The Taliban insurgency happened because they enjoyed a permissive environment: safe haven in Pakistan, state failure in Afghanistan, and an America increasingly focused on Iraq. In turn, most of those had common roots in the Bush administration’s decisions in 2001: to define the conflict as a “War on Terror” best waged with a light footprint and to conflate the Taliban and al-Qaida. Some of those decisions made sense in 2001, but none of them bore scrutiny as the situation in Afghanistan changed, and the Bush administration failed to adapt quickly enough.

The case for more aid to Afghanistan slowly gained ground from late 2002. The Accelerating Success initiative, coupled with the Bonn Process and a new Afghan Constitution, began to move reconstruction efforts in the right direction. A new reconciliation program recognized the need for a settlement with the Taliban. But enduring challenges from recalcitrant warlords, international donors, inflexible diplomacy, and a sclerotic bureaucracy counteracted whatever progress was achieved from 2003 to 2005.

Having accomplished its immediate objectives, the spring of 2002 was an ideal moment for the administration to pause and reassess its strategy, goals, and purpose in Afghanistan. Rather than grapple with the newfound complexity, a sense of inertia, drift, and inattention took over. There was, of course, a sense of urgency and a serious debate starting in the spring of 2002, but it was not about Afghanistan. As the year wore on, the administration became almost wholly consumed with preparations for the war in Iraq. Counterintuitively, the drift and inattention could occasionally work to Afghanistan’s benefit. The Bonn Process unfolded as planned and was widely seen as a success with only loose oversight by policymakers in DC and more leadership from the UN. Unfortunately, Bonn would prove to be the easy part. While the political process unfolded, the international community tried, and, absent American leadership, failed to mount the most ambitious reconstruction and stabilization operation since World War II.

In late 2006 and early 2007, the Bush administration recognized that Afghanistan was deteriorating sharply and undertook a series of strategy reviews. The reviews led to more troops and a new counterinsurgency strategy with attention to training Afghan security forces and improving governance, reconstruction, and counternarcotics. As in 2003, the new approach ran into the buzzsaw of bureaucracy, the fog and friction of war, unanticipated challenges, and, now, a far stronger and more resilient enemy. The problems with the American war effort in 2007 and 2008 were less problems of strategy than of implementation. Having blundered badly in the early years and created huge problems for itself, the American effort was now playing catch up, trying to adjust rapidly to a deteriorating situation.

The Bush administration faced three major strategic choices between September 11 and October 7, when the military campaign started: how to define the war, what to do about the Taliban, and what kind of military footprint to deploy. The administration chose to frame the conflict as a War on Terror, to treat the Taliban as of secondary importance, and to adopt a light footprint. The first choice – to declare a War on Terror – has been the subject of ample and justified criticism, then and now. The latter two choices made more sense at the time, and the Taliban’s fall from power two months later, on December 7, seemed to vindicate the administration’s impressive improvisation. But the sense of vindication also numbed the administration to the need to adapt as circumstances changed.

The fighting stopped in 1975 with Hanois victory. But the battle for the hearts and minds of the American people continued and was propelled by politicians manipulating the mythical cause of POWs/MIAs. Postwar movies filled out the scenario of a war lost because of poor leadership in Washington combined with the baleful influence of the anti-war movement. Presidents wrestled with the legacy of Vietnam, including the controversy over the national Vietnam Memorial. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter both attempted to move the nation beyond the grasp of the Vietnam Specter. Both failed. Ronald Reagan used it to help him win the presidency in 1980, after the debacle that followed the occupation of the American Embassy in Tehran, which only seemed to emphasize the nations lost claims to world leadership after Vietnam. George H. W. Bush claimed that it had been buried in the sands of Iraq after the rapid victory in Gulf War I. Bill Clinton succeeded in establishing diplomatic and economic relations with Vietnam. But it re-emerged with renewed force during the Second Gulf War and the never-ending war in Afghanistan. Even today it shapes much thinking about military interventionism.

The dramatic impact of the 11 September 2001 attacks on New York and Washington sharply intensified relations between Australia and the USA. The bilateral relationship was reconfirmed as the two states joined in war against an elusive, and unexpected, enemy. As the war on terrorism broadened, Australia enthusiastically joined the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’, sending troops to fight in Afghanistan and, more controversially, deploying forces alongside the USA in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. From late 2001 commentary in Australia invariably accepted that ‘relations with the United States dominated Australian foreign affairs’ or more subtly observed that ‘the central dynamics of Australian foreign policy revolved around the issue of relations with the superpower, and the implications of this relationship’ for the broader exercise of Australian foreign policy.

