Voices of Mexico no. 67

Our Voice

The current international situation is dominated by trends that were thought to have faded with the end of the Cold War. The United States has gone from playing a protectionist role mainly on economic issues to reinforcing its isolationist policy since the 9/11 attacks. This has been bolstered through mechanisms that strengthen the so-called National State of Security. One of these mechanisms has been the implementation of “preventive war,” actually quite an old foreign policy instrument in the U.S. diplomatic tradition.

In that sense, and in the context of the imposition in international relations of hegemonic national security criteria —today beginning to be called “securitization”— the following elements have been involved: a) the notion of cooperative security; b) prevention as a long-term concept and policy instrument; c) the return to a predominantly hegemonic international climate instead of a balance of powers which dominated in the bipolar era —this is the origin of the question of whether hegemony is the same as world stability; d) the real —and legitimate?— room for manoeuver that the democratic system has for implementing preventive wars; e) the impact that these wars have on democratic governability, on the integrity of democratic institutions, on the interests and rights of civil society, which seems to be reacting in a new way to the doubtful consensus underlying this state of war; and, lastly, f) the meaning that all this has and will have (mainly because of the invasion of Iraq) with regard to the current organization of the United Nations and the future of multilateralism.

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