WHY TALK OF GLOBAL GOVERNANCE WHEN THERE IS NO GLOBAL JUSTICE?

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 21 Jan 2009

Vithal Rajan

Management chatterati have made it fashionable for governments and universities to set up centres of global governance, abandoning any attempt to rectify glaring injustices at a global level. A small section of humanity over consumes, over pollutes, over wastes – and adding injury to insult – over bombs the vast sea of the poor, who are forced into dire poverty and desperation. So, why talk of governance?

Certainly, it is a great day when Barack Obama is made President of the United States of America, and the people of the world have a right to hope that this man might, just might, change the global equations that have been in place since America rose to superpower status. Will this man go against the current of American foreign policy and stop treating the United Nations as a department of his Secretary of State? Can this international zoo of third-rate bureaucrats be revitalized even at this late hour to serve some global purpose other than narrow American interests? Let us wait and see.

The record so far is not comforting.    The International Commission on Global Governance was co-chaired by Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson and Shridath Ramphal, former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, with the full support of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. While denying that what was meant was global ‘government,’ the Commission’s report tied itself in knots attempting a suitable definition:
    
There is no single model or form of global governance, nor is there a single structure or set of structures. It is a broad, dynamic, complex process of interactive decision- making that is constantly evolving and responding to changing circumstances. Although bound to respond to the specific requirements of different issue areas, governance must take an integrated approach to questions of human survival and prosperity. Recognizing the systemic nature of these issues, it must promote systemic approaches in dealing with them.

    A neutral definition of global governance would see it as an approach for dealing with global problems of interdependence, and to promote processes based on dialogue and cooperation.

    Among the plethora of issues dredged up in debate, three stand out as critical in the thinking of powerful elites: securing long-time control over the world’s natural resources, especially energy derived from fossil fuels; securing their own security in times when several million skilled and unskilled workers are economically needed within their own national borders, though drawn from cultures and races privately regarded as inferior and irrational; and lastly, the major question of power sharing among the powerful themselves, to effectively control resources, people, and capital. A fourth fraught issue, control of global financial markets, could plausibly be added to the list at some future date, but till now no thoughts have been spared in this direction that do not reiterate the need for self-control of institutions, since the idea of transparent multilateral control goes against the very grain of present-day economic ideological orthodoxy.

    There are several other crises that keep humanity on the edge of destruction. Climate change; precipitous loss of bio-diversity; and pollution of air and water, threaten all of humanity, but perhaps these dangers can be addressed by equitable global management of natural resources, already on the list of top priorities. Loss of food security haunts billions of people, but this issue as yet has not come up over the horizon of the powerful. Death by nuclear destruction has long loomed over human consciousness since the bombing of Hiroshima, but again, perhaps, this question can also be addressed under the search for better power sharing formulae, since after all the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction [MAD] kept the world safely poised on the brink during the Cold War.
    
A revitalized United Nations system might  still find a few takers, but past performance gives little assurance to the many smaller nations, while the power of the powerful, especially that of America, has given the so-called United Nations much less amplitude than that available to any chancellery of the powerful, and many times no more scope than the public relations extension of the US State Department.
 
The Search for a ‘New World Order’

    The search for a new world order, to use a well-known term, can be said to have started the day the Soviet Union became history. Between 1990 and 1996 the United Nations held a series of world conferences on global issues such as environment, human rights, social development, and gender equality.

These conferences were inspired by a misguided spirit of optimism that dominated international relations, following the almost total victory the United States achieved over its superpower rival, which even enabled it to help install a chosen President to head a Russia in shambles. The first stage of these UN world conferences was completed with the ‘Peking + 5’ and ‘Copenhagen + 5’ conferences in the summer of 2000.

    The aims of the world conferences were palpably in open contradiction to the dominant power equations that ran the world. The Western countries guided these conferences, apparently called into being by the Third World countries, but in fact brought about by the powerful to enforce globalization and economic integration of the Third World into the dominant world economy, under a specious UN agenda of aiding development.

The engineered euphoria of global freedom following the destruction of the Soviet Union was to signal a new world order in which through market-friendly economic policies the rule of law, good governance, and respect for human rights would form the bedrock of development policies for all.  Part of the agenda was also to highlight the concomitant ecological costs of globalization, to pressurize the poor countries to maintain the power structures that underlie the neo-liberal model of management.

    Five conferences and their implementation processes attained particular significance internationally: the ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro (1992), the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna (1993), the Population Summit in Cairo (1994), the Social Summit in Copenhagen (1995), and the World Conference on Women in Beijing (1995).

