The terrorist attack launched against the USA on September 11th has changed the course of world politics. All of a sudden the US has lost its invulnerability. It is the first time since the war of 1812 that it has suffered an attack on its territory. The greatest power in the world has found out it is without arms to counter this challenge. For a few hours the United States was without a government. Bush took refuge aboard the presidential airplane and the federal government buildings were evacuated. But the effects of the aggression were not limited to the US. People in the world which had entrusted their security to the American Empire have suddenly realized they do not have any protection from terrorism.
The attack goes beyond the traditional schemes of power politics. The threat is not coming from another state (or from a coalition of states) nor from the missiles of rogue states. It is evident that against terrorism the so-called National Missile Defense (NMD) shield is useless. Airplanes, transformed into missiles by the hijackers, took off from American airports, the suicidal pilots were trained in the US. The enemy is hiding inside our societies. These terrorist acts cannot be charged to a particular state, although the perpetrators belong to an organization that receives protection from Afghanistan and maybe from other states. This means that globalization has erased traditional differences, like the one between the internal and external aspects of security, or between crime and war.
The globalization process is causing new actors to emerge on the international political stage (the giant multinational manufacturing and financial companies, the global civil society movements, the international crime organizations, etc.), which erode states' sovereignty. But what characterizes the international terrorist organizations is the fact that they combine the exercise of violence by militants willing to sacrifice their life, with the possession of big financial resources and the support of a part of the international public opinion. With these power-conferring tools they challenge the force monopoly exercised by the states, which have become unable to protect men against a violent death (the principal task of the state according to Hobbes).
All this proves that the states have ceased to be the exclusive players in international politics. So far the states, and above all those at the summit of the world power-hierarchy, have tried to govern the global civil society by co-operating within the international organizations. Now the attack is aimed at the heart of the power apparatus of states. Violence, displaying itself in terrorist attacks, but also in the action of the Black Blocs who infiltrate demonstrations of the people of Seattle, no longer held in check by political institutions, is spreading and risks to drive the world into a state of anarchy or into a new Middle Ages, as the supporters of globalization without government maintain.
The terrorist attacks on the American soil mark the decline of the world order based on US hegemony, as the first World War and the crisis of 1929 marked the decline of the British Empire. These two events opened an era of political turmoil which brought to power totalitarian regimes: first the Soviet and the Fascist, and later the Nazi.
Will the 21st century repeat the history of the 20th? If the terrorist threat is not eradicated, trade, transport, tourism and the very liberty of democratic regimes will suffer. In a climate of insecurity the globalization process, upon which development of the whole world is depending, will come to a halt, and the citizens themselves will call for more security and will ask, if necessary, to sacrifice liberty and democracy for it.
No other power in the world can nowadays aspire to replace the United States in the role of stabilizer of the world order. And yet it is unthinkable that the globalization process, which expresses mankind's tendency toward unification, can possibly go ahead ignoring politics and its noneliminable function of providing first of all security and rules, ensuring, if possible, justice, equity and liberty; in short, a civilized social life.With the fall of NewYork's Twin Towers also the illusion fell that globalization will self-rule, subject only to market laws.
Anyway it is out of the question that a military solution alone will suffice to counter the terrorist threat. Certainly it is not by indiscriminate bombings over Afghanistan, which will create more innocent victims, that bin Laden and his followers can be eliminated. This way of reacting would be an additional proof of US impotence. It would be a tragic mistake to promote a crusade of the Western and Christian world against the Islamic one. Even because it comprises countries, like Egypt, which have been the victims of terror (remember the assassination of President Sadat). The Islamic world is divided between moderate and integralist trends. If a political strategy can be ascribed to terrorists, we can presume its goal is to inflame the hopeless masses of the Islamic world and to topple their moderate governments. On the contrary, the goal of the West and its allies must be to prevent integralism from taking over and the feared "clash of civilizations", which terrorists would like to provoke, from taking place.
