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Opinion
October 26, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 20
Making multilateralism work in the face of a nationalist backlash
Ben Aris in Rhodes
The world is changing. Or rather the population
is growing and that is changing everything. With the global population growing exponentially over the last hundred years, the advent of globalisation and the telecoms revolution that has put all corners of the world in instant communication with each other, the challenges have changed out of recognition. But the world is still ordered along the lines of nation states and there are still only two truly global institutions. Are we up to the new challenges created by this globalisation, asked the delegates at the annual Rhodes Forum held at the start of October on the Greek island. The responses were mixed, but all of them pointed
to the need for more multilateralism as the only possible answer.
“Seventy years ago there were only 2.5bn people on the planet and today there are 7bn-8bn. There will be 9bn-11bn when my children have their own children. And the question is: how can all these people live together peacefully?” asked Joschka Fischer, the former German foreign minister
and vice chancellor, who was a member of the multilateral panel during the Dialogue of the Civilizations summit at Rhodes. “There are brand new challenges that we are facing. “Mankind” is a reality in a way that it has never been before. There is no choice: we have to have a multilateral outlook,” Fischer said.
Multinationalism grew out of the aftermath of WWII as a way to prevent another devastating war.
ex-German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer at the Rhodes summit this year
But today the resulting globalisation is facing a backlash, partly brought about by the financial austerity that was forced on the world following the 2008 crisis. The rise of nationalism across Europe is one manifestation of the reaction against increased multinationalism, Fischer argued. The familiar national identities have been replaced with the spectre of “faceless Brussels bureaucracy,” a meme that plays
into the hands of right-wing parties across the continent and in the US.
“Nationalism is back but the EU will survive
as it is the most advanced experiment in multilateralism in the world,” Fischer said. “Eight billion people can’t fight a war. The Stone Age is over. We have to develop together. The EU will survive and flourish. There is no alternative.”
Fischer was confident that the pan-nationalism of the EU will win out in the long-run as the economic benefits of cooperation trump the vague fears engendered by the dilution of national identities that globalisation causes. But the institutions of this multilateral system are young and confused by members’ insistence on retaining elements of sovereignty in order to be able to sell the EU to their populations. The most obvious example was the decision to largely give up control over monetary policy in the creation of the Eurozone but keep sovereignty over fiscal policy that has contributed to the imbalances seen in the EU today.