Non-State Actors in World Politics

Carlos Slim Helú, the world’s richest man, owns 92% of all Mexican telecommunications services. Through this effective monopoly, Slim has grown to an estimated net worth of $60 billion (1). What I find significant about this fact isn’t that Slim passed Bill Gates and Warren Buffet as the wealthiest man in the world. Rather, it is the fact that Slim’s personal wealth makes him, personally, the 64th largest economy in the world, measured in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with purchasing power parity set in terms of the US Dollar (2). This fact is shocking in a modern economy, where oligarchs were supposed to be checked by the basic nature of the free market. We now live in a world where individuals, non-governmental organizations, criminal cartels, and political parties rival the power of states. Additionally, we live in a world that caters to states that are significantly less powerful than said groups. As a result, modern financial and diplomatic bodies are not equipped to handle these so-called “non-state actors,” a situation that handles several worrisome implications.

The greatest issue we see facing global institutions in dealing with non-state actors is the inability to check their power. Organizations such as the UN, even the very embodiment of the nation-state itself, though by no means perfect, often serve as a check on arbitrarily exercised state power. There is, however, no such check on the power of multinational corporations. By their very nature, these companies operate on a supranational scale. When one nation passes a minimum wage law, for instance, these companies will move to a state that has no such law. A state has no such option. As a result, the fluidity of movement of supranational organizations gives them the ability to operate in multiple locales at once and, more importantly, avoid legal action.

The most obvious instance of such an encounter is the current conflict between the United States and takfiri terrorist groups. In 2003, the US Treasury Department attempted to freeze the assets of the al-Aqsa Foundation, a US-based charity group suspected of ties to Hamas. Though the assets were eventually frozen, the United States only had control over those assets held in the US itself. Without action on the part of other Western European governments, the al-Aqsa Foundation would still be a highly capable financier (3). Though countered in this one case, the inability of the United States to freeze the assets of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps overseas, particularly in Russian banks, clearly displays the necessity for global cooperation if states are to deal with non-state actors.

Though corporations and individuals are globalizing, states are still caught in the Cold War mentality that states themselves are the greatest threat to global stability. As the United States has learned from the tech support exodus to India and the textile manufacturing industry’s flight to China, the global economy is no longer confined into blocs. Rather, it is thoroughly integrated across state boundaries. States still find themselves at a loss when companies, individuals, and parties can operate outside of state bodies, breaking laws of the nations from which they originate. Until states themselves find a means of checking non-state actors, such issues will continue to plague judicial systems and economies alike.

1) Winter, Brian. ""How Slim Got Huge." Foreign Policy Nov.-Dec. 2007.
2) "GDP > PPP (most recent) by country." Chart. NationMaster. 2005. 27 Aug. 2008 .
3) TREASURY DESIGNATES AL-AQSA INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION AS FINANCIER OF TERROR. United States. Department of the Treasury. Office of Public Affairs. .