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Reflections on 9/11, 20 years on
Reflections on 9/11, 20 years on
Do you remember where you where and what you were doing the moment you learned of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001?
I remember. As do 93% of Americans aged 30 and older. I was in New York when the planes hit the towers, in my Midtown office at the time. I was shocked. I was despondent. I was angry. The moment it became clear it wasn’t an accident was a gut punch. As I explain in my Quick Take, it was a feeling that the world had changed inextricably even if I didn’t know exactly how.
Scared of the prospect of other attacks and mad as hell at the perpetrators, in the days and weeks that followed I wanted my country to respond forcefully. Like most Americans, I was on board when President Bush promised to bring those responsible for the worst attack on our homeland since Pearl Harbor to justice. That’s why we went to war in Afghanistan, with overwhelming public support and remarkable clarity of purpose. Right? Or where we after something else?
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Let’s go back and look at the original justification for the invasion.
On October 6, 2001, President Bush issued an ultimatum to the Taliban: shut down al-Qaeda’s base of operations, close their training facilities, and hand over the terrorists, or “pay a heavy price.”
Had the Taliban complied with Bush’s demand and handed over bin Laden and his associates, that would have been the end of it. No case for war, no invasion. Indeed, as Joe Biden rightly put it, the US “had no vital national interest in Afghanistan other than to prevent an attack on America’s homeland and our friends”:
Remember why we went to Afghanistan in the first place? Because we were attacked by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda on September 11th, 2001, and they were based in Afghanistan […] If we had been attacked on September 11, 2001, from Yemen instead of Afghanistan, would we have ever gone to war in Afghanistan—even though the Taliban controlled Afghanistan in 2001? I believe the honest answer is “no.”
Alas, the Taliban refused, so the US launched Operation Enduring Freedom with the stated goal of neutralizing a clear and present danger to America and inflicting pain on those who would had been responsible for it. The war’s aims were righteous but limited: to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, decimate al-Qaeda, and punish the Taliban for harboring terrorists. This mission was immensely popular: 93 percent of Americans supported it at its height, and only one representative—Congresswoman Barbara Lee—voted against the joint resolution of Congress to authorize the war.
Members of Congress applaud President George W. Bush on Sept. 20, 2001 during joint session of Congress to address the 9/11 attacks. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
And boy, was it successful. By mid-2002, a true multilateral effort made up of a few thousand US troops supported by NATO allies and in partnership with the Northern Alliance had swiftly decimated al-Qaeda, rooted out the Taliban government, and forced bin Laden and Mullah Omar into hiding. By 2003, two-thirds of Americans judged that our response to 9/11 had made us safer against future terrorist attacks. Eight years later, in 2011, a clinically executed attack launched from Afghanistan would kill Osama at his compound in Pakistan. Perhaps most importantly, to this day the United States has not experienced another major foreign-directed terrorist attack on its soil.
In other words, the US accomplished what I—and the majority of the American people—thought we had set out to do. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban were punished, incapacitated, and deterred from committing or enabling further attacks on America. But if that’s the case, why is everyone and their mother judging the war to be a catastrophic failure?
The answer is mission creep. After the initial military success, generals and successive presidents from both parties shifted the goalposts and fatally expanded the scope of the war from counterterrorism to state- and nation-building. Incapacitation, punishment and deterrence were not enough for the foreign policy establishment—Afghanistan had to be rehabilitated, too.
This is not what the American people signed up for, as evidenced by the cratering public support post-2011. (I dare you to find me one soldier who enlisted not to avenge killed Americans or defend the homeland, but to empower Afghan civil society.) Since Vietnam, it’s been clear that the United States has neither the stomach nor the power to “fix” countries in the first place.
New York Yankee fans hold up an anti-Osama bin Laden sign during a game against the Oakland Athletics on Oct. 10, 2001.(Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)
The original mission was the only winnable mission. What followed was hopeless fantasy, a lost cause. Military force can do many things, but building state capacity and enduring stability is not one of them. Remaking poor and tribal Afghanistan into a democracy at gunpoint was always doomed to fail.
As the meaning of “victory” pivoted toward the impossible, public opinion soured, and the early successes were forgotten. The Bush administration bears the greatest responsibility for turning an easy win into a sure defeat, followed by Presidents Obama and Trump—both of whom acknowledged the overreach but lacked the courage to end it. As presidents go, Biden is least to blame—after all, he ended the war and was never a fan of nation-building.
