Essays
For a Small Planet
For a Small Planet
.
Updated 2016-05-26
The following essays were originally published between September 2007 through May 2010 in newsletters of the Minnesota Chapter of Citizens for Global Solutions.
SEPTEMBER 2007
BUILDING INTERNATIONAL BRIDGES
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
Next month our state will have the honor of hosting the national annual meeting of Citizens for Global Solutions. One year before Minneapolis hosts the Republican national convention it will be the focus of CGS' efforts. All of you are urged to participate as we review where we've been and, more importantly, where we need to go in the future. For information on registration go to http://www.globalsolutions.org/meeting07 or call Lisa Hall at the national office at 202-330-4120.
However incrementally we move in our advocacy - issue-by-issue, block-by-block - we construct a foundation for international structures that will span the abyss of global problems, even those beyond the control of the United States, history's most powerful nation. Environmental degradation, nuclear weapons, and unchecked population growth are the big three root-cause problems that will require international cooperation and necessitate new 21st century international structures to mount effective corrective action. Any one of these core problems left unchecked could bring disaster on an unprecedented scale and all work corrosively together.
Thanks to decades of effort, mainly by civil society, global warming has become a household word. Dedicated people working through many organizations have cast a spotlight on rising biosphere temperatures and simultaneously decreasing biodiversity. Those of us who remember the first Earth Day celebrations in the early1970s may reflect that at the time it seemed to many like a side issue in the midst of the Vietnam tumult. But these environmental issues have proven to be a template of how the person-in-the-street can identify with the big picture and how that person votes with her wallet and in the ballot box. This issue changed in a few decades from a fringe "tree-hugger" movement to one that no serious presidential platform can ignore. Similar changes of heart, I believe, will take place in the years ahead for the other global problems.
With so much else to occupy our attention, it's easy to ask, "Didn't we solve the nuclear war question with the fall of the Berlin Wall?" In fact, the threat remains real because even in "safe" storage nuclear weapons imperil us. While there has been major progress in moving from a peak of around 70,000 nuclear devices in the mid 1980s down to approximately 26,000 worldwide at present, 11,000 of these are deployed nuclear warheads - American and Russian - ready for launch in minutes or hours (Union of Concerned Scientists http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/worldwide-nuclear-arsenals.html). This number is heading down to 4,000 by 2012 at which time the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) will expire and there will then be no limits unless a new treaty is negotiated! Isn't it an outrage that some suggest we should walk away from further reductions of deployed and stored nuclear weapons to maintain annihilation an option for future brinkmen? How can we educate our citizens and leaders to channel misgiving about this situation into political action to build real security within the framework of an empowered UN International Atomic Energy Agency?
Presently, population growth seems to be a political third rail. There is not nearly enough discussion of how it undermines even the best international foundations laid for progress in other areas. The population problem needs to be seriously addressed in our educational system and built into our strategies for development. Improving the lives of the bottom half of the world's economic strata increases the security of those at the top. "Watchful waiting" to avert a pandemic or political chaos will solve nothing in a shrunken, tightly interconnected world competing for ever-scarcer resources. Decreased birth rates are infinitely preferable to increased death rates as our global civilization approaches the carrying capacity of the planet, especially in light of the social, political and economic turmoil that widespread famine would produce.
There's a lot to hear, contribute and discuss on how to build international institutions appropriate for the 21st century. We must now ask what should be the wisest short-term priorities on which our organization should focus in the coming year(s)? We will explore various possibilities at our Annual CGS Meeting, this year, October 26-28 (Friday-Sunday) at the HHH Institute of Public Affairs on the U of MN Minneapolis West Bank campus, virtually in your back yard! We look forward to seeing you then and invite you to help build the foundations of a bridge to a more secure future, one block and one issue at a time.
BUILDING INTERNATIONAL BRIDGES
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
Next month our state will have the honor of hosting the national annual meeting of Citizens for Global Solutions. One year before Minneapolis hosts the Republican national convention it will be the focus of CGS' efforts. All of you are urged to participate as we review where we've been and, more importantly, where we need to go in the future. For information on registration go to http://www.globalsolutions.org/meeting07 or call Lisa Hall at the national office at 202-330-4120.
However incrementally we move in our advocacy - issue-by-issue, block-by-block - we construct a foundation for international structures that will span the abyss of global problems, even those beyond the control of the United States, history's most powerful nation. Environmental degradation, nuclear weapons, and unchecked population growth are the big three root-cause problems that will require international cooperation and necessitate new 21st century international structures to mount effective corrective action. Any one of these core problems left unchecked could bring disaster on an unprecedented scale and all work corrosively together.
Thanks to decades of effort, mainly by civil society, global warming has become a household word. Dedicated people working through many organizations have cast a spotlight on rising biosphere temperatures and simultaneously decreasing biodiversity. Those of us who remember the first Earth Day celebrations in the early1970s may reflect that at the time it seemed to many like a side issue in the midst of the Vietnam tumult. But these environmental issues have proven to be a template of how the person-in-the-street can identify with the big picture and how that person votes with her wallet and in the ballot box. This issue changed in a few decades from a fringe "tree-hugger" movement to one that no serious presidential platform can ignore. Similar changes of heart, I believe, will take place in the years ahead for the other global problems.
With so much else to occupy our attention, it's easy to ask, "Didn't we solve the nuclear war question with the fall of the Berlin Wall?" In fact, the threat remains real because even in "safe" storage nuclear weapons imperil us. While there has been major progress in moving from a peak of around 70,000 nuclear devices in the mid 1980s down to approximately 26,000 worldwide at present, 11,000 of these are deployed nuclear warheads - American and Russian - ready for launch in minutes or hours (Union of Concerned Scientists http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_weapons/worldwide-nuclear-arsenals.html). This number is heading down to 4,000 by 2012 at which time the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) will expire and there will then be no limits unless a new treaty is negotiated! Isn't it an outrage that some suggest we should walk away from further reductions of deployed and stored nuclear weapons to maintain annihilation an option for future brinkmen? How can we educate our citizens and leaders to channel misgiving about this situation into political action to build real security within the framework of an empowered UN International Atomic Energy Agency?
Presently, population growth seems to be a political third rail. There is not nearly enough discussion of how it undermines even the best international foundations laid for progress in other areas. The population problem needs to be seriously addressed in our educational system and built into our strategies for development. Improving the lives of the bottom half of the world's economic strata increases the security of those at the top. "Watchful waiting" to avert a pandemic or political chaos will solve nothing in a shrunken, tightly interconnected world competing for ever-scarcer resources. Decreased birth rates are infinitely preferable to increased death rates as our global civilization approaches the carrying capacity of the planet, especially in light of the social, political and economic turmoil that widespread famine would produce.
There's a lot to hear, contribute and discuss on how to build international institutions appropriate for the 21st century. We must now ask what should be the wisest short-term priorities on which our organization should focus in the coming year(s)? We will explore various possibilities at our Annual CGS Meeting, this year, October 26-28 (Friday-Sunday) at the HHH Institute of Public Affairs on the U of MN Minneapolis West Bank campus, virtually in your back yard! We look forward to seeing you then and invite you to help build the foundations of a bridge to a more secure future, one block and one issue at a time.
NOVEMBER 2007
A NEW COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
Many technological changes currently underway will have astounding implications for how the world will be organized and function in the future. Although it is easy to become discouraged when contemplating all of today's problems, we should not forget the wonderful changes that will open new possibilities. More than ten years before his untimely death, the scientist and futurist, Carl Sagan, pointed out that human communication had reached the speed of light and could go no faster. It would, however, continue to become less expensive and more universally available and that would open up new possibilities.