1. The Rio ‘Earth Summit’

    The UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), better known as the Rio Earth Summit, which ran from 3 to 14 June 1992, was the first gathering of major significance in the world conference cycles. It led to a happy proliferation of international apparatchiks under the Commission on Sustainable Development . The CSD grandly called for the preservation of global ecosystems linked to worldwide poverty alleviation and to social justice.

The principle that the ‘polluter pays’ was adopted as key to ecological structural transformation. In order to avoid global danger, decisions should be taken even if conclusive scientific proof was not yet available. That all this fine talk remains as nothing more than utopian posturing even after 15 years of several worldwide gatherings underlines the fact that the real agenda behind all these confabulations was globalization of the world economies under neo-liberal economic terms, and not development in the interests of the poor. Of course, it was an achievement to have a Nobel Peace Prize handed out for a half-an-hour film.

2. The Vienna Conference on Human Rights

    The Second World Conference on Human Rights took place in Vienna from 14 to 25 June 1993. It called for the creation of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and of the International Criminal Court. The Permanent International Criminal Court was finally constituted at an international conference in the summer of 1998 in Rome. While no one objected to burgeoning international bureaucracies, and the High Commissioner for Human Rights was welcomed in 1994, the United States has stood out firmly against subjecting its troops or its citizens to the jurisdiction of the ICC.

Of course, again, an achievement was the unanimous acknowledgement of the universality of human rights. However, the gaze of humanistic concern is almost always turned on what happens in Third World countries, or on powerful countries like China, which are considered competitive enemies of the United States. While much may be made of instigated pre-Olympic riots in Tibet, it is strictly outside the scope of the universality of human rights to question what happens at Guantanamo Bay, or the right of the United States to effect extreme rendition, a fudge word for kidnapping of people, by the CIA from all over the world.

3. The Cairo ‘Population Summit’

    The International Conference on Population and Development met from 5 to 13 September 1994 in Cairo. By focusing the spotlight in a Muslim country on reproductive rights, and women’s rights over their own bodies, the world body sent a not very subtle message to the Islamic world, which was disguised as empowerment but was perhaps meant to be perceived as a threat to bring about its opposite.

4. The Copenhagen Summit on Social Development

    The World Summit for Social Development was held in Copenhagen from 6 to 12 March 1995. Ostensibly, its areas of focus were social integration, poverty, employment, education, and basic health. Its benign ‘20/20 Initiative’ requested donor countries and recipient countries to spend 20 percent of development assistance and 20 percent of government expenditure on basic social services. This was a soft-edged conference to re-emphasize liberal well-meaning global concerns of the rich for the poor.

5. The Beijing World Conference on Women

    The Fourth World Conference on Women took place from 4 to 15 September 1995 in Beijing. It discovered as a newly created fact ‘the feminization of poverty,’ and fulminated against women’s unpaid work, abhorred violence against women in the private sphere, and pleaded for equal shares for women in social wealth and political power. This process of Gender Mainstreaming, another felicitous phrase created by the concerned world community, eventually led to the still infertile political debate in India to reserve 33 percent of seats in parliament for women.

    All the recommendations made by all these ‘landmark’ conferences all lack any binding force. Hence, activists from civil society organizations of all countries are constantly required to undertake long international journeys to several conferences, meetings, planning sessions, and protest pickets, to advocate for their implementation.

This process keeps all concerned organizations constantly busy and well-supplied with funds. However the key economic levers of decision making and global direction are firmly in the hands of the powerful elite of the West—the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO)—and the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

There were other attempts at international institution building:

The International Criminal Court has been operative since 1 July 2002, with 87 parties and 139 signatories (as of 27 January 2003).The United States signed the statute on 31 December 2000, but informed the UN Secretary-General on 6 May 2002 that it does not intend to become a party to the treaty.

    The Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination against Women came into being on 3 September 1981;with 170 ratifications (as of 18 June 2002). The United States signed the convention on 17 July 1980, but has not ratified it.

    The Convention on the Rights of the Child Status, in force since 2 September 1990, was ratified by 191 countries (as of 19 November 2002).Only Somalia and the United States have not ratified it.

    The Ottawa Convention on Prohibition of the Use, Production, Stockpiling, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, in force since 1999, with 130 ratifications (as of 11 November 2002) has not been signed by the United States.

