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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 August 2000 Issue No. 494 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 10 - 16 August 2000 Issue No. 494
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Books Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Let them eat keyboards
By Gamil Mattar
The recent summit in Okinawa that brought together the seven richest nations of the world plus Russia was not the most important of the G-8 meetings. The Western media accorded it less attention than other summits held at this time every year. Nor did the meeting generate great excitement among those concerned with the developments affecting the global balance of power. Indeed, Bill Clinton himself, representing one of the G-8's pillars, could not decide whether to go to Okinawa or remain in the company of Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak in Camp David. This indecision cannot be explained away merely on the grounds that a Middle East settlement is the US administration's overriding preoccupation at this stage. The temperature in this region is only one of the global issues that could prompt the wealthiest and most powerful nations of the world to hold a conference.
Clinton's hesitation, and then his decision to fly to Okinawa and rush back to Camp David before that summit ended, highlight an issue that may well have important bearing on the future of international relations, as well as the Middle East conflict. In Okinawa, Clinton treated his summit colleagues just as he did international public opinion and leaders at Camp David -- he refused to let anyone in on the developments. Evidently his opinion was that the negotiations, and indeed the entire Middle East question, should not concern the other heads of state in Okinawa. In other words, the US administration has decided that certain issues fall exclusively within the American scope of jurisdiction because the global order since the fall of the bipolar order has been the Pax Americana. It follows that in such eras, the nation -- or empire -- that imposes its "peace" over the world has certain prerogatives. It determines when certain issues are raised and when and how to settle certain disputes. It has the right to establish and break up alliances and to appoint agents and proxies that act in its name on issues related to security and peace in the empire. In short, it has the right to set the agenda for humanity in accordance with the priorities of the imperial centre.
Particular issues, in spite of their importance, were not brought before the Okinawa conference; those aspects that were discussed on the sidelines or in the cultural sessions were purely for the sake of form. The Middle East issue, as I mentioned, was not discussed at the summit, in spite of how much it affects the interests of all its participants. Nor was the US anti-ballistic missile defence shield brought up, although it was definitely on Vladimir Putin's agenda. Putin knew the US was not willing to discuss issues related to Russia's rehabilitation so early on in Putin's term of office. Therefore, on his way to Okinawa he stopped in North Korea and in China precisely to discuss this issue. He thus succeeded in arming himself with a statement issued in conjunction with Chinese President Jiang Zemin to the effect that the plan by the United States to develop a National Missile Defence (NMD) system was intended to secure unilateral military and security advantages that could have the gravest adverse consequences. He also brought along a proposal from Pyongyang that North Korea would not escalate its missile exports and was prepared to accept offers to enter into satellite launching partnerships.
Putin wanted to put the NMD system on the G-8 summit agenda and failed. He had obtained information directly from Germany and from other political and media channels that most EU countries also fear that the US defence programme threatens international stability with an intensified arms race and could hamper the efforts to overcome the problems that have hindered economic growth in many capitalist countries. Perhaps Putin was under the impression that he would receive European backing in his efforts to put the NMD on the Okinawa agenda. He was mistaken, but that was because Washington was determined not to discuss a "purely American" issue at a public international forum. NMD lies in the realm of the Pax Americana, not the Pax Capitalista.
For the same reason, the US was not about to permit discussion of the US military presence in Okinawa. And, indeed, the issue was not raised, in spite of the human chain the island's inhabitants formed around the summit premises in protest against the US refusal to withdraw from the island. In fact, the Japanese government, which faces the heat of public opinion as well as pressure from China and North Korea, did not even try to broach the issue of the US occupation. It knew without being told that the subject was not to be aired before the other members of the "summit of the rich" and would not be aired unless the US decided to make it a question of the peace and security of the capitalist world such as the Balkans, money laundering and terrorism.
Nonetheless, the US, in a departure from previous G-8 summits, did not have the final word. It is still too early to understand fully the reasons and motives behind this development, but perhaps the US wanted to spread around some of the responsibility for the decisions taken by the summit. Then again, perhaps it wanted to give the impression of some form of democratic participation in the decision-making process. Then, too, Washington may have realised that it could not contend with certain issues on its own, among them the renewed spread of a number of epidemic diseases in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Now there is an issue that falls squarely in the lap of the Pax Capitalista because of the question of financing and the stupendous profits at stake for international pharmaceutical companies, which refuse to produce medicine for the poor unless the bill is footed by the governments of the rich.
Another top priority issue on the agenda of the rich is how to spruce up the image of the market economy or, otherwise put, how to mend the reputation of globalisation following the battering it received in Seattle and Davos. Certainly, compounding their consternation are the many dire predictions issued recently by economists and political observers in the West and South of localised popular uprisings against the rich, as occurred at the end of the 19th century against the Rockefellers, Morgans and Rothschilds, whose vast fortunes were notoriously tainted by corruption. The observers have also warned of worldwide turbulence, predictions that, in fact, are already a reality, but in the guises of religious fundamentalism, sectarianism, organised crime, drug trafficking, and large-scale immigration from the countries of the poor to the countries of abundance. The problems of globalisation also effect Europe, where there is considerable anxiety at the sluggishness of the transition to capitalist economies in the countries of central and southeastern Europe, the revival of an inclination to certain less than democratic and less tolerant processes and forms of government, and the resurfacing of a rabid ultra-nationalist movement throughout Europe. Such issues, in the opinion of the US, should be the responsibility of all the members of the "capitalist" summit and should not be considered within the framework of the Pax Americana.
On these issues, too, the other G-8 member nations act as though they would like to restrict America's sway, or at least to draw a sharper line between what is subject to the realm of the Pax Americana and what should be subject to the assembly of great powers, which must shoulder the considerable burden of defending the capitalist order against two adversaries, one of which already exists while the other looms in the near future. The existing adversary consists of the poor nations and peoples whose sufferings have been aggravated beyond tolerance because of the growing gap between rich and poor and the policies of globalisation, which have aggravated unemployment and political and social instability. The second potential adversary consists of the growing interests and ambitions of US capitalism, whose expanding tentacles have already become so intertwined in the economies of other countries that it is difficult to determine what is specifically American and what is healthy capitalism, in view of the new brand of capitalism the US wants to export at the expense of the type the Europeans are comfortable with.
There remain certain issues that neither the US nor the G-8 appear capable of handling effectively, because they entail religious or moral values. In the West and the East, people are asking who has the right or duty to set the religious and moral standards governing research and innovations in the fields of biotechnology and genetic engineering. The question is of considerable urgency now that progress in these areas is about to bring down barriers that could spell the collapse of entire cultures and the spread of total chaos.
I do not believe it a great exaggeration to say that the answer to this question will contribute directly to shaping the world of the future. Many convictions have been shaken because of technological breakthroughs and the anxieties these have aroused among the world's poor. It is difficult to achieve global peace and stability in the absence of solid, fundamental convictions shared the world over. It is even more difficult to achieve this when the rich, after two centuries of ostensibly practicing liberty, equality and fraternity, are asking, like Marie Antoinette, why the poor cannot acquire the fundamental information and communications technology instead of so stubbornly insisting on bread.
This mentality, which prevailed in Okinawa, bodes an even broader gap between the rich and poor and confirms that the current international leadership, so confident in its power, lacks an essential ingredient: legitimacy.
