| |
ESSAY
September
11 and the battle of the 'isms'
By Sreeram Chaulia
An event as epochal as September 11 is bound to
provoke theorists of international relations.
Over the past year or so, there has been a race
in academia to claim the first prize for the
best theory to explain the events before and
after September 11. The consensus is that the
dominant discourse of realism has won, because
it conceives of conflict and destruction as
natural in an anarchical world (from Thomas
Hobbes' "anarchical state of nature").
It also justifies America's threatening military
actions after the terror strikes as a natural
form of behavior of strong states, which always
bully the weak into compliance to serve the
former's selfish interests.
The more interesting contest is among the
alternative theories to realism. It is a race
for second prize, and the main competitors are
feminism, globalism/neo-Marxism and pluralism.
Feminism
The fundamental premise of feminism is that
international politics is a "man's
world" and a "gendered activity".
Gender is a social construction based on ideas
of "autonomy",
"objectivity", "sovereignty"
and "virtu" (Niccolo Machiavelli), of
which only men and masculine states are
allegedly capable. Writing after September 11,
feminist novelist Arundhati Roy encapsulated
this critique, saying, "Women of the world
stand between two extremes, both represented by
androcentrism, Rambo culture and patriarchy -
Osama bin Laden and George Bush." Bin Laden
reportedly has 42 wives and is a defender and
instigator of Taliban-style hardline Islamic
"structural violence" against women.
Bush heads the most conservative American
administration since Ronald Reagan, pursuing
vested interests of the military-industrial
complex and giant oil multinationals that extort
women in the Third World (a line favored by
Marxist feminism).
Realist dogmas and metaphors of "war of
every man against every man" and "stag
hunt" (Jean Jacques Rousseau) have been
pursued vigorously by the US government since
September 11, accompanied by a culture of
"manliness" and glorification of
soldiers and ultra-patriotic themes in the
media. "Imperial brotherhoods" (Robert
Dean) among mujahideen and the Bush cabinet are
waging destructive wars to quench their
fanaticism and male egotism. Some feminists see
the World Trade Center itself as a symbol of
male capitalist egotism which ran into another
kind of Arabic male chauvinism on September 11.
Feminists also like to point out that the
majority of women in the world, including
Palestinians, mourned the deaths of innocents in
the terror attacks, and called for a foreign
policy of reconciliation instead of revenge. But
state-centric "military security"
orthodoxy dominates the discourse and active
voicing of peace by women has been relegated to
peripheral activity and condescendingly
dismissed as "human interest stuff"
(Ann Tickner). The outcome is that human
security and "common security", an
all-encompassing concept including domestic
non-violence, is sorely lacking as the US
prepares for more wars. Feminist scholars have
particularly lamented how the US has compromised
with chauvinist male warlords in Afghanistan,
who are only a shade better than the Taliban,
and which is still claiming for propaganda value
that American military action
"emancipated" Afghan women.
Feminist interventions since September 11 have
labelled the event and its aftermath as an
instance of patriarchal "technology of
destruction and domination". They urge a
dire need to transform the realist paradigm and
to include one half of the world's population in
deciding on foreign policy so that a more
harmonious world and a "just peace"
can be arrived at. However, feminism has no
unified tenor. Despite using phrases like
"sexual terrorism" (Dorothy Roberts)
as a much bigger threat to human security than
Islamic terrorism, feminists are a highly
divided lot, with competing visions of
"radical feminism", "white
Western feminism", "ecological
feminism", "post-modern
feminism", et al. Feminist international
relations deconstruct realist policies with
gusto, but offer no alternative model for
transforming practice of world affairs. Can a
superpower be realistically expected to simply
"forgive" and "heal"
terrorists who killed nearly 3,000 people in one
single day? Feminists seem to be putting forth a
chimerical ideal.
Globalism/Neo-Marxism
Globalism/Neo-Marxism is a structural theory
that rates economics, not security, as the
driving force of international relations.
Under-development of Third World states leads to
"dependency" on rich industrialized
states, which exploit the peripheral states
through an integrated capitalist system. Saudi
Arabia, which produced the majority of the
hijackers on September 11, is a classic case of
exploitation by gas-guzzling and oil-hungry
America. Globalists believe that domestic
bourgeois forces reinforce foreign domination.
In the Saudi example, collusion between
transnational American corporations and the
Saudi royal family oppresses common people and
forcibly imposes foreign values on Arabic
society.
The ill-effects of US-led globalization deepens
crises in the Muslim world and creates angry
young suicide bombers and hijackers willing to
lay down their lives to hit the Mecca of
capitalism - the World Trade Center. Peaceful
reordering and change of economic inequities
between have and have-not nations is not
feasible. Hence, poverty and frustration in the
Third World feeds into terrorism. Another
insight globalists give is that since foreign
policy depends on economic and geo-economic
resource strategies, the US government is using
its war on terrorism as a pretext to open Iraq
for oil exploration.
Division between the European Union and the US
on war against Iraq can also be seen as a
symptom of intra-capitalist struggle and
"differential growth rates" of the
northern states (Lenin). Europe and America are
headed for a titanic "struggle among
imperialists" to colonize the world, and
this cleft is widening day by day, as was proved
when the last German presidential poll was
fought primarily on whether or not Berlin should
support Washington in war. Alignment of
"part-capitalist" states like Russia,
China and India with the US in the
post-September 11 phase is an indication of core
and "semi-periphery" (Immanuel
Wallerstein) joining hands not just against the
common enemy of Islamic fundamentalism but to
jointly "transfer surplus value" from
least developed and weak states, and to prise
open their markets to exports.
