Today's discussion is about the major economic and foreign policy issues facing New Zealand over the next five years, from 2012 to 2017. The theme throughout today has been mainly on the global dimension of that - the global commons and the global economy, with specific focus on trade and security. This final session is on the multilateral setting.
I mention this because clarity in recognizing the conceptual framework for any discussion is a precondition of any consensus in policy analysis and prescription. So let me offer some thought first on the relationship among these dimensions.
The idea of global unity is millennia old in a philosophical sense - from earliest days of human thought through to modern times. The ancient civilizations carried the innocent belief that their value system was divinely ordained, intrinsically valid and universally applicable.
The fateful experience of mutual contact generated a recognition of the relativity in human values and the need for mutual forbearance, laying the basis for the first known peace treaty - between the Egyptians and the Hittites in the 13th century before the common era.
Unity through military force was thought to be a quick route to salvation, spawning the early empires, from Sargon through Alexander, Cyrus and Caesar.
Unity through political legitimation, based on societal precepts and civic obligation, was the beginning of the maturation process. That modern concept culminated in the Kantian notion of perpetual peace through constitutional republics, and Tolstoy's more fluid assertion that unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.
This has laid the basis of humanistic idealism that supports the aspirational dimension of world politics of the past century - natural justice, universal rights, and the law of humanity.
It finds modern expression in John Rawls' theory of justice, Allott's self-constituting of the international community, MacDonald and Johnston's global constitutionalism,
The realist dimension of international politics is the mirror image of that, resting on positivist law and national interest. That culminated in the Hegelian notion of recurrent stability through balance of national sovereign power. It finds modern expression in Metternich and Clausewitz; Kissinger and Brzezinski and the neo-cons. And of course, everyone's current favourite - Sun Tzu.
It is the uneasy contextual relationship between idealism and realism within which the international community functions in our lifetimes.
The statecraft of Wilson and Roosevelt sought to cut a swathe of 20th century credibility between the two worldviews. Hammarskjöld gave profound expression to that balance during the early days of the United Nations in a bipolar world. Hammarskjöldian thought, perceiving the Organization as a dynamic instrument, the Charter as a teleological document, and multilateralism as a process of human self-realization, remains a beacon to practitioners of international statecraft to this day. Whether it survives the 21st century vagaries of drones, face-book and the human genome project, is unknowable.
What we do know is that human perception of reality changed forever with the planetary self-image sent back by Apollo 8. That paradigmatic shift coincided with the complete spread of national jurisdiction over the land territory of Earth, and the advancement of technology that beckons the global society as a self-ordering reality.
So what we have today is an international system of states in a closed political grid of 193 sovereigns, at a time when we perceive the planet as one and confront genuinely global problems. Tension is intensifying between traditional and contemporary legal precepts - sovereign equality of states versus global enforcement power, domestic jurisdiction versus responsibility to protect, common heritage versus national exploitation rights, state responsibility versus individual liability.
My task today is to offer a Green perspective on these global challenges, and the role of the United Nations in addressing these, and New Zealand's place within that.
My principal message is that the Green foreign policy aims to strike an informed balance between idealism and realism.
- Realism, because any policy not grounded in the world of raw, if licensed, power will stumble in the testing grounds of the ever-present.
- Idealism, because any policy without vision will lose sight, and even sense, of a strategic direction towards the eternal future.
A healthy and vigorous realism was the norm so long as the Earth was vast and human activity modest. Idealism was a luxury of the self-indulgent.
But today the Earth is modest and human activity vast. So paradoxically, as we move from the Holocene Age to the Anthropocene, idealism has become essential, and realism and idealism more reconcilable.
My second message is that the Green foreign policy differs from tradition in one overarching way. As a young political party, Green policy perceives the world through a different paradigm, reflecting the 21st century rather than the 20th.
We do not see the world as being composed primarily of an international community of sovereign nation-states.
Rather we see one planet, whose beauty and bounty is shared by humanity with other species.
We see the human race, informed by centuries of philosophical enquiry and political development, moving carefully and purposefully towards a unified global society, of which all nations are a component part with the natural rights of their peoples fully respected.
We see a 21st century global community of peoples complementing the 20th century international community of states. We are on perhaps a 200-year journey that began with the League of Nations almost a century ago, and continues with the United Nations today. That journey may take another century or so.
The aspiration to global unity is far-removed from the scourge of corporate globalization that has dominated economic relations in the past half-century. Rather it recalls the probing insights of Hammarskjöld, the fearless courage of Mandela and San Suu Kyi, the soaring eloquence of Kennedy and King, the global vision of Gorbachev and Kofi Annan.
Attainment of that vision presupposes resolution of what can only be seen as a 21st century global crisis. That crisis has three components:
- an ecological overshoot by humanity;
- extreme inequality across nations; and
- the illegal use of force by governments and others.
Add to that a fourth challenge. The effective resolution of these problems requires a restructuring of our institutional architecture - through far-reaching reform of the UN and Bretton Woods system.
