ABSTRACT
Globalization and national security vie for the status of the least wellconceptualized, most contested, but also most significant, of contemporary issues for academics and policy-makers. The interconnections between globalization and national security, arguably, have been even less well-studied and conceptualized to date. This is despite the growing sense of the importance of ‘globalization’s shadow’1 or the negative effects of globalization on a variety of policy areas, and the readiness to ascribe problems of national insecurity to the onset of globalization. This sense of the seeming interconnection between globalization and national security has been enhanced post-September 11, with the talk of terrorist acts as some form of backlash against globalization, propelling the ‘Clash of Civilizations’, and the ‘global reach’ of terrorism. Nevertheless, it is perhaps fair to say that much of the discussion on globalization and security – in parallel fashion to much of the debate about globalization’s impact on other policy issues – continues to struggle with the nebulousness of globalization as a concept. Globalization is always there, somehow lurking in the background of academic and policy analysis and explanation, and serves as a convenient phenomenon upon which to pin the origin of much of the world’s ills and discontents. But this often indiscriminate attachment of insecurity to globalization can hinder more than help understanding of globalization’s impact on national security.
