Non-state actors calling the shots

There was time when top government officials determined events in various countries.

At the international level, it was the leaders of master states or powerful countries like the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Japan, or Germany who told the rest of the world what to do.

Since they did not always agree on the orders to give to the others, and tended to quarrel, their disputes split and affected other countries.

Within individual countries, it was the presidents, prime ministers, and ministers who made the decisions that everyone else had to accept.

This has changed, particularly in the first decade of the 21st Century.

Leaders of countries are not any longer the main influence on what happens in the world.

The new determinants are mostly anti-state and they have seemingly made harassing various state their main pre-occupation.

They fall into two categories.

First are those who, starting with a premise that state officials are always wrong, self-righteously claim to be doing good for the masses by repeatedly finding fault in the state.

Second are those who, not interested in the theoretical improvement of the welfare of the masses, concentrate on settling international scores by destabilising the collective sense of security and international order.

In the first category are those anti-state actors who act within and outside state, theoretically in the interest of the people because states had failed to perform.

There is even the paradox of some of these anti-state actors being paid hefty salaries and allowances by the state, often as members of various watchdog commissions.

Having been fished out of the NGO and civil society world, they rarely see the contradiction in their positions.

This is because members of the NGOs and civil society bodies usually receive salaries and operating costs from forces that tend to be foreign and at times hostile to particular states.

Their existence, however, is an indictment to the state for failure to deliver services.