George Friedman, head of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, recently wrote that "the most significant effect of 9/11" was that "the United States became obsessed with a single region." He concedes that this was inevitable in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Today, though, he argues, it is necessary to ask: "What does the United States lose elsewhere while it focuses on the future of Kandahar?" Friedman shares the Afghanistan Study Group's skepticism about the consequences of military failure there, but he also makes the cold-blooded assertion that "the United States cannot subordinate its grand strategy to simply fighting terrorism even if there will be occasional terrorist attacks on the United States."
Kibitzers like Friedman, or me, don't have to deal with U.S. public opinion, of course. Another terrorist attack would make it even harder than it already is for Obama to advance a post-post-9/11 strategy. And I don't think Friedman is right in claiming that, for example, Russia exploited U.S. preoccupation with the Middle East to attack Georgia in 2008. But there are undeniably grave costs to that preoccupation, and not only in blood and treasure. Doubling down in Afghanistan has further ratcheted up the public sense of menace -- they'll attack us here if we don't stop them there -- while the failure to make headway has deepened public cynicism about America's capacity to shape a better world. Obama has adopted from Bush the premise that the United States must find a way to tame the Islamic world, though he has tried to go about it in a very different way. But though this may be true in the long run, in the short run it has turned out to be a thankless task.
The Obama administration cannot, of course, abandon the Middle East peace initiative it has just helped foster, or ignore Iran's nuclear aspirations. But it can pivot from the "arc of crisis," as Zbigniew Brzezinski once dismally labeled the broader Middle East, to the world of opportunity that Obama, as candidate, so successfully invoked. In this regard, I took heart from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech this week at the Council on Foreign Relations. After a ritual mention of Middle Eastern crises, Clinton moved on to relations with European allies and NATO, development assistance, the need to incorporate emerging powers into the global order, regional cooperation, reform of the United Nations and other global institutions, and the obligation to defend and nurture fragile democracies. (Of course, she ended by talking about Iran policy as the successful consummation of all these initiatives.) This is the long-term agenda that has been obscured by crisis.
Are the American people in the mood to hear about global architecture? I don't know; they're in a very bad mood. Nevertheless, we should say on 9/11/10, as Obama did in 2007, "It is time to turn the page."
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