I find myself constantly pondering aspirational political statements from the past and how they continue to resonate with meaning today - especially in terms of the demand for some form of planetary authority to manage the existential issues impacting Homo sapiens - a field where we are falling far short of what is so desperately required.
In his opening address at the gathering of world leaders in the United States on 22nd September 2011, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon advanced five imperatives the international community should focus on to ensure the welfare of future generations:
Sustainable development - including lifting people out of poverty and advancing economic growth
Prevention of conflict as a framework for international cooperation
Building a safer, more secure world, by standing up for democracy, human rights and peace
Supporting countries in transition
Working with and for women and young people.
He also intimated, probably justifiably from his perspective given the empirical habits of some Western nations, that this was an opportunity for all countries to set aside their differences and narrow, short-term interests, in order to cooperate in addressing humanity’s long-term needs.
Anyone who knows the man would immediately appreciate the sincerity behind Ban Ki-moon’s proposed forging of a common agenda targeting prosperity, freedom, peace, and justice. On the surface these five imperatives appeared to be a consistent, well-intentioned vision, possessing all the gravitas one might have expected from someone in his position.
However, in this instance, behind the sincerity of the individual, skulked a lumbering behemoth, an international agency in utter disarray. Other than a few iconic brands, like UNICEF for example, the UN today is even more confused and cumbersome than it was a decade ago.
It was because of the inefficient, incoherent and frankly lacklustre organization behind Ban Ki-moon that I challenged whether such priorities were part of some genuine plan for a coherent societal transformation - or just another of those ill-feted public-relations exercises that appear and evaporate so frequently from within our various political and diplomatic auditoria.
Personally I doubt such grandiose aims can achieve anything much, at least within the framework of global officialdom; certainly no more nor less than has already been tried with other initiatives like the eight Millennium Development Goals and their successor the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
But on what basis can I possibly make such a claim? Setting aside the issues of whether these goals, individually and collectively, reflect a true underlying causal state, or are just symptoms of the predicament in which we find ourselves today, and whether they are, in themselves, appropriate acupuncture points for instituting effective 2nd order structural change, I am puzzled and confronted by some fairly obvious responses:
How can development be 'sustainable' if it includes conventional expectations regarding the advancement of economic growth in addition to preserving the natural environment in its ambit, or without making any attempt to reframe our understanding of what 'development' might become in the context of today's dynamically complex conditions? Surely the nature of 'development' depends on local conditions and can therefore never be accurately defined as an absolute policy framework applying everywhere equally?
Surely international cooperation has to be the framework for preventing conflict between nations, rather than the other way around? And if so, was that not the intended role of the UN? This statement is either and admission of failure or a coded plea requesting greater legal authority to override national sovereignty when the occasion so demands.
Is democracy, as it is currently conceived and practiced, the only means capable of building a safer and more secure world? Or are we at risk of using democracy as a convenient substitute for something far more aspirational? Also, are we to assume that non-democratic states are necessarily opposed to peace or the protection of human rights? If so on either count that could prove to be very limiting.
Do 'countries in transition' need to demonstrate they are heading towards the adoption of Western styles of democracy in order to receive support from the UN or do alternative models reflecting emergent democratized ideals also qualify?
If one goal is to liberate women and young people, why are these demographics not sufficiently represented in UN forums convened for making the decisions that will determine their fate?
There are two additional points that bother me relating to this set of imperatives:
Are those individuals and institutions currently in positions of influence the right people and institutions to instigate and lead change? In that context, then, is the UN the most appropriate agency to be tackling societal transformation? If not what alternatives should we be seeking and installing?
If these imperatives do genuinely offer the opportunity to shape the world of tomorrow by the decisions we take today, what is it about the decisions we are currently taking that have failed to create the world we most desire?
Naturally all of these questions demand comprehensive consideration. There are other equally valid questions one could pose. But for me the crux of the issue is to be found in my final two questions. Those responsible for taking policy decisions today are the same people, in the same institutions, who designed the world-system to function as it does. One must assume that they designed the system to meet their goals. Imagining that these individuals and institutions can now design a system capable of achieving such different outcomes is tantamount to believing in the tooth fairy.
But let us be kind and review the situation, keeping in mind that reality and truth have become mutant hybrids in this continuously morphing world of ours. To contemplate the contextual implications of my questions, we must set contemporary society, in all its various facets and flaws, against the broader sweep of our civilization’s past 2,000 years.
