Security must mean more than safeguarding order for just 20 per cent of the world's population, writes Ismail Sabri Abdallah The nation state is a relatively recent phenomenon and attempts at creating rules governing the relations between such entities even more so. And as we look back over this relatively short history we may note a singular fact -- each of these attempts took place following bitter and protracted periods of international warfare. Take the Congress of Vienna, convened at the close of the 20-year long Napoleonic Wars. Prominent among those present was Prince Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian minister of state who acted as the president. The purpose of the Congress, which lasted from September 1814 to June 1815, was to redraw international boundaries. Naturally, the victors were determined to promote their own interests in the ensuing arrangements: it is not surprising, therefore, that the country that had to pay the heaviest price was Poland. For siding with Napoleon it was effectively carved up between Russia, Austria and Prussia. The delegates at the Congress adopted a number of resolutions pertaining to the conduct of international relations. They formalised systems and guarantees to regulate diplomatic and consular representation, established the principle of respect for territorial boundaries and pledged to support the victims of territorial aggression. The resolutions of the Congress of Vienna remained in effect for 40 years, right up until the unification of Germany and Italy and the onset of renewed inter-European tensions that revolved primarily around the repartition of colonial possessions. As European powers reconfigured themselves, some former adversaries became allies. The Entente Cordiale between Britain and France (1904) saw France abandon its support for the Egyptian nationalist movement while Britain relinquished any claims to French possessions in North Africa. In tandem with these developments the European powers were pursuing a common mission, the aim being to dismember the Ottoman Empire, or at least expel the last remnants of that empire from Europe. European tensions eventually erupted in World War I, the arena of which would extend beyond Europe to the Middle East, a conflict that would take a crucial turn with the Balfour Declaration, concluded secretly in 1917 at the height of hostilities. That same year the US entered the war on the side of the Allies. President Woodrow Wilson, who took the decision, was instrumental in shaping the climate of the post-war period with his Fourteen Points. If the most famous of these points was the declaration of the right of peoples to self- determination, other points addressed solutions to post-war disputes over international boundaries, questions that were ultimately addressed in the Treaty of Versailles at the expense of Germany, forced to pay enormous sums in reparations. Wilson's 14th point called for the creation of an association of nations to safeguard peace, a call that would eventually be fulfiled with the creation of the League of Nations. The new international organisation grew from the embers of an international conflagration that had lasted over four years, claimed millions of lives and wreaked untold devastation across the continent. It was World War I that acted as midwife to the birth of the modern air force, and as the first testing ground for the use of chemical weapons. Given the unprecedented scale of death and destruction it was hardly surprising that the founders of the new organisation would focus their energies on the preservation of international peace and stability and on ways to avert future wars, or at least large scale ones. The Covenant of the League of Nations, signed on 10 January 1920, established three means for the preservation of peace: the peaceful resolution of disputes among member nations (28 upon signing rising to 60 in the course of its existence); disarmament, or more precisely, the reduction of armed forces and equipment to levels sufficient to safeguard national security; and the prohibition of aggression requiring members take joint action against to deter or defeat an aggressor. Structurally, the League consisted of a general assembly in which all member nations were representatives, and a council that was not empowered to override the general assembly. Although the covenant contained no provision endowing a group of nations with the power of veto, the domination of the great powers was such as to ensure that no resolution could be passed over the opposition of one or more of these nations. The league took as its headquarters a sumptuous building in Geneva dubbed the Palace of Nations. Before assessing the performance of the League of Nations, it is noteworthy that its founders and the authors of its covenant paid no heed whatsoever to countries of the third world and their plight under colonialism. Not only did the victors benefit from territories that were stripped from the vanquished powers, they also made rapid bids for the colonial possessions of these powers. Britain, for example, seized Tanganyika and France annexed Cameroon. Meanwhile, in the Arab world, the great powers needed a legal formula to secure their grip on former Ottoman possessions (Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine) so as not to appear to be contravening the principle, enshrined in the covenant, of the right to self-determination. Their solution was the "mandate", the rubric for placing a nation under the control of a colonial power until that nation's people were deemed mature enough to merit independence. Egypt, in the aftermath of the war, remained a British protectorate, a system London had imposed unilaterally with the onset of World War I on the grounds that Egypt no longer owed allegiance to the Ottoman sultan and Leader