Globalization,
Terrorism, and Democracy: 9/11 and its Aftermath[1]
Globalization
has been one of the most hotly contested phenomena of the past two decades. It
has been a primary attractor of books, articles, and heated debate, just as postmodernism
was the most fashionable and debated topic of the 1980s. A wide and diverse
range of social theorists have argued that today's world is organized by
accelerating globalization, which is strengthening the dominance of a world
capitalist economic system, supplanting the primacy of the nation-state by
transnational corporations and organizations, and eroding local cultures and
traditions through a global culture. Contemporary theorists from a wide range
of political and theoretical positions are converging on the position that
globalization is a distinguishing trend of the present moment, but there are
hot debates concerning its nature, effects, and future.[2]
Moreover,
advocates of a postmodern break in history argue that developments in
transnational capitalism are producing a new global historical configuration of
post-Fordism, or postmodernism as an emergent cultural logic of capitalism
(Harvey 1989; Soja 1989; Jameson 1991; and Gottdiener 1995). Others define the
emergent global economy and culture as a "network society" grounded
in new communications and information technology (Castells 1996, 1997, and
1998). For its defenders, globalization marks the triumph of capitalism and its
market economy (see apologists such as Fukuyama 1992 and Friedman 1999 who
perceive this process as positive), while its critics portray globalization as
negative (see, for example, Mander and Goldsmith 1996; Eisenstein 1998; and
Robins and Webster 1999). Some theorists see the emergence of a new
transnational ruling elite and the universalization of consumerism (Sklair
2001), while others stress global fragmentation of "the clash of civilizations"
(Huntington 1996). Driving "post" discourses into novel realms of theory and
politics, Hardt and Negri (2000) present the emergence of "Empire" as producing
evolving forms of sovereignty, economy, culture, and political struggle that
unleash an unforeseeable and unpredictable flow of novelties, surprises, and
upheavals.
Discourses
of globalization initially were polarized into pro or con celebrations or
attacks. For critics, it provides a cover concept for global capitalism and
imperialism, and is accordingly condemned as another form of the imposition of
the logic of capital and the market on ever more regions of the world and
spheres of life. For defenders, it is the continuation of modernization and a
force of progress, increased wealth, freedom, democracy, and happiness. Its
champions present globalization as beneficial, generating fresh economic
opportunities, political democratization, cultural diversity, and the opening
to an exciting new world. Its detractors see globalization as harmful, bringing
about increased domination and control by the wealthier overdeveloped nations
over the poor underdeveloped countries, thus increasing the hegemony of the
"haves" over the "have nots." In addition, supplementing the negative view,
globalization critics assert that globalization produces an undermining of
democracy, a cultural homogenization, and increased destruction of natural species
and the environment.[3] Some imagine the globalization project
-- whether viewed positively or negatively -- as inevitable and beyond human
control and intervention, whereas others view globalization as generating new
conflicts and new spaces for struggle, distinguishing between globalization
from above and globalization from below (and Brecher, Costello, and Smith
2000).
I
wish to sketch aspects of a critical theory of globalization that will discuss
the fundamental transformations in the world economy, politics, and culture in
a dialectical framework that distinguishes between progressive and emancipatory
features and oppressive and negative attributes. This requires articulations of
the contradictions and ambiguities of globalization and the ways that
globalization is both imposed from above and yet can be contested and
reconfigured from below in ways that promote democracy and social justice. I
argue that the key to understanding globalization critically is theorizing it
at once as a product of technological revolution and the global restructuring
of capitalism in which economic, technological, political, and cultural
features are intertwined. From this perspective, one should avoid both
technological and economic determinism and all one-sided optics of
globalization in favor of a view that theorizes globalization as a highly
complex, contradictory, and thus ambiguous set of institutions and social
relations, as well as involving flows of goods, services, ideas, technologies,
cultural forms, and people (see Appadurai 1996).
To illustrate my
approach, I argue that the
September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
put on display contradictions and ambiguities embedded in globalization that
demand critical and dialectic perspectives to clarify and illuminate these
events and globalization itself. Showing the ways that globalization and a
networked society were involved in the 9/11 events and subsequent wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, I argue that the terror attacks and ensuing Terror War
show contradictions in the nature of globalization that requires dialectical
analysis and critique. I conclude with some reflections on the implications of
September 11 and the subsequent Terror War for critical social theory and
democratic politics, envisaging a new global movement against terrorism and
militarism and for democracy, peace, environmentalism, and social justice.
Globalization,
Technological Revolution, and the Restructuring of Capitalism
For
critical social theory, globalization involves both capitalist markets and sets
of social relations and flows of commodities, capital, technology,
ideas, forms of culture, and people across national boundaries via a globally
networked society (see Castells 1996, 1997, and 1998 and Held, et al 1999). In
a globalized network society, the transmutations of technology and capital work
together to create an increasingly globalized and interconnected world. A
technological revolution involving the creation of a computerized network of
communication, transportation, and exchange is the presupposition of a
globalized economy, along with the extension of a world capitalist market
system that is absorbing ever more areas of the world and spheres of
production, exchange, and consumption into its orbit.
The
technological revolution presupposes global computerized networks and the
movement of goods, information, and peoples across national boundaries. Hence,
the Internet and global computer networks make possible globalization by
producing a technological infrastructure for the global economy. Computerized
networks, satellite-communication systems, and the software and hardware that
link together and facilitate the global economy depend on breakthroughs in
microphysics. Technoscience has generated transistors, increasingly powerful
and sophisticated computer chips, integrated circuits, high-tech communication
systems, and a technological revolution that provides an infrastructure for the
global economy and society (see Gilder 1989 and 2000; Kaku 1997; and Best and
Kellner 2001).
From
this perspective, globalization cannot be understood without comprehending the
scientific and technological revolutions and global restructuring of
capital that are the motor and matrix of globalization. Many theorists of globalization,
however, either fail to observe the fundamental importance of scientific and
technological revolution and the new technologies that help spawn
globalization, or interpret the process in a technological determinist
framework that occludes the economic dimensions of the imperatives and
institutions of capitalism. Such one-sided optics fail to grasp the coevolution
of science, technology, and capitalism, and the complex and highly ambiguous
system of globalization that combines capitalism and democracy, technological
mutations, and a turbulent mixture of costs and benefits, gains and losses.
In
order to theorize the global network economy, one therefore needs to avoid the
extremes of technological and economic determinism. Technological determinists
frequently use the discourse of postindustrial, or postmodern, society to
describe current developments. This discourse often produces an ideal-type
distinction between a previous mode of industrial production characterized by
heavy industry, mass production and consumption, bureaucratic organization, and
social conformity, contrasted to the new postindustrial society characterized
by "flexible production," or "postFordism," in which new
technologies serve as the demiurge to a new postmodernity (Harvey 1987).
For
postmodern theorists such as Baudrillard (1993), technologies of information
and social reproduction (e.g. simulation) have permeated every aspect of
society and created a novel social environment of media, consumption,
computers, and socially constructed identities. In the movement toward
postmodernity, Baudrillard claims that humanity has left reality and modern
conceptions behind, as well as the world of modernity. This postmodern
adventure is marked by an implosion of technology and the human, which is
generating an emergent posthuman species and postmodern world (see Baudrillard
1993, the analyses in Kellner 1989b and 1994, and Best and Kellner 2001). For
other less extravagant theorists of the technological revolution, the human
species is evolving into a postindustrial technosociety, culture, and condition
where technology, knowledge, and information are the axial or organizing
principles (Bell 1976 and Lyotard 1984).
There
are positive and negative models of technological determinism. A positive
discourse envisages innovative technologies as producing a "new economy,"
interpreted affirmatively as fabricating a renewed "wealth of nations." On this
affirmative view, globalization provides opportunities for small business and
individual entrepreneurs, empowering excluded persons and social groups.
Technophiles claim that new technologies also make possible increased
democratization, communication, education, culture, entertainment, and other
social benefits, thus generating a utopia of social progress.
Few
legitimating theories of the information and technological revolution, however,
contextualize the structuring, implementation, marketing, and use of new
technologies in the context of the vicissitudes of contemporary capitalism. The
ideologues of the information society act as if technology were an autonomous
force and either neglect to theorize the complex interaction of capital and
technology, or use the advancements of technology to legitimate market
capitalism (i.e. Gilder 1989 and 1999; Gates 1995 and 1999; Friedman 1999).
Theorists, like Kevin Kelly, for instance, the executive editor of Wired,
think that humanity has entered a post-capitalist society that constitutes an
original and innovative stage of history and economy where previous categories
do not apply (1994 and 1998; see the critique in Best and Kellner 1999). Or,
like Bill Gates (1995 and 1999), defenders of the "new economy" imagine
computer and information technologies producing a "friction-free
capitalism," perceived as a highly creative form of capitalism that goes
beyond its previous contradictions, forms, and limitations.
A
negative version of technological determinism, by contrast, portrays the new
world system as constituted by a monolithic or homogenizing technological system
of domination. The German philosopher and Nazi supporter Martin Heidegger
talked of the "complete Europeanisation of the earth and man" (1971:
15), claiming that Western science and technology were creating a new
organization or framework, which he called Gestell (or
"enframing"), and that was encompassing ever more realms of
experience. French theorist Jacques Ellul (1967) depicted a totalitarian
expansion of technology, or what he called la technique, imposing its
logic on ever more domains of life and human practices. More recently, a large
number of technophobic critics argue that new technologies and global
cyberspace are a realm of alienation and reification where humans are alienated
from their bodies, other people, nature, tradition, and lived communities
(Borgmann 1994 and 1999; Slouka 1995; Stoll 1995; Shenk 1998; and Virilio
1998).
