To what extent are the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon a milestone that inaugurates a new era of the international system? Taking as a starting point the theses of Samuel P. Huntington on "the clash of civilizations" and Francis Fukuyama on "the end of history", this article examines the validity and relevance of each of them as keys to understanding what happened that day, concluding that the level of analysis and the empirical evidence presented in Huntington's work makes it more useful for these purposes. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of Urich Beck's approach to September 11 as a true "Chernobyl of globalization" and identifies the changes that are already on the horizon in the post-September 2001 world political and economic scene.
Keywords:
Terrorism, United States, Clash of Civilizations, International System, 9/11 attacks
Author Biography
Jorge Heine
PhD, Stanford; director del Programa Internacional de la Fundación Chile 21 y profesor visitante en la Universidad de Stanford; ex embajador de Chile en Sudáfrica.
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