The Collapse
In Cancun
And The Transformation
Of The Global System
By Andreas Hernandez
16 September, 2003
The
World Trade Organization (WTO) Negotiations in Cancun, Mexico collapsed
on Sunday and the relationships between rich and poor countries will
likely never be the same - nor will the global system. The group of
twenty-two developing nations (G22) that emerged as a negotiating bloc
directly challenged the continuation of a one-sided neoliberal system
that protects investors and corporations of wealthy countries while
opening developing nations to the vulnerability of the global market.
Brazil has emerged as a catalyst and organizer for bringing together
developing and progressive countries to transform the weapons of neoliberalism
into tools for the social agenda, opening possibilities for a more just
global order.
The G22 publicly
announced itself after a profoundly unfair joint US and European Union
(EU) proposal for what would be negotiated in the Cancun WTO meetings
was tabled last week in Geneva. This proposal maintained US and EU protections
against agricultural goods from developing nations (often their largest
export) but greatly weakened controls on foreign investment and other
trade regulations for developing countries. The G22 is comprised of
Brazil, India, China, South Africa, Mexico, Thailand, the Philippines,
Argentina, Turkey and Costa Rica, among others. Previous WTO negotiations
have been characterized by the US and the EU isolating developing countries
and forcing through one-sided agreements that benefit investment and
corporations from wealthy countries and limit the export potential of
developing countries. The G22, in coalition with an African bloc, have
been able to stand firm, refusing to move forward on negotiations important
to wealthy countries until the question of agricultural subsidies and
protections of wealthy countries are brought to the table in a substantial
manner. Approximately seventy other developing nations in addition to
the G22 refused to sign the final US and EU-written accord in Cancun.
The ongoing round of WTO negotiations have come to a halt.
The G22 did not
emerge spontaneously but is one of the first fruits of intense international
organizing begun in Brazil last May. The new Brazilian government led
by the Worker's Party (PT), well-known for its innovative policies at
local and state levels for increasing citizen participation, took federal
power in January after a landslide election for a broad PT-led coalition.
This Party was formed roughly thirty years ago as a new type of Left
Party, through the coming together of unions, social movements and intellectuals
towards the end of Brazil's Military Dictatorship. Their federal mandate
has been supported by an amazing coalition of broad sectors of society,
from the Landless Movement (MST) to national industrialists, who all
unite around their clear vision that the neoliberal project is not working
for Brazil and around their common support for a new Social Pact - sometimes
spoken as a Brazilian New Deal. Around 70% of Brazilians live in poverty,
with 40% living on less than a dollar a day although Brazil is the 11th
wealthiest country on the planet; most of the wealth is concentrated
in few hands or leaves the country through multinational corporations.
Not wishing to go the isolation road as Venezuela or Cuba have done,
Brazil has begun an astonishing organizing effort globally to attempt
to transform the weapons of neoliberal domination into tools for social
justice and solidarity.
This project began
to be visible in late May with the agreement of eight Latin American
countries to negotiate as a group in the Free Trade of the Americas
(FTAA) negotiations. In early June, the Brazilian President Luis Inacio
Lula da Silva (popularly known as Lula) and the new President of Argentina,
Nestor Kirchner, announced their shared priority of establishing a common
parliament for the Mercosur regional integration block (Brazil, Argentina,
Uruguay, Paraguay and Associate Members Chile and Ecuador) with the
vision of a shared currency and the integration of Peru and other nations
of the Andean pact (Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, Venezuela). Brazil is
considering Mercosur the principal medium for consolidating the sustainable
development of the region and fortalizing the presence of South America
in the World scene. Peru has since become a member of Mercosur with
the rest of the Andean pact close behind.
