The 2008 global financial crisis and its aftermath have caused a loss of faith not only in markets, but also in the ability of democratic governments to ensure that the benefits of market-led growth are widely shared. On economic, financial, tax, trade, and climate issues, many people around the world are fearful or angry, believing that a worldwide cabal of bankers, corporations, and G-20 elites uses insider deals to monopolize the benefits of globalization.
But few people – whether ordinary citizens or internationally oriented economists – recognize that our seemingly weak and ineffectual multilateral institutions are the world’s best hope for managing and democratizing the global market. Only these institutions are capable of preventing the elite capture and insider rents that are putting global prosperity at long-term risk.
Wind rose map in the center of the compass. Photo: Lee Cannon.
PARIS – The newspaper commentaries that I write often have a dark perspective. Sadly, this one will be no different. But there are two pieces of good news that break through the gloom.
First, the global significance of US President Barack Obama’s reelection is clear: the world has escaped a disaster for international cooperation. The US was on the verge of sinking into isolationist nationalism, reinforced, perhaps, by xenophobic sentiment. Obama’s victory, despite America’s economic travails, clears the way for cooperation based on a sympathetic ear to others and on negotiations in which the US does not deny the legitimacy of a global public interest (as it has done, unfortunately, on the issue of climate change).
The other piece of good news concerns France, and thus is more “local,” but is crucially important nonetheless. Like everywhere else in the developed world, the global crisis has hit the French economy hard, with output stagnating, unemployment rising, job insecurity mounting, government debt soaring, and the stock market at risk of crashing. Manufacturing production has plummeted, the trade balance has deteriorated sharply, and corporate bankruptcies are increasingly frequent.
For six months, France has had new leadership – a new president, government, and parliament. But President François Hollande and his government were strangely inactive after the elections, limiting themselves to reducing the impact of unfair budget cuts and taxation reforms implemented by the previous government of Nicolas Sarkozy. Many began to wonder whether Hollande was aware of the scope of the crisis that the recent downturn might trigger.
In recent weeks, however, the government has introduced energetic and courageous measures to boost the competitiveness of French industries, including a huge €20 billion ($26 billion) tax break for businesses, to be financed by a hike in value-added tax, which means that the general public will pay for it. The VAT increase will hurt, but there was no other way. Awareness, boldness, and comprehensive policymaking have come as a relief to French investors, and have left them better positioned to face the crisis.
The French government’s new push to confront the country’s economic plight matters not only to France, but to Europe and the world as well. After all, France is the eurozone’s second-largest economy, and the fifth-largest economy in the world.
And yet, despite these bright spots, international cooperation on issues ranging from regional conflicts to the protection of global public goods remains weak. Antarctica, the only land in the world that is administered directly by the international community, is a recent case in point.
The Antarctic Treaty, negotiated in 1959, prohibits any and all military activities in Antarctica and forbids the establishment of any borders. Three agreements – the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Seals (1972), the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR, 1980), and the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty (PEP, 1991), which prohibits any activity relating to mineral resources – have since been added to the treaty.
The Antarctic Treaty System includes three annual meetings: one deals with the supervision and management of the Treaty itself, and the other two concern the CCAMLR and the PEP. In recent years, proposals have been considered that would establish marine reserves around the continent and end the risk of growing scarcity, or the outright disappearance, of a variety of species of fish and cetaceans.
The principle that international cooperation is required to protect fishery resources, which are dwindling everywhere, was adopted at the 2011 CCAMLR meeting. At the 2012 CCAMLR meeting, which concluded at the beginning of November in Hobart, Australia, three proposals (from the US, New Zealand, and France/Australia) to establish marine reserves in three different areas were discussed. They were compatible and would reinforce one another. Yet the discussion foundered, and no decision was taken. Russia and Ukraine – and, to a lesser extent, China – blocked efforts to reach an agreement.
This failure reflects the same dynamic at work in the breakdown of global climate-change conferences in recent years: a few cynical countries, whose cooperation is needed to save the planet, fuel the madness of those bent on destroying it. That will not change until a new consciousness emerges worldwide to persuade states to support binding international law.
