>> During my tenure in the Bush administration, there wasn't, after 9/11, a single American killed in the U.S. by terrorists, and we stopped a lot of terrorists.

Now, could we have done less?

Maybe, but less might have resulted in attacks.

♪♪ >> Hello and welcome to "GZERO World."

I'm Ian Bremmer, and today it's been 20 years since 9/11.

Is the world any safer?

The U.S. has spent trillions in Afghanistan, Iraq and in the global fight on terror.

Was it worth it?

I speak to two people with firsthand experience crafting policy since the towers fell.

First, Michael Chertoff, who led the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, and later Rory Stewart, who has worked extensively in Afghanistan and served as the U.K.'s Secretary of State for International Development.

But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

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Additional funding provided by... ...and by... >> Hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky, the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground, black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon.

That's how President Barack Obama reflected on 9/11 10 years after the towers fell.

He wrote the speech in the Oval Office, then walked down the colonnade past the Rose Garden.

In the background, he could hear crowds gathering, chanting, "USA USA."

News that Osama bin Laden was killed in a night raid in Pakistan had already hit the streets before he even made it to the podium.

Many hoped this moment would mark the end of America's long and costly war on terror.

Now, on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, we watched scenes of terror on our screens once again, a trauma felt most deeply in Afghanistan, where bomb blasts killed U.S. military personnel, as well as scores of Afghans trying to flee the country.

President Joe Biden hoped to use this moment to deliver on a campaign promise -- end America's forever wars.

>> Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building.

It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy.

Our only vital national interest in Afghanistan remains today what it has always been -- preventing a terrorist attack on American homeland.

>> And with the U.S. exit, the Taliban is now back in control.

A local ISIS group has claimed responsibility for the bloody attack on August 26th, and big questions remain about what, if anything, America's war there accomplished.

And remember this scene from 2003, when President Bush delivered a speech from an aircraft carrier announcing the end of U.S. military operations in Iraq, a war that actually ended eight years later and saw more troops on the ground from 2013 until 2017 in order to fight ISIS.

Even Donald Rumsfeld joked that he had removed all of Bush's "mission accomplished" language from the speech, but staff had forgotten to fix the sign.

Post-9/11 policies held more than just embarrassments.

America's image abroad suffered, too, from civilian casualties to torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, where prisoners were subjected to waterboarding, electrocution and other forms of torture.

Here at home, policies implemented in the name of security, including huge and at times even illegal surveillance dragnets of U.S. citizens gave law enforcement unprecedented powers.

And even while these policies have come under heat for excessive government overreach, many argued they worked.

After all, the United States has avoided another catastrophic 9/11-style attack on our soil.

But as America concludes its longest war, are we safer today than before the towers fell?

I speak to two people who have the background to break it down for us.

Michael Chertoff served as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, and Rory Stewart, who over the past 20 years has worked extensively in Afghanistan, both in his role as U.K. Secretary of State for International Development and beyond.

Thank you, sir, for joining us on "GZERO World."

>> Good to be on.

>> So, 20 years after 9/11, how did that moment in American history change the way we think about national security for our country?

>> Well, I think writ large, it made us very conscious that in a global world, with global transportation and global communication, the oceans do not protect us from foreign enemies, and wars are not optional anymore.

They may come looking for you, to kind of paraphrase Trotsky.

>> This was a period of time when the United States, I wouldn't say felt invincible, but certainly felt as if it was way on top of the global order.

The Soviet Union had collapsed.

You know, the European Union had enlarged.

NATO had enlarged.

How dramatic and how quick was the change in view of America's role in the world?

And what did that feel like to you?

>> We did think in the 1990s that we were at an inflection point where America was on top.

There were no rivals of scale.

The economy was doing well.

We didn't really worry about national security threats.

Cyberspace was still a kind of a curiosity, not really a major attack vector.

And so I think many Americans believed that there might be some small incidents that would occur, but nothing that would threaten the United States in even nearly an existential threat.

In the very short term after 9/11, there was an understandable and appropriate -- a very strong focus on preventing something from happening imminently of that kind of scale.

And so we needed to build a system to correct information, to correct intelligence, to examine and inspect what was coming into the country and to begin to strengthen our critical infrastructure.

We also needed to look at even more significant terrorist attacks that might involve weapons of mass destruction, chemical weapons, biological weapons.

All of that was appropriate.

I will say that, you know, for the first couple years, much of what the intelligence community focused on was, of necessity, very tactical.

It was literally going through where particular jihadis might be located, what particular groups might be out there, where there might be laboratories or other imminent threats.

I think at some point, obviously we launched the effort in Afghanistan and Iraq, and that also absorbed a lot of intelligence resources.

