Reviving
Global Justice,
Addressing Legitimate Grievances
By
Richard
Falk
Visiting Distinguished Professor, Global Studies,
University of California, Santa Barbara and Milbank
Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton
University
TFF
associate
January 28, 2004
Since its founding moments, the United States has been
bedeviled by a morally self-congratulatory image of
American exceptionalism, despite engaging in practices
that violate the most fundamental precepts of human
decency. This dualism, constituted by dynamics of denial
and myth-making, has achieved a public posture of
innocence throughout a national history that includes
slavery, racism, dispossession and destruction of native
peoples, continuous interventions in weaker countries,
war-making and exploitative economic arrangements with
autocratic Third World elites. A dramatic instance of
this contradictory reality was the celebration of victory
over fascism as a just war coupled with the
mega-terrorist use of atomic bombs against the civilian
populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
In some notable respects, the disappointments of the
1990s represented a parallel disconnect, due to US
preeminence, between impressive achievements on the level
of global justice and immobility, or worse, on the level
of existential human suffering, when that suffering could
have been mitigated. Nowhere was this more true than in
Africa and the Middle East. The African region was seen
as not worth the candle of strategic engagement by the
geopolitical forces that govern the world; in the Middle
East, those forces accorded priority to sustaining an
artificial and oppressive status quo. In one instance,
the region was geopolitically insignificant, and in the
other, the region was treated as a matter of vital
strategic interest. Yet the results of neglect and
excessive attentiveness were essentially the same for the
local peoples.
The Disconnect
The failure of the United Nations in 1994 to protect
the threatened population of Rwanda against genocide is
illustrative of the refusal of the organized world
community to lift a finger under conditions of
humanitarian emergency. This same refusal to act locally
was dramatically evident in relation to the struggle over
Israel-Palestine, where the illusion of a Ågpeace
processÅh was coupled with the concrete realities
of settlement expansion and a humiliating Israeli
occupation of Palestinian territories in defiance of
international law. There were many other expressions of
this pattern, including a willed indifference to poverty
and disease in the South, as well as the minimal
engagement with Ågethnic cleansingÅh in
former Yugoslavia, culminating in the horrendous massacre
at Srebrenica in 1995, while UN peacekeepers looked on as
virtual bystanders. Such examples of local injustice
could be multiplied indefinitely, although these salient
examples of either regional inattention or preoccupation
by geopolitical forces provide a revealing profile of
recent world politics.
Despite these failures, there were encouraging
suggestions of an awakening sense of human solidarity,
exhibiting a deepening global moral and legal
consciousness. The pursuit of former Chilean dictator
Augusto Pinochet demonstrated an increasing willingness
to hold leaders of states legally responsible for crimes
of state. There was a dramatic increase in attention to
severe violations of human rights, including even a
selective willingness to engage in humanitarian
interventions under the auspices of the UN. There were a
variety of moves to address historic injustices,
including long-deferred compensation for forced labor
during the Nazi era, recovery of bank deposits by
Holocaust survivors, serious discussion of reparations
for victims of slavery, and acknowledgement of and
apology for crimes perpetuated long ago, including the
dispossession of numerous indigenous peoples, colonial
domination and the humiliation of so-called
Ågcomfort womenÅh throughout Asia during the
time of Japanese military expansion.
These moves reflected the rise and influence of global
civil society, providing an expanding number of arenas
that were receptive to constituencies that felt variously
victimized by current political, economic and cultural
arrangements. During the final decade of the bloody
twentieth century, there seemed to be an emergent sense
of global responsibility that transcended borders, and
defied the amorality of geopolitics. A new
internationalism arose that involved coalitions between
transnational social forces organized as civil society
actors and moderate governments, achieving an
anti-personnel land mines treaty and the establishment of
an International Criminal Court over the vigorous
opposition of such leading states as the US and China.
The behavioral impact of such initiatives remain to be
seen, and will be a strong indicator of whether the
specific conduct of controlling geopolitical forces can
be made responsive to the claims of global justice.
Resilience of Power
The question that remains is how to explain this
stultifying disconnect arising from the persistence, and
even intensification, of particular injustices in the
face of general moves in the direction of global justice.
I think there are two lines of explanation, either of
which seems sufficient. The first line of explanation is
quite simply a matter of geopolitical ascendancy, either
highlighting a commitment to the status quo by hegemonic
actors or revealing an essential unwillingness by these
actors to expend resources and give attention to matters
of marginal relevance to their perceived interests. Since
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Middle East has
replaced Europe as the vital pivot of world politics, and
support for Israel is central to the regional hegemonic
strategy of the US, as well as representing an entrenched
domestic commitment in official American politics. At the
same time, the symbolic prominence of the Palestinian
struggle, as the most significant instance of thwarted
self-determination and disrupted decolonization, requires
the appearance of attention to the dynamics of the
conflict.
The result of such conflicting pressures is a phony
peace process, a gesture toward global justice,
accompanied by a worsening Palestinian reality, the
embodiment of local injustice, that ironically gives rise
to forms of local resistance that simultaneously,
although unwittingly, diminish Israeli security and
economic wellbeing. Indeed, this tragic downward spiral
for both peoples is characteristic of the effects of
denying specific injustices so as to realize geopolitical
priorities, which in this instance include oil, military
presence and the suppression of political Islam. We
witness a powerful negative dialectic at work in the
Middle East that couples the language of peace with
governing policies of extreme violence. The US war of
aggression against Iraq followed by a hostile and
exploitative occupation, replete with sweetheart deals
worth billions for such insider corporations as
Halliburton and Bechtel, is illustrative of a new type of
post-colonial colonialism, which seems unlikely to
prevail over the nationalist resistance being mounted by
Iraqi anti-colonialist forces.
