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Introduction
The twenty-first century has brought a proliferation of pressing global problems that break out far more suddenly and surprisingly, spread more swiftly and extensively, and interact in more complex and uncertain ways than ever before. On the eve of the century there was a financial crisis in Asia that began in 1997 and consumed countries in the Americas, Europe, and the Middle East over the following years. The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, began a new era of global mega-terrorism, which quickly spread to many other countries and led to a war in Afghanistan that endured for over a decade. The collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers in New York on September 15, 2008, catalysed an American-turned-global financial crisis that immediately created the world’s worst recession since the one in the 1930s that had brought such great destruction in its wake. This new recession was followed by a European financial crisis that erupted in 2010.