Terror and cosmopolitanism

The work of social theorist Ulrich Beck (famous for his book Risk Society) on cosmopolitanism is a valuable source of reflection on the question, whether there can ever be an answer to the ‘threat’ of terror and ‘terrorism’. In A new cosmopolitanism is in the air (2007), Beck sets out to answer the question: ‘How does our understanding of power and control become altered from a cosmopolitan perspective?’ He thinks of ‘cosmopolitan(ism)’ as a process of ‘cosmopolitanisation’, or ‘… the erosion of distinct boundaries dividing markets, states, civilisations, cultures, and not least of all the life-worlds of different peoples’. It may be the case that this process involves the blurring of boundaries globally at the level of information and capital-flows, but according to Beck (and this hints at the perceived menace of terror) this is:

‘Less so … to flows of people: tourists yes, migrants no. Taking place in national and local life-worlds and institutions is a process of internal globalisation. This alters the conditions for the construction of social identity, which need no longer be impressed by the negative juxtaposition of ‘us’ and ‘them’.’

From this it is clear that, for Beck, globalisation (or what he terms cosmopolitanisation) is not anything abstract; it happens in the daily lives of people. It also occurs in politics at all levels, even ‘domestic’ politics in so far as this involves ‘interdependencies… networks, threats, and so on (“global domestic politics”)’. The reference, here, to ‘threats’ is clearly an allusion to terror and ‘terrorism’; after all, terror has become global, even where it seems to be limited to domestic matters, because different parts of the globe have become interconnected at many levels.
It is impossible to summarise here all the facets of Beck’s ‘cosmopolitan vision’ (which is also the title of a recent book by him), so I shall concentrate on what is pertinent to the issue of terror(ism). First, what he calls ‘meta power play’ in the relation between states and the global economy is important for the irruption of terror globally, given Beck’s insight, that the global economy ‘… has developed a kind of meta power’ that surpasses power relations thought of in terms of the nation state and national territories. The impact of anonymous, territory-independent economic power on states where particular political, religious or cultural sentiments seem powerless to resist the transformational hegemonic power of capital at all these levels, easily gives rise to so-called ‘terrorist’ activity as the only available kind of resistance. (To corroborate Beck’s position here, Hardt & Negri [in Empire], as well as Joel Kovel [in The enemy of nature] offers insightful elaborations on the connection between the rise of religious fundamentalism – often the source of terror – in the face of hegemonic economic [and one may add: military] power on the part of the so-called capitalist states.)

What Beck highlights against this background is significant, namely that the new ‘meta power play … alters the rules of world politics with their orientation to the nation state’. The source of such ‘meta power’ lies in the ‘strategies’ of capital, which Beck expresses as a paradox (and with ironic humour): coercive economic power is today not exercised primarily through the threat of (military) invasion, but through ‘… the threat of the non-invasion of the investors, or of their departure. That is to say, there is only one thing more terrible than being overrun by the multinationals, and that is not to be overrun by them’. This is the form of post-modern, global power, which does not have to be based on the use of military violence, given the effectivity and flexibility of anonymous, rhizomatic power which functions ‘independently of location’. Not surprisingly, therefore, Beck claims that: ‘Not imperialism, but non-imperialism; not invasion, but the withdrawal of investments constitutes the core of global economic power’. This changes the rules of power nationally and internationally. Beck points to the striking analogy between this logic of economic power and military logistics: ‘The volume of investment capital corresponds to the fire-power of military weaponry, with the decisive distinction, however, that in this case, power is augmented by threatening not to shoot’. This explains his claim, that globalisation ‘is not an option; it is an anonymous [and pervasive] power’, and represents ‘… the organised absence of responsibility’. Here we have Foucault with a vengeance – no longer is it merely politics which is ‘war by other means’, but economics, too, which displays clear warlike traits. Its global pervasiveness, however, creates possibilities of cooperation which surpass the economic sphere.

It is Beck’s critique of the nation state, however, which leads to his insight concerning the conditions that would make terror(ism) redundant. He observes that new opportunities for power-acquisition are dependent on the development of a cosmopolitan perspective, and more decisively on a ‘critique of nation state orthodoxy’. A blind adherence to ‘the old, national dogmatism’, instead of switching to a cosmopolitan mindset, he remarks, is likely to lead to irrelevance, as well as to very high costs: ‘… nationalism – a rigid adherence to the position that world political meta-power games are and must remain national ones – is revealed to be extremely expensive. A fact learned by the USA, a world power, recently in Iraq’. To this he adds that the lose/lose and win/lose situations of the meta-power game could make way for a win/win situation for the state, capital, as well as for global civil society, on condition that the new characteristics of power relations were understood, and a cosmopolitan world-view were to be adopted: ‘… consciousness maximises new possibilities for action (cosmopolitan perspective)’. What this ultimately means is that the emergence of a genuinely cosmopolitan way of thinking, to replace the outdated nationalist mindset, could eventually make terror(ism) superfluous.

Related to his thoughts on the obsolescence of conceptualising power in terms of the nation state, is his call, to ‘Sacrifice autonomy [and] gain sovereignty’, which is tantamount to ‘redefining state politics’. He argues that, to surpass ‘the framework of nationalism’, the equation of sovereignty with autonomy must be seen to be cancelled by the advent of cosmopolitanisation. This process, which entails the interdependence, multi-faceted cooperation, networking and cultural diversification of states, actually implies a loss of (formal) autonomy, but a corresponding growth in sovereignty, in the sense of states’ increasing ability to resolve their own problems (mostly because of increasing collaboration and interdependence). Beck calls this ‘the transformation of autonomy on the basis of national exclusion to sovereignty on the basis of transnational inclusion’, and what it means is giving up something limited in order to gain much more.

What does this imply regarding national and international terror(ism)? Although one scarcely dares hope for it, nothing less than the potential neutralisation of the grounds for both ‘state terror’ as well as ‘anti-state terror’. If globalisation could actualise the cosmopolitan condition of recognised, mutual interdependence of all countries, all societies, communities and individuals, there would no longer be any need or motivation for acts of terror, because the fundamental ‘us/them’, ‘friend/foe’ schema will have been eliminated. Although the present state of ‘globalisation’ entails the potential of its actualisation, one has to admit that the possibility of actually attaining such a position of pervasive cosmopolitanism (which would include a thoroughgoing acknowledgement on the part of individuals as well as nations, that this is the case) is almost inconceivable, given the persisting hostilities among the nation states of the world (as well as, only too often, among the people within nation states!). However, it proposes a mindset (rather than an external goal) worth striving for. With this vision, Ulrich Beck points towards a possibility which is worthy of those thinkers of the European Enlightenment who believed that humans, as rational creatures, were capable of actualising the ‘happy society’. Have we become too cynical (or pessimistic) to believe in its attainment?