Hello,
In this edition of Week Signals:
IN REVIEW. 9/11, the War on Terror, the peak of US power, and the emergence of surveillance capitalism.
UP AHEAD. Elections in Sweden, Okinawa, and Russia; rates in America; and speeches in Strasbourg.
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The Week in Review: Back to where it all began
The week began with US talks in Moscow and Kyiv. It ended with Yemen’s Houthi militia taking full control of the Bab-el-Mandeb strait. It was also the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and a time of wide reflection on what had happened in the intervening years to US power and politics, abroad and at home.
Plenty has already been written about it, whether as personal reflections or strategic theses. There is only so much one can add. But this week, I’ve asked Oscar Martin to again hold the pen and provide a review of what’s changed and what hasn’t as we try to situate this singular event – occurring at the height of US hegemony – into the wider story of a changing world order where that hegemony is not only being contested, but arguably abdicated.
It’s also worth a review, considering that in many ways we’re back to where it all started. Yemen – prominent in the news this week – was where al-Qaeda blew up the USS Cole on 12 October 2000, killing 19, including two of the attackers. Saudi Arabia, home to 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers, has also been in the news as it loses easy access to the southern end of the Red Sea.
Today, the US Navy, despite having a base in nearby Djibouti, is no longer in theatre. Donald Trump twice this week refused to fight the Houthis on Riyadh’s behalf, per Axios. It is unclear whether Turkey or Pakistan will either. Of all the things Trump is and isn’t, he’s certainly no George W Bush.
The other players have also changed since 9/11. Today, Saudi Arabia is an increasingly liberal place. Washington’s bogeyman is in the form of Iran’s Shia republic and its mainly Shia proxy forces, not the Sunni extremists of al-Qaeda and their Wahhabi sympathisers. Afghanistan may still be ruled by the Taliban, but it’s no haven for terrorists (even if Pakistan might disagree). NATO is still in a formal alliance with the US, but its publics are hardly likely to again rally to a country whose president questions their sovereignty. And of course, the American public is far less sure of itself.
While 9/11 was the defining geopolitical event for the Millennials and the fall of the Berlin Wall for Gen X, for much of Gen Z, it’s been the war in Gaza, with the West seen as the bad guys. They’re less likely to be convinced of the same old early-2000s certitudes. And when the 50th anniversary of 9/11 rolls around, I’m sure it’ll be remembered very differently than how it’s remembered today. History is written by the victors. But has anyone been victorious in the aftermath of 9/11?
Oscar begins:
On the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, New York is being led by its first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani, who attended the anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero alongside families of the victims.
It would have been hard to imagine a Muslim ever leading New York in the atmosphere that followed the 9/11 attacks. Anti-Muslim hate crimes increased from 28 instances in 2000 to 481 in 2001, as an overwhelmingly negative sentiment against Muslim communities across the West grew in the aftermath.
Yet today, there are now Muslim members of Congress, thousands of mosques across all 50 states, and a Muslim mayor governing the city that suffered the worst of the attacks. And though more than 100,000 people signed a petition asking Mamdani to stay away from the anniversary ceremonies – with former mayor Rudy Giuliani publicly arguing that his Muslim faith made his attendance inappropriate – Mamdani enjoys a 56% approval rating in his city.
This contrast in New Yorkers’ attitudes shows the complicated legacy of 9/11 that continues to this day. It is also a legacy that extends well beyond the specificities of New York politics and into global affairs.
The US invaded Afghanistan less than a month after 9/11 to destroy al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban government that hosted it. In 2003, Iraq fell even though Saddam Hussein’s government had no role in the attacks.
What began as a campaign against the single organisation responsible for 9/11 grew into a much wider intervention in the Middle East. It is estimated that the post-9/11 wars cost the US more than $8 trillion through to 2021. Almost a million were killed directly by war violence across the conflicts, while tens of millions of people were displaced.
Despite the widespread destruction, in Afghanistan, the US withdrew, and the Taliban returned to power. The invasion of Iraq removed Saddam Hussein, but the disorder that followed also contributed to the conditions in which Islamic State eventually emerged. The legacy of these wars continues in the Middle East today, with Iran showing a repeated pattern of forever wars in the Middle East, when the US’s major involvement was sparked on 9/11.
Washington’s severe response was partly due to the massive intelligence failure that allowed 9/11 to occur. The 9/11 Commission found that the attacks reflected failures of “imagination, policy, capabilities, and management”. American agencies had collected important information about al-Qaeda and some of the future hijackers before September 2001, but the separate threads of intelligence were not combined to understand the depth of the threat.
The US created the Director of National Intelligence and the National Counterterrorism Center, which was given responsibility for integrating terrorism intelligence across government. The emphasis shifted towards sharing information between agencies that had previously guarded it closely. This was one of the clearest shifts that arose out of the attacks and has fundamentally shifted the nature of intelligence practices across the West.
This shift has had far-reaching consequences beyond the US intelligence infrastructure. By changing the way intelligence was gathered and shared, it led to a revolution in information processing just as the digital revolution was accelerating. Today, a major political issue across the US and allied nations is the rise of surveillance and automated intelligence technologies. The most significant player in this space that arose directly from 9/11 is Palantir.
Palantir was founded in 2003 and began building software for the US intelligence community to support counterterrorism investigations. It developed methods and technologies that help intelligence analysts find terrorist networks across large amounts of information. The idea attracted early backing from the CIA, and Palantir later expanded into defence, government and commercial work globally. Today, it is one of the most prominent companies in defence technology and artificial intelligence.
The consequence of the investment in conflicts across the Middle East, meanwhile, led to a major geopolitical realignment, which is still ongoing today. Three months after 9/11, China joined the World Trade Organization. Over the following 25 years, it has become the world’s second-largest economy and developed into the main long-term strategic competitor of the US.