    The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ratified by 104 countries (as of 28 January 2003) was converted into a dead letter by the intransigence of the United States, despite the glare of worldwide attention.
    
The Convention on Biological Diversity (1993); The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety to the Convention on Biological Diversity (2000);The Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedures for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade (1998); The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (2001); The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (1989), have all been more or less arrogantly ignored by the United States.

Third World countries content themselves by nominating their favoured bureaucrats to terms of office in these establishments. As mentioned at the beginning, any attempt at revitalizing the United Nations to further the cause of global governance has, so far, remained as a public relations exercise to cover the drive for supreme power by the United States of America, and to a lesser extent the cohort of rich nations that form the G-8.

    A last ditch attempt at reforming the United Nations was to have been undertaken at  the 2005 World Summit: the High-Level Plenary Meeting of the 60th Session of the General Assembly. The Summit was seen as a once-in-a-generation opportunity, as a second San Francisco meeting of great powers to forge an effective global governance policy. Two expert bodies were set up: the High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, which discussed global threats, and challenges within the system of collective security and published its report:  A More Secure World in December 2004, and the Millennium Project, an independent advisory body headed by Jeffrey Sachs, whose report Investing in Development was published later.

     More than 170 heads of state came together in great anticipation.

    Most Third World countries rejected the Secretary-General’s R2P proposal, the “responsibility to protect” of the Security Council, as covert permission for new gunboat colonialism by the West. Thelma Ekiyor, Executive Director, West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI), Accra, explicitly tied in this belief to recent American actions in Iraq:

Many commentators in the global south and particularly in Africa believe that the entire doctrine aims to serve as a camouflage for the real interventionist intentions of powerful states. In the climate of the “war on terrorism” and the general mistrust that accompanied the United States of America’s disregard for the United Nations in its invasion of Iraq, this view has gained popularity, putting proponents of R2P on the defensive.’

 Many leaders were willing in the beginning to go along with the Secretary-General’s  “global package deal,” but when the US delegation, headed by hardliner John Bolton, the  US Ambassador to the United Nations, presented some 700 amendments to the draft outcome document, Third World countries staunchly defended themselves. The ultimate outcome was a watered-down compromise document, as meaningless as several other UN documents.

Can We Trust America?
    
Before a sense of helplessness sets in, it may be best to examine briefly, in their own terms, the two strongest centres of power, The United States of America, and the European Union, and their inter-relationship in the struggle for dominance, if the future contours of global governance are to be discerned with any clarity.

    The pinnacle of military power reached by the United States was described by French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine in 1999 as “hyperpower”. But many within the beltway around Washington DC would rather think of the United States as a ‘Benevolent Hegemon.’ Perhaps, the coming Obama administration may come closest to American admirers’ vision of that implausible oxymoron.

    The previous Democratic President, Bill Clinton, who had campaigned for developing the inner strength of American democracy, and who had dedicated his administration to a new policy of “assertive multilateralism”, when he took office in 1993/94, very quickly turned right round and reasserted American right to hegemonic unipolarity. His Presidential Decision Directive 25, ruled out any deployment of US troops under UN command. He reinforced the old American belief in that country’s manifest destiny to lead the world, and his international policies were little different from those of right-wing politicians like Jesse Helms,

Tom DeLay, or Pat Buchanan, or conservative think tanks like the Hoover Institution, and the Heritage Foundation. For example, he continued to maintain the American economic blockade of Cuba, though almost all Western powers were opposed to such blatant flouting of international norms. The recommendations of the 1996 Commission on America’s National Interests, which underlined the importance of preventing the rise of any rival power in Europe and Asia was a clear return to traditional American power politics. Egon Bahr, a close confidant of Willy Brandt’s, gave an authentic European perspective on the Clinton administration in his famous book, Deutsche Interessen:

    “The American superpower defines itself above all in terms of its military superiority and worldwide intervention capacity. It has initiated huge new arms programs, at the same time evading its obligations on arms control and disarmament by terminating or reinterpreting international agreements. It has risked violating the ABM Treaty and ignored all international protests over the development of a National Missile Defense system which threatens to bring on a new arms race. It has delayed implementation of the agreement on chemical weapons. The US Congress refused to ratify the ban on nuclear testing (CTBT), while at the same time US diplomacy was pressuring other countries to join the treaty. This is no way to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and discipline the “new weapons states”.