Looking ahead, my biggest worry is that the instincts, ideologies, and interests that led to this bipartisan failure are still very much alive, vying for influence over America’s foreign policy. The difference is that the 2021 America is not 2001 America. Yes, the United States remains by far the most powerful country in the world. But the country is also more divided than ever. Our greatest weakness, and the number one limit to our power, is our internal disunity.
As we come together to honor the victims of 9/11 and mourn the lives lost in response to the attacks, we must remember this above all.
🔔 And if you haven't already, don't forget to subscribe to my free newsletter, GZERO Daily by Ian Bremmer, to get new posts delivered to your inbox.
A member of the media and a Jersey City police officer watch the smoke from the remains of New York's World Trade Center pour from lower Manhattan as they stand a a media center established at the Liberty Scenic Center in Jersey City, New Jersey September 12, 2001.
Farewell to the flip phone: How media has changed since 9/11
My Motorola flip phone wasn't working. No signal, just those three piercing tones that indicate something is wrong.
Like everyone else in 2001, I had a landline phone in my New York City apartment and a dial-up modem connected to my laptop. Both proved to be a lifeline to the outside world as I watched the events unfold from inside my apartment.
At the time, I was fresh out of graduate school, freelancing as a reporter for an NPR program called On the Media. I contributed profiles of Broadway stars, a piece on the etymology of the word "diva" pegged to a VH1 concert series, and an interview about famous dogs on screen. All were captured on a Marantz cassette recorder that weighed nearly 10 pounds. I recently learned that those devices are described as "vintage" nowadays, should you want to buy one on eBay.
It was the summer of shark attacks and Chandra Levy. "Drops of Jupiter" and "Bootylicious" both played constantly on the Walkman sports radio I strapped to my arm for jogs around Central Park.
On September 10, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld delivered a speech declaring that the greatest threat to US national security was Pentagon bureaucracy.
Less than 24 hours later, the world changed. Words like Kabul, Kandahar, and al-Qaeda would flood the airwaves.
Using that trusty dial-up modem, I blitzed my resume out to every TV station inbox I could find. Within a couple of days, I was working for MSNBC and a part of what was the biggest story of my lifetime.
As I think about the 20 years since, of course I remember first and foremost the people. The people I interviewed, like Paula Berry whose husband died in the South Tower that day; Alice Hoagland, mother of United flight 93 hero Mark Bingham; and also a little girl whose name I don't know, captured in a photo taken downtown after the towers fell. She was completely covered in dust, her tears creating streaks on her ghost-white face.
But I also think about the enormous changes in the media industry I've witnessed since, how technology and tools evolved at a breakneck pace almost immediately.
The goodwill and unity of the days and weeks following the 9/11 attacks faded away in the subsequent months and years as we went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. There was no shortage of opinions spouted on cable news, but it was the voices emerging online that became increasingly important.
First came the blogs. As controversy and anger swirled around the 2003 invasion of Iraq, CBS News and its flagship anchor Dan Rather had begun an investigation into then President George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. The damning piece aired on television just weeks before the 2004 election. Within hours, a few emerging blog platforms (one whose name, I won't forget, was Little Green Footballs) dismantled the work and eventually the career of one of America's most established journalists. The fatal flaw? Rather and his team fell for fraudulent documents typed in a font that didn't exist in 1973.
Next came online video, and whole new world of storytelling. It's hard to believe that YouTube wasn't launched until 2005, and it's a challenge to remember life — or television reporting — without it. With the proliferation of these videos came an explosion of camera phones that captured broadcast quality images.
After I'd moved to CBS, as a producer for Evening News anchor Katie Couric, I covered the death of activist Neda Agha-Soltan, who was shot in the streets of Tehran amid violent protests following the 2009 election in Iran. Neda's death was captured on cell phone video and shared throughout social media. Time magazine called it "probably the most widely witnessed death in human history," and the amateur images went on to win a prestigious journalism award.
By then social media itself, Twitter and Facebook primarily, were also in full bloom and became an ever-more important reporting tool. After launching a Twitter account for Katie Couric, one of the first US TV news anchors to have a presence there, I was accosted in the halls of CBS by Paul Friedman, then vice president of the venerated news division.
"It's beneath the anchor of the CBS Evening News to be on the Twitter," he said.
Katie felt otherwise, and apparently so did the rest of the world. Now it's a primary place for sharing and gathering information — for better or worse.
