Politics & Power Quote by Douglas Hurd

Hurd’s line is a neat piece of post-Cold War diagnosis disguised as elegy: it treats 9/11 less as a singular horror than as a political accelerant that snapped the West back into hierarchy. “Galvanised” does double duty. It flatters American resolve - the superpower jolted into motion - while implying a kind of involuntary reflex, a surge of energy that can bypass deliberation. The phrase “American superpower” is clinical, almost anthropological, as if the U.S. is a force of nature rather than a partner. That distance matters: it signals both recognition of American necessity and unease with American velocity.

The bite is in the second clause. “Leaving us in Europe divided in its wake” frames Europe not as a co-author of the response but as the turbulence behind the ship. The subtext is NATO’s Article 5 moment that should have unified the alliance, followed by the political reality of Afghanistan’s broad support and Iraq’s fracture line. Hurd is talking about the early 2000s argument over what solidarity means: shared grief, shared intelligence, shared risk - or obedience to Washington’s agenda.

As a British conservative with deep foreign-policy pedigree, Hurd is also quietly marking Britain’s awkward posture: instinctively Atlanticist, increasingly conscious that Europe’s center of gravity was shifting toward skepticism of U.S. intervention. The intent isn’t to relitigate the attacks; it’s to explain how one event reasserted American primacy and exposed Europe’s chronic problem - unity in principle, disunity under pressure.