Kazakhstan's Democratic Forces Forum |
A New International
Organization: Akezhan KAZHEGELDIN Science fiction writers and futurologists forecast that "wars of the future" would take the form of a fight for a certain resource in short supply - oil, water, natural foodstuffs, or fresh air. The people still have enough of all this, and if used reasonably, these resources will last the mankind long enough. The first "war of the 21st century" has broken out over the resource that has always been of limited availability. Over power. 1. There is nothing more trivial than the idea that after the September 11 attacks the world has changed. Indeed, history has never known such a broad coalition as the one built by US diplomacy to fight international terrorism. Never have the long-standing contradictions and differences of opinion so completely receded into the background. Drastic changes in relations between the West and Russia demonstrate this only too well. However, there is something about this striking unity that reminds me of the way animals react to a forest fire: trying to escape they forget about their interspecies and intraspecies struggles for some time. But the day comes and the fire abates. Terrorism is just a way to achieve certain objectives. Under the pressure from consolidated international forces, those who have resorted to these methods will have to abandon them, but they won't abandon their basic goals. Then, new and possibly more severe tests may be in store for the world. To prevent this we should right now start to outline a new "post-terrorist" system of the world. And to do so one should realize the nature of today's crisis. It only seems that the tragic events in the US have caused the needle of the political compass to make a U-turn, and the main historical East-West axis to switch to that of North-South. This confrontation theory has been discussed for a long time, and its advocates have used terrorist attacks on New York and Washington as a "deadly" (in the true sense of the word) proof of their theory. As terrorist leaders in the Middle East keep saying that they are waging a war to protect Islam against a combined Christian and Judaic evil, the liberal intelligentsia appear to face an ideological trap: they have to find a different explanation for what is going on, and it must not be the "war of civilizations". The remaining options are a confrontation of the poor and the rich, a rebellion of the poor South against the rich North. This point of view is conventional and convenient not only for liberal professors and journalists, but also for politicians, especially those with executive powers. It would be a terrible problem for them not to have answers to questions asked by the public as to what the reason is and what they should do. The functioning politician cannot just say "I don't know". The "north-south" dichotomy turns out to be a way out. With its help recent events become at least explainable, and the almost insoluble problem turns out to be almost soluble. It turns out that more assistance should be given to the "third world" countries. As they say in Russia, one should share. 2. Should you ask, "share what?" the answer is - everything. Foodstuffs, clothes, drugs, computers, heaters, fans, grain, harvesters, CNN airtime, small and heavy arms, toys, posts at international organizations… Many more items may be added to this list, but it will never be complete until, quite honestly, one resource tops it all. This resource is "power on a planetary scale". In this case, for instance, this presupposes involvement in global decision making, international influence, and taking part in deciding the fates of countries and nations. The lust after this kind of power is what governs terrorist groups and political elites which stand behind them. Nowhere in the world does protest against the existing political system take the form of such murderous and, simultaneously, suicidal rage as in the Middle East. It is hard to believe that it is caused by concern for the happiness of their nations. To feed the hungry, Osama ben Laden and his "sponsors" should have spent their multi-billion fortunes on food, not ammunition. To secure economic prosperity for the Palestinian people, Gulf sheiks should have invested in that region just a tiny part of their assets. The terrorists’ fervent passions stem from the pains not of poverty, but on the contrary, of wealth. What could the richest person or a group of extremely wealthy people be lacking in the modern world where everything is for sale? Only one thing: power, power commensurate with this wealth. Acute shortage of the above-mentioned involvement in power is experienced by those with an extremely hightened political temperament who, due to the undemocratic nature of the political systems in their countries and personal marginality, have been expelled from the decision-making arena. If Saudi Arabia had, at least slightly, resembled a constitutional monarchy, Osama bin Laden would have possibly carved out a brilliant political career at home. Of course, the question remains whether he would have been satisfied with that kind of power. Entire states could suffer from similar complexes. Or, to be more precise, their ruling regimes which sincerely believe they are blessed by God and unique. The person who feels free to decide the fate of any of his subjects, who rules in the name of God or Party (as almighty and saintly as God) at home, would hardly welcome the idea of being just one of the world's two hundred presidents and premiers, on a par with leaders from Nauru. Painfully