After the Johannesburg summit: Now that neo-liberalism has lost its hegemonial status, how to deal with geopolitics?
06.11.2003: By Joachim H. Spangenberg
The Rio+10 World Summit for Sustainable Development WSSD is over, and the summit results have been met with mixed feelings. What did it actually achieve? Although very little was expected, a lot was at stake: according to the EU Environment Commissioner, the very concept of sustainable development as a new policy paradigm (Wallström 2002). Clearly, the summit fell short of meeting the World’s needs, let alone stand up to its official motto "People, Planet and Prosperity”. But - mostly unnoticed - it demonstrated the decline of neo-liberal politics, a major change in international politics, while at the same time raising the challenge of geopolitics. According to the World’s mightiest nation, no longer economic interest but its national interest should shape the New World order.
("another such victory, and I am lost!" King Pyrrhus after his victory over the early Roman empire) Most prominent in the public judgements about the World Summit on Sustainable Development is not the progress made regarding political or - more successful - scientific paradigms, but its deficits: a wide spectrum of non-binding agreements, many of them bound to turn out to be just window dressing, no monitoring by clear indicators except for the few clear commitments, uncritical overemphasising of free markets and economic instruments (which are regressive in their effect, i.e. lest effective on the richest people most in need to change their pattern of consumption, Spangenberg, Lorek 2002).
For all its merits (see below) it is rather obvious that the WSSD did not provide solutions to the World's most pressing problems. Peace and security were non-issues in the conference, the role of transnational corporations was discussed without any substantial result. No step forward beyond the existing agreements was achieved regarding development finance, debt forgiveness, climate protection, desertification, forest principles and biodiversity protection. Poverty in the North went mainly undiscussed, any no blueprint for a sustainability-oriented system of international institutions was developed. Altogether, the conference results do not satisfy the needs of global sustainable development, as the progress achieved on substance is ridiculed by the growing problems.
Nonetheless the concept of sustainable development still makes a difference; it has proven to be remarkably robust and able to mobilise international decision makers rallying to its support. First of all, although nobody was enthusiastically heading towards Johannesburg, many did not dare to come empty handedly. As a result, the year before the WSSD saw national and regional sustainability plans, business sustainability codes and sustainable development councils established at a pace unknown since the mid-1990s. This alone would have justified a (rather more limited) follow up conference, and given all the promises in the Plan of Implementation it is more a result of individual frustration than of political insight to call for an end to big scale conferences now, dismissing their important function for policy implementation out of hand.
In the conference itself, the integration of three dimension (although neglecting the fourth dimension, the institutional one, and reducing the economic one to growth promotion) reached a quality so far unseen in international negotiations. It even went well beyond the level in most member countries, a striking phenomenon known from the EU’s environmental integration process (Hinterberger et al. 1998, Schepelmann 1999, Spangenberg 2002). Given the real and imagined trade-offs between the three dimensions, the sustainability discourse is the place where they are dealt with - and that is precisely the core issue of politics, moderating interests and managing trade offs, which cannot be solved as long as one dimension - i.e. economic interests dominate the whole of the agenda as under the neoliberal paradigm. Markets and technology create options; politics has to limit the implementation of some while stimulating others, e.g. by defining targets.
The over 30 targets agreed provide a tool to judge governments' seriousness in keeping their promises to the World; once implemented, most of these promises would significantly improve the situation of the World’s poorest. The fact that many of the commitments were already included in the UN Millennium Declaration does not diminish the success, as the USA together with a number of other countries fought against many of those targets, despite the fact that they had been signed by all of them (for the USA, by the Clinton administration). Generally, although still worth the effort to get them, the half-life of US promises was considered to be rather short. This may be due to the fact that as Jeffrey Sachs points out "America’s government is not even aware of the gap between its commitments and action, because almost nobody in authority understands the actions that would be needed to meet the commitments” (Sachs 2002).
The conference managed to develop instructive statements regarding new themes which had developed or risen in prominence since 1992, including the need to bridge the digital divide, to combat AIDS, and to guarantee equal benefit sharing from a more socially and environmentally responsible pattern of globalisation. Although the views expressed went without binding commitments from any side, they provide a platform for future common action of countries willing to do so - provided the political will is there. The mentioning of corporate accountability and responsibility will not by itself provoke any changes, but could as well be the starting point for future political and legislative action.
The prospect for this is not all bleak, as neo-liberalism although not simply fading away has at least lost its hegemonial status concerning actual politics: while in Rio its effects were already tangible even before it became prominent in the public debate, now its decline has started with similarly little public attention devoted to it. The latter is no real surprise, since neo-liberal thinking is still dominating in the ideological domain and used as a legitimation for all kinds of politics, with broad resonance even amongst those most affected. So e.g. a homeless people’s journal distributed at the WSSD accused the South-African government to deprive them of income opportunities by introducing minimum wages and workers rights: "Although it isn’t ideal, when one’s competitive advantage is one’s willingness to work for less pay then it’s grim to have this option taken away by sector-wide pay agreements or by laws that discourage [firing and thus] hiring.” (Anonymous 2002). The enduring intellectual hegemony will still win neo-liberalism a number of victories, adding to the imprint it has already had on the World, but hegemonic it is no longer.
