Two decades on, the 9/11 attacks can be seen as the first in a series of what one might call “post-geographic” crises. That is, their reach has little or nothing to do with the physical proximity between the places involved. Jihadists in Afghanistan wrought carnage on the streets of Manhattan. Several years later, mortgage defaults in places such as Nevada sparked a financial and economic crisis that helped to plunge Greece into penury. In the climate emergency, the locations of emissions (such as a coal power station in Germany) have no bearing on the locations of their most severe human impact (such as flooding in Bangladesh). Covid-19 is a quintessential post-geographic crisis: not rippling out from Wuhan in concentric circles but hopping around the world, primarily on airliners.
Yet the shockingly fast Taliban takeover of Afghanistan is a reminder that geography and physical distance can still matter very much. The events of recent days and the prospects of what might come next form a story about who borders whom, what lies beyond the next range of mountains, where a road leads and where it does not.
Content from our partners
