Michael Cox: 9/11 Anniversary ... From Empire to Decline

Professor Michael Cox is an Associate Fellow, Americas, Chatham House, and Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics.

Having seen off the Soviet Union ten years earlier, and having then experienced what can only be viewed as one of the more successful economic decades in its over two hundred year history, America at the start of the new millennium looked to be riding high in an international system where it clearly faced challenges and problems but no serious threat worthy of the name. So powerful did it in fact seem that few could even remember that rather anxious little moment just before the end of the Cold War when writers like Paul Kennedy had been talking earnestly about the republic's inevitable decline over the longer term. A nation with deficits as large as the US, and carrying the imperial burden that it did, simply could not go on running the world's affairs. There was only one way for it to go - and that, he concluded, was downwards.

How odd such a line of analysis appeared when the ever optimistic Bill Clinton handed the presidency over to George W.Bush in 2000; and how far removed from reality did such views seem as the US started to mobilise its massive resources in response to what had happened in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on that bright Tuesday morning in 2001. Even critics were at first deeply impressed - even that old 'declinist' Paul Kennedy who waxed perhaps rather too lyrically in one article written in early 2002 about that proverbial American bird of prey compelling respect from its friends and forcing even its enemies to submit to its will. This was clearly no ordinary superpower. As he went on to note, this very special eagle was now flying higher than ever. Nor was this his view alone. Across the political spectrum, from critical Europeans on the left to American neo-conservatives on the right, few seemed prepared to dispute the idea that the United States bore more than a family resemblance to Empires of the past – with one fairly obvious difference: this new Rome on the Potomac was not about to decline any time soon. Another century awaited it.

It is well worth recalling this mood today if we are to fully appreciate how far things have changed since 9/11. At the turn of the century Americans felt self-confident and the US acted as if there was little that it could not do – even invade Iraq with little concern for the deeply disturbing impact this might have on both the Middle East and its own position in the world. A decade on and America looks to have changed almost beyond recognition...