The issue remains how the world, at least, can ameliorate the violence which has engulfed us and is threatening our continued existence. How is the seeking after economic and political power secured by military dominance and savagery to give way to human development, peace, and equity in a world of plenty is the contemplation to be considered.
In all of the quest for resources and the power derived thereof, the need to preserve the land base and the atmosphere of our lives in preference to the greedy absorption of the minerals of the world is either neglected or ignored.
In a conversation between two major international relations experts, economist/political analyst, Jeffrey Sachs and international relations theorist, John Mearsheimer, the former put forward the view that to avoid the conflict of wars and violence, which are widespread, there should be established in the international arena a Spheres of Security. And this is distinct from Spheres of Influence, which the likes of the USA, Russia, China, and Israel take to mean an opportunity to use extreme violence within their spheres of influence to achieve what they desire: military might and political influence to gain economic power through the outright stealing of the land space and resources of other countries. Such actions have a long historical trail.
“The great powers should make a serious effort to stay out of each other’s faces,” says Sachs, advising “do not invite Russia and China to establish military bases in violation of the new ‘Donroe’, which is in the American sphere of security.”
Mearsheimer’s response is to the effect that “the basic logic which underpins Spheres of Influence will emerge,” notwithstanding the agreement. The desire for power and domination, he says, will win out in the end over the notion of spheres of security—the great powers will always seek to gain advantage to sustain and advance their hegemonic rule expressed in economic, political and military terms, and so not abide by a Spheres of Security agreement.
Stated differently, but meaning the same thing, those superpowers with advanced weaponry and backed by nuclear capability will not be able to resist the temptation to go after the wealth of others outside of their sphere, especially those nations not able to defend themselves.
One other thought of a previous era and from another analyst in international politics, Professor Ali Mazrui, is that all countries which can build nuclear weapons should be allowed to do so, and that will act as an effective deterrent. For instance, if Venezuela possessed nuclear weapons, the USA would have thought twice about staging the invasion.
Even more pointedly, if the Arab countries which surround Israel have nuclear weapons to match Israel, the Middle East will be a more peaceful region of the world in Mazrui’s model. If that is the case, Netanyahu will know that attacks on neighbouring Arab and Muslim countries will invite the likelihood of a nuclear retaliation.
In adding to Mearsheimer’s view that the enticement to satisfy greed being so powerful that it has overwhelmed the leaders of certain nations to dismiss the environmental disaster predicted by the teams of UN environmental scientists as being fraudulent, because implementation will suppress economic growth and its resultant acquisition of even greater wealth, military and political power.
Mearsheimer also makes the vitally important point that “no higher authority exists to monitor and enforce” the Spheres of Security when countries get out of their prescribed sphere. In the contemporary period, the United Nations Security Council, which was supposed to be the “maker and keeper of peace” is bound by a structure which allows the said power brokers, the five permanent members – the USA, Russia, China, France and the UK- to veto any attempt to censure a member who breaks a sphere of security agreement.
So too, the powerful and their satellites never entered into the international legal system (the ICJ and ICC), which can hold them responsible for breaches of international law; in so doing, they remain law unto themselves and will quite unlikely agree to bind themselves to spheres of security.
My own view is that there are no technical, even diplomatic solutions which will result in the economic, political and militarily powerful nations signing on to and keeping such a commitment to remain within their allotted Spheres of Security. As has been the history of international agreements which restrict the actions of the mighty from gathering greater power for themselves and to leverage it to marginalise, even destroy a weak nation whose wealth they are anxious to steal, they will ignore what they signed on to.
In the present, US President Donald Trump is fully intending to break with the 75-year old North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO, to go after the mineral wealth of a country, in this instance, one owned and controlled by a NATO member, Denmark, even though it will be against the treaty agreement which prevents military conflict within the organisation.
I shall conclude next week.
Tony Rakhal-Fraser – freelance journalist, former reporter/current affairs programme host and News Director at TTT, programme producer/current affairs director at Radio Trinidad, correspondent for the BBC Caribbean Service and the Associated Press, graduate of UWI, CARIMAC, Mona and St Augustine – Institute of International Relations.
