Don't Waste This Worldwide Crisis

Two decades ago, in 1989, communism collapsed in Eastern and Central Europe and the Soviet Union was so eroded that it dissolved two years later. Some hailed this as the birth of a “new world order.” But we have since learned that it was not. It was merely the death of the bipolar world that had dominated our lives and our thinking since two superpowers emerged from the rubble of World War II.

In a spurt of creativity immediately after World War II, the US and Western Europe launched key international institutions designed to draw as many nations as possible into a common focus on the common good, to create a broad, shared interest in “peace, prosperity and progress”. Thus were born the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and many specialized agencies, and the process that would lead to the European Union. Through the Marshall Plan, the US invested liberally in self-help programs to rebuild a war-ravaged Europe, and its occupation targeted a stable, democratic and pacified Japan.

Bipolar dynamics dominated the postwar period -- though the Sino-Soviet split presaged the reemergence of multipolarity, as did an increasingly independent European perspective, and gradual development of new economic centers of influence, if not yet power, in Asia, Latin America, and the oil-rich Middle East.

Just as World War II created the conditions for superpower bipolarity, the current confluence of climate change, terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the technologies that support them, collapse of the global financial system and worldwide economic recession are creating the conditions for a truly new world order. Will it be shaped for common global good by collective leadership? Or will it emerge from drift?

What are the current characteristics of this relatively chaotic international environment?

America’s relative isolation from anything resembling a global, or at least a Western, consensus on major issues results from nearly eight years of idealistic American unilateralism in the “war on terror” and intransigence on other issues, such as climate change. It has only recently been modified by a partial return to realism in the waning years of the Bush Administration.

Russia, under the activist leadership of Vladimir Putin, concentrated initially on its internal rehabilitation, relying on revenues from its vast energy reserves. More recently, Russia as the successor state to the Soviet empire is reemerging, projecting its interests and demanding its preferences be heard in the Balkans (Kosovo), the Caucasus (Georgia) and the Middle East (Iran), as well as threatening to play energy extortion in Europe with those states (whether Ukraine or Germany) that rely on Russian natural gas.

The European Union, torn between so-called enlargement and deepening, has generally been able to find common positions on economic issues but finds much tougher going on security and foreign policy issues, whether Russia, Iran, or the Middle East.

In the Middle East, the open Palestinian wound that for decades has been poisoning the relations of the Arab world with the United States (and the West in general), providing the reasons, or the excuses, for terrorist fundamentalists to struggle against the “materialists, plutocrats and atheists” of the Western world, has exploded into new fighting in Gaza, threatening to derail chances for a reinvigorated peace initiative. Iran pursues its nuclear program and fuels Palestinian revanchism to further its regional ambitions. A hesitant Saudi royalty moves too slowly to curb radical elements that fund fanaticism throughout the Muslim world, and Egypt sinks farther into personal dynastic rule with many elements of a failed state undermining what used to be a dynamic society.

China and India have been rushing forward on the road to rapid industrialization and modernization, disregarding - unfortunately – their impact on the global environment and the added (and potentially destabilizing) income gaps separating the many poor from the few rich and powerful in their societies. While Pakistan teeters on the brink of collapse or of open war with India.

In Latin America, populist socialism has been re-emerging with charismatic rulers such as Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales mesmerizing the masses in Venezuela and Bolivia even as Cuba prepares for its post-Castro future and Mexico struggles with gang violence and corruption that threatens its relatively democratic development.

Lastly, and sadly, Africa continues to be in the intensive care unit of our planet, with failed states from Somalia to Zimbabwe and continued genocidal conflicts that decimate its population, create waves of illegal immigration in all directions, and threaten to overwhelm the relative progress of places like South Africa and Ghana.

Conditions invite drift and chaos.

But the same was said by many observers in 1945-1947.

Instead, decisive, multi-national leadership arrested the drift and established the institutions that have supported unprecedented economic development, decolonization and democratization, and great improvement of the lives of the world’s billions of inhabitants.

The time is ripe for a new global conference, modeled on the 1944 Bretton Woods and 1945 San Francisco Conferences, to tackle the key problems of fundamentalist terrorism, WMD proliferation, climate change and environmental degradation, resource depletion and sustainable development, worldwide financial and economic regulatory regimes and institutions, international institutional reform, genocide and pandemics.

It may that some postwar institutions are beyond repair and must be dismantled and replaced. The demise of such outdated and increasingly irrelevant institutions and ideas can allow creation of new international and regional organizations that are better suited for dealing with the interconnected crises of the contemporary world.

In a globalized system of economic, political and technological interdependence, it must become an article of faith among the leading powers that the common global interest requires adaptations in individual, local, national and regional interests. No country (including the world’s sole superpower) has the “luxury” to decide and act alone, engage in unilateral preemptive war, and employ beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies.

The great centers of economic, political, cultural, scientific – and military -- power must seize the opportunity presented by the current crises to forge the kind of consensus that enabled the postwar world to create unparalleled progress and new levels of well-being for literally billions, a consensus that recognizes a common interest in stability and sustainable development—in short, the survival of our planet. Recent coordinated financial and economic actions, close bilateral US-China economic consultation, a new spirit at the UN Conference on the Environment, close collaboration on fighting piracy off the African Horn, multinational influence on both India and Pakistan to avoid open conflict following the Mumbai attacks – all are examples of what focused leadership and prudent, practical realism bring to the fore.

Nearly 40 years ago, on the 25th anniversary of the UN, then- Secretary General U Thant presciently asked: “As we watch the sun go down, evening after evening, through the smog across the poisoned waters on our native earth, we must ask ourselves seriously whether we really wish some future universal historian on another planet to say about us, ‘With all their genius and with all their skill, they ran out of foresight and air and food and water and ideas…’ or, ‘they went on playing politics until their world collapsed around them’ or ‘when they looked up, it was already too late … .’ “

The resounding answer from the G-20, including vigorous leadership from the US and the European Union and embracing other major players such as China, Russia and India, must be a coordinated, focused, concerted, global attack on these fundamentally inter-related problems. The key issues are linked, and the major powers must act in concert to create profound global focus and generate agreement on basic objectives which can be supported through existing, reformed, and new international institutions, both regional and global.

After all, “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste” as it has remarkable ability to focus peoples’ energies, creativity and resources.