The language of the ‘scramble for the Arctic’ is superficially appealing. It finds deep resonance in our popular culture because it appears to reconfirm rather romantic ideas of heroism at high latitudes, Arctic adventurers and the early 20th century ‘race for the Pole.’ Jack London still probably shapes our popular views of the Arctic at least as much as any amount of scientific reporting or sound political analysis. And the Arctic still seems to be a place for larger-than-life characters and experiences. There is certainly an element of truth to the assertion that, in a world of increasing resource scarcity, and under conditions of climate change, there is a global scramble underway to make sure that vital resources – from water, to productive agricultural land, to oil – are identified and controlled. More than this, of course, the ‘scramble for the Arctic’ conjures up an earlier period of territorial appropriation – to wit, the ‘scramble for Africa’ in the mid-19th century. But the analogy is misleading in three important ways.

First, the ‘scramble for Africa’ took place against the backdrop of Great Power competition in Europe; indeed, colonial expansion outside Europe was arguably a way of preventing competition from coming to a head within Europe. It is hard to see current questions of who owns what in the Arctic as a similar displacement of broader power struggles. The post-modern ‘idealist’ states of Denmark, Norway and Canada are not driven by the same imperial urges as their 19th century counterparts. Things are a little more complex with the US and particularly Russia, which are perhaps closest in their general strategic outlook to the ‘realist’ and ‘balance of power’ schools that dominated 19th century diplomacy. But neither is seeking Arctic dominance in quite the same way that Britain and France vied for dominance of Africa a century or more ago.

Second, whereas the ‘scramble for Africa’ was about who owned what land in Africa, sovereignty over the overwhelming majority of land in the Arctic is already quite clear. There are a few cases – such as Hans Island – where sovereignty is disputed, but these tend to be more opportunities for political chest-beating than anything else. The quiet work of diplomats on a broad range of other issues goes ahead despite them. There is one case – the Svalbard archipelago – where sovereignty itself is not in dispute – Svalbard is Norwegian – but where the rights of signatories to the 1920 treaty that awarded Norway sovereignty are a matter of potential political ruction. But the real questions of Arctic ownership are less about the land and more about the sea, and seabed.

Third, whereas the first phase of the ‘scramble for Africa’ was more or less a free-for- all, in which might was at least as important as right (indeed, the Berlin Conference more or less enshrined the principle of effective control as a key to ownership), there is a substantial legal framework that goes a long way toward determining who owns what parts of the Arctic seas and seabed (just as there is elsewhere in the world). That framework is the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to which all the Arctic states are party (bar the US, which nonetheless recognises UNCLOS as customary international law). The five coastal states (Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the US), meeting in Ilulissat, Greenland, in 2008, restated their commitment to UNCLOS and to “the orderly settlement of any possible overlapping claims.” A meeting of the same group of countries –the A-5, as it were – later this month in Canada will no doubt reaffirm these points. There is no desire whatsoever to renegotiate UNCLOS; after all, it took decades of painful negotiation and ratification procedures to get us to where we are now.

So, the scramble analogy is misleading. What of the alternative? In a recent article for Global Brief, Byers ventures to suggest we are moving towards a ‘Pax Arctica’ – citing, among other things, the Ilulissat declaration, and strengthening patterns of cooperation between the A-5. The whole thing is an “anti-climax” he argues.

It is a nice idea, and on one level it is true. The A-5 nations are increasingly working cooperatively. They have all agreed that international law will be their guide in resolving any disputes about ownership. There is not, as Byers says, any “appetite for conflict” between those states.

But this risks missing a broader point. It is surely right to say that there is no “appetite for conflict” among the A-5 as things now stand – but then there rarely is an “appetite for conflict” before one develops. Conflicts arise from clashes of interest, occasionally from accidents, often from errors of judgement, frequently from opportunities afforded by an asymmetry of power, as much as they do from any crazed “appetite” for them. There is clearly still scope for unilateral actions on the part of one or another Arctic nation that will test the resolve of other Arctic nations to defend their positions – most likely through diplomacy, backed up with a credible Arctic presence. Ungoverned spaces in the international system – that is to say areas over which the nominal owner cannot exert real control – are dangerous.

There is a further, and indeed crucial, point to make here. It us certainly the case that, if ownership were the only question at stake in the Arctic, we could agree that things are turning out quite well – though there are still plenty of disputes already on the table about who owns what, and UNCLOS will not and cannot solve all of them. However, the challenges to Arctic governance will not stop when the states finally come to agreement on such overlapping claims as may arise.

Ownership is just the beginning. Far from agreement on ownership being an “anti-climax” after which we can all settle down and chalk another one up for international law, the governance challenges going forward – both between states and within them – remain huge. And therein lies the risk of conflict: nothing that skillful diplomats and far-sighted politicians cannot manage, of course (and let us hope that they do), but an ongoing and increasing challenge, rather than a diminishing one.

How about this for starters? One reason the A-5 are so keen to assert that existing international law will do a perfectly good job in sorting out who owns the Arctic and who has the right to control and manage it is that the last thing they want is busy-bodies – such as the EU, and let alone China – muscling in on the Arctic action. Still, China may well be more forceful in promoting its legitimate Arctic interests in the future. These interests have much more to do with use than ownership, but they will have to be managed. Existing international law will only take us so far when the new hegemon in the global system is not the US.

Or consider a couple of plausible scenarios that could alter the geopolitics of the Arctic at a stroke: an independent Greenland, or a change of government in Russia, bringing a more aggressive regime into power. Finally, disputes within states about how Arctic development is managed will continue to rage – well after the ownership question is resolved (either completely or in part).

The ‘scramble for the Arctic’ idea deserves to be picked apart, but a ‘Pax Arctica’ does not quite work either. If only things were that simple, and if only law and ownership were the be-all and end-all of international relations (and national politics).

Charles Emmerson is the author of The Future History of the Arctic, released in March from Public Affairs in the US and Canada, and from Random House in the UK and internationally.

L’ordre pénal international (OPI) est un ordre de refus de l’impunité par l’œuvre de la justice pénale supra étatique. Les prémisses de cet ordre en gestation deviennent de plus en plus saisissables avec le développement fulgurant des institutions humaines tournées vers la répression organisée des pires crimes au-delà des frontières des États. En effet, l’une des innovations les plus marquantes de ces dernières décennies est sans doute la création d’une variété de cours et de tribunaux internationaux (les tribunaux ad hoc pour l’Ex-Yougoslavie et pour le Rwanda, le Tribunal spécial pour le Liban, le Tribunal spécial pour la Sierra Leone, les chambres extraordinaires au Cambodge) pour poursuivre et juger les personnes qui ont troublé la tranquillité publique.

Dans cette galaxie d’institutions de lutte contre l’impunité, la Cour pénale internationale (CPI) s’impose comme l’instrument le plus achevé pour rendre les relations humaines et internationales plus sûres. Au fond, par son caractère permanent, sa vocation universelle et sa fonction principale de répression des crimes de masse, cette Cour véhicule l’ordre mondial de lutte contre la criminalité internationale. Pourtant, il lui a été reproché de n’avoir pas déjà atteint la perfection de la justice étatique. Il est vrai que la Cour, comme toute institution humaine, peut toujours être améliorée, mais la critique doit être tempérée à plusieurs égards. D’abord, la Cour est de création très récente, et il faut donc du temps pour tirer les vrais enseignements afin de corriger au besoin les aspects nécessaires à son fonctionnement. La conférence de révision de son Statut prévue au mois de mai 2010 s’inscrit dans cette optique. Ensuite, faut-il le noter, la justice étatique s’est perfectionnée au fil de l’évolution de la société et, aujourd’hui dans ses formes les plus achevées, il n’est pas exclu de la voir fonctionner avec des principes qui semblent relever d’un autre temps (application de la peine de mort). Dans tous les cas, la justice étatique a commis des erreurs et surmonté des obstacles pour en arriver à l’état de sophistication qu’elle connaît aujourd’hui. Elle a dû s’échapper de la justice privée, de celle des seigneurs, des clans, de l’Église, marinant longtemps dans une cacophonie comparable à celle de certaines institutions contemporaines.

Bien que cette Cour ne bénéficie pas de l’avantage d’être un organe subsidiaire doté d’une autorité adossée à celle du Conseil de sécurité – comme c’est le cas des tribunaux ad hoc créés par ce dernier – ceci n’enlève en rien au fait qu’elle incarne de nos jours la forme de justice pénale internationale la plus élaborée, ceci pour plusieurs raisons. Cette Cour est créée par les États et son fonctionnement permanent respecte leur souveraineté dès lors qu’elle n’intervient que de façon complémentaire aux systèmes judiciaires nationaux, lorsque l’État normalement compétent n’a pas la volonté ou la capacité d’intervenir (régime de complémentarité). Les individus poursuivis par la Cour bénéficient des garanties des plus élevées du procès équitable et les victimes des crimes qu’elle poursuit (crime de génocide, crimes de guerre, crimes contre l’humanité et crime d’agression) peuvent participer aux procédures et être indemnisées pour les préjudices subis. Les personnes privées et acteurs de la société civile peuvent provoquer l’ouverture d’enquêtes en communiquant au Procureur des informations sur des crimes qui auraient été commis. Enfin, une autre particularité du système réside dans le fait qu’aucune qualité officielle ou immunité n’est admise pour prétendre se soustraire des poursuites. Sous ce dernier aspect, la CPI a lancé un mandat d’arrêt contre Omar Al Bashir, Président du Soudan en exercice, suspecté pour son implication dans la perpétration des crimes dans la région du Darfour.

Cet épisode dans le fonctionnement de la Cour n’est-il pas la preuve que l’OPI est en marche ? En tout cas, jamais auparavant un chef d’État en exercice n’a été inquiété à ce point par la justice pénale internationale. Cette mise en accusation a été si forte dans l’acte et dans ses effets que l’Union africaine (UA) se dépêcha de saisir immédiatement le Conseil de sécurité pour lui demander de suspendre les procédures contre le Président. La requête ne sera pas suivie, le Conseil n’ayant pas estimé nécessaire de mettre un point d’arrêt au mandat et aux procédures afférentes. Par la suite, l’UA va inviter ses membres à ne pas coopérer pour l’arrestation et le transfert d’Omar Al Bashir. Cette décision, il faut le souligner, reste incompréhensible si on sait que les États africains ont massivement soutenu le projet de création de la CPI. Ils ont été des acteurs très impliqués dans les travaux préparatoires et aux négociations diplomatiques, et milité activement pour l’adoption rapide du statut de la future Cour. Aujourd’hui, 30 États africains ont ratifié le statut – le Sénégal étant le premier pays au monde à l’avoir fait – faisant de l’Afrique le groupe géographique le plus représenté à l’Assemblée des États parties. Celle-ci est l’organe suprême qui décide des questions administratives majeures, tel le budget, l’élection des juges, des Procureurs, du Greffier, etc. En conséquence, les États africains (et leurs nationaux) ne doivent pas tourner le dos à cette institution, ni se soustraire de leurs engagements envers elle. Au contraire, rappelant que ces États ont gravé dans l’acte constitutif de l’UA leur ambition de bâtir une paix durable sur le continent, ils doivent logiquement soutenir la Cour et travailler avec elle et d’autres acteurs, comme les organisations internationales et les ONG, pour relever ensemble les nombreux défis de redressement des sociétés en crise et de stabilité de la région. En réalité, quelle que soit la partie du globe considérée, le relèvement durable des États contemporains en proie à des violations massives de droits humains ne peut désormais se concevoir en dehors de la justice pénale internationale, sauf si les États en cause organisent eux-mêmes les procès pour s’assurer que les responsables répondent dûment de leurs actes dans le cadre de procès réguliers.

Par ailleurs, si les personnes concernées actuellement par les procédures de la CPI sont toutes des Africains et les situations (République Démocratique du Congo, Ouganda, République centrafricaine et Darfour/Soudan) se réfèrent à la région, ceci ne signifie pas que la Cour a été créée uniquement pour juger les Africains. Plusieurs arguments peuvent être avancés ici. D’abord, la Cour a une vocation universelle à intervenir à l’égard de tous les États qui ont ratifié son Statut, de ceux qui n’ont pas ratifié mais ont déclaré accepter sa juridiction (sous réserve toutefois que les critères obligatoires de compétences spécifiques soient réunis) et ceux dont la situation lui est déférée par le Conseil de sécurité. Ensuite, les conditions exigées pour l’exercice de la compétence de la Cour sont réunies dans les affaires pour lesquelles ces personnes sont poursuivies. Troisièmement, les situations en République Démocratique du Congo, en Ouganda et en République centrafricaine ont été déférées à la Cour par les États concernés – alors que la situation au Darfour/Soudan l’a été par une résolution du Conseil de sécurité agissant au nom de la communauté internationale – reconnaissant de facto qu’ils ne peuvent pas ou ne veulent pas s’occuper du jugement des responsables ou de leurs propres nationaux. Enfin, à supposer que la Cour n’existait pas, aurait-il été acceptable de se contenter simplement d’expliquer aux victimes des viols, des pillages et autres exactions que l’État ne veut pas ou n’a pas les moyens de juger les criminels et que rien ne sera fait ou dit sur les traumatismes et pertes qu’elles ont subis ? À supposer également que les personnes poursuivies encourent la peine de mort si elles devaient être jugées par les tribunaux nationaux, devrait-on se plaindre de leur déferrement à une Cour internationale qui exclut la peine capitale de ses règles de fonctionnement ? Que dire si elles devaient être emprisonnées pendant plusieurs mois ou années dans des quartiers pénitentiaires surpeuplés, après quoi elles seront jugées de façon expédiée par des juridictions militaires?

