The Post September 11 Debate Over Empire, Globalization, and Fragmentation
Author(s)
LaFeber, Walter
Abstract
This article reviews arguments about US economic and political imperialism in the age of globalization, following the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the US. It is suggested that the attacks ensued from globalization processes marked first by the wave of new technologies in the 1970s and then US triumph of the late 1980s-early 1990s. As a reprise of pre-WWI Progressive imperialism, 21st-century imperialist globalism led to a disparity in wealth distribution and power decentralization. The sophistication of the attacks testified to the availability of globalization technologies to a highly organized worldwide terrorist cell group. A discussion of responses of administrations of William J. Clinton and George W. Bush to contrary but simultaneous effects of globalization and fragmentation focuses on renewed importance of state-to-state relations, nation-building, and recentralized decision making.
