Globalization and National Security

Jonathan Kirshner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135917296
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this book, top scholars of international relations assess the consequences of globalization for national security, identifying three distinct 'processes' of globalization - the intensification of economic exchange, the flow of information, and marketization (the expansion of the set of social relations governed by market forces)-exploring how they can affect the capacity and power of states as well as conflict within and among them.

Though much has been written on the topics of globalization and national security, there has been relatively little in the way of a systematic examination of the impact that globalization has on a state's national security. These essays deal with how state-less actors, such as terrorists, utilize the benefits of globalization, changing the nature of the security game. Failure to account for the influence of globalization will make it increasingly difficult to understand changes in the balance of power, prospects for war, and strategic choices embraced by states.

1

GLOBALIZATION AND NA TIONAL SECURITY

Jonathan Kirshner

WHAT ARE THE CONSEQUENCES OF GLOBALIZATION for national security? Although there is an enormous and still burgeoning literature on globalization, the answer to this crucial question remains unclear.¹ Part of the reason for this is that much of the debate has recaptured a traditional divide among international relations (IR) scholars, with one side resolutely challenging the relative novelty of contemporary globalization and defending the primacy of the state; while at the other end of the spectrum, suggestions of a brave new borderless world fill the air .² This volume does not address those debates, but rather, engages the question: What are the consequences of globalization (however novel) for national security (traditionally defined)? It argues that even while retaining the state-centric perspective, globalization changes the nature of the game, even if the actors are assumed to retain the same goals they have always pursued. Failure to account for the influence of globalization will make it increasingly difficult to understand changes in the balance of power, prospects for war, and strategic choices embraced by states. Switching from polo on horseback to water polo does not change the principals or their objectives, but the contest is still profoundly transformed by the change in setting. Some players, for example, might have been much better riders than they are swimmers.³

Some definitions are in order.⁴ Globalization (as used here) is shorthand for an array of phenomena that derive from unorganized and stateless forces but that generate pressures that are felt by states. It is important to note that in this usage, globalization is not simplyr an extreme form of “interdependence,” which concerns the political consequences of relationships between two (or more) states.⁵ Nor is globalization a synonym for subnational, transnational, regional, or supranational forms of political organization. Rather, in contrast, the forces of globalization as defined here are in their purest incarnations disorganized and purposeless, the powerful but uncoordinated consequences of individual behavior and technological change. An illustration of globalization, by this definition, is the financial crisis that forced France’s socialists to reverse their economic strategy in 1982. The crisis was not the result (as far as the evidence to date shows) of coordinated political action by agents within France or by other states, but by uncoordinated capital flight.⁶

However, although such market pressures are the most obvious exemplars of globalization, they are not the only forces of globalization captured by this definition, which includes any relatively general phenomenon that is stateless and uncoordinated, and that has little inherent regard for national borders. Some (but not all) forms of technological and social change also fit this description, most obviously with regard to the political consequences of the spread of information technology and of ideas.

National security refers to organized political violence that speaks to the vital interests of at least one state. The consequences of globalization for national security, however, need not be limited to war or insurgency, but include as well how forces of globalization affect the balance of power, change the offense-defense balance or other factors that might affect the security dilemma and the likelihood of war, or transform the ability of the state to defend its own interests.

The conjunction and (from the phrase “globalization and national security”) also plays a critical role in this volume. The focus here, as noted above, is on the consequences of globalization for national security. This is both restricting and liberating. It is restricting for obvious reasons. But it also provides the mechanism through which a broad range of phenomena can be introduced into the mix. For example, the consequences of U.S. preponderance, or the prospects for a “clash of civilizations,” or the spread of terrorism, to take three examples that will appear in the pages that follow, are not in and of themselves objects of inquiry under the definitions just prescribed. Terrorism, after all, could and did exist in the absence of globalization. However, when issues such as these are in turn linked (tightly and explicitly) to forces of globalization (i.e., how the processes of globalization affect the nature or spread of terrorism) they are certainly relevant here; as long as these links are explicit and elucidated, in practical terms there are relatively few constraints on the types of concerns that can be addressed. Similarly, although transnational organizations or international institutions were specifically excluded above from the definition of globalization, it can still be readily argued that globalization has increased the importance of such actors for national security. Tight and explicit links to globalization with specific implications for national security thus allow numerous phenomena to be put on the table. In sum, this definition of “globalization and national security” is in many ways fairly broad; however, ultimately, it is rooted in and delimited by a traditional conception of security concerns. This conception does exclude a large set of issues, such as those often placed under the rubric of “new security,” including global challenges such as environmental degradation or broader conceptions of “human security.”