realizing their "peripheral position in the world" and fearing their own citizens could realize this too, they commit senseless acts like blasting a foreign airliner, aggression against a neighboring state or destroying statues of Buddha. Excesses of this kind create an illusion of these leaders' involvement in global politics and, at the same time, turn their nations into rogue states in the eyes of the international community. Still, this is not completely an illusion. If Kim Chong II had not been "fond of" rocket production and nuclear research, he could not have hoped to attract as much attention as he has been getting lately. Similarly, the role of Muammar Qadaffi in rescuing hostages in the Philippines brought him into focus of the international media and caused Western politicians to pay him visits of gratitude. It turns out that in the sphere of international relations authoritarian regimes find it profitable to be pariahs and bad guys. Perfectly normal human actions on the part of an "outlaw" are admired by the West, which is thankful to them just for not launching missiles at neighboring states, not blasting airliners, not stoning to death a western executive for falling in love with a local woman, not gassing a local minority … Rogue states seem to have a right to perform all these acts and if they abstain, they seem to be entitled to praise and new loans. What is the reason for such warped logic? 3. Awarding the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize to the United Nations Organization amidst artillery fire makes us take a critical look at the role of this organization in promoting international peace. Past UN achievements should not turn this organization into "a sacred cow". After the end of the Cold War, UN Assemblies, little by little, have become a "vanity fair" for undemocratic regimes. The UN helps to secure stability of the authoritarian, undemocratic states. This organization legitimizes any regime, since a regime automatically gets a place on this organization once it had obtained or usurped power at home. UN membership of a country is often reduced to membership of its government. This international organization protects the sovereignty, security and prosperity of the regime very often to the detriment of the security and prosperity of the population. However, this alone has become insufficient with time. The political correctness of the leading Western countries and Russia, their abandonment of the patron-client relationship between them an their former allies in the third world have given ruling elites in some countries reason to assume that they are entitled to decide fundamental political problems of the world - while the entire responsibility and the cost rest on the shoulders of the developed countries. The crisis of the "one country-one vote" principle in international relations drew to a head at the notorious UN conference in Durban this summer, when the Arab-led majority tried to make the global community accept their vision of the Middle East problem. Durban turned out to be a kind of trial, a test for the West and its stamina. The European countries and the US managed to oppose the procedure and to thwart the resolution which totally condemned Israel. Such an outcome once again underscores that decisions on crucial issues of international security cannot be taken by a simple majority vote. This is the sphere of higher mathematics, not arithmetic. The UN is failing in the performance of its peacekeeping functions, and we should admit this fact. Just as in the Middle East, the UN has proved to be helpless in the Balkans, in the fight against terrorism, in the attempts to stop the bloody ethnic conflicts in tropical Africa which have cost millions of lives. The vacuum of responsibility has been filled by NATO and the US, sometimes with the participation of Russia. Peacekeeping processes in the Balkans involving military operations, the anti-terrorism mission of the US and its allies in Afghanistan, a potential intervention that may be needed in the Middle East, these are examples of how tentative steps are being made to establish the new "postwar order". It has to be based on a new international organization which from the very beginning it should have the power of attorney to address a variety of world economic and political problems. In order not to get involved in discussing the name for the future organization, let us call it provisionally a New International Organization (NIO). 4. The developed countries have badly needed such an organization for a long time. Today the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is forced to play the part of such an organization, though it was originally meant to solve quite different problems. Missions forced on the North Atlantic Alliance which go beyond the limits of its responsibilities, their dual military and, simultaneously, humanitarian nature have caused crises in the member states and provided formal grounds for criticism and accusations of "new imperialism" from the outside. Proposals to reform NATO, along with its forced extension beyond the limits of its generic Atlantic region, disputes over a possible or even necessary inclusion of Russia prove that there is a need for some truly functional international mechanism. At the same time it is assumed that there is no alternative to NATO. In my opinion, the New International Organization (NIO) would represent such an alternative. Moreover, the G-8 states can act as its founders. This informal alliance has been all along tackling a variety of problems connected with