Ten Years Later

It has been 10 years since the collapse of the twin towers, and we continue to live in a world shaped by the events of Sept. 11, 2001, including two unfinished wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the gradual adaptation of all of us to living with fear. It is true that they have changed names, faces and circumstances, but U.S. foreign policy, and to a great extent the interior, continue to be marked by the decisions made back then. And today its reflection permeates much of the attitudes of Western governments.

The United States, which has scored many crucial successes in this decade in the fight against terrorism, now seems less vulnerable than it was in those hours that shook the world. Osama bin Laden has died, and al-Qaida is weaker and more fragmented but still capable, in its diffused identity and obedience, to carry out bloodshed in the most diverse scenarios in the name of Islamic madness. The Sept. 11 attacks have increased the efficiency of mythical security agencies (CIA, FBI) that were revealed to be chaotic and incompetent before and after the historic attacks.

But the superpower has paid a high price, morally and politically, for its greatest strength. And its freedoms. With the nefarious preventive war doctrine, George W. Bush buried containment and deterrence as the foundation of security, and a society that fought the enemy with proportionate methods and under the rule of law has grown accustomed to a perverse logic in which anything goes, from torture to murder. Along the way, Washington has been contaminated with policies of indefensible methods and weak or unconditional allies, whose governments have excused [everything from] the CIA’s secret rendition flights to secret prisons. Even today, in Obama’s America — theoretically at odds with that of his predecessor — remains the infamous Guantanamo and indefinite detention without trial of its prisoners. Their unmanned aircraft exercise in places such as Pakistan or Afghanistan in blind and deadly retaliation that does not distinguish between innocent and guilty.

Fracture with Europe

The U.S. image abroad has been cracked. The ill-fated invasion of Iraq — the most serious and tragic mistake, the son of Sept. 11, an exercise in unilateralism at the expense of international law — broke relations with European allies. Even today the final profile of Baghdad is not clear, but we fear in the end it could be closer to Tehran than Washington. And in Afghanistan, the second war launched by the White House, which Pakistan’s double game makes it impossible to win, the allies have only accentuated the estrangement. It illustrates the role the exhausted NATO has been playing in the Central Asian country, a battle for the same reason. Europe, disorganized and overwhelmed by the magnitude of its difficulties (and criticized by Washington for its inability to project itself militarily, even in neighboring countries such as Libya), is reluctant to accompany the military expeditions of the superpower.

The decade has been clearly deteriorating the U.S.’ position in the world. The strategic priorities triggered by Sept. 11 have had an unfortunate anesthetic effect in crucial stages in the international arena. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of its examples, has been abandoned to fate by Washington, despite solemn declarations to the contrary. The Arab Spring, the most encouraging phenomenon of our time, has erupted without warning. The regional democratic ideals Bush embodied much later and its spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East should not be the role of Washington and the Western democracies, but of the overwhelming pressure of historical frustrations and humiliations suffered by the protagonists.

End of Innocence

The world of September 2011 is not the same as in 2001, even though we suffer the dense shadow of events that liquidated any possible innocence. The United States, whose absolute hegemony could not last forever, attends an evident loss of influence to rival powers on a board that has ceased to be modeled first at its will. China emerges as an unstoppable titan, economically and militarily, which seeks to impose its conditions globally sooner rather than later. Or India. Relations between Beijing and Washington have failed to overcome an invincible mutual distrust, heightened in the White House by the challenge to its dominance over the Pacific, which has become the ocean of opportunities. Asia is a powerful magnet for economic and strategic interests of a planet in which a diffuse and diminished Europe has increasing difficulty making itself heard with authority.

Ultimately, the most enduring event of the decade, and perhaps the greatest impact on Americans day to day, may not be Sept. 11, which begins to enter the history books, but the economic earthquake experienced on their own soil in 2008, of which the consequences are far from over. The aftershocks of this monumental financial meltdown will definitely have more impact on the ordinary life of half the world than the unleashed terrorist attacks of that September day. Next year’s presidential elections in the U.S., hopefully, will be played in areas very different from the global war on terror. After the experience of the last decade, and in light of its astronomical deficit, the United States responds with fewer resources to future security challenges, among which it would be suicidal to dismiss the role of Islamist fanaticism. But the lesson of the many mistakes and blunders committed must be learned by everyone — not just in Washington.