Prosperity versus terrorism?

It does feel like we're in a new world in lots of ways.

While the financial crisis is re-making all kinds of relationships and institutions, President Obama may also turn out to be a new broom.

The bombings in Jakarta only emphasise that the other big item on his agenda is terror, the broad problem of political violence.

Sharing prosperity

Apart from the immediate problem of security and the military, there's a longer term question of how to foster environments in countries to diminish what is literally a burning, explosive anger.

Which leads to the question of the relationship between prosperity and extremism.

The finance minister of Egypt, Dr Youssef Boutros-Ghali, told Steve Evans that much depends on whether the fruits of economic growth are shared around.

Aid debate

In the United States, there is a debate over the role of aid, broadly between the State Department which sees it as an arm of foreign policy and other non-government agencies which want to disconnect it from politics.

Steve Evans talked to the head of the university department where diplomats do their schooling.

Carol Lancaster is director of the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service in Washington.

She's had senior positions both in the State Department and in USAID, the aid giving arm of the government.

First broadcast on Friday 17 July 2009