Soon after the 9/11 attack, Niall Ferguson wrote a piece in the NYT (Dec 2001) proposing that the event was a marker of certain world trends: 1)international spread of terrorism with its arrival in NYC 2)ECONOMIC contraction of the world economy along with exaggeration of the richer/poorer divide despite efforts at globalization and free trade. He cites the growing wealth inequity across richer and poorer countries as well as the strain of demand on raw materials esp oil as a source of energy and its long term impact on world economy. He specifically cited the dilemma in Saudi Arabia of decreasing prices at the demand of western allies which has contracted the internal economy of the country. 3)The shift from informal to formal imperialism in US foreign policy. He chose to use the term imperialism because he was writing a book comparing US as an imperial power to Britain in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Ten years later, there have been many reflections on the event. Most are nationalist and self congratulatory about how the US has "survived and prospered" despite 911. And there have been memorials for the slain victims. Fewer are the efforts to evaluate what we have learned in the 10 years since this catastrophe. This reflects the reality that not much has been learned and the destructive effects of the event continue to reverberate through our society.
Have we learned to manage our fear of vulnerability? Not very much. The meaningless and ineffective airport screenings continue. Port and highway points of entry are as vulnerable as before. Bin Laden was recently killed, and a great celebration made of the revenge, but it brought no great decrease in anxiety, as "experts" reported that many were ready to take his place as instigators of terrorism, or already have. These experts come, for the most part, from the growing "terror/surveillance industry", the major growth area in the US Economy. Various defense contractors have rushed into the opportunity created by this fear to develop a commercial network of surveillance and analysis of information supposedly making the society safer from terrorism, but certainly enriching themselves and feeding the general fear as a basis for sustaining the industry. The endless pundits who rush to the news media whenever a potential terrorist event is reported are part of their marketing efforts. And it is all paid for by taxpayer dollars. (PBS recently aired a review of this industry based on the work of Washington Post Investigative reporters.) This process is not the agenda of any political party. Torture and rendition occurred in the Clinton administration. It was vastly expanded and confused in the Bush years. And though Obama ran on the commitment to protect Constitutional Rights, no sign of any significant change has occurred in his administration to date. The extent to which individual privacy of the US Citizens has been systematically abridged is, in some ways, more terrifying than the threat of terrorism itself. This encroachment on fundamental liberty both of all US citizens, and especially of Americans of Middle Eastern origins is a long term destructive effect of 911 which shows no sign of correcting and if anything is heading us toward the paranoid world of the Cold War and the McCarthyism of the 1950s (or the more terrifying world of Orwell's 1984).
Have we dealt with the potential economic consequences? Coming into 911, the US economy was struggling with the fallout of the "dotcom bust". 911 imposed a second assault to the already weak economy. Measures were taken to help the economy rebuild. We now understand that those measures unrealistically expanded credit and the money supply to temporarily and falsely elevate the capacity of lower middle (and some poverty level) income buyers to contract for mortgages, and then sell the resulting credit, as if it were traditional mortgage investments. In retrospect, an organized system of exploitation of the economic system was developed by financial managers ("wall st") who personally enriched themselves in the process. Some of them understood that this was unsustainable and hedged their companies for protection, while the others, including most major banks, did not, and were caught in a crushing collapse of "toxic asset" capitalization. This was a consciously engineered bubble (Ponzi scheme?). And in the end, the American taxpayer is faced with having to support the de-leveraging of this fiasco, while the engineers of the process have walked off with rewards of hundreds of millions (to billions) of personal fortunes. The recent housing based economic crisis is, in part, a direct consequence of 911 along with the long term structural contractions of the US economy, roughly termed "globalization". Before 911, the developed nations were able to exploit their economic advantages over the under-developed or "developing" world. The inequities of the "north-south" economic disparities were in transition in the decade before 911. With "globalization" in developed countries, the lower tier of the labor market and middle tier of white collar labor was and is being devalued down to a level of world wide labor costs. At the same time, in underdeveloped regions like China and India there is substantial improvement in the economic position compared to the developed countries, and some in other developing nations as well. This is a shift of economic activity and benefits across borders, but in developed countries it is felt as a contraction. One would expect that this would lead to terrorism in these countries, and may eventually do so, but in the meantime we have the classic rebellion of rising expectations: namely, middle classes in developing countries recognize how much better off they would be without the impositions of the G8 and this is a major feeder for terrorist activities.
