ABSTRACT
The use of the word globalisation can justifies anything and everything as a security issue, but even NATO began to acknowledge the realities of the global agenda when its Committee on the Challenges of Modern Society (CCMS) sponsored a pilot study on 'Environment and Security in an International Context'. It is all very well to describe the new security agenda but the vagueness of concepts such as 'the war on poverty', or the 'war on AIDS' invites political confusion. In a global age few responsible states see much advantage in nuclear weapons; indeed the United States and Russia are planning to reduce their stocks quite significantly. But in recent years the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) issue has acquired much greater global significance because of the success of non-proliferation. Globalisation is also producing new, network-centred terrorist organisations. Another 'unintended' security threat is global inequality. Inequality is important for many reasons, one of the most important is that it promotes migration.
