don’t believe encouraging Ukraine to join NATO was a proper idea. I think the US just pushed too far. We should have been much more reticent, and we should have understood Russia’s economic, geopolitical and security viewpoints. If we had done so, we wouldn’t be in the current situation. But we have a hardline neoconservative vision of the world that is entrenched in US foreign policy, and it’s an incorrect and dangerous vision.
Is there another way for developing economies to prosper than the sweatshop-driven model, so workers can play a bigger role and have greater input in their societies?
I would say that the best overall framework we have is the sustainable-development framework that countries agreed on at the United Nations. One of the core pillars of the framework is that economic development should be combined with social inclusion and environmental sustainability. I think this kind of development approach is possible. It means each country aims for a mixed economy where private-sector production, trade and investment is combined with a very active state that is guaranteeing quality education, quality healthcare, access to infrastructure and protection of the national environment.
Countries must hold themselves accountable from the national to the local level, not just for GDP growth, but for economic fairness, social inclusion and environmental sustainability as well. This is closest to the social democratic approach of northern Europe and Costa Rica. This model is feasible because it respects the land tenure and community rights of campesinos, and it ensures that large companies can’t use bilateral investment treaties to grab land and destroy the environment. It has some very inclusive features to it, but it is still a market economy in a mixed system. It totally rejects the idea of privatizing core human services and human needs, like health and education, both of which I think need to be publicly guaranteed and publicly provided.
In this sustainable-development approach, basic needs should be met early on: access to healthcare, education, water, sanitation and basic infrastructure. I don’t know of any other way to ensure human needs and an advance in living standards. I think the development work will require a couple of generations ahead of us because a generation of young people needs to grow up with better education, better skills, better nutrition and better health situations. We need to have new entrepreneurs and companies to develop; and all of that takes time.
How important is it for governments not to let the hidden environmental costs of extraction and other polluting industries be left off the books or passed on to the public?
Environmental sustainability is not merely an option; it’s a matter of survival for vast numbers of people and places around the world. The current global production systems, especially those based on high-carbon energy, are creating devastating costs. Some of these costs are short-term in the form of massive pollution that could be put to an end in future years, but the longer-term and persistent climate costs will be even larger than that. It’s not possible to deny human-induced climate change without denying all of the science we know about how Earth’s systems function. We are beyond debate on this issue, and that’s why sustainable development needs to be a central organizing principle for our time, not an option to be debated. We are not there politically in the US because one party [the Republican Party] is so profoundly corrupted by big oil it won’t breathe the truth, and the other party is half-corrupted, so it won’t implement the truth with any vigor.
How vital is gender equality to creating a global sustainable economy?
Gender equality is vital for sustainable development; hence its inclusion as Sustainable Development Goal Five. The benefits of gender equality are first and foremost moral – with girls and women representing half the population, of course they should be entitled to the full social, economic, and political rights enjoyed by males. But the society-wide benefits of gender equality are also enormous and very practical: healthy, educated, empowered young women raise healthy, educated and skilled children who grow up to have better lives and higher wellbeing. By helping girls to achieve their full potential – through nutrition, healthcare and especially access to quality education – the intergenerational propagation of poverty can be defeated. ■
GEORGE SCIALABBA
George Scialabba is a regular contributor to the Washington Post, Village Voice, Dissent, Boston Globe and The Nation. Among his books are: The Modern Predicament, What Are Intellectuals Good For? and Slouching Toward Utopia.
How much of Islamic terrorism can be attributed to US foreign policy and how much of it was a spontaneous, grassroots movement?
Even if I were less ignorant of the various jihadist movements, I would hesitate to guess at the balance among their motivations, any more than I would do so in the case of, say, the Tea Party. I’m sure there are a variety of causes in play: religious sectarianism and cultural self-assertion; resentment of domestic corruption, repression and underdevelopment as well as foreign exploitation and violent intervention. But whatever the proportions, Americans should interest ourselves primarily in the causes of jihadism for which we may have some responsibility and which we may have some ability to affect.
Public statements by al-Qaeda (reprinted in Michael Scheuer’s Imperial Hubris) have said emphatically that their primary goals in attacking the US were to protest and revenge the killing of Muslims by Western military interventions and to end interference by the West (through military bases and weapons sales) in Muslim countries. In response to the many Westerners who have claimed that al-Qaeda’s attack was motivated by hatred of the freedom and openness of Western democracies, bin Laden asked: ‘Why then did we not attack Sweden?’
If many American Southerners still, 150 years later, deeply resent the defeat inflicted by Union armies in an excellent cause – ending slavery – we shouldn’t be surprised that Muslims still resent the much more recent humiliations inflicted on them by the West for the sake of controlling their energy resources.
Do you think American exceptionalism itself has become a secular religion that requires its own subtle forms of blind faith and absolutism?
The nationalist, as George Orwell once remarked, has an uncanny ability to see the atrocities committed by other nations and not to see those committed by his own. In other words, there is nothing exceptional about American exceptionalism. Every state portrays its motives as disinterested and generous, and insider intellectuals in every society are happy to parrot the State’s propaganda. The American propaganda system is unusually effective (see Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent for a detailed description). But in every society, those intellectuals, editors, scholars et al who toe the official line are rewarded with power and influence. Still, the US is a relatively free society, so we can find the truth – if we can tear ourselves away from television and social media.
When do you think humanitarian intervention has been warranted in the past (Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo)? What are your thoughts on R2P (‘responsibility to protect’)?
International law certainly recognizes a responsibility to protect. It belongs to the UN Security Council, when appealed to by a State or population under attack. Of course, the United Nations is now largely non-functional in this respect, because the superpowers have never fulfilled their obligations under the UN Charter. But, rather than give individual great powers the authority to intervene militarily, as at least some versions of the R2P doctrine envision, it would be preferable to address honestly the defects of the UN and try to repair them. The populations of the great powers must force their governments to obey international law, which those governments will never do otherwise.
How should progressives approach the freedom-of-speech issues that are being put to the test by Islamic terrorist attacks against speech they don’t find acceptable?
I think the traditional distinction between speech and action – action may be regulated, speech not – is by and large adequate. In general, the best remedy for falsehood is truth, the best remedy