Descripción de los mecanismos de lesión

Globalization has challenged traditional concepts of security more radic-ally than perhaps any other single contemporary development. Its expo-nents argue that it has made the traditional paradigm of borders and state interests no longer an appropriate way of thinking about security. The new threats are ‘social threats’, not military threats; they are environ-mental threats, threats to rights, and threats to ‘food security’. Moreover, the targets are not states, but persons. The new security paradigm evalu-ates threats in terms of their effects on people, not on their consequences for states. Indeed, the new literature on globalization and security scarcely discusses interstate conflict.¹It has also challenged security studies. Secur-ity specialists are advised to leave behind force configurations and cap-abilities and to focus instead on social developments with adverse outcomes, and the ways in which they might be circumvented. They are advised to join hands with ‘new institutionalists’ to explore institutional developments that might ameliorate such threats. They should be looking at new compliance mechanisms and at transnational actors in the belief that they contribute to the social and political environment within which the new threats arise.

But the new paradigm challenges more than method; it also embeds a far-reaching ontological claim. It claims that the borders of political community have shifted. According to the globalization literature, we are all in the same boat now – we live in a borderless world. In other words, we are enmeshed in what David Held has called ‘communities of common fate’ and we have to learn to become cosmopolitan citizens.²Threats are indivisible as between one people and another so that it is no longer rele-vant to speak of ‘them and us’. Security is indivisible; it is something enjoyed in ‘common’.

But in spite of the apparent consensus, globalization theory is a slippery animal. It has different disciplinary roots and contains, in some cases, opposed postulates. It also confuses causal theories with discursive theo-ries. Not all of those in the globalization business are concerned to identify actual processes and not all globalization theory is intended as empirical theory. Some is intended as critical theory, which, to utilize a

useful distinction made by Martin Hollis and Steve Smith, is concerned with ‘understanding’ rather than ‘explanation’.³This approach to security sees ‘security effects’ as belonging to a rhetorical mode that is intended to secure a political programme. The rhetoric is intended to change our minds, not to identify a currently existing state of affairs.

The two concepts are often confused, since the discourse of globaliza-tion frequently has recourse to a kind of loose ‘causal’ language to eluci-date the implications of globalization. But they are separable, and capable of being distinguished, certainly with regard to security. Still, there is no doubt that security as traditionally conceived is being degraded as a value in globalization discourse. The discourse demands that we rethink secur-ity: towards human security, human welfare, and common security.

However, with regard to its causes, it is not clear that anything very remarkable is occurring with regard to security, or if it is, that it has much to do with globalization.

Globalization as causes and effects

Much globalization theory is the product of traditional social science. In this sort of theory, some things are causing other things to happen. We may call this ‘causal theory’ since it is concerned, variously, with causes and outcomes. (Some in this orientation argue from outcomes to causes;

others argue from causes to outcomes. In either case, these are social sci-entists seeking to explain something.) But there are also different under-standings of globalization as a process, with different implications for its supposed security effects.

Disputed causes in globalization processes

As causality, globalization may be understood in terms of the question:

what is it that is impinging on what? As soon as we pose this question, it should become apparent that there is no single subject that constitutes globalization. Globalization theorists point to different trends, propose different outcomes, and imply or posit different causal motivators. In terms of time span alone, some date globalization from as early as ^AD500, while others see it as a much more recent vintage. Simplifying a complex picture, we may note three broad periodicities, which are associated with different subjects, and these, in turn, with different disciplinary perspec-tives.

The main disputants are sociologists, political economists, and institu-tional economists. The sociological approach casts globalization in terms of large trends that may have begun as early as the onset of modernity.

They focus on deep changes in society. This approach should be distin-guished from middle-range theories where globalization is identified with a particular cycle in the productive process, such as ‘post-Fordism’ (or Globalization and security 117

alternatively, a truly integrated world financial system). This domain tends to be occupied by political economists who are looking at the develop-ment of modern capitalism, usually within the last half century. Finally, there are short-range theories that see it in terms of more recent, and in some cases, very recent policy choices, such as the Uruguay Round. These theorists are typically institutional economists who are concerned with the contemporary organization of the world economy and the development of new rules of economic transaction.

