If after September 11 there was a change of foreign policy paradigm, as many people have suggested, it could be called the “paradigm of terrorism.” If we follow this argument, however, we have to identify the previously dominant paradigm. One possible candidate is a “paradigm of ethnicity.” Like “terrorism,” “ethnicity” has been used to cover a multitude of phenomena, rightly or wrongly, although the definition of the term has never been clear. Both paradigms have a lot in common. Above all, they circumvent and even attack the state as the classic level of conflicts and conflict solutions.

The article concludes that the real change of paradigm did not come about with September 11, 2001, but had already occurred with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 – as it were, 11/9, rather than 9/11. After the “paradigm of nation states” we came under the “paradigm of primordialism” after 11/9.

The “anti-terror” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan show that “ethnic conflict” and “international terrorism” based on religious fundamentalism after 9/11 are developing hand in hand rather than the latter replacing the former. In addition, both “ethnicity” and Islamic fundamentalism reject freedom of individual choice and demand a strictly objective ascription of people as a political resource. This is why “ethnicity” and Islamic fundamentalist terrorism can both be effectively subsumed under primordialism. Moreover, the civil-democratic concept of society and nation (the “French” concept) has lost significance in favor of the ethno-national version (the “German” concept) in its current use worldwide. Philosophically speaking, this represents the bankruptcy of humanism. It is the eclipse of ratio in favor of origo in domestic and international politics.