The uses of social media as both a tool and a weapon are obvious. It fueled the Arab Spring, but also became a recruiting ground for ISIS. Today, disinformation abounds — promulgated by state actors and individuals alike for personal or political gain. In this pandemic we've seen every conspiracy theory imaginable about vaccines, microchips, and even livestock medicine.
We've also seen videos of New Yorkers banging pots and pans at 7pm to cheer on healthcare workers, arias sung on a balcony in Florence as Italy confronted unimaginable suffering, and people pressing their noses against nursing home windows to come as close as was safe and feasible to their loved ones.
There was no social media on September 11, 2001, at least not as we now know it. Millions of us all watched together as Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and, yes, Dan Rather walked us though the stages of collective heartbreak.
If I had a Twitter account then, I would have shown you pictures from Ground Zero and clips of people I met as I roamed the streets booking guests for cable news. Maybe I'd become emotional after working a 14-hour day and quote a poem or show you a poster I found on 7th Avenue, a photo of a man with the words "Have you seen me?" written above.
But I'm glad we had only the tools we did on that day. Instead, I walked out into the street and hugged my friend Lea. My friends and neighbors all stood together on a pier in Riverside Park looking south. We gathered together in bars, often in silence, listening to the news.
The only blue light flickering was from the television screen, and all eyes were on it.
Tony Maciulis is Chief Content Officer at GZERO Media.
20 years since 9/11 attacks
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi everybody. It's the 20th anniversary of 9/11 coming up real soon, and I thought I'd give you a few thoughts about it. I was here in New York, like so many of us, when the planes flew into the towers. It was shocking. I was in our offices in Midtown at the time. At first, of course, everyone thought it was an accident. And then suddenly it became quite apparent it was not. And it was a gut punch. It was a feeling that the world had changed inextricably even if you didn't know exactly how.
I was scared. I was angry. I certainly wanted the country to take action. And I was quite happy, as I think most Americans were, when we had a leader that promised to bring those who attacked our Homeland to justice. We also didn't know what else was out there. Were there other terrorist attacks? I mean, there were aircraft, fighter jets, American fighter jets that were sort of buzzing around New York for the next several days. And every time you heard one, you immediately sort of thought, "oh my God, was this another attack that was coming?"
And at the same time, there was a concern that the United States, whenever you have a big crisis, you focus overwhelmingly on that crisis and that means at the expense of other things. I mean, the idea of not supporting the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan was almost inconceivable as an American at that point, or as any American ally around the world. And you'll remember even the Russian government, which we weren't happy with at that point, they didn't like us at that point, it was of course still Vladimir Putin, but nonetheless offered for the United States and for NATO to use bases in Central Asia, which never would've happened without Putin's approval, to facilitate logistics for the attacks in Afghanistan.
So, it did feel like the world was coming together. I mean, we, of course, all stood up and applauded as the fire trucks were coming back and we all could smell the dust in the air for months. It was even Thanksgiving. You could still smell. And you knew that there were thousands of dead bodies that were in that debris from downtown. And it was hard. It was hard to go down there. It was hard to walk past, even years after, the actual site itself. Now, we're 20 years past this and we're going to talk a lot on the day about Afghanistan and the end of the war. But I think that it is important to remember that the United States did come together after it was attacked. And the country felt like a country. It felt like it was rallying around values that mattered.
And it is so unfortunate that both the war in Afghanistan's mission became so diffuse and expanded and bad and wrongheaded. And then the war in Iraq, which was wrongheaded and misguided and actively misled from the Bush Administration leadership from day one, that so much damage was done over the course of decades, that Americans now much more fundamentally mistrust the idea of the United States providing security around the world. I mean, I think that the level of opposition for the US being involved in support for nation building internationally has decreased significantly. I think the value that Americans see in military alliances has decreased significantly. And I think that's unfortunate because those things matter. Because as deeply divided as America is right now, the values that the United States and its allies ultimately support are values that would do good for poor human beings around the world, especially compared to the alternative.
Now, the challenge is, of course, that all of those values, when they are harnessed to a military superpower with a strong military industrial complex, tend to operate through that lens. And so, as much as it is true that the United States improved the lives of a lot of young Afghan men and women and gave them opportunities over the last 20 years they wouldn't have otherwise had, it's also true, the war in Afghanistan was overwhelmingly damaging on the ground to towns and villages across that country. And the US would have been vastly better off, as would the planet, if most of the effort had not been focused on the war. Fight terrorism, fight Al Qaeda, but spend more of your money and engage more of your people and actually trying to improve the wellbeing and understand the wellbeing of the people on the ground.
