What does 9-11 have to do with globalization?

Globalization is changing the world, for better and for worse. Yet there is not a single globalization, but rather multiple 'globalizations' and many possible futures. Globalizations represent for some the hope of a utopia, where all people on the earth may enjoy together a global prosperity, good health, environmental balance and sustainability, universal human rights, democracy, gender equality, global human security, and positive diversity. For others, globalizations represent the threat and the reality of an increasing global dystopia, marked by growing polarization and conflict rather than equality, peace and harmony among all peoples and all nations. Others focus on the economic policies still dominating the global agenda, led by free market ideas and neo-liberalism. These critics point out that the market by itself is incapable of guaranteeing either social justice or social stability. These require political action on behalf of the interests of the majority. In fact, critics of neoliberal economic globalization argue that the more we 'free' the market, the more polarization we are creating, and the more we are contributing to social and economic destabilization and insecurity. Whatever globalization may be, it should not come at the expense of the social gains of the past century. Elites have tended in the recent past to talk too much about free trade and not enough about justice and stability for the majority. The international financial institutions have tended too much to see their primary responsibility as the defense of the banks and the creditors, rather than the protection of the livelihoods of the majority of working people and their right to employment and to a decent quality of life. The world is in turmoil, and we are living through a period of great change in human history. Where it goes from here is everyone's responsibility. Globalizations must not be retrogressive historically, but rather they should be progressive, contributing to the betterment of the human condition, for everyone, leaving no one behind.

The events in the United States on September 11, 2001 shocked the world. The sympathy of much of the world turned towards the American people in their moment of grief and trauma. There was a unique opportunity for the United States to exercise world leadership in an attempt to gather reflections and address fundamental problems affecting the global system. Unfortunately, this goodwill and the opportunity it presented has by now been seriously eroded, and world opinion, including amongst some of the US's closest allies, is becoming more critical of the United States itself and its 'war on terror'. People and governments throughout the world are openly questioning where the United States is leading them. The key question being raised is this: Is US foreign policy since the tragedy of 9-11, which was an attack on the symbols of American economic and military power, contributing to stabilizing the world and strengthening human security, or rather, is it destabilizing the world and unleashing the forces of war and conflagration, actually making us all more insecure? Is military action really the most effective way to address the problems of global human security? Is US leadership acting in the true interests of the majority or is it pursuing a narrow and particular interest, regardless of the potentially negative consequences? Is the US undermining the multilateral system of governance that the world in an era of globalizations seems to require? What are the alternatives? How can we act together as a global community to enhance the human security of all peoples the world over? This is the challenge of globalization and the real meaning of 9-11.

Barry K. Gills
Director
Globalization Research Center

Impact of 11 September on South Asia

The impact of Sept. 11 on South Asia has been more momentous than anywhere else in the Asia Pacific with potentially disastrous consequences that would dwarf the terrorist attacks on the United States. It has also revealed fundamental contradictions in U.S. foreign policy that have caught American diplomacy between two critical allies in the war against terrorism.

"If New York was Ground Zero for the terrorist attack that began the war on terrorism, South Asia has become Ground Zero for the war itself," Swamy said.

The U.S. decision to take the war directly to Al Qaeda's Taliban hosts in Afghanistan has led to the overthrow of the Taliban regime and its replacement with an unstable coalition of regional warlords. The U.S. decision forced Pakistan, the Taliban's principal patron and a former U.S. ally, to abandon a central plank of its foreign policy. Pakistan has also risked considerable domestic turmoil by supporting U.S. operations against the Taliban and cracking down on Islamist groups in Pakistan itself.

Partly in order to reduce this domestic pressure, Pakistan began to allow, even encourage the redeployment of many Islamic militants to Indian's portion of the disputed province of Kashmir, where Pakistan has long supported an insurgency against Indian rule. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf even suggested publicly that the United States had promised support for Pakistani claims to Kashmir in exchange for support against the Taliban.

India was among the first countries to announce complete support for a U.S.-led war on terrorism, and Indian intelligence has played an important role in identifying militant Islamist groups. But India charged the United States with practicing a double standard on terrorism, demanding world support when the victims were Americans, while ignoring and virtually abetting terrorism against India. A pair of high profile terrorist attacks on the state assembly of Indian Kashmir and then on the Indian parliament led India to mobilize militarily along its border with Pakistan.

"The concern that this could escalate to a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed adversaries has led the U.S. to engage in a continuous diplomatic effort to prevent hostilities from breaking out," Swamy said. "In short, the impact of 911 on South Asia has potential consequences that would be more disastrous than any suffered by the United States and last well after the United States decides to declare victory and go home. Conversely, the impact of South Asia on U.S. policy after 911 has been to rob that policy of the clarity of moral vision President Bush articulated at the outset of the war."

The Impact of 9/11 on Middle Eastern Politics

In January 1981, the Islamic Republic of Iran released 52 Americans held in US' Tehran embassy for 444 days. This ended a traumatic intrusion of Middle Eastern politics upon the American psyche. This previously unimaginable trauma has clouded American memories ever since. And along with the Islamic revolution that made the hostage taking possible, it has helped reshape Middle Eastern politics in ways the region and the outside world is yet to grasp fully.

