Leaving markets on their own to resolve problems of resource generation and allocation will perpetuate both the vast asymmetries of life chances within and among nation-states and the emergence of global financial flows that can rapidly destabilize national economies.

Indeed, pushing back the boundaries of state action and weakening governing capacities in order to increase the scope of market forces in a society will often mean cutting back on services that have offered protection to the vulnerable. The difficulties faced by the poorest and the least powerful will be worsened, not improved. The rise of “security” issues to the top of the political agenda reflects, in part, the need to contain the outcomes such policies help provoke.

The Washington Security Agenda

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were a defining moment for today’s generations. In response, the United States and its major allies could have decided that the most important and effective way to defeat the torrent of global terrorism would be to strengthen international law and enhance the role of multilateral institutions. They could have decided it was important that no single power or group should act as judge, jury, and executioner. They could have decided that global hotspots, like the Israel/Palestine conflict that feeds global terrorism, should be the main priority for coordinated international efforts. They could have decided that the disjuncture between economic globalization and social justice needed more urgent attention. They could have decided to be tough on terrorism and tough on the conditions which lead people to imagine that Al Qaeda and similar groups are agents of justice in the modern world.

Instead they have systematically failed to decide any of these things. Since September 11, the world has become more polarized, international law has become weaker, and the systematic political failings of the Washington Consensus have been compounded by the triumphs of new Washington security doctrines.

The rush to war against Iraq in 2003 gave priority to a narrowly conceived security perspective that is at the heart of the new US doctrine of unilateral and pre-emptive war. This approach contradicts most of the core tenets of international politics and international agreements since 1945. It throws aside respect for political negotiations among states. A single country that enjoys military supremacy to an unprecedented extent has decided under its current president to use that supremacy to respond unilaterally to perceived threats.

The new doctrine has many serious implications. Among these are a return to the view of international relations as a “war of all against all.” Once this “freedom” is granted to the United States, why not also to Russia or China, India or Pakistan, North Korea or Iran? It cannot be consistently argued that all states except one must accept limits on their self-defined goals and that this can be called law. It will not take long for such an approach to become manifestly counter-productive.

Narrow Versus Broad Security Agendas

What the world needs is a global security agenda that demands three things of governments and international institutions—all currently missing.

First, there must be a commitment to the rule of law and the development of multilateral institutions that can execute a robust form of international law enforcement.

Second, a sustained effort has to be undertaken to generate new forms of global political legitimacy for international institutions involved in security and peacemaking.

Third, there must be a head-on acknowledgement that the ethical and justice issues posed by the global polarization of wealth, income, and power cannot be left to markets to resolve.

Instead, we are now witnessing a deeply misguided response to terrorism in which the new security agenda of US neo-conservatives arrogates to the United States the global role of setting standards.

Specifically, we need to link the security and human rights agenda in international law, reform the UN Security Council to improve the legitimacy of armed intervention with credible threshold tests, amend the now outmoded 1945 geopolitical settlement as the basis of decision making in the Security Council by extending representation to all regions on a fair and equal footing, expand the remit of the UN Security Council with a parallel Social and Economic Security Council to examine and, where necessary, intervene in the full gambit of human crises—physical, social, biological, environmental—that can threaten human agency, and found a World Environmental Organization to promote the implementation of existing environmental agreements and treaties whose main mission would be to ensure that the development of world trading and financial systems are compatible with the sustainable use of the world’s resources.

To reconnect the security and human rights agenda in this way we need a global covenant which encompasses both fundamental social and economic issues, including basic education and essential humanitarian priorities such as clean water and public hygiene.

A Social Democratic Future

Social democracy at the level of the nation-state means being tough in pursuit of free markets while insisting on a framework of shared values and common institutional practices. At the global level it means pursuing an economic agenda that calibrates the freeing of markets with poverty reduction programs and the immediate protection of the vulnerable throughout the world. Economic growth can provide a powerful impetus to the achievement of human development targets. But unregulated economic development which simply follows the existing rules and entrenched interests of the global economy will not lead to prosperity for all. Economic development needs to be conceived as a means to an end, not as an end in itself.

If developed countries especially want a swift movement to the establishment of global legal codes that will enhance security and ensure action against the threat of terrorism, then they need to be part of a wider process of reform along these lines that addresses the insecurity of life experienced in developing societies.

Do we have the resources to put such a program into effect? The four major interlocking crises of the multilateral order are evidence of the current lack of political will to confront some of the most pressing global threats. But it cannot be said that we lack the means. A few telling examples make the point. The UN budget is US$1.25 billion per year plus the necessary finances for peacekeeping. Against this, US citizens spend over US$8 billion per year on cosmetics, US$27 billion per year on confectionery, US$70 billion per year on alcohol, and over US$560 billion per year on cars. (All these figures are from the late 1990s and are likely to be much higher now.) Or take the European Union: its citizens spend US$11 billion per year on ice cream, and US$150 billion per year on cigarettes and alcohol. Furthermore, the European Union and the United States together spend over US$17 billion per year on pet food.