9 years on

It's the 11th of September, better known as 9/11. It is a normal day here in London. 9 years after the supposedly defining event of the 21st century, what lasting impact does it really have?

Thousands of lives have been lost. More than 3,000 on the day. Many thousands more since. Both coalition forces and Afghan and Iraqi lives. Relationships between Muslims and non-Muslims are damaged. Probably haven't been worse since the days of Salah-al-Din. The most notable reminder for all of us, however, is when we are asked to take our shoes off in airport security.

So what is the long-term, historical, impact of 9/11? The more I think about it the more I feel it would be very different than initially anticipated. The big fraction lines are economic rather than religious. Al Qaeda is still a concern but is not really an existential threat. Economic battles rather than military wars are likely to dominate the foreseeable future.

In that sense, the biggest impact of 9/11 has been in teaching us what we cannot do, rather than what we should be doing; with "the military mission in Iraq coming to an end", the West has realised it can no longer afford to invade and control a country of 25m people such as Iraq or Afghanistan.

It is not just the diminish force of the NeoCon ideology and with it the idea of regime change. 162 years after the revolutions of 1848, it looks like the world is falling back on Realpolitik, or let's call it Neo-RealPol. The US can no longer afford spending hundreds of billions on wars, regardless of their likely outcome. Moreover, no American President will now be able to convince the American people that a positive outcome to such a war is likely. No other nation can or will initiate such a move.

My fear is that the world has squandered its wealth and its peoples' resolve on the wrong targets. RealPolitik's ideological win, even if temporary, may come at a bad time.

Now, I am no NeoCon. I can't be - I am a moral relativist. I do not believe in absolute moral dicta. Therefore, I also believe in genuinely equal rights. If the US or Britain have the right to develop and deploy nuclear weapons, so does Iraq.

No, I am a big believer in Realpolitik in its interpretation as pragmatic policy making. The reasons not to invade Iraq were, and I did mention both in 2002, (1) Iraq was not likely to deploy WMDs against the West - if it would, it would have done against Israel in GWI, and (2) no one could anticipate what would happen after the planned toppling of Sadam. The invasion of Afghanistan was even more ill-conceived: (1) the Al-Qaeda presence was of minimal military impact beyond the boundaries of Afghanistan itself, and (2) Afghanistan has defeated two of the World's most powerful empires - the Soviet and the British - and no-one could explain why and how the US-led coalition would ensure a different end. Neither wars was the outcome of pragmatic cold geo-political analysis. They were driven by emotion and a sence of absolute morality.

The problem is that we are getting closer and closer to the point in which real existential threats are likely to arise. Ones that under normal circumstances require action based on cold, logical analysis of likely outcomes. The destabilisation of Pakistan following the Afghanistan war and the recent floods is more than likely. The countey's 170m people may desolve into factions. The Taliban is likely to take control of large parts of the country. Most worringly, no one knows in whose hands Pakistan's nuclear arsenal might fall. This represents a much greater danger to the West than either Iraq or Afghanistan ever did. And still, because of the NeoCons, no one is ever likely to do anything meaningful to address these threats.

I guess the NeoCons are having the last laugh in their ideological battle with Realpolitik. The same actions that discredited the NeoCon ideology have rendered Realpolitik impotent.

PS 750km down. 250km to go.