Amongst the laundry-list of platitudes and promissory notes that was the final communique from the recently completed G-20 Summit in Delhi was this truth:

“The global order has undergone dramatic changes since the Second World War due to economic growth and prosperity, decolonization, demographic dividends, technological achievements, emergence of new economic powers and deeper international cooperation. The United Nations must be responsive to the entire membership, faithful to its founding purposes and principles of its Charter and adapted to carrying out its mandate. In this context, we recall the Declaration on the Commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the United Nations (UNGA 75/1) which reaffirmed that our challenges are inter-connected and can only be addressed through reinvigorated multilateralism, reforms and international cooperation. The need for revitalized multilateralism to adequately address contemporary global challenges of the 21st Century, and to make global governance more representative, effective, transparent and accountable, has been voiced at multiple fora. In this context, a more inclusive and reinvigorated multilateralism and reform aimed at implementing the 2030 agenda is essential.”

The text is littered with banalities about “inclusion” and “inclusivity,” including hopes for an “inclusive” global financial system and “inclusive” information technology policies. It also dedicates sections at the end to promises of policies that are inclusive of the interests of women. The one concrete measure that the group took that gives some substance to the “inclusion” agenda was to admit the African Union as a permanent member.

“We welcome the African Union as a permanent member of the G20 and strongly believe that inclusion of the African Union into the G20 will significantly contribute to addressing the global challenges of our time. We commend the efforts of all G20 members which paved the way for accession of the African Union as a permanent member during India’s Presidency of the G20. Africa plays an important role in the global economy. We commit to strengthen our ties with and support the African Union realise the aspirations under Agenda 2063. We also reiterate strong support to Africa, including through the G20 Compact with Africa and G20 Initiative on supporting industrialization in Africa and LDCs. We are supportive of further discussing the deepening of cooperation between the G20 and other regional partners.”

Appropriate as it is to acknowledge the global importance of the countries and regions of the global south on an equal footing with America and Europe, lurking not far beneath the surface were the rather less “moral” motives of international realpolitik. The United States and its allies lobbied hard to have the group issue a united condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But as a sign of the reality of the power of the major powers of the Global South who have tried to stay neutral in the conflict between the Us-EU-NATO-Ukraine and Russia, this demand was resisted in favour of a (predictably) abstract and self-contradictory statement:

“We call on all states to uphold the principles of international law including territorial integrity and sovereignty, international humanitarian law, and the multilateral system that safeguards peace and stability. The peaceful resolution of conflicts, and efforts to address crises as well as diplomacy and dialogue are critical. We will unite in our endeavour to address the adverse impact of the war on the global economy and welcome all relevant and constructive initiatives that support a comprehensive, just, and durable peace in Ukraine that will uphold all the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter for the promotion of peaceful, friendly, and good neighbourly relations among nations in the spirit of ‘One Earth, One Family, One Future’.”

The problem still, as it has long been, is that opposing sides have opposed views of what international law demands. All major powers have good reason to insist on international law when they claim that their opponents are violating it, but even more powerful reasons for not insisting too strongly that it be enforced, lest they are hoist on their own petard when they decide that reasons of state outweigh abstract considerations of legality when it comes to dealing with their own problems. As international relations realists have long argued, sovereignty outweighs international law when whatever a major power has deemed a vital interest is at stake. America wants to remain free to roam the world imposing its version of “rules based order” on everyone. China and India both have internal insurgencies and separatist movements that they want a free hand to deal with in any way they see fit, and Russia claims that it is protecting the Russian-speaking minority in Eastern and Southern Ukraine from far-right Ukrainian nationalists.

One might think that multilateralism posited as a goal and value of international relations implies global harmony of interests. However, as one can see, the reality is quite otherwise. Multilateralism actually means the right of each state to pursue its interests free from interference from other states, because none are powerful enough to impose their interests as the global norm. Harmony is impossible, because the goals of the major actors are at odds with each other and the interests of smaller states or movements that find themselves trapped in between. Multilateralism is thus not a solution to major international problems but disguises the real structures of conflict that generate the wars and poverty that the document laments. The opposition between Russia and the US and its allies is obvious, but there were other tensions playing out behind the scenes. China and India are clearly in competition to assume the role of leading spokes-state for the interests of the Global South. While Russia was certainly pushed to war by American policy and the Russian-speaking population of eastern and southern Ukraine have legitimate interests and concerns, Putin’s attempt to paint the conflict as an anti-imperialist struggle is laughable. One only need bring to mind Russia’s racist treatment of minorities from the Central Asian republics, its absolute destruction of Chechnya in the Second Chechnya War, its arrest of anti-war critics and Marxists, and its attempt to re-conquer the lands first annexed to Russia by Catherine the Great to see that there is nothing more (or less) than classic reasons of state behind the decision to invade. The Putin regime has ruthlessly pursued a centrally-managed capitalist economy that has no place for independent unions but now finds it convenient to invoke the Soviet Union’s (quite checkered) history of support for anti-imperialist struggling defence of its definition of Russia’s national interest.