>> If you could have taken a decision back from the Bush administration, from a Homeland Security and national security perspective, what would it have been?

Would it have been the war in Iraq or would it have been something else?

>> Well, you know, unfortunately, you know, hindsight gives you an advantage, but I guess I would say the war in Iraq in two senses.

First of all, it did distract us from Afghanistan.

We may have overestimated our ability to resolve the Afghanistan conflict in a way that would be stable and balanced.

And certainly from a resource and attention standpoint, Iraq drained a lot of attention.

But I would also say that we were not clear about the mission in Iraq or what would happen after we won.

And the planning for postwar was not what it should have been.

The assessment and articulation of goals was not clear and as a result became basically a magnet for all kinds of attacks on Americans.

That absorbed more resources, more attention and more patience.

I think the problem with Iraq is we weren't clear on what our objective was and what it would mean to win.

And once we got in there and we had toppled Saddam, there was uncertainty about how long we were going to stay and how we were to deal with the disorder there.

There was a bit of a sense of, "Well, it's not our problem," but it really was our problem if we were going to stay, and so therefore clarity about the objective of the mission, clarity about what responsibility we were going to take and what we were going to leave to Iraqis and clarity and transparency with the American people about what was involved.

I think we were all lacking in the way we executed that operation.

>> That's fair enough.

What about on the domestic side?

I mean, again, you know, obviously trillions of dollars not just spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also spent on Homeland Security in so many different manifestations inside the United States, both in terms of the Patriot Act and the surveillance, but also the beefed-up security, the necessary critical infrastructure investments.

What's the one or two there that you say "We didn't do it right, we had the wrong focus, we overdid it, we overspent"?

What would you say, 20 years on?

>> Well, it's a little hard to judge that because in fact, we did not have a significant terrorist attack in the U.S. after 9/11.

In fact, during my tenure in the Bush administration, there wasn't, after 9/11, a single American killed in the U.S. by terrorists, and we stopped a lot of terrorists.

And even afterwards, there were more attacks that were really just inspired by terrorism, but not any global jihadists traveling in.

So you would have to say that certainly we were successful in patrolling the borders against terrorism and building an intelligence capability to identify terrorists and in hardening some of our infrastructure like, for example, airplanes and, you know, the airports.

Now, could we have done less?

Maybe, but less might have resulted in attacks, so it's hard to criticize that.

I think perhaps on the intelligence collection standpoint, once we had kind of calibrated what was out there, I think we might have adjusted it a little bit and maybe been, frankly, a little bit more transparent in why we were collecting what we were collecting.

But I will say that a lot of the uproar about collection of metadata, which is really nothing more than who the sender of a message is, who the recipient is and how long its duration was, I think it was slightly overdone.

Maybe the scale of it seemed a little bit unaccustomed.

But the fact is, one of the things we learned in looking at 9/11 is that the connectivity among the hijackers was a major factor that we could have used to frustrate the attacks, and therefore looking for those kinds of signs and signals without getting into content, you know, had some real value.

>> That makes me want to ask you a very uncomfortable question, even an inhumane one, which is if we haven't had any major Islamic terrorist attacks inside the United States emanating from abroad -- and again, I know we've had some lone-wolf stuff, San Bernardino and whatnot -- I mean, should your initial reaction to that be "Wow, we did a fantastic job" or should it be "Wow, we probably really overspent"?

>> It's not the latter, because I'll tell you, we came close in 2005 or maybe it was 2006, when we had a plot that was uncovered to fly airplanes from Heathrow to North America and blow a dozen up in midair, and it was very good intelligence work, some of the things you're talking about that allowed us to detect and stop that so nobody got killed.

So the fact that we didn't have a big attack here was not an accident.

And there was a deterrent effect, to be honest.

Had we been lax, more would have tried.

At some point they gave up and focused on other things.

But that's not an argument against vigilance.

It actually validates vigilance.

>> So I asked you the question at the beginning about the things that you would have done differently looking back at the Bush administration.

You served on the Cabinet.

But today, if you were in the Oval with President Biden and you could give him one piece of advice that he'd take on changing the way the U.S. is governing and leading around the world, what would it be?

>> I would say -- and I think he knows this.

First of all, I would make sure we are talking to and coordinating with our allies.

I understand there was a little bit of a disconnect in terms of our decision in Afghanistan, where some of our close allies claim they weren't consulted.

And I do think it's important to hear what they have to say because part of what we're trying to do is reassure them that we are back and they have our confidence and we have their confidence and we have each other's backs.

And then I think you always have to make sure you're listening to outside voices.

