Martin Shaw

Progressive politics in Bush's global state?

from Renewal, the journal of Labour politics, 9, 4, 2001

It has become a truism that 'nothing will ever be the same' after 11 September. But what has changed and what hasn't is only starting to become clear. Such turning points create a new sense of possibility, and push people towards radical initiatives. At the Labour Party Conference on 2 October, Tony Blair made an extremely bold, even brave speech outlining a progressive way of 'seizing the moment' in world politics that the terror attacks had opened up.

Writing just after this speech, but before any military attacks on Afghanistan (by the time this reaches Renewal readers, we will know their extent and character), it is possible only to outline the dilemma that has opened up. The hugely criminal attack on the twin centres of American power was uniquely world shattering. It forced the inward-looking Bush administration to engage in world politics of a kind it did not previously imagine. For its 'war on terrorism', the US has mobilized not only its Western allies, but a grand alliance including Russia, China and others outside the Western fold.

This is the global state in action. Bush, the renegade American nationalist, is mobilizing an extended worldwide network of state power. Centred on the Western alliance - hence the importance both of the British connection and of NATO generally - this global state (as I have called it) reaches far beyond. But does this new crystallization of global power really open up the progressive possibilities that Blair outlines?

After 11 September, the signs were not generally promising. As always power compensated for its humiliation with angry mobilization. The situations after Argentina's invasion of the Falklands and Iraq's of Kuwait are relevant comparisons. In each case, Western leaders tried to recover lost ground with aggressive military actions. If the Falklands was the 'war of Thatcher's face', as E.P. Thompson called it, the Gulf was the war of George Bush's face, and the 'war on terrorism' - as announced in mid-September - was that of his son's.

However the 'war on terrorism' was acknowledged as different by all concerned. The organization responsible for the terror attacks was initially unknown: Osama bin Laden was clearly the organizer of a terrorist network and the Taliban his protectors, but the extent of even the former's implication in New York was unclear. But could American anger aroused be translated into credible military strategy? Hawks in the administration canvassed a wide war, taking in Iraq as well as the Taliban. At the beginning of October, it looks as though they have failed to create the necessary political basis.

It was more obvious that a war on terrorism should be like the 'war on drugs': a campaign of investigation, infiltration, arrest, trial and judicial condemnation, rather than military force. The known perpetrators were based in the United States and Europe for months or even years beforehand. Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic were rightly concerned to root out all those who might follow. At the same time they sought not just rhetorical support but practical cooperation from states worldwide. In this sense, at least, the coalition made eminent sense and the British Government was right to play a foremost part in developing it. The obvious objectives were twofold: the arrest, trial and imprisonment of those responsible, directly and indirectly, for the atrocities in America; and a general clampdown on terrorist groups of all kinds to prevent further attacks.

However none of this obviously required war in the literal sense. The atrocities were indeed an act of war, but of illegitimate, degenerate war. There was nothing that automatically required a military response - since there were other levers available. Indeed there was a strong case that terrorists who were apprehended should be brought before properly constituted courts, not only in America or other national jurisdictions but (since these are internationally organized crimes of world significance) but before an international tribunal. A properly constituted international trial would be a powerful symbol of legitimate global order against the mass murderers.

There was a clear tension in the early political rhetoric of the crisis. Bush talked a lot of 'war' and only in passing about 'justice'. In frighteningly banal words he invoked the Wild West, seeking bin Laden 'dead or alive'. It would be comforting to think that this was only folksy rhetoric from the Texas backwoodsman. This would underestimate, however, what Polly Toynbee called the 'primitive and unsophisticated political culture' and 'warped political institutions' of the United States.

Nowhere are these more evident than in attitudes to international order and justice. American, especially Republican, disregard for legitimate international institutions is notorious. It has been compounded in recent years by resistance to the new International Criminal Court, whose foundations Bill Clinton weakened in unholy alliance with China, and which Bush would like to exit altogether. Although the US played a key role in bringing Slobodan Milosevic to trial, its attitude - shockingly - is that international justice cannot call US citizens to account.

It seems that it has no part to play, either, in trying the perpetrators of crimes against Americans. No serious proposals for justice played any part in Bush's early formulation of the 'war against terrorism'. Instead, the war was literally that. Bush seemed to choose war rather than law, because that was the response his politics allowed.

He mobilized an unholy alliance. European NATO did not really have a choice: much as some leaders preferred a more cautious response, the realities of alliance dictated support, and support was necessary to exercise restraint. Russia, China, India and others had more genuine leeway, but appear to have calculated that they have more to gain from America than from Islamic militancy. None have any love for international law, as opposed to power politics. They all have it in mind that the West will now find it more difficult to object to their own brutal efforts - not just against terrorism but against legitimate national movements in Chechnya, Tibet, Kashmir and elsewhere.

Indeed the combination of new American hegemonism within the West, its new reliance on the repressive post-Communist twins (Russia and China), and its discarding of international political and legal institutions, made the onset of the 'war against terrorism' a bleak moment. Contrary to the ideologues of 'anti-globalization', we very much need stronger global state networks. But we don't need the regressive crystallization of global power that the start of this war brought.

