Seeking Balance

Philosophical Issues in Globalization and Policy Making

A. Pablo Iannone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351491679
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The problems and issues arising from globalization are difficult to resolve, in part because our ways of conceptualizing the conflicts and responding to them are inadequate. This book fills this gap, conceiving of globalization as a consequence of economic, political, technological, scientific, and cultural changes. A. Pablo Iannone provides a taxonomy of globalization processes, investigates the consequences of each, and formulates a comprehensive approach for dealing with them.While his emphasis is philosophical, this is not a single-discipline book. Rather, it belongs at the intersection of philosophy, economics, political science, and technology. Its discussions address issues concerning globalization and correlate the processes of fragmentation and dislocation in a realistic manner.Iannone focuses on concrete and current cases, from the global economic and financial issues posed by the multi-centered nature of contemporary business and technology, through the pressures of ever increasing information overload across the planet. He explores the environmental and social challenges associated with current Amazonian development and its significance to weather patterns on Earth. He considers the issues surrounding the use of robots in war from Pakistan through Mexico, and the militarization of space. In short, the approach, while based on theoretical concerns, is solidly grounded in highly practical applications, which are global in their implications.

1

Globalization and the Ideal of a Single Global Community^*

In our fluid twenty-first century, the globally integrative forces of transnationalism, cosmopolitan culture, and modernity elicit romantic enthusiasm from some and cautious skepticism—when not outright fear and anger—from others. In a parallel manner, the globally disintegrative forces of separatism, ethnonationalism, local culture, and tradition also elicit romantic enthusiasm from some and cautious skepticism—when not outright fear and anger—from others. There are those who hail the said globally integrative forces as a way out of widespread poverty, legal and political sectarianism, cultural stagnation, and long-standing oppression of traditionally disenfranchised groups. Others argue that those globally integrative forces are regionally and locally disintegrative and are a sure way to economic and political dependence, cultural decadence, and loss of national identity.

In this chapter, I will understand globalization as the spreading interconnectedness of business, science, technology, politics, and culture through large regions or the entirety of the world—a characterization I will use throughout the book—and ask the following questions: What forms does globalization take? What policy and decision challenges does globalization pose? Is the ideal of a single global community necessary, useful, or desirable in dealing with globalization problems? I will argue, first, that there are at least two types of globalization processes, widespread internationalization and transnational interdependence, which may occur independently or in conflictive or complementary combination with each other; second, that the integrationist ideal of a single, value-convergent global community is neither useful nor necessary for dealing with globalization problems; third, that such an ideal is morally objectionable; and fourth, that there is a better, transnational and transcultural dialogue and interaction model for dealing with the problems. I will close this chapter with a discussion of the prospects for philosophy, the humanities in general, and the social sciences in relation to dealing with these problems.

Two Forms of Globalization

Globalization is often understood as widespread internationalization. This conception is evident in studies that have focused on international relations, where the units of study have largely been countries and the relations studied have primarily been bilateral or multilateral relations between countries.¹ It is also evident in studies of the conduct and impacts of science and technology in a small group of countries.² It additionally permeates social and legal studies of globalization that give preeminence to nation-states. In fact, only recently have other theorists begun to focus on transnational practices and processes, even if they think globalization will bring about a restructuring, and not the demise, of nation-states.³ Yet, this is not the only globalization process there is. For the units of study need not be only or primarily countries, and the relations of significance need not be, and sometimes arguably are not, relations between countries; rather, they can be multicentered relations between a variety of individuals, groups, and organizations, some of them truly worldwide. Consider the following case:

A decade or so ago, an insurance company head-quartered in Hartford, Connecticut, formed a significant partnership with a Chilean insurance company that had developed retirement programs suited to the privatization of social security instituted in Chile in the 1970s. Eventually, the companies merged.

In the 1990s, the government of Mexico, faced with the enormous rising costs of social security, introduced legislation to privatize it. This was an opportunity for the firm head-quartered in Hartford. Its board of directors met, and the CEO directed its members to try to obtain a significant share of the Mexican social security market. He added: “Let us put all our resources behind this effort.” At that point, as he said, he turned around, and saw no one in the room who had any experience with private social security programs, because social security has not been privatized in the US. The Hartford firm however tapped on its global expertise by sending forty of its Chilean experts on private social security programs to Mexico. After all, they arguably had invented it. As a result, the Hartford-based—but thoroughly global—firm secured a significant percentage of that market. Without its multi-centered, globalized expertise, it could not have done it.⁴

The multicentered social relations of transnational interdependence evidenced by this case are not peculiar to business. Indeed, some interpreters have applied them to conceptualize global changes following the end of the Cold War.⁵ In any case, they pose not only conceptual but also factual, ethical, and policy and decision challenges concerning the nature, scope, structure, processes, and impacts of global activities.

