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STRATFOR's
Global Intelligence Update
Weekly Analysis May 24, 1999
The Return of National Security
Summary:
The news from around the world is about war, political intrigue,
and espionage. The obsession with free and fair trade, global
interdependence, and economies without borders has evaporated over
the past year or so.What we are experiencing is the reassertion of
traditional understandings of nationalism and of national security
and the decline of the ideology of globalism. The return of
conflict among nations to the center stage of history and in the
daily newspaper is the important news. The nation-state, far from
declining, is vigorously reasserting itself, with the inevitable
accompaniment of bullets and blood.
Analysis:
It is occasionally useful to step back from the issues dominating
the news to consider some of the deeper and more important
processes that are underway in the world. When we do that, something
quite startling leaps out at us. Perhaps what is most startling about
it is that we should be startled at all, for the return of national
security at the center of global concerns is merely the return of the
world to its natural order. After a decade of hearing about the
decline of the nation-state and the triumph of globalism, the fact is
that the nation-state and nationalism are vibrantly alive. It follows
from this that concern for the security of the nation has superceded
the globalist visions of "the world without borders" and the
transcendence of politico-military issues by denationalized economic
entities and forces.
This is not a local, parochial evolution. This weekend, NATO forces
are engaged in combat against Serbia. U.S. aircraft are flying combat
air patrols over Iraq. Indian air and land forces are engaging
Pakistani forces. Secret talks are going on between Syria and Israel
over the Golan Heights. CIA and FBI counter-intelligence people are
working desperately to try to figure out what Chinese intelligence
acquired, when they acquired it, and how it will affect the regional
and global balance of power. Russian covert operatives are trying to
influence events in the Caucuses. In short, the world is returning to
its normal state in which politics, war, and espionage - along with
economics - are the natural currency among nations.
This is startling only in the context of some of the things that were
being said less than a decade ago. In the minds of some, the end of
the Cold War marked the end not only of an era in history, but of a
fundamental, millennial shift in how the world worked. According to
many extremely practical and influential people, the end of the
Cold War inaugurated a new era in which commercial and economic forces
had supplanted political and military issues. From Tokyo to Bonn to
New York, there was a general consensus that borders had become archaic
and meaningless and that they had been rendered so by the globalization
of economic life.
The dynamics of economic life, this theory went, had taken us to a
point where international trade had created an intensifying
interdependence among nations. Markets were so intimately tied together
that the disruption of any one market would disrupt all other markets.
This made war and even deep-seated political conflict unthinkable, since
war and conflict would inevitably disrupt economic and commercial
relations which, in turn, would wreak havoc on not only the combatants,
but also on third parties who would be affected by any hot or cold war.
Given this, even if two nations were inclined to engage in intense
politico-military competition, their irrationality would effect the
interests of other members of the international community immediately,
who would act to suppress this disruptive behavior.
Consider the case of U.S.-Chinese relations. Under this theory,
intensifying commercial relations between the two countries had
reached such a point of intensity that both countries had a fundamental
interest in maintaining and expanding them. Each country would suppress
any action that might disrupt those relations. Thus, it began to appear
as if the fact that China was a communist country was purely incidental,
an archaic legacy rendered irrelevant by commercial interests and in no
way incompatible with its splendid relations with the capitalist world.
Similarly, deep-rooted geopolitical issues, such as China's relationship
with Taiwan, were regarded as archaic. Taiwan, China and the United
States all wanted the same thing: robust economic growth fueled by
international trade and investment. The issue simply appeared
meaningless in the broader context of globalization and interdependence.
The China example can be universalized to a general theory of how the
