Time to Rebuild

When a large tree falls in a forest, that is a dramatic event. However, it is also the start of new life as young saplings get the chance to reach for the sun.

The current world order is crumbling. Established norms are proving  flimsy. The U.S.A has a president who could best be described as a wrecking ball, doing his best or worst to remake the world as he likes.

Still a demolition job can set the stage for a process of rebuilding. That is what I am writing about here.

While Donald Trump is not the only leader stressing international norms and ways of doing things, he is currently the most prominent trasher in chief. For that reason, I will go over some of the ways he is  weakening current institutions.

1.  He has withdrawn the USA from the Paris Agreement and the efforts to combat climate change. This is not the first time he has done this. That being so, this step was expected from him. It is still shocking in its way. The USA is one of the largest emitters of greenhouse gasses on the planet. This abrogation of responsibility is deplorable.
2. He has , by his actions , relinquished any claim that the USA had, to  lead the free world. He has sided with an aggressor , Putin against a brave country that wants to live its life in freedom.  Not only that , by tabling a demand for a considerable portion of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, he is, in effect joining Russia in an attempt to dismember Ukraine.
3. His efforts  to buy or bully other countries into ceding territory are contrary to the U.N charter and the accepted way of doing things in the modern era. His shopping list includes Greenland and  Canada.
4.  He has essentially voided trade agreements including those he made himself in his first term in office. The most blatant example of this is his ignoring the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.
5.  He has also substantially weakened NATO by stating that the USA will not necessarily come to the aid of countries which may be attacked. All depends on an amorphous set of demands.

So all in all we have a number of institutions, countries and established ways of doing things that are under attack or being severely stressed. These include:

1. Ukraine.
2. The Paris agreements.
3. NATO.
4. The EU.
5. Taiwan.
6. Panama.

It is of note the large number of institutions that he has targetted, Time will tell, however I suspect that he may have bitten off more than he can chew. In any case he is providing an incentive to all of his enemies, real or imaginary, to get together and cooperate. For they all have a common enemy or opponent.

Fundamentally, many of the issues stressing the above are intertwined and could best be mitigated by a unified approach.

There is no doubt that Ukraine deserves all the help it can get. However it would be a mistake to concentrate only on Ukraine and to ignore the wider picture. Indeed a principal motivation for most of the countries that are supporting Ukraine is a desire to deter Russia and other likely aggressors from invading or undermining other countries down the line.

The fact that these issues are intertwined can be demonstrated by the start of the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia.  A central motivation for Russia’s invasion was a desire to eliminate any possibility of Ukraine joining the EU and Nato. This can be seen in the demands which Russia tabled then and is still demanding now.

It is a matter of speculation as to why these demands were, and are, so important to Putin. It may have something to do with an estimation that a successful alignment of a democratic Ukraine with the EU would increase pressure within Russia for a similar realignment of Russia. This would in the long run lead to the collapse of Putin’s grip on power.

Be that as it may a desire for resources and a place in history no doubt also played a role.

The latest developments and especially the reversal of the USA policy on Ukraine with the election of Trump are already leading to a realignment within the industrial countries. On the one hand we have most of the countries of Western Europe including the United Kingdom along with others across the globe including Canada who are sticking with a desire for a rules based international order and also broadly supporting Ukraine. On the other hand we have the worlds largest powers including the U.S.A, Russia and China who are asserting, in practice, the prerogative of the strong to devour the weak.

Many wars, have led to the birth of new institutions and ways of doing things. So with all of this carnage and destruction  , what new institutions may rise to fill the void ?

The obvious answer is a new and global union of the civilised countries. Something along the lines of the federation of free states as envisioned by Kant. A global rule based alliance is  the only sort of institution which will be able to preserve the peace of the world. Such an alliance would also be able to deal effectively with other global issues including climate change and the regulation of dangerous technologies including nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence.

Obviously such an alliance would face challenges, however that is the nature of anything new. In the long run, such an alliance may be successful as it will be able to resolve issues which other groupings cannot.

At the moment we are seeing tentative steps towards realignment. Tentative steps should lead to something bigger and of greater significance.