The richest industrialist and philanthropist of our age, Bill Gates, is dedicating significant effort and a substantial amount of his wealth towards getting the next billion people connected to the Internet by 2015 (for a total of two billion, or about one third of humanity). What effect will this have on economic output, rising expectations, security and activism?
Individual portable electronics are now at least half a century old, with the worldwide spread of transistor radios. But what's different now with the I-pod, Blackberry and a stream of similar devices is their connectedness to a global information system that individualizes the medium to the needs and tastes of user. They are not "broad cast" mass media devices in the old sense as much as they are "unique download" devices under the control of the user (though constrained, of course, by his/her available budget). This is potentially as empowering as the transition that occurred with the introduction of movable type and the explosion of access to information in the fifteenth century. I say "potentially" because these technologies are often implemented with designed-in barriers to steer the user to specific suppliers, for example, of music.
But the potential for this inherently open technology to revolutionize education should be obvious. Perhaps the most efficient (and therefore executable) way to educate the economically lower half of a needy world is through satellite down-loaded news, courses, health education and, yes, entertainment, all running on ubiquitous pocket-sized personal devices for which the marketing name has yet to be established. It's possible in this way that we will see further progress towards one of the goals stated in the UN Charter, "to promote social progress and better standards of life."
A NEW COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
Many technological changes currently underway will have astounding implications for how the world will be organized and function in the future. Although it is easy to become discouraged when contemplating all of today's problems, we should not forget the wonderful changes that will open new possibilities. More than ten years before his untimely death, the scientist and futurist, Carl Sagan, pointed out that human communication had reached the speed of light and could go no faster. It would, however, continue to become less expensive and more universally available and that would open up new possibilities.
The richest industrialist and philanthropist of our age, Bill Gates, is dedicating significant effort and a substantial amount of his wealth towards getting the next billion people connected to the Internet by 2015 (for a total of two billion, or about one third of humanity). What effect will this have on economic output, rising expectations, security and activism?
Individual portable electronics are now at least half a century old, with the worldwide spread of transistor radios. But what's different now with the I-pod, Blackberry and a stream of similar devices is their connectedness to a global information system that individualizes the medium to the needs and tastes of user. They are not "broad cast" mass media devices in the old sense as much as they are "unique download" devices under the control of the user (though constrained, of course, by his/her available budget). This is potentially as empowering as the transition that occurred with the introduction of movable type and the explosion of access to information in the fifteenth century. I say "potentially" because these technologies are often implemented with designed-in barriers to steer the user to specific suppliers, for example, of music.
But the potential for this inherently open technology to revolutionize education should be obvious. Perhaps the most efficient (and therefore executable) way to educate the economically lower half of a needy world is through satellite down-loaded news, courses, health education and, yes, entertainment, all running on ubiquitous pocket-sized personal devices for which the marketing name has yet to be established. It's possible in this way that we will see further progress towards one of the goals stated in the UN Charter, "to promote social progress and better standards of life."
JANUARY 2008
REFRAMING GLOBAL DEMOCRACY
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
Among the noteworthy speakers at the recent CGS national meeting in Minneapolis was Didier Jacobs,
author of Global Democracy (http://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com:80/bookdetail.asp?book_id=4114).
One proposition of this brilliant book is that the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank, and the World Trade Organization together form our current global government, albeit an ineffective
one. But it is the global government that the permanent members of the Security Council want: a “weak
confederation,” with veto and opt-out privileges for a select group of powerful nations, the so-called P-5,
and a “federation,” with no veto and no opt-out privileges, for all others.
Mr. Jacobs asserts, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, that the global government we already have is
characterized as a system of apartheid, in which one’s position in the pecking order is determined by the
color of one’s passport.
Among the take away points in Global Democracy’s conclusion are:
• Institutions are essential (“Governance without government” is, at best, nonsense)
• “Global democracy is a big idea that is astonishingly easy to communicate: ‘We believe all people
should have equal say in decisions that affect all of them’ ‘The World Trade Organization is not
democratic and that is not OK.’ …‘The Security Council does not have proper checks and balances;
that’s bad in national politics, it’s also bad in world politics.’”
• In our everyday conversation we can promote global democracy by referring to the UN or the WTO
as “our global government.” But this is not enough; eventually ordinary citizens will rightfully
expect to elect their representatives in that government.
• The peace movement needs to form and promote a long-term strategy for change (even in between
unpopular wars) instead of abdicating that role to nationalist and benevolent imperialist think tanks.
Reframing the Global Solutions debate in this way is worth considering in spite of the risk that it will be
seen by some as excessively ambitious. As we slide well into the 21st century it’s time to reframe our stand
on how we can solve such seemingly intractable global problems as environmental degradation and nuclear
arms, among others, that are beyond the capacity of the currently undemocratic “global government” to
manage effectively.
REFRAMING GLOBAL DEMOCRACY
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
Among the noteworthy speakers at the recent CGS national meeting in Minneapolis was Didier Jacobs,
author of Global Democracy (http://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com:80/bookdetail.asp?book_id=4114).
One proposition of this brilliant book is that the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World
Bank, and the World Trade Organization together form our current global government, albeit an ineffective
one. But it is the global government that the permanent members of the Security Council want: a “weak
confederation,” with veto and opt-out privileges for a select group of powerful nations, the so-called P-5,
and a “federation,” with no veto and no opt-out privileges, for all others.
Mr. Jacobs asserts, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, that the global government we already have is
characterized as a system of apartheid, in which one’s position in the pecking order is determined by the
color of one’s passport.
Among the take away points in Global Democracy’s conclusion are:
• Institutions are essential (“Governance without government” is, at best, nonsense)
• “Global democracy is a big idea that is astonishingly easy to communicate: ‘We believe all people
should have equal say in decisions that affect all of them’ ‘The World Trade Organization is not
democratic and that is not OK.’ …‘The Security Council does not have proper checks and balances;
that’s bad in national politics, it’s also bad in world politics.’”
• In our everyday conversation we can promote global democracy by referring to the UN or the WTO
as “our global government.” But this is not enough; eventually ordinary citizens will rightfully
expect to elect their representatives in that government.
• The peace movement needs to form and promote a long-term strategy for change (even in between
unpopular wars) instead of abdicating that role to nationalist and benevolent imperialist think tanks.
Reframing the Global Solutions debate in this way is worth considering in spite of the risk that it will be
seen by some as excessively ambitious. As we slide well into the 21st century it’s time to reframe our stand
on how we can solve such seemingly intractable global problems as environmental degradation and nuclear
arms, among others, that are beyond the capacity of the currently undemocratic “global government” to
manage effectively.
MARCH 2008
ROOT CAUSE, CORRECTIVE ACTION
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
What differentiates CGS from countless other worthwhile organizations that make claims on our time and contributions? It is CGS’s emphasis on issues that go beyond the short list of fashionable issues that may have “traction” at a given moment. Our core belief is that the solutions to the root causes of serious global problems that are beyond the ability of individual nations to solve will be found in just and effective international institutions.
Even as our organization’s name changed in recent years from World Federalist Association to Citizens for Global Solutions, we have looked forward to progress on the horizon. (It is interesting that the name Citizens for Incremental Solutions wasn’t even considered in the sometimes heated name change debate.)
