9/11Twenty-Five Years After 9/11, Strategic Shocks Mustn’t Cloud Strategic Thinking
The 9/11 attacks were a strategic shock and demonstrated how quickly shock could overtake our security system. Twenty-five years later, the true measure of is a national security system resilient enough to withstand the next sudden shock without losing sight of the broader strategic environment.
It was 25 years ago today that the Western world completely changed following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11th, 2001. The shock of these horrific terrorist attacks caused a seismic shift in security policy both in Washington and Canberra. While the initial shock justified a major response, the focus on non-state and counterterrorist threats soon consumed a generation of national security policy, military resources, intelligence efforts and intellectual attention.
The strategic failure after 9/11 was not the United States’ and Australia’s response, but that 9/11 became the dominant lens through which all security policy was organised. This imbalance ultimately crowded out sustained attention to long-term, state-based strategic competition.
Twenty-five years ago, Prime Minister John Howard was in Washington for the 50th Anniversary of the ANZUS treaty, and from his hotel room he watched the smoke rise from the Pentagon. Upon returning to Canberra, he invoked that ANZUS treaty for the first and only time in its history. Not long afterwards, the first of two terrorist bombings occurred in Bali, killing 202 people including 88 Australians. These attacks brought the terrorist threat home, transforming the national security system from a post-Cold War state-centric framework to one focused on non-state actors, counterterrorism and homeland security.
The Bush administration pivoted to the Global War on Terror; the Patriot Act, which expanded the powers of law enforcement and intelligence agencies; and the launch of operations in Afghanistan. Australia adapted and developed parts of the Australian Defence Force to integrate with US-led coalition operations. Both governments expanded their domestic intelligence capabilities to integrate more broadly across government agencies and ministries. Many of these reforms were long overdue to better organise around these types of non-conventional threats. Given the shock and uncertainty at the time, this response was necessary.
The problem became one of strategic displacement. Counterterrorism moved from being an essential priority to becoming the dominant lens through which all national security policy was organised. Consequently, our counterterrorism efforts dominated foreign policy relationships, the design of our force structure, intelligence resources, language and regional expertise, strategic geography and industrial priorities.
