The first thing I see every time I come to New York is something that is not there. That soaring absence of the twin towers on the skyline of Manhattan remains this city's most haunting presence. A landmark of air. But the shadow cast by the absent twin towers is no longer the defining feature of world politics in the way that the shadow cast by the Berlin Wall was for nearly 30 years. Most people don't any more feel that we live in a "war on terror" in the way that we did feel that we lived in a cold war. Not across the world. Not in America. Not even in New York.
At the end of last month, Janet Napolitano, the US secretary for homeland security, confirmed that the Obama administration has junked the term "global war on terror". So, as a slogan, what was billed as an epochal struggle like the cold war "“ or "World War IV", according to the neo-conservative Norman Podhoretz, for whom the cold war was World War III "“ lasted little more than seven years, from the autumn of 2001 to the autumn of 2008, when Obama won the presidential election.
For most Americans, Iraq is over "“ though not, of course, for those Iraqis who are still alive and have to go on facing the consequences. "Goodbye, Iraq, and good luck" was the headline on Tom Friedman's column in Tuesday's New York Times. The headline doesn't do justice to the column, but it perfectly sums up a general American attitude which, if I were Iraqi, would make me incandescent with rage.
As a grieving Britain knows only too well, the war in Afghanistan continues. The original, necessary and justified response to the 11 September 2001 attacks has been deformed and betrayed by the disastrous diversion of resources and attention to an unnecessary, unjustified war in Iraq.
Obama has staked his reputation on success in Afghanistan, but the definition of success has been realistically downscaled. The goal is not a flourishing democracy, just a halfway stable state, which is not a haven or breeding ground for terrorists. Even in the United States, he can no longer depend on public support for this war. In a USA Today/Gallup poll in March, 42 per cent of those asked said that the US made a mistake in sending military forces to Afghanistan. In November 2001, the figure was just 9%. The headline "Goodbye, Afghanistan, and good luck" may be only a few years away.
Americans do not necessarily believe that they are that much safer from terrorist attack, despite all the extraordinary measures that have been taken in the name of making them so. In a series of polls, the Pew Research Center has asked whether Americans feel that terrorists' ability to strike the US is greater, the same, or less than it was on 9/11. In August 2002, 39% said it was the same, 34% less, and 22% greater. In February this year, 44% said the same, 35% less, and 17% greater. So nearly eight years on, a clear majority still considers that terrorists' ability to strike the US is the same as, or greater than, it was on 9/11. They may be wrong, but that's what they say.
So there is a general and surely correct sense that a long-term struggle against diverse terrorists continues. However, a decreasing number of Americans think their own safety will be secured by foreign wars. There's still a sharp partisan divide on this. In this year's Pew poll, nearly two out of three Republicans insisted that military operations would have a greater effect in reducing the terrorist threat than diplomatic efforts; with Democrats, it's the other way round. In total, exactly half of those asked said decreasing the US military presence abroad would reduce the threat from terrorism.
Just as importantly, the terrorist threat has been joined or overtaken by other problems, some of which feel more urgent and others which seem more important. The economic meltdown, first of all. The people I watched hurrying to work past the construction site at Ground Zero early yesterday morning were surely not thinking about buildings collapsing as a result of terrorist attack, for in the meantime that same financial district has seen banks collapsing as a result of what the Oxford economist Paul Collier on this sitecalled the crime of bankslaughter. So those New Yorkers hurrying to work are more likely to be thinking about saving their jobs, or stoking the embers of a fragile market recovery.
Meanwhile, looming in the background are other epochal challenges, such as climate change and the rise of China. If future historians ask, "Who was the winner in the war between America and al-Qaida?" they may yet answer, "China". To be sure, China was rising anyway. But geopolitically it is also the unintended and unintentional beneficiary of a diversionary struggle in which the United States, under the Bush administration, also harmed itself.
Even leaving aside the economic costs of the global war on terror, Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo have damaged the US far more than al-Qaida ever could by any direct assault. But then, this has ever been the terrorist's dream: to provoke the target state into hurting itself, in a kind of bloody judo. Lest we forget, Dick Cheney is still with us "“ and most recently stands accused of having instructed the CIA not to report the development of a covert anti-terrorist operation, reportedly including assassination plans, to Congress. Yet Cheney still has the gall to suggest that dropping the term "war on terror" will increase the terrorist threat to the United States.
Sure-footed and subtle, Obama is doing his best to restore America to its better self, in Michigan (where unemployment now exceeds 14%) as in Washington (where healthcare reform and climate change are at last being addressed, albeit with painful compromises in the offing); and in Egypt (where he spoke eloquently to the Muslim world) as in Ghana. But, although Obama is himself a weapon of mass attraction, the national power resources at his disposal are significantly less than they would have been had he assumed office in January 2001, and the challenges he faces, at home and abroad, are in many ways larger.
Down at Ground Zero, the concrete and steel foundations of a new tower are already visible. In five years' time, there will be a new landmark on the Manhattan skyline, and not merely the haunting presence of an absence. According to the local authorities, the building will officially be called 1 World Trade Center, but I trust that it will continue to be widely known by the originally proposed title, Freedom Tower. Its base will be fortified against terrorist attack. But whether the United States will again appear as a beacon of freedom, whether the heart will lift again at the shimmering prospect of the Manhattan skyline "“ that will depend on American policies on many different fronts, among which the incremental struggle against terrorism is only one, and probably not the most important.
www.timothygartonash.com
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