GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY: THE PATH AHEAD*

A draft discussion paper by:
David C. Korten (The People Centered Development Forum, U.S.A.),
Nicanor Perlas (Center for Alternative Development Initiatives, Philippines),
Vandana Shiva (Navdanya, India)

03 December 2002
 

Humanity has entered into the final stage of an epic struggle between the forces of imperial rule (empire) and the forces of democratic rule (community) presently manifest in the confrontation between elite globalization and global civil society. The stress imposed on social and environmental systems by elite globalization's exploitation of people and nature has passed beyond the limits of social and environmental tolerance. Even the rich and powerful now experience the consequences of the resulting economic instability and social and environmental breakdown — including terrorism. The undemocratic, militaristic, and largely counterproductive response by those in control of U.S. military and economic power to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack against the United States under-scores the essential role of global civil society in providing leadership toward deep change based on the democratic ideals and principles of community.

Fortunately, the current balance of power between empire and community tilts less decisively in favor of empire than it at first seems. Empire controls the institutions of political and economic power — including military and police. This control, however, rests on a false legitimacy dependent on empire's ability to perpetuate a falsified and inauthentic cultural trance based on beliefs and values at odds with reality. As empire's failures mount, the reality is exposed, the cultural trance is broken for increasing numbers of people, and the legitimacy of empire's institutions is called into serious question — creating space for the forces of community as manifest in the new social organism we know as global civil society.

Global civil society is a social expression of the awakening of an authentic planetary culture grounded in the spiritual values and social experience of hundreds of millions of people. The power of authentic culture gives civil society the ultimate advantage. This paper examines the strategic implications.
 

         Global civil society presented its public face in massive demonstrations in countries around the world. As the demonstrations grew in size and frequency, the police response became increasingly violent and repressive; confirming a reality well-known to the world’s oppressed: when the interests of property conflict with the rights of persons, police and military power sides with property.

         The full extent of the contemporary threat to freedom and democracy posed by an alliance of economic, military, and police power was revealed, however, only in the aftermath of the dramatic terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The attack awakened the United States and the world to the extent of the terrorist threat to peace and security and the ability of committed terrorists to penetrate the defenses of the world’s greatest military power and to turn modern technologies into weapons of mass destruction.

         The U.S. administration of George W. Bush might appropriately have chosen to respond to this threat by working cooperatively with other nations through the UN and other international bodies to identify terrorist cells dispersed through out the world, bring their members to justice, engage a dialogue on the conditions that give rise to the terrorist impulse, and mobilize a global effort to eliminate those conditions. In a triumph of hubris and political ambition over reason and principle, the U.S. administration’s actual response was to manipulate the feelings of patriotism and desire for national unity stimulated by the September 11 tragedy to advance a policy agenda that included:

• Accelerating implementation of neoliberal economic policies, including tax cuts and subsidies, designed to advance the global projection of U.S. corporate power and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a powerful hereditary U.S. ruling aristocracy;

• Projecting U.S. military power globally and militarizing space to secure U.S. hegemony against possible contenders for geopolitical power and claiming the right to use that power unilaterally and preemptively in the event of a perceived threat to U.S. interests;

• Suppressing civil liberties and demonizing critics to silence opposition, strengthening domestic surveillance under a new Department of Homeland Security; and

• Initiating a clash-of-civilizations foreign policy against Islam with an invasion of Afghanistan quickly followed by an announced intention to invade Iraq.

These developments have occurred against the backdrop of an ever strengthening alliance between the administration that controls U.S. military and police power and the U.S. corporations that dominate the global economy — all supported by a subservient corporate press and endorsed by an opposition party beholden to corporate interests.

The United States has long played the role of an imperial power, beginning with its westward expansion across the North American continent as it appropriated the lands of Native Americans and what was once the Northwestern territory of Mexico. From that base it projected its power into Latin America and the Philippines and emerged from World War II with a global reach.

         With the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States became the world’s sole superpower and the first truly global empire in human history. As the administration of George Bush, Sr. was ending in January 1993, key members of his administration prepared a U.S. Defense Strategy for the 1990s intended to secure a post-Soviet new world order under hegemonic U.S. control. Key participants in that process, who now hold key positions in the present Bush administration, include current Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.  

