South, North and the United Nations in a 21st Century World—III

Global Leadership And Global Systemic Issues

Boutros Boutros-Ghali And Branislav Gosovic

The following is the third and concluding part of a lengthy article being published here in three parts. The first and second parts appeared in the Mainstream issues of April 23, 2011 and April 30, 2011 respectively.
—Editor

7. Global Leadership in the Emerging Polycentric World of the Future

We have argued that the United Nations can and should play a pivotal role in advancing global leadership on complex global issues that need the joint thought, action, cooperation and involvement of the entire international community.

A reinforced United Nations—and in due course its successor, the “second or next generation United Nations”36 —should be properly equipped and empowered to think universally, to clarify and explain the workings of the world system, and to help define and arrive at global public interest. In addition, it should be empowered to act globally, through the negotiation and implementation of binding agreements and instruments of international law. With the Charter, and the universal human values, aspirations and vision that it embodies, as well as almost seven decades of continuous learning, practical experience and institutional memory, the UN offers a ready-made platform to prepare for change and build the world society of the future.

Resistance to meaningful institutional improvement and to an enhanced, central role for the United Nations is deeply embedded in some countries. Thus, there is likely to be an outcry at any mention of the changes that would result from the greater empowerment that we have outlined. Such opposition will come from the dominant power structures, from ingrained concepts and habits, existing institu-tions, vested interests, certain philosophical schools, and vocal segments of the public. This is not likely to change.

One should not wait for greater harmony in order to begin preparing for the next generation United Nations. The thinking and discussion process can be initiated by those countries and political and social forces that are interested in and committed to the goal of actively building a positive future.

Two global systemic issues that require international cooperation are currently on the agenda and should generate the multilateral processes and responses needed to manage and regulate these global challenges. By working together on these and similar, common concerns of imminent and vital importance, new institu-tions, forms and practices of global cooperation will arise.

A number of domains of global significance currently call for, in fact require, approaches, management and solutions that are similar to national societies; or more aptly, to advanced regional integration experiments, such as the European Union (EU). In fact, the EU can in some ways be viewed as an initial pilot project and precursor, from which a good deal can be learned and extrapolated, as the international community works towards an ever more complex “world society” and towards the new forms of global cooperation, management and institutions that this will necessitate.

This essay has suggested some approaches, centred on the United Nations. In the years to come, such approaches could foster the much-needed democratic and participatory multilateral global leadership and the emergence of a corres-ponding global institutional framework that will sustain the positive, enlightened thinking and orientation of the international community.

Hazards down the road: It is logical that hegemonic power will not willingly surrender its privileged position of exceptionalism and primacy. Nor will its political, economic and intellectual elites, or indeed public opinion, abandon the conviction of their own superiority and moral supremacy. However, they are beginning to experience a sense of insecurity and uncertainty in a changing world that is challenging them on a variety of fronts, as their quest is continuing for an ever more elusive national “security”.37 No doubt, the pursuit of this highly elastic, planet-wide concept is perceived and experienced by many as a determination to consolidate and diversify the North’s global domination. Suggestions have thus been made to morph hegemonic unilateralism into its milder variant of “minilateralism” or “global condominiums”, namely, the accommodation of those select few that qualify politically and have enough power and economic weight to be allowed to join a remodelled North-led, power-based club of “global leadership and governance”.38

The intensification of direct and indirect involvement in global affairs of mostly North-centred transnational business, and corporate and financial actors and elites—a “World, Inc” —is to be expected. These will continue to seek to influence and “corporatise” governmental and intergovernmental structures, and to secure key roles for themselves in strategic decision-making processes and in shaping national and global policies. This includes transferring to or maintaining in the private sector (in close cooperation with national power and security structures) the public services and institutions that are of vital strategic importance for the international community as a whole.

There is a likelihood of further high-tech global interventionism, now resting on the malleable concept of “just war”, by those who can and intend to continue to use military force and wage wars outside their own borders anywhere in the world, in what is billed as “defence” of vital national security interests or in pursuit of given geo-strategic goals.

Gated communities for the privileged yet anxious minorities are sprouting everywhere. The possibility of institutionalised global totalitaria-nism imposed by scientifically, technologically, militarily and economically superior forces and transnational elites, the global “super-class”, is thus not beyond imagination. Intent on achieving dominance of the planet and its resources, in a situation where there is not enough for all, the super-class will need to wall itself in and keep under control the global periphery and societal underclass in general.

Such scenarios, which are often depicted in science fiction literature and films, are also likely to figure in the thinking, geo-political strategising, simulations and games by those whose task it is to imagine, plan and prepare for all sorts of contingencies and alternative futures.39

Indeed, the UN member-states and the world peoples need to be constantly vigilant in order that the current period of flux, uncertainty and transition does not engender undesirable outcomes.

This is yet another reason why it is important that the international community does not remain intellectually passive, dependent, and sub-missive vis-à-vis the self-serving political and intellectual “leadership” of the traditional power centres in the North.

