ASIAN AFFAIRS ON TERRORISM Lu Youshi & Zha Junhong -International Politics Institute (Zhejian University - China) THE G8, GLOBALIZATION AND 9/11 Above all, the events of September 11 is antihuman and is “a transnational crime”(words used by Zhu Bangzao, a Chinese Foreign Ministry’s spokesman). Notwithstanding, as has been pointed out, the September 11 events, as international terrorist acts on such a large scale, have their roots in the current international order, and it could be considered unfortunately one of the many manifestations of the anti-globalization feelings that are normally convened through the organised anti-globalization movements. In the 1970’s, while the interdependence and intervulnerabilities created by globalization became obvious and known, little was done to allay the fears of the poorest. The G7-centred West , today the G8 with the addition of Russia, who fixed the world agenda was then the main beneficiary of the on-going process. Delighted at the smooth march of globalization, the West forgot that globalization, which was perceived as all gain for the industrialised world, would place new demands and new moral responsibilities at home as well as abroad. Internationally, the North-South gulf became greater (1). In 1999, the developed countries, whose population accounted for only 20 percent of the world total, controlled 86% of world GDP , with more than 68% for the original G7 itself, and 81.2 percent of the total volume of world trade with more than 49% for the original G7. They were responsible for 92% of FDI outflows and received 68% of FDI inflows. The poorest fifth accounted for less than 1% of these indicators. Income disparities between the richest and poorest fifth of the world’s population increased from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1997. The World Bank estimated that 1.2 billion people lived on less than US$1 dollar a day, a number that was likely to remain stable until 2008 (2). Some 840 million are malnourished worldwide. Since 1971, the number of countries considered by the United Nations to be extremely poor or least of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) had risen from 25 to 48. These countries, representing 13% of world population, accounted for 0.4% of world exports and 0.6% of world imports in 1997. This represented a 40% decline since 1980. More than 80 countries had seen their per capita GDP fall during the 1990s. Only 33 countries sustained a GNP per capita growth of 3% in the 1980-1996 period. In addition, many indicators were announcing a technological or digital divide. The OECD countries, representing 17% of world population, had 74% of all telephone lines and 88% of Internet users. In contrast, 25% of the world’s countries had a teledensity lower than one telephone for 100 inhabitants. The United States had more computers than all other countries combined (3). In the high technology sectors, OECD countries in 1993 accounted for 84% of global research and development expenditures and held 97% of world patents. The first sign of the mismanagement of the globalisation process which would really affect the rich economies was the so-called “Asian financial crisis”. So sure were the pundits of the G8 that globalisation could not bring anything but progress that experts of all kinds started to attribute the crisis to the governments of the middle powers of Asia. To discuss the problems of cross-border capital flow and “hot-money” was out of the question as it was heretic thinking. Today, everyone agrees that this crisis which ruined many emerging economies such as the Indonesian one was the first manifestation of a lack of governance of the financial markets of the G7 countries. Four years later, the North-South issue has never been so acute, whether it is in the economic arena or the political one. Every day 19,000 children die because their governments have to spend money on paying debts rather than on basic services like health care and clean water (4). Unrestricted creditor domination is criticized as the main problem of present debt management. In recent years, the critique has been increasingly directed at the policies of international financial institutions (IFIs), principally the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). At the Third United Nations Conference Against Racism from 31 August to 8 September 2001 in Durban, South Africa, the joint US-Israeli walkout from it halfway was something of a foregone conclusion and met with strong disapproval in international opinion. Although 18,000 participants from more than 170 countries and regions failed to reach a consensus on issues such as Zionism—the movement to establish and maintain a Jewish state—as a racist concept, and the need for nations responsible for slavery and colonialism to provide apologies and reparations, they agreed that the battle against racism had only just begun. On the domestic front, more and more citizens lost patience about loss of jobs, crime and internal disorder, financial panic, and world poverty. Strong anti-globalization movements started to be formed and to have more and more followers. The fiasco of Seattle was a rude awakening for the politicians. However while paralysis ensued at the political level (the IMF saga to replace the departing director exposed infighting within the rich countries that were an insult to the poor ones), the transnational companies continue to forge ahead and carve the world between themselves at an increasing pace under the dictatorship of the market. Furthermore, we witness that the governments are leaving to NGOs the fields such as those regarding deactivating landmines, establishing an international criminal court, and banning the use of child soldiers. Nowadays the campaigns led by NGOs have been instrumental in raising international concern, and in some cases formulating new international norms. Most notable has been the success of such groups as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch in expanding international monitoring of human rights in the past three decades. Although long-term trends of international environmental deterioration have not been halted, three decades of activism have netted great successes in expanding environmental norms and improving environmental monitoring in multilateral institutions during the 