During the vice presidential debate last night, moderator Gwen Ifill asked Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin which is a greater threat to America’s national security: a nuclear-armed Iran or an unstable Pakistan? The two candidates both accurately described how the very real possibility of either is very scary and would serve as a major threat to the United States, with Biden focusing closer on the fact that Pakistan already has nuclear weapons and is most likely where Osama bin Laden is currently hiding, and Palin focusing on the danger of an openly hostile Iranian regime with a nuclear weapon. But then Sen. Biden made a very good point which more and more foreign policy analysts and defense specialists have argued for; Biden noted that while it is important to be very cognizant of the dangers posed by Pakistan and Iran, an attack on America will not come from a sovereign state launching a nuclear-tipped ICBM, it will come in the form of a terrorist with a dirty bomb in a suitcase. Maybe that’s the scariest part about studying national security today. We must not only be aware of and guard against hostile states and the numerous visible enemies worldwide, America must also defend and protect itself from the untold numbers of invisible and unknown enemies worldwide. While 9/11 certainly made this point clear to many politicians and leaders within our country, the full meaning of our changing national security and the role of the state has not been fully understood.

The end of the Cold War, in combination with globalization’s effect of making transportation and information exchange significantly easier has brought on a new era in the world of foreign affairs. The traditional Westphalian state that has reigned dominant since the 17th century has seen its absolute power diminish as subnational and transnational entities, such as al-Qaeda or Nike, have seen their economic, ideological, political and even military power grow at the expense of the state. As a result, the reality of our security has been dramatically altered. In order to properly address this dramatic modern security paradigm, significant changes to the roles and responsibilities of America’s military and diplomatic corps along with a focus on worldwide human security as a direct aspect of our national security will be necessary.

 

What Is Past Is Prologue

In order to understand the modern security paradigm and its future, we must first have at least a brief understanding of the old security paradigm and why it ended. While scholars have disagreed over exactly where the old paradigm begins and ends, for the purposes of this post, we will define the old security paradigm as the balance of power system composed of state vs. state interactions. While there are major differences between the periods composing this paradigm, such as pre-World War I, the inter-war years, and the Cold War, we will focus on the Cold War for the sake of simplicity and since it serves as the last stage of this paradigm.

During the Cold War, the balance of power manifested itself in the form of a bipolar world with the United States on one side and the Soviet Union on the other. While there were significant attempts to establish a non-aligned movement, the net effect was simply that the states that did not fit fully under the umbrella of either the U.S. or the USSR served as battlegrounds for the indirect war between the world’s two superpowers. The U.S. and the USSR relied on state-to-state interactions, whether they be the alliances formed in NATO and the Warsaw Pact, or the proxy warfare found in the Soviet Union against Afghanistan and the United States against Northern Vietnam.

The end of the Soviet Union brought about a phenomenon almost unheard of since the days of the Roman Empire (and one could even make the case that even the Roman Empire never achieved this point); one country was left as the undisputed most dominant nation in the world in every network of power: politically, economically, militarily and ideologically. This is not to say that there haven’t been periods in world history where one country was considered the strongest, but the post-Cold War years saw quite possibly the only period of true global unipolarity.

And yet at the same time that the Soviet Union was crumbling, the technological innovation and popularization of computers and satellites in conjunction with significant pushes towards free trade by the World Trade Organization and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) brought about a revolution known as globalization, which has made transportation and the exchange of goods, services and ideas on a global scale infinitely easier. Increases in the ability of entities to trade, communicate ideas and develop a network of like-minded individuals all on a global level removed Michael Mann’s four sources of social power (political, economic, military and ideological power) from the sole possession of the state and dispersed them throughout a variety of groups operating across a variety of states or below the state level.

 

A Brave New World

With the Cold War over and the effects of globalization rapidly altering the structure of the global society, we now begin to take a look at the paradigm shift and the end of the unquestioned supremacy of the Westphalian state.

As discussed in the previous section, the state traditionally held the role as the dominant shareholder of all four sources of power (although it should be noted that the church certainly had significant ideological power, that power has declined dramatically over the past several centuries). Globalization created a situation where subnational entities (such as the Irish Republican Army [IRA], People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals [PETA] and Bill Gates) and transnational entities (such as al-Qaeda, Doctors Without Borders and Nike) now have a significant share of the four sources of power (political, economic, ideological and military). This is not to say that any particular subnational or transnational entity comes remotely close to rivaling strong countries such as the United States, China or even Tunisia in any particular source of power, but the fact remains that traditional Westphalian states hold a significantly smaller share of these various sources of power.

