Antipode34 Marcuse 911

8/16/2019 Antipode34 Marcuse 911

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© 2002 Editorial Board of Antipode.Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,MA 02148, USA

Really Existing Globalization after

September 11

Peter Marcuse

Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation,Columbia University, New York, NY, USA; [email protected]

The attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, willhave impacts on the current process of globalization, really existingglobalization,1 not changing its direction but accentuating certainfeatures, subordinating others, and revealing tendencies and contra-dictions that had existed before but now become clearer. The impactsmay be summarized as follows:

• Impeding the smoothness of globalization at its margins

• Revealing the ideological contradiction between “free” tradeand a controlled global economy

• Shifting the composition of power: military versus economic,states versus private firms, United States versus the rest of the

world• Changing the mix of hard and soft responses to a changing

opposition by the leaders of the global economy

The net result will be a further skewing of the costs and benefits of globalization.Two big imponderables may permit an alternative, more equitable

scenario to emerge. The forces not sharing in the benefits of reallyexisting globalization, such as those that came to wide attention in thedemonstrations in Seattle and thereafter, are marshalling their forces.They have achieved some positive results, at least in the changingrhetoric of the leading institutions of globalization, which increasinglyseek to portray a soft response to the factors that produced the

September 11 attack, although at the same time dominant governmentsare hardening their physical response. And there are real internalcontradictions within the system of existing globalization (symptoms:the Argentine debt crisis, the vulnerability to world-wide recession,global warming). While the strength of these countervailing forces isnot pursued here, it is important to recognize that the forces of really


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existing globalization do not have their way unimpeded, and thatother outcomes are within the realm of the possible.

“Globalization is going to be at a standstill for a while,” says HenryKaufman, former vice-chair of Salomon Brothers and a guru forfinancial markets ( New York Times October 14, 2001: 3:1). That maybe exaggerated, but the international aspects of really existing global-ization will indeed be seriously affected. After all, the assaults on theWorld Trade Center and the Pentagon were, to the best of presentknowledge, orchestrated from across the globe and carried out with-out substantial hindrance by national borders. While terrorism is atactic that may be used by many different parties, the focus of attentionin Bush’s “war” is strictly on internationally operating terrorists. Fur-

ther, the convictions that apparently underlie the actions of Osamabin Laden and his supporters have much to do with the global postureof the United States; while their perceptions of it may be wildly off,there is a reality to which their position has reference that is actual,and global in nature.

Trade is delayed and made more expensive by security inspectionsand restrictions.2 Just-in-time processes will be curtailed because of the felt need to maintain larger inventories in case of shipping inter-ruptions; “Just-in-Time May Not Be Soon Enough for U.S. Economy,”

reads one headline (on a story of Bloomberg News in the Waterbury Republican October 28, 2001:1D). The advantages of quick inter-national shipment of parts manufactured across national boundariesthus diminish. The mobility of capital will be somewhat more closelyregulated; it is interesting to see how the arch-enemies of regulatingcapital, Dick Army in the U.S. House of Representatives and PhilGramm in the U.S. Senate—who even opposed the mild transparencyrequirements the Clinton administration tried unsuccessfully to put

into effect—are now silent as the United States pushes other states to join it in tracing “terrorist” funds and blocking accounts. The USA PATRIOT legislation recently adopted explicitly expands the federalgovernment’s powers to monitor capital flows and thus endangerssome of the common practices in international trade that use off-shore or multiple transactions to reduce and evade taxes, lesseningthe attractiveness of those global investments that depend on thatadvantage. The Enron scandal, of course, propels further moves in thesame direction.

The mobility of labor across borders is also impeded; restrictionson immigration are being tightened, border checks made stronger,pursuit of those in violation of immigration rules made more aggressive,and civil rights of immigrants curtailed. Even “normal” business travelis affected; delays at airports are substantially increased, and thehassle effect is subjected to major increase. Movement of goods as wellas of people across international borders becomes more cumbersome.

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For those meeting particular profiles or otherwise considered to bean endangering factor, the difficulties will be even more. “Rushdie IsGrounded by FAA,” says a newspaper headline, because his presenceon the plane increases the risk of an attack ( New York Post September21, 2001). In November and December 2001, 30 terminals wereevacuated because of terrorism panics, causing 1180 flight delays and464 cancellations. All of the passengers in 434 planes were ordered off for rescreening ( New York Times January 27, 2002: 5:16). This kind of thing will have a cumulative impact.

