The Age Of Terror: America And The World After September 11 [Paperback]

Strobe Talbott (Author), Nayan Chanda (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 17, 2002

September 11 marked the beginning of a new era--an age of terror in which counter-terrorism will be one of the highest priorities of national governments and international institutions. How we proceed in this new war depends in large measure on the answer to a prior question: what exactly happened here and why? In The Age of Terror, eight leading historians and policymakers address this question and examine the considerations and objectives of policy decisions in post-September 11 America. Co-published with the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This latest entry into the post-September 11 publishing frenzy (edited by former Time contributor and deputy secretary of state Talbott and Chanda, his colleague at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization) relies on top-notch academics to probe behind the headlines. While all of the essays taken together provide a primer on some of the most pressing issues that have emerged in the past few months, the strongest pieces provocatively explore new ground. Scientist Maxine Singer underscores the necessity to extend ties and funding between government and researchers, in part to support "off-the-wall" ideas that might help in U.S. domestic defense. Oxford historian Niall Ferguson explores the non-Muslim antecedents of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon; individual elements of the attacks were not new, he argues, only their combination was. Yale professor Paul Kennedy compares the situation currently faced by the United States with Britain's in the 19th century, concluding that the United States is in a more difficult predicament mainly because of the openness of today's world. These essays often explore ground already covered by journalists: the difficulties of maintaining good relations with a Muslim world, in which the United States is unpopular; the diffuseness of the enemy; the need to protect civil liberties while simultaneously protecting American security. But even where the scholars go over familiar turf, they do so in a comprehensive and thoughtful way that is sure to feed some readers' newly whetted appetites for information on the post-post-Cold War world.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The events of September 11 have raised many new and disturbing questions for everyone. These eight essays, written in the first six weeks (up to November 1) after the events, deal with the perceived failure of America's post-Cold War foreign policy, radical Islam, maintaining this country's place in the new hybrid strategic landscape, Arab terrorism, the behavior of earlier empires that faced threats, maintaining the values of America's legal system, new national security questions, and the relationship between science and defense. The contributors, who include former Deputy Secretary of State Talbot, are all academicians (six at Yale) with collectively many years of thought and writing on their respective topics. They have succeeded in expressing that collective wisdom in an accessible style. No reader should expect definitive answers from such an instant book, but this one earns its keep by suggesting possibly relevant comparisons from the past and by contributing to the definition of the right question. For public and academic libraries. Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (December 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465083579
• ISBN-13: 978-0465083572
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,428,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provocative, informative, entertaining book on 9/11, June 15, 2002

By 

L. Feld "lowkell" (Arlington, VA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Age Of Terror (Hardcover)

This collection of essays--written, compiled, and published within just a few weeks of 9/11-- easily could have fallen into the trap of being just another slap-dash, knee-jerk, sloppily-put-together "instant book." And, as with any collection of essays by different authors, The Age of Terror: America and the World After September 11 could have ended up being wildly uneven in terms of quality, theme, and style. Fortunately, none of this happened. Instead, the book's two editors - former Clinton Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Nayan Chanda-have assembled a fine collection of essays by leading experts in various fields (history, law, political science, molecular biology, diplomacy) into a top-notch, thought provoking, fascinating look at the world after 9/11. As explained on the book's jacket, the premise here is that "the unforgivable is not necessarily incomprehensible or inexplicable." After reading this book, the events of 9/11 should be both more comprehensible and more explicable to just about any reader.

Among the more provocative essays in The Age of Terror" is the one by Charles Hill, a former aide to Secretaries of State Kissinger, Haig, and Shultz. Hill's chapter, entitled "A Herculean Task: The Myth and Reality of Arab Terrorism," demolishes what Hill considers to be a series of "deceptive and dangerous myths" that have sprung up following 9/11: that "America faces an entirely new kind of challenge;" that "we brought this on ourselves;" that there are "legitimate grievances about poverty and oppression" that "leave those afflicted with no choice but to take up terrorism;" and that "nothing we do can be effective against such a threat." Even more provocatively, Hill blasts "the miserable state of politics and governance" in the Arab world, plus the tendency of Arabs to blame all their problems on warped conspiracy theories (i.e, the Mossad was behind 9/11) and bluntly states: "Every regime of the Arab-Islamic world has proved a failure. Not one has proved able to provide its people with realistic hope for a free and prosperous future." On the contrary, Hill argues that Arab regimes have intentionally served up a "combination of internal oppression and propaganda to generate rage against external enemies." In this soil, according to Hill, " religiously inflamed terrorists take root" and thrive. Hill then concludes his fascinating, thought-provoking essay with a classic literary analogy, comparing the current fight against terrorism to the "twelve labors of Hercules." And just as Hercules required "intelligence," "patience," "fortitude" "the willingness and ability to undertake diverse and difficult tasks," "methods other than direct, main force" at times; the assistance of allies, and continued respect for "properly constituted laws and procedures of justice" to successfully complete his labors, so shall we in our current struggle. Hill leaves us with fighting words fit for Hercules: "those who commit acts of war will be warred upon until they surrender or die."

