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April 24, 2007

GLOBALISATION 'THROWS UP NEW CHALLENGES'

Abu Dhabi: The international community has to invest in cooperation to rise up to the challenges of globalisation, said a US strategist yesterday.

"As much as we are living in a globalised and interconnected world, globalisation confronts us challenges, including protectionism, environmental stress, demographic imbalances, armed conflict, nuclear proliferation, and terrorism," said former US Secretary of Defence, William S. Cohen.

In his keynote speech at a conference on globalisation in Abu Dhabi, Cohen said economies may ebb and flow in the short run, but the responsibility to manage our global problems with worldwide human prosperity as the goal should be our consistent aim in both government and the marketplace.

"We can only succeed if we want to live together and if we are prepared to work together; we must invest in international cooperation. This cooperation requires political will and energy and implies accepting the debate on the benefits and costs of cooperation."

Indeed, Cohen added, one could see how simply embracing globalisation as inevitable - rather than debating its definition and purported shortcomings - could potentially foster more coordination and cooperation on these important.

"Indeed it can be argued that in some instances, globalisation has reinforced the strong ones and weakened those that were already weak." Cohen spoke of the anecdotal evidence of increasing interconnectedness, as well as the global culture that seem to spread faster than our ability to keep up - can be demonstrated quantitatively as well. Consider for instance, these dramatic facts: Since 1987 exports have jumped from 16 to 27 per cent of the world economy. Foreign direct investment has tripled since 1990 and cross-border portfolio investment has risen five times as a percentage of world output.

Cohen said globalisation is a word that for many people in the Middle East and the developing world, as well as for many Americans, evokes anxiety and troubling images and fears, even when it represents opportunities and new horizons. In the United States, some worry that economic globalisation will threaten their livelihoods, and that jobs will be exported to other countries.

To control this backlash, he noted, we have to be more sensitive to the negative impacts of this phenomenon.

The three-day conference themed Globalisation in the 21st Century: How Interconnected is the World? is organised by the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research in conjunction with the William S. Cohen Center for International Policy and Commerce, University of Maine.

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