Around the same
time, Brazil, India and South Africa announced the creation of the Group
of Three (G-3), with the possibility of becoming the G-5 to include
China and Russia (who themselves had recently formed an alliance with
the specific aim of countering US power). The creators of the G-3 hoped
the alliance would also bring an alliance between Mercosur and the Southern
Africa Customs Union (South Africa, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia and
Lesotho), particularly in WTO negotiations. The first goal of the G-3
was to begin working to gain a seat for one of its' members as a permanent
member of the United Nations (UN) Security Council and to reform and
democratize this Council in which five countries - not one of them from
the Global South - virtually run the UN through their veto power. The
Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, has supported Brazil's accession
and British Prime Minister Tony Blair has formally announced his backing
for Brazil to gain a seat. Lula will be delivering the opening speech
for the next UN session at the end of this month. He has also non-officially
been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
This past week Lula
formally backed the idea of Peru's President, AlejandroToledo, of forming
a "South American Nation", beginning with the conclusion of
bringing together Mercosur and the Andean Pact. These nations share
the view that they need a community of South American countries to not
be suffocated by the economic power of the US through the FTAA and other
mechanisms.
The PT announced
in June that they will be hosting the 2003 Congress of the Socialist
International, which last met in November 1999 (before the Seattle WTO
Ministerial). This Congress will bring together leaders from 141 social
democratic, socialist and labor parties from every continent, including
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany and Prime Minster Tony Blair.
The PT is considering this as a platform for delivering their message
to the world and many are seeing this Congress as an important moment
of consolidation and a launching point for a new global social project
after two decades of neoliberal policies and practices.
The last weeks brought
together representatives of numerous developing countries, in Geneva
and elsewhere, for preparatory meetings for the Cancun WTO negotiations.
With the tabling of the US/EU proposal for what was to be negotiated
in Cancun, Brazil's emerging core group of developing nations quickly
gained new members and solidified into the G20, which in the course
of the Cancun meeting became the G22.
The US acted aggressively
and unsuccessfully to try to break up the G22 throughout the Cancun
negotiations. Pressure was put on all G22 member countries and Costa
Rica, Colombia and Guatemala were specifically warned that their cohesion
with this bloc threatened other agreements that these countries are
developing individually with the US. Significant bribe money in the
form of aid was offered to sympathetic African countries to distance
themselves from the G22.
Towards the end
of the meeting Brazilian representatives held a briefing with civil
society groups from around the planet, facilitated by Lori Wallach from
the US organization Public Citizen. The PT has been a central force
in bringing global civil society groups together in recent years through
the World Social Forums in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This briefing marked
a new step for Global Justice groups as they begin working with progressive
governments inside the WTO for the social agenda.
The G22 has made
clear that they will postpone the scheduled date of January 2005 for
the end of this WTO negotiation round if the needs of developing countries
do not enter the negotiations. The G22 has stated that it will continue
to act beyond Cancun and will expand to issues beyond agriculture and
to forums beyond the WTO, working to move the current global system
in a more just direction.
This tremendous
organizing on a global scale, directly challenges a neoliberal world
and the power and is a might be the first visible signs of the possibility
of a social democratic turn in the global system. This global coalition
building is using the neoliberal tool of Free Trade as a weapon against
the system of neoliberalism itself. By negotiating as blocs highly concerned
with the social agenda, Brazilian-led coalitions and their expanding
alliances are attempting to turn Free Trade into Fair Trade by beginning
to demand standards for workers and an end for protectionism only for
wealthy countries, as conditions for trade. Are these major structural
signs of a challenge to world domination by the US, Europe and Japan
and the legacy of 500 years of exploitation of the Global South - first
through colonization and then developmentalism and neoliberalism?
It may be a worthy
caution that Brazil's new government came to be through intense struggle,
especially by those who have been the most exploited. The possibility
of an emerging global architecture with more social solidarity may only
be sustainable to the extent that mobilization continues on all levels,
democratizing and transforming the institutions which structure people's
lives. Without this movement, the possibilities of an emerging global
architecture might be little more than an opening for a few more financial
elites from the Global South. However, a more democratic global architecture
would certainly provide the structure to put the brakes on corporate
power and provide a basis for traditionally Left-of-Center parties that
have been dragged Right by market forces during the neolberal era, to
act for the social agenda and a more just planet. Mr. Zoellick, the
US Trade Representative may yet have to eat his words from last year,
when he said that Brazil could go trade with Antarctica if they did
not like the US´s terms for "Free Trade".
Andreas
Hernandez Department of Development Sociology Cornell University