Reimagining
the Governance
of Globalization
By
Richard
Falk
Visiting Distinguished Professor, Global Studies,
University of California, Santa Barbara and Milbank
Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton
University
TFF
associate
August 22, 2003
I. "Globalization" under
Stress
In the 1990s it was evident that "globalization,"
despite objections about the unsatisfactory nature of the
term as misleading or vague, was widely accepted as
usefully descriptive and explanatory: namely, that the
world order sequel to the cold war needed to be
interpreted largely from an economic perspective, and
that the rise of global market forces was displacing the
rivalry among sovereign states as the main preoccupation
of world order. This perception was reinforced by the
ascendancy of Western style capitalism, ideologized as
"neo-liberalism" or as "the Washington consensus," a
circumstance reinforced by the collapse of the Soviet
Union and the discrediting of a socialist alternative. It
seemed more illuminating to think of the 1990s in this
light by reference to globalization than to hold in
abeyance any designation of world politics by continuing
to refer to the historical period as "the post-cold war."
Others spoke convincingly of this being "the information
age" highlighting the re-structuring of international
life that was being brought about by the computer and
Internet, but such a label seemed less resonant with the
wider currents of emphasis on economic growth on a global
scale than did the terminology of globalization.
But then came September 11, simultaneously reviving
and revolutionizing the modern discourse of world
politics, highlighting the severity of security concerns,
war/peace issues, but also giving rise to doctrines and
practices that could not be understood by reference to
the prior centuries of interaction among territorial
sovereign states. The concealed transnational terrorist
network that displayed the capability to inflict severe
substantive and symbolic harm on the heartland of the
dominant state could not be addressed, or even
comprehended, by resorting to a traditional war of
self-defense. There was no suitable statist adversary
that could be defeated once and for all, although this
fundamental and disquieting reality was provisionally
disguised, by the seemingly plausible designation of
Afghanistan as responsible for the attacks by giving safe
have to al Qaeda. But with the Afghanistan War producing
a "victory" in the form of the replacement of the Taliban
regime and the destruction of the al Qaeda
infrastructure, it became clear that such a campaign was
only marginally related to this new type of "war." For
one thing, most of the al Qaeda leadership and many among
the cadre apparently escaped, indicating the absence of
any fixed territorial base or meaningful victory, and the
US Government shifted its focus from the threat of
mega-terrorism to the quite different issue of "axis of
evil" countries. These moves in world politics dramatized
the originality of the global setting after September 11,
and raised anew the question of discourse and
terminology.
To the extent that globalization is retained as the
naming dynamic, its net must be cast far more broadly.
The following section will present this argument by
considering the relevance of the September 11 attacks to
the reconfiguration of conflict on a global level, as
well as to suggest how the quest for a new framework of
regulatory authority has changed from the 1990s. At the
same time, the central contention of this essay is that
"globalization" retains its relevance as a descriptive
label, but that it needs to be interpreted less
economistically since the events of 2001. The final
section will consider approaches to global governance
given this altered understanding of "globalization."
II. The Changing Geopolitical
Context of Globalization and Global
Governance
To set the stage for this extended view of
globalization as incorporating the new geopolitics of
post-statist political conflict, it is necessary to
review briefly the evolution of world politics after the
cold war.
The breakdown of the geopolitical discipline of
bipolarity that had managed conflict during the cold war
era generated a security vacuum that could be and was
filled in various ways. The Iraqi conquest of Kuwait in
1991 was an initial expression of this breakdown. It
would have seemed virtually certain that during the cold
war epoch, without the approval of Moscow and Washington,
Iraq would not have embarked on a path of aggressive
warfare against its small neighbor. The American-led
coalition that restored Kuwaiti sovereignty was the mark
of a new era being shaped by American leadership,
seemingly a geopolitical debut for unipolarity. The fact
that the UNSC endorsed the defensive effort, American
operational control of the Gulf War, and the subsequent
ceasefire burdens imposed on Iraq was far more expressive
of the actuality of unipolarity than it was a sign that
Woodrow Wilson's dream of an institutionalized
international community was finally coming true. What
emerged from the Gulf War more than anything else was the
extent to which the UNSC seemed willing to allow itself
to be used as a legitimating mechanism for controversial
US foreign policy initiatives.