A Fluid World: The Questionable Reality of an Incipient Global Community

The philosopher Peter Singer has discussed globalization from an ethical standpoint.⁶ He wrote,

We . . . need to strengthen institutions for global decision making and make them more responsible to the people they affect. That line of thought leads in the direction of a world community with its own directly elected legislature, perhaps slowly evolving along the lines of the European Union.⁷

Singer acknowledges that this statement may prompt the objection that a world government would lead at best to a monstrous bureaucracy and at worst to world tyranny.⁸ Further, he cautions that the statement does not indicate that we should rush into world federalism; rather, it holds that we should “accept the diminishing significance of national boundaries and take a pragmatic, step-by-step approach to greater global governance.”⁹ His short-term candidates for such greater global governance are global environmental and labor standards. He accordingly suggests, for example, concerning labor standards, that the World Trade Organization, through its apparent willingness to support the International Labor Organization in the development of core standards for labor, is a likely policy forum to bring about his desired labor-related aims. In addition, Singer hypothesizes that it would be possible to create a United Nations Economic Security Council that would institute measures aimed at eliminating global poverty.¹⁰

As I will argue, however, these undoubtedly well-meaning suggestions and conceptions of a global community are insufficiently sensitive to globalization realities. Also, they may undermine rather than promote efforts to soundly address the ethical problems of labor and the environments that motivate them. Singer, however, writes that

the 20th century’s conquest of space made it possible for a human being to look at our planet from a point not on it, and so to see it, literally, as one world. Now the 21st century faces the task of developing a suitable form of government for that single world.¹¹

This all too readily assumes that the current or upcoming world is or will be a single world. However, we live in a very fluid world. What seems reasonable to expect, and as some scholars have concluded, is that international relations will encourage a reformulation and rebalancing of the relation between the power of states and that of globalization forces and organizations.¹² This may lead to a single-centered world or, alternatively, to a multicentered world mirroring that in my business example. Further, each of these alternatives may or may not turn out to be oppressive.

What policy and decision options are justified in these circumstances? Singer’s suggestions assume a predictable future for the institutions he supports (the International Labor Organization) or envisions (a United Nations Economic Security Council).¹³ However, the reliability of these organizations for the desired purposes depends on how international forces play out in the coming decades, and, as previously indicated, the outcome of this process is by no means clear or certain. Will a superpower or alliance hijack the World Trade Organization or the United Nations? Will the United Nations survive current tensions?

The Unreal Ideal of a Global Community

One could reply that Singer’s integrationist conception of a single world and a world community is a guiding ideal, not a prediction, and that the pragmatic steps he suggests in moving toward it fit well with the said new accommodation between the power of states and the organizations and forces of globalization. Yet, Singer’s reasons suggest that the single way he envisions requires too much value convergence to be helpful. For example, he contrasts two historical events. One is the 1914 assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb nationalist and the widespread European opposition to Austria- Hungary’s resulting demands—opposition that led to World War I. The other is the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States’ claims and actions in response to them in Afghanistan, and the extremely favorable reception they initially received from a wide coalition of nations, including, unanimously, the United Nations Security Council members.¹⁴ Singer’s conclusion is the following:

It seems that world leaders now accept that every nation has an obligation to every other nation of the world to suppress activities within its borders that might lead to terrorist attacks carried out in other countries, and that it is reasonable to go to war with a nation that does not do so.

Terrorism has made our world an integrated community in a new and frightening way.¹⁵

The world has indeed changed, but it is unclear whether it has changed as much as, let alone in the way that, Singer surmises. Let us see why.