Such leadership draws on theoretical and policy constructs and “realist” analyses. These are produced by governments (including the military and intelligence communities), by the establishment academia concentrated in Anglo-American ivory towers, by intergovernmental mechanisms of the North such as OECD and EU, increasingly by the corporate sector, and of late by the NATO which is now positioning itself to undertake geo-strategic roles and transnational military missions that are global in scope and aim.

It is also important to be aware of the trend in the key countries of the North towards a growing integration of government, capital, and corporate elites and higher learning institutions. This results in the interlocking of the political, military, business, finance, media and academic establishments, referred to earlier. This trend is enabled by and dependent on specialist, high-tech knowledge and capabilities.

Jointly, these actors are working on how to counter what has been labelled as “threats and challenges”, including how to fight future wars and police the world—in the name of national security, the fight on terror, or given geopolitical goals. Also among their concerns is how, on their preferred terms, to organise, control and be the main beneficiary of the evolving inter-national system, preferably to evolve in essence as a continuum of the traditional imperial world economic and political order.

Symptomatically, this outwardly domineering and expansionist stance is receiving an added boost from “retro”, Right-wing mass populism, with many ideas and reflexes recalling sinister periods in recent human history. It is widespread and increasing, especially among the public of the key developed country, a tendency accen-tuated in a situation of economic, financial and social crisis and uncertainty that is experienced en masse. It is engineered and fomented by media messages and orchestrated campaigns, some hate- and paranoia-driven. It seeks domestic and external enemies and threats to defeat and eliminate. It feeds on deep ignorance and patriotism, an inflammable mix which is a powerful mobilising force. Such outwardly aggressive Right-wing populism, when it occurs in a trigger-happy, militarised society with a global military presence and capability, guided by an offensive “defence” strategy, is a matter for broad, international concern.

It requires multilateral political and practical responses through the United Nations. Inherently, this involves recognising and dealing with a series of global systemic challenges that have played a role in the rise and spread of obscurantist world views. And it calls for the United Nations to play a proactive, advocacy role in developing a different, positively-oriented set of common global values and goals, and the means to achieve them, in contrast to the posture of neutrality and passivity currently demanded of the organisation by the dominant powers.

Towards a polycentric world: The Group of 20 was recently established as a mechanism for the governance and management of global financial and economic affairs. This was decided on and announced without the involvement or mention of the United Nations, reflecting the traditional power-based reasoning of the main players, and their policy of keeping “hard-core” economic and financial issues and decision-making outside the UN framework.

This having been said, the formation of the G-20 also reflects the admission by the North that the global economic and political landscape and balance of power is changing. This could have positive implications for the future shape of international affairs. It represents a potentially significant inroad into what has been an exclusive Northern power circle, and a move in a more participatory direction (from G-5 and G-7 to G-20, though still a far cry from the
G-192 sitting in the UN General Assembly).

One hopes that the developing-country newcomers in the enlarged circle will defend and argue sincerely and effectively for common causes, including those of the South and of development. These issues are making a forced re-entry into the IMF, whose task has traditionally been one of system maintenance and defence. However, the fact remains that the newly admitted countries are not necessarily represen-tative of all those left ante portas. Their leaders are expected to pursue primarily the narrow and immediate national interests of their own countries. Moreover, they will have to face attempts to co-opt them, with privileges and honours, or to pressure them with bargaining and threats.

There is also an ever-present risk that they will be outmanoeuvred, and will remain part of the stage décor that provides legitimacy to policies that will continue to be effectively guided and decided by the same select circle in the North. It is thus essential for the G-20 newcomers from the South to hone their technical skills, in order to become credible and well-equipped partners and a counterforce in this highly technical IMF forum, a forum dominated by the treasuries and financial and banking circles of the handful of major countries.

The G-20 precedent could also be used to further undermine the democratic character of the United Nations and to sideline it because of its supposedly cumbersome decision-making processes. These processes involve a multitude of countries (mostly “small and insignificant” as they have been described) that have different claims and interests. An example occurred at the end of the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference when the lack of progress was attributed by some to the UN, to its unwieldy negotiating process and its large membership. Loud calls were heard then, both from officials and the media of the North, to move the issue to a small group of key countries, based on the G-20 model.

Regardless of underlying trends, motivations and resistance, now that the political permafrost has begun to thaw, the major struggle will be to transform the shaken, though still powerful unipolar system, into a polycentric, more balanced international community. The surfacing of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) and IBSA (India, Brazil, South Africa) groupings— which assemble major world nations that do not belong to the Western camp—is a move in this direction, although the downside of this may be an increase of regional hegemonic behaviour.

