WeeklySA_AdminDIMENSIONS: Today’s global disorder stems from intensified Eurocentrism and deeply embedded Western hypocrisy and racism, which shape international narratives and conflicts in self-serving ways, argues African academic Eyob Balcha Gebremariam…
By Eyob Balcha Gebremariam
The current global moment is expressed in many ways. Some see it as a rupture. Others prefer the term ‘global disorder’.
“Poly-crisis” and the end of the ‘liberal, rules-based world order’ are other frequently used expressions. I find the ‘rules-based world order’ framing utterly disingenuous and hypocritical.
I argue that the current state of the world is a meeting point of two fundamental historical processes: intensified Eurocentrism and normalised racism and hypocrisy. I explain my points as follows.
Eurocentrism, in simple terms, is the privileging of Europe’s socio-historical and political-economic realities as the sole lens for interpreting both past and present world history. This worldview is the outcome of a long history of empire and coloniality. It is imposed through both the hard and soft power of European political and economic dominance.
The benefits of NATO are exclusive to its member states, but
the dangers are framed as a worldwide debacle.
This is Eurocentrism at its best…
Eurocentrism is emboldened in the current global political dynamics by inflating Europe’s anxiety into a global phenomenon. A good example is the often invoked warning of the start of the “third world war.”
Most Euro-North American commentators warned that if the US were to invade Greenland, this might lead to the start of the third world war. What’s being threatened, literally, is the military alliance between America and its European partners.
This is not an oblivious claim that the rest of the world will remain completely unaffected. It is rather a statement of fact. Any conflict among NATO member countries will involve only a few of the countries worldwide.
NATO is a membership-based organisation for a reason. There is no logical basis for NATO to consider itself like the United Nations, where every country across the world is technically a member. It is the hegemonic power of Eurocentrism that creates the illusion that a disagreement among NATO members is equivalent to the entire world at war with itself. The benefits of NATO are exclusive to its member states, but the dangers are framed as a worldwide debacle. This is Eurocentrism at its best.
As an Ethiopian, I can provide a brief historical context to substantiate my claim. On May 12 1936, Emperor Haile Selassie delivered a speech at the League of Nations Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. His speech can be summarised into two core messages.
The first was a plea to the 55 member states of the League of Nations to use their collective power to stop Italy’s aggression against Ethiopia. The Emperor outlined the war crime committed by Italy in using chemical weapons against a defenceless population.
The Fascist Italian army was using its aeroplanes to spread mustard gas over civilian locations, including cattle, rivers, lakes, and pastures, “to kill off systematically all living creatures”.
The second core message was a warning, especially for Europe! The exiled Emperor prophesied that doomsday was coming. He rightly argued that if member states failed to stand up to Fascist Italy, they would eventually face the same danger.
His warning fell on deaf ears. The League of Nations had already imposed ineffective economic sanctions on Italy after its initial aggression. However, it was a slap in the face to anyone’s conscience that, after the Emperor outlined the war crimes committed by Fascist Italy, the League of Nations lifted the sanctions in July 1936.
The League of Nations killed itself because the majority of member states failed to uphold their own principles. When the principles of collective security enshrined in the organisation’s founding document were undermined, most other member states refrained from defending them.
Most of them even chose the aggressor’s side. If the principles had been strictly followed, an attack on one member should have been treated as an attack on all.
However, Ethiopia was not a European member state and did not warrant such support. In fact, the war between Ethiopia and Italy, two member states of the only global intergovernmental organisation, is not historically regarded as the beginning of “World War II”.
The Eurocentric historical account recognises the beginning of “World War Two” as September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Apparently, only European calamities can be elevated to the status of “World War”. This is an ideal example of Eurocentrism.
Normalised hypocrisy and racism
The loss of human life, including a genocidal war, was part of the everyday news cycle for the past three/four years. Eastern DRC, Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen have been epicentres of these devastating conflicts.
All the conflicts above involved multiple countries. Above all, the case of Gaza has been extremely unique, given the intensity and the collateral damage to innocent civilians. We witnessed the carpet bombing of densely populated urban areas, the dismemberment of children and women, and the justifications of ‘the right for self-defence.
’ Most Western countries provided the State of Israel with unconditional support in the form of weaponry, finance, intelligence, political and moral backing for a considerable time.
Most of the Western leaders performed multiple political gymnastics before calling out Israel. Their condemnations were quite measured and less alarmist. None of them framed the annihilation of thousands of civilians, the intentional destruction of non-military infrastructure, the use of significantly disproportionate force, as the dismantling of “the rules-based world order”. The demise of the so-called “rules-based world order” became a primary concern only when the West became the victim. The level of hypocrisy is deep.
Again, history is our best teacher. What Western countries often categorise as a “rules-based world order” has a flip side of disorder and chaos. The Western countries sustained the semblance of order mainly among themselves by manufacturing chaos and disorder in the global South. We can count several occasions since the 1960s. This includes the brutal assassination of Patric Lumumba and Thomas Sankara in DRC and Burkina Faso, respectively, to the several US-sponsored coups and regime changes in the Caribbean and Latin America. In our recent memories, we have the Iraq War. Fabricated consensus about weapons of mass destruction served as a basis for the invasion of Iraq by the West. The region is yet to recover from the spill-over effect and the large-scale destabilisation that ensued.
Most Western countries that are currently crying about global disorder mobilised their military and joined the US in its war on fabricated evidence. Despite glaring evidence of wrongdoing and criminality leading to the Iraq War, the West continued to claim the moral high ground.
In fact, the key figure who led the UK into the war, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, received the highest knighthood in his country. This is how the empire pats itself on the back.
As we learned recently, Tony Blair has even become one of the key players in cementing the new phase of imperialism in the Middle East, especially in Gaza, the ‘Board of Peace.’
Whilst acknowledging the hypocrisy, Prime Minister Mark Carney failed to mention the inherent racism in the Western-dominated world (dis)order. Leaders of Western countries and their mainstream media react differently to war and crises when the actual or potential victims are White people.
Mainstream Western media showed its bias and racism when reporting the first phases of the Ukraine-Russia war. Sympathy for the victims, humanising framing of refugees with emphasis on the difference between European White and Black/Brown victims. The sympathy was right, but the double standard was wrong.
By contrast, when the primary victims are Black and Brown bodies, the response can vary. These may include manufacturing consent through fabricated evidence, justifying on legal grounds, or providing direct support for the favoured ally. It may also include celebrating impunity through knighthood, as with Tony Blair, or through the Nobel Peace Prize, as with Henry Kissinger.
Hypocrisy and racism are mutually reinforcing features of the so-called ‘rules-based world order’ that is upending. In his Davos speech, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney cemented the racist feature of the Western- dominated world order by admitting only the hypocrisy.
The benefits of NATO are exclusive to its member states, but the dangers are framed as a worldwide debacle. This is Eurocentrism at its best. – Roape
* Dr Eyob is a decolonial political economist with a regional focus on African political economy
