9/11 20th anniversary: Historians must judge if the world is now a better place

He was aboard frigate HMS Cumberland, which was in Devonport dockyard undergoing an overhaul, when a call came in telling him to go to the mess room on shore. There he joined his officers watching the events unfold on TV.

‘Like everybody, I can remember the day very, very clearly,’ he said.

Sir Ian started watching after the first plane had hit and at that point nobody knew if it was an attack or an accident.

That uncertainty changed when the second aircraft hit the other tower.

Even then, Sir Ian said the feeling was there was a chance that many people not near the point of impact might have a hope of getting out.

‘I suppose the moment of ultimate disbelief was when the first tower collapsed. That was the moment of supreme shock for everybody.’

He said there was a young American lieutenant with the ship as part of an exchange.

‘I just remember vividly watching him watching the events and seeing the effect of an attack on such a scale on one of his major cities unfold in front of his eyes.’

In the aftermath, every military in the Western world went into a state of high alert.

‘It was very, very clear that the event was going to change the nature of military tasking across Western nations.’

Cumberland was not ready to put to sea immediately and was already scheduled to head to the Middle East, but the nature of its task there changed considerably.

‘Originally our mission was security and ongoing sanctions against the Iraqi regime, but by the time we got there the dynamic had shifted dramatically,’ said Sir Ian.

Coalition forces had attacked and dealt with Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and there was a strong suspicion that some of its members were trying to escape by sea to Somalia. Cumberland spent a lot of time monitoring sea routes in the region.

‘We were on station throughout 2002 partly patrolling the coast of Somalia but also patrolling very, very close to the coast of Iraq.

‘9/11 led to a massive mindset shift in the USA. I think pre-9/11 the US approach to the region was one of managing and containing the tensions.

‘Post-9/11 the Americans declared the policy of the war on terror – they declared a very overt policy that “If you are not actively helping us root out these people, and if you’re harbouring them, then you were part of the problem”, which was quite a different philosophy.’

His personal view was that the intervention in Iraq would have taken ‘much, much longer’ had 9/11 not happened.

After ending his tour with HMS Cumberland, Sir Ian became part of the Full Command Chain which was involved in providing trained forces to operational commanders, monitoring their support and wellbeing.

Twenty years on, he said that the Western world was more capable and tactically prepared to respond to terrorist threats.

‘We are much more aware of them. We have, I think, collectively, a much greater understanding.

‘Our intelligence organisations are infinitely more attuned to that threat, although that doesn’t mean they always get it right because these things are inherently very murky.

‘Is the world a better place as a result of the collective responses to 9/11 and Iraq and things like that?

‘I think we’ll let historians judge that.’