Senior British diplomat Robert Cooper has helped to shape British Prime
Minister Tony Blair's calls for a new internationalism and a new doctrine of
humanitarian intervention which would place limits on state sovereignty. This
article contains the full text of Cooper's essay on "the postmodern
state", written in a personal capacity, an extract from which appears in
the print edition of The
Observer today. Cooper's call for a new liberal imperialism and admission of
the need for double standards in foreign policy have outraged the left but the
essay offers a rare and candid unofficial insight into the thinking behind
British strategy on Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond.
In 1989 the political systems of three centuries came to an end in
Europe: the balance-of-power and the imperial urge. That year marked not just
the end of the Cold War, but also, and more significantly, the end of a state
system in Europe which dated from the Thirty Years War. September 11 showed us
one of the implications of the change.
To understand the present, we must first understand the past, for the
past is still with us. International order used to be based either on hegemony
or on balance. Hegemony came first. In the ancient world, order meant empire.
Those within the empire had order, culture and civilisation. Outside it lay
barbarians, chaos and disorder. The image of peace and order through a single
hegemonic power centre has remained strong ever since. Empires, however, are
ill-designed for promoting change. Holding the empire together - and it is the
essence of empires that they are diverse - usually requires an authoritarian
political style; innovation, especially in society and politics, would lead to
instability. Historically, empires have generally been static.
In Europe, a middle way was found between the stasis of chaos and the
stasis of empire, namely the small state. The small state succeeded in
establishing sovereignty, but only within a geographically limited
jurisdiction. Thus domestic order was purchased at the price of international
anarchy. The competition between the small states of Europe was a source of
progress, but the system was also constantly threatened by a relapse into chaos
on one side and by the hegemony of a single power on the other. The solution to
this was the balance-of-power, a system of counter-balancing alliances which
became seen as the condition of liberty in Europe. Coalitions were successfully
put together to thwart the hegemonic ambitions firstly of Spain, then of
France, and finally of Germany.
But the balance-of-power system too had an inherent instability, the
ever-present risk of war, and it was this that eventually caused it to
collapse. German unification in 1871 created a state too powerful to be
balanced by any European alliance; technological changes raised the costs of war
to an unbearable level; and the development of mass society and democratic
politics, rendered impossible the amoral calculating mindset necessary to make
the balance of power system function. Nevertheless, in the absence of any
obvious alternative it persisted, and what emerged in 1945 was not so much a
new system as the culmination of the old one. The old multi-lateral
balance-of-power in Europe became a bilateral balance of terror worldwide, a
final simplification of the balance of power. But it was not built to last. The
balance of power never suited the more universalistic, moralist spirit of the
late twentieth century.
The second half of the twentieth Century has seen not just the end of
the balance of power but also the waning of the imperial urge: in some degree
the two go together. A world that started the century divided among European
empires finishes it with all or almost all of them gone: the Ottoman, German,
Austrian, French , British and finally Soviet Empires are now no more than a
memory. This leaves us with two new types of state: first there are now states
- often former colonies - where in some sense the state has almost ceased to
exist a 'premodern' zone where the state has failed and a Hobbesian war of all
against all is underway (countries such as Somalia and, until recently,
Afghanistan). Second, there are the post imperial, postmodern states who no
longer think of security primarily in terms of conquest. And thirdly, of course
there remain the traditional "modern" states who behave as states
always have, following Machiavellian principles and raison d'ètat (one thinks
of countries such as India, Pakistan and China).
The postmodern system in which we Europeans live does not rely on
balance; nor does it emphasise sovereignty or the separation of domestic and
foreign affairs. The European Union has become a highly developed system for
mutual interference in each other's domestic affairs, right down to beer and
sausages. The CFE Treaty, under which parties to the treaty have to notify the location
of their heavy weapons and allow inspections, subjects areas close to the core
of sovereignty to international constraints. It is important to realise what an
extraordinary revolution this is. It mirrors the paradox of the nuclear age,
that in order to defend yourself, you had to be prepared to destroy yourself.
The shared interest of European countries in avoiding a nuclear catastrophe has
proved enough to overcome the normal strategic logic of distrust and
concealment. Mutual vulnerability has become mutual transparency.
The main characteristics of the postmodern world are as follows:
· The breaking down of the distinction between domestic and foreign
affairs.
· Mutual interference in (traditional) domestic affairs and mutual
surveillance.
· The rejection of force for resolving disputes and the consequent
codification of self-enforced rules of behaviour.
· The growing irrelevance of borders: this has come about both through
the changing role of the state, but also through missiles, motor cars and
satellites.
· Security is based on transparency, mutual openness, interdependence and
mutual vulnerability.
The conception of an International Criminal Court is a striking example
of the postmodern breakdown of the distinction between domestic and foreign
affairs. In the postmodern world, raison d'ètat and the amorality of
Machiavelli's theories of statecraft, which defined international relations in
the modern era, have been replaced by a moral consciousness that applies to
international relations as well as to domestic affairs: hence the renewed
interest in what constitutes a just war.
