UC Berkeley

Globalization has been under serious scrutiny due largely to its inability to provide social wellbeing to the world population especially, the Third World as promised by those supporting the process. Anti-globalist scholars have pointed at the exploiting tendencies of the process and doubted its capability, for global peace and security.Interactions with those promoting the process have landed majority of the worldsocieties in stringent socio-economic and political conditions in their attempts tocope with their national needs. Some are trapped in the process. Reactions resultingfrom such conditions have undermined global peace and security. Attempts tocurtail these reactions have led the super powers into production of instruments ofmass destruction opposed to production of food. The Existing literature has notcaptured this problem in balanced analytical and theoretical frameworks toenhance understanding without bias, of issues concerning the problem. Theirpartisan and narrow uses of theories have led students/readers astray. Thus, thispaper has used liberal and Marxist conceptions of globalization to x-ray the history of globalization, and verify its impact on the Third World social formations. It interrogates the prospects of globalization to guaranteeing the security of the Third World region and humanity in general especially, in its present character. It argues that globalization has made the Third World a victim of international exploitationand unequal exchange. And that the security of the area can still be guaranteed, if and only when, the region internally takes the challenges of its development with greater discipline, sincerity and patriotic leadership. It concludes that while globalization cannot be avoided, the Third World countries should relate globally with caution, and build internal capacity supportive of self development.