Toward the Creation of a World Parliament: Strongly Recommended Reading
This is a brief promotional comment to call attention to the publication of a truly outstanding contribution to creative and restorative world order thinking. The book is entitled A World Parliament: Governance and Democracy in the 21stCenturyby Jo Leinen and Andreas Bummel, translated from German by Ray Cunningham, and published in 2018 in Berlin under the imprint of Democracy Without Borders. The book is currently available for purchase from Amazon.
I hope at a later time to do a serious review of this urgent plea for what might be called ‘cosmopolitan rationalism,’ the undergirding of a populist movement dedicated to overcoming the menace of the war system and predatory capitalism, placing a great emphasis on the potential of institutional innovation beyond the level of the state, above all, through the establishment of a world parliament with legislative authority. This would be a revolutionary step in the governance of humanity, and if it happens, is likely to be preceded in the evolutionary agenda of the authors by a global assembly endowed with recommendatory powers but lacking a mandate to make and implement binding decisions, and hence incapable of resolving conflicts or solving challenges of global scope.
The authors are both dedicated advocates of the institutionalization of governmental authority of regional and global scope. Leinen
has been a leading member of the European Parliament since 1999 as well as a German government official. Bummel is an internationally known and respected champion of world federalism incorporating democratic values. He is co-founder and director of the NGO, Democracy Without Borders.
What makes this book a great gift to humanity at a time of global emergency, is what I would call its ‘informed global humanism’ that sheds light on the long and distinguished history of proposals for global parliamentary authority. The institutional focus is greatly expanded and deepened by an erudite consideration of why global problems, as varied as food, water, environment, climate change, and economic justice cannot be solved without the presence and help of a world parliament capable of generating enforceable law. The authors bring to bear an astonishing range of knowledge to support their conclusions, drawing on the accumulated wisdom of philosophers, scientists, social scientists, moral authority figures, and statesmen to illuminate the question of how to meet the formidable challenges of the age. This enlargement of concerns lends weight to their commitment to clear the path of obstacles currently blocking the formation of a world parliament.
Indeed, while building their central case for a world parliament, Leinen and Bummel, have authored a book that tells you all you need to know to understand with some depth what is wrong with the world as it now functions, how it can best be fixed, and by whom. Their central political faith is rooted in an espousal of democratic values that they project as a positive global trend. Only here do I have some reservations, reflecting my reactions to the militarization of democracy in the United States and to the strong trends favoring autocracy in most leading countries. I do share with the authors a skepticism about the capacity of existing elites to promote the necessary reforms, as well as their sense that the time of a transnational revolution of the industrial proletariat has passed, with hopes now resting in the eruption of a transnational democratic and cosmopolitan democratic movement promoting progressive and humane forms of global governance.
I strongly recommend this book as a source of wisdom, thought, and the fashioning of a positive vision of the human future. Pasted below is the table of contents of A World Parliament to give a more concrete picture of the scope and grandeur of this extraordinary scholarly contribution with manifold activist implications for those of us who consider themselves citizen pilgrims.
