The paradox of our times can be stated simply: the collective issues we must grapple with are of growing extensity and intensity, yet the means for addressing these are weak and incomplete. Three pressing global issues highlight the urgency of finding a way forward.
David Held's article is based on a lecture to be delivered in Paris, at a meeting convened by the French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, on 19 January 2008First, insufficient progress has been made in creating a sustainable framework for the management of climate change, illustrating the serious problems facing the multilateral order.
Second, progress towards achieving the millennium development goals has been slow and in many places lamentably so. Underlying this fact, is, of course, the material vulnerability of over half the world's population. Each year, some 18 million die prematurely from poverty-related causes. This is one third of all human deaths - 50,000 every day, including 29,000 children under the age of 5. And, yet, the gap between rich and poor countries continues to rise and there is evidence that the bottom 10% of the world's population has become even poorer since the beginning of the 1990s.
Third, the threat of nuclear catastrophe may seem to have diminished, as a result of the end of the cold war, but it is only in abeyance. Huge nuclear stockpiles remain, nuclear proliferation among states is continuing, new generations of tactical and nuclear weapons are being built and nuclear terrorism is a serious threat.
openDemocracy writers seek to make sense of long-term shifts in global politics, economics and the environment:
Avinash D Persaud, "The dollar standard: (only the) beginning of the end" (5 December 2007)
Tom Burke, "The world and climate change: all together now" (7 December 2007)
Ann Pettifor, "Globalisation: sleepwalking to disaster" (11 December 2007)
openDemocracy, "The world in 2008: a year and an era" (21 December 2007) - reflections from twenty authors, including Rajeev Bhargava, Mary Kaldor, Ivan Krastev, and Michel Thieren
Paul Rogers, "A century on the edge: 1945-2045" (29 December 2007)
David Hayes, "A world in contraflow" (3 January 2008)
Saskia Sassen, "The world's third spaces" (8 January 2008)
Simon Zadek, "Accountability's global thread" (14 January 2008) These global challenges are indicative of three core sets of problems we face - those concerned with sharing our planet (global warming, biodiversity and ecosystem losses, water deficits); sustaining our life-chances (poverty, conflict prevention, global infectious diseases); and managing our rulebooks (nuclear proliferation, toxic waste disposal, intellectual property rights, genetic research rules, trade rules, finance and tax rules) (cf. Jean-Francois Rischard, High Noon: Twenty Global Problems, Twenty Years to Solve Them, Basic Books, 2002). In our increasingly interconnected world, these global problems cannot be solved by any one nation-state. They call for collective and collaborative action - something that the nations of the world have not been good at, and which they need to be better at if these pressing issues are to be adequately tackled.
The roots of dysfunction
While complex global processes, from the financial to the ecological, connect the fate of communities to each other across the world, global governance capacity is under pressure. Significant governance innovations have been made in recent decades, but the global-governance system remains too often weak and/or fragmented. Moreover, there has been a complex "unbundling" of sovereignty, territoriality and political forces. This unbundling involves a plurality of actors, a variety of political processes, and diverse levels of co-ordination and operation. Specifically, it includes:
▪ Different forms of intergovernmental arrangements embodying various levels of legalisation, types of instruments utilised and responsiveness to stakeholders
▪ An increasing number of public agencies - e.g . central bankers - maintaining links with similar agencies in other countries and, thus, forming transgovernmental networks for the management of various global issues
▪ Diverse business actors - i.e. firms, their associations and organisations such as international chambers of commerce - establishing their own transnational regulatory mechanisms to manage issues of common concern.
▪ Non-governmental organisations and transnational advocacy networks - i.e. leading actors in global civil society - playing a role in various domains of global governance and at various stages of the global public policy-making process
▪ Public bodies, business actors and NGOs collaborating in many areas in order to provide novel approaches to social problems through multi-stakeholder networks.
There is evidence that the politicisation, bureaucratisation and capacity limits of multilateral institutions have been important factors in driving the expansion of new forms of global governance, since powerful governments have sought to avoid either expanding the remit of existing multilateral agencies or creating new ones. Another factor that has been significant has been the socio-political shift towards "self-regulation", as the private sector has sought to pre-empt or prevent international public regulation while governments have sought to share the regulatory burden with non-state actors.