Defeating neo-liberalism was possible whenever the traditional North-South divide was overcome and replaced by co-operation of the EU and the G77/China, as for a number of issues (by far not for all) both were determined to pursue multilateral solutions to global problems, and to have a conference successfully producing at least some commitments concerning global development problems. In her self-perception, the EU was the only actor dedicated to implement an ambitious concept of sustainable development during the summit (Wallström 2002), while the USA was the main obstacle to progress. However, despite the hard fights on and behind the screen as well as in the media, the US support for the primacy of market deregulation over political regulation or even re-regulation was more rhetoric and rather lukewarm, while geopolitics and the war against terror were taking precedence. The result was a growing unwillingness of the USA to champion American values including the neo-liberal paradigm with the enthusiasm known from earlier conferences: when they joined Cuba in objecting a reference to "democracy” in the draft document, sources said the US’s objection stemmed from concern that it might offend the countries allies in the campaign against terrorism. "Politics makes strange bedfellows” the media commented this tribute to the values of the alliance of civilised countries. In this climate, neo-liberal arguments served more to justify politically determined strategies than vice versa, turning the paradigm’s priorities upside down. To avoid any misunderstanding: it was neither the good scientific arguments available nor the undeniable public pressure which succeeded in toppling neo-liberalism from its hegemonial position; it was the erosion of political support with the USA, its former stronghold, now favouring geopolitical dominance strategies to the neo-liberal competition of equals. To a certain degree, this reflects a change of priorities in domestic politics: as the Economist puts it "There was a time when conservative Washington was full of Adam Smith enthusiasts who solemnly intoned that good government must promote competition, not hand out favours to cronies. [..] Now the talk is of commerce, not competition.” (The Economist 2002c) And in politics, one may add, the talk is about power and spheres of influence. Politics is no longer considered superfluous, and the struggle now is which politics are considered desirable - still an uphill battle for sustainable development.
Although if the promises made in Johannesburg are kept indeed something has been achieved, the speed of progress is easily dwarfed by speed of problem growth. So if the summit results are just one first step on an accelerating journey, they are helpful. However, if they are perceived as signalling that everything is on the right track, and that minor modifications of lifestyles and consumption patterns (if any are necessary at all) will do the job to solve the sustainability problems, it would indeed be a Pyrrhic victory. And if the celebrations of the victory over neo-liberalism would blind the eye for the fact that it did not collapse leaving a vacuum, but was rather replaced by a new (or at least updated) paradigm of geopolitics, and the difficulties this implies for sustainability policies, it would have been a Pyrrhic victory as well. European officials already expressed hope for "a renewed consensus for joint regulatory efforts between the EU and the US, as the self-regulation approach gradually becomes less popular in the US, and government oversight becomes less of an anathema” (Kyriakou 2002). Such a perspective - true as it may be in specific cases - systematically overlooks that the new paradigm that has emerged to replace neo-liberalism is not one of shared global responsibilities and a value-based foreign politics (an approach ex-president Jimmy Carter just won the Nobel Peace Price for), but one of rather unashamed pursuit of national interest. This attitude promises little prospect for joint action as long as such action involves negotiations and compromises amongst equal partners. The new claim for leadership instead includes not only the willingness to lead, but also the demand to other to be ready to be lead in a direction determined by the leader. Details can be negotiated, but not the basics, a position marking a significant change to the 1990s concept of "partnership in leadership”.
Change however means risk as well as opportunity: plans for a New World order are on the drawing board, but have not put in place yet, and in no way in a coherent manner. It is still time - high time, admittedly - to work on alternatives.
The United States as the only remaining superpower feels more than ever entitled to define the international agenda according to her own interests, and to act unilaterally whenever international support for her position is missing. The USA feels strong enough not to be dependant on anybody’s support, to "go it alone” whenever the administration decides it is right for them to do so. A concept of power and rule has emerged or to some degree resurfaced, shaping an imagination of the future World order neither based on deregulation and lean government nor on collective and cooperative framework setting, but on the dominance of big governments biggest stick: weapons. This is not by mere coincidence: Economically, the economy stumbles and the shaky basis of past record performances has now become obvious, and the future looks bright only to those who still have not faced the economic reality. Politically, the USA has been reduced to the role of a most important, but not all-dominant or hegemonial power; the WSSD summit demonstrated the limits to US power, whether going it alone or with the Anglo-Saxon and OPEC allies. On the other hand, it is the ability to wage war where America is indeed far ahead of the rest of the World. The US spends 340 bio $ on defence, and including all related activities like intelligence and home defence even more, up to 55% of its national budget. These figures are bound to rise to 365 bio $ in 2003 and to 440 bio $ by 2007. To compare, the total EU expenditures are less than 40% of this, a still enormous total of 130 bio $ (Pally 2002), and the US ODA in 2002 was 9.95 bio $, i.e. 1/35 of the official military expenditure (Rose 2002). Based on this unprecedented level of military strength, the political priorities are back to geopolitics, but this time - rather convenient - with a self-defined enemy. Can sustainable development survive in such a political climate? A recent German expert poll for the HypoVereinsbank indicate otherwise: 79% agree that "geopolitics is gaining more influence”, and as a consequence 71% expect that "biased interests will prevent sustainable development in the next 15 years, although 70% foresee that "there will be severe international crises changing the World economic system”. (ECC 2001).
