INTERVIEW Exit democracy, enter
tele-oligarchy By Claudio Gallo
Danilo Zolo is professor of
philosophy of law and of philosophy of
international law at the University of Florence.
He has been a visiting fellow at the Universities
of Cambridge, Harvard, Princeton and Oxford and
delivered courses at universities in Argentina,
Brazil, Mexico and Colombia. In 2000 he founded
Jura Gentium: Journal for Philosophy of
International Law and Global Politics. His
publications include: Reflexive Epistemology,
Boston 1989; Democracy and
Complexity, Cambridge 1992; Cosmopolis, Cambridge
1996; Invoking
Humanity, London 2001; Globalization, Colchester
2007; Victors'
Justice, London 2009.
Claudio Gallo: First
Kosovo, then Libya and now perhaps Syria:
"Humanitarian war" is becoming a consolidated
paradigm that you have criticized since its first
appearance as a "subversion of
international law". Why,
according to the title of a book of yours that is
a quotation from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Carl
Schmitt, is it so that "Whoever says 'humanity'
wants to cheat"?
Danilo Zolo: In the
early 1990s "humanitarian intervention" was a key
element in the international strategy of the
United States. It claimed that "global security"
required that the great powers responsible for
world order felt the Westphalian principle of
non-interference in the domestic jurisdiction of
national states to be out of date. The United
States therefore considered itself to have not
only the right but above all a moral duty to
intervene militarily to resolve internal crises in
individual countries, in particular to ensure
respect for human rights.
The
war sparked off by the United States against the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - the war in Kosovo
in 1999 - finally established the practice of
humanitarian interventionism. The humanitarian
motivation was thus taken explicitly as justa causa of a war of
aggression. And the United States has stated that
the use of force for humanitarian reasons was
legitimate, even though in contrast with the
United Nations Charter, the principles of the
statute and the judgment of the Nuremberg
Tribunal, as well as with international law in
general.
In front of this bloody
subversion of international law, the reaction of
the Security Council of the United Nations was
substantial inertia and subordination, if not
outright complicity with Western powers. The death
penalty was actually imposed on thousands of
Yugoslav citizens regardless of any investigation
of their possible culpability.
Thousands of innocent people
have died in terrorist bombings by US, British and
Italian warplanes. The humanitarian militarism of
the Western powers led to a collapse of
international order. The doctrine and practice of
"humanitarian war" were thus the first step of a
systematic use of military force by an "imperial"
superpower that meant and still means to impose
its economic, political and military hegemony to
the whole world through terrorist means.
"Humanitarian wars" have therefore been the
prelude to the next "preventive wars" against
Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. So the aphorism of
Pierre Proudhon, later picked up by Carl Schmitt,
Wer Menschheit sagt will
betrธ gen ("Whoever says 'humanity' wants to
cheat"), remains confirmed once again.
CG: The Bangkok
Declaration of 1993 opposed "Asian values" to the
universalistic conception of human rights spread
from the West. It was argued that the universality
of human rights is a rational assumption that only
makes sense in reference to the Western liberal
tradition. Is it therefore only an ideology among
others?
DZ: In 1948 the
authors of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights gave to all human beings a series of
individual rights, including the "right to life".
They hoped to eradicate the violent practices of
the past and erase forever the tragedy of the
Second World War. But the formalization of basic
human rights, including the "right to life", did
not get the expected results. In particular, in
recent decades there have been phenomena such as
the massacre of thousands of soldiers and innocent
civilians, the bombing of entire cities and the
summary killing of hundreds of people allegedly
responsible for terrorist acts.
All
this proves, in my opinion, that the process of
globalization tends to contradict the principles
affirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and tends to obliterate the very principle
of the "right to life". So the Bangkok Declaration
of 1993 that opposed "Asian values" to Western
universalism is not unfounded.
As
Amnesty International reports prove, human-rights
violation is an occurrence of increasing
proportions. It affects a large number of states,
including all Western states. Bodies and agencies
that have to keep human rights respected -
primarily the Council for Human Rights of the
United Nations - lack any executive power. And
their decisions are systematically ignored and
disregarded.
Think of the crimes committed
by the US at Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo,
Fallujah, not to mention those committed by Israel
in Palestinian territories, particularly in Gaza
and the massacre of December 2008 to January 2009.
Those responsible for these crimes against
humanity have enjoyed and continue to enjoy the
most absolute impunity, thanks to the connivance
of the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Luigi Ferrajoli authoritatively wrote: "The age of
human rights is also the age of their most massive
violation, where inequality is deeper and
intolerable."
Very little data is needed to
dramatically confirm that the sun is setting on
the "Age of Rights" in the globalization era. The
International Labour Organization estimates that 3
billion people are now living below the poverty
line, set at US$2 per day. John Galbraith, in the
preface to the Human Development Report of the
United Nations in 1998, documented that 20% of the
world's population cornered 86% of all goods and
services produced worldwide, while the poorest 20%
of them consumed only 1.3%. Today, after nearly 15
years, these figures have, unfortunately, changed:
the richest 20% of the population consumes 90% of
the goods produced, while the poorest 20% consumes
1%. It is also estimated that 40% of the world's
wealth is owned by 1% of the world population,
while the 20 richest people in the world have
resources equal to those of the billion poorest
people.
