The first decade of the 21st century was anything but quiet. It began with the illusion that the Cold War had been consigned to history and that the great ideological battles of the previous century were largely behind us. Instead, within a few short years, the West found itself confronting terrorism, war, economic upheaval, the rise of China, an increasingly assertive Russia, nuclear proliferation, globalization, and a rapidly changing political and cultural landscape.
And, of course, there was September 11, 2001.
The terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11 transformed the decade—and arguably the century—in an instant. The attacks did not emerge from nowhere. The Clinton administration had already confronted Al-Qaeda through the Somalia experience and the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, yet the threat was never dealt with decisively. Whether a different response during the 1990s could have prevented 9/11 will remain a matter of debate, but the consequences were unmistakable. George W. Bush—Dubya, for better or worse, and in my estimation mostly worse—was suddenly handed the enormous task of responding to a new kind of war. One immediate consequence was that commercial air travel would never again be quite the same.
The attacks also set in motion the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The invasion of Afghanistan and the fight against the Taliban became one of those seemingly endless sagas of modern geopolitics. The United States and its allies entered Afghanistan with overwhelming military power but, in my view, never demonstrated the sustained commitment necessary to finish the job decisively. The Taliban needed to be hit hard and early; afterward, perhaps NATO should have withdrawn and allowed regional powers such as Pakistan to deal with what was, fundamentally, a problem in their own backyard.
I was considerably more ambivalent about Iraq. Saddam Hussein was overthrown, and the regime that had ruled Iraq for decades disappeared, but the war always seemed to me to distract from the central struggle against international terrorism. Whether removing Saddam ultimately made the region safer remains questionable, and it would hardly be surprising if Iraq eventually produced another strongman to fill the political vacuum.
The broader Middle East provided little respite. Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, only to be rewarded with continuing rocket attacks from the territory. Both Bush and Obama administrations pushed, in varying degrees, for a two-state solution, while Israel's regional enemies continued to reject the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Meanwhile, Iran's Islamic regime became increasingly belligerent, pursuing nuclear capabilities while being governed by a political and religious establishment whose rhetoric frequently suggested an alarming willingness to contemplate confrontation with the West.
Iran also produced one of the decade's great missed opportunities. In 2009, ordinary Iranians took to the streets in the Green Movement, demanding greater political freedom and human rights. Their courage was remarkable. Yet the Obama administration's response appeared timid. Rather than embracing the democratic aspirations of the Iranian people, Obama seemed to repeat the mistakes associated with Jimmy Carter's approach to the Iranian Revolution rather than drawing inspiration from Ronald Reagan's more forceful opposition to authoritarianism.
And Iran was hardly the only nuclear headache.
North Korea continued to menace the international community, demonstrating that nuclear proliferation had not disappeared with the Cold War. The country's nuclear ambitions had deep roots, and the policies of previous American administrations—including the Clinton-era engagement strategy—were increasingly criticized as having failed to prevent Pyongyang from developing its capabilities. North Korea continued to combine nuclear brinkmanship, authoritarianism and international extortion with an apparent talent for irritating virtually everyone around it.
Pakistan was another source of anxiety. Corruption, weak political leadership, civil conflict and internal extremism would have been serious enough problems on their own. The fact that Pakistan also possessed nuclear weapons made the country's instability considerably more consequential for the rest of the world.
Russia, meanwhile, was undergoing its own transformation. Vladimir Putin emerged as the dominant figure in Russian politics and increasingly positioned his country as a counterweight to American power. Russia's intervention in Georgia demonstrated that Moscow was prepared to use military force to defend what it regarded as its sphere of influence. Putin's Russia was increasingly assertive, increasingly nationalistic and increasingly willing to challenge the post-Cold War international order.
South America also experienced its own political shift. The Bolivarian movement gathered momentum under Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, while Evo Morales became Bolivia's dominant political figure. Both leaders presented themselves as champions of the poor and opponents of American influence. Critics, however, saw something less romantic: populist leaders increasingly concentrating power while pursuing economic policies that threatened the long-term health of their countries.
In South Africa, voters elected Jacob Zuma as president, another controversial figure whose political career was accompanied by serious allegations and scandals. His subsequent leadership raised questions about whether South Africa might follow the same populist and economically interventionist trajectory being pursued elsewhere in the developing world.
If politics was turbulent, economics was scarcely more stable.
The decade ended with the spectacular collapse of some of America's most prominent financial and industrial institutions. Lehman Brothers went under. AIG required a massive rescue. The American housing and mortgage system, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was placed under extraordinary pressure. General Motors and Chrysler collapsed into bankruptcy and required government intervention.
