Published On:Thursday, February 13, 2014
Posted by Zainab Amin
The US Aspirations to an Imperial World Governance By Nguyen Thi Mai
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The US aspirations to an imperial world governance, which it would lead, is not new and, since World War I, the Administrations in Washington D.C. have constantly oscillated between the temptation of a superb isolationism and a proactive policy of intervention in world affairs and other States' domestic affairs. Reagan's and George Bush I's Administrations were clear examples of the latter behaviour. However, the conditions were different from the present situation:
- in the Reagan's case, the Soviet Union had still not collapsed and the US power was mitigated by the Soviet influence as well as by the, already declining, relative strength of the Third World; and even at the very beginning of the 1990s, the new unequal distribution of world power had not yet been integrated by US policy makers;
- in both cases, the UN was an influential actor (or "reactor") in the various crisis in question;
- the US celebrated system of "checks and balances" worked in its usual rather efficient way.
The picture has now changed dramatically in many respects. Not only there can be no doubt that the United States is now the only hyper-power and is seen as such, but also, as shown by the last Iraqi war, it has tried-with some success-to bypass the United Nations and the checks and balances have not functioned efficiently mainly because of the media self-censorship following September the 11th, with the result that the "liars' war" launched by George W. Bush and Tony Blair and a few allies has not been seriously questioned by the press and the US public opinion, not to speak of the Congress and the Supreme Court. Moreover, with the triumph of the capitalist liberal ideology, the so-called "globalization" of the world economy has weakened the traditional inter-States system in unifying the global economic space under legal rules centrally inspired and enforced through international institutions largely controlled by the United States, such as the International Monetary Fund or, but less clearly, the World Trade Organization.
In itself the gradual elimination of borders as the legal limits of States' jurisdiction is not to be lamented: after all, the new trend superficially corresponds to an old dream of many international lawyers beginning with Georges Scelle, and could announce a new law of mankind rather than of inter-States relations. The 1919 Covenant and, even more strikingly, the 1945 Charter, have laid down the foundations of a new international law based on a paramount limitation of the traditional prerogative of States to use force in international relations while, at the same time, new categories of subjects were recognized international personality. This was the case e.g. concerning international organizations and private persons whether physical or juridical.
The idea behind these changes in the very nature of international law was to "humanize" and to "pacify" the international society. Far from calling into question the sovereign equality of States they aimed at reinforcing and concretizing it, making States the "implementers" of the measures decided by the Security Council and the guarantors of human and investors' rights.
The new legal order takes a very different path. It is:
- global in that it includes important transnational elements, that is principles, rules and institutions which are not dependent upon the territorial division
of the world between States; and
- hegemonic in that it is twisted by the United States according to its selfdefined interests, needs and whims.
Both aspects largely overlap: the economic and military superiority of the sole hyperpower makes it the main beneficiary of the globalization and expanding economic freedoms; as Lacordaire put it "in relations between the strong and the weak, it's freedom that oppresses and law that liberates". At the same time, the US strength endeavours it to change the rules of the game when it deems it proper and, as aptly shown by Professor Zemanek, it can reintroduce national barriers and "territorialism" or exempt itself from the common rules when it fits its interests.
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