The central reality of the twenty-first century world, as the spread of terrorism and the vulnerability of the United States to it demonstrate, is that our era is globally interdependent but far from integrated. We learned on 11 September that the very forces of globalisation we helped to create - open borders and commerce, easy travel, instant communications, instant transfers and widened access to information and technology - can be used to build or destroy, to unite or divide.
At the same time, old confrontations have taken on frightening urgency, especially the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir and the violent stalemate in the Middle East. Progress on these and other global challenges requires us to develop a larger strategy for American foreign policy, rooted in a fundamental commitment to move the world from interdependence to an integrated global community committed to peace and prosperity, freedom and security.
At the heart of all these struggles is a global battle of ideas, especially in the Islamic world, where fundamentalist rivalries have twisted religion to justify suicide assassination of innocents as a legitimate political tool blessed by Allah. This epic battle revolves around three very old and fundamental questions: can we have inclusive communities or must they be exclusive? Can we have a shared future or must our futures be separate? Can we possess the whole truth or must we join others in searching for it?
These dilemmas present perhaps the most enduring conundrum of human history: can people derive their identity primarily by positive association or does life's meaning also require negative comparison to others?