Detailed Contents of A WORLD PARLIAMENT
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………. 1
PART I
The idea of a world parliament: its history and pioneers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
- From the Stoics to Kant: cosmopolitanism, natural law, and the idea
of a contract ………………………………………………………………… 8
Cosmopolitanism in ancient Greece 8—Cosmopolitan roots in India and China 9—
Vitoria’s ‘republic of the whole world’ 10—Conceptions of peace under ‘the sovereign
power of the state’ 12—The idea of the social contract in Hobbes and Locke 13—The
social contract and Wolff’s ‘V.lkerstaat’ 16—Kant’s cosmopolitan project 17
- The 18th century: enlightenment, revolutions, and parliamentarism ….. 20
The American federal state and representative democracy 20—The historical roots of
parliamentarism 22—Cosmopolitanism in the French Revolution 24—Cloots’ ‘republic
of humanity’ 25—The end of cosmopolitanism 26
- From Vienna to The Hague: the dynamics of integration and the
inter-parliamentary movement ………………………………………….. 27
Sartorius’ ‘peoples’ republic’ 27—Pecqueur’s concept of worldwide integration 28—
Pecqueur’s world federation and world parliament 29—Tennyson’s ‘Parliament of
Man’ 31—The long struggle to extend the right to vote 32—The birth of the inter-parliamentary
movement 33—The establishment of the IPU 34—The Hague Peace Conferences
as a catalyst 35—Internationalism in the USA 36—An initiative at the IPU 37—
Arguments emerging out of the German peace movement 39
- World War and the League of Nations ………………………………….. 42
The programme of the ‘Round Table’ group 42—The theory of sociocultural evolution
and a world federation 43—A world parliament on the Versailles agenda 44—The ‘German
Plan’ for the constitution of the League 46—Disappointment over the League of
Nations 46
- The Second World War and the atomic bomb: World Federalism in
the early days of the UN ………………………………………………….. 50
Federalism under pressure from fascism 50—The growth of world federalism 51—
Planning the post-war order 53—Fundamental criticism of the UN, and the shock of
Detailed Contents ix
the atom bomb 54—Prominent support for a federal world order 55—Reves’ critique
of democracy, the nation state and sovereignty 56—Albert Einstein and Albert Camus
as advocates 57—The position of the Catholic Church 58—The British initiative of Nov.
1945 59—The issue of a Charter review conference 60—The foundation of the Council
of Europe 62—Sohn’s proposal for a parliamentary assembly at the UN 62—Models for
a world constitution 63—The Clark and Sohn model 64—Parliamentary cooperation
for a world federation 65
- Bloc confrontation and the rise of the NGOs …………………………… 68
World federalism caught between the fronts in the Cold War 68—The federalist movement
and the founding of NATO 68—The declining popularity of world federalism
and a world parliament 69—The World Order Models Project 71—The growing importance
of NGOs 71—The idea of a ‘second chamber’ 73—The issue of weighted voting
in the UN General Assembly 74—Bertrand’s report 75— Perestroika and Gorbachev’s
initiative 76
- The end of the Cold War: the democratization wave, and the
revitalization of the debate ……………………………………………….. 79
The democratization wave 79—The revitalization of the debate 80—A UN parliamentary
assembly as a strategic concept 81—Support for a world parliament and a UNPA 82—
The report by the Commission on Global Governance 85—The report by the World
Commission on Culture and Development 87
- Democracy in the era of globalization …………………………………… 88
Globalization and the nation state 88—The theory of ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ 90—
The Falk and Strauss essays 93—A community of the democracies? 94— H.ffe’s federal
world republic 95—The call for a WTO parliament and the role of the IPU 97—Other
initiatives towards a world parliament and a UNPA 98
- The ‘War on Terror’, the role of the IPU, and the Campaign for a
UN Parliamentary Assembly ……………………………………………. 102
The ban on landmines, the International Criminal Court and the World Social
Forum 102—New contributions on the idea of a global parliament 103—The Lucknow
conferences 104—9/11 and global democracy 105—The report by the German Bundestag‘
s Enquete Commission 106—The report by the World Commission on the Social
Dimension of Globalization 107—The Ubuntu Forum campaign 108—The Cardoso
panel report 108—Growing support for a UNPA 111—The international campaign
for a UNPA 114—Calls for a UNPA since 2007 117—The third World Conference of
Speakers of Parliament 120—The European Parliament Resolution of 2011 121—The
de Zayas recommendations 123—Later developments 124—The report by the
Albright-Gambari Commission 126—The election of Trump and ongoing efforts 127
PART II
Governance and democracy in the 21st century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
- The Anthropocene, planetary boundaries, and the tragedy of the
commons ………………………………………………………………… 132
The era of humankind 132—Earth system boundaries 133—The problem of voluntarism
135—The ‘tragedy of the commons’ 137—The management of global common