And this is definitely a case of throwing the baby out with the bath water, that the United States in fighting ultimately failed wars is also much less interested in other people around the planet. And that is a lesson we do not want to learn from having now ended the war in Afghanistan. I'm a supporter of having brought the war to a conclusion 20 years on, but I'm not a supporter of forgetting about the people in Afghanistan. Even once we get the remaining 100, 200 American citizens out, the hundreds of thousands of Afghans that fought with side-by-side the NATO coalition, the hundreds of thousands of Afghans that worked with the Americans and the coalition, we have a responsibility to. And also a country that we've spent that much time on the ground in and that much time both supporting and also damaging, it can't just leave you. So I do think that the lesson of 9/11 ultimately should be both resolve, but also compassion.
The United States remains today by far the most powerful country in the world. A 20 year ultimately failed war in Afghanistan does not change that. And being the most powerful country in the world also creates a sense of obligation, a sense of responsibility, a sense of stewardship. Maybe one that we weren't as aware of as we should have been before those planes attacked civilians in the United States almost 20 years ago, but one we need to do a better job of going forward.
So that's the way I think about 9/11, 20 years on. And I hope we can all take a moment of silence to reflect on that on the day. And I hope everyone's doing well. And I'll talk to you real soon.The alternative versions of 9/11
As pivotal as they were, there was certainly nothing inevitable about the September 11th attacks — or their aftermath. Here we imagine five separate scenarios for how things might have gone differently.
The social media 9/11
As the wounded Twin Towers belch smoke and flames into the sky, social media lights up with videos from people within the buildings, documenting their desperate final moments as they go "live." Within hours of the towers' fall, a Staten Island man uploads a shaky hand-held clip of the North Tower's collapse. The clip purports to show that explosives were used to weaken key structural points of the building, hastening its fall. Algorithms instantly spirit this lie to millions of other users, while thousands of anonymous trolls, in the US and abroad, begin fanning the flames of a conspiracy theory about who was actually responsible. By the time President Bush shouts through a bullhorn at Ground Zero three days later that "the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" it's not clear who "us" is. An anguished America is deeply divided about what happened, confused about what the government intends to do in response, and mistrustful of the mainstream media who seem to be towing the government line.
Of course, conspiracy theories and deep political divisions emerged in the years after 9/11 even without social media — but they bubbled up slowly and eccentrically, rather than with the furious immediacy made possible by smartphones and even smarter algorithms. If a similar attack were to occur today, would there be any real unity at all in the aftermath?
Drafting off of 9/11
On September 18th, 2001, just a week after the attacks, President Bush, riding a wave of patriotic unity and fervor, signs a new law reinstating the military draft for the first time in twenty-eight years. As the United States prepares to launch a retaliatory strike in Afghanistan against the Taliban and its al-Qaeda houseguests, tens of thousands of American men between 18 and 25 receive draft cards — they must either report for military service, or do a year of civic service. The stakes of the Global War on Terror, then in its infancy, are immediately clear for everyone, even across America's deepening geographic, political, and socioeconomic divides. There is broad support for the Afghanistan mission, but as the Bush administration begins laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq, there is more skepticism from the public. Because of that, the mainstream media applies more scrutiny to the administration's claims about WMDs, and the linkages between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
Does the Iraq invasion end up happening? And, years later, is America a less polarized place because of the draft?
The Taliban hand over bin Laden, US doesn't invade Afghanistan.
Less than 24 hours after al-Qaeda attacks America, the Taliban don't even wait for the US to come knocking. They immediately offer to hand over Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's leaders to avoid an American invasion and a war they know will end with yet another foreign power occupying Afghanistan for years. Once in US custody, bin Laden and his lieutenants are sent to the US military base in Gauntánamo, Cuba, where they are interrogated for months before a secret trial. Meanwhile, the Taliban hold onto power, but only because the leader of their main enemy, the Northern Alliance, was killed by al-Qaeda two days before 9/11.
Does not getting bogged down in Afghanistan — and later Iraq — make it easier for the US to actually win the Global War on Terror? Do the Taliban stay in power in Afghanistan? And what happens to al-Qaeda once its leaders vanish?
The US does attack Afghanistan, but with a clear plan and exit strategy.
