The defining reality of today's international order is no longer 11 September but America's increasingly bloody occupation of a turbulent Iraq. So why did the Bush administration shift its attention from tracking down Osama bin Laden and a limited number of al-Qaida fugitives to reordering the Iraqi political system in line with American interests and values? This diversion of resources from a clandestine war against a proven enemy to the uphill stabilisation of a wretchedly abused and fractured society seems extraordinarily illogical, even self-defeating. Commentators seeking to make sense of it are now filling the bookstores with volumes devoted to the American 'empire'. But how appropriate is this evocative term?

LRB 6 May 2004 | PDF Download