Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog: Another defeatist-style analysis of “war within the context of war”
Terrorists don’t run anything in our world except our fantasies, but we’ve always needed some bogeyman and these guys will do quite nicely for the here and foreseeable future, and yes, the defeatists both left and right will blow up their significance to unbelievable proportions, constantly working to convince us that we’re really “losing” when globalization continues to chug along, lifting millions upon millions of people out of poverty each year around the world and knitting it ever closer, making it safer, more resilient, more connected.
Terrorists can and will enter that connected world, and their impact will be limited to that of “star” criminals (another ever-present American fascination) who capture our imagination but whose impact on our lives will be about as fantastic as death by meteors and comets and choking on Big Macs (actually, as John Mueller of Ohio points out in his new book–that’s about the statistical reality–even today in this amazingly “dangerous world”). We’ll “fight” terrorists at home with cops, and we’ll win the vast majority of the time.