In this issue:3 • EDITORIAL COMMENT: First & Goal Thesil Morlan10 • BOOK REVIEW: Power and Arrogance David ShorrThe End of Arrogance: America in the<strong>Global</strong> Competition of Ideasby Steven Weber and Bruce Jentleson13 • The New Road to Europe: Mary KaldorWays Out of the Hydra-Headed Crisis<strong>Minerva</strong>This twice-yearly collation, provided bythe World Federalist Institute of <strong>Citizens</strong><strong>for</strong> <strong>Global</strong> <strong>Solutions</strong>, is named in honor ofone of the four women signers of the UNCharter, <strong>Minerva</strong> Bernardino (1907–1998),who helped found the UN Commission onthe Status of Women.15 • BOOK REVIEW: European Union & <strong>Global</strong> Union Ronald J. GlossopThe Uniting of Nations:An Essay on <strong>Global</strong> Governanceby John McClintock17 • Re<strong>for</strong>m of the United Nations Security Council Myron W. Kronisch& General Assembly ~ A Step to Federation19 • The UN as Truth Commission Andrew Erueti20 • INTERVIEW: The Big Picture Joanna RiceRodolfo Stavenhagen, <strong>for</strong>mer UN Special Rapporteuron the Rights of Indigenous Peoples22 • Six Scenes of Endeavor Joshua Cooper1 - UN Expert Mechanism on Rights of IndigenousPeoples | 2 - ASEAN Civil Society Conference& Peoples’ Forum | 3 - UN Human Rights Council4 - UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues5 -Threatened Island Nations | 6 - UNSC & climate change33 • Traditional Values 65 NGOs36 • INTERVIEW: Human Rights, Fundamentalism, Cassandra BalchinPower and PrejudiceVijay Nagaraj, Director,International Council on Human Rights Policy39 • NOTES on Dehumanization and Extermination40 • The Trials and Tests Faced by R2P Rachel Gerber41 • ICC - Speech at Closing of Lubanga Trial Benjamin B. Ferencz42 • ICJ - War Crimes Reparation Right Amnesty International44 • Assertive Action To Protect — Without War Lucy Law Webster45 • REVIEW of 17 BOOKS: Eliminating Nukes James T. Ranney50 • Extreme Injury Elaine Scarry54 • NOTES & RESOURCESEditor:Thesil MorlanPO Box 397Waldoboro, ME 04572Tel & Fax 207-832-6863E-mail: thesil@midcoast.comwww.globalsolutions.org/wfi/minervaEditorial Advisory Board:Robert EnholmRonald GlossopScott HoffmanTo help support <strong>Minerva</strong>, please considermaking a donation to the CGS EducationFund: 418 7th Street, SE, Washington DC20003. Thank you.In<strong>for</strong>mation cut-off <strong>for</strong> this issue:1 November <strong>2011</strong>Submission deadline <strong>for</strong> next issue:1 March 2012<strong>Citizens</strong> <strong>for</strong> <strong>Global</strong> <strong>Solutions</strong> promotesdiscussion of global issues; the views presentedin <strong>Minerva</strong> are the authors’ own.COVERS - Front: UNWRA’s Gaza SummerGames, involving a quarter millionchildren, 30 June <strong>2011</strong> (UN Photo/ShareefSarhan); Back: women observe Eid al-Fitrin Dili, Timor-Leste, 1 October 2008 (UNPhoto/Martine Perret); Back cover quotationfrom A Thousand Times More Fair –What Shakespeare’s Plays Teach Us AboutJustice, by Kenji Yoshino (Ecco, <strong>2011</strong>)2 • <strong>Minerva</strong> #39 • November <strong>2011</strong>
First & GoalEven euphoria isn’t what it used to be.Remember a now fallen Football Hall ofFamer, as a giddy young running back,telling a post-game interviewer that he’dbeen enjoying “a metaphoric moment inthe locker-room”? Perhaps <strong>Minerva</strong> hasbeen suspiciously deficient in sports metaphors.Let’s tackle that.I was surrounded by football as a child(even though my father and mother preferredtennis and lariat twirling, respectively).In a warm climate, our familylived near an open-air football stadiumthat served the local college and highschool — whose season seemed to runmost of the year because a large stateboasts many layers of playoffs — andwhere the nearest professional teamhad its summer training camp. Night afternight, I eventually fell asleep to thesounds of play-by-play from the publicloudspeaker and organized cheers fromthe stands. “PUSH ’em back, PUSH ’emback, WAAAY back!” echoed through myslumbers. 1 “2-4-6-8 — DECIMATE!”Although I don’t claim this as a corruptinginfluence, I’m consequently not surprisedto live in a society that loves tochant “We’re number one!” on the sidelinesof games and battlefields. I’m confounded,though, by American culture’ssimultaneous fostering of reluctance tochoose superior representation in its politicalsystem. We are hobbled by smuglyasserting fictive superiority while mockingand tearing apart any discernible signsof excellence in political policy-makingor leadership.exceptionalismThe strands of our so-called exceptionalisminclude not only that conflicted claimof national superiority (oddly, furtherhardened and undermined simultaneouslyas factions haggle over which side ismore to blame <strong>for</strong> decline!) 