Public Reason 4 (1-2): 222-28

© 2012 by Public Reason

Global Injustice as a Threat to World Security

Vihren Bouzov

St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko

Abstract. The problems of national security are subject matter of interdisciplinary studies in political, economic and military sciences, as well as in philosophy, psychology and social and technical sciences. In this paper, security is perceived of as a process of adequate control by the social subject over adverse impacts of the environment. Today, the world is more insecure than at any in the past: the components of the world security system, inherited from the „Cold war” period, are becoming eroded. Mankind needs a new effective security system, based on a cosmopolitan morale and shared responsibilities. The ongoing process of globalization has entailed growth of inequalities and injustice the world over. Mankind still underestimates their effect as a threat and risk to its security. Global injustice is a source of most of dangers to world security: terrorism, crime and regional conflicts. Existing problems of collective security can only be interpreted with success by means of reference to the political game theory. Its practical advises must be interpreted on the basis of an axiological conception of rationality. The thesis that an effective security system must be built up on the basis of a choice in chime with a dominant option obtaining is forwarded and grounded in this paper. The solution of overall security problems via the use of a model of award of proxy has been proved to be ineffective.

Key words: world security, global injustice, new security system.

The problems of national security are subject matter of interdisciplinary studies in political, economic and military sciences, as well as in philosophy, psychology, and social and technical sciences. In this paper, security is perceived of as a process of adequate control by the social subject over adverse impacts of the environment.

The following classification of principal levels of security is accepted in the present-day security theory: personal, group (communal or organizational), state, regional, and worldwide levels (Buzan and Hansen 2009, 187-224; Slatinski 2011; Ionchev 2008, 16-18). The first three of them are components of the content of the notion of national security. A state’s security is the leader in this system; it connects national to international security, while the latter encompasses interactions of various types of agents at regional and world level. Globalization shifts the accent of security problems onto the world level; as regards mutual commitment between global and local levels, it is of determining nature.

The ongoing process of globalization has entailed growth of inequalities and injustice the world over. Mankind still underestimates their effect as a threat and risk to its security. Global injustice is a source of most of dangers to world security: terrorism, crime and regional conflicts. Existing problems of collective security can only be interpreted with success by means of reference to the political game theory (see Bouzov 2011, 58-64).

I. The Notion of Security in a Global Context

A social subject develops, and partakes of the nature of different relationships with the world and its ‘environment’: in them it strives for realization of its natural forces. Security can be considered as a notion related to different types of social subjects: individuals, social groups (communities and organizations), society and mankind as a whole.

Security cannot be understood as a ‘state of a given social system’; if understood so, it could be interpreted as a desired state of affairs, a system is striving for. Such understanding cannot identify the dialectical nature of relationships creating and supporting security. The latter feature a process, while the state of affairs is stationary and transitory. But, indeed, a coincidence in the development of subject and environment can be achieved, whereby the subject can manage its effects successfully and retain its integrity. The establishment of security is of a dynamic nature, characterized by tension in stability and change.

The transitory nature of security stands out when we treat it in parallel with insecurity. The development of reality involves overcoming of contradictions. Hence, security can be attained by means of overcoming continuously-arising contradictions in a given environment. Such contradictions can be ones of a sharp conflict nature; but they can also be non-antagonistic ones, solvable on the basis of the principles of consent and collaboration.

Security can be defined as a process of support of a satisfactory control by the subject over harmful effects of the environment. Such control can guarantee the existence-per norm-of a given social subject or a social system. The ability of a social subject to successfully cope with harmful effects of environment draws a dynamic dividing line between security and insecurity.

An environment can be natural or social, not affected or created by human intervention. The Copenhagen School of International Security Studies conceives environment, or a strategic part of it, as a referent object in security maintenance (Buzan and Hansen 2009, 13-16, 212-17). The social subject is in active interaction with the environment, and is striving for control over negative effects of the latter, concerned with its own survival. Apart from the ‘factor of nature’ in human environment, the technological world, developed by human beings, has an import of its own, too. It makes up the main difference between human environment and environment of other living organisms. A vast majority of effects in human environment are caused by different subjects: individuals or groups of such. The participants in a social interaction vie with each other in the distribution of specific amounts of resources and their rivalry struggle is an essential trait of a given security environment. People do not establish relationships with nature only, while endeavoring to transform it in order to fall in with their aims and interests. They establish relationships with other people and human institutions as well - with more important influence on their own development. A security environment can be identified with the system of a subject’s social relationships.

These reciprocal dependencies make for perceiving of decisions in the security sphere in a broader context of our political decision and action, as such at the highest levels of security. It involves institutionalized, organized behavior and distribution of definite power resources in searching for response to effects of an environment on a social subject. This view allows of existence of a wider range of different aspects of security – varying from military and legal to social and ecological ones. The Copenhagen experts of security rightfully say that „a more general sectoral widening of security included societal, economic, environmental, health, development and gender” aspects (Buzan and Hansen 2009, 12).

