Richard Falk
[50th Anniversary of Philosophical Society of Turkey, Ankara, Oct. 4, 2024]
A Preliminary Reflection on Orientation
It
is an honor for me, not even a philosopher, to be a panelist on this
program honoring Professor Kucuredi for her inspirational role in the
development of the Turkish Society of Philosophy over its life of 50
years.
Listening
to the presentations and the introduction of speakers have made me
aware that this Society, unlike so much of contemporary philosophy
whether of the language or postmodern variety, is devoted to
understanding the global crises of our time and how they might be best
resolved for the benefit of all humanity.
If
ever during the history of the human species did we need the benefits
of ‘deep thinking,’ which is the enduringly profound contribution of
philosophy, is now so many of the world’s leaders and influencers are
behaving mindlessly or malevolently, raising risks of provoking
quasi-species or even extinction events. Never has the need for
philosophical deep thinking been greater with attention to the time
dimensions of urgency as well as with the space dimensions of complex
and intensive interdependence. Of course, this is not to denigrate
longer term thinking relating to peacemaking and peacebuilding as a
contribution to transformative patters of behavior in political,
economic, and cultural domains of human _expression_ and ecological
awareness, but it is alerting deep thinker to the emergency conditions
that bind together the destinies of all peoples sharing life on planet
earth.
I
have chosen to focus my remarks on the theme of ‘global governance’
that has been at the core of my scholarly work ever since I was a
bewildered graduate student, then fearful of a major war fought with
nuclear weapons. My overriding concern is with the management of global
security in the sense of war, genocide, and atrocity prevention, which
explains their linkage here. I was less concerned with the management of
routine interactions across and within national borders that brings
order, stability, and benefits in many diverse areas of life, including
health, travel, diplomacy, sports, culture, and countless others. It
ranks high among the achievements of modernity, but it is not enough
given the rate and nature of technological innovation.
I
explored from the standpoints of international law, international
relations, and cultural values two central issues: 1) a critique of
global governance as a structure of international life; 2) were there
viable alternative modes of global governance that were less war-prone,
more justice-oriented, and less a product Western hegemonic ambitions
and civilizational provincialism. In carrying forward this line of
thought I often turned to Western philosophy for insight and wisdom and
to Eastern philosophy for empathy, different groundings in
social/political realities, and ethical values reflecting different
civilizational traditions.
Sketching the Philosophical Roots of Global Governance
Existing
structure and procedures of global governance have their normative and
political deep roots in the framework set forth in the Peace of
Westphalia back in 1648, but continuously evolved to adapt to changing
conditions.
The
essential feature of this Westphalian framework was the formal or
juridical autonomy of territorial states sovereign within recognized
international borders, a systemic condition of philosophical anarchy
most influentially theorized by Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan published in 1651. This vision was accepting of the abiding reality of war, which in Hobbes’ words pitted ‘all against all.’
Hedley Bull modernized Hobbes in his important book, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order initially
published in 1977. The originality of Bull’s adherence to
state-centrism was his idea that anarchy could be combined within the
overarching non-governmental normative reality of ‘society,’ which was
the narrative he believed best described world history, and could not be
changed for the better. Revealingly, the main societal premise of
Bull’s worldview was the political, moral, and legal obligation of
sovereign governments to show respect for the norm of non-intervention
by refraining from forcible intervention in the internal affairs of
foreign countries.
The
realist element in Bull’s approach was expressed by his rejection of
the pretensions of international law as ‘a higher law’ than national
legal authority when it came to maintaining global security,
establishing and upholding political order, and imposing criminal
accountability on individuals. Bull illustrated his bold reluctance to
submit power to law within international settings by his rejection of
the Nuremberg precedent by which German political and military officials
were held internationally accountable after World War II for their
alleged criminality.
