The most paradoxical case is that of US military ascendancy. In both conventional and nuclear terms, US military power is still as great as ever, when compared to that of any other sovereign state. The trouble is that the threat now does not emanate from the armed forces of another sovereign state but from a ‘non-state actor’—a loose worldwide network of jihadist cells using the strategy of asymmetric war, and the tactics mostly of urban guerrilla operations. On the evidence of Iraq, US strategies have not as yet proved very effective against such a ‘non-state actor’. One particularly notable aspect of this kind of asymmetric war is the extraordinary economy of means for the jihadists, and the very heavy costs of defence against their potential attacks to almost all sovereign states, particularly the United States. The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 cost the jihadists hardly more than box-cutters, airline tickets and some training expenses. By contrast, the economic and direct financial costs to the United States and just about every other sovereign state in the world in the years since are as yet uncountable, but enormous. In the case of the United States, the direct costs five years after 11 September 2001 are well above US$500 billion.^[4]

Moreover, the visible difficulties in Iraq of coping with an insurgency even (or especially) with the kind of weapons that the United States developed for combat with another superpower in a sense devalues US military capacity as a factor in its overall diplomatic clout. Governments still no doubt (as in Australia) reflect that if they were threatened by another sovereign state, an alliance with the United States would be a vital asset. But, while the actual threat continues to originate from the likes of al Qaeda, how useful is that alliance going to be? Some Europeans are arguing that any alliance with the United States is actively counterproductive, and may indeed invite attack by the jihadists. Yet, to my mind, although the United States and its allies are, without doubt, the high-priority targets, the jihadist campaign is in fact against the entire contemporary society of states, which they regard as a structure of injustice. Although undoubtedly exacerbated by the current conflict in Iraq, the seeds of the jihadist campaign were not sown there.