In
addition to technologically determinist and reductive postindustrial accounts
of globalization, there are economic determinist discourses that view it
primarily as the continuation of capitalism rather than its restructuring
through technological revolution. A large number of theorists conceive
globalization simply as a process of the imposition of the logic of capital and
neo-liberalism on various parts of the world rather than seeing the
restructuring process and the enormous changes and transformations that
scientific and technological revolution are producing in the networked economy
and society. Capital logic theorists, for instance, portray globalization primarily
as the imposition of the logic of capital on the world economy, polity, and
culture, often engaging in economic determinism, rather than seeing the complex
new configurations of economy, technology, polity, and culture, and attendant
forces of domination and resistance. In the same vein, some critical theorists
depict globalization as the triumph of a globalized hegemony of market
capitalism, where capital creates a homogeneous world culture of
commercialization, commodification, administration, surveillance, and
domination (Robins and Webster 1999).
From
these economistic perspectives, globalization is merely a continuation of
previous social tendencies; i.e. the logic of capital and domination by
corporate and commercial interests of the world economy and culture. Defenders
of capitalism, by contrast, present globalization as the triumph of free
markets, democracy, and individual freedom (Fukuyama 1998 and Friedman 1999).
Hence, there are both positive and negative versions of economic and technological
determinism. Most theories of globalization, therefore, are reductive,
undialectical, and one-sided, either failing to see the interaction between
technological features of globalization and the global restructuring of
capitalism, or the complex relations between capitalism and democracy. Dominant
discourses of globalization are thus one-sidedly for or against globalization,
failing to articulate the contradictions and the conflicting costs and
benefits, upsides and downsides, of the process. Hence, many current theories
of globalization do not capture the novelty and ambiguity of the present moment
that involves both innovative forms of technology and economy -- and emergent
conflicts and problems generated by the contradictions of globalization.
In
particular, an economic determinism and reductionism that merely depicts
globalization as the continuation of market capitalism fails to comprehend the
new forms and modes of capitalism itself that are based on novel developments
in science, technology, culture, and everyday life. Likewise, technological
determinism fails to note how the new technologies and new economy are part of
a global restructuring of capitalism and are not autonomous forces that
themselves are engendering a new society and economy which breaks with the
previous mode of social organization. The postindustrial society is sometimes
referred to as the "knowledge society," or "information
society," in which knowledge and information are given roles more
predominant than earlier days (see the survey and critique in Webster 1995). It
is now obvious that the knowledge and information sectors are increasingly
important domains of the contemporary moment and that therefore the theories of
Daniel Bell and other postindustrial theorists are not as ideological and far
off the mark as many of his critics on the left once argued. But in order to
avoid the technological determinism and idealism of many forms of this theory,
one should theorize the information or knowledge "revolution" as part
and parcel of a new form of technocapitalism marked by a synthesis of
capital and technology.
Some
poststructuralist theories that stress the complexity of globalization
exaggerate the disjunctions and autonomous flows of capital, technology,
culture, people, and goods, thus a critical theory of globalization grounds
globalization in a theory of capitalist restructuring and technological
revolution. To paraphrase Max Horkheimer, whoever wants to talk about
capitalism, must talk about globalization, and it is impossible to theorize
globalization without talking about the restructuring of capitalism. The term
"technocapitalism" is useful to describe the synthesis of capital and
technology in the present organization of society (Kellner 1989a). Unlike
theories of postmodernity (i.e. Baudrillard), or the knowledge and information
society, which often argue that technology is the new organizing
principle of society, the concept of technocapitalism points to both the
increasingly important role of technology and the enduring primacy of
capitalist relations of production. In an era of unrestrained capitalism, it
would be difficult to deny that contemporary societies are still organized
around production and capital accumulation, and that capitalist imperatives
continue to dominate production, distribution, and consumption, as well as
other cultural, social and political domains.[4] Workers remain
exploited by capitalists and capital persists as the hegemonic force -- more so
than ever after the collapse of communism.
Moreover,
with the turn toward neo-liberalism as a hegemonic ideology and practice, the
market and its logic comes to triumph over public goods and the state is
subservient to economic imperatives and logic. Yet the term technocapitalism
points to a new configuration of capitalist society in which technical and
scientific knowledge, computerization and automation of labor, and information
technology and multimedia play a role in the process of production analogous to
the function of human labor power, mechanization of the labor process, and
machines in an earlier era of capitalism. This process is generating novel
modes of societal organization, forms of culture and everyday life, conflicts,
and modes of struggle.
The
emergence of novel and original forms of technology, politics, culture, and
economy marks a situation parallel to that confronted by the Frankfurt school
in the 1930s. These German theorists who left Nazi Germany were forced to
theorize the new configurations brought about by the transition from market to
state monopoly capitalism (Kellner 1989a and Bronner and Kellner 1989). In
their now classical texts, the Frankfurt school analyzed the emergent forms of
social and economic organization, technology, and culture; the rise of giant
corporations and cartels and the capitalist state in "organized
capitalism," in both its fascist or "democratic" state
capitalist forms; and the culture industries and mass culture which served as
powerful modes of social control, manipulative forms of ideology and
domination, and novel configurations of culture and everyday life.
Today,
critical theorists confront the challenge of theorizing the emergent forms of
technocapitalism and novelties of the present era constructed by syntheses of
technology and capital in the emergence of a new stage of global capitalism.
The notion of technocapitalism attempts to avoid technological or economic
determinism by guiding theorists to perceive the interaction of capital and
technology in the present moment. Capital is generating innovative forms of
technology just as its restructuring is producing novel configurations of a
networked global economy, culture, and polity. In terms of political economy,
the emergent postindustrial form of technocapitalism is characterized by a
decline of the state and increased power of the market, accompanied by the
growing power of globalized transnational corporations and governmental bodies
and declining power of the nation-state and its institutions -- which remain,
however, extremely important players in the global economy, as the responses to
the terror attacks of September 11 document.
Globalization
also is constituted by a complex interconnection between capitalism and
democracy, which involves positive and negative features, that both empowers
and disempowers individuals and groups, undermining and yet creating potential
for revitalized types of democracy. Yet most theories of globalization are
either primarily negative, presenting it as a disaster for the human species,
or as positive, bringing a wealth of products, ideas, and economic
opportunities to a global arena. Hence, I would advocate development of a critical
theory of globalization that would dialectically appraise its positive and
negative features. A critical theory is sharply critical of globalization's
oppressive effects, skeptical of legitimating ideological discourse, but also
recognizes the centrality of the phenomenon in the present age. It affirms and
promotes globalization's progressive features, while criticizing negative ones
and noting contradictions and ambiguities.
The Contradictory
Matrix of Globalization
Globalization
thus combines economic, technological, social and cultural factors in a unique
matrix that includes homogeneity and heterogeneity, massification and
hybridity, capitalism and democracy, and a contradictory matrix of complex
factors and effects. Globalization also contains a sometimes-conflicting
mixture of the global and the local. As part of the backlash against
globalization over the past years, a wide range of theorists have argued that
the proliferation of difference and the shift to more local discourses and
practices define significant alternatives to corporate globalization. In this
view, theory and politics should swing from the level of globalization and its
accompanying often totalizing and macro dimensions in order to focus on the
local, the specific, the particular, the heterogeneous, and the micro level of
everyday experience. An array of discourses associated with poststructuralism,
postmodernism, feminism, and multiculturalism focus on difference, otherness,
marginality, hybridity, the personal, the particular, and the concrete over
more general theory and politics that aim at more global or universal
conditions. Likewise, a broad spectrum of social movements and subcultures of
resistance have focused their attention on the local level, organizing
struggles around a seemingly endless variety of identity issues (see Best and
Kellner 2001, and Kahn and Kellner 2003).
However,
it can be argued that such dichotomies as those between the global and the
local express contradictions and tensions between crucial constitutive forces
of the present moment, and that it is therefore a mistake to reject a focus on
one side in favor of an exclusive concern with the other (Cvetkovich and
Kellner 1997, Castells 1999). Hence, an important challenge for the emerging
critical theory of globalization is to think through the relationships between
the global and the local by observing how global forces influence and even structure
an increasing number of local situations. This requires analysis as well of how
local forces mediate the global, inflecting global forces to diverse ends and
conditions, and producing unique configurations of the local and the global as
the matrix for thought and action in the contemporary world (see Luke and Luke
2000).
Globalization
is thus necessarily complex and challenging to both critical theories and
radical democratic politics. But many people these days operate with binary
concepts of the global and the local, and promote one or the other side of the
equation as the solution to the world's problems. For globalists, globalization
is the solution, and underdevelopment, backwardness and provincialism are the
problem. For localists, the globalized eradication of traditions, cultures, and
places is the problem and localization is the solution. But, politics is
frequently contextual and pragmatic, and whether global or local solutions are
most salient depends upon the conditions in the distinctive context that one is
addressing and the particular solutions and policies being proposed.
Specific
locations and practices of a plurality of subcultures constitute an important
feature of oppositional subcultural activities at work within the context of
globalization. Consequently, theorists of globalization have made distinctions
between globalization from above, as produced by dominant corporations,
nation states and global institutions, and globalization from below
consisting of groups opposing corporate globalization (see Brecher, Costello
and Smith 2000). Against capitalist globalization from above, there have been a
significant eruption of forces and subcultures of resistance that have
attempted to preserve specific forms of culture and society against globalization
and homogenization, and to create alternative forces of society and culture,
thus exhibiting resistance and globalization from below. Most dramatically,
peasant and guerrilla movements in Latin America, labor unions, students, and
environmentalists throughout the world, and a variety of other groups and
movements have resisted capitalist globalization and attacks on previous rights
and benefits.[5] Several dozen people's organizations
from around the world have protested World Trade Organization policies and a
backlash against globalization is visible everywhere. Politicians who once
championed trade agreements like GATT and NAFTA are now often quiet about these
arrangements and at the 1996 annual Davos World Economic Forum its founder and
managing director published a warning entitled: "Start Taking the Backlash
Against Globalization Seriously." Reports surfaced that major
representatives of the capitalist system expressed fear that capitalism was
getting too mean and predatory, that it needs a kinder and gentler state to
ensure order and harmony, and that the welfare state may make a comeback.[6]
One should take such reports with the proverbial grain of salt, but they
express fissures and openings in the system for critical discourse and
intervention.