[....]

Paul Kennedy's essay, "Maintaining American Power: From Injury to Recovery," to this reviewer's mind is somewhat repetitive of earlier arguments he has made, particularly in his best-known book, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Kennedy stumbles early on when he states unequivocally that 9/11 has led "not just to short-term, military responses...but also to a re-examination of many aspects of the American way of life, of America's attitude toward other countries." Huh? It has? Where? Not in the Bush Administration, that's for sure! After that, Kennedy hits his stride, arguing forcefully (as he has in the past) that the U.S. needs to utilize and strengthen all of the elements of its power: military/industrial, economic, and diplomatic. Kennedy sharply criticizes the Bush Administration's strong tendency towards unilateralism and apparent disrespect for international organizations and alliances, while arguing for an essentially realpolitik "smart diplomacy." Finally, Kennedy warns of the "danger of overreaction and overextension" to the "dreadful and unjustified shock" of 9/11, and prophecizes that the U.S. may find that the 21st century is "even more tricky to navigate, and even more turbulent, than...the century just gone."

Aside from the Hill, Ferguson, and Kennedy essays, other chapters in The Age of Terror ably cover such topics as: the role of science (and strengthening America's scientific base) in the post-9/11 world (Maxine Singer); flaws in U.S. foreign policy--inconsistency, insensitivity, unilateralism once again--that need fixing if we are to fight the asymmetric threat of terrorism (John Lewis Gaddis); the rise of Islamic extremism and fundamentalism--"salafiyyah," Wahhabism-- in the Arab world and "its roots in the history of the Muslim sense of decline and its unhappy encounter with the dominant West;" (Abbas Amanat); the need to maintain our "most fundamental values," such as civil liberties and open debate of issues, while fighting terror (Harold Hongju Koh); and the need for improved intelligence and homeland security while learning as a society how to "live with terrorism" (Paul Bracken). In sum, if you want to understand why 9/11 happened and where we might go from here, I strongly recommend that you read this excellent, well-written, thought-provoking book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good outline of terror-related issues despite rush to print, August 14, 2003

By 

J. Gillespie "gettingthere" ([e-mail]) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Age Of Terror (Hardcover)

The Age Of Terror should be a disaster. Eight academicians and career bureaucrats, thrown together in the immediate aftermath of September 11th, ruminate on issues related to that momentous event. Against all odds, though, this hurried collaboration produced some solid work.

Some topics are inspired (how to foster cooperation between the private sector and the military establishment) and others are predictable (foreign policy, civil liberties, and radical Islam). For the most part the authors showed great prescience in their outline of the issues that would confront the United States. The weakest chapter, ironically, covers the most obvious problem: the tension between national security and civil liberties. Conversely, the best essay is the most complex: how to harness American ingenuity to devise new technologies to confront terrorists. Proximity to the attacks did not really effect the quality of the work; those essays that are good would have been so regardless of when written, and the few that fall short would not have improved with time for reflection. The authors all are experts in their respective fields, and if anything this book shows that America's elites were not as caught off guard as it seemed in the first days after the Pentagon and World Trade Center were attacked.

This book is a good overview of terror-related policy issues and at times provides a surprising degree of depth. That it worked at all, let alone holds up, is a pleasant surprise and a tribute to the editors and contributors.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Often insightful, March 29, 2002

By 

James Voorhees - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Age Of Terror (Hardcover)

This is in some ways an instant book--produced within a month or so of September 11. But the people who contributed have long been thinking about the issues raised by those horrifying events. The contributions are uneven, as one would expect from a proejct like this, but the whole is much better than one might expect. It helps the reader put the events in the context of Middle Eastern and world history and provides some ideas to chew on. I always find John Lewis Gaddis and Paul Kennedy stimulating. The essays by Niall Ferguson (provocatively advocating imperialism!) and Maxine Singer (on the role science might be given) were particularly thought provoking.