Mark Malloch-Brown Pursues a New International Politics

Mark Malloch-Brown’s new book The Unfinished Global Revolution: The Pursuit of a New International Politics takes the reader on a thoughtful, highly personal and wonderfully readable tour of the troubles of managing global collective action in a world of sovereign states. Accompany Lord Malloch-Brown on a trip down memory lane of a remarkable life largely devoted to international public service: Thatcher’s England; the Khmer Rouge’s final days of horror; the UN’s humanitarian mission undermined by Bush’s war in Iraq; Cory Aquino and other democratic transitions; Jim Wolfensohn’s attack on debt and frustrated efforts to change the culture at the World Bank; and the valiant but ultimately failed reform program at the United Nations, where U. S. Ambassador John Bolton foiled Kofi Annan’s efforts to bring serious reform to the United Nations.All this is served up to underline a key message: Globalization is making us more interconnected but less governable. We have a global economy and society but not a global polity.I introduced Mark, who among other things is a CGD Board member, at the Washington DC launch of his book at Brookings yesterday. I offered three comments:

1. The book, like Al Gore’s documentary on climate change, presents a huge global challenge without attempting to describe the solution—and that’s OK, since the solution will require lots more work by lots more people. Perhaps the book can get more people (Americans especially) feeling and thinking globally.
2. Global collective action is in trouble with the loss of America’s unipolar moment – when the United States was big and dominant and its values (openness, a liberal trading environment, democracy and prosperity around the world) were nicely aligned with its interests.
3. It is time to redefine development as a global imperative in which all nations and people have a common interest, not as a matter of aid as charity passed from rich to poor nations (for more on this, see this lecture I gave in the Netherlands). For example, it is well past time for the members of the World Bank, including the United States, to give that global institution a clear mandate and new instruments to address climate change and other global public good challenges that put development around the world at risk.

Perhaps one reason that there has been insufficient appetite for such solutions is that there is too little understanding of how and why the lack of effective global governance is a problem for us all. I’m hoping that Mark’s terrific book will help to fix that.