Tue, Sep 13, 2011 page9

• The Sept. 11 attacks were less significant than we had feared

  • By Francis Fukuyama / The Observer
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  In the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, there were grand assertions that “everything was different” and that the “world had changed.” We were forced to confront a bearded man in a cave spouting incomprehensible invective about crusaders and jihad, and reorient foreign policy in dramatic ways. However, with 10 years’ hindsight, did the world actually change on that date? And what will slain al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s historical legacy be?

  The answer to both questions is: not much. It is my view that in a longer historical perspective, al-Qaeda will be seen as a mere blip or diversion. Bin Laden got lucky that day and pulled off a devastating, made-for-media attack. The US then overreacted, invading Iraq and making anti-Americanism a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  However, while al-Qaeda’s form of radical Islamism appealed to a minority of discontented individuals, it never represented a dominant social trend in the Middle East. The broader and more important story that was emerging in the past decade was the social modernization of the Arab world that has resulted in the Arab Spring.

  People could be excused for thinking that the world had changed after Sept. 11. The World Trade Center attacks involved the killing of innocent people for its own sake, a nihilistic act that could have claimed the lives of 10 or 100 times as many victims, had the technological means been available. The threat of weapons of mass destruction had been around for a long time, but up until that point, no one seemed malevolent enough to use them in this fashion. In the days after the attacks, every thoughtful person began to realize how vulnerable modern technological societies were.

  However, it turned out that once the world’s intelligence and security establishments had turned to focus on the problem of Islamist terrorism, it was possible to mount a defense. That there have been no follow-up attacks on US soil was not for want of trying; but many plots were uncovered and broken up before they could be realized. The truly frightening possibility that terrorists could gain access to nuclear or biological weapons remains, but the route to these capabilities is not so easy for groups such as al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

  The real problem was a political one. As terrorism expert Brian Jenkins has pointed out, democratic publics always overreact to the threat of terrorism.

  It would have been very difficult for a US administration of any stripe to tell the public the truth after Sept. 11, namely, that Western civilization was not facing an existential threat from al-Qaeda, but rather a long twilight struggle best fought by police and intelligence agencies.

  The administration of former US president George W. Bush did much the opposite, elevating the “war on terrorism” to the level of 20th century struggles against fascism and communism, and justifying its invasion of Iraq on these grounds. By neglecting Afghanistan and occupying Iraq, it turned both countries into magnets for new terrorist recruitment, diminished its own moral stature through prisoner abuse and tarnished the name of democracy promotion.

  Sept. 11 spawned many theories of a Muslim or Arab exception to the global trend toward democracy. After the green uprising in Iran and the Arab Spring, we can see clearly that this was one area where the Bush administration was right: There is no cultural or religious obstacle to the spread of democratic ideas in the Middle East; only, it would have to come about through the people’s own agency and not as a gift of a foreign power. Even if democracy does not emerge quickly in places such as Egypt and Tunisia, the popular mobilization we have seen signals a key social trend far more powerful than anything bin Laden or al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri could muster.

  Sept. 11 will have legacies. Al-Qaeda and its affiliates continue to operate and may still succeed in downing an airliner or exploding a car bomb in a shopping mall. Pakistan, with its stockpile of nuclear weapons, is a very scary place, the one part of the Muslim world where trends have been going in the wrong direction. In Western countries, distrust of Muslims has grown since Sept. 11, as evidenced by the controversy of the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” in the US or the rise of anti-immigrant populist parties in Europe. All of this will make the already difficult integration of immigrant communities much more difficult to accomplish.

  Since 2001, the most important world-historical story has been the rise of China. This is a development the impact of which will almost certainly be felt in 50 years’ time. Whether anyone will remember bin Laden and al-Qaeda at that remove is a different matter.

  Francis Fukuyama is a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University.
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Trump signs bill on Taiwan into law

  • 2

    China extradites 10 Taiwanese via Kinmen County

  • 3

    Taiwan courts Japan’s Ayumi Hamasaki after singer snubbed by Shanghai

  • 4

    Taipei welcomes signing of US ‘Taiwan assurance’ act

  • 5

    Taiwan urges S Korea to correct name on platform