The limits of the state

Monday 16th February 2009 at 10:30

Deepening globalisation requires us to fight for equity, security and stability, says David Miliband in this article from The House Magazine.

In his inaugural address last month Barack Obama said: "The world has changed, and we must change with it."

For me, three things define this change. One is global real-time interdependence, and the economic crisis is the best example of that. The second big change is the shift in the balance of power. I call it the 'civilian surge', and I believe it has been brought about by the freedom with which information and ideas now move around the world. The third change is the obvious economic crisis, and in my judgment there are two very different forces pulling in opposite ways as a result of that.

One force is pulling toward more nationalist protection. People want to look after their own first. But, and maybe we feel this strongly because we're hosting the G20 summit in London in April, there's an opposite force, which is to move to a renewal of multilateralism. If we're to win the case for that, we need to ask whether we want to deepen globalisation, or seek to roll it back. Deepening means developing political institutions to guide and engage in questions of equity, security and stability: the essential province of the multilateral system.

If you think about most of the multilateral institutions, above all the UN, it was created to stop one state abusing the rights of another state, and
that remains an important function of a multilateral system. There are some very major challenges to develop ways to ensure that states that have strength and are able to deploy it, do so within a set of what you would call ‘responsible rules'.

The international system was not set up to take care of weak states. There is not an absence of multilateral engagement in Afghanistan. Some say there is too much, but whether these multilateral institutions could co-ordinate better – align better – is a very profound issue. It's not just the UN, it's not just Nato, it's not just the EU. We've got a wide range of institutions seeking to support good governance by the Afghan government. No-one wants to be in Afghanistan to create a new colony – rather the international community is there to bolster a sovereign government. I think one thing that adds to the mix is the very welcome decision by President Obama to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan together. Their respective stability is mutually dependent.

After regularising strong states and their behaviour, and supporting weak ones, the third great insecurity is the absence of a mechanism to deliver public goods. Economic stability is a global public good, nuclear non-proliferation
is a global public good, and the mitigation of climate change is a global public good. In a way this is the easiest case to make for multilateralism, because no one country can meet these on its own – but it's also the hardest. If you thought the world trade deal was a tough negotiation, climate change is much more complex.

The great fear of the developing countries is that climate change is going to be used as an excuse to hold them back. The cruel irony is that some of the richest countries are largely protected from the effects of climate change, while some of the poorest will be hit the most by climatic consequences. So, while Nick Stern's argument about the economics of climate change pointing towards action is true, the issue is most stark in the developing world. A deal will be made or not made around the issue of the global financing of mitigation.

We've also got to do more work on the role of regional bodies. Think about the situation in Africa: the world's biggest peace-keeping operation in the world in the Democratic Republic of Congo costing about a billion dollars a year, a massive set of commitments on paper to Sudan from the UN, and the African Union (AU) in Somalia, with the prospect of a decision by the UN in six to nine months' on whether or not to deploy a peace-keeping operation there. A very important issue for us is Zimbabwe, which is both a strong state in its ability to abuse its citizens, and a weak one in terms of supporting them. And it's an exporter of instability to its neighbours, as there are three to four million refugees in South Africa.

There will never be African solutions to African problems unless there is a strong regional role for some organisation like the AU – and I think here of the role the EU has played in Europe. I believe it was Bill Clinton who once said "it is not the example of our power, but the power of our example". In the EU the power of example has been very, very profound – because the EU of now is a very different beast to that which it was 10 or 15 years ago: a motivator of reform, a threshold on human rights, and a discipline on governments in Eastern Europe.

I think a lot of European foreign ministers feel that there's certainly a big chance, maybe the last chance, to frame a global settlement on the basis of transatlantic values. The nation states are still the locus of political activity, but they also need to know their own limits, and know when to work together.