Richard Swift looks at how the politics of insecurity played out in 2002 - and holds out for a different notion of safety.

I have been to New York's Natural History Museum on the upper west side many times before. But this December was the first time my bags were thoroughly searched and I was made to open my coat to ensure that I was not a suicide bomber about to do in the pre-Christmas crowd.

It reminded me of Jerusalem. In fact one gets the sense these days of an Israelization of the US - a preoccupation with an external enemy, a clinging together in an almost tribal unity and a frightening kind of 'we-they' politics. Most of Official Washington seems to have already decided that Iraqis are 'a necessary enemy' even if they don't have 'weaponsofmassdestruction'.

Across town at the UN many breathed a sigh of relief when the Bush regime brought its ultimatums aimed at the Saddam Hussein dictatorship in Iraq before the Security Council. Resolution 1441 which was passed unanimously on 8 November was both a victory and a defeat for Washington. It managed to strong-arm the recalcitrant French and Russians (backroom deals on post-war Iraqi oil contracts were the key here) into supporting a tough line on Iraq and even the Syrians went along in the end. But having to go to the UN at all was a defeat for the largely civilian 'chicken hawks' who make up the war party in Washington. The UN resolution shifts the issue from 'regime change' to Iraqi disarmament and makes it more difficult for the US to move against Iraq unilaterally. Has the US hijacked the UN or has international and domestic anti-war pressure forced Bush & Co back into a multilateral decision-making forum? The question hung in the air as 2002 drew to a close.

Security. So essential. So elusive. So dangerous. Perhaps the most abused word in the political lexicon these days. In 2002 a good deal of world leaders' time and energy was spent in the search to make us feel secure after the mass public executions of 11 September. In country after country the politics of security and how to ensure it have been driven to the top of the political agenda. The US in particular, under the determined leadership of George W Bush and his coterie of right-wing fundamentalists, has fashioned a global vision to impose a new 'security regime' across the globe. It all has a slightly 'jihadist' ring to it. At home there is a new Patriot Act and a sparkling multi-billion dollar Department of Homeland Security. Overseas the world is to be divided up into those bent on doing 'evil' and the forces of 'good' determined to stop them. Anyone who dares ask questions about the motives of terrorists or the causes on which they feed is simply missing the point. A multi-purpose 'War on Terror' has been crafted in which 'you are either for us or against us'. This new 'war' has an elastic quality that allows it to be adapted to whatever purpose those in power deem necessary.

During the past year the War on Terror was the reason to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the very borders of Russia. The reason to curtail civil liberties and 'streamline' the legal system in order to fast-track those with suspect loyalties. The reason every other ally of the US had to ratchet up military spending in order to 'do their bit'.  The reason that issues like world poverty and environmental degradation had to be put on the back burner. The reason that 'rogue states' needed to be disarmed and disciplined or subject to 'regime change'. It was a total strategy for applying the criteria of security to any sphere of state policy. With enough imagination everything from water supply to internet access can be seen as areas of potential terrorist activity.

A concept that seems to underpin the new security offensive is the notion of 'limited sovereignty'. In a democracy the people are meant to be sovereign. But in country after country legal protections for citizens are under threat. In India police can now hold suspects for three months without charge. In South Africa proposed anti-terrorism legislation could criminalize strikes and even the peaceful delivery of a petition to a foreign embassy. In Spain legislation could ban political parties that 'promote a culture of civil confrontation'. In Italy the security services are to be authorized to break the law for reasons of state security. Certainly 2002 was a tough year for civil liberties - virtually everywhere the precarious rights of foreigners and refugees are under threat.

Internationally 'limited sovereignty' applies to all governments but that of the US. Woe betide governments suspected of either sympathizing with terrorists or being insufficiently enthusiastic in following the US 'War on Terror' agenda. With some 200,000 troops in 144 countries and territories worldwide the US was in a good position to enforce compliance. And make no mistake it's compliance and not 'democratization' that the Cheney and Rumsfeld agenda is all about. After all, what is a more reliable ally: a stable military dictatorship or an unpredictable democracy? The rather desultory attempts to bring 'democracy' to post-Taliban Afghanistan speak volumes.

In 2002 the prominent French strategic affairs specialist Alain Joxe referred to the new aggressive projection of post-Cold War US power as an 'Empire of Disorder' in which sovereignty is passing from democratic publics to markets and corporations. The inherent inequality and instability of such a system puts the US in a position of having constantly to 'regulate disorder' by imposing financial norms, such as structural adjustment, and repressing the 'symptoms of despair' - terrorism, regional wars and popular resistance.¹

The roots of the 2002 security regime can be found back in the Cold War doctrines of national security. It was a philosophy of total war. The original total war - against the old USSR - has now been replaced by a total war against 'stateless' enemies. One problem with fighting stateless enemies is that it is all so intangible. So difficult to claim victory. That is why there is an almost inbuilt tendency for wars against stateless enemies to shift focus into more conventional wars. It is after all easier to claim victory through 'regime change' in Iraq or by suppressing the peasant insurgencies of Colombia. Meanwhile the heroin and cocaine continue to flow and the terrorist bombs continue to explode.

Still, 2002 has seen the beginnings of resistance to Joxe's Empire of Disorder. An international anti-war movement of surprising proportions is starting to rally with massive demonstrations on both sides of the Atlantic. The idea of attacking Iraq was so unpopular in Germany that staunch opposition to it helped the German Social Democrats grab electoral success from the jaws of defeat. In Britain the Blair Government's lap-dog support for US imperial politics has met with vociferous resistance. And many countries, including France and Canada, are emerging as foot-draggers in joining the 'crusade'. So, as 2002 drew to a close there were signs of hope that there might be a chance to rethink the notion of security, to recast it to include not just military security but security from hunger and disease. Such a security based on equality would go a long way towards undercutting the pull to violence by both state and non-state terrorist organizations.

Richard Swift is an NI co-editor.

1 Alain Joxe, Empire of Disorder, Semiotext, New York, 2002.