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The end of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the Iron Curtain brought with it the hope that humanity was very close to finding an end to problems such as poverty and famine.
The regime that was synonymous with “evil” in Western cultures is now gone, after continuous assault by the “free world” and a lack of a visionary strategy in the East that took the communist regimes nowhere. In all, the collapse succeeded in liberating human lives in the communist bloc.
Soon after, Western politicians started preaching new values of globalisation.
They believed that the world, with the help of modern communication technology and unprecedented control over natural resources offered by modern science, could give the Earth a beautiful new face and make it a global village where everyone could enjoy full human rights.
But the rosy scenario was tarnished as 9/11 brought the challenge of terrorism to the fore. More recently, the crash of capitalism’s pillars in the United States has also dealt a body blow.
In between, the world witnessed an unprecedented shortage of food. As a result, it sank deeper into poverty, which leaders had promised to eradicate only a year ago.
Despite this disconcerting turn of events, France is making a strong attempt to expand its international role and define a new structure for world management.
Peace and democracy
The Union for the Mediterranean declared by French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris last July was a step towards correcting international relations and building a new bloc based on cooperation rather than confrontation — a revolution based on the principle of enforcing peace and promoting democracy even if it prompted humanity to go to war.
Another step towards building a new coalition for the good of humanity will be the World Policy Conference (WPC) 2008.
The summit of world leaders to be held in Evian, France, this week [October 6-8] aims to create an efficient method to manage the world.
The importance of the summit stems from the fact that the event is organised by a think-tank that believes globalisation is no guarantee of a bright future for the world and those with a sense of wisdom, including world leaders, should come up with a sustainable system that can address the new problems that have emerged in the wake of globalisation.
The man behind the summit is Thierry de Montbrial, founder and president of the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales (French Institute of International Relations).
De Montbrial is confident that globalisation is a dying process and world leaders should search for an alternative.
Nearly 30 presidents have confirmed their participation in the Evian summit.
De Montbrial told Weekend Review that the summit would be held annually and serve as a platform to debate issues concerning humanity.
“Globalisation has failed badly in managing the world and addressing the roots of the problems facing humanity.
Leaders and governments have to look for a practical and efficient system to manage the world, which is at present ruled by the law of chaos,” de Montbrial said.
In the ideology of globalisation, states do not matter for the development of the world, he said. “It is all done by companies and non-governmental organisations. They can take up the traditional role of the government [and carry out its functions] in a more efficient manner.
But developments in the past 15 years — since the term globalisation was coined — and more precisely, in the past two weeks, suggest the opposite: Globalisation is in its final stages and the world must either work towards improving living conditions or face destruction.”
According to de Montbrial, states have become more important than ever. States by definition are entities invented by society to represent the public and work for their good, he said.
There are issues facing communities around the world that cannot be solved by market forces and there is an urgent need for governments to intervene.
“As we are talking, there are financial crises developing in various parts of the world. The intervention of governments has become necessary even in the United States and in the United Kingdom to bail out the markets and restore confidence in the system. This emphasises the importance of states.
“Many governments have come up with a disappointing performance. But that does not mean that they be scrapped and the market be allowed to decide the fate of the people.
The problem with governments lies with their disability to adjust to a rapidly changing environment,” de Montbrial said.
He said the world was changing at an unprecedented pace and, paradoxically, states were becoming more and more important.
But the states are lagging behind in meeting the need for development as often happens in the case of bureaucracy.
More importantly, the existing style of international relations is more conservative than it ought to be so that it is able to cope with the need for change.
“Most international organisations were created in the first half of the 20th century and have not adjusted, or adjusted in a very limited way, making them unable to function efficiently in the new world,” de Montbrial said.
For example, over the past ten years there has been talk about the need to restructure the United Nations and the Security Council, but there has been no progress.
The G8, which met recently in Japan, proved once again that it had become obsolete because it has excluded China and India, which are considered the world’s largest economies.
Besides, China is also a country that carries significant political weight.
On the other hand, G8 declarations made at the end of each meeting had very limited substance. “Their commitment to Africa has not been fulfilled despite the urgency of the situation on that continent, while China’s presence is expanding day by day. This affects the credibility of the organisation.
“We have to realise that all states are not the same from the sociological and political points of view. The tendency of the US and the West to export democracy cannot always work,” de Montbrial said.
According to him, the heterogeneity of the world we live in has to be recognised.
