Introduction Globalization, Security, and the Nation State

We live in a time of enormous contradictions, of dualities that are moving people and societies in opposite directions. Some paradigms are coming undone and yet others are as fixed as ever. Changes and transformations are pervasive and yet constancies persist. Globalizing processes are accelerating and yet localizing processes remain powerful. Many nations and states are weakening and yet others are undiminished in their competence. Wealth is expanding and yet poverty is omnipresent.New technologies are adding to the pleasures and comforts of daily life and yet insecurities are ubiquitous. Regions are unifying and yet others are mired in conflict and war. People are becoming ever more skillful and yet they are marked by a sense of losing control over their lives. The world's prime superpower is flexing its muscles and yet it is forced to seek assistance from the United Nations. Tensions and ambiguities are prime consequences of these contradictions, and some of the main ones constitute the focus of the following chapters.We collectively seek to comprehend the changing paradigms that are altering the structures of world politics and adding new issues to the global agenda. More specifically, we are concerned with the impact of globalization on the conduct of international affairs, on the capacities of states, and on the security of both peoples and their collectivities. The various authors do not share similar perspectives on such matters, but the differences among them make for lively writing and provocative ideas that are bound to be clarifying for the reader. More specifically, differences can be discerned over whether the course of events are overtaking nations and their states and leading to some of their competencies being superseded by activist nongovernmental organizations and local authorities. Some of the contributors argue that world affairs continue to be a state-dominated system, but others highlight ways in which the system has been undermined by the dynamics that have unfolded since the end of the Cold War and that, in effect, have led to a bifurcation of global structures into state-centric and multicentric worlds. One focus in this regard is the impact of global terrorism on the so-called security dilemma of states. None of the authors denies that the advent of terrorism on a global scale constitutes a major 1 alteration of international structures that calls into question the nature of individual and collective security. But they differ over whether this and the military responses it has evoked are the only major sources of pervasive insecurity, with some contending that widespread poverty and discrepancies between the developed and developing worlds are no less significant as dynamics that underlie the insecurities now intruding on individual, national, and global well-being. And throughout this book there is a preoccupation with the extent to which globalization has served as a source of terrorism and insecurity. Inasmuch as the dynamics of globalization continue to unfold at a rapid rate, estimating the ways in which it has fomented positive and negative transformations is not a simple matter. Much depends on how globalization is conceptualized. For some it is seen as primarily a set of economic processes, a paradigmatic transformation that, in turn, has fostered social, political, and cultural changes. Others perceive a more complex paradigmatic shift in which no single dynamic is perceived as the prime source of change. Rather, causal dynamics are conceived as overlapping and mutually reinforcing, with the social, political, and cultural dynamics interacting with and shaping economic processes as much as they are shaped by these processes. A brief review of the thrusts of the various chapters serves to highlight these various themes and the different approaches to them. The book is divided into four sections that focus, respectively, on reconceptualizing security, state transformations, regional reflections, and emerging international patterns. The chapters were papers first delivered at an international Conference on Globalization and National Security convened in Ankara,Turkey, late in June 2002 and sponsored by the Center for Eurasian Strategic Studies (ASAM) and its director, Dr. Umit Ozdaǧ. All the papers were subsequently revised in response to suggestions made during the conference deliberations and subsequently by the editors. © 2005 State University of New York. All rights reserved