2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY

5056 GLOBAL POLITICS

Whilst the trend to multi-state groupings, and even to super-states, seems clear, the future of global politics is much less clear - especially so after the US has chosen to flout international opinion to pursue its war in Iraq.

What does seem clear is the need; for effective global regulation and intervention, to counter the global forces impinging upon government - not least in terms of macro-economics. The dogmatic claims of those on the right that there can be no effective (long-term) control over such macro-economic forces have led many governments to abandon any attempt even to address them. However, the growing excesses, arising from the powers of the over-weaning financial markets, which now demand that they have a God-given right to operate - subject only to self-regulation - outside of any law, are forcing a recognition around the world that action is needed; and that action must now be at least co-ordinated on a global scale. The very real threat, at present, is that any nation state which dares to defy the financial operators will be destroyed by them - a threat which, if made by another nation, would otherwise almost automatically result in a declaration of war!

The imponderables unfortunately begin when we come to consider how such global government, for that is what is needed, is to come about in practice.

The existing nation-states are loath to hand power even to the multi-state groupings - which share very obvious common interests - to which they have already committed themselves. It is difficult to see when such processes might be extended to nations with very different interests; and which have often been the subject of centuries-long enmities! Just bringing together Israel and its Arab neighbours has proved near impossible, even when they should share very clear common interests. For instance, Lee Kuan Yew - former prime-minister of Singapore - very firmly predicts that there will be no world federation of states; though he goes on more optimistically to add that there will be a community of nations in which a tolerant live-and-let-live relationship prevails.

Having issued that caveat, however, global government - in the form of co-ordinated global actions - has already worked a number of times in the past. The allies in the Second World War put aside all their differences and worked well together - and with the politically very different USSR - across two very different theatres of war. To a lesser extent, something similar happened in the Korean War. Perhaps more important, since it is a peace-time example, the stability afforded by the Bretton Woods system has been credited - most recently perhaps by the ILO in its 1995 report on World Employment - with underpinning the golden age of growth between 1950 and 1973. Indeed, the slower rate of growth since 1973, which has led to the growth in the unemployed across the globe should more properly be attributed to the dismantling of that system; rather than to the Oil Price Shock which occurred at about the same time and is more usually blamed for the damage. Thus, Richard Nixon's enduring legacy, and his most damaging one (albeit just one of many woes he visited on the world), is he destroyed the financial concord between nations which was at the heart of the Bretton Woods agreements and in particular he ended the system of fixed exchange rates - based on a strong dollar - which has since led to the emergence of the global money markets (with all the destabilising effects that has come to imply).

A separate problem is the presence of the existing global institutions. These institutions - most notably the United Nations, but also the World Bank and IMF (also part of the Bretton Woods agreements, but less independent of UN policy since 1973) - are largely designed to bolster existing national differences (or at least those of the super-powers and founder members), hence the veto power of the permanent members of the security council. Even then, the willingness of the US to go it alone in the face of international opinion clearly illustrates the powerlessness of the UN.  Thus the existing global institutions clearly no longer meet the needs of most of the world and - where government is increasingly possible only by agreement with those governed - that means that these existing institutions are becoming less and less effective. Their legitimacy is under constant threat -especially as they come to be seen as vestiges of Western colonialism - and it is now not unusual in my experience for even well-respected government leaders to talk in private about 'the end of the United Nations'!

Unfortunately, these institutions do exist - and do serve the needs of powerful Western governments. As such, it is unlikely that they will voluntarily vote to reform themselves significantly; and certainly will not offer to disband themselves - no matter how great the need of the rest of the world.

It seems likely that global politics will change significantly, to meet the changing needs of global government. Unfortunately, the existing global institutions do not meet these needs - and will need, at least, to be drastically reformed.

Indeed the major political battle over the coming decades will be between the US, demanding its hegemony is repected, and the rest of the world (especially the EU, though operating under the guise of the UN).

8 May 2003

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