Operation Enduring Freedom put an end to a romanticised version of globalism championing common rules, human rights, ‘historic personal freedom’, the freedom of information and the respect for smaller nations. The aspirations of freedom were crushed by security concerns that paved the way to total control and coercion.
The shock and psychological distress in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks have precipitated seismic shifts in global politics and shaken up the world order. The Western world of today and, by extension, the entire architecture of international relations has been largely reshaped by the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’, including Operation Enduring Freedom and its ramifications.
Any challenge can be tackled by violence, whereas fear is a self-selling commodity. The Afghanistan campaign, the Iraq War, Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa (OEF–HOA) and the lesser known Operation Freedom Eagle (OEF–P) were all textbook examples of wars of choice successfully spun as wars of necessity. At the core of both the initial, like the invasion of Afghanistan, and the subsequent steps were humongous media frenzy and egregious public lies. Think Colin Powell famously holding up a vial of alleged weaponised anthrax at the UN Security Council meeting. The public was seeking a decisive response fuelled by vengeance. The US had the capabilities to deploy its military around the world, which it did. And while, militarily, the long-term effects of those overseas engagements were questionable, to say the least – the present-day Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia are an utter mess – the political repercussions really paid off.
Forced consensus. Operation Enduring Freedom proved to be a unique case study in manufacturing forced consensus first at the state-by-state level and then globally. The sincere support and sympathy offered to the US even by its longtime rivals, China and Russia, were leveraged to unleash an unprecedented campaign violating national sovereignty that targeted both America’s enemies and its allies. Thousands of banks and businesses, whether based in Europe, the Persian Gulf or the Far East, were shaken to their core to the tune of blatant disregard for national legislation. Thousands of individuals were launched probes into. Hundreds wound up in the CIA prisons stretching from Europe to Guantanamo Bay. Torture has been legalised as ‘an essential tool to elicit crucial information from the terrorists’ – all in the name of ‘saving lives’, of course. The world of Margaret Thatcher, François Mitterand and Helmut Kohl that saw the US being primus inter pares is now ancient history.
Control freaks. The 2001 USA PATRIOT Act gave the intelligence agencies the unheard-of scope of authority to engage in political censorship, economic persecution over the perceived lack of loyalty and control over the internet. The online free space era all but ground to a halt. The independent media became an oxymoron. Following the 9/11 tragedy, the old-school investigative journalism of the Watergate or Iran–Contra Affair ilk was simply unthinkable as media incursions that brazen could now be punished by a prison sentence of up to 20 years. It ushered in a world of digital transparency for the intel community.
Distrust. Following the early 1990s honeymoon phase in the US–Russia relations, the trust between the two nations went sour before devolving into the complete opposite. Even though Russia eagerly join a host of the US-initiated steps to address the global terrorist threat, its willingness was effectively stunted by a whole gamut of inexplicable shenanigans ranging from the US bases operating in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan to an expedited Nato eastward expansion (Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltic states), a decision made in 2002 under the ‘war on terror’ pretext. Worse still, the armed forces engaged in the five-day Russo–Georgian war were part of the Georgia Train and Equip Program (GTEP).
No more international justice. In 2002, the US Congress passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act. The legislators vowed to protect the American war criminals from prosecution and even rescue them militarily from international courts and overseas custody. Those provisions earned it the colloquial nickname ‘The Hague Invasion Act. In that same year, the US government withdrew its signature from the Rome Statute, thus declining to abide by its legal standards.
Operation Enduring Freedom put an end to a romanticised version of globalism championing common rules, human rights, ‘historic personal freedom’, the freedom of information and the respect for smaller nations. Those rosy dreams and expectations were stomped on by something ostensibly far more important. The aspirations of freedom were crushed by security concerns for good. Meanwhile, without guaranteeing any actual safety, the push for security slumped into total control and coercion.