The New Penguin History of the World (218 page)

As 1999 began, Kosovo was at the centre of the troubles of former Yugoslavia. When spring passed into summer, a strategic commitment at last undertaken in March to a purely air campaign by NATO forces (but carried out mainly by Americans) against Serbia appeared to be achieving little except a stiffening of its people’s will to resist and an increase in the flow of refugees from Kosovo. The Russians were alarmed by NATO action, unsupported as it was by UN authorization, and felt it ignored their traditional interest in the area. The casualties inflicted on civilians – both Serbian and Kosovan – were soon causing misgivings in domestic opinion within the nineteen NATO nations, while the Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, had apparently had his confidence increased by Bill Clinton’s assurance that there would be no NATO land invasion. What was going forward was indeed unusual: the armed coercion of a sovereign European state because of its behaviour to its own citizens.

Meanwhile, over three-quarters of a million Kosovan refugees crossed the frontier in search of safety in Macedonia and Albania, bringing stories of atrocities and intimidation by Serbs. It appeared that it was the deliberate intention of the Belgrade government to drive out at least parts of the non-Serb majority. Then came a disastrous mishap. Acting on out-of-date information – and therefore in avoidable error – American aircraft scored direct hits on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing members of its staff. Beijing refused even to listen to the apology Clinton attempted to give. An orchestrated television campaign had already presented the Chinese people with an interpretation of the whole NATO intervention as a simple act of American aggression. Well-organized student mobs now attacked the American and British embassies in Beijing (though without going quite so
far as the extremes experienced during the Cultural Revolution). Conveniently (the ten-year anniversary of Tiananmen Square was coming up), student steam was thus let off in anti-foreign riots.

The depth of Chinese concern about America’s world role can hardly be doubted, nor that China’s involvement, like Russia’s, in the Kosovo crisis was likely to make it harder for NATO to achieve its aims. The Chinese were strong believers in the veto system of the Security Council, seeing it as protection for the sovereignty of individual nations. They were also disinclined to view with sympathy would-be Kosovan separatists, sensitive as they had always been to any danger of fragmentation in their own huge country. In the deep background, too, must have lain thoughts of reassertion of their own historic world role, as well as the specific irritations of recent years. For a century after the Opium Wars, after all, China had never been without the humiliation of European and United States troops assuring ‘order’ in several of her cities. Perhaps it had crossed the minds of some Chinese that it would be a sweet reversal of fortunes if Chinese soldiers should in the end form part of a peace-keeping force in Europe.

Thanks to the American president’s wish to avoid at all costs the exposure of ground troops to danger, just as Bosnia had destroyed the credibility of the United Nations as a device for assuring international order, it now appeared that Kosovo might destroy that of NATO. Early in June, however, it appeared that the damage done by bombing, together with timely Russian efforts to mediate, and British pressure for a land invasion by NATO forces, were at last weakening the will of the Serbian government. That month, after mediation in which the Russian government took part, it was agreed that a NATO land force should enter Kosovo in a ‘peace-keeping’ role. Serbian forces then withdrew from Kosovo and the province was occupied by NATO. It was not the end of the troubles of the former Yugoslav federation. In 2006 NATO soldiers were still there, and there was still uncertainty about the long-term future of Kosovo, even if the Serb minority was getting smaller as the Albanian majority used strong-arm methods to control the province. But by then there had been a notable change of mood and of government in Belgrade and the former Serbian president had been arrested and handed over to a new international court at the Hague, which had begun to try offenders against international law on war crimes and other charges.

As Clinton’s presidency moved towards its close, he at different times asserted the need to reverse the decline in defence spending, indicated that the proposals for imposing limits on the emission of industrial gases damaging to the climate were unacceptable, and strove to reassure China
by efforts to secure normal trading relations with her; China was to secure admission to the World Trade Organization in 2001. The Republican candidate in the presidential election of 2000, George W. Bush, emphasized in his successful campaign his anxiety to avoid the use of American troops on peace-keeping duties abroad and that he would authorize the building of a Nuclear Missile Defence system to protect the United States against ‘rogue’ powers armed with such missiles. Earlier editions of this book have ended with the observation that we shall always find what happens somewhat surprising, because things tend to change on the one hand more slowly and on the other more rapidly than we tend to think. That seemed to be as true as ever – when events on 11 September 2001 changed things anew.

THE WORLD AFTER
9/11

On the morning of that beautiful autumn day, four airliners travelling on scheduled flights within the United States were hijacked in flight by persons of Islamic or Middle Eastern background and origin. Without attempting, as had frequently been the case in similar acts of air piracy, to ask for ransoms or to make public statements about their goals, the terrorists diverted the aircraft and, in a combination of suicide and murder, flew two of them into the huge towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, and another into the Pentagon building in Washington, the heart of American military planning and administration. The fourth crashed in open country, apparently forced down by the heroic efforts of some of its passengers to overcome the terrorists who had seized it. No one in any of the aircraft survived, the damage was immense in both the cities (above all New York) and 3,000 people perished, many of them not Americans.

It was immediately apparent that it would take time to discover the full truth about these tragedies, but the immediate reaction of the American government was to attribute responsibility in a general sense to extremist Islamist terrorists, and President Bush announced an implicitly worldwide war against the abstraction ‘terrorism’. More particularly, Osama bin Laden was to be hunted down and brought to justice. In a sense, though, individual responsibility for 11 September was not the most important immediate consideration. Much more important was the excitement which erupted worldwide in the general relationship of Muslim radicalism – and perhaps of Islam itself – to such an atrocity. Because of this, the effects of what had happened were potentially even more important than the misery
and terror they had brought to thousands and the physical and economic damage caused. A few such effects were immediately apparent in isolated anti-Muslim acts in several countries.

