The Revenge of History: "The war on terror continued to fuel terrorism across the Muslim world and in the states that waged it, while at the same time nurturing Islamophobia in Europe and North America. Afghanistan had become nothing more than a war to save NATO's credibility.
By then the crash of 2008 had engulfed the main occupying states, deepening popular pressure for withdrawal from exorbitant and unwinnable wars. The economic crisis not only cut the ground from under the market orthodoxy that had shaped politics for a generation, but rehabilitated state intervention overnight. By the scale of their bailouts to save the banking system, nationalisations and boosts in demand, governments gave an object lesson in what could in fact be done.
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But as soon as the immediate threat had passed, pressure to restore the old order and shuffle off the costs of the slump rapidly turned a crisis of the market and the banks into a crisis of the state and public debt."