Voices for Civil Dialogue

A CFR Book. HarperCollins, September 2008, 368 pages, ISBN 978-0061558399, $27.95

Overview -

On September 10, 2001, the United States was the most open country in the world. But since nineteen hijackers turned America’s welcome mat into a weapon that could be used against it, the nation has been shutting its door.

In The Closing of the American Border, Edward Alden goes behind the scenes to tell the story of the Bush administration’s struggle to balance security and openness in the wake of the worst attack on U.S. soil. The goal was to build new lines of defense that could keep out terrorists without stifling the flow of people and ideas from abroad that have helped to build the world’s most dynamic economy. But instead, the government created an obstacle course that has made it vastly harder for people from across the world to come to the United States, hurting America’s image abroad and damaging its economic prospects at home.

Based on extensive interviews with the Bush administration officials charged with securing the border after 9/11, including former Department of Homeland Security secretary Tom Ridge and former secretary of state Colin Powell, and with many of the innocent people whose lives were upended by the new rules, the book shows how an administration that appeared united in the aftermath of the attacks was wracked by internal divisions over how to balance security and openness. The result is a striking and persuasive assessment of the dangers faced by a United States that cuts itself off from the rest of the world, making it increasingly difficult for others to come here and depriving itself of the most persuasive thing it can offer—the example of what it has achieved at home.