Pour la situation du Kenya actuellement instruite par la Cour, le Bureau du Procureur a reçu moult communications venant de plusieurs personnes et organisations de la société civile africaine sur les violences postélectorales qui ont eu lieu en 2007-2008. Les Africains ont largement facilité son travail, y compris les autorités du Kenya et les membres de la Commission d’experts africains mandatée par l’UA en vue d’enquêter sur ces violences. Sur la base de toutes les informations reçues, le Procureur de la Cour, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, a procédé à l’évaluation préliminaire des éléments et conclu qu’il existe une base raisonnable pour que la Cour enquête dans ce pays. Comme le prévoit le Statut, il a par la suite saisi la chambre pour obtenir son autorisation pour ouvrir des enquêtes au Kenya. La décision pertinente n’est pas encore rendue à ce jour, mais on relève avec intérêt que les juges ont demandé au Procureur de soumettre des éclaircissements et de plus amples renseignements devant leur permettre de décider de l’autoriser ou non à ouvrir une enquête sur la situation en République du Kenya. Enfin, faut-il le souligner, le Procureur analyse actuellement les situations en Afghanistan, en Géorgie, en Palestine, en Colombie et en Guinée. S’il estime au bout de son examen que des crimes relevant de la compétence de la Cour sont commis, il mènera des enquêtes afin de traduire les responsables en justice, sauf si les États normalement compétents décident d’exercer leur compétence pénale prioritaire.

Si l’on gratte un peu derrière le tableau ci-dessus, il est possible de déceler d’autres sujets qui intéressent l’OPI. L’imprescriptibilité des crimes atroces est acquise en droit et dans le système de la Cour, mais son utilité sociale semble discutable. Si la paix publique est le but suprême de toute répression pénale, quel est l’intérêt de s’exposer à gratter indéfiniment les plaies? L’amnistie doit-elle être préférée à la justice pénale lorsqu’il s’agit des pires atteintes aux droits de l’homme? Henri IV pour les guerres de religion, Louis XVIII pour la Révolution ont proclamé l’amnistie et demandé l’oubli. Au Guatemala, au Chili, au Brésil, et en Uruguay, l’amnistie est régulièrement venue à l’appui de l’apaisement social. En Afrique du Sud, c’est le pardon qui a été accordé aux auteurs du crime d’apartheid. Dans le même esprit, et pour compenser la prescription, n’aurait-il pas été préférable d’accepter le jugement par contumace (ou par défaut, en l’absence de la personne qui est sous le coup d’un mandat d’arrêt de la Cour) dans le Statut de la Cour, qui permettrait d’aboutir à une décision judiciaire, certes provisoire, mais qui offrirait ensuite des possibilités pour se saisir de l’accusé ou pour le maintenir, s’il se dérobait, dans un ostracisme permanent ? Toujours est-il qu’à ce jour, plusieurs mandats d’arrêt attendent d’être exécutés et les États semblent peu pressés de mettre les moyens pour appréhender et transférer les responsables à la Haye pour y être jugés.

Ces questions illustrent parfaitement la complexité de l’OPI et de la justice pénale elle-même dont la mise en œuvre dans les crises modernes met en perspective le dilemme paix-action pénale. Par exemple, en Ouganda, où opère actuellement la Cour, certains pensent que la reconstruction du tissu social et l’apaisement des communautés touchées passent par le pardon au profit des rebelles de l’Armée de Résistance du Seigneur sous le coup de mandats d’arrêts internationaux, ce qui implique que ces derniers soient retirés au nom de la paix publique. Pour d’autres, en revanche, cette paix passe nécessairement par la poursuite et le jugement des auteurs des crimes : la justice pour les responsables des massacres est une condition impérative du retour à une sociabilité durable. Le débat est loin d’être clos, mais on sait que la thèse du pardon n’a pas encore l’effet escompté. À ce jour, aucun mandat d’arrêt n’est révoqué par la Cour, sauf celui de Raska Lukwiya, annulé pour cause de décès. Mieux que cela, le Procureur a rappelé à maintes reprises qu’il ne peut pas y avoir de paix sans justice, les auteurs des crimes ne doivent pas rester impunis. Cette position s’impose de plus en plus comme la seule acceptable concernant les crimes internationaux : pas d’amnistie pour leurs auteurs. À la vérité, cette position s’inscrit dans le cadre d’un mouvement tendant à écarter dans les processus de règlement des conflits sociaux, l’amnistie ou toute mesure produisant les mêmes effets, lorsqu’il s’agit de crimes attentatoires à l’ordre public international. Par exemple, à propos de la mise en place du tribunal spécial pour la Sierra Leone ou de l’installation des Chambres extraordinaires pour le Cambodge, l’ONU a défendu l’illégitimité de l’amnistie pour les crimes graves, estimant qu’il ne peut pas y avoir de véritable paix sans justice.

Pour revenir sur la CPI, son rôle dissuasif n’est pas contesté. Lorsque l’interdit est violé, elle peut intervenir pour obtenir l’arrestation, le jugement et la condamnation de ceux qui ont foulé au pied les droits de l’homme. Ainsi, elle doit être soutenue dans son combat contre l’impunité. Il est essentiel que les États et autres acteurs coopèrent avec elle pour l’exécution de ses mandats d’arrêt. Aussi, son Statut qui contient des garanties sûres doit être ratifié par les États qui ne l’ont pas encore fait (États-Unis, Russie, Chine, Israël, Inde, Pakistan, Turquie, etc.) et qui s’accrochent aujourd’hui encore à des considérations dont la pertinence reste très discutable si on en juge aux garanties prévues dans ce texte. L’OPI étant en perpétuel mouvement, son avenir dépend nécessairement de l’ancrage de la CPI – qui est après tout l’instance qui le véhicule – dans un système international en pleine mutation, ainsi que de sa capacité à s’adapter face aux grands défis liés à la transformation rapide de la criminalité internationale.

L’auteur est juriste à la Cour pénale internationale (CPI), avocat et docteur en droit. Avant de rejoindre la CPI, Maître MBAYE enseignait à la Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Politiques de l’Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France. Il est l’auteur de plusieurs publications en droit international, en droit pénal et sur des questions de justice et d’État de droit.

Les opinions exprimées dans cet article ont été fournies dans la capacité personnelle de l’auteur et ne reflètent pas nécessairement le point de vue de la CPI.

GB distills coming world orders with world-beating historian Margaret MacMillan

GB Is there a period of history that is more instructive than others for telling us where we might be headed over the next 10 years in terms of global orders?

MM I don’t think that history offers very clear lessons, but it does give interesting parallels, and I think that one parallel might be the period before the First World War. I say this because what you had was a world power in the shape of Great Britain and the British Empire, which was beginning to lose ground to its rivals, such as Germany and the United States, in financial terms and in industrial terms, in terms of production, and also in political terms. This was a period of transition in the world. Then the First World War came along and blew it up. It would mark that transition. After the First World War, I think you’ve got a similar, continued shift in world power with the rise of the United States. If I’m looking at similarities, it is these periods of transition, often after a great struggle – the parallel of the 1920s and 1930s, following on big struggles, just as the 1990s and the present decade have come after the great struggle of the Cold War – where there is a lot of realigning and reshifting in the world. It’s very difficult when you’re in the middle of it to see what’s actually happening. One of the things that perhaps we all try to do is to see what the United States really is – a declining major power. But the United States has a tremendous capacity to change course, and a tremendous capacity to renew itself. So I don’t think that the picture is all that clear. It wasn’t all that clear in the 1920s either, or in the period before the First World War.

GB Do you see this as a transition to some sort of renewed equilibrium, or as a long-term transitional period? And when will we know when the dust has settled?

MM When will we know indeed? I think that the alternatives are – well – there are three, as far as I can see. One is a transition to an old-fashioned balance of power, where you have an uneasy balance between states in various combinations, and often you’ll get states shifting sides. So you might, for example, get a China-Japan axis or a United States-India axis. It’s very difficult to tell at the moment, I think. The other possibility is that you’ll get the rise of a hegemonic power; that is, a dominant power that will keep the international system going, as the British Empire did before the First World War. The British Empire played a very important part in ensuring that trade worked – that currency flowed around the world – and intervened when it looked like one power was disrupting the peace too much. And that is possibly going to be China. I think that it’s way too soon to tell. China has tremendous strengths; it’s had a tremendous rate of growth; it has tremendous capacity. But it also remains a very challenging country with huge internal divisions, and, I think, very large problems. I rule out the possibility of going back to some sort of division of the world into empires – I don’t think that that’s going to happen. The third possibility is perhaps something that we haven’t really seen before, and that is a world in which you get a very high degree of international cooperation – in which international institutions become stronger and stronger. We may well be moving into something like that. One of the different factors in the present, and going into the 21st century, is that we’re just a lot more closely linked now, given the tremendous capacity of the internet, the tremendous speed of communication, and the tremendous capacity of transportation. I think also that the recognition that we share global problems – climate change is one of them, but also global problems in the transmission and spread of diseases, or the global reach of crime, or of terrorist activities by sub-state actors – may well usher in some form of international cooperation, or some recognition that major players actually have more to gain from buying into the system and supporting it than they do from going against it. The only parallel with this third possibility – or at least the most recent parallel with this third possibility – would be Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, where you had major states, even though they were very different in their composition, politics and outlooks – France, Britain, Russia, Austria-Hungary – nevertheless seeing that they all made gains by supporting a stable international order.

GB If you were to put your historian’s money on a certain trend over the next 10 to 50 years, is this a peaceful period, is it conflictual, or is it far too difficult to gamble on a certain tendency?

MM I think that it’s very difficult. There is a recognition that, because of the power of modern weapons, and because of the ways in which we all live together, a major conflict would be destructive even beyond the scale of the First and Second World Wars, and that we may then well end up with no livable planet at all. This is a very important factor in helping us to draw back. However, this won’t stop some group of people from perhaps seizing control of atomic weapons and risking it all. Still, I’d like to think that, on the whole, rationality will prevail. So we may assume that people will largely recognize that the planet simply cannot sustain another major conflict – that we just can’t have another world war because of the nature of modern weapons and the damage that they can do; and that’s not even considering chemical and biological weapons. If this is true, then we’re going to be forced to cooperate with each other, and my hope is that the international institutions and that whole web of institutions, including non-governmental ones and those very particular single-issue ones that have really spread around the world since 1945, will provide a strong enough framework within which major powers can work with each other, and in which conflicts can be avoided. I think that the odds of this are very good. The Chinese, more and more, seem to be working with the international system, rather than against it, and are increasingly showing an awareness of their responsibility for the international system. And I think that India, although it can be difficult, does the same thing. I think that Russia is torn in a couple of ways: it so far has continued to support the international system, as have other new, emerging powers. So my hope – and I think that this is fairly promising – is for an international order in which there will clearly be strains, but through which we will somehow manage to avoid outright conflicts on a major scale. That doesn’t mean that there won’t be lots of little local wars – as we’ve seen since 1945 – but it does mean that we will be avoiding conflict on a major scale simply because we can’t afford it. All of us.

GB If one were to give this coming order a macro-narrative, would it be a social narrative, a religious narrative, or still an economic-cum-geopolitical narrative? Or is it all things in between?

MM I’m not sure that you can separate them out. Economic links are obviously hugely important, and the amount of trade that now goes around the world is absolutely vast. The amount of investment that goes around the world, and also the movements of peoples, skilled peoples and unskilled peoples around the world are absolutely huge. I think that we’ve all come to depend on each other in a way that we haven’t seen since the late 19th century. But I think that it’s also, in a way, a spread of values or a spread of acceptance of certain kinds of institutions and certain kinds of things that need to be done. I don’t mean necessarily democratic values, but rather a sense that you do need an international set of rules that everyone can buy into. It’s a growing acceptance of certain ways of trying to manage international relations. As for a religious narrative, I don’t see it. Climate change will be an important narrative. But this is clearly more than just a sense of being economically linked: I think that there is a sense that we are, in a very important way, linked because we’re all on the same globe.

GB How will the resurgence of Asian powers like China, in particular, but also India, change what the global equilibrium looks like?

MM In a way, what we’re seeing is a rebalancing of the world, and in some ways we’re going back. If you look at the world before about the 1800s, there was terrific power in Asia, and China exerted tremendous influence over its own people and in its neighbourhood. There were very powerful kings in India, and Japan had potential power. What we’re now seeing is a very necessary rebalancing. We grew up in an age in which a very small part of the world – Europe and North America – dominated much of the rest of the world, and I think that we’re now recognizing that that was in fact an anomaly. If you look at production – production in Asia used to outstrip that of Europe until the end of the 18th century – in some ways we’re going back. And what we’ll see is perhaps a world in which the languages that people want to learn – this is already happening – are increasingly languages like Chinese. There’s going to be much more of a sense that different parts of the world need to know about each other, and much more diffusion of education and knowledge. The number of students now studying in different cultures and different societies is big, and I think that this number will continue to grow. So I think that the world is not going to look radically different. Rather, it’s going to change bit by bit. But, clearly, there’s going to be – and there already is – a whole world in Asia that doesn’t need to pay all that much attention to what’s going on in Europe and North America. It does, in a way, but it also has its own world, and that world is increasingly powerful and productive and important. And you see what Australia’s doing: Australia has very consciously realigned itself, and made a real effort to become much more of an Asian power.