Indeed,
by 1999, the theme of the annual Davos conference was making globalization work
for poor countries and minimizing the differences between have and have-nots.
The growing divisions between rich and poor were worrying some globalizers, as
were the wave of crises in Asian, Latin American, and other developing
countries. In James Flanigan's report in the Los Angeles Times (Feb. 19,
1999), the "main theme" is to "spread the wealth. In a world
frightened by glaring imbalances and the weakness of economies from Indonesia
to Russia, the talk is no longer of a new world economy getting stronger but of
ways to 'keep the engine going.'" In particular, the globalizers were
attempting to keep economies growing in the more developed countries and capital
flowing to developing nations. U.S. Vice-President Al Gore called on all
countries to spur economic growth, and he proposed a new U.S.-led initiative to
eliminate the debt burdens of developing countries. South African President
Nelson Mandela asked: "Is globalization only for the powerful? Does it
offer nothing to the men, women and children who are ravaged by the violence of
poverty?"
In
the 2000s, there were ritual proclamations of the need to make globalization
work for the developing nations at all major meetings of global institutions
like the WTO or G-8 convenings. For instance, at the September 2003 WTO meeting
at Cancun, organizers claimed that its goal was to fashion a new trade
agreement that would reduce poverty and boost development in poorer nations.
But critics pointed out that in the past years the richer nations of the U.S.,
Japan, and Europe continued to enforce trade tariffs and provide subsidies for
national producers of goods such as agriculture, while forcing poorer nations
to open their markets to "free trade," thus bankrupting agricultural sectors in
these countries that could not compete. Moreover, major economists like Joseph
Stiglitz (2002), as well as anti-corporate globalization protestors and
critics, argued that the developing countries were not developing under current
corporate globalization policies and that divisions between the rich and poor
nations were growing. Under these conditions, critics of globalization were
calling for radically new policies that would help the developing countries,
regulate the rich, and provide more power to working people and local groups.[7]
But
not only the anti-corporate globalization movement emerged as a form of
globalization from below, but also Al Qaeda and various global terror networks
intensified their attacks and helped generate an era of Terror War (Kellner
2003a). This made it difficult simply to affirm globalization from below while
denigrating globalization from above, as clearly terrorism was an emergent and
dangerous form of globalization from below that was attacking hegemonic global
forces and institutions. Moreover, in the face of Bush administration
unilateralism and militarism, multilateral approaches to the problems of
terrorism called for global responses to the problem, as I argue in this paper.
Thus, in the next section I reflect upon the terror attacks of September 11,
2001 and subsequent Terror War as exemplifying the contradictions and
ambiguities of globalization today and conclude with reflections on the proper
global response to terrorism.
Terrorism and the Contradictions and Ambiguities of
Globalization
The
terrorist acts on the United States on September 11 and subsequent Terror War
dramatically disclose the downsides of globalization, the ways that global
flows of technology, goods, information, ideologies, and people can have
destructive as well as productive effects. The disclosure of powerful
anti-Western terrorist networks shows that globalization divides the world as
it unifies, that it produces enemies as it incorporates participants.
Globalization links people together and brings new commonalties into experience
just as it differentiates them and produces new inequalities. Likewise, while
it connects and brings into global networks parts of the world that were isolated
and cut-off, it ignores and bypasses other regions. The events disclose
explosive contradictions and conflicts at the heart of globalization and that
the technologies of information, communication, and transportation that
facilitate globalization can also be used to undermine and attack it, and
generate instruments of destruction as well as production.[8]
The
experience of September 11 points to the objective ambiguity of
globalization, that positive and negative sides are interconnected, that the institutions
of the open society unlock the possibilities of destruction and violence, as
well as democracy, free trade, and cultural and social exchange. Once again,
the interconnection and interdependency of the networked world was dramatically
demonstrated as terrorists from the Middle East brought local grievances from
their region to attack key symbols of American power and the very
infrastructure of New York. Some saw terrorism as an expression of "the dark
side of globalization," while I would conceive it as part of the ambiguity and
contradictions of globalization that simultaneously creates friends and
enemies, wealth and poverty, and growing divisions between the "haves" and
"have nots." Yet, the downturning of the global economy, intensification of
local and global political conflicts, repression of human rights and civil
liberties, and general increase in fear and anxiety have certainly undermined
the naïve optimism of globophiles who perceived globalization as a purely
positive instrument of progress and well-being.
The use of
powerful technologies as weapons of destruction also discloses current
asymmetries of power and emergent forms of terrorism and war, as the new
millennium exploded into dangerous conflicts and interventions. As technologies
of mass destruction become more available and dispersed, perilous instabilities
have emerged that have elicited policing measures to stem the flow of movements
of people and goods across borders and internally. In particular, the USA
Patriot Act has led to repressive measures that are replacing the spaces of the
open and free information society with new forms of surveillance, policing, and
repression, thus significantly undermining U.S. democracy (see Kellner 2003b).
Ultimately,
however, the abhorrent terror acts by the bin Laden network and the violent
military response by the Bush administration may be an anomalous paroxysm
whereby a highly regressive premodern Islamic fundamentalism has clashed with
an old-fashioned patriarchal and unilateralist Wild West militarism. It could
be that such forms of terrorism, militarism, and state repression would be
superseded by more rational forms of politics that globally criminalize
terrorism, and that do not sacrifice the benefits of the open society and
economy in the name of security. Yet the events of September 11 may open a new
era of Terror War that will lead to the kind of apocalyptic futurist world
depicted by cyberpunk fiction.
In
any case, the events of September 11 have promoted a fury of reflection, theoretical
debates, and political conflicts and upheaval that put the complex dynamics of
globalization at the center of contemporary theory and politics. To those
skeptical of the centrality of globalization to contemporary experience, it is
now clear that we are living in a global world that is highly interconnected
and vulnerable to passions and crises that can cross borders and can effect
anyone or any region at any time. The events of September 11 also provide a
test case to evaluate various theories of globalization and the contemporary
era. In addition, they highlight some of the contradictions of globalization
and the need to develop a highly complex and dialectical model to capture its
conflicts, ambiguities, and contradictory effects.
Consequently,
I want to argue that in order to properly theorize globalization one needs to
conceptualize several sets of contradictions generated by globalization's
combination of technological revolution and restructuring of capital, which in
turn generate tensions between capitalism and democracy, and "haves" and "have
nots." Within the world economy, globalization involves the proliferation of
the logic of capital, but also the spread of democracy in information, finance,
investing, and the diffusion of technology (see Friedman 1999 and Hardt and
Negri 2000). Globalization is thus a contradictory amalgam of capitalism and
democracy, in which the logic of capital and the market system enter ever more
arenas of global life, even as democracy spreads and more political regions and
spaces of everyday life are being contested by democratic demands and forces.
But the overall process is contradictory. Sometimes globalizing forces promote
democracy and sometimes inhibit it, thus either equating capitalism and
democracy, or simply opposing them, are problematical.
The
processes of globalization are highly turbulent and have generated new
conflicts throughout the world. Benjamin Barber (1998) describes the strife
between McWorld and Jihad, contrasting the homogenizing, commercialized,
Americanized tendencies of the global economy and culture with traditional
cultures which are often resistant to globalization. Thomas Friedman (1999)
makes a more benign distinction between what he calls the "Lexus" and
the "Olive Tree." The former is a symbol of modernization, of
affluence and luxury, and of Westernized consumption, contrasted with the Olive
Tree that is a symbol of roots, tradition, place, and stable community. Barber
(1997), however, is too negative toward McWorld and Jihad, failing to
adequately describe the democratic and progressive forces within both. Although
Barber recognizes a dialectic of McWorld and Jihad, he opposes both to
democracy, failing to perceive how both generate their own democratic forces
and tendencies, as well as opposing and undermining democratization. Within the
Western democracies, for instance, there is not just top-down homogenization
and corporate domination, but also globalization-from-below and oppositional
social movements that desire alternatives to capitalist globalization. Thus, it
is not only traditionalist, non-Western forces of Jihad that oppose McWorld.
Likewise, Jihad has its democratizing forces as well as the reactionary Islamic
fundamentalists who are now the most demonized elements of the contemporary
era. Jihad, like McWorld, has its contradictions and its potential for
democratization, as well as elements of domination and destruction (see Kellner
2003b).
Friedman,
by contrast, is too uncritical of globalization, caught up in his own Lexus
high-consumption life-style, failing to perceive the depth of the oppressive
features of globalization and breadth and extent of resistance and opposition
to it. In particular, he fails to articulate contradictions between capitalism
and democracy and the ways that globalization and its economic logic undermines
democracy as well as circulates it. Likewise, he does not grasp the virulence
of the premodern and Jihadist tendencies that he blithely identifies with the
Olive tree and the reasons why globalization and the West are so strongly
resisted in many parts of the world.
Hence,
it is important to present globalization as a strange amalgam of both
homogenizing forces of sameness and uniformity, and heterogeneity,
difference, and hybridity, as well as a contradictory mixture of democratizing
and anti-democratizing tendencies. On one hand, globalization unfolds a process
of standardization in which a globalized mass culture circulates the globe
creating sameness and homogeneity everywhere. But globalized culture makes
possible unique appropriations and developments all over the world, thus
proliferating hybridity, difference, and heterogeneity.[9] Every
local context involves its own appropriation and reworking of global products
and signifiers, thus proliferating difference, otherness, diversity, and
variety (Luke and Luke 2000). Grasping that globalization embodies these
contradictory tendencies at once, that it can be both a force of homogenization
and heterogeneity, is crucial to articulating the contradictions of
globalization and avoiding one-sided and reductive conceptions.