of the Faithful, who had joined ranks with Germany. India remained an anomaly during this period. It had a chair in the General Assembly though it was filled by a representative of the British governor- general. The League of Nations received its first blow even before it officially came into being. The end of Wilson's presidency marked the end of US. A resurgent isolationism was signalled by Congress' refusal to ratify the bill of the League of Nations. Even so, some historians observe that the League of Nations performed effectively for nine years, until the onset of the Great Depression, the global depression that saw many millions of workers around the world sink into unemployment and destitution. Historians tend to overlook the fact that one of the League's greatest failings was its blindness to the need to formulate collective policies that might hasten the end of the hardship brought by the depression. Certainly, national stability would have been enhanced if governments had acted to create work opportunities, especially in manufacturing or service activities that would create demand without increasing supply. This was the course Roosevelt adopted in his massive public works programmes, most notably the federal interstate highway system. Had the League been more attentive to economic questions it may have averted fateful developments in Germany, already crippled by reparations. Hitler was carried to power with the support of both major industrialists, fearful of the growing influence of the left, and the despairing hordes of the unemployed and destitute. The Nazis' preferred route to creating job opportunities without increasing supply was to promote the armaments industry and one of Hitler's first acts was to abrogate Germany's commitment to the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles that pertained to arms reductions. In spite of this forewarning, the governments of Western Europe initially welcomed the rise of fascism and Nazism, believing these movements would serve as bulwarks against the spread of a communism that was becoming increasingly attractive to the working classes. Against this background one can better understand the League's eventual expulsion of the Soviet Union, and its earlier failure to take action against the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931) in spite of the appeals from China, against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1936) and Hitler's reoccupation of the Ruhr, annexation of Austria and dismemberment of Czechoslovakia. Calls for disarmament conferences had by now become a joke, so heavily engrossed were the nations that had invoked them to begin with in the race to amass larger and more up-to-date arsenals. The League of Nations effectively breathed its last with the German invasion of Poland in 1939, though its final obsequies were read in Geneva in December 1946. The nightmare of World War II was worse than anything previously experienced. The theatre of war extended across Europe and Asia and over the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Tens of million of civilians were killed and entire cities destroyed (Berlin being perhaps the most notorious example). In addition, the Nazis, fascists and their petty allies, as well as the Japanese, inflicted atrocities of staggering proportions on occupied peoples. The Nazis, in particular, had authored a creed founded upon a pseudo- scientific interpretation of Darwin's theory of natural selection. The result was a virulent form of social Darwinism that posited a hierarchical division of races, in accordance with which the Aryan race, of which the Germans were the purest and most robust strain, was superior, while at the bottom of the ladder stood the "Negroid" races and Romanis (gypsies). The Nazis interpreted Darwin's "survival of the fittest" as the right to exterminate entire peoples. European Jews were among the foremost victims of the Nazi genocide. A corollary of Hitler's racist theory was that the Semitic race was the antithesis of the Aryan race and that it was constantly plotting to destroy Aryan strength and undermine its spirit of courage and nobility. As these horrors progressed the great powers persisted in their drive to develop increasingly lethal weapons. World War II gave birth to the atomic bomb, the horrors of which were first unleashed against the Japanese city of Hiroshima. But this war also gave rise to legendary acts of resistance on the part of peoples that refused to accept Germany as an occupying power and their governments' complicity with the occupiers. Simultaneously, Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union had a profound impact on sympathy with the first socialist country in history. These factors combined to generate a powerful grassroots movement that helped ensure that concepts of freedom and human rights, as well as national rights and the end of colonialism, were placed on the agenda of the San Francisco Conference, the participants of which drafted the charter of the new international organisation that would emerge in the aftermath of World War II. This is not the place to assess the performance of the UN during its more than 50 years of existence. Rather, the point I would like to stress here is that it too emerged from the cauldron of an extremely devastating war and that its primary aim was to avert future conflagrations. The last half century has been the most extended period in the history of the capitalist West during which there has been no outbreak of war between western powers. This unprecedented phenomenon is, in part, the product of Europe's extensive history of warfare and bloody revolution and in part of the deterrent power of nuclear weapons which once unleashed would destroy both victor and vanquished (though quite how it is possible to determine victor