Why law beats war

The plane that crashed last week into a tower block in Milan reminded us how jittery the world still is after September 11. But the lawless approach President Bush is taking to international affairs is making it even more difficult to defeat terrorism. And the anxiety and anger we members of the public feel is shared in private by many civil servants in Whitehall. This shared concern offers a chance to build a new consensus for a less militaristic approach to world politics.

The other day a British general was explaining that relations with Washington were now in a worse condition than at any time since the British burned down the White House in the war of 1812. He urged that great care be taken over our relationship. A rather different take on the same problem came from a young diplomat I met who urged that Britain deal with the US the way it does France, as an ally but not one that has to be deferred to. Both these concerns has been made worse by the way Bush ignored Blair's attempt to stop the tariffs on European steel. Many officials see the steel issue as an example of the way secure 'vassals' like Britain can be treated badly while others that the US still has to court, like Saudi Arabia or Turkey still have some leverage.

We should not rejoice at the private discomfort of the mandarins. What we should do is realise that there is much broader support inside government for new approaches to security than the media generally explains. Not policies that confront the US, but which give the UK more options and reduce the damage being created by Washington.

The search for new ideas stems from a feeling that things are running out of control. Even as a specialist in foreign policy I feel overwhelmed by a new crisis almost every day. Afghanistan, Palestine, crazy nuclear war plans, India-Pakistan the list goes on and on. There is a growing sense of unease - if not yet the type of fear older readers experienced back in the Cold War.

What I have tried to do in this article is to lay out a range of objectives for dramatically changing the way we do foreign policy. These and similar ideas can form part of a growing pressure for reform that many officials would like to see but which, as permanent civil servants, they cannot argue for in public. In a world at risk from a rogue superpower protestors and officials have more in common than they realise.

We need longer-term goals to create a badly needed sense of momentum. We are, in sporting terms suffering from a bad case of ball-watching, mesmerised by events and without much leadership beyond. Saying No to the War, No to globalisation is not enough without a constructive agenda as well. One intelligence official told me that taking such a comprehensive approach would be 'brave' - for which read 'barking mad' - but he was equally clear that many of those in power want - indeed need - to have the conversation.

The fundamental place to begin is to take on those people who argue that in the real world the law of the jungle has no room for idealism about co-operation. The necessity of an effective UN system was a lesson learned in the horrors of two world wars. Churchill and Roosevelt needed no lessons in what the real world was like and they saw the need for an international system. Ironically, it is intelligence officials, often caricatured as epitomising reactionary thinking who are the first to recognise the need for a good multilateral climate because intelligence requires international co-operation or terrorists can move between countries without trouble. They realise that if other issues are creating a bad climate then cooperation will be forced and of limited value.

September 11 provides a much greater need for cooperation because it marked a new era in conflict as dramatic as the introduction of aircraft or tanks. It was the first major strategic attack carried out by a guerilla force and the attackers came from within as well as without our society. They also marked the first time since the Ottoman Empire that non-Westerners have attacked a Western capital. Or, to put it crudely, that the colonised have hit back. These factors and the ever-increasing integration of our globalised world mean that it is useful to consider the conflict as a global guerilla or civil war. Attacks on the scale of September 11 need only occur every few years to keep the initiative with the attackers.

The vast majority of political attention and defence expenditure has been devoted to a an old-style military expedition to Afghanistan using traditional, albeit high-tech weapons systems like plane and missiles. This US lead approach has several major problems - even from a traditional secuirty perpective.

The first problem is that it is over-militarised, with other policy tools including even the Coast Guard and the State Department being neglected. Today's republicans have the attitude that if it is not military it must be wimpish. It is the international equivalent of trying to keep order in a city by only using the riot squad, with no police on the beat, no courts and no economic development programme. In these circumstances it should come as not surprise that we keep needing to send the riot squad.

The second problem is that the US's reluctance to suffer casualties creates a weakness because it has made it difficult for the US to put soldiers in the ground. The macho-militarist approach ends up being seen as mere bravado when it comes to Americans being hurt, making the approach imposed by the US ineffective even on its own terms.

The third and most fundamental problem in the Bush approach is that his policies amount to international anarchy. It is the ideological opposition to international law rather than any isolationist or unilateralist tendency that is the defining quality of the present Administration's approach. In order to contain this threat to international order we should insist that no agreements be made in areas that the President does want to see progress on without progress towards legal controls on international security too. Europeans should refuse new treaties on trade if treaties to control weapons are not on the table too.