goods 139—The problem of the generations 140—Global majority decision-making 141—
The tragedy of international law 143
- Overshoot, the ‘Great Transformation’, and a global eco-social
market economy …………………………………………………………. 144
Overshoot and ecological footprint 144—The end of the Utopia of growth 145—The
challenge of global eco-social development 146—‘Political barriers’ as the main obstacle
to transformation 147—The process of state formation and the rise of the market economy
148—The ‘double movement’ between market fundamentalism and state interventionism
149—A global eco-social market economy 150
- Turbo-capitalism, the financial crisis, and countering global
deregulation ……………………………………………………………… 153
The relevance of the ‘double movement’ and the emancipation question 153—The
financial crisis and the continuing systemic risk 154—State intervention to stabilize the
financial system 156—The financial system as a ‘priority global public good’ 157—The
anarchic system of international law 158—Liberalism, Laissez-faire and the question of
a world state 159—The global race to deregulate 160—The key role of tax havens and
anonymous shell companies 161—The hidden trillions 164—Global state formation
as the goal of the counter-movement 165
- A world currency, global taxation, and fiscal federalism ………………. 167
A world currency and a world central bank 167—The impact of national monetary policy
and currency wars 168—Recent proposals for a world reserve currency 169—The
fiscal race to the bottom 170—Uniform taxation of multinational corporations 172—
Rejection by the OECD 173—Global fiscal federalism and the restitution of fiscal sovereignty
174—Ideas for global taxes 175—The management, supervision and expenditure
of global tax revenues 176
- World domestic policy, trans-sovereign problems, and complex
interdependence …………………………………………………………. 179
‘Trans-sovereign problems’ 179—The concept of interdependence 180—Transgovernmental
networks and the merging of domestic and foreign policy 181—The evolutionary
phases of the international order 183—Sovereignty and the era of ‘implosion’ 184
Detailed Contents xi
- The fragility of world civilization, existential risks, and human
evolution …………………………………………………………………. 187
The potential for worldwide collapse 187—The Genome as part of the heritage of humankind
188—Reprogenetics 189—Transhumanism and artificial intelligence 190—
Autonomous weapons systems 191—Bioterrorism, nanobots and new pathogens 193—
The need for regulation under global law 194
- The threat of nuclear weapons, disarmament, and collective security … 196
Nulcear war as ‘the end of all things’ 196—The danger of nuclear war 197—The risk of
nuclear accidents 198—The unfulfilled commitment to general and complete disarmament
200—The architecture of nuclear disarmament 202—The link between nuclear
and conventional disarmament 204—The McCloy-Zorin Accords 206—The unrealized
peace concept of the UN Charter, and UN armed forces 207—The four pillars of a
world peace order 209—The role of a World Parliament 210
- Fighting terrorism, ‘blowback’, and data protection …………………… 212
The ‘war on terror’ as an end in itself 212—The covert warfare of the USA 212—The
consequences of US foreign policy and the ‘war against terror’ 213—Human rights violations
and the USA’s drone warfare 215—The roots of transnational terrorism and
the relevance of a World Parliament 216—The global surveillance system and universal
disenfranchisement 219—Global data protection legislation 221
- A world law enforcement system, criminal prosecution, and the
post-American era ………………………………………………………. 223
The need for world police law and a supranational police authority 223—The failure of
classical sanctions 224—A supranational police to support the ICC 225—Extending the
prosecuting powers of the ICC 227—Strengthening international criminal prosecution
and a World Parliament 229—Interpol and accountability 231—A World Parliament as
an element of world police law 232—The role and significance of the USA 235
- Global food security and the political economy of hunger …………….. 238
The extent of worldwide hunger and the right to adequate nutrition 238—Population
growth and food production 240—The fragility of global food supply 242—Dependence
on oil and phosphates 244—Hunger as a problem of political economy 244—
The relevance of democracy and the international system 245—Agricultural subsidies,
the WTO and food security 247—Commodity markets and financial speculation 248—
Food security as a global public good and the failure of the G20 249—The FAO, a World
Food Board and global food reserves 250—Free trade, food security and a world peace
order 252—Democratising global food policy and a World Parliament 253
- Global water policy ……………………………………………………… 256
The state of drinking water supply 256—Water security as a global concern 257—The
democratic deficit in water governance and a World Parliament 259
- The elimination of poverty, and basic social security for all …………… 262