Another course of action could have been followed, and
was even encouraged by the first President Bush's
rhetorical invocation of "a new world order" as a means
of generating public and governmental support in the UN
for authorizing a collective security response to Iraqi
aggression. Such reliance on the procedures of the
Security Council to fashion and supervise a response
would have been a genuine expression of the Wilsonian
project to shift the locus of authority in war/peace
matters from the level of the state to that of the world
community. But there was no such disposition. Instead,
the United States moved to fill the security vacuum by
acting on its own to the extent that it deemed necessary,
while seeking Security Council approval for the sake of a
legitimating rationale whenever it would be forthcoming.
The initiation of the Kosovo War under NATO auspices in
1999 made this new American orientation toward law and
power clear. With the prospect of a Soviet and Chinese
veto in the offing, the US Government avoided the UNSC,
while organizing "a coalition of the willing" under the
formal umbrella of NATO, a deliberate step away from
multipolarity of independent policymaking in the Security
Council. This departure from the discipline of
international law and the UN Charter was widely, although
controversially endorsed, throughout Europe and in the
United States. It was justified as an exceptional claim
necessitated by the perceived imminence of an ethnic
cleansing crisis in Kosovo and against the background of
the failure to protects the Bosnian peoples, as
epitomized by the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of up to 7,000
Bosnian males while UN peacekeepers stood by as
disempowered spectators.
The Iraq Crisis was a more revealing and consequential
departure from the UN framework of restraint with respect
to the use of international force in circumstances other
than self-defense. Instead of circumventing the Security
Council as in Kosovo, the US tried hard to enlist the UN
in its war plans, and initially succeed in persuading the
entire membership of 15 countries to back SC Res. 1441,
which implicitly accepted the American position that if
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were not found and
destroyed by Baghdad's voluntary action or through the
United Nations inspection process, then an American-led
war with UN blessings would obtain political backing and
international legitimacy. Tensions within the Security
Council surrounded mainly the timing and the alleged
requirement of an explicit authorization for recourse to
war. Evidently concerned that inspection might obviate
the case for war, and that the mandate for war might
after all not be forthcoming, the US went ahead on its
own in early 2003, inducing a coalition of more or less
willing partners to join in the military effort, which
produced a quick battlefield victory, but a bloody and
inconclusive occupation.
In an important sense President George W. Bush was
implementing a vision of a new world order, but not the
one that his father appeared to favor in 1990-91 or that
Wilson pushed so hard for after World War I. Unlike The
Gulf War where the response, which was endorsed by the
United Nations Security Council, was one of collective
defense against prior aggression and conquest or the
Kosovo War where the military action appeared necessary
and justified as humanitarian intervention, the war
against Iraq rested on neither a legal nor moral
grounding that was persuasive to most governments in the
world, was opposed by an incensed global public opinion,
and even seemed politically imprudent from the
perspective of meeting the al Qaida challenge of
transnational terrorism. The Bush Doctrine of preemptive
war, without a persuasive factual showing of imminent
threat, represented a flagrant repudiation of the core
international law prohibition of non-defensive force as
generally understood, and established a precedent that,
if followed by other states, could produce a series of
wars and undermine the authority of the UN Charter and
modern international law. The United States approach
filled the security vacuum after the cold war with the
unilateralism and lawlessness of hegemonic prerogatives,
and seemed to widen even the claimed right of preemptive
defense by resorting to war in the absence of an imminent
threat, and possibly in the absence of any threat
whatsoever, thereby extending unilateralism and
discretionary recourse to war even beyond the
expansiveness of so-called "preventive war." For the
United States to attack Iraq, at every stage a weak state
beyond the reach of its regional status, and weakened
further by its exhausting stalemate of the 1980s in
relation to Iran, by a devastating defeat in the Gulf
War, and by more than a decade of harsh sanctions,
involved launching a war without international or
regional backing in a context where there was no credible
past, present, or future threat.