You know, for someone who's been in Washington a long time and has a great group of advisers, they've been together and there's a little bit of a bubble that arises when you've worked for 10 or 20 years with people and you all can anticipate the way you think.

So once in a while, it's a good idea to bring fresh blood and even contrary views so you get a reality check on some of your decision-making.

>> Secretary Michael Chertoff trying his best to help us avoid a G-Zero world.

Thanks so much for joining us today.

>> Happy to be here, Ian.

Take care.

♪♪ >> And now to Rory Stewart.

He wrote the book "The Places in Between" after spending 36 months walking across Afghanistan.

He later served as the U.K. Secretary of State for International Development.

He believes President Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal was a costly mistake and that we could see an increase in global terrorism because of it.

Rory Stewart, thank you so much for joining us on "GZERO World."

>> Great to see you.

Thank you for having me.

>> So with 9/11 and 20 years passing since that, that tragedy, rapidly approaching, do you think today the world is considerably more safe, more secure versus terrorist threats than we were back then?

>> I think in some ways, yes.

It's certainly true that we have developed much more comprehensive counterterrorist infrastructure than we had 20 years ago.

In other words, for better or for worse, the equivalence of the FBI, the CIA, Special Forces are able to do far more to focus on terrorism and counterterrorism, and that has played a significant role in stopping terrorist threats happening, and that also includes the deployment of drones and artificial intelligence, all this kind of stuff.

The thing that hasn't dramatically changed over the last 20 years is there are still a very uncomfortable number of very fragile conflict-affected states, and there are very striking numbers of people who are still prepared to endorse a jihadist ideology.

And the victory in Afghanistan of the Taliban over the last few weeks will have produced a huge morale boost to jihadists around the world from Sahel right the way across who will see this as they did indeed the ISIS victories in Syria and Iraq as a sign that they're on their way back.

>> You've been an outspoken critic of the Biden administration withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Tell me why that is.

>> Because I believe that what we needed in Afghanistan was a light, long-term, sustainable footprint, that there was no reason for him to withdraw in this way, that it was unnecessary and catastrophically damaging to Afghanistan and to American interests.

>> Catastrophically damaging to American interests.

Most Americans, for quite some time, have said that they wanted the United States to withdraw completely.

And of course, a lot of Americans can't find Afghanistan on a map.

Why do you think -- I mean, you've spent a lot of time in that country.

Why use a word that's so freighted?

>> Well, I think let's start firstly, from the point of view of Afghans themselves.

We've spent 20 years in their country.

When I first visited Kabul at the end of the Taliban period, it was a ghost town -- 300,000 people in a city of 4 million, no cars on the streets, bombed-out buildings.

I and many, many others worked for nearly 20 years to build things up in Afghanistan.

And by the end of that period, it was a very, very different place.

One of the things, sadly, that I think maybe American and British voters don't realize is how much better Afghanistan had become.

It's become a narrative that's suggesting the whole place was a basket case and nothing we were doing was of any use.

But the truth is, you could see it in millions of Afghan lives.

If you were a young woman going off to school or university or work, that is basically now in danger of coming to an end.

If you were from the Hazara community in central Afghanistan, you are now facing a commander sitting on the edge of that valley talking about taking genocidal revenge.

And you can see it simply in the desperation of people to get out of the country.

So this was not a perfect country.

It was a poor, fragile state like many other poor, fragile states around the world.

But it was much, much better than it was 20 years ago.

>> So, Rory, you're suggesting, and virtually no one in the United States is saying this, that the actual nation-building effort by the Americans and the NATO Coalition on the ground in Afghanistan was actually, to a degree, successful.

>> I'm saying that the improvement in millions of lives was incredibly successful.

I don't want to get caught up in this idea of nation building.

Building nations is a very difficult, long-term thing.

After the U.S. had been with troops in Korea for 20 years, South Korea was still a military dictatorship, with a GDP per capita lower than the Congo.

It takes a very, very long time for nations to be built.

But what you could see through the work of my own nonprofit on the ground, through the work of many other people is transformations in millions of individual lives.

You can see it.

Life expectancy went up.

Healthcare was massively improved.

Literacy went up.

The economy grew dramatically.

Afghan businesses were flourishing.

And many middle-class Afghans were living lives comparable to their opposite numbers in India.

And that was something that simply didn't exist before the U.S.-led intervention.

>> I mean, America's Afghan war did engage in a fair amount of mission creep.

I mean, at the beginning, the existential threat was a United States that had just faced this unprecedented attack on New York City, on Washington, D.C. Americans were scared.

Americans were angry.

Americans wanted to do something.

And al-Qaeda was that fight.