After the dust settles on the ruins of Lower Manhattan and the Pentagon, President Bush tells the nation he'll follow his dad's recommendation to respond to 9/11 like the US did to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait a decade ago. America will seek a UN resolution authorizing a US-led coalition to attack Afghanistan with the sole purpose of capturing al-Qaeda's leaders and putting them on trial in the United States. America wants to do things by the book, but is not keen on a lengthy legal process at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which cannot hand down the death penalty. US forces get ready to strike Afghanistan with a coalition of almost 100 countries, many of them Arab states angry at the Taliban for helping al-Qaeda commit such a massacre.
How would a truly multilateral, Gulf War-style plan have changed things in the Global War on Terror? And would backing from Muslim-majority countries have made a difference? What would have happened to Afghanistan after a US-led military campaign that ends without America as an occupying power?
It never happened.
On the morning of September 7, 2001, President Bush convenes a press conference with newly appointed FBI chief Robert Mueller and CIA director George Tenet. They announce that a massive terrorist plot against the United States has been uncovered and thwarted. So far, more than a dozen nationals of Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been arrested in three different states for planning to hijack airplanes and fly them into several, as yet unknown, targets along the East Coast of the US.
If the whole thing had never happened, what would have come next? Let us know what you think — if you do, be sure to include your name and location as you'd like them to be cited, just in case we decide to publish.
When a giant sneezes: How the US response to 9/11 reshaped the world
In the narrowest sense, the 9/11 attacks were something that happened only in New York, Washington, and a field in Pennsylvania. But how the US responded — unleashing an open-ended Global War on Terror, launching wars and nation-building occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and dramatically reshaping the government's powers of surveillance at home — sent shockwaves around the world.
In many places, the effects are still felt: in the shattering of the MIddle East, in the rise of China, in the upheavals of South Asia, or in the newly complicated relationships between Washington and old allies in Europe and Turkey. And remember when the US and Russia were — for a few weeks there — seemingly the closest of friends?
We asked analysts at Eurasia Group, our parent company, to give us a quick recap of how 9/11 and its aftermath have affected the regions they cover. Enjoy.
China: The golden opportunity — Neil Thomas
The Global War on Terror that Washington chose to pursue after 9/11 led to a sustained US foreign policy focus on the Middle East that distracted significantly from China's rise as a regional heavyweight and a global power. Before becoming US president in January 2001, George W. Bush backed his predecessor Bill Clinton's campaign to establish permanent normal trading relations with China and support its admission to the World Trade Organization, but he promised a tougher stance that treated Beijing as a "strategic competitor." That attitude changed after 9/11.
Beijing presented itself as an ally in the Global War on Terror and the Bush administration was eager for international cooperation. Meanwhile, China experienced phenomenal economic growth that enabled Beijing to expand its international influence, modernize the People's Liberation Army, and consolidate contentious territorial claims — all without significant pushback from Washington. Beijing even persuaded the US government to designate a Uyghur militant group known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement as a terrorist organization (a decision that was reversed last November).
That move to target ETIM reflected Beijing's post-9/11 reframing of its Uyghur ethnic minority, a traditionally Muslim group concentrated in China's western Xinjiang region, as a potential terrorist threat. Especially after ethnic violence in Xinjiang in 2009 and deadly attacks by Uighur terrorists in 2011 and 2013, Chinese leaders increasingly deployed rhetoric and techniques from the Global War on Terror to pursue repressive policies of "counter-extremism" and "de-radicalization." This campaign evolved into a wholesale crackdown on Uyghur identity and culture that includes the forced detention of millions of Uyghurs in "vocational education and training centers."
The Middle East: Two decades of upheaval— Sofia Meranto & Ahmed Morsy
Twenty years after 9/11, the Middle East is still grappling with its impacts. A highly tumultuous period followed the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and a decade later the Arab Spring sent another round of shockwaves across the region.
The Iraq War, right in the heart of the Middle East, was perhaps the most jarring for regional leaders. The subsequent chaos bred wider instability and spawned the birth of terrorist groups like ISIS, further fracturing states like Iraq and Syria.
The US Global War on Terror and its policy of "either you are with us, or against us" shaped domestic policies in pivotal ways as well. On the one hand, it created space for authoritarian leaders to crack down not only on extremist groups but on other critics in their midst as well. But on the other, the subsequent US democratization agenda pressured some to make cosmetic liberalizing reforms.
Meanwhile, despite efforts to dissociate the war on terror from a war with Islam, the perception in the Middle East is that Islamophobia rose palpably in the West after 9/11.
