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| Sunday, 6 October 2002 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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The Iraqi crisis and the challenge to global democracy Observations by LAKSHMAN GUNASEKERA British Prime Minister Tony Blair's lone support, among the major world powers, for the current United States' government's threat of a military invasion of Iraq is perhaps the greatest subversion of Washington's aspiring global pre-eminence. The primary reason for London's categorical (but, so far, only verbal) support for the aggressive US posture is not Blair's acknowledgment of this pre-eminence but, rather, the Labour government's shrewd assessment of its own domestic political profit. Midway in their second successive term in government, Labour's leadership is all too aware that the reason for their continued electoral edge over the Conservative Party is their espousal of typically Conservative policy, both domestic and international, thereby sustaining their attraction to a sufficient number of Conservative as well as neutral voters to keep them ahead of the rival party. Blair's carefully built up 'New Labour' image of his party, with its shrewd combination of a drastically diluted traditional Labour social democratic posture that retained the party's traditional vote banks and, a Thatcherite market-oriented and global-hegemonist posture that won over a crucial number of Conservative voters was, and is, his formula for success. And the Conservative voters will, in all probability, continue to remain attracted to Labour as long the Conservative leadership stays divided on policy and is unable to provide an inspiring leadership that matches Blair's flair. That the trick is working can be seen in Blair's continued edge in the opinion polls nationally, despite the loud rumblings inside his own party. Even within his own party, too, the Blair leadership continues to retain a slight edge, partly because no organised rival group has emerged from the traditional social democratic wing, but mainly because much of the organised membership shares in its thinking, and the vast majority of Labour parliamentarians know that this is the only way that they can stay ahead of the Tories. There was no better indication of the success of the Blair strategy than at last week's national party conference where more than 50 per cent of the Labour branch representatives attending (as opposed to the union representatives) showed sympathy for an aggressive militarist posture against the Baghdad regime. So it is not so much the US' "leadership" that Blair respects as his own public opinion polls. In cynically utilising Washington's risky endeavours at global hegemony merely to boost its own domestic popularity ratings, London does no service to its "ally". When even the sole major power that supports Washington's aggressive policy does so for domestic reasons and not because of a direct allegiance to any inter-state hierarchy or inter-dependence, the limits of Washington's global 'pre-eminence' is starkly exposed. No wonder that the current US leadership has, now, to go further than a dependence on inter-state political allegiances and relationships and look to its own military power to try to consolidate its global pre-eminence. No wonder that, in complete disregard to its avowed commitment to spreading 'democracy' and 'good governance' globally, the government of President George Bush chooses to ignore the very international legal and institutional regimes it wants others to obey. From the global ecological regime of the Kyoto Protocol to the nuclear and biological weapons disarmament framework to the International Criminal Court, the United States of America has refused to sign up in complete contrast with the rest of the major Western democracies all of whom are together with Washington in preaching to the world about 'good governance' and 'democracy'. The biggest betrayal of all, however, is the US' self-exclusion from the United Nations. Having, some years back, denounced the UN for its lack of budgetary discipline and slowed down its annual financial contributions to the world body, the US now refuses to acknowledge the world body's legal-political writ but instead chooses to give it ultimatums. Not a day passes without someone in Washington declaring that, if the UN fails to do what Washington thinks it should do vis-…-vis Iraq, then the US would proceed with unilateral military action, having, presumably, cobbled together a 'coalition' that might give such action a veneer of international consensus. Conventional foreign policy analysis euphemistically describes Washington's current behaviour as 'unilateralism'. But 'unilateral' implies a lateral uniformity in the structure of current global inter-state relations. To say or even imply that the global system of nation-states that prevails today is one in which all these states exist as equals is either an act of sheer ignorance, or, of disinformation to cover up the reality. Even if some liberal apologists of US hegemonism might want to cover up the reality, very few serious analysts, both in and outside the US, would deny that the global system is actually an intensely hierarchical structure of states with tremendous imbalances in the political, military and economic power relations. As I have stated in a previous column, if, thanks to colonialism, the last millennium was a European one, the last century was most certainly an American one. America's pre-eminence in the 20th Century, however, was actually a harbinger of the end of European colonial supremacy (the origins of the power of the American State being an 'internal' colonialism - the colonisation of the North American continent). But if Europe's colonial supremacy was not