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Eduardo del Buey
Foto: Afp
La Jornada Maya

Martes 18 de diciembre, 2018

As the Cold War ended, global leaders began to envisage a new world order – a rules-based international system of governance in which the principles of the United Nations and the international financial institutions founded at the end of World War II would finally come into force. The hope was that, with the end of great power rivalry, the international community could come together as one to manage and control the myriad challenges that had beset mankind since the dawn of the nation state.

With Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, the United States and the Soviet Union came together to create an international coalition to end the occupation and liberate Kuwait. The key institution was the United Nations Security Council that passed a resolution authorizing the use of force if Hussein’s forces didn’t leave Kuwait within a certain time frame. A hitherto unbelievable coalition of Western democracies, the Soviet Union, and major Arab states put an end to the brutal occupation and ushered in a new era that many hoped would last forever.

For the first time in memory, the great powers had come together and acted as one. The rules-based international community would put an end to this egregious violation of international law and reflect the evolution towards a new international order.

As then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev noted, the world was witnessing a most profound social change. Hundreds of millions of people, new nations and states, new public movements and ideologies moved to the forefront of history. The idea of democratizing the entire world order has become a powerful socio-political force.

At the same time, the scientific and technological revolution has turned many economic, food, energy, environmental, information and population problems, which only recently we treated as national or regional ones, into global problems. Thanks to the advances in mass media and means of transportation, the world has become more visible and tangible. International communication is easier than ever before.

Gorbachev was prescient. As the new millennium began, the world became more interconnected than ever, and the term globalization became the common currency of foreign policy practitioners. It became the reality in commerce and culture, as well as in terrorism and radicalism. Like money, it had no morality.

However today, many voters perceive that globalization and free trade has cost millions of manufacturing jobs in the industrialized West, replacing them with lower paying jobs with fewer benefits and far less security. This is only partly true as many manufacturing jobs have been replaced by higher paying service sector jobs. Meanwhile, the rise of robotics also means that that many of these jobs are never coming back.

Leaders sometimes appear to focus on macroeconomic results rather than the microeconomic impact of their policies and how they impact the individual voter. This has led many to believe that the post-war political and economic system no longer works in their favor.

Indeed, the “Gillets Jaunes” who have been demonstrating violently in France over the past few weekends and are threatening to spread to Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, are enjoying the support of over 70 percent of the French population as they pursue higher wages and lower taxes. Right and left-wing extremists are joining this movement, and it remains to be seen how this affects the government of Emmanuel Macron who, until recently, was viewed as one of the key leaders in the international liberal movement.

Low wage growth and higher taxes are but two factors that have given rise to the current attraction of populism in its various forms, as people try to make sense of a world that they no longer feel that they control. Cross-cultural migration (the feeling that one’s culture is being eroded by immigrants from different backgrounds), terrorism, and the explosion of refugees around the world has exacerbated these frustrations, and these feelings have translated into growing support for populist leaders who espouse simplistic solutions that sound good politically but that are usually doomed to fail.

For example, in a speech in Brussels on December 4th, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said “Even our European friends sometimes say we’re not acting in the free world’s interest. This is just plain wrong,” adding that “under President Trump, we are not abandoning international leadership or our friends in the international system. Indeed, quite the contrary.”

But since the end of the Cold War, the international order “failed us, and it failed you,” he said. “Multilateralism has become viewed as an end unto itself. The more treaties we sign, the safer we supposedly are. The more bureaucrats we have, the better the job gets done.”

As the New York Times reported that same day, “Mr. Pompeo called Britain’s decision to leave the European Union a “political wake-up call” for the bloc, which is based in Brussels. He then asked whether the European Union “is ensuring that the interests of countries and their citizens are placed before those of bureaucrats here in Brussels?”

In Pompeo’s opinion, “What is needed is a multilateralism that once again places the nation-state front and center”.

Indeed, the current swing towards nationalism ignores the fact that populist leaders can do little to address transnational problems through the withdrawal from international treaties and joint obligations. Regardless of how nationalistic one is, polluted air and water, disease and natural disasters, will continue to cross national borders and will militate for strong international multilateral institutions to address their effects.

The answer does not lie in pulling out of multilateral institutions and global treaties but, rather, in ensuring that these international instruments and organizations are seen to be aimed at first and foremost addressing and satisfying the needs of everyday citizens.

Absent this, we will continue to respond to populist leaders who seek to erode the very institutions that can mitigate the myriad challenges that we face and revert to a kind of protectionism that will only exacerbate our problems.

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