The translation of the 'war against terrorism' from rhetoric to combat has been slower than first seemed likely. The delay seems to have allowed more cautious voices in the Bush administration the upper hand. It has also underlined what the theory of the global state tells us - that however powerful America is, in the new world power conditions it is constrained not only by the wider Western bloc of Europe and Japan, but by larger networks of power relations.

The theory of war tells us, moreover, that wars are unpredictable affairs, with contradictory effects unwished for by their authors. The terrorists may just have bitten off more than they can chew: their attacks were so successful that America, with global support, may actually damage their campaign in the short term. But Bush may also have launched something whose effects he find will difficult to control. Even as the ambitions of the 'war' were scaled down - to possibly quite limited military operations in Afghanistan - the contradictions of the coming conflict loomed large.

The sociology of late modern war tells us that the most difficult area for Western states is the mediated suffering of civilian populations. The plight of the Iraqi Kurds, with Western TV journalists campaigning for them, boomeranged on George I and John Major at the end of the Gulf War. The suffering of the Kosovo Albanians became NATO's prime cause in 1999, and very nearly rebounded disastrously as cameras filmed the suffering of those Milosovic expelled in response to the bombing. Tony Blair was forced into a very public role of pressure on Clinton to make sure that NATO did not falter.

Before a single bomb has been dropped on Afghanistan, Western media were already showing us the terrible situation of ordinary Afghans, worsened by fear of US attacks. This sort of coverage was poor PR for the Taliban and helped to legitimate their overthrow. But it also made it more than likely that - even if direct civilian casualties are minimised - the West will have to address the chronic disaster of ordinary Afghans' existence.

With British media and NGOs in the forefront of humanitarian coverage, this headache was always likely to be proportionally bigger for Blair than other Western statesmen. To his credit, Blair saw the problem quickly and called for a 'humanitarian coalition' alongside Bush's anti-terrorism coalition, to address these problems. (Even Bush, much more incongruously, mouthed professions of concern.) Then Blair upped the stakes very dramatically with his wide-ranging call for a new global politics on 2 October.

There are therefore two issues in the coming weeks and months. First, is it possible to wage war in Afghanistan, to destroy the power of terrorists and Taliban, while simultaneously protecting the civilian population? This short-term issue is absolutely crucial, not only to the lives of the threatened millions, but also to the credibility of Blair and any progressive outcome to the world crisis. Quite simply, if the 'war against terrorism' leads to mass killing - or more likely mass starvation - this will do greater damage to Blair's new left globalism than to Bush's old right Americanism.

Second, if this 'war' is somehow managed, as Blair must hope, in a way that salvages - let alone enhances - the reputation of the global coalition, would it be possible to convert this short-term success into the kinds of radical measures that Blair envisages? I do not believe, as left-wing critics allege, that Blair's global vision is simply radical cover for the naked exercise of American power. It represents an alternative, broadly social democratic, global politics that rests on the interests and experience of western Europe. Here serious democratic politics, human rights, international institutions, law and global social justice all play a far larger part than they do in America.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to see how Blair can seize this moment to push his agenda forward, even if he was really determined. Few in the gang that Bush has brought together - Vladimir Putin, Jiang Zemin, jostling Indians and Pakistanis, not to mention the Saudis and other reactionary Arab regimes - have the slightest interest in Blair's ideals. War and poverty in Africa don't figure on their horizons. Meanwhile, Europe is too preoccupied with its own problems - and some of these are Blair's own. It will be no small gain if this moment allows Blair finally to take the initiative over the single currency. But it hardly represents a direct contribution to addressing the really big world issues.

It is all too probable that real contributions will turn out to be modest: like Gordon Brown's policies on debt, or Clare Short's on poverty. Neither should be denigrated: they are foundations on which an attempt to realise Blair's vision could build. But they are simply not of the radical scope that would be needed for any serious effort to heal the 'scars' of modern Africa. We are talking rather of bold policies that, in the past, have issued only from world war and catastrophe - Marshall plans for whole continents and regions, with real enforcement of democracy, law and social welfare on a historically unprecedented scale.

It is the sense of crisis that has shaken up world politics enough for Blair to propose a radical global vision. But the depressing paradox is that precisely because the real war may well be quite limited, so too will be the reforms that result. In the end, George W. is likely to be as cautious in risking American soldiers as his father or Clinton. He will be thinking about the 'exit strategy', long before real peace, democracy or social justice comes to Afghanistan, let alone Africa. And we must suspect that Tony too will be more preoccupied with winning the euro referendum (and of course the next election) than campaigning for the world's poor who don't have votes.

This does not mean that these causes are lost. On the contrary, the fact that Blair has elevated them is a real advance. But if the longer-term outcomes of this crisis are to belong to Blair, rather than Bush, there are huge roles for friendly critics within the British and European left, for social movement campaigns, and for the intellectuals. We need a broad and deep coalition in world society to match the promises of the new globalist social democracy.