War & Conflict Archive

U.S. President Barack Obama was preparing to announce Osama bin Laden was dead when word got out and crowds gathered outside the White House in Washington and at Ground Zero in New York City.

With the weeks grinding on in an intervention that no one anticipated, the West finds itself increasingly embroiled in Libya’s civil war. In this special report, World Politics Review explores the strategic and diplomatic fallout of NATO’s intervention in Libya through articles published in the past two months. Below are links to each article in this special report, which subscribers can read in full. Subscribers can also download a .pdf version of this report from our document center. Not a subscriber? Subscribe now, or try our subscription service for free. U.S. Leadership Obama Abdicating U.S. Leadership in LibyaBy Thomas P.M. […]

After digesting the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by a U.S. Navy Seals team, my first thought was about how his death, and the manner in which it happened, highlights the tension between the visible and the invisible in terms of terrorism and counterterrorism. Terrorism must be tactically invisible in order to effectively plan and carry out attacks, but it depends on the high visibility of those attacks for any strategic impact. In almost a perfect inversion, counterterrorism employs highly visible tactical measures — the kind of “security theater” best-illustrated at airports — to reassure the public, […]

While the death of Osama bin Laden represents the long overdue demise of one man, its impact on the long-term trajectory of American foreign policy is likely to be more profound: Along with bin Laden, so too dies the “global war on terrorism.” This does not mean that there are no longer any terrorists who want to kill Americans and other Westerners. Neither does it mean that al-Qaida will simply disappear overnight. And another major attack could return the U.S. and its allies to a war footing. But bin Laden’s death does mean that the exaggerated role that terrorism has […]