In the emerging security environment, there is recognition by many of an abiding tension between globalization and unipolarity. Primacists in the United States highlight the lead-role of the United States as the common denominator. Critics, however, argue that such an approach is flawed in its assumptions and doomed in the long run.

Globalization and Security

In the 1990s, increased emphasis on economic issues made the World Trade Organization (WTO) debate synonymous with globalization, squeezing out security considerations from the new framework. There is now a recognition that threats to security have changed in form, context and scope with references like transnational, asymmetric and unconventional. Traditional determinants of national power themselves provide inaccurate measure of vulnerabilities as globalization has exacerbated instability in different regions and dimensions.

Unipolarity and its Impact

Coercive power, like other forms of power, is a function of dependency and US leverage over participants of globalization has increased manifold due to this form of power. Coercion, however, has limited influence over ‘irrational’ actors since coercion takes into account some form of predictable behavior from the weaker party in the dependency equation.

Some authors have identified the current power configuration of the world system as unipolarity without hegemony, which is not inherently unstable. Others challenge this conception while acknowledging that hegemony relates more to power than to polarity.  Hegemony itself has been defined as “a situation in which one state is powerful enough to maintain the essential rules governing interstate relations, and willing to do so.” The theory of hegemonic stability, whereby co-operation and order depend upon perpetuation of hegemony, is flawed in the present day context, as it does not take into account the interplay of forces of globalization.

The present day hegemonic structure is often linked to economic expansion. Negative results of globalization, wherever experienced and for whatever reason, are often blamed on the US with allegations of neo-imperialism, cultural invasion as well as violent backlash in the name of religion. Unipolarity also heightens concerns that nations are unable to shape their own destiny, enabling many local leaders to exploit the situation by arousing popular sentiment through religious politics.  It therefore follows that while globalization has increased threats of new forms of warfare, unipolarity increases the probability of their occurrence.

It is also important to underscore that there is a strong and durable link between international political economy and security, and that new tensions are representative of the effects of a global political economy organized along neo-liberal lines under hegemonic influence, which detaches itself from societal impulses generated by discord over submission to an abstract, shifting ‘common good.’  The future of globalization is inextricably linked to the management of alienation, as indeed is security. Making a virtue of expediency is a predictable outcome of unilateralism and can in itself become the underlying cause of increased instability. And globalization increases this possibility still further.

Responding to the Challenge

New vulnerabilities and increased transnational threats require enlightened cohesion, which can come about only through mutual adjustment. A hegemonic approach to shaping the security environment can be inadequate at best and counter-productive at worst.

Co-operation with contenders to manage hegemony was used effectively after the emergence of new post-war power structures in 1815, 1919 and 1945. However, those models differ from the present since the outcome of wars then were not unipolarity. This dissimilarity has prompted unilateralists to call for maintaining America’s freedom of action abroad and oppose organizations, such as the United Nations, that threaten to limit the country’s sovereignty.  However, the more a hegemon undercuts the legitimacy and effectiveness of international organizations in a globalized world, the more inequitable and unstable will globalization become.

Shaping of the future security environment should be addressed under the auspices of the UN where strategies for handling new types of multidisciplinary threats should be evolved. The sweeping winds of globalization make all states stakeholders in global security as much as in global economy, and require them to look beyond mere interdependence. Legal and practical limitations of the UN should not become an excuse for unilateral action or intervention, and necessary adjustment of the UN charter and framework should be undertaken instead.

Unilateralism locks a hegemon in a paradigm that sharpens the dividing line, forcing challengers to devise new ways to breach this line. Blurring this dividing line through devolution and multilateralism is essential to improve the security environment in the globalized world. An expanded security framework, with increased role of multilateral institutions including the UN, can significantly diminish the probability of globalization turning pernicious. It is the promotion of global norms and pluralism that ought to be at the heart of any globalization strategy.