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Technological innovation and economic globalization have opened the world to business and industry, increased the power of the United States and its allies, and brought peace and prosperity to many parts of the planet. But not everyone has benefited from decades of sustained economic growth. A large pool of poor, frustrated, and angry people has formed that can be mobilized by extremists and criminals. Moreover, the infrastructure of the global market, which provides such great opportunities to entrepreneurs, is also readily accessible to terrorists, who can harness planet-spanning information, communication and transportation systems to highly destructive agendas. In this essay, Tim Luke suggests that the failures of world capitalism and the emergence of global terrorism are linked. He concludes that addressing the former is essential to neutralizing the latter.

Published November 2003

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Timothy W. Luke is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Political Science at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. His areas of research include environmental and cultural studies as well as comparative politics, international political economy, and modern critical social and political theory. He teaches courses in the history of political thought, contemporary political theory, comparative and international politics. He is the author of Capitalism, Democracy and Ecology: Departing from Marx (1999), Ecocritique: Contesting the Politics of Nature, Economy, and Culture (1997), and co-editor (with Chris Toulouse) of The Politics of Cyberspace (1998).

Center for Unconventional Security Affairs
University of California, Irvine
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E-mail: cusa@uci.edu