The
nation state, the construct that has dominated global politics
and diplomacy for two centuries, can no longer meet the needs of
citizens. This is the stark conclusion of a former high-flying
British diplomat who quit the Foreign Office in disgust over Iraq and
who has since worked with emerging governments in trying to assert
themselves on the world stage.
y
the book
Carne
Ross
takes up where Naomi
Klein,
Noreena
Hertz
and others left off. This is an impassioned, idealistic critique of
the state of global politics and the deepening rift between those
with power and those without. One of the book's strengths is that he
seeks solutions, though I wasn't always persuaded of their
effectiveness.
Most
of all this is a mea culpa. It is refreshing for a non-fiction author
to be so brutal about himself. Ross was one of an elite corps of
diplomats, fast-tracked to a high position at a relatively young age.
He would probably have received a top ambassadorship – with all the
baubles of status and comfort that he admits he found attractive –
had he not jumped ship.
As
the lead official at Britain's mission at the United Nations in New
York dealing with Iraq, Ross was responsible for implementing policy
on weapons of mass destruction and the pre-war sanctions regime. He
contends that the Brits and their allies knew pretty much all along
that Saddam Hussein did not possess significant WMD. Therefore, in
his view, the sanctions were unjustified punishment of a people who
suffered widespread privation. Ross cites experts' estimates of an
"excess mortality rate" of over 500,000 children under the
age of five. "Though Saddam Hussein doubtless had a hand too, I
cannot avoid my own responsibility. This was my work; this is what I
did."
It
is when people feel dissociated from the consequence of their actions
that harm is done. The author recalls Stanley Milgram's famous
laboratory experiment from
the 1960s, which showed how easily humans could obey orders to
torture, giving electric shocks to other participants. This, Ross
argues, showed not just the pernicious effects of authority upon
moral conduct, but something even more revealing: "the fact that
the volunteers who administered the electric shocks, crucially, were
told that they had no responsibility for the results".
At
the heart of the corrosion of public life is the time-old
relationship between politics, power and money. Ross details the
pernicious influence of lobbyists, which he argues pervades Whitehall
as much as it does Washington DC. While the argument is not new, the
details are engaging. From McDonald's to Pepsi, from Kraft Foods to
BP, rules were bent to accommodate corporate interests. I was
particularly struck by the exemption
granted to Wrigley chewing gum during the imposition of sanctions
against Iran. The gum, Ross tells readers, "was classed as
'humanitarian aid' and thus exempt from sanctions, permitting
millions of dollars of sales".
Yet,
in its desire to cover the gamut of evil-doing, the narrative loses
impact. One minute readers are taken to Kosovo, the next they are
told about David Cameron's Big Society. Then from Iraq they are in US
healthcare. Still, this is an important contribution to the debate.
Ross bravely advocates the term
anarchism
(a positive absence of distant, top-down leadership), which he
differentiates from anarchy, the absence of rules and the onset of
chaos. He seeks a new form of engagement which borrows from the right
an appeal to individual enterprise and self-expression, and from the
left a sense of solidarity and community.
He
concludes with a nine-point manifesto for citizens to regain control
of the decisions that affect their lives. It includes: work out the
priorities that affect you and pursue them; identify "who's got
the money and who's got the gun" (in other words, where the
power resides); do what you can when you can (for example, don't wait
for asylum policy to improve); help an affected family (as his
parents did first for a Czechoslovak student escaping the Soviets,
and 30 years later for a Zimbabwean fleeing Mugabe).I am not
convinced that they add up to a whole, but the individual parts are
compelling.
It
comes down to on-the-ground change. The most illuminating example
Ross cites is the experiment
conducted in Porto Alegre.
In 1989 the Brazilian city was one of the most unequal in Latin
America. It then embarked upon "participatory budgeting",
with citizens encouraged to join debates about local spending
priorities. Some 50,000 of its 1.5 million citizens take part.
Apparently the number of schools has increased fourfold, while
provision of sewerage and water is now comprehensive.
His
message to the elite is that if they do not listen and act, they will
face the consequences: "The less people have agency – control
– over their own affairs, and the less command they feel over their
futures and their circumstances, the more inclined they are to take
to the street."
Text by John
Kampfner
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