International law and the future

Abstract

Globalisation, 9/11 and the USA's ‘war on terror’ have shaken the foundations of 21st century world order, leading to consensus on the need for an effective and benevolent form of global governance, but there is little agreement on how this should be implemented. Distinguishing between Westphalian pessimists and optimists (the former doubtful of the state system's ability to solve the current crisis; the latter convinced that said system can be adapted and modified to do so), this article examines the different approaches currently being taken to global governance, concluding that a post-Westphalian solution must be achieved. However, it rejects the notion of benevolent (US) empire, with its reliance on militarisation and pre-emptive action, and argues instead for a law-oriented approach espousing cosmopolitan values and striving for global justice and global democracy. The rise of a global civil society and the growing influence of transnational social forces are among the trends that suggest this may be possible.

Notes

1 Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, 3 vols, Oxford: Blackwell, 1996 – 98. See also Richard Appelbaum, William Felstiner & Volkmar Gessner (eds), Rules and Networks: The Legal Culture of Global Business Transactions, Oxford: Hart Publishing; and William Robinson, ‘Social theory and globalization: the rise of a transnational state’, Theory and Society, 30, 2001, pp 157 – 200.

2 Richard Falk, The Great Terror War, New York: Olive Branch, 2003.

3 Richard Falk, The Declining World Order: America's Imperial Geopolitics, New York: Routledge, 2004. See also John Ikenberry's contentions that the institutional capabilities of the Westphalian approach have been degraded by recent developments. G John Ikenberry, ‘The strange triumph of unilateralism’, Current History, 104, 2005, pp 414 – 417.

4 Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitan: Ethics in a World of Strangers, New York: Norton, 2006; and David Held & Mathias Koenig-Archibugi (eds), Taming Globalization: Frontiers of Governance, Cambridge: Polity, 2003.

5 Michael Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation-Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, Penguin, 2003; and Amitai Etzioni, From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

6 David Held, Global Covenant: The Social Democratic Alternative to the Washington Consensus, Cambridge: Polity, 2004; and Anne-Marie Slaughter, A New World Order, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004.

7 Without subscribing to a conspiracy theory explanation, see David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor, Northampton, MA: Olive Branch, 2004; and Griffin, The 9-11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, Northampton, MA: Oliver Branch, 2005.

8 There are many expressions of this perspective. See Project for the New American Century, Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources for a New Century, 2000, at http://newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf; and White House, ‘National Security Strategy of the United States of America’, 2002, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.pdf. The bbc three-part documentary, The Power of Nightmares—The Rise of the Politics of Fear, directed by Adam Curtiss, 2003, ties many of these elements together. On Strauss, see Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.

9 For examples, see Slaughter, A New World Order; Etzioni, From Empire to Community; and Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, New York: Basic, 2004.

10 Michael Mandelbaum, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the 21st Century, New York: Public Affairs, 2005, p xvi, explained further on pp 196 – 202.

11 Ibid, pp 28 – 29.

12 Neil Smith offers a critical and persuasive account of this continuity as confirming the thesis of non-solution offered here. Smith, The Endgame of Globalization, New York: Routledge, 2004.

13 See George Kennan, ‘Review of current trends in US foreign policy’, Policy Planning Study 23, 24 February 1948, for the locus classicus for disclosing the importance of this dimension, reprinted in Thomas H Entzold & John Lewis Gaddis (eds), Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy 1940 – 50, New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.

14 See Gareth Evans & Mohamed Sahnoun, ‘The Responsibility to Protect, by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty’, Foreign Affairs, 81 (6), pp 99 – 110; Kosovo Report, Report of the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000; The Responsibility to Protect, Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001; and Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo, Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1999.

15 US failures to support interventions have also caused problems, as the genocidal tragedies in Rwanda and Darfur attest.

16 Richard Falk, ‘Storm clouds over Iran’, The Nation, 13 February 2006, at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060213/falk.

17 Thomas TM Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-first Century, New York: GP Putnam's Sons, 2004; and Barnett, Blueprint for Action: A Future Worth Creating, New York: GP Putnam's Sons, 2005.

18 Held, Global Covenant, p 161. See also Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995.

19 Held, Global Covenant, p 162, elaborated in detail on pp 164 – 165, 170 – 178. Cf John Rawls, who also discusses the achievement of human decency within the Westphalian framework as a ‘realist utopia’. Rawls, The Law of Peoples, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

20 Held, Global Covenant, p 6. Cf Slaughter, A New World Order on disaggregating the state as the solution.

21 For a negative articulation of world government, see Brzezinski, The Choice.

22 See Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth, New York: Knopf, 1982; and Richard Falk & Robert Lifton, Indefensible Weapons: The Political and Psychological Case against Nuclearism, New York: Basic, 1982.

23 See Barnett, Blueprint; Barry Commoner, The Closing Circle: Nature, Man and Technology, New York: Knopf, 1971; and Richard Falk, This Endangered Planet: Prospects and Proposals for Human Survival, New York: Random House, 1971.

24 Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations, New York: Norton, 2000; Richard Falk, On Humane Governance: Toward a New Global Politics, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995; Falk, Declining World Order, pp 107 – 135; and Falk, Explorations at the Edge of Time: The Prospects for World Order, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992.

25 Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri, Empire, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000; Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of America's Empire, New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000; Andrew J Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002; and David Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

26 Bacevich, American Empire; and Ignatieff, Empire Lite.

27 Mandelbaum, The Case for Goliath.

28 Richard Perle & David Frum, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror, New York: Random House, 2003.

29 Peter Singer, One World: The Ethics of Globalization, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002, p 13.

30 Ibid, pp 200 – 201.