"While in Japan the ministry for industry and trade MITI has long recognised that - even without the pressure of a strong green movement the shift to green products must be promoted now in order to be competitive on the markets of the new century, and while in Europe the private sector has gained similar insights and begins to involve representatives of the environmental movement into "partnerships” [..], such a discourse is absent in the USA. This situation, combined with the current economic crisis makes the self-appointed global leader unable to act - in the post cold war era it is no longer sufficient to gain identity from enemies to fight and to praise the American way of life as a role model for the World. Economically troubled, politically unable to get their way and [..] faced with the insight that the global military capability assumed after the Gulf war has rather narrow limits, the USA have retreated into an intellectual isolation that makes the insight in the changing international situation impossible. […] Bush, the Texan oil millionaire defended the wasteful use of energy as a part of the US identity [while] the US inability to pay was dressed as unwillingness.” (Spangenberg 1992)
Ten years later, with even further improved military capabilities and inspired by the victory against an enemy as challenging as the Taliban the same people in their intellectual isolation from the World came to the conclusion that the military option is a viable one these days. As Maurice Strong, Secretary General of the 1992 UNCED conference said: "Not all fossils are in the fuels”.
One essential element of the sustainable performance of a nation is the necessity for it to accept the responsibility for the effects of what it does to the World beyond its borders (even if we often do not know what the effects are, as we” throw stones further than we can look”). Responsibility is measured not by national standards, but by standards of the common good, of "our common future”. As sustainability is unavoidably a global paradigm due to the global character of the environmental, social and economic problems it deals with, the obligation is one of mutually respecting all others’ positions, expressed in Rio 1992 as the "common but differentiated responsibility”. Differentiated this responsibility is according to the respective contribution to the emergence of problems, and to the capability to solve them. Such a kind of common obligation is usually codified by contracts, and if many nations are affected (as is necessarily the case with sustainability problems), by international conventions. Voluntary gatherings of nations, agreeing on rules to bind every participant are expressing and constituting the will of nations to define a legal basis for living together as equals under the law. This is as close to Rousseau’s "volonte general” determining the "contrat social” (Rousseau 1762) as any agreement between nations can come: multilateralism is the equivalent of democracy on the international level.
However, the United States do not share this equity-based philosophical and ethical point of view. In a moral sense, the government feels to be the protector and promoter of a superior value system represented by the USA and applicable to every World citizen, like it or not. But what kind of system is this ? Are its results so uniquely convincing that the assumption everybody would go for it has at least a certain plausibility ? From a European perspective, hardly so. In continental Europe, the poverty rate is well below 10%, half as high as in the Anglo-Saxon countries (if measured according to international standards). When falling into poverty, public transfers help to limit its duration to an average below one year. The income distribution is more balanced, so e.g. in Germany 37,8% of all income go to the top 20% of earners, and 9,1% to the bottom 20% as compared to 50,4% and 4,2% respectively in the USA (empirical studies found no correlation of income disparities and economic dynamic, to answer the question before it has been asked). The income fluctuation is lower, making life and retirement planning more reliable, and the social mobility is higher in Europe: five years after having been found in low paid jobs, in the USA 35% were still in this position, against only 10% in Europe (Alber 2002). The weekly working hours are less, holidays are longer and pension comes earlier: little wonder then that around the World and in Europe in particular the desire for the US model is rather limited when compared to its European counter piece, with the public support in Europe around 90% in the population at large.
Another side effect of this social system is worth to mention in this context: a high level of social security provides the basis for a high level of public safety with limited state intervention. While the number of prisoners rather stagnated in Europe, in the USA it rose from 196,000 to 1.2 million from 1970 to 1997 without significantly decreasing the criminality rate. The US system includes a massive use of police and other security institutions in order to protect the social order. Again, this attitude is not restricted to the domestic sphere, but projected outside the USA justifying the use of military strength not only against criminals but against all "enemies” of the US order. Legal obstacles, be it international conventions or even the US constitution (military courts without lawyers, detention of suspects without proof, etc.) are ignored when the enemy hunt is on. Disobedience then justifies unilateral or selective partnership actions (in true Orwellian manner declared to be support, as the war against Iraq now under preparation has been declared a step to peace for the Middle East) even against the will of those affected. The Soviet Union followed a similar line of reasoning when proving "brotherly help” to Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, enforcing the "Breshniew doctrine” and the "limited sovereignity” it granted its allies. The USA complements a similar attitude of all other countries’ limited sovereignity (obvious e.g. when it tried to pressure the EU to accept Turkey as a new member for geopolitical reasons, rather harshly rejected by European leaders in Copenhagen in December 2002) with a claim of "global sovereignity”. This includes the singular right to intervene at any place or time according to the own assessment of necessity or suitability, the right to (re-)define international codes of conduct. Institutional and legal arrangements (including defining alliances of the "good” and enemies which are just "bad”, "evil” or at best "rouge”), defining normality and crisis, and deciding on the use of force (including "power projection” by nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries. As in World War II, the Japanese might add).
Besides the principle of limited sovereignity this attitude promotes the use of US law on the international scale to replace international law (the Helms-Burton legislation being one extreme case, and the bilateral contracts to undermine the international criminal court a more recent one). One precondition for establishing US law as a global standard, but also a policy objective in its own right is the drive to downgrade or end international legal obligations by multilateral agreements (including peace, environment, population and human rights issues, but also the WTO), and by weakening international institutions and regimes including military alliances and economic partners.