An important aspect of such positive change would be for regions, which encompass many states that are too small and too weak to wield influence on their own and remain effectively marginalised, to pool their numbers and strength in a common stance and to take common action on regional and global systemic issues. Recent moves in Latin America are an instance of this. Some who are thinking about the future are in fact projecting a vision of a “world of regions”.40

The established intellectual hegemony of the North, which was particularly pronounced during the period of unipolarity and which in turn it helped buttress, needs to be formally recognised, questioned and countered. Given that intellectual groundwork underpins all human endeavours, challenging this hegemony is a sine qua non if the international community is to shake off its continuing, chronic dependence on the traditional handful of North countries, and their intertwined establishments and often self-serving intellectual constructs.

A counterforce—policy-related, analytical, intellectual and normative—with a socially progressive orientation needs to be organised and mobilised as a global point of convergence of thinking and system awareness. It should pull together the political, theoretical, analytical and empirical background. Much of such material already exists, but is scattered, often not noticed and frequently negated, and for certain not used by an organised and visible political force; it offers the elements needed to shape and orient the emerging polycentric international community.

Related to the above, an often overlooked fact is the traditional domination of scholarly study of the international organisations by the Anglo-American academia and foundations, and by the Foreign Ministries of these two countries. This is of importance in the design or reform of inter-national organisations, where strategically placed experts play key roles. In the quest to democratise global leadership and the inter-national organisations, it is essential to overcome this dependence and the traditional concen-tration of international organisation scholarship essentially in a single country in the North. If this is done it will be possible to question and counter the frequent underlying policy biases in the intellectual analysis and prescriptions regarding the United Nations.

Future institution-building and democratisation of the United Nations, and of inter-national organisations in general, should be the subject of comprehensive study and analysis from the standpoint of the international community as a whole. An important aspect of global leadership in the 21st century is therefore the need to finance, build and diversify scholarship devoted to international organi-sations and international relations, both inside the framework of the United Nations and outside, independent of national interests and agendas and the views of the dominant powers of the North. Broad participation and involve-ment should be assured of countries and other actors on the world scene, including those from civil society.41

The global environmental challenge: a vehicle of systemic change? Global leadership for global causes will need to draw its strength and political legitimacy from the wide support and partici-pation of world citizenry. Awareness of the global environment problems, notwithstanding their frequently conflictive character, has also created a growing sense of an overarching, unifying cause for common action.

This potential for worldwide mobilisation and solidarity could not be achieved in the case of workers’ rights, nuclear disarmament, peace, or poverty eradication. In the case of environ-ment, it is proving possible because of the more personal, at first sight non-political, issues that are of concern to everybody, usually easy to grasp, including by children of school-age who carry the acquired sensitivities, concerns and commitment in adulthood.

Thus, four decades after the UN brought the issue of environment to the attention of the world, witnessing the consequent spread of public awareness, it can be concluded that a fledgling global constituency in favour of the planetary sustainable development goals already exists.

Indeed, it can be argued that the environment-development “Siamese twins”, and the global sustainable development agenda, is an important vehicle of soft, yet structural change, deeply political and with transformational potential. It is helping to question and gradually erode the very foundations of the existing order. It has offered a relatively safe terrain for political activism. And it has made it possible to question the dominant system and structures without necessarily becoming ideologically branded or formally condemned as unpatriotic and a threat to the existing order, although this seems to be changing in some political milieux.

The global sustainable development agenda is also challenging the concept of absolute state sovereignty. Most significantly, this concerns those countries of the North with the greatest wealth, power and global reach, whose wealth was in part built through the exploitation of the earth’s resources during the age of “no limits to growth”.

These countries will need to weigh and adjust their narrow, national interests against the global objectives. Also, voluntarily or otherwise, they will need to place some of their potential, including practical know-how, scientific and technological capacity, wealth and resources, at the disposal of the world community and sustainable development agenda. This would represent a partial repayment of the global political, economic, social and environmental debts that they have accumulated and which they owe to the “rest”. This will help to limit confrontation in international negotiations, and temper the widespread feeling of gross unfair-ness, double standards and the resulting resentment vis-à-vis the North, of the countries and peoples of the South.

Environmental exigencies are leading to a call for limits on the “sovereignty” of the individual, on private greed and on superfluous consumerism and wasteful lifestyles in affluent societies and in general. This new awareness focuses on the individual’s personal behaviour and responsibilities, on his/her environmental footprint and its cumu-lative implications at the global level.

Global warming is forcing development back onto the international agenda as a priority concern and, after a long interruption it is reviving the themes of the North-South develop-ment dialogue. It is also focusing attention on global distributional and equity issues which were pigeonholed as politically illegitimate and obsolete at the height of the neo-liberal tide.42

Decades ago, the environment-related issues launched the debate on the limits of economic growth and questioned the sustainability of the dominant patterns of production and consump-tion and lifestyles. This effectively placed on the global agenda the need to rethink and re-conceptualise economics, economic growth and the market.

