It was about 9:30 p.m. in Hong Kong on the evening of September 11, 2001 when my grandmother called the house and frantically told us to turn on CNN.
I will never forget standing with my whole family and staring at the television in silence for over ten minutes.
My father had colleagues who worked in the World Trade Center who thankfully managed to escape safely, but were forever scarred by the experience. We were stricken with grief for the victims and their families, and we were shocked that something like this could have happened. Moreover, given that both of my parents are journalists, they could already envision the ramifications of this event—not only for America, but also for the whole world.
September 11 is the landmark event of our generation and has impacted countries all over the world.
The most obvious examples would be Afghanistan and Iraq because of the U.S. “War on Terror.” Outside of the two war-torn countries, the entire Middle East has been affected by the consequences of 9/11.
Pakistan is now a major player in the War on Terror because the U.S. has relied on the country for strategic reasons, despite the fact that Pakistan has been accused on abetting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
The U.S. military has also conducted many operations on al-Qaeda targets in Yemen, the Philippines and the Horn of Africa.
As Lionel Barber stated in the Financial Times this week, however, 9/11 changed the international community’s attitude towards America more than it did towards terrorism (given that terrorism has existed for a long time). For the first time, the U.S. was no longer the all-mighty nation that I had pictured it to be from across the Pacific. Despite being the world’s largest economy and most powerful military force, the U.S. was no longer untouchable. America's controversial methods of counter-terrorism—such as the use of torture in Guantanamo—were also scrutinized in foreign countries.
Yet despite this apparent disapproval of the American counter-terrorism methods on the international scene, numerous countries improved their ties to the U.S. by either supporting the general cause or by actually committing troops to the Afghan or Iraqi wars.
The example of this that is closest to my heart regards China. It has supported America's war from the beginning—as Michael Szonyi wrote for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in 2002, this Chinese support has “heralded a new and closer chapter in Sino-American relations.”
An interesting parallel to this has been the threat of China overtaking the US as the world superpower. A source at the Financial Times office in Hong Kong aptly explained that the downgrading of the United States' sovereign debt this year could be partly traced all the way back to 9/11, given the incredible costs of the War on Terror that weighed down its government’s budget.
Arguably, 9/11 could be a symbol for the end of the US’s unquestionable dominance in the world.
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