I never did like the “Global War on Terror” label.
It has always seemed better to me to think of it as the globalization wars.
There are maybe four different competing visions at play.
Obviously, there are the jihadists who see a restoration of classical Islam as the cure for the ills of materialism. Universal in its pretensions and certain in its precepts, Islam is the water that will fill all vessels. (The problem is that Islam is poisoned by its contact with postmodernism and atrophies all of the civilizing “apostasies” that made it bearable.)
Then, there is the European Social Democratic model. (Probably very much in line with Bobbit’s thesis.) This envisions that the nation state will be subsumed into a higher order of international institutions which will mediate and equalize power relationships and the distribution of wealth. Eventually this will result in a Star Trek multi cultural utopia of law abiding and environmentally friendly happy shining people.
Impossible to overlook is the gravitational pull of the Middle Kingdom. China has regained her cultural confidence and has resumed her historical imperative to expand her periphery and slowly absorb all into the kingdom. Starkly utilitarian and unsentimental, there is no romance in China’s vision of the global future, only a slow and patient process of digestion, like a python.
What has been nearly the default model of globalization is the American Empire of liberal markets and pop culture regnant. America rarely resorts to military violence and does not practice the kind of punitive actions we see Russia engaging in. Most of her expansion is not even conscious. There was certainly no intention that Filipino insurgents would sing “Knock Three Times” as they marched. America’s reverie spreads through the world like a benign contagion. It was only in the aftermath of 9/11 that America began to realize that her cultural tendrils around the world belonged to her and that she had to protect them.
These are the four visions contending with each other, forming temporary alliances with each other, and mutating each other as the 21st century begins.