It rapidly became a cliche that everything had been changed by the events of 11 September. This, of course, was an exaggeration. For all the eventual repercussions of what followed, many historical processes went on unaltered in many parts of the world. But the effect of the attacks was, undoubtedly, galvanic, and it made much evident that had only been implicit. Immediately and obviously, a huge shock had been given to the American consciousness. It was not to be measured only by the remarkable rallying of public opinion behind the president’s categorization of what had happened as the beginning of a ‘war’ – though one with no precisely identified enemy – nor, even, by the transformation of the political position of the new President, George Bush, which, at the beginning of the year, after a disputed election, had been questioned by many. It was clear now that his countrymen felt again something of the national rage and unity that had followed the attack on Pearl Harbor nearly sixty years before. The United States had endured terrorist attacks at home and abroad for twenty years. The tragedy of 11 September, though, was wholly unprecedented in scale and, unhappily, suggested that other atrocities might be on the way. It was not surprising that Bush felt he could respond to democracy’s outrage in strong language and that the country overwhelmingly fell into line behind him.

It soon seemed likely that to the apprehension and bringing to trial of the shadowy figure of bin Laden would be added the aim of removing by force the threat of the ‘rogue states’, whose assistance to terrorism was presumed to have been available and essential. The practical implications of this went far beyond the preparation of conventional military efforts, and began immediately with a vigorous and worldwide American diplomatic offensive to obtain moral support and practical assistance. This was remarkably successful. Not all governments responded with equal enthusiasm, but almost all responded positively, including most Muslim countries and, more important still, Russia and China. The Security Council found no difficulty in expressing its unanimous sympathy; the NATO powers recognized their responsibilities to come to the assistance of an ally under attack.

Just as in the days of the Holy Alliance after the Napoleonic Wars, Europe’s conservative powers had been haunted by the nightmare of conspiracy and revolution. In the years following the hijackings, there was an alarming hint of a similar exaggerated fear of Islamist terrorism. That what had happened had been carefully and cleverly planned, there could be no
doubt. But little was actually known about what the organizing powers really were and what were their ramifications and extent. It did not, at first sight, seem plausible that merely the work of one man could explain these acts. But neither could it be plausibly argued that the world was entering upon a struggle of civilizations, although some said so.

That United States policy abroad – above all, in support of Israel – had given much encouragement to the growth of anti-American feeling in Arab countries could not be doubted, even if that was a new idea for many Americans. There was widespread resentment, too, of the offensive blatancy with which American communications had thrust manifestations of an insensitive capitalist culture on sometimes poverty-stricken countries. In some places what could be regarded as American armies of occupation, guests rarely welcomed in any country, could be depicted as the upholders of corrupt regimes. But none of this could plausibly add up to a crusade against Muslims any more than could the immense variety of Islamic civilization be seen as a monolithic opponent of a monolithic West. What was soon achieved was the removal of the hostile Taliban regime in Afghanistan, by a combination of the efforts of its local and indigenous enemies and American bombing, technology and special forces. By the end of 2001 there was a new Afghan state formally in being, resourceless and dangerously divided into the fiefs of warlords and tribal enclaves though it seemed, and dependent on US and other NATO forces to fight its enemies. Elsewhere, the consequences of the ill-defined war on terrorism complicated events in Palestine. Arab states showed no willingness to cease to support the Palestinians when Israel attacked them, invoking the crusade against international terrorism.

The most disastrous effect of the 11 September 2001 atrocities was the decision taken by President Bush and his main international ally, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, to invade Iraq in 2003. The main cause of the invasion was the growing fear, especially in the United States, that Saddam Hussain’s regime had, or would soon get hold of, chemical, bacteriological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction. Before September 2001 it would have been difficult to envisage a pre-emptive strike against a sovereign country based on (unfounded, as it turned out) suspicions of weapons’ acquisitions, however unpalatable that country’s regime was. But, for many Americans, the events of 9/11 changed that. They were now ready – at least for a time – to follow a president who wanted to make use of the sense of post-9/11 emergency to deal with other potential threats. Even if Bush and Blair realised that Saddam – for all his anti-Western bluff and bluster – had nothing to do with the attacks on New York and Washington, they thought his regime was an evil that had to be removed. In spite of
stiff resistance from all the other members of the UN Security Council, and most of global public opinion, the United States and Britain started pushing for a UN resolution that would empower them to attack Iraq. When it became clear, in early March 2003, that no such resolution was forthcoming, the two countries, and some of their allies, decided to invade Iraq and remove Saddam’s regime even without the support of the UN.

The Second Gulf War lasted only twenty-one days in March/April 2003, but came to dominate international affairs at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It ended, predictably, with the removal, and later the trial and execution, of Saddam Hussain and the overthrow of his regime. But it also produced new fissures in world politics that proved difficult to plaster over, and lasting resistance in many areas of Iraq against what was seen as foreign occupation. In Europe, France, Germany and Russia opposed the invasion and spoke out against it. China condemned it as a violation of international law. NATO encountered its biggest post-Cold War crisis, when it could not agree on supporting the invasion, and the United States was left with the new East European members as its staunchest supporters. But the biggest damage was done to the concept of a new post-Cold War world order in which consultations among the great powers and multilateral action should replace worldwide confrontation. The UN General Secretary, the Ghanaian Kofi Annan – a man the United States itself had worked hard to get elected – told the world that US and British action in Iraq was illegal. To him, and to many others, the real concern was not with Bush’s determination to get rid of Saddam, but with what would happen elsewhere, when other countries were determined to get rid of their enemies and the biggest power on earth had set an example through unilateral action.