The long shadow of 9/11

Abstract

It has been two decades since the 9/11 terror attacks, a critical watershed not only for the United States but also for the rest of the world. The youth of today might not have a clear idea of this pivotal event but it had far-reaching repercussions for global politics and public policy, particularly the foreign policies of states and counter-terrorism approaches of governments and international organizations. Since 9/11, the world witnessed US military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rise of the Islamic State, and the mutation of terrorism beyond religious extremism. The United States under the Biden administration also took time to remember 9/11 but also delivered its first major foreign policy decision—its complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. Known as its longest war to date, the US war on Afghanistan has exacted a toll in the country in terms of time, resources, and the bodies and lives of its own citizens as it sought to rebuild the Afghan nation. However, as the Taliban forces regained power over the country, the US withdrawal instantaneously led to its swift and complete control over the country. The harrowing images of Afghan citizens trying to flee their country to avoid being under the Taliban was a grim reminder of the failure of the original US mission in the war-torn state. Many observers compared this to the US fleeing another war it fought with Vietnam during the Cold War period. 9/11 changed the world and remade the global international order. While terrorism remains an existential threat to states and societies, there has been a paradigm shift to view this security challenge more holistically. For example, the advent of the preventing/countering violent extremism (P/CVE) paradigm sought to generically treat terrorism as a phenomenon across all ideologies and even religions. The hard, militaristic counter-terrorism approach is balanced with a softer, kinetic orientation that addresses the roots of radicalization from a governance and whole-of-society approach. My own research on the Philippines revealed that the adoption of the P/CVE framework by the government did not automatically change the military-dominant orientation of policy toward terrorism. On the contrary, P/CVE became a “sanitized” version of a violent and heavy-handed approach to government-designated terror threats that now include insurgent and rebel groups (Arugay et al., 2021). But the US withdrawal on Afghanistan could also be an indication of how the US will reposition itself as a global superpower. Could this be further proof of the declining US strategic commitment as the world's greatest military power? Or could this mean that the US has finally learned the lessons of calibrating the use of its awesome military as a means of exercising power globally? There are perennial questions that have ramifications on Asia and how its states deal with the US in safeguarding regional peace and stability. Over the past decade, Asian Politics & Policy (APP) has featured cutting-edge research that analyzes the impact of 9/11 and the terror threat in Asia. Most of what we have published are studies that examined the impact of counterterrorism policy in democratic governance. For example, Owens and Pelizzo (2013) found that the global war on terror had a profound impact on the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches of government in Asian democracies. With regard to state–society relations, Toomey and Singleton (2014) analyzes the official state discourses on terrorism and concluded that the “terrorist” label applied rebel groups in Sri Lanka and Palestine justified the use of overwhelming force. Finally, a study traced the extraordinary evolution of the Abu Sayyaf Group a s jihadist organization to an appendage of the Islamic State (Singh & Singh, 2019). The authors painted a gloomy picture as terrorist organizations can be attached to larger radical movements despite geographic distance and ideological differences. APP looks forward to publishing more studies on the impact of terrorism and political violence in domestic politics and international relations. In this final issue of Asian Politics & Policy for 2021, we offer an array of excellent articles that include topics such as China's Belt and Road Initiative, ASEAN's response to the Rohingya crisis, Russia's Far East development policy, and populism in India under Modi. For the first time, we are also featuring three policy reviews that analyzed the Rohingya refugee crisis, China's COVID-19 diplomacy, and India's telecommunication reforms. We hope that our journal can be a good academic medium for serious and rigorous debates about political issues and public policies in Asia.