Subtle tools : the dismantling of American democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Despite assertions about the unprecedented nature of his presidency, few of Trump's policies have been novel; many had been proposed in varied form throughout the latter years of the 20th century. Yet it was not until 9/11 that many of these policies started to take hold. In this intellectual and political history, Greenberg traces the evolving language, law, governance and policy that began to redefine the nation in the wake of 9/11 and shows how these took a transformative step forward under Donald Trump. Rampant executive power, exceptionalism in foreign affairs, racism and xenophobia, disinformation, and a disdain for the law--all found secure footing initially after the attacks of 9/11 and with new energy and rootedness in the era of Trump. Ultimately, Greenberg shows how Trump repurposed the war on terror playbook and turned it on democracy itself. The book outlines the "subtle tools" that were put into place in the wake of 9/11 and that paved the way for Trump's politics today: imprecision and vagueness in language, secrecy and the hiding of facts, bureaucratic porousness, and the abandonment of norms. Greenberg shows, for instance, how the all-encompassing language used in the Authorizations for Use of Military Force (which ultimately authorized the Iraq War) became characteristic of other policies, providing legal grounding for previously illegal practices like the indefinite detention of "detainees" at Guantanamo Bay and of children and adults at the southern border. These tools--subtle enough to evade public scrutiny--hold the key, Greenberg argues, to understanding the trajectory of our democracy over the last two decades. In mapping out democratic vulnerabilities, the book also points to the reforms that would be needed to strengthen and ground American governance. Overall, the result is a book deeply grounded in interview, legal documents, and archival work that finds a new origin point for the story of the Trump-era and reveals the deep connection between the war and terror and our current political life"--,Provided by publisher.

"How policies forged after September 11 were weaponized under Trump and turned on American democracy itself. In the wake of the September 11 terror attacks, the American government implemented a wave of overt policies to fight the nation's enemies. Unseen and undetected by the public, however, another set of tools were brought to bear on the domestic front. In this riveting book, one of today's leading experts on the US security state shows how these "subtle tools" imperiled the very foundations of democracy, from the separation of powers and transparency in government to adherence to the Constitution. Taking readers from Ground Zero to the Capitol insurrection, Karen Greenberg describes the subtle tools that were forged under George W. Bush in the name of security: imprecise language, bureaucratic confusion, secrecy, and the bypassing of procedural and legal norms. While the power and legacy of these tools lasted into the Obama years, reliance on them increased exponentially in the Trump era, both in the fight against terrorism abroad and in battles closer to home. Greenberg discusses how the Trump administration weaponized these tools to separate families at the border, suppress Black Lives Matter protests, and attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Revealing the deeper consequences of the war on terror, Subtle Tools paints a troubling portrait of an increasingly undemocratic America where disinformation, xenophobia, and disdain for the law became the new norm, and where the subtle tools of national security threatened democracy itself"--,Provided by publisher.