World order

Talk at the Nordic Peoples’ Parliament in Jondal, Norway Let us start with the crisis. It is not a world crisis but a Western crisis. The root is simple: the Rest is catching up, and partly overtaking the West; China is catching up, and partly overtaking the USA–recovering from the blow received around 1500 from the Portuguese and the English destroying 1,000 years of buddhist-muslim trade from East China to Somalia via the rest of Asia; ending in Macao-Hong Kong (there are no Chinese enclaves in Portugal-England). The West is outcompeted. The crisis is partly economic and partly a desperate Western effort, indeed Obama’s effort, to cling to hegemony.

From Jondal, Norway Writes Eduardo Porter on The New York Times: “Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Libor scandal is how familiar it seems. Sure, for some of the world’s leading banks to try to manipulate one of the most important interest rates in contemporary finance is clearly egregious. But is that worse than packaging billions of dollars worth of dubious mortgages into a bond and having it stamped with a Triple-A rating to sell to some dupe down the road while betting against it? Or how about forging documents on an industrial scale to foreclose fraudulently on countless homeowners?” A useful summary of the situation as of today. But, a summary of what? What is this? We have been through many answers starting with credit squeeze, then a real estate bubble that burst, toxic assets, credit swaps, hedge funds, derivatives – bets with the money of other people,...

NEW DELHI – India had more than one message for China prior to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s three-day visit to Myanmar, the world’s newest darling of democracy being wooed with ardour by the two Asian giants and the US. From New Delhi went the un-subtle message that the prime minister’s visit was actuated by the neighbourly intent of peace and prosperity; and, not by any expansionist design. Taking a dig at China comes naturally to some in New Delhi, even when it is inappropriate – as it was here, because it does not fit with Manmohan Singh’s style and persona.

There has been serious confusion associated with the widespread embrace of ‘soft power’ as a preferred form of diplomacy for the 21st century. Joseph Nye introduced and popularized the concept, and later it was adopted and applied in a myriad of settings that are often contradictory from the perspective of international law and morality. I write in the belief that soft power as a force multiplier for imperial geopolitics is to be viewed with the greatest suspicion, but as an alternative to militarism and violence is to be valued and adopted as a potential political project that could turn out to be the first feasible utopia of the 21st century.

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> The current belief of the government of Barack Obama is that there are two major fault lines in the world – one in the Middle East and one in the so-called “failing states”. “From Africa to Central Asia to the Pacific rim nearly 60 countries stand on the brink of conflict or collapse. These failed states are the perfect incubators for extremism and terror”, President Obama has said. But is this true? The evidence suggests it manifestly is not as a general case although obviously Al Qaeda’s operations in deeply troubled Afghanistan and Pakistan (which some say is heading towards becoming a failed state) suggest that there has been some truth in the assertion.

Talk at the Federation of German Scientists – Berlin, Germany We honor a great German and world citizen, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, born 100 years ago, and his path-breaking motto, World Domestic Policy, Weltinnenpolitik. What might it look like? But before that, some words about CFvW in meetings around the world of WOMP, the World Order Models Project, brilliantly conceived and organized by Saul Mendlovitz, who sends warm greetings, and Richard Falk, the European representative with CfvW (and me as non-territorial). And as a board member of the Max Planck Institut; close to 20 years older, a father, brother and colleague.

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> Woodrow Wilson, the president of the United States during the First World War, said that the U.S. world role came “by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God that led us into this way”. The Vietnam-induced pause in this historical march now seems to be a long time ago. The forward momentum of “the exceptional American spirit” continued with President Bill Clinton who expanded Nato’s frontiers right up to the Russian border. The US ignored its commitment conveyed personally to the Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, not to do this. Now, under President Barack Obama, the frontier has been stretched into Asia. A new base in Australia will allow forward deployments in this area to support those in Japan. At the same time the Administration has said that most of the US fleet will be moved to Asian seas. No wonder it makes China nervous.

The multi-season Arab Spring is the third anti-imperialist Arab revolt in less than a century: against the Ottoman empire, the Western Italian-French-English empire, and now the US-Israel empire. The empires hit back. The Ottomans were weak, but England-France-Israel even invaded Egypt in 29 October 1956 – in the shadow of the Hungarian revolt against the Soviet empire that crumbled 23-25 years later. And now it is the turn o USA-Israel to try to maintain an illegitimate structure. So much for the background. In the foreground is class, pitting the powerless at the bottom against the powerful at the top.

The UN Alliance of Civilization (AOC) was initiated by Kofi Annan in 2005 while he was Secretary General of the UN with the joint sponsorship of Turkey and Spain, with its principal center of operations in Istanbul. It was formed under the dark skies that existed after the 9/11 attacks, and seeks to provide an alternative narrative to that of inter-civilizational war, that starkly negative scenario of Islam versus the West associated with the inflammatory views of Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington that continues to provide fuel for Islamophobia that burns ever more brightly in Europe and North America. It was several years since I had heard as many references to Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis as I did during the discussions and presentations at the Istanbul Forum, which was opened by speeches made by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister of Turkey, and Ban Ki Moon, the current UN...

The Houla Massacre of a week ago in several small Muslim villages near the Syrian city of Homs underscores the tragic circumstances of civilian vulnerability to the brutal violence of a criminal government. Reliable reports confirm that most of the 108 civilians who died in Houla were executed at close range in cold blood, over 50 of whom were children under the age of 10. It is no wonder that the Houla Massacre is being called ‘a tipping point’ in the global response to this latest horrifying outbreak of Syrian violence, a process that started over 15 months ago. The chilling nature of this vicious attack that refused to spare the most innocent among us, young children, does seem like a point of no return.

Talk at the Université de Strasbourg, France Important is not only to think peace, but to speak, write and contribute to making, building and keeping it. For that purpose a little formula might be useful: + Positive Peace Equity X Harmony Peace = ________________ = _________________ – Negative Peace Trauma X Conflict There is positive peace in the numerator: the more the better. And key factors leading to direct, structural and cultural violence–the opposite of negative peace–in the denominator: the less the better. What is gained in peace is easily lost through inattention to negative pace. But there is a zone of stability by compensation. According to the formula there are four basic tasks; all of them difficult but not impossible, all requiring training, skills.

We are facing six conflicts, four current, one past and one future are shaping our present reality. Conflict is a relation of incompatibility between parties; not an attribute of one party. It spells danger of violence and opportunity to create new realities. Thus, to understand the shoa the narratives of unspeakable German atrocity and infinite Jewish suffering are indispensable. But so are the narratives of German-Jewish relations, Germans to others, Jews to others. Failure to do so blocks rationality: if conflict is in the relation, then the solution is in a new relation. This is not blaming the victim. What matters most is changing the relation. Are we able?