GB Do you see South America and Africa as important pivots, or even as participants in this realignment?

MM Absolutely. Not only are they huge in terms of population, but they contain enormous natural resources, and have enormous potential. We’re already seeing the rise of Latin American powers. Brazil, for example, is a very, very significant power these days, and has managed to achieve stable governance – something that it didn’t have for a while. And I think that there are African countries with enormous potential. Certainly, African countries have, in many cases, been left with this colonial legacy of really unworkable borders. But if they can begin to develop common markets, I think that there’s huge potential there.

GB So what are the big watersheds to watch for over the next five, 10 or 15 years to tell us where we’re headed? And what would trigger some reflection for you?

MM I think that the key marker is whether, collectively, the powers of the world can do something about climate change; whether, collectively, they can do something about nuclear proliferation, which remains a very real concern; whether, collectively, they can create more robust financial institutions and more robust regulatory mechanisms that will, we hope, prevent periods like this past year of economic chaos from happening again. The other key marker will be whether rising powers will be brought into the system. A lot of the time we’ll know some of this, but a lot of the time we’ll be living through it – and it’s sometimes very difficult to spot.

Margaret MacMillan, best-selling author of Paris 1919, is Warden of St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford.

(Photograph: Greg Smolonski)

La valse inter-détroit (Taipei-Pékin) continue. Barthélémy Courmont rapporte de Taiwan.

Depuis deux ans et l’arrivée au pouvoir du président taiwanais, Ma Ying-jiou, les relations entre Taiwan et la Chine continentale se sont considérablement améliorées, et à plusieurs niveaux. La relation d’interdépendance économique, qui existait déjà, est désormais officiellement reconnue de part et d’autre, et des avancées notables en matière d’échanges de personnes, d’établissement de lignes aériennes directes ou encore de rencontres de personnalités importantes ont été constatées. Cependant, 2010 pourrait marquer un nouveau niveau dans la mise en place de relations durables entre les deux entités rivales, qui refusent tout dialogue depuis 1949, Pékin et Taipei ayant manifesté leur désir d’accélérer l’intégration économique et commerciale inter-détroit.

À l’occasion du sommet de l’APEC, qui s’est tenu à Singapour en novembre 2009, le dirigeant du Kuomintang, Lien Chan, a rencontré le président chinois, Hu Jintao. Les deux hommes se sont entretenus sur les avancées dans les négociations concernant la mise en place d’une zone de libre-échange entre la Chine et Taiwan. Selon les observateurs taiwanais et chinois, de premiers accords pourraient même être signés dès 2010, ce qui ferait de cette année une véritable révolution dans la relation inter-détroit. Une telle évolution est analysée sous tous les angles à Taiwan, en tenant compte des avantages et des risques qu’un rapprochement avec le rival chinois provoquerait. Ce constat est alimenté par l’observation des stratégies chinoises de partenariat économique et commercial avec d’autres pays, en particulier en Asie du Sud-Est.

L’actualité est en effet riche de ce côté. La Chine et six pays de l’ASEAN ont supprimé depuis le 1er janvier 2010 la quasi-totalité des droits de douane sur 7 000 produits et services couvrant pas moins de 90 pour cent de leurs échanges. Cet accord, qui entre en vigueur dans ce qui est devenu, en volume, la troisième zone de libre-échange de la planète, va modifier le paysage commercial et industriel d’une région qui couvre 13 millions de kilomètres carrés et totalise une population de deux milliards d’habitants. Seuls la Thaïlande, l’Indonésie, Brunei, les Philippines, Singapour et la Malaisie sont pour l’instant concernés par cet accord, qui s’étendra aux autres pays de l’ASEAN à échéance de 2015. Néanmoins, le processus est engagé et les échanges dans la région devraient doubler en 2010 par rapport au volume de 2005, date à laquelle les premières levées sur les taxes douanières entrèrent en service : 200 milliards de dollars américains contre un peu plus de 100 milliards de dollars. Et ce chiffre augmentera de manière constante dans les prochaines années.

Les pays de l’ASEAN vont pouvoir accroître leurs exportations de matières premières vers la Chine (riz, fruits exotiques, caoutchouc, huile de palme, gaz naturel). Mais cette nouvelle donne économique a aussi de quoi les inquiéter, du fait du « poids » du grand voisin du Nord. C’est donc surtout la Chine qui pourrait profiter de cet accord pour augmenter ses exportations et renforcer sa puissance économique à l’échelle asiatique.

Les dirigeants taiwanais ont suivi de près les conditions dans lesquelles cet accord a été adopté, en ce qu’il pourrait à la fois servir de référence pour les accords inter-détroit, mais également dans la possibilité d’élargir ces derniers aux pays de l’ASEAN. Le marché d’Asie du Sud-Est a tout pour attirer la puissance exportatrice qu’est Taiwan, et la possibilité d’accroître les échanges avec cette zone en partenariat avec la Chine permettrait de réduire les risques de compétition.

Les interrogations sont cependant multiples au sein de la population taiwanaise au sujet de la question d’une zone de libre-échange avec la Chine. Le rapport de forces étant très nettement à l’avantage de Pékin, qui deviendra officiellement en 2010 deuxième puissance économique mondiale derrière les États-Unis et devant le Japon, de nombreux Taiwanais craignent ainsi d’être asphyxiés par le géant chinois. L’opposition politique craint, pour sa part, que la souveraineté de Taiwan ne soit mise à mal dès lors que le rapprochement avec la Chine, qui continue de présenter Taiwan comme une province rebelle, rendrait difficile toute volonté d’indépendance. La crise économique internationale n’ayant pas épargné Taiwan, le président Ma Ying-jiou sait qu’il joue une partie de son avenir politique sur la relation inter-détroit et la manière dont celle-ci est perçue par l’opinion publique de son pays. Élu sur un programme de reprise de l’économie, il a une obligation de résultats, mais il ne peut dans le même temps solder la souveraineté de l’île au profit de Pékin. Ses adversaires politiques l’attendent donc au tournant, en prévision des prochaines échéances électorales. L’année 2010 est donc un test grandeur nature à la fois pour mesurer la solidité de cette nouvelle relation inter-détroit, mais également pour vérifier dans quelle mesure la population taiwanaise est prête à des changements majeurs dans les échanges avec la Chine continentale.

Barthélémy Courmont est professeur invité à l’Université du Québec à Montréal et titulaire par intérim de la Chaire Raoul-Dandurand en études stratégiques et diplomatiques.

(Photograph : The Canadian Press / Chiang Ying-Ying)

GB fait un tour d’horizon de la Cour pénale internationale avec son premier président

GB Vous avez été l’un des pères du Statut de Rome et le premier président de la Cour pénale internationale. Vous avez depuis tiré votre révérence de la Cour. Quel est l’état général du droit pénal international?

PK Le droit pénal international s’est considérablement développé depuis le début des années 90, à partir de la fin de la Guerre froide et du choc provoqué en même temps par les crimes commis dans l’ex-Yougoslavie et au Rwanda. On n’aurait pas pu imaginer, il y a 20 ans, que la justice internationale aurait atteint le niveau actuel. Au niveau des principes, l’impunité en tant que telle n’est plus acceptée. Les questions qui se posent aujourd’hui sont des questions de modalités, pas de principe. On a donc assisté à un développement graduel qui est allé de l’établissement et de la multiplication de tribunaux spéciaux à l’établissement d’une cour pénale internationale permanente. La Cour pénale est aujourd’hui établie fermement dans le paysage international et a produit un certain nombre de développements positifs collatéraux. Évidemment, il reste des défis importants, défis qui sont dus principalement à un environnement essentiellement politique et vont demander un niveau de coopération et d’appui étatique soutenu; autrement dit, il faut que les états ne perdent pas de vue leurs propres objectifs en créant la justice pénale internationale, simplement parce qu’ils font face à des difficultés inévitables vu le contexte.

GB Comment la Cour pénale internationale devrait-elle influencer les calculs d’un quelconque leader qui songe à faire la guerre dans les années à venir?

PK Techniquement, la Cour pénale n’exerce aujourd’hui sa compétence que sur trois crimes : le génocide, les crimes contre l’humanité et les crimes de guerre, et non pas, en tout cas pas encore, sur le crime de l’agression, bien qu’il figure aussi parmi les crimes du Statut de Rome. La Cour pénale actuellement ne traite que des crimes qui sont commis au cours de conflits ou en dehors de conflits, mais ne peut pas se prononcer sur la légalité de conflits en soi, parce que cela demanderait que les travaux sur la définition de l’agression et les conditions de compétence de la Cour sur ce crime soient complétés, ce qui n’est pas encore le cas. Donc, pour l’instant, la légalité de la guerre est hors d’atteinte de la Cour. Cela dit, évidemment, un dirigeant qui donne l’ordre de mener une guerre doit savoir qu’il va être responsable ou qu’il peut être tenu responsable de crimes qui découlent de la conduite de cette guerre en fonction de la responsabilité de commandement. Mais ce n’est pas tout à fait la même chose que d’être responsable pénalement pour le déclenchement de la guerre elle-même.

GB Croyez-vous que le déclenchement de la guerre puisse tomber sous la juridiction d’une telle cour dans les années à venir?

PK Il est évident que le crime d’agression, parce que c’est vraiment de cela dont vous parlez, est, depuis Nuremberg, un crime clé, ce que certains appelaient la mère et le père de tous les autres crimes. C’est pour cela qu’en dépit de l’incapacité des états à Rome de s’accorder sur une définition et sur les conditions que nécessite la compétence de la Cour, l’agression fait quand même partie des quatre crimes de base du statut. Le reste va vraiment dépendre de la volonté des états. Si les états veulent que la Cour puisse, en réalité, exercer sa juridiction sur ce crime et qu’ils en arrivent à une définition et des conditions d’exercice, la Cour aura compétence. Sinon, elle devra se contenter pour l’avenir des crimes dont elle a déjà la responsabilité. Toutes ces questions, non seulement l’agression, mais d’autres crimes qui pourraient s’ajouter à la compétence de la Cour, doivent en principe être examinées à la Conférence de révision de Kampala, qui aura lieu cette année.

GB La CPI est accusée aujourd’hui par certains de ne cibler que les Africains. L’Union africaine a même demandé aux états africains de ne pas coopérer avec la Cour concernant les poursuites contre les dirigeants africains. Quel est votre avis?

PK La prémisse voulant que la Cour pénale s’adresse à l’Afrique en priorité est fausse. Il faut se rappeler que la Cour pénale ne s’est saisie elle-même d’aucune des quatre situations qui se trouvent aujourd’hui devant elle. Trois d’entre elles, la République démocratique du Congo, l’Ouganda et la République Centrale africaine ont été renvoyées à la Cour par ces états eux-mêmes. La quatrième affaire, qui est celle du Soudan, a été amenée à la Cour par le Conseil de sécurité. Jusqu’à présent, la Cour n’a donc pas pris l’initiative. Cela dit, l’Afrique était, et cela, je m’en souviens très bien, lors de la conférence de Rome, une des régions les plus intéressées par la création de la Cour, parce que les pays d’Afrique avaient connu sur leur territoire, probablement de la façon la plus grave possible, les conséquences des crimes de cette envergure qui étaient commis par d’autres. Ils voyaient vraiment dans la Cour pénale une espèce de protection juridique pour l’avenir. Il n’est donc pas surprenant que les premières situations viennent de l’Afrique. On peut aussi noter que l’Afrique demeure la région la plus représentée à l’Assemblée des États Parties, au nombre de 30, alors que les états de l’Union européenne, par exemple, y sont moins nombreux. Quand à la résolution de l’Union africaine à laquelle vous avez fait allusion, c’est une déclaration politique, et une déclaration politique qui est limitée à une situation. Cela ne libère pas les États Parties africains de leurs obligations juridiques qu’ils ont souscrites de par leur ratification du statut dans cette affaire et dans les autres. Plusieurs d’entre eux ont montré qu’ils comprenaient cet état des choses. Évidemment, avec le temps, il va être essentiel que la Cour pénale internationale aille au-delà de l’Afrique et s’attaque à des situations qui existent dans d’autres continents. Mais il faut se rappeler que la Cour est une cour très jeune, qui ne date que de quelques années. Le procureur, d’ailleurs, est en train d’effectuer les analyses préliminaires des situations dont certaines sont en dehors de l’Afrique (par exemple, l’Afghanistan, la Palestine, la Colombie et la Géorgie).

GB Est-ce que le fait que le Conseil de sécurité a un rôle à jouer pour déclencher la juridiction de la Cour est quelque chose de positif ou négatif pour la Cour?

PK La possibilité pour le Conseil de sécurité de renvoyer certaines situations à la Cour est un élément important parce que c’est vraiment la seule possibilité qui reste quand des crimes graves sont commis, qui impliquent le territoire ou des accusés d’États non-Parties; sinon, il n’y aurait aucune possibilité de renvoyer une situation à la Cour. Sauf intervention du Conseil, pour exercer sa juridiction, la Cour a besoin du consentement de l’état de la nationalité, de l’accusé ou de celui de l’état sur le territoire duquel s’est commis le crime. De ce fait, je pense que ce rôle positif du Conseil est important. Évidemment, il y a aussi l’inverse, la possibilité pour le Conseil de sécurité de suspendre l’exercice de la compétence de la Cour sur certaines situations pour une période limitée à 12 mois dans la mesure où elles sont l’objet d’une résolution en vertu du Chapitre VII de la Charte de l’ONU. Cette disposition était destinée à éviter des complications dues à l’intervention judiciaire en plein milieu d’un processus de négociations. La capacité qu’a ainsi le Conseil de sécurité de reporter des situations doit, à mon sens, être utilisée avec une extrême prudence, parce qu’elle pourrait facilement amener, sans que le Conseil de sécurité en ait l’intention, à une réduction de l’efficacité de la Cour pénale et surtout de l’effet préventif de son action si la perception se développait qu’aussitôt qu’il y a un problème, le Conseil de sécurité écarte la Cour. Il est donc important à la fois que le Conseil de sécurité demeure pleinement conscient des implications qui existeraient dans le cas où il envisagerait de suspendre une affaire devant la Cour.