David Held's analyses have appeared in openDemocracy since 2001:
"Violence and justice in a global age" (13 September 2001)
"New war, new justice" (27 September 2001) - with Mary Kaldor"9/11: What should we do now?" (10 October 2001) - with Scilla Elworthy, Tim Garden, Mary Kaldor and S Sayyid
"Globalisation: the argument of our time" (21 January 2002) - a major debate with Paul Hirst
"Davos: a view from the summit" (13 February 2002)"Return to the state of nature" (20 March 2003)
"Globalisation: the dangers and the answers" (26 May 2004)
"What are the dangers and the answers? Clashes over globalisation" (10 October 2004)
"Building bridges: a reply to Anne-Marie Slaughter & Thomas N Hale" (23 December 2005)
"Gordon Brown's foreign-policy challenges" (10 August 2007) - with David MephamProblem-solving capacities at the global and regional level are weak because of a number of structural difficulties, which compound the problems of generating and implementing urgent policy with respect to global goods and bads. These difficulties are rooted in the post-war settlement and the subsequent development of the multilateral order itself. Four deep-rooted problems need mentioning.
A first set of problems emerges as a result of the development of globalisation itself, which generates public policy problems which span the "domestic" and the "foreign", and the interstate order with its clear political boundaries and lines of responsibility. These policy problems are often insufficiently understood or acted upon. There is a fundamental lack of ownership of many of them at the global level.
A second set of difficulties relates to the inertia found in the system of international agencies, or the inability of these agencies to mount collective problem-solving solutions faced with uncertainty about lines of responsibility and frequent disagreement over objectives, means and costs. This often leads to the situation where the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of taking action.
A third set of problems arises because there is no clear division of labour among the myriad of international governmental agencies; functions often overlap, mandates frequently conflict, and aims and objectives too often get blurred.
A fourth set of difficulties relates to an accountability deficit, itself linked to two interrelated problems: the power imbalances among states and those between state and non-state actors in the shaping and making of global public policy. Multilateral bodies need to be fully representative of the states involved in them, and they rarely are.
Underlying these four difficulties is the breakdown of symmetry and congruence between decision-makers and decision-takers. The point has been well articulated recently by Inge Kaul and her associates in their work on global public goods. They speak about the "forgotten equivalence principle" (see Inge Kaul, et al., Providing Global Public Goods: Managing Globalization, Oxford University Press, 2003). At its simplest, the principle suggests that those who are significantly affected by a global good or bad should have a say in its provision or regulation, i.e ., the span of a good's benefits and costs should be matched with the span of the jurisdiction in which decisions are taken about that good. Yet, all too often, there is a breakdown of "equivalence" between decision-makers and decision-takers, between decision-makers and stakeholders, and between the inputs and outputs of the decision-making process. Among pressing examples are climate change, the impact of trade subsidies, HIV/Aids management and the question of intellectual property rights.
The ingredients of change
Thus, the challenge is to find ways to align the circles of those to be involved in decision-making with the spillover range of the good under negotiation, i.e. to address the issue of accountability gaps; to create new organisational mechanisms for policy innovation across borders; and to find new ways of financing urgent global public goods. Legitimate political authority at the global level cannot be entrenched adequately without addressing the representative, organisational and financial gaps in governance arrangements.
Surprisingly perhaps, it is an opportune moment to rethink the nature and form of global governance and the dominant policies of the last decade or so. The policy packages that have largely set the global agenda - in economics and security - are failing. The so-called Washington consensus and Washington security doctrines (otherwise market fundamentalism and unilateralism) have dug their own graves. The most successful developing countries in the world (China, India, Vietnam, Uganda, among them) are successful because they have not followed the Washington consensus agenda, and the conflicts that have most successfully been defused (the Balkans, Sierra Leone, Liberia, among others) are ones that have benefited from concentrated multilateral support and a human-security agenda. Here are clear clues as to how to proceed in the future. We need to follow these clues and learn from the mistakes of the past if the rule of law, accountability and the effectiveness of the multilateral order are to be advanced.
David Held is professor in the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics, and one of the most prolific and innovative thinkers in the study of globalisation. Among his books are Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus (Polity, 2004) and Models of Democracy (Polity, third edition, 2006) In addition, the political tectonic plates appear to be shifting. With the faltering of unilateralism in United States foreign policy, uncertainty over the role of the European Union in global affairs, the crisis of global trade talks, the emergence of powerful authoritarian capitalist states (Russia, China), the growing confidence of leading emerging countries in world economic forums (China, India and Brazil), and the unsettled relations between elements of Islam and the west, business as usual seems unlikely at the global level in the decades ahead. It is highly improbable that the multilateral order can survive for very much longer in its current form.
