Did 9/11 really change the world — or just America?

Twenty-five years ago this week, the world watched in disbelief as four hijacked airliners became weapons of mass murder.

Two smashed into New York's World Trade Center. A third hit the Pentagon. The fourth crashed into a Pennsylvania field after passengers fought back against the hijackers.

By the end of the day, almost 3,000 people were dead.

The attacks changed America almost overnight.

But did they really change the world?

As the generation that remembers September 11 begins to grow older — and millions of younger people know the event only from history books and videos — that question becomes increasingly important.

The day that changed everything

There is no doubt that 9/11 transformed American policy.

The United States went to war in Afghanistan, where the Taliban had provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

The Taliban were driven from power.

But removing a regime is one thing.

Building a functioning replacement is another.

America eventually spent more than two decades in Afghanistan, deployed hundreds of thousands of troops over the years and spent trillions of dollars.

And in August 2021, the Taliban returned to power.

After twenty years, the regime America had gone to war to remove was back.

Then came Iraq

If Afghanistan was a direct response to 9/11, Iraq was something very different.

In March 2003, America invaded Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The weapons of mass destruction that had helped justify the war were never found.

The promised transformation of the Middle East proved vastly more complicated than its architects had imagined.

And the consequences were enormous.

Thousands of American troops were killed, many more were wounded, and trillions of dollars were spent.

Perhaps more importantly, the Iraq war changed how many Americans viewed military intervention overseas.

The country that had responded to 9/11 by projecting enormous military power abroad eventually became far more reluctant to do so.

Iran was one of the winners

There was another extraordinary consequence.

Iran had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, yet the removal of Saddam Hussein — one of Tehran's major regional enemies — helped strengthen Iran's position in the Middle East.

The destruction of Iraq's political order created a vacuum that Iran was able to exploit.

The Middle East that emerged from the wars following 9/11 was therefore very different from the one that existed before the attacks.

But that does not mean every subsequent conflict can be traced back to September 11.

History rarely works that neatly.

So did terrorism win?

In one sense, remarkably, no.

There was no endless succession of 9/11-scale attacks bringing Western civilisation to its knees.

Governments dramatically strengthened aviation security, intelligence cooperation, surveillance and counter-terrorism operations.

Al-Qaeda was hunted relentlessly.

Bin Laden was eventually killed in Pakistan in 2011.

Terrorism certainly did not disappear.

But it failed to produce the global transformation its perpetrators presumably wanted.

And there is an important reason for that.

Terrorists are generally much better at destroying things than building them.

They can create fear.

They can kill.

They can disrupt.

But creating a successful political system capable of replacing the one they hate is an entirely different proposition.

The bigger changes came elsewhere

Look back across the 25 years since 9/11 and some developments arguably mattered far more to the course of history.

China became an economic and technological superpower.

Russia returned to aggressive confrontation with the West and eventually invaded Ukraine.

COVID-19 disrupted virtually every society on Earth.

Artificial intelligence emerged from something largely confined to laboratories into a technology capable of transforming economies, warfare and everyday life.

Drones became cheap, accurate and enormously destructive.

And America's own relationship with the post-war international order changed dramatically.

Those forces may ultimately prove much more important than the terrorist attack that dominated the opening years of the century.

But the danger has changed

That does not mean terrorism is finished.

Quite the opposite.

The terrorist of the future may not need a fleet of hijacked aircraft.

AI can potentially make propaganda, planning and targeting easier.

Cheap drones can deliver explosives without putting a terrorist inside the target.

Advances in biotechnology raise even more disturbing possibilities.

Technology that gives ordinary people extraordinary capabilities can also give extraordinarily dangerous capabilities to very small groups.

The next 9/11 may therefore look nothing like the first.

The legacy of September 11

Perhaps the most important lesson of 9/11 is not that terrorists changed the world.

It is that governments changed the world in response to terrorism.

America went to war.

Security systems were transformed.

Surveillance expanded.

Civil liberties were debated.

Billions — eventually trillions — were spent.

Entire generations grew up during wars that began because of what happened on one September morning.

Twenty-five years later, the Taliban are back in Kabul, Iraq is no longer ruled by Saddam Hussein, Iran is a much more powerful regional player and America is confronting a world increasingly shaped by China, Russia and technology.

So perhaps the real historical question is not whether 9/11 changed everything.

It didn't.

But it certainly changed America — and America's response to the attack changed a great deal of the world.

And now comes the uncomfortable question:

Did the terrorists change history — or did the decisions made after 9/11 change it for them?

AN Original SOURCE

I remember where I was when it was announced on television…

I was at home in Pattaya playing Bluegrass music with a friend from California when they announced it, I said to my wife this will change the world.....

And in August 2021, the Taliban returned to power.

"And in August 2021, the Afghanis won the war."

It is obvious that no one likes to be declared the loser but the Afghanis beat Russia also thanks to stinger missiles and other weapons, so no point pretending.

They were not terrorists, they were a people wanting to eject foreign invaders. It was Saudis that flew into the towers