I mean, certainly after al-Qaeda is massively degraded, the leadership is decapitated, in the case of bin Laden quite directly, I mean, hard to argue for an American domestic audience that Afghanistan is an existential threat or close to it.

But do you think that the Americans face knock-on impact from Afghanistan itself?

I mean is there likelihood of a terrorist base showing up that is significant in the near term as a consequence of this withdrawal?

>> The problem in the U.S. debate is that it's just all black and white.

Either this is the most important threat in the world or it's not a threat at all.

The answer, of course, is it's somewhere in between.

And it's always been, right?

It was never as important as American politicians pretended between 2001 and 2010, but it's than American foreign policy people are acknowledging today.

What do we mean by that?

Is it a terrorist threat?

Does it provide safe haven for nasty terrorist groups?

The answer in very blunt terms is, of course it does.

We've just seen 13 American servicemen killed in Kabul by the Islamic State Khorasan in Afghanistan.

That is an extremely brutal international terrorist group operating freely from within Afghan territory and killing American servicemen.

So whatever we think about Afghanistan, nobody should be concluding that there are no terrorist threats coming from that, particularly this week.

Secondly, what happens when the United States withdraws?

Is the United States going to have more capacity to control and monitor the emergence of terrorists in Afghanistan after they've left than when they were there?

Certainly not.

And who's going to fill that vacuum?

But the United States is basically, at the moment, holding off all support from the Taliban.

China, Russia, Pakistan are going to turn up and say, "Okay, we'll step into that void and we'll begin to provide the support."

And one of the naivetés of this whole thing is the idea that somehow if America leaves, this is all going to be just an internal issue inside Afghanistan.

Of course it isn't.

You've created a vacuum into which Iran, Pakistan and others will flood.

So in terms of any of the things that we've cared about for the last 50 years -- regional stability, terrorism, humanitarian obligation towards the Afghan people, the credibility of the United States and its allies -- this is a very, very damaging moment.

>> How much damage do you think has been done to the U.S.-U.K. special relationship, as we call it, as a consequence of this?

>> You need to sort of put it back and see it from the British point of view.

So, since the 1950s, Britain has designed its entire foreign policy and defense policy around the United States.

Essentially, Britain, around the world, has tried to find out what the U.S. is doing and do it at a slightly smaller scale alongside the United States.

Everything is designed around the United States.

So we went into Iraq with the United States, we went into Afghanistan with the United States and of course, we lost hundreds of lives in Afghanistan, fighting an American counterinsurgency warfare strategy.

And every one of our generals and every one of our politicians and diplomats was out there repeating the lines from the George Bush administration and the Obama administration about why Afghanistan was so incredibly important, repeating to our own grieving parents of dead soldiers the U.S. analysis, which was that this was a threat to global security, that we needed to do this, that it was important to defeat the Taliban, that we had a moral obligation to Afghan women and we were going to stay the course.

And throughout that whole period, the United States was very flattering to Britain.

When it suits the United States, they're very good at saying, "Oh, you're absolutely critical to us.

We're so grateful for you coming along with us.

All these lives you're losing in Helmand make a huge difference to the effort.

We really care about you."

But at the moment of departure, the U.S. wants to get out, and it appears to forget that it had any partners on the ground at all.

There was no real attempt to include Britain in any of these conversations, and through the manner of the departure, the U.S. seems to indicate that this entire story of a partnership or relationship was nonsense.

When it suited the U.S. to get a coalition behind it, it could be as charming as it wanted, but when it wanted to leave, any attempt to reach out to other countries and say, "Do you really think this is sensible if we're leaving?

Is there any way that you could fill the gap that we're leaving behind?

Can we provide some enablers behind you?

2,500 soldiers is not very many to ask NATO to keep behind when the U.S. leaves.

Can we facilitate that in some way?"

Those conversations were entirely lacking, and as I say, Biden didn't even bother to pick up the telephone to Prime Minister Johnson for 48 hours after Kabul fell.

And so that means that if you are Britain, the next time the U.S. is saying, you know, "We really want you with us and we want you taking all these lives and risks and political costs because we want you to believe in the American confidence, the consistency of an American vision, America's commitment to its alliances, its moral obligation to people around the world," people are going to be a little bit skeptical.

>> Rory Stewart, thank you so much for joining us today.

>> Thank you.

>> That's our show this week.

Come back next week, and if you like what you see or even if you don't, but you know it's making you a better person somehow, why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com?

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Major corporate funding provided by founding sponsor First Republic.

At First Republic, our clients come first.

Taking the time to listen helps us provide customized banking and wealth-management solutions.

More on our clients at firstrepublic.com.

Additional funding provided by... ...and by...