The post-1945 multilateral order is in trouble. Clear, effective and accountable decision-making is needed across a range of urgent global challenges; and, yet, the collective capacity for addressing these matters is in doubt. The dominant policy packages of the last several years have not delivered the goods and a learning opportunity beckons. There are, of course, many ways that have been proposed to deepen the accountability and effectiveness of global governance mechanisms - from proposals for global issue networks, the expansion of key "G" clusters (G8, G22, and the like), coalitions of particular nation-states acting in clubs, to the reform of the United Nations and cosmopolitan democracy.
But rather than end by making the case for any one of these, I want to finish by stressing a methodological point. It can be misleading and dangerous to over-generalise about politics or policy from the present, or from a single time period, or from the point of view of one culture, country or region. Instead, the test of deliberative generalisability needs to be built into reflections on "ways forward" in order to help ensure a focus on global solutions to global challenges - not just American, French, British, German, European Union, Chinese solutions. In other words, we require a multi-perspectival mode of forming, defending and defining political preferences - a mode that is in fact, other- and future-regarding.
Comments
David Held's analysis - in casting such a wide net of 'blame' for the manifest inadequacies and injustices of the global order (or, more accurately, 'disorder') - leaves one (at least it left me) floundering in a morass of what appear to be - or at least are presented as - largely institutional failures.
Part of the problem is the language - a kind of 'techno-babble' - in which the problems are cast, in which there is no 'good' and 'evil', only failures of organisation and communication. The simple truth is that the major decisions are being taken by members of a global political, commercial, military-industrial elite which cares little for human suffering. This elite has hijacked the political and economic decision-making processes for its own vested interests - which have little or nothing to do with peace, justice and the fair sharing of the world's wealth among all its inhabitants. Indeed, spokespersons for this elite seriously suggest that the real problem is over-population, and that it is necessary to reduce the world's population by 80%. There is evidence that they have already started to do so.
In order to maintain its hegemony, the elite uses propaganda, deception, double-think, physical force, and the now pervasive appeal to human beings' self-interest. One major deception is the lie of 'democracy' (there are, with the possible exception of Switzerland) no genuine democracies on the planet. Another is the lie of the intrinsic connection between democracy and free-market capitalism (very useful when you want to win new markets for capitalism). I recommend anyone who doubts this to acquire a copy of Adam Curtis' massively impressive "The Century of the Self" (originally broadcast by the BBC in four parts in 2002).
In order to cut through the spin, hyperbole and outright lies (I'm not referring to David Held here), we might use plainer language. Calling a spade a spade, we should rather refer to the aforementioned elite (they have, of course, vast numbers of acolytes more than ready to place self-interest above justice and peace) as 'robber barons', cut-throats and would-be dictators - who need to be named and shamed and divested of their power before anything approaching a just world order can be instituted. A 'sticking-plaster' approach simply will not work, and the elite is more than happy to see good folk picking up the tabs (through their charitable donations) for the mess the former continues to create.
The problem is that we, the public, have - out of laziness, or stupidity, or self-interest - colluded in the con, and have allowed governments and other elites to create virtually impregnable positions of power, effective 'Catch-22' situations in which citizens would need to own real decision-making power in order to change a corrupt system, but where the system has been so designed and/or progressively manipulated as to prevent them from ever gaining that power, and the propaganda - from both political parties and the ever-compliant mainstream media - has been so effective that the majority is not even aware that its birthright has been "sold for a mess of potage".
And that's at the level of 'ordinary' politics! On top of that has been the massive lies of the 'war on terror' and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, based on what have manifestly been acts of state-sponsored terror, but sold to a gullible public (including academics and professionals who ought to know better) as external attacks by a resurgent Islamic fundamentalism.
Until such time as the mainstream analysis of these events is based on the demonstrable facts, rather than on some preposterous myth, the global elite will continue to "get away with it" and we will be left ineffectively wringing our hands and hoping against hope for a miracle.
Sincerely
Paul Carline
Civilisation in 2008 - The Reckoning
For millennia wise men (and women), have told us that what we think creates how we live, and few would disagree. In this 21st century we still understand little about who and what we are as a species, as our technological achievements continue to outstrip our understanding of each other . . . and this is at the heart of our inability to make progress in dealing with climate change.
It is our traditional beliefs that cause our ceaseless conflict with each other and have created the desperate global situation we now find ourselves in. Consequently it must follow that these beliefs are totally incapable of providing the solutions to the problems they have created.
We believe it is our right to take from this planet whatever, whenever and however we choose, without any thought or responsibility for managing what we are doing – and still continues today in spite of accelerating climate change.
We are seeing increasing droughts and drying up of riverbeds, as well as flooding from whatever causes and rising temperatures. All of these changes in environmental balance directly affect our water supplies and seriously hinder food production, leading to our increasing inability to feed ourselves. We are now further increasing this dangerous situation as we begin to our use our food stocks for ethanol production to propel our transport.