Our Vision Statement on every newsletter is a touchstone to help us recalibrate which incremental issues to work on to support our long-term goals to abolish war while protecting our rights and freedoms.
What may have been “good enough” in the way of international institutions in earlier centuries no longer suffices to keep the world on track. Today’s youth will live out their lives in a much different setting than that of their parents and grandparents.
The 1988 book, Planethood, provides a brilliant explanation of the urgent need to move away from an international free-for-all that keeps all nations permanently on the edge of disaster. Co-authored by Benjamin Ferencz, a Nuremberg war crime trials chief prosecutor, and Ken Keyes, Planethood was widely distributed for years by many in the peace movement (see the American Journal of International Law review: http://www.benferencz.org/books/planrev.html). The book is easily available for a few dollars on most Internet web sites for used books. I highly recommend it.
Examine the root causes of international insecurity and work on corrective action. The end product may be world federalism in some form; but let’s stay focused on the need to find global solutions for global problems, all the major global problems, as they are inter-related and feed on one another (nuclear arms including the 96% controlled by the US and Russia, environmental degradation, overpopulation, and so forth). In this way we position ourselves in a more relevant way by emphasizing the process that will wean us from our archaic tolerance for impending disaster due to might-makes-right thinking.
ROOT CAUSE, CORRECTIVE ACTION
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
What differentiates CGS from countless other worthwhile organizations that make claims on our time and contributions? It is CGS’s emphasis on issues that go beyond the short list of fashionable issues that may have “traction” at a given moment. Our core belief is that the solutions to the root causes of serious global problems that are beyond the ability of individual nations to solve will be found in just and effective international institutions.
Even as our organization’s name changed in recent years from World Federalist Association to Citizens for Global Solutions, we have looked forward to progress on the horizon. (It is interesting that the name Citizens for Incremental Solutions wasn’t even considered in the sometimes heated name change debate.)
Our Vision Statement on every newsletter is a touchstone to help us recalibrate which incremental issues to work on to support our long-term goals to abolish war while protecting our rights and freedoms.
What may have been “good enough” in the way of international institutions in earlier centuries no longer suffices to keep the world on track. Today’s youth will live out their lives in a much different setting than that of their parents and grandparents.
The 1988 book, Planethood, provides a brilliant explanation of the urgent need to move away from an international free-for-all that keeps all nations permanently on the edge of disaster. Co-authored by Benjamin Ferencz, a Nuremberg war crime trials chief prosecutor, and Ken Keyes, Planethood was widely distributed for years by many in the peace movement (see the American Journal of International Law review: http://www.benferencz.org/books/planrev.html). The book is easily available for a few dollars on most Internet web sites for used books. I highly recommend it.
Examine the root causes of international insecurity and work on corrective action. The end product may be world federalism in some form; but let’s stay focused on the need to find global solutions for global problems, all the major global problems, as they are inter-related and feed on one another (nuclear arms including the 96% controlled by the US and Russia, environmental degradation, overpopulation, and so forth). In this way we position ourselves in a more relevant way by emphasizing the process that will wean us from our archaic tolerance for impending disaster due to might-makes-right thinking.
MAY 2008
OVER THE HORIZON
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
"Something old, something new, something borrowed..." is an incantation that has served countless people as they prepared to pass a threshold into a new stage.
Not too long ago I was privileged to witness a dedication ceremony performed at a Minnesota manufacturing plant, but simultaneously shared via a satellite video hookup with workers at the corporation in India where the test equipment in question was to be installed. The magic wasn't just in the relatively cutting-edge technology being demonstrated for acceptance. It was also with the simulcast sharing of the moment with hopeful souls on the other side of the planet. A Hindu ceremony to greet and honor was performed first, as in ages past, to acknowledge Ganesh, an ancient god in the Hindu pantheon, who is also known as the "Remover of All Obstacles." The real magic that day was the bridging of time to acknowledge the shared aspirations with those who came before and with those who have yet to be born in a world made new, again.
There always will be news to push us into cynicism about the world's prospects for avoiding disaster of one kind or another. We band together to encourage one another that plans for a better world with a more certain future are being proposed and refined into workable solutions to the world's most menacing problems. Something old (the UN), something new (charter amendments for empowerment and secure funding), and something borrowed (the best ideas available for checks and balances for democratized international law) are just over the horizon for our stressed global civilization.
OVER THE HORIZON
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
"Something old, something new, something borrowed..." is an incantation that has served countless people as they prepared to pass a threshold into a new stage.
Not too long ago I was privileged to witness a dedication ceremony performed at a Minnesota manufacturing plant, but simultaneously shared via a satellite video hookup with workers at the corporation in India where the test equipment in question was to be installed. The magic wasn't just in the relatively cutting-edge technology being demonstrated for acceptance. It was also with the simulcast sharing of the moment with hopeful souls on the other side of the planet. A Hindu ceremony to greet and honor was performed first, as in ages past, to acknowledge Ganesh, an ancient god in the Hindu pantheon, who is also known as the "Remover of All Obstacles." The real magic that day was the bridging of time to acknowledge the shared aspirations with those who came before and with those who have yet to be born in a world made new, again.
There always will be news to push us into cynicism about the world's prospects for avoiding disaster of one kind or another. We band together to encourage one another that plans for a better world with a more certain future are being proposed and refined into workable solutions to the world's most menacing problems. Something old (the UN), something new (charter amendments for empowerment and secure funding), and something borrowed (the best ideas available for checks and balances for democratized international law) are just over the horizon for our stressed global civilization.
SEPTEMBER 2008
CELEBRATE CONSENSUS BUILDING AND PEACEFUL TRANSFER OF POWER
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
We are one-twelfth into the first century of the new millennium (Thank God that’s over!). During this period we have witnessed previews of what could have been a major change of course; but many Americans are left with a feeling that we’ve seen and heard all this before.
What we’re now experiencing is a thinly disguised retelling of the same sad story of the last few centuries when distance and delays in communication made it easy for people to think of countries as isolated, unattached entities. When our own country was new, the social contract that bound its citizens together did not seem to apply on an international scale. Then, even the basic human rights of prisoners of war had to be promoted and negotiated by the newly independent United States, whose citizens had been hideously abused in our parent-empire’s prison ships off Manhattan Island and elsewhere. But today the farthest distance on earth has shrunk to at most 48 hours for a traveler taking scheduled Airlines and to minutes for an intercontinental missile. Communication is instantaneous and ubiquitous thanks to an infrastructure of satellite carriers and Internet servers. But, in a time when the world is inextricably interconnected, our
international institutions are not yet up to the task of ensuring a secure future. Signs that we are prone to regression abound.
Ironically, we are surrounded by successful examples of how free committed groups with divergent and seemingly irreconcilable views are able to work through a long, sometimes tedious, but eventually manageable, process of consensus building. As we Americans watch our political process with fascination - and sometimes trepidation – we witness a mostly successful model that could be scaled up to allow peaceful transfer of power on an international level, with checks and balances and guarantees of basic rights.
Take heart that there is a way forward to a democratic (small d), inclusive system of international institutions that could be capable of solving life-and-death problems that no nation can solve alone: nuclear proliferation, water and energy resource wars, environmental degradation, and overpopulation. With guidance, our embryonic system of global governance -- as it now exists in the Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization -- can be improved by increasing transparency and accountability and by increased and better representation of those who are affected by the decisions made by these institutions.
