The wrong turn that US strategy took after 9/11

The US retreated from global leadership, squandering the political, economic, and, arguably, moral capital it had accumulated since World War II.

At 8:46 in the morning on September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 11 flew into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Three plane crashes and almost 3,000 deaths followed. The US shut down. The City That Never Sleeps collapsed. And US television shows stopped running ads for a full two weeks — a cultural indicator of just how shocking and unprecedented the attacks were. Yet the greater and more insidious damage was caused by the changes in US strategy after 9/11, where the Bush administration abandoned the hard-earned lessons from the Vietnam War. The US has yet to correct these wrong turns.

The Bush administration proceeded with inadequate foreknowledge and insufficient planning in both Afghanistan and Iraq. (Photo credit: Getty Images)

Successful grand strategy depends on establishing and communicating clear objectives, calculating the appropriate means to achieve these goals, and using overwhelming force — i.e., the Powell Doctrine — when military action is needed. Previous US presidents followed these guidelines when they intervened in Grenada (1983), Panama (1988), Haiti (1994-1995), and in the larger Desert Shield and Desert Storm (1989-1990) operations. Not all were successful, as with the Iranian hostage rescue mission (1980) and the deployment of US marines in Lebanon (1983), but whatever else we might think of these operations, they were finite engagements with set objectives.

In contrast — and this was the first wrong turn — the Bush administration proceeded with inadequate foreknowledge and insufficient planning in both Afghanistan and Iraq. US-led forces were unable to eliminate the Taliban or establish a viable civilian government in Kabul. The US then went into Iraq with inadequate ground forces and proceeded to disband the 400,000-strong Iraqi security forces, throwing Iraqi society into chaos and supplying the insurgency with hundreds of thousands of armed personnel.

The occupation of Iraq lasted nearly nine years and cost $4-6 trillion. And the 20-year War on Terror ended with the withdrawal US troops leaving Afghanistan in 2021 at a total cost of $8 trillion and 900,000 lives. For good reason, Donald Trump campaigned against forever wars in 2016 when he first sought the American presidency.

Bush’s second wrong turn was not funding the War on Terror. Not only was this a departure from previous wartime presidents, all of whom had offset more military spending with higher taxes, but it also ignored the multidimensional quality of national security. Military strength is interwoven with and ultimately dependent on economic health, fiscal prudence, political order, physical infrastructure, healthy citizens, and other domestic factors.

Ronald Reagan was famous for his income tax cuts, yet he quietly cut corporate tax breaks (1982). He increased social security taxes and delayed retirement (1983). He eliminated individual and corporate tax shelters (1984), increased excise taxes on liquor (1984), raised taxes on corporate incomes and capital gains (1986), and removed tax deductions and tax shelters (1986). Although military spending doubled between 1981 and 1989, tax revenues increased by 50% over the same period. In early 1990, soon after the Gulf War, Bush Sr and the Congress raised the tax rates on individuals in the highest income tax bracket and increased excise taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and gasoline.

In contrast, the younger Bush did not ask Americans to pay more in taxes or tighten their belts by saving more or consuming less. Even though patriotic sentiment surged after 9/11, with Bush enjoying 90%+ approval ratings in October, the president followed his 2001 (pre-9/11) tax cuts by passing the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Bill of 2003, which accelerated the 2001 tax cuts. The two tax bills combined to reduce income taxes, lessen capital gains taxes, and cut estate taxes. US military spending more than doubled from 2001 to 2009 (from $330 billion to more than $700 billion), while the federal deficit soared from a $128 billion surplus in 2001 to a $1.4 trillion deficit by 2009.

The third wrong turn was the administration’s readiness under the Bush Doctrine to go it alone. The White House was willing to abandon some of its foremost allies in pursuit of the War on Terror. As a result, the US led a lopsided and limited coalition of States in its invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and then Iraq. It proceeded without France, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, and other allies. In 1989 and 1990, by way of contrast, Bush Sr’s administration was able to get more than three dozen States to contribute troops, material, money, and logistical support for the US-led mission to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

Twenty-five years later, there is still no US grand strategy — and the undefined War on Terror was not a grand strategy. The Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations essentially followed the paths of the Bush and the Trump presidencies. The US federal debt has risen from $5.8 trillion in 2001 to over $40 trillion as of August 2026. And with the possible exception of the intervention in Libya and support for Ukraine, the US has, much of the time, acted unilaterally or bilaterally, independent of its NATO and other historical and potential allies.

The larger lesson is that after 9/11, American strategy veered off track. The US retreated from global leadership and it squandered its political, economic, and, arguably, moral capital — capital it accumulated internationally and domestically in the post-World War II era. And it has continued down these wrong paths at immense financial, physical, and human cost to the Iraqis, Afghans, Europeans, West Asians — especially Palestinians and Iranians — and Americans, as well as others worldwide. American military personnel and contractors have been killed or severely injured. Taxpayers face a ballooning national debt. US foreign relations now figure prominently in the ever more divisive politics in America. This retreat from global leadership and responsibility might be called strategic backsliding, where the US (along with a handful of other States) now believes it is not accountable to other States, to international law, or to humankind.

Bartholomew H Sparrow is professor of government, the University of Texas, Austin. The views expressed are personal