Editorial

Citation

Coleman, J. (2002), "Editorial", European Business Review, Vol. 14 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2002.05414cab.002

Editorial

EditorJohn Coleman

Deputy EditorAidan Rankin

The euro and terrorism

Two factors dominate the underlying trends of present political and commercial thinking. One is the move into the euro and the other is the events of September 11. It is too soon to feel very sure about either. Another September 11 could come out of the blue and strike any of the great cities of the West. It is therefore very important that we should not bury our heads in the sand but look at both of them realistically.

The first article is from David Colvin who until last year was the British Ambassador to Belgium and at the centre of many of the conference leading to monetary union. It seemed appropriate to include with it the updated version of Dave Birch's article, which appeared in New European in 1999 and was recently distributed by the European Atlantic Group. It made the interesting point that a recent Gallup poll shows that two-thirds of the UK population expect notes and coins to disappear within a decade.

Peter Unwin's article describes a journey with a fascinating group of people along the course of the old Iron Curtain and gives added significance to David Colvin's musings about the future of Europe and raises questions that may well have a powerful bearing on how the European Union handles the threat of terrorism and the related questions of peace and security in the future. It is clear that in the small country and in the small community not only is the activity of the terrorist more noticeable, but also the motivation for such activity is far less, if not non-existent. The most direct bearing on the matter is at the heart of Peter Cannon-Brookes's contribution about museums in Europe. In a much wider sense the whole thrust of modern architecture and superficial modernisation generally, so attractive to politicians seeking votes today, is towards cheapness and poor quality and therefore vulnerability to random attacks and in addition there is a lack of respect for the great achievements of the past. In the nineteenth century, Disraeli pointed out in Parliament that his century was the first to assume that its people were wiser than their forefathers. Previously he said that they suspected that their forefathers might have known something that they themselves had missed.

September 11 may indeed have given us cause to pause and reflect on the facile optimism of our blind belief in progress and John Coleman's article on Ahmed Rashid's book Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia throws the fresh insights of this remarkable book into the arena of foreign policy and shows how dangerous the one-size-fits-all simplistic solutions can be. Rashid quotes Boutros Boutros Ghali's remark in 1995 that it would have been wiser for the West to have concentrated on the legacy of the conflict between the Soviet Union and the West in Afghanistan rather than concentrating on Yugoslavia.

The two questions addressed in this issue are of inescapable significance. They are outside the category that business people can afford to work round. Whilst the greatest care should be exercised in our dealings with "rogue states", it should not be forgotten that the possibility of poisoned water supply or a nuclear device in a suitcase could strike in one of the great Western cities and no politicians or business people nor ordinary citizens would be unaffected.