While we can contain terrorism, we can't afford the costs of trying to eliminate it and will have to learn how to live with the chronic threat of low-level attacks, says CFR's Stephen Biddle.

Which policies have worked and which ones need work ten years after the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history? CFR experts examine ten issues that have preoccupied U.S. planners.

While U.S. efforts to forge a better relationship with the Muslim world are important, it will also take leadership within that world to challenge the myths that lead to anger and disapproval toward the United States.

The tightening of U.S. border and immigration policy since the 9/11 attacks has been far too sweeping, turning away the kind of visitors who have strengthened the country, writes CFR's Edward Alden.

The payoff of huge investments in security precautions mean better intelligence collection, surveillance, and other security infrastructure that combine to make the likelihood of an al-Qaeda attack today very slim.

A near absence of terrorist incidents in the United States since 9/11 points to the success of the Bush administration's counterterrorism measures that once stirred controversy but now have bipartisan acceptance, writes CFR's Max Boot

U.S. homeland security is unquestionably safer a decade after 9/11 and will remain so if the country pursues a robust, yet proportional, counterterrorism effort abroad, writes CFR's Richard Falkenrath.

The United States has made real strides against nuclear terrorism, but efforts to secure nuclear materials are incomplete and will require continued commitment, says CFR's Michael Levi.

Initial U.S. successes in Afghanistan and Pakistan after 9/11 masked deeper problems that have beset Washington's effort to stabilize the "AfPak" theater, writes CFR's Daniel Markey.

Guantanamo Bay, where hundreds of terror suspects have been detained since 9/11, has underscored the need for flexibility and careful balancing in detainee policy to confront twenty-first-century threats, writes CFR's Matthew Waxman.

Drones have become a cost-effective default tactic for dealing with potential terrorist threats since 9/11, but this policy could lead to drone strikes by other countries as well as pushback from targeted states, says CFR's Micah Zenko.

This video is part of a special Council on Foreign Relations series that explores how 9/11 changed international relations and U.S. foreign policy. In this video, Stewart M. Patrick, senior fellow and director of the International Institutions and Global Governance Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, identifies the successes and lasting challenges in the international community's response to global terrorism since the attacks of September 11, 2001. "The world has made a lot of progress," says Patrick, "but it still has quite a bit of a ways to go to achieve real consensus and real solidarity in this fight."

This video is part of a special Council on Foreign Relations series that explores how 9/11 changed international relations and U.S. foreign policy. In this video, Steven Cook, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations discusses how the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 transformed the United States' Middle East policy. Cook argues the attacks led to the conclusion that "authoritarian stability -- that is, relying on authoritarian leaders in the region to help create a political order that made it relatively easier for the United States to pursue its interests in the region -- was perhaps no longer appropriate." Instead, U.S. policy has been devoted from that point on to "fostering democratic change in the Middle East."

This video is part of a special Council on Foreign Relations series that explores how
9/11 changed international relations and U.S. foreign policy. In this video, Ed Husain, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, who was previously a member and strategist for radical Islamist organizations in London discusses the impact of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on Islamist extremism as well as global counter-terrorism efforts. "The most important thing that happened after 9/11," says Husain, "is not just the so-called 'War on Terror', but more importantly, the unspoken and often unheard developments within Islamist extremism globally." Husain argues that "the global Islamist movement then split into two, immediately after 9/11," into global jihadists like al-Qaeda on one side and non-violent extremists on the other.

This video is part of a special Council on Foreign Relations series that explores how 9/11 changed international relations and U.S. foreign policy. In this video, Isobel Coleman, Senior Fellow and Director of CFR's Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy Initiative, discusses how the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2011 influenced a debate over social and economic challenges and opportunities in the Middle East.

This video is part of a special Council on Foreign Relations series that explores how 9/11 changed international relations and U.S. foreign policy. In this video, Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, discusses how the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2011 transformed the Bush administration. Abrams says 9/11 led then-president Bush to conclude that "bringing democracy and good governance to the Middle East was going to be critical in terms of fighting the sources of Islamic terrorism."

This video is part of a special Council on Foreign Relations series that explores how 9/11 changed international relations and U.S. foreign policy. In this video, Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose argues that the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States "unleashed U.S. power on the world." Rose says this resulted "not just in the Afghanistan campaign, but in the Iraq campaign eventually, in the Global War on Terror, and in the massive deployment of American resources, in power projection, and in an activist world role that wouldn't have been conceivable without the immediate trigger of a threat in the previous decade." He says the end of this decade saw a "chastened, less hubristic" U.S. attitude and a country confronting a host of domestic challenges.

Linda Robinson discusses new attributes that have characterized Special Operations Forces (SOF) operations since 9/11 and their consequences or implications for the future.