Much of the moral legitimation is gained from ideology of "Manifest Destiny" , claiming that the USA as a most honourable country will anyway always do what is "right”, and real politics compromises needed in international coalitions should make it easier to implement what needs to be done in this sense, but must not change it substantially (Deller 2002). The pursue of such "right goals" also justifies the adjustment of ethical and political standards in their service: Pakistan had been sidelined for its obvious breach of the global nuclear non-proliferation principle strongly supported by the USA, but was welcomed as a friend when it joined the "war against terror". Israel stockpiles nuclear, biological and chemical weapons enough to be a prominent member of any "axis of evil”. It exports missile components including US technology without sanctions to countries such as China, whereas North Korea for the same "misbehaviour” (although based on less sophisticated technology) was a target for economic and political sanctions. On the other hand, its newly admitted nuclear capability is to be dealt with diplomatically (a clear incentive to go for the bomb). As opposed to this, Iraq has neither nuclear weapons nor long-range ballistic missiles, and - unlike the USA itself - it has not trained and equipped terrorists, but is demonised as a threat to World security. Only a new government can help, the story goes, one that would invite US investment in the oil industry and open up oil supply enough to undermine the OPEC cartel (The Economist 2002a) - a reason to hurry since Saddam is selling out oil and prospecting rights to non-US oil companies. However, the USA is no warmonger - she prefers transforming other peoples into good Americans than going to war against them, wishing they prefer the benevolent rule (Wolfowitz) of "an attractive empire” (Max Boot) to military defeat.
None of this reflects an attitude which is coherently following a specific political strategy, economic interest or ethical standard, except for the (often ill-defined) self-interest of the United States. However, the argument goes under the destiny believers, what is good for the USA and helps spread her influence also spreads her values, so whatever they do for this behalf is good for mankind, may they like it or not. With this truly Orwellian legitimisation, hegemonic "globalisations wars" turn into "liberation wars", and what in the context of World War II was called "aggressive war” Nazi and Japanese leaders were held to account for at the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials turns into a peace saving "pre-emptive war”, as the US peace camp points out (Krieger 2002a). Compromises or legal obligations other than those based on the self-interest are perceived as a betrayal of American and thus universal values. This moral attitude provides the legitimation for a new era of geopolitics (or neo-imperialism), establishing the precedence of politics over the economic.
As opposed to this claim for monopoly in defining what is good for the World, sustainability is an inclusive concept, including not only nations around the globe but as well their civil societies (generations to come are included as well, but usually physically absent in meetings). So sustainability conferences since Rio 1992 rightfully include major groups’ representatives in numbers and intensities unknown to other international negotiations. Given this inclusiveness as a necessary precondition for sustainable development makes multilateralism and participation mandatory conditions as no single power - however benevolent its politics may be - will ever be able to unilaterally involve all other countries and their civil societies into a common effort for sustainable development according to the one country’s terms. Consequently, although sustainable development policies must be implemented in each country in a specific way, the only guarantee that the policies pursued are mutually supportive for the common good of humankind and not producing unnecessary trade-offs are international negotiations and agreements, getting as many nations as possible on board to avoid free rider effects.
This obviously includes the necessity to transfer parts of the national sovereignity to international institutions: any legal system demands giving up individual options for greater gains under a shared framework (e.g. individual revenge versus relative safety and legal punishment). So admittedly under a binding sustainability paradigm no nation is free to act at will, but bound to act within the framework of shared principles, dedicated not to national, but to global interests and universal standards. One example are the signatories to the UN Charter, which rules out military attacks against other nations (except in case of self defence, and until the UN takes over with multilateral action) - a principle effectively suppressed during the Cold War, but being the reason for a great many of positive expectations after the falling of the wall in the early 1990s. Today this basic principle is no longer suppressed, but denied by the USA, resulting in a destabilisation of international relations, exactly the opposite of what the United Nations were founded for.
Another example are the signatories to the Geneva Conventions which make human rights obligatory regardless whether in a specific situation a country likes it or not. The need to accept such restrictions is relatively easy understood in countries where the vulnerability to the global political, economic and environmental systems is rather obvious. It seems to be much harder to grasp in a nation where the mutual dependency (the inability to solve ones own problems without the help of others) is neither visible at first glance nor an issue of the public debate like the USA. Nonetheless it exists: environmentally, economically and politically.
Responsibility and the mutual taking of hostages
Environmentally: Coal-fired power plants in China and CFC production in India, or unsustainable forestry in Brazil, Congo or Indonesia will affect the US Midwest farmer as much as his/her energy and material consumption (or, similarly, the European city dwellers mobility pattern) will affect climate, monsoon and thus the nutritional base of billions of citizens in the aforementioned countries. Responsibility means to take these distant effects into account when developing and implementing policy strategies.
Economically: As the recent downturn has shown, an economic crisis in the USA immediately affects the state of the economy in the export-dependant nations of South-East Asia and the Europeans economically tied to the US market. In return, a slowing of their economies decreases the demand for US products and thus further deepens the US economic problems. Share markets are rather synchronised, they rise and fall together all over the World, intensifying this effect.
Socially: When the economic conditions are bad, salaries are under pressure, and the international competition causes a spill-over effect here as well: for competitiveness reasons, when labour income is stagnant or even declining in the US, there is a high pressure on all competitors to follow suit, which in turn enhances the pressure on US salaries.
Since all over the World the increasing and accelerating globalisation has made people increasingly aware of this situation of mutual dpendency, the public mind in the USA and in the rest of the World seems to be more distant than ever, making a mutual understanding increasingly difficult. Similarly, the supremacy of national over the international legislation, sometimes demanded by respected US Congress and Senate members appears absurd to any European citizen experienced in dealing with the supra-national law of the European Union, but may sound more appealing to citizens of a country unaware of these international regimes. However, such claims do not only sound absurd, they are contradictions in terms: today, due to the multitude of existing feedback mechanisms, putting national interest before the common one is against the national interest, at least in the medium to long run.
