Dissidents of the International Left. Andy Heintz
Why do you think access to water, food and land are often not cited as basic human rights, and do you see this changing any time soon?
While some may associate human rights more with civil and political rights, we have witnessed over the past decade a marked increase in the recognition of land, water and food (and other economic, social and cultural rights) as human rights. That said, rights to land, water and food are still too often overlooked because those rights stand in the way of increased commodification of natural resources for the profit of industries and private investors. Likewise, the loss of the commons (including water systems) is a necessary step to feed the neoliberal model. In such a system, a river’s utility is measured in its ability to generate power via a dam to energize mining operations or industrial agricultural projects, regardless of the human and environmental damage such schemes cause.
Many critics of globalization have been lumped into the so-called anti-globalization movement. Is your organization’s advocacy of globalization from below an attempt to counter that negative term?
Grassroots’ partner La Vía Campesina is one of the social movements that has promoted the idea of what movements can and need to globalize – their slogan is ‘Globalize the Struggle, Globalize Hope!’ The importance of linkages between social movements across geographies and across sectors is also key to our philosophy and theory of change.
What would trade agreements look like if grassroots organizations in the Global South had the same influence over the terms of the agreements as corporations and pharmaceutical companies?
I think the short answer is that if grassroots organizations in the Global South had their way, there would be no free-trade agreements at all! Some of our partners and allies work towards the goal of fair trade – based on the principles of the solidarity economy. ■
JEFFREY SACHS
Jeffrey Sachs is the director of the Earth Institute and was special advisor to former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, having held the same position under Kofi Annan. He is also director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, co-founder and chief strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, and director of the Millennium Villages Project. He is the author of The End of Poverty, Common Wealth: Economics for a crowded planet, The Price of Civilization and To Move the World: JFK’s quest for peace.
What do you think is the solution to the Syrian crisis?
The US has pursued a regime-change strategy in the Middle East and other parts of the world during the entire Cold War and post-Cold War period and it’s reached an end because it’s now in a disastrous stage of sharply negative returns. Both the Syria and Libya debacles that followed the Afghanistan and Iraq disasters have left us in a situation of war, massive terrorist blowback, and a massive displacement of people.
We need an approach that is not based on US-led regime change. The United States should have never been in the business of toppling Assad, a decision that was made by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton without public debate or Congressional backing. Whatever one thinks about Assad, it wasn’t an appropriate foreign policy of the United States to team up with Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other Gulf States to bring down this regime. The UN Security Council should always have a role in trying to frame international support for regional solutions. This would mean finding common ground with Russia and China, as well as with American allies like France and Britain. There needs to be a co-operative approach to encourage a different Middle East reality.
We also need active diplomatic solutions where Iran, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt play a role to help broker a reasonable path forward for Syria and the region more generally. This means not letting this Shi’a-Sunni proxy war (i.e. the virulent anti-Iranian positions of the US and its allies) spin even further out of control.
The second aspect of global diplomacy is to remember that this region is experiencing an ecological and developmental crisis. There are many crucial steps to take in the Middle East concerning water, energy transformation, education and job creation. These are the truly important issues for the region. There is an urgent and positive sustainable-development agenda that is extremely significant in the Middle East and must be part of any realistic, core long-term approach. Moving from a US strategy of perpetual war to a regional strategy of peace, and moving from a strategy of US-led regime change to a strategy of regional sustainable development, is the only sound and sensible approach. If anyone thinks we are on a sound course right now, they don’t have their eyes open.
Do you think it would be problematic to arm the secular Syrian rebel groups?
I think arming any faction in the region now as a first-line approach makes no sense. We need to know what we are trying to do. What are the goals, what is realistic? There is no military solution to the Syrian and Middle East problems and there never was. And we have not properly discussed or agreed on a diplomatic solution globally.
Do you think these negotiations will have to involve all the external and internal sources involved in the Syrian conflict to prevent the arms flow into the country?
Syria is a classic proxy war: lots of different interests are being fought in Syria. This isn’t working to anyone’s advantage, least of all the Syrians, of course. The proxy war is a disastrous negative sum game being played out right now. The United States views Syria in Cold War terms vis-à-vis Russia; the Saudis view it as part of their war against Iran, as does Israel. There are enough political conflicts inside Syria to last for quite a while, unless directly tamped down in the interests of peace. The Turkish engagement in Syria has also been very complex because it’s been both based on the Turkish role in the Sunni world and Turkish-Arab relations, but it’s also deeply implicated in Turkish-Kurdish issues.
The Syrian war is a proxy war with arms pouring in from all sides because everybody is placing their bets and defending their positions. The way out of a proxy war is to have an approach that brings the interested parties together and out of the illusion that they can win on the battlefield. This proxy war has also led to terrorism and bloodshed that is out of the control of any of the countries involved to a large extent. I don’t think the ISIS phenomenon is in any of the countries’ agendas and interests in terms of creating it, but I do think there is a shared interest in stopping it because it has carried out a campaign of mass murder across a very large area. There are strong interests of Russia, the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey that are reflected in war, but should be a basis for a peaceful resolution.
What needs to happen on both sides to develop better relations between the United States and Russia?
I think a Cold War and unipolar mentality is at the core of US foreign policy. So, at the end of the Cold War, rather than saying now we can build a world based on international law and multi-polarity, we know there were strong neoconservative views inside the United States that thought now we can build a world based on unipolar US leadership. That was a powerful and profoundly misguided vision that played on many deep strands of US exceptionalism. I think this vision has been a major fuel for US-fought wars since 1991. It’s also been one of the main reasons for stoking a new, albeit lesser, Cold War with Russia, which I think is also very dangerous. The idea that everything that has happened is because Putin is a tyrant is an absurdity; it’s for people who don’t follow the storyline. The storyline is that the US has also made a lot of provocations towards Russia in the post-Cold War era.
Do you think Russia and the United States can come to a strategic and morally acceptable agreement about how to deal with the situations in Syria and Ukraine, where both countries have pursued foreign policies distinctly different from one another?
Yes, I do. I think there are a lot of common interests, but there is no winner-take-all outcome possible. I don’t think the US idea that we were going to defeat Russia’s