Global Governance After 11^th September 2001

Professor Lord Desai

October 2001

The impact of the events of 11^th September 2001 are still being felt and will no doubt continue to be felt. At the moment, the long term implications are still open to a lot of uncertainty and in a situation like that it is legitimate to speculate. This is what I intend to do.

The World Before 11^th September 2001

It has been ten years since the collapse of the USSR led us into what George Bush senior called the 'New World Order'. During this decade, we have had the Gulf War and the Balkans as examples of international action in the name of the UN charter and human rights. Apartheid ended in South Africa and after a lot of pain, East Timor became independent. We also had the Rwandan genocide.

One outstanding characteristic of the New World Order was the existence of a single superpower, the USA. There were fears about the USA being isolationist or unilateralist. Events in Somalia, the bombing of Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998 were unilateral actions while the actions listed in the paragraph above were taken with a coalition of nations and some UN or other (NATO) legitimacy.

It is not clear, however, whether the international system worried more about US unilateralism or US isolationism. I think it was the latter. The world wanted the US to be engaged in its problems but within a UN framework if possible.

Through much of the Clinton Presidency, the US remained engaged – in the India-Pakistan dispute, in Northern Ireland, in the Sunrise Project of Kim Dae Jung and above all, in the Israel-Palestine dispute. In its final days, the Clinton Presidency came the closest anyone has come to a comprehensive settlement. Sadly it did not succeed.

Despite these efforts, the USA still attracted a lot of criticism, partly due to its being the sole superpower as such and partly because the different perceptions people have about these disputes, especially the Israel-Palistine issue.[1] This resentment was behind the first attempt to bomb the World Trade Centre in 1993. There was the tragedy of Lockerbie, the bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. These attacks emphasised the unique status of the USA – as a superpower it was held responsible for the situation in the Middle East.

The Bush Presidency seemed to increase fears about the unilateralism/isolation of the USA. In a series of policy moves – as the Kyoto Protocol, or biological warfare, the national missile defence and the associated abandonment of the ABM treaties, the Bush Presidency signalled a marked increase in unilateralism if not isolationism. This reflected in a much more acute sense than before the widespread feeling among the US citizens of their asymmetric relationship with the world. The world may need the USA but the USA did not need the world. The US policy was to be driven by US needs – for cheap energy, for security against rogue states with missile capability. The rise in fuel prices in September 2000 added some strength to the Bush campaign promise to allow exploration of oil in ecologically sensitive areas.

All this of course is irrelevant, at least for the time being. The events of 11^th September challenged and indeed changed every one of the assumptions on which the New World Order was based.

The World After 11^th Sepember 2001

The twin attacks on WTC and on the Pentagon did many things. They destroyed the US feeling of insularity from the outside world, the guarantee of Fortress America. Indeed, one can say that the myth of American invincibility was shaken. The attacks ended any chance of American isolation in the future.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, Americans, especially New Yorkers felt helpless and were surprised and grateful for support and sympathy from the outside world. The fact that the victims of the WTC attack were a mix of many nationalities was perhaps less surprising than the response of the world in a wave of sympathy sharing New York’s tragedy. Americans realised for the first time in many years that they needed the world as much as they had thought the world needed them.

The policy response of the Bush Presidency has been also qualitatively different from any that one could have predicted from previous behaviour. The response has been measured and deliberate. It has also been multilateral rather than unilateral. Compared to the Clinton Presidency’s response to the bombing of US embassies in Africa, the response of the Bush Presidency has been cautious and statesmanlike. This may be the end of US unilateralism for the foreseeable future.

A New ‘New War’

The attacks on the WTC and Pentagon have inaugurated a new type of war. It is a war not against states but against NGOs. We are far too much used to thinking of NGOs as peaceful, friendly helpful bodied. Many people characterise civil society and by extension global civil society as the benevolent institutions of the non governmental sector. But the Mafia is an NGO or INGO and so are Al Qaeda, Hizbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad [let us label them UNGOs (Undesirable NGOs)].

Perhaps one should make a distinction between formal and informal NGOs as one does between the formal and informal economy. For some time we have known that there is a dark side to globalisation – drug trafficking, money laundering, the armaments trade. All these generate large money flows which pass through the formal channels but are invisible at the origin and the destination. The many civil wars which are being fought around the world – New Wars as Mary Kaldor has called them – thrive on these three channels of drugs, black money and arms. These wars are conducted by liberation or nationalist movements which have a terrorist arm – the Tamil Tigers for instance. It is a continuum between these ‘large’ civil wars and the terrorist groups which are under suspicion in the 11^th September events.

Terrorism along with Aids and human trafficking has become an additional dimension of the dark side of globalisation. These are global phenomena both in their geographical reach and in their economic/political character. They are in some sense plants that have flourished with globalisation. Easy transfer of money, rapid transport of goods and people and the weakening, if not collapse of nation states in South Eastern / Eastern Europe, Sub Saharan Africa and Latin American have contributed to this flowering.

Thus it should not be surprising that the network against which the new ‘new war’ is to be waged is diffuse, non hierarchical (flat structures as in the new management paradigm) and financed by informal channels and largely cash based. Flexible exchange markets take all money changing out of official control. Donations can be collected in any currency around the world and converted in to dollars or pounds or Euro currencies.

