Terrorist attackers have perhaps done the world a lot of good if you consider the long-term effects of their actions on the rest of us. Having a communal enemy might be the crucial piece in the puzzle that international relations specialists have been trying to fit together in vain for decades. Which puzzle? The possible framework for world government.
Other pieces are (versions of) globalisation, the end of the nation state, transnationalism, cross border flows, general flux the world is in, that kind of thing. But perhaps the term ‘cosmopolitanism' is most apt to describe the renewed interest in this issue. Practical application of new ideas that look promising in satisfyingly eroding the previous ideology-based debate and fitting new realities better into a more modern context in which a common enemy unites us all would begin with international organisations such as the WTO, ICC and the UN. What to make of this new (anti-)ideology ‘terrorism makes all of us more equal than ever before'?
A recent poll indicates that US people are still placing similar levels of trust in their leaders as they did ahead of the 9/11 2001 twin tower attacks, despite their loud uproar in light of the deceit of their leaders who have been accused of manipulating the public to gain support for the war against Iraq. Apparently Americans feel strongly that good government depends on openness with the public, with seven out of 10 people concerned about government secrecy. This level is hardly altered since before 9/11, say the people conducting the survey, the Sunshine in Government Initiative.
This is a collaboration of the Associated Press and seven journalism organizations, who are joining forces to promote policies aimed at ensuring government is accessible, accountable and open. A recent poll indicates that US people are still placing similar levels of trust in their leaders as they did ahead of the 9/11 2001 twin tower attacks, despite their loud uproar in light of the deceit of their leaders who have been accused of manipulating the public to gain support for the war against Iraq.
Apparently Americans feel strongly that good government depends on openness with the public, with seven out of 10 people concerned about government secrecy. This level is hardly altered since before 9/11, say the people conducting the survey, the Sunshine in Government Initiative. This is a collaboration of the Associated Press and seven journalism organizations, who are joining forces to promote policies aimed at ensuring government is accessible, accountable and open.
What's behind this illogical outcome? Why the kicking and screaming and no profound increased worries about government secrecy now? Perhaps the US population is a bit war tired and since the economy isn't that bad anyway, everyone's quite happy to stick it out another few years with rhetoric of prevailing war on terror as a background to everything else in the public sphere.
Another explanation is that people are beginning to feel what it means to be part of a wider global community, whether or not they realize it. To be certain, over the last decades a lot of speculation has been done vis-a-vis some more practical applications to the idea of the global village ruled by no one in specific. Prior to 9/11, most of these theories were rather vague on how stuff would stack together if the village really were to become anything other than a cozy sort of idea to cherish.
Then 9/11 occurred. Our entire system of values was attacked and to some extent the terrorists got their way in that they really overthrew everything people had once taken for granted and gave us a free ticket to rethink large parts if not our entire system. The difference between 9/11 and other catastrophy was that the entire world was under threat, not just a portion of the population. The wider global population was spearheaded into another dimension of reality that many of them would have never thought about if this hadn't happened. It prepared everyone for the rigorous change in thinking that's emerged since.
The question of whether the attacks could have been predicted featured the debate immediately after the event and continued to dominate the public debate as part of the US policy of preemption. However, had the US policy not been focused on trying to predict the future on a continuous basis, it would have still been very topical.
The stage was somewhat set in sociologists' minds for fitting in current forms of the way nation states are organised into new forms of global governance. What exactly made the puzzle fall into place for many was the element of global threat that the terrorists provided. Some thinking along the lines of atomic fears also was dragged out of the cupboard. Herbert Marcuse's treatment of a global nuclear catastrophe as the unifying element binding the technological society proved to be quite useful.
The immediate common criticism of the US and European response to the terrorists - the attempt in the name of global security to dominate terrorism on an absolutist basis - is that this contributes to reproduction of terrorism. The rhetoric and practice of preemptive strike against terrorism rather than what one prominent scholar, Ulrich Beck, terms ‘negotiating risk' are seen as dancing to the terrorist tune, having the terrorists set the agenda and play on our collective fear. However, the alternatives on a practical level did not leave governments much choice.
Policymakers admitted their responses fell short so long as they were part of a modernity that was by no means advanced enough to combat the crimes. The case for a redefinition of modernity was born. And a lot of scholars saw their lifelong thinking endeavors come to fruition.
The case for responding to the terrorist attacks against the twin towers on a higher transnational, level and the need for the redefinition of modern societies flows as a somewhat natural decision from modern socio political thinking. It fits the thinking that among others Herbert Marcuse set out ages ago in his work One Dimensional Man. He is the undoubted champion of preemptive action when states it is imperative for societies to live on the edge and always be alert to causes that undermine their security. He was also one of the first proponents of the idea that new conflict would totally erase the need for ideological approaches.
The synergy between the scholars and politicians became a lot more natural however due to the preemptive actions that the politicians were pushing for. The fact that rather than setting out policy for present situations, and reserve any futurist scenarios for any other social security issues than pensions and financially based instruments, was a major surprise. Yet it was the financial world that offered some good thougths here. Futurist scenarios for every part of life needed to be drawn up and where else to look than in futures markets or the capital markets at large to find somewhat suitable prediction models? This exercise created a more than ever natural overlap between the political and scholarly terrains.
The scope of the terror that was unleashed was of such proportions that the were no ready made theories available when 9/11 happened. People had difficulty explaining it in the first place, let alone come up with immediate productive arguments as to which path of action to take. Beck is the first to agree here. He himself did not what else to say but that this was going to be the Chernobyl of globalisation. This statement, which some consider opportunist, might prove correct.
