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Dietrich Fischer: Globalization and Human Security
Globalization has greatly increased the flow of people, ideas, goods and capital across borders. This can either lead to a growing concentration of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands, through a series of vicious cycles, undermining human security for all; or it can lead to a decentralization of power and an overall improvement of human security.
This article considers four forms of power – military, economic, cultural and political – and mechanisms which lead to greater concentration or greater decentralization of these forms of power. It examines who has the capacity and motivation to help democratize power and thus advance human security.
Introduction
Does globalization contribute to human security or threaten it? It depends entirely on what form it takes.
Some use the term "globalization" to denote the current trend of growing accumulation of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands, which creates massive poverty in the Third World, resistance movements against foreign domination, and the use of military force by some big powers to maintain inequality and access to natural resources throughout the world. This form of globalization contributes to structural violence and war and undermines human security. It was rightly opposed by numerous NGOs in Seattle, Prague, Genoa, Washington, Davos and Porto Alegre. That trend can and must be reversed.
But globalization can also mean the growing global interdependence, brought about by faster and cheaper communication and transportation, which has facilitated the movement of ideas, goods and people around the world. This trend, which began with telegraphs and trains in the 19th century and even before, is probably irreversible. It has the potential to lead to growing international cooperation, global problem solving and the global spread of knowledge. It can help improve living conditions and security for everyone.
Globalization can make it increasingly harder for authoritarian regimes to prevent their people from finding out what is happening elsewhere in the world, and this has led to the downfall of several dictatorships, including the end of the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe in 1989, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
If used appropriately, globalization can help improve poor people's living conditions and preserve cultural diversity. For example, a village in the Peruvian Andes had a tradition of weaving woolen rugs with beautiful colorful patterns. Difficult economic times gradually forced all the villagers to work in a nearby coal mine, and their artistic tradition was in danger of becoming extinct. A young entrepreneur who had created a website on which indigenous artists can offer their works directly to buyers around the world, visited the village and signed up one of the artists. He was able to sell his rugs, earning more than before, even though the final customers pay less, because the middlemen were cut out. Gradually, he could help all his fellow villagers to quit their jobs as miners and earn a living again with their art work, saving their tradition.
Of course, there are many other cases where exposure to the world market has hurt people in the South when cheaper mass-produced articles competed with hand-made products of local artisans or subsidized food imports impoverished local farmers, but it would be a paralyzing mistake to see only what is wrong. We can and must find ways to make globalization help improve the lives of all.
One of the main causes of problems we face today is a series of vicious cycles that lead to growing concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small elite, and sometimes to war. In the past, such vicious cycles were largely confined within the borders of a country, but with globalization they increasingly have global reach. How can those vicious cycles be broken? How can we use the potential of globalization in order to decentralize and democratize power, instead of concentrating power?
One can distinguish between military, economic, political and cultural power (Galtung 1988, 1994; Boulding 1989). They correspond to four basic human needs: survival, welfare, freedom and identity (with their opposites being direct violence, misery, oppression and alienation). Misery and oppression are two aspects of what Galtung calls "structural violence," the loss of life and well-being that is not caused by weapons, but by unjust social structures with extreme wealth and waste at one end, and needless deprivation at the other end. Schrock-Shenk (2002) has estimated that 34,000 children under age 5 die every day from hunger and preventable diseases. Therefore the loss of life from structural violence far exceeds that from direct violence, i.e. wars and crimes. Cultural violence justifies direct and structural violence through nationalism, racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination. The four forms of power now tend to mutually reinforce one another. Power can and must be decentralized and democratized to bring the benefits of globalization to all.
Table 1 lists a number of ways how these four forms of power tend to reinforce one another and lead to growing concentration of wealth and power at the top and growing poverty and powerlessness at the bottom.
Table 2 suggests a number of ways how power can be decentralized to reduce the misery of those most in need.
