On 11 September 2001, two passenger aircraft deployed as missiles by hijackers struck New York City’s iconic twin towers of the World Trade Center 17 minutes apart. It did not take a third strike—the US Pentagon was bombed next—for the very spectacle of its intent to certify a terror attack, America’s most horrific.
Labelled ‘9/11,’ the day’s horrors left nearly 3,000 people dead and the world’s most powerful country in shock.
No sooner had Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network been identified as the culprit than 9/11 triggered America’s ‘forever war’ on Afghanistan to depose its Taliban regime for hosting that ragtag militia.
In 2003, the US embarked on a high-octane war of “shock and awe” to oust Iraq’s dictator accused of posing a nuclear threat. Bin Laden was eventually traced not to a hill cavern in Tora Bora, but to a hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a high-walled villa right under the nose of its Janus-faced army.
By the time he was executed by US Navy Seals in May 2011, a trail of US war fury had left hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead.
A quarter of a century after 9/11, how that bolt from the blue may have inflected global geopolitics is worth asking. Especially in today’s context of a potential power shift from west to east, with the metaphor of a majestic eagle ruffled by dragon-breath getting harder to brush aside.
As the US rattles the world order, shrinks from climate action and closes itself behind labour walls and trade barriers, it signals a loss of confidence in its own ‘end of history’ formula of free-market democracy.
Not just that, it grants ‘Red China’ the bonanza of space to make a grand pitch for stable prosperity; the more erratic US policy gets, the less favoured it may come to be for leadership of an ‘Asian Century’ as it unfolds. Yet, a muddled reaction to China’s trade-driven ascent cannot fully explain America’s lurch under President Donald Trump.
Arguably, post-9/11 xenophobia played a thinly veiled role in the appeal of ‘Make America Great Again,’ even if Barack Obama’s 2008 election victory had defied cynics to affirm its ‘self-evident’ 1776 values.
And today, it’s clear that America’s rival across the Pacific, whose ploy after the Soviet Union’s crack-up was to “hide your strength, bide your time,” has been this century’s big winner so far, never mind the dust-haze around any part that a covert Beijing nexus with Rawalpindi may (or may not) have played in the turn of events.
What about the ‘clash of civilizations’ that some sought to pin 9/11 on? Although sporadic terror attacks in its wake gave that thesis of an Islamic world in endless conflict with the West a degree of popular traction, it fell flat under academic scrutiny.
A multi-player ‘great game’ aimed at control of West Asia could better explain this region’s eruptions of war, recent hostilities plausibly included. So long as the US alienates regional opinion by openly backing Israel on what’s widely seen as an open wound, Palestine, a West Asian pivot to the East seems plausible enough for such an outcome to be ‘in play’ as part of a pivotal geo-rivalry.
As a democracy, the US may yet be able to fix its fumbles. But right now, even as its federal debt soars, it seems bent on ceding strategic space to a People’s Republic that might finally be done biding its time.
All in all, how this century pans out will likely influence India’s path to prosperity too, and as the power plot thickens, our bet on neutrality will need to pay off.