Comment: Defining U.S. Foreign Policy in the Post-9/11 World

Abstract

Evaluating U.S. foreign policy one year after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is a risky venture, particularly when writing the analysis four months before the actual anniversary. Currently the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominates the news: Will recent fighting in the region diminish prospects for negotiating a peace accord that recognizes both an Israeli and a Palestinian state? Does the deployment of U.S. and British unarmed civilians to the West Bank to oversee the Palestinian imprisonment of six detained terrorists foreshadow a larger U.S. military presence in the area? Does “the best chance for peace in Palestine, and for stability throughout the entire Middle East, [go] through Baghdad,” as the Wall Street Journal recently wrote?1 In the next few months, Middle East politics, from oil prices to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Saddam Hussein's repressive regime in Iraq, will almost certainly continue to dominate the news and serve as focal points of U.S. foreign policy. Whether U.S. actions will need to expand from diplomacy to military intervention will likely be the hotly debated question, though events might prompt earlier action. Although the attacks of September 11th harshly illustrated how events can redefine the policy agenda, we nevertheless can make some predictions about the direction of U.S. foreign policy in the post-9/11 world.