Historic Climate Deal Reached

'This deal puts the fossil fuel industry on the wrong side of history.'—Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International

By Andrea Germanos

teleSUR English spoke to author Jean Bricmont on how the industry and ideology of human rights has been used to justify imperialism and undermine the efficiency of the European and North American left.

teleSUR English: Your book “Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell War” was released in English back in 2006 following the invasion of Iraq by the U.S. and the British, so for those not familiar with the book could you briefly outline the contents and the argument and tell us what exactly inspired you to write it?

Jean Bricmont: It goes back to the Kosovo War when there was no opposition to the war in at least Belgium and France. In fact, there was widespread consensus on the left and the far left for that war because it was a war for “human rights” and we “had to stop genocide.” The opposition to the Iraq War was actually quite weak because people accepted sanctions and all sorts of things that led to the war, but there was at least a certain opposition to the war. But there was no opposition to the Libyan War to speak of and there's been indirect support for interventions in Syria and Ukraine. I think the left has completely lost its senses because they have totally lost any idea of the relationship of forces between nations in the world. Of course, this goes along with the liberal ideology of the market: Everyone goes to the market, everyone competes on the market and all the nations are equal, and then there's a superpower that's supposed to be the cop that's going to enforce human rights. And the human rights ideology, not the goal of human rights as such but the ideology that the West should always intervene and human rights organizations should always denounce, this ideology has totally wiped out the West including the left in the West and maybe more the left than the right. On the right there are still people who think of the national interest in terms of realpolitik, which I think nowadays is a lesser evil than waging war against everybody.

teleSUR English: Dec. 10 is International Human Rights Day which celebrates the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the General Assembly. Could you briefly chart the history of human rights in the 20th and 21st centuries and tell us what, in your opinion, went wrong?

Jean Bricmont: The Declaration of Human Rights is obviously full of good intentions. There is a right to education, there is a right to food and so on. But suppose I am hungry, how am I going to enforce those rights? Those rights cannot be enforced because rights can only be enforced within a state that has the power to enforce those rights. You need police, you need courts and so on and so forth. The problem mostly comes after the 1960s. Before that it's true that respect for state power was far too extreme, so I understand why people thought that they needed to protest against state power, but the problem is that they've never incorporated a desire for peace. The Declaration of Human Rights was introduced at the same time of the Nuremberg trials and the principles and charters of the U .N. The charter of the U.N. is also an important document to maintain peace because it assumes we have to have equal respect for states large and small, strong and weak.

    “The ideology of human rights … has been used in a systematic way in order to undermine the sovereignty of weak states and justify intervention.” 

The ideology of human rights however has been used in a systematic way in order to undermine the sovereignty of weak states and justify intervention, which has always existed and was one of the causes of World War II. One of the reasons why the U.N. charter was created after the war was to prevent the repetition of such events, and now we have chaos in Libya, Syria and Ukraine, we have chaos everywhere. Then there are refugees and then there's a xenophobic reaction to the refugees, but what do you expect? It's totally unrealistic to expect people to welcome millions of refugees and not protest, just as it's totally unrealistic to think human rights can be enforced through war. Eventually war makes the worst in human beings come to the fore. We say we have a responsibility to protect without asking who's responsible for the protection. The protection of course comes from the United States, but the United States is not a benevolent power as we've seen throughout history. It has its own agenda and it wages war against the countries it considers its enemies. It's not going to protect the Palestinians, it's not going to protect the Yemenis, it's not going to intervene in Saudi Arabia. And so we give power to an absolute sovereign who uses it as it sees fit. This has been a total subversion of human rights, which I of course respect as an idea but not the way it has been put into practice. That includes Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, who have all been incredibly biased in their denunciation of human rights abuses.

teleSUR English: I was just going to ask you about the relationship between the left, the imperial governments such as the U.S., France and Britain, human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as well as the U.N. itself? What's the relationship between these different actors?