Poverty as a key issue 262—Extreme poverty and the right to an adequate standard of
living 262—The need for a new approach to international development 265—
Economic growth is not enough 266—Social security as the foundation of a planetary
social contract 267—A global basic income 268—Universal access to the global commons
270—The dream of a life free from economic compulsion 270
- Global class formation, the ‘super class’, and global inequality ………… 272
The emergence of global class conflicts and the role of the middle class 272—The
global precariat 274—The concept of the Multitude 275—The super rich and global
power structures 277—The transnational capitalist class 279—A transnational state
apparatus 280—The interconnections between transnational corporations 281—The
need for a global antitrust authority 282—Global inequality and instability 284—
Inequality as the cause of the financial crisis 285—The growth of capital investments
and a global tax on capital 286—The need for global public policy instruments and a
World Parliament 287—A new global class compromise 289
- The debate on world government, the age of entropy, and
federalism ………………………………………………………………… 290
The global elite and the question of a world government 290—The spectre of a
global Leviathan 292—Hierarchical order and complexity 294—Different types of
hierarchies 294—The principle of subsidiarity 295—The fragmentation of global governance
and international law 296—Coherent world law and a World Parliament 298—
The bewildering world order and the ‘age of entropy’ 298—The entropic decline of
world civilization? 300—World federalism as a means of reducing complexity 301—A
world state as a taboo topic 302—The teetering paradigm of intergovernmentalism 303—
The standard reactionary arguments 305
- The third democratic transformation and the global democratic
deficit …………………………………………………………………….. 307
The waves of democratization 307—Economic development and democracy 309—The
post-industrial transformation in values 310—Democracy as a universal value 312—
The right to democracy 313—The undermining of democracy by intergovernmentalism
315—The influence of transnational corporations 317—The example of the Codex
Commission 317—Fragmentation as a problem of democracy 319—The dilemma of
scale 320—The concept of a chain of legitimation 320—Output legitimation 321—
Accountability to the world’s citizens 323—Equality and representation in international
law and world law 324—The third democratic transformation 326—
International parliamentary institutions 328
Detailed Contents xiii
- The development of a planetary consciousness, and a new global
enlightenment …………………………………………………………… 330
War and socio-political evolution 331—The decline of violence 333—The development
of reason, empathy, and morality 333—The origin of morality in group selection 336—
In-group morality and humanity’s crisis of adolescence 337—Sociogenesis and psychogenesis
340—The widening circle of empathy 340—The transition to an integral consciousness
343—Group narcissm and the Promethean gap 345—The problem of cultural
lag 347—Global identity and the Other 349—The ‘Overview Effect’ and a planetary
worldview 351—Identity, demos, and state formation 353—The progressive
attitude of the world population 357—Global history and world citizenship education
359—‘Big History’ as a modern creation story 360—The continuation of the project
of modernity 362—The new global Enlightenment 365
PART III
Shaping the future: the design and realization of world democracy . . . . 367
- Building a world parliament …………………………………………….. 369
The example of the European Parliament 369—The proposal for a UNPA 370—The
extension of powers and responsibilities 371—Growing democratic challenges 374—
The allocation of seats 376
- Creating world law ………………………………………………………. 379
International law and world law compared 379—A bicameral world legislature 381—
A world constitutional court 382
- The necessary conditions for the transformation ………………………. 384
The structural conditions for institutional change 384—A cosmopolitan movement
386—The role of NGOs 388—A UNPA as a catalyst for change 389—Four
factors 391—The stealthy revolution 391—The revolution from below 392—The revolution
from above 393—The trigger 394—Anticipating and averting the horror 395—
Climate-induced events 396—A democratic China 397—In the beginning 399
Index …………………………………………………………………………. 401
Tags: Andreas Bummel, Jo Leinen, World Federalism, World Government, World Parliament
Global Justice in the 21st Century 
ONUMA-san’s WORLD
27 May[Prefatory Note: The following text was published in May 2018 in the Yale Journal of International Law. Professor ONUMA’s text is the best comprehensive treatment of international law, and additionally raises crucial questions about the legitimating impact of a transcivilizational approach, which implies dewesternization as international law up to this point evolved as an instrument for regulating relations among Western sovereign states and exerting hegemonic control over the non-Western members of international society. An indispensable book.]
