 |
Fernando
Henrique Cardoso
Speaks to Fulbrighters |
Fernando Henrique Cardoso delivers his Fulbright
Prize address Oct. 30, 2003, at a special ceremony at the U.S. Department of
State in Washington, D.C. |
| May I thank the Honorable Richard Haass, president of the Council on
Foreign Relations, for his generous words. I am very pleased, Ambassador Haass, to be greeted by a personality
of your intellectual and political stature. I bore witness to the outstanding work you did for the promotion of
Inter-American relations during your tenure at the Department of State,
which kindly hosts us this afternoon. |
| It
is my great honor to receive the J. William Fulbright Prize for
International Understanding.
I am deeply grateful to the Fulbright Association and its cooperating
associates. I see the award as a
symbol of the friendship the Fulbright program has always shown towards
Brazil and its people. |
|
|
| The
Fulbright program has increased knowledge of
Brazil in the United States and of the United States in Brazil, including in my alma mater, the University of São Paulo. I highly value the
extraordinary contribution the Fulbright program has given over the last
decades to the improvement of dialogue among peoples and cultures. Fulbright exchanges do justice to the career and spirit of late
Senator J. William Fulbright. |
| It
is under the inspiration of the founder of this renowned international
educational and cultural exchange program that I would like to share with
you some thoughts about the current challenges and prospects for
international understanding. |
| Wherever we happen to be, in Washington or in São Paulo, in Europe, Asia, or
Africa, we live today in a risk society. One may argue that earlier generations also had to sail into uncharted waters. But no doubt we are experiencing uncertainties of a new kind. |
| We
are no longer obsessed with risks coming from tradition or nature. We are now mostly concerned with risks created by the very impact of
our developing knowledge upon the world. We are primarily threatened by what we may call “manufactured
risks.” Climate change falls
into that category. So does the
meltdown of national economies through market instability—not to mention
the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the specter of
terrorism itself. Examples of
man-generated risks thus abound, but effective solutions, I am afraid, do
not. |
| Now
and then regressive utopias are brought to the floor. The radical ecology discourse is a case in point. On denying our capacity to command nature through science and
technology, it places modernity under a negative sign. Others have been preaching isolationism as the best therapy. The level of a country’s exposure to economic and security risks
would be commensurate to the extent of its interaction with the outside
world. It goes without saying
that neither way is sustainable in the long run. After all, the clock of history is unlikely to run backward. Nor should it do so. |
| If
we are to succeed in dispelling global threats, it will be through more,
rather than less, technical innovation. Our very capacity to tell how concrete and imminent those threats are
is contingent upon available knowledge and technological resources. |
| What
we know for certain is that we are not speaking of local phenomena. No place on earth is impervious to the effects of occurrences like
climate change, infectious diseases, financial crisis, drug trade, or
terrorism. They cut across
national jurisdictions. |
| Hence,
the fallacy of autarchic solutions. Hence,
the illusion that a single state or community could tame contemporary
hazards on its own. |
| Transnational
problems require global responses. How
should those responses be worked out? What
paths should be trodden to enhance prospects for international cooperation
and understanding? It is fair to
acknowledge that some important ground has already been covered. Suffice it to mention the multilateral normative network set up since
the end of the Cold War. States
are committed as never before to universally agreed norms in fields like
environmental protection and human rights. |
| The
cycle of United Nations Conferences initiated in
Rio de Janeiro
in 1992 played a crucial role in this regard. It was then that the global civil society emerged as a major actor in
the search for a democratic global governance. Had it not been for the active participation in it of civil society,
the Rio Conference would hardly have been so seminal in its results, among
which the emblematic Convention on Climate Change. No less decisive was the influence of non-state actors and the world
public opinion in the setting-up of ground-breaking institutions like the
International Criminal Court. |
| The
fact is that, profiting from the resources made available by the information
technology revolution, a true global public space came into being during the
nineties. In this contemporary
agora, views are expressed and actions taken on a broad range of issues by
multiple stakeholders. |
| States
have lost monopoly over the global public agenda. It is true that none but state agents act out of popular mandates. But the legitimacy of civil society groups is of a different nature
and should be evaluated accordingly. It
rests on what comes out of their activism. They are what they do. Their
power is contingent not on the authority to decide or enforce. But on the capacity to argue, denounce, propose, experiment and
innovate.. |
| There
seems, therefore, to be no contradiction between the role of the state and
that of civil society. On the
contrary, the state and civil society appear to form a partnership well
entitled to pursue the cause cherished by many of democratizing democracy. This entails both global and domestic objectives.ains. That's what our fellow, Dr. Norman Bourlag,
has been able to contribute. |
| The
global challenge would be that of contributing to fill up the existing
deficit of governance in international affairs. Economy has turned global, but politics has not. The interdependence of markets has not been matched by an updating of
the Bretton Woods system. The
international community is still lacking mechanisms that could effectively
follow up and control financial volatility. |
| The
United Nations is not exempt of reform either. The methods of the organization are to be brought in line with the
goals of the Millenium Declaration. A
step in that direction has been the decision by Secretary-General Kofi Annan
to broaden the discussion on ways to strengthen the participation of civil
society in the UN system. |
| As
to the objective of democratizing democracy in domestic fronts, it will
evolve within the discretion of national constituencies. But, again, it is only expected that the worldwide trend of expanding
the role of civil society in the establishment, implementation, and control
of public policies is kept up, simply because we are referring to a no-loser
situation—the state saves funds and wins credibility. Civil society broadens its share in the conduct of the common good. The citizenry is better served. And
the polity as a whole becomes more accountable. |
| One
may add that the more democratic a local experience is, the better its
chances of being globally consequential are. Conversely, the less oligarchic the international system becomes, the
more consistent with local aspirations it will be. For instance, let us take the HIV prevention and control experience. The participatory nature of the Brazilian HIV program, led as it is
by a state-civil society partnership, helped raise support for
Brazil
in its dispute with the pharmaceutical industry within the World Trade
Organization. Conversely, the
outcome of that multilateral dispute has produced priceless benefits for the
local treatment of HIV worldwide. |
| Global
has become local and the other way around. This is a defining feature of globalization, in its dramatic
bouleversement of the notion of space. |
| Some
feared that globalization would simply pull away power from states to the
global arena. And so did
globalization, depriving nations of some of the leverage they once had, but
it has also produced an opposite effect. It has created pressures for local autonomy. It has helped revive cultural identities, endowing communities with
new practices and means of expression. As
a result the world after globalization is far from looking like a homogenous
and monotonous landscape. It
resembles a rich mosaic instead. The
challenge before us is that of ensuring that all parts fit together in
cohesive, but plural, geometries. How
can we best get there? Is it
just a matter of political engineering? Or is the international community in need for a new ethics, an ethics
of solidarity and tolerance? Most
certainly, it is. It is high
time absolute notions of good and evil are shelved in. They simply do not fit the world as it is. The international community is too diverse to be straitjacketed into
Manichean models. |
| Nations
themselves are usually too plural to be depicted as uniform entities, be it
under a positive or a negative light. The United States and Brazil are good examples. Our nations
have been plural from the outset. Our
background is European, but we managed to call in new peoples and cultures
to share our eventful sagas. Multiculturalism
is our trademark, not to mention social mobility. We are definitely forward-looking nations. |
| Let
us continue to strive together for a more inclusive, democratic, and
peaceful future for us all. The
United States
deserves it. So does
Brazil. And so does the world at
large. |
| Thank
you very much. |
| See also: |
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