Yaqing Qin: COVID-19 and the degradation of global security culture
Author: Qin Yaqing, former dean of China Foreign Affairs University, Chair Professor of Shandong University
Source: International Security Research, No. 1, 2021;
WeChat platform editor: Zhou Yue
Executive Summary: A culture of safety is an inter-stakeholder understanding and common knowledge reached by a community on how to define security and security threats, how to safeguard and achieve security. After the Cold War, globalization promoted the initial formation of a global society, which also gave birth to the rudiments of a cooperative global security culture with open security, common security and cooperative security as the basic content. However, due to the failure of global governance, the emerging and increasingly accumulated global threats cannot be effectively dealt with, the rise of populist realism, the cooperative global security culture has been repeatedly hit hard, and it has begun to shift to a conflict-based security culture with closed security, isolated security, zero security, and significantly reducing the probability of international security cooperation. The failure of global public safety cooperation in the fight against COVID-19 is a clear example. Although the historical trend of human evolution into the community is unstoppable, for a period of time, fierce competition between a cooperative global security culture and a conflict-based global security culture will be the new normal of international relations.
Keywords: global security culture; open security; common security; cooperative security; new collective security concept
The spread of covid-19 is a major threat to global public health security and should have become an excellent platform for international cooperation, but in fact the epidemic has not only become an opportunity for cooperation, but has become a gladiatorial arena for competition. Why is this happening? Why is it that the situations most in need of and most likely to engage in security cooperation have led to the reality of a high degree of non-cooperation? There are many relevant factors, but the cooperative global security culture that has been initially formed in the process of more than three decades of globalization has encountered a serious crisis and has obviously deteriorated, which is an important reason for the failure of international security cooperation.
This article attempts to explain the issue of security cooperation from the perspective of a safety culture. The premise is that culture influences behaviour, and the basic assumption is that a culture of security is an important background factor that leads to or fails international security cooperation. In a cooperative global security culture, the security behavior of members of the international community will take on a cooperation-led behavioural orientation, while in a conflict-based security culture, members of the international community are more likely to present a non-cooperation-led behavioural orientation, no matter how much cooperation is required for the elimination of security threats. Globalization has given birth to a global society and the prototype of a cooperative global security culture, but both are fragile. Finally, covid-19 has become an important turning point, clearly demonstrating the cracking and transformation of this rudimentary safety culture. This is not just a short-term phenomenon caused by the pandemic, but it could become the new normal in international relations, making the world we are facing and will face very different from the past few decades.
1 Culture and safety culture
After the Cold War, culture, as an important factor in international relations, has once again become an important agenda for academic research. The cultural perspective of international relations and state behavior has also received renewed attention. Safety culture is a culture that has the general attributes of culture, and it is necessary to first sort out the general definition of culture when discussing safety culture.
(1) Culture
Culture is the common knowledge of a community, the overall attitude of a community member to life, and the way they think and behave at a macro level. Culture shapes the identity of community members, reflects the worldview, code of conduct, and code of conduct of community members, and is related to how community members observe, how they live, and how they interact with others and the outside world. In short, culture is a community consensus.
UNESCO's definition of culture is probably the most comprehensive, encompassing a unique set of spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional factors for a society or group, including lifestyles, ways of coexistence, value systems, traditions and beliefs. This is quite similar to Liang Shuming's view that "culture is everything that my life depends on". In academia, cultural definitions place more emphasis on immaterial factors and intellectual content. For example, Yu Yingshi defined culture as "a nation's way of life, mainly in terms of spiritual life"; Xu Zhuoyun pointed out three elements of culture: one is the way of thinking, the second is the form of dealing with human relations, and the third is the attitude towards the natural environment. Alastair Iain Johnston has summarized the definition of this concept by many cultural researchers: for example, Edmund Glenn and his colleagues defined culture as "the whole knowledge of a social existence"; Aaron Wildavsky called culture a symbol that enables community members to know the world, including truths, paradigms, programs, etc. These minimalist symbol systems can be applied to the infinite situations of the vast world; Clifford Geertz points out from the perspective of human culture that culture is "a cognitive system that has been passed down through inheritance, presented in the form of symbols, through which people communicate and communicate knowledge about attitudes to life, make it long-lived, and develop." Linda Smithich and Samuel Barnes define culture as unconscious, hidden standard procedures of action, norms, and routines that allow people to act without thinking, which most people follow most of the time, but which are difficult to state precisely.
Scholars of international relations define culture more closely with the international community and with countries that are key members of the international community. Alexander Wendt defines culture as common and collective knowledge at the level of the international system from a social perspective. Having common knowledge means that the members of a community are aware of each other's beliefs, preferences, ways of thinking, and behaving, which is called "intersubjective understanding." Collective knowledge refers to the knowledge structure of a group, which accumulates over time to generate cognitive and behavioral patterns of community members at the macro level. Peter J. Katzenstein argues that culture is a system of judgment and identity that constructs community membership and influences their behavior. Jiang Yien defines culture more from the unit level, viewing culture as a common decision-making rule, standard behavior procedure, and habitual decision-making method. Moreover, culture is not basically static like the material power structure of the international system, which is learned, evolved, and dynamic.
Both the definition of culture in the general sense and the discussion of culture in the international relations community have emphasized the influence of culture on the behavior of community members. Max Weber said that we are all "cultural beings," emphasizing the impact of culture on people. In a sense, culture shapes people and, as a result, influences their behavior. Culture is undoubtedly constructed by man in practice and through practical activities, but once it is formed, it becomes an important enabling factor. Culture, while not linearly becoming the direct cause of an individual's behavior or a certain state policy, makes the behavior of a member of a community possible or impossible in the capacity of a coherent context, in the form of shared knowledge. Therefore, culture is more manifested as a subtle, subtle and silent role of pregnancy, a kind of cultural force obtained in practice and affecting practice.