GB Le renvoi à la CPI de la situation au Darfour, au Soudan, par le Conseil de sécurité a apparemment fait beaucoup de bruit. Que pensez-vous de cette initiative du Conseil?

PK Les questions politiques ne sont pas des questions sur lesquelles je suis disposé à me prononcer en tant que juge. Ce qui est manifeste, c’est que des crimes extrêmement graves ont été commis au Darfour. C’est exactement le type de situation à laquelle les rédacteurs du statut songeaient au moment où ils ont décidé de donner au Conseil de sécurité la faculté de renvoyer certaines situations à la Cour quand celles-ci n’impliquaient aucun État Partie. En revanche, la situation au Darfour illustre aussi les difficultés pour la CPI d’opérer dans un environnement politique. Quoi qu’il en soit, une fois que le renvoi a été fait, une fois que la Cour pénale a été saisie, il est de son obligation que la justice suive son cours de façon indépendant et de façon non politique. Et donc, pour l’avenir, il est extrêmement important que le Conseil de sécurité demeure cohérent dans sa démarche envers la justice pénale pour qu’elle puisse fonctionner de façon efficace. Il est important également que les États Parties demeurent tout aussi cohérents dans leurs propres engagements et ne reculent pas aussitôt qu’un problème politique se soulève. Il faut quand même se rappeler que le fondement de la justice internationale est que la paix et la justice vont ensemble. Si l’on en venait à oublier cela, ce sera vraiment un recul considérable par rapport aux dernières années.

GB Certains reprochent à la CPI d’être une cour occidentale. Vrai ou faux?

PK C’est faux. Le statut de la CPI a été adopté dans une conférence où 160 états participaient, où tous ont eu l’occasion de contribuer au développement d’un système qui n’est pas lié à une région particulière. Ce système consiste en une fusion d’un certain nombre d’éléments de systèmes juridiques différents de façon à représenter l’ensemble de la communauté internationale. Au bout de ce processus, 120 états ont voté en faveur du Statut de Rome. Après le Statut de Rome, la Commission préparatoire s’est réunie, a travaillé pendant trois ans et demi, et a adopté un certain nombre d’instruments, dont le Règlement de procédure et de preuve et les Éléments des crimes. Toutes les décisions de la Commission préparatoire sur ces questions ont été adoptées par accord général. Et aujourd’hui, nous avons 110 États Parties, qui viennent de tous les continents. Je vois vraiment mal l’argument selon lequel ce serait une cour occidentale.

GB Est-ce que la Cour privilégie la common law ou le droit civil?

PK C’est un mélange, un système hybride. Évidemment, la façade de la Cour suit plutôt le modèle common law, en ce sens qu’on assiste à des procédures dans lesquelles le procureur et les avocats de la défense s’affrontent, plutôt qu’à un système inquisitoire où c’est le tribunal qui mène le jeu. Au-delà de la surface, le système a vraiment été conçu pour essayer, en tous les cas, d’allier les meilleurs éléments des divers systèmes. On peut penser à la Chambre préliminaire, qui tire en partie son origine du juge d’instruction français, en partie du grand jury aux États-Unis, ou à la participation des victimes qui est sans précédent sur le plan international. Plus la Cour se développera, moins son système pourra être identifié à un de ces deux systèmes de base, en particulier parce qu’il y aura construction graduelle qui sera sui generis.

GB Dans la mesure où la balance du pouvoir international devient de plus en plus avantageuse pour le monde asiatique, constatez-vous une influence asiatique ou même islamique croissante dans la culture du développement du droit dans la Cour ou dans le droit pénal international?

PK Dans la Cour pénale et dans les autres tribunaux internationaux, un certain nombre de juges asiatiques jouent un rôle extrêmement important. Je n’ai pas besoin de vous rappeler que le président actuel de la CPI est un juge qui vient de Corée, tout comme le président de la Cour internationale de justice est un juge qui vient du Japon. Manifestement, bien que les Asiatiques soient proportionnellement moins représentés à la CPI, en tant que région, que d’autres, ils jouent un rôle considérable. C’est un rôle que, personnellement, j’ai toujours encouragé justement pour que la Cour puisse répondre à sa vocation de traité universel qui découle naturellement de sa création par traité et aussi de la nécessité d’être acceptable à tous les pays dans la mesure où, comme je l’ai signalé, l’exercice de la compétence dépend du consentement soit de l’état de la nationalité de l’accusé, soit de l’état du territoire où le crime a été commis. Pour que la Cour exerce sa compétence pleinement, il faut essentiellement que son champ d’application s’élargisse, et s’élargisse en particulier à l’Asie. Cette remarque vaut également pour le Moyen-Orient, qui est à ce jour très peu représenté à la CPI.

GB Dans les accords de paix conclus ces dernières années, l’amnistie juridique est refusée pour les crimes internationaux. Ne pensez-vous pas que cela pourrait constituer un obstacle pour la réconciliation dans les pays concernés?

PK Pour répondre à cette question, il faut d’abord garder à l’esprit que la justice internationale et la justice nationale doivent jouer leurs rôles respectifs. La justice internationale a une capacité limitée. Elle ne pourra se saisir à la fois que de quelques situations, et à l’intérieur de ces situations, que de quelques affaires concernant les individus particulièrement responsables. Les autres crimes, qui ont été commis dans le même cadre, par exemple celui d’un conflit particulier, reviendront aux systèmes nationaux. Ceux-ci ont à leur disposition une série d’outils différents tels que des cours régulières et spéciales, mais aussi des commissions de paix et de réconciliation, et des amnisties dans certains cas. En deçà des auteurs les plus responsables des crimes les plus graves, les systèmes nationaux ont une certaine flexibilité dans l’application de ces mécanismes. Il y a cependant des limites à la légitimité et à la légalité de leur utilisation. En ce qui concerne la Cour pénale internationale, ce qui est important est que ces mécanismes ne reviennent pas à mettre un état dans la position où il est incapable ou n’a pas la volonté de mener, sur son territoire, des procédures authentiques en cas de crimes tombant sous la juridiction de la Cour. Le concept d’amnistie n’est pas un concept aveugle, ce n’est pas un concept qui s’applique nécessairement à tous les crimes commis. De façon plus large, hors du contexte spécifique de la CPI, si on commençait à accorder l’amnistie pour les crimes les plus sérieux commis par les individus les plus élevés et les plus responsables, cela risquerait de défaire ce qui a été accompli dans les décennies dernières et nous ramener à une espèce de culture d’impunité.

GB La multiplication des tribunaux ad hoc et des juridictions pénales internationalisées n’est-elle pas le signe de l’échec de l’ONU dans le maintien de la paix dans le monde?

PK Je vois vraiment ces deux questions comme étant séparées. Il est évident que l’ONU n’a pas joué le rôle efficace qu’on espérait au moment de sa création, mais il est aussi certain qu’il y aurait des conflits même si l’ONU fonctionnait beaucoup plus efficacement dans le domaine de la paix et de la sécurité qu’elle ne le fait actuellement. De même, beaucoup de crimes très graves sont commis dans des situations autres que des conflits internationaux. Indépendamment de l’efficacité de l’ONU, le développement de la justice internationale est nécessaire. La multiplication des institutions est un phénomène temporaire maintenant qu’une cour permanente existe, mais ce développement était important, car il signalait un déplacement majeur de l’acceptation de l’impunité. Et cela, c’est vraiment le point clé des développements qu’on a connus dans les deux dernières décennies.

GB Que pensez-vous du principe de la compétence universelle? Est-ce que le monde à venir, dans les prochains 10 ou 15 ans, est un monde où il y a convergence des conceptions de l’universalité?

PK La compétence universelle, d’une certaine manière, a des ressemblances avec le développement des tribunaux internationaux. Ces deux phénomènes sont des tentatives, chacune à leur manière, de répondre aux défaillances de systèmes nationaux lorsqu’ils n’arrivent pas à s’occuper de certaines affaires judiciaires ou ne le veulent pas. Autrement dit, la compétence universelle est, sur le plan national, un instrument de dernier ressort, comme les tribunaux pénaux internationaux sont un phénomène de dernier ressort sur le plan international dans le cas de crimes qui préoccupent la communauté internationale dans son ensemble. L’application de la compétence universelle a engendré, à l’occasion, des réactions fortes, parce que les affaires sur lesquelles on s’est penché avaient parfois peu de liens avec la compétence nationale traditionnelle et parce qu’il y avait aussi une certaine crainte d’une politisation de l’exercice de la compétence universelle. Donc, cette question reste un peu ouverte, mais ce qui me semble tout à fait clair est qu’une ratification large du statut de la CPI réduirait considérablement la pertinence et le besoin de l’application de la compétence universelle. Dans cette optique, la question se règlerait peut-être d’elle-même.

GB Quel message lanceriez-vous aux états qui n’ont toujours pas ratifié le Statut de Rome?

PK La ratification est une décision souveraine de chaque état, qui a besoin d’être prise sur le fondement d’une réflexion nationale. Mais je crois que le nombre de ratifications, jusqu’à présent, reflète à la fois une confiance croissante dans le besoin de la Cour et dans son caractère d’institution judiciaire, non politique. Cette remarque vaut aussi dans les cas où certains pays qui n’ont jusqu’ici pas ratifié le Statut fournissent un appui pratique à la Cour à certaines occasions. De façon générale, les États non-Parties doivent continuer à réfléchir à l’importance de cette institution, non seulement pour des raisons humanitaires, mais pour des raisons qui touchent la paix et la sécurité, le bien-être du monde, la sécurité régionale et leur propre rôle potentiel.

Philippe Kirsch fut le premier président de la Cour pénale internationale. Il est aujourd’hui juge ad hoc dans l’affaire relative à des Questions concernant l’obligation de poursuivre ou d’extrader (Belgique c. Sénégal) à la Cour internationale de Justice.

(Photograph : The Canadian Press / Robert Mailloux)

How a flat world has yielded uneven fruits, sowing the seeds of democratic discontent

The big challenge of this new decade will be coping with the emergence of a global plutocracy – the hyper-educated, internationally-minded meritocrats who have been the chief beneficiaries of globalization and the technological revolution.

The rise of the plutocracy is an unexpected and still seldom noted consequence of the powerful political and economic changes shaping this young century. These revolutions – the collapse of communism, the spread of economic globalization, and the onset of the internet and mass computing – were, after all, about breaking barriers. The Berlin Wall fell; trade restrictions were eased; technology made information and communication free, or nearly so.

Thomas Friedman was right: as these political, economic and social barricades came down, the world really did become flatter. Older, established institutions – ranging from the music business, to traditional media, to Detroit carmakers – found themselves outmanoeuvered and outpriced by entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Mumbai and Shanghai.

Even in finance, which brought the phrase ‘too big to fail’ into the public discourse, smart insurgents have been outplaying – and outearning – corporate armies. Lloyd Blankfein, whose commercially brilliant leadership of Goldman Sachs earned him the Financial Times’ acknowledgment as Man of the Year, had a good war. But John Paulson, the hedge fund manager who shorted subprime, emerged from the crisis a billionaire.

We live in an age of unprecedented opportunity for the smartest, the most persistent and the most cunning among us – and, incredibly, today’s Horatio Algers are getting their start not just in Harvard dorm rooms, but also in the software centres of Bangalore and the oil fields of Siberia.

Our cultural reflex is to assume that this weakening of old hierarchies and the removal of traditional bars to economic and social entry will have an egalitarian effect: just think about the fondly recalled Little-House-on-the-Prairie equality of the American frontier, in contrast with the gently mocked My-Fair-Lady divisions of the old world. This time around, though, the same forces that have allowed the super-talented to claim a reward that is richer, and can be earned more swiftly, than ever before have also made society as a whole more unequal.

One dynamic at work is the winner-take-all effect of globalization and its enabling technologies: today, the gap between Oprah Winfrey and Chicago’s third or fourth best talk show host is far greater than it would have been 40 years ago. Nor does this superstar commercial logic apply only to media or sports celebrities. As companies become bigger, and the corporate environment more relentlessly competitive, and as the financial return on the very best decision and its execution consequently increases, the value to shareholders of hiring the best possible CEO – rather than, say, the fifth or sixth best candidate – has become greater, driving up the salaries of chief executives.

Another force at play is what one might call the premium on responding to revolution. We live in a time of swift – and possibly accelerating – change to the business environment. Rapid and disruptive technological innovation is transforming everything from manufacturing, to retail, to logistics, to telecommunications, to entertainment – and the pace of this transformation shows no sign of letting up. The collapse of communism and the subsequent economic liberalization in India and China brought equally dramatic transformations to those parts of the world, and powerful knock-on effects everywhere else. Possibly as a result of these forces, the business cycle seems to have become more violent and fast-moving: the Asian and Russian crises, and the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management in 1998, were followed just a few years later by the bursting of the technology bubble, and just a few years after that by the 2007-2008 credit crunch and financial crisis.

