Les cinq guerres de la mondialisation

In the midst of the “war against terrorism” launched by the US government, the editor of Foreign Policy rightly reminds us that there are other “wars”, not waged by one state against another; these are sometimes even more destructive and governments have great difficulty in gaining the upper hand. These wars are made much worse by certain new features of globalisation and, according to Moisés Naím, they are likely to be long-lasting and to become even more serious if governments do not realize that these problems call for major strategic reforms.
The wars in question are against drug-trafficking, the illegal arms trade, breaches of intellectual property, trafficking of human beings and money-laundering.
These problems have no regard for geography or sovereignty, and they bring governments into conflict with networks based solely on market forces. In many ways, Naím argues, these struggles are structuring the world as much as the tensions between nation-states did in the past. In addition, they raise questions about the dominant ideas and institutions of nation-states and they highlight the damaging side-effects of untrammelled market forces.