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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 June 1999 Issue No. 434 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 17 - 23 June 1999 Issue No. 434
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Profile Features Living Travel Sports Time Out Chronicles People Cartoons Letters Legitimacy is not fairness
By Essam Eddin Galal *One of the most striking features of the modern world is that the word "order", though one of the most commonly used, has in itself no moral or spiritual connotations, either at the national or international level. Take, for instance, the fascist and Stalinist regimes: they were two of the tautest, most tightly controlled "orders" the world had ever seen. In its own way, the current fascination with the idea of a "new world order" is equally amoral. For while the notion of that order may claim to be founded upon two types of ethical claim, there is no guarantee that these principles will be translated into concrete action under the coming dispensation.
The first type of claim is defined by a set of catchwords which are constantly brandished by the Western camp in its attack, first on the Eastern bloc, and more recently on more or less anything or anyone which seeks to move without its permission. Cries of "democracy", "human rights", "freedom of choice", "freedom of expression", "the right to participate" and "guarantees for creative initiative" fill the air. Not only are these the values to which the West lays claim -- by implication, exclusively -- but we are encouraged to believe that the political, ideological and economic victory of "the American way of life" will eventually guarantee that they are translated into a code of conduct governing human relations at both the national and international levels.
The second type of claim is generally identified with an argument much touted by former US President George Bush during the Second Gulf War. Bush told us that thanks to America's decision to assume the de facto leadership of the world and set the agenda for global policy according to its own criteria, we would soon be entering a new age of international security grounded in the victory of justice, universal participation and the rule of law. In effect, he suggested, the US would henceforth humbly execute what the UN had, in its wisdom, commanded.
Yet instead of a new world order, we have a new global non-order. The fact that it is still too soon for us to determine exactly what role is played by each of the various forces that make it up should not blind us to its nature. Nothing, in fact, could be harder than to describe just where we may go from here. The momentous changes that commenced during the 1980s and '90s have yet to run their course. The mourning of the passing of the socialist camp and the Warsaw Alliance is still unfinished. The political, economic and social structures that are emerging in the aftermath of the collapse of the so-called bipolar system have yet to coalesce, and the likely balance of relations between the countries that once formed the socialist bloc, and between these countries and the rest of the world, is still to be determined.
This is not just an Eastern problem. The Western camp is in a state of similar confusion. The various economic, security and political blocs that will characterise it through the coming century are still taking shape, as are their relations with one another and with the post-Socialist East. And on top of that, massive changes are underway in those nations that the pressures of the global economy and international politics have cast into the role of the "underdeveloped" and the "developing". They, too, have a long way to go before they can elude the stranglehold of external power and define their own path to development -- a path that must nevertheless accommodate the broad sweep of international change.
In such a context, it is even more important than at other times that the concept of international legitimacy embodied by the UN system should not be annexed by any one group of interests. Rather, it should be the product of all the interactions between all these different forces for change. However, it is unlikely that all these changes will be allowed to play themselves out before the new world order is defined, for better or for worse. Indeed, perhaps the greatest peril facing the world today is not the descent into chaos and anarchy, but that the present transition will be used by certain players to impose standards and practices that will distort, if not obstruct, the possibility of constructive development.
If this happens, the fault will not lie simply with the dominant powers, but with the entire international community. Had it not been for the disintegration, frailty and tractability of the Arab League during the Gulf crisis, a consensus would never have coalesced around a strategy of mass destruction aimed not only against the forces of aggression, but also against the potential of Arab nationalism. The Arabs should themselves be held accountable for their part in the dismembering of the Arab world.
Likewise, had it not been for the weakness and passivity of the Organisation of African Unity and the Arab League, the tragedy of Somalia would not have deteriorated into a public tender, in which those with power and resources could scramble to imprint their mark on the handling of the crisis. Once again, it was our apathy that offered these powers the opportunity to declare the existing processes of international and regional participation bankrupt.
This is not just an Arab problem, moreover. Even the world's second -- and smaller -- giant, the EU, has squandered its chance to establish the rules and practices of the new European order. Its divisions, negligence and incompetence in dealing with the crimes in former Yugoslavia have effectively played into the hands of its American masters. At the same time, the EU has deliberately obstructed all attempts to lend equity and efficacy to the promised new world order, through its criminal self-absorption in national problems writ large, its obsession with the creation of a common market, its refusal to permit the international community to fill the void created by its dereliction and its disregard for the lasting distortions inflicted by its negligence.
For such distortions threaten to persist beyond the present transitional phase to jeopardise not only security arrangements, but the political, economic and environmental health of our societies. Their cumulative effect will be to generate a global anarchy that could undermine the very principle of international legitimacy and prevent the consolidation of any mechanism that might reasonably be expected to uphold it. Simultaneously, they threaten to foster dependency, further marginalise underdeveloped nations, broaden the gap that separates them from their development goals and compound the dangers of environmental destruction.
Contrary to what many believe or pretend to believe, the UN, particularly in its highest instances, such as the Security Council, was not always as submissive to the powerful, bent only on marginalising developing and socialist countries, willing to rubber-stamp policy statements and eager to legitimise the decisions dictated to it behind the scenes, as it is today. Many UN initiatives for development and international justice, carried out through UNESCO, UNCTAD, UNIDO and other agencies, were sound in themselves, but have since been thoroughly pruned and trimmed to serve the dominant world economy. Programmes and projects have been transformed into powerless pulpits, while the few real gains achieved by the developing countries in the past have been buried alive and their mechanisms dismembered. The titans are dividing up the spoils among themselves, while the rest of the world, which commands less than a fifth of global trade, looks on. The UN has been increasingly supplanted and the power to act, pass laws and impose obligations has been cornered by a set of institutions which are directly under the control of the leading industrialised nations. The World Bank, the IMF, the G7, the Paris Club and GATT have slowly edged all truly multilateral international organisations out of the circle of influence. Worse still, this move has been met with an alarming zombie-like acquiescence by the many whose interests are at stake.
The Earth Summit, where I had the misfortune and the honour to act as principal spokesman for the developing nations at the expert conferences, is a perfect example of this process. Such was the neglect for the true environmental concerns of the Third World, that it was less an earth summit, than a summit of the stars. Thus, no attention whatsoever was paid to "poverty pollution", which claims millions of lives in the poor nations each year. No one was interested in our lack of clean water, adequate waste disposal, decent housing, proper nourishment and fundamental health care, or in how these plights are compounded by biological and chemical pollution visited upon the South by the North.
In its focus on the pollution caused by prosperity, such as excessive fuel consumption, the conference was deaf to our protests. Yet the area of Los Angeles alone has three times as many motor vehicles as the Indian subcontinent, and Westphalia in Germany has more cars than the entire continent of Africa. In such a context, it is ridiculous to imagine that developing countries, which do not possess the resources to provide for their inhabitants' fundamental needs, can make even a weak stab at solving their environmental problems. And, as though their plight were not dire enough already, the GATT process has gone on to bar them from access to the advanced technology that is essential to their development, by consolidating the West's monopoly over that technology, augmenting its costs and expanding its scope.
That is why all the countries of the world, and not just the rich and powerful, have a responsibility to bear in addressing the disparities that are presently being entrenched under the new world anarchy. However limited their resources and complex their problems, the developing nations must avoid complicity in the crime of burying our hopes for a less brutal and less wasteful future. There is no reason why they should not press for a more effective say in the course of global affairs. Rather than serving as a pretext for compliance and resignation, their very problems and difficulties should constitute their most powerful motives for positive action.
*The writer is a former head of the United Nations Consultative Committee on Science, Technology and Development.