The long-range sociological view generally bundles together long-term social trends, primarily the expansion of communication, the rationaliza-tion of government, and the internarationaliza-tionalizarationaliza-tion of producrationaliza-tion and con-sumption. Together, these produce a distinctive, and new, social form described as ‘the globalized society’, which is characterized by more inter-nationalized forms of governance, various forms of interdependence and intense transnational pluralism. In this theory, which is identified as the mainstream in Water’s key text for Routledge, the transnational (or global) society is the proper unit of analysis.⁴

Globalization as a long-term trend is difficult to distinguish from mod-ernization; indeed, some regard globalization as simply a contemporary expression of modernization: for many of the trends identified by the soci-ological globalists are the same trends long identified in the moderniza-tion literature, and some of the posited outcomes are similar as well.

Relating the two has become a subject of some contention. There is Anthony Giddens’ robust defence of globalization as modernity, which portrays globalization as simply the latest stage of modernization, and the signifier that makes more precise the outcomes of modernization processes.⁵ Others, however, distinguish the orientation of ‘traditional’

modernization theory from its new form as represented in globalization theory, for example, Ulrich Beck’s reference to globalization as the

‘second’ modernization.⁶However, for Giddens, this ‘new theory’ simply tracks modernization processes as they have manifested themselves further down the historical timeline.

The medium-range, more economistic, theories concentrate on the mode of production rather than on broad social trends. This is, moreover, a particular mode of industrial production with clear generative proper-ties. It may be ‘post-Fordism’ that is driving government policies; it may be the increasing internationalization of capital; or it may be the specific form of modern production, such as technology-dependent industrial processes. Political economists tend to be agnostic on whether the devel-opment in question was immanent in industrialization from its earliest days. More frequently, it is simply the way things have turned out. But in any event, the economic form has consequences.

Susan Strange, whose Retreat of the State advances a popular middle-range theory, derives the phenomena associated with globalization (retreat of the state, new patterns of violence, etc.) from what she calls the

‘new’ internationalization of production. By this she means not a division of labour among different plants in different parts of the globe, nor the multinational company; rather, its central feature is the transnational company – the company that looks to a world market as its normal market, wherever it is located.⁷She means that, now, producers take for granted an international (or more accurately global) market for their goods.

(She has no views on whether this development is a necessary aspect of capitalism.)

In the short-range view, globalization is simply the system of inter-national settlements that replaced Bretton Woods. It is post-Uruguay; it is

‘dirty floats’ creating a vast international currency market; and it is the World Trade Organization. In this variant, it is also, possibly, hyper-liberalism such as that developed and encouraged by successive American administrations. In any event, it is more of a policy than an underlying social or productive trend.⁸

Within each of these approaches, the significant variable and, accord-ingly, the explanatory referent, differs. We may note among the long-range sociological theorists the quarrel between Giddens, and Held and McGrew.⁹Each sources globalization in long social trends, but Giddens puts the emphasis on communication systems while Held and McGrew prefer other long-term changes. (These different foci affect both the time span and dynamic of the process. The development of global communica-tions is relatively recent, and Giddens would see further development of global communications as the central dynamic in the process.) Within the middle-range economistic theories there is the difference between chang-ing industrial organization, as proposed by Robert Cox,¹⁰ and changing industrial reach (and sometimes changing technology), as favoured by Susan Strange. Among the short-range theories, some associate the new policy orientation with the creation of the Eurodollar market, and accord-ingly with the role of state mandarins in the growth of a global financial market. Others, however, emphasize the Uruguay Round and the emer-gence of a new universal trading system.¹¹

As for explanatory strategies, again we see different modes. Giddens is a full-blown causal theorist who sees the relevant processes being moved along by specific changes which ‘cause’ other changes. Others, such as Susan Strange, stress intentions rather than causes. Strange sees globaliza-tion as being driven by the decisions of specified actors at specified moments, generally for rationally understood reasons. Finally, there is Held and McGrew’s functional approach, perhaps the most common approach, which presents institutions and modes of thought as simply adapting to long-range social changes without a clear specification of either agents or determinants. In the functional type of theory, there are neither agents nor causes; the configuration just moves along, via processes of adaptation.

