Globalization Process and Conflicts in the World Order

By Mr. B. M. Jain

It gives me a great pleasure to be here, especially amidst peace theorists and peace activists coming from diverse countries and continents. Before 1 deliver my keynote address on the globalization process and conflicts in the new world order, let me address some key issues that have been puzzling us. What is new world order? What is globalization? What is the nature and pattern of conflicts we are witnessing today? What are major sources of myriad typologies of conflicts? What are appropriate alternatives and options to reduce their magnitude?

Let me first take up the much controversial part of new world order as defined by American President George Bush, perhaps in the predominantly Western thinking and approach divorced from hardboiled realities of the world politics. The notion of a new world order, defined along the parameters of peace, justice, cooperation, collective security system, rule of law, Human Rights and democracy, is being seriously contested on the ground that it does not take cognizance of the key notions such as equality, equity and sovereignty.

For, the sovereign character of nation­state will always remain an integral part irrespective of the nature of the world order. The so-called new world order is basically flawed by the fact that state systems based on sovereignty have been given a back seat. There are theorists who subscribe to this view that the concept of sovereignty in the globalization process has lost much of its relevance given the inevitable global interdependence. It is a patent fact that the world has become truly interdependent. It is also true that globalization process is inevitable. But the moot question is can we ignore state's sovereign character? Kevin P. Clements of International Alert writes that state systems are "absolutely indispensable to the peace-building process." This is grounded in the logic that states as actors have to deal with counter state actors on matters of concluding treaties whether for terminating war or for concluding peace agreements or accrediting of diplomats or exchange of protocols or signing of memorandum of understanding (MOD) and agreements in various areas of bilateralism or multilateralism. Theses acts can not be performed by non-state actors.

Nor such functions can be transferred to non-state actors. This is one side of the story of the concept of sovereignty. The other part of it is the role of state in maintaining military, and law enforcing agencies. I am of this view that the sovereign character of nation-state system needs to be retained when we are encountering threat of international terrorism and religious extremism. To combat or curb them, state-to-state mutual cooperation becomes inevitably essential and logically that automatically involves the question of sovereignty of a state.

One thing more that merits mention is that in an elan for globalisation, it is essential to rethink how our entire planet will look like if multinationals are given a free run to take over national economies of states under their Control, to decide upon the resource allocation to developmental plans, to arbiter on defence requirements, to formulate academic curricula in colleges and universities, to set their priorities in the creative field of artistic and aesthetic works, to plan, shape and execute welfare schemes in accordance with their conception and imagi­nation guided solely by the wisdom of how much monetary strength they possess. Should it be allowed to happen? If this at all happens or made to happen then, I am quite certain, there will be a total anarchy in the borderless globalisation process without any fetters. For it is basically the greed that propels giant business and industrial houses to make global and national economies fetterless so that they can reap the fruits of monetary harvest at the cost of the rest.

Perhaps this is the greatest dilemma as well as the biggest threat to emerging world order. Unless this dilemma is resolved satisfactorily, there is the likelihood of an uncontrollable spurt in various typologies of conflicts. And naturally peace will remain a pipe dream.

Perhaps this is one of the principal reasons that Russia. China and India, for instance, do not subscribe to the notion of unipolar world led by the United States and supported by its "Anglo-Saxon cousins" in Huntington's phraseology, For this implies non-equality of legally equal and sovereign states. That is why Third World nations advocate multi polar world based on equality and sovereignty. I think it is essential to have a comprehensive, creative and critical debate over the New World Order itself so that we can better grasp the nuances of globalization and its ongoing process. Let us not forget that conflicts take place within the international system which is influenced by many and varied inputs.

For, there is a feedback system and in that feedback system, the sources of conflicts emanate from social injustice, from the tide of cultural nationalism and ethnic consciousness. One writer has rightly said that this is a kind of "ethnic passion". And when it is a passion, how we can control it. So ethno-national, religious and cultural passions after the end of the cold war and the demise of the Soviet Union have created manifold problems.

The people in East European countries belonging to divergent cultural communities and ethnic groups started expressing their deep-seated anguish against monolithic structures of state in hitherto communist regimes. Their demand for economic autonomy as well as for the preservation of cultural identities assumed the ugliest form of social violence against the dominant and powerful ethno-cultural communities.

Separatist conflicts took place in Chechnya - a Republic of Russian Federation. Ethnic conflicts between majority Muslims and minority Serbs in Bosnia, and between Serbs and Muslims of the Albanian origin in the Kosovo province of Yugoslavia are the telling examples of a narrow ethnic consciousness.

