The Fateful Nineties

For Americans, the 1990s are both the most sharply defined and the most fuzzily understood of modern decades. The nineties began on 11/9/1989, with the breaching of the Berlin Wall by East Germans—a symbolic repudiation of communism and a glorious American victory in the Cold War. They ended on 9/11/2001, when al-Qaeda terrorists, most of them Saudi Arabians, flew two airplanes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. President George W. Bush responded by launching the invasion of Iraq, which brought a historic military defeat and an even more consequential reputational one. At the start of the nineties, Americans seemed to possess unique insight into the principles on which modern economies and societies were built. At the end of the nineties, Americans were stunned to discover that the person with the best insight into their own country and its vulnerabilities was Osama bin Laden.