Global Justice in the 21st Century

It is astonishing that despite the huge gaps between the maximum that Israel is willing to concede and the minimum that the Palestine Authority could accept as the basis of a final settlement of the conflict, governmental leaders, especially in Washington, continue to pull every available string to restart inter-governmental negotiations.  Is it not enough of a signal that Israel lacks the capacity or will to agree to an extension of the partial settlement freeze for a mere additional 90 days, despite the outrageous inducements from the Obama Administration (20 F-35 fighter jets useful for an attack on Iran; an unprecedented advance promise to veto any initiative in the Security Council acknowledging a Palestinian state; and the assurance that

Israel would never again be asked to accept a settlement moratorium) that were offered to suspend partially their unlawful settlement activity. In effect, a habitual armed robber was being asked to stop robbing a few banks for three months in exchange for a huge financial payoff. Such an arrangement qualifies as a transparently shameless embrace of Israeli lawlessness on behalf of a peace process that has no prospect of producing peace, much less justice.  Justice here is conceived in relation to the satisfaction of Palestinian rights, especially the right of self–determination that has through the years been whittled down.

The Palestinian acceptance of the 1967 borders (a decision ratified by the PLO in 1988) as the unilaterally reduced basis of the territorial claims associated with Palestinian self-determination, which is only 22% of historic Palestine, and this is less than half of what the UN had proposed in its 1947 partition plan that was at that time quite reasonably rejected by the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors as a colonialist ploy in which the indigenous population was adversely affected and never consulted. In retrospect, the Palestinian readiness to settle for the 1967 borders was an extraordinary concession in advance of negotiations that was never acknowledged by either Israel or the United States, casting real doubt on whether there was ever a credible commitment to end the conflict by diplomacy.

The shamelessness continues. Instead of castigating Israel for its refusal to show even a pretense of pragmatic flexibility that would make the Obama approach seem slightly less fatuous and regressively wimpy, the U.S. Government simply announced that it was abandoning its efforts to persuade Israel to extend the moratorium, and was now embarking on a resumption of the negotiations between the parties without any preconditions, that is, settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing could now continue uncontested.

This was too much even for the normally passive European Union. A few days ago a meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers in Brussels issued a statement insisting that all Israeli activity cease in what was called the ‘illegal settlements’ and that the Gaza blockade be ended ‘immediately’ by an opening of all the crossings to humanitarian and commercial goods, as well as to the entry and exit of persons. The EU statement was impressively forthright for once: “Our view on settlements, including East Jerusalem, are clear: they are illegal under international law and an obstacle to peace.” Regrettably, the EU statement was silent on the issue of recognition of Palestinian statehood, losing the opportunity to reinforce the symbolically important diplomatic step taken by Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay to accord Palestine recognition within its 1967 borders. Nevertheless, the EU did distance itself from Washington, leaving the United States to the discomfort of its lonely solidarity with Israel. By refusing a diplomatic accommodation with Turkey in the aftermath of the flagrantly criminal attack last May on the Freedom Flotilla carrying humanitarian assistance to the beleaguered people of Gaza, Israel confirms this perception of its pariah status.

Underneath these dark clouds of deception and delusion, the peoples of occupied Palestine, as well as the several million refugees, endure their harsh daily existence while the world watches and waits, seemingly helpless. The durable American envoy to the conflict, George Mitchell, continues to say that the objective of the talks is “an idependent, viable state of Palestine..living side by side with Israel.” The incoherence of such an objective should be palpable. How can one honestly talk about such an envisioned Palestinian state as ‘viable’ when the American leadership, agrees with Israel that ‘subsequent developments’ (the code phrase for settlements, land seizures, wall, ethnic cleansing, annexation of Jerusalem) need to be embodied in the outcome of negotiations? And what sort of ‘independence’ is being contemplated if the Palestinian borders are to be still controlled by Israeli security forces and a demilitarized Palestine is expected to live side by side with a highly militarized Israel? The American approach plays with lives as it plays with language, and yet most of the mainstream media swallows this latest bend in the river without raising even a skeptical eyebrow.

These considerations ignore some other problematic aspects of the current framework. The Netanyahu government demands PA acknowledgement of Israel as ‘a Jewish state,’ thereby overlooking the human rights of the Palestinian minority in pre-1967 Israel, numbering about 1.5 million or about 20% of the total population, to live as citizens under conditions of non-discrimination and dignity. Sometimes history is useful. Even the notorious Balfour Declaration, a pure assertion of British colonial prerogative, promised the Zionist movement only ‘a homeland,’ not a sovereign state. The workings of warfare and geopolitics and clever propaganda gradually shifted the parameters of understanding, allowing a homeland to be transformed into a sovereign state with disastrous chain of consequences for the indigenous population. In this respect the most recent Hamas position of refusing recognition of Israel while agreeing to the establishment of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders is a reasonable effort to draw a line between affirming the illegitimate and being reconciled to political circumstances. To expect more is to drive the Palestinians into an unacceptable corner of humiliation, in effect, endorsing the nabka, and all that has followed by way of dispossession and abuse.

