Multinational Organizations and a Structuring of (Anxious) Power

It is time to ask for the legacy of multinational organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank. What have they achieved? It is not suffice to say that they have alleviated some of the world's problems, for these are not final but intermediate goals of the organizations...these are what they do in the everyday. But, what of their goals in the long-run? Since we do arrive at any conclusion from the fact that the West is, in fact, particularly obsessed with 'power,' we should ask, what have the multinational organizations done in the field of power? The answer is this: that they have constructed fantasies of structured power, meaning that, they have fantasized of having put power in a proper place and of having managed its flow into other places. 

What does it mean to structure something such as power? It means to spread out in different intensities the thing, but even before that, it means to divide and deconstruct the thing to such a degree that it becomes not something which can be captured by a single place, but is in fact many things/sub-components spread out across many places. So, structuring power is to eliminate power's oneness, and also to divide power along different intensities. This was achieved by the multinational organization: to divide the world along developed and developing lines, and then to posit different frameworks for each of these categories. The world, in other words, was fragmented along different intensities of power. We no longer live in a single (united) planet, but we live in a multiplicity...and our aim today, in servitude of power, has been to find more and more difference. 

Let us offer an explanation as to why there was the need in the developed world for such an organization as the UN or World Bank. It was inspired totally by a first-world problem: the inability to decide which nation would be the most powerful, and whether such a nation would be singularly powerful. Anxiety was key: anxiety that the other would be more powerful than one, and therefore, as an 'anti-anxiety' the developed world decided to combine and add up its resources and power, so that one wouldn't be more powerful than the many. Thus, we have the security council, where the heads of state all pool together their power and destabilize the weight of power in favor of themselves and away from the United States. A legally administered framework is in place, a placement of different nations along certain intensities of power so that any one nation cannot emerge as powerful within the framework. But what about outside the framework? It seems true that the structure is managed according to the agendas of what is outside of it. But what is most important is that the structure itself creates a position external/outside of it. It is not, therefore, in the context of an inside-outside reality where the structure is manifest, but, it is with the construction of a structure that the external is created. What we mean is that the UN did not emerge in the context of American dominance, but, it helped form American dominance in its own way. 

Anxiety does not completely quell the question of power, in a sense, anxiety is never a zero-sum game, but rather a compromise. The compromise here is that power would be maintained but it would be transformed into a multinational entity, rather than remain in the hands of a national entity. What is even more key about anxiety is that it is not so much turned towards the other (in a revolutionary vein) but rather turned towards the self (in a self-preservation vein). It does not seek to destroy the anxiety-producing other, it is not about valor, but, it is about making sure that one is protected, it is more defensive. Thus, it suffices when the other goes into hiding, when the powerful operates behind the scenes, where there is doubt as to whether the other operates or not. We have, in the security council of the UN, a great showcasing of the powerful network of individual nations, but, behind the scenes, the United States operates as the true power. As long as the US stays behind the scenes, the anxiety of other nations is not provoked and produced, but as soon as there is a show of power within the UN itself, then there is anxiety and a potential for conflict. The UN, therefore, poses as a neutral framework, a neutralizing structure, a structure which can defuse conflict and tensions...but in actual fact, there is an ignorance on the part of the UN regarding the fact that there are nations which operate their international relations outside of it. There is the real confusion in the UN between the notion that "power is structured" (a false notion) and "power desires (an other) structure" (a true notion). 

The UN is therefore a structure that does not itself have power but which manages power, which allows for a way to fight the anxiety of other nations in the face of US neo-imperialism. The UN upholds the illusion that it has true power, when in fact its only power is in upholding the veil which fights anxiety. But, if the UN is an empty mechanism, it certainly has another role to play in global politics: for if it is empty, it can be filled with a variety of substances...another very important role the UN body plays is by signifying the inevitability of the next empire. The UN is a body which can be used by any empire as it sees fit, it is a tool of power play and a tool of exercising power, without itself being powerful...it serves in the hands of the powerful. So, if the US withers away, the next power will be able to use the UN for its own ploys and tactics, and develop, via the UN framework, another type of international relations. This is precisely what the structuring of power means, that the principle of structuring has allowed empty positions to develop where different nations can sit and play their roles within the entire power play. And between the truly powerful and the rest is the question of anxiety, of self-preservation from a threat rather than any offensive towards itself gaining more power. 

The question now is this: how does one nation cease to play into its current position within the power play and become powerful by itself? How is there rebellion in a structure? Perhaps we have an answer if we revisit anxiety: a nation becomes anxious and defensive, not because of any weakness it sees with itself, but with the weakness of the mechanism (UN, World Bank) itself. When the mechanism which manages power itself becomes seen as weak, then there is anxiety among some elements within a structure. When the structure is weak, there is anxiety from structural elements within it. The veil itself appears damaged, allowing too much room for American power to manifest. Thus, with anxiety as its propulsion, a new nation challenges the veil, it challenges the UN. And there is now finally a conflict, between the US and this new nation, the outcome of which is that either this new nation is destroyed, or it gets a better position within the UN just to refurbish the veil of the UN itself. What this means is that, in global politics today, it is not so much about challenging the US which gives one power, but challenging and critiquing the UN, abstaining from the UN etc..the UN has become the site where power play can operate, a commons where two contesting powers conflict, rather than there being direct contact and friction between two powers. The irony is that, the more one nation abstains from the UN, or shows its anxiety regarding the UN, the more it becomes likely that it will be a dominant member of the UN in the future. The UN by itself has no answer to power play, it is formally ready for any type of power which seeks to fill it with substance. Therefore the UN is not a peace-building organization in any sense, it is rather, an organization which allows power to build itself and its influence in a very systematic manner, so that there is not much 'collateral damage' in the form of anxiety. 

And one gets anxious when one sees a glimpse of the other and thereafter begins the process of constructing a narrative about the other. What truth of anxiety can we shed here? We can say that anxiety is formed on the evidence that the other is in fact just like the self, that the other has the same desires as the self does, that the other is a mirror image of the self. The desires most hidden and suppressed within the self, when given a substance in the excluded other, provokes anxiety and posits questions and doubts regarding the whole power play of a tool such as the UN. It is not the case that an unfolding of the structure posits power at the end of it in a future which will never arrive, but, the excluded element is always animated, and makes of the whole structure a series of contact zones...the excluded element (neo-imperial USA) is very mobile, and it is this chaotic character too which causes anxiety among other nations.