21st Century Vision

Kant and us

Gordon Brown's failure to turn up to sign the treaty of European union alongside the other 26 EU leaders on Thursday exasperated them mightily: their perception is of a politically semi-detached Britain dreaming of the lost grandeur of empire and the ersatz glory of the "special relationship" with the United States. But this disconnection reflects another, and one which this time bears on all our international commitments, the UN as well as the EU. In Britain there is no serious debate about the meaning of supranational institution building, something that betrays itself in the empty shouting match about defending the "national interest" that does duty for an understanding of modern European developments, and more terribly in the decision to ignore international law and wage war alongside the US in Iraq.

In his recent collection of interviews and articles*, Jürgen Habermas - doyen of European social theory for several decades now - reminds us of just how deep are the roots of this disengagement. The rise of the modern nation state coincided with the discrediting of religion as a means of restraining organized aggression, obliging Enlightenment thinkers to put forward what could only be a rational approach to preventing war. In 1795 Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace: a philosophical sketch duly provided the foundation of a debate which in Europe continues to this day, and which has been deepened, fuelled and enriched by the spectacle of the extreme national self-assertion of the Nazi period, the experience of Soviet communism and the patient process of constitution-building in the post war world.

Habermas contrasts a number of lines of thought. Have we for example to accept, as Kant at first suggested, that supranational institutions must take the form of a global republic? Habermas thinks not: not a global electorate, but a global public committed to universal human rights may be enough to hold international actors to account. How do we move towards such a situation? Certainly not through the "hegemonic unilateralism" of a dominant superpower seeking to extend its own legal system to encompass the world as a whole. Even a benign democratic hegemon could, as Habermas puts it, "never be sure whether it is really distinguishing its own national interests from the universalizable interests that all other nations could share".

With the UN as it actually is, however, and in the Bretton Woods institutions, we confront a distribution of international legislative authority which largely reflects the relative power of nation states. It is here we encounter what is perhaps Habermas's key idea: a living polity must not merely represent the weight of its constituent parts, it must command the legitimacy to alter those weights in the interests of all. This is the true dialectic of democratic institutions, something that Kant was feeling for over two centuries ago and which we still find hard to grasp today.

The UK is of course a country which lacks a rationally justified written constitution of its own. Perhaps in that light it is little wonder that we tend to be dead to the intelligent debate which engages our continental neighbours. Reading Habermas gives you an idea of what we are missing.

* The Divided West (Polity Press 2006)

To see a clip of Habermas lecturing on these issues, click here

The new free for all

We seem to be in transition from one foreign policy paradigm to another. The old set of preoccupations was organised around 9/11 and the opportunity it gave the US presidency to pursue the goals of the Project for a New American Century. Secure energy supplies, global projection of US military power and perhaps malleable political regimes in the Middle East (code named "democracy") were the watchwords. Other states were commanded to fall in behind or face demonisation, while the UN was either to supply legitimacy or sink into irrelevance.

The problem now is to identify the main features of the new paradigm emerging from the startlingly rapid ruin of the old one. Perhaps we can hazard one or two suggestions -

First, there is an accelerating rise in the self confidence of nation states as they contemplate a world in which both the military and economic balance is shifting almost from day to day. It's not just China and India: South Korea, Vietnam, Brazil, Indonesia and perhaps half a dozen other countries are in no mood to take orders from anyone, whether on climate change or anything else. This is not just a matter of crude economic weight or military strength: there has been a moral and cultural shift in which the prestige of the West has distinctly declined. That doesn't mean that institutions which emerged in the course of Western development have no value, just that the value they have is no longer something the West can dictate. Democracy and markets? Maybe, but democracy and markets our way, thank you.

Second, there has been a decline in confidence in international institutions. As NATO in Afghanistan disappears into a quagmire of conflicting goals and confusing command structures, the days of the stable military alliance look done. In Europe the noble ideals of the founders of the European Community - to make war not only unthinkable, but materially impossible - are all but forgotten as states like Britain and Poland have no thought but to gain the best possible deal for themselves. As for the UN, it struggles to retain its prestige like a dowager hanging on to her memories and her tiara. When even the Sudanese government can thumb its nose to the international community for years on end, you know things are serious.

On the economic front, confidence in the $ is sliding, the international trading system is in question as the Doha round - no longer seriously focused on development - struggles to survive, and the French president is tempting Europe with the prospect of a new protectionism. Yes, global economic growth continues at unheard of rates, but at the cost of yawning inequalities within and between countries and continents.

So the new paradigm looks like, well more than anything like a free for all. And this comes just at the moment when climate change is beginning to make international organization and mutual confidence absolutely vital.

What can I say? Join your local United Nations Association.

Click here for the UNA-UK website

How do I look?

