Globalizing Regionalism: Harnessing Regional Organizations to Meet Global Threats

Post-Cold War uncertainties about the future global threats have faded over the past few years. Terrorism, organized crime, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, HIV/AIDS, pandemic diseases, weak states, and conflicts over resources top the recent global threat assessments by governments, international institutions, and independent analysts alike. While policy prescriptions for dealing with these challenges vary and often conflict, most analyses concur that today’s global threats are too diverse, elusive, dynamic and potent to be tackled with existing policies and procedures or by any one government alone. Rather, what is required are novel and multifaceted threat responses.