CIAO DATE: 08/02

Globalization and Security: Migration and Evolving Conceptions of Security in Statecraft and Scholarship

Christopher Rudolph, Visiting Scholar

April 2002

The Center for International Studies University of Southern California

Summary

Does globalization shape the way states define their security interests? While few would question the fact that we live in an era of extraordinary change-technological, economic, social, and political-scholars disagree whether globalization is really something new and different, or simply the continuation of an enduring process that has proceeded for centuries (Cf. Chase-Dunn 1994; Rosenau 1997; Sassen 1998; Arrighi 1999; Wallerstein 1999; Castells 2000; Keohane and Nye 2000; Mittelman 2000). However, even skeptics concede that while the capitalist world-system has become increasingly global over the span of centuries, the speed and degree of globalization has increased tremendously in recent decades (Chase-Dunn 1999, 181). Even before George Bush popularized the term "new world order," there was a growing sense that the changes brought about by processes of globalization were fundamentally changing world order and international politics-but in what sense?

David Harvey (1990) has posited that globalization represents the harbinger of modernity's demise. Others have added that these processes of globalization are eroding the fundamental basis of international society-state sovereignty-and that its decline represents a revolutionary transformation in the Westphalian structure of the international system (Cf. Strange 1994; Fowler and Bunck 1995; Strange 1996). Arthur Stein (2002) has presented a more measured and nuanced assessment, suggesting that globalization, sovereignty, and democracy represent a "great trilemma." Appropriating the triangular structure of the Mundell-Fleming model in economics, Stein suggests that, in their "pure" state, only two of the three cannot coexist. Clearly, any of these interpretations would have dramatic implications for world politics and international order. My purpose is to understand how these processes affect the definition of security interests and the grand strategy states pursue to forward these interests.

To understand this new world order, contemporary changes must be taken in historical context-not so much with an eye toward pivotal turning points, but rather, on the dynamic process of incremental change. As I will show in this paper, globalization has established a complex matrix of cause and effect relationships that has created political impulses that push for a reconceptualization of security. I will explicate this matrix in several steps that build on empirical evidence as well as how the evidence is reflected in IR scholarship trends. Many interpretations of globalization reflect a negative impact on the role of the state. In general, I counter that the state is not the passive "victim" of an autonomous process of globalization, but rather, that trading state grand strategy (Rosecrance 1986) itself has compounded the scope and pace of globalization and has initiated processes that have prompted new security issues and objectives to arise. In particular, I argue that the emergence of trading states has not only made control over trade and capital flows an essential component of state grand strategy, but that migration has emerged as a key issue-perhaps even the key issue-in the construction of a contemporary security paradigm. Migration lies at the nexus between three essential elements of the contemporary security dilemma:

1. production and accumulation of economic power
2. the changing nature of war-especially between combatants with highly disproportionate power and resources, and
3. growing concerns regarding social identities and the potential effect threats to national identity have on the relationship between the nation and the state.

I begin with the realist presumption of egoistic states operating under anarchy. I then examine the technological, economic, and ideational dimensions of globalization evident in the late 20th century and discuss how these processes affect traditional security paradigms and the assumptions on which they are built. Building on the work of Richard Rosecrance (1986; 1999), I'll explicate the dialectic relationship between globalization and trading state grand strategy. The rise of the trading state is not the end of the story, however. In the following section, I will explain how trading state globalization and the emergence of "Washington consensus" liberalism has initiated global inequalities that have increased pressures for the movement of people, not just trade and capital. While there are strong economic gains to be had through such movement, these processes have led to increased sensitivity to demographic change in receiving states. This has led to an identity-centered security interest in receiving states (Waever et al. 1993; Rudolph 2001; Weiner and Russell 2002) and the rise of "expatriate politics" among sending states (Cornelius et al. 2001; Brand 2002). The effects of trading state openness and North-South inequality have also created conditions wherein terrorism has emerged as a "weapon of the weak," and migration has emerged as a potentially crucial element in the delivery of weapons of mass destruction. I conclude by suggesting that accurate models of world politics must move beyond traditional security paradigms, acknowledging the interrelationships between the economic, political, and societal dimensions of state grand strategy.

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