El 11-S veinticinco años después

Twenty-five years after the events of 11-S, the Liberal Democracy finds itself less prepared to handle attacks and even less equipped to overcome them. The feeling of being threatened has increased since 2001, as unity has diminished and past mistakes have not been learned from. On the morning of September 11, 2001, in New York City, four hijacked commercial airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and one crashed in rural Pennsylvania when passengers revolted against al-Qaeda members they were traveling with. The anniversary of these events, which claimed nearly three thousand lives, deserves reflection.

The primary reflection is that neither new lessons have been learned nor old ones forgotten. The Liberal Democracy is even less prepared to withstand enemy blows and less capable of overcoming them. The question arises: what are we facing in a world on fire compared to where we were half a century ago? As William Shakespeare's play "The Tempest" suggests, this is a development of destructive madness that has been announced before.

This recurring theme spans centuries, a mere breath of time between disasters. We find ourselves in the same place we were before, as history tells us.

In 1943, during the Battle of Stalingrad and the siege of Monte Cassino, humanity was back in the same position it had been in just twenty-five years prior. The peace established by the Treaty of Versailles in 1918, which aimed to end the Great War and ensure perpetual peace, was followed by the Second World War. The peace of Versailles became a prelude to another global conflict.

As the World Trade Center towers were destroyed, the world lived under the illusion of the "End of History." Russia had joined the G-7 three years before (only to be expelled after annexing Crimea in 2014), Europe had introduced a common electronic currency, and China was on the brink of joining the World Trade Organization. The same towers that were annihilated in what would later be called Ground Zero symbolized the limitless trust in international markets and globalization.

Today, we are rebuilding, recognizing that old enemies have shed their masks and perfected what we called hybrid wars. We are pushing various weapons and testing different strategies to use them, yet we feel as insecure as we did during the 1930s. Perhaps even more insecure due to the anxiety accompanying artificial intelligence.

The fact remains that we feel more threatened than in 2001 because we are less united. We are no longer the same, but we are worse off. We repeat mistakes we have not forgotten and have not learned from. Thus, if this fearful onslaught by al-Qaeda marked the beginning of a new era, different from the previous ones, or if it was merely a familiar phenomenon, it was merely another assault in the perpetual duel of brute force.

If it is the former, then we face challenges of a different order today, as the open society now has many more enemies than it did on September 11, 2001. The regimes of old despised America: Russia, China, North Korea, Islamists, and the Bolivarians, all of whom were new on the world stage. They have always detested freedom, pluralism of opinions, individual responsibility, the rule of law, judicial independence, and the division of powers.

These are the only things that can belong to a tyrant and his minions. Today, more and more governments are totalitarian, arbitrary, or openly liberal, led by strong men who reject these principles and values. Polls and surveys, while inconclusive, show that Liberal Democracies are retreating. In Europe, the two-party system and the alternation of power have failed, parliaments are fragmented, governing coalitions are fragile, and peoples are polarized into opposing blocks.

At the same time, the transatlantic pact, the understanding of the post-World War II era, has fractured. This is extremely serious. We find ourselves facing each other with increasing mistrust, where before we looked in the same direction. In 2026, there will be few educated people who in 2001 admired the promising Liberal Democracy that the founding fathers of the United States created two and a half centuries ago.

Today, there is little of that enthusiasm left, and those most and least rebellious against the hegemonic power on the other side of the ocean have calmed down.