Toronto Star

Much of this is what you would expect from a major representative of the Washington Consensus neo-liberal approach to managing the process of globalization. However, it's the part about terrorism that got me to thinking. So, I put on my thinking cap which some people might choose to describe as a tin hat.

At this point I find it useful to think of TERRORISM as encompassing not only actual and potential acts of political violence but also the politics and hysteria that surrounds those acts. Disruption of various processes is a likely objective of the people who are attempting to pull off acts of political violence. It's a classic guerrilla tactic intended to provoke an extreme reaction. So far there haven't been enough actual such acts of violence to even create a blip on the radar of international economic and trade relationships. However, the various responses of governments to the potential threat may well that the potential to create economic disruption. It seems to be enough to get the Fed's attention.

Trade of tangible goods and commodities is dependent on some form of physical transportation. It is controlled by legal barriers to entry. Those make it fairly feasible to increase security for cargo shipment. That might result in some increase in shipping cost but it doesn't seem likely to significantly disrupt the flow of goods. It is the technological developments in telecommunications that are radically altering a variety of relationships in the international service sector.

There have been several things to come to light about efforts to monitor international telephone conversations and financial transactions. It seems reasonable to assume that here is a good bit more going on that we don't know anything about. So far most of the public discussion about these activities has centred on civil liberties issues. Those are real and valid concerns. However, there may also be some significant financial issues involved. If these activities remain secret in the name of security, there is no assurance that they will be limited to people who might have links to known terrorist organizations. Global financial networks have become a vast and powerful apparatus. Having access and control of them raises all sorts of possibilities for intervention and manipulation as well as the possibility of just screwing them up by incompetent meddling.

I have long been inclined to think that an effort to control the international flow of energy resources is a major agenda of the current military occupations in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia. History has seen several waves of globalization. They have all been disrupted and redirected by major political and economic events such as wars and recessions. We may well have a front row seat for the next episode in that saga.