The Importance of Africa to The World System After 9/11 Attacks: War on Terrorism or Integration for Sustainable Development

Sustainable development; This refers to the changes and the evolutions taking place within thesociety from bad to good to say the least. Development is best understood when employed in Rowstow 1960 approach of the stages of economic growth, in which he identifies five distinct stages of economic development, from the pre industrial, take off, maturity, mastery of our development, distribution stages. Development refers to the evolution of the processes and reforms which facilitates development within the community society and the state at large. As a process, development is the transformation, or shift politically, economically socio-culturally from one stage of development to the other. Development has been confined to economic progress that is limiting the term to economic development but it also applies to progress made in the security, education, environment, human interactions as quoted in the work of (shrum 2001 in Andin and Sih 2008)

Terrorism; Terrorism has been described variously as both a tactic and strategy; a crime and a holy duty; a justified reaction to oppression and an inexcusable abomination. Terrorism has often been used offensively as an effective tactic for the weaker side in a conflict. As an asymmetric form of organization, they often offer opponents no clear organization to defend against or to deter. The US Department of Defence defines terrorism as ‘’the calculated use of threats of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuits of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological’’. The US Department of State defines terrorism to be ‘’premeditated politically-motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience. The UN in 1992 definition terrorism as ‘’An anxiety-inspiring method of repeated violent action, employed by (semi) clandestine individual, group or state actors, for idiosyncratic, criminal or reasons, where by in contrast to assassination, the direct targets of violence are not the main targets’’.

The State and politics; Max Weber define the state as a political enterprise of a social character that reclaim with success the monopoly of force over all the other entity in the society. The sociologists define the state as a government, territory and a population that is distinct from the realist conception as a monolithic homogenous and coherent actor. On his part Harold D. Lasswell sees politics as the study of changes in the shape and composition of the value pattern of society. (Lasswell 1936: in Ravenhill 2008:19) defines politics as the study of ‘’who gets what when and how’’ ²⁰