Geopolitical globalization – the USA and the war on terrorism

coordinated by the USA

1. Introduction

What is geopolitics?
The word geopolitics was originally coined by the Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén
about the turn of the 20th century, and its use spread throughout Europe in the period between
World Wars I and II. 1

Geopolitics is an approach to studying contemporary international affairs that is anchored in

the study of history, geography and culture, or as Dr. James Kurth has put it, it is the study of the
“realities and mentalities of the localities.”2

Geopolitics is a study of the influence of such factors as geography, economics, and

demography on the politics and especially the foreign policy of a state. 3

What is globalization?
Globalization is the word used to describe the growing interdependence of the world’s
economies, cultures, and populations, brought about by cross-border trade in goods and services,
technology, and flows of investment, people, and information.4

Countries have built economic partnerships to facilitate these movements over many centuries.
But the term gained popularity after the Cold War in the early 1990s, as these cooperative
arrangements shaped modern everyday life. The wide-ranging effects of globalization are
complex and politically charged.5

1
‘Geopolitics | Political Science’ <https://www.britannica.com/topic/geopolitics>.

2
‘What Is Geopolitics and Why Does It Matter?’
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282464915_What_is_Geopolitics_and_Why_Does_It_Matter>.

3
‘Definition of Geopolitics’ <https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/geopolitics>.

4
‘What Is Globalization?’ <https://www.piie.com/microsites/globalization/what-is-globalization>.
Main Body

GEOPOLITICS VERSUS GLOBALIZATION

It is common to see geopolitics and globalization as opposites with respect to how the world
works. Brian Blouet has devoted an entire book to justifying this opposition. He writes:
“Geopolitical policies seek to establish national or imperial control over space and the resources,
routeways, industrial capacity and population the territory contains,’ whereas “globalization is
the opening of national space to the free flow of goods, capital, and ideas. Globalization removes
obstructions to movement and creates conditions in which international trade in goods and
services can expand” (Blouet 2001, 1).6

Cold War from 1945 until 1991 involved a major geopolitical fracture between a relatively
freeflowing West and a relatively autarchic East. Rright across the periods in question there were
systematic efforts on the part of some governments, particularly in Britain and the United States,
and businesses looking to expand beyond home shores, to reduce and remove barriers to trade
and investment. 7

The opposition relies on: a world of territorial and self-aggrandizing states and a world of
networked flows independent of states.8 These are competing paradigms of modernity. In this

5
‘What Is Globalization? Meaning and Importance’ <https://www.managementstudyguide.com/what-is-
globalization.htm>.

6
‘UNDERSTANDING “GEOPOLITICS” IN AN ERA OF GLOBALIZATION’
<file:///C:/Users/Dell/Downloads/UNDERSTANDING_GEOPOLITICS_IN_AN_ERA_OF_GLOBALIZATI.pdf>.

7
‘Globalization and Geopolitics | 21st Century Challanges’ <https://21stcenturychallenges.org/globalisation/>.
construction territorialization is opposed to open circulation. In fact, they have always co-existed
with one another.9

Three ways in which geopolitics underpins globalization can be identified as constituting

geopolitics in the era of globalization. The first, at the global level, is the geopolitics of
globalization or the way in which the world’s most powerful state for the past seventy years, the
United States, has facilitated the opening up of the world economy. 10 The second, at the national
level, is the geopolitics of development with reference to the differences between states with
respect to their mobilization of populations to pursue economic development and the investment
in public goods and infrastructures to enable this pursuit. The final is the increasingly complex
system under globalization of what can be called “low geopolitics” or the economic-regulatory
activities carried out by relatively independent private and public agencies and the emergence of
intermediary jurisdictions particularly tax havens and global financial centers in world cities
through which the invoices of world trade and investment increasingly circulate. 11 This is
geopolitics without the drama of military strategies involving carrier task forces and so on but
with real impacts on everyday lives around the world.12

8
‘The Effect of Geopolitics on Global Growth’ <https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/21/the-effect-of-geopolitics-on-
global-growth-worries-me-most-wef-president-says.html>.

9
‘Globalization and Geopolitics | 21st Century Challanges’.

10
‘UNDERSTANDING “GEOPOLITICS” IN AN ERA OF GLOBALIZATION’.

11
‘The Geopolitical and Geosecutiry Implications of Globalization’
<https://www.sustainablehistory.com/geopolitical-and-geosecurity-implications-of-globalization>.