The net result is that big and mainstream capital will continue tooperate across borders without restriction, but where its movementis either politically or economically not desired by the G-7 it will

be reduced. Labor will continue to be permitted to cross borders where there is a particular economic interest in having it do so, but where there is no such interest its movement will be much morerestricted. Trade will continue to grow, but in the long run militar-ization and the greater weight given to military production andinvestment in military development will be counterproductive foreconomic growth, certainly for equitable economic growth.

Alan Greenspan told Congress of the danger that “internationaltravel will tank” ( Business Week October 22, 2001:35); while that

is something of an exaggeration—perhaps targeted to supportingthe airlines’ request for their US$15 billion dollar bailout—there isno question that there have been sharp reductions in air travel. Thesecurity proposal for airport access now speaks of a special stream-lined ID card for “frequent travelers”—that is, for business travelers;infrequent travelers, which includes most lower-income folk, will findthemselves even more in second-class status. The “cocooning” effectof the widespread media focus on terrorism and the political bombast

surrounding it has likewise reduced pleasure travel, particularly acrossinternational borders. At the political level, governmental attitudes towards international-

ization are also changing: “free trade” is no longer an absolute, andcontrols are seen as necessary. United States foreign policy is shiftingfrom the manic promotion of economic interests—viewed as bestserved by free markets in many but not all commodities—to a newpriority for security, which calls for a higher level of restrictive actionsby governments. Yale School of Management Dean Jeffrey E. Garten,

who was the Commerce Department official in the first Clinton Administration that led the US trade push in emerging markets, says,“Now, instead of knocking down new barriers, foreign policy willlikely be more focused on addressing the many holes and vulner-abilities in the system” ( Business Week October 22, 2001:35). The “waron terrorism” has attracted the support of governments around the

world because it is in each of their individual interests to increase their

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own powers; but by the same token, despite its talk about coalitionsand international agreements, that talk seems to amount to nothingmore than conceding limited room to United States military powerand increasing national control over national boundaries and cross-border activities. Really existing globalization turns out not to see allforms of internationalization, all weakening of national boundaries, asdesirable, as an absolute.

The ideological contradiction in which conservatives—includingthe Bush administration—are caught by the need to respond to theattacks is thus major. The contradiction lies in the willingness of theforces otherwise profiting from expanded global mobility and inter-change to recognize necessary limitations on certain aspects of global-

ization, at the same time as their actual global control is increased,accentuated by the presence and use of military power. The contradictionis primarily at the level of the ideology and rhetoric of globalization;in reality, transnational capital benefits from both the control of mobility and its expansion. Not only is there concern to limit and/orregulate free trade, otherwise anathema to the administration, notonly are investments in high-tech weaponry like Star Wars conspicu-ously irrelevant yet part of their basic long-term program, but, perhapsmost importantly, the commitment to reduce the size of government

is hardly viable today. The issue of federal responsibility for airportsecurity is perhaps symbolic; the “federalization” of security inspectorsis the first major deprivatization of a public service in several decades.What becomes clear is that the principled commitment is not infact to reduce the size of government, but only to reduce certain ofits functions, those having to do with welfare and social concerns. Thatcan, in the long run, provoke widespread political discontent. Thetension remains unresolved.

The shift in the way global power is exercised becomes noticeable.The exercise of military power by any one super-power had beenrestrained in the era of the Cold War, because of fear of retaliation inkind. That no longer exists, and the United States is increasingly

willing to flex its military muscle around the world. In so doing, itsignificantly reinforces the relationships that private economic powerhad already established; it reinforces the direction of really existingglobalization. In so doing, the role of the state is measurably increased,leading to the ideological dilemma mentioned above. Other states are

similarly caught in a contradiction: they welcome the legitimacy givento them to suppress by force dissident movements within their ownborders,3 although they resent the unilateralism of the United Statesand its acknowledged superiority in actual military might.

That creates a tension around the United States’ role internation-ally. On the one hand, the United States has gone all out to use itspower to achieve its purposes, both militarily (as in the assumption of

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its right to engage in “nation-building,” vide Afghanistan) and economic-ally (in its unabashed use of international financial institutions tobribe cooperation, vide Pakistan). On the other hand, there is also anundercurrent of desire to reassert national independence in somecountries, and an unquietness about the intent and competence of United States leadership. The result is still open. Thus, when the UnitedStates objects to re-electing the head of the international Organizationfor the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, only 48 of 98 members

voted its way, 50 did not; but of those 50, 43 simply abstained ( NewYork Times April 23, 2002). Other countries do not agree, but neitherdare they oppose.

Opponents to the direction of really existing globalization are not so

inhibited, however. Really existing globalization is a highly contestedprocess. This is not the place to examine the opposition in detail,although it is clear that the basic line of division has to do with wealthand power, both in the economic and the political sphere, at the inter-national, national, and local levels. However, in terms of the impact of September 11 on the two sides, the basic outlines are clear.