And by this audacity on the part of the US Government,
repeatedly justified by the distinct challenge of
mega-terrorism made manifest in the attacks of September
11, the United States was also reconstituting world order
in three crucial respects: seriously eroding the
sovereignty of foreign countries by potentially
converting the world as a whole into a battlefield for
the conduct of its war against al Qaida; discarding the
restraints associated with international law and
collective procedures of the organized world community in
the name of anti-terrorism; reestablishing the centrality
of the role of war and force in world politics, while
dimming the lights that had been illuminating the rise of
markets and the primacy of corporate
globalization. In effect, the focus on the terminology of
globalization and the operations of the world economy
were superseded by a novel 21st century pattern of
geopolitics in which the main adversaries were a
concealed transnational network of political extremists
and a global state operating without consistent regard
for the sovereign rights of normal territorial states.
For both of these political actors the framework of
diplomacy and restraint that evolved since the Peace of
Westphalia in 1648 to regulate political behavior in a
world of sovereign states was being treated as obsolete
with respect to the resolution of acute transnational
conflict. Reliance on the discourse of globalization
seems useful to emphasize the extent to which the crucial
dimensions of world history are being addresses with a
much diminished role for the boundaries of states. These
boundaries continue to identify a significant class of
political actors on the world stage, but these actors are
no longer appropriately treated as the defining forces
shaping the history of our times.
III. Five Globalizations for
the 21st Century
Whether this current rupture with the past is an
aberration to be corrected shortly or the new framing of
global governance is uncertain. The contours and
ideological orientation of globalization and governance
are almost certain to remain highly contested and fluid,
far more so than during the 1990s, and the future of
world order will hang in the balance. The old political
language of statism will persist in many formal settings,
but it will not illuminate the changing structure of
world order nearly as effectively as a revamped reliance
on the language of globalization.
Five overlapping approaches to governance can be
identified as the structural alternatives for the future
of world order. These will be briefly depicted, and a few
conclusions drawn: corporate globalization; civic
globalization; imperial globalization; apocalyptic
globalization; and regional globalization. The emerging
structure of world order is a complex composite of these
interacting elements, varying with conditions of time and
space, and therefore incapable of an authoritative
"construction." In other words, many constructions vie
for plausibility, but none can be prescriptive. The
contours and meanings of globalization are embedded in a
dialogic process.
Corporate globalization. In the 1990s, with the
resolution of the East/West conflict, the center of
attention shifted to the ideas, arenas, and practices
associated with the functioning of financial markets and
world trade, as guided by a privileging of capital
formation and efficiency. The role of governments was
increasingly seen in relation to this dynamic, and
political elites to be "legitimate" had to win the
endorsement of private sector elites. Ideological
adjustments were made to upgrade markets, privatize a
wide range of undertakings previously situated within the
public sector, and to minimize the role of government in
promoting social goals. New arenas of policy formation
emerged to reflect this shift in emphasis, giving
prominence to the World Economic Forum organized as a
gathering of business leaders, but soliciting the
participation of the top political figures who came to
Davos with the purpose of providing reassurance that they
too were championing corporate globalization. Governments
and international financial institutions accepted and
promoted this economistic agenda, creating arenas
designed to facilitate the goals of the private sector,
such as the annual economic summit (Group of Seven, then
Eight) that brought together the political heads of state
of the principal advanced industrial countries in the
North.
In the 1990s there seemed to be a rather neat
displacement of the territorial and security features of
the state system with the capital-driven concerns of the
world economy organized according to the ideology of the
free market. It appeared that a new non-territorial
diplomacy associated with trade and investment was taking
precedence over older concerns with alliances, as well as
with friends, enemies, and the security and well being of
the territorial community of citizens. As long as
corporate globalization was sustained by impressive
growth statistics, even if accompanied by growing
indications of persistent massive poverty, widening
disparities with respect to income and wealth, and a
disturbing neglect of economic stagnancy in sub-Saharan
Africa, there was little mainstream questioning directed
at the pro-globalization consensus. This consensus was
seen as a panacea by important champions of
globalization, producing also a drift toward
constitutional democracy.[See T. Friedman, The
Lexus and the Olive Tree]
It was only in the wake of the Asian Financial Crisis
that began in 1998, and its reverberations in such
disparate countries as Argentina, Japan, and Russia that
serious criticism began to produce a controversy as to
the future of corporate globalization. In such an
atmosphere, the reformist voices of such insiders as
George Soros and Joseph Stiglitz began to be heard more
widely, lending credibility to the previously ignored
leftist critics. And then in late 1999, the Seattle
demonstrations directed at an IMF ministerial meeting
signaled to the world the birth of a wide and deep
anti-globalization movement deeply opposed to the basic
policies associated with the implementation of
neo-liberalism. The reaction to Seattle finally generated
a debate about the effects of globalization, assessing
its benefits and burdens, and focusing especially on
whether the poor of the world were being victimized or
impressively helped.[This debate persists see The
Economist an intelligent recent restatement of the
pro-globalization spin.]
