Kirshner: Globalization and National Security

Kirshner, J., Globalization and national security, Routledge.

This text asks how globalization is changing national security. It acknowledges that there are myriad schools of thought on this issue, from the realist that believes that globalization is a fad or zeitgeist to the cosmopolitan thinker who sees it fundamentally changing the nature of the world. Kirshner argues that globalization, even if we completely retain the state-centered view of international relations, changes the rules of the game. He likens this to the difference in playing polo on horses to playing water polo: the overall objective of the game has not changed, but the context in which actors must operate is fundamentally different. “Some players…might have been much better riders than they are swimmers” (1).

Definitions:

Globalization: “…shorthand for an array of phenomena that derive from unorganized and stateless forces but that generate pressures that are felt by states…the forces of globalization…are in their purest incarnations disorganized and purposeless, the powerful but uncoordinated consequences of individual behavior and technological change” (1-2).

National Security: “…organized political violence that speaks to the vital interests of at least one state” (2).

The first chapter of this text approaches the question of globalization and national security from the perspective of three “conduits through which the pressures of globalization are transmitted through the system: via the intensification of economic exchange, the flow of information and marketization—the expansion of the set of social relations governed by market forces” (3).

Kirshner presents a figure for explaining how globalization affects national security. In it, there are three bubbles, or phenomenon with causal linkages posited: autonomy and capacity drive balance of power and balance of power drives axes of conflict. Globalization (as defined earlier as the decentered process of intensified economic exchange, flow of information and marketization) drives each of these three phenomena separately, thus one would assume that there is a compounding effect (6).

Kirshner also goes into the economic exchange, information flows and marketization in detail.