Today, the social and political fallout engendered by the global financial and economic crisis has raised fresh doubts about the sanctity and foundations of economics as a “man-made science”, and has highlighted the contemporary society’s dependence on neo-classical economics and clans of economists. As with climate change-related dilemmas, the financial and economic crisis raises questions as to what and whom the current iteration of this “science” serves and what are its societal and worldwide impacts and implications. It has also contributed to the revival and mainstreaming of the disciplines of political economy and development economics, which had been in exile during the neo-liberal dominance.

The above are all signs of change in the making. Redesigning the world political and economic/financial/monetary order is a universal challenge that will need to be taken up by the global community as a joint multilateral undertaking within the fold of the United Nations.

To prepare for and shape the world of the future, calls for democratising and channelling the processes of globalisation that are bringing nations and peoples ever closer together. As suggested, this means embedding such globalisation into an overarching global socio-political and theoretical framework, which will provide it with order and direction. Such a framework should also educate and sensitise the general public and in particular the younger generation. Importantly, this means evolving a global political/civic culture of shared responsibilities, rights and obligations in both the public and private spheres.

This is part of a broader effort to restructure international relations and organisations. It requires an enlightened international community with the ability to imagine and design the world of tomorrow. It also means it should begin to exert a degree of influence and take control of its own progression towards a more promising future. Environment-related global challenges are leading in this direction, by demanding positive forms of global leadership, inspired by the broad goals of common good and planetary sustainability.

Prometheus unbound: the rising South as a force for a positive future? Such hoped-for developments will require, among other things, the full commitment and active participation of the South. Comprising close to four-fifths of the world’s population, with growing economies and with key natural resources and ecosystems within its perimeter, it is favourably positioned to act as a moving force for constructive change in the world’s political, social and economic arena.

Looking back on recent decades, one can easily argue that the countries of the South share some responsibility for what transpired during the unipolar period. They did not offer organised and sustained resistance. They failed to build up their own strong institutional support or elabo-rate and promote a South agenda of systemic change. As a collective they did not fight effectively, or question openly and critically, the re-energised, resurgent neo-colonialism of the North. Individually, many seemed resigned or committed to accommodation and cooperation with the dominant trend.

But developing countries can now see, after many decades of debate and negotiation, that in a world where raw power, naked self-interest, hard bargaining and double standards tend to predominate, pleading and negotiation from a position of weakness will not bring about a fair deal and, even less, systemic changes.

Unlike the North’s establishment and power structures, the countries of the South are not wedded to imperial legacies and habits, nor do they defend their global hegemony. Admittedly, many in their elites identify with the North and want to belong within the select circle, and there is also a strong likelihood that many countries will have little choice but to continue to “go with the flow” as directed by the North. Mostly, however, they do not have a vested interest in prolonging and sustaining the global structural status quo. They would welcome transformative and equitable changes in the political and economic world order, which they have long been advocating.

Building and using their growing power base; bolstering their human resources, intellectual strength, legal expertise and technical capacities; drawing on local and regional knowledge and experiences; in general adopting a posture of national and collective self-reliance; and encouraging broad-based development and economic and social empowerment of their people—these are increa-singly being seen as effective ways to advance and effect change.43 Importantly, they help to build self-esteem and confidence. They also help to overcome the perception of second-rate citizen status and the humiliating genuflection and exclusion commonly experienced in their relations with the North.

New, influential and powerful centres are rising in the South, and their voice is being heard in the global arena.44 They are not part of the traditional Western civilisation that has been dominant during the last few centuries. They belong to geographic areas that have been colonised or have endured imperialist expansionism and its consequences. They bring with them specific outlooks and sensitivities, and views on the management of global affairs. One expects and hopes that they will not be tempted to mimic the stance, be coopted and reproduce the practices of the hegemonic global powers.

Their ascendance means a change in the global distribution of power. This hopefully will contri-bute to the emergence of influential centres of global leadership for positive change, inspired and oriented by the overarching common purposes and objectives of planetary public good. Such development would contribute to strengthening genuine multilateralism within the United Nations and to the democratisation of international relations.

In fact, the major developing countries are already favourably positioned to contribute to global leadership on global systemic issues, including by action and patterns of development within their national borders and in their foreign and multilateral policies. In the world political arena, together with other developing countries and through South-South cooperation, they can raise and pursue many systemic policies and issues, including proposals that were taken off the global agenda in recent decades.

These countries, most prominently BIC (Brazil, India and China), are among the leading members of the Non-Aligned Movement and/or the Group of 77, which for decades have sought and fought for the creation of a genuinely democratic, multilateral system. Together with all countries of the South, they have advocated a humanist world order based on solidarity, universal cooperation, and peace; an order to be arrived at and legitimised through democratic instruments, and multilateral processes in the United Nations and UN system.