Similarly, the demand for separatism in China's Xin-Xiang province, in Sri Lanka, Algeria, in Tibet and India has contributed to ethno-religious strife of the worst kind ever witnessed in this century.

And, moreover, the resurgence of ethnic consciousness in Rwanda between Hutus and Tutsis has resulted in a horrendous genocide. Above instances clearly reveal that ethnic nationalism in a quest for separate nationhood has given rise to violence and bloodshed.

Given this backdrop, we are today talking of diverse conflicts-political, social, economic, and cultural, psychological and civilisational conflicts. This debate has been generated for two main reasons. Who will lead the global order? I am not talking about the new world order but the global world order. I am just adding one word i.e. global as a prefix to world order. Because many of American scholars, policy elites and theorists are talking of the American global leadership. They are justifying it on the ground that the world already disordered would be more disordered or even more chaotic and anarchical if the United States does not come forward to lead the world order. It sounds well. And also it appears convincing to some extent given the religious resurgence, proliferation of nuclear weapons in the hands of irresponsible and irrational regimes in certain regions. The idea of America to lead also appears to be good given the fact that America has appropriate capabilities and commanding resources to lead the global world order. It is also true that ambitious goals like leading the world order can be realised only when you have the matching capabilities. And on that account America is more than qualified while compared to other great powers or configuration of powers. Besides that the global milieu is also favourable so far as homogeneity in political structures, democratic processes and development models in the West is concerned. Whereas, in the Third World countries a kind of hybrid developmental models operate. In fact, Third World countries do not have any definite and distinct model of development. They are merely aping the Western models of developments which do not fit into their indigenous conditions or internal circumstances, except for China. 1 may be wrong in saying so but the empirical evidence points up to it.

Now for Chinese it is a very important saying that whether it is a black cat or a white cat, it must catch mice. See the contradictions. Ideological rigidities in Chinese political system still remain but in the economic domain they have adopted market economy right since 1978. Whereas India introduced economic reforms only in 1991. So politically China is not going to deviate from its political ideology. But so far its market economy is concerned, its leaders have made it amply clear that they are not going to reverse this process. The basic reason rooted into this phenomenon is China's ambition to emerge as a super power. To fulfil this ambition, Chinese leaders have prepared a comprehensive and systematic blueprint appropriate to their long-term goals. For this, they had launched the modernization programme in four critical areas-agriculture, industry, defence science and technology-as back as1978, and had decided to complete them by the end of the twentieth century. They were introduced after the death of Mao who took his country back by introducing cultural revolution in 1966. That did not payoff. On the contrary, China was internationally isolated. Realizing the importance of integrating Chinese economy with the world economy, pragmatic leadership in the post-Mao period embarked upon an "open door policy" urider the astute leadership of Deng Xiopeng. As a result, China has attained the status of a great power in Asia and is steadily heading towards becoming a super power may be by 2020 or 2030.

Nobody can precisely predict about it. Similarly, about 1700 American experts on Soviet Union including Henry Kissinger and Brzezinsky failed to predict the direction of the Soviet disintegration.

Definitional Problematique
If we come to the definition of new world order, as defined by George Bush, there are different schools of thought. For instance, Henry Kissinger says that new world order is a mirage. Brzezinsky says that they are merely atmospheric changes. Historian Schlesinger is of the view that in the new world order we are sliding back into the thirties.

Though we are talking of the globalization of economy, of society, of culture, of politics of technology, in this new world order there is a simultaneous process of integration and disintegration. Today we are talking about peace; discussing alternative strategies and conflict management. We may probably prefer the word management to resolution for the simple reason that a complete resolution of conflicts will be a mirage. We may at best mange the conflict or crisis. By this logic, today we need more and more crisis­managers. If this is so, can we hope for a permanent peace? Of course in a relative sense. There can neither be absolute peace nor absolute peace. Because my absolute security will cancel out your absolute Security, Therefore, we need to take not only a pragmatic view of security but also a rational, logical and scientific view of it. At the same time, we have to find out some feasible alternative that fits in the new world order. After the establishment of the WTO in 1995, what we observe is a kind of new war trend. It is apparently a trade cold war between and among developed and between developed and developing nations. If we carefully look at the proceedings of the WTO that took place in Geneva, what we observe is the persisting controversy among WTO members over the social chapter. It has not yet been implemented. It contains three important components - environment, Human Rights and labour standards. Look, if you want to have an equitable world order, if you want to have a relatively peaceful societal order, then hardly does it require any explanation that world order should be based on equity, on justice and distributive justice so far as the Third Wold is concerned. You can not afford to ignore it.

