The Age of Consent. George Monbiot
Just as importantly, compromised solutions will not command popular enthusiasm. Who wants to fight, perhaps in extremis lay down her life, for solutions which are ‘puny when compared with the magnitude of the problems they are supposed to resolve’? We know that the reform of illegitimate institutions is likely only to enhance their credibility, and thus the scope of their illegitimate powers. No solution of any value to the oppressed will surface unless vast numbers of people demand it, not just once, but consistently, and they will not, of course, demand it if they perceive that it is hopeless.
Had those people who campaigned for national democratization in the nineteenth century in Europe approached their task with the same hopeless realism as the reformists campaigning for global democratization today, they would have argued that, as the authorities were not ready to consider granting the universal franchise, they should settle for a ‘realistic’ option instead, and their descendants might today have been left with a situation in which all those earning, say, $50,000 a year or possessing twenty acres of land were permitted to vote, but those with less remained disenfranchised.
Every revolution could have been – indeed almost certainly was – described as ‘unrealistic’ just a few years before it happened. The American Revolution, the French Revolution, female enfranchisement, the rise of communism, the fall of communism, the aspirations of decolonization movements all over the world were mocked by those reformists who believed that the best we could hope for was to tinker with existing institutions and beg some small remission from the dominant powers. Had you announced, in 1985, that within five years men and women with sledge-hammers would be knocking down the Berlin Wall, the world would have laughed in your face. All of these movements, like our global democratic revolution, depended for their success on mass mobilization and political will. Without these components, they were impossible. With them, they were unstoppable.
What is realistic is what happens. The moment we make it happen, it becomes realistic. As the other possibilities fall away, a global democratic revolution is, in both senses, the only realistic option we have. It is the only strategy which could deliver us from the global dictatorship of vested interests. It is the only strategy that is likely to succeed. We have responded to the Age of Coercion with an Age of Dissent. This is the beginning, not the end, of our battle. It is time to invoke the Age of Consent.
CHAPTER 4 We the Peoples Building a World Parliament
Our global revolution requires no tumbrils, no guillotines, no unmarked graves; no revanchist running dogs need be put against the wall. We have within our hands already the means to a peaceful, democratic transformation. These means arise inexorably from an analysis of how the world is run, and why the existing world order fails. Each of the following three chapters examines one aspect of global governance, shows why the current system is not working, considers the possible alternatives, chooses those which seem to work best and then explains how we – the dissidents of the rich world and the citizens of the poor world – can, using only those resources available to us, replace the system which works for the powerful with one which works for the weak. The first of these tasks is perhaps the most pressing: altering the mediation of war and peace and the relations between nation states, and seeking to replace a world order built on coercion with one which emerges from below, built upon democracy.
The United Nations was conceived in 1941 by the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, as an alliance against the Axis powers. As the Second World War progressed, its scope and membership expanded, until, in June 1945, fifty nations signed a declaration of principles – the United Nations Charter – whose purpose was to promote peace, human rights and international law, to encourage social progress, higher living standards and to prevent another World War.33 The UN, in other words, was founded with the best of intentions. But these, like the motives surrounding every aspect of the postwar settlement, were mixed with some rather less elevated concerns. No one gives power away, and those nations which constructed the UN were careful to ensure that it reinforced rather than diminished their global pre-eminence.
This concern is reflected in the constitution of the supreme international body, which is charged with the prevention of war, the United Nations Security Council. If one nation is threatening or attacking another, the council may use whatever measures are necessary to force it to desist: it can order a ceasefire, for example; levy economic sanctions; send in peacekeepers; or, at the last resort, authorize the armed forces of the UN’s member states to take military action against the aggressor. At the international level it asserts (though with little success) what the state asserts at the national level: a monopoly of violence.
The Security Council mimics the notional constraints of the democratic state. By this means it claims to sustain a world order founded on right rather than might. The problem with the postwar settlement is that those with the might decide what is right.
There are fifteen members of the council, of which ten have temporary seats (held for two years and then passed to another state) and five have permanent seats. Each of the five permanent members has the power of veto: no decision can be taken by the Security Council unless all five have approved it. Unsurprisingly, the five permanent members are the three powers which founded the United Nations – the United States, United Kingdom and Russia – and their principal wartime allies, China and France.* They granted themselves the ability to determine, for as long as the UN continues to exist, who is the aggressor and who the aggressed.
The power of veto was introduced partly in order to prevent those states in possession of nuclear weapons from attacking each other: had the other member states, for example, collectively decided that the Soviet Union was threatening one of its neighbours, and then sought to restrain it through military action, the USSR may have responded by offering to meet that force with greater force, provoking another world war. Indeed, during the Cold War the Soviet Union used its veto repeatedly, precisely in order to prevent the other states from restricting its attempts to expand its imperial domain. But, while the veto may have functioned as a safety valve, preserving a global peace at the expense of the weaker states being threatened or attacked by one of the permanent members, it has also proved to be an instant recipe for the abuse of power and the impediment of justice.
The problem with the way the Security Council has been established is that those who possess power cannot be held to account by those who do not. The key democratic question – who guards the guards? – has been left unanswered. The Security Council is, by definition, tyrannical. Those who defend the way the world is run point out that veto powers have rarely been used since the end of the Cold War* and that the veto can, in theory, be deployed (as France and Russia tried to deploy it in 2003) to protect states from unauthorized attacks by other members; but the truth is that the threat of the veto informs every decision the Security Council does or does not make. Other member states know perfectly well, for example, that there is no point in preparing a resolution which the United States will reject. The US, and to a lesser extent the other permanent members, assert their will without even having to ask.
As other nations cannot hold them to account, the permanent members (or, more precisely, the two permanent members which have, since the UN’s formation, wielded real power) can blithely defy every principle the United Nations was established to defend. Since 1945, the United States has launched over 200 armed operations,35 most of which were intended not to promote world peace but to further its own political or economic interests. The Soviet Union repeatedly used its veto to prevent other member states from interfering with its sponsorship of violent insurrection, and occasional direct invasion. The five permanent members also happen to be