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A nation cannot be made safer just by monitoring its geographical boundaries, increasing national security level, profiling or introducing tougher laws. A nation is safe when it has the capacity to coexist globally and share its abundance of knowledge, culture and resources which could pave way for an equitable distribution of global economic power. As mentioned in the movie 'Spiderman, 'With great power comes great responsibility'. This holds for the United States of America.

To understand terrorism, we don't have to befriend a terrorist. All that is required is to look at the ambience they are bred and how their pattern of life evolves and force them to commit unbelievable atrocities. Prevention is better than cure is an old powerful saying. The need of the hour is to understand the fundamental problems in the poverty driven countries and strive to reach them with our principles before they reach our shores with mad ideologies. I feel, being a super power, the challenge is not to kick ass the terrorists with weapons coz they understand weapons better than you and they love to reciprocate. The real challenge is to hit them hard with mind games, by investing more on transforming people around them with education, compassion, value of life etc. It may not be easy. But tell me what was easier in world history whenever somebody brought in a change.

Terrorist are people with neurotic depressions with their mind conditioned to focus on only one thing which is destruction. Most of them originate from nations with huge unemployment and poverty besides putting ideology before their own existence. United States should identify these nations and reach out to them in a positive way and help them economically with their strategies and empowerment. Education and employment with strong cultural values could transform any nation from terrorism path. A good example that comes to my mind is Japan. After 1945 bombing, I don't recall Japan being a breeding ground for terrorism and neither have we come across any Japanese terrorists trying to bomb US for vengeance. Japanese had a rich cultural heritage and their mind was too busy towards modernization and they became electronic super power. That's the positive transformation. Idle nations with too many idle people are devil's factory.

Being a melting pot for immigrants, US could be the safest place if it, A)Could invest in people skills by appointing very good brand ambassadors for countries that need change rather than taking the foreign government head on. B)Stops trade sanctions on countries that go against their foreign policies and start reaching out to the people instead. All that a trade sanction could do is to further impoverish a country and create a climate for blossoming terrorism. C)Stops international policing and start focusing only on nations with poverty and trouble (many African countries come under this category).Lot of new recruits for terrorism come from these region. D)Start looking into internal terrorism due to gun culture, drug culture and total depletion in quality of education and social responsibility for younger Americans.

History has imprints of various nations like Rome, Britain, French and Germans ruling the world at one point of time. None realized that war is futile and is not an option for co- existence. Americans have the power today. The greatest benefit they have that others didn't have is the multi cultural background, tolerance and open society. Needless to say, they have the power to make the world safer which includes them.

Learn more about this author, Ram Karthik.
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