Chapter 5 analyzes two cases of fake news as disinformation – the 2003 Iraq war and climate change. I look at how political and economic actors manipulate the news media to promote disinformation, in the process “manufacturing consent” for the public. With Iraq, I document the initial success of the Bush administration in selling the US invasion, producing growing support for the war, with the news-consuming public based on notions that Iraq possessed WMDs and ties to terrorism. Support for war declined over time, as the public was increasingly sensitized to rising casualties and the financial cost of the war, after the United States failed to find WMDs, and as the war was increasingly seen as unwinnable and immoral. I also examine how the fossil fuel industry utilized “false balancing” as a news management technique for encouraging mass confusion related to climate change, pitting climate-change skeptics against individuals recognizing planetary warming. Examining “climategate” and cap-and-trade legislation in the late 2000s, I show how reactionary narratives dominated the news, driving increased public opposition to efforts to address climate change. Public opposition receded by the mid-to-late 2010s as extreme weather and a warming planet undermined efforts to foster mass ignorance.

Although islands have long been geologically, ecologically, economically and strategically linked to oceans, they are now juridically linked to them, also. The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea grants states the right to claim exclusive economic zones projecting up to 200 nautical miles from their coasts, and continental shelves projecting up to 350 nautical miles. Bird islands have been transformed into anchors of pelagic sovereignty, leading to fierce diplomatic disputes over the legal definition of island-ness.

Nature conservation has also served as one means of forging new legal connections between islands and oceans, for in the past few years pelagic states have established a series of vast oceanic reserves anchored by bird islands. The US has expanded Roosevelt’s Hawaiian Islands Reservation into the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, and Britain has established the Chagos Islands Marine Protected Area in an attempt to protect the US military base on Diego Garcia. It is hard to find a more chilling example of nature conservation as a tactic for conserving sovereignty over territory.

Historian James Whitman notes that, historically, governors used pardons to maintain low prison populations. He relates the report of an English observer in 1835 that prisoners in New York “felt unduly wronged” if they did not receive a pardon after serving half of their sentences, a belief reinforced by the existence of “semiannual clemency sessions which resulted in the release of forty to fifty convicts simultaneously.”1 One explanation for the demise of executive clemency was its replacement with more formal types of executive lenience, such as parole.2 As noted inand , however, American jurisdictions would later severely restrict parole. And when that happened, a traditional safeguard against bloated prison populations – the pardon power – did not reemerge.

The period since the 1990s has proved, in an ironic way, the strength of Israel–US relations. In 1991, American president, George H. W. Bush, clashed with Israel, and since 1996, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had strained Israel–US relations in an unprecedented manner. In both cases, the constants that determined the course of the Israel–US relationship, religion, shared values, and history, proved to be stronger than any individual, regardless of their position. The period covered in this chapter was characterized by a close friendship and strategic partnership between the two nations. During those years, the two countries signed several memoranda of understanding which solidified the American commitment to Israel’s security and ensured its qualitative military edge, as well as expanding the cooperation on economic and cultural matters. The military-industrial cooperation as well as security cooperation between the two countries deepened. The growing Israeli attachment to American culture and values was another manifestation of the deepening relations between the two countries. The Israeli economy changed from socialist to neoliberal under the influence of American economic thinking. Neoconservatism spread across Israel’s political and intellectual elites through institutions and people, most notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israelis adopted many of the characteristics of American culture and economy, bringing their country closer to the United States in form and content. The ties between Israel and the Christian Zionist Evangelicals deepened as well. With the Evangelicals returning to the forefront of American politics since the mid-1970s, they became a major force in the support of Israel, a tendency that was especially encouraged by the right wing in Israel. Evangelical support for Israel has only increased during the 1990s and 2000s.

