Omar Dahbour, Three Models of Global Community, Journal Of
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OMAR DAHBOUR THREE MODELS OF GLOBAL COMMUNITY (Received 14 May 2004; accepted in revised form 7 June 2004) ABSTRACT. Debates about global justice tend to assume normative models of global community without justifying them explicitly. These models are divided be- tween those that advocate a borderless world and those that emphasize the self- sufficiency of smaller political communities. In the first case, there are conceptions of a community of trade and a community of law. In the second case, there are ideas of a community of nation-states and of a community of autonomous communities. The nation-state model, however, is not easily justified and is one that has been criticized extensively elsewhere. The model of a community of trade underlies both advocates of market-oriented development and exponents of global schemes of redistribution of resources and incomes. I analyze the work of Charles Beitz, Peter Singer, and Thomas Pogge to show that the assumption that global interdependence is beneficial is poorly justified. The model of a community of law, as seen in the work of Henry Shue and others, is the basis for arguments against state sovereignty and in favor of international human rights regimes. I argue that this model suffers either from a problem of practicability or of hegemony. Finally, the model of a community of autonomous communities uses notions of patriotism and sovereignty to maintain that disengagement and independence are the best routes to global peace and justice. KEY WORDS: global justice, international law, patriotism, peace, sovereignty, sustainability 1. JUSTICE,PEACE,AND GLOBAL COMMUNITY There has been considerable recent discussion about what kind of a global community can provide the proper context for the achieve- ment of justice and peace on a world scale. Current debates about global justice abound with the jargon of ‘‘one world,’’ ‘‘global gov- ernance,’’ and the like. Yet, though much attention has been given, on the one hand, to the moral foundations of claims to global justice, and, on the other hand, to the institutional design of schemes of international cooperation, less thought has been devoted to the eth- ical justification of particular end-states of world society – what John Rawls has referred to as ‘‘realizable utopias.’’1 This paper is 1 John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), pp. 7, 11–12. For an earlier, and still relevant, statement of a similar idea, see Herbert Marcuse, An Essay on Liberation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 3–5. The Journal of Ethics (2005) 9: 201–224 Ó Springer 2005 202 OMAR DAHBOUR concerned to evaluate a number of such mid-range conceptions of a global political community – first, by identifying such conceptions within current views about global justice and peace, and second, by assessing their capacity for moving us closer to those goals. In identifying different models of global community, a basic dichotomy can be made between two visions of world order. One such vision is that of a ‘‘world without borders.’’ From this per- spective, the goal is to break down barriers between peoples in order to achieve mutual understanding and perhaps some modicum of substantive equality in global living standards. There are actually two rather different versions of this conception of global community that will be distinguished below. One emphasizes the terms of a fair global redistribution of wealth, while the other focuses on the rules of a global system of legal regulation. But there is a second, and very different, sort of vision – that of a ‘‘world of self-sufficient communities.’’ This view is often conflated with that of ‘‘nationalism’’ – that is, the advocacy of ‘‘nation-states’’ as a universal form of political community. But this is a mistake. While a world of nation-states could be an instantiation of a world of self-sufficient communities, it is not the only version of such an idea. Moreover, understood properly, a world of nation-states differs quite markedly from a world of sovereign, or self-determining, states, since nation-states are not just any sovereign political communities, but only those congruent with national communities, in the sense of ethnic nations. I, as well as some others, have written on the defi- ciencies of this nationalist ideal – and it has few unapologetic expo- nents today.2 Nevertheless, the ideal of the nation-state persists in various forms and, more loosely construed as not based on ethnic identities, continues to have adherents.3 But if sovereign states are not understood to be nation-states and yet are not considered legitimate simply because they already exist, some other justification is required to regard them as the basis of a world order.4 This, I will argue, can 2 See, most recently, Omar Dahbour, Illusion of the Peoples: A Critique of National Self-Determination (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2003), as well as Omar Dahbour, ‘‘National Identity: An Argument for the Strict Definition,’’ Public Affairs Quarterly 16 (2002), pp. 17–37. 