ABSTRACT
Cognizant of the fact that globalization exerts a two-pronged impact on the war on terror: the first being its creation of cyberspace as a platform that terrorists utilize to transcend their constraint in the loss of physical territory, and the second being the mismanagement of globalization in such a manner that creates conflict and poverty—the latter amongst the economically vulnerable—this chapter interrogates the economic nexus or dialectical materialism in the war on terror. The mismanagement of globalization and the attendant conflicts and immiseration have spawned refugee flows and migration through which some believe terrorists are dispensed; hence, the rise of xenophobia and populism in the United States and much of Europe, exemplified by Trumpism and Brexit, etc. This situation is not helped by the policymakers in most Western countries being unable to transcend their fixation with modernization and embrace the spirit of postmodernism—the former imprisoning them in preconceptions and ethnocentrism; but embracing the latter can liberate them from their prejudices and make for the cultural relativism that will acknowledge the right of the oppressed to dignity and, hence, limit their discontent that often contributes to terrorism.