fettered too much by a global homogenous inter-state system, America's modern supremacy is. The nature of America's pre-eminence is not directly political like that of colonial hegemony, but relies on the more insidious grip of economic dependence and linkage and, the corollary confluence of political interests among inter-linked socio-economic elites. After all colonialism's product was global capitalism and the United States is the leading capitalist power by far. While colonialism was Europe's triumph, global capitalism is currently an Euro-American-led. Globalisation, however, while yet geographically and culturally concentrated, is revealing itself to be a process that will transcend the contours of not merely geography but even demography and social stratification. If the essence of the supremacy of the Western capitalist powers is based on that confluence of interests of inter-linked economic elites, the nature of capitalism itself yet drives a competitive dynamic at nation-state and regional level that also fractures this inter-elite consensus. And in doing so, it compels the culturally diverse elites to fall back on their cultural-national or cultural-regional solidarities for survival. Even here, it is the hegemonist economic policies of the capitalist powers that cause the splits. While the originators of global capitalism, the Western powers, preach 'free market' policies to the rest of the world, they themselves practise protectionism and enjoy the benefits of state welfarism within their protected economies. This leaves the competing new capitalist states and the 'under-developed' ones to resort to similar economic nationalism. Here, demography plays a major role and those states with very large markets are proceeding rapidly towards an economic eminence that could soon rival that of the West. This economic rivalry has combined with memories of colonial aggression, post-colonial traumas and a continuing Western cultural aggression to subvert any hope-for total confluence of interests between the elites of some of these emerging economic powers and the West. Even more significant is the confluence of interest of non-elite socio-economic groups across the world. If globalisation has produced a modicum of inter-elite solidarity under the leadership of the elites of the capitalist big powers, it has also produced a growing solidarity among the socially and economically marginalised and disadvantaged groups among all countries. The 'Anti-Globalisation' Movement as it is popularly known is actually a misnomer. In its huge success in bringing together literally tens of thousands of social movements from virtually all states and from the remotest corners of Earth, this Movement is a living example of the success and virtues of globalisation. That is why some of the visionaries of this Movement, such as Chandra Muzaffer and Claude Alvarez, prefer not theorise against globalisation per se but to call for global justice. Most important, however, is that this non-elite social solidarity transcends the contours of global big power politics with large bases in the First World, the former Socialist states and the Third World. Indeed, as international politics takes on the characteristics of a global dynamic, there is no longer a 'First' and a 'Third' World. Rather, there are the rich and powerful elites - grouped, for example, in the World Economic Forum - and there are the non-elite movements now converging at world level in the Anti-Globalisation Movement. While this development raises the long term hope that democracy may one day be truly global, in the intermediate term it presents a hierarchical global power structure that, despite the aggressive stances and hegemonist aspirations of the 'sole superpower', is one that is delicately balanced between several inter-state power centres and is also mediated by social class solidarities that transcend national power interests. Fortunately, elements of the American leadership are also aware of this reality as seen in a recent statement by former United States Vice President Al Gore (who actually won more election votes than did President George Bush Jr.). "If what America represents to the world is leadership in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legion. If what we represent is an empire, then it is our enemies who will be legion," Gore is quoted as telling an elite society gathering in San Francisco. This is in stark contrast to a recent assertion by National Security Advisor to the US President Condoleeza Rice that the US will not allow any other state to attempt to reach military parity. She reportedly argued that the US wished to preserve its military supremacy in order to protect freedom in the world. That is probably the most explicit prioritisation of military power over civil-institutional politics by any US government official in recent times. That someone as senior and powerful as Al Gore takes a different view is, fortunately, a clear indication of the strength of US democracy and an awareness of the complexities of global politics today. Political leadership is not necessarily based on formal democracy. The global system has yet to see such formal democratic structures since the UN is yet controlled by the five 'Big Powers'. But democracy in America was won by a democratic leadership that only subsequently set up the formal democratic institutions. Even in a non-democratic world system, it is eminently feasible for the democratic impetus to flourish. What is needed is an enlightened leadership, both at the elite as well as the non-elite level, and the prioritising of negotiation over confrontation. And negotiation can only come with the readiness to use all available platforms and however flawed they might be. |
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