Last week, at the US Naval academy’s commencement, Vice President JD Vance delivered a speech that offered more than the usual ceremonial uplift. In carefully measured tones, he outlined—if only in broad strokes—the emerging contours of the Trump-era foreign policy which he described as a “generational shift”. The US, Vance said, would no longer concern itself with the internal arrangements of other societies, nor entangle itself in “open-ended” conflicts untethered from its core interests — the two most enduring legacies of the era when George W. Bush initiated the so-called Global War on Terror. 

For much of the 21st century, skepticism toward American military power came from the left. Today, that mantle is being taken up—unevenly, and often incoherently—by parts of the right, and those ideas have entered the White House. What began as a slow drift away from liberal interventionism has hardened into something that appears more serious.  

It must be said: Joe Biden, the former US president, had already begun shifting America’s foreign policy away from the whack-a-mole task of counter-terrorism and toward great power competition. He followed through on Trump’s commitment to withdraw from Afghanistan to its bitter end and also made good on that promise in Ukraine, confronting Russia head-on. But Biden’s shift felt less like a reckoning than a change in focus — more expedient than transformative. The US would still have plenty to say about other societies — and still try, however half-heartedly, to shape them in its image, if with less of the old missionary zeal. 

But Vance’s statement went further. He didn’t name Francis Fukuyama, but he invoked the end-of-history thesis only to dismiss its central assumption: that the world was inevitably moving toward liberalism. It was wrong, he said, and in any case, it was not the US’s role — or interest — to make it so. “We had a long experiment in our foreign policy that traded national defence and the maintenance of our alliances for nation-building and meddling in foreign countries affairs”, Vance said. “Over time, we were told that the world would converge toward a uniform set of bland, secular, universal ideals, regardless of culture or country. And those that didn’t want to converge, well, our policy makers would make it their goal to force them, by any means necessary.” The Trump administration, he said, has “reversed course”.  

This shift, Vance said, was marked by Trump’s visit to the Gulf states — a region the US had long criticized but where Trump’s gesture was so deeply appreciated that one Saudi academic went so far as to liken him to a modern-day Frantz Fanon. Trump later posted a video on X, crediting Saudi Arabia’s success to its decision to embrace its traditions rather than discard them. The cherry on top was a tweet from the US ambassador to Türkiye, who wrote: “A century ago, the West imposed maps, mandates, penciled borders, and foreign rule. Sykes-Picot divided Syria and the broader region for imperial gain—not peace. That mistake cost generations. We will not make it again.” 

This is a far cry from the mood that prevailed at the outset of the War on Terror—which justified the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq on spurious grounds. Murtaza Hussain, a reporter for the American outlet Drop Site News, notes that the 9/11 attack, claimed by al-Qaida, was filtered through cold war logic: an ideological struggle between good and evil, between champions of an open, free society and the proponents of a medieval, authoritarian culture. “It is very strange now, in retrospect, but when 9/11 happened, it became verboten to discuss the motivations or background of the organisation responsible”, Hussain says.  

This view was championed by a cohort of officials orbiting the White House, shaped by a dense web of Washington institutions known collectively as the neoconservatives, known more widely as the neocons. They believed the US should remain the world’s dominant military and economic power — and that it ought to use that power to spread democracy, combat archaic ideologies, and pry open authoritarian societies in the name of human flourishing. Al-Qaida’s attack gave them the perfect pretext to embark on this grand global experiment. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, gave perhaps the most vivid expression of the bellicosity and ideological zeal that seized the US after the attacks on the World Trade Center. In an interview with Charlie Rose, he argued that the Muslim world had allowed a “terrorism bubble” to fester, and it was the job of “American boys and girls going house to house from Basra to Baghdad” to make clear they would defend their open society — and that anyone standing in the way should “suck on this.” The US could’ve hit anyone, he later added. “We could have hit Saudi Arabia. It was part of that bubble. We could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq, because we could. And that’s the real truth.” 

To stop terrorism, Iraq and Afghanistan, it was said, needed to be remade as liberal democracies — a premise that launched one of the most ambitious, and most foolhardy, enterprises of the modern era. Some policymakers looked to postwar West Germany and Japan as models for what they believed might unfold across the Muslim world. John Gray, the British political philosopher, compared them to the possessed in Dostoevsky’s novel, Devils. He was among the first to suggest that the notion the wars were about oil was, in the end, less dangerous than the truth: that they were fought and lives taken for a half-baked idea — that we would only be safe if the world became liberal and democratic, just like us. Over time, the concessions to reality piled up and in the end, Iran — a Shia Islamist state — came to dominate Iraq, and the Taliban swept back into power in Afghanistan, expelling the American troops who had occupied it for two decades.  

These shifts matter in Somalia, where the US remains a key security partner. In recent weeks, questions have surfaced over whether it will continue backing the government in its long-running war against al-Shabaab, the local al-Qaida affiliate it has been battling since 2007. The Washington Post reported this week that a former State department official recalled Trump-era aides asking whether the US could simply pull the plug on security cooperation with Somalia. “What if we just let it burn?” one reportedly asked. “Can we contain it?” The official warned that such an outcome wasn’t realistic. The US has since signaled that it will continue supporting Somalia, despite misgivings over the president’s political maneuvering. 

Geeska speaks with Murtaza Hussain, a national security and foreign affairs reporter at Drop Site News, about these shifts in US foreign policy and its long war with al-Qaida — a group that, as he recently noted, has in some measure succeeded in forcing the US to rethink how it conducts itself abroad. 

Faisal Ali: You’ve argued that the US misunderstood al-Qaida’s character and objectives from the outset — which echoes a key theme in Vance’s speech about avoiding open-ended conflicts. What do you see as the core misunderstanding, and how did that shape the way the War on Terror was fought? 