The USA does not share this point of view. For all her merits in sponsoring the founding of the United Nations and the worldwide respect for the universal human rights she has nonetheless always held a mixed attitude towards binding international agreements. Based on a rather traditional and now dominant perception international law is perceived as an obstacle for the USA to act to will and to realise their national interests. This was already the kind of arguments which led the USA to not join the League of Nations, and more recently many human rights, peace and environmental agreements and conventions were not or not fully ratified. Examples include the conventions, manifestoes and declarations against torture, for children's rights, against discrimination of women, for the International Criminal Court (maybe for good reasons: a head of state ordering an pre-emptive strike using weapons of mass destruction would rather sure be a case for the Court), against small weapons export and land mines, for bioweapon control, against climate change (Kyoto), for human rights (Durban).
This attitude was criticised as isolationism in the past, a tendency still existing amongst the US conservatives, but not decisive for the current government. Within the Bush administration, the global role they cannot avoid to play is broadly accepted, but despite the differing emphasis expressed by the "hawks" and the (rather hawkish) "doves" of the administration, the rules of this international involvement have been redefined: the USA claims a self-ascribed special role in "putting the World to order” while pursuing their geopolitical interest. Global economic interests, a moral justification of national supremacy projecting the hidden but still vibrant apartheid attitude of Southern Conservatives to the outside World and a feeling of strength (no longer of being invulnerable) combine to an attitude not to act as one nation amongst equals. It is against this background that Henry Kissinger could call Sept. 11th 2001 a tragedy which can become an opportunity.
strengthening the military potential of the USA to be able to attack and conquer countries worldwide, replace their governments and make sure that no other power can ever rival the US military strength as the Soviet Union did. Preemptive and preventive wars are means to enforce this dedication, and the destabilisation always inherent to preventive violence is not considered a reason to worry as long as the military superiority is unchallenged.
securing access to additional resources, in particular to oil reserves not as a mere economic issue, but as a strategic objective, again underlining the primacy of political over economic concerns as the access to oil is not secured via a strong market position, but through military presence and spheres of influence in the oil producing regions of Near East, Central Asia and more recently Africa.
the "war against terror”, extended to include potentially all states owning weapons of mass destruction or potentially capable of assembling them (which covers about 90% of all industrialised countries and half of the South as far as bio-weapons, the "poor mans bombs”, are included). Based on the unrivalled military strength this should help to enforce the American model on all those so far resistant (considered an act of liberation).
These three objectives are deeply intertwined and mutually support each other. Although initially emerging from rather unconnected discourses, they have by now been galvanised into what can be considered the new definition of the strategic political interests of the USA. These are no abstract and theoretical concepts, they emerge and develop based on day-to-day politics: Around Afghanistan, the new friendships and military bases in Central Asian strengthen the US influence in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and their neighbouring states (including some of the most rude dictatorships in the World) in the competition for oil exploration licences in the second-richest oil area of the World. Another gulf war would definitively increase the oil prices significantly - an economic challenge to the US economy which imports 10% of its oil supply from the region, but a serious threat to its economic competitors: of Europe’s oil imports, 40% are from the Arab world, and for Japan it is about 70%. After the war, a new US friendly regime would take over, and after the decade-long economic boycott which brought Iraq down from a modern welfare state to the level of a developing country nobody could deny the country the need to massively increase its income by raising its oil exports to the capacity maximum . As Iraq has the second highest oil capacities in the World, topped only by Saudi-Arabia, this would reduce the role of the Saudis (considered an unreliable partner after so many Saudis were involved in Bin Laden’s network, and following the Newsweek campaign against the Saudi ambassador) and it might help to blow up the whole of the OPEC cartel, leading to lower oil prices on a global scale (The Economist 2002a). The US support for the failed coup in oil-rich Venezuela and its newly emerging interest in Western Africa (including a military base planned in Sao Tome and Principe, The Economist 2002b) are just footnotes to this story.
Sustainable development and geopolitics are based on incomprehensible cultural orientations, providing for a common denominator as a basis for joint politics of representatives of both attitudes only in a rare minority of cases, as the above explanations have illustrated. Consequently, for most of the day-to-day business and even more for the strategic orientation, a choice has to be made between the two cultures. As the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation from California points out: "The world is definitely experiencing a clash of cultures, but not along the fault lines of civilisations as Samuel Huntington has suggested. The opposing cultural trends that are most dominant are between [..] powerful individuals, corporations and the states that provide a haven for them and those who define the world in terms of shared rights and responsibilities for life and future generations” (Krieger 2002b).
Sustainability as explained besides safeguarding the environment, providing a decent standard of living and enhancing the economic capabilities to satisfy peoples needs has a specific institutional dimension, calling for an equitable model of global governance. This includes acknowledging international and intergenerational responsibility, inclusiveness within and between states, peaceful problem solving and conflict prevention, and binding, multilaterally agreed standards. The USA, at least for the time being, follows a different approach, not only regarding the use of military means for political purposes. Despite its emphasis on military means (from space based missile defence via the option of pre-emptive wars to the first-use of nuclear weapons), the US government has a broad set of tools at hand to push through their perceived national interest: financial support, trade and credit conditionalities, trade boycotts vs. preferential treatment, and finally their influence in the Bretton Woods institutions.
