Hazem Saghieh
TT

The World as One and the World as Different

Since serious talk began about a coronavirus vaccine with a high success rate being made available, the image of the world as one has begun to return to the fore. For all of it, in all of its parts, is asking for the vaccines and pinning its hopes on it, and its parts are mutually cooperating (and competing) to this end.

Recovery, then, will either be global or it won’t be a recovery.

The winds of optimism blew out the coronavirus’ self-aggrandizing isolating and isolation, not only between countries but within the same country, and its inducement of panic about strangers, immigrants, and refugees, and the fences it erected between men and women, not to mention the almost universal glorification of surveillance and punitive measures. When facts and information failed to curb this reactionary course, conspiracy theories came to its aid and support.

Before the coronavirus, over more than two decades, populist nationalism had solidified theories of isolation and fear. The largest and most powerful nations on earth successively came to fall under these theories’ spell and to be led by infallible leaders: Russia, China, India, the United States, Britain, Brazil ...

Besides medical vaccinations, it is now likely that after the US presidential elections, several international agreements that had broken down over the past four years will be revisited, especially the Paris Climate Agreement (2015), which the new Biden administration has not concealed its enthusiasm for. Protectionism and trade wars are also expected to recede, and trade agreements previously signed, either in revised or unrevised form, to be brought back.

The fact of the matter is that the populist wave, which found in the coronavirus pandemic both its extension and culmination, had originally emerged as a strong reaction to the transformations brought about by globalization and immigration. With these reactions, the countries raised their national sovereignty flags high. Perhaps the strongest reaction was the Brexit referendum in Britain that threatened the European Union’s very existence.

However, the latest developments have made expecting a return to skepticism about national sovereignty tenable, and it did the same for expecting that these developments that the populist resurgence wanted to disrupt could be built upon. Cleaning up the environment and curtailing desertification cannot be done by one country, neither can investing in rivers, almost all of which originate in one country and flow into another. The same applies to employment and immigration, and to fighting poverty, disease and illiteracy, as well as organized crime and controlling the massive international financial transactions and countless other issues, especially scientific and technological progress, for which international cooperation creates far better conditions.

However, beginning to present the world as one again does not mean that his unity has become viable. The transition from unity as an ideal and utopia to unity as a project is a long and arduous road that has several requisites, including the solidification of international institutions such as the United Nations and its offshoots and giving teeth to the principle of humanitarian intervention against regimes that tyrannize their peoples. This is, of course, tied to bringing an end to the ramifications of the coronavirus pandemic, especially the expansion of the space that security agencies and police occupy and the reinvigoration of some patriarchal values and practices.

It nevertheless remains true that parliamentary democracy’s recovery, if allowed to proceed, provides a serious source of confidence in this transitional path beyond the nation-state. It is a confidence that would increase further with an economic recovery that is accompanied by a fairer and more equitable distribution of wealth once the repercussions of the pandemic are overcome.

On the other hand, the military and security regimes are the obstinate obstacle hindering this optimist scenario from emerging, and they function, in many parts of the world, including ours, in solidarity with the extended kinship system (sectarian, ethnic ...) and rely on it. The two, alternately or in combination, suffocate millions of people nowadays and keep them stuck in pre-nation-statehood.

This course takes many forms and has many formulas, including the outbreak of open-ended civil wars and the population displacements that accompany them, which we have seen manifest especially glaringly in Syria. But we have also seen it in many other countries, the most recent of which is Ethiopia. We also have the expulsion of populations considered "different" from states and societies accepted modes of being, such as the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar and the Uighur Muslims in China, as well as states that are in paralysis in many countries ravaged by civil conflicts pending settlements that are external before being internal, to say nothing about corruption and the squander of resources in places where popular oversight and transparency are absent.

These are two opposite potentialities, one that tries to ascend beyond the state, and another sinking in what preceded it. Unfortunately, it would be illusory and naive to assume that these two paths could be combined.