The source in fundamental Islam would suggest that the fighters are opposed to all economic development or change. But the recruits are drawn from mostly middle class youth in countries with dictatorial rule and economic stasis. The US focus on tracking down a few terrorist leaders completely misses the problem of rising expectations and economic instability, with the result that the "Arab Spring" has undermined most US allies in the region. All those who preached NAFTA and etc are now reaping the whirlwind of rapid and unstable economic changes. The US response to this is fundamentally wrong. The fundamental issues of north/south economics must be prioritized, instead of concentrating on a hardline imperialist approach.
We will never know how much 911 was a reaction to US attempts to dominate the oil production of the Middle East. But the US reaction to 911was an invasion and attempt to secure the control of Iraq's oil production, and prevent a Russian pipeline through Afghanistan, which are a matter of public record. After two wars and a failed effort to recover from the economic changes occurring across the world, the US is in a much worse position economically than before 911. Nothing has been learned here either.
How has the US position as a world leader fared? At the time of 911, the US supposed itself to be the new Roman Empire. A NYT magazine cover even headlined this. ("Pax Americana"). We had "won" the first Gulf war almost without a fight, against the supposed greatest army in the middle East. (No matter that they failed to sustain in a recent war against Iran, which we helped support.) English was the commanding language of business and culture across the internet and around the world. US culture in the form of exported media was in great demand and copied or pirated everywhere. Then in 911, a dramatic reversal: The US is vulnerable to using its own technology against it! The US could counterattack the safety zone of the attackers, but not control the complex ground wars of irregular combatants in either country. It is sinking toward another "military Vietnam" now in two countries, and that, despite even more high tech tools of war. US has become fearful and defensive of others coming to study in its universities and working in its country.
And it is confused about its alliances, turning its back on old alliances with Europeans, to favor a "coalition of the willing", ie mostly minor nations who curried favor with the US by symbolic support of its military efforts. Rather than the Roman empire, the US is becoming more like the ineffectual Chinese empire before its collapse before barbarian invaders. We have not learned important lessons from 911 about tempering our role in world affairs and how to make ourselves safer by our alliances. The culmination of this error emerged in the Spring of this year, when the "Arab Spring" resulted in popular rebellions in many of the Middle Eastern countries whose dictatorships we had been supporting in the supposition that they would be our best allies in the war against terrorism. Dictators who feared rebellion in their own countries. Did no one in the State Department remember the Shah of Iran? In the words of the great political theorist, Yogi Berra: "its deja vu all over again." No use crying over spilt milk. We have flubbed many chances to learn from 911 in the past 10 years but must recover and move on.
Each of these areas offers something to learn from 911: 1) our fear of terrorism cannot be managed by expanding the surveillance of our citizens and creating a loss of civil rights in the name of security. This only leads to a paranoid society that eventually distrusts its government and rebels! The country must be reunited and committed to the MUTUAL TASK of making the country safe. Not delegating it to some supposed agency in Washington spending billions on who knows what. 2) The power and stability of our country depends on its economic stability. This means that "welfare to work" must be instituted in meaningful form. During the 1930s some of the major achievements of our society, including the Hoover Dam and Golden Gate Bridge were built. Maybe we do not need to build physical edifices, but we need to find ways to employ our citizens to improve our infrastructure while it is affordable to do so. There will be a lot fewer robbers in prison if they are working to rebuild the society in some way before they ever get to prison. (Prisons, after all, are a particularly inefficient, socially destructive, and expensive form of welfare.) 3) The US must learn from its recent diplomatic and military fiascos that being the most powerful country in the world DOES NOT MEAN that you are entitled to tell every other country what they should do for you. Diplomacy did not change to dominance because we were attacked on 911. And our failures in diplomacy are making another attack more likely. At the end of the Cold War, the US viewed itself as a Superpower antagonist. And in policy Washington continues to look for its opponent (missing) Superpower enemy, instead of developing a new and more relevant international identity.
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