Volume 48, Number 17 · November 1, 2001
On the War
By Stanley Hoffmann
As soon as the shock of the terror attacks on New York and Washington was felt, commentators began saying that September 11, 2001, marked the beginning of a new era in world affairs. It is a misleading interpretation of a horrible event. What was new was the demonstration that a small number of well-organized conspirators could cause thousands of victims in the territory of the 'only superpower' and thus show that the US was not any safer from attack than far less mighty nations. But the change of scale and the location of the targets do not represent a transformation of international relations. The terrorists brutally drew our attention to a phenomenon that had long been partly hidden from sight by the cold war and by decolonization, two historical developments that were quite traditional: an epic contest between two great powers, and the troubled birth of a large number of (more or less shaky) new states.
Feature, 3190 words
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