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Since the end of World War II, the dominant trends in Western society have been toward greater openness and greater networking among individuals, institutions, and nations. From the telephone to the Internet, from Standard Oil to the airlines' Star Alliance, from the Berlin Wall to the European Union, these trends are interdependent and have combined to increase freedom and economic growth among t... More

Since the end of World War II, the dominant trends in Western society have been toward greater openness and greater networking among individuals, institutions, and nations. From the telephone to the Internet, from Standard Oil to the airlines' Star Alliance, from the Berlin Wall to the European Union, these trends are interdependent and have combined to increase freedom and economic growth among the countries, companies, and people that have been their beneficiaries. The terrorists who attacked the United States and its allies, from without and within, have shown that there is a fine line between openness and exposure. Their goal is manifestly to turn a strength into a weakness. "Terrorists want to turn the openness of the global economy against itself," President George W. Bush told executives attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Shanghai last October. Their primary weapon is not civilian transportation, or invisible microbes, or any of the other bruited weapons of postmodern warfare. Rather, their weapon is fear. In the past, people relegated the task of banishing fear to their governments. To this day, we equate leadership in times of crisis with the soothing words and bold programs of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who, on the eve of World War II, identified freedom from fear (together with freedom of expression, freedom to worship, and freedom from want) as one of the "Four Freedoms" that underpin the good society. One of the hallmarks of the networked world is that governments now have less ability to drive progress - or reduce fear - on their own. Instead, eliminating terror and the threat it poses to the open society has become the task of both the public and the private sector. Leaders of corporations must assume a role unfamiliar to them during the past quarter-century of growing peace and greater prosperity: Alongside government and military leaders, they must strive within their own environs to evict fear, maintain openness, and sustain economic growth.

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