Monsicha Hoonsuwan Final Analytical Paper IR Capstone Professor De Laet 13 May 2011 The World of Insecurity Welcome to a new

era. This is the age in which post-Cold War globalization transforms the world into an even flatter, more tightly knit quilt of nations. The worlds economies remain interdependentas usual. What has significantly changed is the extent to which everything links together. Thanks to the information revolution, the gap that previously to existed between political states, domestic and international economies, human connections, and the environment has been closed. Everything is now lumped into one global issue. It is impossible to talk about politics without talking about the economy, or talking about human survival without talking about the environment. The improved speed of communication, thanks to the internet, enables news to travel faster than our ancestors could have imagined. Consequently, a tiny environmental change in, say, Solomon Island can have a higher impact on world politics, economy, and social interactions than ever before. It all seems like a perfect world out there; people are getting richer, enjoying more indulgences, and having better access to more informationand presumably more educated. Yet, underneath the glamour of this new civilization of high technology and convenience lies a dark, hidden truth: globalization has pitched individual survival against the greed of multinational corporations and the governments, which severely undermines global security.

Human nature cherishes its physical ability to exist, that is, the ability to survive in all sorts of environments. It tends to react towards harms in a self-preserving way. Such may seem selfish, but despite all the philosophical debates on human nature, this is nothing but scientific. It is human instinctto steer away from harm, to survive, and to be alivethat is governed by biology, not morality. A closer look into a human body reveals truly amazing automatic functions dealing with human responses to danger. The body generates white blood cells to fight diseases, stores more fat when a person is not eating enough, and triggers the discharge of the sympathetic nervous system that alerts a person to fight or flee when in harms way. If human beings are not biologically selfpreserving creatures, why would those functions exist? one may ask. There is no doubt, then, that everybody is born to love oneself as much asif not morethan other people. Labeling such natural tendency selfish is misleading. Selfishness is a socially constructed concept and is subject to individual and societal perceptionstherefore, is a morality issue. Loving oneself is not a morality issue; showing or not showing the society that one is committed to such tendency is. This explains an assortment of reactions people generate towards danger. Whether one would fight violently or remain quiet, act in a way that is individualistic or collectivistic, for example, is determined by ones moral standard, societys values, and ones expected societal feedback. This process of logical thinking is learned through socialization, and is not innate. Selfish or not, a human being still yearns for safety. Uninterrupted access to basic needs such as food, water, airthings that everybody needs to stay aliveis the most important thing that will forestall any possible

responses, both socially acceptable and unacceptable, to naturally occurring fear of violent death.1 Not many threats are more alarming than the lack of access to basic needsfood and water in particular. Besides air, these two are what keep almost all beings alive. Healthy humans can go up to eight weeks without food, as long as they have water. Otherwise, they can die within several hours from dehydration. Since industrialization, however, factors that are responsible for satisfying our basic needs have changed considerably. Global Warming, climate change, and rising sea levelsman-made or notare imminent threats to humans access to food and water supply. For every one degree Celsius increase in temperature above the optimum, farmers can expect a 10 percent decline in grain yields necessary to feed the worlds population.2 During the 2010 heat wave in Russia, for example, the countrys grain harvest dropped by nearly 40 percent. Fresh water crucial to every being is also vanishing, replaced by saline ocean water that is threatening to swallow agricultural lands. Bangladeshs Bengal coast is a prime example; the country could potentially lose the largest amount of cultivated land, as one-meter rise in sea levels would swamp 20 percent of Bangladeshs landmass. In recent years, saline water flooded 25,000 hectares south of the country, depositing salt on the land. Agricultural production dropped considerably. U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) also predicts that by 2025, 1,800 million people will be living in

Thomas Hobbes believed that human nature resembles a civil war, a universal insecurity, when people have reasons to fear violent death. The desire for security is, as a result, the most reliable and rational desire of human being.
2