Furthermore the USA is not (and was not in Johannesburg) acting unilaterally: they chose changing partners in a kind of "multilateralism á la carte” in all policy areas (trade, environment, military, criminal prosecution, …), while rejecting all "omnilateralism”, i.e. all globally binding agreements based on compromise instead of self-defined national interest. This attitude, however, undermines global governance structures as a whole (including the economic governance mechanisms of the Bretton Woods institutions and the formerly so strongly endorsed Washington Consensus), including the existing political and military alliances by devaluing membership. Members are no longer granted any special and reliable rights in return for their membership commitments, as Tony Blair’s desperate and rather fruitless efforts to influence the US position on the "War against Terror” illustrate. As a neglected (or at least ill-considered) "collateral damage” this weakens coalitions by depriving them of their meaning and thus devaluates them as a policy tool for the coalition leader, the USA, further reducing its international political strength. While perceived as a sign of strength, in fact the bilateralisation of international relations is a sign of weakness, indicating that the "hyperpower” feels superior to every individual partner but not capable of steering broader networks according to its own will. The USA has given up to strive for hegemony by leadership, as this includes small scale compromises as the price for determining the large scale direction. Instead she strives for a hegemony by coercion, thus reducing the outreach of her political influence by sidelining and/or alienating important allies (Rilling 2002). The resulting polarisation enforces choices, and may in the end lead to ever greater isolation of the USA (and of her friends and allies on the national political stage in other countries). Driven by the sole focus on economic strength, with a rather vulnerable economy dependant on foreign finance and neglecting the need for political leadership this strategy is rather obviously counterproductive and tends to concentrate US influence in those places and on those periods affected by US "power projection”, but undermining it everywhere else . "Summit leaves USA standing alone - Britain and EU side with developing nations” (Sunday Times 2002) might then become more than occasional news.
Mutual dependency is a fact, not an option which might be avoided; our interconnect ness on the planet is one dominating truth of the 21st century. Consequently, solutions to global problems need multilateral co-operation based, emanating from a concept of security not derived from military thinking, but replacing this wide-spread attitude by a more up to date one, focussed on the prevailing threats to mankind and resulting in a concept of security through sustainability. Such a policy approach is no basis for a competition amongst equals with the USA, based upon similar aspirations but different beneficiaries, but it provides a system alternative. Important elements of such new horizontal, i.e. non-hierarchical system of global governance are equity based partnerships for sustainable development, the acknowledgement of mutual but differentiated responsibilities, economic and scientific co-operation, peaceful conflict prevention and conflict settlement, rule of the law, participation and democracy, i.e. the whole set of civil and social rights, labour rights and environmental rights and obligations enshrined in the UN constitution, the declaration of human rights, the ILO conventions and the Multilateral Environmental Agreements. It must build coalitions to establish a system of co-operation open for anybody to join in, also for those now opposed to it (with administrations, attitudes may change).
Shared responsibilities in a concept of sustainable development refer to the institutional setting and to the substance of political decision making. They include:
Social responsibility as those covered by the ILO conventions, poverty eradication, equal opportunities and codes of behaviour for domestic and foreign investors. Other elements of social responsibility can be found in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, and even more in Agenda 21.
Environmental responsibility has been codified by a number of conventions, but not harmonised by an effective coordination of their secretariats of even by joining forces in a World Environment Organisation. Enforcement mechanisms like those for the Montreal protocol on substances depleting the ozone layer are missing in most of the conventions and should be accepted as a part of the responsibility approach.
Economic responsibility is still rather undiscussed; it must include but go far beyond conventions on corporate accountability. Reducing economic volatility, stabilising exchange rates against speculation (e.g. by a Tobin tax as demanded by the international attac movement) and safeguarding against diminishing returns from primary resource production in order to minimize the need to ever-increasing extraction volumes are some open questions regarding economic responsibility. The fact that economic criteria and interest remain vague is one of the reasons why in any valuing against environmental and social criteria they can never be overruled: they are not explicit at all, and a definition of "economic sustainability” does not exist.
The most important pillar of a governance structure based on reciprocal obligations and multilateral agreements capable of establishing such responsibility based governance structures is obviously a strengthened the UN system. It must be empowered to do what it truly can do: organise a global response to global challenges, including poverty, hunger, disease control, lack of schooling, environmental destruction and armed conflicts. This refers to using it as a conflict solution mechanism (not only the security council, but the UN system as a whole), and by providing it with more effective governance structures (for instance a World Environment Organisation, and a World Trade Organisation brought back under the auspices of the United Nations).
Political leadership should rest with the UN, as an institution not only legitimised but also well capable of providing it (UN agencies have far more expertise and hands-on experience than any other organisations in the World), and the member states should contribute to this capability according to their shared but differentiated responsibilities. Affluent countries or regions like the European Union could and should help to strengthen the UN system and immunise it against financial blackmailing. This could be achieved e.g. by a guarantee fond giving security to the smooth continuation of UN operations in case one or more of its members are not in a position to pay their membership duties, for economic, political or other reasons. As it would cover actual deficits, not outstanding debt, and as delayed payment would be used to replenish its accounts, the financial volume involved would not be prohibitive. In particular if non-compliance with payment rules would result in a loss of voting rights, there would be a strong incentive against abusing the fond to quit payments. Politically, the mere existence of such a fond would make economic pressurising of the system illusory and thus probably prevent attempts to do so, which in return would reduce the financial demands of the fond. For rich countries like the EU, the total volume of such a fond would be a neglectable sum, but for the UN it would make a hell of a difference.