         Approximately a year after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack George W. Bush, began to publicly articulate key elements of the plan as official doctrine, as when he announced a new U.S. policy of reserving the right to unilaterally launch a first strike military assault against any country considered a threat to U.S. interests. Media pundits began discussing the merits of an explicit U. S. commitment to imposing a new imperial order on the world. A Washington Post editor suggested that, “Only if Washington acknowledges it is acting as an Empire will the task of responding to disorder be more coherent….The chaos in the world is too threatening to ignore and existing methods for dealing with that chaos have been found wanting.” The need to impose order on an otherwise chaotic world is the logic of empire and the logic underlying the policies, actions, and rhetoric of the Bush/Cheney administration and its effort to openly align the full force of U.S. military power behind an American Imperium.

         We the people of the world have yielded our sovereign democratic authority power to institutions that are now using their military and police powers in ways that threaten freedom, democracy, and security everywhere. Rather than reducing the threat of non-state terrorism, their actions increase it by increasing the injustice, deprivation, suffering, and sense of exclusion and powerlessness that motivate terrorist action. It is a path far distant from the path of international cooperation required to achieve the conditions of economic justice, respect for other cultures and ways of life, and environmental sustainability essential to true human security and well-being.

         Global civil society emerged as an expression of the love of life, freedom, community, and democracy that resides deep in the soul of every human being. The increasingly naked extremism and demagoguery of elite globalization further exposes the reality behind its benevolent face. 

Epic Struggle

he struggle between the forces of elite globalization and the forces of global civil society is defined by a tension between two deeply conflicting world views. It is the contemporary face of an epic struggle between community and empire that extends back to the earliest human experience. Its contemporary resolution may determine the fate of humanity for many generations to come.

         In the worldview of community, the world is a place of creative opportunity best realized through cooperation and the equitable sharing of power and control of resources. This worldview gives rise to the democratic impulse.

         In the worldview of empire, the world is an inherently hostile and competitive place. In the world of empire the only choice life offers is to be a winner or be a loser, rule or be ruled. Trust, compassion, and cooperation are for fools and cowards. By the logic of empire smartest, toughest, and most rational players have both the right and the duty to seize and hold power by whatever means available to impose peace and order on the unruly in the interests of all — a service for which they believe they are justly rewarded with wealth and power. This worldview gives rise to the authoritarian impulse.

         Concentration and centralization of power and wealth are essential organizing principles of elite globalization. Equitable distribution and decentralization of power and wealth are essential organizing principles of global civil society.

         Feminist scholar and historian Riane Eisler characterizes the conflict as a struggle between dominator and partnership models of human relations. The outward political expression of this conflict mirrors an inner psychic tension that resides within each of us. On the one hand, we experience the pull of love, trust, a joyful sense of connection to the whole of life grounded in a perception of the world as a nurturing, caring, and cooperative place overflowing with creativity and abundance. On the other hand, we experience the opposing pull of fear, distrust and alienation grounded in a perception of the world as a threatening place filled with human and natural enemies that must be physically controlled or destroyed to make ourselves secure. At a more primitive level of experience the former pull is associated with the feminine predisposition to bond for mutual protection in the face of danger and the latter with a masculine predisposition to fight or flight.

         While one tendency or the other may be more fully expressed in a given individual or society, both reside in each of us — both male and female — which helps to account for the wide variety of the human experience. In societies where love, trust, and sense of connection prevail, we are more likely to find cooperative partnership models of social organization that favor deeply democratic self-organizing processes mediated by an ethical culture that values equality, justice, the creative freedom of the individual, and the willingness of each individual to act with a sense of responsibility for the interests of the whole.

         In societies where fear, distrust, and alienation prevail, we may find more competitive dominator models of social organization that extend rights and freedoms to those on the top that are denied to those on the bottom — and a legitimating culture that extols the virtues of the powerful winners and condemns the vices of slothful losers. Societies so organized are likely to exhibit persistent patterns of exploitation, injustice, and scarcity, a climate of fear and insecurity, perceptions of real or imagined threats, political demagogues who play to these fears, violence against suspect groups, and the embrace of coercive institutions that specialize in the use of force to impose order. Such societies easily become trapped in a self-reinforcing cycle of violence and competition for power that provides a fertile ground for demagogues who build their power base on fear and violence by appealing to those who long for vengeance and to those who seek the protection of a powerful leader.

         The tendencies toward empire and community exist in all societies and give rise to a substantial range of cultural and social possibilities. Either may become dominant in a given society depending on which of the competing tendencies its culture and institutions most value and reward.  

         This leads to an essential insight. Human culture and institutions are human constructions subject to individual and collective human choice. It is within the means of “We the people of planet Earth” to make the choice for a caring and compassionate world of community and to live our vision into being.