I commented on a post at Tim’s:
The gist is that the CiF poster he quotes does not believe that we can go on with national governments acting purely in their own countries’ interests:
“Gordon Brown needs to change the course of New Labour and replace the national agenda with a new cosmopolitan realism in order to tackle the challenges of terrorism, globalisation and climate change.”
The problem is that this is anything but a change of course for New Labour. As I quoted in my comment:
Today the impulse towards interdependence is immeasurably greater. We are witnessing the beginnings of a new doctrine of international community. By this I mean the explicit recognition that today more than ever before we are mutually dependent, that national interest is to a significant extent governed by international collaboration and that we need a clear and coherent debate as to the direction this doctrine takes us in each field of international endeavour. Just as within domestic politics, the notion of community – the belief that partnership and co-operation are essential to advance self-interest – is coming into its own; so it needs to find its own international echo. Global financial markets, the global environment, global security and disarmament issues: none of these can he solved without intense international co-operation.
That was Tony Blair in 1999, encouraging the US to stay the course – behind Bill Clinton – of subjugating the Balkans.
The election of the relatively anti-internationalist Bush in 2000 was a setback for New Labour’s “International Community”, but luckily for Blair, September 2001 brought him over into the internationalist camp.
If one truly wants a global authority to deal with global warming, or anything else, there are two things that need to be done:
- Create a global authority.
- Get it to agree with your policies.
It’s conceivable that a global authority, once existing, could change its policies, but not that a bunch of people that agree with some policy, but have no power, could become a global authority. So the appropriate strategy would be to encourage whatever practical internationalism exists, and then to change its policy. The only internationalist movements with realistic access to power in the world today are the US neoconservatives, and the EU. I have already explained why the EU does not, and will not, have sufficient power to challenge the US, so any internationalism today must start with neconservatism.
If I believed what Ulrich claims – that only a system of global cooperation can save us from catastrophe, my political strategy would be to throw in totally with the War on Terror. If the US gained the support of the EU to make Iraq into a colony, and then conquer Iran, world government would be that much closer. A powerful military base in the Middle East would put more pressure on the other major oil producers in the region. Venezuela, Canada and Nigeria are all relatively easy to handle. The next stage would be to bring Putin to heel. I admit I can’t see an easy way to do that, unless our Empire’s oil production can be hugely ramped up. A carefully placed nuclear “accident” might do the job, perhaps.
Once substantially all the world’s oil comes under the control of the Empire, it could rule the world. The politics of environmentalism would at that stage be very useful as a rationale for politically managing the oil supply, so it should not be too difficult to apply stage 2 of the climate change strategy, and convert the Emperor to the desired policy.
This whole political programme is, I must admit, very unpleasant. We are talking about at least two decades of continuous war of Imperial conquest. But, as Ulrich Beck says:
When taken seriously and thought through to its logical conclusions, climate change demands a political paradigm shift.
so, we must ask, are we prepared to make the necessary sacrifices, or aren’t we?