The second main explanation of the disconnect involves
the resilience of state sovereignty. During recent
decades, power differentials have become increasingly
difficult to translate into political outcomes in the
face of nationalist resistance. Most current injustices
are matters of either state-society relations in which an
abusive government imposes its will or cruelties embedded
in popular culture that governments lack the means (or
the will) to prevent, as is the case with Åghonor
killingsÅh in such countries as Turkey and Jordan.
Perhaps, over time, the endorsement of standards of
international human rights, as well as decades of
relevant peace education and the homogenizing impact of
globalization, will lead to a gradual and uneven process
of Ågharmonization,Åh softening the behavior
of governments toward their own citizens and challenging
regressive aspects of cultural practice.
But the main explanation of local injustice continues
to be what it has been for several centuries: the
Westphalian framework of a world of territorially
sovereign states, empowered to act as an insulating
sanctuary for the commission of what Ken Booth has so
tellingly called Åghuman wrongs.Åh In other
words, the imperatives of global justice are continuously
being trumped by the unjust realities of territorial
authority. Thinking back to the Nazi era, it is
chastening to realize that so long as Hitler carried on
his genocidal policies within German borders, there was
no geopolitical willingness whatsoever to challenge the
persecution of the Jews and others. It was only when
Germany and its partners deeply threatened the global
order by waging European wars of aggression that a
defensive alliance took shape. As long as Germany acted
domestically, there was no political will to protect the
victims of acute local injustice. The liberal democracies
were quite willing to participate in the 1936 Olympics
and to be entertained by their hosts at Berlin, knowingly
presenting the Nazi regime with a major propaganda
victory.
Reversing the Momentum
Such an assessment of this complex relationship
between the globally articulated demands for justice and
the persistence of local injustice has proceeded without
discussing either the complicating relevance of corporate
and other forms of globalization and without a mention of
the September 11 attacks.
Very superficially, there was a new dialectical
movement at work during the 1990s with respect to
globalization, combining an economistic indifference to
the human fallout of neo-liberal global economic policy
and a moral and religious resurgence partly arising as a
defensive reaction to corporate globalization. This
reaction was notable by its selective attentiveness to
specific injustices, as well as its embrace of a
normative discourse on a global level, especially with
respect to human rights. Multinational companies such as
Shell, with notorious records of local abuse, suddenly
purchased prominent advertising space to proclaim their
dedication to human rights and environmental
responsibility. Of course, such initiatives were in large
part cynical public relations gestures, but were also
significant as acknowledgements that the moral demands of
global civil society could not be ignored. It may still
be a stretch to claim that global civil society is
Ågthe other superpower,Åh but it would be
equally ahistorical to ignore this transnational capacity
to endow certain global justice demands with political
force.
The impact of September 11 is significant, obscuring
the dialectical links between claims of global justice
and the persistence of local injustice by restoring
issues of war and peace to center stage. When global
civil society mounted its extraordinary protests of
February 15, 2003 against the prospect of a US attack on
Iraq, it signified the adoption by civil society of a
war/peace agenda, as well as the impotence of grassroots
forces to reverse the geopolitical momentum associated
with the US drive to convert its defense against the
al-Qaeda network into a pretext for global empire. By so
shifting the focus of concern, the encouraging
developments of the 1990s that had mounted a potentially
positive dialectic, generating a normative climate in
which political legitimacy of elites was at least
provisionally dependent on upholding human rights, were
canceled overnight. As in the Cold War, a negative
dialectic prevailed, in which geopolitical alignments
were privileged to the extent that abusive rule at home
was ignored, or even reinforced, provided support was
given in the struggle against world communism. Now the
political language has shifted to
Ågterrorism,Åh but the effects are similar,
granting states an exemption from global accountability
so long as they sign up as acquiescent in US moves to
consolidate its imperial grip on the world political and
economic system.
Whether the more hopeful dialectic of the 1990s can be
restored to historical relevance is an uncertainty likely
to be resolved in the next few years. Crucial to this
resolution is the outcome of the Iraq occupation and the
2004 presidential elections in the US. Unfortunately,
hope in the near term depends on the continuing failure
of US policy in Iraq, as well as on an economic
ÅgrecoveryÅh that restores corporate profits
without overcoming joblessness. If the response to
September 11 can be converted from ÅgwarÅh to
Åglaw enforcement,Åh and the Bush presidency
repudiated at the polls, then there is a strong prospect
that the momentum of the 1990s in support of global
justice will reappear, quite possibly with enhanced
stature and a greater sense of urgency.
In such an atmosphere, it is not unreasonable to hope
that the most symbolically powerful instances of
injustice will attract growing attention, which could
finally bring some relief and balance to the struggle of
the Palestinian people to achieve their rights,
especially the right of self-determination. It is helpful
to remember that the downfall of apartheid at the outset
of the 1990s seemed ÅgimpossibleÅh only a few
years before it happened, but that it too had acquired
the status of an intolerable specific injustice for the
world as a whole. It is this possibility, as reinforced
by the courage of the Palestinian people, which gives us
some reason to believe that the decade ahead will give
rise to progress with respect to this grossest form of
collective injustice, as well as allow for a revival of
attention to an array of other legitimate grievances
around the world.
©
TFF & the author 2004
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