After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made

by Ben Rhodes

The securitization of society. The demonization of the Other. Far-reaching laws of social control branded as counterterrorism. These would prove potent tools. Vladimir Putin had already been waging a brutal war in Chechnya before 9/11. But when he used security and antiterrorism laws to transform Russia into an authoritarian cabal where he controlled all aspects of Russian politics, he could nestle these measures under the wing of the American hegemon and its shared commitment to fighting a global War on Terror, while bristling at America’s moral standing to criticize him. Xi Jinping also embraced the American War on Terror as a template and a justification. The Chinese Communist Party built an infrastructure of mass surveillance that took the PATRIOT Act to the next logical step of making maximum use of all that reach into the lives of their citizens. In 2014, after Uighur attacks took dozens of lives in Xinjiang Province, China’s media began to refer to “China’s 9/11.” Xi set in motion the crackdown that would lead to a million Uighurs being thrown in concentration camps by calling for a “struggle against terrorism, infiltration, and separatism.”