Murtaza Hussain: It is very strange now, in retrospect, but when 9/11 happened, it became verboten to discuss the motivations or background of the organisation responsible. When Osama bin Laden declared war against America in the ’90s, he had three clear demands: the removal of sanctions on Iraq, the removal of military bases from Saudi Arabia, and an end to general US support for Israel. So, whatever you think of those demands, they were quite clear. But when the attacks happened, they were so shocking, and because of the emotional intensity, we discussed them as a kind of cosmic event — one without real world context. George Bush actually said — and I remember this, though I was quite young at the time — that the US was attacked because of its freedom. The US wanted to characterise the conflict as a grand ideological struggle like the cold war.  

But that just wasn’t the case. The jihadists were very weak compared to the Soviet Union — they didn’t control any states; they were just networks of individuals. And they didn’t really have a global ideology, per se. You could say that Islam is a universal idea, but al-Qaida wasn’t really a proselytising movement. They weren’t in it to spread Islam — their goals were mostly focused on toppling Middle Eastern governments. 

I’ve been reflecting on this lately because of events in Damascus and Kabul — which are, of course, different. But what we’ve seen is Islamic armed movements capturing major countries, and in the case of Syria, we’ve even seen the new government gain a degree of global acceptance.  

Al-Qaida didn’t expect to be fighting America for twenty years, which is probably why many of their stalwarts actually didn’t support the 9/11 attacks. 

FA: One of al-Qaida’s core aims was actually to draw the US into conflicts in Muslim countries that would exhaust its resources and damage its reputation and encourage armed resistance. Ahmed al-Sharaa actually came up fighting the US in Iraq. Would you say this is another instance of Bush and his team taking the bait? 

MH: Actually, that wasn’t the initial idea. They believed they’d hit the US hard, as they did on 9/11, and that the US would send an expeditionary force they could defeat—replicating the Battle of Jaji, when they helped defeat the Soviets in the Afghan war. But they didn’t understand the psychology of America, nor the catastrophic consequences of their attack, which triggered a global war and brought ruin to the Middle East. I mean, if their goal was to have sanctions lifted in Iraq because of the suffering there, how did their actions leading to the Iraq invasion help? So, the whole narrative that al-Qaida wanted to wear the US out is something they came up with after the fact. They didn’t expect to be fighting America for twenty years, which is probably why many al-Qaida stalwarts actually didn’t support the 9/11 attacks.  

FA: You’ve written about movements like al-Qaida as a kind of extreme-right anti-colonial force—less interested in destroying the global order than in finishing what they see as an incomplete decolonisation, specifically by removing post-colonial elites and then finding their place in the global order. Some might argue that this is a naive reading. How would you respond to that?  

MH: I think the conquest of Kabul in 2021 really settled this debate within the jihadist community. They realised that spectacular attacks and global conflicts don’t produce benefits for anyone. And Syria is just another example. Both groups have now basically clamped down on anyone trying to carry out acts of global terror from their countries, which further suggests that—for their leaders at least—it has become a strictly national enterprise. 

FA: Let’s move on to the US. Some find it striking that some of the strongest opposition to the country’s global posture is now coming from the right — whether it’s pundits like Tucker Carlson shifting on Israel, or figures like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump opposing the so-called forever wars. It wouldn’t be accurate to say this was ever solely the domain of the left, but can you speak to that shift? 

MH: When the Iraq War began, the ideological character of the protests was actually quite diverse. But some of the most articulate early critics came from the right, particularly within the libertarian tradition. Ron Paul, a senator, was a star of this movement and became really popular. Pat Buchanan is another example.  

But the neocons’ aggressive advocacy for the Iraq War — and how disastrously it unfolded — left many in the US embittered. That deepened the appeal of this strand on the right and eventually influenced the Republican party, first in 2016 to some extent, and again in 2024. In his first term, Trump had to staff his White House from the existing ranks of the Republican establishment — many of whom were still influenced by neoconservative thinking. But this time, he’s been able to surround himself with people who more fully share his views. There was even talk of Ron Paul being included in the administration.  

“Liberalism was believed to be uniquely capable of responding to inherent human needs in a way that other ideologies couldn’t. But things turned out differently.” 

FA: How do you interpret JD Vance’s recent speech — his critique of neoconservatism, his rejection of open-ended conflicts and democracy promotion? To what extent do you think these are lessons drawn from the War on Terror? 

MH: Look, I really do think we’re witnessing a very profound ideological shift. The 20th century was defined by a clash between three universalist ideologies: liberalism, communism, and fascism. Fascism was defeated in world war two, and communism with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Now, we’re beginning to see the end of liberalism. But for twenty years, liberalism was the last man standing, and there really was a belief that we’d witness its march across the planet. That was Fukuyama’s thesis, right.   

But I think it was the Arab Spring that actually marked the end of the end of history. Everyone assumed they would be liberal revolutions — because, at that point, all revolutions were expected to be liberal. Liberalism was believed to be uniquely capable of responding to inherent human needs in a way that other ideologies couldn’t. But things turned out differently. Voices emerged making all kinds of demands, religious parties were elected and I think that’s where the shift really began.  

JD Vance was also deployed to Iraq, which is likely a significant reason why he takes a dim view of the motivations and reasoning behind those wars. There is a generational aspect to this story. 

FA: Thinking ahead, does the global decline of liberalism mean we are moving towards a more conflictual world, or less?  

MH: Theoretically, it could make the world less violent, but that isn’t certain by any measure. It could actually be a positive development. If multiple sides no longer feel compelled to convert others to their beliefs—though they may still dislike or even hate each other—the primary factor mediating their relationships would be interests. This might make it easier to reach agreements and manage differences. There could be a painful transition period but would generate a more peaceful global order.