It is not too much to say that, if we do not move quickly to develop effective and accountable global institutions to handle our global problems, we may simply not succeed.
A Green foreign policy recognizes these problems and the unprecedented cooperation required by governments to effectively resolve them. A Green foreign policy has New Zealand acting as a responsible global citizen, pursuing a legitimate national interest, not an excessively competitive one that is largely indifferent to the rest of the world.
A Green foreign policy will embrace the seven global values proclaimed by the UN in 2005 - freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for human rights, respect for Nature and shared responsibility.
We envision a world where people respect each other and the natural environment. Our quality of life is valued above individual wealth. The global political and economic system enables people to meet their needs within Nature's limits, so that future generations may meet theirs on a sustainable basis.
The survival and well-being of humanity depends on individuals and governments recognizing the common imperative of sustainability, replacing the mindless pursuit of material economic growth.
A Green foreign policy identifies four global objectives:
Global Sustainability: A world where humanity, at an optimal global population, lives in harmony with Nature and within the carrying capacity of Earth's natural resources.
Global Security: A world in which nations respect the peaceful resolution of disputes, refraining from acts of aggression, the use of force being in accordance with international law.
Global Justice: A world based on economic and social equity, where the basic human needs of sustenance and self-development are met for all, not simply the privileged few.
Global Community: A world in which societies respect the cultural beliefs of others, embracing the common global values identified by the UN.
In pursuit of those objectives, The Green Party has ten major policies.
1. Achieve sustainability & climate stabilization
The Green Party calls for humanity's Ecological Footprint to be of a sustainable size by 2030. This will require collaborative support through the UN, building from the pioneering initiative of UNDP with the Human Development Index that began two decades ago, expanding that to embrace the current work of IUCN, WWF and the Global Footprint Network. In this respect, sustainable consumption, as recognized at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, is as important as sustainable development.
We support a global warming cap of 2 degrees Celsius, as a strict goal, not simply lip service. We retain hope for a global legal framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol by the end of 2012. We call for an unconditional commitment by New Zealand for national carbon emission reductions of 33% by 2020 and 90% by 2050. We call upon New Zealand to follow Denmark's goal of a fossil fuel-free economy by 2050.
We call for the UN General Assembly to recognize the nine planetary boundaries identified by the scientific community, within whose maximum and minimum ranges we must remain for human civilization to remain vibrant and for all species to flourish. We call upon UN member states to develop effective and coordinated policy responses on each of the boundaries.
We call on our own Parliament to acknowledge the universal relevance of the Earth Charter for all peoples, adopted at UNESCO in 2000.
2. Outlaw aggression
The Green Party is working internationally to help make aggression a leadership crime in international and domestic law through the Rome Statute. At the ICC Review Conference in Kampala last year, a breakthrough occurred, and we can expect aggression to be a justiciable crime around 2017. New Zealand should be in the forefront of that movement.
3. Restrict foreign troop deployment
Deployment of any country's armed forces overseas should be countenanced only on the basis of an authorizing Security Council resolution under Chapter VII or a General Assembly resolution under the 'Uniting for Peace' precedent.
4. Apply universal jurisdiction
New Zealand must be prepared to investigate, under its universal jurisdiction obligations, anyone reasonably suspected of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. The Government failed to do that in the case of IDF chief Moshe Ya'alon in 2006.
5. Legislate for a nuclear-free world
New Zealand must reject nuclear deterrence in its voting at the UN, something NZ governments have not yet totally done. And we must support the draft Nuclear Weapons Convention for conclusion by 2015, initially without the nuclear-weapon states if necessary.
6. Make trade responsible and fair
Promote responsible trade and investment policies in which a healthy global interaction among countries for real comparative advantage is reconciled with national resilience, and stronger environmental and labour standards.
7. Attain the ODA target
Establish a timetable for our ODA to reach 0.7% of GNI by 2015, through increases in multilateral contributions, to help attain the Millennium Development Goals by that same year.
8. Support good governance
Promote legitimate, accountable and non-corrupt governance in all countries, while avoiding the imposition of any single, preconceived model of 'democracy'.
9. Reform the institutional architecture
Reform the United Nations, with the establishment of a UN Parliamentary Assembly, and improvements to Security Council composition and procedures, General Assembly voting and procedures, system-wide management coherence, and adequate financial support based on continuous and effective auditing of expenditure.
Reform the Bretton Woods institutions - the IMF, World Bank and WTO - and pursue more stringent banking measures under the Basel framework.
10. Promote global understanding
Support initiatives for a structured dialogue among all cultures and faiths, acknowledging their common spiritual provenance and eschewing religious fanaticism and fundamentalism.
This is our philosophy. These are our objectives and policies.
It is an aspirational foreign policy.
Yet it is grounded in a sobered realization that nothing less will meet the magnitude and imminence of the global challenges we now face. In that sense, it is simply survivalist.
Nothing less will do for our times.
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