Gray: Is global morality the new ideology?

[Sergius]

This is a transcript of Is global morality the new ideology? given by Professor John Gray [at the London School of Economics in 2002, Ljubomir]. Professor John Gray

Thank you very much. I will begin by focusing on what I think should be one of our central concerns which is conflict and the ways in which the conflicts which are currently happening in the world should impact on our moral thinking and this is intended in a sense, as pointed in my conclusion which is that a lot of moral thought, as applied to politics, has evaded conflict, has tended to suppress or gloss over conflict or to rest on the pious hope that conflict can always be reconciled or somehow transcended. I don’t think that’s true.
But before I say why, in order to show you how I get to that conclusion, I want to just make a couple of remarks on what’s new in the types of conflicts we’re experiencing in the world post September 11th.
What I take to be one of the most important features of the conflicts that is currently under way, is that it is a new type of war, I think it is war, not just police action against forms of illegal behaviour, in that it’s not solely or even primarily between states. Although, of course, states are very heavily involved in it, one of the protagonists to this new type of war, is not only not a state but is not directed or controlled, or the instrument of any state. And one can even go further and say that one of the features of this war is that, its points of highest intensity of conflict have been in areas of the world where states have collapsed or corroded almost to the point of non existence, not only Afghanistan but also places like Chechnya and parts of the Balkans.
And this brings out one very important feature of our present situation which is that the world is littered with collapsed, or failed or deeply corroded states. That in itself is not new. State failure or state collapse is not new. What it’s new is the combination of state failure and state collapse in many parts of the world with globalisation.
In other words, what is new is the conjunction of regions of the world being semi or largely anarchic in that there is no state or the state has substantially lost its leverage over the control of the organised violence. It’s the conjunction of that with global media and communication and, at least to a higher degree in the past, global mobility of people. Not of course of emigration on a large scale because that’s severely controlled. But at any rate of people involved in various types of political and military conflict are dispersed right throughout the world in a way that they weren’t before.
So one thing I draw your attention to is the conjunction of two things, both of which, it seems to me, were unanticipated up to the mid 90s and even unanticipated up until September 11th. What was unanticipated is that the period of globalisation would be a period of weak states in large parts of the world and collapsed states in some parts of the world; that wasn’t anticipated. What was still less anticipated was that new types of conflict would emerge in which organisations, sometimes strategically or tactically for periods of time, based in collapsed states or regions where the states have collapsed, would use the technologies and liberties which go with globalisation in order to wage a new kind of war.
Now, what do I conclude from this situation? And I warn you in advance that there will be absolutely nothing here of comfort or consolation. The first thing I think, there are three things and then I’ll finish, there are three lessons I take from this new type of conflict. The first is that the obssessional hostility to the state which is being a feature of liberal thought throughout the 20th century should be abandoned. It’s no longer appropriate. It was true in the 20th century, that the major crimes against humanity were committed by states most of them. Not only the two world wars, the holocaust, the gulag, the major assaults on human freedom and human dignity, the largest and most terrible ones, were committed by states. It’s not longer true, it seems to me. Even before of the end of the 20th century, some of the major violations of human rights weren’t committed by states but occurred in countries where there were no states, in kind of political vacuums. The last big genocide, I suppose, or semi-genocidal conflict in Rwanda wasn’t committed by states, nearly 2 million people were killed, it was committed by regular militias against a background of former colonialism, but nonetheless it was not committed by a state. And in many parts of the world, the violence which is done to people, the expectation they suffer, the insecurity they live in has more in common with anarchy than it does with tyranny.
I think that’s very very important, that we need to think afresh about the state and no longer see it as the enemy of freedom. The second thing is that strong modern states exist side by side with failed states, or pre-modern states or collapsed states, or zones of anarchy and that’s even true in Europe: Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia, Georgia…large parts of Europe actually don’t contain modern states, they contain ruins of states, fragmented states, collapsed states, and I think one of the motives or explanations of the new defensive imperialism, which has emerged with imperial type protectorates emerging in Europe and elsewhere in the world, is the fact that there are zones of the world in which not only is there no state but it’s going to be a very long haul to develop one which is really robust and self sustaining.
So strong modern states exist side by side with zone of anarchy and collapsed states and this leads indirectly to my third point, but before I mention that I’ll say that strong states seem to me, the strong states that remain in the world are the key actors now.
The key actors are certainly not trans-national organisations. To my mind they have been comprehensively marginalized, they have some significance, have given legitimacy to actions, they have some significance in mediating and in being areas of diplomacy and so forth, but the idea that they can supplant or displace or abstract the determined action of strong sovereign states is just an illusion. I think we can see that now unfolding under our eyes. And indeed strong states are seeking to become stronger, and this leads me to my third lesson, which is that the boundaries between domestic and foreign policy have been blurred.
But how they’ve been blurred? Well, any debates we may have about the balance to be struck between civil liberties and antiterrorist legislation is an example, firstly, of the way in which strong states are seeking more powers of surveillance and control in order to protect their citizens from terrorist originated insecurity, but also because that illustrates the blurring of the boundaries between domestic and foreign policy.
What’s my final conclusion from this?. Well, my final conclusion is that these types of conflicts don’t allow the luxury of clean hands. That’s to say if you are engaged either in a military conflict or even in domestic political argumentation about civil liberties and terrorism and the conflict between the two, it seems to me that the first precondition of good moral thinking on it is honesty, is truthfulness, veracity in the sense that you acknowledge that these are conflicts involving vital goods and that any resolution of the conflict in any future that we can foresee will involve serious and sometimes deeply humanly damaging loss.
But the idea that there is some way out of these conflicts for us now that would be cost free, that if only there were enough people with good will in the right places these conflicts would somehow evaporate and go away. I think that’s the worst and most disabling illusion, not only because it means that the conflicts aren’t coped with, it actually means that liberal societies are continuing to indulge themselves in the notion that they can reconcile, deep seeded and often intractable disorders which, what we should be trying to do is actually not to reconcile but to contain them, to negotiate them, to make their effects on human world being less damaging, to try and use some of the conflicts as opportunities, but never to think that these deep political and military conflicts can be prosecuted without profound wrongs being committed, without in other words, dirty hands. So, if you wanted a kind of summary of what I’m saying it’s a plea for dirty hands.
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