In particular China, with its rapidly growing economic power and global influence, is favourably positioned to contribute to the evolution of positive approaches to global systemic issues.45 Practising socialism with Chinese characteristics and evolving a socialist market economy, with a strong and well-organised state pursuing a vision and strategy of “scientific outlook on development” in its efforts to meet monumental domestic development challenges and modernise its economy and society, to fulfil the social needs of its people and overcome poverty, and to institute sustainable development practices and deal with environmental problems, both those related to poverty and underdevelopment, and those caused by economic growth and demands given rise by the growing affluence of steadily expanding numbers of its large population, what happens in China and how this country decides to orient its international policies and stance, is no doubt of worldwide significance and is likely to play a critical role in shaping the 21st century world. Indeed, China’s presence and active role in Africa, for example, is showing its potential to foster development and modify the traditional geopolitics on this continent.

Global leadership can be exercised more readily where there is adequate power and influence. The positive future of the international system, one can conclude, is thus also linked to an ongoing economic power shift to the South, with its young population approaching the six billion mark, representing the brain and brawn of a different future world. These changes and the South, in its own right as “the new kids on the block”, should eventually bring about the end of the stubborn legacies and remnants of colonialism-imperialism, and help to overcome the centre-periphery, structural divisions that continue to bedevil and embitter world affairs.46

Taking aim at and reforming the North: A positive future also depends on constructive change in both the domestic and international policy outlook and global strategies of the developed countries. These countries, most of all the superpower that has led and dominated the group, happen to play key roles in most issues on the global agenda. They can not only block progress, they can also make positive and constructive solutions possible.

Their policies, domestic situations, thinking and politics, and their influence are felt world-wide. This is possible due to their financial and economic importance, global claims and strategies, military power, science and technology edge, superior organisational and institutional capabilities, and of course the global range of their media.

Yet the common agenda and domestic actions of the developed countries, including those originating in the OECD, EU and NATO and in their corporate and financial sectors (the “Western agenda”), have been kept out of international deliberations. Thus far these countries and their policies have evaded comprehensive, in-depth, sustained and critical international scrutiny in the universal forum of the United Nations, where all countries can participate.

The countries of the North, however, will need to undergo change and structural adjust-ment from within, and be subjected to differential duties and obligations corresponding to their special place, role and responsibilities in the global arena. In fact, action by, and change in the attitude and policy within the North, is a necessary condition vital to achieving many of the global objectives.47 This refers in particular to the superpower. Its policies, embedded in complex domestic politics affect and often decide the results in key domains on the international agenda.

Reaching many of the desired global goals would be facilitated through sustained re-education and acculturation in this country, where important segments of its population and elites share some strongly held views which result in an outwardly aggressive and hegemonic stance. The melding of Manifest Destiny and the Monroe Doctrine, the 2MDs, carrying out divine missions on earth, and considering the planet as one’s own backyard, cannot but have impli-cations for the nature and prospects of the evolving international order.48

On most issues on the global agenda, the international community effectively continues to be hostage to this country and its domestic, often parochial politics, actors (sometimes strategically placed single individuals), and interest groups, and institutional and constitu-tional specificities. In fact, its interests, as well as ideological and political preferences weigh down the global agenda and often determine possible outcomes in the world arena.49

The fusing of foreign policies and domestic politics—conveyed by a newly coined term “intermestic”, derived from international and domestic, whereby foreign policy is conducted on the basis of partisan and interest group pressures and electoral considerations—was cemented during the 50 years of the Cold War. It has left a durable legacy and inertia of structures, vested interests, and patterns of thinking and action. It is difficult to question, let alone change, them. In fact, what has happened is the continuation of the politics of chronic insecurity and the Cold War mentality, a case of perpetual, worldwide “Cold-warriorship” to which the polity, economy and society of this superpower continue to cling.

Targets today consist of real or imaginary threats worldwide that have replaced the spectre of communism. Now, embodied in the global war against terror, these threats also seem to include for many people all the “different” thinking and ideals, including the internationalism and multilateralism symbolised by the United Nations and its work.

Recognising and overcoming this globalised dependence on a single country situation emerges as a systemic and political challenge for the world community which is in so many domains deeply affected by its outlook, domestic politics and outcomes.

This is of special importance for multilateral institutions and cooperation. Also, it concerns the countries of the South and the global commons, which represent the key spaces on the global chessboard where the current phase of the continuing Cold War struggle is being waged and where the “grand manoeuvres” of the 21st century are being planned and readied.

It bears repeating that this dependence represents a major stumbling block in evolving an agreed global policy vision. The Cold War was also waged with intensity on the domestic front in this superpower, with lasting impact on society and its dominant policy outlook. “Alien”, “soft on enemy” and in general socially progressive ideas, including those advocating multi-lateralism, were attacked in public discourse, criticised and even criminally prosecuted. A socially progressive outlook thus became a political liability, and was effectively marginalised by subtle mechanisms of a system that has been referred to as “inverted totalitarianism”.50

Containing and overcoming the deep-rooted Cold War legacies, and ending the Cold War waged against ideas, in both the domestic and foreign policies of the lone superpower, thus emerge as vital strategic objectives for the international community.