Fierce partisan conflict in the United States is not new. Throughout American history, there have been polarizing struggles over fundamental questions relating to the meaning of the Declaration, the Constitution, and the relationship between the two. These struggles over ideals have become all encompassing when joined to battles over what it means to be an American – conflicts that have become more regular and dangerous with the rise of the administrative state. The idea of a “State” cuts more deeply than suggested by Max Weber’s definition of “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Beyond the powers of government, the State represents a centralizing ambition (at least for progressive reformers) to cultivate, or impose, a vision of citizenship. In Randolph Bourne’s words, the State is a “concept of power” that comes alive in defense of or in conflict with an ideal of how such foundational values of Americanism as “free and enlightened” are to be interpreted and enforced. The ideal is symbolized not by the Declaration and the Constitution but rather in rallying emblems such as the flag and Uncle Sam.

The entire outlook of the Middle East changed following the 9/11 attacks, and US–Iran relations were no different. Iran condemned the attacks, citing its own experiences with terrorism, and the first year of the war in Afghanistan surfaced surprising opportunities for cooperation. But in a pivotal State of the Union address, George W. Bush referred to Iran, along with North Korea and Iraq, as part of an Axis of Evil, supporting terrorism and disrupting the global order. The Iranians were incensed and called off the talks on Afghanistan’s new government. The next few years would see heightened rhetoric from both sides and the election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Despite his inflammatory policies, he apparently was still open to engagement with the US, if Washington would make the first move. Bush showed no signs of doing so, but with the decline in influence of neoconservative advisers Rumsfeld and Cheney, and the rise to Secretary of State of Condoleezza Rice, the administration made a surprising switch. Again, little of actual substance would develop, but it showed that even as fierce public jabs were exchanged, secret channels still survived.

When the Bush administration launched the War on Terror after the attacks of 9/11, Gothic responded through complex critiques of the discourses and the violence this entailed, but also by unapologetically energising the endeavour to maintain US global hegemony. Noting a number of geopolitical, economical and cultural similarities between late nineteenth-century Britain and the US at the turn of the millennium, this chapter observes that a dominant strand of American Gothic in the early twenty-first century is in fact effectively imperial. The chapter then discusses the interplay between what can thus be termed an ‘American Imperial Gothic’ and the post-9/11 period, paying particular attention to the ideological and affective work that Gothic performs. Located at the intersection between postcolonial and decolonial studies, and international relations and security studies, the chapter furthermore explores how a union of various entertainment corporations and government institutions is involved in the production and dissemination of often deeply reactionary Gothic texts. These rehearse racists and sexist tropes central to the neocolonial project, but also reveal how the anxieties always tied to vast imperial and capitalist projects rise to the surface during moments of sudden upheaval and transformation.

This chapter shows how the Bush administration and other Iraq hawks promulgated a successful case against containment after 9/11 based on the idea that containment and deterrence could not address the “nexus” threat of weapons of mass destruction, terrorist groups, and rogue states. It then examines what I call the “Powell–Blair” approach to Iraq, which defined the political/policy establishment's thinking on Iraq in this period. Tony Blair, Colin Powell, most of the foreign policy elite, and many Democratic politicians criticized how Bush was pursuing regime change but nonetheless endorsed the basic tenets of the regime change consensus. They made a tactical and procedural argument for pursuing regime change “the right way” but did not think that containment was a viable alternative. Thus, after the Bush administration made a cursory effort at supporting inspections in Iraq in the winter of 2002–2003, the majority of this establishment supported the invasion.

Chapter 2 explores the motivations for going public on pending Supreme Court decisions and the effect of these speeches on case outcomes. Though presidents commonly use speeches to shape the actions of Congress and the bureaucracy, this is a risky tactic with regard to the Supreme Court, since it makes the president susceptible to attacks for violating the norm of judicial independence. Moreover, it is not entirely clear why a president would turn to public speeches to influence the justices when the Solicitor General is available to litigate cases or file amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs before the Court on behalf of the administration. We conclude that presidents’ primary motivation to speak about pending cases is not to influence their outcomes, but rather to take public positions that demonstrate their commitment to the policies implicated in the litigation, including shaping how the public understands the constitutional issues involved in the cases.

While it opposes states and state action, radical liberal natural law theory also provides vigorous support for any existing state’s adoption of an anti-militarist, anti-imperialist foreign policy. Anti-interventionism and anti-imperialism have been persistently, if not universally, valued in the liberal tradition. Chapter 8 brings a natural law perspective critically to bear on an alternative liberal view, an attempt to defend a chastened militarism as a liberal option.