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Globalization and its security effects

If we turn from disputatious causes to undoubted consequences, it should be noted that none of the major globalization theorists are primarily con-cerned with security. Giddens barely discusses it, while Held and McGrew merely infer some possible security effects from the social changes they discuss. Susan Strange’s remarks on security are contained in a single article. The security implications have been drawn by international rela-tions theorists, inferring from the broader social changes proposed mainly by the sociological globalists.

Ignoring for the moment the risks of inferring from inferences, the inter-national relations literature has highlighted three major security effects, with a variety of intra-specific progenitors. First in prevalence, and primarily of material origin, is the increased incidence of ethnic conflict, which, though unsourced, is generally related to the ‘local’ and uneven effects of global processes. This is primarily a material effect since it is rooted in the unevenness of material life chances associated with rapid globalization.

Second, there are the ‘human security’ effects, material as well as percep-tual. On the material side, there is environmental security, which is demanded in light of the enhanced risks that come with a new, globalized environment. For example, concerns about ‘food security’ stem from inad-vertent outcomes of modern supply and demand patterns in world agricul-ture. On the perceptual side, globalization is credited with calling forth a view of security as something more than ‘state’ security. In a globalized world security means personal security. For example, human security theo-rists argue that it is individual human beings, rather than states, who should enjoy freedom from fear, hunger, and ill-heath. Finally, there is the ‘decline of the state’ thesis, which is inferred from the state’s loss of regulative capac-ity in a global market and from the associated idea of ‘common securcapac-ity’.

The latter is evinced by efforts to address questions of security, not in terms of states and their alliances of convenience, but in international regimes endowed with independent capabilities directed to conflict resolution and institutionalized peacekeeping. Thus, ‘common security’ is sourced in the state’s inability to deal with the new security threats alone.

Quite apart from their inferential nature, there are a variety of prob-lems with these effects, the most important of which is their precarious empirical grounding. In short, it is not clear that some of these effects are actually occurring; and it is not clear that what is occurring has much to do with globalization.

The rise of ethnic conflict?

The increased incidence of ethnic conflict is one of the most frequently cited entailments of globalization and is also the most remarkable for its shaky foundations. Nowhere in the globalization literature is it

demonstra-ted that ethnic conflict is, in fact, on the rise. Ethnic and separatist con-flict has been prevalent since serious counting of war began.¹² There is nothing new in this fact. Equally, there is no evidence of an increase during any time period that might be coincident with globalization. There is, for example, no evidence of a ‘blip’ or intensification associated with any new trend in material production, such as ‘post-Fordism’. On the con-trary, apart from an immediate blip in the three years after the fall of the Soviet Union, there appears to have been less ethnic conflict in recent years.¹³

Of course, there is something new: the recent distribution of ethnic con-flict.¹⁴On the one hand, Europe – a relatively war-free zone between 1945 and 1990 – became war-prone after 1990. Also, the new pattern within this previously war-free zone, while capable of being represented as boundary or border or ‘political’ conflict, seems to have been shaped primarily along ethnic lines. Accordingly, the new European conflicts seem, at a superficial level, to be more ‘social’ than ‘political’. It is the re-emergence of European war, and especially war on separatist or ethnic lines, which has provided globalization theorists with the firmest support for both the

‘new social forces’ thesis and the ‘globalization-produces-disparate-local-effects’ postulate.

