This week in New York one paradigm of global action has started its path toward terminal demise while another is being born. Networks are replacing nations.
Even if the UN summit had managed to expand the Security Council into a body truly reflective of the world distribution of power, its relevance as a trade union of nation states would remain in question because sovereignty itself has so withered with globalization. At the same time, those who wish to assert their historically residual nationality do so irrespective of the UN. Iran is assembling its own coalition of the willing (including India and China) that will support its nuclear rights and campaign against "nuclear apartheid" in exchange for scarce oil, preparing to end run the UN just as the US did when it went into Iraq.
Boutros Boutros Ghali was no doubt right when he speculated to me recently in Paris that the UN would inexorably morph into a body whose main purpose would no longer involve peace and security, but managing globalization and its dislocations from climate change to poverty.
While UN clout thus fades, global civil society is maturing into a critical force on the world scene. Adding a page to the Davos world summits of business-government-civil society elites, Bill Clinton has launced his Global Initiative across town at the Sheratown Towers. His aim is to shape the diaspora of global public opinion and plethora of non-governmental groups into focused, effective action. "It is not very realistic," he says, "to imagine that we can have a globalized economy without the counterpart of global social action. My idea is to contribute to the creation of a global civil society with partnerships that transcend national and regional borders. "
Some may sneer at Clinton's self-appointment as the head of global civil society. Some will call it leadership. But what is an ex-US president, still relatively youthful and identified with the positive face of globalization, to do? In truth, only a sympathetic, embracing American who was once chief-executive of the sole superpower could successfully play such a role. In this position, Clinton could even be more influential than if he were to succeed Kofi Annan as secretary general, an idea in circulation.
Having been a two-term governor and president, Clinton understands that in today's networked world there is power beyond politics. As social thinker and designer Bruce Mau has said, "for massive change to take place today, it doesn't have to cross the classical, formal political threshold. The single biggest difference beteween the past and the future is that the capacity to affect change is 'distributed.' A new social and political ecology is evolving where individuals or groups don't have to go up the tree of political authority only to come back down again to make something happen. We've crossed the line. Everyone can get involved in designing solutions to our civilizational challenges."