International Law in a Transcivilizational World. By ONUMA Yasuaki. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
A Transivilizational Perspective?
Professor ONUMA Yasuaki, long considered among the most eminent of international law scholars of our time, has made a clarion call in recent years for what he calls “a transcivilizational approach” to the study and appreciation of international law. Onuma san[*]is judicious in balancing the contributions of international law to a more humane world order against its limitations in regulating behavior from the perspective of peace, sustainability, and equity or justice. What Onuma san has given us in the book under review is a magisterial treatise that provides the best available pedagogic foundation currently available for the study of international law as a discipline. Although clearly written, it is demanding because of its jurisprudential sophistication, historically grounded doctrinal assessments, and comprehensive treatment of the major legal issues on the current global policy agenda.
A few years ago, in an apparent effort to reinforce his Japanese identity, Onuma san wrote to friends and colleagues, requesting that they address him as “ONUMA (or Onuma) san” in accord with Japanese protocol, and even if closely associated, refrain from the Western habit of calling friends by their first names, that is, “Yasuaki.” I suspect that this outstanding scholarly contribution is also an outgrowth of such a maturing of Onuma san’s psycho-political consciousness, resting on an insistence that the future legitimacy and effectiveness of international law will depend on whether it can overcome what Onuma san calls its West-centric bias and orientation.
For many years I worked rather closely with another leading, now deceased, Japanese scholar, Yoshikazu Sakamoto, in a multi-civilizational project, the World Order Models Project.[1] What makes this reference relevant is that Sakamoto’s preoccupation, alone among the dozen or so participating scholars from around the world representing a wide range of legal traditions and policy priorities, was focused on “identity” as the prime world order challenge of the late twentieth-century post-colonial world. It makes me wonder now whether there is something about Japanese cultural sensitivity in the period since the end of World War II that seeks to find a distinctive path into the “lifeworld” (Habermas) that is authentically faithful to the Japanese national circumstance, yet (i) maintains its intellectual and emotional distance from the United States/Europe and China and (ii) possesses the transnational tools and accompanying outlook needed to solve the challenges facing what Onuma san calls “humankind,” which seems an apparent move in the direction of feminist political correctness, scrapping the more familiar terminology of “mankind.”
Onuma san appears somewhat anguished, not only by a keen awareness of the inherent “impossibility” of achieving a genuine transcivilizatonal approach, given the dominance of Euro-American civilization in the evolution of international law and world order, but also by his own intellectual formation. In his words, “I am just one of many modern persons whose intellectual personality has been constructed by modern European civilization.” He adds, “I am a hybrid being, only part of which is an Asian or Japanese” (p. 7). In another passage Onuma san, almost in a confessional idiom writes, “We are all children of Grotius, Kant and Marx, and therefore ‘Europeans’ in the figurative sense”(p. 13).[2]
He does modify this assertion by the observation that “contemporary members of humankind are also children of Buddha, Confucius, Mohammad, and many other non-Western thinkers.” (p. 13). I really do have some doubts about this unsubstantiated claim, which would seem to suggest that we are all, to some extent, transcivilizational without even realizing it. As a sympathetic reader, I find these non-Western influences hard to find either in Onuma san’s treatment of international law or in my own thinking about comparable issues. To be sure, there is presently a disposition toward humane solutions of global problems and the encouragement of peaceful approaches to international disputes and conflict situations, but such views seem similarly rooted in Western humanist traditions of thought and not necessarily a reflection the influence of non-Western philosophical wisdom.