Jean Bricmont: With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Bloc, the left needed a holy ghost to rally around and instead of socialism it chose human rights. The problem with that is that human rights were always used during the Cold War as a rallying cry for the right against the Communists. You don't need to be a Communist to be suspicious of this ideology of human rights. By embracing this ideology of human rights they thought they were subversive but they were not. The right was actually quite happy with the way it was used ideologically, they've always had those kinds of double standards. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, far from seeing the birth of a genuine left as people like Chomsky might have hoped for, what happened was a total capitulation and an embrace of the idea of the enemy. Now we have a sort of artificial division between the left and the right, for example in the area of gay rights which the right might not like, but when it comes to war, peace, the market and the economy there isn't any consistent thought, even in thinking of alternatives to neoliberalism.

teleSUR English: The British have just joined a coalition of airstrikes against the Islamic State group in Syria. The need to intervene by the pro-interventionists was firmly rooted in the rhetoric of humanitarianism. How do you read the situation in Syria and what role are the Islamic State group playing for outside powers?

Jean Bricmont: It's a bit complicated because in 2013 the West were debating whether to intervene because Assad allegedly used chemical weapons, and now they're intervening against the enemies of Assad. It seems to me there is no real thinking. First they were supporting the rebels fighting against Assad, and now they're in effect helping Assad despite not wanting to admit to it openly. So now they're fighting the worst enemies of Assad while claiming to not have any contact with the Syrian army, which makes no sense because if you want to be efficient then you should be in contact with the troops on the ground that are fighting ISIS, mainly the Syrian army.

    “The priority seems to be a show of force, they want to show they're doing something despite not doing anything effective.” 

However, they don't want to do that because of their human rights, so they're in a situation in which they're going to bomb and create hatred among those who could sympathize with them, and they're not going to be effective on the ground. I don't think they should do it but it would actually make sense for them to join the Russians and Syrians and fight ISIS together with troops on the ground, but that doesn't seem to be a priority. The priority seems to be a show of force, they want to show they're doing something despite not doing anything effective. What they won't even admit is that the policies contradict those they used to have when they tried to overthrow Assad. They helped the rebels, they gave them weapons, so it seems to me that even from the point of view of the government there isn't any strategic thinking. He may be right or wrong, but Putin is thinking strategically—he thinks one should defeat ISIS by cooperating with the Syrian forces. What I think the West is going to do is help the Syrian and Russian forces without admitting it. We will see. I just find it all a bit embarrassing.

teleSUR English: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Jean Bricmont: People have actually supported the chaos in the Middle East, indirectly of course, but they have. In Syria for example, the left have failed to look at the relationship of forces, they have failed to ask questions about the opposition, the role of Saudi Arabia, Turkey. Instead, there's been total fantasy. Then there's the Palestinian question, which we've always been really weak on. The reason we've been weak is because of this struggle against anti-Semitism without making proper distinctions, with no respect for free speech. And now the left want to welcome refugees but it's a difficult situation, there are no jobs, there is real mass unemployment, so of course the refugees provoke a revolt. In France, there will be a huge victory for the far right and the left will be totally eliminated in the coming elections. You reap what you sow and the left have totally confused policy. You can't be for globalization and no borders while being for the destabilization of other countries and expect no chaos in your own country. And if you have chaos in your own country, then you're going to have a right-wing reaction because the population won't accept it.

    “If restraint wasn't imposed by nuclear weapons we'd have a generalized war in the Middle East.” 

The other thing is all this agitation about the COP21, climate change and so on. Many people are demonstrating about the climate, but France is going to war and I see nobody reacting to that. Nobody is saying anything. Of course we should demonstrate for the climate, but we're on the verge of a general war. If restraint wasn't imposed by nuclear weapons we'd have a generalized war in the Middle East. There is Iran, Russia, Syria, Iraq on one side. Then you have Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United States and its allies on the other side. This is a recipe for global war. Nobody wants a global war because of nuclear weapons but if it weren't for nuclear weapons there would be a global war and we'd be back in 1914. The situation is very serious. I’m actually quite scared. 