Table 1: Some mechanisms that lead to a concentration of power
(Influence is from the form of power listed on the left to the one at the top)
Form of
power
Cultural
power
Economic
power
Political
power
Military
power
Cultural
power
Censorship
Education limited to the rich
Opposition is blocked from access to media
Military indoctrination in schools
Economic
power
Private ownership of the airwaves
Monopolization
Privately funded election campaigns
Military ownership of firms; Private armies, mercenaries
Political
power
Media controlled by political elites
Corruption
Opposition parties banned, persecuted
Government spends the country's wealth for arms
Military
power
Media seized by the military
Private armies, conflict diamonds etc.
Military coups, military dictatorship
Arms race
Table 2: Some mechanisms that lead to a decentralization of power
(Influence is from the form of power listed on the left to the one at the top)
Form of
power
Cultural
power
Economic
power
Political
power
Military
power
Cultural
power
Free speech for all
Free and compulsory education
Fair access to media for all parties
Peace education
Economic
power
Internet; fair access to media
Economic democracy; redistribution of wealth; free basic services
Public funding of election campaigns
Civilian-based defense
Political
power
Democratic control of the media
Transparency;
measures to prevent corruption
Internationally supervised elections
Democratic decision-making about war or peace
Military
power
No role for military in education
Civilian control of military
International peacekeepers; International Criminal Court
Nonviolent resistance
The following paragraphs illustrate some of the mechanisms how power can be decentralized in more detail. These examples are by no means exhaustive, simply a starting point for dialogue.
1) Cultural power
The best guarantee for democratizing cultural power is free speech, to give everyone an equal chance to be heard, and those with the best ideas will attract the most listeners. The internet, which can help break the monopoly and censorship of large media conglomerates and governments, has the potential to help decentralize cultural power.
If time on radio and TV can be purchased, the rich have more voice than others. The allocation of air time should be made by an elected commission, representing the wishes and interests of all economic, cultural, ethnic, gender and age groups, independent of the government currently in power. If a government official makes a speech, someone holding an opposing viewpoint should get equal time. Licenses for the radio and TV spectrum should not be handed out by the government, but be allocated in a more democratic way.
In a military coup, one of the first positions seized is usually the national radio and television station, so that the new rulers can spread their own propaganda and censor all dissenting views. Anyone who seizes power by force should not be recognized, and automatically be tried by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and subject to sanctions. If the world's response is automatic, without double standards, this will help reduce military coups. It was a terrible mistake that the United States supported Saddam Hussein – who had seized power by assassinating his critics in 1979 – when he attacked Iran in 1980. It encouraged him to seize Kuwait a decade later, leading to the 1991 Gulf War to repel that aggression. The United States finally invaded Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein's dictatorial regime, but this has only increased the Iraqi people's suffering.
2) Economic power
In earlier times, only rich people could afford to hire private teachers to educate their children. This perpetuated the concentration of wealth and power. Free and compulsory education, a great social achievement of the 19th century, has helped decentralize knowledge and given many a better start in life. Illiteracy is still a key obstacle to development in many countries. Most countries with a high rate of illiteracy suffer from mass poverty, whereas those with close to universal adult literacy are generally doing well economically.
The world economy now operates similarly to a game of "Monopoly," where those who have a random advantage (in addition, sometimes, to better skills and judgment) can buy property, charge rent to others and so increase their wealth even further, until one player owns everything and all the others are bankrupt. We must change the rules to introduce mechanisms that redistribute wealth. This includes a progressive property tax (which can bring greater equality over time; a progressive income tax can slow down, but not reverse the accumulation of wealth; a progressive tax on wealth can help reverse inequality). We also need to create a global welfare system that guarantees the basic needs of all, foremost the right to adequate nutrition. The debts of the least developed countries ought to be canceled, and technical assistance to improve self-help be given to local groups. A model is the agricultural extension service in the United States, which provides free advice and information to farmers and has helped make US agriculture one of the most productive sectors. Such a service is needed at the global level, now focussing not only on increased productivity, but also on preserving the environment.