John Searle's concept of "background" or "background knowledge" aptly reflects this influence of culture. Searle defines background knowledge as, "a set of non-intent or pre-intent capabilities that make intentional functions possible." "The intentional function of man does not in itself include such unintentional or pre-intent capacities, but the former cannot occur at all without the latter. The context of linguistics is an example. Context determines the exact meaning of a word, and without context, the word has no definite meaning. With background knowledge, people can understand something that exists, can they interpret some external facts, and can they have the orientation of what kind of action to take in a certain situation. For example, the "diplomatic community" is an international community composed of diplomats from different countries, following the internationally accepted diplomatic culture; the International Red Cross is a transnational community established on the humanitarian cultural consciousness of saving lives.
According to this, culture is a system of meaning that arises in practice and is formed through practice. Culture is internalized in the minds of community members, creating an unintelligible, unspoken, but tangible impact on the way they think and behave. This has similar significance to Pierre Bourdieu's "habits," Anthony Giddens' "practical conscious knowledge," Michel Foucault's cognitive, thought systems, or historical a priori assumptions. Culture is the common context of the community and enables community members to exhibit similar ways of thinking and behaving at a macro level. The family style, school spirit and corporate culture mentioned in daily life all belong to this category.
(2) Safety culture
Security is the basic need of a living body, which first means that the survival of the living body is not threatened, and also means that the growth and development of the living body is not threatened. Culture is the common knowledge of a community member, their intersubjective cognition of the objective world and world things at the macro level, according to which safety culture is a community's common knowledge and similar cognition of safety. Barry Buzan and Ollie Weiff point out that security is a "political choice" and "social construction" based on the perception and judgment of threats, and security threats are a social identity construction between subjects. The so-called inter-subject social identity expresses the meaning of safety culture. A safety culture is one in which members of a community have a common knowledge of what safety and security threats are, how to obtain and ensure safety. Similarly, in the international community, a culture of security refers to the consensus of States that are key members on security threats and security guarantees.
From the perspective of a culture of security, the security interests of States are not inherent, but are defined by States in their interactions with other States and with the international community, and are judged by States under the influence of cultural factors. From this, we can draw three basic assumptions. First, safety is a social concept that expresses a relationship between the self and others, related to the self's cognition of survival and development and the role of others in this cognition; second, in a community, there is a certain holistic safety culture, referring to the consensus of the members of this particular community on self-safety, security threats and safe access; third, the safety culture is generated in the interactive practice of community members, and affects the way community members think and behave in terms of safety in the way of common knowledge.
There are different types of safety cultures. We can distinguish between two ideal types of safety culture from two dimensions – Datong culture and jungle culture. If community members agree that security is fundamentally a zero-sum game, and that security can only be achieved and maintained by violent means, then this is a jungle culture. If the common knowledge of community members is that security is fundamentally not a zero-sum game, and that security can be obtained and maintained through cooperative means, then this is a culture of unity. The behavior of community members in the jungle safety culture area tends to be conflicting, while the behavior of community members in the Datong safety culture area tends to be cooperative.
From a security perspective, the three international system cultures proposed by Winter are actually three different types of safety cultures. Hobbes culture is a jungle culture, the theoretical basis of strong realism, a zero-sum arena of natural selection and survival of the fittest, and a "struggle of all people against all people", and its core consensus is "you die and I live" and "might is justice". The strong must be contended, and the country must be hegemonic, which has become the behavioral representation of jungle culture. Locke culture is a culture of competition and cooperation, in the security consensus to abandon the "all people against all people struggle" consciousness, and replaced by "survival is also allowed to survive", the principle of sovereignty in modern international relations is not only the basic characteristics of Locke culture, but also the code of conduct of international relations practice. The Kant culture is close to the Datong culture, with friendship and cooperation as the basic norm, in which security is no longer a problem and lasting peace is truly achieved. For example, the "security community" is a concrete expression of Kant's culture. In a security community, there is no conflict, but members have a common background knowledge or cooperative security culture of non-violent conflict resolution.
Here, we express the nature and means of a culture of security through these two dimensions, namely the nature dimension of Datong culture-jungle culture and the dimension of violent-nonviolent means. According to the nature of the security culture, the Cosmos culture is a fully cooperative security culture, while the jungle culture is a completely conflict-based security culture, which represents two extreme forms of security culture, respectively, and according to the way security is obtained and guaranteed, violent and non-violent means also represent both extreme forms (see figure 1).
Cosmos culture and jungle culture are two extreme forms that represent full cooperation or complete conflict, belonging to the ideal type. In the real world, safety culture is generally somewhere between two extremes. The sections of zone B and zone D within the dotted line above represent the security culture in the real world. Zone B represents a culture of cooperation-led safety, but competition exists. Zone D represents a competitive-led safety culture, and cooperation exists. The so-called security community is a typical case of cooperative culture, located in Zone B, where cooperation is far greater than competition, and non-violence has become a highly internalized norm. The cold-war security culture was a conflict-type security culture, in Zone D, where competition was far greater than cooperation and could reach a state of war at any time, but it was not entirely without cooperation. Because of the variability of safety culture, we can think of safety culture as changing along the diagonal line of jungle culture-Datong culture, and change can be two-way. From the perspective of the history of human development, the general direction should be from the jungle culture to the Datong culture, otherwise human beings as a species would have been extinct long ago. But in a certain historical period, reverse change is not only possible, but has also occurred many times in the history of modern international relations, such as during the two world wars. The development from the jungle culture to the Datong culture, from the conflict type to the cooperative type is the evolution of the safety culture, and the reverse is the degradation of the safety culture.
2 Globalization and a global security culture
International relations have long studied safety culture, but global safety culture has never been systematically considered. Since international relations theory largely regards the world of international relations as anarchic system, and realism compares it to the Hobbes jungle, international security is often preconceived as a zero-sum game, and such a perspective cannot imagine a global society, and naturally does not explore the global security culture. The British school believed that a global society could not be formed, so it ignored the study of the "world society", let alone the global security culture. Liberalism and constructivism also believe that a culture of cooperative security can at best be formed locally, such as the European Union. As a result, the concept of a global culture of security is either ignored or equated with a culture of the international system. But in the process of globalization, there are some clear signs that point to the emergence of a global society, accompanied by a cooperative global security culture.