My
intention is to present globalization as conflictual, contradictory and open to
resistance and democratic intervention and transformation and not just as a
monolithic juggernaut of progress or domination as in many discourses. This
goal is advanced by distinguishing between "globalization from below"
and the "globalization from above" of corporate capitalism and the
capitalist state, a distinction that should help us to get a better sense of
how globalization does or does not promote democratization. "Globalization
from below" refers to the ways in which marginalized individuals and
social movements resist globalization and/or use its institutions and
instruments to further democratization and social justice.
Yet, one
needs to avoid binary normative articulations, since globalization from below
can have highly conservative and destructive effects, as well as positive ones,
while globalization from above can help produce global solutions to problems
like terrorism or the environment. Thus, in distinguishing between
globalization from above and globalization from below, one should not simply
affirm that one is good and the other is bad in relation to democracy. As
Friedman shows (1999), capitalist corporations and global forces might very
well promote democratization in many arenas of the world, and
globalization-from-below might promote special interests or reactionary goals,
as well as destructive projects like Al Qaeda terrorism.
While on
one level, globalization significantly increases the supremacy of big
corporations and big government, it can also give power to groups and
individuals that were previously left out of the democratic dialogue and
terrain of political struggle. Such potentially positive effects of
globalization include increased access to education for individuals excluded
from entry to culture and knowledge and the possibility of oppositional
individuals and groups to participate in global culture and politics through
gaining access to global communication and media networks and to circulate
local struggles and oppositional ideas through these media. The role of new
technologies in social movements, political struggle, and everyday life forces
social movements to reconsider their political strategies and goals and
democratic theory to appraise how new technologies do and do not promote
democratization (Kellner 1997 and 1999b).
In
their book Empire, Hardt and Negri (2000) present contradictions within
globalization in terms of an imperializing logic of "Empire" and an assortment
of struggles by the multitude, creating a contradictory and tension-full
situation. As in my conception, Hardt and Negri present globalization as a
complex process that involves a multidimensional mixture of expansions of the
global economy and capitalist market system, new technologies and media,
expanded judicial and legal modes of governance, and emergent modes of power,
sovereignty, and resistance.[10] Combining poststructuralism with
"autonomous Marxism," Hardt and Negri stress political openings and
possibilities of struggle within Empire in an optimistic and buoyant text that
envisages progressive democratization and self-valorization in the turbulent
process of the restructuring of capital.
Many
theorists, by contrast, have argued that one of the trends of globalization is
depoliticization of publics, the decline of the nation-state, and end of
traditional politics (Boggs 2000). While I would agree that globalization is
promoted by tremendously powerful economic forces and that it often undermines
democratic movements and decision-making, I would also argue that there are
openings and possibilities for a globalization from below, and that
globalization can thus help promote as well as undermine democracy.[11]
As noted, however, globalization from below can implement and inflect
globalization both for positive and progressive ends like democracy and social
justice, as well as destructive ones like terrorism.
In general,
globalization involves both a disorganization and reorganization of capitalism,
a tremendous restructuring process, which creates openings for progressive
social change and intervention. In a more fluid and open economic and political
system, oppositional forces can gain concessions, win victories, and effect
progressive changes. During the 1970s, new social movements, new
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and new forms of struggle and solidarity
emerged that have been expanding to the present day (Hardt and Negri 2000;
Burbach 2001; and Foran 2003). And, as noted, destructive forces are also
unleashed like terrorism and the sorts of civil war apparent in Africa and
other parts of the developing world.
The
present conjuncture, I would suggest, is marked by a conflict between growing
centralization and organization of power and wealth in the hands of the few
contrasted with opposing processes exhibiting a fragmentation of power that is
more plural, multiple, and open to contestation. As the following analysis will
suggest, both tendencies are observable and it is up to individuals and groups
to find openings for progressive political intervention and social
transformation that pursue positive values such as democracy, human rights,
ecological preservation and restoration, and social justice, while fighting
poverty, terror, and injustice. Thus, rather than just denouncing
globalization, or engaging in celebration and legitimation, a critical theory
of globalization reproaches those aspects that are oppressive, while seizing
upon opportunities to fight domination and exploitation and to promote
democratization, justice, and a forward looking reconstruction of the polity,
society, and culture.
Globalization,
Terror War, and 9/11
Momentous historical events,
like the September 11 terrorist attacks and the subsequent Terror War, test
social theories and provide a challenge to give a convincing account of the
event and its consequences. In the following analyses, I want first to suggest
how certain dominant social theories were put in question during the momentous
and world-shaking events of September 11, and offer an analysis of the
historical background necessary to understand and contextualize the terror
attacks.
I am using the term "Terror War"
to describe the Bush administration's "war against terrorism" and its use of
unilateral military force and terror as the privileged vehicles of constructing
a U.S. hegemony in the current world (dis)order (see Kellner 2003b). The Bush
administration has expanded its combat against Islamic terrorism into a policy
of Terror War where they have declared the right of the U.S. to strike any
enemy state or organization presumed to harbor or support terrorism, or to
eliminate "weapons of mass destruction" that could be used against the U.S. The
rightwing of the Bush administration seeks to promote Terror War as the
defining struggle of the era, coded as an apocalyptic battle between good and
evil and has already mounted major military campaigns against Afghanistan and
Iraq, with highly ambiguous and unsettling results.
Social theories generalize from past
experience and provide accounts of historical events or periods that attempt to
map, illuminate, and perhaps criticize dominant social relations, institutions,
forms, trends, and events of a given epoch. In turn, they can be judged by the
extent to which they account for, interpret, and critically assess contemporary
conditions, or predict future events or developments. One major theory of the
past two decades, Francis Fukuyama's The End of History (1992), was
strongly put into question by the events of September 11 and their aftermath. [12]
For Fukuyama, the collapse of Soviet communism and triumph of Western
capitalism and democracy in the early 1990s constituted "the end of history."
This signified for him "the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and
the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human
government." Although there may be conflicts in places like the Third World,
overall for Fukuyama liberal democracy and market capitalism have prevailed and
future politics will devolve around resolving routine economic and technical
problems, and the future will accordingly be rather mundane and boring.
Samuel Huntington polemicizes against
Fukuyama's "one world: euphoria and harmony" model in his The Clash of
Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996). For Huntington, the
future holds a series of clashes between "the West and the Rest." Huntington
rejects a number of models of contemporary history, including a "realist" model
that nation-states are primary players on the world scene who will continue to
form alliances and coalitions that will play themselves out in various
conflicts. He also rejects a "chaos" model that detects no discernible order or
structure. Instead, Huntington asserts that the contemporary world is
articulated into competing civilizations that are based on irreconcilably
different cultures and religions. For Huntington, culture provides unifying and
integrating principles of order and cohesion, and from dominant cultural
formations emerge civilizations that are likely to come into conflict with each
other, including Islam, China, Russia, and the West. On Huntington's model,
religion is "perhaps the central force that motivates and mobilizes
people" and is thus the core of civilization.
Although Huntington's model seems to have
some purchase in the currently emerging global encounter with terrorism, and is
becoming a new dominant conservative ideology, it tends to overly homogenize
both Islam and the West, as well as the other civilizations he depicts. As
Tariq Ali argues (2002), Huntington exaggerates the role of religion, while
downplaying the importance of economics and politics.[13]
Moreover, Huntington's model lends itself to pernicious misuse, and has been
deployed to call for and legitimate military retribution against implacable
adversarial civilizations by conservative intellectuals like Jeane Kirkpatrick,
Henry Kissinger, and members of the Bush administration, as well as, in effect,
to give credence to Al Qaeda and Jihadist attacks against the "corrupt" and
"infidel" West.
In
sum, Huntington's work provides too essentialist a model that covers over
contradictions and conflicts both within the West and within Islam. Both worlds
have been divided for centuries into dueling countries, ethnic groups,
religious fractions, and complex alliances that have fought fierce wars against
each other and that continue to be divided geographically, politically,
ideologically, and culturally (see Ali 2002). Moreover, Huntington's ideal type
that contrasts East and West, based on conflicting models of civilization,
covers over the extent to which Arab and Muslim culture preserved the cultural
traditions of the Greece and Rome during the Middle Ages and thus played a
major role in constituting Western culture and modernity. Huntington downplays
as well the extent to which Western science and technology were importantly
anticipated and developed in the Middle and Far East.[14]
Furthermore, Islam itself is a contested terrain
and in the current situation there are important attempts to mobilize more
moderate forms of Islam and Islamic countries against Osama bin Laden's Al
Qaeda terror network and Islamic extremism (see Ahmed 2003). Hence,
Huntington's binary model of inexorable conflict between the West and Islam is
not only analytically problematic, but covers over the crucial battle within
Islam itself to define the role and nature of religion in the contemporary
world. It also decenters the important challenge for the West to engage the
Islamic world in a productive dialogue about religion and modernity and to
bring about more peaceful, informed, and mutually beneficial relations between
the West and the Islamic world. Positing inexorable conflicts between
civilizations may well describe past history and present dangers, but it does
not help produce a better future and is thus normatively and politically
defective and dangerous.
Globalization
includes a homogenizing neo-liberal market logic and commodification, cultural
interaction, and hybridization, as well as conflict between corporations,
nations, blocs, and cultures. Benjamin Barber's book McWorld vs. Jihad
(1996) captures both the sameness and conflictual elements of globalization.
