The events of September 11 produced evident changes in U.S. foreign policy, immediately elevating to a top priority efforts to enhance the security of the homeland and to combat foreign terrorist groups. The Bush Administration has pursued these new missions with admirable determination and speed, declaring a new era in which the fight against terror has redefined the international landscape and the primary objectives of America’s global engagement. To be sure, the attacks on New York and Washington warranted a shift in U.S. priorities, but it is nevertheless premature to announce the opening of a new era and the consequent emergence of new geopolitical fault lines.

Important and effective responses to the events of September 11 have been made at the tactical level: enhancing intelligence capabilities abroad, preparing military operations against non-state actors, and tightening domestic security. Much less has changed at the strategic level. The dictates of international politics make traditional priorities as relevant as ever; Washington still needs to focus on managing relations among major states, integrating rising powers into global markets and councils, and using multilateral institutions to promote cooperation, peace, and development. In similar fashion, despite steady bipartisan support for the ongoing war against the Al-Qaeda network, it would be unwise to conclude that September 11 has durably reversed America’s diminishing interest in foreign engagement, shoring up U.S. internationalism for the foreseeable future. The popular comparison to Pearl Harbor may well prove erroneous, for the difficult struggle against terrorism is ill-suited to engendering public attention and sacrifice over the long term.

Therefore, even as the United States remains vigilant in countering the threat of terrorism, it must guard against misreading that threat and exaggerating the extent to which it defines a new international system. The problem of terrorism should not delude America into thinking that it has entered a brave new world when it has not. Entertaining such illusions will impel the United States to pursue a misguided grand strategy that will ultimately do much greater damage to U.S. national interests than the terror attacks themselves.

The most significant effect of September 11 has been America’s awakening to non-conventional threats to its security. Prior to the attacks, the Bush Administration was scaling back U.S. commitments in peripheral areas and designing a military prepared to take on conventional adversaries with high-tech, stand-off weaponry. It has since altered course, deploying ground troops and special forces in Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Philippines, and other locales that were previously deemed outside the scope of America’s core security interests. The vulnerability of the homeland has also lent urgency to the task of protecting against weapons of mass destruction (WMD), prompting redoubled efforts to develop missile defense and plans for preemptive strikes. Whatever the means, keeping WMD out of the hands of terrorists and rogue states will remain a primary objective.

The United States will also continue to focus on non-military efforts to neutralize terrorist threats, such as rebuilding human intelligence capabilities, strengthening international cooperation among intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and improving capacities for tracing financial flows and freezing assets. Tighter border controls, more domestic surveillance, increased security at airports and seaports, and greater readiness for biological attack will become permanent elements of efforts to protect the homeland. These shifts in U.S. policy are significant, and they should do much to help counter the threat that they have been designed to meet.

Beyond these adjustments to U.S. strategy, however, it is difficult to sustain the case that September 11 has wrought a more fundamental transformation of world politics. Three major changes were predicted just after September 11; none have come to pass.

First, many analysts predicted that the globe’s major powers would come together in a coalition against terror. The Bush Administration agreed, with the President asserting “a new threat to civilization is erasing old lines of rivalry and resentment between nations.” But September 11 has hardly brought harmony to great power relations. Despite the invocation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, America and Europe have since drifted far apart, with the EU chagrined by America’s unilateralism and its seemingly exclusive focus on fighting terrorism with military force. Beijing and Washington still differ on many core issues. Relations between the United States and Russia have certainly improved, but this rapprochement stems from a unique set of converging interests unlikely to be replicated elsewhere.

Initial assessments of the impact of the attacks on New York and Washington also pointed to a permanent change in relations between the rich North and the impoverished South. Inequality and poverty were allegedly breeding resentment and anti-American sentiment, putting the industrialized and developing worlds on a collision course. Thomas Friedman’s “super-empowered angry man” was turning a socio-economic gap into a geopolitical divide; Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations seemed to be finally taking shape (though this was not necessarily Professor Huntington’s conclusion).

Again, such pronouncements have proved either premature or downright illusory. The central cleavage fueling the terrorism spawned in the Middle East is within the Islamic world itself as it tries to come to terms with modernity, not between the United States and Islamic society. The illegitimacy of governing regimes, clan and factional rivalries, pervasive poverty, and a sense of having been left behind by history are the root causes of disaffection within the Islamic world. It is true that this disaffection can fuel widespread anti-American sentiment, but demonstrating against U.S. Middle East policy is not the same as carrying out terror attacks against U.S. targets. The strategic threat that the South poses to America comes from a few isolated groups and rogue regimes, not from the developing world – or the Muslim world – as a whole.