Lester R. Brown, "The New Geopolitics of Food," Foreign Policy, May/June 2011: 5463. 3

countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, while two-thirds of the world population would be under stress conditions. Yet, as if the Earths beings have not faced enough life-threatening issues, there is another problem: a growing population. As the worlds population continues to grow at an exponential rate, the impact it has on the environment and humans access to vital necessities is increasingly disturbing. In Calcutta, five million people cram into the city where population density is 2.5 times higher than the city of New York. Among these people are old women cooking on the sidewalks over open fires, men waiting for their turns to bath without undressing at municipal hand pumps, and those sleeping on work carts filled with paper, rags, or hay. What supports the crowds of Kolkata are what supports life everywhere: air, water, food, fuel, climate, wrote Julia Whitty for Mother Jones.3 The Himalayas three hundred miles north of the city holds the Earths largest freshwater reserve, supplying water to some of the worlds greatest rivers: Ganges, Indus, Irrawaddy, Mekong, Yangtze, and Yellow River. Bay of Bengal in the south supplies three million tons of seafood, and the highlands near the city are the prime source for coal. The city may be equipped with a decent system of roads and railroads that bring business and developments, but what really determines its destiny is the existence of those natural resources. What will happen to the city of Calcuttaan India as a wholewhen all Himalayan glaciers melt, topsoil on the Indian plains erodes, catches in the ocean reach zero, all coals are extracted, and pollution is blown into the air? Will the people be

Julia Whitty, The Last Taboo, May/June 2010, http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/05/population-growth-india-vatican (accessed May 13, 2011). 4

content living in expanding slums and shantytowns with limited supply of water, food, and clean air? The Earths non-renewable resources are dwindlingfast. The global population is using seven out of 10 of the land, water, and air the earth could regenerate to ensure continuous supply and to absorb greenhouse gases, a process called ecological overshoot. In 2009, 6.8 people consumed the renewable resources of 1.4 Earths.4 More people sharing diminishing vital resources like arable topsoil required for food production and fresh water poses a great threat to global security; like siblings sharing their favorite toy, conflicts and tensions emerge as to who would have the first priorityand the fight ensues. Unfortunately, in the current global system, none of them has the first priority. Instead, corporations that have found their ways across the ocean to a cheaper location, where they could exploit cheap natural resources and lower the cost of production, get the first pick. Concisely, this is what globalization is: the integration of the worlds economies, cultures, and societies, by which free market capitalism reigns as the dominant form of economic interactions. Its defining characteristic is the emergence of neoliberalism propagated through the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and World Trade Organization (WTO). Through their Structural Adjustment Programs, these giant financial institutions reflect neoliberal belief that market forces and commercial activities are the most efficient ways to produce and supply goods and services, as well as enhancing social well-being. Deregulation of economic, financial, and

Julia Whitty, The Last Taboo, May/June 2010, http://motherjones.com/environment/2010/05/population-growth-india-vatican (accessed May 13, 2011). 5

social affairs, removal of trade barriers or liberalization, free trade, and privatization are the key components of neoliberal ideology. In the end, if you want higher standards of living in a world without walls, the free market is the only ideological alternative left,5 wrote Thomas Friedman, the self-proclaim globalist who believes that free market is a compelling force that brings about societal reforms. The truth is, these multinational corporations do not care about individual or social well-being; their only motivation is to maximize profit by reducing the cost of production. The success of multinational corporations usually fuels economic growth that is measured in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Governments and corporations often cite GDP to prove their theory that better trades means higher economic growth. This presumption, however, is flawed. Although there is a correlation between the growing proportion of trade to GDP, it does not mean that economic growth is benefiting other people besides those involved with the corporations. In fact, the GDP itself is misleading, because it overshadows the gap between corporate exponential growth and mediocre growth experienced by the rest of the society. Rajesh Makwana provides interesting statistics: Two hundred corporations account for a third of global economic growth, while over 50 percent of global economic growth and 75 percent of the EU economic growth are the result of corporate trade.6 Therefore, the growth might be good for the economy, but only few people benefit from itfinancially. When it comes to other issues such as

Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 1st Anchor Books ed. (New York City: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000).
6

Rajesh Makwana, "Neoliberalism and Economic Globalization," Share the World's Resources, November 23, 2006, http://www.stwr.org/globalization/neoliberalism-andeconomic-globalization.html (accessed May 13, 2011). 6

environment and security, almost nobody else besides corporate giants find themselves in an advantageous position. The growth of corporations comes with depleting natural resources that, as mentioned earlier, are already affected by climate change and population growth. Corporations have to go to extraordinary lengths in order to reflect endless growth in their accounting books. As a result, finite resources are wasted and the environment is dangerously neglected. The equivalent of two football fields of natural forest is cleared each second by profit hungry corporations, wrote Makwana.7 The free-market system embedded in globalization encourages the use of local resources by multinational corporations that, being a transcendent international actor, have no emotional ties and take no ownership of those resources. They merely enter emerging markets, use their financial might to acquire lands, labors, and other resources needed to complete the production of goods and services without any moral obligation to the local community. The worlds resources no longer belong to the people, but become an asset of transnational corporations. Their actions exacerbate scarcity problem. It is one thing to invest in coalmines, but when corporate greed taps into a market of necessities like food and water, it is turning basic life supports into a tool of leverage. Certainly, there is bound to be some heavy resistance. It is true; investing in food is profitable business. Everybody needs to buy food. Controlling the food supply, hence, allows companies to make money off human nature to stay alive, especially in developing countries where they can reap benefits from

Rajesh Makwana, "Neoliberalism and Economic Globalization," Share the World's Resources, November 23, 2006, http://www.stwr.org/globalization/neoliberalism-andeconomic-globalization.html (accessed May 13, 2011). 7

cheaper lands and labors. The emergence of agribusiness also subjects food to price fluctuations determined by the nature of supply and demand and those who have no part in agricultural production at all: speculators. Frederick Kaufman stated in his recent article for Foreign Policy that Wall Street greed is another main reason why food prices have gone up recently. It took the brilliant minds of Goldman Sachs to realize the simple truth that nothing is more valuable than our daily bread. And where there's value, there's money to be made.8 This well-known financial institution creates the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) as an investment vehicle. After a deregulation of grain futures market, bankers could assume a position in grains. The index encourages bankers to buy and buy regardless of the price, instead of traditional buy-low-sell-high system that created a balance within commodities markets. Such behaviors could potentially lead to food inflation, which will be felt all over the world. Giant food producers and speculators clearly are not thinking about the ability of ordinary people to buy food; they only care about how much money they would make. High demand, falling supply, and rising food prices are pushing consumers over the edge. People with money may just feel it in the supermarkets, but for the worlds poor, it is becoming more and more difficult to satisfy their dietary needs, which are essential to their survival. Although it depends on the societal context, whether those hungry individuals will speak out against the injustice or not, it is certain that their security is threatened. The untouchables in India may not receive enough food to eat, but they might not speak out against such injustice due to the acceptance of their unfortunate roles in the
8

Frederick Kaufman, "How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis," Foreign Policy, April 27, 2011, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/04/27/how_goldman_sachs_created_the_foo d_crisis?page=full (accessed May 13, 2011). 8

society. However, people whose lives are threatened by starvation in other countries such as the U.S. will surely demand that there be social programs to feed the hungry. Of course, the differences in actions taken by people from different societies regarding lifethreatening issues like food scarcity might still exist. Yet, globalization has ensured that not only is the economy being molded to fit capitalistic scheme, but cultures and societies, too, are being steered towards the same direction. Self-proclaimed globalist Thomas Friedman contended that globalization has empowered individuals, giving them more ways to make themselves heard in the world. However, it is not as much about being empowered as being influenced by novel ideas. Thanks to the information revolution that gave rise to the prominent role of western media in the worldespecially the U.S. mediafor portraying freedom and democracy as the most desirable thing that could fix societal problems. It works, and it sells, as Francis Fukuyama observed in his famous book The End of History and the Last Man that more liberal democracies are emerging worldwide. The internet and social media also facilitate peoples discovery of news and information from all over the world in real time. A growing number of the global population has access to foreign media and the internet, so more people are being exposed to ideas beyond what their native societies have taught them. They see alternative solutions to the problems threatening their survival and have more courage to act according to their new belief. The Arab revolts is the most impressive example: from Tunisia, where a 23-yearrule of Ben Ali unraveled, to Libya, where the strongman Muammar Gaddafi defiantly holds on to power despite the presence of international armed forces. When Tunisian street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set himself on fire in December last year to protest