Barber divides the world into a modernizing, stanardizing, Westernizing, and
secular forces of globalization, controlled by multinational corporations,
opposed to premodern, fundamentalist, and tribalizing forces at war with the
West and modernity. The provocative "Jihad" in the title seems to grasp
precisely the animus against the West in Islamic extremism. But "Jihad"
scholars argue that the term has a complex history in Islam and often privilege
the more spiritual senses as a struggle for religion and spiritualization, or a
struggle within oneself for spiritual mastery. From this view, bin Laden's
militarization of Jihad is itself a distortion of Islam that is contested by
its mainstream.[15]
Leading
dualistic theories that posit a fundamental bifurcation between the West and
Islam are thus analytically suspicious in that they homogenize complex
civilizations and cover over differences, hybridizations, contradictions, and
conflicts within these cultures. Positing inexorable clashes between bifurcated
blocs a la Huntington and Barber fails to illuminate specific discord within
the opposing spheres and the complex relations between them. These analyses do
not grasp the complexity in the current geopolitical situation, which involves
highly multifaceted and intricate interests, coalitions, and conflicts that
shift and evolve in response to changing situations within an overdetermined
and constantly evolving historical context. As Tariq Ali points out (2002),
dualistic models of clashes of civilization also occlude the historical forces
that clashed in the September 11 attacks and the subsequent Terror War.
Consequently, the events of September 11 and
their aftermath suggest that critical social theory needs models that account
for complexity and the historical roots and vicissitudes of contemporary
problems like terrorism rather than bifurcated dualistic theories. Critical
social theory also needs to articulate how events like September 11 produce
novel historical configurations while articulating both changes and
continuities in the present situation.[16] It requires historical
accounts of the contemporary origins of Islamic radicalism and its complicity
with U.S. imperialism (see Kellner 2003b). The causes of the September 11
events and their aftermath are highly multifaceted and involve, for starters,
the failure of U.S. intelligence and the destructive consequences of U.S.
interventionist foreign policy since World War II and the failure to address
the Israeli-Palestinian crisis; U.S. policies since the late 1970s that
supported Islamic Jihadist forces against the Soviet Union in the last days of
the Cold War; and the failure to take terrorist threats seriously and provide
an adequate response. In other words, there is no one cause or faction
responsible for the 9/11 terror attacks, but a wide range of responsibility to
be ascribed and a complex historical background concerning relations between
the U.S. and radical Islamic forces in the Cold War and then conflicts starting
with the 1990-1991 "crisis in the Gulf" and subsequent Gulf War (see Kellner
1992 and 2003b. In the next section, I want to suggest how these events have
been bound up with the trajectory of globalization.
Globalization
and the Aftermath 9/11 Terror Attacks: What Has Changed?
In the aftermath of September 11, there was a
wealth of commentary arguing that "everything has changed," that the
post-September 11 world is a different one, less innocent, more serious, and
significantly altered, with momentous modifications in the economy, polity,
culture and everyday life. There were some doubters such as historian Alan
Brinkley who stated in a New York Times interview (Sept. 14, 2002): "I'm
skeptical that this is a great rupture in the fabric of history."[17]
Time alone will tell the depth of the magnitude of change, but there are
enough significant shifts that have occurred already to see September 11 as a transformational
event that has created some dramatic alterations in both the U.S. and
global society, signaling reconfigurations and novelties in the current world.
In the context of U.S. politics, September 11
was so far-reaching and catastrophic that it flipped the political world upside
down, put new issues on the agenda, and changed the political, cultural, and
economic climate almost completely overnight. To begin, there was a dramatic
reversal of the fortunes of George W. Bush and the Bush administration. Before
September 11, Bush's popularity was rapidly declining. After several months of
the most breathtaking hardright turn perhaps ever seen in U.S. politics, Bush
seemed to lose control of the agenda with the defection of Vermont Republican
Senator Jim Jeffords to the Democratic Party in May 2001. Jeffords' defection
gave the Democrats a razor-thin control of Congress and the ability to block
Bush's programs and to advance their own (see Kellner 2001, Chapter Eleven).
Bush seemed disengaged after this setback, spending more and more time at his
Texas ranch. He was widely perceived as incompetent and unqualified, and his
public support was seriously eroding.
With the terror attacks of September 11, however,
the bitter partisanship of the previous months disappeared and Bush was the
beneficiary of a extraordinary outburst of patriotism. Support for the Bush
administration was strongly fuelled by the media that provided 24/7 coverage of
the heroism of the fireman, police, and rescue workers at the World Trade
Center. The response of ordinary citizens to the tragedy showed American
courage, skill, and dedication at its best, as rescue workers heroically
struggled to save lives and deal with the immense problems of removing the
Trade Center ruins. New York City and the country pulled together in a
remarkable display of community, heroism, and resolve, focused on in the
ongoing media coverage of the tragedy. There was an explosion of flags and
patriotism and widespread desire for military retaliation, fanned by the media.
The U.S. media's demonizing coverage of bin
Laden and his Al Qaeda network of terrorists and constant demand for strong
military retaliation precluded developing broader coalitions and more global
and less militarist approaches to the problem of terrorism. The anthrax
attacks, unsolved as I write in Fall 2003, fueled media hysteria and mass panic
that terrorism could strike anyone at any time and any place. Bush articulated
the escalating patriotism, vilification of the terrorists, and the demand for
stern military retaliation, and a frightened nation supported his policies,
often without seeing their broader implications and threat to democracy and
world peace.
There was a brief and ironical ideological
flip-flop of Bush administration policy, in which it temporarily put aside the
unilateralism that had distinguished its first months in office in favor of a
multilateral approach. As the Bush administration scrambled to assemble a
global coalition against terrorism with partners such as Pakistan, China, and
Russia, that it had previously ignored or in the case of China even provoked,
illusions circulated that the U.S. would pursue a more multilateral global
politics. Yet ultimately the U.S. largely chose to fight the Afghanistan war
itself, eschewing NATO, UN, or other multilateral support. One could indeed
argue that the failures of the Afghan intervention to capture bin Laden, Mullah
Omar, and other top Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership was a result of the U.S.
choosing a unilateral military policy rather than a more multilateral approach
(see Kellner 2003b).
With the apparent collapse of the Taliban and
the defacto conclusion of the intense military phase of the Afghanistan Terror
War by December 2001, the Bush administration intensified its unilateral
approach and only many months later invited in a more multilateral policing
force although as of Fall 2003, the multilateral police forces are only
operative in Kabul and the rest of the country remains in chaos.[18]
Moreover, the Bush doctrine articulated in his January 2002 State of the Union
address projected an "axis of evil" threatened by U.S. military action, called
for unprecedented military action and build-up, and evoked an image of an era
of war via U.S. military intervention throughout the world for the foreseeable
future. The threat of a new militarism as the defining feature of the Bush era
was intensified as his administration came to formulate his doctrine of
"preemptive strikes" during the summer of 2002 and put into practice via the
Bush and Blair war against Iraq in April 2003.
Crucially, the September 11 events dramatized that
globalization is a defining reality of our time and that the much-celebrated
flow of people, ideas, technology, media, and goods could have a down side as
well as an upside, and expensive costs as well as benefits. The 9/11 terror
attacks also call attention to the complex and unpredictable nature of a
globally-connected networked society and the paradoxes, surprises, and
unintended consequences that flow from the multidimensional processes of
globalization. Al Qaeda presented an example of a hidden and secretive
decentered network dedicated to attacking the U.S. and their Afghanistan base
represented what theorists called "wild zones" or "zones of turmoil" that
existed out of the boundaries of "safe zones" of globalized metropoles like
Wall Street and Northern Virginia (see Mann 2001 and Urry 2002). Globalization
thus generates its Other, its opponents, just as it destroys tradition and
incorporates ever more parts of the world and forms of life into its
modernizing and neo-liberal market.
For the first time, the American people were
obliged to perceive that it had serious enemies throughout the globe and that
global problems had to be addressed. No longer could the U.S. enjoy the luxury
of isolationism, but was forced to actively define its role within a dangerous
and complex global environment. Moreover, the
terror attacks of 9/11 put in question much conventional wisdom and forced U.S.
citizens and others to reflect upon the continued viability of key values,
practices, and institutions of a democratic society. In particular, the events
of September 11 force the rethinking of globalization, technology, democracy,
and national and global security. 9/11 and its aftermath demonstrate the
significance of globalization and the ways that global, national, and local
scenes and events intersect in the contemporary world. The terror spectacle
also pointed to the fundamental contradictions and ambiguities of
globalization, undermining one-sided pro or anti-globalization positions.
9/11 was
obviously a global event that dramatized an interconnected and conflicted networked society where there
is a constant worldwide flow of people, products, technologies, ideas and the
like. September 11 could only be a mega-event in a global media world, a
society of the spectacle (Debord 1970), where the whole world is watching and
participates in what Marshall McLuhan (1964) called a global village. The 9/11
terror spectacle was obviously constructed as a media event to circulate terror
and to demonstrate to the world the vulnerability of the epicenter of global
capitalism and American power.
Thus, September 11
dramatized the interconnected networked globe and the important role of the
media in which individuals everywhere can simultaneously watch events of
global significance unfold and participate in the dramas of globalization.
Already,
Bill Clinton had said before September 11 that terrorism is the downside,
the dark side, of globalization, and after 9/11 Colin Powell interpreted
the
terrorist attacks in similar fashion. Worldwide terrorism is threatening
in part because globalization relentlessly divides the world into have and
have-nots, promotes conflicts and competition, and fuels long simmering hatreds
and grievances -- as well as bringing people together, creating new relations
and interactions, and new hybridities. This is the objective ambiguity of
globalization that both brings people together and brings them into conflict,
that creates social interaction and inclusion, as well as hostilities and
exclusions, and that potentially tears regions and the world apart while
attempting to pull things together. Moreover, as different groups gain access
to technologies of destruction and devise plans to make conventional
technologies, like the airplane, instruments of destruction then dangers
of unexpected terror events, any place and any time proliferate and become
part of
the frightening mediascape of the contemporary moment.
