THE September 11th early morning terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and then on the Pentagon in Washington, USA, were symptomatic of a dramatic scene in an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Denzel Washington action movie project, from the Hollywood film industry. Only by the time the second plane strike on theWorld Trade Center towers, would onlookers realise that something was horribly wrong.

The effrontery of Adolph Hitler and his scientists could not have realised success with their `Flying bombs' of World War II on London, as the perpetrators of this attack disrupted the respective halcyon of two major cities in the USA.

These well-planned and coordinated terrorist attacks, indicate that Islamic fundamentalists have taken their protest action, and fatalistic abandon to it, to a higher level. Images of bearded ragtag militants brandishing AK47 assault rifles fighting a protracted conflict in an inhospitable desert environment, and hijacking airliners in the Middle East at most, are with a jolt, rewritten.

With all sympathies to victims of the disaster, American Foreign Policy and the efforts of the United Nations Security Council need to be reviewed where the discomfiture of Islamic conflicts exist in the Middle East.

Charles Kindleberger, in his version of hegemonic stability theory, recognised that the US economic and political power at the end of World War II, helped create, institutionalise and enforce principles in the international political economy. One example of such is Zionism, i.e. the movement for the establishment of a Jewish homeland, now linked to the defence of the interests and territorial integrity of Israel. This was seemingly done with the USA's innate interest of creating and having a stable market for its military industrial complex and an ally in the Middle East, during the Cold War, when Egypt's Abdel Gamel Nasser espoused his theories of Non-Alignment. The resulting inconvenience of Palestinians has invoked the wrath of the Islamic world and fundamentalist groups in particular. An acceptable solution to this conflict to the Palestinian people, will defuse the passions for such terrorists attacks. The next attack with or without the existence of Osama bin Laden, in a few years or decades to come, may utilise the same vintage US strategic planning capabilities, but possibly utilising nuclear weapons from some insecure depot in Russia, Pakistan or India. The recent suicide bombings in Gaza, has shown how determined and desperate Islamic militants are to realise their objectives and should serve as a warning as to the price they are willing to pay. It can inevitably mean the end of the USA's hegemony, and the birth of a new one as, say, an integrated European Union, that is, if the world still exists.

As the US amasses its military forces, encouraging the `Vietnam Syndrome' in strategising whether to use land forces in the anticipated conflict, and regard the possibility of increasing the employ of human security personnel in operations, one wonders what this means to developing countries like Guyana.

A proactive approach to terrorism will certainly mean the resuscitation and/or expansion of covert USA external security agency relationships with intelligence units and militaries of sovereign nation states, employing personnel from these domestic agencies as informants on human resources of these states. The negative attribute is the apotheosis of these personnel who create an institutionalised subculture of prejudice and elitism, that is as evil as any terrorism. The Pinochet dictatorship in Chile and Noriega's fulsomeness in Panama, are extreme examples.

Stricter migration policies and screening processes as pursued by the Tory Government of Margaret Thatcher, can reduce the success rates of developing world peoples migrating to the developing world to earn meaningful purchasing power. Remittances contribute the most in the consumerism of developing countries.

The recent critical issue of criminal deportees of developing world nationalities, will certainly be treated with renewed vigour, expedience and intolerance by US authorities. The problem of the severity of criminal activities increasing with the difficulties in monitoring such egocentric characters back home without any worthwhile engagements is understandable.

Developing world governments can become skeptical of exploiting non-traditional trading arrangements with those nations deemed as rogue states. The attempt by the Windward Islands leaders to preserve and secure banana markets with Libya, is now under question, for example.

The psyche of the perpetrators of these terrorist acts is no different than the `Trench Warfare' psyche we Guyanese harbour when bureaucrats resort to isntitutionalised discrimination to preserve their own ends or the arsonists set to destroy blocks in the city. The actions in the US were only calculated and of a different magnitude.

During the shock of the attacks in the USA someone would have cried or lamented to the effect:

"Imagine there is no country,
And no religion too,
Nothing to live or die for,
Just the brotherhood of man." --John Lennon, 1970