Today, Washington is clearly exploring ways to draw down its involvement in the Middle East. Taken together with the messy Afghanistan exit, this has raised concerns for Gulf countries, which have historically relied heavily on the US security umbrella. And there are a number of unresolved regional issues — including Lebanon's collapse, Syria's post-war role, Iran's regional and nuclear ambitions, and the moribund Middle East peace process — that will demand that regional powers develop ways to coordinate better and lower tensions.
Lastly, twenty years after the attack on the US, the reach of al-Qaeda reach is undoubtedly more limited — as is the threat of ISIS compared to a decade ago — but the jury is still out on how serious a terrorist threat could emerge out of Afghanistan, where the Taliban is now back in power.
Turkey: Ties in Tatters— Emre Peker
The 9/11 attacks coincided with a sea change in Turkish politics. After a decade marred by economic crises, terrorism, and social upheavals, Turkish voters rejected mainstream parties in November 2002 elections, sweeping Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party to power. And while Turkey had been quick to support NATO's Afghanistan mission post-9/11, the new government refused to back George W. Bush's 2003 foray into Iraq. That marked an unusual break with the US, which would only grow in the coming years.
While Ankara remained sensitive to security threats from Islamist radicals, Erdogan did away with the old establishment's strict secularism. That provided openings for cooperation with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas — despite US protestations. And amid growing hostility towards Washington in the Middle East during the Bush years, Turkey emerged as a regional soft power, leveraging its status as a majority-Muslim NATO member with aspirations to join the EU.
When Barack Obama was elected president in 2008, he tried to bolster ties with Ankara as part of a broader effort to repair Washington's terrible image in the region. That push, however, didn't survive into Obama's second term as Ankara and Washington increasingly came to blows over Syria and other issues.
As Turkey dropped its broadly neutral foreign policies to pursue regime change in Syria, throw its weight behind the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, intervene in the Libyan conflict, and stake out claims in contested Eastern Mediterranean waters, Erdogan found himself increasingly at odds with Middle Eastern rivals and major powers alike.
Tensions even grew between Turkey and its NATO partners, over Ankara's tactical partnerships with NATO rival Russia. Where the Trump administration largely enabled Erdogan to operate unchecked, Biden is looking to opportunistically engage Turkey despite ongoing disagreements on issues ranging from where Turkey buys its weapons to how Erdogan has weakened Turkey's democracy.
Overall,9/11 — coupled with political trends in the US and Turkey — left the once-strong Washington-Ankara alliance in tatters, a condition from which it is unlikely to recover any time soon.
Russia and Central Asia: Remember the good old days? — Alex Brideau
Given how bad US-Russia ties are these days, it's hard to remember that things between Washington and Moscow were actually pretty good in the aftermath of 9/11. President Vladimir Putin was the first world leader to contact Bush after the planes hit the towers. Intelligence sharing and Russian support for US bases in Central Asia as part of the Afghanistan invasion soon followed.
Russia was, at the time, in the third year of a renewed conflict against separatists in Chechnya who were fighting under the banner of Islam and who would soon wage terrorist attacks of their own elsewhere in Russia. Putin promptly framed that conflict, which had fueled his own political rise, as part of the West's Global War on Terror. Central Asian authoritarians and democratic governments alike worked with the US to protect against threats of terrorism in their own countries. Even after that cooperation stopped, regional leaders continued to repress any groups that might pose risks to their governments, often by framing them as "extremists."
US-Russia cooperation did not last long. By 2007, Moscow's opposition to the invasion of Iraq, combined with resentment of US policy in other areas, led Putin to blast Washington in a speech in Munich, and elsewhere to draw a jawdropping comparison between the Bush administration and Nazi Germany. The relationship deteriorated further after Russia's 2008 war with Georgia and collapsed almost entirely after the Russian seizure of Ukraine's Crimea region in 2014.
The Kremlin meanwhile took advantage of Washington's increasing aversion to direct engagement with the Middle East in the 2010s to build up its own presence in the region. Moscow intervened directly in the Syrian civil war and indirectly in post-Qaddafi Libya, while trying to build up new economic and security relationships with a range of partners.
In 2021, with the Taliban back in control of Afghanistan, Russia and Central Asia face similar concerns about security and regional stability to those of twenty years ago. But this time around, cooperation with the US is sure to be much less intensive and enthusiastic.
Europe: Solidarity and skepticism— Naz Masraff
Europe was united in horror and solidarity after the September 11 attacks twenty years ago. In a now famous essay, the editor of the prominent French daily Le Monde proclaimed, "we are all Americans." He wasn't referring to France alone.
