Understanding global security - Peter Hough

ECONOMIC THREATS TO SECURITY
policy of autarky, whereby states have sought to enhance their power (and hence also
theirs and their people’s security) by foreign conquest to gain economic resources.
In a more mainstream form, what has been distinguished as ‘Neo-Mercantilism’
both sees and advocates the state putting their interest over that of the wider
international community by promoting economic protectionism. Just as Realism
has dominated foreign policy practice in military security, mercantilism has guided
governments in their international economic relations and continues to do so. The
Liberal International Economic Order has advanced the logic of Smith further than
at any point previously in history, but all states, including the liberal democracies,
still have a reluctance to integrate themselves fully into the global marketplace. One
state’s comparative advantage is another’s disadvantage.
There is some compelling logic behind all three approaches to IPE when thinking
about human security. The famines of the late nineteenth century bear testimony to
the failings of laissez-faire economics at the global level. The persistence of hunger
in a contemporary world of unprecedented wealth indicates that the system is
still fundamentally flawed. The dependency theory solution of going alone, however,
is no longer a serious option, such is the inter-connectedness of the world today.
Isolated, dogmatic North Korea stands as a stark illustration of that. The Structuralist
contention that global economic forces determine people’s lives and deaths is no
longer an argument aired only at Marxist rallies, it is demonstrably true and now
part of mainstream thinking in IPE. The notion that North–South interactions in the
global system are inherently exploitative does not, however, entirely stand up to
scrutiny. Without doubt, the economic gap between the world’s rich and poor
continues to widen and many countries remain undeveloped and appear unlikely
to develop in the foreseeable future. Many countries have achieved economic development,
however, and nearly all have achieved human development. Of all states in
the world only Zambia recorded a lower HDI rating in 1999 compared with 1975
(Goklany 2002) and life expectancies have risen more quickly in LDCs than in the
developed world over the last 50 years (see Chapter 6).
There can be little doubt that liberalizing trade leads to more produce and
wealth for the world collectively but it is not surprising that governments are reluctant
to abandon mercantilism, given that there is a certain risk inherent in opening up
your country in this way. The collective spoils of free trade are not likely to be
distributed evenly and governments fear not getting their slice of the global pie if
it is a global free-for-all. Comparative advantage might make global economic sense
but it might also make governmental political suicide. Governments abandoning
large swathes of their country’s industrial or agricultural firms to allow more efficient
foreign competitors in in their place, of course, risk courting huge unpopularity.
This, however, does not indicate that protectionism is the best method of achieving
human security, if seen from the global perspective. Agricultural protectionism in the
global North keeps northern farmers and food producers wealthy but abandoning
it would not imperil their lives. Lives in the global South, however, are threatened by
the distorting effects of this protectionsm. This illustrates clearly the failings of
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