My point is: anti-imperialism does not mean just anti-American imperialism and is not a positive political value in its own right. Anti-American imperialism is fully compatible with imperialist ambitions within other countries’ self-defined spheres of interest. To the indigenous inhabitants of Tibet the fact that it is the Chinese and not the American state that governs their homelands does not make the situation less oppressive. The women of Iran will likely not be mollified by Iranian President Raisi’s railing against the United States in his address to the UN General Assembly. They were not motivated to take to the streets last year because of American interference but because his regime murders women who dare to decide how to wear their hair. Neither Multilateralism nor anti-imperialism have value save as a contribution to global peace, more comprehensive satisfaction of the natural and social needs of each and all, and the creation of the social, political, and economic conditions for the free and full exploration and development of the creative and experiential capacities of each and all, in forms whose appropriateness is decided by the individuals and not a narrow strata of conservative rulers. The self-determination of nations is valuable only to the extent that it is a political condition for the self-determination of all the members of those nations. Fanon warned long ago that however justified and necessary anti-imperialist national liberation struggles were, they always ran the risk of putting in power a national ruling class that collapses the interest of the people as a whole into its own interests. The Hindu nationalism of a Modi and the conservative Islam of a Raisi are contemporary analogues of the problem that concerned Fanon.

The rising powers of the world are right to remind everyone of the historical injustice they have faced at the hands of American and European colonisers and imperialists. But the logic of the value of self-determination that they invoke in their legitimate critique of American hegemony is universalizing and does not stop at the boundaries of individual states. If India as a whole has the right to determine its own domestic and international policy, then it must recognize that the same right legitimates the struggles of nationalist movements in Kashmir and Sikh struggles for a homeland. If Iran rejects the legitimacy of interference in its internal affairs, it assumes the duty to govern those affairs in keeping with the demands of its own people, who reveal, by their not infrequent taking to the streets en masse, that they are tired of paying the price for a conservative theocracy. America will always try to exploit such movements, it does not follow that America creates them. Where there are mass political movements there are problems. To be sure, the groups involved must solve their own problems their own way, but the efforts must be genuine and “anti-imperialist” justifications for internal repression of national and social movements must be rejected on grounds that they contradict the universal human value that the particular demand for self-determination contains. That value is the unrepeatable singularity of the life of each and every social self-conscious human agent. No one is born to be the mere instrument of the World Spirit, American manifest destiny, capitalist market forces, or any other abstract, reified force. People are not born to be sacrificed in wars or murdered because they demand for their nation what other nations already enjoy: independence.

How incompatible demands can be resolved without destruction of one or the other side is the most vexing, challenging, and perhaps impossible question in global politics. The twentieth century has taught us that America and Europe have no solutions; that their professed support for national liberation moments or social movements amongst the oppressed is always hypocritical, cynical, and self-interested. It does not follow that a move from a unipolar to a multipolar world on its own will make any difference to the poor and oppressed of the world. Likewise, anti-imperialism is valuable because it opposes the political and economic domination of smaller nations by larger and more powerful states. The member of the smaller states are reduced to mere tools of the interests of the great power. But imperial, neo-imperial, and quasi-imperial power are functions of size and relative strength, not nationality. Think what one will about Lenin, he at least made it clear that Tsarist Russia was an imperial oppressor of Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Poland. No one was a more vehement critic of European imperialism than he was, but he also fought the enemy of imperialism at home. The Bolsheviks withdrew from World War One and the first Soviet Constitution granted independence to the nations engulfed by the Russian empire. Like all the other liberatory values of the revolution national independence for the lands conquered by the Tsars was never realized, of course, but the early leaders of the revolution at least understood that imperialism, not the imperialism of other nations only, was the problem.

of course, the assertion of general philosophical principles is much easier than working out concrete political solutions. However, the articulation of general principles is not useless if they can function as agreed upon guidelines for the conduct of political life. In all cases, the life-values that alone justify more particular practices and relationships must be drawn out. Multilateralism and anti-imperialism are not valuable in and of themselves but only to the extent that they serve the deeper general purpose of helping to create the political and social conditions for all-round need-satisfaction and thus enabling each person to explore and develop their life-capacities in their own way. Perhaps it is too much too hope that all political powers and movements recognize and act according to these universal life-values. Nevertheless, if those who understand them stop insisting upon their reality because it seems impossible, then reasons of state will certainly continue to dominate actual politics to the detriment of the vast majority of the world’s people whose real shared interests will be ignored.