In order to check the trend to disperse power and to international disorder, which is bound to bring about new forms of violence and authoritarianism, it is necessary to take the road leading to a world federal government. This is the only formula that can compound the need for political unity, peace and security, necessary for reining in violence and for ruling the world
economy, and the safeguard of cultural diversity, which represents mankind's greatest asset.
The states' immediate reaction to the crimes in New York and Washington can be interpreted as the first step of a long journey in that direction. In fact the United States has promoted the formation of an international coalition of an amplitude
without precedents, ranging from the European Union countries to Russia, China, down to Pakistan and many other Islamic countries, including the Palestinian Authority. The urge to fight the common enemy who has infiltrated every society has pushed the raisons d'état of most governments to converge.
This means that the conditions are being laid for increasing the role of the UN. The US decision to unfreeze the funds for settling its outstanding debts with the UN is a signal in this direction.
To fight terrorism, it is necessary to start measures of international policing. It would be wrong to use the word "war", which implies a clash among states and armies. The road to be followed instead is to fill up the ditch separating organized crime, which has become global and has learned how to use the most advanced technologies, and the security systems, which still remain national.
Therefore, the problem to be solved is how to progressively give binding force to international law and how to reform the UN in view of setting up new forms of statehood at world level. A first step in this direction is represented by the International Criminal Court, which will allow (once it will come into force) to apply international law to individuals, and hence to
punish crimes against humanity, as those committed in New York and Washington. But the ultimate goal must be to transfer the coercion power monopoly to the UN.
But certainly repressive measures are not sufficient to defuse the bomb of Islamic integralism. It is necessary to build up a just world order. To this effect there is a significant fact to point out: the agreement between the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank, concerning the injection of liquidity for supporting the world market and staving off a serious financial crisis. It can be the beginning of a deeper entente addressed to govern the world economy, and which may foreshadow a Euro-American equal partnership. Of course this objective will be attained only when Europe will bring to conclusion its process of federal unification, that will allow it to speak with one voice. Lacking a government, Europe could not fill the power vacuum opened by the decline of US influence. So, it was not able to give any contribution to the solution of the conflicts in the Balkans and in the Middle East, nor was it able to rescue the wrecked economies in Africa and the Middle East. Ethnic
conflicts, undeveloped economies and social hardship present in those regions are all phenomena which have fostered Islamic
integralism. There is no doubt that Europe has a vital interest, much stronger than America's given its geographical contiguity, of promoting political stability and economic development in this region; however it is not doing so because of its political division.
If political cooperation between Europe and North America is not to be limited to promoting only the interests of North-Atlantic countries at the expense of the rest of the world, other subjects must be involved: first of all Japan, but also Russia
and little by little all the rest of the world. The world is looking for security beyond the old schemes based on domination and inequality. Security and economic development of any one state can no longer be conceived of as objectives to be pursued at the expense of other states.They have to be founded instead on the participation of all to the global control of economy and security.
Governments, political parties, NGOs and public opinion are searching for a model that shows how to govern globalization. The European Union is the most innovative experiment of a process of markets integration governed by a supra-national
authority; it regulates competition, is provided with anti-trust powers, and is subject to a vote of approval by a Parliament directly elected by the citizens. In addition, the euro has eliminated speculative capital movements within the Union boundaries, thus showing both the goal (a world currency), if the same final objective is to be reached at the global level, and the intermediate objective (an area of monetary stability among the euro, the dollar and the yen, on the model of the European Monetary System). Despite its democratic deficit due to the concentration of excessive powers in the Council, which decides
unanimously in crucial sectors, the European Union represents an important answer to the need of governing globalization.
If the European Union will be able to bring to conclusion the process of federal unification, it will not only represent the example to be followed to get to the democratic transformation of other international organizations. It will also be a valid reason for extending international democracy to other great regions of the world and within the UN.
It means it will become the engine for the democratic unification of the world.