(1) Redefinition of security threats
International security in the traditional sense specifically refers to the security of countries relative to other countries, and the core of international security discourse is whether one country is invaded by another country in the international system in which many countries live together, thus losing its own national security. Judging from the basic principles of realist international relations theory, inter-State threats are the root and root of international security threats, and it is the countries in the system that pose threats. The highest form of security threat between States is inter-State warfare, which was typical of the two world wars that erupted in the 20th century. Traditional security threats have clear enemies, clear intentions and specific goals. The Second World War, in particular, was seen as a case of an international security catastrophe, and Germany's security threat to its neighbors, to Europe and to the world was at the root of the war. Therefore, the most important reason for the establishment of the United Nations is to free the world from the ravages of war, and it is the countries that start wars and create threats.
After the end of the Cold War, the tide of globalization began to sweep the world. The world of international relations has undergone great changes, and state practices have shown obvious differences from the past. Since 1989, due to the development of globalization, there has been a situation of high economic interdependence, high flow of information and high mobility of people. Of course, while globalization is developing rapidly, a large number of global threats have emerged, and important changes have taken place in the form and significance of security. Global security threats are another type of threat, enemies, intentions, and targets are difficult to find, but the harm may exceed any traditional security threat. The COVID-19 virus is a typical case that has threatened almost all countries and regions in the world. Information about the outbreak has also spread equally quickly, with real and virtual fears having a serious impact on people's bodies and minds. While realism insists that inter-State threats remain the most fundamental and serious threats in the international system, the international community's perception of security threats has emerged in a new orientation that differs not only from those of the Cold War period, but also from ever before, and security threats have been redefined.
A new consensus has gradually emerged in the post-cold-war era: global threats have become major threats to international security. In the early 2000s, kofi Annan, then Secretary-General of the United Nations, organized a "High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on Threats, Challenges and Change" to study the major threats and challenges facing the world and to make policy recommendations to address them. The celebrity panel is made up of 16 former dignitaries with international experience around the world, including Former Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen, and has received support and help from almost all major countries. The final report of the research project, titled "A Safer World: Our Shared Responsibility", provides the following new definition of security threats in today's world:
...... We are well aware that the gravest security threats we face now and in the decades to come go far beyond the wars of aggression waged by States. Security threats extend to the following areas: poverty, infectious diseases and environmental pollution, war and violence within States, the potential spread and use of nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons, terrorism and transnational organized crime.
While wars of aggression waged by States remain an important threat to international security, transnational and global threats are regarded as at least equally serious, or even more serious, security threats. Some scholars see the post-Cold War era of globalization as an era of "transnational threats", the main governance of the era of globalization as "anarchy", and human security as fundamental security. In this way, international security has a global significance, not only in the sense of an international system, but also in the sense of a global society. The object of security threats also transcends the State and becomes the entire human world, both State and non-State. This global definition of security threats provides the basis for a global security culture.
(2) The extension of the concept of collective security
As the source of security threats changes significantly, so does the content of collective security. The original meaning of the collective security of the United Nations was that aggression against one State was aggression against all States. Therefore, when a country is invaded, other countries should unite and oppose the aggressor country with collective strength. The ideal collective security, therefore, is that the States members of the entire international system unite against the States that have waged wars of aggression.
But global security threats are very different from traditional threats. The characteristics of global threats are obvious. The first is transnational nature. Global threats are characterized by borderless liquidity and random spread. Invisible pathogens, polluted air, and computer viruses can easily cross borders and travel between countries at any time. Even with the strictest precautions, it is difficult to fully control such invisible cross-border flows with no defined purpose and no clear channels.
The second is full coverage. A global threat is a threat to all of humanity and to the entire international community. It transcends any race, country, creed, ideology, political system, economic level, and social formation. The major threats that have emerged over the years, whether it is the Ebola virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus, the new coronavirus, the financial crisis, climate change, terrorism and so on, are beyond the scope. And the more deeply embedded and interdependent countries are globalized, the more catastrophic the blows they are. Such threats are not against any one particular country, but against all of humanity; the enemy facing the world is not the enemy of any one country, but the common enemy of all mankind.
The third is non-exclusivity. In the face of global threats, no country can stand alone. No matter how powerful a country is, there is no way to eliminate the threat and protect itself by its own strength alone. In the major global threats, almost none of the major countries have been spared. The 9/11 terrorist attack was the world's superpower, the United States; the 2008 financial crisis threatened all important economies, with western developed countries bearing the brunt; and the current COVID-19 epidemic has spread rapidly to the world, and almost all countries and regions have become epidemic areas. Furthermore, if the virus is not completely eliminated in all places, the epidemic may make a comeback and spread again, and any other place may become a disaster area again.
Because global security threats have these characteristics, collective security also needs to have new connotations. First, the state is still the most important actor in the international community, so the leading actor in dealing with global security threats is still the state; second, effective action to deal with global security threats must be a coordinated and all-round action on a global scale. International cooperation is therefore a sine qua non for countering security threats; Multilateral international organizations should play a leading and coordinating role in preventing, countering and neutralizing global security threats. The concept of collective security also extends from the international community's rejection of a state's war of aggression to the catastrophe of the international community's protection of all States and all populations from traditional and non-traditional security threats. The extension of the concept of collective security has thus been greatly expanded.
While threats between States remain an important part of international relations, at the same time, global security threats are seen as events of at least as serious as inter-State security, and global cooperation is seen as an important attitude and means of responding to security threats. Therefore, a global consensus has begun to form in the field of security, and the common responsibility of states, cooperation and cooperation among countries, and the effective implementation of multilateralism have become a "new collective security concept" and have influenced the thinking and behavior of members of the international community, providing a positive impetus for the formation of a global cooperative security culture.