As the 21st century commences its highly uncertain course, the world is buffeted by complex global crises and faces the risk of a potential systemic collapse, a situation which favours the rise of obscurantisms and fundamentalisms in global centres of power. This bodes ill for the future, and it needs to be recognised as a major challenge requiring enlightened thinking and responses by the international community.

Civil society: thus spoke the people: Civil society, including a number of progressive thinkers and academics in the North who are less circumspect or constrained than its establishment, is using both the financial crisis and the climate change issue to expose hitherto solid and immune structures and processes, and to challenge dominant views. Grassroots movements, prompted by the effects of neo-liberal globalisation and related policies of the elites of their own countries, have also mobilised and become vocal in some parts of the South.

Where the international community has failed through formal intergovernmental channels, civil society may have more success in helping to expose to national and international scrutiny and criticism, how global forces, structures and actors operate, and the social distress and global turbulence that they may engender.

In fact during the years of unipolarity and unilateralism, and unconstrained neo-liberal globalisation, the critical voices that were heard came mostly from civil society. Will the impulse and ideas for change come from the base of society, as has often been the case? It remains to be seen what political vision this will generate and what kind of change will emerge as a result.

8. Challenges Ahead

IN conclusion, one should reiterate the importance of the source and quality of ideas and reasoning, and their implications in the global context.

Ideas shape and determine the content and orientation of policy, and of the conceptual and normative framework on which action is based and global opinion formed. Overcoming the intellectual and ideological dependence of the world community on the traditionally dominant centres of the North, with their often self-serving intellectual constructs and the related worldview, which they project or impose on the rest of the international community, is an outstanding challenge.

To achieve worldwide support, and to reflect the realities and diversity of the international community, global systemic issues should be studied and analysed, debated, formulated and endorsed within the multilateral context of the United Nations. The policy and conceptual framework thus arrived at should help lead and serve the international community as reference and guidance.

Arriving at such a policy framework involves, among other things, a knowledge and full under-standing of global systems, including the role of key global actors, and how such systems operate, who runs them, who benefits and who loses. This would bring about greater empower-ment of the international community and help to harness and channel the ever-growing potential of the humankind to meet the challenges and attain common objectives through cooperation.

What is at stake is the nature of the world order and an evolving world society. Humanity will need to face and resolve jointly at the global level many issues that have challenged and frustrated society throughout modern history. These include overcoming and ending poverty, exploitation, domination and aggression, and political and religious obscurantism, while attaining through cooperation the elusive goals of peace, social equity and justice, genuine participatory democracy, prosperity, and global environmental sustainability. Most of all, it involves avoiding a contemporary replay of the past global conflicts, which in this age of advanced technology risk to have catastrophic consequences for all.

Global problems and needs, and the globalised complexity of the emerging systems, the need to maintain them in good working order, their inherent fragility and the negative worldwide effects of their malfunction, will hopefully persuade, indeed compel the international community to come together in search of solutions. Existing capacities and accumulated wealth, combined with political, social, economic, scientific and technological progress, and ultimately human ingenuity, will provide the means to design and implement these solutions.

A positive, enlightened future can be built gradually, through cooperation, on a growing number of issues where countries and peoples have common interests and objectives. This cooperation would yield collective benefits, by evolving a shared, compatible understanding of and outlook on global problems, grounded in agreed objectives and normative values.

At the same time, a radically different mode of global politics will need to be conceived and refined in practice. It should transcend the prevailing adversarial, confrontational, deal-making and quid pro quo modes of negotiation and decision-making among actors of greatly varying strengths and capabilities, of different views and often opposing interests.

Special attention is needed to improve the multilateral process of reflection, policy-and decision-making, and negotiation, which requires the harmonisation of the views of the entire international community in the framework of the United Nations. In these negotiations the international community would join forces and work together to attain given goals and evolve appropriate societal forms and lifestyles. Indeed, the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities”, which was adopted by the 1992 Rio UN Conference on Environment and Development, should serve as a cornerstone in future arrangements and in working out definitions of national sovereignty that correspond to the changing world and its emerging needs.

The above is a task of enlightened, positive, altruistic global thinking and leadership in the years and decades to come. It should be based on a global social contract and rely on the collective brainpower and engagement of the international community, embodied in and symbolised by the United Nations.

A handful of major global powers will unavoidably play a central role in the above quest. Their political outlook, or worldview, is of concern to all. Their peoples and leaders bear special responsibility for the final outcomes. It should not be permitted, as some of them may be inclined, to allow the United Nations to become a fig-leaf, or even an instrument for a 21st century version of power and interest geo-politics.

This is why the United Nations should actively inspire and lead the global struggle against the retrograde political ideas that have gained currency and even legitimacy in some countries in recent decades. These ideas undermine and threaten social harmony and world peace, and the UN was established and mandated to counter them and fight against their revival and resurgence.

