The choice rests with the West

The fear for us all is that by standing up instead for a continuation of colonial behaviour masquerading as universal principles we are limiting the right to define international development to a sub-set of peoples who command the superior technologies of violence. This law of the jungle reproduces a condition in which no-one is secure and no-one is happy, characterised by uncertain consequences. We cannot presume the success of a western modernisation project, brought about by the military-industrial complex of Texas. The choice of instrument forecloses that outcome. The transcending issues is the relation between choice and alienation. Absence of the former produces the latter, and the latter is only honourably resolved by seizing the conditions for choice rather than receiving the choices of others. That choice might indeed resemble western modernisation summarised as democratic capitalism, but the point is that the choice must freely exist. Of course if western modernisation is summarised as colonial oppression by the mighty over the weak, then process has to be dealt with before substance.

This is where we are now in the Middle East and many other places in the world. The behaviour of the West has effectively shifted a debate about substance to one about process and rights to choose substance. The struggle globally is, ironically, more about the latter than the former. In other words, the principle of freedom has displaced the propositions about what to do with that freedom. Do we think, for example, that the suicide bombers and the settlers in the territory we call Palestine and Israel have fundamentally opposed views about the good life? The family-based adults from both communities espouse the same substance, as they do across the divide in Northern Ireland. The difference is the extent of choice available to each community. But if the powerful community cuts off the choice, and removes the range of options for the pursuit of secure welfare for the other community then a colonial relationship has been re-established. In the west, we would not like that for ourselves. That is why many who opposed the last war, would have supported the second world war as a just one: the defence of choice.

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So back to my young men and women in the alienated world. What lies ahead for them, excluded as they are from citizenship and access to global opportunities? With what hope can they fall in love and build families? How can they meet their kinship obligations to their parents and grandparents? With the loss of face from colonial humiliation comes shame. How is shame to be overcome and dignity restored? A failure to confront shame is shame itself. Without a paradigm shift in the West towards a more long term and sustainable foreign policy, based upon a more inclusive process by which international development is defined and pursued, we can expect a globalisation of the intifada starting, ironically, in the cradle of civilisation itself. The choice, it seems, is with us in the West -- have we already made the wrong one for the 21st century?

Geof Wood is Professor of International Development, University of Bath.