(3) The prototype of a cooperative global safety culture
In the process of globalization, the overall level of well-being of the world has been improved, and the rise of emerging developing countries is a typical example. At the same time, in parallel with the development of material elements, and also important development, is a global consensus that has begun to emerge, which I call the prototype of a global security culture. Although there is not much attention and discussion in the academic community, the emergence of this prototype is of great significance, because it indicates that global security practices can produce a global security culture, which means that the generation of a global society or human community is possible. If culture is defined as "shared knowledge," then the rudimentary elements of this global security culture include at least the following consensus.
1. Open and secure
Globalization began in the economic sphere. A distinctive feature of the post-Cold War period was that the global economy began to become interconnected and gradually formed an interdependent situation in which you have me and I have you. Capital, according to its own laws, finds suitable places in the world, the market expands worldwide, and the production chain is extended accordingly. The components of an Apple computer involve many countries and regions around the world. All countries that have adopted an open strategy in the context of globalization have developed rapidly, becoming beneficiaries of globalization, as well as promoters and builders of globalization. China is undoubtedly a good example. Since 1978, China has taken reform and opening up as the country's basic strategic policy, and regarded reform and opening up as two wings of national development, supporting each other and complementing each other.
Security has always been a fundamental issue for a country. In the process of globalization, the world economic system is relatively open, and the openness of the national strategy can be connected with the opening of the global economic system. The traditional concept of national security has been greatly impacted. Realism has always considered the link between existential security and security dilemmas, the anarchy of the international system has contributed to the dominance of Hobbesian culture, and the relationship between states is always a hostile relationship, a zero-sum relationship, and even a life-and-death relationship. Therefore, there are no more than two ways for a State to guarantee security: one is to make itself a more powerful country than other countries, and the security dilemma is the product of this mentality and policy; the other is to close itself off from the country, to isolate itself from the rest of the international community, so that no one can infringe on the interests of self-security. Both the Qing Empire's closed-door policy and the theory of attachment that prevailed in the 1960s and 1970s reflected the influence of this security culture to some extent.
The impact of globalization has changed this security culture mentality to some extent. In the process of economic globalization, only by participating in this open process can we develop the economy of our own country; and only when our own economy develops, is the best guarantee for economic security. Problems and threats to economic security can be eliminated only in the process of greater opening-up. The development of the world economy for decades and the rapid economic growth of the country have convincingly demonstrated this, so that a global consensus has gradually emerged: only by opening up can economic security be obtained and guaranteed. As a result, openness has become a necessary condition for economic security, and openness and security have also become an important connotation of the prototype of global culture in the era of globalization.
2. Common security
Open security is bound to lead to common security. The openness of the global economic system and the openness of major national strategies form a superposition effect, but also raise a serious question: how to ensure the security of all parties involved in the open system in the open system.
Traditional realism tells us that the essence of international relations is conflict, security, especially a zero-sum game, and that common security is only a utopian consciousness. The global problems caused by globalization have brought about a different side of the problem. Globalization has brought new forms of threat. The transnational, full-coverage, non-exclusive nature of global threats makes it a typical malignant global public good. Furthermore, there is a close correlation between global threats. The threat of one area spills over into other areas, and even spreads globally, and no country and its citizens are immune to disaster. Global warming will directly affect the economy, ecology and even human life; terrorism is related to the proliferation and even use of weapons of mass destruction; epidemic diseases will not only directly affect human health, but also cause severe economic setbacks, social disintegration and ecological devastation.
The COVID-19 pandemic provides an excellent example. As a malignant public good, the novel coronavirus is fully transnational, fully covered and non-exclusive. At the same time, it has had a serious negative impact on the politics, economy and society of the entire world. The new coronavirus is attacking the entire human race, under the ravages of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, as long as a country still has new crown pneumonia patients, as long as the effective vaccine is not fully developed, the citizens of any other country in the world, any other country, it is impossible to get full security, and it is impossible to be free from threat fear. In such a situation, security can only be common security.
Common security has become the second consensus of the international community and an important part of the global security culture. Common security norms are widely accepted internationally, not only in Western countries, but also in emerging countries, ASEAN countries, etc. At the same time, the concept of common security not only forms a certain cultural identity in the international community, but also extends to the relationship between man and nature, making the international community realize that under the action of complex system effects, natural insecurity can lead to human insecurity at any time. In the open system, including the openness of human society and the openness of the global environment, common security and self-security become two sides of the same coin, coexistence and symbiosis, and co-evolution.
3. Cooperative security
Cooperative security means that cooperation is the fundamental way of security. In an open system, in an environment where only common security can ensure self-security, only cooperation can achieve the purpose of security. At the same time, cooperative security views security as a relational process. That is to say, the interest of security always arises in the relationship between the self and others, and it is you who have me and I have you. If one of the two countries in the interaction is always in a high degree of security anxiety, it will also cause the other party to constantly have security troubles, and vice versa.
Western realist international relations theory insists that in anarchic international system, national security is a conflict game, and cooperation on security issues can only be strategic, non-fundamental, and short-term, if not completely impossible. There is little cooperation and security between countries, and most of them are security dilemmas. Globalization has largely changed this perception. The security threats posed by globalization differ from those of the past in two important ways: first, the source of security threats has changed substantially, and the threats do not come from other countries, but from some force outside or beyond the State; Effective international cooperation is indispensable for responding to such security threats, which cannot be achieved by any single Country.
The international community has not only fully recognized the importance of cooperation in eliminating global threats, but has also reached a certain consensus on how to cooperate, that is, multilateralist cooperation with international organizations as the coordination mechanism. The United Nations is the institutional form of multilateralism. After the end of World War II, the world experienced more than seventy years of long peace, and an important reason is that multilateralism represented by the United Nations and the United Nations system has played an important order function.
After the end of the Cold War, the realist theory of international relations that emphasized hard power declined, and international institutionalism developed rapidly, becoming a mainstream and even dominant view of the international order. Robert Keohane theoretically argued the possibility and necessity of an institutional order, arguing that international institutions, including rules, mechanisms, and decision-making procedures, could operate on a high degree of independence; the strategic reports of some major think tanks and intellectual elites also regarded the multilateral system as the dominant element of the post-Cold War world order, and institutional power as an important resource of power. The conceptual structure of multilateralism as the ideal order and global cooperation and security has gradually taken shape.
