Have the terrorists won the war?

So which is it: defeated or resurgent?

Neither, really.

Al-Qaeda hasn’t gone away, but it has changed – in a way that makes it less dangerous for Americans at home, but more dangerous for Americans who live in the Middle East and Africa.

Once it was global, but today’s al-Qaeda has gone local.

This month’s threat against western embassies, for example, was focused on capitals in the Middle East – especially in Yemen, where al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has been fighting to overthrow a government supported by the US.

Other attacks by al-Qaeda franchises have had a similarly parochial focus, from Mali and Somalia to Pakistan. Even in Libya, where a group loosely connected to al-Qaeda attacked the US Consulate in Benghazi last year, the operation appeared to stem from a local struggle for power, not a global plot directed by the heirs of Osama bin Laden.

Outside its home territories, though, al-Qaeda has failed to strike successfully in the US or Europe since the 2005 bombing of the London underground.

The organisation still employs the man some US officials call the world’s most dangerous terrorist, Saudi-born bomb-maker Ibrahim Hassan Asiri – but Asiri’s plots haven’t worked so far. In 2009, his underwear bomber got as far as Detroit, but the detonator failed. That same year, Asiri’s brother, outfitted with a similar bomb, got as far as the palace of Saudi Arabia’s counter-terrorism chief – another local target – and blew himself up, but he was the only casualty in the attack.

US officials say they still consider Asiri and his innovative bombs a major threat to aviation security. But note that this month’s alerts, based on intercepted communications between al-Qaeda leaders in Yemen and Pakistan, didn’t focus on planes; they focused on embassies.

In that sense, al-Qaeda may be returning to its roots, reprising the kind of plots it successfully employed before Osama bin Laden escalated to spectacular attacks in the West. Before 2001, al-Qaeda’s main focus was on attacking embassies and other outposts of foreign power in the Middle East and Africa – like the attack on the US destroyer Cole off Yemen in 2000 and the bombing of US embassies in East Africa in 1998. According to some scholars, bin Laden’s successor, Ayman Zawahiri, always thought it was more cost-effective to strike US embassies in the region than to attempt attacks inside the US.

Al-Qaeda and its outgrowths have become a different kind of problem for the US and its allies. Homegrown terrorism can still occur on American soil, as it did at Boston. But for now, al-Qaeda seems focused on the western presence in its own backyard, not on targets in the West.

The good news, to put it bluntly, is that most Americans have less to worry about. New Yorkers no longer live in the shadow of another 9/11. American tourists can visit London, Paris or even Bali without being any more vigilant about suspicious packages or unaccompanied suitcases than they would be at home.

Even the State Department’s worldwide travel alert issued last Friday had a slightly sheepish tone, reminding Americans of “the continued potential for terrorist attacks”, especially in the Middle East.

But for US diplomats in embassies overseas, the new normal is a serious problem – as much for their ability to do their work as for their safety.

After terrorists attacked the US Consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador J Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, Congress demanded tougher security measures. This month’s closure of embassies was, in part, a response. The State Department said the action was taken “out of an abundance of caution”.

But working diplomats worry that if embassies close in response to every threat, their work will be impossible.

“Washington makes decisions on a zero-risk basis, but there has been a level of risk for years,” noted Ronald E Neumann, a former US ambassador to Afghanistan.

Put more bluntly: If a bomb-maker in Yemen can close US embassies just by making plans for his next attempt, doesn’t that mean the terrorists have won?

Over the long run, diplomats are going to have to find new ways to work without exposing themselves to danger, according to the State Department’s former counter-terrorism chief.

“This is the new normal,” said Daniel Benjamin, now director of the John Sloan Dickey Centre for International Understanding at Dartmouth College. “We’ve been closing embassies off and on for the last five years. In a lot of places, after the Arab Spring, we can’t rely on local security services anymore. It’s going to be very difficult to fix. But if you lose an embassy (to a successful attack), that’s an even bigger setback.”