Globalization is thus messier and more
dangerous than previous theories had indicated. Moreover, global terrorism and
megaspectacle terror events are possible because of the lethality and power of
new technology, and its availability to groups and individuals that previously
had restricted access. In a perverted distortion of Andrew Feenberg's theory of
the reconstruction and democratization of technology (1995, 1999), terrorist
groups seek technologies of mass destruction in the past monopolized by the
state and take instruments of mass transportation and communication run by
corporations and the state, like airlines and mail delivery, and reconvert
these instruments into weapons of mass destruction, or at least of mass terror.
I might parenthetically note here the etymology of the term terrorism, which,
according to most scholars, derives from the Latin verb terrere, "to cause to
tremble or quiver." It began to be used during the French Revolution, and especially
after the fall of Robespierre and the "reign of terror," or simply, "the
Terror" in which enemies of the revolution were subjected to imprisonment,
torture and beheading, the first of many modern examples of state terrorism.
Hence, 9/11 exhibited a technological terror that
converts benign instruments like airlines and buildings into instruments of
mass destruction. Within a short time after the 9/11 terror attacks, in early
October, 2001, the mail system was polluted by anthrax. Since infected letters
were sent to politicians and corporate media, there was maximum public
attention on the dangers on a lethal anthrax attack, making postal work, mail
delivery, and the opening of mail a traumatic event, infused with fear. This is
exactly the goal of terrorism and media hysteria over anthrax attacks went far
in promoting war fever and hysterical fear that led the public to
unquestionably support whatever military retaliation, or domestic politics, the
Bush administration choose to exert. Curiously, while the Bush administration
seemed at first to blame the Al Qaeda network and then Iraq for the anthrax
attacks, it appears that the military high grade of anthrax has the genetic
footprint of U.S. laboratories in Fort Detrick Maryland. But eventually the FBI
and academic experts believe the source of the attacks was an individual
working for the U.S. defense and biological weapons establishment (see Kellner
2003b).
It is clear from September 11 that the new
technologies disperse power, empowering angry disempowered people, leveling the
playing field and distributing the use and application of information
technology and some technologies of mass destruction. Many military
technologies can be obtained by individuals and groups to use against the
superpowers and the access to such technology produces a situation of asymmetrical
war where weaker individuals and groups
can go after superpowers. The possibility of new forms of cyberwar, and
terrorist threats from chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons, creates new
vulnerabilities in the national defense of the overdeveloped countries and
provides opportunities for weaker nations or groups to attack stronger ones.
Journalist William Greider, for instance, author of Fortress America: The
American Military and the Consequences of Peace, claims that: "A
deadly irony is embedded in the potential of these new technologies. Smaller,
poorer nations may be able to defend themselves on the cheap against the
intrusion of America's overwhelming military strength" (abcsnew.com,
11/01/99) -- or exercise deadly terrorism against civilian populations.
Hence, the U.S.
discovered that it is vulnerable domestically to terrorist attack. Likewise, it
is becoming clear that the more technologically advanced a society is, the more
vulnerable it is to cyberwar. There are now, of course, serious worries about the Internet and cyberterrorism
disrupting the global economy and networked society. It is somewhat strange
that terrorist groups have not, in fact, gone after the Internet, and attempted
to shut it down since they were obviously attempting to disrupt global business
by attacking the World Trade Center and airlines industry. Already Paul Virilio
evoked the frightening possibility of the collapse of the Internet through a
major technological "event" that would cause its shutdown ‹- disruptions
previewed by hacker attacks, worms, and viruses over the past years.[19]
Rather, the Al Qaeda terror network used the
Internet, as it used globalization, to move its communication, money, people,
propaganda, and terror. Curiously, then, 9/11 dramatizes that all of the most
positive aspects of globalization and new technology can be turned against the
U.S., or, in general, positive aspects of globalization can turn into their
opposite. This situation illustrates Adorno and Horkheimer's "dialectic of
Enlightenment," in which reason, science, technology, and other instruments of
Enlightenment turned into their opposites in the hands of German fascism and
other oppressive social groups (1972). Airplanes, for example, cab be
instruments of terror as well as transportation. Indeed, globalization makes
possible global terror networks as well as networks of commerce and
communication. The circulation of commodities, technologies, ideas, money and
people can facilitate networks of terror, as well as trade and travel. The
Internet makes possible the spreading of hate and terror, as well as knowledge
and culture. Computers can be an integral part of a terror network just as they
are part of businesses everywhere and many of our own everyday lives. And
biotechnology, which promises such extravagant medical advances and miracles,
can provide weapons of mass destruction, as well as medicines and positive
forces.
Thus, September 11 and its aftermath exhibits
the contradictions and ambiguities of globalization, the Internet,
biotechnology, and technology in general in the contemporary age. Globalization
has upsides and downsides, costs and benefits, which are often interconnected,
and is consequently intrinsically ambiguous. New technologies can be used
positively or negatively and in fact are at once potentially empowering and
productive and disempowering and destructive, and are thus fraught with
contradictions. Often, the positives and negatives of globalization and new
technology are intertwined, as when the free and open society enabled the open
movement of terrorists; the open architecture of the Internet enabled
terrorists to communicate, circulate money, and organize their terror attacks;
and the networked society of globalization, with its dark sides, enabled
terrorists to attack the very symbols of American global wealth and power.
Certainly bin Laden's Al Qaeda network
represents bad globalization, most would agree, and the perverted use of
technology. But in a sense the Al Qaeda Jihad is the reverse image of McWorld,
which imposes its Jihad on tradition and local culture, wanting to create the
world in its image. Just as Al Qaeda dreams of imposing a radical premodern
Islam on the world, taking over and destroying Western infidel culture and
imposing a homogenized Islamic fundamentalism, so too does McDonald's want to
destroy local and traditional eating habits and cuisine and replace them with a
globalized and universalized menu.
Hence,
whereas theories of globalization, the Internet, and cyberculture tended to be
on the whole one-sided, either pro or con, 9/11 and its aftermath showed the
objective ambiguity and contradictions of these phenomena and need for a more
dialectical and contextualizing optic. On one hand, the events showed the
fundamental interdependence of the world, dramatizing how activities in one
part of the world effected others and the need for more global consciousness
and politics. The September 11 events exposed the dangers and weaknesses inherent
in constructions of Fortress America, and the untenability of isolationism and
unilateralist policies. They made evident that we are in a local/global world
with local/global problems, which require local/global solutions.
As the Bush administration pursued
increasingly unilateralist policies after seeming to make gestures toward a
multilateralist response, the aftermath of 9/11 shows the limited possibilities
for a single nation to impose its will on the world and to dominate the complex
environment of the world economy and politics, as the turmoil evident by fall
2003 in both Afghanistan and Iraq reveal. The
9/11 terror attacks also disclosed the failures of the laissez-faire
conservative economics, which claimed that there was a market solution to every
problem. Just as Grand Theft 2000 revealed the failure of voting technology,
the voting registration process, the very system of voting, as well as the
failure of the media and judicial system in the United States (see Kellner
2001), so too did September 11 reveal the massive failure of U.S. intelligence
agencies, the National Security State, and the U.S. government to protect the
people in the country, as well as cities and monuments, against terrorist
attack. The privatization undergone by the airlines industry left travelers
vulnerable to the hijacking of airplanes; the confused and ineffectual response
by the federal government to the anthrax attacks uncovered the necessity of a
better public health system, as well as more protection and security against
terrorist attacks. Going after the terror networks disclosed the need for
tighter financial regulation, better legal and police coordination, and an
improved intelligence and national security apparatus. Rebuilding New York City
and the lives of those affected by the terror attacks showed the need for a
beneficent welfare state that would provide for its citizens in their time of
need.
Thus,
the 9/11 events end the fantasies of Reagan-Bush conservative economics that
the market alone can solve all social problems and provide the best mechanism
for every industry and sector of life. The Bush-Enron scandals also reveal the
utter failures of neo-liberalism and the need for a stronger and more effective
polity for the U.S. to compete and survive in a highly complex world economy
and polity (see Kellner 2003b, Chapter 9).
On
the whole, September 11 and its aftermath have made the world a much more
dangerous place. Regional conflicts from the Israel-Palestine hostilities in
the Middle East to India-Pakistan conflict to discord in Africa, the
Philippines, Columbia, and elsewhere have used Bush administration discourse
against terrorism to suppress human rights, to legitimate government
oppression, and to kill political opponents throughout the world. Bush administration
unilateralism in pursuing the war against terror throughout the world,
including against an imagined "axis of evil" not directly related to the Al
Qaeda terror network, has weakened multilateral agreements and forces from NATO
to the UN and has increased collective insecurity immensely. The Bush
administration polarizing policy of "you are with us or against us" has divided
alliances, is ever more isolating the U.S. and is producing a more polarized
and conflicted world. The alarming build-up of U.S. military power is
escalating a new militarism and producing proliferating enemies and resentment
against the U.S., now being increasingly seen as a rogue superpower. Finally,
aggressive U.S. military action throughout the world, failed propaganda in the
Arab world, and what is perceived as growing U.S. arrogance and belligerence is
producing more enemies in the Arab world and elsewhere that will no doubt
create dangerous blowback effects in the future.
Not
only has Bush administration unilateralist foreign policy endangered the U.S.
to new attacks and enemies, but Bush administration domestic policy has also
weakened democracy, civil liberties, and the very concept of a free and open
society. Draconian anti-terror laws embodied in the so-called "USA Patriot Act"
have immeasurably increased government powers of surveillance, arrest, and
detention. The erection of military prison camps for suspected terrorists, the
abrogation of basic civil liberties, and the call for military trials
undermines decades of progress in developing a democratic policy, producing
among the most regressive U.S. domestic policies in history.
Bush
administration economic policy has also done little to strengthen the "new
economy," largely giving favors to its major contributors in the oil, energy,
and military industries. Bush administration censorship of Web-sites, e-mail
and wireless communication, refusal to release government documents, and
curtailment of the information freedom act signals the decline of the
information society and perhaps of a free and open democratic society.