Similarly there is non official non governmental armaments trade which can keep these groups supplied with whatever they need. In one sense, technical progress has reduced the relative price of lethal arms and so the financing of private armies is feasible. The supply of arms has also gone up since the end of the cold war largely due to the economic distress caused during the transition to a market economy in the former USSR.

The cluster of UNGOs which are currently the targets of the new war is like a global corporation providing a service via franchised units. There is a common corporate philosophy – anti Americanism and a common produce – damage and destruction to life and property. Unlike natural disasters, this is however a deliberate human construction.

The new war against the UNGOs will be covert, spread out and small scale. It will be long drawn out, intelligence intensive and multinational. It will be totally unlike the battle Smiley waged against Karla through the words of John Le Carre. Neither will it be like the adventures of James Bond. It is not High Noon either with the Sheriff gunning down the Baddies single handedly. It is closest to Elliott Ness and The Untouchables, the celebrated TV series of the 1950’s in which Federal Agents combated Prohibition related crime in Chicago. The only change is that it is not just Chicago but an unknowably large area. Even then let us remember that Al Capone was convicted on income tax evasion charges rather than any murder he may have been involved with.

Sleeping With the Enemy

This is not to be flippant but to bring out the difficulty of ‘winning the war against terrorism’. In a more local context, one could argue that the IRA has now survived 80 years since Irish Independence, taken a new form of the Provisional IRA since 1968 and spawned new forms since the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 – Real IRA, Continuity IRA etc. The British State has battled with the IRA and negotiated with it. More than three years since the Good Friday Agreement, the IRA-UK government relation is still not resolved but if anything there has been more accommodation and understanding than antagonism since negotiations began in secret during the Major government in mid 1990s. If the IRA does decommission (and it is more likely after 11 September that it may), there will still be its ‘illegitimate children’ – Real IRA etc to deal with.

Thus the new war against the set of UNGOs under suspicion will be not only long drawn out, multilateral and geographically wide ranging, but it will also have to run some negotiations in parallel with the hostilities. This will be difficult if not impossible to admit. But the question of Israel-Palestine relationship which went from the high hopes of Oslo to the despair of Camp David will have to be actively re-opened. It is obvious that at the root of this episode of terrorism is the Middle Eastern question. There are, as mentioned above, several facets to the Middle Eastern question besides Israel-Palestine. Three main facets have to do with Iran, Iraq and Libya. (The issue of Kurdistan is a separate issue which is not ‘alive’ at present.)

Of these three facets, Iran and Libya appear to be separate from the new war. This may change but diplomacy seems to be succeeding at present in neutralising them. Iraq remains a potential ‘second front’ in the war. However, the whole hearted co-operation, the US and its coalition partners obtained from Arab countries in the Gulf war may not be forthcoming this time. This is because the Gulf war arose from the aggression of one Arab nation – Iraq – against another – Kuwait. The Israel-Palestine question concerns all Arab nations.

Some of them are Kingdoms or Sultanates, others are republics. Some are authoritarian and others have democratic forms. But they are all sensitive to the grievances of Palestinians.

A Concert in Gaza

It is this solidarity of opinion across ‘Arabia’ which will compel negotiations in parallel with conflict. The negotiations will not be ‘with the terrorists’ as in the case of UK and IRA but it will have to engage with the grievances which have fuelled terrorism.

Thus the bigger impact of 11^th September may be felt in Jerusalem. Ever since its inception, the USA has backed Israel unflinchingly and unthinkingly. Israel became the first and last protégé of the USA. But with the USA having had its impregnability compromised, Israel may find itself exposed more than ever before.

The result will not be any military threat to Israel; the US will still protect it in that eventuality. But Israel will not be defended politically in all eventualities. We may see the inauguration of a new and long process of settlement of the Palestine question. This time the negotiations will be multilateral and international, with the EU and Russia playing a role along with the USA in the process. We have already seen the beginning of this process in the way in which Ariel Sharon had to reverse his ban on the meeting between Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat in the third week after 11^th September.

This internationalisation of the Palestine peace process should be seen as a welcome effect of 11^th September. The final, eventual result of the process would be a recognition of the rights of both Israel and Palestine to exist peacefully. It will be brought about not by a unilateral intervention on the part of the USA summoning the two parties to Camp David as has happened in the past, nor will it be by the intervention of a neutral country such as Norway. This time it will be through a full participation of the EU and Russia, with the tacit approval of China in the UN Security Council and the USA, along with the Arab countries plus Israel and the Palestine Authority.

Wind of Change

Thus the long term impact of 11^th September may be to improve the prospects of global governance. The asymmetry of one superpower (hyperpower as the French call it) dominating the Security Council P5 and the informal world leadership in G8 was always an obstacle to a multilateral, consensual framework for global governance. At least for the time being the UN is active and getting a lot of attention from the USA. If it is true that the USA will stop being unilateralist and isolationist, then the prospect for US-UN co-operation in creating institutions of global governance may last beyond the present crisis.

1. This was not the only ‘Middle-East’ issue. There were other centres of conflict such as Iraq, Iran and Libya vis-à-vis the USA.

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