1990s. The imbalance became such that anti-globalization organisations, practically unknown three years ago are today rising as conspicuous international actors. The fact that they exist at all and with such wide audience is further proof that the growth of a global civil society and the increasing globalization of the existing world were not matched by the birth of new mechanisms that would provide an effective governance of the process. While, since 1994 (5), the G7 tried to put a human veil on its concerns and pretended to be responsive to the demands of an increasingly globalized world, on close scrutiny, the G8's behaviour and focus in recent years has not really changed. The governments of the G7’s member countries have always regarded the G7 as a kind of institution coordinating the political, economic and social policies of the West, but as a consequence of its dominant position, others, notably the analysts, scholars and the media of its member countries expect it to be the centre of global governance. Thus, when one examines the reform of the international financial system by the G7 since 1995 (6), it becomes apparent that the G7 was mostly managing the current status-quo. Its proclaimed goal of a globalised world remains primarily a way to sustain the vested-interest structure it inherited. What the G7/ G8 grouping seems to be today is some sort of a shadow UN’s cabinet. Its logic is clear, if not spelled out officially. What the G7/G8 upholds is the big powers cooperating to “rule” rather than “govern” the world. And that is what the big powers believe they were doing safely until September 11 and with no challenge ahead. After the September 11 events, countries around the world rapidly reached an unprecedented consensus. They were willing to fight against international terrorism with the USA. And so for the first time, the divide between the rich and poor seemed to disappear towards a common goal, that of a better international governance so that terrorism will have no place in a civilised society. But beyond the immediate goal of fighting the actors, which for a state is a legitimate response, the more important problem is to create the conditions in which terrorism loses its very raison d’être. Such a goal offers the G8 the opportunity to initiate a new system of global governance. Such a system would establish a framework of rules, institutions and established practices that set limitations and give incentives for nation-state governments to work together and to enlist them equally in international affairs to respond to the grim challenge brought by globalization, among which each government’s work, whether singly, jointly or in formal institutions, can often help each other. At present, what is the most urgent is to enlarge the participation of all the countries in the international issue areas that are directly related to their national economy and the well-being of their people. It is primarily to give them a role to play in the international financial system and the international trade regime. As to the former, the G7 has firmly controlled its reform process since 1995. As for the latter, the priorities have been the G7 priorities to the exclusion of any other agenda, as can be seen with the protracted battle about farm subsidies between USA and Europe and today USA and China, while the most subsidies farmers of the world are the American ones! After September 11, 2001, the G7 Ministers of Finance and their Central Bank Governors have released three statements, and the leaders of the G8 one statement. Not a word was said about reforming the international financial architecture (while Argentina was about to collapse) nor were the trade issues mentioned. These statements repeatedly emphasised waging war against terrorism, stopping the flow of funds to terrorists, as well as dividing lines between those who support terrorism and those who do not participate in counter terrorism (7). Although it expressed the same attitude with the G7 in the Statement made by the leaders of the G8, Russia, the eighth member of G7, has yet to be formally invited to the discussion held by the G7 Ministers of Finance and their Central Bank governors. And the rumor is that the G8 2003 summit, which ought to be Russia's turn as a host, would be presided by France. If that is the way the G7 treats their last member, one can only surmise that developing countries probably don't fare very high on the agenda of such meetings. In any case, whether the United States can become an ordinary country on par with others and relinquished its hegemonic stature is one of the keys to the formation of a global governance system. And after the beginning of the bombing campaign over Afghanistan, it seems that such a key question has lost among the G7 members all relevance(8). Other G7 member countries supported the USA from the very beginning, making retaliation an easy choice. Later, of the six countries that provided a military support to the US in the war waged on Afghanistan, five were G7 member countries (the USA, Britain, France, Germany, and Canada) while the other two (Japan and Italy) providing logistical support(9). It is clear that, in spite of the approval of the UN’s resolution that condemned terrorism, having brewed and mediated diplomatically for 18 days or so, the USA launched a massive air attack, without really studying or initiating a diplomatic process to get justice. The United States' global strategy is clear. Without delay, and without giving a chance to diplomacy, it took this one opportunity to penetrate into Afghanistan to repress Russia at the north and deter China at the south. In such a context, it can be said that “Global governance”, as globalization needs it, remains an absolutely impossible goal because as long as the United States vainly attempts to dominate the world alone, at any opportunity and any cost to others, the other G7 members will continue to struggle and resist such control. The net result is a weakening of the resolve of the G7 as a group to formulate a new approach to the governance issue. To establish real global governance in a new globalised world, the key is probably to bring the UN system into play. As an international intergovernmental organization with the broadest representation of the present world, the UN shares its wide identity