If we now place in this equation our belief in financial management and the law of supply and demand to regulate what we use, then a growing shortage of food means ever increasing prices. This in turn will see an increasing number of people unable to feed themselves as basic life sustaining nourishment is taken beyond their financial capabilities.
We are already beginning to see the price of basic foodstuffs rise to feed the growing demand for ethanol. Rising grain prices directly affect the prices of our other food sources such as meat and eggs, where up to a 20% increase in prices has occurred over just the last 12 months in China alone – and theirs is quite a large population!
As this problem escalates our traditional political institutions will need to be seen to be doing something, and so we lapse into blame as one nation accuses another of hoarding. The application of “labels” begins as hatred is stirred up between supposedly differing groups, be they racial, religious or any other ethnic grouping.
And so we deteriorate into conflict, further expanding the threat to our existence as a civilisation through the powerful weapons we have now developed, and our inability to manage them effectively because of the ancient beliefs we still hold about each other and our surroundings.
The most powerful nation may come out on top by annihilating everyone else - but as global war escalates, who can say with any degree of certainty that they too will not blow themselves off the face of this beautiful planet, given the nature of modern terrorist warfare and the inability to determine who is the ”enemy”?
I honestly do not believe I am exaggerating anything within this scenario, but simply applying the effects of our traditional and limiting beliefs to the growing problem we are creating, and which they can only fuel rather than resolve.
By challenging what we believe, and in so doing changing our relationship with each other and our surroundings, I believe it is possible to create the opportunity for a huge evolutionary leap forward as a species. We are at a unique moment in time in our history and embedded within this era are the ingredients for either our destruction or survival – the choice is ours.
If we do not bother to commit to fundamental changes in what we believe in, and the time comes when we seek to protect our young from rising temperatures - holding them close to us as we huddle precariously on the roofs of our houses, and with rescuers unable to get to us because of the approach of more tidal waves which will sweep over us, it’s no good saying “We’re very very sorry, we won’t do it again!” – Its not right or wrong - it just didn’t work.
Play it Again Uncle Sam
Play what again?
You know. The game.
What game?
The game called “F*ck you Buddy” that American society is based on.
Who invented the game?
A mathematician called John Nash who was working for the highly secretive Rand Corporation in the 1950s.
Didn’t he suffer from paranoid schizophrenia?
Yes he did.
Is it wise to base an entire modus vivendi on such a cynical assumption?
Read “Play it Again Uncle Sam” and find out.
****************
The Rand [research and development] Program was initially set up by the US military to develop new weapon systems after the war. However in 1948 it separated out into a non-profit making body supposedly to promote world peace and democracy, funded by the Ford Foundation. Because of the secrecy surrounding its work, it soon aroused suspicion as to its real motives, which were not allayed when it was discovered that there were links between its sponsors, the Ford Foundation, and the CIA. One was Richard Bissell, an early President of the Foundation who went onto to join the CIA and oversee the U2 Spy plane program. JFK was later to remove him from office over the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Another was JJ McCloy, a personal friend of CIA Director, Allen Dulles.
During the 1950’s Rand employed many top class mathematicians who developed a revolutionary concept called “Game Theory,” a system of strategies to be used by two or more players. The game could be applied to any potentially confrontational situation with the aim of achieving a state of “equilibrium,” from which neither player could better their position by deviating from their chosen stratagem. It was initially designed to predict Soviet responses to cold war confrontation but was later applied to all social interactions in society at large. One of its main architects was the mathematician, John Nash, an eccentric loner who had concluded that humans were ultimately selfish and devious creatures who schemed constantly to get one step ahead of each other. So cynical was he of “human nature” that he and his colleagues actually devised a board game called “Fuck you Buddy” to illustrate his paranoid hypothesis.
Four players were given 7 coloured chips each with the ultimate goal of capturing all their opponents’ chips. Acceptable strategies included forming coalitions and agreements to cooperate, even though these would all eventually be reneged on. The winner was the last surviving player and the game seemed to work as long as it was understood that the modus operandi was to behave selfishly and outwit your opponents. But when the researchers initially tested the game out on their secretaries, they chose to cooperate, thereby ruining the ethos of the game, but this was conveniently ignored and even though Nash was exhibiting the early symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, the game was still launched.
Throughout the fifties and sixties game theory was used to justify the arms race and the US nuclear strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction [MAD] which, because there was no all out war with the Soviet Union, was widely believed to have worked. It was also applied to the war against Vietnam, often with genocidal consequences.
