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Coming to grips with the new shape of the world.
Iraqi children scramble for water at a collection point in the southern city of Basra. REUTERS PHOTO
Terrorism is connected to the principles of globalization and the principles of anti-globalization. Coming to grips with what those connections are and what they mean is crucial for people on both sides of the globalization debate.

Globalization
Globalization has many definitions, but at its root it is about the planet getting smaller and the free flow of people, goods, capital, and ideas across borders. Globalization has been sped up by technology (computers, jets, etc.) and it makes traditional notions of sovereign nation-state powers more and more irrelevant.

Hendrik Hertzberg wrote in The New Yorker (9/24/01) that globalization ". . . relies increasingly on a kind of trust -- the unsentimental expectation that people, individually and collectively, will behave more or less in their rational self-interest. . . . The terrorists made use of that trust. They rode the flow of the world's aerial circulatory system like lethal viruses."

The terrorist network at work today uses the technological tools of globalization, and they ignore (or attempt to transcend) the normal definitions of the nation-state. Furthermore, the extreme Muslim fundamentalists (and others) worry that unbridled globalization can exploit workers and replace ancient cultures with McDonald's and Mickey Mouse.

". . . leading thinkers have begun to discuss one of the ironies laid bare by the terror attack -- the same technologies that empower our lives turn into double- edged swords in the wrong hands," according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Given all this, globalization cheerleaders need to answer some questions:

How can the tools of globalization be kept out of destructive hands?

Are you willing to accept more controls on the flow of goods and capital if it will prevent criminal acts?

Can globalization go forward while also protecting the integrity of local cultures and communities?


Globalization has many definitions, but at its root it is about the planet getting smaller.
Anti-Globalization
According to a report in The International Herald Tribune, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi drew a direct connection between the terrorists and anti-globalization protestors:

"The terrorists were trying 'to stop the corrupting effect of Western civilization on the Islamic world,' [Berlusconi] said, while 'the anti-globalization movement criticizes, from within Western civilization, the Western way of life, trying to make Western civilization feel guilty. 'That's why I see a singular coincidence between this action and the anti-globalization movement.'

In Washington, DC, an anti-globalization protest which was planned for the canceled World Bank meeting morphed easily into an anti-war protest (which some interpreted as sympathetic to the terrorist forces). Sloppy thinkers might even say that since anti-globalization forces are opposed to world trade, taking out the World Trade Center could be seen as a victory for them.

The vast majority of the anti-globalizers have denounced all forms of violence (both before and after September 11). But they still have some hard questions to answer as well:

Could the more inflammatory rhetoric of the anti-globalization movement inspire some people to violence, even terrorism?

Since anti-globalizers themselves use the tools of globalization to organize, shouldn't they be more specific about what they dislike in globalization?

Should anti-globalizers give up on street protests as a form of action?


The attacks of September 11 have changed many things, but globalization will continue, even if the pace or direction is altered. And when the debate over the pros and cons of globalization begins again it must be more focused, and it must take place in a more civil atmosphere.

http://thesaturdaysyndicate.com/2011/08/10/the-connection-between-globalisation-and-terrorism/
The Connection Between Globalisation and Terrorism
2011.08.10 BY JAKEEYREMDY 0 COMMENTS
There are numerous variables that have the potential to come into effect when one considers the nexus between globalization and terrorism. Some experts have argued that globalization is simple interdependence on steroids; that is its in essence a trend that “has widened the effective reach of multinational business, enabling smaller firms as well as larger multinationals to market across borders” (National Intelligence Council, p.31), and that therefore as a result it brings “heretofore non-traded services into the international arena” (p.31). Such an expansion of products on the international market does have side effects though.
One of those side effects is the emergence of an international political economy wherein two distinct groups of nation-states emerge. The first set is composed of advanced industrialized states who have “benefited and are now in a position to weigh in [and] will seek more power in international bodies and greater influence [over] the rules of the game” (p.33). Some examples of such states are the United States, the UK, Canada, and France. These states have the industrial infrastructure necessary to not only survive, but excel in such a commercial atmosphere by providing goods to less developed countries (LDCs) who consume them. The other group is composed of states that aren’t fully industrialized and able to compete, either due to the developed nations using them as source of raw materials, because their industries are underdeveloped, or because western multi-national corporations (MNCs) own and operate this technology for the benefit of the corporation, not the nation-state that the technology is based within. Yet, where does terrorism enter into the equation?
Terrorism has been described before as a weapon that the weak used against the strong. Whether it is from states on the lower end of the balance of power, or non-state entities such as al-Qaeda, Hamas, or Hizballah, globalization plays a key role in providing motivation to the causes of those sources of terrorism. The reasons for this are numerous. To begin with, terrorist actions have been motivated by LDCs lack of success in the international marketplace. In an international system where the developed countries make and break the rules, the LDCs bear the brunt of this type of decision-making. This creates a situation where those that perpetrate terrorism (be it a state or a non-state group) may be motivated by the inability to find success in the international commercial arena (or even success locally). This lack of success may create an inability to provide for oneself or one’s family, thus creating a need to place blame upon some external entity. Violence towards the entity may be one way that such states or individuals relieve that pent-up frustration.
Another potential linkage between globalization and terrorism is the fact that some terrorist elements perceive globalization as harmful to them and to their communities culturally. This belief derives from new Western products that influence the way the local people behave. Indeed, some of the root causes for some terrorist attacks against western targets is the idea that some believe that globalization is a corrupting influence. Finally, one interesting circumstance that concerns terrorism in relation to globalization is the idea that those same groups that deride the western influence imported along with globalization use its products for their organization’s causes (such as the Internet). In this sense they despise the West for its values and cultures, but not for the goods and services that the West provides which help them further their terrorist activities.
Given these elements and the many others this post has not discussed, the query then is not whether there are connecting linkages between the effect of globalization and terrorism, but what are the sociological solutions to this problem? For example, if provided with an opportunity to provide for one’s family, would that individual choose to be part of a terrorist organization, or would they choose to end their affiliation with that terrorist group?
https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/international_security/v027/27.3cronin.html

http://www.thenation.com/article/terrorism-and-globalization/
Terrorism and Globalization
Although the timing was off, a conference on globalism connects the dots between its subject and terrorism.
By Doug HenwoodTwitterNOVEMBER 21, 2001
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The organizers of the Globalization and Resistance Conference, held at the City University of New York's Graduate Center on November 16 and 17, had a very bad stroke of luck. They started planning the conference over the summer, with an agenda focusing on the origins and impacts of globalization, and the protest movements that have organized against it. Then came the September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent US response. Neither the conference speakers nor the attendees did a great job of assimilating those facts to the agenda at hand.


Not, of course, that that's easy. But much of the talk, whether from the stage or in the hallways, was either about globalization (and the so-called antiglobalization movement) or the war (and the antiwar movement). They were like two parallel discourses that never quite met.

Susan George, the writer and activist on development and global poverty, led off the conference by confessing that the bombing of Afghanistan hadn't turned out to be the disaster she'd feared, leaving her a bit confused about what to think. George then laid out a "planetary contract" for "hope and renewal"–an end to our "foolish dependency" on oil, cancellation of poor countries' debts, a program to meet the basic needs of the world's poorest (which would cost $50 billion to