Our era of outsized change has created outsized opportunities for people with the temperament and savvy to seize them. Russia’s oligarchs became billionaires within a decade by spotting the possibilities created by the collapse of communism, and ruthlessly exploiting them. Software geeks smart enough to invent the latest new thing have earned fortunes almost as quickly. Hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut and London’s Mayfair with the insight to ride these revolutions have made a killing, too.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of us, who may be superbly skilled at our business-as-usual jobs, and work at them doggedly, not only miss these windfalls, but have in many cases found our professions, our companies and even our life’s savings destroyed by the same forces that have enriched and empowered the plutocracy. Both globalization and technology have had a punishing impact on those without the intellect or luck or chutzpah to profit from them: median wages have stagnated, as machines and developing world workers have pushed down the value of low-skilled labour in the West.

This dynamic has been most pronounced in the US: between 1997 and 2001, the top 10 percent of US earners received 49 percent of the growth in aggregate real wages and salaries, while the top one percent received an astonishing 24 percent. All the while, the bottom 50 percent received less than 13 percent – barely half of what the top one percent got.

The rise of the super-rich is a significant historic shift: in 1971, the top 0.01 percent of Americans took home around 0.5 percent of the US’s total national wage income. That was a sharp drop from 1916, when their share had been close to 4.5 percent. But now we are again closer to the economic distribution of 1916 than that of 1970: by 1998, the top 0.01 percent, or one hundredth of a percent of the population, was collecting three percent of the national wage income, and that tiny elite’s share grew further in the subsequent decade. Robert Reich has illustrated the disparity with a vivid example: In 2005, Bill Gates was worth US $46 billion, and Warren Buffet was worth US $44 billion. That year, the combined wealth of the 120 million people who comprised the bottom 40 percent of the US population was around US $95 billion – just US $5 billion more than the sum of the fortunes of these two men.

For anyone who values openness as a core political goal, the increase in income inequality in parallel with globalization and the technological revolution is a troubling conundrum. We live in an age of unprecedented openness – of ideas, of people, of trade. But for the middle class, this age’s new opportunities have been largely theoretical; indeed, in America, social mobility has actually declined.

Until 2008, none of this seemed to matter very much. The wondrous inventions of the plutocracy – the iPhone, Google, Amazon – improved everyone’s life. And the less wondrous inventions – particularly the explosion of subprime credit – masked the rise of income inequality for many of those on the losing end of the global shift.

But the financial crisis, and the broader economic recession that it triggered, has abruptly made the gap between the super-rich and the rest of us a pressing political issue. It is one thing to lionize multi-millionaire financiers when one has a job, and has just used the exploding value of one’s house to enjoy a home-equity-loan-funded vacation; but when unemployment is at 10 percent, and house values have plummeted, Wall Street’s nearly instant return to pre-crash compensation levels suddenly seems a lot less benign.

This prickly new awareness of the plutocracy has manifested itself as a global backlash against the super-rich – particularly those whose businesses were bailed out by taxpayer billions during the crisis. In response to that public hostility, the British government has imposed a windfall tax on bankers’ bonuses, with the French promising to follow suit. In America, Kenneth Feinberg, the White House’s pay czar, has imposed tough limits on compensation at companies in which the state holds a major stake.

When Feinberg’s measures proved to be thin gruel for a US public seeking meatier measures, President Obama offered some rhetorical sustenance by describing American financiers as “fat-cat bankers.” Some of the president’s critics dismissed that linguistic flourish as pandering to the Democratic base. It was – but it was also more than that.

In fact, one sign of the sudden political salience of income inequality is that it has become a focus not just for the left, but also for the right. Sarah Palin is regularly dismissed by the chattering classes for being provincial and lightly schooled – but it is precisely these qualities that endear her to an American conservative base that has realized abruptly that it has been left behind by globalization and technological change.

Right-wing intellectuals, who before the crisis tended to deny that income inequality was increasing, or argued that it did not matter, are beginning to pay more explicit attention to the issue, too. Jim Manzi, a software entrepreneur and fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a US conservative think tank, recently asserted that conservatives have “as a rhetorical and political strategy, downplayed the problems of cohesion – problems like inequality, wage stagnation, worker displacement, and disparities in educational performance […]. [T]he conservative view fails to acknowledge the social costs of unrestrained economic innovation.”

One of Manzi’s fears is that income inequality has created a social and cultural gap between the highly educated, hard-working elite and everyone else. Manzi compares the personal and family customs of America’s new super-rich with those of the old WASP ascendancy: “Increasingly, our country is segregated into high-income groups with a tendency to bourgeois norms, and low-income groups experiencing profound social breakdown.”

For Manzi, the big problem with the social divide between the super-rich and the rest is that a culturally dysfunctional lower-middle class America will be unable to compete in the world economy – and that the “shrinking elite portion of the American population,” no matter how Waspish it is in habits, cannot maintain the country’s position in the global economy all by itself.

The left is also discomfited by the social and cultural gap being created by increasing income inequality – but for quite different reasons. The Spirit Level, the work of two British epidemiologists published in the US in December of last year, draws angry attention to the health rift between rich and poor even in affluent societies, and contends that wide disparities in wealth in and of themselves make us sick.

The financial crisis has inspired a political twist on this ‘two nations’ critique: the thesis that one cause of the crash was the excessive political might of the financial sector, which succeeded in pushing through deregulatory reforms that were good for banks and bankers, but disastrous for the economy as a whole. Simon Johnson, a former IMF chief economist, has gone so far as to compare America’s bankers to emerging market oligarchs, and to characterize their political success as a “quiet coup.”

Willem Buiter, the LSE professor who has just joined Citigroup as its chief economist, describes the problem not only as a matter of successful lobbying by a powerful, vested economic interest group; in his analysis, economists and policymakers, particularly in the Anglo-American world, were the subject of “cognitive capture” by business – particularly financial – elites.

Concepts like cognitive capture or the culture of the WASP ascendancy do not come up too often on Glenn Beck’s Fox News talk show, or on the blogs of the American populist left. But a sometimes inchoate sense of an elite that is increasingly separate from the rest of society – in its culture, education, health, travel and worldview – is one reason for the uncharacteristic flaring of resentment of the plutocrats on both ends of America’s political spectrum.

For the plutocracy, the political culture of the hoi polloi is equally unfathomable. That gap became particularly apparent last fall, when bankers, especially those whose institutions had successfully navigated the financial crisis, found the wholesale public anger directed at Wall Street and The City impossible to comprehend. One manifestation of that failure of understanding was public relations missteps by normally sure-footed firms: Lloyd Blankfein’s “God’s work” quip comes most irresistibly to mind.

More importantly, for the plutocrats, the political, cultural and social rift between themselves and everyone else – a separation far deeper and more tribal than mere party affiliation – has given rise to a sense that modern western democracies do not work very well anymore.

The self-made multimillionaire sees himself – and usually is – not only dramatically richer, but also more globally minded, more rigorously educated, and more able to understand the details of the latest financial or technological innovation than the ordinary citizen – and often feels a similar gap between himself and the citizenry’s elected representatives. From the plutocracy’s point of view, the big political challenges of the day are not about a conflict between interest groups or between ideologies; rather, they are about finding the ‘right,’ highly technical answer to tough questions. And, as a senior JP Morgan executive explained during a recent panel discussion in New York: “It is just so hard to educate Congress”.

This sense of a society facing huge, technically sophisticated challenges beyond the ken of ordinary folks and their elected champions accounts for the current appeal of the Chinese political model for many of the West’s own mandarins and moguls. As the distance grows between the meritocrats and everyone else, the idea of entrusting a society’s big decisions to the great unwashed starts to seem not just inefficient, but perhaps dangerous.

But if the plutocracy is sometimes tempted to sacrifice democracy for the sake of unfettered capitalism, plutocracy’s critics are all too sanguine about restricting capitalism for the sake of democracy. Wilkinson and Pickett, the British epidemiologists of Spirit Level fame, argue that “economic growth, for so long the great engine of progress, has, in the rich countries, largely finished its work [...]. [W]e need to shift attention from material standards and economic growth to ways of improving the psychological and social well-being of whole societies.”

Both the yearning for authoritarianism and the vision of capitalism without growth are troubling responses to rising income inequality. But they at least have the merit of facing head-on the big challenge of liberal market democracies in the 21st century: the internal logic of global capitalism is making us richer overall, but also more unequal; the internal logic of technology-enabled democracy is already being strained by the growing gap between the very rich and everyone else. For everyone who believes in both capitalism and democracy, managing this tension – and finding ways to overcome it – is this next decade’s big political task.

Chrystia Freeland is the US Managing Editor of the Financial Times.

(Illustration: Christian Northeast)

New, more complex global problems call out for a new generation of synoptic thinkers – in GB-speak, ‘geocrats’ – who understand power and dare to act

Henry Kissinger never attended a public policy school, he never took an economics course, and he never worked for a law firm, a large corporation or a traditional government bureaucracy. His career belies the assumptions about professionalization that dominate our 21st century discussions of leadership. Kissinger was never really certified as an ‘expert’ of anything. His famous doctoral dissertation on the Congress of Vienna, for example, was a work of History written in a Department of Government. The historians considered him a dilettante; the political scientists believed that he was too unscientific. Kissinger only found a permanent academic position at Harvard University when the dean of the college, McGeorge Bundy, created a controversial and experimental new home – the Center for International Affairs – to nurture interdisciplinary projects and acquire large grants from foundations, the federal government, and the intelligence agencies of the US government.

Kissinger was a cosmopolitan generalist with an eye for pragmatic policy, living in a time of hyper-specialization and growing separation between thinkers and doers. That is what made Kissinger so special. He lived between separated worlds, and he brought those worlds together for concerted action on behalf of clearly defined national purposes. This was not just a form of work for Kissinger; it was his life story. As an Orthodox Jew in Nazi Germany, an immigrant in the US Army, a non-traditional scholar at Harvard, and an unelected White House adviser, Kissinger always operated on the edge of respectability. He was always the eccentric, the pusher, and the climber. Among respectable and smug pin-striped specialists, these were the qualities that allowed Kissinger to be more creative and daring in his policy advice. These were the qualities that also made him attractive to powerful figures in search of new initiatives.

Leadership, at its core, is about connections and calculated risk-taking. Kissinger excelled at both. He was a big-picture thinker who drew actively on the work of people with diverse areas of expertise. Kissinger might not have done the original research, but he knew how to identify and exploit valuable new knowledge. He brilliantly synthesized the talent around him to address pressing problems in pragmatic ways. In the decades after WW2, Kissinger guided policy-makers in their responses to the challenges of post-war reconstruction, communist containment, the nuclear arms race, limited warfare, third world revolutions, and détente. He mastered these subjects, and he kept a clear focus on the strategic need to expand American foreign influence, while limiting direct commitments.

Kissinger understood that leadership in a complex international environment frequently offers a first-mover advantage. He had lived through a decade in the 1930s when the powerful democratic states were paralyzed by their hesitance to take action against emerging threats. Kissinger was driven to prevent a recurrence of those conditions. As he put it, the successful statesman must anticipate, as well as react; he or she must “rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance.” Leaders, Kissinger recognized, must define their times, rather than let their times define them. He succeeded in those terms as almost no one else has in recent memory.

Kissinger made many mistakes, but he managed to transform major regions of the world in ways that served American interests. The enduring peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, and the uninterrupted Western access to Middle East oil were negotiated by Kissinger personally over the course of his famous ‘shuttle diplomacy.’ The US opening to China was also orchestrated by Kissinger through a series of personal overtures that challenged conventional wisdom. Nearly every major international politician of the last two generations – from Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong to George W. Bush and Hu Jintao – has recognized that if you want to initiate international change, Henry Kissinger is a key catalyst. That is why he remains so influential, more than 30 years since he ended his term as Secretary of State under President Gerald Ford.

Whether one approves of Kissinger’s policies or not, the challenges of the 21st century require new Henry Kissingers. The problems – from failed states and the proliferation of violence, to environmental degradation, fossil fuel depletion, and global disease – require leaders who can synthesize gigabytes of information without getting lost in the details. Leaders will have to connect apparently incompatible ideas and people, and they will have to take calculated risks. The early crises of the 21st century – terrorist attacks, North Korean nuclear sabre-rattling, the near collapse of the global economy, and the devastating earthquake in Haiti – have shown that creativity and vision are at a premium. The old language of ‘deterrence,’ ‘development,’ and ‘democracy’ does not offer much help. The leaders of the 21st century will have to invent new intellectual anchors for action.

So far, the required international leadership has been in short supply. The most decorated economists around the world have mobilized to address the global financial crisis, and yet the structure of the international financial system remains largely unchanged. Where are the inspiring reform ideas? The same can be said for global energy, health and the environment. Experts have held countless international meetings – the latest in Copenhagen – and they have had the ear of many powerful politicians. Despite these opportunities, where is an inspiring programme for new energy production, improved human health and environmental sustenance? The international community has lots of pet projects and powerful ideas floating around, but where are the figures who can bring all of them together and implement a coherent strategy?

Politics within and among societies is clearly a hindrance to collective action. Resources are also in short supply, and citizens – especially in North America and Western Europe – are comfortably ensconced in self-defeating modes of behaviour. All of these observations are valid, but they are only part of the story. They are more of an excuse, rather than an explanation for poor leadership. The political, resource and habitual hindrances to effective policy in the 21st century are neither new nor overwhelming. They are, in fact, sources of creative opportunity that await a visionary transformation. Almost everyone recognizes that change is necessary, but no one has yet painted a persuasive picture of it.