against Tunisian police actions, it ignited a large-scale revolt demanding for more freedom that forced Tunisian President Ben Ali to flee the country. Many in other Arab countries echoed Bouazizis message by lighting themselves on fire to make a political statement. In Egypt, citizens were inspired by the success in Tunisia and finally forced Hosni Mubarak out of power, hoping for more freedom and democracy. Yemen, Oman, Syria have also seen protests motivated by the success in Tunisia and Egypt. Many credit the movements that are sweeping across the Middle East and Northern Africa to the use of social media to build momentum. Social media allowed people from other Arab countries to learn from the experiences of Tunisians and Egyptians, but these ongoing conflicts in the region also underline a fundamental problem that has been influencing the current era of world politics. Although these protestors are demanding more freedom and democracy, the inability of individuals to secure resources they need to survive, especially food and water, is the main motivation. Time magazine reported Mishaal al Gergawi writing in a Dubai newspaper, "Tunisians and Algerians are hungry. The Egyptians and Yemenis are right behind them."9 It is also noteworthy that in some cases, people will join radical groups just for a flickering hope of survival. Desperation makes them easy targets for terrorist groups, which claim to speak on behalf of the poor, offer aid and social help to those in need, and convince them to join the movements for a better life. In essence, ones inability to access food and water can be used as a recruiting or mobilizing tool for

Angela Shah, "The Tunisia Effect: Will Its "Hunger Revolution" Spread?," Time, January 16, 2011, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2042736,00.html (accessed May 13, 2011). 10

various interest groups: nationalists, religious fundamentalists, or even those protesting on the streets of Middle Eastern and North African countries. Essentially, in a globalized world individuals struggle over the ownership of resources they need to survive, in competition with multinational corporations. When life is threatened, people take the most logical action. That logical action is increasingly being understood as joining a protest, demanding more freedom and democratic revolution, or even warring against the perceived enemies. It is more difficult to go against multibillion-dollar businesses, and only few movements have been able to force companies to change their practices. So many times people unleash their antagonism on their governments whose job is to feed the people first, then feed the already-rich businesses. This results in strikes, protests, revolutions, civil wars, and other destabilizing events. Therefore, global security is undermined by the fact that corporations are taking away peoples access to resources they need most. At the beginning of the 2007-2008 global food price crisis, a Chinese firm Jilin Fuhua Agricultural Science and Technology Development Co., Ltd. (Fuhua Co.) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Philippines Department of Agriculture to rent a tenth of Philippines agricultural landabout 2.5 million acresto grow crops that would be shipped back to China. The rationale was to lease those lands to a foreign company rather than leaving them undeveloped due to the lack of capital. Nevertheless, when the news leaked, Filipinos were so outraged that Manila had to suspend the agreement. To ensure interrupted supplies of food, governments of different countries are encouraging their agribusinesses to rent agricultural lands abroad and ship the products