Every Saturday the Independent newspaper carries a column in its magazine section entitled “How do I look?” in which a well-known person talks apparently frankly about their favourite subject – him or herself. Today we borrow this formula as one of the most prominent celebrities of our time muses exclusively to Enfield and the Barnets UNA about her fears, hopes and vanities.

Britannia, national icon, age 335

Well, of course, anno domini is something I do care about, I mean you could say I had been around since the Romans, but their Britannia was just the family name really, so it’s only me since my image appeared on the farthing in 1672. And you know, that does give me some maturity compared with that hussy Marianne across the Channel, who only sashayed onto the scene in 1792, all revolutionary ardour and cleavage in just about equal proportions if you ask me. As for Uncle Sam, well he’s only a child really, not even 200 yet, more of a nephew, so that’s why I feel that while he makes a lot of noise aunty can quietly give him the benefit of her experience of life. I mean, it’s not as if I haven’t been to war before, and quite frankly with pretty much everyone who’s anyone. Of course since Sam got religion it’s been a bumpy ride, but my dear what muscles!

And it’s true, at my age a girl has to think about her reputation as well as her looks. It does sometimes bother me, I have to admit, when people don’t seem to think of me as the epitome of fairness and justice. I mean I don’t think I really played fast and loose with that silly old Non-Proliferation Treaty, telling those Iranians they couldn’t have nuclear weapons while at the same time upgrading mine for the next generation or so: I mean a girl does need a hatpin in case someone gets too enthusiastic. Anyway it’s only 50 years or so since with a bit of help from Sam I put that whole Iranian government in its place, i.e. in the dustbin. What a lark!

And there was that other bit of bother about weapons of mass destruction. So what if I joined the dots together, I mean a glimpse of ankle and all those stuffy old judges were falling over themselves to give me the benefit of the doubt. It’s true they’re only my own judges, but when it comes to it they’re the only ones who count. Somebody once asked me about the House of Commons!  I ask you, a high-kicking chorus line if ever there was one, belting out my favourite number – that’s “Rule Britannia”, by the way – with never a thought for whether the theatre is a crumbling ruin.

Well that’s what you want from pets, isn’t it? I mean they give you that sort of unconditional affection which it seems harder and harder to find away from home. I mean, that little Tory puppy sometimes makes me wonder, but Ming the hamster on his going-nowhere little treadmill makes me laugh every time – and of course faithful old New Labour (if you see what I mean) is just a love. Throw him a headline, and he’s on his back, oblivious to ambivalence about torture, starvation of asylum seekers, or even the odd spot of bribery by pals of mine like BAE.

Anyway, who cares about all that?  What if abroad an awful lot of foreigners seem to die when we try to help, while at home a lot of children are poor and we have to bang up more people than ever before? Green and pleasant land, that’s the picture, teaching the world about fair play and honesty in the conduct of public affairs (or something like that!). No, a hearing aid is the last thing I want!

Britannia is currently appearing in a drama about the injustice of the seizure of 15 of her sailors by a foreign power. Reviews are mixed.

The United Nations of America

Our sibling organization across the Atlantic - the United Nations Association of the USA - has just adopted 16 resolutions at its 2007 Biennial Convention. Its approach is thorough and lucid, but the list of demands it makes of the US government is a long one. As it says -

True to the association's mission of strengthening US global engagement and leadership at the UN, the resolutions call on the US to become party to a number of existing treaties, including the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction (Mine Ban Treaty), the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Kyoto Protocol and successor agreement.

UNA-USA's proposals on Iraq deserve to be set out in full. It calls upon the US government to -

• Request the UN to organize an international conference to include all major Iraqi factions, Middle Eastern countries, particularly Syria and Iran, and other major international players, the aim of which is to devise a national reconciliation process, build stability in Iraq and distribute political power equitably in order to ease sectarian violence
• Recognize that an objective of the conference would be to establish a process to achieve a unified, sovereign country, ruled by a government derived by its authority from the governed, with protections for minorities, the process of which is to be guided by the UN with assistance as needed from a UN international peace-keeping force
• Complete the withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq by December 31, 2007
• Declare that it will not permanently base US troops in Iraq and discontinue the construction of all US military bases in Iraq
• Through the UN, fund and facilitate the reconstruction, primarily by Iraqis, of the Iraqi infrastructure and buildings damaged or destroyed as a result of the Iraq War with support of the UN Development Fund for Iraq, including a comprehensive clean-up of cluster bombs, depleted uranium, and other munitions
• Exert maximum effort to create employment for Iraqis
• Ensure that negotiations by Iraqis on oil issues, particularly distribution of revenues, are conducted on an open, not secretive basis
• Facilitate a level playing field for all commercial ventures
• Assure sufficient funding to the UNHCR to assist Iraqi refugees and internally displaced persons, and accept Iraqi refugees into the US as needed in concert with the UNHCR

It further calls upon the UN Security Council to -

• Provide, under UN direction and supervision, for such international security presence as may be agreed by the international conference recommended above and by the contending Iraqi forces
• In accordance with UN Security Council resolution 1325, ensure that women from all sectors of Iraqi society be included in any and all negotiations which will affect their lives and futures

Click here to see all 16 resolutions adopted at UNA-USA's 2007 Biennial Convention

Business as usual?

