I held a conference in Harvard where Americans said they didn't believe in risk. They thought it was just European hysteria. Then the terrorist attacks happened and there was a complete conversion. Suddenly terrorism was the central risk.

Accordingly, globalization is not only something that will concern and threaten us in the future, but something that is taking place in the present and to which we must first open our eyes.

We are living in a world that is beyond controllability.

In the first instance, therefore, global terrorism created a kind of global community sharing a common fate, something we had previously considered impossible.

Global conditions are far too complex to be able to imagine that they could ever be really controlled by one power.

Electronic communication makes possible what has previously been excluded: namely, active, simultaneous and reciprocal contact between individuals across all frontiers constituted by countries, religions and continents.

In the final analysis, terror is also another proof of the fact that the superpower is not really a superpower. It was vulnerable.