The practice of global security cooperation based on multilateralism is also evident in the field of practice. In fact, over the past three decades or so, major international forces have shown a general trend of cooperation in the opposite direction, and the main platform for solving global security problems is the multilateral international mechanism. The G20 is the multilateral institutional platform for key countries to form and respond to challenges when global economic security is a major threat. Taking the extremely important bilateral relationship between China and the United States as an example, although the United States as the sole superpower is aware of China's challenge, it is at the same time full of confidence in the US domination of the international system, believing that China can be included, so there will be no subversive revolution in the international system. China has not strongly challenged the us as a super-superiority, and has always recognized the interdependence of "you have me, I have you", believing that Sino-US relations are mutually beneficial and fighting is hurtful.
Therefore, more than three decades of practice have gradually formed the third important content of global security culture, which is the consensus of cooperative security. The history of human development and evolution is a history of cooperation. Only those species that actively cooperate with the environment, with others, with groups are the most adaptable species, the safest. In the known world, the most cooperative consciousness and cooperative behavior are humans. Humans have evolved more successfully than any other species. One of the most important reasons for the success of human beings and the progress of human society is that human beings are super collaborators, and it is cooperation that gives human beings the longest period of time and the most fundamental security guarantee.
3 The crisis of inward-looking national security and the decoupling of the global security culture
If the process of globalization for more than thirty years has gradually given rise to the rudiments of a cooperative global security culture, then this prototype is very fragile, and the three common knowledge contents (namely, open security, common security, and cooperative security) that are the basis of the global security culture are constantly being doubted, impacted and eroded, and even have the possibility of complete disintegration. It can be seen that from the end of the Cold War to the financial crisis in 2008, cooperation is the dominant aspect in general, and the establishment of the G20 is a symbolic product of international cooperation, but since then, international cooperation has begun to decline all the way, and by the 2019 outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic into a trough period, the global security culture is facing a serious crisis of large-scale disintegration.
(i) Failure of global governance and the rise of populist realism
The reason why the global security culture is facing a major crisis is directly related to the failure of global governance. As noted above, in 2004, the United Nations clearly defined new security threats in "A safer world: our shared responsibility" and identified several non-traditional security areas in addition to security threats between States, including poverty, infectious diseases and environmental degradation, conflicts within and among States, nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological weapons, terrorism and transnational organized crime. It should be said that these judgments on the global threat posed by globalization are accurate and in line with the reality of the post-cold-war world. Moreover, these global threats are interrelated, with threats in one area spilling over to others, causing widespread losses. The COVID-19 pandemic is arguably the most typical and tragic case.
The international community has been working to take measures to try to achieve effective global governance and to address security threats in these areas. But these efforts have had little effect, and global problems continue to emerge and accumulate. Members of the international community continue to feel the threat of security and continue to generate different forms of security anxiety. The process of globalization for more than three decades has witnessed the overall rise of global well-being, while also witnessing the growing threat to global security and the growing deficit of global governance. As the most important actor in global governance, the state has not been able to achieve the kind of institutional cooperation expected by neoliberal institutionalism, and the tragedy of the global commons continues to be staged, and the phenomenon of governance failure continues to occur.
In The Areas of Global Security Threats listed in A Safer World: Our Shared Responsibility, none of which has been effectively addressed so far. Crises in the field of the world economy have occurred from time to time, and the Doha negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organization have reached an indefinite stalemate; the negotiations on climate change under the auspices of the United Nations have been difficult, and finally the Paris Agreement to deal with global warming was finally reached in 2015, but soon after the United States announced its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, which has caused serious setbacks to the governance of the field of climate change; governance in the field of counter-terrorism has always received attention, but the whole situation seems to be "the more anti-terrorist the more fearful", if the gap between poverty and rich and poor can not be effectively resolved, The threat of terrorism is also difficult to eradicate at all. As the governance deficit grows, many people have doubts about the effectiveness of global governance and the ability of existing international mechanisms to eliminate security threats, and have lost confidence in the practice of strengthening the security of the international community through global multilateral cooperation.
A direct reflection of the failure of global governance is the rise of populist realism. Populist realism is a combination of populism and strong realism. Populism emphasizes that the nation is the most important, and realism believes that material strength is the most important. Populist realism concentrates the extreme elements of both ideas, emphasizing the supremacy of the nation-state, the supremacy of national interests, and the supremacy of national power. At a time when global governance is failing and global security threats are becoming more and more serious, populist realism reflects the extreme ideas behind anti-globalization and has become the ideological support for anti-globalization actions. A very illustrative example is the recent political process in the United States. Trump repeatedly declared the logic of "America First" in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, chanting the slogan "Americanism, not globalism, will be ourcredo." In 2017, some well-known Conservative intellectuals in Europe issued a public statement in Paris entitled "A Europe We Can Trust", the main contents of which included: Europe is our homeland, the nation-state is the symbol of Europe, the unity imposed by regional integration, the multicultural culture does not work, populism should be given the attention it deserves, etc., showing the strong populist proposition and anti-globalization call.
These currents of thought do not only stay at the conceptual level, but also have concrete manifestations in terms of strategy and policy. Since taking office, Trump has begun to adopt more conservative policies in areas such as international trade and immigration; due to the major policy change of Brexit, people have begun to worry about the future of the European Union, and the election of European powers such as France has become an arena of two forces. Issues such as an inclusive international community, an open world economy, a regional integration process, and traditional international security have all become new points of international political anxiety.