+ ELECTING NATIONAL REPRESENTATIVES TO THE UN, WTO, NATO AND THE EU +REMOVING DEPENDENCY ON MIDDLE EAST OIL BY STRATEGIC SHIFT TO RENEWABLE ENERGY +BASE DEVELOPMENT POLICIES ON THE PRINCIPAL OF 'FIRST DO NO HARM' AND PRIORITISE ARMS SALES, DEBT AND TARIFFS + USING EXISTING TREATIES CONTROLLING ARMS TO PREPARE A COMPREHENSIVE PROGRAMME TO MANAGE OR ELIMINATE ALL WEAPONS

A major problem with building support for a more multilateral approach is that international organisations are remote. I've spent weeks with other analysts and campaigners in the basement of UN conference buildings trying to pick up scraps of information from diplomats and from time to time offering ideas they can use. Most international negotiations get little poltical or media attention and are managed by diplomats mostly interested in a quiet life. When MPs or Ministers turn up, occasionally, there is then a little more action. But it would make a real difference if politicians were representing us all the time. They have an interest in getting things done, if only to further their own careers. People are less and less interested in the political process, partly because it is seen to be irrelevant to the corporate and military forces at work in the world. By democratising global institutions we can make them directly accountable and give them much needed legitimacy.

Is this type of democratic change pie in the sky? Much to my surprise I've found a keen interest in the idea from leading MPs and foreign office officials. The leaders of the German Green Party, with experience of government, are keen to push this agenda. Britain could promote this agenda by posting junior ministers who are either MPs or peers to representate Britain abroad, though still supported by the ambassador from the Foreign Office. This agenda can be moved forward stage-by-stage but, as we look ahead to 2010 or 2020, we are going to be a lot better off if we have accountable, elected global institutions.

The Middle East has been one of the most war ravaged regions on the planet for the last fifty years. Several Arab-Israeli wars, the Iran and Iraq war and of course the Gulf War have resulted in a continuing military build up and the prospect of a new round of fighting. Apart from the Israeli-Palestinian issue the key reason for conflict is control of oil.

It is important to remove the vulnerability of the industrialized world to both interruptions of Middle East oil supplies and attacks on the energy infrastructure. The leading industrialised nations need to embark upon emergency transition strategy to renewable energy. This transformation ought to have taken place already to protect the environment, but now there it is needed in order to defend ourselves. The idea is not just supported by groups like Greenpeace. In the US, despite Bush's love-in with the oil lobby, even some leading Republicans and hawkish Democrats favour switching to renewables. They include Bud McFarlane, who was Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor.

Among the biggest threats to global security are weapons of mass destruction and the dangers of uncontrolled corporate power. Our leaders acknowledge WMD - the anorak's acronym for nuclear chemical and biological weapons - as the most important issue on the international agenda today. So why have controlling and eliminating them dropped off the list of concerns? While billions are being poured into new weapons systems by the US not even a few million can be found to pay the inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to check up on all the radioactive material around the world. Ronald Reagan and Mikhael Gorbachev showed that, with the right political will, thousands of missiles could be destroyed. Since then there has been no progress. Reagan used to use the adage, "trust but verify". In the world of George W. this seems to have been transformed into 'won't trust, can't verify'.

The impact of the unparalleled power of big business today may be less immediately dramatic than that of weapons of mass destruction, but it has done much to erode belief in political participation and democracy. We need to redress the balance of power. If the key demand of big business is to remove any regulation that stands in their way, why not look at the key regulation that corporations rely on? The very name limited liability company gives the game away. The key immunity enjoyed by business is the limited liability concept that enables people to invest in corporations without being personally liable for the actions of that business. If regulations in all other areas of society are to be removed to suit corporations then 'limited liability' must go too. Such a direct challenge can be made every time that the issue of de-regulation is raised. We could be surprised how quickly the deregulation argument fades from the political agenda.

The programme I have outlined is a long-term one, intended to be far reaching in its effect. Some may find it hard to swallow. But the policies we have been pursuing since the collapse of communism have not produced security and have permitted an accelerating deterioration in international affairs. Without a sense of where we want to head, opposition will be limited in its effects. It is time to create a new comprehensive approach to global security.

Dan Plesch is Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (www.rusi.org) and author of "Sheriff and Outlaws in the Global Village, published by Guardian Books. He will be writing a monthly online column for Observer Worldview.

What do you think?

You can email the author at dplesch@rusi.org. To send your views on the piece, or if you would like to contribute to Observer Worldview, contact Observer site editor Sunder Katwala at observer@guardianunlimited.co.uk