A new opportunity in Cancun's failure

A new opportunity in Cancun's failure

Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Director, Program on Human Rights and Justice,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, U.S.A, Yale Center
for the Study of Globalization

In 1955, twenty-nine nations from Africa and Asia gathered in
Bandung, Indonesia in the first-ever meeting of the former-
colonized, non-white nations.

The emergence of the bloc of G-22 countries at the recent
Cancun World Trade Organization meeting can be seen as a
continuation of the spirit of Bandung, a desire by Third World
states to catch up with the North and effectively challenge the
overwhelming power of their former colonial masters. And just as
Bandung defined North-South and led to the formation of the Non-
Aligned Group of countries, the new trade bloc will likely have a
far-reaching impact.

At Cancun, the G-22 group of developing countries, which
comprises well over 50 percent of the world's population and
includes Brazil, China, India and South Africa, was able to
present a coherent stand on a variety of issues that are of
importance to the Third World in trade negotiations.

The issues of particular concern were cross-border investment,
competition policies, trade facilitation, and government
procurement. Cancun also marked a new solidarity between G-22
states and a coalition of civil society organizations from around
the world.

How should we interpret these new developments? Is G-22 the
re-initiation of a Third World bloc, carrying forward the spirit
of Bandung? And what is the significance of the new alliance
between Southern states and a global social movement focused on
economic justice?

First, it is likely that the G-22 is here to stay, though some
members of the group such as Peru and Colombia have opted out
under U.S. pressure. The Chairman of the U.S. Senate Finance
Committee, Charles Grassley, has warned that the behavior of
Latin American countries at Cancun would influence future
decisions. Yet despite such pressure from the U.S. and the EU,
the G-22 seems to have a core that is capable of holding on.

That "core" consists of the three large Southern industrial
democracies -- Brazil, India and South Africa -- which are now
attempting to challenge the hegemony of Northern democracies.
They have recently formed a G-3 -- perhaps as a counterweight to
the G-7 -- and have announced a range of measures to strengthen
their trilateral relationship.

Trade between the three has increased rapidly in recent years;
Brazil and India are exchanging top-level visits; and MERCOSUR is
concluding preferential trade agreements with South Africa and
India. In 2002, Brazilian exports to India were larger in
percentage terms than to any other country. The total bilateral
trade in 2002 reached US$1.2 billion.

If similar relations emerge between other members of the G-22,
especially China, Egypt, and Turkey, it would constitute a very
significant challenge to Euro-American hegemony of the world
economy. Celso Amorim, the foreign minister of Brazil, doesn't
hide that the G-3 aims for expansion to China and perhaps even to
Russia.

Consider this. Between 2000 and the end of 2002 China received
21 Brazilian trade missions, and Brazil received 24 Chinese trade
missions during the same period. In May of this year exports from
Brazil to China increased by 375 percent compared to three years
previously. Moreover, Brazilian exports to India were larger in
percentage terms than to any other country including the U.S.,
UK, China, Germany, and Japan.

Along with their closer economic ties, the G-3 democracies may
influence global politics as well -- all share an ideological
critique of the current world order, which they perceive to be
western-dominated. They may jointly advocate for global changes,
from the reform of the UN Security Council to reduction of
agricultural subsidies.

Secondly, the new alliance between civil society and Third
World states at Cancun is also likely to be a powerful world
political player, and could last for decades. The civil society
movement began with the onslaught against the WTO meeting in
Seattle in 1999, which also collapsed without an agreement, and
has continued in virtually every world economic gathering.

The World Social Forum in Porto Allegre gave shape to the
institutionalization of "alternative-globalization" viewpoints.
For middle-ranking states such as India or Brazil, the emergence
of this movement is a useful political development which gives
them additional tools. Civil society actors who may oppose the
neoliberal reforms or right-wing rulers of host states are often
willing to work with their state representatives in international
negotiations when doing so is clearly pro-poor or pro-
environment.

The deepening of democracy in major Southern states has also
led to linkages inside countries between ruling elites and civil
society actors. The clearest example of this comes from Brazil,
where the Lula-led Workers Party continues to have strong links
to trade unions and to social movements of landless workers.

In this sense, what these countries are now saying is not very
different from what the U.S. used to claim in trade negotiations:
We are a democracy and therefore it is harder for us to make too
many painful reforms.

Also, in these Southern countries, democratic deepening is
also a nationalist enterprise, which leads elites to strive for
grand bargains in trade negotiations as it solidifies their
political gains domestically. The nationalist impulse in
democracies such as India comes from a sense that as large,
important civilizations, they ought to assume their proper place
in world affairs, and they see their increasing economic power as
key to that goal.

The civil society-state linkage has also emerged at a more
pragmatic level. Organizations such as Oxfam have often provided
technical assistance on complex trade issues, such as by
providing background papers, to poor, smaller countries that lack
such knowledge. When global power depends so much on expertise,
the provision of such assistance by NGOs enables poor countries
to have more say in negotiations. The civil society movement is
not without internal tensions, especially about attitudes towards
the WTO and trade liberalization in general. Nevertheless, the
coalition of states and civil society organizations seems likely
to persist, and will affect future trade negotiations and exert a
profound influence on world politics.

Guessing the future course of the G-22 is hazardous, but if
what happened in the recent FTAA (Free Trade Area of the
Americas) talks in Miami is any yardstick, the small countries
are likely to be bullied into accepting bilateral deals with the
U.S. and EU while the larger ones, facing domestic opposition to
liberalization, will survive by accepting whatever they can.

The meeting in Bandung in 1955 was a milestone simply because
it took place -- a meeting of the former colonized attempting to
define a "third way" free of western and Soviet hegemony. It was
also important because it placed on the global agenda issues such
as racism and decolonization, which had not until then been
considered subjects of global politics. On its face, Cancun was
less momentous. Nevertheless, the emergence of state-civil
society coalitions, aided by the increasing power of middle-
ranking countries, may mount a serious challenge to western
hegemony over the long-term.

This article appeared in YaleGlobal Online,
(www.yaleglobal.yale.edu) a publication of the Yale Center for
the Study of Globalization, and is reprinted by permission.