Mounting deterioration and deprivation in the South unquestionably warrant America’s attention and resources. As was the case before September 11, however, the South poses to the North a humanitarian emergency, not a strategic challenge. The North-South divide will become a geopolitical fault line only if America turns it into one, narrowly viewing developing countries as breeding grounds for terrorism rather than as distressed polities in need of structural reform and humanitarian aid.

A third misreading of the events of September 11 concerns their likely impact on the trajectory of U.S. internationalism. Prior to the attacks on New York and Washington, the Bush administration was abandoning the liberal internationalism of the past five decades in favor of both neo-isolationist and unilateralist extremes. Washington was backing away from peacekeeping missions and pledging to focus more attention on the Western Hemisphere at the same time that it was distancing itself from international institutions – the ABM Treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, the International Criminal Court – that might constrain the country’s room for maneuver.

For many, the events of September 2001 promised to arrest this trend. As Andrew Sullivan wrote a few days after the attack, “We have been put on notice that every major Western city is now vulnerable. For the United States itself, this means one central thing. Isolationism is dead.” G. John Ikenberry claimed that terrorism would push the United States “back toward a more centrist foreign policy” that “stresses alliances [and] multilateral cooperation,” thereby providing “new sinews of cohesion among the great powers.”

It is unlikely, however, that terrorism will inoculate the United States against the allure of either neo-isolationism or unilateralism. These inclinations run far deeper than the personality of the Bush Administration. In the long run, America’s leaders may well find the country’s security better served by reducing its overseas commitments and raising protective barriers than by chasing terrorists through the mountains of Afghanistan. The United States has a strong tradition of seeking to cordon itself off from foreign troubles, an impulse that could well be reawakened by the rising costs of global engagement. America’s initial response to the attacks of September 11, after all, was to close its borders with Mexico and Canada, ground the nation’s air traffic, and patrol the country’s coasts with warships and jet fighters. It is worth recalling that attacks against Americans in Lebanon (1983), Somalia (1993) and Yemen (2000) induced the United States to withdraw its forces, not to take the fight to the perpetrators. The long-term consequences of the threat of terror may well be an America that devotes much more attention to the security of its own territory and much less attention to resolving problems in distant lands.

It is equally doubtful that the threat of terror will ensure a responsible Congress and a more engaged and attentive public. Bipartisan rancor did disappear instantly on September 11, 2001, and the public stood firmly behind military retaliation. But these were temporary phenomena arising from the shock of the moment; after a few months, partisan wrangling returned and the public mind again began to wander. As one reporter commented on December 2, “The post-Sept. 11 Congress has now almost fully abandoned its briefly adopted pose of high-minded bipartisanship.”

The relatively rapid return to business as usual stems in part from the new nature of the challenge at hand. From the 1940s through the 1990s, American leaders had in Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and then the Soviet Union dangerous and identifiable enemies against which to mobilize the nation. Terrorism represents a far more elusive enemy. Instead of facing a tangible adversary with armored columns and aircraft carriers, America now confronts sleeper cells and disparate groups of extremists schooled in guerilla tactics. With much of the struggle against terrorism occurring quietly beyond the public eye, evocative images that help rally the country around the flag will be few in number. In the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington and the anthrax scare that followed, President Bush asked of Americans not that they make a special sacrifice, but that they return to normal life by shopping in malls and traveling by air. Even as American soldiers were fighting and dying in Afghanistan, ABC was trying to woo David Letterman to its late-night slot to replace Nightline – one of the few network programs that provides even remotely in-depth analysis of foreign news. As before September 2001, keeping the American public engaged in international affairs promises to be an uphill battle.

The threat of terror also appears to be intensifying, not moderating, America’s unilateralist proclivities. Despite offers of help from abroad, the United States preferred to act largely alone in the main battles against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Although terrorists pose a collective threat, they single out specific countries when they strike. Understandably, the attacked country has a much stronger motivation to hit back than others. That is why Israel, Russia, Britain, France and most other targets of terror have been on their own in responding to terrorist attacks on their territory. For better or worse, the type of threat posed by terrorism is more likely to stoke unilateral action than to tame it.

The distance between the United States and its putative partners has only increased since the effective end of the fighting in Afghanistan. President Bush’s designation of Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an “axis of evil,” his determination to topple Saddam Hussein, and his strong support for Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians have exacerbated strains across the Atlantic. Even staunch allies such as Germany have begun to urge that the EU take steps to restrain a wayward America.

Rather than changing the underlying dynamics of international politics, the events of September 2001 have only added the need to combat terrorism to an already long list of priorities. Perhaps the main danger ahead is that U.S. policy makers will continue to believe that the international system has changed much more than it has, holding a view of a global landscape that bears little resemblance to that envisaged by the rest of the world. If this misperception continues, the United States may well succeed in eliminating the Al-Qaeda network, but at the expense of the alliances and institutions that remain the bedrock of international peace and prosperity.