Interview: The unfinished global revolution

Rahim Kanani speaks to Mark Malloch Brown about his new book, The Unfinished Global Revolution: The Pursuit of a New International Politics, which explores the challenges and opportunities of globalization in the 21st century.

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You argue that the central global predicament of the 21st century is that, in becoming more integrated, we have also become less governed. When did this shift start taking place, and where are we today along the continuum of this “unfinished global revolution”?

In the last twenty or so years, two great trends that are inherently in conflict with each other have been playing out. By chance, I have lived at their intersection. The first trend is the demand of people everywhere to have more say over their own lives. This has led to the astonishing people power revolutions from the Philippines and Latin America to Eastern Europe and Africa, and now, recently, in Egypt. Steadily, one man rule has been rolled back, and politburos and generals have been sent packing, as people have demanded democratic control over their societies and lives.

I was present at many of these revolutions. In the early days, as a political advisor to insurgent candidates like Cory Aquino in the Philippines and her counterparts in Latin America and Eastern Europe, and then I saw a later round of these changes, and got in the midst of more than my fair share of them as a senior international official, and then government minister. I saw enough, as I describe in the book, to understand that most, if not all, of these democratic outpourings have fallen short of the anticipation of those who filled the streets to celebrate democracy’s victory. The old order, corruption, inequality, a lack of real freedom, too often has hung on, despite the new democratic trappings.

But there is no doubting the depth of the yearning for control over our lives and the freedom to make our own choices within a democratic framework, where we have the protection of the land for ourselves and our families. From being a minority, luxury, aspiration for the few in the West, democracy has become a nearly worldwide demand.

This political tidal wave of our lifetimes smashes into the rocks of the other great trend of recent decades: the impact of globalization. While it has blown change through our lives, and through its mass communications technologies even enabled many of the national democratic changes – witness the role of Facebook and Twitter in Egypt, it has also hijacked our democracy, in unanticipated ways.

What I mean is that as our lives have become integrated on a global level: from the globally sourced finance that underpins national economies, to the far-flung locations from where our food and consumer goods come, to where the services from bank back offices to the staff in our hospitals originate. We live our lives with an ever greater dependence on international travel for work and pleasure. All of this has consequences for national democracy. Regulating finance, trade, public health, security, and all the other dimensions of a global economy are beyond the power of individual countries – even the most powerful. A country only controls one or two links in the chain of finance, or the spread of an infectious disease.

That is the dilemma I try to expose as a democracy advocate and a champion of better management of our global affairs. I describe how my thinking evolved, as I found how difficult it is to carry that powerful moment of democratic revolution from the people power of the streets to people power in the distant, global places, where more and more of the decisions that shape our lives must be made. I am able to describe these inaccessible places, and their workings too, in these pages because my own journey took me from democratic activist to senior international official, where I was privy to significant deliberations and was responsible for major management roles across the system. Indeed, probably nobody has been lucky enough to enjoy such a wide range of experience across the top level of an emerging system of global governance.

So, this is the story of two unfinished revolutions: the imperfections and incompleteness of local and national democracy in the face of the persistence of old power groups and of poverty and marginalization; and of the long journey, that we have hardly embarked on, to build a global democracy – partly because it is even more complicated than one man, one vote, or one country, one vote. We have hardly begun to work out how to govern ourselves at the global level. And indeed there are jealous politicians everywhere, defending their own prerogatives, in the name of national sovereignty, who don’t think we should even try.

In this changing international landscape, what is the obligation of this generation to the next?

Well, this generation is probably the last globally unregulated generation. We can race through the world’s finite natural resources of energy, water, commodities, forests, soils, and oceans, as though there was no tomorrow! We also have the freedom to move our wealth around, shopping for low regulation locations where it is not taxed and oversight is lax. Indeed, many companies employ lots of lawyers and tax accountants to play this patchwork global system, where money is global, but regulation local.