The most advanced societies are, quite frankly, visually challenged in their approach to policy precisely because they are so technically capable. Scientists and engineers have proven ingenious in developing machinery and medicine that allow societies to put off tough choices. Instead of addressing growing inequalities in access to basic resources, the impoverished get connected to the Internet. Instead of deliberating about the behaviour changes necessary to improve human health, some of the sick get expensive new treatments, while others languish in Dickensian squalor. This cannot continue, but science and engineering have put off the day of reckoning – at least for a while.

Despite these deep forebodings, there is cause for optimism. Human history is filled with remarkable examples of creative leadership in the face of imminent disaster. We might have reached a similar juncture in recent years. The new Kissingers of the 21st century do not look or sound like Kissinger. They do, however, share his talent for connection and calculated risk-taking. They are cosmopolitan generalists – not narrow specialists – and they congregate in the spaces between established professions, disciplines, and political institutions. Like Kissinger, the new leaders of the 21st century are thinkers and doers at the same time – eccentric and indispensable.

They are also young. Active leadership is, in fact, a youthful enterprise. The men and women who are devising and implementing a new vision for international change do not have fancy titles, large incomes or even big offices. They work long hours, communicating with colleagues around the world, and pushing for change within existing business and government institutions. They often disagree on details, but they see themselves as part of a larger, serious, world-historical enterprise.

Who are they? They are the restless academics and journalists who left universities and newspapers because they wanted to be more relevant. In some cases, they found their generalist interests made them unacceptable for professional gatekeepers. In other cases, they achieved professional success, but quickly found themselves frustrated with the narcissistic combination of moral outrage and behavioural indifference that characterizes much of intellectual life in the most advanced societies. Like Kissinger, these new leaders have used hard work, eccentricity and opportunism to build careers in-between institutions – often floating among think tanks, foundations, government appointments, non-governmental institutions and temporary academic positions. These are the creative thinkers and doers of the 21st century, and they are evident in every major national capital.

What have these new leaders done? Quite a lot, in fact. They are the staffers who converted the 9/11 Commission Report into a stunning re-evaluation of security and government organization in age of stateless threats. They are the writers who, working with General David Petreus, redesigned American counterinsurgency doctrine on the eve of the ‘Surge’ in Iraq. They are also the itinerant scholars around Europe who are working every day to make the EU into a new kind of transnational government. In China and India, these are the thinkers who are pushing for more openness to outside influences, and better adjustment to domestic needs. The youthful generalists in these and other settings are Kissingerian in their non-traditional efforts at connection, and in their unwillingness to divorce ideas from action, as most bureaucracies require.

The problem is not finding these men and women, or encouraging them to continue their activities. They are highly motivated by the challenges, and they are smart enough to find mechanisms for support in large and wealthy societies. What they lack is intellectual fertilization from the academy and the business community. Kissinger came of age in a more clubby, face-to-face world, where people met frequently for discussions about the big problems of the day. The conversations emphasized understanding and empathy more than labels and political positioning. Despite differences and specializations, these discussions brought people together to listen, and they allowed generalists like Kissinger to acquire new ideas and nurture new supporters.

More often than not, the humanities communities at the great universities in the US, Canada and Western Europe provided the inspiration and the infrastructure for these wide-ranging discussions. Major post-war figures in History, English, Language and Arts departments saw it as their role to seed civic community around the pressing issues of the day. Scholars like Lionel Trilling at Columbia University, Raymond Aron at L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, A.J.P. Taylor at the University of Oxford, and George Mosse at the University of Wisconsin brought in artists, policy-makers, business people and, indeed, the young Kissingers to enrich one another. To be a humanist was to be part of a society-wide conversation about the values of our civilization and the aspirations for the future. To be a humanist was to be in dialogue with the creative arts, the technical sciences and the policy-makers of the day. Many of the latter group, including Kissinger, were the students of the humanists.

The cosmopolitan generalists of the 21st century need the humanities, and the humanities need them. The young men and women around each nation’s capital are poised to exert ever more influence – especially as global crises mount. They risk, however, becoming too much a part of the governing system. They must make policy, but they also must remain connected to the creative thinkers who do not make policy. In Kissinger’s later life, one could argue that he lost this connection, and that his policies suffered.

The humanities are an incubator for the creativity and imagination that policy needs more than ever before. The humanities are also a natural connector for the arts, business and policy. The new Kissingers will not be traditional scholars of literature and history, but they will draw on the discussions surrounding that vital work. They will pioneer new humanistic applications of the modern world’s incredible technical capabilities.

Jeremi Suri is the E. Gordon Fox Professor of History, Director of the European Union Center of Excellence, and Director of the Grand Strategy Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a featured GB Geo-Blogger at www.globalbrief.ca.

(Illustration: Philip Burke)

A majestic region-wide union may well transform the strategic calculus of the sceptics and the spoilers

Victor Hugo famously quipped: « [i]l existe une chose plus puissante que toutes les armées du monde, c’est une idée dont l’Heure est venue. » Here’s one such powerful idea: a multi-state union that stretches from the Fertile Crescent to the Silk Road, connecting the Indian Ocean to the Caucasus, and the Mediterranean to Central Asia – a grand political-economic-security union (precise name to be determined) that finally brings the peoples of this ‘region’ under the same banner.

A bold proposition? Perhaps, but to recognize its merits, one need look no further than the tormented history of the ‘region’: for the past two centuries alone, it has, alas, been the continuing theatre of political and economic turmoil, senseless divisions and ruinous wars. And yes, the challenges of bringing this proposition to fruition are by no means trivial. The volatility and historic divisions intrinsic to this age-old region, coupled with foreign strategic power plays, are sure to generate resistance and friction.

To reiterate, what this region requires is a bona fide, all-inclusive regional organization founded – indigenously – on the pillars of regional security, economic interdependence and a collective commitment to reconciliation, the rule of law and human rights.

The sceptic ought to consider the following: In Europe, just over half of century ago, the notion of unification was seen by most as the stuff of fantasy. Yet today’s EU proves that human agency and ingenuity have put paid to yesteryear’s conventional wisdom. Lest we forget, the 1940s saw more than 60 million people – including the victims of the Holocaust – perish on the European continent in devastation and savagery that first brought Europe to its knees, then – more importantly – to a turning point. An epiphany was had. The events of WW2 reawakened European consciousness. Something had to be done to reduce the possibility of further regional bloodletting, do away with centuries-old divisions within the continent, ensure that human rights were valued and aggregate quality of life enhanced. And indeed, against all odds, something concrete was done. The Council of Europe was created in 1949, and then the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1951, inaugurating the European Coal and Steel Community – a pragmatic first step toward regional cohesion.

The EU of 2010, for its part, enjoys relative peace from Warsaw to London, with well-heeled institutions of governance spread across the continent, from Brussels to Strasbourg. And although not bereft of problems, the EU is united and economically vibrant, finding strength in the collective. It has in place supranational structures devising common policy, harmonizing legislation and regulation, and fostering a culture of democracy and human rights across the continent’s hugely diverse nationalities. Europe has reinvented itself. And let there be no mistake: Europe’s achievements are by no means accidental. They issued from a tormented experience – a recognized need for transformation, followed by efficacious action to effect such transformation.

Others have taken note. In a globalized and still ever-competitive world, states, quite evidently, cannot exist in a vacuum. In the Americas, the Organization of American States (OAS) is just one example in a global trend toward regional alignment. North America has NAFTA, among other mechanisms, to preserve and promote the continent’s interests through trilateral integration. And then there is the Union of South American Nations – a more recent, still embryonic push toward supranationalism. As for the African continent, the awakening took the form of the African Union (AU), a regional confederation of 53 states.

But the grand region that interests us in these pages stands alone as the only territory without a meaningful, region-wide organizing framework – and this in spite of the paradoxical prospect that, united, the states in this region would arguably form one of the most potent and prosperous regional blocks in recent history. For the region is opulent in all things valued by the human race – from oil, gas and all forms of mineral and material goods, to some of the greatest philosophical heritages of mankind. The birthplace of most of the world’s major religions (and all of its monotheistic ones), it is also home to some of the earliest state formations, civilizations, cultures and great thinkers: to name but a few, Ibn Haiyan (the ‘father of chemistry’); Khwarazmi (the ‘father of algebra’); Avicenna (the ‘father of modern medicine’); and Al-Shaybani, credited with authoring the first treaties on international law. The region’s fertile lands and strategically important topography and waterways only add to the intrinsic ‘wealth’ of the region.

And while analysts or advisers foreign to the region are all too aware of its importance as a strategic ‘core’ or ‘centre of global power,’ the region itself continues to stand largely oblivious to its own potential as a unified force. Of course, this is the very state of mind that needs to be altered.

The sceptic continues: the concept is too theoretical – a ‘castle in Spain’ rooted in the fanciful mind of the idealist; for the region is too tribal, its conflicts and political realities too inscrutable. This much is clearly conceded. But these, as the EU (and perhaps also the OAS and AU stories) illustrates, are not insurmountable; that is, supranationalism in a historically divided region is indeed possible.

Is this region today any more fragmented than was Europe in the 1940s? The answer is no, even if one considers regional tensions over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (which we take up below). Are the peoples of the region less homogenous than the Europeans? No, they are in fact far more homogenous – if one appreciates the region’s shared history, as well as the linguistic, social, cultural and religious movements that have shaped its ‘psyche’ over the course of millennia. Do its people speak more languages among themselves than do the Europeans (or, conversely, have fewer languages in common)? Again, no. While there exists a rich variety of languages in the region, the numbers do not come close to exceeding the over 200 languages spoken in Europe (23 of which are official EU languages). Have wars in the region over recent centuries been more catastrophic than those in Europe since the 17th century? The answer is once again no. The Thirty Years’ War, the Napoleonic Wars and the two World Wars together caused more bloodshed – and more intra-European enmity – than anything that the region has seen for the same period. And yet the record shows that Europe was able to move forward for the sake of its collective interests; indeed, its survival.

The existing hurdles are in large part due to the lack of a collective regional vision, itself rooted largely in historical dynamics in which the tribal idiom – Afghan, Arab, Georgian, Kurd, Persian, Israeli, Turk, Christian, Jew, Shi’a or Sunni – prevails. Historical grudges against the ‘other’ make reconciliation remarkably difficult. These ‘conceptual’ divisions, coupled with more basic or classical strategic competition between the region’s states, have together conspired to keep the region fraught with conflict, alienated and weak.

In the meantime, many Central Asian countries have opted for membership in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). And Europe, for its part, is busily promoting a Mediterranean Union, a project that aims to bring eastern and southern Mediterranean countries – predominantly of ‘Eastern’ culture – into the European fold. Evidently, one can appreciate the gravitation toward Europe. After all, today’s Europe boasts freer societies, stronger economies and overall stability. But what of a union proper to these countries’ own region?

The history of old civilizations very much resembles the kinetics of a roller-coaster: there are revolving highs and lows. And we are, today, clearly not at a regional high point. Faced, therefore, with decay and depression, the region has two possible paths before it: the first is to surrender before further decline; the second is to change direction, dig deep into the past, and, revived by a rich heritage, look to effect decisive transformation.

From the Treaty of Kadesh (1258 B.C.) to the historically important Silk Road, to trade, cultural and technical exchange, and to the Turco-Persian agreements of the early 20th century, the notion that interstate cooperation can create stability and mutual benefit is certainly not foreign to the region. More recent examples of this recognition include, of course, the Regional Cooperation for Development (1964) – later to become the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) – which, initiated in the Iranian Pahlavi dynasty, advanced joint socioeconomic projects between Turkey, Pakistan and Iran; the League of Arab States (1945); and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (CCASG) (1981). Also noteworthy is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), founded in 1986, with the primary mandate of ensuring members’ security.

What’s more, there are promising signs that the need for increased cooperation and formal integration is slowly being recognized. The region’s troubled modern history –in particular after the two World Wars and the Cold War – has gradually given rise to a new way of thinking. This new thinking has a number of hallmarks: first, a common sense of vulnerability vis-à-vis major foreign powers, and an obvious desire for remedy; second, a recognition that states in the region cannot carry on ignoring powers and trends in their own backyard; and third, as a consequence, a growing inclination to take greater responsibility for the state of their own region. Apart from recent Turkish diplomatic efforts focussed on regional cooperation, in December 2008, for instance, the Iraqi government announced that it is engaged in talks for the creation of a regional economic and security union for the Middle East. That initiative is aimed at encouraging economic partnerships, water and electricity sharing, the construction of roads between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, confronting militant extremism and settling border disputes.

While the existing regional cooperation agreements and new efforts toward integration are constructive, they, without exception, fall well short of maximizing the potential of an all-inclusive union. Indeed, in their restricted memberships (and their constricted mandates), they betray the very ‘tribal’ limitations that have plagued the region to date. The ECO, for instance, is an exclusive club of 10 countries from Central Asia, the Caucasus, Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Turkey. Absent from ECO membership are regional neighbours like Armenia and Georgia, as well as the Arab states and Israel. Similarly, while the 2008 Iraqi initiative includes Turkey and most of the region’s Arab states, two significant regional players were conspicuously left out: Iran and Israel. The League of Arab States and the CCASG are no different: they are composed of regional groupings of Arab countries that, by definition, exclude Turkey, Israel, Iran and a number of surrounding states. As for the SCO, its limits are equally found in its ‘exclusivity.’ In short, this proliferation of exclusive ‘sub-regional’ clubs not only fails to bring comprehensive stability to the region, but may, over time, actually beget increase inter-club and interstate anxiety and competition.

