16 - 22 August 2001
Issue No.547
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 16 - 22 August 2001 Issue No.547 |
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How useful the G-8?
From here on, the informal summits of the seven most industrialised countries, plus Russia, will take place in remote places, far from public scrutiny. Mohamed Sid-Ahmed comments
Italy is taken up these days with an investigation into the brutal repression by its carabinieri of large-scale demonstrations held in Genoa last month, when some 200,000 anti-globalisation protesters, fuelled by the ever sharper perception that the G-8 leaders and the institutions they control follow a policy that runs against the interests of humanity as a whole, marched through the streets of the picturesque town to protest the latest meeting of the seven most developed industrial states, plus Russia, on present-day issues of globalisation. The Italian opposition is demanding that the investigation focus in particular on Giancarlo Fini, deputy prime minister in Berlusconi's right-wing government and leader of the neo-Fascist party, the National Alliance. Germany's Interior Minister has proposed the idea of a European force that could be used to contain such demonstrations, which he described as "riot tourism," and deter would-be participants by drawing up "blacklists" of the demonstrators. As a result of the confrontational strategy employed by the police in Genoa, a young demonstrator was shot dead, and images of his blood-stained body flashed on television screens throughout the world.
There is no doubt that the Italian authorities had their work cut out for them when Italy was chosen to host the meeting, having to ensure the security of the world's most powerful heads of state while at the same time not curtailing the freedom of the anti-globalisation demonstrations who converged on Genoa from all over the globe. This could explain, if not justify, some of the excesses of the police, whose treatment of some of the people they arrested could easily be described as torture. The Italian state may have preferred to put the responsibility on the police rather than assuming it itself. All that is possible. But it does not explain the vindictiveness in dealing with the anti- globalisation demonstrations, or why the confrontation became so ruthless.
The big powers consider the shift from the bipolar world order, based on the confrontation between East and West, to a unipolar world order, as a fundamental step forward. The implosion of the Soviet Union was seen by the proponents of neoliberalism as a vindication of capitalism, marking the end of ideological confrontation and "the end of history" itself. They believed that while pockets of resistance to the new world order would continue to resort to violence, conflict would take the form of conflict between civilisations, not of violent clashes in the streets.
But reality proved to be different. The world was treated to the amazing spectacle of "people power" in Seattle, where demonstrators protesting the policies of the World Trade Organisation succeeded in preventing its Millennium Conference from convening. Similar meetings of the great powers, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other non-official gatherings of the powerful of this world, such as Davos, have been received by wide masses with strong hostility. Why?
The US administration -- headquarters of the New World Order -- regards the unipolar world order as stable and irreversible. True, a number of "rogue" states are challenging its supremacy, but they are a minority, a transient phenomenon that is bound to disappear sooner or later.
The ranks of the Genoa demonstrations, as well as of similar demonstrations in the past, were infiltrated by small violent groups, called "black blocks," whose recourse to such methods as breaking windows, robbing stores, overturning cars and setting fire to bank branches and the seats of multinational corporations jeopardised the position of all demonstrators by providing occasions for the police to charge peaceful participants. This small minority of anarchist activists distorts the image of the vast majority of the protest movement, which is made up of a variety of NGOs, trade unionists, representatives of political parties, organisations in the field of human rights and other institutions whose political activities are conducted within the framework of the law, using legitimate peaceful means. The organisers of these increasingly unpopular meetings have every interest in discrediting their critics by focusing attention on the anarchist minority to falsify the overall picture and drown the voices of the disciplined demonstrators in the general clamour.
Still, the organisers have come to realise that surrounding the meetings with ostentatious fanfare only underscores the growing disparity between rich and poor. The Genoa meeting is probably the last to be held in the traditional way. Meetings in future will be held in discreet places that are as inaccessible as possible to protest. The next meeting of the World Trade Organisation is to be held in Doha, next November, while G-8 leaders will meet next year in a remote village in the Canadian Rockies. The World Bank has had to cancel the meeting it was meant to hold in Barcelona last June and its annual meeting with the IMF in Washington next October will probably be the last to be held in that format. These are indications that the great powers feel it is no longer fitting, or perhaps even legitimate, to hold showy summits in the context of growing social disparities, especially in view of the increasing success of protest mobilisations, which have proved capable of preventing the holding of meetings altogether. A barricade was set up around the historical centre of Genoa where the summit was held. Are we witnessing the erection of a wall between the rich North and the poor South, after the breakdown of the Berlin wall between the capitalist West and the communist East?
Despite their anti-globalisation label, the Genoa demonstrators are not opposed to the process of globalisation per se, but to the way it is being implemented by the proponents of neoliberalism. They are not against the process as an objective development that reduces the distances between people and transforms the planet into a global village, nor to the rapid pace of technological development, especially in the field of communications, which has underscored a shared sense of global identity. What they are calling for is an alternative model of globalisation, one that does not reduce the distances between people geographically while increasing the social distances between rich and poor, replacing one bipolar world system by another.
It is true that for a few years the present form of globalisation had a certain popularity and, as such, enjoyed some legitimacy, especially in many developed capitalist societies. The proponents of unbridled liberalism, all-out privatisation and deregulation, like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, could rely on a genuine consensus and a measure of legitimacy in the eyes of a large part of the population in industrialised countries. This was reinforced by the collapse of the Soviet bloc as well as by the legitimacy derived from the Gulf War. But since 1997, elements inducing a loss of legitimacy have been accumulating: successive crises in key countries of the periphery (south-east Asia, Brazil, Argentina, Russia, Turkey), the failure of the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, the failure of the millennium round in Seattle, stock exchange crises, a slowdown of economic growth in industrialised countries and global poverty reaching an unprecedented level in the past half-century (with women more affected than men).
This has had its repercussions, further degrading the environment and renewing the arms race. US President Bush has opposed the Kyoto Protocol on global warming and pushed ahead with his anti- missile shield project, thus encouraging a new round of global military escalation. The legitimacy of unrestricted liberalism has gradually been eroded. Some have called for a Third Way lying somewhere between traditional socialism and traditional capitalism. But it is not by identifying the mainstream members of a growing protest movement who are calling for an alternative, more humane, world order with a small minority of extremists, nor by resorting to police violence against them, that a healthy discussion of the seminal issues at stake can be generated.
What is required is a wide-ranging public debate, not a restricted discussion conducted behind high walls by a handful of leaders whose decisions will impact on the whole of humankind. Nor does the solution lie in toning down the ostentatious display of wealth and power that has traditionally characterised these meetings while continuing to keep them shrouded in secrecy. The lack of transparency here denotes a lack of faith in democracy. And the vitality displayed by a wide range of protesters is proof that attempts to shut the people out of the workings of an exclusive club that seeks to shape their destiny cannot be sustained for ever.
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