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| Globalisation rides out the terror threat storm |
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| Written by Brian Micklethwait | |
| Saturday, 30 September 2006 | |
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Globalisation creates opportunities for destructive as well as for creative people. Might a terrorist one day load an atomic bomb into a big metal container, ship it to a major Western city and pull off the terrorist coup of the century so far? Meanwhile, does the threat of terrorism, and the inconvenience of all the unwieldy post 9/11 anti-terror measures now being taken against this threat, jeopardise the growth of world trade and hence economic growth generally? According to this Canadian article, these costs are now huge: Certainly shipping and travelling around the world has become a lot more costly and aggravating. A year after the attacks, a survey found truckers waited on average 20% longer to get across the Canada-U.S. border, the annual cost of the lost time as high as $11.4-million per firm.But the good news is that the benefits of globalisation far outweigh such costs: But analysts say the beneficial effects of globalization, which have slashed the costs of almost every conceivable consumer good from clothing to kitchenware - by bringing an army of cheap laborers to the world stage - have far outweighed those costs.As for the potential threat of those containers, this Indian article makes interesting reading. Containerisation is central to the globalisation process (see also this earlier posting here), and terrorism does indeed threaten to reduce the benefits of containers. But here too, efforts are underway to minimise the threats, and the costs that guarding against these threats impose. The US has built the CSI system in response to this problem. The CSI involves four elements: identification of high-risk containers, pre-screening of containers early in the supply chain, use of high technology to do rapid screening, and tamper-proof containers. Containers from a CSI-enabled port get rapid processing at other CSI-enabled ports around the world.CSI stands here not for Crime Scene Investigation - well, let's hope not! - but for Container Security Initiative, and is an initiative of another US acronym, CBP (the US's Customs and Border Protection). It sounds very costly, and even a bit scary. What other "threats" will such US government micro-control and micro-surveillance be used against, beyond its own borders? But as far as most people will be concerned, if this speeds up trade and reduces its cost, then the costs of CSI will be worth paying, and globalisation will march on. |