That is not an easy thing to do. Individual and collective realities are determined and shaped by our 'window (weltanschauung) on a world that is so dynamically complex it is almost impossible to pause any aspect of it long enough for it to make sense. To make matters even more complicated that 'window on the world' comprises myriad implicit sets of filters driven by fleeting instincts and self-righteous emotions.
For example, if you trust the boundaries you see unerringly portrayed on maps, if you believe political ideologies endure in abstract purity, if you imagine still that national agencies shape international diplomacy and that elected political parties control a nation’s destiny, then you may find my questions offensive or simply crazy. What 'was' in the past, you might argue, remains intact today.
If, however, you believe like me, that no two nations are alike - some thriving yet in decline, others impoverished yet making astonishing advances; some vulnerable to the forces of change, others inexplicably resilient; a few posing as empires alongside empires posing as nations; city states such as the Vatican and Singapore; countries in name only like England and Puerto Rico; and even a territory such as Palestine that has no universally-agreed state mandate as yet - and that, as a consequence, it is all but impossible to propose an all-encompassing definition of the nation-state, then you could be forgiven for perceiving current globalized conditions as being closer to those that existed during the Middle Ages. Albeit on acid or cocaine! In that context my two questions would be entirely relevant and you would now, no doubt, be lauding my exemplary sapience.
But let us play with this notion and bring these two weltanschauung together. Viewed through a polyocular lens our globalized society is incredibly chaotic and hard to pin down, yet also astonishingly abundant in its diversity. Power functions asymmetrically in different ways via multipolar interactions that constantly wax and wane. Pluralistic social networks, online activism, and lobbyists for big business wield considerably more political influence than national governments, which find themselves in unending antiphonic modes of reaction and readjustment. Unlikely conjunctions of public and private interests generate novel yet potent forms of innovation. Billionaires influence the agendas of social enterprise… This topsy-turvy world exists like a thinly-disguised membrane over the more formal world of competitive global trade and international policy making.
In this extraordinary multifaceted global setting conventional borders and standard taxonomies are now almost meaningless. Multinational organizations and universal governance structures, such as exist with the UN, can quickly become sterile and lethargic in such chaos. What do work seem to be greater levels of connectivity and collaboration at a local level, more fluid strategies and much less bureaucracy. And this of course is precisely why I question whether the UN (or any equivalent agency) is responsive and adaptive enough to elicit rapid universal cooperation at scale.
Having described, if ineloquently, the incredibly convoluted nature of the context in which we find ourselves (i.e. the contemporary human condition) we can now bring greater degrees of granularity to my question as it concerns nation-states.
An agreed definition of the term nation-state remains elusive. Let us suppose the state is the government and its institutions, while the nation is the summation of the relationships we have with others who live in close cultural, ethnic, linguistic or geographical proximity to us and with whom we choose to identify. The nation-state is the marriage of these two (partly discrete) ideas.
Now let us consider how, over the course of the past 60 years at least, national devices for homogeneity (such as partisan ceremonies and rites) versus statist mechanisms for coordination (via civic and political engagement) plus control (though legislation and administration) have often subverted the potential for these two ideas to harmonize in ways that would enable continuing relevance for the nation-state.
We have witnessed the outbreak of extremes of nationalistic fervour (e.g. the pro-Trump storming of the Capitol in the US ), brutal oppression (e.g. Syria under the Assad regime), and military coups against democratically elected governments (e.g. Thailand and Myanmar). But where there is oppression of any kind the people will eventually rebel. Recently, the sense of injustice that triggered student protests against the monarchy in Thailand can be compared with Hong Kong's umbrella movement and the growing civil unrest in Myanmar following the arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, on three counts. In all three cases the protests are about the brazen misuse of power. In all three cases civic disruption has been greeted by overwhelming support from alarmed citizens around the world. And in all three cases the supposed raison-d’etre of the nation-state in caring for its citizens has been rocked to the core.
The UN currently comprises 193 member states. The invention of the sovereign nation in or around the 19th century was designed - and further refined within the framework of globalism - as a mechanism for protecting discrete interests, and furthering explicit agendas, most often those of the elite within each nation state. Because of this history it should come as no surprise that the primary inclination of the nation-state apparatus is to compete with other nations rather than to cooperate. We have seen precisely this predisposition hinder successive climate change meetings where the scale of the task to overcome national and sectoral interests routinely dashes any hope that a simple, universally-binding, consensus to lower carbon-dioxide emissions and thus combat global heating, can be crafted. All eyes will be on the UN's Climate Change meeting in Glasgow later this year to see if the increasing urgency of the climate crisis plays out any differently than before.