As a result of this shift, some states are weaker than these various non-state entities in one or more source of power. For instance, if Warren Buffett, the American investor and richest man in the world at $62 billion, were a state, he would rank as the 82nd richest state in the world, ranked behind Uzbekistan, but ahead of Kenya and the Dominican Republic. Another example of how some states are being eclipsed by non-state actors is simply to look at the political and military power of groups such as the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka or the Irish Republican Army in Ireland. The fact is that both groups had near the same amount of, if not more political and military power as the state governments of each country.

None of this is to say that the world has been turned upside down and the Westphalian state-system as we know it has been rendered dead by globalization, nor is it to say that any individual non-state actor could rival the United States or another major power, but this devolution of these various sources of power have moved the world away from the state-to-state interaction that characterized the old paradigm. Many of the interactions in the modern paradigm are state-to-transnational corporation, state-to-terrorist group, state-to-nongovernmental organization, and so on. An adage taken from Thucydides’ The History of the Peloponnesian War is that justice and true dialogue only exist between equals. While many of these state-to-non-state actor interactions are not necessarily between equals, the gap between the two has dramatically decreased as a result of globalization and the paradigm shift, which is why these interactions now even take place.

 

The New Reality of American Security

From this new view of globalization and the modern paradigm as it relates to the growing power of non-state actors, the question on the mind of many politicians, policy makers, and leaders in Washington is, “How does this new paradigm affect American security in the 21st century?”

As mentioned earlier in this post, the United States still faces antagonistic states such as Russia, Iran and China that wish to assert themselves as challengers to American hegemony, but the real change in American security is that we now face so many non-state actors that can either directly oppose us or use their advantage in one of the four sources of power to assist others in combat against us.

This begs a related question, though: Why us?

Despite our traditional nature of selective engagement and the Jeffersonian focus on strengthening ourselves at home first and foremost, the United States was thrust into the role of a superpower following the two World Wars. In the name of improving our quality of life, our security in the face of the perceived fears of global communism, and our moral obligation to serve worldwide peace, we expanded our position and involvement around the globe. With our major allies still struggling to rebuild themselves following the destruction of World War II, we were the only country possibly equipped to do so. The problem is that as the United States has tried to pull the entire globe (with the possible exception of Africa since we have spent very little energy there) into its sphere of influence, our mistakes and the inherent hypocrisy that comes with exalting the virtues of freedom and democracy while supporting pro-American dictators, combined with the nature of scarce resources for a globe with the desire for an increasingly higher quality of life have left many feeling upset at, violated by and disenchanted with the United States.

Due to our large presence and our position as the only superpower left in the world, many state and non-state actors have targeted us due to their frustration with the current global order. Some of the state actors include Iran, whose leaders and public still remember very well that we not only supported a ruthless tyrant in Mohammed Reza Shah, but also covertly removed the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mosaddeq due to his attempted nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (who would later become British Petroleum). One of the more obvious non-state actors is al-Qaeda, who has been very effective at using the internet to wield its ideological power, which in turn has brought in recruits, splinter cells and donations, in essence increasing its economic, political and military power. Al-Qaeda’s leader, Osama bin Laden, turned his hatred from what he considered apostates (Muslim leaders that had turned secular) to the United States following the positioning of American troops in Saudi Arabia for the Persian Gulf War, which bin Laden considered an ultimate crime to allow non-Muslim troops on Muslim holy lands.

The combination of these state and non-state actors has proven to be extremely dangerous to navigate as we attempt to balance the various actors, attempting to make new friends without making any new enemies. The United States may have been fighting an existential threat in the Russian bear during the Cold War, but the end of the bear simply gave rise to the hundreds of thousands of webs and networks woven by spiders across the world. While few, if any, are existential threats individually, the collective danger posed by the possibility of these hundreds of thousands of spiders all operating against us is not only significantly harder to defend against, but quite possibly much more threatening than the Russian bear.

For an excellent piece discussing the changing meaning of “national security” in the globalized post-9/11 world, I recommend Steve Smith and Amitav Acharya’s piece entitled, “The Concept of Security Before and After September 11” and  a piece by Christopher Rudolph of the USC Center for International Studies entitled “Globalization and Security: Migration and Evolving Conceptions of Security in Statecraft and Scholarship”. (Just as a warning, both articles are protected, so many of you will be unable to read these pieces.)

 

Where Do We Go From Here?