Longstanding critics of the West's military adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon might be forgiven a certain degree of schadenfreude as the true horror of the war party's position becomes apparent - even to them. As this blog has pointed out, many of the predictions made by the anti-war movement - the dubiety of the case for Iraqi possession of WMD, the likelihood of an increased rather than diminished terrorist threat, the unreality of the idea of "implanting" democracy by the gun - have been more than borne out. There is a temptation to indulge in a bout of self-satisfied "We told you so, listen to us next time."

That however would be to play the game of business as usual. OK, perhaps the House of Representatives will fall to the Democrats next month, perhaps the Senate too. Maybe Labour will be slaughtered in next May's local elections. Goodness, Donald Rumsfeld might be replaced, and - most extreme "business as usual" possibility of all - Mr Blair might let slip that he will leave office two weeks earlier than originally planned (whenever that was). But should we allow those who brought about this debacle to choreograph their departure from the scene, reputations and all the trappings intact?

Let us pause for a moment to consider some of the casualties of these wars -

• Many hundreds of thousands of civilians dead - often children, often in abominable agony with no access to medical care
• More coalition troops killed than died in the attack on the World Trade Centre
• Tens if not hundreds of billions of pounds worth of damage to hospitals, schools, roads, power systems and sanitation, with reconstruction funds often syphoned off by corrupt interests
• A flood of cheap heroin heading for a street near you

And then there are the less tangible casualties. In Britain these include -

• The spectacle of an executive which deceived and dissembled to make the case for a war that few officials actually believed in, in short systemic professional collapse
• The exposure of a media which - with the honourable exceptions of the Independent and the Morning Star, and some columnists in other papers - largely failed to question the mendacity of a government not subject to significant constitutional constraint
• A profound attack on civil liberties, including the acceptability of evidence obtained through torture
  
• And then there is the Labour Party. Again with honourable exceptions (though after you have mentioned Robin Cook it gets harder to name them), it has revealed itself to be governed by a venal pursuit of preferment which would have shamed members of the unreformed Commons of the eighteenth century

And in Iraq another casualty has been the effective destruction of democratic - but not knee-jerk pro-Western - forces, through assassination and emigration.

And what of the UN? In the way they began these wars, and in the way they apparently propose to end them, the US and Britain have treated the Security Council as a cab rank from which to hire international "cover" when required. True the UN baulked at the attack on Iraq, but went some way to endorsing the occupation nonetheless (SCR 1483, para 4).  It now appears the US and the UK are contemplating withdrawing with none of the stated objectives for governance and economic reconstruction achieved and even the territorial integrity of the country fatally compromised. These states, together with their fair weather allies, have undermined the effectiveness of the UN and tainted its legitimacy.

This is not a time for business as usual. It is a time for ensuring that vainglorious and posturing leaders can no longer unleash havoc unchallenged - at home or in New York.

Various UNA events

There are a number of UNA events coming up which local members may be interested in:

1. We have a street collection in Palmers Green on Saturday Oct 21st. Let Jack Piachaud know at [email protected] if you can help.

2. There is a lobby of Parliament on Tuesday Oct 24th. Information will be in the next issue of New World - let's hope it arrives before then!

3. Also on the 24th, UNA Westminster have their AGM at Portcullis House (opposite Big Ben) at 6.30, followed by two guest speakers (Joan Ruddock MP and Dr Shatha Beserani, founder of the Iraqi Women for Peace and Democracy Campaign) on the subject of "Women, peace and security: What progress since UN Security Council Resolution 1325?"

4. On Monday Oct 30th, at 7.30, the Golders Green and Hendon branch are hosting a lecture by their President and UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador Martin Bell on "The UN and UNICEF in the Troubled World" at the Trinty Church, Hodford Road, Golders Green.

5. The London and SE Region has its AGM at Croydon Town Hall on Saturday Nov 4th at 12.30. Lunch and refreshments provided. See their website for details of the agenda.

6. Westminster UNA again, and they are organising a UN Documentary Film Festival on the Millennium Development Goals at the NFT on Saturday Dec 2nd, with 22 films (some of them very short) over 4 sessions. See their website for details and timings.

