The WEEK ending 23 September 2001
INDETERMINATE JUSTICE
'omnis determinatio est negatio' Spinoza
George W Bush's campaign against international terrorism, now named 'Infinite Justice', looks like his father's New World Order, but actually it is very different.
The chief architects of George Bush Snr's 'New World Order' coalition against Iraq, Colin Powell and Dick Chaney, are at the head of Infinite Justice. Drawing on that experience, George W.'s team have launched into shuttle diplomacy to build a coalition - this time to isolate Afghanistan. And drawing on their experience of the Gulf War, peace activists have set about lobbying for a negotiated settlement.
Whatever the intentions and beliefs of the participants, the process started after the Pentagon and World Trade Center bombings will be very different from the New World Order constructed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait - not least because of the unintended consequences of Bush Snr's 'New World Order'.
In 1991 Bush Snr's administration consciously set about provoking a conflict with Iraq, so that US diplomacy and militarism would have a new defining goal after the end of the Cold War. By contrast, the US had no knowledge, let alone control over the Pentagon/WTC attacks, and is forced instead to formulate its response on the hoof.
In the first instance, the 1991 coalition was built to defend the principle of national independence, albeit of a largely fictitious nation, 'Kuwait'. In its consequences, though, the New World Order tended to delegitimate independent nations. The way that Iraq's independence had been compromised by the imposition of Kurdish 'safe havens' and the 'no-fly zone' became a model in international relations. Countries from Yugoslavia to Indonesia, Sudan to Zimbabwe found that the defence of their national independence - derided as the archaic 'Westphalian System' - won little favour in international circles. And though it was the USA that initiated the process whereby national independence was de-legitimated, it was often America's traditional allies - like Chile - that were targeted.
Alongside the discredited 'Westphalian System' of diplomacy between independent states, a new international politics emerged whose actors were not nations, but non-governmental organisation, NGOs. For the most part these were just charities and advocacy organisations. But with media attention they learned that they had the power to undermine national states, and substitute themselves for local actors. Though the role of the NGOs helped to reform diplomacy, they also proved unreliable, without stable foundations, and prone to histrionics. The United States found to its horror that it was increasingly the target of protests against its environmental, trade and international justice policies. NGOs pressed the US over its failure to sign international treaties. Even the national independence of the United States was not sacrosanct. NGOs helped European nations to re-formulate the New World Order according to their own agenda. The United States, by contrast, became disengaged once Bush Jnr took office.
European commentators have looked for differences between the United States and its European allies in the emerging Coalition against Terror: but they will not find any. Certainly the media can find different nuances but talking these up into cracks or splits at this stage obscures the real enthusiasm of the Europeans for the American-led campaign. The European powers are determined to use the crisis to lock the United States into an international diplomatic process. Bush's administration can also use the crisis to put the familiar stamp of American militarism on a world order that it felt had become increasingly hostile to the US. Already, the Bush administration has suggested that some NGOs are fronts for terrorism, de-legitimating their role.
The Infinite Justice campaign is fast turning into the form which the international political process assumes. Different actors formulate their own demands and interests in terms of the campaign against terrorism, thereby legitimating them. The indeterminate nature of the 'enemy' means that different players can easily introduce their own bugbears. Since the Bush administration is putting its emphasis upon building an international coalition, the first impact has been a resurgence of the 'Westphalian System' as different countries are wooed to contribute.
Different nations get different things out of Infinite Justice:
* The United States has found a formula for re-taking control of world diplomacy, that it had found less and less tractable in recent years;
* European nations can lock the United States into the world diplomatic process, where they anticipate they will be better able to influence its course;
* Russia's war against Chechen insurgents will no longer be used by critics to embarrass it publicly, and its moral humiliation at the hands of the Afghans will be eased;
* China, that had been criticised, amongst other things, for the advanced technology developed to censor its internet users, found its accession to the World Trade Organisation went through without comment, after it used this technology to censor anti-American comment, post- hijacking;
* Pakistan, which had been subject to sanctions since testing its nuclear bomb, has been promised all the aid it needs to finance the military regime there (commentators overemphasise Gen. Musharraf's problem with local opposition: the regime is well-used to ignoring popular opinion);
* Iran, which organised protests against the bombing, succeeds both in mending fences with the US and undermining its hated Taliban rivals;
* Indonesia, where separatist movements first in Timor and now Aceh had been endorsed by the 'international community', is now being courted by the US as an important Islamic ally;
* Middle Eastern states have succeeded in persuading Bush to rein in Israel. White House officials objected to Premier Sharon's statement that 'we will not pay the price for the establishment of this coalition' and imposed a ceasefire on their truculent client;
* In Northern Ireland, just as the British sponsored 'peace process' was on the verge of disintegrating, the bombing created new leverage against the IRA to disarm.
Not many of these competing aspirations will be realised, but the avenue for their expression that the War on Terrorism provides will give Infinite Justice wings. So far the coalition makes precious few demands on different participants, while offering the Earth - but then so did George Bush Sr.'s New World Order. -- James Heartfield