PRESENT AND EMERGING GOVERNANCE CHALLENGES
Governing security
A Discussion Paper for Global Governance meeting 21-23 October
2004 Athens, Greece.
Thanks to the organisation, Global Governance Group, for inviting me to speak on the important topic of the security challenges facing the world and ways to resolve them.
I had the good fortune to come and attend 2 conferences in Greece in recent years, one on the rights of the child, and the other one on the Olympic Truce Conference organised by the International Peace Bureau in Athens and Olympia.
We can define security broadly into three categories: Global, Human and Collective. We need to integrate all the security challenges for achieving lasting peace.
Global security focuses on the security of territory and governments. States seldom shy away from deploying small arms, light weapons, threat of weapons of mass destruction to defend their borders and maintain the status quo.
Human security is concerned with the preservation of human life and their safety in a changing world. It is an alternative way of seeing the world because it challenges the basic precepts of military security. Instead it takes concepts like democracy, human rights, social equity and the elimination of poverty as essential elements of what constitute human security.
The concept of collective security forms the bedrock of the United Nations Charter and has served the international community well for several decades. At its minimum, it requires a commitment to multilateralism and seeking the cooperation of the widest possible number of groups, institutions and civil society at large.
Threats or challenges facing the world today
.The challenges are terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), globalisation (rich-poor divide), unilateral or pre-emptive attacks by powerful nations on sovereign states.
Terrorism
The world and specially the US has identified (War on Terror) as its overriding priority and its occupation. The heightened state of alert in US and rest of the western world is causing endless problems including curbing civil liberties in US, UK and other parts of the world. War on terror has been used as a excuse for increased military spending in order to secure power and control. The recently formed Counter Terrorism Council (CTC) by the UN is monitoring the worldwide terror networks and responding to them.
Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
A variety of factors are driving up military spending; terrorism, civil wars, border conflicts and modernisation. The world is awash with 36.000 nuclear warheads worldwide and with millions of small arms in Africa and other parts of the globe. After USA's unilateralist military approach most countries in the world including the permanent 5 (P5) veto-wielding members of the Security Council-Britain, France, China, Russia and USA have increased defence spending for the first time after the Cold War. USA has proposals for a new missile defence shield and development of low-yield nuclear weapons, or so called mini nukes. The world, need to get rid of all military hardware for any lasting peace on earth.
Globalisation (rich-poor divide)
Around 2 Billion people throughout the world live in abject poverty on $1 a day while for the first time in the history we have the technology, know how and the means to feed them and also make them part of society instead of marginalising them. Globalisation and World Trade Organisation (WTO) unjust trade policies have increased the social – economic divide leading to deprivation of millions of people in poor countries resulting in loss of jobs, opportunity, hope thus endangering security.
Unilateral or pre-emptive attacks by powerful nations on sovereign states
It is worth remembering that when US could not find WMD in Iraq and also could not get a second Security Council resolution on Iraq, it led a unilateral invasion without a explicit Security Council authorisation for force. Other countries like Iran and Syria are accused of having WMD's and are threatened with pre-emptive or unilateral strikes. The bigger question is that is there any grounds for intervention for powerful countries to attack sovereign states on humanitarian, moral or any other reasons? Can a attack on another country be ever justified? Are pre-emptive strikes an answer to terrorism?
Recent increases in military spending
Another important component of security is the danger of increased military spending in the world. At present global military spending stands at $950 billion per year in contrast to $6 billion spent on basic education. This highlights the paradox of the world in which we spend more to destroy each other then to spend on peace, international cooperation, education and the eradication of poverty.
When we talk about governing security, we must begin with a foundation of our basic aspirations of humankind- freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility.
It is relevant for us therefore to review these shared values set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration as a common ethical base. From each of these fundamental values we draw our guidance for the specific action plans that the international community committed itself to in the Millennium Declaration. It is a moral compass for us all. Individually these values represent powerful forces that have inspired and motivated humankind throughout millennia of history. They have been accelerators of human progress. Collectively they represent the benchmark against which we must judge our performance as individual nations and as the world community in taking humankind forward to a better and safer world.