Bull
believed, and experience has largely vindicated his skepticism, that
such punitive treatment as imposed on the losers in World War II made a
mockery of law by overriding the sovereignty of only the losers. This
unwillingness of the victorious countries to submit their own behavior
to any legal assessment meant that what was being called ‘law’ at Nuremberg is more properly regarded as a naked _expression_ of power. At
the same time Bull valued law for its functional roles in serving the
mutual or reciprocal interests of states in political order
internationally, but he believed it had no constructive role in relation
to war/peace contexts other than shared humanitarian concerns such as
the humane treatment of prisoners-of-war by adversaries.
In
effect, the Nuremberg Judgment was more an exercise of state propaganda
by the winners in World War II than their claim of an advance in
criminal jurisprudence of international accountability. In effect, war
was accepted as embedded in the anarchic structures and it was leading
many liberal idealists to regard international life as governed by law
rather than power. Such thinking was an anathema to a confirmed realist
such as Bull who felt there no alternative to leaving global governance
and global security to what the most influential international relations
agreed upon despite policy divergencies (Morgenthau, Kissinger, and Kennan).
Bull’s
deconstruction of Nuremberg accountability claims have been reinforced
by invoking criminal law to punish Saddam Hussein after the Iraq War of
2003 while foregoing any legal scrutiny of serious war crimes
allegations directed at George W. Bush or Tony Blair. The furious
refusal by the US to have any member of its armed forces investigated or
arrested for international crimes by the International Criminal Court
is a further indication that Bull’s skepticism continues to be validated
by experience.
Also
significant is the reality that these projections of global governance
that originated in the West and served Western interests in overriding
the sovereignty of non-Western national societies by disguising power
grabs as criminal justice. At its peak this Western hegemony both had
recourse to law to rationalize colonialism, sugarcoat in the process
genocidal policies directed toward native populations, especially in the
British breakaway colonies in North America, Australia, and New
Zealand.
As
world history unfolded the US Government insisted upon and achieved
total impunity even in relation to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki that were viewed as unlawful in more objective legal and
cultural venues ever since such weaponry of mass destruction came into
existence. We can only regret that these grants of impunity for the
atomic attacks cleared the path to the Nuclear Age that might not have
come to pass if Germany or Japan had resorted to such weaponry and yet
went on to lose the war. Controversial combat tactics by the losers in
war rarely become acceptable practices in future wars, but if by winners
it becomes more tenuous to deny the validity of their future use.
Kant’s disruptive challenge to Hobbes and contemporary realists
An
earlier partial philosophical break came to the fore in the aftermath
of the French Revolution articulated in perhaps the most conceptually
sophisticated manner by Immanuel Kant in his publication 230 years ago
of a long essay given the title Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch.
The basic Kantian insight was that the global spread of democratic
republicanism, and accompanying human rights, could come to allow
separate states to co-exist in a condition of harmony with respect to
their national security, thereby indirectly achieving global security.
Kant
sought to counter the structure of political realism that envisioned no
alternative go ‘perpetual war’ with the revolutionary idea that war was
not rooted in the human condition or even in the fragmented character
of international society, but is an outgrowth of ideological tension,
predatory economic impulses. Kant explored the possibility that the
newly comforting belief that democracies would not wage war against each
other. There were other related features in this Kantian hopeful view
of international relations including a self-interested dynamic of state
in mutual demilitarization.
It
is arguable that this Kantian radical vision has never been tested
historically because of the failure of democracy to spread to many
important countries outside of the West, and with anti-democratic
national governance remaining commonplace even in the West. The source
of both world wars of the prior century were often accurately described
as pitting the liberal democracies against first fascism and then
totalitarian socialism, which can be conceived as a meeting place
between Kant’s bonding expectations of democracies and their antagonism
to anti-democratic forms, a kind of second-order fulfillment of Kant’s
views on the relevance of internal state/society relations.
With
the rise of civilizational consciousness conflict configurations are
often portrayed by reference to diverse religious or ethnic identities,
and their conflictual perspectives. Biden is the latest of Western
leaders who sought to rally democracies against autocracies, as if he
were a Kantian, although his designation of democracy was so broadened
as to be normatively meaningless, malevolent, and mendacious by
including Israel, Modi’s India, Saudi Arabia, and others. Such
ideological opportunism undermines second-order Kantianism.