and authority with the majority of countries in the world. This existing organization would easily play a role conforming with its tenets and principles and contribute to world peace, human security and social development, if the G7-guided West would seriously regard it as the place to resolve and govern global issues. However, in recent years, the G7, and in particular its biggest nation-state member the United States, are in the habit of praising the UN when it is helpful for their own interest, while spurning it when it might affect some vested interests. Such attitude is seriously impairing the UN’s authority and jeopardizes its working mechanism. For exemple, in 1999, the USA-centered NATO steered clear of the UN to bomb Yugoslavia. Then later on, they demanded that the UN Security Council pass the draft of a G8 summit resolution without changes which was justifying the way they had been impinging on one’s sovereignty without UN’s approval in the first place. While the military attack launched by the USA and its allies against the Afghanistan Taliban government was acquiesced by the United Nation’s 1373 counter terrorism resolution that the UN Security Council passed unanimously on September 28, the UN resolution does not called actually for a military strike. But many Western governments including that of the four permanent members of the UN Security Council have expressed their support for U.S.-led war against the Taliban regime. Only China dissented. While the case is far from being the same as the NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, as always, however, it is the civilians that were the most affected. Thousands, children, men and women alike, died (10). Significantly, on the second day of the bombardment, the US Government hinted that it was prepared to launch attacks on other countries. Although the matter was quietly dropped later on upon pressure from its allies except Britain, it is far from certain that the United States will not at some point of time deviate from its original aim which was to eliminate what it sees as the backbone of the terrorists. The ultimate reason that the G7 has not so far grasped the event to do much about implementing a new system of global governance lies not only in its largest member, the United States, and its constant dream of establishing a unipolar hegemonic structure which runs contrary to what globalization needs, but also with the other G7 members. All of them are accustomed to protect their own vested interests in the current existing international order controlled by the United States. And therefore only marginal adjustments are the order of the day rather than a drastic new approach to world affairs, no matter the gravity of the events unfolding around them - the latest being the Argentina debacle. According to such thought, the reform of the current international order that the G7 drives can only be destructive for itself and the whole world in the long run. In a world where the societies go polarized and the poor countries marginalized, if G7 continues to control the reform process of the international order, with no effort to enlist other non-West countries, especially the great developing countries with the overwhelming majority of population in the world such as China, Brazil, India and the like, to participate in it, it is unlikely to be beneficial to all. Everyone agrees that only an authentic democratization and institutionalization of the system can bring an end to terrorist acts, which are born out of desperation and hopelessness. To think that sheer force will solve the problem is at best naive. History is full of such challenges and force always failed in the end to allay the legitimate concern of ostracized populations. Notes 1.- Source for the following three paragraphs: UNDP, Human Development Report 1999. Additional sources: Social Development Review, Vol. 3, No. 4, December 1999; UNCTAD, Trade and Development Report 1999, New York, United Nations, 1999; UNCTAD, Report of the Secretary General to UNCTAD X, New York, United Nations, 1999 TD 380; UNCTAD, World Investment Report: Foreign Direct Investment and the Challenge of Development, New York, United Nations, 1999. 2.-J. Wolfensohn, communication at UNCTAD X, Bangkok, February 2000. 3.-Dr. Andreas Freytag and Dipl.-Volksw. Stefan Mai, “Does E-Commerce Demand International Policy Co-ordination? The Okinawa Charter on Global Information Society Scrutinized”. Paper presented in a research workshop at the University of Marburg/Germany, January 23, 2001 and at the Public Choice Society’s Annual Meeting in San Antonio, March 9-11, 2001. 4.-Jonathan Power argues in the Herald Tribune, that poverty, particularly when it exists in a society of gross inequalities, breeds violence, crime and the urge to deal out deadly punishment on conventional society. The leaders may be educated (as were Osama Bin Laden or Che Guevara) the shock troops always come from the underclass. "I think, Jonathan Power writes, that the argument can be taken even further: there are 800 million people living in hunger without sufficient nourishment. Many exist in a state of political torpor, barely able to summon the energy to plant next year's crop. But somewhere in the vast mass there are those who see the situation with anger at their predicament. These days the mass media is ubiquitous, reaching even into the poorest villages, telling all. I'll never forget sitting on an African country bus, filled with peasants holding their live chickens, watching French-made videos portraying the most ghastly violence. Ideas travel. The only surprise is that it has taken so long for a bin Laden type to hit us where it hurts (…). Sartaj Aziz, a former minister of finance in Pakistan and a key player at the World Food Conference recalls the 1970s as a "remarkably creative period ….the UN system began to elaborate an alternative development strategy focused on the basic needs of the population, poverty reduction, income redistribution and employment. But before these new concepts could be translated into actual policies a serious debt crisis struck several Latin American countries and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank relegated these ideas to the back burner. Privatisation and liberalisation were presented as the panacea for all economic