The dangerous challenge of a global police
May 14, 2004By Cristina Fernandez Pereda
Napoleon said, “Ballistae are good for everything except for sitting.” Militaries can bring peace but they cannot maintain it. In the last century, the police bodies were organized at the local level. External functions and defense of the country were handled by the military.
During the 20th century, world trade and imperialist products developed. Also, foreign interventions increase to correct the possible disagreements between countries. During those same years the “international community” formed.
This new concept includes the European Union, Canada, the United States and Japan. It is a vague classification that, depending on the circumstances, includes regional powers who want to bring their support. When this group of countries wanted to establish a new order, they put forth the mechanism of international politics. And, there still is no other organization to which it answers.
Until 1999, the corrective was only applied by a regional organism or the United Nations. This year the OTAN took control of politics in a faraway area: The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The way this century began will remain in the future.
This context allows an increasing number of interventions from the “international community” in the domestic affairs of other countries. The new mechanism could intervene in the protection of human rights or to prevent swaying into a more integrated and sensible market.
The great powers have contradictory forecasts; from the most optimistic stance that foretell the triumph of western democracy and free market where there is war, to the most pessimistic that predict a free area of the world in peace while chaos and poverty reign in another. The function of international policy would be to prevent the instability of one region to affect another. The super powers could not allow the backwardness of others to ruin their accomplishments.
The United States put forth four possible scenarios for the future of the international politics in 1999; the triumph of western democracy, the disappearance of identities in a “triumphant globalization,” military conflict between powers to defend their interests, or absolute chaos by means of natural or economic disasters and massive migrations.
In any case, the United States considers it necessary to have an international mechanism to defend its interests. Among its international objectives for the future is the defense of territory, citizens and property; economic stability, increase trade and the promotion and respect of American values.
The 19th century enemies were a country or region or ideology that threatened power. Today the objectives were more and more ambitious and it is easy to find an enemy. To reach its goals, the United States will have to count on sufficient force to avoid divergences. Many of those goals should be corrected or adapted for global policy. The super powers will have to make new rules for a game that has already become too small for them.
New global crimes have been defined and an archive of the usual suspects such as Syria, Iran, and Iraq has been created. They are the same countries that suffer economic or political sanctions from the United States. Global politics could function with or without the blessing of regional powers. And, a crime may be punished differently in one country than it would be in another that was previously under suspicion.
Once the United Nations has been disauthorized, there is no longer a legitimate juridical organism to regulate international politics. The new form of control does not have any internal laws either. No one knows who will judge its actions and establish which objectives are just and which are not. The representative of the “international community” will be whoever has the most powerful avenues to put global politics to its service.
The obsession with security makes international politics more logical than equal access to education or health. The new interests do not consist in expanding development. The super powers do not want to their share their accomplishments. They want to protect them. Instead of balancing the number of academic titles between countries, they prefer to share private data about their citizens.
