Fernando/Resistance, 2. Contemporary Globalization and Militarization

This chapter aims to reconstruct the interconnectedness between the recent wave of globalization, understood as capital’s international mobility and penetration, with militarism, understood as institutionalized physical and non-physical violence. The roots of globalization lie in the restorative onslaught of the Reagan administration against various crisis-generating challenges. The birth of globalization incorporated a good measure of state violence. Reagan’s assault was symbolized domestically in America’s rust belt and internationally by the onset of the Second Cold War. The speculative capital divorced from production for human need, running amok together with privatization plague, created poverty-inducing structures and processes. Resulting inequalities within and between nations made the very conditions of life violent for billions. The politico-legal superstructure of globalization, the so-called “New World Order” was devised to discipline the mortals while the US was set to recreate the world after its own image through chaos. Sovereignty-denial was the purpose. The American “right to intervene” was to become a customary source of international law through frequent use and common consent. All this naturally necessitated militaristic incursions into all facets of life in the form of “War on Terror.” Resistance to enslavement carried mainly dormant militaristic values and dynamics from the victims’ socio-cultural environment into the confrontation. The mutually supplementary process provided legitimate militarism. Finally, at its nadir, the collapse of the liberal project manifest itself in militaristic populism. The attack on the social being which makes us human beings is at its peak. Resistance means nothing but a recovery of our social being.