international security, economics, and democracy. The fact that not only NATO states but Russia and Japan are among its members places the organization above all possible suspicion. The G-8 states should establish the NIO, approve its charter, and invite other countries to join. In contrast to the United Nations, the NIO membership can not be automatic. It must be determined by special criteria, among which democracy, observance of human rights, and a liberal market economy are the most important. These three criteria are interconnected and not one of them may be disregarded. Unlike the Helsinki process, there should be no "baskets" discussed by diplomats separately. From the outset, NIO members should become allies in their struggle for international security, human rights and free economic development. Entering the NIO, newcomers should accept responsibilities which their allies have already taken upon themselves. The observance of those principles has to become a condition not only for admittance but also for continued membership. Changes in the political system or large-scale violations of human rights shall result in the termination of membership. Such prospects will guarantee political stability of the new alliance’s member countries. Otherwise, the world will get another assembly where Saddam Hussein and Kim Chong II would have a vote on an equal footing with US or Russian Presidents or Japan’s Prime Minister. From the very beginning, the NIO should avoid any ambiguity and declare its commitment to safeguard security and peace, its right to impose sanctions, including military ones, against countries or, in a wider sense, against forces constituting a menace to mankind. Any decisions taken by the NIO on international security shall be binding for non-member states as well. Otherwise, the NIO shall reserve the right to apply sanctions, including military ones. There is nothing radically new or historically unprecedented about such a procedure of establishing a the NIO. The United Nations Organization was set up in a similar manner by anti-Nazi coalition states. As far as the UN’s future is concerned, the NIO will give a new impetus to it, will turn it into an open forum for NIO states and other countries to meet one another and exchange opinions. The UN will gain in importance and not just in a ritual sense. Anticipating criticism, I would like to stress that God created people, not presidents or kings, free and equal. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees nothing to leaders of rogue states. 5. I have a dream: one day my native Kazakhstan will be able to enter the NIO. But this will become possible only after major democratic reforms are accomplished and free elections take place. There is nothing humiliating for a nation in such a position, as the nation itself recognizes the great gap that separates it today from its future NIO partners. This is how the Kazakhstani public reacted to the PACE refusal to admit Kazakhstan as its member. A parliament that was formed through unfair elections, that has no real authority, and serves as a front for a clan-based dictatorship cannot be a member equal to the British Parliament or the Polish Seym. It should become one of NIO's priority tasks to induce Central Asia to meet the NIO criteria because the region in its present form is fraught with explosive dangers. The West is unable to solve this problem without Russia, and vice versa Russia is unable to solve it without the Western countries. I have written in the Moscow newspaper Izvestiya about Russia's new role as a "human rights empire" in the region. This does not mean that Russia will interfere with internal affairs or force its values or political practices on other countries. The right to choose their own way of political development will belong to the nations and not to the clans or dictators who have come to power, to a greater or lesser degree, by chance. A newly established NIO with the US and Russia as founders will render senseless the policy of fanning contradictions between the two powers while seeming loyal to both patrons at once. In Kazakhstan, they call this policy a "multi-vector foreign policy." There are other names for this… The importance of NIO efforts in Central Asia will be also determined by the fact that the region is vulnerable to extremism both militarily and morally. Thus, Tajik political reality could prove much closer to the current Afghan regime than can ever be imagine at OSCE headquarters. Yet, Tadjikistan is an OSCE member. Another example is Turkmenistan, where actions of its president for life and a OSCE summits participant are unpredictable. His country plays several games at once, and among them the most dangerous one is external neutrality combined with violent dictatorship. Tadjikistan can prove an extremely easy prey for Taliban. These are the problems that not only Afghanistan's immediate neighbors are facing. I have given my book the title "Opposition to the Middle Ages". The book describes the political confrontation in Kazakhstan. And this is not accidental. My native country has been facing challenges of the past too. It makes no sense to idealize the way things are in traditional democracies, though the democracy there functions and is still able to develop further, which is of great importance. In authoritarian states, citizens are often deprived of any chance to express themselves other than by joining underground terrorist groups. Only by dying are these people able to prove the fact they exist in society. 