The causes were numerous and complicated. Political parties of both stripes bore responsibility, as did Wall Street greed, lax regulation, excessive leverage, distorted incentives and a political culture that increasingly assumed that somebody else would ultimately absorb the consequences of bad decisions. The housing bubble was not simply the product of one political ideology or one administration. It was the cumulative result of years of misguided incentives and collective irresponsibility.
The response, however, introduced another contentious doctrine: the idea that governments could spend their way out of economic crisis and that institutions deemed too important to fail should simply be rescued. The United States consequently became an even larger debtor nation, while the principle that failed institutions should bear the consequences of their own mistakes was increasingly subordinated to the perceived necessity of preventing systemic collapse.
Meanwhile, another economic giant was emerging.
China continued its remarkable transformation into an economic superpower, particularly in manufacturing. Western consumers became increasingly accustomed to seeing "Made in China" on virtually everything they purchased. Global manufacturing chains stretched across continents, while Western economies increasingly specialized in finance, services, technology and consumption. One could reasonably ask: Is there anything left that isn't made in China?
India followed its own very different path. Its enormous population—more than 1.1 billion by the end of the decade—continued to strain infrastructure and resources, yet the country experienced substantial economic growth. Technology, outsourcing and a highly educated professional class helped turn India into one of the decade's great emerging economic stories.
All of this was accelerated by globalization and, above all, by the Internet.
The Internet transformed commerce, communications, politics and culture at a speed that would have been unimaginable only a generation earlier. Information could now cross the planet almost instantaneously. Ideas, money, entertainment and political movements could travel globally with unprecedented ease.
Unfortunately, so could bad ideas.
Never in the history of our species had so many people been able to spread so many questionable ideas so quickly.
The decade also witnessed an increasingly intense debate over climate change. Considerable amounts of money, political capital, research and newsprint were devoted to what critics regarded as the increasingly politicized global-warming movement. The debate became less about scientific uncertainty and more about politics, economics and the redistribution of wealth between developed and developing nations. International agreements such as Kyoto became symbols of this larger struggle. Whatever one's position on the science, it was obvious by the end of the decade that climate policy would become a much larger political and economic issue in the decades ahead.
Environmentalism also became increasingly intertwined with the political left. To its critics, the emerging environmental movement sometimes appeared less like a narrow campaign for conservation and more like a comprehensive political ideology—an updated version of collectivist politics wrapped in the language of saving the planet. Just when you thought Communism was dead, some would argue, along came the sequel.
The political culture of the West was changing in other ways as well. Freedom of speech came under increasing pressure from political correctness, hate-speech legislation and institutional speech codes. Critics accused organizations such as the ACLU of sometimes defending restrictions on speech in the name of protecting people from offensive ideas. The underlying question was becoming increasingly difficult to avoid: where does the protection of individuals end and the suppression of unpopular opinions begin?
Education was another source of concern. Across parts of Europe and the broader Western world, critics complained about declining educational standards and the growing influence of ideological politics within educational institutions. To those critics, the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment—reason, skepticism, debate and evidence—was increasingly being displaced by political fashion.
Meanwhile, one of the world's most devastating diseases continued to ravage Africa. AIDS remained a major killer, even as patients in wealthy Western countries increasingly benefited from life-prolonging combinations of antiretroviral drugs. The disparity was stark. The Bush administration deserves credit for substantially increasing American assistance to Africa through initiatives such as PEPFAR, although the perennial question remained: how much of the money and resources actually reached those who needed them most?
And then there was Barack Obama.
Obama's election in 2008 represented one of the most consequential political moments of the decade. His supporters viewed him as a transformative figure and, in some cases, almost as a political messiah. His presidency would certainly prove consequential, particularly through his efforts to reform the American healthcare system. Yet his foreign-policy credentials remained, in my view, considerably less impressive. The lofty rhetoric was there, but whether the substance matched it remained an open question.
By the end of the decade, the world looked considerably different from the one that had entered it in 2001.
The United States was fighting wars on two fronts, carrying enormous debt and struggling through its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. China had become a manufacturing powerhouse and an increasingly important geopolitical player. India was emerging as a major economic force. Russia was once again asserting itself. Iran and North Korea remained nuclear concerns. Pakistan remained dangerously unstable. Venezuela and Bolivia were experimenting with populist economic models. The Middle East remained unresolved. The Internet had revolutionized global communication. Environmental politics had become a major force. And the boundaries of acceptable political speech were being vigorously contested throughout the West.
The first decade of the 21st century therefore ended much as it had begun: with uncertainty.
The optimistic assumption that the post-Cold War world would naturally become more peaceful, prosperous and liberal had collided with the messy realities of terrorism, authoritarianism, economic globalization, ideological polarization and technological change.
And if the first decade taught us anything, it was that history had not ended after all.
It had merely changed the channel.
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