2 but also: exceptionalismas a measure of lapse fromfoundational ideals, as a prod to improvementin that regard, or as an excuse <strong>for</strong>alleging that emergencies supersede adherenceto tradition or to the rule of law;and the assertion that international law orglobally accepted standards do not applyto a self-proclaimed virtuous country, entitledto special status.Despite the usual terminology, exceptionalistattitudes are not exclusively American.Several strands are tangled in wayspeculiar to each nation, and are sometimesmatted over broader turf, such as ahemisphere or the realms called “<strong>Global</strong>North” or “South”. There are even competingproclamations that “the West” isbest at deteriorating!But the USA does specialize in an exceptionalistoutlook that tends to be experiencedby others as at least ignorant,at worst predatory. At home, “[t]hat thecommon good requires such exceptionalismhas been so taken <strong>for</strong> granted as to notneed acknowledgment,” observes JamesCarroll, though the US Congress recentlyaimed “to convert in<strong>for</strong>mal understandinginto official legislation” in a provision ofthe National Defense Authorization Act“expand[ing] boundaries of America’smilitary mission in the world” by stretchingthe notion of our targetable enemy toinclude not only those who “committed oraided” the 2001 attacks but also <strong>for</strong>ces allegedly“associated” with designated antagonists.Although this language affirmswhat already has become practice, saysCarroll, “more than policy is at stake. Thelaw after 9/11 made an implicit claim toglobal <strong>for</strong>ce projection based on an emergency;the new legislation would explicitlyreject any time or place limitations onthat <strong>for</strong>ce. In other words, a seeminglysubtle shift marks a movement from theexceptional to the threshold of normal.There is a word <strong>for</strong> the realm into whichthat threshold opens: The legislation is astep toward an open declaration of Americanempire.” Carroll comments that, evenif instances of “‘invited’ US imperialism[are] mainly benign (which requires leavingaside questions of unfair economicstructures abroad, and dehumanizing effectsof garrison culture at home)”, andeven if “contemplated expansions of …belligerence may successfully defangterrorism (instead of sparking it), … themore far-reaching consequence of 21stcenturyAmerican empire will be the finaldestruction of authentic internationalism— nations bound by the power of agreed3 • <strong>Minerva</strong> #39 • November <strong>2011</strong>democratic law, cross-border systems ofchecks and balances, all abiding by thesame rules, mutually en<strong>for</strong>ced. The destruction,that is, of the only world with ahope of real peace and justice.” 3Decrying “America’s Selective Vigilantism”4 , Tariq Ali complains that, “notwithstanding”Euro-American liberal andconservative governing elites’ “pious renunciationsof terrorist violence …, theyhave no problems in defending torture,renditions, targeting and assassination ofindividuals, post-legal states of exceptionat home so that they can imprisonanybody without trial indefinitely”, whilemost citizens “avert their gaze from thedead, wounded and orphaned” afar.Even if one (a) acknowledges that humanitarianimpulses inevitably may bemixed with impure thoughts, that humanitarianexcuses often are merely addedon officially to crasser projects, or that“great-power logic soon overwhelms thehumanitarian rationale <strong>for</strong> intervention”,as Walden Bello complains 5 , but (b) doesnot go so far as to agree with Tariq Alithat NATO intervention in Libya intended“to bring the Arab rebellions to an end byasserting western control, confiscatingtheir impetus and spontaneity”, and that“the frontiers of the squalid protectoratethat the west is going to create are beingdecided in Washington”, it is painfullyobvious that our infamous cultural exceptionalismis riddled with delusions thatare dangerous <strong>for</strong> all.The delusion of being Number One, deploredby some as obnoxious and selfdefeating,diagnosed by others as a frenzycovering anxieties about being sidelined,might also sometimes be considered a bitof relief in the midst of seemingly interminablevicious squabbles — evidence thatwe can conceive of banding together afterall. But as long as this involves pushingeveryone else back — or ignoring theirexistence — it obviously doesn’t advanceus down the earth-wide field toward anydesirable, or even recognizable, goal.Political theorist Benjamin Barber 6 mocks“the American exceptionalist claim that‘We’re Number One’, when as measuredby far too many key indicators we are
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