At the very least we are going to have to explain to the next generation why in a world of growing population, we did not have the foresight to think and act more clearly to address these issues. Why did we not understand that in a globalized economy, letting politicians continue in the self-indulgence that rules and regulations could still be set by them at the national level was a recipe for incoherence and abuse? What can we do about it? Act now, and get going on the kind of bargaining and global negotiating necessary to create proper frameworks for handling these issues in a fair, globally inclusive way for the future.

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In your book, you argue that as national politicians cede control to impersonal global forces, they will be forced to become more effective participants in international mechanisms, such as the United Nations. What are some examples of this trend, and what are the potential consequences associated with an increased reliance on a system like the UN that still needs much reform in order to operate effectively?

A: When one looks at a difficult and so far unsuccessful new trade round, the so-called Doha round, one sees politicians weighing in because they think an agreement will bring jobs home. So, for months at a time, trade negotiations will be delegated to ambassadors in Geneva who often have no particular incentive to arrive at an agreement, given the pleasant sinecure of Geneva life. Suddenly, politicians facing low growth and too few jobs at home wade in, and there are frantic phone-calls between leaders. The White House, Downing Street, and their Indian and Chinese equivalents are involved. In this case, with little result, but the point is clear: politicians recognize global trade matters.

Similarly, in 2008-9, when the world was faced with financial meltdown, leaders got stuck in. From Bush to Brown, they recognized the survival of their national economies depended on coordinated international action.

A lot of these examples of coordinated political action are, however, outside the UN. This is a sad commentary on its perceived ineffectiveness. It has got a fail grade from many on its handling of climate change negotiations. It has been largely missing in many of the major political confrontations of the last few years. The stark truth is it is going to have to raise its game, if the new multilateralism is not to largely by-pass it.

Nevertheless, one should not overlook the fact that the source of much of its weakness is also the source of its unique legitimacy: every country is a member. And while an inner core of countries, with major interests in the issue, may be able to agree an approach to financial regulation or climate change, unless the whole global community of 192 suspicious, often opposing, countries then endorse it, it’s not going to be applied universally. So, while the dynamic part of negotiation may migrate from the UN to more purpose-built associations of national and other stakeholders, they seem likely to continue to need the UN as the final seal of approval.

That would be a reduced role for the UN, but it may be its fate unless a new generation of leaders, like Kofi Annan, comes back into positions of prominence. As I argue in the book, what distinguished Kofi, and other leaders I worked with, was the ability, proactively, to sense where a creative progressive consensus among governments might be found, and to lead, bargain, and cajole nations to get there. Then, the UN can produce remarkable results.

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If President Obama granted you an audience to discuss the role of the United States moving forward in strengthening the system of international relations and global mechanisms such as the United Nations, what would be your advice?

Senator Obama visited the UN on a couple of occasions when I was Deputy Secretary-General. We spoke about Darfur and other trouble spots. I was left with a very clear respect for his instinctive multilateralism as a means for moving forward human rights and conflict issues he cared deeply about. He understood that the American ‘big stick’, wielded alone, rarely brought the results he desired around the world. But his faith in multilateralism, as a progressive force, was even then laced with a discernible scepticism about whether the UN was always fit for purpose for the big tasks, such as peacekeeping in Darfur. His two concerns seemed to be the chronic institutional conservatism brought about by obedience to the sovereign rights of even the most wretched governments such as Sudan. How could you save the people of Darfur, if everything you did had to have the OK of their persecutors in Khartoum? His second apparent concern was that an organization with such governments having a hand on the wheel was unlikely to have the internal resourcefulness, morale, or risk taking culture, to deal robustly with crises.

I was left believing President Obama was an unconditional multilateralist but a conditional UN supporter. The way of course to convince him otherwise is clear. The UN must perform. That, in turn, means a risk-taking leadership ready again to challenge the world, including the US, to do better.