It is always useful to recall that the Charter in its opening paragraphs states inter alia that among the UN’s objectives and roles is “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, “to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”, “to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples”, and “to be a centre for harmonising the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends”. These uplifting paragraphs and phrases are the core of the UN Charter.

The struggle is on for the soul of the United Nations, and thus over the nature of the world order and human societies that are its constituent parts. It is of critical importance that the UN becomes the centre of global political, social and economic discourse and that it generates a paradigm needed to inspire and orient human-kind in the decades to come.

The United Nations faces the challenge and opportunity of continuing its mission to transcend and finally bring an end to what remains of the imperial age of power-based self-interest, and predatory, hegemonic domination, and at the same time to promote new multilateral, participatory forms of global leadership and enlightened thinking, which are needed for the creation and management of an emerging democratic, sharing, equitable, coope-rative and sustainable world society.

(Concluded)

REFERENCES

36. Often reference is made to a “third generation” international organisation, when talking about the future. “Second or next generation United Nations” is used here in order to underline the continuity and identity of the organisation. The League of Nations, as the “first generation” international organisation, was created at the time of colonial empires and mandates, and was a product of accommodation between the then dominant imperial powers. A universal international organisation, democratic, at least in its stated intent, and with an all-encompassing mandate, came into being only with the creation and subsequent work of the United Nations. (A recent historical study discusses the ideas and process that led to the establishment of the UN. See Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations, Princeton University Press, 2009. It traces the origins of some ideas and formulations in the thinking and inputs of personalities whose underlying objective and preoccupation was the shoring up of the British colonial empire in the post-World War II period. Soon after the establishment of the UN, it was the initiative of India’s Prime Minister Nehru that opened up a different perspective for the organisation. India’s action in the UN General Assembly concerning discrimination against the Indian minority living in South Africa effectively initiated the UN-based process of decoloni-sation and liberation of countries and peoples of the South. This episode, which relied on a flexible interpretation of the UN Charter’s Article 2.7 on protection of national sovereignty, can also be seen as an early antecedent of the North-led interventionism in the South that intensified during the decade of the 1990s, eventually leading to the above mentioned concepts of “humanitarian intervention” and “responsibility to protect” (R2P) as its normative and legal justification.)

37. For a recent example of mainstream thinking in the superpower by the so-called “liberal internationalists”, less explicit and assertive than the neo-con outlook to which, however, it is quite similar in its basic orientation, see G. John Ikenberry and Anne-Marie Slaughter, Co-Directors, Forging a World of Liberty Under Law, US National Security in the 21st Century, Final Report of the Princeton Project on National Security, 2006. Using as precedent the article by George F. Kennan which outlined the strategy of containment of the USSR and which appeared in 1948 in Foreign Affairs anonymously with “X” as the author, the Princeton Project was conceived as a “collective X article” (more than 400 scholars and intellectuals were involved). One of the objectives of this project was to strengthen the intellectual underpinnings of American strategy and “to protect the American people and American way of life for decades to come”.

38. One of the recommendations of the Princeton Project concerns establishment of a “Concert of Democracies”, a global institution “dedicated to the principles underpinning liberal democracy”, with the aim of hastening the reform of the UN and other global institutions and “as a possible alternative to them” provided these institutions cannot be “successfully reformed”. Ibid., pp. 25-26. The proposed membership of the Concert includes as its core the NATO members and non-NATO European democracies, as well as Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. “New democratic partners” are also envisaged; India, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico being singled out as possible candidates that may qualify for this honour. The idea was taken up by the Republican Presidential candidate in 2008, who during his campaign spoke of the establishment of a “League of Democracies”, as one of the initial steps of his Administration.

39. The militaristic logic and continuity of reasoning issued from the earlier epochs of imperialism, fire and sword, and rooted in the underlying, deep conviction of the “right of the strongest” is illustrated in the post-Cold War writings of many “realist” thinkers. See, for example, Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of the more influential strategists and patriarchs of the geopolitics school in the superpower, in his The Grand Chess Board: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives, Basic Books, 1997.

40. See Johan Galtung, “A world of regions—and the EU role?”, Transcend Media Service, April 5, 2010.

41. The dominance of the English language in international organisation (IO) scholarship is a factor which contributes to the existing situation, with studies and views written in other languages seldom reaching beyond the perimeter of their language zone. An example of alternative, militant views on the UN published in French can be found in a volume edited by Julie Duchatel anf Florian Rochat, ONU, Droits pour tous ou loi du plus fort?, CETIM, 2005. Regarding the issue of cultural diversity and language see the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of Diversity of Cultural Expressions, adopted by the UNESCO in 2005.

42. The 2010 Gulf oil spill, and the environmental, political, social, economic, technological and international problems that it has given rise to, is illustrative of the complexities that await in the future. It concerns how, in the years to come, environment and energy issues will be dealt with and the global activities of the TNCs supervised and regulated. In the context of this essay, it would be instructive to imagine the differences in likely approaches, reactions, and proposed solutions, had the same oil spill occurred somewhere off the African coast and had the responsible oil company been domiciled in the superpower. Contrasts between the Gulf episode and the Bhopal case are also striking, and point once again to the need to bring back the issue of transnational corporations to the UN agenda.