One feature of Onuma san’s approach that cuts across the grain of typical international law theorizing is his insistence on understanding present reality by adopting a historical approach to international legal doctrine and norms. Onuma san lets us know rather starkly that he has “learned far more from modern European works published from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century than from post-World War II theories” (p. 13). He does not engage directly with contemporary international law theorizing in the course of his seven-hundred-plus page book, which is somewhat puzzling, since Onuma san’s perspective focuses on the impact of recent events, especially the collapse of European colonialism, followed by the international participation and economic growth of the non-West, especially of Asian countries. Onuma san strongly believes that these altered material conditions in the character of international relations must make some fundamental adjustments to the nature of international law if it is to gain the global legitimacy required to be effective (p. 53).
Such a concern seems particularly timely in view of the helplessness of the international order to bring peace and stability to the Middle East or to overcome the legal nihilism of a new crop of political leaders, highlighted by the lawlessness of the Trump presidency.
Reflecting personally on such concerns, I realize that I am less hybrid than Onuma san, although I completely agree with his aspirational insistence on transcivilizational authenticity for both historical and practical reasons. I suspect that I am less hybrid because my Western embeddedness takes for granted questions of identity and perspective, which has led my critical energies to express themselves as an internal critic of Western civilization. I am sure that this non-self-consciousness, when it comes to civilizational identity, also follows from the way international law is studied in the United States and Europe, employing an ahistorical jurisprudence rooted in Western values and universalizing pretensions, as well as resting on similar conceptions of the international political context. Although I have been a critic of the way Western policymakers continue to manipulate international law to rationalize a belligerent foreign policy, I have not thought of these dangerous shortcomings as projections of civilizational values but rather as a matter of indulging an insatiable geopolitical appetite.[3]
Turning to substance, Onuma san’s treatment of international law is convincingly grounded in the sociopolitical realities of our time, making it hard to dissent from the lessons he draws. Onuma san places stress on the fact that ninety percent of the world’s peoples are non-Western, and that power relations are changing in ways that favor Asia and diminish the political and economic dominance of the West on a materiallevel. Yet—and here is where Onuma san’s call for change in approach and content becomes most relevant—he anticipates (in a rather complex and somewhat confusing manner) that there will be a continued dominance of Western ideationalinfluence, which he believes will persist deep into the twenty-first century, even in the likely event that China becomes the world’s largest economy. Whether Onuma’s prediction will hold in the event that Trump’s policy of relinquishing global leadership persists is quite uncertain.
Conceptualizing International Law
Onuma san is very clear about how he understands basic issues bearing on the nature and effectiveness of international law. He blames what he calls “domestic model thinking” for a frequent underestimation of the effectiveness and importance of international law to the maintenance of an orderly world. In effect, the weak institutionalization of authority and lack of enforcement capabilities overlook the degree to which State actors and a variety of non-State actors benefit from a stable normative environment that encourages compliance, reliability, and moderation. Onuma san makes the frequently overlooked point that violations of domestic law are common without drawing into question the reality of the legal order. We must learn to evaluate international law in relation to the specific functions it performs given its State-centric modes of operation.
Unlike domestic law, international law is less focused on regulating behavior than in a series of other undertakings that Onuma san enumerates as “prescriptive, adjudicative, justificatory, legitimating, communicative, rule declaratory, and constructive (or constitutive)” (pp. 30, 585). These functions have more to do with the conduct of statecraft, civic activism, and policy planning than they do with governmental adherence to rules. In this vein, Onuma san is critical of the parallel tendency of international jurists to emphasize adjudication in their presentation of the field. This emphasis exaggerates the relevance that tribunals and judicial decisions have to the diverse modes by which international law fulfills its various functions.
