Globalising Values, Actualising Abstractions

The Vicar of Downing Street appears to be limbering up for the coming years on the lecture circuit. After a bit of a gambol at the White House, during which George W Bush said things about Iraq and Iran and his reverence agreed with George W Bush, Tony informed the world that a "hopeless mismatch" existed between the challenges faced by the modern world and the global institutions which are meant to deal with them. In other words, "the west would sometimes need to take pre-emptive military action abroad, even if it was not on the basis of definite information", and the antiquated behemoths of international law have yet to take cognizance of this fact.

His reverence appealed, once again, for a certain geometrical delineation to be appended to a certain issue: "It has been three years since Saddam fell, and it has been three years of strife and bloodshed but it has also seen something remarkable." His reverence finds nothing very remarkable about the strife and bloodshed which has accompanied his most extensive exercise in global value-sharing. "How could we possibly, in the face of such a struggle so critical to our own values, not see it through?"

On the subject of values, his reverence homilified that "We should stand up for our own values, asserting that they are not western but global values". The global values he referred to are "liberty, democracy, tolerance, justice"; so given the present state of liberty, democracy, tolerance and justice in the US and Britain, it is certainly arguable that they are not western values. Nevertheless, "These are the values universally accepted across all nations, faiths and races, though not by all elements within them"; in other words, these values are global except for those who do not accept them. "These are values that can inspire and unify", if only a few troublesome elements in Haiti, Iraq, Palestine, Uzbekistan, Bolivia, Venezuela and the spinally endowed portions of the parliamentary Labour Party would listen to George and Tony and do as they are told.

But even these universal values, which are shared by almost everyone except those who do not share Tony and George's idea of them, "will only succeed if they are seen to be fairly and even-handedly applied." A few decades ago, "countries could wait, assess over time, even opt out, at least until everything was clear. We could act when we knew". Now, however, "we have to act, not react; we have to do so on the basis of prediction, not certainty; and such action will, if not usually, then often be outside of our own territory." So we must act whether or not there is any cause for it; and such action will often, if not usually, trample over the sovereign rights of other nations. Naturally, they will not be permitted to do the same to us; we are the ones with the global values, after all.