Let’s move now to globalization. Globalization is probably one of the main transformations of our world order. It’s a quite new order that we are meeting with this process, which is quite new and which is questioning really all the concepts, which have been coined for explaining the international relations. I would say first that globalization results in a series of paradoxes which are challenging our conceptual vision of the international arena. First, first paradox: contradiction between power and integration. Power is the cornerstone of the traditional international order, when integration is the main consequence of a global order which is more and more interplaying and interdependent. How to combine power and interdependence? How to combine power and integration? Second paradox: between power and powerlessness. Globalization is providing new resources to power and the power holders have the feeling, the intuition that globalization is able to bring them new means, new instruments for dominating the world. But in the meantime interdependence is contradicting power and we can observe that in our present world order power is less and less powerful and power is failing in many kinds of tensions and conflicts that we are meeting now, and especially in Middle East and Africa. Third contradiction: a contradiction between coexistence and interdependence. Interdependence is the main principle of global order when coexistence is coming from the traditional vision of sovereignty. How to combine them? Fourth contradiction, fourth paradox: between market and inclusion. Globalization is often presented as the accomplishment, as the achievement of the market, of a kind of world market, but it’s not totally true. Market and free trade and free-exchanges are only one dimension of globalization while we have to take into account the other dimension which is connected to this process of integration and inclusion. Fifth paradox: between global order and a fragmented order. It will be a great mistake to consider that globalization results in a kind of unification of the world. Globalization is also boosting a kind of fragmentation, new particularisms, that we have to take into account. And the result is that we are in a global but also local world order, that’s to say a kind of “glocalization” as it has been said. Now the real question, which is at stake, is: how to define globalization? And the problem of definition is probably not really solved, it is very difficult now to give a consensual definition of globalization. I would say that this dispute is shading the light on some ambiguities of globalization. Globalization doesn't mean internationalization, internationalization implies relations among nation-states, globalization is not limited to relations among nation-states but is including many other actors as we have mentioned. Globalization does not mean liberalization. That’s to say globalization can imply the development of free market but globalization is also shading a light on the necessity of a social integration which is different from the liberal vision and the free-market vision of the global order. Globalization does not mean universalization as globalization is triggering new particularisms which are more and more visible, and especially when some problems, some tensions, some conflicts take place. And globalization does not mean westernization. Many people in the western world consider that globalization was the end of history, that’s to say was resulting in the success and the victory of a western vision of the world order. We see now that globalization is on the contrary resulting in the development and in the strengthening of new cultures, and of competing cultures: African cultures, Arab cultures, Chinese cultures. We are in a world which cannot be considered as the result of a cultural unification. So, how to define? I would say first that globalization implies three symptoms and I would like to approach globalization through these three symptoms. The first one is inclusion. For the first time in the world history we are all in the same boat, that’s to say humanity is entirely included in the same arena, is playing on a unique arena and this is really new; this is really a new aspect of the world order that we didn’t meet in the precedent steps of the human history. And that’s mean if we are in an including world, there is no center, that’s to say no possibility to conceive a center and even a hegemon on this new global world. The second symptom of globalization is to be found in mobility. we are in a world of communication, we are in a world of transportation, we are in a world in which people are more and more able to move and also to transgress the borderlines. Mobility is a new parameter, which is challenging the traditional order, which is made of statism, of stability and of territorial stability. We are no more in a territorial world but in a world of mobility. And the third symptom is interdependence. We are depending on each other, that means that the weak is still depending on the strong. But that means something much more important that with globalization, now the strong is also depending on the weak. That is quite new. And that’s why I said that the concept of power is now challenged and power is getting powerless. Can you see in the world order how a small state, how a very weak collectivity is able to control, to make pressure, to contain the strengths of the strongest. That are the symptoms of globalization. Where are the roots? What is the origin of globalization? This is a very tough question of course, but I will say maybe three points, I will make three points. First, probably and even certainly, globalization is coming from the transformation of technology. Globalization was not politically invented, politically created, globalization is the result of a new technological context. What is this technological context? I would say it’s the revolution of communication. We are in a world in which it’s very easy for each individual to communicate with all the others around the world. When I was young it was so difficult to give a call to telephone to US when we were settled in Europe now we can do that with our cells, with our mobile phones, it’s so easy, and so difficult also to control, and so difficult to limit. We are in a world of generalized communication. What is a world of generalized communication? It’s a world in which distance is getting meaningless, we are in a world in which distance is no more organizing the world, in which distance is no more a political resource for the rulers, for the princes, for the governments, and it’s a world in which distance is no more a handicap for the individuals, that’s to say for all of us, for the seven billion of people. So globalization is first of all a world of deterritorialization. What does it mean? It means that the traditional definition of politics which has been coined for instance by Max Weber is no more relevant, that’s to say there is a gap, a conceptual gap between the idea of politics and the idea of territory. That’s to say the real political challenge is no more coming from territory, and the competition between territorial nation-states, but is a world of transnational relations. But that means something else: in this world which is no more territorial, there is a real risk, which is a sociological risk, which was pointed in his time by Emile Durkheim, that’s to say a world of anomie. This world of interdependence is a world, which needs to be integrated and with a lack of integration there is a strong risk of anomie. Anomie that’s to say a risk of destruction of the social background of this new world. This risk of anomie is probably explaining what it is now taking place in matter of wars and conflicts. And I would say that globalization is, as I mentioned, “glocalization”, that’s to say a world in which the whole is important, but in which, in the meantime, the individual is important, that’s to say a permanent tension between the micro-unit, which is constituted by the individual and the totality which is incarnating this new global world.