Not surprisingly, Onuma san credits this more existentially-grounded appreciation of international law to his work outside the classroom and library, mentioning specifically his work as “a human rights activist and as an advisor to a member of the Japanese cabinet” (p. 8). In effect, Onuma san wants us to understand that it is in these non-judicial settings of advocacy and advising that the guidelines associated with international law often make their most significant contribution. What Onuma san proposes for the study of international law is a less academically oriented understanding and more of a practitioners’viewpoint.
Again I am struck by the tensions between Onuma san’s erudition and reliance on political philosophy (especially, Hobbes, Kant, Machiavelli, Karl Schmitt, even Marx), as well as early modern juridical works (especially, Grotius), which stand in contrast to his experiential unbookish insistence on comprehending the scope and functioning of international law by contact with the doingrather than by parsing the nuances of doctrineas enunciated by the judges of the International Court of Justice or the elaborate pontifications of leading jurists. In a similar spirit, Onuma san downplays the constraining role of international law, particularly relating to the behavior of major States, insisting that if a legal system works well, disputes are generally avoided, and behavioral guidelines are invisibly respected as a matter of course or to satisfy national interests.
Another feature of Onuma san’s approach is the avoidance of idealism and legalism in his assessment of what to expect with respect to the links between international law and justice: “[T]he work of international law is in an irrational world where voices seeking justice are often ignored. It is sad to recognize such a reality, but one should not escape from it” (p. 28). In this spirit, which seems more in keeping with a variety of skeptical twentieth-century European thinkers than with a manifestation of non-Western thinking, Onuma san describes himself as “a pessimist in approach” whose advice is “to doubt everything, including one’s own sense, intuitions, premises, and understandings, based on his or her past study and experience”(pp. 28-29).[4]
There are many thoughtful reflections offered by Onuma san as to the development of international law over time—and particularly the emergence of the territorially-oriented European system of sovereign states and its globalization in the past several decades. This transformation of international law reflects both the success of the anti-colonial movement—the greatest pushback ever experienced by the West as a global system—and the essential acceptance of this European way of organizing international relations by the newly independent States of Asia and Africa. This erosion and extension of Euro-centricism has made international law “less imperialistic, racist, male-centric” and hence more globally legitimate (p. 85). At the same time, there is much more to be done in the ideational sphere to attain Onuma san’s transcivilizational goals. He is acutely aware that most writings on international law continue to be reflections predominantly of the Western mentality. This civilizational provincialism will not be overcome until “global discursive space” exhibits a greater responsiveness to the civilizational outlook of the new demographic and normative balances that are heavily weighted in favor of non-Western peoples.
Onuma san’s views here do encourage greater self-reflection and self-criticism by those of us who are representative of the West, and this is good. In some ironic sense, for this reason I find Onuma san’s treatise potentially more valuable for Western readers than for others. I suspect that the Asian scholarly community, especially after twenty years of anti-Western critiques asserting the relevance of “Asian values,” needs no coaching by Onuma san as to the desirability of a transcivilizational perspective.
I also find that some confusion surrounds the post-Cold geopoliticalappropriation of human rights, narrowly understood in the West as civil and political rights and invoked as a pretext for military interventions in such non-Western countries as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. In other words, in the post-colonial and post-Cold War world, the West has sought to retain its global role by claiming the high moral ground, creating an entitlement to override non-intervention and self-determination norms that are given priority by most non-Western states.