(2) Inward-looking national security
An important manifestation of populist realism is the return of state-centrism. Since the establishment of the Westphalian system of internationality in 1648, with the state as the dominant actor, the state has been the subject of international politics and is often identified as the sole subject. The state is not only seen as the supreme authority, but also the embodiment of modernity and reason, but the development of globalization has forced the state to face three major problems. First, changes in the source of threats. For states, threats may no longer come from other countries, but from unpredictable forces. Second, the change of direct threat targets. Security threats in the traditional sense are directed at states, while global threats are directly targeted to a large extent individuals, citizens of states, who threaten states themselves by threatening their citizens. Third, changes in the way security threats are addressed. The basic way for countries to dismantle traditional security is to strengthen their own strength, but in the face of global security threats, no matter how powerful a single country is, it cannot effectively deal with them.
In this situation, countries began to seek cooperation with other countries and the international community to mitigate the threats they faced and maintain their own security. But the failure of global governance and its resulting disappointment with cooperative governance and multilateral institutions has made populist realism a global trend of thought. In the context of increasingly serious global security threats and rising global governance deficits, people have developed serious security anxieties, and the safe return of countries has become a direct reflection of the failure of global governance. During this period, there were three landmark events that demonstrated the inward-looking nature of national security and the crisis of the dissolution of the global security culture.
The first major landmark event was the worldwide financial crisis of 2008. The financial crisis began in the United States, the country that began globalization, and the subprime mortgage crisis in the United States caused investors to lose confidence, and a large-scale liquidity crisis broke out, and the world's major economies were seriously affected. Due to the high interdependence of the global financial sector, the large banks of the major capitalist countries are connected, coupled with the convenience and rapid effect of the Internet, once the crisis occurs at a certain point, it will become a crisis on a global scale. Therefore, the financial crisis that began in the United States quickly swept through the Western world. While the crisis has remained largely cooperative, and emerging economies have moved through the G20 to the center of global economic governance, security anxieties have been a lingering national nightmare since the 2008 financial crisis. Openness and security are particularly questioned, and cutting off ties, eliminating security anxieties, and ensuring self-security have become hot topics of discussion, and globalization has also been questioned in many ways.
The second landmark event was the UK's decision to leave the EU. Since the financial crisis, anti-globalization voices and anti-globalization actions have become increasingly apparent. But overall, the power of a cooperative global security culture continues, and countries want to address global security threats through international cooperation. Responses to major public security threats are also guided and coordinated by multilateral international organizations, such as the Ebola virus in Africa. But Britain's departure from the EU is a major event, showing that the country is beginning to address perceived security threats in an inward-looking manner. There are many reasons why the UK decided to leave the EU, such as the UK's dissatisfaction with the EU's refugee policy, which believes that refugees seriously threaten the UK's own economic development and social stability. Moreover, the OVERALL ECONOMIC LEVEL OF THE UK FEELS THAT IT IS ON THE SIDE OF THE "LOSER" IN THE EU, WHETHER IN TERMS OF BUDGET ASSUMPTIONS OR OTHER EU RESPONSIBILITIES. Therefore, leaving the EU is seen as a better way to protect britain's own economic, social and even political security, while staying in the EU is actually a damage to british security. As a permanent member of the Un Security Council and one of the strongholds of liberal capitalism, Brexit is much more symbolic than it actually is, indicating that the thinking of inward-looking security and ensuring self-security in a way that does not cooperate with the international or regional community becomes a reality in a country that was originally firmly supportive of globalization. This is undoubtedly a heavy blow and a serious crack in the global security culture.
The third landmark event was Trump's election as President of the United States. In 2016, when the United Kingdom decided to leave the European Union, Trump won the US election, and the political process in the United States changed significantly. The United States, a great power that once exalted globalism and openness and security, has shown great security anxiety and publicly declared a return to realism. The ideas and policies of the Trump administration in the United States are more obvious. As soon as Trump took office, he put forward a series of slogans and policies such as "America First". Building border walls, being tough on immigration, and seeing the United States' relative gains in a globalized open system reflect a strong sense of introversion. In terms of vigorously promoting a comprehensive "decoupling" from China, it is even more obvious to show the mentality of security anxiety and identity melancholy. "Reinvigorating America" is the end, "returning to America" is the means, and the actions of the United States are the worst blow to globalization and the most serious corrosive agent of the global security culture.
The impact of the inward-looking United States far exceeded that of the United Kingdom, and the country's inward-looking path to security began to become a manifestation of world politics, and a security orientation towards Hobbes culture and nationalism appeared on a global scale. In all aspects of the economy, politics, society and other aspects, the country has shown a clear trend of inward-looking. The state redefines security as a closed system of meaning, regards the open system as the root cause of security threats, and turns to self-isolation and self-reliance as a way to eliminate security anxiety. If the 2008 financial crisis paved the way for the dismantling of the global security culture, the strategy of Brexit and the Trump administration in the United States clearly demonstrated distrust of the community, believing that its own security and interests can only be achieved through self-strength. The action to retreat from state barriers on economic security issues is only an example, because no economic factor is isolated, and the retraction of economic security, as an ideological concept, is bound to manifest itself in other security areas.
The inward trend of national security has peaked during the COVID-19 pandemic, both in concept and action. The identity of globalization is interdependence, and interdependence is characterized by highly correlated sensitive security perceptions and vulnerability security realities. Only when the entire international community is fully secure will there be the security of each member itself; The fate of each country is linked to the fate of the international community, and the interests of each country are also linked to the interests of other countries, which makes the whole of mankind even more a community of common destiny. The novel coronavirus is the public enemy of all mankind, bringing out all the characteristics of a global security threat. In the face of such a threat, the international community, especially the important members of the international community, should have united and cooperated to fight the epidemic in the name of mankind. But the reality is the opposite, with countries essentially going their own way and doing their own thing. What's more, the anti-epidemic action has been politicized and ideologicalized, putting all the responsibility on others in other countries, making stigmatizing comments, arbitrarily commenting on anti-epidemic cooperation with an ultra-nationalist mentality, maliciously guessing the motives behind it, and coldly watching the epidemic development and anti-epidemic actions of other countries with narrow self-interest, and so on. The more far-reaching effect is that people are beginning to think of closure as a guarantee of safety and retreat as a panacea for security anxiety. This is undoubtedly a serious step backwards for the global security culture.