For individuals such as myself who spend their time and energy looking at how to improve American foreign policy, we come to the most important question, and ultimately the hardest question: “Looking forward, what must America do to address this new security paradigm?” While I do not have the audacity to claim that I know the answer to such a complicated and tenuous issue, I believe that there are several major changes that must be made to our foreign policy mindset and structure in order to improve our position and safety in this new security paradigm.

First and foremost, we need to be cognizant of the fact that when addressing non-state actors such as terrorist groups, it is not possible to kill our enemies faster than people can be recruited and turned into enemies. As such, we must focus on prevention instead of rollback. This entails a variety of issues that all must go into our approach to the issue. First among them is a recognition of just how many issues directly affect our national security, and second is the strong relationship in the modern paradigm between human security internationally and our national security domestically.

While some of the biggest proponents of the war on terrorism and defenders of national security are hawkish neocons, I have yet to see a single one of them suggest that we address the root causes of terrorism and unfriendly regimes: failing and failed states. As Daniel Lambach and Tobias Debiel correctly point out in their paper, “State Failure Revisited: Globalization of Security and Neighborhood Effects,” failed states serve as the greatest source of regional instability around the world. The fact is the genocide in Darfur should have just as much importance in our national security calculations as Iraq. The spillover effects of the failed state in Sudan and elsewhere in Africa threaten to destabilize friendly regimes throughout the area, sending them into economic turmoil and possibly handing over such friendly countries to a regime that is unfriendly and upset with our lack of effort to stop the atrocities committed throughout that continent. Think about it, Robert Mugabe stole an election from Morgan Tsvangirai in Zimbabwe and instead of upholding the power of democracy by protecting Tsvangirai, his family or his supporters, we let Mugabe strong-arm Tsvangirai into a meaningless power-sharing agreement that will most likely be non-existent by the year’s end. While we didn’t screw up as badly as we did in Iran with the Mosaddeq situation, don’t think for a second that the people of Zimbabwe will forget that the world turned their back on this struggling African nation.

As part of this push towards human security and defense against failed states, we need to support countries through foreign assistance and direct investment to ensure that they can provide social services for their people. One of the reasons why terrorist and pseudo-terrorist groups such as Hizbullah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood have become so powerful and so well supported is because the states they operate within have failed to provide basic social services in certain parts of the country. If your government fails to provide food, clothing, medical care, education or some sort of banking system, but an organization such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt steps into that void by providing all of those services, of course you’d consider that organization more legitimate and in line with your interests than the national government. Remedying this situation in all of the countries where these sorts of failures occur will not be easy, cheap or even necessarily possible. Sen. Biden acknowledged in the debate that probably the first thing to be cut, or at least postponed in an Obama administration by the economic crisis and the $700 billion bailout is the pledge to double foreign aid from $25 billion to $50 billion per year.

Part of the way to mitigate the costs of such a tremendous effort is by shifting existing resources and improving multilateral efforts within countries. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called for “transformational diplomacy” in a speech at Georgetown University in 2006, which would get diplomats out of the capital working only on a state-to-state level, and into the streets working on state-to-non-state actor levels. Similarly, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called for the military to focus less on fighting conventional wars, and instead to focus on humanitarian relief, infrastructure development and reconstruction projects. While these are both high-level changes in the correct direction, the major problem facing both programs, especially transformational diplomacy, is that there is simply not enough funding or manpower to accomplish what these programs wish to achieve since both would require not only redirecting resources, but expanding and retraining the existing diplomatic and military corps.

Lastly, as part of the effort to evenly spread the burden of serving human security, we must improve our multilateral efforts by strengthening the power of the UN and transforming NATO from a national security organization to a human security organization. As Michael MccGwire notes in “The Paradigm That Lost Its Way”, the failure to truly entrench multilateralism following the Cold War serves as a major reason why the United States often faces the wrath of both state and non-state actors alone, which has forced us to spread ourselves too thinly in attempt to put out all the fires of the world. Part of our responsibility as the only world superpower is to unite the various countries of the world who have the will, but not the way, with those that have the way, but not the will.

 

 

We’ve only recently entered this new paradigm in which state-to-state interaction is not the standard operating procedure. The way that we rethink and retool our foreign policy to properly address this new security paradigm will have a profound impact on our safety and well being for the next several generations. There are a lot of spiders out there, and while they’re not all necessarily out to get us, we have to be very careful treading through these webs, lest we find ourselves overwhelmed and tangled by the multitude of state and non-state actors.