Once the financial situation is secured beyond doubt, the UN would be in a position to effectively work on implementation schemes for the major development goals; Sachs (2002) calls this a "Global framework of Action”. These plans should outline in rough terms, but with financial contributions and time tables attached the specific contributions demanded from affluent and poor countries, from civil society and from the much-praised business partnerships in a transparent manner. Regular reporting of the contributions received and the progress achieved would help to name and shame those not participating properly, to assess progress made and to refocus the activities for the benefit of maximum effect whenever appropriate. With financial blackmailing impossible, the UN and its sub-organisations would not only be more effective in implementing global social and environmental objectives, they could also make headway concerning their basic task of conflict management: UN peace keeping troops are indispensable not only in Cyprus, Palestine, East Timor, former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, they are also the best hope for other conflicts. The US threat of withholding its support is of minor concern, as of 45,000 UN peace keepers world wide only 700 (less than 2%) are US citizens, while 7,000 or 17% are from the EU and ¾ from non-OECD countries. This minor contribution to multilateral peace efforts can be substituted by others, in particular if this is needed to make the World Criminal Court effective.
A second road to developing equitable global governance structures while confronted with the boycott of influential nations uses the opportunities from like minded countries initiatives, based on voluntary agreements. As the Kyoto protocol on climate change has shown despite its extraordinarily high hurdles, individual resistance can be overcome for the benefit of the common good (which cannot be defined by one country), and in an open network this kind of front riders can be well accommodated. This way, progress towards sustainable development can be accelerated by "coalitions of the willing”, like it happened not only with the Kyoto Protocol, but also during the Durban UN Human Rights Conference which successfully concluded its work after the US and some of its close allies had left the negotiating tables. Such "like minded countries initiatives” could be useful to produce progress where full consensus cannot be reached (yet).
A third means of strengthening the multilateral approach is the appropriate use of voting rights in the international monetary and trade institutions. In none of those, the USA holds a majority, but her influence is beyond proportion: debunking the Bretton Woods system and adapting the "rules of the game” to sustainability objectives is a question of political will and the readiness to accept political conflicts with economic interests domestically and with the USA. So in 2002 the German Development Cooperation minister managed to postpone a World Bank decision on funding logging projects in tropical forests - with more initiatives like this one, a set of new rules could be introduced to the international casino, overcoming the short-sighted neo-liberal thrive towards general deregulation, instead shaping globalisation in an environmentally and socially benign way, including re-regulation and political frameworks for trade as appropriate.
If such a strategy is pursued in the international level, some states will feel tempted to make selective choices on a case by case basis, instead of deciding for one or the other option. This is legitimate, and it causes no real problem as long as they respect the basic principle of reciprocity on which a network structure must be based. This given, the network is no closed shop but open for all to participate on the basis of equal rights and opportunities - in the end also for the USA once they have realised that there is no other way to go, that multilateralism is the best way to safeguard the national interest.
Since a rather long time, the European Union has emerged as a key challenger to the global US dominance, mainly in the economic sphere. The creation of a common market in Europe was included the attempt to reduce the dependency on foreign relations by deepened European integration, the Schengen agreement on the free move of people complements the free move of capital and goods creating one integrated economy, and the Euro as a common currency is a challenge to the monopoly of the US Dollar as world trade and reserve currency. EU foreign politics includes enlargement to the East, closer economic collaboration with the Mediterranean countries and special relations to the former colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific region (ACP-countries) - all of this has elements of creating a specific world trade area which follows other rules than those of the WTO, or at least allows for modifications of these rules. This contributes to the establishment of different spheres of influence; from a sustainability point of view they make sense as not two structurally similar spheres of dominance with different hegemons in charge, but spheres of different cultures, offering an equity-based partnership to those who want to join the EU-supported network governance system. Championing this different approach is in the genuine interest of the EU as her most significant successes are in the field of economic and social integration, within the Union but also in its relations to its external partners. Participatory democracy, social balance, poverty eradication and open (but not necessarily unregulated) markets are excellent preconditions for such economic integration processes. They provide the basis for further economic collaboration, and thus a significant benefit to the EU itself (Ruf 2002). It is exactly these achievements, plus the identity of the Union which are at stake when new members are accepted, making a common legal system (the ‘aquis communitaire’) and comparable social institutions and economic achievements a precondition for joining into the existing semi-state and sharing votes in its parliament and administration. Thus the US pressure to invite Turkey as a full member was perceived by the European press as expression of a "colonial attitude”, as bowing to this pressure would have meant to accept limited sovereignity and to undermine the very basics of the EU as such. Was that the intention of the US pressure (which for Turkey ended up in a situation worse than before, being told that "attempts to push Europe around will not help accession”), or was it just US ignorance regarding the character of the Union ? Maybe both, but there are strong indications of a complete lack of understanding the character and functioning of the European Union to be found in Washington. So e.g. when Max Boot of the Council of Foreign Affairs accuses the EU of having failed to admit the Central European countries immediately after 1990 (Boot 2002), he simply overlooks that this would not only have required a complete change of the legal character of the EU as a region with on common legislation, administration and jurisdiction, but as well would have meant the total economic collapse of those countries when being right away integrated into an economic sphere with much higher productivity. This would have meant a decades-long economic crisis for them, as for Turkey if accepted right away, as the example of Eastern Germany and the still unfinished unification process have demonstrated. Boot’s conclusion that the USA has to "act as the grown-up” by leading Europe through the NATO will not end with American leadership, but with the complete devaluation of the NATO: the public opinion all over Europe does not accept such leadership, and no politician heading for re-election can ignore this. The USA is too weak to enforce hegemony by coercion on Europe, and has not yet realised the ‘collateral damage’ caused every time she tries to do so.
