Globalization can be defined as a process whereby the role of external factors affecting national economies rises, national restrictions hampering the formation of global markets give way to new international rules of economic conduct. This process includes three components: international division of labor, internationalized production and new patterns of political relationships. Amongst such political factors note should be made of the triumphal march of neoliberal economic recipes that achieved wide recognition partly as a result of the collapse of the Soviet-type command economies in Central and Eastern Europe.
        However, so far globalization failed to live up to the expectations of its genuinely «global» reach and manifold benefits it was supposed to bring to both the developed and developing states. The major critique of globalization has become its uneven character, that is, the availability of its benefits mostly to developed, post-industrial states and the inability of poorer segments of the world economy to fully participate in the global markets. Moreover, globalization has left almost unaffected such important markets as those of labor, agricultural products and high technologies. Such imbalances carry the risk of economic and social upheavals once global markets in these sectors start getting liberalized.

        The rise of cooperative strategies in international politics has become one of the landmark developments of the last decade. It became manifest in the progress of world trade liberalization as a consequence of WTO activities, the increasingly positive perspective of policymakers on the impact of foreign direct investment on the domestic economy as well as in success stories of a number of regional economic institutions. This can be explained by the simultaneous emergence of «new» international actors (such as trans-national corporations and banks, non-governmental organizations, sub-national administrative entities) and the increased attention to the global public goods (such as peace and stability of the international trade and financial system, protection of environment and cultural heritage, various international institutions and regimes). The «new» actors are strong agents in enforcing the global public goods and stimulating cooperation in achieving their goals both among themselves and among the «new» and traditional actors (such as states).
        Different schools of thought in International Political Economy tend to come to different conclusions regarding the changes in cooperativeness among international actors. These differences stem from stressing either the «struggle» (nationalist, Marxist schools) or «market» (liberal, rational choice economics) sides of international economic interactions.

        The major implication of globalization, as a form of global hegemony of the corporate capital, is the ability of «global actors» (MNCs, international financial institutions, superpowers) to affect economic, political, social and cultural processes under way in the international arena and nation-states. Whereas pure internationalization is a «progressive» economic development on the global scale, globalization should be put in check for the various imbalances it creates in the socio-economic, technological and political dimensions of international development. First, the global corporate capital has split the international socio-economic fabric into the «controlling» (MNCs and their home countries) and «controlled» (developing states) worlds. Second, MNCs are profiting from and therefore perpetuating national boundaries that allow for huge disparities in salaries, living standards and conditions of labor between the developed countries and the Third World. Third, MNCs and their home countries – world economic leaders – have consolidated in their hands the tools (such as overwhelming military power, weapons of mass destruction etc.) that enable them to sustain current economic disparities and expand the reach of the global culture tailored to the needs of MNCs. This provides an impetus to the forces of anti-globalization to engage into asymmetrical warfare with terrorism being one of the most dramatic responses to the disparities resulting from globalization.

         The «Bush doctrine» for U.S. foreign policy, set forth as a consequence of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, has become an «offspring» of the two main approaches to the American role in the post-bipolar world: liberal interventionism and imperial unilateralism. The former stressed the need for the world-wide fostering of democratic values and ideals and the right of the United States to employ force in solving the problems of lack of democratic rule and observance of human rights. The latter assigned the primary goal of U.S. policymakers to the pursuit of U.S. national interest and emphasized the military and economic preponderance of the United States that endowed Washington with a vast room for international maneuver. Imperial unilateralists called for decreased reliance on international treaties and regimes and stressed the need for pre-emptive action in countering various challenges to U.S. national security. The Bush Administration has radicalized the mix of these approaches by suggesting, for example, that «those, who are not with us, are against us» and that «the mission defines the coalition, not the other way round».
        While the United States is guided by such a perspective on the world order, it would not be productive for the Russian Federation to look for alliances to balance the U.S. dominance in world affairs. In reality, Russia seems to be gaining a number of important security benefits from the current conduct of U.S. foreign policy.

        Sabotage and terrorism emerged as a means of asymmetrical warfare in the early XX century. This type of warfare was essentially a response to the need to defeat an enemy who had an overwhelming advantage in conventional arsenals and manpower. Sabotage and terrorist warfare target mainly civilian infrastructure avoiding open fight with regular military contingents. The elements conducting such warfare seek to arouse public discontent with the level of civil protection provided by the government. Their strategy is based upon surprise and borrows heavily from the instruments employed by guerillas and political terrorists. However, for its massive scale, the sabotage and terrorist warfare is not tantamount to political terror. It is also distinct from guerilla warfare which can hardly take place on the enemy’s homeland territory and, especially, in big cities. The «internationalized» sabotage and terrorist warfare in the first decade of the XXIst century draws justification and recruiting power mainly from the intransigence of the radical Islamism and financial resources of a number of Arab states.

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