NOVEMBER 1995 HUMAN SECURITY and MUTUAL VULNERABILITY AN EXPLORATION into the GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY of DEVELOPMENT and UNDERDEVELOPMENT J. Nef ATIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH CENTRE HUMAN SECURITY and MUTUAL VULNERABILITY AN EXPLORATION into the GLOBAL POLITICAL ECONOMY of DEVELOPMENT and UNDERDEVELOPMENT J. Nef INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH CENTRE Ottawa • Cairo • Dakar . Johannesburg • Montevideo Nairobi • New Delhi • Singapore Published by the International Development Research Centre P0 Box 8500, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1G 3H9 © International Development Research Centre 1995 Legal Deposit: 4th quarter 1995 National Library of Canada A microfiche edition is available Material contained in this report is produced as submitted and has not been subjected to peer review or editing by IDRC Books staff. The views expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the International Development Research Centre. Mention of a proprietary name does not constitute endorsement of the product and is given only for information. To order, please contact IDRC Books. Mail: P0 Box 8500, Ottawa, ON, Canada K1G 3H9 Phone: (613) 236-6163 ext. 2087 E-mail: [email protected] Our catalogue may be consulted on Internet. gopher.idrc.ca World-Wide Web: http://www.idrc.ca ISBN 0-88936-795-7 CONTENTS Acknowledgments iv — Introduction: Paradigms of Crisis and the Crisis of Paradigms 1 The Changing Foundations of the World System 5 Security inthe New Era 11 Chapter 1: A Framework for Analysis 13 The Concept of World System 14 The Elements of the System 16 The Present World System as a Complex Conglomerate 18 Chapter 2: Environmental Insecurity 23 Reciprocating Dysfunctions 23 The Global Environmental Regime 35 Chapter 3: Economic Insecurity 39 The Symptoms of the Economic Crisis . 39 The Global Economic Regime 48 Chapter 4: Social Insecurity 51 The Sources of Social Insecurity 51 The Global Society: Transnational Integration and National Disintegration 59 Chapter 5: Political Insecurity 63 The Global Political Crisis and its Manifestations 64 The Global Political Regime 75 Chapter 6: Cultural Insecurity 81 Not a Clash, but a Crisis of Civiisation 83 The Closure of the Cultural Commons 88 Conclusion: The Global Predicament 91 Bibliography 95 The Author 103 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my most sincere thanks to all those who contributed to this book: to Dr Paz Buttedahi, without whose encouragement and constant support this idea would have never come to fruition; to IDRC, whose South—North Project gave the initial impetus to this idea; to my Research and Teaching Associate, Mr Wilder Robles Calderón, for his enormous assistance in preparing the tables, pruning through the text and searching for sources above and beyond the call of duty; to Ms Megan Mills, for reading the manuscript and making corrections and suggestions; and, fmally, to my family, for their patience and understanding through this undertaking. In Memoriam Angélica (1943—1995) INTRODUCTION PARADIGMS OF Ciusis AND THE CRIsIs OF PARADIGMS To a casual observer of international events, sitting in the comfort of a corporate office, the post 1989 world order may seem like a string of good news. From a conventional point of view, the present appears to contain few security threats. After all, the end of the East—West conflict meant that the possibilities of a nuclear holocaust have all but disappeared. The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the demise of communism could be seen as the global victory of political and economic liberalism.1 Some, in the vein of a modem Doctor Panglos have optimistically asserted that "life for the majority of the world's citizens is getting steadily better in almost every category" (Gee 1994). The past few decades have seen an improvement in human health, education, nutrition and longevity. The rapid expansion of the world economy, which has grown nearly fivefold since 1950, has raised living standards in all but the poorest countries. Food production has easily outstripped population growth. Democracy has advanced in almost every corner of the globe. International security has improved. (Ibid.) With the end of the East European bloc, the Third World and its plight (articulated in the Non-Aligned Movement, UNCTAD and the South Commission) have also vanished as a source of nuisance for the West (Lane 1992). Furthermore, the crippling debt burden has fmally brought most of the South to accept the conditionalities imposed by the international fmancial community. And without international socialism to assist local revolutionary movements, insurgency looks rather unlikely. Moreover, a number of major "hot spots" have cooled off: