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The Doha Failure is a Victory for the Sovereign
The failure of the Doha World Trade Organization talks is a victory for the people of all countries.
The past has seen a tendency of nations to give up their sovereignty to some unaccountable organizations or contractual agreement frameworks. The EU, IMF, NATO or the WTO are example for such. These organizations restrict the ability of future national governments to change basic national policies. With the rise of such constructs it did not matter anymore how people voted because basic elements of economic and security policies had been given away to some anonymous plutocracy and could only be changed by paying an ever increasing price.
The failure of the Doha talks may well be the long needed turnaround of this trend.
It does not matter who is to blame for these failures. The WaPo editors predictably blame China, the developing countries blame the U.S. and EU and their huge farm subsidies.
The developed countries insist on heavily subsidizing their own agriculture sectors. The $307 billion farm bill which passed the Senate in May is bigger than the GDP of most countries.
Afraid of mass imports of hugely subsidized goods from the U.S. and EU, developing countries insisted on their right to put tariffs on these and to protect their local long term food sources from economic ruin. The rich countries tried to deny that right to the poor even while they insisted on subsidizing their exports.
The real issue at stake here was the responsibility of a nation to provide for its people. That duty includes their security in a wide sense. Any nation is obliged to take care that it can feed its people from its own soil.
The failure of the Doha talks reaffirms this responsibility. The ability to adopt national policies on food production stays with the local people. Everyone who believes in real democracy should welcome this event. It is a win for the sovereigns of the world – its people.
Yeah B is right… and Lamy looked really dead on his vacillating feet. Here, there have been NO demonstrations (afaik; if there were any they were invisible, I even passed by right in front) as if the usual WTO protesting crowds knew that the negotiations would fail? Or, the meeting was somehow not considered an important venue (though it was)? I talked to an old marxist friend, what, he said, no, demos, no and nothing more.
The problem as I see it is double, and related, one, these are merchants haggling in the marketplace, in a sort of unconnected parallel universe (feeding ppl is not really their concern, international or global matters are boiled down quarrels about tariffs on bananas, which is not illegitimate at all but perhaps beside the point and stupendously symbolic) two, and this a pet peeve of mine, the method of negotiation.
For tricky negotiations it is better to meet face to face but not with delegations from more than 100 countries, not with crowds of ppl, etc. Lamy was forced to create a smaller group of the powerful…which pissed off everyone else no end and doomed the whole enterprise. If countries had the chance to state what was really important for them, or what were the inalterable demands/sticking points – hopefully these might be, once stated, considered seriously and discussed and possibly even amended following goodwill and so on – there might be, as they say, a way.
But a limited souk where the powerful dominate…no. Mind you, the top ppl get paid to be frustrated, finally it all comes down to an empty exercise, so what, on to the next round, call the chauffeur, James, Jamesy, Ahmed, Pedro, or Elvis, here is some money for your daughter’s teeth!
There are ways, outside of these kinds of big meets, to have negotiations at least continuing and thus moving forward, like a sort of diplomatic equivalent of an internet forum, to give just one image. But that means that even even small players have a voice, provided they can articulate it, and have it accepted, even if only in ‘theory’ – So that doesn’t happen. The whole process, as a method, is flawed, nay doomed, to be journalistic here, and seems in fact designed for that very purpose.
Borders are artificial and international trade exists de facto and is regulated. Pragmatically, that has to be accepted, and worked, on, and changed..
Posted by: Tangerine | Jul 30 2008 17:32 utc | 12
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