An Unwritten Future by Jonathan Kirshner;

Author:Jonathan Kirshner;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2022-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

Classical Realist Political Economy—Globalization and the Social Economy

Even while retaining realist foundations—a state-centric perspective, continuity regarding expectations of states’ motivations and (lack of) inhibitions, the pursuit of the National Interest in a dangerous anarchic world—and a focus on national security traditionally (even narrowly) defined, globalization matters for world politics, and classical realism is analytically well equipped to understand how and why. When the condition well characterizes world politics, a failure to account for the influence of globalization will make it difficult to understand changes in the balance of power, the prospects for war, and the strategic choices embraced by states. Shifting the setting doesn’t eliminate intense and potentially dangerous interstate competition, but contexts are not neutral. Baseball and basketball are both zero-sum games with clear winners and losers. But one of the greatest basketball players in history was a mediocre minor-league baseball player.

Nor is there anything inherently reassuring about the political implications of globalization (the characteristic that made many structural realists respond so viscerally to claims about the international political consequences of interstate interdependence). As Stanley Hoffmann observed, “Globalization, far from spreading peace … seems to foster conflicts and resentments.” Similarly, a wave of research on “weaponized interdependence” emphasizes the new and distinct conduits of interstate conflict facilitated by a highly enmeshed world economy.73 More generally, reflecting an array of pressures that derive from unorganized and stateless forces, globalization affects traditional national security issues in three principal ways: by reshaping state capacity, recasting relative power, and revising calculations about the costs and benefits of the use of force in different settings. Globalization affects state capacity (in many ways increasing their capabilities, especially with regard to the domestic surveillance of political adversaries) and state autonomy (often reducing it, commonly seen with regard to macroeconomic policy). Because it does so unevenly, globalization thus alters the balance of power between states, reshuffling relative capabilities and vulnerabilities. It also generates new incentives and disincentives for war and political violence more generally, privileging some expressions of violence over others, and creates distinct axes of conflict.

Globalization—the increasing size and reach of the international economy, the growing pressure of market forces, and the tidal wave of border-indifferent information flows—is inherently disruptive, in the value-neutral sense of the term. Such forces more generally tend to disorder traditional patterns of activity, and widen or alter disparities between groups within societies. And times of rapid change—even change for the better—are often associated with political instability for this reason. As some thrive and others do not, the dissatisfied and vulnerable will demand redress and call for resistance—especially when unwelcome changes can be attributed to demonized “outsiders” both within and beyond a country’s borders.74

The principal conduits of globalization are flows of information and commerce. As noted, with regard to the former, they can be empowering of states (and also weaponized); the latter are neither irreversible nor irresistible, but do raise the opportunity costs of closure. Nor should they be understood as in any way apolitical in origin or implication. State choices, especially

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