The World After 9/11: Has Anything Changed?
We go to work, meet with friends, and occasionally go out for dinner. Media experts tell us the world has irrevocably changed, but I see little of that in the lives of those around me.
African farmers
I imagine things are similar for most of the world's population. Has anything changed, for example, in the lives of the African farmers I visited last summer?
The economic, security and health problems they faced before 9/11 are likely to have shifted very little. AIDS, physical insecurity, and poor health care are probably much the same, and I doubt the local government has done much in the intervening year to improve the sewage pipes or electricity grid.
What, then, about life in China, or Russia? Peru and Indonesia? For the billions living there, life continues much as before. For sure, many people have access to CNN and other international media and are thus exposed to streams of 9/11 reporting and images of Osama Bin Laden, U.S. Special Forces, Bush administration officials, and New York rescue workers. But even for those relatively privileged few, the media's insistence on irrevocable global change must seem bizarre.
Karzai's regime and Taliban
There is continuity even in areas deeply affected by post-9/11 political and military events. In Afghanistan, the Taliban have disappeared and urban Afghani women are freer than before. That, certainly, is an enormous change.
In the countryside, however, most people continue to struggle with the legacy of prolonged civil war, and no matter what experts say, most Afghanis' lives are liable to remain the same for decades to come. Karzai's regime may or may not collapse, but this is likely to have only limited effect on those living outside Kabul.
Palestinian territory and Israel
In the Palestinian territories, to take another example, fighting between Israelis and Palestinian militants continues unabated, and the civilian population, as usual, suffers the most. Israeli blockades of Palestinian villages and towns cause enormous hardship, while Palestinian suicide bombers continue to strike whenever they can.
9/11 may have created more sympathy for Israel in the U.S., but American public opinion on that conflict has always tended in that direction, and the basic contours of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle untouched.
For those of us saturated by the American media, it is clear that the public discourse in North America has shifted enormously. The "war on terror" is a nightly news item, and the Pentagon finds it easier than ever before to justify budget increases. To suggest that this is evidence of dramatic global change, however, is to identify the "world" with "America."
The jury is still out
America's critics say 9/11 transformed the country into a self-involved and arrogant bully. America's preoccupation with its own values, choices and agenda, however, is hardly a new thing. Overwhelming military and economic superiority inevitably breeds self-absorption, and at most, 9/11 has only exacerbated this trend.
So what, then, is the long-term effect of 9/11? To my mind, the jury is still out. Historical trends take years to unfold, and even more time is required to properly analyze their trajectory. In a decade or two it may be possible to look back and determine whether 9/11 was a decisive break with the past, or only one more event in a much broader political cycle.
For now, it seems clear that 9/11 has accelerated developments underway since the early 1990s. The world is being divided into pro and anti American regimes, and as was true in the Cold War, leaders are being forced to choose sides.
Iraq invasion
Unlike the Soviets, however, Osama Bin Laden has little to offer in terms of material or military support, and most world governments have chosen to side with the Americans, if only rhetorically.
Their populations, however, seem to feel quite differently. Amongst political active groups, anti-Americanism is increasingly popular, much as was anti-colonialism decades ago. One possible long-term effect of 9/11, therefore, is the creation of enduring tensions between governments and civil society.
Americans, conversely, are becoming more convinced than ever before of the justice of their government's international actions. There is mounting skepticism about Bush and his corporate allies, but US foreign policy, with the exception of the Iraq invasion, remains largely off-limits to real debate.
Hope and reality
American policies on renewable energy alternatives, Middle East oil, Israel, global environmental change, and other pressing issues are becoming even more insulated from debate than ever before. A second long-term effect of 9/11, then, is an increasingly unbridgeable divide between Americans and the rest of the world.
Sadly, this could have turned out differently. In the days after 9/11,I hoped the tragedy would provoke serious discussion within the US about its foreign policy priorities.
It seemed just possible that the US agenda might change as Americans abruptly realized they lived in an interdependent world in which their choices deeply affected others. The opposite occurred, but it is still far from clear that anything radically new has occurred. (JR/NM)
* James Ron is Canada Research Chair in Conflict and Human Rights in the Sociology Department at McGill University.