4 Global security culture degradation
The COVID-19 pandemic is an extremely serious global crisis, and it has repeatedly encountered helpless cooperation dilemmas, shaking the cornerstone of a rudimentary global security culture of open security, common security and cooperation. The global consensus on security that emerged in the process of globalization has encountered a major crisis. The three core elements of the global security culture have been eroded, resulting in serious signs of degradation of the global security culture and the inwardization of countries.
(1) Dismantling and opening security with closed security
The inwardization of the state is most evident in the concept and policy of closed security. Closed safety preset, life in a closed system is the safest. Some people call it the "fortress theory", hiding in the fortress is the best way to ensure their own life, the more strong the fortress is built, the higher the safety factor. And openness can only cause great insecurity.
The theory of "relative returns" provides an ideological basis for closed security. In the great debates of neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism in the 1980s and 1990s, a focus was the struggle between "relative returns" and "absolute returns." At that time, neoliberal institutionalism held the concept of "absolute returns" on the issue of benefits, that is, in the process of state interaction, as long as both sides can benefit, the state will continue to exchange and cooperate, although one side benefits more and the other side benefits less, but both sides benefit from exchanges, which constitutes the basis of an open interactive process. Neorealism put forward the view of "relative returns" tit-for-tat, arguing that the problem of income is not at all whether it is profitable, but in the distribution of income, that is, who benefits more and who benefits less. The state-based mentality suffers from inequality without poverty. Based on the high emphasis on power, realism believes that the party with the highest sustained relative return will eventually surpass the party with less sustained relative return in power, thus becoming an all-out loser. The policy effect of the "relative return" theory is that in the process of interaction between two or more parties, if one party believes that its relative benefits are less than those of the other party or the other party, then for the sake of its own immediate income security and ultimate comprehensive security, it will give up the interaction and return to itself. The "relative benefit" theory derives the policy of "closed security".
"Decoupling" is the most typical case of closed security. Since Trump took office, one of the first judgments is that the United States has "suffered a big loss" in its exchanges with China. After more than three decades of globalization, China has undergone earth-shaking changes and become the world's second largest economy. Although the absolute benefits of the United States are not many, compared with China, the relative benefits are getting smaller and smaller, and the result is that the overall power gap between the two countries has narrowed sharply, and the era of us hegemonic order has also come to an end. The Trump administration blamed all this on the reduction of relative returns of the United States, so it began to implement a "decoupling" policy, putting pressure on China in the economic and trade fields, striving for so-called "fairness", and in different fields such as industry, science and technology, information, education, etc., in the name of national security, it vigorously promoted the "decoupling" policy, interrupted cooperation projects, sanctioned Huawei and other enterprises, shut down Confucius Institutes, interrupted people-to-people exchanges, and so on.
Decoupling and decoupling can present a chain reaction. The United States is forced to "decouple" from China, forcing China to prepare for "decoupling" and formulate strategies to deal with "decoupling". "Decoupling" also allows some countries to prioritize relative benefits, and can implement "decoupling" policies as long as they believe that the distribution of benefits is unfair. This creates a countercultural disintegration effect of openness and security, inward-looking countries, with openness seen as a threat and closure seen as security. As the fight against COVID-19 has shown, the global open system is also in danger of moving towards a closed system of fragmentation.
(b) to construct the enemy to disintegrate common security
The inward-looking nature of States makes common security illusory. The basis of common security is an open system, a common threat posed by globalization and a common member of the global open society in which states define themselves. The inwardization of the state makes this premise no longer exist, so that the state redefines the self from the closed window of the self, frames the other, and understands and interprets the relationship between the self and the other. The direct effect of inward security is the establishment of an identity in the international system of an antagonist, and this antagonist must be another state. This dualistic identity politics undermines the foundations of common security. On the one hand, the state retreats into the fortress it has built, mentally rejecting the possibility of cooperation; on the other hand, the dualistic identity politics regards the interaction between countries as a zero-sum game and a competitive game.
Dualistic identities are an easily formed redefinition of identities that can be easily formed by the inward-looking state. Richard Ned Lebow once discussed the Kant-Hegel conflicting identity schema: in order to construct the identity of the "self," a hostile "other" must be created. Kant drew a clear line between the self-society and his society, arguing that the self-society was conditional at the expense of his society. Hegel pointed out that conflicts between the self-state and other states can give both sides a clear identity and mutual identity. Lebeau argues that if one follows the Kant-Hegel conflicting self-other relationship binary opposing cognitive schema, the archetype of the other must be negative and hostile.
The process of constructing this dualistic identity is the best breeding ground for autistic and arrogant nationalism, and it is easy to form populism with the self-nation as the introverted core. The deep connotation of populism lies in the interpretation of identity security, and the basic idea is an extremely simple, black-and-white identity politics of enemy and self-opposition: to clarify the meaning of self-identity by constructing the identity of the enemy of the other, to interpret the threat of self-security with the mentality of blaming all faults on the enemy other, and to eliminate the struggle of the enemy other as the ultimate means of ensuring the absolute security of the self. The simultaneous synchronicity of national inward-looking and national inward-looking has become a prominent feature of the epidemic period, making the nation-state not only a hard fortress in the international system again, but also a sustained-release agent for national identity anxiety and a hallucinogen for national identity security.
At the same time, the dualistic politics of identity also makes relative gain an extremely sensitive and easy-to-pan security issue. In international cooperation, since no cooperative exchange will produce fully reciprocal benefits, in the highly sensitive introverted culture of income distribution, the state will regard the other who has the advantage of relative benefits as competitors, and the countries with the highest relative benefits as the main opponents or even enemies. Therefore, introverted countries no longer look at themselves from an outreach perspective, but look at the world from an introspective perspective, redefine themselves, regard the self as a victim in the process of open exchanges, regard the process of open exchanges as negative and interactive, and treat others as competitors or even enemies. The result is that no other is allowed to reap more relative gains than oneself, even allies. In fact, Joseph Grieco's assumption that the relative return sensitivity coefficient k is always greater than zero can only be established in binary opposing political identities.