ills. These days,there is no fiscal space for actually implementing pro-agriculture and pro-poor policies". Few development economists question the need for continued liberalisation and globalisation. But what has to go hand in hand with that is an awareness that the richer countries have many of the most important markets rigged in their favour and that particular effort needs to be concentrated on the poorest and hungriest with methods that often supplement or, if necessary, bypass the market. It is a well-known fact that he World Trade Organization's policy of liberalizing trade concentrates on high tech products largely of interest to the richer countries, a few middle-income developing countries and the multinational companies. The simple manufactured products such as textile and leather goods, which are of greater interest to the developing countries, remain subject to many protectionist policies. As for agriculture, in particular, which could open the widest gate to the poorest countries, the rich countries are spending $350 billion a year in subsidies, which works to keep the potential agricultural exports of the developing countries at bay and often enough sabotages their internal markets with dumped products. This is almost six times the total the rich countries spend on foreign aid, of which, anyway, only about 10% gets spent on projects that directly help the hungriest. ((Herald Tribune, January 10th, 2002). 4.- " For those who survive to grow up in this environment and by some means of good fortune learn at least the rudiments of why one's family and people were neglected, is it not likely that an anger will burn within that one day might find its true target? Jonathan Power asked in his article. "When it does happen we might wonder, as with bin Laden today, why it has taken so long for someone to rise up and hit us in the solar plexus. (Jonathan Power: Poverty could breed more Bin Ladens - Herald Tribune January 10th, 2002). 5.- At the 1994 Naples Summit, the G7 invited Russia to participate in its foreign policy discussions coined as the P8 (“Political 8”) following the G7 Summit. Then the G7 Leaders agreed that the 1995 Halifax Summit should launch a comprehensive and systematic reform of the international institutions, in particular a new architecture for the international financial institutions. The G8 was then very much at the image of the world of the nineteenth century, not the twentieth one. Russia's economic strength is a mere shadow of what the Soviet Union's one was as it is now merely an economic dwarf compared to Brazil, India or China. 6.- The G7 initiated institutional reforms of such organizations as the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the OECD, and various UN agencies to foster “sustainable development with good jobs, economic growth and expanded trade”(“1. Introduction”, in Summit Communiqué, 1994) at the 1995 Halifax Summit, and has accelerated the ongoing process of reform of the international financial architecture till now. The essence of reform is to strengthen the prevailing international financial architecture and to maintain the G7’s domination in it. For discussions of the reform, see Roy Culpeper, “Systemic Reform at a Standstill: a Flock of ’Gs’ in Search of Global Financial Stability”, Paper presented at the conference Critical Issues in Financial Reform: Latin-American/Caribbean and Canadian Perspectives, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto, June 1-2, 2000, and Randall D Germain, “Reforming the International Financial Architecture: The New Political Agenda”, Paper presented at the International Studies Association, Chicago, IL, February 20-24, 2001.= 7.- See Statement of G7 Ministers of Finance and Central Bank Governors on attacks in United States, September 12, 2001, Statement of G7 Ministers of Finance, September 25, 2001, G7 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, October 6, 2001 and Statement by the leaders of the G8 over last week’s terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, September 19, 2001. 8.- John Kirton and many other experts on the G7/G8 often use “Socialization” as a term to describe the function of the G7/G8. Nevertheless, we have so far not read of any clear definition they give for the term. In our view, this term has two meanings, the first of which is to integrate the new administrations into the world of international affairs as a whole, and the second to integrate the big powers within a unilateralist orientation into the existing international order. 9.- “Six allies launching attack against Afghanistan” (People’s Daily, October 8, 2001). 10.- The United Nations on Friday 4 January 2002 expressed serious concern over frequent bombardment of civilians by coalition forces, urging them to take extra care in their military campaign to avoid civilian casualties, after a series of air raids on December 29 by coalition forces on a village with an estimated population of 250 people, located six kilometers north of Gardez city in Paktia province killed at least 52 innocent civilians. During the bombing, five large fort-like traditional compounds with living quarters inside were razed to the ground and it appeared that all the inhabitants had been buried under the rubble. After the first raid, between 10 and 20 villagers including women and children ran north of the village to seek protection around a water source. These people were also attacked and there were no survivors. The second and third attacks also targeted the village, destroying more houses and killing a number of people. Among those killed were six villagers from a neighbouring village, who had come to help the injured and survivors. After the attacks, relatives identified 52 bodies which included 17 men, 10 women and 25 children, according to the UN's spokesman. The total civilian casulaties in Afghanistan will remain an unknown number, but the lower estimate is about 4,000 as of January 4th, 2001. In spite of a plea from various organizations, the bombing has not stopped. More bombing raids took place in the second week of January 2002. The number of deaths, among them children by the hundreds, dwarfs the number of prisonners of the Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces, by at least one to ten. | |||
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