Traditional Bush family secrecy explains part of the extreme assaults on open
flow of information and freedom, but there are also signs that key members of
the Bush administration are contemptuous of democracy itself and threaten to
drastically cut back democratic rights and freedoms.
Consequently,
Bush administration policy has arguably exploited the tragedy of September 11
for promoting its own political agenda and interests and threatens to undermine
the U.S. and world economy and American democracy in the process. 9/11 thus
represents a clear and present danger to the U.S. economy and democracy as well
as the threat of terror attacks. Of course, many people lost loved ones in the
9/11 terror attacks and their lives will never be the same. Other individuals
have returned to the routines and patterns of their pre-September 11 life, and
there are thus continuities in culture and everyday life as well as differences
and changes. It is not clear if there will be a significant and lasting
resurgence of civic re-engagement, but more people now realize that global
politics are highly significant and that there should be more focus and debates
on this terrain than previously.
Still, many
corporate and political interests and individual citizens pursue business as
usual at the same time that significant differences unfold in the economy and
politics. There are, however, intelligent and destructive ways to fight global
terrorism and such a virulent global problem requires a global and multilateral
solution, demanding alliances of a complex array of countries on the legal,
police, economic, and military front. In this global context, there are serious
dangers that the Bush administration will make the problem of terrorism worse
and will immeasurably weaken the U.S. and the global economy and polity in the
process. In the name of containing
terrorism, the Bush administration is both championing curtailment of civil
liberties and the public sphere domestically and promoting military solutions
to terrorism globally. These policies legitimate repressive regimes to suppress
human rights and democracy and to themselves use military and police methods to
deal with their respective regime's opponents and critics -- as was evident in
the India-Pakistan dispute, the intensification of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict, and numerous other actions around the world following the Bush
administration Afghanistan intervention.[20] And the U.S.-U.K. Iraq
intervention also arguably destabilized the Middle East and created more
enemies for the West and new waves of terrorist violence. In this situation, it
is now becoming increasingly important to seek local/global solutions to
local/global problems, to defend democracy and social justice, and to criticize
both militarism and terrorism.
For Democracy and Against Terrorism and
Militarism
In conclusion, I want to argue that in the
light of the Bush administration attacks on democracy and the public sphere in
the United States and elsewhere in the name of a war against terrorism, there
should be a strong reaffirmation of the basic values and institutions of
democracy and a call for local/global solutions to problems that involve both
dimensions. Progressive social movements should thus struggle against
terrorism, militarism, and social injustice and for democracy, peace,
environmentalism, human rights, and social justice. Rather than curtailing
democracy in the naming of fighting terrorism we need to strengthen democracy
in the name of its survival and indeed the survival of the planet against the
forces of violence and destruction. Rather than absolve Bush administration
domestic and foreign policy from criticism in the name of patriotism and
national unity, as the administration's supporters demand, we need more than
ever a critical dialogue on how to defeat terrorism and how to strengthen
democracy throughout the world.
Democracy is in part a dialogue that requires
dissent and debate as well as consensus. Those who believe in democracy should
oppose all attempts to curtail democratic rights and liberties and a free and
open public sphere. Democracy also involves the cultivation of oppositional
public spheres and as in the 1960s on a global scale there should be a
resurrection of the local, national, and global movements for social
transformation that emerged as a reaction to war and injustice in the earlier
era. This is not to call for a return to the 1960s, but for the rebirth of
local/global movements for peace and justice that build on the lessons of the
past as they engage the realities of the present.
In addition to re-affirming democracy, we
should be against terrorism and militarism. This is not to argue for an utopic
pacifism, but to argue against militarism in the sense that the military is
offered as the privileged solution to the problem of terrorism and in which the
military is significantly expanded, as in the Bush administration massive
military build-up, and promotion of unilateral military action. Thus, while I
would argue that military action against terrorism is legitimate, I would
oppose U.S. unilateralist militarism outside of the bounds of recognized
military conventions and law, and would favor more multilateral action in the
context of global law and coalitions.
Yet
just as globalization from above and from below can both have positive and
destructive dimensions and effects, likewise unilateralism is not per se bad
and multilateralism is not itself good. Sometimes it is necessary for
nation-states to undertake unilateral action, and often multilateral agreements
and coalitions are deployed to exert power of the haves over the have nots, or
for stronger states to suppress weaker ones. Yet in the context of current
debates over terrorism and global problems like the environment and arms
control, certain multilateral and global solutions have become necessary while
Bush administration unilateralism has clear shown its flaws and failures.
There is little doubt that that the Bin Laden
and Al Qaeda terrorists are highly fanatical and religious in their ideology
and actions, of a sort hard to comprehend by Western categories. In their drive
for an apocalyptic Jihad, they believe that their goals will be furthered by
creating chaos, especially war between radical Islam and the West. Obviously,
dialogue is not possible with such groups, but equally as certain an
overreactive military response that causes a large number of innocent civilian
deaths in a Muslim country could trigger precisely such an apocalyptic
explosion of violence as was dreamed of by the fanatic terrorists. It would
seem that such a retaliatory response was desired by the Bin Laden group which
carried out the terrorist attacks on the U.S. Thus, to continue to attack Arab
and Islamic countries could be to fall into the Bin Laden gang's trap and play
their game -- with highly dangerous consequences.
Further, we need to reflect on the global
economic, social, environmental and other consequences of promoting militarism
and an era of warfare against terrorism. Evoking and fighting an "axis of evil"
called for by the Bush administration is highly dangerous, irrational, and
potentially apocalyptic. It is not clear that the global economy can survive
constant disruption of warfare. Nor can the environment stand constant bombardment
and warfare, when ecological survival is already threatened by unrestrained
capitalist development (see Kovel 2002 and Foster 2003). To carry out continued
military intervention, whether against an "axis of evil" or any country that is
said to support terrorism by the Bush administration, risks apocalypse of the
most frightening kind. Continued large-scale bombing of Iraq, Iran, Syria or
any Arab countries, especially after growing anger following the U.S./U.K. war
against Iraq in 2003, could trigger an upheaval in Pakistan, with conceivable
turmoil in Saudi Arabia and other Moslem countries. It could also help produce
a dangerous escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, already at a state
of white-hot intensity, whose expansion could engulf the Middle East in flames.
Thus, while it is reasonable to deem
international terrorism a deadly threat on a global scale and to take resolute
action against terrorism, what is required is an intelligent multifaceted and
multilateral response. This would require a diplomatic consensus that a global
campaign against terrorism is necessary which requires the arrest of members of
terrorist networks, the regulation of financial institutions that allow funds
to flow to terrorists, the implementation of national security measures to
protect citizens against terrorism, and the world-wide criminalization of
terrorist networks that sets international, national, and local institutions
against the terrorist threat. Some of these measures have already begun and the
conditions are present to develop an effective and resolute global campaign
against terrorism.
There is a danger, however, that excessive
unilateral American military action would split a potential coalition, creating
uncontrollable chaos that could destroy the global economy and create an era of
apocalyptic war and misery such as Orwell evoked in 1984. We are living
in a very dangerous period and must be extremely careful and responsible in
appraising responses to the events of September 11 and other terrorist attacks
bound to happen. This will require the mobilization of publics on a local,
national, and global level to oppose both terrorism and militarism and to seek
productive solutions to the social problems that generate terrorism, as well as
to terrorism itself.
Consequently, while I would support a global
campaign against terrorism, I believe that we cannot depend on war or
large-scale military action to solve the problem of global terrorism.
Terrorists should be criminalized and international and national institutions
should go after terrorist networks and those who support them with the
appropriate legal, financial, judicial, and political instruments. Before and
during Bush administration military intervention in Afghanistan, an intelligent
campaign was underway that had arrested many participants and supporters of the
bin Laden and other terror networks, that had alerted publics throughout the
world to the dangers of terrorism, and that had created the conditions of
possibility for a global campaign against terror. But we need global movements
and institutions to oppose purely militarist attacks on terrorism and that
legitimate the suppression of democracy in the name of the war against
terrorism.
Another lesson of September 11 is that it is
now totally appropriate to be completely against terrorism, to use the term in
the arsenal of critical social theory, and to declare it unacceptable and
indefensible in the modern world. There was a time when it was argued that one
person's "terrorism" was another person's "national liberation movement," or
"freedom fighter," and that the term was thus an ideological concept not to be
used by politically and theoretically correct discourse -- a position that
Reuters purportedly continues to follow.
In terms of modern/postmodern
epistemological debates, I would argue against absolutism and universalism
and for providing a contextual and historical account of terms like terrorism.
There were times in history when "terrorism" was an arguably defensible tactic
used by those engaged in struggles against fascism, such as in World War
II, or
in national liberation struggles, such as in the movements against oppressive
European and later U.S. empire and colonialism. In the current situation,
however, when terrorism is a clear and present danger to innocent civilians
throughout the world, it seems unacceptable to advocate, carry out, or defend
terrorism against civilian populations because of the lethality of modern
weapons, the immorality of indiscriminate crime, and the explosiveness of
the present situation when terror on one side could unleash genocidal, even
species-cidal, terror as a retaliatory response.
Yet it is extremely important
to be critical of state terrorism when one discusses the complex and sensitive
topic of terrorism. For decades, the U.S. and Israel have been accused of
state
terrorism (see Chomsky and Herman 1979 and Herman 1982), just as many European
superpowers had been previously. In much of the world, the 2003 Bush-Blair
war against Iraq is seen as an example of state terrorism and Israeli policies
continue to warrant this label.
It is therefore neither the time for
terrorism nor reckless unilateral military intervention, but for a global
campaign against terrorism that deploys all legal, political, and morally
defensible means to destroy the network of terrorists responsible for the
September 11 events, but that is also against state terrorism and for democracy
and peace. Such a global response would put terrorist groups on warning that
their activity will be strongly opposed, and that "terrorism" will be construed
as a moral and political malevolence not to be accepted or defended. But a
progressive global campaign should also not accept militarism, the erection of
a police-military state, and the undermining of democracy in the name of
fighting terrorism.