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December 12, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "Common Dreams" - The global talks known as COP21 ended Saturday with nearly 200 countries agreeing to a carbon emissions-slashing deal (pdf).  But climate campaigners are saying that the agreement doesn't go far enough, and that the real work is just beginning.

While Reuters described the deal's adoption as "setting the course for a 'historic' transformation of the world's fossil fuel-driven economy within decades in a bid to arrest global warming," commentator George Monbiot writes Saturday of the draft agreement, "By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster." 

Greenpeace International executive director Kumi Naidoo's take at the end of the talks was that the agreement marks "only one step on long a road, and there are parts of it that frustrate and disappoint me, but it is progress. This deal alone won’t dig us out the hole we’re in, but it makes the sides less steep."

Here's how environmental organization Earthjustice sums up just what the Paris Agreement commits its signatories to:

• hold the increase in global temperature average to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees, a goal that reflects the most current science on the uppermost limit of warming if we are to reduce the risk of the most catastrophic impacts of climate change
• review progress every five years, the first before 2020, and bring countries back to the table to increase their emissions reduction efforts
• robust transparency provisions to hold nations accountable to carry through on their pledges
• provide support to poorer countries to help them leapfrog to low-carbon development, adapt to climate change and cope with unavoidable loss and damage.

The Guardian reports that the deal "for the first time commits rich countries, rising economies and some of the poorest countries to work together to fight climate change." 

"The overall agreement is legally binding," the reporting adds, "but some elements—including the pledges to curb emissions by individual countries and the climate finance elements —are not."

That was noted by Friends of the Earth Scotland, who said that among the pact's problems is the fact that "[t]here is no legally binding way forward to address the problem of lack of ambition of current national contributions towards post-2020 action—a very weak "facilitative dialogue" in 2018 with no obligation to actually improve these plans." And as far as the 1.5 degree limit is concerned, the language used—"to pursue efforts"—is weak.

Naidoo said of the 1.5 degree limit, "That single number, and the new goal of net zero emissions by the second half of this century, will cause consternation in the boardrooms of coal companies and the palaces of oil-exporting states."

"This deal puts the fossil fuel industry on the wrong side of history," Naidoo said. Indeed, similar to Reuters' phrasing of the outcome, the Guardian wrote in its reporting of the deal's adoption: "Governments have signaled an end to the fossil fuel era." That laudable element aside, many of the nations' pledges put the world on a path to warming of not 2 but over 3 degrees, Earthjustice says.

On the issue of climate finance, says ActionAid, the deal "lets the world’s biggest historical polluters off the hook." Disappointments aside, the group's chief executive, Adriano Campolina, said the deal "provides an important hook on which people can hang their demands."

"And so our work is just beginning," Earthjustice President Trip Van Noppen. "Whether we live in rich nations or poor ones, in low-lying coastal communities or in the American heartland, our fates are bound together."

Others at the Paris conference took to Twitter to underscore the importance of grassroots movements now in forcing governments to commit to making the changes required: 

And the gavel falls on @cop21. Now the work to hold them to their promises begins. 1.5? Game on.

— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) December 12, 2015

#cop21 ends with an agreement among delegates and agreement within movements that our work matters even more now. Onwards to the next era!

— mayboeve (@mayboeve) December 12, 2015

#PeoplePower can and is changing the world! The movement for our future is beginning. #D12 #COP21 pic.twitter.com/uGN5uno7HM

— Greenpeace (@Greenpeace) December 12, 2015

And that sentiment brought out thousands to the streets of Paris—in defiance of a protest ban—on Saturday. Among those is Philippine activist Joseph Purugganan from the organization Focus on the Global South. "The message here is that the real solution will come from the people," he told the New York Times.

As Naidoo added in his statement, "To pull us free of fossil fuels we are going to need to mobilize in ever greater numbers." And there have been successes, he noted. "This year the climate movement beat the Keystone pipeline, we kicked Shell out of the Arctic and put coal into terminal decline."

"For us," he said, "Paris was always a stop on an ongoing journey. Ultimately our fate will be decided over the coming decades by the collective courage of our species. I believe we will succeed."