A WORLD OF DISORDER

By Kingsley Chiedu Moghalu and - - Reprint | | Print |

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GENEVA, Jan 31 2004 (IPS) - The international crisis generated by the US invasion of Iraq captures the tension in world politics between the \’\’international community\’\’ as represented in the UN, and the role of power and its attendant interests, writes Kingsley Moghalu, an international lawyer and head of resource mobilisation and global partnerships at the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in Geneva, Switzerland. In this analysis, the author argues that the problem with a unipolar world is that international law –a significant component in the maintenance of order in world politics– can become a major casualty. In such a world, international law can be violated with little direct consequence to the hegemonic power. Far from consolidating order, such use of power, even in the name of freedom, human rights, and liberal democracy, will rather increase disorder. A certain degree of anarchy will always exist in an international society based on sovereign states and mobile non-state actors that pursue frequently divergent interests. We must manage that anarchy by addressing the fundamental issues that exacerbate it. The way forward is not the balance of power of bye-gone years but a balance of approach in which the world\’s hegemon has not only special circumstances but special responsibilities of global leadership.

The international crisis generated by the US invasion of Iraq captures the tension in world politics between the ”international community” as represented in the UN, and the role of power and its attendant interests. That event will have profound consequences for international relations and especially for the future direction of international law, the role of the United Nations, and the future of United States foreign policy.

With the implosion of the Soviet Union and the Cold War long over, the world is left with an American power that is not only dominant but has practically no effective balance in sight. China remains a major global power, though for now an inward-looking one. Europe is partly allied to the hegemonic power, partly opposed to it.

The problem with a unipolar world is that international law –a significant component in the maintenance of order in world politics– can become a major casualty. In such a world, international law can be violated with little direct consequence to the hegemonic power. Far from consolidating order, such use of power, even in the name of freedom, human rights, and liberal democracy, will rather increase disorder.

The disappointment that many outside the United States felt at the American invasion of Iraq stems mainly from a faith in international law that misunderstands its fundamental nature. Theorists have spent lakes of ink on whether international law, lacking as it does the centralised, coercive power or structure of law in the municipal sphere — a government with power to legislate, police and prisons to enforce — is indeed law. It is, but for different reasons.

States obey and respect international law first, because, as Austrian legal philosopher Hans Kelsen argued, members of the international society of states can enforce it on their own in certain circumstances; second, they believe it is in their national interest to do so; and third, because of the influence of international or domestic public opinion — the interstate equivalent of peer pressure. No state, however powerful, wants to be viewed as a habitual law breaker. Which is why, whatever its real motives, the United States has justified its action in Iraq as an exercise of its right to pre-emptive self-defence. It also argues that it acted to enforce international law, represented in the UN Security Council resolutions it believed Saddam had serially violated.

Pre-emptive self-defence is a controversial notion but one that actually has some support in the works of influential international lawyers of centuries past and in customary international law. Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist that is considered the father of international law, argued in his book ”On the Law of War and Peace”(1625) that it was legitimate ”to kill him who is preparing to kill”. There is a certain analogy between this statement and US President George Bush’s assertion that ”the violent restraint of violent men” is sometimes necessary.

The future will answer the question of whether or not Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. But, when in 1837 Britain attacked an American ship, the Caroline, in American waters and argued pre-emptive self-defence, American secretary of state Daniel Webster argued that the doctrine was applicable only where ”the necessity for self-defence is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means and no moment for deliberation”.

This brings us back to the UN Charter and the future of the organisation in world politics. That the UN has been wounded by the Iraq crisis cannot be doubted. But hasty obituaries of the organisation in the heat of the crisis were decidedly premature. For one, it is a far more elastic and adaptive organisation than the high-minded League of Nations. For another, the United States, despite its power, frequently needs the legitimacy conferred by the United Nations. Although it acted ultimately on its own with a ”coalition of the willing”, the US sought that legitimacy in the form of an authorising UN resolution — without success.

In a recent article in Foreign Affairs (”Why the US Needs the UN”) UN Under-Secretary-General Shashi Tharoor noted that all states act both unilaterally and multilaterally at different times. The United States’ desire for the United Nations to return to Iraq is proof that these two realities can co-exist comfortably. That is the real nature of the international society. The US may be the world’s hegemon, but the loci of power and legitimacy are not always the same.

There are those who lament a unipolar world, but we need to remember that balance-of-power systems, despite their advantages, have historically not guaranteed international order.

Then there are those who believe that the global distribution of power is the problem, not the solution, that the dominance of the United States is a better guarantee of global stability, because America’s use of power is far more responsible than the tendencies of its adversaries, and because the energies that go into maintaining a multipolar balance detract from real progress.

A certain degree of anarchy will always exist in an international society that is based on sovereign states and mobile non-state actors that pursue frequently divergent interests. We must manage that anarchy by addressing the fundamental issues that exacerbate it. The way forward is not the balance of power of bye-gone years. Rather, it lies in a balance of approach in which the world’s hegemon, by virtue of its unique power, has not only special circumstances but special responsibilities of global leadership. In so doing, we will ensure not a utopian world of serene peace, but peace in the sense of absence of the conflict that attends the world of disorder in which we live now. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)