The interest payments on past debts, which now in fact constitute a reverse "Marshall Plan" of funds flowing from the poor countries to the rich, should be replaced by a true global Marshall Plan to aid poor countries. Jan Tinbergen proposed a World Treasury (Fischer 1997) to help finance world development, protection of the global environment, and international peacekeeping and conflict transformation by peaceful means. It could be funded by a tax on currency speculation (Tobin 1978) and/or taxes on pollution, the use of natural resources, and the use of global commons. Such forms of raising funds for global problem-solving have the advantage that they simultaneously provide benefits, such as reduced fluctuations of currency exchange rates in case of the Tobin tax, a cleaner environment as a consequence of pollution taxes, and conservation as a consequence of taxes on the use of natural resources and global commons. This can help make such taxes more acceptable than an additional global income tax. Care must be taken that this money is not simply given to governments, without demanding accountability, because it sometimes ends up in private pockets and has supported some of the most corrupt dictatorships, such as Marcos, Mobutu, Duvalier and Saddam Hussein. The use of these funds must be carefully overseen by a respected international board that can ensure that they are used only as intended.
We must democratize not only political, but also economic power and reduce the enormous inequality in the world. Marc Hathaway (1999) has calculated that the world's wealthiest 225 individuals have a combined net "worth" equal to the combined annual income of the poorer half of humanity. That is, each of these billionaires, on average, has more wealth than over eleven million of the poorest people!
Most countries have laws prohibiting bribery, but fail to enforce them. Transparency International plays a valuable role in ranking countries by the level of corruption, publicizing blatant examples, and most of all, assisting governments who would like to end corruption with advice on how to accomplish that goal. Corruption prevents economic development not only by diverting funds, but even more by giving distorted incentives. If it is easier to get rich by controlling the army or police than by producing goods that meet people's needs, the most enterprising individuals in a society will plot coups, instead of planning production and creating jobs.
3) Political power
The executive branch of government must not be allowed to control the media, as was the case, for example, in Yugoslavia under Milosevic. Before the 1992 elections, the opposition candidate Milan Panic, who ran on a peace platform, had no access to state radio and television, which was completely controlled by Milosevic and his supporters, who accused Panic daily of being a traitor. Voters heard only one point of view and thus had no real choice.
Individual and corporate campaign contributions should be eliminated completely. Instead, there should be a series of public debates among candidates running for office, allowing the viewers to decide with whom they agree most. What we have today in the United States and many other countries resembles more plutocracy (one dollar, one vote) than democracy (one person, one vote). Australia has a better system: election campaigns are publicly financed, and it is prohibited to accept financial contributions or to spend one's own money for a campaign. Already Aristotle warned that if money plays a role in elections, it will lead to corruption.
Elections should be supervised by neutral international observers to assure not only that there is no cheating at the ballot boxes, but also fair access to the voters by all parties and candidates before the elections, and that all parties honor the outcome of elections (not like in Angola, where Jonas Savimbi resumed the civil war after he lost the 1992 election). The UN played an outstanding role in ending the civil war in Namibia, by holding elections, in which the leader of the independence movement, Sam Nujoma, became President. The countries that claim to have a long tradition of democracy should be the first to invite international observers, to show that they have nothing to hide. If that practice becomes routine, any government that refuses international observers will raise the suspicion that it seeks to cheat.
If anyone seizes power by force (as General Babangida in Nigeria), or prevents an elected government from taking office (as the Burmese military junta), an international peacekeeping force should arrest those who are guilty of this crime. If that power is available, it may never actually have to be used.
4) Military power
The military must not be allowed to censor news, or to educate young people through paramilitary organizations.
Oscar Arias has criticized the practice of the military in Central America engaging in business, because they use their power to suppress competition, for example by allowing their own imports and exports freely across the border, while holding up the competition's, and by reinforcing tax laws selectively.
The military must be democratically controlled. A modest step in that direction is the War Powers Act passed in the United States after the Vietnam war, which says that only Congress, not the President, can declare war. Unfortunately, it has not yet been enforced.
National military forces should gradually be replaced by a global peacekeeping force, followed by universal disarmament. For each country to maintain its own military is as wasteful as if each house in a community were to maintain its own fire engine.
Who will decentralize power?
To be successful, any strategy needs a "carrier", a group of people who are both motivated to implement it and capable of doing so. One can either help empower those who now suffer from globalization and wish to change the way it works, or motivate the rich and powerful to work for greater equality (as Ted Turner did when he gave $1 billion to the UN, Bill and Melinda Gates when they donated $750 million to inoculate children in the Third World, or George Soros by financing Open Society Institutes in Eastern Europe).
