Uniting the Two Superpowers

Global Justice and the Heart of America

By SYD BAUMEL

Jujitsu is the art of using the power of your opponent to your own advantage. If your opponent happens to be charging or blundering down the wrong path, it can be to his advantage too.

For the global justice movement, the most formidable opponent in the world today is, ironically, the greatest historic symbol of freedom and democracy: the United States. 

The American republic today stands accused of having degenerated into the modern Roman Empire. Instead of using its influence as the world's uncontested superpower or hegemon to promote true freedom and justice, under George W. Bush America appears bent on manipulating the world for selfish national and corporate interests. Its rhetoric is about freedom and liberation, but its actions bespeak domination and exploitation.

Is there a silver lining in this neo-imperial cloud? Can the elephant be made to change its course? Can the republic be restored and the global village saved? 

The answer is it takes only political will. People power can "take back America." And whither goes America, there too goes the world.

The Superpower of Global Peace and Justice

February 15, 2003 may go down in history as the day the balance of global power began to shift. On that day, an estimated 10 to 20 million people in over 600 cities in some 60 countries took to the streets to protest a war that had not even started. It was, says American historian Jeremy Brecher, "the largest global wave of protest in history."

What united the demonstrators – and, according to polls, most people everywhere – was their opposition to the shady unilateral militarism of the Bush-Blair alliance.

The protesters were behaving, ironically, like "true Americans" – questioning authority and refusing to be led by the nose. Like the UN weapons inspectors and most UN member states, they weren’t buying the story Bush and Blair were selling. It made no sense, neither rationally nor morally. It was the protestors and their kind, not the Bushes, the Cheneys and the Rumsfelds, who had opposed Saddam Hussein from the start and anguished over the plight of his people, from the gassing of the Kurds in the 1980s to the suppression of the Gulf War uprising and, finally, the deadly UN sanctions – maintained at the insistence of the same Anglo-American alliance.

They wanted Saddam out. But not this way.

The protests went unheeded by the warhawks. But the pundits grasped for words to describe this millennial power walk of the global justice movement – "the Emerging Superpower of Peace," "the Second Superpower," "the Other Superpower," "the Movement of Movements." I would call it "the Superpower of Global Peace and Justice."

It would, of course, be foolish to ascribe to this movement an infallible moral compass or a monopoly on wisdom and virtue. But at its best, it is – as Brecher described it shortly after September 11 – "a global movement for global justice" that "blames neither trade nor America for the world's ills. Rather, it is grounded in an understanding that no community or country can solve its economic problems by trying to beat out others – that the result of such competition is instead a race to the bottom in which all lose. It argues that the world's people and environment will suffer unless a global people's movement imposes rules on countries and corporations to block the destructive effects of that competition. It calls for worldwide cooperation to protect human and labour rights, the environment, and people's livelihoods. . . .

"Much as the Bin Ladens and the Bushes may have other ideas, the fundamental conflict in the world today remains globalization from above vs. globalization from below."

In other words, globalization for the few or globalization for all.

I believe this movement could unite the world. 

Unity across diversity requires only a base of mutually sacred common ground – in this case, the universal desire for peace and justice, freedom, opportunity, security and other fundamentals common to people of most every stripe and persuasion.

A global culture, a "world consciousness for cooperation, for peace and for sustainability," as U.S. presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich has put it, is emerging, with a political platform based on these shared values and visions. 

Is it your culture too?

Do you believe humanity needs a social contract – a constitution – that guarantees to people everywhere fundamental rights and freedoms and defines our responsibilities to life and planet, as outlined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Earth Charter?

Are you disturbed by the inequities of economic globalization as we know it – of unfair trade posing as free trade, despoiling the environment, steamrolling diversity and widening the gap between rich and poor? Do you believe that commerce, investment and trade, like all human activity, must be governed by laws that balance freedoms and rights with restraints and responsibilities? 

Do you believe in real democracy, not dollar democracy? Do you believe in the separation of "Mammon and State"? Do you believe politicians should be loyal and accountable to people and planet first?

Do you believe we live in a global village where relations between nations and peoples should be based on the ethic of love thy neighbour as thyself? Do you believe humanity must be the good samaritan, intervening as best we can wherever there is injustice, inequity or oppression?

Do you believe Nature – the global commons – is the foundation of our economy, not a bottomless cookie jar for the greedy and the gluttonous? Do you believe we must learn to live harmoniously and sustainably in the natural world? 

Do you value international institutions, treaties and agreements, whether in their present form or as they could be if democratically reformed for the good of all: the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the World Heath Organization, the World Bank and the weapons control treaties, among others?

Do you believe in nonviolent conflict resolution – in dialogue, diplomacy, mediation and the rule of just, enforceable laws, not the law of unilateral force? Do you believe no person, corporation or institution should be above the law?

Do you believe the global village needs "a tribal council" – a government even, of the people, by the people, for the people – to write global laws by which to govern global affairs such as the environment, international relations, human rights and transnational trade and commerce? 

Do you believe violence between nations, no less than violence between people, should be outlawed? Would you feel safer in a world where an elected global government or an empowered United Nations oversaw the abolition of national armies, militant groups and all weapons of mass destruction? 

Are you drawn to global democratic initiatives like the World Social Forum, the growth of e-democracy and the Simultaneous Policy?

Do you think it's time we the people of the global village got together to decide how we're going to govern ourselves and preserve our planet? 

If a worldwide election were held tomorrow, would you vote for a global village "town hall," a world constitutional conference? 

Such an election could come in years, not centuries. But there is that obstacle.