Progressive Politics Needs to Support International Rule of Law

Comments by Denis MacShane MP at Foreign Press Association on launch of St Antony’s College, Oxford new International Affairs Review

“The failure to find a path to reform of the United Nations is part of a wider crisis about the future of supra-national institutions set up after 1945.
“From the EU to the WTO, taking in the OSCE or the ILO, the great panoply of international bodies set up with high hope and high ambitions are flailing around without  a sense of a future.
“Three reasons have contributed to this problem.
“The first is the lack of democracy in too many countries.
“The second is the triumph of nationalism, populism and protectionism as the rising force in early 21st century international politics.
“The third is the return of religion as an organising and totalising force in societal and non-governmental politics.
“The UN is quintessentially a Darwinian organisation – believing in the evolution of the species towards a higher state of being.
“Instead we see the endorsement in an increasing number of countries of pre-Darwin beliefs that brook no discussion or challenge.
“It is time for a reassertion of the role of Kant and Voltaire and what the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen calls ‘an emphasis on freedom and reasoning’. As Sen wrote in the Financial Times this week ‘Attempts to politicise Islam have come not only from the terrorist recruiters but also from those opponents who take the Islamic identity to be a Muslim person’s only identity. They seek, therefore, to enlist a “properly defined” Islam in the “right” cause, rather than trying to enhance the political and civic rights of people who happen to be Muslim. This has vastly magnified the power and voice of religious leaders, sometimes at the expense of civic society.’
 “Sen is quite right. We need to return to political terrain because little human security, let alone progress can be found by staying on the teological terrain where we debate with those who deny the right of reason and democracy to decide how people should and under what laws, preferring instead the supremacy of religion.
“It will be hard work but we have to start now because without an intellectual and political foundation for supra-nationalism it will be impossible to move forward with hopes of success for the reform efforts which will be always fall foul of national interests, undemocratic governments who resist post-Westphalian concepts like “le droit d’ingérence”.
“Modern commerce, crime and culture has are no longer confined or controlled by the nation state. Therefore those that seek rule of law and democracy and human security have to find ways of seeking these at a post-national level as well as within the majority of UN member states where rule of law, democracy and human rights are not fully respected.
“The rise of religious fundamentalism expressed by the denial of women’s rights, or the insistence on laws ordained by the books of prophets, or by the refusal to share power and jurisdiction in lands contested by different faith all contribute to undermining the need for effective international law-making and the institutions needed to make this work.”