Michael Walzer

Liberalism is above all a domestic theory, designed by its earliest practitioners to address the relationship of individuals to one another and to the state. The justice of particular states and societies and the rights of individuals as citizens and aliens: these are its primary concerns. But the greatest inequalities, the most terrifying misery, the ugliest forms of human degradation now exist in international society — which is to say, they are attributable (in part) to economic policies and practices that have global reach, and they are measurable across state boundaries. Some countries, despite the great inequalities within them, are overwhelmingly impoverished, desperately poor, while the inhabitants of others are mostly comfortable and even well-to-do.

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, some liberal and leftist writers argued that these gross inequalities were the “root cause” of international terrorism — as if to give us a new reason for opposing them. That argument seems to me wrong, both for domestic and global society, for otherwise terrorism would be far more widely dispersed than it is (and far more prevalent and powerful in sub-Saharan Africa than in the Middle East). Desperate poverty makes more often for political despair and passivity than for activism of any sort. But sometimes, when historical circumstances are favorable, it gives rise to a politics of opposition and revolt. The forms of this politics are determined largely by culture and ideology, not by poverty- or inequality-in-itself. Struggles for emancipation and empowerment are the most common forms, and even when these struggles are high-pitched and passionate, they do not necessarily or usually include terrorism as one of their methods. The need to defeat terrorism is not a particularly good reason for trying to reduce inequality. There are older and better reasons, which have to do with the human suffering that unconstrained power and wealth joined with radical vulnerability and destitution inevitably produce. Terrorism is a different subject; inequality is important in its own right. So, how should we address the problems of global powerlessness and poverty?

The response to this question most consistent with liberal political theory is easy to describe — and a good number of liberal theorists have actually (and commendably) responded in this way: they argue that we should, right now, take whatever steps are necessary to reproduce liberalism’s domestic success in the international arena. We should defend the human rights of individuals across the globe and look for international agencies that can undertake some, at least, of the functions of the liberal state: collecting and redistributing resources so as to enable the largest possible number of individuals to “pursue happiness”; sustaining a livable environment for rich and poor alike; maintaining a system of law enforcement aimed at “equal protection”; and so on. Liberalism’s theoretical drift — even if practice lags far behind — is toward a global regime that relates directly, with equal respect and concern, to individual men and women.

A regime of this sort looks more feasible today than it did only decades ago. The development of an international version of civil society opens the way for the characteristic liberal form of mediation between individual and regime, which is the work of social movements and interest groups of all sorts. Many such organizations already exist and have had some political impact, though it is hard to say how much. The most interesting feature of groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders, Greenpeace, and many others, is that they recruit staff, members, and supporters across all the world’s frontiers and defend the interests of men and women in many different countries. Their work is not yet 15 p e a c e c o l l o q u y matched by groups aiming at economic redistribution, but after the political demonstrations in Seattle 2000, it is at least possible to imagine a global version of social democracy: parties and unions directing their energy, in the absence of a global state, at agencies like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, which function in a statelike manner.

This emerging liberal politics reproduces what I have called the emancipation model at the level of international society. Amnesty International and Greenpeace are obvious examples of voluntary associations: they are the international equivalents of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Sierra Club. They act on behalf of (previously) powerless and vulnerable people, whose lives are diminished by brutal governments that ignore their rights or by profit-driven corporations that show no regard for the safety of their environment. And, as with the domestic counterparts of these associations, if they were ever fully successful, their members would have no reason to hang around together. If their vulnerability were overcome, their solidarity would evaporate.

For anyone interested in greater equality, global emancipation is a necessary politics. We need governmental or near-governmental institutions (like the UN, the IMF, and the WTO) that respond, or can be forced to respond, to the demands of international movements and associations, and that then act in an authoritative way to protect the interests or redeem the rights of vulnerable human beings.

But the politics of emancipation cannot stand by itself; its individualist and voluntarist commitments reproduce the characteristic weaknesses of domestic liberalism. For the inequalities of international society are both class/economic and categorical/political inequalities: the individual men and women who occupy the lowest ranks on the global hierarchy are there because they are poor, obviously, but also because they are (without ever having chosen to be) Congolese, Rwandan, or Bengali — or Kurdish or Palestinian. Their fate is determined by their location, by their parents, and by their nationality.

Many people in the world today are poor and powerless (in part) because they live in weak and dysfunctional states, which have been seized by predatory elites or warring gangs. In the direst circumstances, in time of famine or massacre, these people can be rescued, perhaps they can only be rescued, by the military intervention of foreign states. Over the long haul, however, what they need most is an empowered and effective state of their own. They should be helped to create such states, but the creation will ultimately have to be (in part) their own work.

The need for effective states is widely recognized in the international community, whose leaders acknowledge the necessity of “nation-building” after each local crisis, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and East Timor, for example — even if most of them are unwilling to commit their own countries to the necessary expense (one more example of the failure, up until now, of redistributive politics). And nation-building is in fact state-building: it requires the creation of institutions capable of maintaining law and order, collecting taxes, providing services, and sponsoring and shaping economic activity. A good global society will have strong international regulatory agencies with the power to enforce their regulations on the states that are its members — on behalf of individual men and women who are also its members. But this same global society will also have its own version of multi-culturalism: its member states will be independent and at least semi-sovereign, capable, ideally, of delivering “meat and potatoes” to their citizens.

No doubt, a politics committed to working with people in states is going to encounter some nasty and repressive states, and we will have to figure out how to deal with them, much as we have to do in domestic society when we encounter, say, chauvinist ethnic groups or fundamentalist religious sects. Recall the persistent oppression of women in groups and sects of this sort; we are sure to encounter similar or parallel forms of oppression in many sovereign states, which will have to be met by the same mix of external intervention and internal revolt that has (sometimes) worked domestically. But it cannot be met by a politics committed to transcending group life, breaking the categories of difference. This is sure to be ineffective (there are many examples), and it is also likely to be nasty and repressive in its own way. Individuals-with-rights are also individuals-with-emotions: they (or most of them) have the affiliative passions that go with their practical attachments, and if we want to strengthen their hands, some of the help they need has to come via their own political associations. On the way to becoming citizens of the world, they must have an opportunity to be, and they must learn to be, competent citizens of a particular state.

A well-known political philosopher and theorist, Michael Walzer is UPS Foundation Professor at the School of Social Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Walzer delivered the Ninth Annual Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C. Lectures on Ethics and Public Policy on April 8-9, 2003, on the theme “Emancipation and Empowerment.” This article is excerpted from his lecture entitled “Emancipation and Empowerment: The Global Order.”

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