Of course, the issue of self-determination is not for non-Palestinians to determine. Those who call upon Washington, even now and despite its partisanship and ill-concealed alignments, to impose a solution are thus doubly misguided. Even Hilary Clinton acknowledged days ago the impossibility of adopting such an approach. What seems clear at present is that both the PA and Hamas seem ready to accept a state of their own within 1967 borders, more or less along the lines set forth back in 1967 in the Security Resolution 242, which remains an iconic document that supposedly embodies a continuing international consensus. What it would mean with respect to implementation is certain to be highly contentious, especially in relation to those infamous ‘subsequent developments,’ better understood as massive encroachments on Palestinian prospects for separate statehood.  Many in the Palestinian diaspora doubt whether a two state solution is attainable or desirable. Instead theyt are calling for a single secular, bi-national democratic state that is co-terminus with the historic Palestinian mandate, and alone has the inherent capacity to reconcile contemporary ideas of democracy, human rights, and a belated realization of Palestinian rights, including the long deferred claims of Palestinian refugees.

Geopolitics is stubborn, and is not moving in hopeful directions. Now arms are being again twisted by American diplomacy in the region to resume talks between the parties on what are being called ‘core issues’ (borders, security arrangements, Jerusalem, settlements, refugees, relations with neighbors). While this mindless diplomatic spinning goes forth, other clocks are ticking madly: the settlements expanding at accelerating rates, new segments of the wall are being constructed, ethnic cleansing intensifies in East Jerusalem, the apartheid practices and structures in the West Bank are being steadily strengthened, the entrapped and imprisoned population of Gaza lives continuously on the brink of a survival crisis, the refugees in their camps endure their dreary and unacceptable confinement. Netanyahu thunderously warns that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, that never will a single Palestinian refugee be allowed to return, that Israel is a Jewish state, and that whatever Tel Aviv calls ‘security’ must be treated as non-negotiable. Given these predispositions, combined with the disparities in bargaining power between the parties, as well as the one-sided hegemonic role of the United States, who but a fool could think that a just peace could emerge from the such a deformed pattern of geopolitical diplomacy? Is it not better at this time to rely on the growing Palestine Solidarity Movement, peace from below, and the related success being experienced in waging the Legitimacy War against Israel, what Israel itself nervously calls ‘the de-legitimacy project’ that is viewed by its leaders and think tanks as a far greater threat to its illicit ambitions than  armed resistance?

The thousands of delegates and many civic activists have temporarily retreated from the climate change wars waged on the battlefields of Cancun. The inter-governmental battles were fought in the resort setting of the five star Moon Palace Hotel, known for its manicured golf course, situated in an ecologically sensitive area beyond the easy reach of activists, while the main NGO happenings were staged on the streets of the urban poor of the town of Cancun, and in a isolated huge convention center.

The overwhelming majority of the delegates went home content, feeling that they did all that was possible under the circumstances for their governments and having rescued for the time being the reputation of the multilateral approach that had been so tarnished by the failures of Copenhagen that were magnified by the rash and unexpected ineptitudes and police violence of the Danish hosts. Cancun, at the very least, was a triumph for Mexican hospitality and diplomacy, with Latin American women running the show with panache, tact, and a credible commitment to inclusiveness of participation and transparency of negotiations. Of course, there were glitches in the process, and moments of high tension at the end, but overall, and certainly by comparison with Copenhagen, there were good feelings generated in most governmental circles by the end of the proceedings. I suppose that the best summary of these atmospherics was ‘Onward to Durban’ where next year’s climate change gathering will convene, and where there were a variety of pledges to get beyond the compromises and ambiguities that clouded the results at Cancun.