Globalists provide a very valuable
recommendation that war on terrorism must
include a war against poverty, not a war against
the poor in Iraq and elsewhere. If the gap
between North and South is not bridged soon,
terrorism will flourish and gain deeper
socioeconomic roots. However, in the
post-September 11 world, it is inconceivable
that the "transformation of global
capitalist hegemony" will ever come about.
It is also doubtful if proletariat and
subordinated classes everywhere sympathize or
approve of Osama bin Laden, who is himself a
capitalist millionaire. Al-Qaeda and Islamic
holy warriors bother least about capital
accumulation and most about religion. If at all
there is a global struggle in their minds, it is
not one between have and have-not states but a
"clash of civilizations" (Samuel
Huntington) between Islamic and Judaeo-Christian
worlds. Globalist medicines to counter the
capitalist world system are also impractical.
Self-reliance and autarchy are discarded options
in today's world, be it for tackling terrorism
or underdevelopment.
Pluralism
Pluralism is another structural theory of
international relations which agrees with
globalists that world politics is often governed
by economics, not security. But pluralists
perceive no exploitative super-structure. They
believe free trade and barrier-free investment
will eradicate all differences between have and
have-not states. They support the neo-liberal
macroeconomic consensus of the World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund as the answer to
the ills of poor countries, including terrorism.
It is an optimistic pro-globalization stand a la
Francis Fukuyama's position that secularism,
liberal democracy and free markets will reduce
all tensions in the world.
In game theoretical language, international
relations are a positive sum-game, not a
negative or zero sum-game. By extension, what
the Osama bin Ladens of the world hate most are
America's "free way of life" and its
efforts to "modernize" the world.
Pluralists consider non-state actors very
important entities, having transnational impact.
Al-Qaeda is a great example of the "cobweb
image" of pluralist international
relations, where multiple players crisscross
national boundaries and act in concert to
influence foreign policies. Global jihad knows
no territorial border. Another aspect of
non-state actor prominence after September 11 is
pluralist faith in efficacy of international
organizations to promote worldwide cooperation
and regulate conflicts. There is a heightened
need today for a comprehensive global convention
against terrorism under the aegis of the United
Nations. Robert Keohane's "hegemonic
mover", the US, has to take the new
initiative for a new "regime" against
terrorism at the UN.
Pluralists also approach foreign policy
decision-making through models like
"groupthink" and bureaucratic
politics. American governmental decisions after
September 11 are redolent with institutional
turf battles between the CIA and FBI, the US
State Department and the Defense Department, for
example. Instead of using a paint-brush and
faulting president George W Bush as a
"Rambo" or a "capitalist
exploiter", some pluralists go down the
ladder by choosing smaller units of analysis at
the intra-governmental stage and give a more
thorough and detailed description of the parts
that make a whole and give rise to the final
foreign policy "outcome".
Pluralism offers a perfect theoretical
explanation of terrorist groups as
"super-empowered non-state actors" who
challenge state sovereignties and foreign
policies. Nevertheless, the theory fails to
explain why the US waged war on Afghanistan and
is planning another in Iraq.
"Internationalism" and John Ruggie's
"multilateralism" are nowhere to be
seen at present, as the US is showing increasing
signs of "going it alone" in its war
against terrorism. International organizations
have been reduced to meaninglessness, as the US
seems least interested in sharing even
declaratory documents from Iraq meant actually
for the UN. Talk of "integration" and
world consensus based on free market ideas
appears Utopian as America is igniting more and
more conflict in newer theaters to safeguard its
own national security.
The Fukuyama brand of pluralism is far too naive
in a world on the verge of war and in deep
economic recession. Another problem with
pluralists is that they are almost exclusively
all Americans and reflect an ethnocentric view
of the global system and motivating factors in
international affairs. The concept of a
benevolent hegemon enforcing rules and regimes
for the benefit of all appears incredulous in
the case of a US that is not signatory to some
of the most important international treaties and
conventions. Pluralists do not have the tools to
explain why the US is not continuing in the camp
of Immanuel Kant's "peace union" of
liberal states. Is "democratic peace"
really not a cover behind which advanced
neo-imperialist countries intervene in and
exploit poorer states?
The winner
From our discussion of alternatives to realism,
globalism/neo-Marxism comes nearest to a
thorough explanation of the events preceding and
succeeding September 11. Imbalances in economic
development between North and South directly
fuel the fires of anti-Americanism and
terrorism. They create a reservoir of young
people without jobs who are willing to vent
their spleen on targets selected by religious
fanatics. Pluralist triumphalism about exporting
Western liberal polity and economy to end all
inequalities does not stand ground on serious
scrutiny. Globalization has discontents, and is
not an unmitigated success story. Addressing the
problems of those discontents will assuage most
of the rage that translates into terrorist
attacks. Feminism has its own distinct
contribution on September 11 by voicing the
cause of voiceless women in the periphery, but
it cannot offer a rational step-by-step
explanation of the terror attacks and the US
response by merely deconstructing and
criticizing the existing system of international
relations.
Globalism is thus the runner-up in the battle of
the "isms".
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact[email protected]
for information on our sales and syndication
policies.) |
| |
|
|
 |
|
