Politics beyond international order?
The de-territorialization of transnational politics from a security policy perspective
By Hartmut Behr
Hartmut Behr (Foto: privat).
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"Globalization" is one of our current epoch's most quoted slogans to characterize worldwide transformations of politics and society. As with most slogans, it is too undifferentiated and lacks explicit meaning. There appears to be, however, consensus in the social sciences about at least two aspects of globalization: the first concerns its characteristics, the second concerns one of its consequences. The main characteristic is said to be an immense increase in the number of non-state, transnationally organized actors and their increased policy impact. The main consequence is said to be the emergence of global political arenas that lie beyond the sovereign control of nations and the international order. This loss of control poses serious challenges to national and international politics which are both based on the concept of states' sovereignty.
Because social sciences are, in contrast to natural sciences, not independent of their object under study and therefore are involved in fundamental discussions about what might be the most appropriate form of analysis, the degree of consensus is often very limited. Thus, in the case of globalization, most discussions focus on the question of whether the sovereignty of the state vanishes or whether the state survives, whereby these positions are based less on empirical observation than on the social scientists' pre-scientific or theoretical premises.
I place in my studies greater analytical emphasis on the withdrawal of transnational actors from the national and international order for the practical purpose of figuring out states' strategies to regain monitoring power over such transnational actors and their policies. For this purpose we have to find an analytical instrument to understand and explain the meaning of this transnational withdrawal itself. In my view, the analytical key for understanding and explaining what actually happens in the relationship between national and international order, on the one hand, and transnational politics, on the other hand, is the principle of territoriality. Studying territoriality tells us what the foundation of the concept of sovereignty is and how it is de facto called into question by transnational politics. The principle of territoriality is not only the basis of sovereignty but of three other pillars of stateness: namely state integration, state borders, and state security. They are all - and not just sovereignty as most analysts suggest - fundamental concepts of modern stateness.
Sovereignty, integration, borders, and security are each constructed in reference to the framework of the nation-state and of national territoriality and are all affected by transnational politics. We thus have, as the most fundamental category, to re-think the role of territoriality in global politics because transnational actors, as empirical studies on the organization of global actors and their strategies show, are organized and operate in de-territorialized political arenas. These arenas stretch out beyond, and spread across political spaces that are subject to national and international rule and their ordering territorial principles such as sovereignty, integration, border controls, and security policies. Thus, empirical studies which demonstrate transnational withdrawal support the notion of the de-territorialization of politics. What I would like to explore in a little more detail now are the consequences of de-territoriality for security and security policies.
Transnationally organized actors, who seek either to bypass national and international law (such as drug rings and weapon trafficking dealers) or attempt to harm national governments and international order (such as terrorist groups), and who thus cause serious threats to human and infrastructure security, can no longer be controlled and combated by national and international security policies alone. To exemplify this argument, we have to recognize that national security is based on five territorial assumptions: that (a) the threat arises from within a territorial boundary and thereby from a definable actor (i.e. a state), that (b) the threat's range is territorially limited, that (c) the threat is directed at a territorially determinable area with the aim of conquering and occupying it (i.e. a state). Because of these three assumptions (d) territory and the states' claim on territory are the final causus belli, that is why (e) security politics can be divided into territorially specified external and internal affairs.
The attacks of "9/11", which were archetypically transnational in their character, most evidently demonstrate that all of these assumptions fail when it comes to understanding and analyzing transnational security threats. They fail, too, in the development of appropriate strategies to prevent and defend against those threats and actors. We have to recognize that national and international security have been thoroughly rethought and revisited. In a word, security policy has to be adjusted to the de-territorialized logic of transnational politics. This, of course, does not mean that states should choose the same strategies as terrorists but that they have to adapt their own strategies to the logic of transnationalism.
States therefore must complement their traditional security policies with the development of de-territorialized strategies of prevention. They will thereby be able to gain monitoring power over transnational politics that occurs beyond the traditional international order, and that will, probably forever, take place beyond the control of single states. I intentionally speak of monitoring power which stands for states' capabilities to potentially govern the circumstances under which transnational politics arises. However, it will not be possible to control global actors directly - unless either globalization could, and should, be principally reversed, or a united world state might be erected. Here, however, social scientists largely agree that both is neither possible nor normatively desirable.
Consequently military means decrease in their relevance and effectiveness to fight transnational security threats whereas the importance of intelligence, of control of global finance markets, of private-public partnerships to counter-network transnationally networking threat groups, and finally of civil societies' sensibilities towards democracy and the constitutional state increase immensely. The emphasis on civil society is enormously relevant in so far as states' reactions towards the unknown, unpredictable and faceless danger of deterritorialized actors and their virtual networks can easily oscillate into measures that themselves endanger democracy and the legitimate rule of law by limiting fundamental civil rights. Such self-destruction of democratic achievements in reaction to transnational threats might, if there is any political rationale behind it at all, be the intrinsic aim of global crime and terrorism. Because the assumption that those groups were only acting for their own material benefit or were just nihilistic, would probably neglect the graveness, wholeheartedness and cleverness of the "new age-outlaws" who perfectly understand how to utilize the opportunities of globalization for their own (perverted) purposes.
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