But even more controversially the game was used to give credence to the ideas of right wing economists like Friedrich Von Hayek and James Buchanan. These men insisted that even elected leaders and their bureaucrats were only self seeking tyrants with no genuine concern for the public good, and therefore all power was to taken away from them and the populace exposed to unfettered market forces. This would provide one explanation for the witchhunts of the fifties, where any politician even thinking of tinkering with the free market was denigrated, and in some cases terminated. The idea of society or community was consistently rubbished and the citizens of America encouraged to believe they were simply mindless consumers, whose only meaningful interaction with their fellow man was in the market place. Their primary responsibility was therefore to themselves and their families who were encouraged to consume as conspicuously as possible.
One of the end results of this game has been a rapid decline in social mobility where the income of the bottom 10% actually fell in real terms, with the middle class seeing a small rise in their living standards and the over class seeing a quadrupling of their assets. This, unsurprisingly, has led to a destabilision of society with rising levels of violence and other anti-social behaviour as the “have nots” battle the “haves,” for their slice of the American Pie. The winners get to live in gated communities while the losers are herded into the ghettos of the inner cities.
But not content with experimenting on its citizens, the US has exported this dysfunctional model of social disharmony via the Military/Industrial Complex, which has usually imposed it on third world societies around the world under the banner of “globalisation.” This has been portrayed by the western media as a positive force, especially in those areas of the world deemed crucial to US business or vital resource interests, especially the oil states of the Middle East and the “banana” republics of Latin America. This was achieved by citing “expansion of democracy in the region” whilst forcing regime change and unleashing market forces. This has invariably led to an overclass lording it over long established tribal or community based societies, often with disastrous consequences, including vengeful acts of terrorism.
So what has happened to those opposing the imposition of the game?
Over the decades there have been many foreign leaders, usually elected, determined to stop their country being drained if its natural resources and its people used as cheap labour. This has been particularly true of the countries of Latin America, a region that the United States has always regarded as its backyard, a repository of riches to be raided at will. Unsurprisingly many leaders of these countries have tried to stand up to this blatant imperialism, often by attempting to nationalise foreign owned businesses to regain control of their economy. This has always been met by outright hostility from the CIA who have helped organise coups and in some cases, assassination, of such interferers in the game.
One of the most successful of these leaders has been Fidel Castro in Cuba. He terrified American Corporations when he came to power in 1959, after overthrowing the US backed Dictator, Fulgencio Batista, and confiscating American assets on the island. They were worried that his example would be followed by others in the region, so the CIA was instructed to get rid of him as quickly as possible, using any means at its disposal. However the US’s involvement in this illegal act was to be hidden at all costs so they covered their tracks using the concept known as “plausible deniability,” the euphemism for framing someone or some group to take the blame. But all their attempts failed and eventually they had to turn to the professional killers, the Mafia, to carry out the contract. But amazingly they too failed.
However CIA assets did manage to infiltrate Cuba to attempt to foment counter revolution from within, the likes of Frank Sturgis and E Howard Hunt, two men who, a decade later, would play a pivotal role in the Watergate scandal. However some of these men, who were being manipulated like pawns in a game, turned out to be, or pretended to be, double agents working both sides of the fence.
One such Agent was allegedly William Alexander Morgan, a man who had been trained at the Atsugi Air Base in Japan by US Military and a few years later turned up on Cuba fighting for anti-Castro forces on the island. Ironically the men under his command initially assumed him to be a CIA plant, so were understandably confused when he suddenly gained the confidence of Fidel and switched sides. Back in the States, in a probably staged press release Morgan was stripped of his American citizenship and labelled a traitor. But one year on, when Castro discovered he’d probably been a CIA plant all along, he was executed.
Following in Morgans’ footsteps was another alleged double Agent, Lee Harvey Oswald who amazingly had also been trained at the US base at Atsugi, although a few years after Morgan. He was to make a high profile defection to Russia, only to return three years later, with a Russian bride, whose uncle just happened to be a high ranking KGB officer. Amazingly his passport and citizenship were quickly restored with few questions asked. There is now little doubt that Oswald, or his double, was being manipulated by CIA Agents involved with psychological operations, to play a key role in the assassination of Castro and then to take the blame. But, like Fidel, he, or his co-conspirators, proved too clever and the whole operation was turned and President Kennedy assassinated instead. This whole cock up has necessitated the biggest cover up in the history of the western world, a smoke screen that is still being maintained today. It is high time the US Intelligence community came clean about its role in this disaster but in the meantime read my novel “Play it Again Uncle Sam,” which is based on these events.
www.playitagainunclesam.com
Post new comment