But if this is a new pattern there is also something about it which is, if not old, certainly familiar. This is the ‘end of empire’ phenomenon. The occasion of the new ethnic conflict in Europe has been the dissolution of the Soviet Union’s formal and informal empire, and exclusively so. More-over, in terms of its causes, it is not primarily an ‘economic’ phenomenon (though economic calculation may have played a part in it). Nor is it a

‘social’ phenomenon, if by that an autonomous social development is implied. On the contrary, it is essentially a ‘politicist’ phenomenon, in that it developed in the context of different struggles on the part of various social forces and governments within the former Soviet zone to enlarge their scope for political autonomy. For its part, Soviet policy con-sisted of a series of de facto imperial retreats, until eventually the former zones of Soviet influence, and some regions under direct Soviet gover-nance, gained effective freedom to manage their own affairs. As such, it is scarcely far-fetched to regard the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the light of the dissolution of empire more generally, and accordingly as the latest in a series of imperial dissolutions following in turn the dissolution of the Ottoman, Austrian, British, and French empires.¹⁵ Moreover, each of those earlier retreats was also followed by a period of ethnic conflict, as groups within the former imperial zones fought to establish ascendancy within their respective political spaces. (We may recall North Slavs versus South Slavs, Mau Mau in Kenya, Magyarization in Hungary, the Irgun in Palestine, Muslim expulsions from Greece, etc.)

Accordingly, what we have seen since the end of the Cold War may be nothing more than an entailment of the retreat of empire, and a Globalization and security 121

repetition of the consequences of the Russian, Ottoman, Austrian, and British imperial retreats. Indeed, it is more likely to be a post-imperial phenomenon than a globalization phenomenon, since what is new is being defined primarily by the European (and central European) context.

Moreover, as a post-imperial phenomenon, it may be nothing more than the entirely ‘modern’ outcome of the liberal thesis regarding the self-determination of national groupings.¹⁶

If the rise of ethnic conflict is a post-imperial, and not a globalization, phenomenon, it still may be affected by something related to globaliza-tion. In other words, we might be witnessing two processes in which one (globalization) acts as an intervening variable. For example, when the Soviet Union collapsed, it did so in a global environment where the pre-vailing norm was marketization and the prepre-vailing policy orientation neo-liberal. This norm and the policies associated with it were powerful factors affecting the nature and pace of the Russian decolonization. Among other things, it meant that Russia did not have that wide range of policy choices with which to manage the decolonization process that France and Britain enjoyed in the immediate post-war period. Then, prevailing notions of the planned welfare state afforded space for a wide range of social and eco-nomic experiments. For example, France was ‘allowed’ to construct a monetary zone between it and its former colonies, which would not have been possible in the Russian case, even had it been able to do so.

Another genuinely new factor, analysed most notably by Mary Kaldor, is the modern weapons productive system, identified by her as one of the progenitors of the ‘new wars’ phenomenon.¹⁷New wars are wars of irregu-lars representing different social factions and marked by social disarray and high degrees of interpersonal violence.¹⁸In 1971, Istvan Kende found that civil wars tended to last longer and become more intense than inter-state wars. But he associated it with the involvement of major power inter-state backers in local wars, which made weapons more easily available to rival factions in ‘backward’ areas than would otherwise have been the case.¹⁹It may be that Kaldor is quite right in one respect – that the new deregu-lated market is now making ‘weapons of choice’ more easily available,

Another genuinely new factor, analysed most notably by Mary Kaldor, is the modern weapons productive system, identified by her as one of the progenitors of the ‘new wars’ phenomenon.¹⁷New wars are wars of irregu-lars representing different social factions and marked by social disarray and high degrees of interpersonal violence.¹⁸In 1971, Istvan Kende found that civil wars tended to last longer and become more intense than inter-state wars. But he associated it with the involvement of major power inter-state backers in local wars, which made weapons more easily available to rival factions in ‘backward’ areas than would otherwise have been the case.¹⁹It may be that Kaldor is quite right in one respect – that the new deregu-lated market is now making ‘weapons of choice’ more easily available,