First, it is a debatable interpretation to affirm that 1914 criticism of Austria-Hungary was based merely on national sovereignty principles. States act also in accordance with calculations of military might, and no one wants to be on the losing side of a war, or even on the sidelines of an expected victory and thus distanced from the advantages to be gained from being one of the winners. This also can be said of a number of the members of the coalition supporting US actions against al-Qaida and the Taliban, raising questions about the extent to which they were then becoming the morally integrated community Singer perceives. Russia announced that it had the same right to act against Chechen rebels and the state accused of helping them, the Republic of Georgia, as the United States had to attack the Taliban. Yet, Russia resisted supporting the US attack against Iraq partly because it sought to resolve the question of whether and how Russia would be able to recover, in the event of a war, the seven billion dollars that Iraq owed it. France sought access to Iraqi oil fields. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait hoped for US protection for their own petroleum reserves. Egypt and Jordan wanted to receive more economic assistance. Turkey indicated it would like reimbursement for its support in confronting Iraq but insisted that an invasion of Iraq should take place at a time other than the summer, because this would be bad for tourism, a major prop of Turkey’s economy. Iraqi Kurdish commanders sought to extend their authority to the prized oil fields around Kirkuk and Mosul, and this enraged neighboring Turkey, which saw the oil-producing areas as a traditional ethnic Turkish zone and feared that oil-enriched Kurds would seek independence and encourage autonomy-seeking Turkish Kurds. China opposed unilateral US action but did not use its Security Council veto, apparently because of the warm-up in US-Sino relations partly prompted by the United States’ having designated a Chinese Islamic dissident group as a terrorist organization. The list goes on and on.¹⁶

Further doubts about the reality of such integration are raised by the controversy concerning, for example, the US invasion of Iraq and subsequent conflicts in Afghanistan and Libya. Even Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, during an early parliamentary exchange about Britain’s role in US-led action against Iraq, put things in a realistic perspective by sidestepping global considerations and stating, “I understand alliances.”¹⁷ In any case, the concerns of these countries do not seem to reflect the convergent values of the integrated community that Singer claims to incipiently exist. At best, they reflect the divergent but, depending on what can be negotiated, eventually compatible interests of prospective members of a fluid coalition.

Toward a More Workable Conception of a Global Society

There is then a crucial moral weakness in the integrationist approach to globalization issues: the type of resolution it seeks requires a significantly convergent, generalized agreement on a variety of matters related to beliefs and values. That is, it requires a very substantial common ground in the sense of a thick network—or well-structured, somewhat fixed set—of shared beliefs, norms, and practices (to be eventually cast in the form of policies or institutions) that, if existent or attained, would in effect amount to the core of a world culture and be embodied in the single global community Singer envisions. As the preceding discussion indicates, however, the true degree of actualization or even the likelihood of such a global community is not at all evident.

Indeed, concerning global governance, the clash between, on the one hand, local or regional interests, liberties, and traditions and, on the other hand, big government, is especially intractable. In this context, Singer’s ideal of a global community would be a distraction too likely to lead—granted, through the best of intentions—to highly undesirable consequences. The absence of the widely shared specific beliefs and values required for a resolution of policy and decision problems in such a community would lead to gridlock and, hence, through desperation or impatience and single-mindedness, to autocratic decisions. Thus, existing conflicts would become intractable and new ones would be encouraged, and this would undermine instead of promote meaningful dialogue—that is, dialogue entered in good faith and intended to be constructive, not merely or primarily used as a ploy to attain ulterior ends (e.g., as a delay tactic). Meaningful dialogue is used primarily as a way of addressing conflicts in order to overcome them through discussion of merits, negotiation, or bargaining.

The disastrous likely results and the violations of individual rights that the ideal of a single global community would likely involve make this integration-ist ideal inherently undesirable and morally objectionab...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copy Right Page
• Content Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Globalization and the Ideal of a Single Global Community
• Dialogue
• 2 Varieties of Globalization
• Dialogue
• 3 Contemporary Business and Technology: A Multicentered World
• Dialogue
• 4 Old Habits, New Challenges, and Economic Policy: Argentina’s Foreshadowing Case
• Dialogue
• 5 Globalization or Modernization? Views from the Developing World
• Dialogue
• 6 Globalization Issues, Moral Theory, and Moral Practice
• Dialogue
• 7 Prominent Ethical Theories and this Book’s Theoretical Framework
• Dialogue
• 8 Eco-Diplomacy: Reclaiming the Green Continent
• Dialogue
• 9 The Andean Oil Rush: A Magnet for Development Agents from All Continents
• Dialogue
• 10 Biotechnology Goes Worldwide: Between Luddism and Transhumanism
• Dialogue
• 11 The Factual, the Virtual, and the Fictional in the Widening World of Art, Science, and Technology
• Dialogue
• 12 Walking the Information Overload Tightrope in Ever-Expanding Cyberspace
• Dialogue
• 13 Globalized Cyberwars: How Much Autonomy Should Robotic Weapons Have?
• Dialogue
• 14 Worlds in Transition, Structures of Social Life, and Cooperation among Strangers
• Dialogue
• 15 Globalization, Migrations, and Personal Identity
• Dialogue
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index