CELEBRATE CONSENSUS BUILDING AND PEACEFUL TRANSFER OF POWER
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
We are one-twelfth into the first century of the new millennium (Thank God that’s over!). During this period we have witnessed previews of what could have been a major change of course; but many Americans are left with a feeling that we’ve seen and heard all this before.
What we’re now experiencing is a thinly disguised retelling of the same sad story of the last few centuries when distance and delays in communication made it easy for people to think of countries as isolated, unattached entities. When our own country was new, the social contract that bound its citizens together did not seem to apply on an international scale. Then, even the basic human rights of prisoners of war had to be promoted and negotiated by the newly independent United States, whose citizens had been hideously abused in our parent-empire’s prison ships off Manhattan Island and elsewhere. But today the farthest distance on earth has shrunk to at most 48 hours for a traveler taking scheduled Airlines and to minutes for an intercontinental missile. Communication is instantaneous and ubiquitous thanks to an infrastructure of satellite carriers and Internet servers. But, in a time when the world is inextricably interconnected, our
international institutions are not yet up to the task of ensuring a secure future. Signs that we are prone to regression abound.
Ironically, we are surrounded by successful examples of how free committed groups with divergent and seemingly irreconcilable views are able to work through a long, sometimes tedious, but eventually manageable, process of consensus building. As we Americans watch our political process with fascination - and sometimes trepidation – we witness a mostly successful model that could be scaled up to allow peaceful transfer of power on an international level, with checks and balances and guarantees of basic rights.
Take heart that there is a way forward to a democratic (small d), inclusive system of international institutions that could be capable of solving life-and-death problems that no nation can solve alone: nuclear proliferation, water and energy resource wars, environmental degradation, and overpopulation. With guidance, our embryonic system of global governance -- as it now exists in the Security Council, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization -- can be improved by increasing transparency and accountability and by increased and better representation of those who are affected by the decisions made by these institutions.
NOVEMBER 2008
SHIFTING TO A NEW EQUILIBRIUM
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
As I write this, it is still unknown who will be the next President of the United States. No matter who wins, his team will have their hands full repairing the immediate damage and aftermath of the recent banking meltdown, which will almost certainly result in a protracted recession and possibly something worse.
This puts me in mind, somehow, of “chaos theory.” Chaos theory is best known for its so-called “butterfly effect,” according to which a butterfly flapping its wings in China could lead to a hurricane on the other side of the planet (Wall Street?). This is known as “critical dependence on initial conditions,” which also means that it’s virtually impossible to model completely complex system, including the world economy. But the feature of this theory most germane to our efforts to establish a safer and more just world is the insight that certain equilibriums are preferred while others ought to be completely avoided. After the ongoing seismic movements in our global banking system subsides, what will be the new equilibrium or “rules of engagement” for the relationship between banking institutions and governments?
The most important question for the progress of global governance is not whether the US will be able to sustain its status as the sole remaining superpower in the long term, but rather will the European Union hold together when the (blue) chips are down? Initially, the responses to the banking crisis as it washed over Europe were actions by individual nations, rather than a coordinated EU policy. The situation bears watching in the months ahead and may indicate needed changes to EU institutions and crisis management.
An unfortunate consequence of the banking crisis is that it shifted attention from Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. These are major issues for this election according to former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter (author of Iraq Confidential and, more recently, Target Iran), who recently spoke at an event sponsored by CGS-MN.
If an enemy had caused a trillion or two dollars of damage to our economy it would be seen as an act of war. But the incredible thing about the on-going debt buildup and the resultant crisis of liquidity is that we did it to ourselves. This is a sobering thought when we consider our own stockpiled weapons of mass destruction and our recent cowboy foreign policy. Maintaining even our present quasi-peace will require shifting from assumptions originating in an earlier era. In the unpredictable changes ahead as the 21st century unfolds, butterfly wings will surely flutter.
SHIFTING TO A NEW EQUILIBRIUM
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
As I write this, it is still unknown who will be the next President of the United States. No matter who wins, his team will have their hands full repairing the immediate damage and aftermath of the recent banking meltdown, which will almost certainly result in a protracted recession and possibly something worse.
This puts me in mind, somehow, of “chaos theory.” Chaos theory is best known for its so-called “butterfly effect,” according to which a butterfly flapping its wings in China could lead to a hurricane on the other side of the planet (Wall Street?). This is known as “critical dependence on initial conditions,” which also means that it’s virtually impossible to model completely complex system, including the world economy. But the feature of this theory most germane to our efforts to establish a safer and more just world is the insight that certain equilibriums are preferred while others ought to be completely avoided. After the ongoing seismic movements in our global banking system subsides, what will be the new equilibrium or “rules of engagement” for the relationship between banking institutions and governments?
The most important question for the progress of global governance is not whether the US will be able to sustain its status as the sole remaining superpower in the long term, but rather will the European Union hold together when the (blue) chips are down? Initially, the responses to the banking crisis as it washed over Europe were actions by individual nations, rather than a coordinated EU policy. The situation bears watching in the months ahead and may indicate needed changes to EU institutions and crisis management.
An unfortunate consequence of the banking crisis is that it shifted attention from Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. These are major issues for this election according to former UN weapons inspector, Scott Ritter (author of Iraq Confidential and, more recently, Target Iran), who recently spoke at an event sponsored by CGS-MN.
If an enemy had caused a trillion or two dollars of damage to our economy it would be seen as an act of war. But the incredible thing about the on-going debt buildup and the resultant crisis of liquidity is that we did it to ourselves. This is a sobering thought when we consider our own stockpiled weapons of mass destruction and our recent cowboy foreign policy. Maintaining even our present quasi-peace will require shifting from assumptions originating in an earlier era. In the unpredictable changes ahead as the 21st century unfolds, butterfly wings will surely flutter.
JANUARY 2009
HELPING TO BUILD THE FUTURE THROUGH THE PARTNERS PROGRAM
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
2009 promises to be an “interesting” year. While no one can really know what the future will bring for good or ill, that doesn’t stop us from trying to guess. It’s easy to be blinded by the blazing present and miss sometimes subtle, but fundamental, changes taking place in the way the world is organized in this soon-tobe-archaic age. (For expert perspectives, come to our Third Thursday Forum on February 19.)
Our global interdependence is evident as economic woes cascade from continent to continent. However global competition will probably intensify as countries and regions attempt to minimize their pain by seeking to maximize their gain in a shifting economic and political landscape. This tension between the ties that bind us together in a common fate and the centrifugal forces that fling us apart may be older than history. But the world has never been so small a place and how this dynamic plays out now may be unique to this era.
It has been said that a nation is formed when people realize they share a common fate. There would be no escape from the consequences of environmental damage that drastically reduces the earth’s carrying capacity, a large-scale nuclear exchange or a global pandemic. In this sense the world’s people already are a nation (albeit a highly-fragmented one). We just don’t recognize it as yet! And we don’t yet realize that all wars are civil wars, one faction of humankind against another.
Our vision of effective and democratic global governance is derived directly from a belief that it is an imperative pre-condition for long-term survival. Do you think of yourself as conservative? Then what are you trying to conserve? One person, one vote? Checks and balances among branches of government? Security for the nation? Do you think of yourself as progressive? What are you trying to progress towards? A more peaceful world? Universal education? A sustainable world that doesn’t fear the next meltdown?
Be part of making the future happen, right from the comfort of you own home, or, more in keeping with the
times, from the comfort of your local Wi-Fi connection. Sign up for the CGS Partners for Global Change
program at http://globalsolutions.org/partners or call 202-546-3950 x124. You’ll learn more about critical
issues and have opportunities to customize the projects you want to work on.