3 See various writings by Michael Walzer and Charles Taylor and, more program- matically, Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 4 On this point, see Omar Dahbour, ‘‘Self-Determination without Nationalism,’’ in Fred Dallmayr and Jose´ M. Rosales (eds.), Beyond Nationalism?: Sovereignty and Citizenship (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2001), pp. 57–71. GLOBAL COMMUNITY 203 be given by the idea of a world of ecologically sustainable commu- nities – an idea that has been influential in the radical wing of the global justice movement for the last ten years or so.5 So we have two concepts of a ‘‘world without borders’’ and two concepts of a ‘‘world of self-sufficient communities.’’ In the first case, a world without borders can be thought of as either a ‘‘community of trade’’ or as a ‘‘community of law.’’ The idea of a community of trade is based on the notion that increasing global interconnections are conducive to a peaceful, and ultimately just, world. The best way to do this is through encouragement of economic interactions, suitably adjusted to ensure that the conditions for fair trade are present. This view is cosmopolitan in the sense that the creation of commonalities, identities, and ultimately loyalties across borders is regarded as a way to obtain peace and justice interna- tionally. The best means of ensuring that this happens is to increase transborder and global interconnections – that is, globalization, in contemporary parlance. A community of law focuses on the creation of a borderless world through the establishment of laws, rules, procedures, and institutions that will gradually supercede particular sovereignties and political loyalties. Transnational organizations of all kinds, whether govern- mental or nongovernmental, have a role to play in this process. But the goal is a world in which global standards of justice are eventually applied universally, without restriction by particular states or local laws. In the second case – that of a world of autonomous or self-sus- taining communities – the two possible models are those of a com- munity of nation-states and that of a community of ecological communities. I will set aside here the first model, as having been thoroughly criticized elsewhere, and concentrate on the second. This model of ecological communities, which I will equate with the general notion of autonomous communities, assumes the norm of self- determination as a primary component of global justice (and its maintenance through some conception of sovereignty). But sover- eignty is now given a ‘‘green’’ justification – it provides the means of protecting self-sustaining communities in the face of the globalizing tendencies of dominant corporations and states. 5 See Herman Daly and John Cobb, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future, 2nd edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), especially Chapter 9. 204 OMAR DAHBOUR So in considering these three remaining models of global com- munity each can be seen to appeal to those espousing particular conceptions of political justice. A global trading community appeals most often to those internationalists who seek global redistributions of income and wealth. Economic interconnections must obtain in order to make an argument for the injustice of particular distribu- tions of goods. Second, it is those most concerned with the estab- lishment and enforcement of human rights of various sorts that find a global legal community most compelling. Such a community would provide a set of norms concerning rights to which appeal could be made – as well as institutions that would make the enforcement of such norms a possibility. Third, conceiving of the world as a community of autonomous communities is most attractive to those seeking protection for regions, countries, and localities faced with subsumption by aggressive states and corporations within a global market or political empire. As already mentioned, such protection often seems particularly important to those who view environmental sustainability as a necessary component of global justice. Undoubtedly, all these models of global community can seem compelling; a temptation will be to regard them as compatible in some way. But the arguments to be made for them are quite different in nature. It is in the justification of these different models of a global community that their incompatibility becomes clear. 2. A COMMUNITY OF TRADE The first model, a community of trade, assumes the value or benefit of the economic growth that supposedly results from opening domestic markets and economies generally to free trade and foreign invest- ments. World peace will be a result of states’ recognition that inter- national trade produces global economic benefits. This recognition should over time yield international trade agreements to ensure the uninterrupted flow of capital, goods, and labor across borders. Mil- itary conflict would come to be regarded as an irrational interference with the increasing global interconnections that occur naturally in a relatively unregulated world market.