The World's 'Sheriff'

New global institutions are needed for handling matters of environmental security, such as the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, says a former Venezuelan minister.

CARACAS - According to the political theory, but particularly according to common sense, even at its most basic levels, all power requires a counterweight. To a great extent, the key to human coexistence resides in this balance. Without it, arbitrariness and abuse thrive. Someone has already said, perhaps an exaggerator: power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

With the Soviet Union gone, the United States does as it wishes, and, as evidence, there are innumerable levers that weaken the already fragile structure of international law, to the point that Samuel Huntington, himself of conservative bent, writes that his country is turning into a superpower that does not respect the law.

Remember, for example, how the United States has opposed the creation of the International Criminal Court and how it reacted to the drama of ''ethnic cleansing'' in Kosovo, overstepping the constitutive bases of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) and the United Nations Charter - the document of an organization that often appears to fail as the forum to which all countries can turn for help in resolving their differences, without resorting to the law of the jungle.

President George W. Bush's refusal to support the Kyoto Protocol (on climate change) is but the most recent incident and should come as no surprise. The intention of curbing greenhouse gas emissions, which cause climate change, has run into the North American wall. Bill Clinton (1993-2001) created out the first faults and Bush, with pretensions of being the Earth's ''sheriff'' and with several of his Cabinet members coming from the bowels of the petroleum industry, has gone even further in his intransigence.

For the president of the country that leads the world in carbon dioxide emissions, the recommendations of the Kyoto treaty lack solid scientific evidence and, further, hurt North American interests by obstructing the growth of its gross domestic product (GDP), upon the altar of which he would even sacrifice the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge of Alaska. It would seem he does not want to see such banal reasons - a mere climatic decompensation - hurt his country's placement on the Global Competitiveness Index, drawn up by the World Economic Forum, a ranking system that brings to mind that of the World Boxing Association.

In these times, the crisis of the nation-state, an old invention of several centuries ago, is one of the issues that stands out in the globalization debate. Today the state can no longer do what it used to, nor is it what it used to be - a summary of a diagnosis that most seem to share: the state is unable to control all lines of the economy, the communications media are erasing the traditional line of its sovereignty and it has no way to confront environmental problems.

And it is evident, on the other hand, that competition (the clearest expression of the single ideology that now governs us all) is not the appropriate instrument for responding to the new forms of coexistence demanded by today's world, with its dense network of interdependence and interaction.

There is no other matter like the environment that has such an urgent need for a global action that reins in the market and allows the efficient and respectful use of natural, available and potential resources. The US desertion of the Kyoto Protocol is, of course, a low blow to these aspirations.

Anyone can understand that globalization is, in a certain sense, universal and irreversible, like the law of gravity. But it must be asked whether its only manifestation possible is the one we are seeing, or if it is possible to sustain globalization upon other values and in other ways, instead of confusing globalization with the interests of a handful of countries or, worse, a few corporations.

The world will gather once again to discuss the Kyoto Protocol (in Bonn, Germany, July 17-27). We must not forget, then, that we must continue the political fight for the creation of global institutions that promote a balance of the world powers and , through them, the safety of the planet, the preservation of international order and justice, the eradication of poverty and care for the environment.

* Ignacio Ávalos Gutiérrez is a former minister of Science and Technology of Venezuela.