In the Bush presidency, despite the focus on global
security and the war against mega-terrorism, the US
Government has dogmatically and unconditionally
reinforced its commitment to corporate globalization as
the sole foundation of legitimate governance at the level
of the sovereign state. [Most authoritatively in NSS
September 2002] These policies are being promoted
without much fanfare because of the preoccupation with
the war/peace agenda, but corporate globalization is
being challenged both by the realities of a sharp global
recession and by a robust worldwide grassroots movement
that has shifted its goals from anti-globalization to
alternative globalization.
Civic Globalization. As suggested, the effects of
corporate globalization have generated a counter-movement
on the level of ideas and practices, seeking a more
equitable and sustainable world economy, although not
necessarily opposed to "globalization" as such. That is,
if globalization is understood as the compression of time
and space as a result of technological innovation and
social/economic integration, if people-oriented rather
than capital-driven, then support for "another
globalization" best describes the identity of the popular
movement.[See Falk, Predatory
Globalization] Over the years, civic
globalization has clarified its dominant tendencies,
although diverse constituencies from North and South,
from activist groups mainly concerned with human rights,
economic well being, and environmental protection, and
from commitments to global democracy have produced a
somewhat incoherent image of what is meant by a
people-oriented approach. As suggested, especially
through the annual gatherings in Porto Allegre, Brazil,
civic globalization has been shedding its negative image
of merely being against corporate globalization, and can
no longer be accurately described as an
anti-globalization movement, despite a continuing
repudiation of the main tenets of corporate
globalization. In the search for coherence and a positive
program, there is an increasing disposition to view civic
globalization as essentially a movement dedicated to the
achievement of global democracy, which includes a major
stress on a more participatory, transparent, and
accountable process of shaping and implementing global
economic policy.
As might be expected, those concerned with the impact
of corporate globalization are also deeply disturbed by
the American response to the September 11 attacks, and
view resistance to imperial globalization as ranking
with, or even regarded as more serious and urgent,
opposition to corporate globalization. The mobilization
of millions to oppose the Iraq War in early 2003 was
mainly a phenomenon in the countries of the North, but it
attracted the many of the same individuals who had
earlier been part of the grassroots campaigns associated
with opposition to corporate globalization. There is an
uncertainty, at present, as to whether anti-war and
anti-imperial activism will merge successfully with the
struggle for another globalization.
Imperial Globalization. Even at the high point of
corporate globalization in the mid-1990s, there were a
variety of assessments that pierced the economistic veil
to discern an American project of global domination.
[For two very different assessments of pre-Bush
imperial geopolitics see Hardt & Negri, Empire
and Bacevich, America's Empire] It was notable
that during the 1990s the United States failed to use its
global preeminence to promote nuclear and general
disarmament or to create a more robust UN peacekeeping
capability or to address the major unresolved conflicts
throughout the world. Instead, the United States
Government put its energies into the discovery of new
enemies justifying high defense spending, perpetuating a
network of military bases and regional naval commands,
developing its nuclear arsenal, and embarking on an
expensive program for the militarization of space. In
retrospect, it seems difficult to deny the charges that
US policy, whether or not with full comprehension, was
seeking a structure for world order that rested on
American imperial authority. True, the apparent priority
function of this authority was to make the world safe and
profitable for corporate globalization, especially in the
face of growing opposition.
September 11 gave an opening to the most ardent
advocates of imperial globalization. It converted the
undertaking from one of indirection to that of the most
vital security imperative in the history of the country.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks it provided the
most effective rationale for US global leadership since
the cold war era, and it did so in a setting where the
absence of strategic and ideological statist rivalry
allowed the US Government to project a future world order
at peace, and enjoying the benefits of a reinvigorated
corporate globalization. [See Bush forward to
NSS] As suggested earlier, the anti-terrorist
consensus loomed large at first, giving rise to
widespread support for the US decision to wage war
against Afghanistan, and to dislodge the Taliban regime
from control. The move toward war with Iraq disclosed the
limits of this consensus as well as the diplomatic
limits of American power to induce political support for
its project of global dominance. As with Afghanistan, the
Iraqi regime was widely deplored as oppressive and
militarist, but unlike Afghanistan, Washington's claims
of preemption as directed toward Iraq seemed much more
connected with geopolitical expansion, especially in the
Middle East, than with a response to the continuing
threat of the al Qaeda network.
