Just as a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut, so Liz Truss has put her finger on something true. On Thursday the foreign secretary gave a speech, in which she declared: “The invasion of Ukraine is a paradigm shift on the scale of 9/11.” Like the uncanny feeling that comes on seeing a stopped clock telling the right time, it was a jolt to hear a halfway accurate assessment come from a senior member of the UK government. Still, naturally, there were things Truss did not and would not say. For one thing, what no one will call 2/24 is likely to prove even more significant than 9/11. For another, the chief value in making a comparison between this moment and the agony of September 2001 is to ensure we don’t make the same mistakes all over again.
Start with the aptness of the parallel. The attacks on New York and Washington were understood at the time as a summons to the democratic world to defend a fundamental principle of freedom. That summons is louder now, not least because the threat Vladimir Putin poses is sharper than the one represented by the 9/11 hijackers, the principle under assault clearer. By invading Ukraine, he has violated the basic concept of sovereignty and self-determination by which nations coexist. He has said that big states can gobble up smaller ones, turning their people into vassals. In that move, he has taken an axe to the way our world is ordered and the only way it can function.