While one could argue that this competitive nature of the state served society well enough during the industrial age, contributing enormously to productive efficiencies, and raising living standards in many countries, it is hardly an energizing idea for our times. Recent events and new technologies have exposed the state's inability to adjust to contemporary realities fast enough. It has also grown more corrupt and inequitable.
In the immediate aftermath of World War II the interests of most states started to align more with the motives of wealthy industrialists and corporations than with the needs of citizens. The promise of nurturing civic life and protecting human rights (through the provision of education, employment and healthcare) started to unravel. As a result, the gap between the rich and the poor widened exponentially. Today the state finds itself liable for a range of escalating inequities that have become even more starkly evident with the advent of new information and communications technologies.
Against this dynamic of societal change, old institutions and their stewards will whither and die if they cannot shift course to reinvent inbred assumptions, and transcend past habits. While the UN has had some limited success with collaborative ventures in some diplomatic theatres, such as peacekeeping, the levels of cooperation needed to create a worldwide common agenda of the form Ban Ki-moon envisages, which also assumes the voluntary suspension of some aspects of sovereignty, is unprecedented and highly improbable. The underlying assumptions and dissimilar habits in this unwieldy league of nations are gravitational in their inability to adapt in this way - unless they were all to agree to a new universal authority, backed by international law, to assume control over matters of vital concern to humanity, such as climate change, nuclear proliferation, and food security, for example.
For while I harbour serious misgivings that the UN is an appropriate forum for whole-system change, the fact is no other formally-instituted forum currently exists that has sufficient credibility (and thence buy-in) from the world’s citizens. That vacuum is also the reason we are going to see an increasing number and intensity of insurgencies and demonstrations around the world.
Citizens in some countries are outraged by what they interpret as dithering from their own governments on a range of critical issues. Others are fatigued by the constant bullying and sanctions imposed by the US in its futile attempt to retain some form of global hegemonic power. In that respect all eyes are currently on US-China relations, and the demands America is continuing to exert on Iran in terms of the Iran Nuclear Deal. At this early stage of the new administration there is no evidence to suggest US policy towards either of these problems is about to take a different course.
Civil non-compliance won some incredible battles in the past, swaying official policies and in some cases ousting governments. The situation today is different. States seem to have gained a greater appetite to resist the demands of their citizens, prepared to fight back with a range of new surveillance and policing mechanisms. The exhilarating prospects earlier revolutions opened up for the emergence of new kinds of imagined communities that were at once more strategically appropriate and systemically viable for the issues they were needing to confront, have been quashed by authoritarianism. The greatest danger now is that we will simply bow to authority, and fail to learn vital lessons regarding the need for transformative change.
The UN was originally established to help sovereign states deal with distinct problems for which it had conspicuous (indeed obvious) solutions. It now finds itself increasingly out-of-touch in an international system experiencing cascading institutional collapse.
Indeed even the notion of a coherent international community seems more and more antiquated in a multi-polar world-system where such a variety of physical hubs, private corporations, billionaires, and fluid networks of online communities, coexist in a hyper-dynamic ecosystem. The world map of circumscribed geographies no longer precisely represents this fragmented reality. Indeed the very concept of the nation-state is now threatened – unless it can use its penchant for competition in ways that confront global challenges (particularly those identified by Ban Ki-moon) rather than other nations.
Meanwhile, weighed down by bureaucratic inertia, home to technocratic hordes more intent on setting targets and establishing new agencies than resolving complex issues or advancing humanity, the UN exists in spite of itself - and not because it actually does anything transformational. Faced with wickedly complex issues in a progressively more borderless world, largely incapable of perceiving lithe connections in this world-system, the latest tendency has been to proclaim every issue - including food, energy, climate, population, health, terrorism and poverty - a matter of security. This crass attempt to bring almost every issue of contention within the purview of the UN is great for fund-raising but not very useful for resolving complex, multidisciplinary dilemmas.
At a time when all governments are seriously struggling to find their role in this messy, fracturing world, where no two states are the same, and at a time when more diverse modes of governance, and indeed democracy, are emerging around the world, the supposed function of being a surrogate for multilateral governance is not a happy one. Especially for a UN lacking adequate funding, legal authority, tools and skills.
Of course it is always easy to find fault with any list such as this. However I suspect not much thought has been given to the implicit assumptions behind these so-called five imperatives nor, indeed, what it will take that is contrary to what is already being done – by the UN and similar bodies.
The greatest danger always is that the usual suspects will continue to do what they have always done, perhaps with more enthusiasm or resources than before, expecting that the results will be different. Or, if I was more cynical, that they will appear to be trying to change things when their real motivation is to maintain the status quo.