Examples that show how the apparently powerless have amazing power to overturn repressive governments with nonviolent means include Gandhi's struggle for independence, the nonviolent revolution in the Philippines that ended the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, Solidarity in Poland, the peaceful demonstrations in Leipzig that brought an end to communism in East Germany and eventually the fall of the Berlin wall, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia that brought Václav Havel from political imprisonment to the Presidency within less than a year, the defeat of the 1991 military coup in Moscow, the demonstrations in October 2000 that ended Milosevic's rule in Yugoslavia, and the demonstrations in Ukraine in November 2004 that helped overturn a fraudulent election and brought President Yushchenko to power.
The greatest obstacle preventing nonviolence from being practiced more widely may be the distorted media culture that finds violence (in fact, only direct violence) newsworthy, but rarely reports successes of nonviolence. The old saying "no news is good news" has been distorted into "good news is no news."
Here are two examples that suggest why nonviolence is so powerful: When Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines tried to rig elections to stay in power in 1986, two army units defected. He sent the rest of his army to crush them, but they were surrounded and protected by half a million unarmed civilians. A newscast showed how a tank pressed against the crowd and many people moved out of the way at the last moment, but a nun in her white gown kneeled on the floor praying and did not move. Finally the tank driver pulled back. If a soldier had tried to stop the tank by firing at it with a machine gun, the tank driver would hardly have withdrawn. In the fall of 1989 in Leipzig, when thousands of civilians held weekly demonstrations against the East German communist regime, the police had orders to shoot and waited for some pretext, like a stone thrown at them, or a Molotov cocktail. But the demonstrators remained absolutely nonviolent, and the police never fired. Soon the regime fell. If the demonstrators had resorted to violence, the army clearly would have had the upper hand in terms of violence.
Galtung (1988) has observed that in medieval times, all four forms of power – military, economic, cultural and political – were concentrated in a few hands: those of an absolute monarch and top church leaders. The reformation (1517), with the translation of the Bible into everyday language, broke the monopoly of the church over cultural power by enabling ordinary people to read the scriptures by themselves without depending on the clergy to interpret them. The American declaration of independence (1776) broke the monopoly of the British crown over political power. The French revolution (1789) broke the monopoly of the monarchy over economic power. Before, the king granted exclusive franchises to families of the nobility over certain sectors of the economy, and nobody was allowed to compete, under severe penalties. The bourgeois class fought for the right to free competition in the realm of economics. Power was further democratized in those areas with the abolition of slavery, the workers' movement, the women's movement and the anticolonial movement. Only military power is still concentrated in very few hands: those of heads of state, a few generals and leaders of military industries. The role of the peace movement is to break that last bastion of monopoly power and wrest control over decision over war and peace from the few who now make them.
Billions of dollars have been spent on research on weapons, but research on nonmilitary defense and strategy for change has been carried out only by a few individuals, with almost no funding (especially Johan Galtung, Gene Sharp, Jonathan Schell and some others). If more research were devoted to it, and if it were practised in maneuvers like military defense, there is little doubt that it could be developed into an even far more effective force than it already is today.
The notion of nonviolent strategies ought to be expanded to cover much more than the examples of the nonviolent demonstrations mentioned above. Promoting mutually beneficial cooperation, as Jean Monnet did to overcome the century-old hostility between Germany and France by tying them together in the European Coal and Steel Union, which has since then developed into the European Union, is another of many examples of a nonmilitary strategy to transform conflicts.
A concluding remark
Globalization is neither a panacea that will automatically lead to global cooperation, an end of poverty and universal human security, as some claim, nor is it an evil force that destroys cultural diversity, throws people out of work, leads to a concentration of wealth and power and is a cause of war, as others maintain. Globalization expands the range of possibilities open to humanity. How we will use it depends entirely on the choices we make.
Tha author, a former MacArthur Fellow at Princeton University, is Academic Director at the European University Center for Peace Studies, Stadtschlaining, Austria, and Co-Director of TRANSCEND, a Peace and Development Network. This article also appeared in the Australasian Journal of Human Security in 2005.
