Navigating a New World by Lloyd Axworthy

Author:Lloyd Axworthy [Axworthy, Lloyd]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-36837-9
Publisher: Knopf Canada
Published: 2003-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

THE CROWDED GLOBAL VILLAGE

THE GLOBAL VILLAGE IS BECOMING A TRIFLE OVERCROWDED. THE streets teem with close to 190 nations. The big and powerful strut and swagger at centre stage while the poor and small are shuffled to the outer edge. Others are states in name only, presiding over a presidential palace while a group of warlords control the hinterland. Yet national sovereignty is still acknowledged to be the right of each villager, even though the reality is that all the inhabitants find their fortunes and futures intertwined.

The Westphalian nation-state system has been around a long time and is a deeply entrenched belief in most corridors of power and in the mindset of most people. And for good reason, as over the past two and a half centuries it has been, by and large, an effective system for managing affairs, getting rid of pretensions of world empire, and serving people’s needs. In the lexicon of political science, it has been an appropriate level of governance. Nor has it been static. After the Second World War, there was a creative period of institution building where a whole raft of political and economic intergovernmental agencies and organizations were established to order the increasing interdependency. More recently we have witnessed the World Trade Organization and the emergence of regional groupings, with greater or lesser degrees of integration, such as the European Union. Of course we also see the increasing power of other players. Some are influential international organizations in the humanitarian field, such as the Red Cross, but the most notable are the global corporations. Multinational corporations bestride a global marketplace, serviced and supported by a plethora of international consultants, rating agencies, lawyers and accountants.

There is, too, a dark underside of this system, one which shows that modern tools of global management, finance and organization can be used to exploit and to murder and to traffic in drugs with worldwide efficiency. The globe is becoming more corrupted and terrorized. It is also home to increasing numbers of the dispossessed, those who have no home, standing, privileges or rights. These are the refugees, the displaced, the victims of illegal migration, the unemployed youth, the young children deprived of parents and community by the ravages of war, AIDS or natural disaster. They are forgotten, ignored and often exploited by the global elite.

On the plus side, global civil society has multiplied into thousands of NGOs, wired together, joined by a proliferating number of associations and multilateral institutions addressing worldwide or regional issues, drawing all the other villagers into an ever changing galaxy of networks and connections. Marshall McLuhan would be impressed. This village is more democratic, in many places more prosperous and healthy. There is the embryo of international governance, and the information revolution promises to bind people together and make control by elites more difficult. These efforts add to the complexity of interactions and connections between the various occupants and add to the overriding of nation-state distinctions. “Community” might well be a better way to understand what is going on.

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