"The reason why we'd like to imagine a world without 9/11 was to think of a world that would've been better because those towers never fell. It's cathartic to believe if we'd prevented 9/11, the issues we face now wouldn't have happened....It's sadder. Istead of our world being a exception because of a dramatic terrorist attack, our world really is something that was going to happen anyway. In this timeline, we just get a decade more of peace",
So aside from being as depressing as all hell, this video by Cody makes me wonder if the absence of 9/11 would've really changed anything in our world, if the events that we recognize as being spawned by 9/11 were just going to happen anyway.
Aside from the détente that we get from there being no War on Terror, is there anything significant that the absence of 9/11 would've changed?
I'm not a fan of Cody's work, but this one takes the cake.
He conveniently skips over the enormous political effects that the War on Terror had on the US, its allies and enemies.
Post 9/11 legislation led to a slew of poorly conceived laws that reduced the freedom of people living across the western world, but especially in the US, caused a backlash among classical liberals (so without 9/11 Wikileaks may not have been a thing and even if it were, it would have been much less supported). Without the poor laws, the US doesn't get one of its most dysfunctional and corrupt government departments created, the Secret Service likely continues to be a functional and elite branch of the Treasury Dept. (meaning we avoid some of their humiliating embarrassments they've had of late) and the world avoids the loss of billions of dollars of time and effort to security theatre.
Likely the Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 is different and happens at a different time - 9/11 took a heavy toll on experienced US financial workers (because financial firms rented so much office space in the Twin Towers). So the big US financial institutions don't have a sudden loss of skilled staff. It's hard to say what impact this would have, my own opinion is that it wouldn't stop the Financial Crisis, but it may delay it by as much as a year. But whether things are delayed by only a few months or more, a delay can have big political impacts.
Here in Britain no Iraq War means the average Briton is still pro-American, Tony Blair isn't a deeply hated figure and liberal interventionism is likely still a popular ideology. "New Labour" isn't a swear word for most people, and the Blairite modernization project for the British left likely leaves a bigger legacy. Islamophobia still exists and likely still increases in the early 21st Century, but it likely won't have such broad appeal, meaning a slower rise of the far right.
France and Germany are certainly more pro-American in this TL. Russian influence likely doesn't grow nearly as much (IMO the rise of Russian influence has been largely down to the US being distracted and discrediting itself in the Middle East, and to a lesser extent simply Russia getting itself sorted out after the disastrous 90s, in TTL, only one of those things would be true).
(Of course, I am making the implicit assumption that without 9/11 Bush II is very much a domestic focused president, which may be derailed by whatever unpredictable events happen in TTL, but I think is on balance the most likely way he'd go.)
If a Syrian civil war does still happen (IMO it is likely), the US and Western Europe still being in favour of liberal interventionism likely means that NATO intervenes in the conflict. IMO Cody is being laughably ignorant when he blithely says that Iraq would fall to civil war. Saddam Hussein and his likely successors are all not going to hesitate to crack down if there is any sign of rebellion. Unlike Assad, who hesitated to crack down when the first sparks of civil war started to fly, and then cracked down too hard too late to maximally discredit himself in the eyes of his people. It would be interesting to see how Saddam's Iraq dealt with the Syrian civil war overflowing into Iraq. I don't see a full breakdown of the Baghdad regime as being likely though.
Without a US invasion of Iraq, Iran is much, much, much less likely to desire nuclear weapons. In OTL it looked like there was a serious risk that the US might invade them since they were named as a member of the "Axis of Evil", in TTL no "Axis" members get invaded, if Bush II even coins that term, so nuclear weapons would seem much higher risk and much less benefit in TTL.
North Korea still wants nukes, of course.
Since this was before 9/11, I doubt 'enhanced interrogation techniques' would be a viable option.
Which is for the good. Torture has repeatedly been shown to be an ineffective interrogation technique.
fasquardon
