In the summer of 2004, the US National Committee on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (“the 9/11 Commission”) released its final report explaining why the United States was blindsided by Al Qaeda on September 11, 2001, and what improvements the United States could make to reduce the chances of another catastrophic terrorist attack on US soil. The Commission went to great lengths to identify the shortcomings of the US governmental system that allowed the attacks to occur. Despite the Commission’s efforts, one important topic remained outside the scope of their report: the intellectual mindset that guides US national security strategy. The United States must re-evaluate and modify the political theories that guided the national security leadership on the eve of September 11 if it is to be effective in deterring international terrorism in the future.

Immediately prior to September 11, the administration of US President George W. Bush was operating in a more or less realist framework. Realism, however, is a worldview ill-equipped to deal with the challenges to security in the 21st century, as it greatly underestimates the critical role played by non-state actors. In our globalized world of asymmetrical hazards, we must rethink our priorities to include unconventional rogue networks alongside traditional great power threats. If the 9/11 Commission and its successors are to achieve their objective of providing a comprehensive set of recommendations for reducing the likelihood of disastrous attacks in the future, it is imperative that we grasp the limitations of realism as a guiding worldview. This requires that we are more receptive to liberalism as a guiding paradigm and that we take a more critical view of the teachings of realism.

Realism versus Liberalism

On April 8, 2004, US National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice appeared before the 9/11 Commission, an event that was covered in real time by every major network in the United States. In an effort to investigate the failures and oversights of the US government in possibly preventing the September 11 attacks, the Commission demanded that the National Security Advisor test in public under oath and succeeded in getting this. This was despite the established separation of powers precedent that shields White House staff from having to testify under oath on Capitol Hill.

The push for Rice’s appearance was instigated by former US National Security Council (NSC) counterterrorism specialist Richard Clarke. In his 2004 book Against All Enemies, which some commentators read as an indictment of the Bush administration, Clarke questioned the way in which principals in the administration chose to deal with Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda terrorist network prior to the attacks of September 11.

In his book and in his public testimony before the Commission, Clarke accused the Bush administration of not focusing seriously enough on the threat posed by terrorism. During his highly publicized appearance before the Commission, Clarke went so far as to apologize to the victims of September 11 and their families: “[Y]our government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask—once all the facts are out—for your understanding and for your forgiveness.”

Where was the root of the failure? According to Clarke, the failure stemmed from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: “I believe the Bush administration in the first eight months considered terrorism an important issue, but not an urgent issue ... [A]lthough I continued to say it was an urgent problem, I don’t think it was ever treated that way.”

The appearances of Rice and Clarke before the Commission often entailed a subtle trading of barbs, leaving an impression that there just was not enough room in the White House for both of these horn-locking individuals. However, when one looks beyond the superficial clash of personalities, one can easily see why Rice and Clarke did not readily agree on terrorism. The public pronouncements and testimonials of Rice and Clarke show that they hold different worldviews in respect to international relations. Guided by two dissimilar paradigms, it is only natural that they treated competing issues with different levels of priority.

Rice is on the record as being a long-time subscriber to the theory of political realism. Clarke, while never stating it explicitly, seems to be a subscriber to realism’s chief competitor, political liberalism. During the first eight months of the Bush administration, realism was the dominant perspective, far more important than liberalism, and arguably it still is. As a result, however, the United States was poorly prepared to deal with non-traditional threats and agents, including terrorism and Al Qaeda, which are hardly, if ever, addressed by realism.

For over half a century, realism has been the dominant paradigm in international relations. Tracing its origins back to Thucydides’s The Peloponnesian Wars, realism posits: first, the primary agents in international politics are states, especially major powers; second, states selfishly pursue their national interests, the most vital being national security; third, the most important resources in the pursuit of national interests are material capabilities, especially offensive military capabilities; and fourth, international politics is distinct from domestic politics because the former is anarchic. In such a setting, non-state actors are discounted, unilateralism is favored over multilateralism, military force is a privileged means to an end, and international law and human rights are expendable in the final analysis because morality is never universal. In this grim view, world politics is a state of war among states.

Liberalism, often inappropriately portrayed as realism’s polar opposite, loosens the strict views of realism. Its fundamental propositions are: first, international politics involves a variety of agents, including states (big and small), organizations (intergovernmental and nongovernmental), groups (transnational and domestic), and even individuals (public and private); second, these agents pursue interests (both selfish and collective) through an international agenda that includes economic, environmental, developmental, and cultural matters, in addition to security matters; third, the exercise of power involves a variety of hard (material) and soft (ideational) resources; and fourth, laws and institutions (both domestic and international, as liberalism does not distinguish clearly between the two) based on principles, norms, morals, and rules, play the vital function of providing order in the international system. In the liberal world, a rock star like Bono can have just as much impact as a politician like Russian President Vladimir Putin. As a result, poverty in Africa might receive as much attention as arms control in Central Europe. Hope tends to trump despair in a paradigm that maintains that some moral standards are universal. The international community can improve the world and promote justice through cooperation—especially through international institutions, as multilateralism is a preferred approach to global problems. If, as Thomas Hobbes once suggested, force and fraud are the two principal virtues of realism, law and legitimacy can be seen as the principal virtues of liberalism.