On Geopolitics

"The world today is no longer connected by sea or land, it's connected by air. In the air, you don't have flags or history or geography or sovereignties or borders; you have real, net competition of brains. And this is the competition that I think Moses was awaiting all his life. So now it came. And we shouldn't lose it."
(Speech to American Jewish Committee, May 3, 2001)

COMMENT: What does Moses have to do with it? "So now it came." What came? "And we shouldn't lose it." Lose what? Air?

"Science will replace soil."
(Batya Feldman, The Peres Prophecy, Globes, published by Israel's Business Arena, January 9, 2000)

COMMENT: This is Peres-shorthand for saying that "science" will replace states.

"The world is changing from a world of enemies to a world of dangers. Enemies means armies, nations, uniforms, flags and so on. And dangers are floating all over the places. . . . We are in a strange situation in which we have armies without enemies and we have dangers without the military answer."
(Transcript of briefing by Peres to foreign press, September 10, 2001, issued by Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

"I am very concerned that in fact we are going from a world of enemies to a world of dangers."
(Australia/Israel Review, June 6-26, 1997)

"When the economy moved from land to science, technology and telecommunications, territories, borders, sea and land lost their importance. . . . The world is moving from a position of national strategy to a position of global strategy. From a battle between armies, to a fight against dangers. From a world of enemies (nationalistic), to a world of dangers (global)."
(Terror, A Global Threat, October 21, 2001, by Shimon Peres, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs website)

"We think the world is facing a grave danger. As I have said, we have gone over from a world of enemies to a world of dangers. Enemies are national, dangers are global. Enemies are earthly, dangers are floating in the air."
(Press conference with Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem in Tel-Aviv, Sept. 21, 2001, transcript by Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

[Addressing the terror attack on America of Sept 11, 2001] "It's against the basis of our lives, it's against the gospels of every believer. Then again, we have to organize ourselves globally, because we are going over from a world of enemies, where we have had armies to face, to a world of global dangers where we don't have neither [sic] a clear enemy nor an army to stop."
(Interview on CNN, Sept. 11, 2001)

COMMENT: While terrorists are harder to track down than foreign armies, it does not follow that dangers have replaced enemies.

"Dear friends, when I look at all borders I ask what is their value."
(Speech to Socialist International, Oslo, May 18, 1998)

"But in reality, these days, borders between states have lost much of their value. A border cannot protect us from economic flows because the economy is now global, founded on a science and technology devoid of all national character. Markets are more imporant than states and being a player in these markets means competition that has no respect for national borders."
(Shimon Peres, "Why We Need a Palestinian State," Le Monde, Aug. 22, 1999)

"Borders are not as strong as people think. Borders are important when you have an agreement about borders, but borders without an agreement is a conflict — that's the whole story."
(Transcript of briefing by Peres to the foreign press, September 10, 2001, issued by Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

"We were used to crime in the streets of the cities; now we have crime in the winds of the globe."
(Remarks at National Press Club, Washington, D.C., October 22, 2001)