I may slightly deviate from my keynote address. I believe that first it is essential to mention about the milieu in which peace operates. That milieu has multi-variant levels-global, regional and national, sub­regional or even village one. At the very level who matters most is a powerful or an influential actor in everyday-to-day decision­making. Majority of us, as commoners, have at best vocal power to express our grievances to sensitise those actors who matter. But these actors get hardly sensitized because they have already become immune to the sensitivities of others, as a medical doctor becomes totally immune to the shrieks and cries of a patient when he operates upon him/her or administers injections while performing his routine duties. The only difference is this that a doctor cures a patient while political actors play with the lives of humankind. Thus the insensitivity on the part of powerful and affluent actors is the source of developed nations' immunity to the appeals of Third World nations for equity, fairness, distributive justice. And this immunity is the real source of conflicts of different typologies as we witness in the form of inter-state or intra­state conflicts or between developed and developing nations.

Diffusion
Though there is diffusion of power; diffusion of technology, even diffusion of knowledge, can we have that kind of stream of knowledge?

Can we have that kind of stream of thought where we can have the vision of integration? Of course diversity but not disunity. The real challenge to the issue of the conflict management or conflict prevention is not ideological but the philosophical one. A new kind of psychology is emerging from this challenge which I dub it as "competitive-cognitive psychology." We may apply this psychology to any social group or any configuration of powers to gain a better understanding of violent behaviour of people having narrow cultural outlook. I do not claim that this is the only kind of psychology emerging in the world order. But the competitive psychology needs to be taken into consideration when we talk of peace, when we talk of non-violence, when we talk of new world order or when we talk of management or the resolution of conflicts. Its application part can be easily seen in the case of India and Pakistan, in the case of the Arab­Israel conflict, in the case of the Korean peninsula. What we have been witnessing for more than five decades in the case of India and Pakistan is the psycho-cultural incompatibility prodding them into outmanevring each other. Gradually they cultivated mutual enemy images that we have grown so strong that they need psycho­therapy.

Therefore, the psychiatric school of thought reveal that unless we bring about positive transformation in the psychology of ruling elites, influential actors. decision­makers and of those who matter in crucial decision-making we can scarcely think of a peaceful order; we can hardly imagine a tension-free social order. What we need today is the diffusion of peace throughout the world.

Primacy of Economy
In the post-cold war world, theorists and policy practitioners are talking about the primacy of economy after the collapse of the Soviet Russia.

Union attributed mainly to the economic chaos in its totalitarian regime. But at the same time, the economic primacy also stems from the competitive-cognitive psychology that ultimately informs and guides our economic behaviour and actions-good or bad just or unjust, fair or foul. For, it is in the mind wars or conflicts, hatred or retributional attributes originate. It is not a new thing that I am telling. What I am saying is that behind this competitive-cognitive psychology is greed and unbridled lust for acquisitiveness to outbeat others. Gradually the commercia­lization of human minds will lead to the criminalisation of intellect, of mind, and of thinking process that ultimately gives birth to all kinds of conflicts in the form of violation of human rights, ethno-religious feuds, resurgence of religious fundamentalism, glorification of jihad, glorification of national pride in possessing nuclear weapons and also the glorification of one's civilisational and cultural values. All these lead to an unbridled violent world order

Strategies and Options
What is the way out? What are appropriate strategies and future alternatives?

I begin with a hypothesis that unless we strike at the very root of violence, we can not have a trouble-free or violence-free social order.

We can not afford to take a surfacial view. On the basis of surfacial view if we formulate models, develop alternative models, methods or modalities I doubt we will be able to achieve our goal. Why should we not strike at the very root cause of trouble shooters? It may not be, and is probably not, so easy to achieve the goal of a peaceful world order even though we succeed in locating one singular reason behind the eruption of violent conflicts of diverse nature. But what is important is our relentless movement against the dark forces.