    Further, the Clinton administration by its unilateral action in Kosovo arrogantly undermined the UN Security Council’s right to authorize the use of military force, grievously damaging one of the pillars of international law. The American game-plan was to erode Russian influence in the Balkans, and establish a military base there, strengthening its hold over the oil-rich Middle-East. This was a logical follow-up to the elder Bush’s First Gulf War, and the breaking of Iraqi power, and reaffirmed American control over Kuwait. As later events showed, this move was completed by the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan by the younger Bush, completing the encirclement of the region’s energy-bearing natural resources.

    Clinton rejected the re-election of the UN Secretary-General, Boutros Boutros Ghali, who was supported by several UN members, and openly showed American control of the United Nations by installing Kofi Annan, who was careful of American interests till his last year in office. The Clinton Administration, despite assiduously promoting a public image of democratic internationalism, prevented the adoption of important international regulations: such as the convention banning antipersonnel mines, much used by dictators favoured by the Americans.

Though President Clinton signed the International Criminal Court Charter in 2000, the American government has not ratified it and has openly insisted that its soldiers and citizens cannot be prosecuted by the court, careless that this will expose the hypocrisy of an administration that frequently carps on the human rights record of others.

    In addition to dominating the IMF and the World Bank, Clinton worked to establish the power of the World Trade Organization, to ensure American economic leadership, and he also blocked the global environmental policy advocated by his own Vice-President, Al Gore. Harald Muller noted:

    “From the law of the seas to the Kyoto Protocol, from the biodiversity convention, from the extraterritorial application of the trade embargo against Cuba or Iran, from the brusque calls for reform of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to the International Criminal Court: American unilateralism appears as an omnipresent syndrome pervading world politics.”

     Zbigniew Brzezinski, former American national security adviser, has described the American experience in the 20th century  as ‘an unparalleled gain of strength, influence, and dynamics in a crucial moment.’ He describes the position of the ‘first and only real’ superpower with reference to ‘four crucial domains of global power’: worldwide military presence, economic and technological leadership (making military superiority possible), and cultural hegemony, the ‘American way of life,’ as propagated by US media corporations.

     Though he had some criticism for shallow American self-centred policies, even with close allies, and affirmed that ‘the price that our hubris costs us is a high one,’ the notion of global cooperation was completely rejected by Brzezinski, who represents the realistic school in American politics. Brzezinski wants American political leadership to pursue ‘without reservation’, the preservation of ‘America’s dominant position for at least a generation, if not longer’ and only then to accede to a ‘functioning structure of worldwide cooperation.’

    Samuel P. Huntington, who cannot be accused of being a dove, finds it difficult to accept such an assessment of the world situation. He points out: “There is now only one superpower.  But that does not mean that the world is unipolar. 

A unipolar system would have one superpower, no significant major powers, and many minor powers.” But there are several significant major powers, apart from the members of the G8 group, such as China, India, and Brazil. He terms the present stage as “uni-multipolar”.  He sees the present push of American decision-makers for a ‘global unilateralism’ as counterproductive to their own interests.

The superpower inimical to cooperation runs the risk of becoming a ‘lonely superpower,’ which would have more to lose than to gain. In Huntington’s cold assessment, uni-polar governance of the world by the United States is still very much beyond the reach of American hands.

Can We Trust the EU?
    
The Europe of the EU does not see itself in the same light as the United Kingdom, as having a ‘special relationship’ with America, in other words as a colony of its erstwhile colony. So, it opposes the Brzezinski philosophy in several ways. Berlin has quietly joined Paris, the Gaullist centre of attack on American hegemony. Other European capitals, while being discreet about their anti-Americanism, are just as clear that the Americans have failed to build a transatlantic bridge of common interests.

    The EU is already a greater global trading power, concretizing its challenge to the several decades-old warning given by Servan-Schreiber in his Le Défi Amércain. Its development aid has already created a greater worldwide impact than USAID, though delivered for similar geo-political reasons.

Its Ostpolitik policy, first established by Willy Brandt towards Eastern Europe, which was coming out from under the dead hand of Soviet economics, preserves careful welfare-state elements as a measure of ‘Rhenish Capitalism’, and hence is more acceptable than the chaos America created in Russia. Above all, the EU promises not only a resplendent social and economic future to all its members, but it defines itself as the undeniable custodian of Western culture, and hence as an instinctive bulwark for its peoples against cultural Americanization.

    The EU has capitalized on the American reluctance to build international institutions that might at a later date possibly challenge the right of the United States to do whatever it pleases. The EU has gone ahead without American participation and rapidly built many institutions, which might also find support from the Third World.