An all-encompassing, indigenous, supranational union ought to be established – one that includes all Arab states, Turkey, Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other states from the Caucasus and Central Asia. In time, a successful union may be joined by other nations from the Asian continent. For instance, in this new setting, South and East Asian countries may view the Union in favourable terms – their security and geo-political interests oblige (after all, “the politics of a state are in its geography”).

The Union ought to have many of the bells and whistles of the EU, OAS and AU. It should aim at regional integration through a single market, facilitating the free movement of peoples, goods, services and capital. Its governance system should have legislative, executive and judicial bodies. The first two branches will be responsible for policies and their implementation in fields as varied as peace and security; social development and culture; civil society; the environment; academic and spiritual scholarship; as well as public and private finance. As for the judicial pillar, it will harmonize laws and settle disputes between member states, in addition to enforcing member states’ obligations to uphold basic standards of human rights.

What can be achieved through the Union?

Regional Security: The Union can implement a security pact, and create a regional security organization to enforce the pact for purposes of collective regional defence. The agreement must bind its signatories, requiring that they pledge to respect each other’s sovereign rights and borders, and refrain from threatening one another with the use of force (using Chapter VII of the UN Charter as a guide). The pact should equally require signatories to commit to resolve interstate disputes through mediatory mechanisms (to be) established by the Union. The arrangement must oblige signatories to march to the defence of another member state in the event that the latter’s territorial integrity is breached, and put in place a regional military arrangement that can dispatch peacekeeping and defence forces under the Union banner when the need arises.

In a region plagued by conflict, a comprehensive security pact is critical to triggering a new era of cooperation and trust. In this new environment, many of the explosive security concerns faced by the region today – from raw, internal rivalries to external concerns over the region’s aspirations for nuclear technology, to Israeli anxieties vis-à-vis its neighbours, and vice-versa – will become increasingly insignificant. Removing the security concerns and fears of major regional players will, in turn, gradually change mindsets and precipitate (foreign) policy shifts in favour of maintaining this newly acquired ‘secure’ environment. Bringing countries traditionally isolated in the region into the collective fold under a security umbrella will also decrease reliance on proxy armed forces as a means to protect perceived national interests. Collective security will also do away with the (real or assumed) practice of instrumentalizing ethnic and religious minority populations in neighbouring states to secure and support the ‘mainland’ and/or preserve its government. A union firmly bonded in collective security will steadily see the waning of sectarian conflicts – at least those incited for political gain. (Increased regional prosperity, which we take up below, will only buttress this dynamic.) In time, militant ideologies and terrorist groups will also be eradicated – or, at a bare minimum, their operations and support bases significantly curtailed.

Improved Israeli-Palestinian Relations: The Union will have a positive impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, promoting a resolution by changing the political and security setting within which this protracted and complex dispute operates. By providing remedies to major points of contention, the Union facilitates the realization of the two-state solution, should the parties view this as their preferred option. Israeli anxieties will be addressed: the Union will provide guarantees of full normalization of relations between Israel and its neighbours; its recognition as a sovereign state, as well as the said necessary security assurances. In particular, agreements can be reached on many of the key ‘final status’ issues – to wit, sufficiency and fair distribution of water, border security and the shared status of Jerusalem. Gains on these major items will build confidence between the parties, and eventually help them arrive at reasonable agreements on complex issues like Palestinian refugees and Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

The international community, if serious about solving this stubborn impasse – which has brought many region-based challenges to their shores – should see in the Union a unique opportunity for radically changing the strategic calculus in favour of resolution for the collective interests of the protagonists and other regional parties.

Regional Court of Human Rights: The Union can truly flourish if its future ‘founding fathers/mothers’ recognize that they can only achieve greatness in a collective of open, pluralistic societies, where emancipated individuals – men and women alike, of all ethnicities, religious beliefs and indeed non-beliefs – are free to pursue life’s projects and participate in all aspects of civic life. The architects-to-be of this Union must equally acknowledge that diversity and liberated minds are the ‘petroleum’ of progressive, thriving and healthy societies; that systems of governance that impose an exclusive conception of piety or ‘truth’ upon an entire society are not only a threat to minority rights, but ask that liberty – the oxygen of the soul – be subordinated to imposed ideology (surely an all-loving God discriminates not between ‘men’); that a yearning for justice and respect for human rights are deeply engrained in the genetic makeup of all human beings; and, finally, that democracy, rule of law and human rights are prerequisites for sustainable peace and prosperity in the modern age – and, indeed, key to moving the region forward.

Universally accepted, fundamental rights and guarantees similar to those listed in the international covenants (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Conventional on Civil and Political Rights, inter alia) must be entrenched in a regional convention – much as is the case in the inter-American, European and African systems – and safeguarded by its custodian: the region’s very first Court of Human Rights (CHR). To draft such a convention, a working group comprising representatives of the ministries of justice, eminent jurists and respected members of civil society – from each member state – should be assembled to review the cultural and religious legacies of the region, the various societal ills in need of rectification, domestic and foreign constitutions, as well as international legal instruments dealing with human rights protection – the latter for purposes of ensuring that the convention’s text is in keeping with internationally recognized human rights norms and standards.

Unlike the International Criminal Court, which attributes individual criminal responsibility for international crimes, the CHR will ensure that contracting states respect the rights and guarantees set out in the region’s human rights convention through binding judgements (similar to its European and American counterparts in Strasbourg and Costa Rica, respectively). Should a country fail to execute a judgement rendered against it, the Union’s Parliament (or legislative branch) could, where appropriate, impose sanctions by withdrawing privileges associated with Union membership.

Apart from acting as a guardian of the peoples’ rights, such a regional court will, over time, improve the constitutional and legal frameworks (and indeed legal cultures) of member states, helping them to adapt and reform their constitutions, where necessary, to bring them into line with the specific needs and aspirations of their citizens and the requirements of the region’s human rights convention.

Economic, Social and Cultural Benefits: Revived and empowered by a new sense of independence, the region will be able to liberate itself from a historically induced, fatalistic mindset, and turn the page on its recent painful past. From this new position of strength, the region can engage with the outside world, advancing its interests with greater effect.

Freed from real or imagined fear of external interference, member states will, in time, open up to one another and the outside world – all the while looking within for areas in need of improvement. In the security and relative comfort of the Union, binding legal and policy instruments can be negotiated and implemented on a full range of socioeconomic issues that can only propel the region forward. These include agreements dealing with: combating poverty; water accessibility and distribution; corruption; literacy and education; boosting the economy and creating employment opportunities; cross-cultural exchange programmes; free press regulations; free elections; independence of the judiciary and legal reform; drug trafficking; disease eradication; science and technology; and, equally importantly, future environmentally sustainable technological solutions for the region’s energy needs (the region’s vast gas and oil coffers, although immense, are, after all, not infinite).

Furthermore, joint investments in technology, cultivation of skilled labour and broadened expertise will enable the region to increase its output of industrial goods, and decrease its reliance on oil, gas, raw materials and agricultural commodities for export. The new Union’s geopolitical strategy will, over time, be defined by the interests of the collective – largely eliminating zero-sum competition in the region. This will translate into a situation in which infrastructure – pipelines and other cross-border projects – will be envisioned, designed and delivered with the region and its needs in mind, in the early idiom of the Iran-Pakistan-India Friendship Pipeline, but even more comprehensively and in line with the strategic preferences of all member states. A large internal market, open borders and free flows of people and capital for tourism, trade and finance will not only issue in major economic gains, but will also promote tolerance and strengthen ties between the peoples and cultures of the region.

An old Persian proverb states: “One hand generates no noise.” It is a metaphor that holds that little can be accomplished alone, while together the world is the limit. The proposed Union is a signal innovation, offering great hope and promise for enduring peace, progress and prosperity in the region. History awaits the realization of this yearning. In the words of James Orbinski: “Every major advance in [...] political thinking came about because someone dared the (seemingly) impossible.” It is past time for the region to toil for the creation of this Union.

Hirad Abtahi is the first legal adviser of the Presidency of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Previously, he served the Chambers of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Milosević trial.

Sam Sasan Shoamanesh, co-founder and Associate Editor of Global Brief, is a legal adviser at the ICC. He was the Court’s first delegate to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

*The authors’ names are listed alphabetically. The views expressed in this article have been provided in the authors’ personal capacity, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the ICC, ECHR or the UN.

(Illustration: Adam Niklewicz)

Attention à ce que nous souhaitons

Quand il s’agit d’une volonté occidentale face à la Chine, on peut distinguer deux ordres de désirs très distincts. En tant que grands consommateurs, nous avons un appétit indéniable pour les produits chinois. Cependant, nous avons aussi le souhait clair, exprimé à la fois par nos dirigeants politiques et nos organismes humanitaires, d’un système politique chinois plus démocratique et transparent. En d’autres mots, nous voudrions un gouvernement chinois qui ressemblerait plus à nos propres gouvernements, tout en étant peut-être encore plus environnementaliste. Malheureusement, notre souhait humaniste pour un état chinois plus ouvert, plus juste et moins polluant n’est pas forcément en accord avec notre appétit pour les produits chinois.

Les produits manufacturiers chinois envahissent de plus en plus nos domiciles. Ils sont à la base d’une explosion de consommation et d’endettement que la récente crise économique semble à peine freiner. Ces produits sont fondamentalement abordables. Il s’agit de technologies et d’objets familiers. Du très grand au tout petit, des meubles aux porte-clés, en passant par les téléviseurs HD et les puces d’ordinateurs, tout nous semble soudainement moins cher.

Cette masse de produits est le fruit d’un immense pas en avant dans l’industrialisation mondiale. La croissance économique chinoise compte, à elle seule, pour 20 pour cent de la croissance mondiale. La Chine fabrique aujourd’hui pour la planète entière, ce qui entraîne un effet transformateur important pour l’ordre économique mondial.

Pourtant, nous pensons peu aux fabricants eux-mêmes, à ces centaines de millions de jeunes Chinois qui ont quitté leurs villages pour venir passer leurs journées et leurs nuits dans les grandes structures de béton qui pullulent dans les villes industrielles. Cette immense mobilisation de la main-d’œuvre en si peu de temps n’a pas de précédent dans l’histoire. Les années en usine sont devenues un rite de passage pour les jeunes de la campagne chinoise. Il n’est pas rare de trouver des villages chinois habités presque exclusivement par des enfants et des vieillards, soit entièrement dépeuplés d’individus entre 15 et 35 ans. En outre, une partie non négligeable du salaire des ouvriers est expédiée vers la campagne, où on s’en sert pour acheter des provisions et des outils et pour apporter de petites améliorations à la dure vie paysanne.

Nous ne pensons pas non plus souvent aux centaines de milliers de fabriques qui consomment d’énormes quantités de métaux, de béton, de papier, de plastique, de charbon, de pétrole et de biens recyclés. Les Canadiens, par exemple, sont bien heureux de pouvoir vendre leurs matières premières à la Chine en assez grandes quantités pour essayer de couvrir leurs importations de produits manufacturiers. Après tout, ils sont si peu nombreux et habitent un si vaste et riche pays. Par contre, même le Canada est de plus en plus déficitaire envers la Chine.

Leurs voisins américains sont moins chanceux. Leur pays est aussi incroyablement riche, mais ils sont 10 fois plus nombreux que les Canadiens et consomment eux-mêmes une bien plus grande partie de leurs matières premières. Ils en ont donc moins à exporter, tout en étant les plus grands consommateurs mondiaux de produits chinois. Heureusement, les États-Unis ont une super monnaie que le monde entier convoite toujours.

La situation est bien plus désavantageuse pour l’autre grand pays du continent nord-américain, le Mexique, qui voulait lui-même devenir un pourvoyeur régional de biens manufacturiers. Avant même de pouvoir s’implanter solidement dans le marché américain, il fait aujourd’hui face à un compétiteur souvent plus discipliné, mais surtout plus productif. Les fabricants mexicains voient ainsi les prix de leurs produits baisser, au moment même où le coût de leurs intrants augmente et que leur main-d’œuvre devient de plus en plus coûteuse.

En fait, à part les grands exportateurs de ressources comme le Canada, les seuls autres grands gagnants occidentaux dans cet échange avec la Chine sont les exportateurs de technologies ultra-précises dont les Chinois n’ont pas encore maitrisé la production. Dans les usines chinoises, les machines qui font les machines viennent encore souvent du Japon et de l’Allemagne, mais même ces pays combattent une tendance à la baisse dans la croissance des ventes de ces produits hautement spécialisés.

Cette consommation de produits chinois a eu des parallèles dans les périodes médiévale et antique. Les biens venant de la Chine étaient alors hautement convoités par les élites qui, seuls, pouvaient se les payer. Ce fut d’ailleurs une des principales motivations pour l’expansion du commerce maritime en Europe, qui mena éventuellement l’Occident à dominer le monde. De nos jours, ce même commerce maritime, de plus en plus volumineux et développé partout dans le monde, fait que les biens chinois ont des acheteurs parmi toutes les strates sociales, partout sur Terre. Les élites sont toujours acheteuses de produits chinois, mais le plus pauvre paysan africain dispose lui aussi d’une paire de bottes ou d’une machette fabriquées en Chine.