HELPING TO BUILD THE FUTURE THROUGH THE PARTNERS PROGRAM
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
2009 promises to be an “interesting” year. While no one can really know what the future will bring for good or ill, that doesn’t stop us from trying to guess. It’s easy to be blinded by the blazing present and miss sometimes subtle, but fundamental, changes taking place in the way the world is organized in this soon-tobe-archaic age. (For expert perspectives, come to our Third Thursday Forum on February 19.)
Our global interdependence is evident as economic woes cascade from continent to continent. However global competition will probably intensify as countries and regions attempt to minimize their pain by seeking to maximize their gain in a shifting economic and political landscape. This tension between the ties that bind us together in a common fate and the centrifugal forces that fling us apart may be older than history. But the world has never been so small a place and how this dynamic plays out now may be unique to this era.
It has been said that a nation is formed when people realize they share a common fate. There would be no escape from the consequences of environmental damage that drastically reduces the earth’s carrying capacity, a large-scale nuclear exchange or a global pandemic. In this sense the world’s people already are a nation (albeit a highly-fragmented one). We just don’t recognize it as yet! And we don’t yet realize that all wars are civil wars, one faction of humankind against another.
Our vision of effective and democratic global governance is derived directly from a belief that it is an imperative pre-condition for long-term survival. Do you think of yourself as conservative? Then what are you trying to conserve? One person, one vote? Checks and balances among branches of government? Security for the nation? Do you think of yourself as progressive? What are you trying to progress towards? A more peaceful world? Universal education? A sustainable world that doesn’t fear the next meltdown?
Be part of making the future happen, right from the comfort of you own home, or, more in keeping with the
times, from the comfort of your local Wi-Fi connection. Sign up for the CGS Partners for Global Change
program at http://globalsolutions.org/partners or call 202-546-3950 x124. You’ll learn more about critical
issues and have opportunities to customize the projects you want to work on.
MARCH 2009
ATOMS FOR PEACE NEEDS RETHINKING
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
A very conservative acquaintance once asserted to me that the primary purpose of a national government is to Establish security. Our global governance system (UN, WTO, IMF, etc.) is failing by this primal measure to guard against potential global conflicts that could be precipitated by the ever-increasing water/food/energy insecurity.
There is an inherent loophole built into the “Atoms for Peace” regime which allows all nations the right of owning the entire production cycle of nuclear material. As Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector and the presenter in CGS’ past September forum, pointed out in his recent book, Target Iran, all nations including Iran have the right to process nuclear fuel for civilian use. Unfortunately the exact same process used for enrichment of nuclear material for civilian energy use is also used for further enrichment for use in nuclear bombs for military purposes: merely cycle the material through cascading centrifuges until the desired concentration is reached.
How could international law be changed to block countries from developing this technology or at least to require all nations to submit to full supervision of the concentration phase of production? Can we imagine the US and Russia (who, according to the reputable Union of Concerned Scientists, own 96% of all nuclear weapons) going along with these new requirements? Would other countries agree to such supervision if these rules don’t apply also to the US and Russia? The relationship between the US and Russia, especially on the nuclear issue, will remain pivotal if the world is to move forward on the security front.
Allen Greenspan recently said that it was human nature that caused the global financial meltdown and that, because human nature doesn’t change, a similar meltdown could reoccur. Hmmm… If that’s true, then, by the same reasoning, we remain vulnerable to all-out nuclear war. Thus, the 96% of the nuclear weapons held by the US and Russia must be seen as a greater long-term threat to civilization than the new ones coming on line. It may seem that past cycles of mass violence provide the skeleton of human history upon which subsequent details are fleshed out. But it is social, industrial and governmental structures that make up the framework of civilization; and war, especially global war, is the cancer that threatens that structure. What we need now are effective structures for peace, to use a favorite term of our late chapter inspiration, Stanley Platt.
It’s time to get on with the work of civilization, to establish and maintain peace at the international level, even if peace remains imperfect at the local level. In the same way, peace among neighboring US states doesn’t completely eliminate local crimes or brawls. The higher authority of our federal courts allows even serious disputes between states to be resolved without resorting to military action. This is the tradition that needs to be established at the international level.
ATOMS FOR PEACE NEEDS RETHINKING
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
A very conservative acquaintance once asserted to me that the primary purpose of a national government is to Establish security. Our global governance system (UN, WTO, IMF, etc.) is failing by this primal measure to guard against potential global conflicts that could be precipitated by the ever-increasing water/food/energy insecurity.
There is an inherent loophole built into the “Atoms for Peace” regime which allows all nations the right of owning the entire production cycle of nuclear material. As Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector and the presenter in CGS’ past September forum, pointed out in his recent book, Target Iran, all nations including Iran have the right to process nuclear fuel for civilian use. Unfortunately the exact same process used for enrichment of nuclear material for civilian energy use is also used for further enrichment for use in nuclear bombs for military purposes: merely cycle the material through cascading centrifuges until the desired concentration is reached.
How could international law be changed to block countries from developing this technology or at least to require all nations to submit to full supervision of the concentration phase of production? Can we imagine the US and Russia (who, according to the reputable Union of Concerned Scientists, own 96% of all nuclear weapons) going along with these new requirements? Would other countries agree to such supervision if these rules don’t apply also to the US and Russia? The relationship between the US and Russia, especially on the nuclear issue, will remain pivotal if the world is to move forward on the security front.
Allen Greenspan recently said that it was human nature that caused the global financial meltdown and that, because human nature doesn’t change, a similar meltdown could reoccur. Hmmm… If that’s true, then, by the same reasoning, we remain vulnerable to all-out nuclear war. Thus, the 96% of the nuclear weapons held by the US and Russia must be seen as a greater long-term threat to civilization than the new ones coming on line. It may seem that past cycles of mass violence provide the skeleton of human history upon which subsequent details are fleshed out. But it is social, industrial and governmental structures that make up the framework of civilization; and war, especially global war, is the cancer that threatens that structure. What we need now are effective structures for peace, to use a favorite term of our late chapter inspiration, Stanley Platt.
It’s time to get on with the work of civilization, to establish and maintain peace at the international level, even if peace remains imperfect at the local level. In the same way, peace among neighboring US states doesn’t completely eliminate local crimes or brawls. The higher authority of our federal courts allows even serious disputes between states to be resolved without resorting to military action. This is the tradition that needs to be established at the international level.
MAY 2009
GOING MAINSTREAM WITH GLOBAL THINKING
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
It’s easy to fall into the trap of obsessing over the latest litany of bad news the media obligingly provide. Yet, looking back on one’s lifetime, one can see real positive changes in attitudes and therefore in the prospect for solutions to whatever problems the future might bring us.
Over lunch on Earth Day this past month I was watching the favorite soap opera of my 80-something-year-old mother. A ten-second public service spot at the end of the episode had one of the main actors out-of-character remind viewers of the importance of Earth Day and of our stewardship of the environment. Encouragement, like beauty, is where you find it. Nonetheless, I was surprised and uplifted that this message seems to have gone mainstream during the thirty-odd years since the first Earth Day.
Perhaps in another third of a century an out-of-character actor will remind daytime TV viewers that their
carbon tax is less than 1% of energy costs and allows the UN to do its work to help ensure our secure future.
GOING MAINSTREAM WITH GLOBAL THINKING
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
It’s easy to fall into the trap of obsessing over the latest litany of bad news the media obligingly provide. Yet, looking back on one’s lifetime, one can see real positive changes in attitudes and therefore in the prospect for solutions to whatever problems the future might bring us.
