The Intellectual Guard and the New World Order

Gone are the days when we could make fun of backwoods Americans who set up people’s militias, dig bunkers, stockpile canned food and arm themselves to the teeth to defend themselves against a secret international cabal seeking to impose a New World Order. Now we have all that at home too. First we got the Styrian Guard, and now an open letter from Slovenian intellectuals demanding that the Slovenian government not vote for amendments to the pandemic agreement and the International Health Regulations at the World Health Organization, “in which large private economic interests have acquired impermissibly great influence through funding.”

The New World Order is a conspiracy theory that warns of the danger of a secretly emerging totalitarian world government. It is supposedly being installed by a globalist power elite which, by orchestrating political, financial, migrant, health and other crises, seeks to rule the world through its outposts (the Trilateral Commission, the World Economic Forum in Davos, the World Health Organization, Jewish financial elites … insert as desired).

In this latest case, which has attracted the attention and indignation of the eighty-two signatories of the open letter, the new world order is supposedly being established through the scheme of the Director-General of the World Health Organization to acquire new powers through changes to international regulations, thumb his nose at national sovereignty and, whenever the whim takes him, “declare an emergency in which laws do not apply and introduce measures at his own discretion.” What measures these might be, the signatories do not explain, but every self-respecting anti-vaxxer will know where the vaccine needle is buried. Such decisions, according to the signatories, “directly concern our national sovereignty and the basic vital interests of the population.”

Which would be true in principle. If it were true. But it isn’t. At least not the part about the arbitrary introduction of emergencies and measures that thumb their nose at the domestic legal order of member states. If this were just a story from the backwaters of social media, probably no serious person would take it seriously. But because there are quite a few doctors of science and well-known personalities among the signatories, the State Secretary at the Ministry of Health had to deal with the matter, explaining with great patience and restraint why the open letter is, to put it mildly, misleading. That is the first lesson of this story. A doctorate does not guarantee you sense, but nonsense signed by people with doctorates gets more attention than it would otherwise deserve.

The list of signatories is a colorful minestrone made up of individuals who have earned a reputation with the Slovenian public in one way or another. Some with their understanding attitude toward the reasons that forced Russia into aggression against its neighbor, or their concern about the fascism of the European Union; others with their skepticism toward vaccination; still others with organizing seminars on the extinction of the Slovenian nation due to feminism and the statement that Adolf Hitler had good intentions but unfortunately it didn’t work out for him in the end. But enough about the signatories. They don’t worry me as individuals, but as a symptom.

First of all, as a symptom of frivolity and irresponsibility. The pandemic that struck the world in 2020 took an enormous number of human lives and caused enormous economic damage, with ongoing social, economic and political consequences. The possibility of new similar or even worse health threats in the future can by no means be ruled out. Preventing, and above all responding effectively to, such challenges is possible only through strengthened and effective international cooperation and solidarity. The World Health Organization is of key importance in this. Responsible people understand that after the Covid experience it will critically assess its performance and introduce changes that will ensure greater effectiveness in tackling possible future threats. Others write an open letter. In which they describe as a threat the efforts to address questions concerning “health and healthcare, the economy, education, the free functioning of society as a whole and human rights and civil liberties” with the help of international cooperation and solidarity as well.

It is no secret that the negotiations on changes to the World Health Organization’s regulations are difficult and complicated. But there is nothing unusual about that, especially since they are taking place in circumstances marked by the post-Covid boom in disinformation and its abuse for political purposes. In this context, the open letter is not a warning about a threat but part of the problem that actually threatens “our freedom and well-being, health and life.”

The letter is also a symptom of sovereigntism, or the fetishization of national sovereignty, which elsewhere is part of the political discourse of the far right, but here enthuses people from all corners of the political spectrum, which is also reflected in the list of signatories of this open letter. This ideological discourse, stoked on one side by far-right nationalism and on the other by obsessive anti-Westernism, rejects a model of European or international cooperation based on solidarity and common rules, aimed at finding solutions to challenges such as health crises, migration, the environment, peace and so on.

Of course, no international institution is immune to problems and abuses. The WHO’s conduct during the pandemic can and must be the subject of critical examination and correction of any mistakes. But that is not done through conspiracy theories and weakening multilateral organizations. When, years ago, the Council of Europe was faced with corruption in its Parliamentary Assembly, it responded by establishing responsibility and imposing sanctions.

Finally, I would point out that in recent weeks the spotlight has been on another international body, the International Criminal Court, which does indeed have important supranational powers. When prosecutor Karim Khan recently requested international arrest warrants for crimes in Gaza, Israel’s political leadership responded with indignant clamor about national sovereignty, which in the opinion of some gives you the right to do whatever you like with people and with international law.

The existing world (dis)order, based on the United Nations Charter, is far from perfect, and far from being something we could not or should not be critical of. The long period of a unipolar world dominated by the United States after the end of the Cold War has led to a situation in which it often seems no longer to work. But instead of efforts to repair and strengthen it, more and more people see the solution in autarkic withdrawal within national borders and in a multipolar world in which US influence will be balanced by China and Russia. That authoritarians from those countries are enthusiastic about such a vision of the world isn’t nice, but it is at least to some extent logical. That people from countries like Slovenia cheer for it is harder to understand. In a new world order run by imperialist hegemons, we will be able to stick our sovereignty in our ear. Or somewhere lower down.