OVERVIEW

This chapter proceeds in two principal parts. First, it addresses the political context of globalization (especially the role of unipolarity and U.S. power) and then considers three broad ways in which security can be affected by globalization: by reshaping state capacity, recasting relative power, and revising the calculations associated with international conflict. Obviously, given the definition employed above, globalization will reduce or at the very least change the capabilities and autonomy of the state vis-à-vis nonstate actors .⁷ Because the consequences for capacity and autonomy will vary from state to state, globalization will also affect the balance of power between states, relatively empowering some at the expense of others. Globalization will also change the nature of conflict, generating new axes of strife, privileging distinct expressions of violence, and affecting the likelihood of war.

Second, this chapter considers the processes of globalization and how they can affect state capacity, the balance of power, and the nature of conflict. These processes are also bundled together in three groups, which to some extent inevitably overlap and are mutually reinforcing, but are nevertheless purposefully designed to call attention to three distinct conduits through which the pressures of globalization are transmitted through the system: via the intensification of economic exchange, the flow of information, and marketization—the expansion of the set of social relations governed by market forces. A brief conclusion describes how each chapter in the volume is integrated into this general framework.

UNIPOLARITY, GLOBALIZATION, AND SECURITY

The contemporary international system is influenced by two “mocksystemic” effects: unipolarity and globalization. These are systemic forces in that to a large extent they affect all states uniformly (though, because states are, at a minimum, differently situated, there is variation in the relative significance of and range of response to those forces). However, they are not systemic in the pure sense of the concept because, in both cases, they are shaped by state choices, especially those of the United States.⁸ Indeed, regarding unipolarity, the mock-systemic effect that is felt by other states is not so much a direct function of the distribution of power, as with (arguably) bipolarity, but rather the doctrinal foreign policy choices of the United States.

This is a bit of a paradox—systemic explanations normally rest on the consequences of essentially uniform (or at least unidirectional) pressures faced by relatively like units distinguished principally by their relative capabilities—a conception of world politics as a function of constrained choice where position trumps preference. Thus highlighting the distribution of power (in this case, American predominance) as a causal variable would appear to privilege the perspective that state behavior is constrained by systemic imperatives, just as individual firms must respond to the dictates imposed by the market. But this analogy has always been imperfect, as even oligopolists (surely more analogous to states in international relations than small firms are) are not pure “price takers,” but can influence their environment through their behavior.⁹ And the greater the concentration of power—market or political—the broader the discretion enjoyed by the biggest players. Thus the extraordinary preponderance of U.S. power presents us with a state virtually uninhibited by traditional systemic constraints. Unnaturally unconstrained by its position, the United States has the luxury of choosing from a large menu of policy choices. To the extent that those choices reflect a coherent underlying purpose or doctrine—such as the Bush Doctrine of preventive war or the promotion of global economic liberalization—that policy choice is transmitted throughout and shapes the nature of the system as a “mock systemic” effect.¹⁰

One such policy choice of the United States is the embrace of, or at the very least a policy of purposeful benign permissiveness regarding, the forces of globalization. Technology may make it much easier to transmit information, or more difficult to control capital flows, but if the world’s only superpower had different policy preferences, say those of caution, closure, and control, then the pressures of globalization, while still present and powerful, would not be as pervasive.¹¹ Finance may be unbound, but financial deregulation was (and remains) to a large extent the result of decisions by great powers pursuing their perceived national interests; similarly, although it may be more difficult for authorities to control what their citizens read, see, and share with others, states—especially the most powerful states—nevertheless play a central role in negotiations regarding media spaces and information policies, which establish the legal, technical, and political market structures that shape the ways in which information flows.¹² In sum, it would be a serious mistake to overlook the political foundations of globalization or to lose sight of the fact that globalization is not politically neutral. As one journalist neatly observed, “Globalization is the narcissism of a superpower in a one superpower world.”¹³

At the same time, it is also crucial to be sensitive to the limitations of the influence both of unipolarity and of globalization. Although the United States is indeed at the center of a unipolar political order, the military predominance reflected in unipolarity translates only uneasily to economic “hegemony”—on the economic front, there are more chinks in the American armor—unchallenged on the battlefield, the United States is nonetheless saddled by national debt, fiscal deficits, and record trade imbalances. Second, and more important, both unipolarity and hegemony are largely measures of relative state capacities without regard to other challenges (and opportunities) faced by states. Thus although the enormous U.S. economy is “hegemonic” compared to other national economies (and its military unrivaled by any other state), it nevertheless is constrained by the pressures of globalization in ways that economic hegemons (and military superpowers) of the past (such as the United States after the Second World War) were not. Therefore, even though the United States has purposefully promoted globalization and has flourished in that context, this does not alter the fact that America itself is also “not immune to the powerful forces of globalization .”¹⁴

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