The Impact of September 11 Attacks on the US Foreign Policy Research Paper

The Impact of September 11 Attacks on the US Foreign Policy - Research Paper Example This paper is basically an effort to describe the very important political event of September 11 attacks in relation to the influence it exerted on America’s foreign policy and international relations. The paper also discusses myriad ways by which US had to transform its international relations and alter foreign policy decisions according to the theories of international politics. On the morning of September 11, four commercial US airlines were hijacked by some 19 hijackers who were believed to be associated with Al-Qaeda and two of those hijacked jets were intentionally flown into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center. The third plane got crashed into the ground due to the angry passengers’ involvement and the last plane was deliberately flown into the important building of Pentagon. As a result, thousands of people died and many got badly injured for life. Most of the people who died from the attacks happened to be innocent civilians and a minority belo nged to the military forces who ran to the attacked places to save the public. The impact zones where planes hit the North and South Towers made it virtually impossible for anyone above and below the impact zones to make an escape from the buildings, rather many hundreds of people got trapped in the poisonous fumes and dust and died of smoke inhalations after remaining entrapped for terribly long hours. However, the South Tower got attacked after the North Tower which is why significantly lesser casualties were reported in this tower as the military officials started evacuating the building immediately after the first tower got struck. US also changed economically a lot as the destruction of the towers cast serious and irreparable damage to the economy of the busy area of lower Manhattan as a result of which seriously bad and devastating influence was exerted in the global markets and ultimately it all culminated in global economic recession. US economic recession was also fomented to a large extent by the practice of investing many billions of dollars in the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq under Bush administration. Prior to attacks, the approach taken by Washington concerning the rest of the world was relatively unfocused and it became definitely very much focused after attacks. America really had no significant thoughts nor any decisions were made about other countries as the Cold War has already ended a decade earlier and also victory was bagged by US in the Cold War as the enemy in the form of Soviet Union got defeated which had earlier on managed to give a focus to Washington’s approach to the world. Post 9/11, this focus again shifted but this time the influence produced happened to be long-term and much more demanding, tiring, and exhausting for both US government and public than ever before. US took these attacks made on September 11 as a threat to not only US law, order and peace but a serious menace to global law and order which is why the important officials sat together and with agreement launched a very extensive War on Terror by first invading Afghanistan and later Iraq to combat against the Taliban belonging to Al-Qaeda and defeat them. Most of the Taliban resided in