“We in the democratic world cannot keep insisting on converting other countries to be like us. This will not work and will be considered by other nations as a new colonial attitude that invites revenge,” he said.
Another factor that has made globalisation dysfunctional is environmental problems. “It has been proved that the environmental imbalance cannot be corrected without the cooperation of the major players,” de Montbrial said.
He believes all these issues only go on to suggest that globalisation is not the right framework for managing either the world or individual governments.
“Governments are mired in bureaucratic processes that discourage a swift response to change. So they will not be able to solve problems with the existing tools,” de Montbrial said.
“I arrived at the conclusion that bringing together the leaders of the world along with a group of selected people from the business community and the intellectual elite might be quite useful in coming up with a proper system for managing the world.”
It may be argued that think-tanks or forums such as the one de Montbrial has suggested already exist but they don’t have the power to implement their recommendations. It is up to politicians to adopt their views or reject them.
But the summit envisaged by de Montbrial will have a follow-up committee to oversee the implementation keeping in view the bureaucratic tendency to resist changes.
“I think the exercise might result in a comprehensive proposal on how to manage the world in a short period with political and social significance,” Montbrial said.
Is the WPC a proposal to end the United Nations?
“Not at all,” de Montbrial said, adding that although the UN and the Security Council had lost much of their legitimacy, no system to replace them was in place.
According to him, the world body is still important but in some ways it had become irrelevant.
The WPC doesn’t aim to replace the UN but will certainly be looking into ways to improve the way it functions.
The Evian summit is a private initiative with specific goals that are supposed to be achieved through round-table discussions. All those who attend the summit, including the leaders, will participate in brainstorming sessions. De Montbrial said the delegates to the WPC would be participating on invitation. The agenda of the summit has been decided by the Institut Francais des Relations Internationales and the ambassadors of the participating countries have no say in the framework and the functionality of the summit.
The first round-table, for instance, de Montbrial said, would be attended by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero and King Abdullah of Jordan, while the second round-table will host the Turkish president, the Greek prime minister and the prime minister of Qatar.
De Montbrial said a second round of workshops will be conducted during the summit to highlight operational issues and come up with a work plan to oversee the implementation of the recommendations.
The WPC will be looking to establish a triangular system to manage the world based on politicians, intellectuals and business leaders.
“The concern that this summit is trying to answer is: How do we create a bridge that [can help] the three groups of participants [intellectual, politicians and businessmen] to communicate and come up with concrete plans for the issues of debate,” de Montbrial said.
He said the absence of star leaders or those representing the so-called superpower had nothing to do with the success of the summit, which is looking at generating workable ideas rather than making headlines.
“I have always wondered why when the Iranian president, for instance, spoke in Davos, all the attention went to him while very few people listened to the Estonian president, who happens to be a very intellectual person.
In addition, the WPC has a precise schedule and its programme allows all the participants to attend major functions. All leaders are treated on an equal footing unlike Davos, where there are 100 events competing with each other.”
“We have not even thought of competing with Davos. The forum is a big success but most of the people participating in it do so because it offers an excellent platform for public relations and business deals,” de Montbrial said.
The summit, he added, was not against the idea of inviting officials from the US and the American president would definitely be invited in the future.
Highlights of Thierry de Montbrial’s career
- A member of the Institut de France. He has been professor of Economics at the Ecole Polytechnique since 1974.
- Holds the chair of Economics and International Relations at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers.
- A columnist for ‘Le Monde’ since March 2002 and a columnist for ‘Le Figaro’ from 1989 to 2001.
- The chairman of the Franco-Austrian Centre for European Economic Convergence.
- He serves on the boards or advisory boards of a number of international institutions.
- Between 1993 and 2001, he was the first chairman of the Foundation for Strategic Research.
- In 1973, Michel Jobert, foreign affairs minister, entrusted him with the setting up of the Policy Planning Staff (Centre d’Analyse et de Prévision) at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was its first director from 1973 to 1979.
- Established the French Institute of International Relations in 1979.
- In June 1992, he was elected a member of the Institut de France (Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques). of which he was elected president for 2001.
- He was elected member of the Academia Europaea in March 1993, of the Académie Royale de Belgique in January 1996, of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences in May 1999, of the Romanian Academy in December 1999 and of the Russian Academy of Sciences in May 2003.
- He has been awarded state orders by the governments of Austria, Poland, Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Romania and Brazil.
- He is a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and the Ecole des Mines. He received a PhD in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
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