To any European country with the right capabilities, joining the US in the War on Terror seemed an obvious choice at first. Bin Laden's presumed location, and intelligence of Al Qaeda bases were enough to convince even a reluctant Germany to send troops to Afghanistan under the self-defense terms of the UN Charter.
But the rift with the US over Iraq sowed division within Europe itself. The UK, along with Spain and most future member states in Central and Eastern Europe, backed Washington, while Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissed the more reluctant France and Germany as "Old Europe." The EU's great eastward expansion of 2004 still took place, but Iraq was probably the first moment at which it became clear that a common EU security and defense policy might be impossible.
Anti-American sentiment — which had retreated to the eccentric margins after September 11 — became the norm as chaos unfolded in Iraq and terrorist attacks happened on European soil: Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005. EU leaders and citizens alike tended to blame the chaos on President Bush.
To this day, Europe is still grappling with the consequences of decisions made in the aftermath of September 11. Afghans and Iraqis formed a large part of the wave of refugees in the 2015 migration crisis. And just as EU capitals scaled back their operations in Afghanistan, new terrorist threats forced them to deploy in the Sahel and over Syria.
Moreover, twenty years after 9/11, a new debate is roiling Europe: whether to develop more strategic autonomy in ways that would move the continent away from the familiar US-backed security architecture. Europe is certainly willing to be more assertive now, but it's hard to see the EU developing real strategic autonomy from Washington and broader geopolitical independence any time soon.
South Asia: Pivotal Pakistan— Peter Mumford
Apart from Afghanistan, which is its own story entirely, the post-9/11 impacts on South Asia were most acute in the rival nuclear-armed states of Pakistan and India. Pakistan, of course, became central to events in Afghanistan and the broader war on terror, with Washington often placing more emphasis on its (complex, sometimes strained) relationship with Islamabad than it did on ties with India. US dependency on Pakistan to maintain military operations in Afghanistan also became an issue of concern in New Delhi.
That said, India was happy to see Pakistan tied up with issues on its northern border with Afghanistan. India also benefited from a change in how the US and international community viewed terrorism. When Pakistan-backed terrorists attacked India's parliament in December 2001, Pakistan was shocked to find the US not calling for restraint by India, something that it would almost certainly have done prior to 9/11. India was also pleased to see the US pay more attention to broader threats posed by Islamist terrorism.
Following the killing of Osama bin Laden (in Pakistan, no less) and subsequent winding down of US military operations in Afghanistan, Washington's attention increasingly shifted from Pakistan to India, with US-India relations becoming closer in recent years. But that relationship has also deepened because of mutual concerns about China's growing power — something that would have happened regardless. In some ways, 9/11 and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars distracted the US from improving bilateral ties with India sooner than it did.
Southeast Asia: Terrorism faded, but China arrived— Peter Mumford
The years following 9/11 saw a sharp increase in the Islamist terrorist threat in Southeast Asia, with al-Qaeda affiliates and other extremist groups seemingly emboldened. This was most noticeable in Indonesia, with the Bali bombings in 2002, and attacks on the Marriott hotel in Jakarta in 2003 and 2009 — which killed both Indonesians and foreigners. The Philippines also experienced a rise in terrorism threats, as did, to a lesser extent, Malaysia.
US counterterrorism assistance, in the form of funding, training, and intel sharing, helped to reduce (though certainly not eliminate) the terrorist threat in the region. That said, the US-led global war on terror, and particular the war in Iraq, increased anti-US sentiment in Muslim-majority Indonesia and Malaysia — to some extent this also strengthened Islamist political parties in these countries, though other factors such as rising inequality and intensified identity politics, were also at play. These sentiments softened, though were reignited to some extent by Donald Trump's "Muslim ban".
In the meantime, with the US distracted by the global war on terror, a rising China was able more easily to extend its influence in the region, even beyond these Muslim-majority countries. President Barack Obama sought to address this through his somewhat stillborn "pivot to Asia" but subsequent administrations have been forced to reckon more directly with Chinese competition.
What about where you live? How did 9/11 or the US response change things -- either in the immediate aftermath or over the past 20 years?
The Graphic Truth: The cost of America's post-9/11 wars
In the two decades since 9/11, the US government has spent an astounding $8 trillion on the resulting Global War on Terror, which included invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and more limited involvement in other conflicts around the Middle East and Asia. The human costs in affected countries are staggering: almost a million dead, and 38 million refugees or internally displaced people. Meanwhile, a select group of US-based arms companies benefited immensely — if you'd invested in them in 2001, you'd have seen a return twice as large as the average for blue-chip firms during that time frame. Here we take a look at US military spending, top US defense contractors' stock prices, death toll, and displaced people in the US-led Global War on Terror.
