www.theglobalsite.ac.uk/review

Danilo Zolo

Against universalism

F. Halliday, The World at 2000, Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001, ISBN: 0-333-94535-2.

In just over 160 pages, Halliday’s handbook presents a very concise overview of international relations at the dawn of the new millennium. After a brief preface, the author examines in a flowing prose, rich in factual references, the international events that have characterised the twentieth century. He then engages in a swift exposition of the problems that are now affecting the world: the crisis of sovereignty among nation-states; the broad processes of power dislocation that are shifting the centre of gravity towards the Far East (particularly, towards China and the Pacific); the turbulences produced at a global level by ethnic strife, climate changes, epidemics, criminal organisations and the crises of financial markets; the clash between the hegemonic tendencies of the West and, particularly, of the United States and the ‘anti-imperialist’ movements that, since Seattle, have protested against the project of a global humanitarian regime led by the great industrial powers; the inequality in the distribution of wealth engendered today by the processes of global unification of markets.

Halliday does not limit himself to a survey of these as yet unsolved problems: he indicates explicitly, though perfunctorily, some of the philosophical premises of his interpretation of the world situation and he suggests some formulae for the realisation of a universal just order.

From the perspective of broad philosophical premises, Halliday states that his theoretical aim is international reason (p. ix). With this term, the author alludes to an analytical and ethical approach that aspires to be rational and universal, and that proposes evaluations of international conflicts on the basis of a rational discussion. From this standpoint, the last chapter of the book (entitled For a Radical Universalism) argues against the anti-universalistic ideologies that are based on values such as political community, collective identity, and the reclaiming of state sovereignty. In opposition to the particularism of these positions, Halliday argues in just over three pages (pp. 144-148), that international order and justice demand the establishment of three principles: equality, democracy and the protection of individual rights.

What can be critically observed about this work is its tendency to oversimplify through a pragmatic Anglo-Saxon common sense the tragedies and conflicts that inflame and bloody the world today. Despite a sincere effort to overcome the most elementary prejudices of the Western point of view, the world is seen within an openly ethnocentric perspective, based on the commonplaces of the moralism and universalism characteristic of the Western globalists – to use a subtly ironic expression dear to Hedley Bull. Follwing other Western theorists of international ethics and international relations – from Michael Walzer to Charles Beitz, Stanley Hoffmann and Joseph Nye – Halliday does not clarify what ‘reason’ and ‘rational argument’ mean within the field of international relations, as if they were not two of the most controversial concepts of contemporary epistemology and philosophy. Neither does the author seem to worry about the need for clarifying what ‘ethics’ and, even more importantly, ‘universal ethics’ mean in a world increasingly characterised by the polytheism of moral beliefs. Nor does he attempt to justify, in deontological terms, the foundations of the obligations attached to this kind of normative claim.

The same can also be said for notions such as ‘equality’, ‘democracy’ and ‘rights’, which are swiftly proposed as universal panacea for the realisation of peace and justice among human beings. This is done despite the existence of several debates. Firstly, there is an extremely rich literature – from Alf Ross to Norberto Bobbio – on the antinomies, even the conceptual emptiness of the notion of justice. Secondly, the theory and the praxis of representative democracy, in the West as well as in the East, have been subjected to a caustic critique that denounces the ‘unkept – and unredeemable – promises’ of the founding fathers of the European liberal-democratic tradition. Finally, there is currently an ongoing debate involving thinkers ranging from Jürgen Habermas to Samuel Huntington and Richard Rorty, on the deontological foundations and universality of the doctrine of human rights, which is nowadays strongly contested in the West and, especially, in the East (Halliday omits the whole issue of the Asian values).

In addition, Halliday swiftly dismisses with very perfunctory arguments (p. 40) the theses that denounce the hegemonic unilateralism of the United States as a new, unprecedented form of imperial power on a global scale. Moreover, the author makes no reference to themes that are crucial in understanding the structural transformations that are occuring at the global level. These include: the functional transformation of NATO; the overcoming of the principle of non-interference in the domestic jurisdiction of nation-states by the great powers and the establishment, since the Gulf War of the universalist ideology of humanitarian interventionism which justified, in the name of human rights, NATO’s military attack on the Yugoslav Republic. This was in violation of the United Nations Charter, and notwithstanding the opposition of states such as Russia, India and China which, taken together, represent almost two thirds of the world’s population.

Translated from the Italian original by Filippo Artoni.