Sounding A Cautionary Note
“Internationalism” is a term that, like so much that aspires to the global, allows different regional and local interpretations. In modern European history, the term was first used in the 1860s and has tended to be associated with the communist project. Yet in recent years, it has been widely rejected for that reason in the name of national political and cultural interests. In the United States, by contrast, the term has been used for several decades to refer to a broadly open, liberal view of the U.S. role in the world. The term applies as much in matters of trade and investment as it does in security issues and carries few cultural associations.
J. Ørstrom Møller—the author of this book, an official in the Danish foreign ministry, and recently ambassador to Singapore—does not define the term, but he is a committed “internationalist” in a broadly liberal sense. He draws on what he sees as the achievements of international institutions and European unification since 1945, and lays his hopes on the strengthening of institutions of global governance. His argument is clear: the internationalism of the past half century has achieved a great deal, especially in West European integration, and could achieve much more. The end of the Cold War, the globalization of the world economy, and a certain elite learning process have all provided a favorable context for taking this further.
But there are worrying signs, which, if allowed to continue, will threaten and could reverse that process. Free trade threatens employment. Migration, which is economically necessary, provokes a populist counterreaction. The spread of a media culture, within and among states, is determined by the values and profits of “entertainment” risks and undermines the political culture on which democracy and a functioning set of international institutions rest.
Møller’s argument on the crisis of the welfare state, and the link between this and the pressures of internationalized economy, is apposite. He says some particularly perceptive things about the new global elite, which is certainly internationalist in spirit and aspiration, but which runs the risk of losing touch with the rest of its populations. He is no simple believer in the social and political effects of communications technology.
In his final chapter, Møller lays out what the alternatives to such a promotion of internationalism could entail. One possibility looks remarkably like the 1930s. In it is chaos in which international institutions lose their power, aggression becomes more common, autarchy prevails, and international cooperation ceases. A second possibility, of which he remains nonetheless skeptical, is a clash of civilizations. A third is the regrouping of nation-states in which between five and ten larger states would divide the world among them. His fourth and most probable outcome is what he calls the “joker.” It is a kind of muddling through, in which a generation from now the world would look much as it does now, but would be much more overtly under the control of the stronger states: the nationalism of a few powerful countries would prevail. This last outcome is not catastrophic but would, he argues, be far from the internationalism that has driven world affairs since World War II.
Møller has written a thoughtful, perceptive book. We can sense at times the critical wisdom of the diplomatic confidence or the sharp observation of local states that his position allows. In chapter 6, he proclaims the end of several pillars of our time: the nation-state, nonintervention, unanimous decisionmaking, Anglo-Saxon dominance, political parties, the free lunch. At times, the argument slips into platitude, such as the bullet points of the global conference center. The editing of the English text also could have been more vigilant. The book is short on statistics, intermittent in its use of history, too silent about corruption and the distortions of democracy and states by money, and euphemistic about powerful states.
There are several more substantive difficulties with this book. First, the contrast between the internationalism of the past decades and the joker scenario Møller sees for the future may not be that great. The lessons of the Cold War, the Franco-German domination of European unification, and the U.S. hegemony of globalization show that the role of powerful states may be far larger and their pursuit of national interest greater than he suggests. There are arguments for this role if the alternative is chaos, but it is perhaps naïve to present the second half of the twentieth century as a period of liberal internationalism.
Second, by dint of timing, his professional position, and possibly his inclination, Møller very much downplays the role of pressure from below. Whether such pressure comes from national and social protest movements of recent decades or the more recent globalized, anticapitalist protests that have greeted meetings of the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund, these would be the first to present themselves as internationalist, but in a more robust, traditional European sense of the term than Møller espouses. His calm appeal for international order also avoids the now very widespread sense associated with the end of the Cold War of hostility to the use of force and sanctions in international disputes. Moreover, his discussion of sanctions (pp. 178, 187) is innocent of the kind of questions that the late 1990s have forced to the front of the agenda.
Møller’s warning about the threats to global cooperation is timely and to the point. Too much discussion of global governance, global civil society, and European integration rests on a view of history as necessarily moving in the desired direction. Unlike many authors who have seized the challenge of the post–Cold War world, Møller does not offer a dramatic, simplified answer. Rather, he suggests that a measured defense of what has been achieved and a certain unease about contemporary trends is in order. His calm tone in this regard is welcome—better this approach than the histrionics of a Samuel Huntington, a Robert Kaplan, or The Economist on one of its more excitable days.