CG: Critics of the
Western world say that the United States is using
its influence over the UN to transform it into an
instrument of its power. Do you think this is a
credible argument?
DZ: I have no doubt
that United States is using its absolute military
and nuclear power to influence the political and
military decisions of the UN Security Council.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United
States became the only authority capable of
controlling or preventing the decisions of the
Security Council. On the other hand, the United
States makes decisions that seriously infringe the
UN Charter without even taking into account the
provisions of the Charter. Just think of the wars
declared and conducted by the United States
against countries such as Serbia, Afghanistan,
Iraq and Libya without the slightest reaction of
member states of the Security Council.
CG: You wrote that
you are skeptical about intellectuals whom Hedley
Bull called, with a hint of irony, Western
globalists (Richard Falk, David Held, Ulrich Beck,
Zygmunt Bauman, Juergen Habermas). Why don't you
believe that a world government would be the only
antidote to war?
DZ: The idea of a
world government that may assure peace in the
world is empty of meaning. It makes no sense
because, first of all, a world government should
express the will of all countries in the world by
a universal parliament, hierarchical and unipolar,
in which the great powers should live side by side
with the poorest countries. It has no meaning
because the so-called five BRICS countries -
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -
are emerging to compete with the major Western
powers, wiping out any military-political-economic
possibility of a cosmopolitan pacifism. A world
government, in continuity with existing
international institutions and inspired by a
cosmopolitan model, would necessarily be a
Leviathan, despotic and totalitarian, and should
oppose the spread of terrorism through the
widespread use of weapons.
CG: You don't
believe, as Pierre Bourdieu does, that
globalization is only capitalist rhetoric. You
define it also as a change in human relationships
determined by technological revolution. What is,
in your opinion, the positive aspect of
globalization?
DZ: I do not agree
with Bourdieu, who denies the very need to use the
term "globalization". From my point of view,
globalization shows very different aspects. On the
one hand, I think we should firmly reject the
Western rhetoric of globalization that makes it
the main route to the unification of mankind, and
to the advent of universal citizenship. At the
same time, I tend to distrust the radically
skeptical positions that explain globalization as
capitalist rhetoric.
I don't deny the rhetoric and
don't underestimate ideological manipulation. I
argue, however, that rhetoric and ideology are
developing from some empirical phenomena of which
it would be very shortsighted to ignore the
innovation and relevance.
In
this sense, the well-known proposal of the
definition of Antony Giddens, in my opinion, nails
an element that we need to sort out: What we call
globalization is in many ways the result of a
series of compressions of space and time,
originated by the great decrease of time and cost
in transportation and communications, and the
removal of many barriers (certainly not all) in
the international movement of goods, services,
capital and knowledge. To
maintain that the process of globalization is
irreversible does not mean to consider it a
natural phenomenon or the result of random and
disorderly "anonymous forces" operating in a
"foggy and muddy no man's land", as written by
Zygmunt Bauman. Luciano Gallino is instead
perfectly right saying that political,
communicative and economic outcomes of
globalization match a project designed and built
consciously by major powers of the world and the
international institutions they control. It is
therefore necessary to distinguish, as argued by
Joseph Stiglitz, between processes of
globalization as such and their political
management by the major economic and political
powers of the planet. And that management cannot
be in any way considered "irreversible".
CG: Your next book,
which is about to be published by Laterza in
Italy, will be titled Democracy without a
Future. Do you think that our future will be
very dark indeed?
DZ: There is no
doubt, in my opinion, that in the West the
institutions we call "democratic" are in serious
trouble, especially in Europe and Italy. The
political and legal sovereignty of nation-states
has been greatly weakened, while the function of
parliaments is limited by the power of public and
private bureaucracies, including judicial
bureaucracy and constitutional courts. At the same
time the executive power tends to assume a
hegemonic function without taking into account the
division of powers that had been the hallmark of
the Euro-continental constitutional state and the
Anglo-American rule of law.
Parliamentary democracy gives
way to "telecracy". Public and private television
channels are very effective instruments for
political propaganda. As Norberto Bobbio noted,
the enormous power of television has caused a
reversal of the relationship between citizens who
control to citizens who are controlled: The
restricted minority of elected representatives are
controlling the masses of voters and not vice
versa. We are therefore in a regime that it is not
rhetorical to call "post-democratic
tele-oligarchy", in which the vast majority of
people do not "choose" and do not "elect", but
ignore and obey.
Hundreds of thousands of
young people, women and the elderly have no jobs,
not even the most menial, and live in poverty. So
is a "very dark" tomorrow awaiting us? It is not
easy to answer this question. What seems
absolutely certain is the progressive weakening of
political and economic functions of individual
states and the dominance of some economic and
political elites serving untouchable private
interests. It is the so-called "new transnational
capitalist class" that dominates the processes of
globalization from the top of glass towers in
cities like New York, Washington, London,
Frankfurt, New Delhi, Shanghai.
Claudio Gallo is world
news editor of Italian daily La Stampa.
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