9/11 and the start of a new global era
At a quarter to nine in the morning (New York time) on 11 September 2001, when a plane killed 2,996 people in the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the United States, the world came to a standstill and has not been able to turn with the same certainty since then. This attack marked the beginning of the 21st century. A century that began in a tragic way, setting the trend for what would happen in the years to come.
Fifteen years later, on the morning of Tuesday 22 March, a double attack claimed by the Daesh in Brussels left at least 35 people dead (including three of the terrorists) and some 350 injured. Something similar occurred in mid-July that year when a Tunisian resident in France drove a lorry into a crowd that was celebrating the "National Day of France" in Nice, killing 85 people and injuring over 300.
A report released Tuesday by Brown University revealed that the "global war on terror" launched in the wake of the September 11 attack has left at least 37 million people displaced worldwide. The document - to which the EFE news agency has had access - states that the greatest number of displaced persons have been in Iraq (9.2 million), Syria (7.1 million) and Afghanistan (5.3 million), followed by Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya and the Philippines.
The last decade of the 20th century has been marked by conflicts such as that in Libya, a country characterised by tribalism and its large oilfields. Control over resources has turned this conflict into an open war of interests over who gets control of the much prized black gold. The North African nation is the victim of one of the cruellest wars of this century and is facing the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by General Khalifa Haftar and backed by Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, Russia and France; and the Tripoli government, backed by the Muslim Brothers and internationally recognised by the United Nations, which also receives military assistance from Turkey and Qatar.
It is not alone. Violence has become a constant in Afghanistan in recent years. In 2001 the United States, supported by an international coalition, as a reaction to the attacks of 11 September 2001, overthrew the Taliban government. At that time a war began in which thousands of people, including civilians, have died.
On the other hand, there is Syria. The story of President Bachar al-Asad, an ophthalmologist trained and educated in the UK, changed completely after the death of his father. Bachar represented the hope of democratic opening in a country that a decade later would be plunged into one of the cruellest conflicts of the 21st century. The civil war, the economic crisis and the coronavirus have created the perfect scenario for the so-called "most serious crisis in the last twenty years of the Syrian government".
Political instability has also intensified the Yemeni civil war. Other areas that have been affected by the growth of violence and political inconsistency in recent years are the Central African Republic, Southern Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Ukraine, Egypt, Israel and Palestine, forcing their inhabitants to abandon their homes and flee to Europe in search of "a better world", according to several think tanks such as the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
In this sense, Europe has shown in this 2020 that it is still not prepared for the massive arrival of refugees or the terrorist threat. The new wave of refugees has reopened the scars of a crisis which, for a few years, seemed to have been buried under the ashes of the migration agreement signed in 2016. History has repeated itself. Turkey's decision to open its borders for the passage of migrants towards the European Union has further strained relations between Brussels and Ankara. Since 28 February last, when Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, took this decision, thousands of refugees have tried to cross the border.
Moreover, the relationship between the Mediterranean countries and Turkey has worsened in the last months after Ankara announced the beginning of the seismic survey activities carried out by the ship Oruç Reis in the Greek islands of Kastellorizo and Crete. In response, France has strengthened its military presence in the Mediterranean, particularly in support of Greece, further exacerbating tensions in the region.
These problems have been compounded by the destabilisation caused by the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. The increasingly agitated reality of Europe, together with the current political instability caused by the coronavirus and which is endangering European integrity, is filling this 2020 with uncertainties at different levels, particularly economic. Last July, European leaders agreed to issue a joint debt of 750 billion euros to revive the economy.
The international outlook also depends on the result of the US elections to be held on 3 November. The US election campaign has entered the home straight following the confirmation of the current president, Donald Trump, as the Republican candidate for re-election and Joe Biden as his Democratic counterpart, with the latter leading in the polls. Racial violence and the resulting protests have added to the long list of challenges both leaders have to face, a situation that could affect Trump's aspirations of being re-elected in these elections.
Political and economic instability is not only present in Europe and the United States. It is also present in Latin America where countries like Venezuela are currently in the spotlight. Venezuela has already had and continues to have to deal with problems such as the shortage of foreign currency, inflation, shortages and fiscal deficits. These problems have been compounded by a very significant one in recent years: the free fall in oil prices. On the other hand, in Colombia, demonstrators have taken to the streets to protest against the police violence that led to the death of Javier Ordóñez.
Over the past decade, the Latin American region has lost its place on the global map to Asia, specifically to China. According to the SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) report, total global military expenditure increased to $1,917 billion by 2019. The five countries that spent the most in 2019, accounting for 62 per cent of expenditure, were the United States, China, India, Russia and Saudi Arabia, this being the first time that two Asian states were among the top three.
In this scenario we must take into account the appearance of the coronavirus and the race to find a vaccine for this pathogen. This disease continues to spread across the planet and has already infected over 28.1 million people, while the global death toll stands at over 910,000.
The Jihadist groups have taken advantage of the instability and inequality caused by this crisis to transform their action dynamics and increase their influence in certain territories where their presence was minimal or non-existent until now, according 11 September also had the power to change the world as we knew it up to that point. New York is commemorating the anniversary of this tragedy on a stage dominated by anti-coronavirus measures. Since that fateful day, globalisation has brought about major changes in the new international challenges. On the negative side are the hundreds of armed and diplomatic conflicts that threaten the world's stability and bring a large influx of refugees. On the positive side, Libya's intention to continue working for peace or the work being done by the European Union to reduce tension in the eastern Mediterranean. In short, 2020 is undoubtedly becoming a year of questions marked by the consolidation of a multipolar world.