Even though we succeed in giving relief to 1 percent to victims of violence and terror, this will be our success in the mission taken in hand. One poet has rightly said that if we go back inch by inch from the path of war, you are causing peace to occur since the war is receding inch by inch and gradually its space will get widened. I may also refer to Thomas Kunh's monumental scientific work on the structure of consciousness that helps us understand the thought process that ultimately prods decision-makers to take decisions-, may be positive or negative. It is that thought process which can be trained scientifically through a proper feedback system like" right knowledge", "unbiased and objective information", and "universal human value-loaded literature" to absorb positive ideas and cultivate constructive approach. Thus the function of thought process is crucial to the bigger questions of global peace and equitous world order. Nothing is small and nothing is big. It is the goodness or badness of our thinking process oozing out of the structure of our consciousness. So what is important is the quality of inputs we provide to the structure of our consciousness. That makes a big difference as what was said by Thomas Swell in his famous work on Vision. He also supports our premise - the quality of inputs-and argues that if we desire to have a fair andjust social order then we need to cultivate "unconstrained vision". He further says that all sorts of problems and all kinds of conflicts basically emanate from the constrained vision of ruling leaders. If ruling leaders think in terms of their caste or racial or country or regional affiliation they are, he claims, the patent products of "constrained vision." This is really a very important dimension of global peace and security when we talk of visions. It is the constrained vision of an individual that narrow sectarian and biased approaches seek an upper hand.

The second important dimension is the citizen intervention which is a practical approach to deal with conflicts. It is people's awareness that bring force ruling elites to abandon the policies and path of violence and confrontation by creating artificial threat perceptions. by creating artificial and imaginary enemies to sustain themselves in power and authority. The situation in Third world countries is worst where poverty, illiteracy and unemployment are the real obstacles to mass awareness.

People are struggling for their livelihood, are battling for their sheer physical survival. Who will show them path? Who will lead them since political leaders have no political will to lead them for they see benefit in exploiting the mass poverty, their drudgery and social backwardness?

The media and intelligentsia are power brokers indulged in sharing the booty and enjoying the perks and privileges. The middle class has nothing to do with what is happening. They are concerned with maintaining their status quo in society. Therefore, the lower rung of society suffers at the hands of ruling elites, intelligentsia and middle class people. Unless there is a change in the old mind sets at the grassroots level, no movement can succeed to prevent the conflicts-social, economic, political, cultural and religious. How can we stop the sustained ethno-religious conflicts whether in Sri Lanka or in Northern Island or in Quebec or in India or in Kosovo? Do these conflict not contribute to international terrorism and religious extremism at the global level? Yes, these conflicts ultimately lead to insurgencies, militancy and religious resurgence whose embers can not be extinguished by military or violent means. They have to be tackled politically but humane approach is the fitting approach to reduce their magnitude. Yesterday, we had very interesting discussion. The idea of non-killing society of Glenn D. Paige is a novel idea, a very interesting notion? The problem with every new idea is the question of implementation, the question of modality appropriate to achieving the ideal. Another important idea is the idea of granting "non-territorial status" to minority religious groups as a solution to the problem of granting the right to self-determination for a separate state. Gottileb suggests "that the nations that do not have states of their own, should be granted a formal non-territorial status and be recognised internationally." It is a good suggestion. After all we know that cultural conflicts between and among nations is related to the question of identity, the question of self-esteem.

Now he has suggested the way out in "non­territorial status" to cultural minority groups so that they can preserve their self-esteem and state can maintain its territorial integration, advantageous to the interest of both parties.

Friends, I am raising another serious but real problem that ought to have caught our attention much earlier is concerned with right to visa. Can we think of abolishing visa? Is it a practicable proposition? If it is not possible to abolish it, then make it less cumbersome and less humiliating. The purpose behind it is to ensure that it is given to a right person for a reasonable cause. There are different categories of visa demanders.

Ninety percent cases are generally genuine and for 10 percent, even less, 90 percent visa seekers are harassed by visa-granting embassies unnecessarily. So why do you punish 90% genuine visa seekers? In fact, visa system is a great barrier to cultural integration and to the promotion of multicultural understanding. Let me conclude that unless we bring qualitative and positive change in our perceptions, in our behaviour action, we can not bring about change in the violent behaviour and actions of others. This calls upon the NGOs and peace activists to accept the challenge and work intensively in the area of practical training in peace, nonviolence through step-by-step approach.

It is a continuous process. But if the NGOs' work is limited to paper or publication work, the dream of having a co-existential world community will never be fulfilled.

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Author : Mr. B. M. Jain is Professor of Political Science in the University of Rajasthan, Jaipur. He is a known political scientist and has authored and edited several books and research papers relating to global political scenario.

Article Source : Anuvibha Reporter ( Special Issue : Dec. 2000 )
Ahimsa, Peacemaking, Conflict Prevention and Management Proceedings and Presentations
Fourth International Conference on Peace and Nonviolent Action ( IV ICPNA )
New Delhi : Nov. 10-14, 1999

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