Over lunch on Earth Day this past month I was watching the favorite soap opera of my 80-something-year-old mother. A ten-second public service spot at the end of the episode had one of the main actors out-of-character remind viewers of the importance of Earth Day and of our stewardship of the environment. Encouragement, like beauty, is where you find it. Nonetheless, I was surprised and uplifted that this message seems to have gone mainstream during the thirty-odd years since the first Earth Day.
Perhaps in another third of a century an out-of-character actor will remind daytime TV viewers that their
carbon tax is less than 1% of energy costs and allows the UN to do its work to help ensure our secure future.
SEPTEMBER 2009
PRIORITIZING ISSUES FOR THE COMING YEAR (Adapted from remarks made at June’s Annual Dinner meeting)
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
Two millennia ago Seneca the Elder wrote, “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.” Touchstones for many modern organizations are their Vision statements. Ours appear above. While that statement does inform us in a very general way of where we ought to be headed, it does not answer the practical question, “What should we do next? Let’s think about it.
It has been said that politics is the art of the possible. So our long-term goal is to move the center of mass of public opinion and that of our elected leaders of all persuasions to make it possible to support and create effective, democratic (small d) institutions at the international level. This will happen when the public-at-large perceives greater security in thoughtful movement to the rule of law at the international level and relatively less security in the current anarchy and vigilantism of the less-than-effective UN and treaty system of world governance that we have today.
We invite you to review the big issues identified on the CGS national web site: http://www.globalsolutions.org/ (See Issues tab on left of the web site’s main page.)
Climate Change Human Rights Law of the Sea United Nations
Global Peacekeeping International Criminal Court Nuclear Weapons
Look these over and let us know your highest priorities. There is much to be done.
PRIORITIZING ISSUES FOR THE COMING YEAR (Adapted from remarks made at June’s Annual Dinner meeting)
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
Two millennia ago Seneca the Elder wrote, “If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.” Touchstones for many modern organizations are their Vision statements. Ours appear above. While that statement does inform us in a very general way of where we ought to be headed, it does not answer the practical question, “What should we do next? Let’s think about it.
It has been said that politics is the art of the possible. So our long-term goal is to move the center of mass of public opinion and that of our elected leaders of all persuasions to make it possible to support and create effective, democratic (small d) institutions at the international level. This will happen when the public-at-large perceives greater security in thoughtful movement to the rule of law at the international level and relatively less security in the current anarchy and vigilantism of the less-than-effective UN and treaty system of world governance that we have today.
We invite you to review the big issues identified on the CGS national web site: http://www.globalsolutions.org/ (See Issues tab on left of the web site’s main page.)
Climate Change Human Rights Law of the Sea United Nations
Global Peacekeeping International Criminal Court Nuclear Weapons
Look these over and let us know your highest priorities. There is much to be done.
NOVEMBER 2009
A BINATIONAL COMMISSION WITH RUSSIA
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
Imagine my surprise, while browsing through a defense contractor’s web site, when a series of links brought me to the home page of the US State Department and a linked video of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/10/130567.htm). She spoke in Moscow on October 14 and touched on the Binational Commission with Russia, part of which deals with missile defense. About twenty minutes into the video, during the questions and answers section, she was asked to prioritize issues of the Russia-America partnership. Clinton’s lengthy answer included the following: “Our goal is to be as cooperative as we can. And it would be, in my view, a very positive outcome if someday in the future you see the United States and Russia announcing a joint plan on missile defense…” This underscores the sea change that has taken place over the last few decades under many administrations regarding our relationship with Russia, our nemesis for most of the second half of the last century.
In his landmark book, Cosmos, of 1980 Carl Sagan suggested that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could forgo development of the latest space (and delivery) technology and concluded that joint exploration was therefore the logical bridge to a time when hostilities would have subsided. We seem to be well into this transition with the international work of the Space Station and continued talks on joint exploration of Mars. Perhaps it is now past time when it is politically possible to reexamine just how many operational missiles and stored warheads both countries need to be “safe.” Calls for nuclear nonproliferation will ring hollow as long as the main keepers of nuclear weapons continue to hoard them and resist further progress in decreasing their stockpiles.
(By the way, did you know the US Atlas V commercial rocket flies with a Russian-made rocket engine?
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/europe/russia/)
A BINATIONAL COMMISSION WITH RUSSIA
Claude Buettner, President, Minnesota Chapter, CGS
Imagine my surprise, while browsing through a defense contractor’s web site, when a series of links brought me to the home page of the US State Department and a linked video of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/10/130567.htm). She spoke in Moscow on October 14 and touched on the Binational Commission with Russia, part of which deals with missile defense. About twenty minutes into the video, during the questions and answers section, she was asked to prioritize issues of the Russia-America partnership. Clinton’s lengthy answer included the following: “Our goal is to be as cooperative as we can. And it would be, in my view, a very positive outcome if someday in the future you see the United States and Russia announcing a joint plan on missile defense…” This underscores the sea change that has taken place over the last few decades under many administrations regarding our relationship with Russia, our nemesis for most of the second half of the last century.
In his landmark book, Cosmos, of 1980 Carl Sagan suggested that neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could forgo development of the latest space (and delivery) technology and concluded that joint exploration was therefore the logical bridge to a time when hostilities would have subsided. We seem to be well into this transition with the international work of the Space Station and continued talks on joint exploration of Mars. Perhaps it is now past time when it is politically possible to reexamine just how many operational missiles and stored warheads both countries need to be “safe.” Calls for nuclear nonproliferation will ring hollow as long as the main keepers of nuclear weapons continue to hoard them and resist further progress in decreasing their stockpiles.
(By the way, did you know the US Atlas V commercial rocket flies with a Russian-made rocket engine?
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/europe/russia/)
JANUARY 2010
THE QUEST FOR GLOBAL POLITICAL EQUITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Claude Buettner, President, MN Chapter, CGS
Decade One of the new millennium (since 2000) is complete. Punctuated by mass murder, regional wars, more evidence of environmental degradation and near-missed economic meltdowns, the first decade makes it easy to be pessimistic about the future. But some progress has been made in the world coming together at the national governmental and NGO levels on crucial issues such as mass relief for natural disasters and coordinated economic policy when a crisis threatens the global economy.
More than ever before this past decade has brought to light how decisions made in key institutions that collectively pass for our nascent world government (e.g., the UN Security Council, World Trade Organization and World Bank) affect everyone on the planet. Calls for legitimacy of government in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and other nations shed light on the limited democracy of the most powerful world institutions of global governance. A critical deficiency now is lack of democratic legitimacy, which makes it more difficult to address problems that can't be solved at the national level, among the most pressing of which are environmental degradation and the persistence and spread of nuclear weapons.
It isn't just Las Vegas, as the ads say, that is America's back yard. Recent studies suggest that up to 250 million people will be environmental refugees by 2050 (whether or not one believes this is due to climate change brought about by documented increases in carbon dioxide gas). Millions of desperate people in an interconnected world will certainly lead to conflicts over resources and to social instability that will spill to every continent (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/6653187.stm).
On the horizon for the new decade will be calls for the formation of a UN Parliamentary body, perhaps with initial advisory status only (see TTGIF notice for January on page 2). Regardless of the compromises made during the creation of such a body, it will not be perfect. But it will be a step in the right direction of democratizing the UN. As the legendary United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld told us, the UN was "not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.
