Progressive internationalists must show they are best-placed to promote democracy and tackle terrorism

"Ideas create contemporary terrorist networks, but poverty provides footsoldiers who die and audiences that cheer the bombing of symbols of western freedom"

David Miliband’s speech in Oxford last month laid out the clear challenge that faces progressive internationalists in the post-Iraq invasion world. But to understand where the internationalist left should go from here it has become important, if not essential, to define clearly what we are not. This is always a depressing place to have to begin building a case from, but after Iraq it is vital that we state clearly what we are not before trying to engage people with what we are for.

Whenever you do this on a personal level the results are surprising. I have lost count of the number of times I meet people who initially cannot understand how a progressive can be in favour of intervention, indeed can have endorsed the necessity for regime change in Iraq. After outlining what progressive internationalism is not the conversation alters direction substantially. After explaining what progressive internationalism is for, one can begin to glimpse the reconstruction of that broad coalition that embraced a new dawn in international relations after the collapse of the Soviet Union and before the hegemony of the neo-conservatives led us to the disastrous implementation of regime change in Iraq. Let us state what we are not.

Progressive internationalists are not neo-conservatives. We are not warmongers and we do not believe that hard power solutions either always work or are always the right answer. We do not believe there is one model of free market capitalism that must be imposed on the world. We do not believe that west is always best; that Islam is a totalitarian ideology that wants to take over the world; that George Bush is the new FDR or that Tony Blair could, if he wanted, turn water into wine. But neither do we believe that western intervention always makes matters worse, that if an American politician believes something it must be wrong or that fascism dressed up as religious belief is an invention of totalitarian western ‘democracies’ designed to replace reasoned political discussion with fear of the other.

The reason fear exists in this world, at this time, is because there is an ideological struggle going on and within that struggle there are people who want to destroy our way of life and the way of life of their moderate co-believers. It is a struggle with a revolutionary cadre who will use any means necessary to achieve their objectives. Our challenge as progressives is to defeat this enemy and, at the same time, remove the ground from which the support for
this enemy grew.

If the foundation of our international identity as social democrats is universalism then the expression of that belief must be actions rather than words or resolutions to act at some point, when the circumstances are right and the conditions amenable. Nye Bevan used to say that the social furniture of the 20th century was too fragile to live alongside the jackboot.

In the 21st century it is again the case that the characteristic image that can express the experience of life in many states, especially for women trying to make their own choices about their lives, is a jack boot in the face – not as a kick so much as a constant pressure holding you down so that you cannot escape. And now the jack boot is not only directed by states it also comes from international terrorist networks who do not kick in faces but strap explosives around the waists of well-paid Martyrs who sit on buses or walk into nightclubs. There is no progressive ideology of the left that should accept this state of affairs or try to understand it as being culturally relative. It is not a relative issue. It is, or should be, for progressives, an absolute truth - there is no religion dressed as ideology that justifies the murder of civilians.

There is a violent revolutionary movement which cloaks itself in the language of Islam and which is set on destroying democracy. It must be fought as any revolutionary movement has been fought through the ages when it set out to impose the will of the minority onto the life choices of the majority – through hard and soft power. Our failure to quickly confront and defeat such movements in the past, for example the Bolsheviks and the Nazis, had terrible consequences.

If we can accept this then we begin to create the space for the discussions that need to take place. Progressives are not neo-cons for many reasons but mostly because they embrace the complexity of the interconnectedness of issues and do not have a simple blueprint for solving the world’s problems. They have an approach and, understanding and defining that approach, they make clearer the distance between our worldview and that of the isolationist right and the fellow-travelling left. This interconnectedness can be summed up and thought about in a series of key relationships and challenges.

The threat of global warming is both environmental and profoundly political. It is underpinned by resource wars which have ravaged Africa, South America and the Middle East. The political dimensions of energy policy and the implications of energy-derived wealth for the prospect of democratic consolidation will become increasingly central issues as oil dependency faces ever dwindling supply.

The deepening of energy inequality, unless offset by redistributive economic policies on a global scale that go significantly beyond millennium goals, will continue to feed systemic underdevelopment in sizable portions of the world. This poverty does not create violence. Ideas create contemporary terrorist networks, but poverty provides footsoldiers who die and audiences that cheer the bombing of symbols of western freedom. Poverty also provides a context that victims of the Pilger worldview can point to as explanations and justifications for terrorism. Economic growth and development that is evenly distributed are keys to political development. Successful democracies therefore have well-functioning states based on social markets and progressives should be at the forefront of opposing the ‘stateless’ models of the neo-cons. In turn the free movement of peoples and the relationship between democratic consolidation and greater equality is clear.

Progressive internationalists also need to return the issue of nuclear proliferation to the forefront of debate. This needs to be done both in terms of new states seeking to join the nuclear club but also in terms of reducing and destroying as much of the old Cold War nuclear stockpile as possible.

Underpinning all of these challenges and problems, the root cause of many of them and the essence of their solution, is what David Miliband calls the ‘Democratic Imperative’. Progressive internationalists need to reclaim the territory of democracy building as our own.

Brian Brivati
is director of the John Smith Memorial Trust

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