Globalization and National Security

The effect of growing worldwide economic, political, and social interconnectedness on U.S. national security. According to political scientists David Held and Anthony McGrew in the Oxford Companion to Politics, globalization is marked by four types of change. First, it involves a stretching of social, political, and economic activities across international boundaries. Second, it is marked by an increasing [Page 293]intensity in the flow of exchanges such as trade, investment, migration, and culture. Third, it is characterized by a faster pace of global interactions and processes as new transportation and communication capabilities hasten the spread of ideas, goods, information, and people. Fourth, these interactions have a great impact on distant as well as local events.

The end of the Cold War marked an end to the superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union and its appending power alignments. In its place emerged the notion of globalism to fill the vacuum of a collapsed, bipolar political world.

The concept of globalism, or globalization, quickly gained new application and wide acceptance as a state of world affairs that implies concrete processes and structures. The post–Cold War realignment of power relations set into motion a transformation of multilateral institutions, a new role for civic society, a redefinition of the concept of governance, and a shift in the arena of conflict.

During the period of the Cold War, countries across the globe fell mostly within one of two orbits. National regimes felt secure in the knowledge that their administrations would be propped up politically, economically, and, if need be, militarily as a client state of either the United States or the Soviet Union. Despite hostilities in some areas of the globe, the superpower rivalry created geopolitical stability in others. The conclusion of the superpower hostilities, however, left behind a string of failed states.

Political Upheaval

Tensions roiled in the southern Caucasus, parts of Africa, Yugoslavia, central Asia, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Up to this time, these struggles had been suppressed and immersed in the greater theater of conflict. Yet, after the fall of communism, for many regimes there came a day of reckoning as calls for the redress of past grievances were sounded by restive populations. The leaderships of these regimes had regarded themselves as immune from the consequences of abuse of power because of their strategic positioning within the existing power blocs. However, once the aegis of mutual assistance programs, treaty organizations, and military pacts was tossed aside, new tensions grew.

Local animosities erupted almost immediately. Revanchist claims, ethnic tensions, and age-old hatreds that had been simmering for generations came to a boil in various parts of the world. Romanians, Afghans, Tamil separatists, and Indonesians resorted to rioting, assassination, and execution. Mayan populations in Mexico; Hutus and Tutsis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and Chechens in the former Soviet Union all engaged in violent activity as perpetrators and victims of brutality and massacre.

Fueling the fire was the rise of fundamentalism. Although the ideological schism between East and West was closing, the fall of communism in Eastern Europe coincided with an increase in religious fervor around the world. Ethnic and religious ardor in the former Yugoslav republics mingled to produce political figures such as Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia.

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