11

back to their homelands. Most of the land acquisitions are in Africa, especially Ethiopia and Sudan, because it is relatively cheap comparing to other regions. Some governments in Africa are willing to lease land to foreign companies for less than $1 per acre a year, even when their populations are starving. Among countries that are pursuing such policy is Japan and South Korea. In Madagascar, South Korean firm Daewoo Logistics wanted to rent three million acres of land, but the furious Madagascans opposed the plan, ousted the government, and voided the deal. Japanese companies are also looking to do the same thing to help alleviate the countrys very low food self-sufficiency ratio. Such land acquisitions by foreign companies tend to anger local people; Many of the land deals have been made in secret, and in most cases, the land involved was already in use by villagers when it was sold or leased. Often those already farming the land were neither consulted about nor even informed of the new arrangements. And because there typically are not formal land titles in many developing-country villages, the farmers who lost their land have had little backing to bring their cases to court, wrote Lester. Indeed, few things are more likely to fuel insurgencies than taking land from people.10 Water is also another primary source of global conflicts in this era. Scientific surveys conclude that the worlds freshwater sources are diminishing, and it would affect the peoples ability to drink as well as agricultural production. World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) found that 70 percent of the world uses freshwater for irrigation, 22 percent for industry, and eight percent for domestic use. This means that water shortages will directly lead to a steep decline in food availability; ordinary individuals will have to face both food insecurity and water insecurity at the same timea combination that could
10

Lester R. Brown, "The New Geopolitics of Food," Foreign Policy, May/June 2011: 5463. 12

kill them in a matter of days. To make matters worse, the dominant capitalist ideology is cutting peoples access to water by forcing privatization on such vital resource. The World Bank, in 1997, demanded water privatization in Bolivia as a condition to a loan, in partnership with private corporations such as the French multinational Suez. Mass protest ensued as tens of thousands of impoverished families lost their access to water and sewage services. The connection costs was too expensive for the average Bolivian. This is not only the case for Bolivians; no impoverished person can afford water services. When crucial services such as water are privatized, companies will tend not to extend their services to the poor sector of a community because it is not profitablethe people cannot pay for them. Thus, publicly owned and managed water facilities, with their primary focus on meeting welfare needs and not profit, is best placed to undertake this service.11 While the future of the world might be grim, people like Friedman are pointing out that globalization has produced as many benefitsif not moreas it would troubles. It makes ordinary people super-empowered individuals, that corporations will follow their demands if there is high enough momentum. It forces states to improve their internal structures, which will enhance the quality of life of their people. If the intellectual critics of globalization would spend more time thinking about how to use the system, and less time thinking about how to tear it down, they might realize what a lot of these little folks have already realizedthat globalization can create as many solutions and opportunities as it can problems, Friedman suggested. As harsh as the globalization system can be, it

11

Rajesh Makwana, "Neoliberalism and Economic Globalization," Share the World's Resources, November 23, 2006, http://www.stwr.org/globalization/neoliberalism-andeconomic-globalization.html (accessed May 13, 2011). 13

also gives those brutalized by it a greater ability to tell people about their pain or get organized to do something about it, and this helps explain and sustain the groundswell.12 Sure, it does not hurt to be optimistic, but Friedman hurts everyone by understating the tendency of multinational corporations to follow their greed and exploit everything they can. He overlooked the inability of ordinary individuals to gather large enough momentum to fight against multi-million-dollar corporations that, with only one phone call, can change and prevent any policies that could harm them from taking place. The world where the people and businesses responsibly share dwindling natural resources is a dream, and idealists should start trying to understand the truth. The world needs to look further than just giving food to the poor or enhancing food production with fancy technology to fix the issue of food and water security, as this is not an issue that result from a broken political system; it is most likely the underlying cause of global insecurity and conflicts today. And the culprit is the international system that pushes the failing idea of neoliberalism all over the place. Globalization divides the world into two camps: individuals struggling to preserve their life and multinational corporations that are going to great lengths to make more profit. From renting agricultural land abroad to privatization of water service, the multinational firms are cutting off ordinary peoples access to basic needs, threatening their life security, and instigating their uprisings. So they fight, often. There is no hope for long-lasting peace unless someone figures out how to transfer food businesses back into the hands of those who grow, tend, and water their crops. Such will be the most preferable solutionyet, still highly idealistic in a generally too-messy world.
12

Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, 1st Anchor Books ed. (New York City: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). 14