This development raises two relevant concerns. First, the West claims that the human rights discourse is transcivilizational in character, by its linkage of rights to the generic quality of being “human,” even though its formulations are beholden to Western liberalism. Secondly, the relevance of the continued Westernized dominance of force projection, a salient material reality largely under the aegis of the United States, seems not sufficiently appreciated by Onuma san in his long final chapter on the strenuous efforts of international law—as set forth most authoritatively in the UN Charter—to restrict recourse by States to force. It would appear that this central feature of the global security system raises some serious unanswered questions about the materialdecline of the West. We still live in a world where all debates and practice pertaining to intervention continue to be discussions about whether the West should intervene in the non-West, and never the reverse.[5]
A Concluding Assessment
There are thoughtful and analytically rigorous chapters on the main themes of international law, each of which warrants extensive comments beyond the limits of this review. In general, rather than a transcivilizational view, what I find more consistently present is an interpretation of the substance of international law from a global perspective that privileges the humaninterest, yet is restrained by Onuma san’s form of pessimistic realism that is sensitive to the primacy of a State-centric world order that rests on the interaction of egoistic nationalinterests.
To illustrate the accelerating pace of history, Onuma san’s treatise was published before the world was gripped by a populist backlash in politics that has reversed prior democratizing trends. This has produced a surge of chauvinistic nationalisms and a series of elected leaders with autocratic governing styles in some of the world’s most influential countries, including Russia, India, Japan, Brazil, Turkey, and the United States. In addition, the worst nuclear crises in fifty years have threatened catastrophe on the Korean Peninsula as well as in the Middle East with respect to Iran. Beyond this, the Trump presidency has deprived the world of leadership with respect to major issues requiring global cooperation, such as climate change, global migration and treatment of refugees, and famine conditions in several countries. These issues call for what might be considered a meta-civilizational approach that addresses current global challenges on the basis of shared human interests. In my view, Onuma san provides the outlook and understanding that would encourage such enlightened behavior, but it is only presented as a sub-text and is perhaps overshadowed by the less substantiated claim that this treatise provides a transnationalized approach to international law traditions that still prevail under the ideationalhegemony of the West despite its partial loss of materialistleverage due to the rise of the non-West.
Despite my quibbles here and there, this is a great book that deserves study by all those concerned about the past, present, and future of international law. Every serious student of the subject can hardly get along without meeting the various challenges posed and interpretations offered by Onuma san in the course of this all-encompassing treatise.
Onuma makes a stirring final appeal that is worth pondering: “International law is an indispensable meansfor people to realize the material and spiritual well-being of humanity. As such, people should constantly press national governments, international organizations, and other subjects to respect and abide by it” (p. 666). I find this kind of profession of faith in the importance of international law to be a compelling conclusion, including its unexplained yet resonant reference to “spiritual well-being.” This may be the most indispensable element of all!
[*]Professor ONUMA Yasuaki has requested that his name appear, in keeping with Japanese tradition, as ONUMA or Onuma san.
[1]See On the Creation of a Just World Order: Preferred Worlds for the 1990s(Saul H. Mendlovitz ed., 1975).
[2]Elsewhere, Onuma san suggests that his intellectual personality was also formed by Buddhist and Confucian thought operating on an “unconscious level” (p. 7). I am puzzled by what is meant in this regard with respect to the concrete pattern of opinions and judgments offered in the course of this most comprehensive study of international law.
[3]My own approach to these issues is most recently set forth in Richard Falk, Power Shift: On the New Global Order(2016).
[4]Perhaps, as a gesture to a transcivilizational approach, Onuma san concludes this line of thought with the following quotation of Confucius: “[I]t should be a pleasure to learn and review constantly and repeatedly” (p. 29). I read such advice as not an expression of pessimism or wisdom from the East but, on the contrary, the near-universal view that learning should be a satisfying lifelong activity that allows ideas and opinions to remain alive so long as they do not become dogma.
[5]This persistence of Western dominance in the security domain does not alter my belief that the unlearned lesson of the Vietnam War is the declining capacity of Western military superiority to control the political outcomes in non-Western contexts. For discussion, see Revisiting the Vietnam War: The Views and Interpretations of Richard Falk (Stefan Andersson ed., 2017).
Tags: compliance, internatlional law, ONUMA-san, transcvilivilizational approach