Who Governs The World?

The world is a jungle of squabbling and competing states, each one of them intent above all on protecting its national interests, with little regard for the common good. How the world is to be governed remains one of the greatest puzzles of our time

By Patrick Seale
First Published 2009-10-29,
Last Updated 2009-10-29 16:41:31
Courtesy Of Middle-East-Online

Rarely in modern times has the planet been as ungovernable as it is today. Global problems assail us on all sides, but no global solutions are forthcoming.

Instead, what do we see? Wars, massacres, unprecedented financial crises, unresolved conflicts, over-population, food and water insecurity, pitiful mass migrations, the ravages of climate change -- and, in many parts of the globe, a rash of cruel and corrupt regimes.

Long gone are the days – such as after the first and second world wars -- when a handful of allied statesmen could lay down the law, draw frontiers, reward and punish, and impose a victors’ peace. Gone, too, is the bi-polar world of the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union established an uneasy equilibrium.

Instead, the world is a jungle of squabbling and competing states, each one of them intent above all on protecting its national interests, with little regard for the common good.

It is clear that the world faces a grave problem of governance. There is no single centre of undisputed power, no institution capable of demanding compliance. At a time of great insecurity, when no one can tell what new dangers tomorrow might bring, people tend to look to their own nation-state for protection, thereby contributing to the crumbling of global leadership, and the disregard of once-accepted global values.

In seeking an explanation for the current anarchy, several commentators have pointed to the decline in the power, authority and reputation of the United States, battered and bankrupted by the Bush years. President Barack Obama is trying valiantly to reverse the trend, but the legacy of the past weighs heavily upon him. In the meantime, the U.S. dollar has taken a beating, with the unwelcome consequence of driving up the Euro, thus damaging the export prospects and economic recovery of the countries of the Euro zone.

The United States remains stronger than any other single country, but it is not all-powerful. It is no longer the unchallenged hyper-power it was after the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago -- an earth-shattering event which heralded the collapse of the Soviet Union and of the whole Communist system.

Javier Solana, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, has called for the EU to build a foreign policy fit for the 21st century. Europe has undoubted potential, but divisions among its members have robbed it of real political power. In spite of its wealth, high achievements and a population of nearly 500 million, the EU is still not a major global actor.

World leaders will be going to Berlin on November 9 to commemorate the fall of the wall, but their show of unity will only paper over the cracks of their profound disunity and collective impotence.

Also in November, Finance Ministers and Central Bank governors of the world’s 20 largest economies – the so-called G20 – are due to meet again in London to wrestle with how to deal with the fallout from the financial crisis, which is still by no means over. Economic decision-making was once the prerogative of the United States and its Western allies. The G20 symbolises the entry into the picture of new thrusting economies such as those of China, India, Brazil and a resurgent Russia.

Members of the G20 were meant to agree on regulating banks and financial institutions, on curbing executive bonuses, on winding down the huge stimulus packages which, at the height of the crisis, attempted to save the world from economic disaster. The G20 was, in fact, expected to devise a new international capital accord. But little action has followed the brave talk.

Overshadowing the proceedings is the emergence of China as the world’s new economic colossus. Indeed, some would advocate putting world economic strategy in the hands of a G2 -- made up of the United States and China, a suggestion which only serves to underline America’s loss of influence.

Can salvation come from international institutions? The truth is that the UN, the Arab League, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the African Union, the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have all been crippled by discord between their members and the prevailing anarchy.

The catastrophic Iraq War overstretched America, shattered the Western consensus and, by destroying a major Arab country, profoundly destabilised the Middle East. The tragic results -- blind violence, sectarian conflict and the untold human misery of a vast mass of refugees and displaced persons -- are with us still. The United States is at last withdrawing from Iraq but the damage is done and will take decades to heal.

Another senseless war is being waged in Afghanistan, in which the United States is again being tested -- and being found wanting. In the vain search for al-Qaeda, American and NATO troops are waging an unwinnable war against fiercely independent and xenophobic Afghan tribes -- the same tribes which, in the past, successful resisted attempts to tame them by the British Empire and the Soviet Union and, in our own time, by the Pakistan and Afghan governments as well.

The conflict cries out for a political solution involving all of Pakistan’s neighbours, but these neighbours are themselves at sixes and sevens, while some powerful voices in the United States still clamour for ‘victory’, evidently forcing President Barrack Obama to be more warlike than his instincts dictate. In the meantime, the drain on America continues unabated, and NATO itself seems about to collapse under the strain.

Nowhere is the impotence and disunity of the international community more striking than in the Middle East. Little Israel, a country of some seven million people, continues to defy not just its great American ally, but the entire Arab and Muslim world and almost the whole of civilised opinion in the world. It adamantly refuses to halt its land-grab of Palestinian land, to end its occupation of the West Bank or its siege of Gaza, and to engage in serious negotiations on such final status issues as borders, Jerusalem, refugees, water, security -- and peace. The weakness of the international system has allowed Israeli hawks to persist with cruel, mistaken and short-sighted policies, which must ultimately be self-defeating.

Evidently, how the world is to be governed remains one of the greatest puzzles of our time.

Patrick Seale is a leading British writer on the Middle East, and the author of The Struggle for Syria; also, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East; and Abu Nidal: A Gun for Hire.

Copyright © 2009 Patrick Seale – distributed by Agence Global