Twenty years and eight months later, a similarly unimaginable confrontation between what some people have called Middle Eastern political reality and American complacency exploded at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. These two calamitous events twenty years apart, both related to mutations of Islamic/nationalist politics in the region, could be understood as intended or unintended attempts by various forces within the region to reconfigure the relationship this oil-rich region has had with the world's only superpower, the United States.

The impact of 9/11 on the region and its politics, then, cannot be merely understood as the reverberations of the violence that was inflicted on September 11 on a region so utterly used to routinized violence. Rather the implications must be sought precisely in the reconfiguration of relations between the US and the region. And so far what 9/11 has occasioned and made more likely is the intensification of violence and instability in the region with no clear signs of a path that would allow the region to pull itself together and move in a different direction. If one lives in the region, the overwhelming feeling is one of everything solid, no matter how pernicious, melting into thin air without any clear sense of what is replacing the old.

This intensification of violence and instability has been made possible by what is seemingly fundamental policy choices made by the Bush Administration to "throw violence at violence" through moves:

1. To abandon any sponsorship of substantive negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis; to support almost every Israeli action in the occupied territories and to condemn and isolate the Palestinians as blanket targets of US war on terrorism, while Israeli settlements expand and Palestinian enclaves shrink.
   
2. To pursue almost single-mindedly the strategic objective of bringing about regime changes in the region through the use of extra-regional forces, beginning with the dreaded regime of Saddam Hussein but then continuing with regimes in Lebanon, Iran, Syria and even Saudi Arabia as a means to replace the existing architecture of the region - which still reflects British (and French) imperial primacy during and after WWI - with a revised system that would perhaps better reflect new global realities. As before, the desires, aspirations, or claims of various opposition groups, or even disenfranchised majorities, would be accessory to the imperatives of the empire.

This double-pronged approach to the Middle East - that willfully ignores the Israeli-Palestinian problems and hopes that one ball aimed at Iraq can knock down several regimes - has been around for some time on the wilder fringes of politics but has come to the fore in the United States on the back of the "war against terrorism." Its impact on the Middle East, particularly the Arab world, will undoubtedly be chaos and instability, at least for a while. This perhaps explains why despite the early sympathies generated by 9/11, currently the American standing in the Middle East has reached its lowest ebb in terms of public opinion. It is a signal of a deepening alienation with America that even the Arab world's elite and the middle class, a section of society that has long acted as a bridge with the west, now feels humiliated and convinced that Arab and Muslim societies have been made to pay for the crimes of a few. Even in Iran where polls show anti-Americanism is less than elsewhere, all the war talk emanating from Washington has led to popular anxiety about whether Iran will be next after Iraq.

In short, for a region tired of war, but awaiting yet another confrontation with the US, 9/11 and the subsequent "war on terrorism" has not so far brought seeds of hope generated from new understandings but has intensified old dreadful patterns, with potential for further violence both in the region and the US.

Impact of 9/11 on Southeast Asia One Year After

• For much of the past two or more decades Southeast Asian economies had enjoyed high economic growth because of their success in exporting to Japan, the US, and Europe. With the slow-down of the world economy, which was exacerbated by the events of 9/11, the region's economy has slowed considerably.
  
• Many Western and Japanese companies have been reluctant to make new investments in the region for fear of instability following the decision of the US to open up a "Second Front" in Southeast Asia in the war against terrorism.
  
• China has begun to invest more aggressively in Southeast Asia since opportunities have opened up after 9/11. Even Indonesia, which has a history of tense relations with China, has begun to court the Chinese to help replace the capital which fled the country after 9/11.
  
• A year after 9/11 the regional economies are slowly regaining growth, but they are still awaiting a world economic recovery because of their export-driven industries. The Political Impact
  
• The US announcement of the opening of a second front in the war against terrorism was an ill-advised move that has increased tensions in the region. Muslim minorities in Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines have come under greater suspicion and surveillance; whereas, in Indonesia and Malaysia with Muslim majorities, there has been a pitting of "militant" against "moderate" Islamic groups.
  
• America's war has been manipulated by certain leaders in order to suppress genuine grievances among those who have long sought greater autonomy in their countries. By claiming that these groups are Muslim terrorists, governments in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia have been able to move more aggressively against them, often with US blessings and financial and military assistance.
  
• In the name of the war against terrorism, the Malaysian government has now been able to detain some of the leaders of the opposition PAS (Islamic Party of Malaysia) as being linked to terrorists.
  
• In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, the military has begun once again to reassert itself in the political arena because of the perceived need for stability in order to deal with Muslim extremists in the country. The US government has acquiesced if not encouraged this development because of the belief that al-Qaida elements are present in the country despite the lack of evidence.
  
• Because of the single-mindedness with which the Americans have pursued the second front in the war against terrorism, they have run rough-shod over national sensibilities. Many politicians are now trying to distance themselves from the US in order to gain legitimacy from their constituents.

Final Comment

• There is still considerable good-will toward Americans, including among the vast numbers of Muslims, in Southeast Asia. It is important for the US to be aware and sensitive to the domestic situation in these Southeast Asian countries. There is a danger that the war against terrorism will strengthen the authoritarian tendencies of some governments and lead to situations which could pose a threat to peace in the region.