We need to rethink a world that no longer works – Pierre Haski

Where to start to put the pieces of a blown up world back together? The question may seem odd at a time when rivalries are intensifying, the war in Ukraine looks set to upset next winter, China remains stuck and will do nothing to bridge the gap that has been created and the “global south”, as an abused definition goes, look for a way to survive.

Today there is neither an institution nor a moral or political personality that can overcome this difficult condition of the world, and probably the will to try to do so is also lacking. There is not even an agreement on a commitment against the dangers common to all humanity, such as climate change, which at first gave the illusion of uniting the “international community”, one Cop after another , but then it gave way to differences and impotence.

An incomprehensible rearmament
At the risk of sounding naive, I confess that I am appalled at the announcements of increases in military spending around the world, while it seems impossible to find the money to make a serious commitment to tackling the climate crisis. Asia, a land of intense strategic rivalries, has become the continent that spends the most on arms, from Japan to Australia, from Taiwan to China, from the two Koreas to India and Indonesia: hundreds of billions of dollars are invested to prepare the wars of tomorrow and certainly not the “harmonious” human development of the future, to take up an expression dear to those who are Confucian only in words.

It is often said that this period of strong rivalry and redefinition of the balance of power should lead to the end of a world dominated by Western countries. But in fact this domination has already ended. At stake, however, there is a globalization becomes insane and in which Westerners are not a dominant bloc.

China, to give just one example, is the great winner of the last phase of globalization and certainly would not have been able to produce an alternative “model” if it had not become the “factory of the world” in the last thirty years, the very basis of its economic take-off. In this planetary upheaval, the alternative is not clearly defined and it must be admitted that it is not even tempting, represented as it is by totalitarian powers thirsting for revenge.

Today the West pays the bill for its colonial rule, a wound that has never healed, but also its arrogance in having continued to think – until the beginning of the twenty-first century, from Afghanistan to Iraq and Libya – that it could transform a societies, political systems and regimes. Prior to these failed “civilizing” wars there had been operations to overthrow progressive government leaders, such as Mohammad Mossadeq in Iran in 1953 and Salvador Allende in Chile in 1974, to name just two.

Now Europe, grappling with the invasion of Ukraine, is amazed because the rest of the world shares its indignation at Vladimir Putin’s cynicism. . Perhaps today we need to do two things at the same time: to help the Ukrainians to do something more than to resist the brutality that threatens the world and which absolutely must not prevail, but also to look in the mirror and rethink a world that no longer works.

Putting totalitarianism in check is necessary but not sufficient to recreate an international community worthy of the name and capable of taking action to face united the great evils that affect nearly eight billion human beings. The problem is where to start, and with whom.

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)