20 years after 9/11, Thomas Friedman advocates more cooperation and less controversy

NEW YORK – The United States is just a few days away from celebrating the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that destroyed the towers of the World Trade Center in New York and part of the Pentagon outside Washington. The Nikkei interviewed Thomas Friedman, a New York Times foreign affairs columnist, and asked him to look at how the attacks affected the world in terms of history and thought. The following are excerpts from the interview.

On September 11, 2001, I was in Israel. When I got into a taxi after finishing my interview with the president of Tel Aviv University, his driver told me that two passenger planes had crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. So I hurried back to the president’s office at Tel Aviv University and watched the buildings collapse on television in frustration. I was shocked and angry that someone had carried out such attacks against my country.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has won three Pulitzers.

In my 1999 book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, I warned of the danger of an “over-empowered angry man” entering the new age of globalization. My role model for such a man was Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization. In the summer of 1998, al Qaeda bombed US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and the US government of President Bill Clinton fired more than 70 cruise missiles at Afghanistan in retaliation. When the first missile launch from the US, a superpower, targeting one person in history.

I warned that if we do not resolve the socio-economic background and religious environment that create an extremely powerful angry man like bin Laden, they will be a threat to the United States. Such a concern became a reality three years later in the form of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. For example, Francis Fukuyama predicted “the end of history”, with free markets triumphing and peace coming. But the conflicts did not disappear.

Samuel Huntington also argued for a “clash of civilizations.” In fact, conflicts often broke out within civilizations, such as the confrontation between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. I envisioned a world where something very old and something very new, namely ethnic identity and globalization, interact and coexist. Tribal impulses and world order maintain balance there while occasionally engaging in tug-of-war or wrestling. I think that prediction was quite at the point.

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, he did not send Russian troops to invade Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. Although China is tightening the screws in Hong Kong, it has not yet invaded Taiwan. This is due to the fact that the world order has successfully curbed racial impulses.

I would just say that America is a giant island basically surrounded by two oceans. The mainland had never been invaded by foreign forces until the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The attacks have made Americans more suspicious. The United States invaded Afghanistan in pursuit of bin Laden in 2001 and then Iraq in 2003, falsely claiming that the country had weapons of mass destruction. The US lost a lot of time and money.

The world has largely maintained peace for the last 40 years. I think the focus of this peace has been on a world system characterized by coexistence between the United States and China. But this balance is now about to collapse because China has become a much more aggressive force. If the US had invested more in education and infrastructure without wasting money on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, they could have competed with China much more effectively today.

The challenges facing the globalized world are also global. Issues such as climate change and the coronavirus pandemic cannot be resolved if countries do not cooperate across borders. People have two contradictory instincts – the desire to cooperate with others and the racial aspect of the preference for confrontation. Unfortunately, the racial instinct is stronger.

But I am optimistic about the future. This is due to the fact that another instinct for cooperation and empathy with others has so far promoted wonderful cultures and cooperation between countries.

Thomas Friedman joined the New York Times in 1981 and has served as a foreign affairs columnist since 1995. He has won the Pulitzer Prize three times. He has written books, including one entitled “The World is Flat”.