ForeignPolicy: 3rd Piece of the Puzzle
by John Rensenbrink

Third Piece: the North/South Division

Dear Greens on all shores,

      I move on to a third Piece of the puzzle. The major thesis of the first two Pieces goes something like this: First, Europe, though still in a state of ultimate dependence on the U.S., will increasingly seek independence of the over-weening power and dominating arrogance of the U.S. government. Second, that European Greens do, and should, applaud and support such a trend, but without letting it take a strident military (and economically agressive) form that pits Europe against the U.S. and will inspire the U.S. government to intensify its quest for domination and control. Third, that in order for Greens in Europe to be successful in this, it is essential that Greens in the United States and their allies develop a political power sufficient to temper (if not transform) the imperialist and hegemonic drive of the U.S. government as presently constituted. Thus, it is argued, a combination of Greens in Europe and Greens in the United States and Canada can help a new policy, a new kind of leadership, a new direction to emerge that will alter the present policies that are driving both the U.S. and Europe towards disaster, and the world along with them.

      A large order you may say.

      Indeed, but wait until you consider the next one.

      The next one, and it is an even deeper issue if you can believe it, is the North/South division.

      I shall state the problem as briefly as possible, since most of us know a good deal about its various disturbing facets.

      The fundamental problem is that the South (and this includes China) has for some time now been deluded into thinking that the way forward is to imitate and emulate the development process of the North, the anti-nature techno-industrial model. The delusion is of course fostered by the multinational corporations. It is also fostered big time by the so-called aid institutions of the North (IMF, World Bank, etc etc.) and by the bureaucrats and experts provided to the South by Northern governments.But it must also be acknowledged that the elites and peoples of the South have bought into this delusion to some considerable degree, just as happened in the North in its period of taking off from the agrarian economy and society of their past.

      The problem is deeply complicated. For one thing, the populations of the South are for the most part determined not to live like their grandfathers and mothers, they want *modernization*, they want consumer goods, they want to have a better life (since what they have now is abysmal poverty and often grinding soul-defeating physical and spiritual deprivations together with horrible environmental pollution that they feel they have to put up with in order to get out from under the pall of eternal poverty): and so, they want development and the only one they know about or hear about is the anti-nature techno-industrial model run on fossil fuels, the Northern model. For another thing: insofar as the peoples and (even the) elites of the South would like to stop the pollution, would like to have clean air, water, land, food, smaller families, insofar as this is the case, and it is the case in many places, yet they can't. Two things weigh them down.(A) They are shackled by political tyranny, straigtjacketed into oppressive social, economic, and political rigidities (whether this is China, or Brazil,or Iraq or Singapore), and it is often Northern governments and multinational corporations that permit and indeed foster such conditions. (B) The second thing they are shackled by is that they can't afford it. A new model of development is too expensive. So they are condemned to the same process the North went (and is going) through and it's much worse, if that is possible to believe, but believe you me, it may be even worse than *the dark satanic mills*, than Birmingham or Pittsburg or even Love Canal.

      There is an answer. Oh yes, there is. It is to be found in the flame of freedom that is not extinguished anywhere in the world. So that anywhere in the world (North or South, North and South) human beings there are who will fight for freedom from tyranny and from the rigidities imposed on people by oppressive and greedy machines and mafias.

      That is one flaming answer. The second answer lies in the North especially. The North does have the material and intellectual resources to help provide the South with the basis for a new developmental beginning rooted in a nature-friendly, people friendly technology. Not as an act of philanthropy. Not at all. But as an act of friendliness, cooperation, in recognition of past unfriendly exploitation and in recognition of our common destiny on this beautiful planet.

      However, not so fast. This must go hand in hand with a profound shift in the North away from fossil fuels and away from hyper-consumption habits and patterns. If the North is to provide real help to the South it must get its own house in order: it itself must shift away from the old modernization model and towards an economy and society that is truly in balance with nature.

      Well, and how is this to happen, how is it to happen that real assistance is provided the South, that a new model of development is offered and fostered, and that the North itself shifts into a new develomental mode? And how is it to happen that the South can in turn cooperate and get excited by the new model and pursue a new developmental pathway?

      The answer in both cases, however much many may still wish to resist it, is POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION, in both the South and the North. Democracy is on the agenda and that's first. The Green Party in every country, North and South, has a solemn and glorious task: to be that political force that can so act within their own body politic that they achieve a substantial turning and tempering of their respective government into new pathways and new directions. This is the key to planetary sanity, healing, and hope.

      Of major significance, once again, is what happens in the United States. The Greens here need all the help they can get. Part of that help is a gentle but firm understanding among Greens everywhere of just what is at stake and how critical it is that the Green struggle for political power in the United States be supported, for it is far more important than it has hitherto been thought to be.

      Democracy. Community. Solar technology. Conservation ethic. Global Cooperation. There is implicit in this the need to think through what a planetary government might look like. We do need a vision of a federated world, for that would provide us with a sense of where we are going, of what kind of a world order can and should be ours in this next millenium. I will offer my own (very modest) idea for a planetary goverment in the next, the fourth Piece.