At the global level, there are changes both within the forces that arein conflict and among them. The World Economic Forum—generallyin Davos, in 2002 in New York City—and the World Social Forum in

Porto Alegre (and the protests against the World Economic forum inNew York City) are representative of the opposing sides. The WorldEconomic Forum represents, as much as any group does, the establishedleaders of the world’s economies. The World Trade Organization, theInternational Monetary Fund, and the World Bank, the contemporaryglobal economic institutions, may be seen as their institutional agents,in a relationship that is complicated by the semi-independent par-ticipation of leading governments, the United States dominant among

them.The World Social Forum, organized in direct opposition to theWorld Economic Forum, had well over 40,000 participants from a wide

variety of organizations; with its loose, open organization, it reflectsboth the strengths and the difficulties of turning the forces opposingreally existing globalization into a coherent force for change. Thedemonstrations in Washington, DC on April 20, 2002, numericallyamong the largest “antiglobalization” demonstrations to date, like-

wise demonstrated both the strength of the opposition and what it had

yet to accomplish: there were multiple and generally mutually consist-ent demands, but no formulation was attempted that would haveassembled them behind a united program.

However, September 11 has also had an impact on these forcesopposing really existing globalization. The tightening of internationalborders in the name of preventing terrorism has limited the travel of protesting groups across borders; witness the actions of the Italian



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authorities in restricting entry before the Genoa conference. In NewYork, control over public protests around the meeting of the WorldEconomic Forum in that city were strengthened and demagogicallydefended under color of September 11.4 The momentum of theparticipants in the Durban World Conference Against Racism, whichincluded significant criticism of the forms of past and present global-ization, slowed noticeably after September 11:5 “the near-paralysisof oppositional politics,” one commentator (Winant 2002:20) calls it;“the antiglobalization movement … [has] now been put on hold.” Inthe United States, fast-track authority of the proposed Free Trade

Agreement for the Americas seems likely to pass, despite concertedopposition by the major labor organizations and critics of really

existing globalization, while in 1998 Congress had refused similarauthority. Appeals to national unity in the war against terrorism wereactively used in the campaign this time. The strength of current pro-tests and counteractions to US policies, in the US and internationally,

will say much about how the critical forces have recovered from thesesetbacks. The Enron scandal may give them some ideological ammunitionto use in the future, although its links to issues of globalization have

yet to be highlighted.

Two apparently contradictory approaches by the world’s economicleadership seem to be emerging from the clash of these forces: a softline and a hard line. The soft one stems from a greater awarenessby the global economic institutions of accusations that they arecontributing to increasing poverty and polarization around the world.The World Bank has made reducing poverty one of its main goals; theWorld Trade Organization proclaims its dedication to, among otherthings, environmental quality and the alleviation of poverty throughmaximized growth. Much of the liberal (in the US sense) questioning

of the US response to the al Qaeda terrorism is phrased in terms of examining “why do they hate us so,” the answer then highlightingissues of inequality. The response, at the level of rhetoric, may be seenas a way of avoiding criticism, deflecting or co-opting opposition: thesoft response to September 11. At its most obvious, at the WorldEconomic Forum in New York City in February 2002, one com-mentator (Global Exchange 2002:14) observed, “[S]elf-flagellation

was all the rage.” (Naomi Klein [2002:15] called it “a dour capitalist

S&M parlor.”) A reporter (Koerner 2002) noted:Executive after executive cooed about their new obligations: Tocare for the Earth’s downtrodden in addition to their shareholders.Richard D. Parsons, AOL Time Warner’s CEO-designate, waxedphilosophical … “We are at another point in evolution where we areinheriting the responsibility for structuring social order,” saidParsons, “when the bulk of decisions as to how people are going to

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lead their lives, about what opportunities they have, what access toopportunities they are going to have, is migrating to the corporatesector.”

Financier George Soros said, “We need a global society and not justa global economy. We need to address wealth disparities andinequalities.” Bill Gates said, “People who feel the world is tiltedagainst them will spawn the kind of hatred that is very dangerous forall of us.” Even Horst Koehler, managing director of the Inter-national Monetary Fund said, “Societies in the advanced countriesare too selfish to give up their privileges” (Jackson 2002:A23). AndGates was further quoted as saying, “[W]e need a discussion about

whether the rich world is giving back what it should in thedeveloping world” (Global Exchange 2002:14). But discussion was asfar as it got.6 At the World Bank–International Monetary Fundmeeting in Washington, DC on April 20, 2002, a pledge was made toguarantee every child all over the world a basic education, but onlytwo countries agreed to put up any money for that purpose.

