Our Position

War and Violence within the context of globalisation

In countries like Afghanistan, Iraq or Congo a peculiar condition between war and peace can be observed. You never know if the war is really over or if it is just taking a break. It may start again tomorrow and already be a part of normality. Additionally, combatants and non-combatants can rarely be distinguished from one another and military fronts are hard to distinguish. Furthermore the protection of civil society, which is regulated in the law of war, is being more and more eroded and - what worries organisations like medico –aid is instrumentalised for war purposes.

Peace efforts usually already falter when it is not clear with whom negotiations about peace should be led. Who, for example, is the contact person in Congo, where local warlords, ambitious adjoining states, empowering multinational affiliated groups, private armies and spread out leftovers of the regular army fight against one another?

Economising war

On closer examination, it becomes clear that the increasing economisation of war is at least partially responsible for the ”delimitation” of violence: Although economic aspects have played a role when leading wars in the past as well, for example through the conquering of markets or the destruction of capital, today it is the war as such that ensures profits and relevant categories of the worlds economy. In this specific economisation of warlike violence, lies the key to its understanding.

It was the persistent war that enabled foreign firms and internationally cross-linked criminal structures to extract natural resources, enhance the oil recovery or deal with drugs or weapons, through avoidance of social standards and tax payments, thus in a state of liberalization. Economic war processes that operate in shadows like that are called “global shadow economies”, whose fraction of the world economy has been growing for years. They allow roaring trades that would come to a sudden halt if the war were to end.

An insane game one would think, but unfortunately an example of the irrational state the world is in today. A world, in which relevant economic spheres only grow in the shadow of war and the regulative policy efforts promote the disruption of social relations. Only when looked at from the background of the globalisation process taking place, do these conflicts and wars, that overshadow the world today, become understandable.

Depredation of social relations

Although the world has moved closer together thanks to economic globalisation, there can be no talk of the “global village” that is often euphemistically described. The opposite has happened: The world has never been divided the way it is now. On the one side there is the rich global north, with its economic, political and cultural dominance, on the other side the global south, the zones of adversity, where the losers are at home, those people the global economy can do without: “redundant people”.

It is no secret that globalisation has taken two different directions: For one it has enabled the integration of the world to one global system. One, which for the first time shows signs of global society contexts. On the other hand it has caused the exclusion of large parts of the world population, for whom there seems to be no room in this system. The parallelism of integration and exclusion is the very being of globalisation the way it is taking place now.

An inequality in a never before known degree has arisen. Huge disparities become apparent and can be found in the relationship of north and south as well as in the individual countries. Even in European and North American cities, zones of the global south have emerged, while isles of the global north can be found in the global south. Wherever the shadow of exclusion falls, where adversity, disinterest, lack of commitment, disappointed hopes and lack of prospects rule, ruthlessness and inconsiderateness, moral indifference and a latent animosity, which can revert to violence at any time, spread.

Gang crime and the emergence of non-state actors of violence are advantaged everywhere it has come to a dramatic devastation of the social relations. That too is the consequence of economic globalisation. Especially in Africa, but also in parts of Latin America the extreme foreign debt, credit requirements and the forced budget cutbacks have undermined the Institutions of the state, so that there actually can be no more talk of statehood.

Resources that were needed for education, health and social politics, went to the debt service or vanished within corrupt structures. But when states only offer their residents more hardships, corruption and repression, they lose their legitimization. In the place of democratic legitimization, clientelism patronage and populism emerge. Opposing forces, quasi-feudal power relations, warlordism and private security forces surface. An informalisation of violence takes place.

Especially the parts where the zones of exclusion come upon the prospering areas provoke a high potential for violence, which has its roots in the rapidly growing inequality.

Security imperialism

In order to protect the efficient parts of the world, a lot of intervention takes place within the failed areas. Federal defence minister Struck made this clear when he, to the surprise of those that were still animated with the thought of humanitarian intervention, bluntly stated, that the German security was being defended at the Hindu Kush.

And so the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq are surely about oil, about pipelines, the business of reconstruction or about geostrategic interests as well, but even more so about the enforcement of a new world order, dictated by on of the powerful countries. Goal is the creation of a new, global monopoly on the use of force that does not tolerate contradiction. Everything interpreted as a danger to the ruling economic model, the existing privileges, the exclusive political power of few, more or less the status quo, is fought against. That is the actual goal against terrorism.

Although the circumstances are new, there is a historical parallel: The war against piratism in the 19th century, an important precondition for the spreading of colonialism. Just like back then, when the pirates where outlawed and the fight against them didn’t stop short of any methods no matter how rough, today all means seem to be appropriate: the violation of the UN-Charta, torture, clandestine prisons, officially legitimated disappearances and the demoralisation of the own civil society through systematic campaigns of lies.

As opposed to the war against piratism, today it is not about the spreading of power, but about securing the existing power- and economic relations. And so, many of today’s wars are world order wars, that are powered by a kind of security imperialism. In the foreground is the question how all those, for whom there is no efficient zone in the world, can be kept at bay.

Political thinking instead of practical constraints

As it is generally know, the power relations dominating the world grow on the ruins of previous interventions. Colonialism, proxy wars, IMF-structural adaptation programs, the business with weapons, drugs and natural resources shape a whole chain of in the end failed interventions. Instead of going into the next round of interventions with a repetition compulsion, it would be necessary to pull the emergency brake, which Walter Benjamin had wished for even before the Second World War. Cooperation is without a question necessary when help in an emergency or to protect human rights is needed. But it cannot be characterized by paternalism, a know-all manner and self interest, but by the insight, that the destruction process will not make halt in front of us if history keeps going the way it is at the moment.

It was the deceased French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, that convincingly called attention to the fact that the global unleashing of the economy can only be implemented without protest because it can surround itself with the Aura of economically inherent necessities. But globalisation is no inevitability that leaves no room for politics, but it follows a certain policy of its own. Apparently paradox, Bourdieu called this policy a politic of depoliticization. If another world should become possible, the policy of depoliticization has to be penetrated and the political thinking against the practical constraints has to be defended.