there is qualified peace in Central America, the Iran—Iraq war has ended, Afghanistan and Cambodia are out of the news, the civil strifes in the Horn of Africa (especially in Ethiopia with the independence of Eritrea and Tigray) have come to an apparent end and Germany has been reunified. The two most enduring problems with potentially destabiising effects, South Africa's apartheid regime and A most explicit articulation of this business position is contained in Marcus Gee, a member of The Globe and Mail Editorial Board. See Gee, 'Apocalypse Deferred", The Globe and Mail, Saturday April 9, 1994, pp. Dl and D3. His was a response to Robert Kaplan's "The Coming Anarchy" in the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 273, No. 2, 1993, PP. 44-75. 2 HUMAN SECURITY AND MUTUAL VULNERABILITY Palestinian self-rule moved decisively towards settlement. In 1993, an ANC government, led by the country's once most notorious political prisoner, Nelson Mandela won the general elections. The following year, an agreement between the PLO and the Israeli government began handing power to an emerging Palestinian entity; the first move towards an independent state. The rebellion in Northern freland, was settled in 1994, putting an end to decades of sectarian violence. These developments can result in a reduction of military expenditures (Sivard 1989), a slowing down of refugee flows and in a downturn in transnational terrorism. For the superpowers and their more developed allies, demobiisation, in theory at least, means the possibility of cashing in a "peace dividend." In addition, Western cooperation under US hegemony, as seen in the UN actions against Iraq and the "peacemaking" operation in Somalia, has brought decisive, yet at times unfocussed, intervention to enforce "international law" and "norms of civiised behaviour." However, there is a more sombre side of the picture. As Pierre Sane, Amnesty International's Secretary General, stated in his 1993 Human Rights Day address: Four years ago, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, we were promised a bright new future. New accountable democratic governments. New prosperity. New cooperation between the governments of the world .... But what do we see? Far from accountable democracies, we see the horror of civil war and governments resorting to the old methods of repression .... Far from prosperity, we see even more people plunged into poverty, sickness and despair .... Far from international cooperation, we see the world community floundering in the face of human rights disasters (Sand 1993). The disintegration of Eastern Europe has meant the unleashing of deep and vicious social, political and ethnic tensions, the symptoms of which are persistent civil wars, military intervention and border disputes in Chechnya, Georgia, the Central Asian Republics, in the Armenian-Azari region and the multisided conflagration in the former Yugoslavia. The Bosnian war has meant not only a vicious and cruel ethnic bloodshed, but also a widening entanglement for would- be "peacekeepers": NATO, the USA, Canada and various East European states, including Ukraine and Russia. Conflict has also spread throughout Africa as in the Rwanda and Burundi massacres, while deeply seated genocidal confrontations continued in Sudan, Angola, Mozambique and Liberia. Likewise, the aforementioned negotiated dismantling of South Africa's apartheid system has been accomplished in the midst of persistent violence. The same is true with the more recent implementation of the Palestinian—Israeli accord. Violent ethnic conflicts go on unabated in India and Sri Lanka, with prospects of national INTRODUCTION: PARADIGMS OF CRISIS 3 disintegration. With constant turmoil, refugee-producing zones have just been replaced by new and more active ones. Robert Kaplan's apocalyptic 1993 article in the Atlantic Monthly suxnmanzes Western paranoia about the "revenge of the poor." In his "premonition of the future" he envisions: [a] worldwide demographic, environmental, and societal stress, in which criminal anarchy emerges as the real "strategic" danger. Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increased erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms and international drug cartels ... [provides] an appropriate introduction to the issues ... that will soon confront our civilization. (Kaplan 1993) Instability and centrifugalism in the former Soviet Union and the fragmentation and deregulation of its nuclear arsenals raise the spectre of proliferation, smuggling of atomic weapons,. blackmail and, in the mildest scenario, severe environmental hazards. This is compounded by internal problems. In Russia, direct confrontation among power contenders has moved beyond a manageable threshold, in the absence of clear and legitimate