A new reality comes to the fore.

Hinkson, John

If the task of the Bush Administration is to forge policy that differentiates it from its predecessor, George W. Bush has achieved his goal. Certainly at first glance his defence and environmental policies could hardly strike a stronger contrast with those of Clinton. No doubt in part related to an extremely rapid deterioration in the economy, but also a more aggressive approach to world affairs, the ambience of the Bush Administration seems a world away from the easy policies and ecstatic excess of the last four years of Clinton. With this mixture of changed circumstance and hard resolve to avoid 'soft options', Bush seeks to set a new agenda for the first decade of globalization in the twenty-first century.

'No-nonsense' is the name of the game. Environmental protection will not be allowed to threaten economic prosperity. "Rogue" states will be prevented from challenging the proper role of a superpower that, after all, acts only in the global interest. Here is the pragmatic politician putting realpolitik back into policy in contrast to the media-driven strategies of Bill Clinton.

But how real is this 'reality'? No emphasis upon toughness and pragmatic response can conceal the helplessness of conventional politics in the face of the radical situation produced by globalization. Is it really tackling the hard questions to pretend that environmental threats of the most general and profound kind, such as global warming, must be ignored in the interests of the economy? The contradictions of such a view, where the elementary conditions of life become grist for the mill of economic growth, suggest a crisis on a new type. Rather than take this threat seriously, Bush proposes a no-nonsense re-assertion of a form of development that, via the lynchpin of individual consumption and unquestioned unlimited 'need', can only deepen a crisis that is now spreading far beyond the bounds of the economy.

The environment is by no means the only site of global threats to the elementary conditions of life. The concept of missile defence perhaps even more clearly indicates the contradictions embodied in the global trajectory. While much of the concern about 'rogue' states should not be taken too seriously, the same cannot be said about weaponry that works at a distance. The twentieth century was the testing ground of war at a distance. Its other side was the unprecedented mass slaughter of civilians. The techno-sciences, those expressions of radical creativity that lie at the heart of the globalization process of the last twenty years, first proved their practical possibilities in that abomination that changed human warfare forever, the nuclear bomb. If highly concentrated area bombing achieved a crescendo of mass slaughter and degradation over Germany in 1944, in 1945 the world leapt into another zone. Hiroshima was the birth of high-tech warfare.

Weaponry that works at a distance and avoids face-to-face confrontation became the name of the game. In this respect weaponry mirrors the structure of globalization itself. War at a distance finds its accomplice in the abstract forms of social interchange which compose the primary structures of global society. Elementary structures of community, formed in a given place and maintaining relations between the generations, are an anomaly in the globalized world. Not only do they take the brunt of modern warfare, they are under siege in the face of what is regarded as development.

At the time of publication of this issue of Arena Journal Slobodan Milosevic is in court in The Hague facing charges of genocide, amongst other things. People of goodwill all around the world hope that any such proceedings will strengthen processes that will place real limits on the commitment of atrocities such as ethnic cleansing. But if there is to be such a development in human affairs such atrocities must be placed side by side with those state and social policies that regard the mass slaughter of civilians as the unavoidable cost--or even the active means--of war at a distance. In the context of such policies, the dangers of a new emphasis on the development of nuclear missile shields can hardly be over-estimated. The re-ignition of a phase of development of such nuclear weapons must also come under the umbrella of international law if it is to have credibility.

In this issue two articles take up the question of genocide. One, by Ned Curthoys, does so indirectly via a reflection on the work of Hannah Arendt and the representation of the Holocaust. The other, by Tom Nairn, reflects directly upon the way in which various writers have sought to understand the genocide of the twentieth century.

In the twnety-first century it is arguable that this will not be possible without thinking through the nature of globalization itself. Its lack of affinity with cultures which are structured around reciprocity and mutual presence is palpable. Even within so-called advanced societies it eats away at community relations that most people assume to be indestructible. The cultural task of a version of globalization that preserves basic relations to others in their diversity cannot remain 'utopian' for much longer.