This story has significance for readers across Kenya and beyond.
Two major global epochal events have until now defined geopolitics. The first was the so-called World War II in which the West, led by the United States, defeated fascism championed by Germany’s Adolf Hitler and his Japanese and Italian consiglieri. The second was decolonisation in which countries – mostly in the Global South – freed themselves from direct European colonial rule.
These events started the gradual process of removing the most visible signs of global Eurocentrism. It became somewhat unfashionable to be openly racist. The struggle against Apartheid South Africa deepened the outward rejection of the public performance of naked White bigotry. Equalitarian projects and skin-deep attempts to repudiate notions of White supremacy became the vogue. The United Nations became the global symbol of this “new world.”
It is important not to blow out of proportion, or process through shallow thick bifocals what the post-1945 era ushered on the globe. While the pre-1945 era was defined by unapologetic philosophies and global structures of the disdain of difference and equity, the epoch that followed was sheathed in syrupy concepts of non-discrimination and equal protections norms.
“All men are created equal”
The loudest manifestation of this era was a holier-than-thou schema of global governance championed by the West. Central to this philosophy was the highly effective bundle of norms known as human rights. Its motto was that “all men are created equal.” The order’s central claims were undermined by that sexist framing. That was only the tip of the iceberg of what the “new world order” didn’t openly reveal.
Hidden under the canvas of human rights and universalism was the projection and perpetuation of global power and race asymmetries as in “white over black” and the pre-eminence of Eurocentrism in global commerce, military hegemonies, and philosophies of hierarchies of human beings. The world came to accept in the soft language of human rights and democracy that whiteness and Eurocentrism – the centering of white power and privilege everywhere on the globe – was “second nature.” The world settled. It accepted white superiority through the UN and its institutions. The bigotry of low expectations for people of color became a global norm. Not even the rise of Asia, especially China, Japan, and later the so-called Asian tigers tamped down this reality. The UN itself and its sister organisations – World Bank, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization, and a myriad other “global” institutions came to embody the centrality of the Eurocentric rule of the globe under the hegemony and tutelage of the US.
This has been the “natural order” of the post-1945 Pax Americana. The US could project its power anywhere, anytime, anyhow. In its duopolistic combat with the Soviet Union, the US vanquished its competitor and relegated it to a nuclear power without any economic muscle or global seduction. That’s how America came to bestride the Earth like a colossus. Then this world order started to crumble. It got tired and gave way to disillusion. The promise of the UN Charter now lies in tatters.
Re-enactment of global hegemonies
International liberalism has had a good run. But it seems like all systems, it’s run its course. In the last two decades, demons of the past have come back to haunt the system. This is very interesting because the UN didn’t ideologically repudiate in its totality the old order of power by might and by racial entitlement. It merely wore cleaner gloves and packaged them in the language of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law. But underneath that glove was always an iron fist. We can say the UN hoodwinked all of us into believing that a universal nirvana was finally here. But we should have seen through the smokescreen of sweet-sounding nothings. Peel back the mask so you can see.
The power of the UN lay not in the General Assembly but in the Security Council, the exclusive club dominated by the five permanent members – US, Britain, France, China, and Russia. What’s my point? As the Chinese saying goes, the sun can not for long be hidden. The scaffolding that the UN sought to deflect the naked power of the most powerful countries has been removed and we are now back to the era of open brutality akin the age of direct colonial rule. Racists and bigots now occupy powerful positions across the globe. They talk and walk with the swagger of the racist cowboy. We are now constantly being reminded that we all “Indians” in this movie. No more pretense.
Racism is again sexy. The gains of the last epoch, no matter how shallow they have been, are now being wiped out. The mask is off. We are witnessing in real time the re-sexualisation of racism and the re-enactment of global hegemonies.
The United Nations stands by limping, if not mortally wounded. It’s mute as carnage and genocide are committed with impunity. Can it recover and re-assert some moral authority, or is it dead and only needs a decent burial? Can we recover humanity?
Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. On X: @makaumutua.
Reporting originally appeared via Nation Africa. Read the full source for additional context.