The terrorist attacks in New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 have affected US global policy. The terrorist attacks have presented an “opportunity” for Washington to attempt to constrain the emerging complexity of the emerging international system as a whole by shifting international focus to the relatively narrow, but no less significant, issue-area of 'anti-terrorism'. Since then, the US has made consistent and persuasive, indeed unremitting, attempts to reduce many other items on the international political and economic agenda to an anti-terrorist essence. They took the policy of preemption. They argue that, “In the cold war essentially following the Cuban Missile crisis we faced a general status quo, risk adverse adversary. Deterrence was the effective defense. But deterrence based only upon the threat of retaliation is less likely to work against the leaders of rogue states more willing to take risks gambling with the lives of their people, and the wealth of their nation.”