The relative weight and balance of various factors and levels of security maintenance has become changed in the Global Age. Overall involvement of a great variety of participants active in international relations, plus appearance of a new type of threats and risks, make it necessary to plan acts in the security sphere and their effects in the context of the whole planet. One can say that national states are still unable to ensure their security by themselves: they cease to be the main referent object in the analysis of international relations, as they were in the Modern Times after the Westphalian Peace in 1648.

Security can exist in normal set-ups or in crisis. The normal development of the social subject spells out ability of it to realize satisfactory control over the impact of environment. This means that the social subject would be able to make autonomous decisions and to realize acts falling in with its interests and aims. ‘Norm’ is a prescription for the existence of particular activity or inactivity; it is enacted by specific authority. A norm is valid when it is part of a functioning normative system, regulating a given type of social relationships. Evaluations of the social subject as regards social facts are incorporated in a norm – specifically, its will to transform a status quo (Buzan and Hansen 2009, 19-27).[1] The security of a system is ‘in norm,’ when some prescriptions are fulfilled in the realization of control by the subject over environmental impacts, as necessary and essential conditions for its survival and development. When such prescriptions are neglected, crisis comes up. Then the social subject is not able to control environmental impacts successfully; and its existence and development could be jeopardized.

Crises-determining factors could be classified as challenges, risks and threats. A challenge is a critical state of a security environment, calling for certain response. A threat is also a state of the environment, when it manifests itself in a normal framework. It can be revealed in a direct way, as a phenomenon immediately preceding a crisis. Risks are threats of an unknown, constant duration. They have a strong impact on the appearance of crises and are characterized by uncertainty. Risks can the result of external factors or inherent flaws.

Worldwide security is the highest level in the study of these problems. In the world today, on the basis of the internationalization of economic relations, advance in information and communicative technologies and intensification of political cooperation and cross border ecological risks, worldwide security is, no doubt, of global importance. The problem of regulation of international relations worldwide as regards guaranteeing security of all participants in them is one of primary importance.

Today, our world is in a state of dynamic insecurity, owing to the fact that the pre-Cold War system of security has been destroyed and no efficient substitute of it has been found. The number of crises-boding security risks is growing incessantly. The main source of them is the existing global injustice.

II. Global Injustice and the Future of Mankind

The first cause for the existence of crisis of global security is the lack of perspective to review and underscore established social distinctions and to somehow do away with inequalities. The world community is not adequately successful in its efforts to reduce poverty and to streamline and bridle environmental hazards. Our planet does not have adequate resources to secure a high standard of living for all humans, on a par with that of the richest people. The latter are altogether not concerned at with any making of corresponding changes.

Neoliberalism cannot be an adequate strategy in this process. As a development strategy it is unable to ensure normal functioning of a social system and just relationships between people. It is justifiable to compare the contemporary neoliberal economists with the theologians in the Middle Ages (Pogge 2005, 30). The global corporative media and neoliberal economists have defended in one voice ‘The Washington consensus’ and neoliberal strategies. This type of political and social projects is considered as having no alternative (Harrison 2002, 16-17). It coincides with the intimate ideas of the corporative media owners. The neoliberal values claim to be an universal therapy for all economic and social diseases. Mankind is faced up with a steady deepening of the ongoing world economic and financial crisis, as a result of this manipulation.

The deepening of economic imbalance on our planet is a lasting result of the ongoing neoliberal globalization. Capitalist expansion transforms existing relations in the ranks of mankind: dynamic changes in them in recent decades have given an impetus to coordinated work in solving economic, political, social and cultural problems of states and their citizens. However, one can say that these processes could not lead to a fair sharing of existing limited resources. The developing countries in the world have increasingly become moored to the debt trap laid by the most advanced ones. The wealth of the latter is growing rapidly. The uncompromising language of data shows that in 1960 20%of the richest people in the world had incomes 30 times higher than those of the poorest ones, while in 1995 this ratio had already marked a 82 times jump; the wealth of 225 of the richest individuals in the world made up 50 % of the annual incomes of 2,5 billion individuals in the poorest people bracket (Boniface 2007, 194). The data for the preceding growth of this rift in the income ratio was as follows: 3:1 (1820), 7:1 (1870), 11:1 (1913); it went up to 30:1 in 1960, and to 60:1 in 1990 (Pogge 2005b, 549). It accounts for the incredible scope of hunger, poverty and diseases among the population of our planet. The use of information and Internet and communicative innovations is also very unevenly distributed, mainly benefiting citizens of the most advanced countries (Sendov 1993). J. Fulcher is right in saying that although it is often considered that global capitalism integrated world, it, as a matter of fact, permanently brings about more division into the distribution of wealth (Fulcher 2008, 195).