| Freedom - was the spur that rid the world of slavery, colonialism and apartheid: it is the ethical value that protects men, women and children from fear, exploitation and abuse, from injustice and deprivation and from want and hunger. |
| Equality - is what drove societies to abolish discrimination on the basis of colour, creed, wealth, ethnicity, aristocratic origin and gender: it is the ethical value that empowers individuals in society and nations in the international community whether big or small, rich or poor, mighty or meek. |
| Solidarity - is the sense of a common identity as one human family with reciprocal duties and obligations that has led to social contracts and social security within countries and to the aid and assistance of the wealthy and developed countries to those who are stricken with disease, disaster and endemic poverty: it is the ethical value that must ensure the elimination of injustices, asymmetries in globalised development and absolute poverty. |
| Tolerance - is the glue that has bonded us together as human beings with mutual respect for each other despite our astonishing diversity both within nations and the international community: it is the ethical value that will prevent ethnic and religious conflict within nations and the ‘clash of civilizations’ on a global scale ensuring instead a ‘dialogue among civilizations’ and the celebration of human diversity as an endowment. |
| Respect for nature - is what has preserved the available and potential natural resources of our planet Earth and our ecological system as our common heritage to serve the genuine needs and not the greedy wants of humankind: it is the ethical value that will guide us to sustainable development managing our consumption of resources equitably and wisely so that we pass on the world which we occupy as a trust, to generations to come in at least as healthy and wholesome a state as we received it from preceding generations. Finally, |
| Shared responsibility – is the common realization that we are one brotherhood and sisterhood placed together in a world that is more integrated than ever before through the processes of globalization and that the management of public goods has to be achieved optimally through participatory, people-centred endeavours and good democratic governance at the national level and through multilateralism and international organizations - with the United Nations at its apex - in the collective response to global challenges to international peace and human security: it is the ethical value that will prevent humankind from anarchy and self-destruction through selfishness and profligacy and the insurance policy to achieve a rule based international order founded on the bedrock of international law, human rights, equity and justice. |
The translation of these ethical values in the daily world of human interaction – to do the right thing for the right reason - presents all of us with an enormous challenge. No Government or group can claim a monopoly over wisdom. Nor can they claim to be the sole interpreters of the national or global interest. Already there are danger signals that illustrate an erosion of the ethical base we have in the world. Terrorism, nihilism and anarchism are ominous symptoms. Are they the result of perceptions that the policies pursued in the past have been divorced from ethics? Or are they the emergence of a new threat for which our collective response must not be militarism but a return to implementing our shared value base of ethics - honestly, transparently and consistently?
It would help our task if we had a barometer to measure the performance of all our leaders in the achievement of implementing ethics as policy. The world has seen the evolution of numerous indices for human progress. We have economic and social indicators ranging from Gross National Product in quantitative terms to the Human Development Index in qualitative terms. There are other more specific indices such as a Corruption Index from Transparency International, a Freedom Index from Freedom House and there is even a Happiness Index! I would hope that research organizations, think tanks and NGOs would combine their efforts to devise an Ethical Policy Index ranking countries in accordance with their adherence to a commonly accepted set of ethical values such as those enshrined in the Millennium Declaration of the United Nations. That will contribute to some pressure on Governments to be accountable to their people in adopting policies that will be of widespread and durable benefit. It is but one of many tools we can propose in the quest for a greater role for ethics in the formulation of policy to respond to the new threats to security and to the other challenges facing humankind today. It is an urgent task to preserve and develop the mainsprings of our common humanity for a new and glorious chapter of human history.
We are all aware that the concept of security has expanded vastly. It is no longer possible to regard national or international security in purely military terms. We have a wider view which embraces political elements, economic and environmental factors and social and cultural aspects. Taking these into account, we have to reappraise our way of thinking. Thus, facing these new realities requires the international community to reestablish the idea of collective security and other urgent measures to address terrorism, WMD, and globalisation.
The Concept of Collective Security
In his statement to the United Nations General Assembly on 23 September 2003 Secretary General Kofi Annan described the situation of the UN following the controversy over the invasion of Iraq as " a fork in the road …. no less decisive than 1945 itself when the United Nations was founded." While some may disagree with this over dramatization of where the world body is today, the Secretary General used the opportunity to appoint a sixteen member High Level Panel of eminent personalities to examine current challenges to peace and security; identify the contribution collective action can make in addressing these challenges; and recommend changes in the principal organs of the UN and elsewhere to ensure effective collective action. The panel has is expected to finalize its report in early December 2004.
The concept of collective security forms the bedrock of the United Nations Charter and has served the international community well for several decades. However all concepts and systems must be re-appraised from time to time and adapted to serve new realities.
Secretary General Kofi Annan's primary rationale for the appointment of the High Level Panel is that the consensus underpinning collective security, which had been recently restated in the Millennium Declaration, had broken down in the wake of sharp disagreement over military intervention in Iraq last year. Unilateral military intervention is not new in the post World War II history of global events.
What is new is that, after the events of September 11, 2001 and the alarming revelations of clandestine weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation to states that had legally renounced such weapons as well as to non state actors, pre-emptive unilateral action even with WMD is being asserted as justifiable - ostensibly in the exercise of the right of self defense. The legitimacy conferred on armed intervention by the Security Council and, consequently, the universal support that such action enjoys is thus sacrificed for the freedom of unilateral action in pursuit of individual national interest. In the pre UN era nations waged wars self-righteously claiming their justness whatever the circumstances. To do so today without Security Council authority undermines international law and the unity of the UN system and opens the way to an anarchic global society with no internationally accepted norms.
The problem lies perhaps in the evolution of the global system from a bipolar one to a unipolar system and the exceptionalism demanded for some forms of unilateral action. It also arises from the inroads being made into the theory of state sovereignty as an absolute. The controversial 'humanitarian intervention' speech of Secretary General Kofi Annan in 1999 led to the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty whose report was published at the end of 2001. It asserted that state sovereignty implied a responsibility to protect its citizens and that where a state was unwilling or unable to provide that protection the principle of non-intervention yielded to the international responsibility to protect. However guiding principles and criteria were carefully described in terms of international law and the circumstances warranting action and the procedure for obtaining authority set out. The obvious limitation of this approach is that in the selective application of new principles the powerful states will ensure that their state sovereignty will not be compromised thus provoking the charge of double standards.