The wheel of history will keep turning whether or not steps are taken immediately to democratize existing world governmental institutions. What holds us back is the fear by many that we are moving too fast. However, moving too slowly risks having global problems overwhelm the current level of world order and the foreclosing of the promise of a more secure future.
THE QUEST FOR GLOBAL POLITICAL EQUITY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Claude Buettner, President, MN Chapter, CGS
Decade One of the new millennium (since 2000) is complete. Punctuated by mass murder, regional wars, more evidence of environmental degradation and near-missed economic meltdowns, the first decade makes it easy to be pessimistic about the future. But some progress has been made in the world coming together at the national governmental and NGO levels on crucial issues such as mass relief for natural disasters and coordinated economic policy when a crisis threatens the global economy.
More than ever before this past decade has brought to light how decisions made in key institutions that collectively pass for our nascent world government (e.g., the UN Security Council, World Trade Organization and World Bank) affect everyone on the planet. Calls for legitimacy of government in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and other nations shed light on the limited democracy of the most powerful world institutions of global governance. A critical deficiency now is lack of democratic legitimacy, which makes it more difficult to address problems that can't be solved at the national level, among the most pressing of which are environmental degradation and the persistence and spread of nuclear weapons.
It isn't just Las Vegas, as the ads say, that is America's back yard. Recent studies suggest that up to 250 million people will be environmental refugees by 2050 (whether or not one believes this is due to climate change brought about by documented increases in carbon dioxide gas). Millions of desperate people in an interconnected world will certainly lead to conflicts over resources and to social instability that will spill to every continent (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/6653187.stm).
On the horizon for the new decade will be calls for the formation of a UN Parliamentary body, perhaps with initial advisory status only (see TTGIF notice for January on page 2). Regardless of the compromises made during the creation of such a body, it will not be perfect. But it will be a step in the right direction of democratizing the UN. As the legendary United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld told us, the UN was "not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.
The wheel of history will keep turning whether or not steps are taken immediately to democratize existing world governmental institutions. What holds us back is the fear by many that we are moving too fast. However, moving too slowly risks having global problems overwhelm the current level of world order and the foreclosing of the promise of a more secure future.
MARCH 2010
CONFRONTING FUTURE TERROR
Claude Buettner, President, MN Chapter, CGS
Philip Bobbitt’s thought-provoking book, Terror and Consent, The Wars for the Twenty-first Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), is a difficult read. But its morbid subject challenges the reader to plod forward. The author, an Accomplished historian, provides us with an exhaustive treatment of the unexpected pressures on the current system of sovereign nation states that has been the dominant form of political organization since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia.
Much of the book systematically examines and questions many commonly held beliefs on the nature of the new terrorism that is evolving in parallel with changes in the nation state. Among these is the dubious assumption that terror is only a means and not an end. Bobbitt contends that the strategic thinking of our political leaders and the general public has lagged behind the reality that strengthened international law ought to be a natural consequence of the current nation state’s inability to guarantee the security of its people. We are now on the cusp of a historic shift towards international law, not because that will magically seem self-evidently legitimate, but because the nation states’ current legitimacy will become more self-evidently degraded as countries evolve towards what Bobbitt refers to as “market states” (a term of his own devising).
Succinctly, Bobbitt defines a market state as one based on “the emerging constitutional order that promises to maximize the opportunity of its people, tending to privatize many state activities and making representative governments more responsible to consumers.” He devotes a whole chapter to describe this concept in detail. “The constitutional order of the State,” he argues, “is determined by the unique grounds on which the State claims legitimate power.” He then traces the historical evolution of princely states, which flourished in the sixteenth century, into nation states, which emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century bringing with them industrialized “total” war.
Bobbitt contends that the territorial nation state is now giving way to the non-territorial market state whose legitimacy erodes because of the inability of the nation state to assure the security of its citizens. This weakness is tied to the nexus of global industry and communications coupled with the technology of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) escaping into the black market. (But Bobbitt never adequately explains how the emerging market state would be better suited to ensure safety from WMD.) As evidence of the emerging market state, Bobbitt cites the trend of federal government departments and agencies to outsource the majority of their work, becoming in effect contract management agencies. NASA and the Department of Energy, for example, spend up to 80% of their budgets on contractors, while the department of Defense uses contractors as never before, even for the provision of helicopters and armored vehicles.
Additionally, Bobbitt cites an experiment suggested by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in “Opportunity NYC” (http://opportunitynyc.org/), based on a successful Mexican rural poverty elimination program. It advocates flat rate payments for people in return for specific behaviors such as graduating from high school, maintaining health insurance, obtaining health screenings, etc. “This sort of conditional cash transfer, in contrast to welfare rights,” says Bobbitt, “is characteristic of the market state.”(Think about this as you follow the unfolding of the current debate on health care reform.)
Opposed to market states of consent, however, we can also anticipate market states of terror that have a vested interest in creating fear and disruption so as to intimidate in order to retain and enhance their power.
Key issues set forth by Bobbitt:
• “We must reform our ideas about terrorism, war, and the war aim if we are to win the wars of the twenty-first century in order to preserve states of consent and prevent the triumph of states of terror.”
• “The changes in warfare and terrorism are both a consequence and a driver of the change in the constitutional order.”
• Al Qaeda is only a herald of the larger phenomenon of twenty-first century terrorism.
• Terrorists in this century will mimic their enemy, the newly evolved market states of consent: decentralized, devolved, dependent on outsourcing and privatized. (Terrorists acts may be carried out by disaffected luddites at odds with modernity; but terrorist strategists are adept in their uses of the Internet, cell phones and video for global Communications in all its forms.)
• Alliances matter and can be one of our chief advantages in confronting states of terror.
• “…the twentieth century triad of deterrence, containment, and arms control regimes must now give way to twenty-first century strategies of preclusion.”
• “There is, at present, no more important question before the world because failure to resolve the issue of legitimate action to preclude terror will frustrate not only our efforts against global terrorism but also success in avoiding regional and global epidemics, and great power confrontation.”
Many paths lead to the conclusion that the institutions of global governance that are currently evolving above the nation-state level must be made more secure and legitimate. For some it is a religious conviction extrapolated from the dictum, “Thou shall not kill.” For others it is the cold logic of the sweep of history towards larger scales of social organization. For still others it is clammy fear of another dark age should there be another world war among global powers in an age of nuclear weapons. More recently, for some it is the belief that civilization could end with a whimper rather than with a bang as unchecked environmental degradation makes “things fall apart.” Much in Terror and Consent will disturb global governance adherents of all persuasions; but it’s worth studying to help make sense of a disorderly world in transition.
CONFRONTING FUTURE TERROR
Claude Buettner, President, MN Chapter, CGS
Philip Bobbitt’s thought-provoking book, Terror and Consent, The Wars for the Twenty-first Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), is a difficult read. But its morbid subject challenges the reader to plod forward. The author, an Accomplished historian, provides us with an exhaustive treatment of the unexpected pressures on the current system of sovereign nation states that has been the dominant form of political organization since the 1648 Peace of Westphalia.
Much of the book systematically examines and questions many commonly held beliefs on the nature of the new terrorism that is evolving in parallel with changes in the nation state. Among these is the dubious assumption that terror is only a means and not an end. Bobbitt contends that the strategic thinking of our political leaders and the general public has lagged behind the reality that strengthened international law ought to be a natural consequence of the current nation state’s inability to guarantee the security of its people. We are now on the cusp of a historic shift towards international law, not because that will magically seem self-evidently legitimate, but because the nation states’ current legitimacy will become more self-evidently degraded as countries evolve towards what Bobbitt refers to as “market states” (a term of his own devising).