Les citoyens chinois ne sont toutefois pas encore de grands consommateurs. Il demeure en effet encore très cher pour les Chinois de consommer eux-mêmes leur production industrielle. Ceci est partiellement l’œuvre du gouvernement central qui contrôle les salaires et estime que, pour le moment, la consommation serait trop inégalement repartie et nuirait trop au développement tant soit peu lent de la vie rurale pour être libérée de leur contrôle. On calcule peut-être aussi que les producteurs chinois doivent en premier lieu supprimer la compétition mondiale avant de laisser les salaires ouvriers augmenter et donner libre cours à la consommation intérieure.

Pourtant, le gouvernement central de la Chine déclare déjà depuis plusieurs années qu’il se fixe l’objectif de faire progressivement croître la consommation domestique. D’ailleurs, la Chine vient de déclarer qu’elle venait de déclasser les États-Unis comme plus gros producteur d’automobiles au monde, et les automobiles chinoises sont presque uniquement achetées en Chine.

Donc, quand nous exigeons une société chinoise plus démocratique et plus transparente, nous le faisons sans trop penser à notre intense consommation de produits chinois. Or, l’économie de la Chine est étroitement liée à son système politique. Quand nous achetons des produits chinois, nous achetons aussi le système chinois, qui repose sur des valeurs sociales finement codifiées, sur une gestion de la main d’œuvre, le maintien des prix et une limitation de la croissance de la population, lesquels jouent tous un rôle important pour nous offrir une production – et donc une consommation – plus abondantes et séduisantes qu’elles ne le seraient autrement. C’est en grande partie un système social et politique très discipliné et, de notre point de vue, assez oppressif qui permet le roulement harmonieux de cette économie si vaste.

La liberté d’expression, les droits individuels, la transparence et la pluralité politique sont encore des valeurs étranges et distantes pour les masses chinoises. Leur souhait, et celui de leur gouvernement, est d’abord et avant tout d’être prospère.

Cependant, le passage par les fabriques et les villes constitue une sorte de libération pour des centaines de millions de Chinois. Aussi contraignante que peut être l’existence de l’ouvrier manufacturier, qui vit souvent dans un état semi-clandestin et jouit de peu de droits, le salaire qu’il gagne dans l’usine demeure bien plus alléchant que ce que lui offre une existence agricole. C’est sans parler que son passage dans la ville lui ouvre les yeux sur de nouvelles formes de vie, jusqu’alors inimaginables.

Nous devons donc considérer la période actuelle comme une transition. Tant qu’il y aura des masses de paysans pauvres dans ses villages, la Chine manufacturière pourra s’y fier pour garder le coût de la main-d’œuvre bas, et nous, pour continuer de jouir de produits peu chers.

Peut-être devrait-on se réjouir du fait que l’Occident privilégie plus les libertés individuelles que la Chine. En effet, ces libertés nous aident justement à nous assurer une compétitivité économique de plus en plus mise à l’épreuve par la Chine, en nous permettant de demeurer plus inventifs, innovateurs et possiblement heureux que les Chinois.

En revanche, même à ce niveau, la Chine connaît une évolution. Elle reconnaît cet avantage des sociétés occidentales et tente d’y contrer en encourageant une certaine libéralisation du milieu académique et scientifique.

La Chine continuera donc à répondre à notre appétit de consommateurs, parce que c’est avantageux pour elle. Elle continuera aussi à évoluer vers une certaine libération de l’individu, vers une libéralisation politique et économique et vers une conscientisation environnementale – non pas parce que nous le voulons, ou pas nécessairement en suivant les modèles occidentaux, mais bien parce que cette progression est nécessaire pour la prospérité et la croissance chinoises.

En somme, il est probablement plus important désormais que les Occidentaux réfléchissent à ce que veulent les Chinois de nous. La réponse pourrait bien s’avérer troublante pour nous, les Occidentaux, encore peu habitués à partager le contrôle de la planète et des ressources limitées qui s’y trouvent.

La vérité est que l’intérêt des Chinois envers nous se résume souvent à leur appétit pour nos matières premières. La Chine a bien sûr encore profondément besoin de nos consommateurs, mais, en tant que société, elle s’inspire beaucoup moins de nous que nous le souhaiterions. Elle désire certainement apprendre de nos avancées technologiques, mais elle résiste toujours à se joindre au grand cortège des nations disciples de l’Occident. La logique de notre modèle ne lui paraît peut-être pas si évidente, et peut-être un jour les Chinois auront eux-mêmes un modèle viable à proposer à la planète.

Alexandre Trudeau est cinéaste, journaliste et écrivain montréalais. Dans son oeuvre documentaire et écrite, il porte un regard critique et intimiste sur l’évolution des sociétés mondiales et des grands enjeux géopolitiques.


(Illustration: Dan Page)

What will Iran look like in 10 years?

Trita Parsi
What will Iran look like in a decade if we continue to put the nuclear clock at the centre, while neglecting the crucial importance of democracy for the country? What will this tortured nation look like in a decade if the current waves of democracy prevail, but Western demands on Iran remain doctrinaire and unchanged? Will the West find itself at odds with a democratic Iran, just as it did with its theocratic form, or will there finally be a recognition that a stable Middle East cannot reasonably be achieved without a strong Iran?

» Dr. Trita Parsi is founder and president of the National Iranian American Council, and an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute. He is the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States.

Reza Aslan
The stolen election that returned Iran’s bellicose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, to power, and the awe-inspiring uprising that erupted in response, have perched Iran on a dangerous precipice. On the one side is the very real possibility of a military dictatorship led by the Revolutionary Guard – the military-intelligence-security apparatus that has seized almost all levers of Iran’s government and that, by some estimates, now controls more than a third of Iran’s annual budget, and practically all of Iran’s black market. On the other side is the possibility of a more open society that could ultimately lead to a gradual transition of power from the unelected shadow government that currently rules the country to the elected, democratic institutions already in place in Iran. Put simply, Iran at the end of this decade will look like either Burma or China. The path that Iran takes depends in large part on the success of the so-called Green Movement to force a political compromise. Despite the brutality displayed by the Revolutionary Guard in response to the demonstrations, such a compromise from the Iranian regime is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Iran is currently facing a crumbling economy, with a 26 percent annual inflation rate, and an unofficial unemployment rate of nearly 40 percent. Part of what has made the current protests so robust and seemingly unstoppable is the disastrous stewardship of the economy under the current government. That is why the protesters in the streets of Iran are supported by a growing coalition of religious, political, and business leaders who are increasingly frustrated by the political and economic control of the Revolutionary Guard. For those of us who lived through the 1979 Revolution, this coalition looks eerily familiar. After all, it was a similar alliance of religious, political, and business interests that toppled the dictatorship of the Shah 30 years ago. Iran’s economic troubles could be exploited by the US and EU through a comprehensive offer of security guarantees and economic incentives, the purpose of which would be to tip the balance of power away from the current regime and toward a more pragmatic, more open society modelled along the lines of China. Of course, unlike China, Iran is already built upon a representative constitutional framework, and has in place the democratic institutions necessary for dramatic sociopolitical change.

Yet these institutions can exert themselves only if Iran is forced out of its political and economic isolation. Further isolation will only increase the power of the Revolutionary Guard, leading Iran in the next decade to devolve into a military police state – and a nuclear one at that. The China model may be unsatisfying for those waiting for a secular, Jeffersonian democracy to miraculously drop from heaven onto Iran. But it is a model that the vast majority of Iranians – those on the streets and those in the halls of power – would gladly accept.

» Reza Aslan is the author of No God but God, and How to Win A Cosmic War.

Peter Jones
Trying to predict what Iran will look like in 10 months is hard enough; trying to predict the next 10 years approaches folly. Nevertheless, let me be foolish enough to try. Another revolution on the scale of 1979 is unlikely. The Iranian people are cautious about unleashing that monster again, and the security services are unlikely to ‘step aside’ as they did in most Eastern European countries when communism fell. But the people do want change. If the protests that we see on the streets really were an aberration, or the work of a small minority of foreign-inspired malcontents (as the regime would have us believe), they would have ended by now.

For its part, the regime has two broad options: crack down much more brutally than it has to date, and try to violently suppress the discontent; or try to reach some accommodation with the ‘acceptable’ forces of reform that will address some elements of the peoples’ wishes, while leaving the fundamentals of the regime in power. The first option might work for a few years, but it would accelerate the already serious decline in Iran’s economic fortunes. The second option may hold the prospect of a longer period of relative stability, but will also unleash an ongoing balancing act – how much reform will the government allow, versus how much will it take to satisfy the bulk of the population? More seriously, expectations have a habit of evolving. Once a process of reform is underway, however circumscribed, can it be controlled? If so, for how long?

For the rest of the world, we should not expect that any Iranian regime that emerges from either of these options (and especially the first) will necessarily be more amenable than the present one is to our interests on such issues as the nuclear programme. It is often forgotten that the supposedly moderate political forces that believe that the June 2009 election was ‘stolen’ were supportive of Iran’s nuclear programme. But a regime that emerges from the second option might be less adversarial in its tone, thereby opening a door to some form of diplomatic engagement with the West.

A final note of caution: the foregoing is the product of a relatively conventional analysis of the current trend-line in Iranian politics. Most predictions of this kind are, but these types of analyses cannot accommodate sudden and unforeseeable events: a devastating earthquake (to which Iran is prone); a more prolonged economic downturn; a regional conflict that involves Iran; the unexpected death of a leading figure. Any of these developments could result in much more fundamental and rapid change.

May you live in interesting times…

» Peter Jones is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.

Alidad Mafinezam
A key source of Iran’s strength is the historically entrenched diversity of its population. For thousands of years, the ethno-linguistic and religious pluralism of Iranians has been a source of communal cohesion, and a solid bulwark of national identity. Only in a handful of countries is multiculturalism as deeply rooted as it is in Iran – a country literally at the crossroads of civilizations.

Iran in the year 2020 will have built on this deeply entrenched human endowment, and will be well advanced in harnessing its diversity for the benefit of all Iranians, as well as of that of other countries in West, South, Central Asia and beyond. Time and again over the country’s millennial and turbulent history, the inclusiveness and tolerance of Iranian culture has washed over the otherwise fractious impact of different religions. Whatever else might constitute their identity, Iranians bond, first and foremost, with their national – and thus inclusive and tolerant – roots. While Shi’a Islam is Iran’s official religion – and has been so for five centuries – it must be remembered that Sunni Islam equally has deep roots in the country, dating back to the Islamic conquest. Zoroastrianism, the mystical religion which inspired the German philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche, to produce his most influential work, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was born in Iran some 3,000 years ago.

Christianity, for its part, has been practiced in the country since the religion’s inception. Iran’s substantial Armenian community, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, has practiced its Christian faith in Iran for over 1,700 years. The Ismaili faith, a branch of Shi’a Islam, was conceived in Iran 1,200 years ago. The Bahá’í faith, now outlawed by the Iranian government, was equally founded in Iran in the mid-19th century. And in the rhetorical and geopolitical contest between Iran and Israel, we often forget that, among the world’s 57 Muslim countries, Iran has more synagogues and a larger Jewish community than any other predominantly Muslim country. In no other country has Judaism been practiced uninterrupted over the span of 25 centuries.

Against this historical background, the country – notwithstanding its contemporary challenges – has great potential to build a modern, pluralistic country within, while exerting a powerful, stabilizing influence abroad. This could be Iran in 2020. History and geography seem to have destined it to fulfill this role.

» Dr. Alidad Mafinezam is the co-founder of The Mosaic Institute, Toronto.

Sam Sasan Shoamanesh
The future of Iran is not as uncertain as one may be inclined to believe. My certainty rests on nothing more than the courage and unyielding aspirations of the Iranian people. Contemporary Iran is troubled by a system of rule that fosters prejudices of religion and gender, with little breathing space for the expression of liberties – political or other. The Iranian struggle for a bona fide constitutional order has been in the making since at least the turn of the 20th century, when Iranians of all religious and ethnic stripes, and of all classes – peasants and merchants, alongside socially perceptive romantic aristocrats, such as the then-young Mohammad Mossadegh or Abdolhossein Teymourtash – together formed an unprecedented movement of constitutionalists fighting to curb absolute rule and inequality in their country. Bref, the struggles witnessed in the streets of Iran today are modern manifestations of a century-old longing, yet to be fulfilled.

Surely, predicting what any nation will look like in a decade is a difficult task – one complicated several-fold by the unique complexities of Iran. What is more, to venture a guess into what the Iranian body politic will look like in a decade equally belies the central point: no matter what form of government reigns in Iran 10 years hence, it will either fully meet the people’s needs or, like its predecessors, will have to answer to a people unbending in their progressive and democratic demands. These are demands emblazoned in Iranian consciousness from the time of the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), with calls for the (i) rule of law (حکومت قانون), (ii) rule of the people (حکومت مردم), (iii) freedom of political parties (آزادی احزاب سیاسی), (iv) freedom of the press (آزادی مطبوعات), and (v) modernity (تجدد) and all that it entails… Certainly, things may get worse before they get better. Yet, if this forward thrust is not derailed by damaging external interventions, a decade from now, Iranians will either be relishing the sweet fruit of their century-old struggle or, at a bare minimum, find themselves yet another step closer in their epic journey toward realizing their full democratic aspirations. Whether that triumphant day is tomorrow, a decade or even decades from now, it is surely on the horizon.

» Sam Sasan Shoamanesh, co-founder and Associate Editor of Global Brief, is a legal adviser at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The views expressed in this commentary have been provided in the author’s personal capacity, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the ICC.

Photo: The Charter of Cyrus the Great, a clay cuneiform cylinder describing the humane treatment of Babylonia after its conquest by the Persians, has been hailed as the world’s first declaration of human rights.