Sep 11, 2026 12:15 pm IST

9/11, And The Price Of Fighting Terror For A Quarter Century

Twenty-five years later, 9/11 is more than just a lived memory for those who witnessed it in real time, as I did as a UN official

Shashi Tharoor Shashi Tharoor MP, Columnist

Shashi Tharoor MP, Columnist

A quarter-century has elapsed since the bright, cloudless Tuesday morning of September 11, 2001, in New York, when the world stood still in collective horror at the television images broadcast from the Big Apple. The image of the Twin Towers collapsing into a mountain of ash and steel in Lower Manhattan remains permanently etched into the global consciousness, and "9/11" (in the American dating style) became the term for an era-defining day.

Twenty-five years later, 9/11 is no longer merely a lived memory for those who witnessed it in real time, as I did as a UN official. It has fully entered the realm of history; 9/11 marks a pivotal inflection point that irrevocably cleaved the post-Cold War era from the turbulent twenty-first century to follow. Looking back across two and a half decades provides a sobering vantage point. The catastrophic attacks carried out by al-Qaeda did not just claim nearly three thousand innocent lives and shatter the domestic invulnerability of the United States; they recalibrated the architecture of international security, reshaped the balance between individual liberty and state authority, fundamentally altered the trajectory of global politics, and left a profound psychological mark on societies worldwide.

To understand the full magnitude of September 11, one must recall the geopolitical climate that preceded it. The 1990s were characterised by an overwhelming sense of Western optimism. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, political theorists spoke of the "End of History" - a widespread belief that........

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