6. The NIO needs Central Asia no less than the peoples of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan need the NIO. Their consolidated resources of hydrocarbons combined by the resources of Russia and its partners will allow to organize the new world energy market much more fairly. This will also become an NIO objective if it takes up the issue of strategic stability. We should put an end to any opportunity for energy blackmail as well as other artificially caused crises. It is hard to imagine that the developed countries would unite into an Organization of Medicine Exporters and try to achieve their political purposes by setting prices and quotas for medicines exported to third world countries. People need fuel no less than medicines. Only an international organization like the NIO can neutralize OPEC influence. If oil were distributed in various regions more or less evenly, clashes of interests of various countries would rule out a chance that exporters could reach a non-economic agreement against importers. But nature distributed those resources haphazardly, and OPEC transforms them into instruments of political pressure upon developed countries. Membership of big oil producers, such as Russia, the US, Mexico, Norway in the NIO will provide an opportunity for political coordination of oil producers' and consumers' interests. The reason why the Middle East became the focal point of international terrorism in the 21st century requires special consideration. The NIO will have to make tremendous efforts to extinguish the fire of wars there. I belong to those who do not consider the Palestinian problem as a single and major reason for violence in the region. The war between Iran and Iraq, Iraq and Kuwait, fundamentalist terror and anti-fundamentalist repressions - all these have their own deep roots. Perhaps, the curse of the regimes in the region stems from the fact that, on the one hand, they are too rich, and on the other hand, too irresponsible and immature to use this wealth in a proper way. The necessity to add Caspian oil to the NIO resources and the huge investments involved will force various countries to evaluate the regimes in the region more carefully. Otherwise, with time the situation in the Caspian region may become fraught with crises no less than those which we see in the Middle East today. 7. The threat of bacteriological warfare has temporarily overshadowed the problem of conventional weapons. The NIO’s main priority should be international control of arms trafficking. The present-day wild market can not be tolerated any more. Arms-producing states now face a situation when military and terrorist operations against them are carried out with their own weapons. This happens in Chechnya and Afghanistan. It will be necessary to not only strictly control all deals, but also develop rules governing the purchase and selling of armaments obligatory to all countries. Otherwise the selling of jet fighters to North Korea and anti-aircraft complexes and small arms to unknown buyers will continue. No one can guarantee that the Taliban or Chechen rebels will not use those particular arms against Russia and the US, Kazakhstan's strategic partners. The NIO will have to develop a system of sanctions against those governments which do not comply with their international obligations, even if these are unwritten. In the case of jet fighters deal, which were almost sold to North Korea, Nazarbayev said that arms sales are an internal affair of Kazakhstan. Ideas of that kind should be opposed vigorously. Military operations on the territory of Afghanistan and, possibly, several other countries should eventually lead to the defeat of such paramilitary organizations as the one founded by Osama bin Laden. But US President George W. Bush says that a new long "cold war" is coming. It means that ahead of us lies an era of fear akin to the one that Western Europe and the US experienced in the 1950s. The world is concerned that democratic society will have to abandon some essential freedoms as a "payment of fear" in exchange for security conditionally guaranteed by the state. Could it be that residents in the developed countries will again have to build family bombshelters, purchase gas masks and study destructive characteristics of sarin and saman at civil defense lessons? Civilized mankind should never put up with such a perspective. Otherwise, the military defeat of terrorism will turn into its moral victory over that which it has been fighting all along: democratic principles, rights and freedoms. Formation of the NIO, the extension of the responsibility of the community of developed countries to the whole world will make it possible to avoid long confrontation. The G-8, as a kind of Security Council of the NIO, will have to accept this historical burden of power. The G-8 states have enough economic and military power, moral resources and historical experience to handle that task. Having once led a government, I realize what a burden of responsibility I urge the governments of the US, Russia, Germany, France, Japan, United Kingdom, Canada and Italy to shoulder. As a politician and a citizen of a Central Asian state, I am positive that if this will be done, it will mainly benefit the citizens of the developing countries. Once the NIO is formed, the term "third world" should be removed from the political vocabulary. Only two worlds will remain: One world where citizens are involved in making global decisions. And the other one where people still have to travel their uneasy road to power.
Otechestvennye Zapiski, No.1 2001 |
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