ABSTRACT
The triumphalism that resounded around the world following the end of the Cold War has turned out to be misplaeed. Confliet - systemie in the global stand-off between 'good' and 'evil'/ inter-state in the sparring between Pakistan and India, the war in lraq and in the former Yugoslavia, intra-state in Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone and elsewhere - has been made all the more dangerous by the preponderanee ofnuelear and biologieal weapomy.3 New fears emanating from the apoealyptie hallueinations of global terrorist networks, the rapid spread of diseases around the world, and concerns about the seale of environmental catastrophe have heightened levels of insecurity, uneertainty and risk. Even the fulcrum that is designed to underpin the global system - the transatlantie alliance - has seen a freeze in its relations which has the potential to turn polar in its intensity.4 The erisis of global govemance, evidenced in the splits and ruptures feIt by both the United Nations and the World Bank, aptly exposes the idealism eontained in utopian dreams of eosmopolitan demoeracy and global civil society.5 Against this backdrop of turbulence, any notion of 're-ordering the world' looks hopelessly naive, a delusion best explained by what Fred Halliday ealls 'the complaeency of a triumphal age. ,6
1 Halliday (1999: 1). 2 The categories of 'good' and 'evil' are those invoked by US President George W. Bush to distinguish between states that subscribe to principles of 'freedom' and 'axis of evil' states, which follow a quite discrete normative, political and economic path. 3 These categories are overiapping: none of the civil conflicts cited in Africa, for example, can be designated as completely 'intra-state' evidenced by the involvement of Ugandan troops in the Rwandan conflict, and British involvement in Sierra Leone. 4 On this, the most evocative waming is evinced by Robert Kagan, co-founder ofthe Project for the New American Century, who wams that, when it comes to international affairs, American and European perspectives are diverging to the extent that 'Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.' Kagan (2003: 1). 5 On WTO fissure, see Stiglitz (2002); on cosmopolitanism, see Held (1995, 2004); on global civil society, see Kaldor (2003). 6 The notion of 'reordering the world' is one advocated by British thinkers and policymakers, usually of the left. Hence the contributions by Tony Blair, lack Straw and others to a book published by the Foreign Policy Centre on the theme. See Leonard (ed) (2002).