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If your audience was the leadership of China, India, or Brazil, and the topic was the future of the international system, how would your advice differ?

I would presumptuously offer the leaders of China, India, and Brazil, a history lesson. It would dwell on events they may not be that familiar with –  how FDR came to commission the design of the United Nations even as the US entered the Second World War, and that he did this not solely to export American liberal values round the world. Rather, it was seen as a system of sharing out responsibility for global security. Roosevelt could see America was going to be landed with the role of global policeman, but he equally recognized Americans would demand that the country focused its resources on the home front. The UN became the pragmatic vehicle for squaring the circle, to deflect global calls for American leadership into a robust burden-shared system of global leadership, covering security and development matters.

Today, China, India, and Brazil face similar demands to step up to global leadership when their people want them to continue to tackle a huge unmet domestic agenda. The UN offers their leaders, as it did the Americans in 1945, a low-cost way of meeting the responsibilities thrust upon them. It requires them to plunge back into the organization which they have traditionally resented as too Western dominated.

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Reflecting on the 2008 financial crisis, what is the relationship between the necessity to govern the global economy with global institutions, and the necessity to empower and enable similar institutions to address issues of public health, poverty, or climate change?

The leap to an empowered G20 occurred in 2008 because of a financial crisis that threatened the stability of governments and all our livelihoods. Briefly because of crisis leaders surprised themselves by the force and coherence of their actions. As British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s G20 envoy, I saw it was a high point, and indeed the pace of agreement on common action fell away sharply after the London Summit in April 2009 as the crisis itself receded.

So, while there is a similarly compelling case for global action on public health, poverty or climate change, the sense of crisis and mutual threat that drove action on finance is missing. There have been moments – the concerted action against HIV/Aids when it threatened to become a global scourge; an intermittent commitment to tackling poverty –  but what we have not yet acquired is a global political consciousness that allows us to recognize that we must worry about the bad neighbourhoods next door. Just as Americans or Britons, a hundred years ago, had begun to recognize the state must address poverty, and not leave it to private charity alone, so we are on the cusp, I suspect, of a great leap of imagination in terms of our responsibilities as citizens, whether we believe in right-wing market solutions to global poverty or more left-wing social interventions, we are crossing the threshold where we will recognize that it is our business to worry about global poverty, even if we still disagree about solutions.

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As the ‘unfinished global revolution’ unfolds, and having served for many years in a variety of public, private and non-profit institutions around the world, what insights would you impart on young and emerging leaders in the social sector who may be disenchanted with the ineffectiveness and bureaucracy of global institutions and with their inability to meet 21st century challenges?

First, the canvas on which young leaders can act is wide: NGOs, the UN, business. Almost every organization is moving towards a more international model, and with that comes the opportunity of more career time spent abroad. So, choices do not need to be limited to the official part of an international system. It’s now big enough and diverse enough to touch all of us. So, seize the chance whatever your field of endeavour. Recognize that new or old organizations will need continuously to re-invent themselves during a century of continuous change and likely drastic upheaval. Finally, understand that new leadership requires less of the domineering alpha male popularized in the Hollywood model of governmental and corporate leaders. We are likely to see fewer lantern-jawed heroic titans barking instructions to deferential subordinates, and instead see a gentler consensus, with leaders who will seek the understanding and emotional buy-in of the cross-cultural teams they work with. Kofi Annan. Not George Bush.

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What is it about the ‘unfinished global revolution’ that worries you the most?

That it’s unfinished and, with a world expanding at 200,000 people a day, we don’t have long to sort ourselves out.

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And what are you most optimistic about?

That, so far, innovation, social adaptation, and remarkable individuals – not just some extraordinary world leaders, but civil society and entrepreneurs, some working in most difficult circumstances – have kept us one step ahead of failure.

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● Rahim Kanani is founder and editor-in-chief of World Affairs Commentary. For more interviews with global leaders in international development, philanthropy, education, and more, visit www.RahimKanani.com.