Examines issues of the day against a triumvirate of core principles: liberty, responsibility and justice.
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This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
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Wednesday, February 19, 2003
Since the end of the Cold War, the world�s geopolitical dynamic has shifted from a bipolar conflict between factions led by the United States and the Soviet Union to a multi-polar arrangement. However, the key supranational institutions that formed the basis for political interaction between countries, the UN, NATO and the EU, have remained largely unchanged. While no major crises have arisen during the past 10 years to test the relevance of these decades-old organizations, the current debates over Iraq policy make clear that these institutions are obsolete in this new world order. The core differences between the world then and the world now, which makes this alphabet soup of acronyms anachronistic, are the lack of a clearly defined rivalry of the East-West nature, the ascendancy of asymmetrical warfare and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The ideological fault line between communism and capitalism no longer exists, the latter having convincingly defeated the former. The new global fault line is civilizational, as Samuel Huntington described it, or, if you prefer Thomas Friedman, the world of order versus the world of disorder. This is plainly evident in the replacement of Moscow-centered Stalinism with worldwide Islamic radicalism as the greatest threat to global security. The twin threat of proliferation is what makes this new world so dangerous; the potential destructive capability of terror networks using WMD surpasses that of the few conventional armies that stand as avowed enemies of America. In such a world, the geographic nature of old alliances no longer applies and ought to be supplanted by values-based alliances. The role of a nation should thus be defined not by its physical position as part of a containment strategy to win the Cold War, but by that nation�s willingness to acknowledge that a Terror War has been declared against Western civilization and, more importantly, by its resolve to win it. In this war, there are not two, but three sides. There are the protagonists, led by the United States, the antagonists, led by Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and their supporters, and then there are the undecided, led by France. In this system, it makes much more sense for the Czech Republic to be aligned with Australia rather than with France, and for the United States to be aligned with India rather than with Belgium.
As a critical and successful military alliance, NATO stood firm against Soviet expansionism in Europe and allowed socialist Western European nations to enjoy security on the cheap under America�s protective umbrella. But the recent difficulties in which 3 (Belgium, France and Germany) of the 19 members prevented the alliance from planning for the defense of Turkey highlighted the fact that NATO no longer has a central guiding principle. NATO emerged victorious from its rivalry with the Warsaw Pact, and should go gracefully into retirement. In its place should be assembled a military and intelligence alliance intended to serve the interests of Friedman�s world of order.
Similarly, the UN has outlived whatever useful life it ever had. Even before the ascension of Libya to chair the human rights commission, Iraq to chair the disarmament conference and Syria to chair the Security Council made the UN a laughingstock, its impotence, corruption and wastefulness caused many to question its utility beyond providing a forum in which to exchange speeches. As the world�s preeminent medium for anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity, it has certainly served a useful purpose for Arab nations. Beyond that, the Hutus of Rwanda and the Muslims of Kosovo might question the value of a torpid UN. Without American leadership, nothing would have been done in either of those places and UNMOVIC inspectors, which are now spoken of with almost existential importance, would never have returned to Iraq.
The Security Council, where the only power resides, gives equal weight to the votes of all nations, so that the worst human rights abusers and the most undemocratic nations have as much authority as free nations. As the U.S. seeks to round up votes to enforce 16 of the UN�s other resolutions on Iraq, Angola, Cameroon and Guinea count as much as does the U.S. Furthermore, vetoes are distributed as a result of a historical happenstance that requires the U.S. to bow to France�s will in order to get the blessed political cover of �multilateralism.� The solution is to form a rival organization with respect for human rights and democratic principles as the sole criterion for entry. Whereas the UN has no moral authority or guiding principles, despite its grandiose protestations and absurd pretensions to the contrary, this new organization would be bound together by pursuit of liberty and justice.
A similar phenomenon plagues the EU, which is viewed by a declining France primarily as a means to magnify its voice in the world. Jacques Chirac�s petulant tirade scolding those nations that disagreed with his viewpoint on the Iraq issue is reminiscent of the Franco-German plan for domination of Europe�s political message through the dual presidency, which, incidentally, the rest of the union immediately dismissed. The new entrants from Central and Eastern Europe, which know the evils of socialism and tyranny, are more receptive to the vision of a free world than are the old European elites. The French presumption to speak for the rest of Europe, and the threats that followed when the Vilnius 10 defied Chirac, reveal deep rifts that are not to be ignored. Ironically, French and German leaders need expansion in order to preserve their relevance but not only do these new entrants have different perspectives, but the establishment has suspicions about who is truly European (witness Valery Giscard d�Estaing�s comments about Turkey). This is why the transformation of the EU from a trading bloc to a political union is unlikely to succeed precisely because of the differing opinions of its members. For the same reason that the Euro is not sustainable as a single currency (namely, that economies cannot have divergent fiscal policies and a single monetary policy), the EU will not last as a single political voice.
It may take another decade or so for the realignment of the world order to manifest itself in a realignment of world institutions, but this process must take place for effective international political cooperation to occur. The current paralysis on Iraq is not peculiar to the issue, but inherent in the system, and it will recur so long as the system remains unchanged. NATO, the UN and the EU are betamax institutions in a DVD world.
2/19/2003 11:12:00 PM
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