ABSTRACT
Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose their vision of government
upon the Middle East and the ‘West’ which, at the very least, wants to
maintain the status quo and, at best, to cultivate liberal democratic regimes
in the region. In the debate on what this conflict is about, some say the core
issues are development and social mobility, which cannot be achieved with
guns and bombs. Others believe that the use of military force is an important component in defeating what they see as an overtly ‘military’ threat,
the new ‘fascism’ of the twenty-first century.
