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Blair advisor calls for colonialism again { April 7 2002 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,680117,00.htmlhttp://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,680117,00.html
Why we still need empires
Tony Blair's foreign policy guru Robert Cooper believes that a new colonialism can save the world. This is the article that caused the storm. You can also read a longer version of this essay here and join the online debate here
Sunday April 7, 2002
The Observer
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 power centre has remained strong. But empires are ill-designed for promoting change. Holding an empire together usually requires an authoritarian political style, since innovation leads to instability. Historically, empires have been static.
But the balance-of-power system which replaced empire in Europe also had an inherent instability - the ever-present risk of war. After 1945, a final simplification turned the multilateral balance of power in Europe into a bilateral balance of terror. But it was also not built to last. The end of the balance of power in 1989 also marked the waning of the imperial urge. A world that started the last century divided among European empires finished it with all or almost all of them gone: the Ottoman, German, Austrian, French , British and Soviet Empires are now just a memory.
Instead, we have two new types of state. First, there are pre-modern states - often former colonies - whose failures have led to a Hobbesian war of all against all: countries such as Somalia and, until recently, Afghanistan. Second, there are post-imperial, postmodern states which no longer think of security primarily in terms of conquest. A third kind are the traditional 'modern' states such as India, Pakistan or China which behave as states always have, following interest, power and raison d'état .
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. Members of the postmodern world do not consider invading each other. But both the modern and pre-modern zones pose threats to our security.
We are most familiar with the threat from the modern world. If there is to be stability among states still operating by the principles of empire and the supremacy of national interest, it will come from a balance among the aggressive forces. There are few areas of the world where such a balance exists. A nuclear element in the equation in some areas sharpens the risk.
The postmodern world has to start to get used to double standards. Among ourselves, we operate on the basis of laws and open cooperative security. But, when dealing with old-fashioned 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. The prolonged period of peace in Europe has created a dangerous temptation to neglect our defences, both physical and psychological.
The challenge posed by the pre-modern world of failed states is a new one. The pre-modern world is a world of failed states which have lost legitimacy for or monopoly over the use of force; often both. 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 sovereign authority in Afghanistan; nor is there in up-country Burma or in parts of South America, where drug barons threaten the state's monopoly on force. All over Africa countries are at risk. 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 organised crime.
The pre-modern state may be too weak even to secure its own 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 drug, crime, or terrorist syndicates use pre-modern bases for attacks on the more orderly parts of the world, then the organised states may have to respond. If they become too dangerous for established states to tolerate, it is possible to imagine a defensive imperialism. The West's response to Afghanistan can be seen 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.
The most logical way to deal with chaos, and the one employed most often in the past, is colonisation. But this is unacceptable to postmodern states. Empire and imperialism are words that have become a form of abuse and no colonial powers are 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.
All the conditions for imperialism are there, but both the supply and demand for imperialism have dried up. And yet a world in which the efficient and well-governed export stability and liberty seems eminently desirable.
What is needed is a new kind of imperialism, one compatible with human rights and cosmopolitan values: an imperialism which aims to bring order and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle.
We already have voluntary imperialism of the global economy through institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. These multilateral 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.
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. The international community provides not just soldiers but police, judges, prison officers, bankers and others, as well as monitoring and organising elections.
European enlargement shows another kind of voluntary imperialism. In the past, empires have imposed laws and systems of government; in the case of Europe no one is imposing anything. 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 inside you will have a voice in the commonwealth. The postmodern EU offers a vision of cooperative empire, a common liberty and 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.
The co-operative empire offers a domestic political 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.
Only time will tell whether such a vision can be realised. In the modern world the secret race to acquire nuclear weapons goes on. In the pre-modern 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 British diplomat and writes in a personal capacity. This article is extracted from 'Reordering the World: the long-term implications of September 11', published by The Foreign Policy Centre (www.fpc.org.uk).
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