Home » World scenarios twenty years after 11 September – Pierre Haski

World scenarios twenty years after 11 September – Pierre Haski

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Some events mark a historical fracture that we instinctively perceive when they occur. The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 is one of them. The same is true of September 11, 2001, although there is a debate among historians about the possibility that there really is a “before” and “after” the attack on the twin towers.

To the list I would add the fall of Kabul on 15 August, the impact of which will be felt for a long time. It will be up to the historians to establish whether, as one might think today, the end of the American war in Afghanistan will close the chapter opened on 11 September. It certainly highlights a change in the strategy of the first world power and the beginning of a new phase, that of rivalry with China.

You don’t need to be particularly old to have lived through at least three distinct historical moments: the Cold War, the post-Cold War and the post-11 September, to which now is added a fourth crucial moment with the post-Kabul. Ours is a time of confusion, in which large and medium powers test themselves and try to establish new relations of power. But it is also a dangerous era.

Post-Cold War Illusions
All people over forty remember the Cold War and its symbols. Before becoming a tourist destination, Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin was a crossing point between east and west, and it was impossible to cross it without feeling a weight on the stomach, as in the novels of John LeCarré.

Then the cold war ended, and instead of the conflict between the two blocs we lived what was trivially called “after the cold war”, a period characterized by the hegemonic power of the United States and a globalization that some believe should have resolved any problem. The United Nations had regained momentum, democracy was advancing almost everywhere and, miraculously, Nelson Mandela had become president of the apartheid country.

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This illusion was shattered on 11 September with the Al Qaeda attacks. The world has become tragic again (but it must be said that there was no shortage of tragedies in the nineties, with the genocide in Rwanda and the wars in the former Yugoslavia). The symbol of the twin towers and the irruption of the terrorist risk on top of the possible threats pushed the United States, and consequently the West, into a race forward that ended in failure.

In 2001, when the 9/11 attacks were carried out, the United States was the only global power and, as the symbolic phrase of the time went, we had become “all Americans”. Today, twenty years later, even the Americans are divided, and the world is in crisis. Certainly the planet no longer recognizes itself in a US leadership that has lost value due to the war in Iraq, the renunciation in Syria, the Trumpian chaos and finally the Afghan defeat. The world today is nothing like what we imagined in 2001.

This “after Kabul” has several characteristics: the first is that there is no longer a single superpower, but there are two, with the emergence of China, a revisionist power that wants to change the international rules of the game.

The second characteristic is the emancipation of the middle powers such as Turkey, Iran, Russia or India, which want to carve out their role. There remains Europe, which still does not know if it wants to be a power but which must realize that in case of renunciation it would condemn itself to be subordinate to the others. It will not be easy to establish itself in “after Kabul”.

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(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)

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