There
remains a slender basis for the Kantian belief that ‘genuine’
democracies do not fight one another, and that if global political
landscape came one day to consist only of genuine democracies, there
would be, or at least might be, a prolonged period of world peace.
The Fleeting Promise of Governmental Solutions
From
pre-Westphalian times contrary expectations envisioned an enhanced role
for international law, entertaining political and ethical notions of
overcoming Hobbesian anarchy by various ideas of institutional
centralization expressive of various ideas of spontaneous or coerced
unity of humanity, generating even governmental proposals for world
government or geopolitical ambition to establish a global state. In
other words, the pathway to a peaceful world led not through an anarchic
structure but depends on overcoming political fragmentation by way of a
deliberative process that credibly gives rise to a more centralized
system of governance.
What
now exists, epitomized by the design of the UN as an institutional
(non-governmental) system in which all sovereign states are treated as
equal in a formal diplomatic sense yet the five main prevailing states
in World War II enjoy a right of veto in the Security Council, the only
UN political organ with the authority to reach binding decisions. In
effect, this has meant that global security is managed outside the UN by
these powerful political actors who are granted the legal authority to
evade the UN Charter while pursuing either peacekeeping or strategic
interests.
In
fact, this P5 managerial role produced during the 40 years of Cold War
led to a precarious balance between the Soviet Union and the three NATO
members of the SC led by the US with respect to major war. Since the
Soviet collapse and the end of the Cold War this geopolitical P2 became
behaviorally the P1, at least until Russia mounted a geopolitical
challenge as an accompaniment to the Ukraine War and the Global South
showed signs of promoting their own version of global governance with
encouragement by China. The Ukraine War also highlighted the moral
hypocrisy of the West by its denunciation of Russia while actively
supporting Israel in openly carrying out genocide in Gaza. This posture
also exhibited a betrayal of liberal values associated with respect for
international law and human rights in this clash with strategic
interests and cultural affinities.
After
each of the world wars, idealists on the sidelines of world politics
put forward views that advocated world government in the form of the
enactment of a federalist constitutional framework providing global
governance and the institutional management of global security.
These
views never gained political traction against either the realist
consensus that dominated foreign policy elites in the powerful countries
of the world or by public advocacy on the part of engaged national
citizenries. These ideas of centralized global governance continued to
languish despite the advent of nuclear weapons, the climate crisis, and
the wastefulness and menace of militarized global security in the
nuclear age. The UN was framed to create a system of institutional
centralization for functional activities while being forced to adapt to the geopolitical management
of war prevention and global security. It should therefore come as no
surprise that the UN has been minimally involved in the ongoing war in
Ukraine and the genocidal assault in Gaza
The
2024 UN Summit of the Future with its call for virtuous behavior
protective of long-term human wellbeing and ecological stability by UN
members and along with the championing of inspiring policies directed at
mitigating human suffering seems likely to experience the disappointing
destiny of the UN Preamble to the Charter with its confident call to
end the scourge of war and serve as a beacon of hope for a peaceful
future. Satisfying words with a pacifying impact without obligatory
matching deeds is similar to being presented a beautiful wine bottle
that is empty of the coveted liquid within.
A Concluding Lament
We
live in disillusioning times, where the appeals of 21st century
pragmatic thinkers and critics, alive to real world challenges, are
still dismissed as visionary, and are neither heard nor heeded in the
corridors of power. These venues of power and wealth still remain mainly
the preserve of ambitious men who continue to be bewitched by
the benefits of short-term performances, while the profound challenges
that haunt a human future facing increasingly urgent imperative
consisting of long-term vision, commitment, empathy, ecological
resilience, and spiritual wisdom. May it be so! And may philosophers add
their variants of deep thinking in the process.