If we put aside these diversionary atmospherics to one side, it dawns on us that this meeting of governments, most represented at the ministerial level, was supposed to address urgent concerns relating to climate change, which has up to now widely understood to mean doing what is necessary to keep global warming from rising above 2 degrees Celsius, the absolute highest tolerable average earth temperature as measured since the onset of the industrial age. The scientific consensus seems increasingly to believe that this ceiling is dangerously high, having at most a 50% chance of avoiding severe harm to the quality of life throughout the world, and that a 1.5 degree increase, although seemingly too ambitious to be realistic as a target, is the most average increase in heat that it is prudent to allow. If this is the case that means a reduction of the current 390 ppm (parts per million) of greenhouse gasses to a utopian upper limit of 350 ppm. Even it these lower levels were somehow achieved over time, great problems would remain as the heating of the earth is uneven, with Africa getting a much higher than average heating, causing dreadful droughts and fires already. At Cancun these realities were essentially ignored except by Bolivia as they were correctly understood by the convenors and delegates to bring the whole negotiating process to a grinding halt, uncovering all the unresolved battles about the distribution of responsibilities for reducing carbon emissions, the developing world is united in refusing to slow their development when the problems of global warming were, in their judgment, mainly a result of the buildup of GHGs during the centuries of industrialization in the developed world. The developed world, led by the United States Government (with a climate skeptic Republican dominated Congress in the background), insists in opposition that present contributions to emissions should be the primary basis for assessing levels of responsibilities, making the developing countries, led by China, share the burden on a roughly proportionate basis. This standoff is fundamental, and seems unlikely to be resolved soon by either multilateral diplomacy or by enlightened leadership on either side of this paralyzing divide.

This state of affairs puts the spotlight on the pluri-national democratic state of Bolivia, as it insists on being identified, that stood bravely and resolutely on principle throughout the conference, cogently arguing that the refusal to work toward the control of carbon emissions was unacceptable, and meant dooming the future of humanity as well violating the integrity of Mother Earth. At the final dramatic session when there existed near unanimity in the great hall the Bolivian chief negotiator, Pablo Colon, with eloquence and indisputably, played the role of spoiler refusing to go along with a final text, called ‘The Copenhagen Agreements: A New Era of International Cooperation on Climate Change,” that he described as a virtual death warrant for the human species and the surrounding reality of a habitable earth, precisely because it failed to address the central issue of global warming in a prudent and responsible fashion. That Colon with great composure and dignity stood alone in a vast hall filled with tired and angry delegates, was shamelessly shouted down, and invoked the notion of ‘consensus’ to contend that no negotiated text could be procedurally adopted without adhering to UN procedural rules requiring ‘consensus’ to be equated with unanimity.

In the end to the relief of the assembled crowd at about 4 am, the President of the Conference, the Mexican Foreign Minister, Patricia Espinosa, declared the agreed text adopted, receiving thunderous applause that was also meant to convey the enraged response to the Bolivian efforts to block the process. It is a nice technical question for the legal community as to whether or not in UN circles ‘consensus’ should be understood to mean ‘unanimity’ or just an expression of the overwhelming political will, a kind of super-majority plurality. A related issue is whether a UN climate change conference can establish its own procedural norms for reaching decisions. The Bolivian voice was wonderfully expressive and determined, a courageously prophetic intoning of the underlying failure of the conference to come to grips with the challenges of climate change, but in terms  of process, it would operate as a veto on a process that would become unmanageable if serious decisions required the unanimous assent of the more than 192 participating governments.

Should we conclude that Cancun was a small step forward, restoring some hope to multilateral cooperation, achieving some help for the most vulnerable countries, and illustrating the willingness of most governments to work together for the sake of achieving what was attainable given the political realities of the moment? Or should we condemn Cancun as one more demonstration of the incapacity of the world of states to rise above national interests and geopolitical ambitions, to see ahead to the terrible consequences of inaction at present, and to administer a sedative to the peoples of the world when what is desperately needed is a strong stimulant?

As has been so well said on other occasions, my friends, “the answer is blowing in the wind.”

Two important reflections on the global role of the United States caught my attention during the last 24 hours, and I recommend them both as perceptive interpretations of what seems to be happening to American power and prestige and as presaging worse to come: Alfred W. McCoy, “The Decline and Fall of the American Empire: Four Scenarios for the end of the American Century by 2025,” available via TomDispatch.com, posted Dec. 5, 2010; Sahin Alpay,  “Wikileaks: the sad story of a declining superpower,” Today’s Zaman, December 6, 2010.

Both pieces paint a similar picture of the United States as heading for the geopolitical dumpster, but at somewhat different speeds and consequences. What for Alpay is sad is for McCoy catastrophic. McCoy, a distinguished historian who has been writing revealingly for decades about corrosive role of secrecy and the drug connections associated with the conduct of the ceaseless American wars in Third World countries, as well as being the author of a devastating expose of the reliance by the CIA on pre-Bush era torture ever since the early years of the Cold War. In depicting the future, McCoy looks at four scenarios for abrupt decline: by economic unraveling via the collapse of the dollar; by persisting military misadventures in Afghanistan, Iran, elsewhere; by an oil/energy squeeze by way of supply shortages and skyrocketing prices; and by stumbling into World War III as a result of the spiraling out of control of the intensifying rivalry with China. McCoy’s cogent line of reasoning suggests that these converging features of the global setting are so unfavorable to the United States’ accustomed role for the last century as to produce an abrupt collapse of its imperial status on the world stage accompanied by a devastating downturn at home, likely generating an irresponsible nativist backlash that will only make matters far worse. McCoy believes that the collapse will probably occur by 2025, and not later.