Futurists Peter Schwartz and Richard Slaughter showed how the financial markets provided ideas for terror prevention strategies. They set out to answer the question of whether the attacks could have been predicted by going over the assessments of the 1997 Asian currency crisis. The outcome of their studies was that 9/11 was predicted in advance but that an effective response was blocked by fragmented information, territorial policymakers and inadequate organisational capabilities. Sound familiar?
Politicians and scholars agreed that answers would only be found in a new version of modernity. But how to redefine modernity without knowledge of the future, which was undoubtably going to have to be part of the definition if they wanted to truly get a more modern than ever modernity to dissect? Fighting against terror within the specifications of a framework that dated back to the pre 9/11 realities simply would not be sufficient.
Going into proposing ways to combat terrorism that would stand the test of true modernity, Beck also takes the risk assessment route as the way into the heart of the problem of what he's termed the "manufactured risk" our civilization produces. Manufactured risk is a commonly accepted idea of the payoff we need to calculate into our less responsible ways of living. Marcuse refers to it as the totalitarian way in we have organized our technological base.
Beck decided to cut across established ideological and methodological boundaries when he presented a more modern than modern approach to achieve what he terms a ‘transformed global risk environment'. His coup was less enticing for governments: This is not an ideologically driven globalization that seeks to impose laissez faire free market orthodoxies as a condition of entry into the institutions of global trade, or that critiques that requirement as an inevitable determination of the logic for capital. No, every conceivable system on the face of this earth could from now on fit in.
Far from being limited to the economic domain globalization is understood as a multivalent set of social, political, cultural and environmental processes of exchange, interdependence and mutuality. Each of these overlapping areas provides opportunities to negotiate the management of a fate that is shared, as never before, at an immediate and global level.
Not a controversial plea for the end of the nation state that would invoke opposition. Opposition is no longer relevant because the structures stay in tact but will as a direct result of the terrorism fighting be questioned by the outlets of this ‘second modernity' as it is also known. Terming it the continuity and resistance within transformation, Beck declared the nation state not dead and gone but diagnosed it as ‘somewhat undead' instead.
Natural boundaries simply cease to matter in determining people's views, the nation state has simply been demoted to an entity experiencing entropy, he postulates. Beck touches on the areas explored by Marcuse in explaining how he sees this happening as something that left wingers have been dying to see. Does anyone really believe that the end of repression is in sight? It certainly comes across as such in Beck's theory.
The true test is whether he sees second modernity thinking reflected in any policy initiatives. You don't often see scholars argue their case with the vehemence Beck reserves for his ideas.The decision makers in large global institutions are quite aware of Beck's ideas, yet it takes time to get the ball rolling.
Other scholars ahead of 9/11 saw the future also as spearheaded by transnational networks, but no one had any clue as to how these would fit in the puzzle, exept that they'd be a large part of the integration process. "[The transnational networks] are part of the changing logic of collective action in the globalized world, but one problem they cited is that the "radical interdependence" across borders that they exemplify and foster was nowhere near modal, although it is increasingly dense and visible." The terrorist attacks have certainly helped the process toward unifying countries globally, some believed. The process of globalisation was underway in recognisable form on the government level, which
The criticism that there simply is no room for issues such as proof in this thinking might be the factor that is to blame for its relative unpopularity. Some believe something that's not tangible in the shape of a well described ideology will simply never become dominant in world affairs because of economic considerations.
Yet to officially launch a new ideology based on these thoughts would also be to destroy it. Which is why others again are afraid of any of this. Because who's to guarantee that structures that are forming slowly are not any less evil than the evil of terrorism as well? Who says that evil just stops on one level if you decide with all your intellectual might that you've encapsulated it into your system? By reasoning that you don't need history, you also conveniently disable the rationale for comparative study in the shape of historical precedents.
The absence of any tangible ideology as a substantial founding principle is criticised by opponents as an abyss rather than a positive basis to operate from. Beck acknowleges this, saying cosmopolitanism is of course not without problems. It is imperative to see it as a set of processes that are not immediately tangible, but are nevertheless tested in practice, he admits.
The most immediate confirmation of the applicability of the theory is its treatment of terrorism today. Even though cosmopolitanism itself is a methodological programme with real objectives -the sweeping reconstitution of both society and sociology- which by dint of its aversion to being defined is unlikely to make it as a recognized science, it is proving its value to politicians is its treatment of terrorism almost every day.
In shifting the terms of political discourse away from the totalising obsession with absolute security and terror, cosmopolitanism effectively re orients the war on terror towards coping with risk by analysing it as part and parcel of the modern society's self inflicted, manufactured risk. This way, terror is neutralised and seen as a negotiable risk that does not dominate our lives and emasculate society.
The first real recognisible initiative that is following logically from this kind of thinking are the WTO negotiations, or rather, non-negotiations between the US which has teamed up with the EU and the G22, the 1998 formed sub-political transnational network of third world countries. The EU and the US failed to reach agreement on a series of rules aimed at trade liberalization in 15 areas. What became known as the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations, begun in February 2002, was bogged down on several points prior to the Cancun conference, where profound differences came to the fore, largely along North-South lines, pitting developing against industrialized countries. Recent exploratory talks held have drawn positive openings for all round agreements in which the West would cede some of its overly protectionist stance.
Perhaps a really meaningful equality is very very slowly beginning to take shape. It will be interesting to see how the post Doha negotionations evolve. We won't call it a shift of power but in stead begin on the quest for coining phrases that drive the message home in a, let's say, euphemistic way. If someone objects, we'll postulate that we don't know any better way of putting this, just yet.
Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com |