The perception of imperial globalization is a matter
of interpretation, as are its probable effects on the
governance of political behavior in the world. The
advocates of the new imperialism emphasize its benevolent
potentialities, with reference to the spread of
constitutional democracy and human rights, and the
provision of peacekeeping capabilities that could act far
more effectively than what could be achieved by the
United Nations. [See Robert Kagan, "Benevolent
Empire," Michael Ignatieff, "Burden"] The critics are
concerned with arousing a geopolitical backlash in the
form of a new strategic rivalry, possibly involving a
Sino-European alliance, and about the prospect for a
further abandonment of American republicanism at home and
abroad under the pretext of responding to the security
threats that are present. In this setting, it seems
prudent to worry about the emergence of some new
oppressive political order that might be most accurately
described as "global fascism," a political fix that has
no historical precedent. [See Falk, "Will the Empire
be Fascist?"; Sheldon Wolin] Of course, the
proponents of imperial globalization resent the frictions
associated with civic globalization, and despite the
claims of support for "democracy" prefer compliant
governmental elites and passive citizenries. Bush
"rewarded" and lavishly praised governments that ignored
and overrode the clearly evidenced anti-war sentiments of
their citizens, especially Britain, but also Italy and
Spain, while "punishing" those that refused to support
fully recourse to aggressive war against Iraq, including
France, Turkey, and Germany.
Apocalyptic Globalization. There is no entirely
satisfactory designation for the sort of political stance
associated with Osama Bin Laden's vision of global
governance. It does appear dedicated to extreme forms of
political violence that challenge by "war" the strongest
consolidation of state power in all of human history. Its
capability to pose such a challenge was vividly
demonstrated on September 11, attacking the United States
directly and more effectively than had been done by any
state throughout the course of its entire history. The
Bin Laden vision also embodies very far reaching goals
that if achieved would restructure world order as it is
now known: driving the United States from the Islamic
world, replacing the state system with an Islamic
umma, and converting the residual infidel world to
Islam, thereby globalizing the umma. It is here
characterized as "apocalyptic" because of its religious
embrace of violent finality that radically restructures
world order on the basis of a specific religious vision,
as well as its seeming willingness to resolve the
historical tensions of the present world by engaging in a
war of extermination against the "Crusader" mentality of
those designated as enemies, including Jews, Christians,
and atheists. Since the United States as the target and
opponent of al Qaeda also expresses its response in the
political language of good and evil, but with the moral
identities inverted, there seems to exist grounds for the
term "apocalyptic globalization."
Perhaps, it confers on al Qaeda an exaggerated
prominence by treating its vision as sufficiently
relevant to warrant this distinct status as a new species
of globalization that approaches the future with its own
formula for global governance. At present, the scale of
the attacks, as well as the scope of the response, seems
to validate this prominence, even though it may seem
highly dubious that such an extremist network has any
enduring prospect of toppling statism or challenging
corporate globalization. As far as civic globalization is
concerned, there exists a quiet antagonism, and an even
quieter basis for limited collaboration. The antagonism
arises because the main support for civic globalization
comes from that regard themselves as secularists, or at
least as opponents of extremist readings of any world
religion that gives rise to a rationale for holy war. The
collaboration possibility, undoubtedly tacit, arises
because of certain shared goals, including justice for
the Palestinians and opposition to imperial and corporate
globalization.
Regional Globalization. As with apocalyptic
globalization, the terminology is an immediate problem.
Does not the postulate of a regionalist world order
contradict trends toward globalization? The language may
seem to suggest such a tension, but the intention is
coherent, to imply the possibility that global governance
may in the future be partially, or even best, conceived
by reference to a world of regions. The basic
perspective, longer range than the others, is to view
European regionalism as an exploratory venture, which if
it succeeds, will lead to imitative behavior in other
principal regions of the world. What succeeds means is
difficult to discern, but undoubtedly includes economic
progress, social democracy, conflict resolution in
relation to ethnic and territorial disputes, resistance
to, or at least the moderating of, imperial, apocalyptic,
and corporate manifestations of globalization. Such
regionalizing prospects are highly speculative at this
stage, but still worth entertaining, given the dramatic
transformations experienced by Europe during the past
fifty years, and the difficulties associated with world
order alternatives.