The US has now reelected a president who understands this. France has a president who understands the need for bold, far-reaching actions as well. Their active leadership, and that of others, is needed now more than ever to turn the tide.
Copyright Project Syndicate
Michel Rocard is a former French prime minister and former leader of the French Socialist Party. For further information on the topic, please view the following publications from our partners:
Aerial view of the Amazon Rainforest. Photo: CIFOR/flickr.
BLOOMINGTON – Much is riding on the United Nations Rio+20 summit. Many are billing it as Plan A for Planet Earth and want leaders bound to a single international agreement to protect our life-support system and prevent a global humanitarian crisis.
Inaction in Rio would be disastrous, but a single international agreement would be a grave mistake. We cannot rely on singular global policies to solve the problem of managing our common resources: the oceans, atmosphere, forests, waterways, and rich diversity of life that combine to create the right conditions for life, including seven billion humans, to thrive.
We have never had to deal with problems of the scale facing today’s globally interconnected society. No one knows for sure what will work, so it is important to build a system that can evolve and adapt rapidly.
Decades of research demonstrate that a variety of overlapping policies at city, subnational, national, and international levels is more likely to succeed than are single, overarching binding agreements. Such an evolutionary approach to policy provides essential safety nets should one or more policies fail.
The G-20 leaders at Cannes, France, in November 2011. Photo: Gobierno Federal/flickr.
BERLIN – The multipolar nature of today’s international system will again be on display at the upcoming G-20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico. Global problems are no longer solved, crises managed, or global rules defined, let alone implemented, the old-fashioned way, by a few, mostly Western, powers. Incipient great and middle powers, such as India, Brazil, Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey, and South Africa, also demand their say.
Some of these powers are still emerging economies. Politically, however, most of them have crossed the threshold that has long limited their access to the kitchen of international decision-making. The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the “P-5”) still defend their right to veto resolutions, and their military power is unmatched. But they can no longer dispose of sufficient resources, competence, and legitimacy to cope with global challenges or crises on their own.
In today’s discussion of global interdependence, we highlight a common weakness of those who advocate increased global governance – e.g., the belief that the cluster of values and beliefs that support the concept are universal and not culturally bound. This is of course not true – any attempts at formal global governance must reflect the principle of socio-political subsidiarity if it is to succeed. But in embracing the principle of maximum local control, the seed of collective governance’s destruction, or at least its diminished strength, is at hand. One reason is that the localism represented by subsidiarity is not necessarily compatible with global governance, and the reason for that might be a nation-state’s strategic culture.
According to the political scientist Jack Snyder, strategic culture “refers to a nation’s traditions, values, attitudes, patterns of behavior, habits, symbols, achievements and particular ways of adapting to the environment and solving problems with respect to the threat or use of force.” Alastair Johnston, in turn, defines strategic culture as a “system of symbols…which acts to establish pervasive and long-lasting strategic preferences by formulating concepts of the role and efficacy of military force in interstate political affairs, and by clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the strategic preferences seem uniquely realistic and efficacious.” These definitions are a big improvement over their less “scientific” forefathers – i.e., the 19th century, Social Darwinist notion of “national character.” Ardant du Picq, for example, noted in his infamous “Battle Studies” (one of the founding texts of the 19th century European military Cult of the Offensive) that the French military historically had no choice but to be offensively-minded. After all, the typical Frenchman was too skittish, nervous, glory hungry, and “Latin” to ever prefer defensive over offensive warfare. (Never mind the Maginot Line.) This type of stereotyping was quite common in the late-19th and early 20th century, but its crudity and caricaturing of nations and peoples soon caused it to lapse into disfavor. The typical Japanese soldier, if we recall, was often portrayed as a robot, an ape or as lice in virulent WWII propaganda, which was nothing if not the ungainly child of earlier “national character” parents. So, it’s interesting to see how the concept of strategic culture has dubious roots, got sanitized over time and yet gained explanatory power in the process. National obsessions and myths do remain an impediment to transnational governance.