Any changes that we propose must discourage unilateral action and seek to facilitate multilateral consensus through UN mechanisms that are palpably effective. No one seriously questions the virtue of co-operative action in the defense of collective security. Empowering one state or a group of states to be the global gendarme without Security Council authority undermines this. How do we therefore strengthen UN institutions to serve collective security in the current context?
I believe it is essential that we agree on some basic principles before we proceed to consider specific institutional reforms.
| Firstly it is my deep conviction that the founders of the UN intended that there should be equilibrium among the principal organs of the UN for the purposes and principles of the world body to be implemented. Admittedly the Security Council is vested with the primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security but that is a task performed on behalf of the entire membership of the UN, all of whom have citizens with equal human rights even if the principle of the sovereign equality of all its member states (laid down in Article 2:1 of the UN Charter) has become one of the more glorious myths of the UN today.. Today the system is in disequilibrium not only because of the Security Council is the overwhelmingly dominant organ but also because of disequilibrium within the Council. How do we restore equilibrium within the system while accepting the realities of power asymmetry in the world? |
| Finally, we are all aware that the concept of security has expanded vastly. It is no longer possible to regard national or international security in purely military terms. We have a wider view which embraces political elements, economic and environmental factors and social and cultural aspects. The Security Council has recognized this by considering women's rights, AIDS and other non-conventional issues as security issues. Clearly more needs to be done to link the Security Council more closely with the Economic and Social Council and other principal organs, with the work of the specialized agencies and regional economic commissions and by calling for action oriented reports on particular aspects of security related issues where the authority of the Security Council could ensure the attainment of goals such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). |
Dealing with Terrorism
Soon after the events of 11 September 2001, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan underlined three important principles when he addressed the opening of the 56th session of the UN General Assembly stating that whilst "…terrorist acts are never justified no matter what considerations may be invoked." At the same time the counter-terrorist campaign should not distract from action on other UN principles and purposes the achievement of which could by itself reduce and eliminate terrorism. The adoption of preventive measures to be undertaken on a co-operative basis should be "in accordance with the Charter and other relevant provisions of international law". The search for legal precision must be subordinated to ‘moral clarity’ on the subject of terrorism.
This approach ensured that the UN reaction was not one of revenge or retribution but based, as to be expected in a norm-based organization, on legal concepts and values. It also placed the action to be taken in the context of the anti-terrorism conventions already adopted within the UN framework. Moreover the Secretary-General focused on the protection of civilians – a vital theme in the UN - pointing significantly to the indiscriminate nature of terrorist attacks.
I believe this approach is best practised by the UN entrusting the surveillance of terrorism to a broad-based Commission on Terrorism under the aegis of the Economic and Social Council in addition to the Security Council’s mandated tasks.
Dealing with WMD
Disarmament, especially the disarmament of WMD, is at a critical crossroad. It is over a decade since the end of the Cold War led to an illusion of security as the prospect of global nuclear war receded into the background. However, after the September 11 2001 terrorist attack, the US is developing new mini nukes and other countries have continued rearming themselves for the fear of attack from more powerful countries.
The world community needs to forge an alliance to adhere to multilateral treaties and agreements for getting rid of WMD and achieving complete and general disarmament.
Dealing with military spending
The European Union (EU) Constitution and its armaments policy is a blueprint for the militarization of Europe. It includes the European arms industry, the privatisation of military services, military influence of science, engineering and technology, including the EU military strategy and operations. These policies will have a grave effect on the growth of the global south and we need to counter the policies of the militerisation of the EU. Furthermore, it go against the spirit of the EU and the rationale for its existence- namely to bring a united Europe together after the Second World War. Thus, the EU Constitution, in its current form is not acceptable and requires urgent reforms before its final implementation. A united Europe should forge the way for peace and international security in the world.
Conclusion
As long as there is arms trade there will be wars, hostilities and suffering. Warmongers will always invent or make excuses to wage more wars. These conflicts world-wide result in increased manufacturing, selling, and supplying of more arms and the spiral goes on, creating more and more hostilities and hatred.
Hatred between communities and nations can not be pacified by hatred, but only by love- that is the rule eternal. Civil society can only be built on love, education and a culture of peace.
The military budget of nations should never be bigger then the budget for health, education and development. At the moment the global spending on education is 6 billion USD against 950 billion USD on military spending. It should be the other way around completing the urgently needed 8 Millennium Development Goals (MDG): eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability, develop a global partnership for development. Only then we are to have any hope and chance for a safer world and better international relations.
We need a united global peace movement to say loudly no to the global arms race and the suffering it brings to humanity. The increased world military spending cannot be sustained and if the powerful nations keep starting new wars one day it will be the end of humanity and civilization as we know it.
As we stand at the threshold of a new century, time has come to say loudly that we demand the delegitimation of war and military spending. The global arms race has to stop for the sake of peace and security for ourselves, for our children, and future generations.
Thank you very much.