I have been arguing this very point for the last week, far less eloquently of course. Westerners, fully absorbed within their own perspective, have virtually no comprehensiopn of the extent to which UN “law” and global governance framework under the auspices of multi-lateral institutions, are modeled and built upon their conception of what the world should be.

In the post WWII consensus, weaker, less organized “developing” nations have gone allong with this program, essentially at a state level. I dont find any convincing evidence that at the grassroots level, their is any accpetance of these supranational insitutions as bearing governing legitamacy.

Two forces are about to collide. On the one hand the natural creep by power authorites to extend their reach. Witness, the steady expansion of the Hague’s self proclaimed mandate to investigate Human rights abuses at ever smaller granualations, within sovereign states. On the other hand, the accelerating growth of economic and political power among non-western powers towards a critical mass inflection point, that will bring direct challanges to many assumed sacred cow “settled issues” of the UN, that will come as a shock to much of the west.

Climate change is another one of these issues for which we have yet to hear from the majority poor on their take on the trade off’s between rescource deplation, acceptable pollution, and economic growth.

Eloquent? Ad hominem is more like it.

Ana Majnun