and vanquished amidst the massive devastation so far escapes me). Another preventive factor has been western capitalism's entry into a phase of globalisation. Multi- or trans- national companies have spread their activities across dozens of countries; if they find trouble in one country they close down operations there and move to another. To transnationals every part of the inhabited world is a present or potential market, and most of the rivalries between them they overcome through alliances, mergers and take-overs. Marks and Spencer offers one ample of how such companies operate. Virtually overnight it decided to close down 37 of its retail outlets in France without this causing a problem between it and the French government or the French business sector. The primary weapon these companies use to penetrate the Third World is to bribe government officials: regardless of the sums spent in this manner this form of infiltration is ultimately much less expensive than a military campaign. More often than not local officials smooth the way for public acceptance by exulting in the influx of foreign investment, foreign management expertise and the enhanced export capacities transnationals bring. Perhaps western nations take the peace that has prevailed among them since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to mean the end of warfare. Peace among the masters has always been the gauge that they relied on most. After all, wars among nations of the South are only a reflection of these nations' backwardness, inability to develop and aversion to democracy. Peace among 20 per cent of the world's inhabitants is regarded as a great success when fighting among the remaining 80 per cent presents no danger. Indeed, some American commentators have gone so far as to assert that mankind is better off without the billion or so people who cannot produce their own daily bread. Human history, they say, is replete with examples of societies and civilisations that have become extinct because of their failure to develop and progress. The UN, hailed by so many as the embodiment of the universal will for a brighter future for all mankind, has also embodied a dream that remains out of reach for the vast majority of the world's population. Only two years after its founding, China emerged from a protracted civil war which had ended in the victory of the popular forces and the flight of the US's ally, Chiang Kai-shek, to Formosa (present day Taiwan). It did not reflect well on the nascent international organisation that China, representing more than a sixth of the world's population, was denied a permanent seat on the Security Council until 1972, when the US finally recognised the need to face up to reality and established diplomatic relations with Beijing. In 1947 the UN intervened in Palestine with its partition resolution, dispatching Count Folke Bernadotte to the region to oversee its implementation. Bernadotte was not destined to live to see the completion of his mission. He was assassinated in 1948 by Jewish extremists, after which Israeli forces seized a large portion of the territory that had been designated to the Palestinian state. Israel was setting the pattern for its future behaviour towards the UN. It has flouted every UN resolution that has ever succeeded in getting beyond America's veto to begin with. The 1950s brought the Vietnam war, initiated by France and perpetuated by the US which brought to bear its full arsenal (apart from nuclear arms) and still emerged with a stinging defeat, the beginning of the Algerian war of liberation and the tripartite invasion of Egypt to punish Nasser for nationalising the Suez Canal. Then came the wars between India and Pakistan, firstly over the sovereignty of Kashmir and then over the secession of Bangladesh. Over subsequent years warfare among or within nations of the South continued to proliferate, encompassing among others Cambodia, Laos, the Falklands, the Horn of Africa, Angola, Congo, Cote d'Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, East Timor, Haiti, the Western Sahara, not to mention a couple of more Arab-Israeli wars. The end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st brought more precedents. For the first time in half a century war returned to Europe with the tragedy of Yugoslavia. The second was the invasion by two international powers of Iraq, in spite of the opposition of the Security Council, in affirmation of Washington's determination to bypass the UN. The third is the autonomy of transnational companies and their ability to ignore the official policies of the countries in which they are based. The fourth, though not less important, is the growing international movement against capitalist globalisation and the increasing success of grassroots and civil society organisations in making their voice -- and the voice of the Third World -- heard. This we have witnessed most forcefully in Seattle, Port Alegre and Cancun. These phenomena give rise to the following questions. Should not non-governmental entities such as transnationals and NGOs and other non-profit organisations be represented in international organisations such as the UN? Is it not overdue that we seek a way to counterbalance the principle of maximising profit with another, more humane values such as enabling the poor and marginalised to engage in productive labour through which they can derive an income sufficient to ensure a dignified life? Is it not vital to the survival of mankind that whatever frameworks we create must also seek to safeguard not only peace and stability but the entire eco-system? We do not need to recall Newton -- "matter is neither created nor destroyed" -- nor even Marx -- "When man changes his natural conditions he changes himself" -- to realise that maximising profit is hardly the key to universal happiness.