The hard response to September 11, on the other hand, is of coursefirst and foremost military, as has been described above. The hardresponse is also reflected domestically in the limitation of civil

liberties, the increased surveillance of public spaces, and the tightenedcontrol over the movement of persons and goods, particularly acrossinternational borders. Thus, the powers of national government arestrengthened under the banner of international cooperation.

And here lies an internal and as yet unresolved contradiction withinthe forces promoting really existing globalization. While both thesoft response to September 11 and the so-called Coalition AgainstTerrorism as part of the hard response seem to move in the directionof greater international exchange and collective action, other actionsof the international economic institutions and the United States movein the opposite direction. The response to the Argentinean crisis,for instance, is much more a cut-them-off-from-international-activitythan was the response to the Mexican or the Asian economic crisis notmany years ago. The refusals to act on African issues, whether humanrights or economic need, are likewise a curtailing of the scope of globalaction. The unilateralism of the United States is remarkable in connec-tion with a number of international treaties, from the antiballistic missile

treaty to Kyoto to the Durban Human Rights conference to a list of human rights conventions to the International Court of Justice. The limi-tations on immigration and the restrictions on air travel, the surveillanceof the organization of protests, and the limitations of civil libertiestend likewise to restrict the nature and reach of free global exchange.

Thus far it seems that, outside the realm of the rhetoric of somesoft responses, international official reactions to September 11 have



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strengthened the forces of really existing globalization, with somechange in strategy but without any radical change in their direction.The net result is a further skewing of globalization in the direction of its really existing form7 and a further suppression of the efforts to findan alternative. However, the internal contradictions of this form of globalization periodically burst out, and opposition is more likely togrow than to disappear. La lutta continua.

Endnotes1 I use the term “really existing globalization” to differentiate it from other possibleforms of globalization, and see it as having today three components: technologicaladvance, concentration of economic power, and international exchange. See Marcuseand van Kempen (1999).

2 See the New York Times (October 9, 2001:C1), commenting on delays at the Canadianborder, pressures to increase inventories, and so on.3 The Russian labeling of the war in Chechnya as a war against terrorism is a classicexample.4 See the striking quotations from the New York press in FAIR (2002).5 The official title was the United Nations World Conference Against Racism, RacialDiscrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. For a set of thoughtful com-ments, see Poverty & Race (2002).6 Even the discussion was a little strange: “When asked to describe what povertymeans, one government official at the New York summit defined it as ‘an absence of

information’” (Global Exchange 2002:14).7 For a detailed discussion of how the steps to deal with the consequences of September 11 in New York City and lower Manhattan are likely to lead to a locally very skewed result, see Marcuse (2002, forthcoming).

References Business Week (2001) 22 October:35 How terrorism threatens the global economyFairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) (2002) Media advisory: NYC newspapers

smear activists ahead of WEF protests. 28 January. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ portside/message/1988 (last accessed 23 May 2002)

Global Exchange (2002) Another world is possible. 50 (spring 2002):14Jackson Derrick Z (2002) The elite’s pure greed. Boston Globe 8 FebruaryKlein N (2002) Coming together at the seams. In These Times 18 March:15Koerner B I (2002) Davos on the Hudson: Day five. Mother Jones 5 February.

http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/features/news/wef_day_five.html (lastaccessed 23 May 2002)

Marcuse P and van Kempen R (1999) Introduction. In P Marcuse and R van Kempen(eds) Globalizing Cities: Is There a New Spatial Order? (pp 1–21). London: Blackwell

Marcuse P (2002) What kind of planning in New York City? In M Sorkin and S Zukin(eds) After the World Trade Center: Rethinking New York City (pp 153–162) . New

York: RoutledgeMarcuse P (forthcoming) Urban form and globalization after September 11: The view

from New York. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research forthcoming New York Post (2001) Rushdie is grounded by FAA. 21 September New York Times (2001) 14 October:3:1 (p 18). Round Table: The New Challenges for

Wall Street New York Times (2001) 9 October:C1 Claudia Deutsch, “A Nation Challenged: The

Suppliers”

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New York Times (2002) At airports, new watchdog is taking over. 27 January: 5:16Matthew L Wald

New York Times (2002) 23 April Marlise Simons, “U.S. Forces out Head of Chemical Arms Agency”

Waterbury Republican (2001) Just-in-time may not be soon enough for US economy.28 October:1DWinant H (2002) Durban, globalization, and the world after 9/11: Toward a new

politics. Poverty & Race 11(1):20


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