While such a system does deal with the problems that made the
balance-of-power unworkable, it does not entail the demise of the nation state.
While economy, law-making and defence may be increasingly embedded in
international frameworks, and the borders of territory may be less important,
identity and democratic institutions remain primarily national. Thus
traditional states will remain the fundamental unit of international relations
for the foreseeable future, even though some of them may have ceased to behave
in traditional ways.
What is the origin of this basic change in the state system? The
fundamental point is that "the world's grown honest". A large number
of the most powerful states no longer want to fight or conquer. It is this that
gives rise to both the pre-modern and postmodern worlds. Imperialism in the
traditional sense is dead, at least among the Western powers.
If this is true, it follows that we should not think of the EU or even
NATO as the root cause of the half century of peace we have enjoyed in Western
Europe. The basic fact is that Western European countries no longer want to
fight each other. NATO and the EU have, nevertheless, played an important role
in reinforcing and sustaining this position. NATO's most valuable contribution
has been the openness it has created. NATO was, and is a massive intra-western
confidence-building measure. It was NATO and the EU that provided the framework
within which Germany could be reunited without posing a threat to the rest of
Europe as its original unification had in 1871. Both give rise to thousands of
meetings of ministers and officials, so that all those concerned with decisions
involving war and peace know each other well. Compared with the past, this
represents a quality and stability of political relations never known before.
The EU is the most developed example of a postmodern system. It
represents security through transparency, and transparency through interdependence.
The EU is more a transnational than a supra-national system, a voluntary
association of states rather than the subordination of states to a central
power. The dream of a European state is one left from a previous age. It rests
on the assumption that nation states are fundamentally dangerous and that the
only way to tame the anarchy of nations is to impose hegemony on them. But if
the nation-state is a problem then the super-state is certainly not a solution.
European states are not the only members of the postmodern world.
Outside Europe, Canada is certainly a postmodern state; Japan is by inclination
a postmodern state, but its location prevents it developing more fully in this
direction. The USA is the more doubtful case since it is not clear that the US
government or Congress accepts either the necessity or desirability of
interdependence, or its corollaries of openness, mutual surveillance and mutual
interference, to the same extent as most European governments now do.
Elsewhere, what in Europe has become a reality is in many other parts of the
world an aspiration. ASEAN, NAFTA, MERCOSUR and even OAU suggest at least the
desire for a postmodern environment, and though this wish is unlikely to be
realised quickly, imitation is undoubtedly easier than invention.
Within the postmodern world, there are no security threats in the
traditional sense; that is to say, its members do not consider invading each
other. Whereas in the modern world , following Clausewitz' dictum war is an
instrument of policy in the postmodern world it is a sign of policy failure.
But while the members of the postmodern world may not represent a danger to one
another, both the modern and pre-modern zones pose threats.
The threat from the modern world is the most familiar. Here, the
classical state system, from which the postmodern world has only recently
emerged, remains intact, and continues to operate by the principles of empire
and the supremacy of national interest. If there is to be stability it will
come from a balance among the aggressive forces. It is notable how few are the
areas of the world where such a balance exists. And how sharp the risk is that
in some areas there may soon be a nuclear element in the equation.
The challenge to the postmodern world is to get used to the idea of
double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open
cooperative security. But when dealing with more old-fashioned kinds of states
outside the postmodern continent of Europe, we need to revert to the rougher
methods of an earlier era - force, pre-emptive attack, deception, whatever is
necessary to deal with those who still live in the nineteenth century world of
every state for itself. Among ourselves, we keep the law but when we are
operating in the jungle, we must also use the laws of the jungle. In the
prolonged period of peace in Europe, there has been a temptation to neglect our
defences, both physical and psychological. This represents one of the great dangers
of the postmodern state.
The challenge posed by the pre-modern world is a new one. The pre-modern
world is a world of failed states. Here the state no longer fulfils Weber's
criterion of having the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Either it has
lost the legitimacy or it has lost the monopoly of the use of force; often the
two go together. Examples of total collapse are relatively rare, but the number
of countries at risk grows all the time. Some areas of the former Soviet Union
are candidates, including Chechnya. All of the world's major drug-producing
areas are part of the pre-modern world. Until recently there was no real
sovereign authority in Afghanistan; nor is there in upcountry Burma or in some
parts of South America, where drug barons threaten the state's monopoly on
force. All over Africa countries are at risk. No area of the world is without
its dangerous cases. In such areas chaos is the norm and war is a way of life.
In so far as there is a government it operates in a way similar to an organised
crime syndicate.
The premodern state may be too weak even to secure its home territory,
let alone pose a threat internationally, but it can provide a base for
non-state actors who may represent a danger to the postmodern world. If
non-state actors, notably drug, crime, or terrorist syndicates take to using
premodern bases for attacks on the more orderly parts of the world, then the
organised states may eventually have to respond. If they become too dangerous
for established states to tolerate, it is possible to imagine a defensive
imperialism. It is not going too far to view the West's response to Afghanistan
in this light.