 

When a tree falls in a forest , one may search  for a culprit. Maybe some fungus has infiltrated the wood. Maybe some disease has crept in under the bark. One can however look at it from a different angle and ask “how healthy was this tree in the first place ?”. It is the same with human beings. A healthy person is more likely to be able to absorb shocks and infections than others.

It is the same with Institutions or established ways of doing  things. . When institutions or norms seem to under duress, we can concentrate on the agent doing the damage. On the other hand we can ask, Have these institutions or norms run their course ? . Are they worth saving ? Maybe the time has come to build something new, stronger and better than that which has gone before.

I think that many of our current international institutions have strengths but they have also profound limitations and weaknesses. The time is ripe for some of these institutions to be superseded by something better. I will here enumerate some of these plusses and minuses for some international institutions here. I am writing here with broad strokes.

The United Nations.

The name given to this organisation was aspirational. It has served as a meeting place from representatives worldwide to meet and sometimes reach agreements. It has also contributed to various initiatives which have had a positive impact worldwide. However it cannot be said to have achieved its core mission as suggested by its name of uniting the various nations of the world and preventing conflicts.

One only has to read the first article of the United Nations charter to realise just how far the united nations is from realising the aspirations of its founder’s.

The first article reads as follows:

The Purposes of the United Nations are:

To maintain international peace and security, and to that end: to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace;

It is patently obvious that the United Nations is not fulfilling that purpose.

Article 2 of the United Nations charter contains the following requirement from all member states:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Again this membership requirement has not been enforced.

For all of its founders aspirations, the organisation has not fulfilled the desire of its founders to unite the nations of the World.

The reasons why the United Nations is ineffective are fairly obvious. The organisation as a whole does not have heft. All of the power remains with the various States and especially with the permanent members of the security council. Russia invaded Ukraine safe in the knowledge that the United Nations security council would not adopt any resolution against said invasion, let alone enforce it. Similarly,  China may, any time  it feels like it, invade Taiwan and subject the island to China. Again the United Nation’s will be impotent in that eventuality. The United States, may act similarly in the case of Greenland.

I am aware that many people with an international outlook place emphasis on the positive work done by the United Nations. They tend to downplay its weaknesses. However the weaknesses of the United Nations are considerable. It is not fulfilling its core purpose as defined by its founders. It is time to think of the constitution of a replacement to the United Nations or a radical reform of the same which would enable the realisation of the aspirations of its founders and a genuinely united world.

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

This organisation was set up shortly after  the end of the second world war. It was set up principally to provide mutual protection from external threats with an emphasis on the threat posed by Russia.  The treaty setting up the defence pact was short and succinct.  NATO has been very successful in its principal aim of deterring Russian attacks on its member countries. Recent events have, however, served to highlight some weaknesses in its structure.

The following weaknesses have become evident.

1. For all of its language about mutual response in the event of an attack, this is just an expression of intent. What actually happens is entirely dependent on the political leadership of each country.
2. The organisation is overly dependent on the United States.

The European Union.

The predecessors of the current European Union were set up shortly after the establishment of NATO.  This was no coincidence . The availability of a military defence framework enabled the establishment of the European Union, an organisation devoted principally to economic affairs. While the organisation is principally economic, the motivations for its establishment included a desire to cement peace within Europe by binding the various countries within a common framework.

In that respect the European Union has been very successful.

The principal challenges facing the European Union currently include the following:

1. The weakening of NATO caused by the lack of commitment to NATO from the current US administration , mean that the military underpinning of Europe is weakened.
2. On the climate front, while Europe, as a whole, has been much more serious than many other regions in taking effective action to mitigate the climate crisis, this is not enough. Also a Euro centric approach will never suffice to solve a global problem. The environmental crisis in many areas of the globe, along with other issues have also lead to an understandable desire of many people around the world to move to greener pastures. This in turn has led to a variety of pressures within relatively prosperous countries, the EU included.
3. The issues surrounding migration are a source of division within countries of the EU.

 

 

Jeffrey Glausiusz