India, a wireless giant-in-the-making and one of the countries helping remove the Earth’s spherical curvature with its high-tech prowess, learned (again) with the rest of us last week that terrorism can be every bit as potent a force as globalization in a world where shadowy groups of individuals can upstage behemoth corporations and nation states at any given moment on any given day.
Terrorism is at once a threat and beneficiary of globalization, though it is doubtful that even cold-blood killers can halt the ever-gathering momentum of the latter. But the bad guys will try, and they will make a dent in the uneven, evolving world order. Aiding their nihilistic campaign are the digital tools and technological advances of the modern world they so viscerally despise-cell phones, the Internet, airplanes and clever, latter-day munitions. Terrorists would be far less effective without these widgets.
None of this is news to Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist and, in my mind, the most insightful observer of the kaleidoscopic big picture in our time.
Still, it is easy to forget that the flattening sweep of globalization is as real and true for free trade, life-style altering innovation, sophisticated supply chains and the rest as it is for terrorism. So then, what is this thing we call global terrorism, which arguably poses the single biggest threat to political and economic reform and the eradication of disease, poverty and illiteracy around the world? Is it a war, a passing trend, a disparate collection of age-old, deadly ethnic rivalries and territorial disputes that never seem to die, or a fundamental culture clash possibly exacerbated by a globalization trend that has its share of far more sensible critics-particularly in developing countries? Perhaps it is a combination of many things, or maybe something else. What are we missing? Maybe nothing. Some might say it simply is what it is. Period.
The point is, cell phones, the Internet and cheap labor have competition as some of the world’s most powerful flatteners. Hijacked-airliners-turned-missiles-whether targeting the political and financial meccas of the United States-and improvised explosive devices-whether detonated on a commuter trains in London or in Mumbai, or along some road in the struggling land of Iraq-can also flatten.
By the way, Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay and India’s financial capital) will be the site of a U.S.-India business summit on Nov. 29-30. The July 11 rail bombings in Mumbai will not easily be forgotten. But India and the world will move on.
Indeed, for all its blood-thirsty ferocity, terrorism will never be a match for the religious zeal of two parties hell-bent on doing a deal.