    The EU has stolen a march over its great economic rival by vastly increasing its trade with Asia, and this despite the IMF engineered financial crisis of 1997. Asia is the European Union’s third largest trading and economic partner after the European non-EU countries, and the countries of the North American free trade area.

    In the presence of defiant American unilateralism, the foreign policy pursued by the European Union leaders attempts to strengthen global security policy, a global environmental policy, and the subtle stiffening of the United Nations against American diktats. Europeans are also reaching out to the Japanese, close partners of America since the end of World War II, through agreements on arms control and implementation of climate change protocols.

    The only area where the EU adopts a similar posture to that of the United States is in uncomfortably distancing itself from China, a rising power of the East that already challenges both Western economic powers by its astonishing growth. The EU like the United States feebly accuses China of human rights violations, and threatens boycotting the Olympic Games, in an attempt to pressurize this new self-confident opponent, as the Soviet Union was in 1980. The confusion inherent in Europe’s policy with relation to China has been disingenuously expressed by Frank Biermann and Hans-Dieter Sohn:

    “Yet it remains questionable to what extent China can be a close partner for Europe in creating global governance structures. First of all, the United States remains crucial for China by virtue of the USA being China’s most important market, biggest investor and most significant technology partner. On the other hand, following the end of the Soviet-American conflict and the resulting strategic partnership between Washington and Peking, China possibly sees itself increasingly in the role of a potential antagonist
of the United States.”
 
    While the EU has established an undeniable global commercial lead over the United States, the predominant military presence of the latter in every quarter of the globe, coupled with its ruthless ability to call several leaders to heel, from those of India to those of the Marshall Islands, leaves the United States in possession of the field. The Americans following hard on the British have established long-standing diplomatic and economic links with most countries, while the European countries are still largely newcomers, except in what is still known as ‘French’ Africa.

Further the Americans seem supremely confidant that Europe can never come together sufficiently to launch a challenge to America. Even in the aftermath of 9-11,  Zbigniew Brzezinski crowed about discordance within the EU: “In the American-European relationship a fundamentally important ingredient continues to be missing: Europe. There is no Europe as such that is joining America in its long-term campaign; what most European states can actually offer falls far short of the earlier rhetoric from some of them regarding Europe’s allegedly increasing ‘autonomous global security role.’ ”

    This global stand-off between the two contenders for global dominance leaves neither in charge of shaping global governance standards to its own convenience.
 
Not Obama, but Osama at the Gates!

    The fateful events of September 11, 2001, have left an indelible mark on the foreign policies of all states. While the United States swiftly utilized the global alarm caused to seize control of the energy-rich Middle East, its military actions have alarmed all, and consolidated support for its opponents. The EU on the other hand, which more or less escaped censure, has tried to build a case for safe multiculturism, based on influencing the varied streams of millions of guest workers from all parts of the globe.

The search for internal security, elevated to the position of first concern of global governance, even superseding the hunt for natural resources, shows up how the two great power groups have reacted differently to the threat of ‘terrorism.’ The Americans have tried to wall themselves inside a Festung Americana, while the Europeans have opened up a dialogue with ‘moderate Islam.’ But this forced leap in the dark for mutual understanding has not been uniform. The Italian Premier, Silvio Berlusconi was gauche enough to say in 2001:

    “The West is destined to win over and Westernize people … It has done so with the Communist world and part of the Islamic world, but unfortunately a part of the Islamic world is stuck where it was 1400 years ago.”

    Genuine dialogue requires something more than hastily patched up compromise. In Frankfurt, Jürgen Habermas while accepting the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, mentioned the phenomenon of “global speechlessness,” in other words, the incapacity to understand ‘the other.’ A dialogue is often considered successful if the outcome leads to acceptance of Western beliefs and practices. The implied cultural arrogance toward others  accentuates confrontation, distancing many in the Muslim community, who see themselves as excluded from any real partnership with the West.

    The West has glossed over how Europe and America have destabilized the Middle East from before the Balfour declaration, which in fascist manner tried to solve the issue of European discrimination against the Jewish peoples, even of ‘Ashkenazi,’ or Western, origin, by offering them Arab lands. The continued cynicism and manipulation with which the Palestine issue has been handled, especially after the discovery of oil in the region has effectively alienated the Islamic world, except for the very rich who have benefited from the process of neo-colonialism.

In addition to the fact that the West has callously and constantly stoked violence in the region, the people of the Middle East are fully aware how the West is despoiling them of their fast depleting energy resources. A cultural ‘return to basics,’ [to misquote former British premier John Major] to long cherished religious values, is not to be wondered at as a people’s attempt to retain faith in themselves.

