Some thoughts on the direction we thought the 21st century was going to go on the morning of September 11, 2001…

On the morning of September 11, 2001, policymakers in the Bush administration were focused on the prospects for the renewal of great-power competition and on the military and diplomatic problems associated with the recovery of Russian power and the growth of Chinese power. Bush’s focus on geopolitical problems rather than terrorism had seemingly been affirmed during the Hainan Island crisis, when American and Chinese planes collided with fatal effect. Chinese power, considered a military asset to the United States in the 1970s and 1980s and an economic opportunity in the 1990s, posed the greatest long-range risk to American security. By noon that day, no one at all was thinking about Chinese power.

I don’t think it’s quite right to say that we missed out on a quarter century of great power competition because of 9/11, but things certainly played out differently than how anyone had expected at the time.

Photo Credit: By 日本防衛省・統合幕僚監部 – https://www.mod.go.jp/js/Press/press2020/press_pdf/p20200428_04.pdf, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89577403

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