Regionalism is conceptually and ideologically
appealing as a feasible synthesis of functional pressures
to form enlarged political communities and the rise of
identity politics associated with civilizational and
religious orientations. Regionalism is geopolitically
appealing as augmenting the capabilities of the sovereign
state without abandoning its centrality in political life
at the national level, especially to allow non-American
centers of action to compete economically and to build
bulwarks of political resistance to the threats posed by
imperial and apocalyptic globalization.
It is also well to acknowledge grounds for skepticism
with respect to regional globalization. The United
States, as well possibly as China, Russia, Japan, Brazil,
and India, seem likely to oppose any strong regionalizing
moves outside of Europe. The disparities in the
non-Western regions are so great as to make ambitious
experiments in regionalism seem rather utopian for the
foreseeable future. Also, the regional frameworks are not
entirely congruent with the supposed acknowledgement of
civilizational and religious identities. Even in Europe
there are large non-Western, non-Judeo-Christian
minorities, and in Asia and Africa, the civilizational
and religious identities cannot be homogeneously
categorized without neglecting the realities of their
basic condition of heterogeneity.
IV. A Concluding
Observation
The basic argument made here is that it remains useful
to retain the descriptive terminology of globalization in
addressing the challenge of global governance, but that
its provenance should be enlarged to take account of
globalizing tendencies other than those associated with
the world economy and the anti-globalization movement
that formed in reaction. The discourse on globalization
to remain useful needs to extend its coverage to the
antagonism produced by the encounter between the United
States and al Qaeda, acknowledging its borderless
character and the degree to which both antagonists
sponsor a visionary solution to the problem of global
governance, neither of which seems consistent with the
values associated with human rights and global democracy.
As well, the European experiment in organizing many
aspects of political community on a regional basis,
thereby suggesting an alternative to reliance on statism,
(which had been unquestioned at the time the United
Nations was established) as well as a potential source of
resistance to both imperial and apocalyptic menaces.
Such an appreciation of various globalizations is not
intended as a funeral rite for the state system that has
shaped world order since the mid-seventeenth century or
to deride the achievements of territorial sovereignty in
promoting tolerance, reason, and a liberal conception of
state/society relations. The state may yet stage a
comeback, including a normative comeback, providing most
of the peoples of the world with their best hope for
blunting the sharp edges of corporate, imperial,
apocalyptic, and even regional dimensions of
globalization. [This possibility is explored in Falk,
"State of Siege" Journal of International Affairs,
199-] The recovery of a positive world order role for
the state may be further facilitated by collaborative
endeavors joining moderate states with the transnational
social energies of civic globalization. Such a
possibility has already been manifested in impressive
moves to support the Kyoto Protocol on climate change,
the outlawry of anti-personnel landmines, and especially
by the movement to establish the International Criminal
Court.
The whole project of global governance has been
eclipsed by the events of recent years, especially the
unleashing of the borderless war and the deliberate
Washington effort to sideline the United Nations to the
extent that it refuse to implement the policies of
imperial globalization. Part of the rationale for
reimagining globalization is to encourage a more relevant
debate on the needs and possibilities for global
governance, that is, suggesting that the world situation
is not altogether subject to this vivid clash of dark
forces, that constructive possibilities exist, and
deserve the engagement of citizens and their leaders
throughout the world. Of course, it will be maintained by
some commentators that such an undertaking is merely
rescuing globalization from circumstances that have
rendered the discussions of the 1990s irrelevant to
present realities, and that it is better to deal with the
current world by reference to its distinctive, rather
unique, characteristics. My concluding view is that
despite some merit in this view favoring an entirely
fresh language, it is advantageous to retain and revise
the globalization discourse, especially in the context of
global governance. A different conclusion might well
result if the context was an appraisal of "political
economy" or "global security."
©
TFF & the author 2003
Tell a friend about this article
Send to:
From:
Message and your name
|