‘A Parallel Globalization of Terror’: 9-11, Security and Globalization

Abstract

Little research exists on how the conception of world order in terms of globalization defines security policy. The way the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, on 11 September 2001 were understood highlights how globalization defines threats, and the policies adopted to deal with them, in the post-Cold War international order. This article utilizes three elements of the globalization discourse (globality, globalization and globalism) identified by Ulrich Beck in analysing the Western reaction to the events of 11 September 2001. It is argued that the attacks reflected a new ‘strategic globality’ in which the new civilian infrastructure of globalization enabled Third World groups to intervene in the West. In terms of globalization, the events of 11 September were seen as the realization of scenarios for post-Cold War insecurity that dominated the late 1990s. The terrorist attacks actualized the ‘ontological insecurity’ which followed from the notion that globalization enabled threats to proliferate with the same force as trade. Focusing on ‘globalism’, the article analyses the strategies for creating safety in a globalized world that presented themselves immediately after the events. The author presents three globalisms: particularism, imperialism and cosmopolitanism. © 2002, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.