THE PLANETARY INTEREST Edited by: Kennedy Graham

The Planetary Interest

David Capie
THE PLANETARY INTEREST Edited by: Kennedy Graham Published by: University College London (UCL) Press, London, 1999, 289pp.

In the past ten years the lexicon of international relations has seen a remarkable proliferation in concepts of security. In an attempt to deal with the challenges of the post-Cold War agenda notions of common, co-operative, comprehensive and human security have been put forward.
These share a common recognition that many of the security threats that face the world today do not originate from, and are not easily contained within, the territory of a single nation-state. Environmental degradation or infectious disease do not respect national borders. Global warming, nuclear proliferation, the prevention of mass human rights violations -- these are not concerns that can best be dealt with unilaterally. Rather, they point to the need for new thinking about security and co-operation -- and highlight the need for a new conceptual vocabulary upon which to base practical action. It is this kind of reasoning that underpins New Zealander Kennedy Graham's new edited volume, The Planetary Interest.

As its title suggests, the book urges the adoption of a new concept -- the planetary interest -- capable of underpinning a policy agenda to deal with the global challenges that now face the world. Such challenges include climate change, forest management, disarmament and sustainable development. These concerns are discussed by a truly international cast of contributors -- twenty-two authors, from every continent, from micro-states such as the Maldives, to great powers like China and the United States.

Unconventional notions like the planetary interest tend to set off alarm bells for the sceptical practitioner of international relations. The failures of the League of Nations and plans for world government are quickly summoned to mind. But any reader fearing a descent into the naive idealism of the inter-war years is quickly put at ease. The planetary interest is not advanced here as some sort of alternative to the ubiquitous notion of national interest. The authors do not expect the nation-state to disappear overnight, nor do they want it to. Rather, their work suggests that the planetary interest can sit above the notion of the national interest. In a thoughtful introductory chapter, Graham suggests `something concerns the planetary interest if it materially affects, not necessarily uniformly, the planet as opposed to the region or the nation-state alone.' He accepts that `legitimate national interests' should endure, these being those interests and policies `which are compatible with, and do not adversely affect, the interests of the planet and humanity as a species -- both current and future generations.'

But therein lies the challenge for the book. If a world of states is to continue -- at least for the time being -- how are we to make sense of legitimacy? What is a legitimate national interest? Who decides? Gwyn Prins's conceptual chapter is charged with dealing with this issue. He discusses many different sources of legitimacy, but ultimately concludes that what he calls `mandate by extension' will be vital to the planetary interest; that is, legitimacy will, in future, flow `uncontroversially' through existing national institutions which will be simply more conscious of global issues.

But Prins's lament that there is, as yet, no self-conscious culture of global society does hint at how ideas similar to the planetary interest are already being put into place. His approving citation of Allott's claim that `international society is an unculture ... [a] vacuum filled by a culture of primitive capitalism' overlooks the developing normative structure of global politics. The establishment of the idea of humanitarian intervention, the biological and chemical weapons taboo, the prohibition on landmines, and campaigns against light weapons proliferation and the use of child soldiers -- these developing norms are not to be lightly dismissed. They also point to another, potentially more important, source for the development of the planetary interest. Rather than the statist `mandate by extension,' pragmatic, informal transnational coalitions of non-state actors might offer the best hope for effecting norm change across a range of issue areas.

The substantive chapters that follow Graham's and Prins's conceptual introduction are uneven. As might perhaps to be expected when twenty of the contributors are former or serving politicians, there is some tendency towards self-promotion. Claudine Schneider's analysis of the United States features rather too many references to her achievements while in Congress. The habits of campaigning die hard, perhaps, but Schneider's claim that the US president `understands the planetary interest' but the Congress does not, is rather less forgivable. This is a dubious dichotomy: it was, after all, President George Bush who styled himself the `Environmental President' but then refused to go to Rio. Likewise, in his chapter Michael Marshall, a former British Cabinet minister, exhibits a gee-whiz enthusiasm for information technology surely unmatched in contemporary politics. Sadly, his claim that `the ready availability of UN documentation through [the] Internet today allows the public around the world ... to follow UN issues quite closely' seems a triumph of wishful thinking. His optimism also starkly contrasts with the assertion in David Lange's chapter on disarmament that `little hope can be placed in multilateral fora at whose head stands a Security Council which cannot overrule the wishes of any one of the five declared nuclear powers'.

Taken as a whole the substantive chapters contain a useful discussion of a wide range of international problems, from demographic change to disarmament. Indeed, at times the range of issues covered and the depth of the analysis provided is almost overwhelming. The opportunity to hear from some of the less familiar international actors on the international stage (the Maldives, Bangladesh and Kenya) is also especially welcome.

This is a provocative book. While its title might unsettle exponents of orthodox international relations, The Planetary Interest advances a highly original but carefully measured conceptual argument and backs it up with a comprehensive set of empirical studies. It deserves a wide audience in both the academic and policy communities.

David Capie is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at York University in Toronto.

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