12
‘UNDERSTANDING “GEOPOLITICS” IN AN ERA OF GLOBALIZATION’.
GEOPOLITICS OF GLOBALIZATION

If in Europe a balance-of-power regime encouraged interstate competition outside of the

region, the arrival of new state actors such as Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States onto
the global scene disrupted the British-dominated globalization of trade and finance worldwide.
British governments provided the international legal and financial rules including the monetary
gold standard that greased the wheels of nineteenth century global commerce. 13This ended badly
when up-and-coming powers such as Germany with more territorialized conceptions of political-
economic organization and feeling closed out of existing imperial arrangements challenged the
political-military status. Much of the twentieth century was spent fighting and recovering from
the wars that this geopolitical system of inter-imperial rivalry entailed (Agnew and Corbridge
1995).14

In the aftermath of World War II, the United States took on the global role of sponsoring a
return to the sort of open world economy relinquished by a now-declining Britain. United States
had become the world’s most important country economically and militarily. 15 Whether this
always guarantees equivalent success in specific conflicts, from the Vietnam War to 2003
invasion and occupation of Iraq and the inability to coerce Russia in Ukraine in 2014, is open to
much doubt. US economic and cultural influence around the world has generally proved very
successful, even though challenged during the Cold War until 1991 by the competing political-
economic model of the Soviet Union. 16
13
Baldev Raj Nayar, The Geopolitics of Globalization: The Consequences for Development, 2007
<https://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195693034.001.0001/acprof-9780195693034>.

14
‘UNDERSTANDING “GEOPOLITICS” IN AN ERA OF GLOBALIZATION’.

15
‘Digital Globalisation vs Geopolitical Globalisation: A Tale of Two Worlds’
<https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/digital-globalisation-vs-geopolitical-globalisation-a-tale-of-
two-worlds/articleshow/59173111.cms?from=mdr>.

16
‘Geopolitics | Political Science’.
 Removing barriers to trade such as tariffs and quotas became an important goal of US foreign
policy in the 1950s and 1960s. US governments sponsored all of the major rounds of the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to open up world trade in manufactured goods.17

However, globalization does not necessarily need continuing “geopolitical support.” The
frequently voiced view in the United States is different. As Thomas Friedman (2000, 467-8) puts
it “the globalization system cannot hold together without an an activist and generous American
foreign policy.” 18

THE US AND THE WAR ON TERRORISM

“We have to be mindful of James Madison’s warning that ‘No nation could preserve its freedom
in the midst of continual warfare.’ […] This war [on terror], like all wars, must end. That’s what
history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.”

Barack Obama, 23 May 2013

“We will […] unite the civilized world against Radical Islamic Terrorism, which we will
eradicate completely from the face of the Earth.”

Donald Trump, 20 January 2017

17
‘UNDERSTANDING “GEOPOLITICS” IN AN ERA OF GLOBALIZATION’.

18
‘The Effect of Geopolitics on Global Growth’.
 Since the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, the country has embarked on
a so-called war on terrorism. 19

The United States has now been at war in Afghanistan for seventeen years and been fighting
another major war in Iraq for fifteen years. It has been active in Somalia far longer and has
spread its operations to deal with terrorist or extremist threats in a wide range of conflicts in
North and Sub-Saharan in Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia.20

As more time following the 9/11 attacks passed, some measures were reversed (such as the use
of torture), some mitigated (such as the inadvertent surveillance of US citizens), some
maintained (such as indefinite detention without trial), and some expanded (such as targeted
killings using drones).21

While the U.S. did initially attempt create unified civil-military strategies to win popular
support for the governments it supported and an outcome that would have lasting stability, the
U.S. has since virtually abandoned its efforts at "nation building." It now relies largely on reform
efforts and humanitarian aid to provide the civil side of victory.22

The U.S. has also increasingly sought to reduce its presence on the ground to a minimum of
train and assist personnel backed by combat air power. This has limited terrorist and extremist
gains in the cases where the U.S. is fighting a major insurgency, but the end result has become a

19
‘ON THE SO-CALLED WAR ON TERRORISM’ <https://www.jstor.org/stable/24439556?seq=1>.

20
‘Terrorism: U.S. Strategy and the Trends in Its “Wars” on Terrorism’ <https://www.csis.org/analysis/terrorism-us-
strategy-and-trends-its-wars-terrorism>.

21
‘The Evolution of the War on Terror under Three Presidents’ <https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/publication/the-
united-states-and-the-war-on-terrorism/>.