    The ensuing crises have emerged in chronic form, presenting extremely skewed income distribution, leaving the majority in poverty in the midst of great national wealth, with ordinary people oppressed by selfish dictatorial regimes, which are answerable only to the West.

    Few in the West understand, let alone echo, the words of Ruud Lubbers, as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees:

    “It is important to use intelligent methods to screen out terrorists. But it is just as important to recognize that lack of willingness to share burdens, that the lack of generosity and solidarity, is rearing tomorrow’s terrorists.”

    While many in the West have called for a military solution to terrorism, and the quagmire American forces find themselves in, in Iraq and Afghanistan, is a result of that instinctual response, few have responded to the thoughtful idea of drawing up a global social policy. Perhaps, we should take a re-look at the reports of the Brandt and Brundtland Commissions, with their good but ignored proposals. Harald Müller writes: “It is therefore alarming to hear politicians calling, these days, for more spending for the Bundeswehr and domestic security, but without seeming to have got the point that development policy, and precisely it, serves the end of crisis prevention and containment of terrorism.”

    Hans Muller writes even more to the point when he identifies the ‘violence-prone losers of globalization.’ He calls for “action on the part of committed nation-states as well as for a world-political new deal which should also include radically advanced forms of international cooperation and integration.”

    But both the United States of America and the European Union have yet to admit that the price of global security is providing a measure of global equity. Such admission would imply the necessity of far-reaching changes in the economic and military policies of the West, changes the shape of which cannot yet be perceived from Washington, Berlin or Paris, and hence which are discounted as unnecessary.

    Will the EU move towards an ill-formulated  “multilateralism à la carte,” as Richard von Weizsäcker has warned, or will Zbigniew Brzezinski’s strategy prevail of ensuring “U.S. preponderance?” No one has yet got the answer.

What Price Global Governance without Global Equity?

    Few in the West may appreciate the parallels drawn by Chilean human rights activist, Ariel Dorfman,  of the insecurity, fear, and panic experienced between 9-11 of 2001, which brought down the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and 9-11 of 1973, when General Pinochet under CIA guidance overthrew the democratically elected government of President Allende in Chile and unleashed terror in Santiago. Western governments have not yet taken a critical view of their own history, or even understood how the rest of the world perceives them, their motives, and their actions. Many Third World critics think of the concepts of globalization and global governance as nothing more than transnational socio-economic processes promoted by the West to control the Third World.

    Perhaps the very concept of global governance, which implies a measure of justice in equal measure for all, cannot be formulated with any coherence in the prolonged era of neo-colonialism and re-colonization taking place today under the smooth rubric of Globalisation. This present phase of history was once described as neo-colonialism by Kwame Nkrumah, the founding father of Ghana, and a great leader of the Third World:

    “Faced with the militant peoples of the ex-colonial territories  imperialism simply switches tactics. Without a qualm it dispenses with its flags, and even with certain of its more hated expatriate officials. This means, so it claims, that it is ‘giving’ independence to its former subjects, to be followed by ‘aid’ for their development. Under cover of such phrases, however, it devises innumerable ways to accomplish objectives formerly achieved by naked colonialism. It is this sum total of these modern attempts to perpetuate colonialism while at the same time talking about ‘freedom’, which has come to be known as neo-colonialism.
    
The same perhaps could be said today of globalization, or its covert promotion under the guise of global governance. If some measure of global equity is a necessary condition for any form of global governance worthy of the name, it may be justified to ask what steps should be taken now to move towards such a desirable state of affairs. We have seen how in the last two decades every attempt to create global regulatory bodies, or even broadly accepted principles, which can benefit all nations and classes has been brought to nothing by the attitude of the United States government. This then is not an appropriate moment at all to fantasize about global governance, which only serves to mask less holy ambitions.

An as yet Utopian vision to aim towards might be a ‘Neo-Gandhian’ family of cooperating national communities, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s own national vision of Gram Swaraj, but enlarged to encompass all nationalities. The normative principles behind such a vision may inform a search for a genuine form of global governance that is both practical and acceptable, to both the rich and the strong, and the poor and weak at some future date and time. However, the United States of America and the European Union of nations must first proceed on their own learning curves to realize that the world is no longer their oyster, and that injustices perpetrated on the many will meet with even greater horrendous response.

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 21 Jan 2009.

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