Today, officials from the European Union plan to sign off on a major trade and investment agreement with Japan, known colloquially as JEFTA. The deal, which is multiple years in the making, has drawn intense concern from environmental and labour campaigners due to its lack of provisions on whaling (amazingly still a problem in 2018), weak commitment to sustainable development, and inclusion of rules that could facilitate the privatisation of public services, including water, in Germany and other EU states. In addition, the deal refuses to recognise the precautionary principle and includes restrictions on the right of states to regulate multinational corporations.
JEFTA, written behind closed doors by lobby shops, is only visible to campaigners because it was leaked to Greenpeace. Yet, bar a freak accident, it will be signed off tomorrow without a public referendum in any country.
The agreement, like its sister deal CETA and the WTO, should be reminders of the dark side of globalisation, which, as of late, has not been fashionable to discuss.
Ever since Donald Trump was installed as President in the US, media commentators and political flacks in Europe and North America alike have been voicing their concern for the state of the "international rules-based order" with increasing hysteria. Every article, speech, or proclamation on the topic may as well have been written by a machine- spit out the words- 1945, liberal democratic, international norms, NATO, human rights, free trade, open markets, etc etc.
Increasingly, this rhetoric has become a mirror image of far-right conspiratorial thinking- whereas the various fascists and right wing populists of Europe and the US brand any and all international institutions as "globalists" organ run by a combination of George Soros, "bankers," migrants, Islam, and liberal politicians, the liberal centre lumps all transnational groups into a singe category, with little distinction between, say, NATO, founded after the Second World War, and the Paris Climate Agreement, signed around 70 years later.
These duelling bipolar narratives are highly beneficial to both sides, and disastrous for the public at large. While leaders like Salvini and Seehofer can pass draconian anti-refugee policies under the guise of "sovereignty," and while Orban can criminalise NGOs as puppets of "globalist" Soros, the centre can push though trade deals like CETA and call for increased NATO military spending under the guise of defending "openness" and "internationalism."
Indeed, it could easily be said that these two sides of the same coin feed entirely off one another. One needs only to look at the Syrian catastrophe to understand how the ultra-right can use centrist policy mistakes to make electoral hay, while feeding instability that creates a desire for further intervention on the part of the centrists.
Absent is the nuanced- and essential- view adopted by the left as recently as 10 years ago. Call it "alter-globalisation," the "global justice movement," the "global intifada" or "globalisation from below," this perspective sees the world not through a struggle between the national and the international, but international humanity and the corporate capitalist system holding it back.
Organisations and agreements such as the Paris Climate Accord, the United Nations, the Club of Rome, the World Health Organisation, and the Iran Nuclear Deal, while in desperate need of reform and by no means perfect, were intended to protect peace, human rights, and the environment, and are thus different animals entirely from both the organisations created by the United States after the Second World War (IMF, World Bank, GATT, NATO) and more recent "free trade" deals like the WTO, TTIP, NAFTA, and TPP, invented almost solely to further corporate profits and entrench US-style consumer capitalism and military hegemony all over the world. Talk of improving such bodies goes against their very nature, and they should therefore be abolished.
Refugees and migrants from Africa, the Arab World, and Central America are not multinational corporations like Google and Nike. NGOs like Greenpeace, Amnesty International, and MSF Sea are not Bilderberg or the Trilateral Commission. Yet based on the rhetoric of both the centre and the far-right, one could quite easily conflate them.
The European Union in particular has been the target of slings and arrows from racists and xenophobes. At the same time, legitimate criticisms can easily be made of the institution- it is undemocratic, based on a shoddy economic model, and beholden to entrenched special interests.
One can reject the current model of the EU and still support unity among the peoples of Europe. Organisations like DiEM25 on the social-democratic side, along with more radical communist anarchist collectives, have sought to highlight common humanity while both the extreme right and the extreme centre.
No matter what tendency of the left one supports- from Bookchin-style anarchism to democratic socialism of the vein practiced by Corbyn in the UK and the DSA in the United States, one should wholeheartedly refuse to see the world through the lens of the conspiracist right or the corporate liberal centre. Unfortunately, however, many people, and not just liberal-leftists, have leaped to the defence of NATO, the G7 and the WTO over the past few weeks, as Donald Trump makes a fuss about withdrawing from them.
Trump is perhaps the most repulsive individual on the planet today. Yet if one defines themselves entirely by their opposition to him (or equally, in opposition to Blair, Clinton, and the neoliberals), it is impossible to maintain the humanist, egalitarian, and ecological worldview that is common to nearly all on the left.
It's time for us to once more set the terms of the debate-and our understanding of a capitalist world plunging towards its demise- rather than relying on the language and outlook of ideologies that are historically, morally, and philosophically bankrupt.
After all, no matter how many JEFTAs are signed, another world remains possible.