouragement to the growth of anti-American feeling in Arab countries could not be doubted, even if that was a new idea for many Americans. There was widespread resentment, too, of the offensive blatancy with which American communications had thrust manifestations of an insensitive capitalist culture on sometimes poverty-stricken countries. In some places what could be regarded as American armies of occupation, guests rarely welcomed in any country, could be depicted as the upholders of corrupt regimes. But none of this could plausibly add up to a crusade against Muslims, any more than could the immense variety of Islamic civilization be seen as a monolithic opponent of a monolithic West. What was soon achieved was the removal of the hostile Taliban regime in Afghanistan, by a combination of the efforts of its local and indigenous enemies and American bombing, technology and military special forces. By the end of 2001 there was a new Afghan state formally in being, resourceless and dangerously divided into the fiefs of warlords and tribal enclaves though it seemed, and dependent on American and other NATO forces to fight its enemies. Elsewhere, the consequences of the ill-defined war on terrorism complicated events in Palestine. Arab states showed no willingness to cease to support the Palestinians when Israel attacked them, invoking the crusade against international terrorism.

The most disastrous effect of the 11 September atrocities was the decision taken by President Bush and his main international ally, Britain’s prime minister, Tony Blair, to invade Iraq in 2003. The main cause of the invasion was the growing fear, especially in the United States, that Saddam Hussein’s regime had chemical, bacteriological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Before September 2001 it would have been difficult to envisage a pre-emptive strike against a sovereign country based on (unfounded, as it turned out) suspicions of weapons’ stocks or acquisitions, however unpalatable that country’s regime was. But, for many Americans, the events of 11 September changed that. They were now ready – at least for a time – to follow a president who wanted to make use of the sense of post-tragedy emergency to deal with other potential threats. Even if Bush and Blair realized that Saddam – for all his anti-western bluff and bluster – had nothing to do with the attacks on New York and Washington, they thought his regime was an evil that had to be removed. In spite of stiff resistance from all the other members of the UN Security Council, and most of global public opinion, the United States and Britain started pushing for a UN resolution that would empower them to attack Iraq. When it became clear, in early March 2003, that no such resolution was forthcoming, the two countries, and some of their allies, decided to invade Iraq and remove Saddam’s regime even without the support of the UN.

The Second Gulf War lasted only twenty-one days in March/April 2003, but came to dominate international affairs at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It ended, predictably, with the removal, and later the trial and execution, of Saddam Hussein and the overthrow of his regime. But it also produced new fissures in world politics that proved difficult to plaster over, and lasting resistance in many areas of Iraq against what was seen as foreign occupation. In Europe, France, Germany and Russia opposed the invasion and spoke out against it. China condemned it as a violation of international law. NATO encountered its biggest post-Cold War crisis, when it could not agree on whether to support the invasion or not, and the United States was left with the new east European members as its staunchest supporters. But the biggest damage was done to the concept of a new post-Cold War world order in which consultations among the great powers and multilateral action should replace worldwide confrontation. The UN secretary-general, the Ghanaian Kofi Annan – a man the United States itself had worked hard to get elected – told the world that American and British action in Iraq was illegal. To him, and to many others, the real concern was not with Bush’s determination to get rid of Saddam, but with what would happen elsewhere, when other countries were determined to get rid of their enemies and the biggest power on earth had set an example through unilateral action.