Alpay, a prominent university professor and a regular columnist in Turkey, relates his assessments closely to the illuminating Wikileaks revelations of the inner and hidden dynamics of American diplomacy, arguing along the way that these massive and embarrassing disclosures should be welcomed as fully in the spirit of democratic governance, and those who made it happen should be applauded and defended, not threatened and criminalized. WiliLeaks exposes the huge gaps that separate the deep and secretive politics of the policy elites from the dishonest public rationales offered to citizens and the world by American leaders. The revelations also confirm the misguided and inept thinking that underlies current foreign policy failures. Alpay’s main observation is to cast aside those who insist that the WikiLeaks phenomenon is itself a dark conspiracy by one of the following: Israel to build support for a waging war against Iran, U.S. Government eager to intensify tensions in the Arab world, rogue bureaucrats seeking to embarrass the elected Obama presidency. Instead of conspiracies so quickly embraced in the Middle East, Alpay believes that the main value of the 250,000 plus cables confirm what we should have already known: that the inner workings of power in the United States exhibit a lethal downward spiral of disarray that puts the Middle East and Central Asia in great and immediate danger. This sudden eruption of transparency demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt the governmental indifference toward those supposedly core values of a democratic society associated with law and decency, but it also provides ample proof of the incompetence, wrongheadedness, and an uncritical embrace of dysfunctional militarism that reigns supreme in Washington.

I would add a few peripheral points to these perceptive commentaries:

–whether decline and fall are inevitable is uncertain, but what makes these outcomes more and more probable and proximate, is this dual obsessive attachment of the Beltway Gang to dysfunctional militarism and a suicidal form of hyper-capitalism, both paving the way to political extremism at home and fiscal disaster for the world;

–while the preoccupation with American failures is understandable, it deflects attention from other trends that imperil the human future, and compound the difficulties already mentioned: global warming and its secondary effects on weather, ocean levels, food security, health, stability;

‘peak oil’ implying declining production and supply curves at a time of rising consumption and demand curves; water scarcities imperiling the wellbeing of over a billion persons;

–what seems dismaying is the absence of a coherent progressive opposition that is rooted in ideas, values, and trends that rests on several vital normative premises: equality and dignity of all persons, the embeddedness of human destiny in its larger natural and cosmic surroundings, the need for human security to be build upon a foundation of justice,  locally, nationally, and globally, a reliance on rationality, evidence, education, respect for law, and ethical responsibility in reaching public policy conclusions; the contrast with an ascending reactionary opposition is striking: its views are coherent and principled, but its vision is warped, based on hostility toward ‘otherness’, division of humanity into good and evil, racism, climate skepticism, a general repudiation of knowledge and reason as guides for policy, an absence of empathy for the suffering of others, national chauvinism, an exaggerated veneration of the military and military virtues;

–what may provide glimmers of hope is the incapacity of the mind to encompass the totality of the reality that confronts society, and will disclose itself by an unfolding that cannot be fully anticipated; uncertainty makes struggle against the impending darkness an urgent and necessary imperative; if we wish to live we must be willing to fight; the biggest domestic challenge in this country is directed at the youth, briefly awakened by the promises of the Obama presidential campaign but quickly disillusioned by the performance of the Obama presidency, and now regressing to a mindless urban hedonism that is pacified by social networking and preoccupied by a hermetic world of sex, food, and careers, or at least jobs, an atmosphere unintentionally forming the background of the film Social Networking (also confirmed by the texture and circumscribed concerns portrayed in Going the Distance); in the often invoked words of William Butler Yeats, ‘the worst are full of passionate intensity, while the best lack all conviction.’ If this remains the case, we should all check in at the nearest hospice!

–avoiding the worst of these future scenarios of doom is a global challenge, not just one confronting Americans; the global presence of the United States, epitomized by its 800 or so overseas military bases, should make people everywhere insist on having  a vote in American elections as an essential, if symbolic, element in any legitimate future form of global democracy; the rest of the world is disenfranchised here in America, yet its fate is often more determined, at least for now, by decisions made in the White House without any pretense of consulting those most affected. These decisions are often more consequential for human wellbeing than are the contests for leadership in national elections. The Brazilian leader, Lula, typified this awareness when he said prior to a G-20 meeting at the height of the world recession, “I pray for him more than for myself,” My claim is that the world needs votes, not prayers, if it is to create some relationship between representation, responsibility, and social/political/economic reality. Our political imaginations remain entrapped spatially, by way of geographic boundaries, while our lives are increasingly constituted and disempowered by an array of digital machinations.