WASHINGTON: September 11 did more than ignite a global ‘war on terrorism’. Generations from now, historians are likely to pinpoint that day as a turning point in world politics, the day the last vestiges of the Cold War were erased from the map and new alignments drawn.
For much of the 1990s, the “post-Cold War era” was still defined by US-Russian relations, even rivalry, as Washington sought to prop up Moscow economically while pushing NATO’s boundaries gently eastward, and Russia sought to define its new role in the world.
Through the first eight months of 2001, as Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin sought to figure each other out, Putin toyed with the “China card”, a potential balance to US influence in Asia.
But within hours of the terrorist attacks on the United States, Putin discarded the China card and threw his lot completely with Washington. The US-Russian “strategic framework”, already under negotiation, was accelerated and finalized at the Moscow summit in May with both presidents agreeing to deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals.
The United States withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty without so much as a shrug from Moscow, which, in another turnaround, also raised few objections as several erstwhile Soviet allies of the Warsaw Pact were offered membership in NATO.
Most dramatically, Putin acquiesced to a new US military presence in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus as part of the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan. Washington had treated these countries with deference before September 11, a tacit recognition of Moscow’s traditional “sphere of influence”. No more.
By allying himself with the West, Putin earned a higher profile in the G-8 groups, made up of the world’s seven most industrialized countries and Russia, as well as relative US silence on Russia’s war in Chechnya, where rebel groups are now called “terrorists” because of their links to Al Qaeda.
With the Stars and Stripes on display at military bases throughout Central Asia, Afghanistan and South Asia, Chinese leaders could be excused if they suddenly felt encircled by US military might.
Most ominously for Beijing, the weeks after September 11 saw the Japanese Diet approve deployment of naval forces to support the US armada conducting war in Afghanistan. It was the first Japanese naval deployment outside Japanese waters since World War II and a sign that the US-Japan alliance could become an even greater strategic factor in the Far East.
In Southeast Asia, US forces returned to the Philippines for the first time in years as advisers in the Philippines army’s fight against the Abu Sayyaf separatist group.
The Bush administration moved to improve military ties with Indonesia that had been severed after the East Timor uprising of the late 1990s. US cooperation with Singapore and Malaysia on law enforcement, financial and military matters also improved.
Two flashpoint regions are still feeling the aftershocks of September 11. In South Asia, the new US influence in Pakistan has allowed President Pervez Musharraf to shed the pariah status that marked him after his 1999 coup. Yet Musharraf walks a fine and dangerous line between supporting the US ‘anti-terrorism’ campaign and not angering Islamic militants in his country.
In the Middle East, Bush’s ‘war on terrorism’ and its rhetoric of “with us or against us” has driven US policy closer to Israel. Bush had been reluctant to intervene in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, but he needs Arab support to take on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
That led Bush to endorse Palestinian statehood and invest US prestige and credibility in finding a solution.
As for Iraq, US officials have failed so far to find a “smoking gun” linking Baghdad to the September 11 plot.—dpa