Globalization and War

War doesn't just tear nations apart—it brings peoples and places closer together, providing a new lens on globalization. This book offers a fresh perspective on globalization and war, topics rarely considered together. It conceives war as a form of interconnection between home and abroad, and as an occasion for circulation and interchange. It identifies the political and military work required to create and maintain a free-trading world, while critiquing liberal and neoliberal conceptions of the pacific benefits of economic globalization.

Speaking from the heart of old and new imperial orders, Tarak Barkawi exposes the Eurocentric limitations of military history and highlights the imperial dimensions of modern warfare. Britain, India, and the colonial Indian army exemplify the intertwined, global histories illuminated by attention to globalization and war. Around the world, geographies and wars are imagined differently. Cultural approaches to globalization show how popular consciousness of the world often takes military and warlike form, and how militaries spawn hybrid "traveling cultures" wherever they go.

Finally, Barkawi examines the contemporary "war on terror" using historical and non-Eurocentric globalizations to clarify the politics and strategies involved in the purported 'clash of civilizations'. Adding a new layer of understanding, he looks at the globalization of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the intensifying "Israelization" of the United States.