Succinctly, Bobbitt defines a market state as one based on “the emerging constitutional order that promises to maximize the opportunity of its people, tending to privatize many state activities and making representative governments more responsible to consumers.” He devotes a whole chapter to describe this concept in detail. “The constitutional order of the State,” he argues, “is determined by the unique grounds on which the State claims legitimate power.” He then traces the historical evolution of princely states, which flourished in the sixteenth century, into nation states, which emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century bringing with them industrialized “total” war.
Bobbitt contends that the territorial nation state is now giving way to the non-territorial market state whose legitimacy erodes because of the inability of the nation state to assure the security of its citizens. This weakness is tied to the nexus of global industry and communications coupled with the technology of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) escaping into the black market. (But Bobbitt never adequately explains how the emerging market state would be better suited to ensure safety from WMD.) As evidence of the emerging market state, Bobbitt cites the trend of federal government departments and agencies to outsource the majority of their work, becoming in effect contract management agencies. NASA and the Department of Energy, for example, spend up to 80% of their budgets on contractors, while the department of Defense uses contractors as never before, even for the provision of helicopters and armored vehicles.
Additionally, Bobbitt cites an experiment suggested by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg in “Opportunity NYC” (http://opportunitynyc.org/), based on a successful Mexican rural poverty elimination program. It advocates flat rate payments for people in return for specific behaviors such as graduating from high school, maintaining health insurance, obtaining health screenings, etc. “This sort of conditional cash transfer, in contrast to welfare rights,” says Bobbitt, “is characteristic of the market state.”(Think about this as you follow the unfolding of the current debate on health care reform.)
Opposed to market states of consent, however, we can also anticipate market states of terror that have a vested interest in creating fear and disruption so as to intimidate in order to retain and enhance their power.
Key issues set forth by Bobbitt:
• “We must reform our ideas about terrorism, war, and the war aim if we are to win the wars of the twenty-first century in order to preserve states of consent and prevent the triumph of states of terror.”
• “The changes in warfare and terrorism are both a consequence and a driver of the change in the constitutional order.”
• Al Qaeda is only a herald of the larger phenomenon of twenty-first century terrorism.
• Terrorists in this century will mimic their enemy, the newly evolved market states of consent: decentralized, devolved, dependent on outsourcing and privatized. (Terrorists acts may be carried out by disaffected luddites at odds with modernity; but terrorist strategists are adept in their uses of the Internet, cell phones and video for global Communications in all its forms.)
• Alliances matter and can be one of our chief advantages in confronting states of terror.
• “…the twentieth century triad of deterrence, containment, and arms control regimes must now give way to twenty-first century strategies of preclusion.”
• “There is, at present, no more important question before the world because failure to resolve the issue of legitimate action to preclude terror will frustrate not only our efforts against global terrorism but also success in avoiding regional and global epidemics, and great power confrontation.”
Many paths lead to the conclusion that the institutions of global governance that are currently evolving above the nation-state level must be made more secure and legitimate. For some it is a religious conviction extrapolated from the dictum, “Thou shall not kill.” For others it is the cold logic of the sweep of history towards larger scales of social organization. For still others it is clammy fear of another dark age should there be another world war among global powers in an age of nuclear weapons. More recently, for some it is the belief that civilization could end with a whimper rather than with a bang as unchecked environmental degradation makes “things fall apart.” Much in Terror and Consent will disturb global governance adherents of all persuasions; but it’s worth studying to help make sense of a disorderly world in transition.
MAY 2010
IMPENDING CHANGE
Claude Buettner, Outgoing President
It has been a great privilege and pleasure to lead our chapter for the last three years. But it is time for me to step down. I gladly relinquish the presidency to someone who will be, I am confident, a worthy successor.
It is impossible to know or measure the effectiveness of NGOs such as CGS. Sometimes our faith that the “keyboard is mightier than the gun” suffices to motivate us to plod on. Rest assured that your support and interest is working towards keeping this imperfect global civilization on course to a safer future.
The good news on perhaps the biggest issue, to my thinking, is that the US and Russia have recently agreed on further reduction in their stockpiles of Cold War era nuclear bombs, the original weapons of mass destruction. Together, the US and Russia own over 90% of these weapons. Although some analysts have written that the recent agreement is more symbolic than the numbers at first indicate, it is a clear demonstration by decision makers to continue the long-term trend of nuclear weapons reduction. Only with this trend can the world be made safer and the necessary legitimacy be given to non-proliferation efforts.
Although the world’s estimated population of 6.8 billion people continues to rise, the global birth rate (currently estimated to be 1.1% per year by the US Census Bureau) continues to fall. This is great news as population growth is one of the main “drivers” behind a host of related global problems such as environmental degradation, economic and political instability, and even war.
Currently, there is a test of resolve for the European Union, the most noteworthy on-going experiment in international integration. When things are going well, all parties bask in the success of expanded economic opportunity and rising standards of living. But when many among Europe’s population begin to have misgivings that their stressed economies are subsidizing the most poorly managed or most unfortunate countries, such as Greece, Portugal and others, there are calls to rethink the basic premise of the EU. For the moment the various EU countries are determined to give the needed financial support to Greece. But, if other countries need financial propping up, the mood may change and the EU steadfastness may be tested.
I end with this Haiku to offer encouragement to a world in dangerous times on the cusp of great change:
Sloughing our past selves,
We unfold who we are now
To our amazement!
IMPENDING CHANGE
Claude Buettner, Outgoing President
It has been a great privilege and pleasure to lead our chapter for the last three years. But it is time for me to step down. I gladly relinquish the presidency to someone who will be, I am confident, a worthy successor.
It is impossible to know or measure the effectiveness of NGOs such as CGS. Sometimes our faith that the “keyboard is mightier than the gun” suffices to motivate us to plod on. Rest assured that your support and interest is working towards keeping this imperfect global civilization on course to a safer future.
The good news on perhaps the biggest issue, to my thinking, is that the US and Russia have recently agreed on further reduction in their stockpiles of Cold War era nuclear bombs, the original weapons of mass destruction. Together, the US and Russia own over 90% of these weapons. Although some analysts have written that the recent agreement is more symbolic than the numbers at first indicate, it is a clear demonstration by decision makers to continue the long-term trend of nuclear weapons reduction. Only with this trend can the world be made safer and the necessary legitimacy be given to non-proliferation efforts.
Although the world’s estimated population of 6.8 billion people continues to rise, the global birth rate (currently estimated to be 1.1% per year by the US Census Bureau) continues to fall. This is great news as population growth is one of the main “drivers” behind a host of related global problems such as environmental degradation, economic and political instability, and even war.
Currently, there is a test of resolve for the European Union, the most noteworthy on-going experiment in international integration. When things are going well, all parties bask in the success of expanded economic opportunity and rising standards of living. But when many among Europe’s population begin to have misgivings that their stressed economies are subsidizing the most poorly managed or most unfortunate countries, such as Greece, Portugal and others, there are calls to rethink the basic premise of the EU. For the moment the various EU countries are determined to give the needed financial support to Greece. But, if other countries need financial propping up, the mood may change and the EU steadfastness may be tested.
I end with this Haiku to offer encouragement to a world in dangerous times on the cusp of great change:
Sloughing our past selves,
We unfold who we are now
To our amazement!