Exactly 25 years ago, American President George W. Bush declared the 'War on Terror' in response to the 9/11 attacks in which thousands of Americans lost their lives. "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," he said in a speech to the US Congress.
"America was going to wage an existential crusade," says professor of foreign policy at Maastricht University, Roberta Haar. The War on Terror was meant to protect freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.
Officially, that fight is over, but the US achieved hardly any results. The wars backfired, Haar and other experts say, and undermined American authority in the world. That legacy is still visible.
Bush doctrine
The fight against terror began in October 2001 when the Americans invaded Afghanistan. There, the Taliban provided shelter to the terror organization al-Qaida and its founder Osama bin Laden. But Bush wanted more than just to catch Bin Laden. "Our fight will not end until every terrorist group has been tracked down, stopped, and defeated," said the president.
America claimed the right to intervene anywhere in the world from then on; the Bush doctrine. Haar: "Dick Cheney, his vice president, even called it the 1 percent doctrine; if there is a 1 percent chance anywhere in the world that America is threatened, we have the right to intervene preventively."
Leadership role
And in 2001 there were quite a few threats: according to the Americans at that time, 28 terrorist organizations, mainly spread across the Middle East. In 2003, America invaded Iraq, which was accused of harboring terrorist groups and possessing weapons of mass destruction.
Those weapons of mass destruction were never found, but the consequences for Iraq were enormous: hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died. The country became destabilized and new terrorist groups emerged in the power vacuum.
Rifts also appeared in America's alliances. Not all Western countries supported the war in Iraq. And the detention without trial and torture of terror suspects undermined trust in America's leadership role. "In doing so, the US undermined its own world order," says Haar.
Many of the 'forever prisoners' still have no charges against them to this day. A former Guantanamo detainee was held there for 14 years and now lives in the Netherlands:
Bush's successor, Barack Obama, wanted to end the large American ground wars. But because he feared Afghanistan would fall into chaos if the Taliban regained power, he sent tens of thousands of additional troops.
In 2011, the Americans succeeded in killing Bin Laden, but that was only a symbolic peak, says Haar. "It did not have much influence on the further course of the global fight. The Taliban simply said: 'you have the clocks, but we have the time.'"
American troops fully withdrew from Afghanistan under presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Haar: "The agreement with the Taliban was reached during the first Trump administration, but then executed in a completely disastrous way by the Biden administration."
'Black page'
According to Cliff Sloan, Guantanamo envoy under Obama, the fight against terrorism "has become a catastrophe and forever a black page in US history." Also, after a quarter of a century, the number of terror groups has nearly tripled to 81. "The Iraq war became a recruitment poster for jihadists," says history lecturer Joseph Stieb, who wrote a book about American decision-making regarding the Iraq war.
Moreover, the War on Terror is estimated to have caused one million deaths and another 3.5 million indirect deaths. And an enormous amount of money: 8 trillion dollars. According to experts, wasted money, because goals were barely or not achieved and America lost influence worldwide. Stieb: "Russia, and especially China, managed to make significant gains during that period."
In this video, an extensive analysis of the costs and results of 25 years of War on Terror:
Should the US never have waged the War on Terror? Haar: "With all the emotions after 9/11, it is very difficult to imagine a restrained America. It is hard to say: what if they had handled it differently?"
The current Trump administration seems to conclude that the US should have acted harder to make the War on Terror a success, says Stieb. "They believe they could have won in Afghanistan and Iraq if they had used more violence, focused more firmly on detention, tortured more, and arrested more Muslims in their own country."
Trump believes that with "the best army in the world," he can decide when and where to use that power himself. As now in the war against Iran. But also against, as Trump says, "drug cartels and international gangs," which he considers foreign terrorists.
Sloan sees an important warning in this. "That when the emotions of the moment lead to actions that are neither well-considered nor consistent with the fundamental values of your country, it ends in disaster."