Another plea to the foreign secretary

A few days ago this blog reported on a letter sent by Lord Hannay, Chair of UNA-UK, to Margaret Becket, protesting at the UK's failure to call for an immediate ceasefire in Lebanon. In view of the continuing deterioration of the situation there, he has now sent another, more strongly-worded letter:

Dear Foreign Secretary,

I am writing now again on behalf of the United Nations Association of the UK (UNA-UK) on the crisis in the Middle East to express the deepening dismay of our membership at the failure of the international community and, in particular, leading countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom to take effective action to bring the fighting to an end.

In particular we deplore:

• The continued deaths of civilians, including the large loss of life at Qana, and in many cases the targeting of civilians.
• The failure of Israel and Hezbollah to agree to an immediate ceasefire, and the unwillingness of the US and the UK to do so.
• The failure of the Israeli government to agree to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s request for a joint UN-Israeli or international investigation into the killing of four UN observers in the Khiyam area of southern Lebanon. (If the deaths were unintended, what does Israel have to fear from an independent investigation?)

While we recognise the importance of disarming Hezbollah, as demanded by Israel and as required under Security Council resolution 1559, we believe that Israel’s current military tactics will not achieve this goal. Instead, Israel is coming under increasing and justifiable criticism whilst Hezbollah appears to be gaining widespread support, particularly in Arab countries.

UNA-UK calls upon the British government to promote forcefully to all the parties a solution which would include a robust international force, with UN Security Council authorisation and a Security Council mandate, and to ensure effective respect for this mandate by Hezbollah and Israel. We believe that all five permanent members of the Security Council should be directly involved in the mounting of this international force with a view to increasing its credibility and effectiveness, and that the UK government should press the case for this with the US administration.

Yours sincerely,

Lord Hannay of Chiswick

Chair of UNA-UK

Dear Diary

We moved house recently, and under the stairs was a torn page from an old diary ….

Thursday 30^th May 1996

It was nice to see Auntie Poppy, Uncle Jack and the Palmers Green cousins, but all that cynical carping about New Labour and clause IV!  Afterwards I went to sleep on the settee, and what a dream I had. It was 2006, and I was ten years older.

Labour had just won a third term!  And no wonder.  As the ice caps melted, Britain had taken the lead, with 2 cents on the top rate of income tax to invest in non-nuclear sustainable energy technology. Already we were selling surplus power by cable to our Eurozone partners, themselves less happily endowed with winds and tides.  Shakespeare, with his “fortress built by nature”, definitely had it the wrong way round.

Once people got the idea the government was serious, it seemed obvious that extremes of inequality were unacceptable. Companies realized that what mattered was the enthusiasm of their workers, not the value of executive stock options. Work, as the chancellor said in 1998, had to change. And it did change. The Management for Social Purpose Act meant enterprises had to publish annual evidenced social impact statements, agreed by unions, consumers and local authorities, as well as directors.

As temporary contracts virtually disappeared, family poverty began to fall. Parents could plan for the longer term, and magical solutions such as the lottery withered on the vine. Incomes didn’t rise overall, but debt sharply declined. Teachers reported new attitudes in schools. One from Ashby-de-la-Zouch summed it up: “the kids can see the future depends not on chance but on their intelligence and thoughtfulness”. As the boom in new energy technologies took hold, universities re-opened or expanded their physics and engineering departments, and the spin-off industries – often located in the windswept provinces – did wonders for depressed regions.

And those local areas! OK, some town halls (Barnet again!) bungled their new responsibilities for energy, schools and health services, but countrywide the creative buzz in the proportionally elected council chambers swept away most of the unproductive bipartisan posturing of the past.

Can one have mixed feelings in a dream? Mindless drinking and drug-fuelled violence declined. Had it ever truly been fun? Had football ever really been more than one game of athletic skill among others? 

When to universal acclaim Tony Blair succeeded Nelson Mandela (the dream is fading a bit) as UN Secretary General, the value of the example we had set seemed clear to everyone. Helped perhaps by Blair’s forthright repudiation of neoconservative aggression, President "Kyoto" Gore had defeated George Bush in 2004.  He rapidly agreed not only debt cancellation and big cuts in US farm subsidies but, at the suggestion of Burmese prime minister Aung San Suu Kyi, annual Security Council assessments of progress towards binding development goals. Member states were expected to contribute not 0.7 but 0.9% of GDP to development assistance and all (except I fancy it was Australia) had done so. An international community was emerging at last, one in which tyranny at home was as alien - and pointless - as imperialism abroad.

At Lord's China were 52 for 2 in reply to England’s first innings 205 all out.

Dear diary, as John Keats said when he was living up the road here in Enfield, "Do I wake or sleep?"