Poverty is one of the most effective counter-democratic measures rulers can impose on their populations. If the people are kept in financial desperation, they are too busy surviving to interfere in the political process. Their deprivation marginalizes them. The need for bread supersedes the demand for rights. Impoverishing the people is a strategy of social management.
However, the extreme greed of the radical capitalist power structure, inevitably drives oppressed populations towards desperate opposition. The ruthlessness of the tactics employed to neutralize popular participation, ironically, leads to the mobilization of the masses; and this has to be dealt with by force. The use of force is rationalized by means of the pretext of security; the fabrication of a terrorist threat, for example.
The War on Terror, in other words, is nothing more than a pre-emptive counter-insurgency strategy to defend the power structure.