43. Important new regional cooperation developments in Latin America, including ALBA, UNASUR and the establishment of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the proposed closer cooperation between Latin America and Africa, and the cooperative activities of the Brazil, India and South Africa (IBSA) trilateral development initiative are examples of regional and inter-regional South-South efforts with global leadership implications.

44. For an example of this self-confidence, see Celso Amorim, “Let’s hear from the new kids on the block”, International Herald Tribune, June 15, 2010.

45. For a thoughtful analysis of the continuity of China’s policies since the birth of the People’s Republic in 1949 and a forceful argument about its historic role and responsibility as the largest developing country in bringing about a “harmonious world” based on new principles, and of its self-positioning as a role model and “driving force and mainstay” in the establishment of the NIEO by means of South-South cooperation, see An Chen and Dong Chen, “What should be China’s strategic position in the establishment of New International Economic Order?”, Journal of World Investment and Trade, June 2009, 10(3).

46. For a view of the evolving trends reflecting the reaction and positioning of the World Bank vis-à-vis global changes, see on World Bank website “The End of the Third World? Modernising Multilateralism for a Multipolar World”, statement by Robert B. Zoellick, President of the World Bank Group, April 14, 2010, Woodrow Wilson Centre for International Scholars. (In the context of our discussion, the tendentious wording of the title merits being pointed out. Rather than to proclaim “The End of the Third World”, “The Rise of the Third World” would have been correct. The chosen title reflects the long standing unhappiness of the North establishment with the concept of the “Third World” /or the global “South”/ and its decades-long efforts to deny its existence and legitimacy. Similarly, “Modernising Multilateralism” used in the title begs the question, given the recent period characterised by crass “unilateralism”: “Reviving and democratising multilateralism”, would have been more appropriate.)

47. A nod in the direction of systemic change was made by Mikhail Gorbachev who proposes a global “perestroika” in the North, and especially in the United States. See his “We had our Perestroika. It’s High Time for Yours”, The Washington Post, June 7, 2009.

48. For a perceptive analysis of deeper economic rationale of such efforts to assert total global economic and political control, see Benjamin Schwartz, “Why America Thinks it Has to Run the World”, in The Atlantic Monthly, June 1996, pp. 92-102.

49. For an unusual public exposé of this country’s “hegemomic leadership” practices on a global systemic issue dealt with in the UN, and the subterranean diplomacy and crude realpolitik used to influence the outcomes and direction of global climate negotiations by corralling individual countries into supporting its position on the “Copenhagen Accord”, see Damian Carrington, “WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord”, The Guardian, December 3, 2010.

50. See a seminal study by a distinguished political theorist Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Inc., Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totalitarianism, Princeton University Press, 2008. For an overview of the Cold War and US domestic politics, see Campbell Craig and Frederik Logevall, America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity, Harvard University Press, 2009. This volume concludes with a citation (p. 370) of George F. Kennan’s words pronounced in 1985: “It could in fact be said that the first thing we Americans need to learn to contain is, in some ways, ourselves.” There has been recently a plethora of books and studies on the global US empire. See, for example, Johan Galtung, The Fall of the US Empire—And Then What? Successors, Regionalisation or Globalisation? US Fascism or US Blossoming?, Transcend University Press, 2009. For an incisive discussion of the global empire syndrome see “Comparative Imperial Pathologies: Rome, Britain and America”, a chapter in Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, pp. 54-89, Metropolitan Books, 2006.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali is from Egypt. He holds an LL.B. from Cairo University and a Ph.D in international law from the Sorbonne University in Paris. Between 1949 and 1977, he was Professor of International Law and International Relations at Cairo University. Among many national functions he was the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs (1977-1991), Member of Parliament (1987-1991), Vice-President of the Socialist International (1990-1991) and Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs (1991). Boutros-Ghali was the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations (1992-1996), Secretary-General of the International Organisation of the Francophonie (1997-2002), and Chairperson of the Board, South Centre (2003-2006). Currently he is the President of the International Panel on Democracy and Development, UNESCO; Institute for Mediterranean Political Studies, Club de Monaco; Curatorium of the Academy of International Law, The Hague; and National Council for Human Rights of Egypt. He has authored more than 100 publications in English, French and Arabic on regional and international affairs, law and diplomacy, and political science.

Branislav Gosovic is from Yugoslavia. He holds a Ph.D in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. A former UN career official, he worked in UNCTAD, UNEP, and ECLAC, as well as, on secondment, in the World Commission on Environment and Development and the South Commission. He headed the South Centre secretariat (1991-2005). He is member of Development Alternatives Global (DAG) and author of several books and articles on development, international relations and the UN.