Editorial note: An earlier version of this graphic incorrectly listed the amount spent on US veterans' care and the breakdown of deaths in the Global War on Terror. We apologize for the errors.
Damaged area of Pentagon seen at sunrise with US Capitol in the background.
9/11 and after: A personal reminiscence from inside the machine
In 2001, I was US National Intelligence Officer for Economics, and had spent much of that summer traveling in China. At the time, all signs were pointing to China becoming the predominant focus of the George W. Bush administration, and I needed to become much more conversant with the workings of the Chinese economy.
All of that changed on September 11th, just five days after I returned to Washington. For national crisis contingencies, I had an additional assignment that would turn out to be crucial that day: I was the liaison between the intelligence community and the Congressional leadership.
As a result, a few hours after the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, I provided the initial briefing for the House and Senate leadership (who along with all Members had been evacuated from Washington to a "secure location") on exactly what had happened, how it happened, and why we had been unable to prevent it.
This was one of the toughest briefs I ever had to present. We had warned President Bush that al-Qaeda was planning a major attack, but we had failed to penetrate the small, self-contained group that was planning and undertaking the operation. It was exceptionally well-conceived and executed.
So much for my personal experience of 9/11 — the events of that day also had a profound effect on many aspects of US foreign policy. For one thing, 9/11 marked the end of the post-Cold War period of intense debate over the basic strategic focus of national security policy. NATO expansion, humanitarian intervention, the promotion of multilateralism, and how to engage both Russia and a rising China were all hot topics at the time. But after 9/11, all of these issues took a back seat to counter-terrorism, which became the focus of US grand strategy. That remained true at least until President Obama re-opened the debate with his only partially-achieved "pivot to Asia," which began in 2013.
The 9/11 attacks also enormously changed the world of economic intelligence. China became less important to us as the focus shifted to identifying and disrupting terrorist financing. This gave rise to the very close and continuing partnership between intelligence and the Treasury, and the beginnings of a whole new phase of muscular and often coercive financial diplomacy, enabled by intelligence. The main impact of this has been not in the counter-terrorism space at all, but in much broader themes, especially around the use of targeted financial sanctions and leveraging access to the US economy and financial system. It is no exaggeration to say that without the huge upgrading of financial intelligence following 9/11, the entire suite of coercive financial instruments that are now in common use would not have been developed.
9/11 also dramatically altered the trajectory of US-China relations, but in a positive direction. What I had learned in the summer of 2001 on China did not go to waste, as I was given the deputy role in the then-flourishing US-China Strategic Dialogue when I moved to State as policy planning director in 2007. The decade following 9/11 was marked by growing and sustained collaboration between Beijing and Washington, driven by mutual concerns about terrorism.
But the limits of Beijing's interest in US–China cooperation began to be reached even before Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. By President Obama's second term, the debate around Washington's China policy had returned to where it was just before 9/11, with hawks and doves contending within both Republican and Democratic national security elites. But during that 12-year period China had become a substantially more powerful actor, and had become comfortable with not being the focal point of US policy and strategy. Both Obama and Trump shifted to much more pessimistic views of China over the course of their presidencies; and all of President Biden's China team comes from the hawkish wing of Democratic China hands.
And one last thing, in conclusion: the US counterterrorism strategy worked in one very important respect. In the face of the rising challenges from China, both Trump and Biden have sought to cast US counter-terrorism efforts after 9/11 as excessive distractions; "forever wars." But on 9/11/2021, even as we remember the horrific images of death and destruction from that infamous day twenty years ago, we need to acknowledge the success of post 9/11 counter-terrorism efforts, especially in protecting the US homeland. Back in 2001, there were few, if any, observers who were predicting that there would not be another substantial Islamist extremist attack on US soil in twenty years.
David F. Gordon is a Senior Adviser to Eurasia Group, and was Director of Policy Planning at the State Department during the George W. Bush administration.
Did the War on Terror make the US safer?
For former US Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), 20 years after 9/11 the War on Terror has made the US and the world safer in some ways, but less safe in others. She shares her thoughts in an interview with Ian Bremmer, during which Harman also discusses why the US currently lacks a coherent national security strategy — and in fact hasn't had one since the end of the Cold War.