22
‘Trends in Its “Wars” on Terrorism’ <https://www.csis.org/analysis/terrorism-us-strategy-and-trends-its-wars-
terrorism>.
series of wars of attrition. The U.S. has shown that such an approach to warfare can deny victory
to extremist threats and win most key tactical engagements.23

In the nationalist worldview of President Donald Trump, the threat of terrorism occupies a
central place. In his typically provocative manner, Trump has contemplated all kinds of drastic
measures to combat terrorism. He told the press that the controversial interrogation technique of
waterboarding is an effective means of obtaining information. 24

As usual, Trump has not put everything he contemplated aloud into action, but it is also not all
just rhetoric. One of his first official acts was to order an operation of special forces against an
Al-Qaeda cell in Yemen; 14 people – including several civilians – were killed in the operation.
The president is said to have declared Yemen and Somalia “areas of active hostilities,” and thus
relaxed the criteria for the use of deadly force there.25

The methods for fighting the war against terrorism, have been repeatedly adapted. First, the
terrorist threat has brought preventive action to the fore. Because deterrence is ineffective against
terrorists who are prepared to sacrifice their own lives, the investigation and prosecution of
crimes already committed does not prevent future attacks. Second, in certain parts of the world,
the struggle against terrorism is conducted by military means. 26

The immediate and existential threat following the attacks of 9/11 has passed, and yet terrorism
continues to hold a central place in the American perception of its security environment. Despite
23
‘How the United States Justified Its War on Terrorism: Prime Morality and the Construction of a “Just War”’
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0143659042000308429>.

24
‘“Transcript: ABC News Anchor David Muir Interviews President Trump”’, 2917
<https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/transcript-abc-news-anchor-david-muir-interviews-president/story?id=45047602>.

25
New York Times, ‘Eric Schmitt, “U.S. Commando Killed in Yemen in Trump’s First Counterterrorism
Operation”’, 2017.

26
‘The United States and the War on Terrorism’ <https://www.swp-berlin.org/en/publication/the-united-states-and-
the-war-on-terrorism/#fn-d35509e238>.
all the differences between Trump’s administration and the Bush and Obama administrations, in
the war on terror, continuity prevails. Following Obama’s time in the White House, many
controversial methods are now more firmly institutionalized than ever before. Policies introduced
for exceptional situations have become the standard. 27

That there is no end in sight to this war is also due to the fact that Congress has allowed the
executive to extend its methods to ever-new groups and territories. the terrorist threat is now
being overshadowed by new challenges.28

Due to Russia’s aggressive policy and China’s assertive stance, the return of rivalries among the
great powers is being discussed more and more.137 In the sense that terrorism dominates the
strategic debate, the post-9/11 era is coming to an end.29 However, this does not mean the end of
the war against terrorism, which to some degree has always taken place in the shadows. 30 We can
only hope that the United States, under a new administration, will return to promoting a strong
commitment to human rights. However, the war on terror, conducted outside of the traditional
normative framework, would be a major obstacle.31

If European governments wish to maintain human rights advocacy as a foreign policy goal,
they should not be silent in the face of violations. In the early years of the global war on terror,
US methods were strongly criticized by Europe’s governments. 32 This has now largely ceased. It
27
‘War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism’ <https://wuve.pw/166.pdf>.

28
‘How the United States Justified Its War on Terrorism: Prime Morality and the Construction of a “Just War”’.

29
New York Times.

30
‘War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism’.

31
DANIEL BYMAN, ‘Eighteen Years On: The War on Terror Comes of Age’ <https://ctc.usma.edu/eighteen-years-
war-terror-comes-age/>.

32
‘The Evolution of the War on Terror under Three Presidents’.
is not clear whether this is due to the fact that Europeans are now increasingly experiencing
terrorist attacks of their own, whether they became less critical out of understanding or sympathy
33
for the Obama administration, or whether they have simply become accustomed. To tolerate –
or even adopt – such problematic methods is not only contrary to Europe’s claim of being a
guardian of the rule of law and human rights. It also carries the risk of a return to even worse
episodes in the war on terrorism. 34

Trump’s election illustrates how shortsighted it is to trust in the judgment of the man occupying
the White House – as the Europeans did with Obama. Even in the best hands, too much power
creates potential for abuse. Only strong laws, institutions, and norms can prevent this.35

Conclusion

Geopolitics and globalization have always gone together rather than been antithetical. I have
tried to show how they have been mutually entailed by focusing on three moments of their
relationship with globalization: with respect to the origins of contemporary globalization in the
policies pursued by successive US governments after 1945; the close connection between
geopolitical history and status and the capacity to exploit the possibilities of globalization; and
the emergence of new regulatory and standard-setting agencies under the sponsorship of major
geopolitical powers but growing in authority in recognition of dominant states’ limited ability to
manage the explosion of transnational transactions on their own.

33
‘Timeline of the U.S.-Led War on Terror’ <https://www.history.com/topics/21st-century/war-on-terror-timeline>.

34
‘US Airstrikes in the Long War’ <https://www.longwarjournal.org/us-airstrikes-in-the-long-war>.

35
‘The United States and the War on Terrorism’.
The United States must take a hard look at its interests when designing its counterterrorism
strategy.. The U.S. mix of intelligence cooperation, putting pressure on havens, and better
homeland security has kept America itself mostly safe and also helped limit the threat to Europe.

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