Economic strength results in political influence - although the political weight of Europe is still underdeveloped as a result of ineffectively coordinated for common foreign policies (although about ¾ of the EU electorate support having European instead of national foreign politics), and it is underrated due to the inertia of perception, in the USA, in the South and even in Europe itself. However, given its real weight Europe can no longer hide behind the USA when defining its interest - it is too big, and the cultural attitudes and functional interests are too divergent. Europe’s interest lies in peaceful, mutually beneficial collaboration with partners around the World, not in the thrive for political dominance. The history of national colonial empires, endless conflicts and finally European unification in peace and affluence has provided a wealth of lessons in this respect.
As history lessons, cultural attitudes, political and economic interests point into the same direction, together they represent is a strong incentive for Europe to play a more active part in World politics, and not to be absorbed by the problems its internal development (extension, constitutional reform, etc.) will surely cause. For this behalf Europe needs to define its own role, and if neither ignoring the responsibility emanating from its economic weight nor willing repeat the mistakes of earlier imperialistic phases of its history, its remaining choice is to act as a world leader in fair partnership.
This includes (Ruf 2002) developing an alternative, pro-active, civil and co-operation based European foreign politics which replaces the concept of security based on military thinking by one based on avoiding and preventing economic, social and environmental threats, emphasises pre-emptive domestic and if necessary collaborative political problem solving instead of foreign intervention, and leaves military power as the instrument of last resort to the United Nations. It should also involve regular reporting on the European contribution to the implementation of international development goals the European Union has subscribed to like the WSSD Plan of Implementation, the United Nations Millennium Goals or the goals of Agenda 21, reconfirmed in Johannesburg ten years after being adopted in Rio de Janeiro. The EU Commission will include this into the annual spring summit report, adequately complementing the Synthesis Report on economic, social and environmental progress within the Union. Consequently, the structural indicators used for that purpose could be extended to cover the international responsibility of the Union, claimed as an integral part of its politics by the European sustainable development strategy.
Other steps towards an improved international governance for sustainable development. include to initiate negotiations on legally binding instruments regarding corporate social and environmental accountability and responsibility. This could be binding initially only for signatory states once a certain quorum is reached, or throughout the EU and for all companies seated there (an open question is the kind of benefits offered in return to signatory countries in order to create incentives to join the agreement).
A short term credibility test will be the Doha round of trade negotiations under the WTO; Europe would be well-advised to upgrade its performance as compared to Johannesburg, resisting the hard-headed lobbying of agricultural groups and the countries responding to them, notably France. Just as importantly, it should make sure that not only trade politics and economic experts are around the negotiation table. Similarly, it is necessary to continue confronting the rather simplistic neo-liberal world view with the complexity of reality, pressing for abandoning this ideology as the core orientation not only of the Bretton Woods Institutions, but of economic institutes and institutions throughout the World and in Europe in particular and replacing it with less elegant, but more down-to-earth analyses and policy prescriptions.
Time enough, but no time to loose
There is time enough to get an alternative off the ground, as most of its components are already there and have been widely tested. However, the have to be assembled to provide a real alternative vision. Political action needs to get started, in Europe, in the South and particular in their co-operation. Regarding the USA, there may as well be a hope for change sooner or later, but this cannot be helped or accelerated from the outside.
The next credibility test will be the preference for a political over a military solution in the Middle East Crisis (Iraq, Israel) and the Doha round of the WTO negotiations. Here again the EU and the USA are following different ideas: the USA goes for complete deregulation on a bilateral basis (stressing the wish for global agreements, but in practice undermining them). Robert Zoelnik, the US trade representative highlights the close links of his trade policy strategy to America’s political and security aims, its values and aspirations on the one hand and the importance of Free Trade Agreements with equitable partners such as Chile, Singapore, Morocco and Australia on the other (Zoelnik 2002). At the same time he threatens the future WTO negotiation partners that the USA "will not passively accept a veto over Americas drive to open markets”, sounding rather frightening given the new military doctrine of the USA. Europe follows a different line of thought. As Zoellner puts it "the EU’s distinguishing agenda is to ‘widen’ the WTO mandate by developing new rules to cover more topics. [..] it wants gradually to achieve a supranational system of governance for globalisation”, whereas the USA prefers "that rules should be forged first through the market, rather than through government controls.
From a European point of view, markets are an optimisation mechanisms, while politics is an orientation mechanisms setting a framework and giving a direction for the optimisation process; from a US perspective, markets are rather self-organising entities, setting the objectives and optimising their implementation in a process politics should not interfere with.
As a consequence of the decline of neo-liberalism (not with a bang but with a sigh), there is no longer the need to argue why politics is necessary at all. To the contrary: now the battle is up (and maybe an even more difficult one than before) which kind of politics should dominate the agenda. This is the time when political justifications are needed again, when value questions can be asked, when legitimation has to be earned again by politics instead of being given by the supposedly iron laws of the market (and, not too surprisingly, their performance in this respects is not too convincing). This provides a unique opportunity for civil society to set the course - we will see if business is the only part of civil society to do so, or if other actors will enforce the broad discourses so characteristic for sustainable development politics.
Joachim H. Spangenberg is Vice President of the Sustainable Europe Research Institute and Executive committee member of INES, international network of engineers and scientists for global responsibility.
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