One could say that the ambitions of the world community to reduce poverty and stake off environmental hazards have relatively no effective means of realization in our divided world. Rather, they entail serious conflicts owing to the pressing demand of developing countries to have no restrictions in their prospects for economic development, rooting in assertions that advanced countries sought to reduce emissions and do away with harmful effects of the global warming. The Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009 was the first major arena of this deepening conflict. The ongoing freeing of Latin America from US domination and the rise of the BRIC-S countries are the next stage of this process.

It could be said that social and economic inequalities are prerequisites for the existence of lasting inequalities in the field of knowledge, the most important resource of the Global era. Practically, the developing countries and the poorest people in the world are deprived any social perspective. Their number has increased as a result of the use of neoliberal strategies. This process will continue to sharpen the present-existing conflict between the global elite and other humans. Global injustice has become a threat of an unknown duration and risk for the future of mankind. It needs a new effective security system, based on a cosmopolitan morale and shared responsibilities.

III. The Quest For A More Effective System of Global Security

The world today is dominated by social and economic imbalances in favor of the richest countries. Illustrated below is the possibility of applying the political theory of decisions to the selection of a political strategy of building up a more effective system of international security. Political relations – international ones in particular, can be modeled as game interactions in which there are certain strategies of pursuing success or profit. The interests of the parties in the game are opposed to each other, boiling down to the allocation of resources, whereby a participant seeks to maximize profits. Crises in international relations often become long-term conflicts, without a solution, visible and acceptable to parties. One could well say that in such circumstances, efforts to overcome crises often rely on solutions conjured up in uncertainty and ambiguity of information.

World history of the past decade shows that the world has not become a more secure place after the end of the „Cold War.” The system of international security inherited from that era is unable to overcome regional conflicts and new threats to mankind. Alternatives are: unipolar world with a monopoly of power-imposed solution to global conflicts, or multi-polar world, based on the balance of power and consensus in the common interests of guaranteeing security and social values. The unipolar world is dominated and ruled by global economic and political elites. The multi-polar world could be based on a social and economic pluralism.

The accepted orientation to the model of making collective decisions by proxy appears to lead to negative consequences for our insecure world. A proxy can be perceived of as an agent managing or coordinating collective efforts: once he has made decisions on behalf of all, no one can play solo. There is a strong requirement that a „proxy’s choices” could be „other-person or socially grounded” (Shick 1997, 113). But there are no guarantees that the actual proxy options meet the interests of its constituents, or pupils who have authorized it. Today there exists a widespread view that the „New World Order” of dominance of one superpower, the U.S., committed to settling the world conflicts with power intervention - is not a permanent security guarantee. Unless the U.S., NATO and EU assume the role of proxy in situational coalitions created under their control. Examples of this approach are the crises in the Balkans (Bouzov 2001), and wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. In all of them there seems to exist a gap between proxy benefit and benefit of others involved, when it is not possible to reach a settlement of a conflict acceptable to all parties. Ambitions of regional leaders to resist imposed power and to realize their own decisions in their respective region, spell out growth of volatility work. Brazil and China are good examples in this case.

The above-said can be illustrated by the failures of global leaders to reach an acceptable agreement at all levels so as to take common measures against the currently ongoing global financial and economic crisis. Each of the major players in it is looking for individual salvation, led by corporate interests. The same could be said about programs to combat poverty and ease up debt burdens of developing countries, about efforts to achieve sustainable, steady development, etc. The desired consensus in Copenhagen in 2009 has failed, because of the selfishness of the developed countries. Corporate interests and conflicts always lead to such negative results.

The model of choice according to dominating option (Shick 1997, 110-21), offers more possibilities for achievement of effective decisions. One option should be dominant for decision-makers, if they prefer its outcome to be the outcome of each other option, making other participants to act; or prefer it in a certain context of their actions, while remaining indifferent to other options. If such option is not available, and if ambiguity exists, an agent might make a choice as per a rationalizable possibility, dominating in a current situation. A choice made in chime with a dominant option, is determined by attitudes and principles of lasting value. More often than not it leads to a decision finding an equilibrium (balance) in the game. It is clear that when the balanced possibilities are more than one, a choice can be justified by value arguments. T. Schelling has such a problem in his Strategy of Conflict (1980).

The model suggested above allows the formation of coalitions based on a limited consensus among several parties. It could be said that this is the sole realistic road to finding solutions in the now raging global financial crisis, to the overcoming of poverty and the ecological crisis by means of reducing emissions, with due respect for the interests of developing countries. The choice of a dominant option postulates an option of finding equlibrium or cooperative decisions, acceptable to each party; they do not make their status worse. In the context of international relations the imposition of such a model of management and settlement of crises calls for overcoming the unipolar insecure world and emergence of new leaders in the ranks of existing global opposition. In economic terms, such perspectives are now taking shape in China, the EU and Russia and also in some new unions such as the Shanghai Organization and the BRIC countries.

Security in such a world would be based not only on a balance of forces, but also on value-motivated consensus around common interests and shared responsibilities.

v.bouzov@gmail.com

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[1]  See Bouzov 2006, 19-27.