How should we deal with the pre-modern chaos? To become involved in a
zone of chaos is risky; if the intervention is prolonged it may become
unsustainable in public opinion; if the intervention is unsuccessful it may be
damaging to the government that ordered it. But the risks of letting countries
rot, as the West did Afghanistan, may be even greater.
What form should intervention take? The most logical way to deal with
chaos, and the one most employed in the past is colonisation. But colonisation
is unacceptable to postmodern states (and, as it happens, to some modern states
too). It is precisely because of the death of imperialism that we are seeing
the emergence of the pre-modern world. Empire and imperialism are words that
have become a form of abuse in the postmodern world. Today, there are no
colonial powers willing to take on the job, though the opportunities, perhaps even
the need for colonisation is as great as it ever was in the nineteenth century.
Those left out of the global economy risk falling into a vicious circle. Weak
government means disorder and that means falling investment. In the 1950s,
South Korea had a lower GNP per head than Zambia: the one has achieved
membership of the global economy, the other has not.
All the conditions for imperialism are there, but both the supply and
demand for imperialism have dried up. And yet the weak still need the strong
and the strong still need an orderly world. A world in which the efficient and
well governed export stability and liberty, and which is open for investment
and growth - all of this seems eminently desirable.
What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a
world of human rights and cosmopolitan values. We can already discern its
outline: an imperialism which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order and
organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle.
Postmodern imperialism takes two forms. First there is the voluntary
imperialism of the global economy. This is usually operated by an international
consortium through International Financial Institutions such as the IMF and the
World Bank - it is characteristic of the new imperialism that it is
multilateral. These institutions provide help to states wishing to find their
way back into the global economy and into the virtuous circle of investment and
prosperity. In return they make demands which, they hope, address the political
and economic failures that have contributed to the original need for
assistance. Aid theology today increasingly emphasises governance. If states
wish to benefit, they must open themselves up to the interference of
international organisations and foreign states (just as, for different reasons,
the postmodern world has also opened itself up.)
The second form of postmodern imperialism might be called the
imperialism of neighbours. Instability in your neighbourhood poses threats
which no state can ignore. Misgovernment, ethnic violence and crime in the
Balkans poses a threat to Europe. The response has been to create something
like a voluntary UN protectorate in Bosnia and Kosovo. It is no surprise that
in both cases the High Representative is European. Europe provides most of the
aid that keeps Bosnia and Kosovo running and most of the soldiers (though the
US presence is an indispensable stabilising factor). In a further unprecedented
move, the EU has offered unilateral free-market access to all the countries of the
former Yugoslavia for all products including most agricultural produce. It is
not just soldiers that come from the international community; it is police,
judges, prison officers, central bankers and others. Elections are organised
and monitored by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE). Local police are financed and trained by the UN. As auxiliaries to this
effort - in many areas indispensable to it - are over a hundred NGOs.
One additional point needs to be made. It is dangerous if a neighbouring
state is taken over in some way by organised or disorganised crime - which is
what state collapse usually amounts to. But Usama bin Laden has now
demonstrated for those who had not already realised, that today all the world
is, potentially at least, our neighbour.
The Balkans are a special case. Elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe
the EU is engaged in a programme which will eventually lead to massive
enlargement. In the past empires have imposed their laws and systems of
government; in this case no one is imposing anything. Instead, a voluntary
movement of self-imposition is taking place. While you are a candidate for EU
membership you have to accept what is given - a whole mass of laws and
regulations - as subject countries once did. But the prize is that once you are
inside you will have a voice in the commonwealth. If this process is a kind of
voluntary imperialism, the end state might be describes as a cooperative
empire. 'Commonwealth' might indeed not be a bad name.
The postmodern EU offers a vision of cooperative empire, a common
liberty and a common security without the ethnic domination and centralised
absolutism to which past empires have been subject, but also without the ethnic
exclusiveness that is the hallmark of the nation state - inappropriate in an
era without borders and unworkable in regions such as the Balkans. A
cooperative empire might be the domestic political framework that best matches
the altered substance of the postmodern state: a framework in which each has a share
in the government, in which no single country dominates and in which the
governing principles are not ethnic but legal. The lightest of touches will be
required from the centre; the 'imperial bureaucracy' must be under control,
accountable, and the servant, not the master, of the commonwealth. Such an
institution must be as dedicated to liberty and democracy as its constituent
parts. Like Rome, this commonwealth would provide its citizens with some of its
laws, some coins and the occasional road.
That perhaps is the vision. Can it be realised? Only time will tell. The
question is how much time there may be. In the modern world the secret race to
acquire nuclear weapons goes on. In the premodern world the interests of
organised crime - including international terrorism - grow greater and faster
than the state. There may not be much time left.
· Robert Cooper is a senior serving British diplomat, and writes
in a personal capacity. This article is published as The post-modern state
in the new collection Reordering the World: the long term implications of
September 11, published by The Foreign Policy Centre.
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