Therefore, the struggle for power between countries has become the main contradiction in international relations, and the acquisition of relative benefits has become the main contradiction in the power struggle; the threat of national security is no longer a transnational security threat faced by the international community, but a security threat between countries. In a game in which the self is hostile to the other and the country is zero-sum, the members of the international community lose their status as collaborators based on common knowledge, and common security loses the basis for existence and development. Without the foundation of shared security, a cooperative global security culture is difficult to gain a foothold, let alone evolve further.
(3) Using conflict narratives to break up cooperative security
The inward-looking of the state has led to a redefinition of identity, defining self-meaning in terms of the antagonist and defining self-security by eliminating the hostile other. Although inward-looking will shrink the state mentality, it cannot actually isolate the relationship between the state and other countries, but can only redefine and interpret this relationship, and the most likely result is to interpret the discourse and practice of international relations in a conflict narrative.
In this way, it returns to the conflict logic of realism and to the Hobbes culture of the international system. Defining the self as the self that is damaged everywhere, and defining the other as the opponent who is everywhere, the theatrical theme of international politics becomes competition, especially between the great powers. The most important criticism of the US foreign strategy over the past 30 years by john Mearsheimer, Stephen M. Walt and other international relations realists is that the United States has chosen the wrong enemy and mistakenly regarded al-Qaida and other "mosquito flies" instead of china and Russia as enemies. Treating non-traditional security as the primary enemy is to put the cart before the horse, and cooperation with major countries such as China is "raising tigers for trouble." Wrong strategic judgments and strategic actions led to a decline in American power. The Thucydides Trap is an image depiction of great power competition and clearly has the recognition that it has become an important part of a security culture in today's world. The foreign policy of John Bolton, Steve Bannon, and others is also a concrete practice of redefining the return of self-security threats from global issues to great power conflicts. And once other countries are defined as enemies, all means of struggle against the enemy are regarded as legitimate, and the elimination of the enemy becomes the only way to self-security.
Of course, a culture of security with conflict-led narratives does not completely rule out cooperation. But international cooperation must exist in conditions, and this condition is power. An example commonly used in classical realist theory is bank robbery. When a robber puts a pistol on the head of the bank president, the president naturally cooperates with him. Although he had absolutely no desire to cooperate with the robbers in his heart, the coercion of power forced him to cooperate. In a classic paper, the institutional realist scholar Stephen Krasner spoke of the extreme form of this collaboration: While cooperation is possible, it is power that ultimately determines the distribution of the proceeds of cooperation. Because power is to make the other party do what they don't want to do. Michael Mastanduno studied U.S.-Japan cooperation in industry and pointed out that even between friendly countries like the United States and Japan, even in low-political areas, there is a strong sensitivity to relative gains. In high-politics areas such as security, especially between adversaries, coercive cooperation in power is a means used by States. Furthermore, the more competitive the countries, the more sensitive they are to relative gains. In the narrative of conflict, institutional cooperation and friendly cooperation are unreliable, and only coercive cooperation of power is reliable. It is precisely because cooperation is the product of power that this kind of cooperation has no ontological significance, and power competition is the essence of international relations.
If conflict security narratives are superimposed with identity politics, inward-looking states make inter-state security cooperation even more elusive. Inward-looking states have reconfigured membership in the international system as competitors rather than collaborators. According to the theory of identity politics, identity determines interests, interests determine actions, and the security purpose of the other must be based on the non-security of the self. Since the identity of the antagonist determines that it must be aimed at violating its own security, national security is first and foremost the destruction of any threat means of the enemy. Redefining international politics with the threat of security between states and redefining national identity with hostility between states, security cooperation has fundamentally become a zero-sum game. Coercive cooperation is necessary and possible under certain conditions, such as the adoption of high-pressure policies, but cooperation based on common interests is at best strategic and therefore short-lived. In such an overall narrative, the scenes are reframed, the script is rewritten, the character identities and relationship nature are redefined, open space becomes a condition for security threats, security once again becomes a survival game between countries in anarchic system, and equal security cooperation is once again a myth. Any idealized perception of this will produce illusions and misleading.
5 Conclusion
A global culture of security is a background element of state behaviour. The global culture of security is shaped by countries and, once formed, has a significant impact on national thinking and behaviour. As Mr. Zhang Dongsun has already said, "Therefore, culture is created by people, and after the culture rises, culture creates people..." Although there is not a linear causal relationship between the culture of security and the behavior of the state, as a background element, it has an important impact on the country's security cognition and strategic orientation, which in turn affects the nature of international relations and the pattern of world order. At a time of century-long change, the evolution of the global security culture requires particular attention.
In fact, security anxieties and national inward-looking have been brewing, growing and intensifying before the COVID-19 pandemic. But the COVID-19 pandemic, a global public safety event, has not only not changed this phenomenon, but has rapidly exacerbated the onslaught on the fledgling global security culture of cooperation. In the process of the degradation of the cooperative global security culture, the inward-looking security of countries, the dissolution of international security cooperation, the intensification of security conflicts, and the sensitivity of countries to relative benefits will become more obvious; the strategic game between countries, geopolitical competition, and non-cooperation in international multilateral organizations will also be significantly aggravated.
For a long time to come, this split in the global security culture will continue to develop, and the international order will present an uphill contest between the two forces of a cooperative and conflict-type global security culture. However, globalization as a development trend will not be completely reversed, and the pillar connotations of a cooperative global security culture – open security, common security, cooperative security – will not completely disappear. It can be seen that even at a time when populism, state-centrism, and zero-security ideas are rampant, the forces for adhering to security cooperation, multilateralism, and an open system are still strong. The current degradation of cracking may herald the re-emergence of a more open global security practice and a more cooperative security culture. However, the process of re-formation is bound to be long-term, tortuous, and full of difficulties and hardships.
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*Disclaimer: This article only represents the personal views of the author and does not represent the position of this official account
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