Thus,
while I would support a global campaign against terrorism, especially the al
Qaeda network, that could include military action under UN or other global
auspices, I would not trust U.S. unilateral military action for reasons of U.S.
failures in the region and its sustained history of supporting the most
reactionary social forces (see Kellner 2003b). Indeed, one of the stakes of the
current crisis, and of globalization itself, is whether the U.S. empire will
come to dominate the world, or whether globalization will constitute a more
democratic, cosmopolitan, pluralistic, and just world, without domination by
hegemonic states or corporations. Now more than ever local/global institutions
and movements are needed to deal with local/global problems and those who see
positive potential in globalization should renounce all merely national and
unilateral solutions to the problem of terrorism and seek global ones.
Consequently, while politicians like Bill Clinton and Colin Powell have deemed
terrorism "the dark side of globalization," it can also be seen as an
unacceptable response to misguided and destructive imperial national policies
which themselves must be transformed if a world without terror is possible.
Finally,
this will require the anti-corporate globalization movement to rethink its
nature, agenda, and goals. There may well be a "clash of civilizations"
occurring today between the globalizing forces of transnational capital and
resistance to global capitalism by heterogeneous configurations of individuals,
groups, and social movements. But in its first stages the movement against
capitalist globalization tended to be defined more by what it was against than
what it was for, hence, the common term "anti-globalization movement." New
social movements in the contemporary era must, however, define themselves by
what they are for as well as against. In the wake of September 11, I am
suggesting that local, national, and global democratic movements should be for
democracy, peace, environmentalism, and social justice and against war,
militarism, and terrorism, as well as the multiplicity of injustices that
various social movements are currently fighting. Now, more than ever, we are
living in a global world and need new global movements and politics to address
global problems and achieve global solutions.
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Notes
[1]
In this study, I draw upon previous studies of globalization in Cvetkovich and
Kellner 1997 and Kellner 1998 and 2002, and my study of the 9/11 terror attacks
and subsequent Terror War in Kellner 2003b. For critical comments that helped
with the revision of this article, I am thankful to Richard Kahn, David
Sherman, and Ino Rossi.
[2]. Attempts to chart the globalization of capital, decline of the nation-state,
and rise of a new global culture include the essays in Featherstone 1990;
Giddens 1990; Robertson 1991; King 1991; Bird, et al, 1993; Gilroy 1993;
Arrighi 1994; Lash and Urry 1994; Grewel and Kaplan 1994; Wark 1994;
Featherstone and Lash 1995; Axford 1995; Held 1995; Waters 1995; Hirst and
Thompson 1996; Wilson and Dissayanake 1996; Albrow 1996; Cvetkovich and Kellner
1997; Kellner 1998; Friedman 1999; Held, et al 1999; Hardt and Negri 2000;
Steger 2002; Stiglitz 2002; and Kellner 2002.
[3]
What now appears at the first stage of academic and popular discourses of
globalization in the 1990s tended to be dichotomized into celebratory
globophilia and dismissive globophobia. There was also a tendency in some
theorists to exaggerate the novelties of globalization and others to dismiss
these claims by arguing that globalization has been going on for centuries and
there is not that much that is new and different. For an excellent delineation
and critique of academic discourses on globalization, see Steger 2002.
[4]
In his extreme postmodern stage, Baudrillard (1993) argued that "simulation"
had replaced production as the organizing principle of contemporary societies,
marking "the end of political economy." See the critique in Kellner 1989b. In
general, I am trying to mediate the economic determinism in some neo-Marxian
and other theories of globalization and the technological determinism found in
Baudrillard and others.
[5]. On resistance to globalization by labor, see Moody 1997; on resistance
by environmentalists and other social movements, see the studies in Mander and
Goldsmith 1996, Kellner 1999 and 2003c, and Best and Kellner, 2001.
[6]. See the article in New York Times, February 7, 1996: A15.
Friedman (1999: 267f) notes that George Soros was the star of Davos in 1995,
when the triumph of global capital was being celebrated, but that the next year
Russian Communist Party leader Gennadi A. Zyuganov was a major media focus when
unrestrained globalization was being questioned -- though Friedman does not
point out that this was a result of a growing recognition that divisions
between "haves" and "have nots" were becoming too scandalous and that predatory
capitalism was becoming too brutal and ferocious....
[7]
On the Cancun meetings, see Chris Kraul, "WTO Meeting Finds Protests Inside and
out,"
Los Angeles Times (September 11, 2003: A3); Patricia Hewitt,
"Making trade fairer,"
The Guardian, September 12, 2003; and Naomi
Klein, "Activists must follow the money,"
The Guardian, September 12,
2003. On the growing division between rich and poor, see Benjamin M. Friedman,
"Globalization: Stiglitz's Case,"
The New York Review of Books (August
15, 2002) and "George Monbiot, "The worst of times"
The Guardian,
September 12, 2003.
[8]
I am not able in the framework of this paper to theorize the alarming expansion
of war and militarism in the post-9/ 11 environment. For my theorizing of these
topics, see Kellner 2002 and 2003b.
[9]. For example, as Ritzer argues (1993 and 1996), McDonald's imposes not
only a similar cuisine all over the world, but circulates processes of what he
calls "McDonaldization" that involve a production/consumption model
of efficiency, technological rationality, calculability, predictability, and
control. Yet as Watson et al 1997 argue, McDonald's has various cultural
meanings in diverse local contexts, as well as different products,
organization, and effects. Yet the latter goes too far toward stressing
heterogeneity, downplaying the cultural power of McDonald's as a force of a
homogenizing globalization and Western corporate logic and system; see Kellner
1999a and 2003a.
[10] While I find Empire an extremely
impressive and productive text, I am not sure, however, what is gained by using
the word "Empire" rather than the concepts of global capital and political economy.
Although Hardt and Negri combine categories of Marxism and critical social
theory with poststructuralist discourse derived from Foucault and Deleuze and
Guattari, they frequently favor the latter, often mystifying and obscuring the
object of analysis. I am also not as confident as Hardt and Negri that the
"multitude" replaces traditional concepts of the working class and other modern
political subjects, movements, and actors, and find the emphasis on nomads,
"New Barbarians," and the poor as replacement categories problematical. Nor am
I clear on exactly what forms their poststructuralist politics would take. The
same problem is evident, I believe, in an earlier decade's provocative and
postmarxist text by Laclau and Mouffe (1985), who valorized new social
movements, radical democracy, and a postsocialist politics without providing
many concrete examples or proposals for struggle in the present conjuncture.
[11]. I am thus trying to mediate in this paper between those who claim that
globalization simply undermines democracy and those who claim that
globalization promotes democratization like Friedman (1999). While critics of
globalization simply see it as the reproduction of capitalism and hostile to
democracy, its champions, like Friedman, see global capital as largely
promoting democracy and do not perceive how globalization often undercuts it.
Likewise, Friedman does not engage the role of new social movements, dissident
groups, or the "have nots" in promoting democratization, and is usually
contemptuous of anti-globalization groups. Nor do concerns for social justice,
equality, and participatory democracy play a role in his book.
[12]
Fukujama's 1992 book was an expansion of a 1989 article published in the
conservative journal
The National Interest. His texts generated a
tremendous amount of controversy and were seen by some as a new dominant
ideology proclaiming the triumph of Western ideals of capitalism and democracy
over all of their opponents. With a quasi-Hegelian gloss, Fukuyama proclaimed
the victory of the Ideas of neo-Liberalism and the "end of history," and his
work prompted both skepticism ("it ain't over, til its over") and impassioned
critique. If terrorism and the Bush administration militarism soon pass from
the historical scene and a neo-liberal globalization driven by market
capitalism and democracy returns to become the constitutive force of the new
millennium, Fukuyama would end up being vindicated after all. But in the
current conflictual state of the world, his views appear off the mark and put
in question by the present situation.
[13]
Ali also notes (2002: 282f) that after the September 11 attacks, Huntington
modified his "clash of civilization" thesis to describe the post Cold War era
as an "age of "Muslim wars," with Muslims fighting each other, or their
specific enemies (see Huntington essay in
Newsweek, Special Davos
Edition (Dec-Jan. 2001-2). As Ali maintains, besides being a highly
questionable overview of the present age, it contradicts his previous model,
reducing Huntington's thought to incoherency.
[14]
Critical scholarship has revealed the important role of Islam in the very
construction of modernity and globalization; see Rahman 1984; Ali 2001; and
Simons 2003.
[15]
For an astute analysis of the different senses of Jihad and a sharp critique of
the Islamic terrorists' distortions of Islam, see Raschid 2002 and Ahmed 2003.
[16]
I provide my own historical and theoretical account of the background to the
events of September 11 in Kellner 2003b.
[18]April Witt, "Afghan Political Violence on the Rise
Instability in South Grows as Pro-Taliban Fighters Attack Allies of U.S.-Led
Forces," Washington Post (August 3, 2003: A01) and Robyn Dixon, "Afghans
on Edge of Chaos: As opium production and banditry soar, the country is at risk
of anarchy, some warn, and could allow a Taliban resurgence." Los Angeles
Times (Aug.4, 2003).
[19] For Virilio (1998), every technology has its accident that
accompanies it, so the airplane's accident is the crash, the automobile a
wreck, and a ship its sinking. For Virilio, the accident the Internet faces is
"the accident of accidents," as he calls it, the entire collapse of the global
system of communication and information, and thus the global economy. On
Virilio, see Kellner 1999.
[20]
Human Rights Watch has released a report that has documented how a wide
spectrum of countries have used the war against terrorism to legitimate
intensified repression of its domestic opponents and military action against
foreign adversaries. See http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/02/usmil0215.htm