Issue No. 608
Opinion
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17 - 23 October 2002 Issue No. 608 Opinion |
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Clinton's integrated global society
Bill Clinton believes the challenge of terrorism can best be faced by taking the growingly interdependent world community towards further integration rather than towards new confrontations, writes Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
One of the highlights of the British Labour Party's annual conference this year was the talk delivered on 11 September by former US president Bill Clinton, which earned him a standing ovation from delegates. Speaking on the first anniversary of last year's terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Clinton said that as the spread of worldwide terrorism and America's vulnerability to it demonstrate, the central reality of the 21st century in that our era is globally interdependent but far from integrated. Taking this theme further, he said that what we learned on 11 September is that "the very forces of globalisation we helped to create -- open borders and commerce, easy travel, instant communications, instant transfers, and widened access to information and technology -- can be used to build or destroy, to unite or divide."
In his talk, Clinton proceeded from a premise that is the exact opposite of the one which informs his successor's vision, namely, that the future should determine how we assess the past, not the other way round. There are many signs that the world is moving towards greater interpenetration and complementarity, side by side with phenomena indicating a greater degree of mutual exclusion and division -- notably terrorism. To concentrate all attention on what divides and ignore what can eventually help bring together and unite can only aggravate the situation.
Of course, the Bush vision was forged in the crucible of 11 September, while Clinton, who did not have to deal with the pressures of putting the country back on its feet after the devastating blow to its self-confidence, can afford to view the event from a broader socio-political perspective. His intellectual credentials and eight-year stint at the head of the most powerful state on earth make his opinion particularly relevant.
Clinton put down the frightening urgency taken on by old confrontations (like the India-Pakistan conflict over Kashmir and the violent stalemate in the Middle East conflict) to a global battle of ideas revolving around three very old and very fundamental questions: Can we have inclusive communities or must they be exclusive? Can we have a shared future or must our futures be separate? Can we possess the whole truth or must we join others in searching for it?
A few days ago, American evangelical Christian leader, Jerry Falwell, known for his extreme right-wing views, apologised for offending Muslims by describing the holy Prophet Mohamed as a terrorist in a televised interview last week. This latest in a series of equally bigoted and inflammatory statements made by other prominent Christian fundamentalist leaders in recent months was seen by many as a natural progression of the position articulated by Bush with his ill-advised "crusade" remark in the immediate aftermath of the 11 September attacks. The analogy he drew at the time between the confrontation with terrorism and the Crusades carried the implicit meaning that the war against terrorism is a war against Islam itself, not against a small fringe of extremists who attribute themselves to Islam.
Unlike Bush, Clinton does not make his frame of reference the past but the future, focussing in his talk on how to move the world from interdependence to an integrated global community committed to peace and prosperity. He admits this is a formidable challenge, especially with the huge discrepancies between societies. The statistics speak for themselves. Over half of humankind still live on less than $2 a day. One billion people are in a permanent state of hunger. One billion and a half have no access to potable water. 10 million children never go to school. 10 million children die every year from curable diseases. One quarter of all deaths are due to a specific number of diseases: AIDS, tuberculoses, malaria and dysentery. These statistics indicate that what separates humans is more effective in determining their fate than what unites them.
Clinton talks of going beyond the "Third Way", an expression coined by British Prime Minister Tony Blair soon after taking office to denote a form of capitalism with a social conscience as an alternative to both communism as applied throughout the 20th century and capitalism as it is still being practiced today. Clinton aspires to take the Third Way still further towards a global society in which states will disappear and be replaced by some form of alternative social organisation in which what brings people together will take precedence over what divides them. He did not give a detailed plan how things will get there, but one can imagine that what happened to Germany after the breakdown of the Berlin Wall could be a good example, a sort of prefiguration of what Clinton dreams of achieving. Eventually, the huge markets Clinton inaugurated during his presidency and which link the United States to its direct neighbours as well as to other countries bordering on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, could be seen as first steps in that direction. Meanwhile, the European Union is the most striking achievement that has gone furthest in transcending the present world order.
But developing a global consciousness that allows for a shared future is a long-term project. In the meantime, Clinton believes the terrorism and violence which threaten to destabilise the world must be fought with an aggressive security policy based on five major elements that he summarised as follows: First, Bush and the US military must be supported in finishing the job of getting Osama Bin Laden and the other Al-Qa'eda leaders out of Afghanistan. Second, everything possible must be done to end the North Korean nuclear missile programme. Clinton said that during his administration he came close to ending that programme, but having decided to focus on the Middle East situation, was unable to pursue the two objectives simultaneously. Third, the production and distribution of chemical, biological and small scale nuclear weapons must be constrained. While the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in this respect is real, he said, it is not as immediate as the need to restart the Middle East peace process and may not require an invasion. Fourth, the capacity of America's friends to deal with terror must be increased. Here Clinton voiced his support for what Bush is doing to help President Arroyo in the Philippines and to expand US aid to Columbia, which is in danger of becoming the world's first narco-state. Fifth, domestic defences and cooperation must be improved. He said he supported the creation of the new Department of Homeland Security as long as it has the authority to keep all related agencies in close cooperation.
But these five defencive steps are not sufficient in themselves to create a better, terrorist-free world, according to Clinton, who believes that there must be a vision for building a reordered world guided by the principles of the Third Way philosophy: empowerment, opportunity and responsibility. First, there should be more, and more effective, international institutions along the lines of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organisation. He gave his administration credit for bringing China into the WTO, ratifying the chemical weapons convention, expanding NATO and supporting the growth of the European Union, while criticising the Republican-controlled US Senate for rejecting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. He also criticised Bush for walking away from the Kyoto agreement and the International Criminal Court protocol.
Second, more targeted debt relief should be provided for the world's poor nations. According to Clinton, the debt relief that was promoted in 2000 has already produced some stunning results because it was based on the requirement that all of the savings go to education, health care and development -- providing opportunity while demanding responsibility.
Third, investment in foreign assistance should be increased. America spends a smaller percentage on foreign assistance than any other developed nation. Bush was right to increase it from $10 to $15 billion a year. But Kofi Annan has asked for $10 billion annually to fight AIDS and other infectious diseases, and America should pay its share.
Fourth, efforts should be intensified to bring peace in the world's most troubled places, particularly the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent. Concluding his address on an optimistic note, Clinton said, with a strong security policy, a vigorous effort to create more partners and fewer terrorists, and an unrelenting struggle to win the battle of ideas, America can do a great deal to move the world from interdependence to integration in a global community that will be a fitting world for the coming generations.
However, the traditional problem raised by a world government is the one that German philosopher Kant put forward, namely, how to reconcile one global, central authority, that will necessarily be totalitarian in one form or other, with democracy, accountability, transparency. How to ensure that social structures based on the idea of a 'network' take precedence over those based on the idea of a 'pyramid', an interactive command system rather than from top to bottom? This problem was not sufficiently addressed by Clinton in his otherwise thought-provoking speech.
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