As anti-globalization protestors demonstrated in Genoa to mark the anniversary of the death there of one of their number at last year’s G7 summit, a four-day international conference on ‘Globalization - from conflict to opportunity’ was opening at the international centre of Initiatives of Change in Caux, Switzerland.

As anti-globalization protestors demonstrated in Genoa to mark the anniversary of the death there of one of their number at last year’s G7 summit, a four-day international conference on ‘Globalization - from conflict to opportunity’ was opening at the international centre of Initiatives of Change in Caux, Switzerland.

Dr. Kimon Valaskakis, a former Canadian ambassador to the OECD in Paris, and now founding president of the Club of Athens, noted the asymmetrical development of globalization - the government sector being the least developed, in his view. ‘The experts on globalization are organized crime,’ he said. The current international and national structures, shaped by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia and the resulting growth of national sovereignty, have been overtaken by the pace of events, the Canadian academic and diplomat claimed. The terrorist attacks of September 11th had chosen as their target a symbol of globalization, but the terrorist networks were themselves an example of globalization at work.

‘Borders are for the police, not for criminals,’ Valaskakis continued. ‘In the process of eliminating borders, we’ve eliminated rules,’ he said, and a lawless world lead to a breakdown of governance and ultimately of civilization itself. As an example of the problems that defied solution by the 195 national sovereign governments, he cited mad cow disease, the regulation of the Internet, global warming, and terrorism. The problems of conflicting jurisdictions played into the hands of multi-nationals and criminal or terrorist networks. Then there was also ‘the rise of the non-state actors’. A 1999 OECD study had shown that of the 100 largest economic entities in the world, 51 were companies and 49 were states. General Motors and the next five largest corporations, if they merged, in 1999 would have qualified for G7 status. There was no global anti-trust law, nor any global standards of accounting, he went on. It was like an Olympic competition, but without any rules or referees. Trade between the subsidiaries of multi-nationals now accounted for more than half of world trade, he claimed. The World Com and Enron scandals would have been scarcely possible before globalization, he said.

The Club of Athens sought to balance economic globalization with ‘a civilizing, humanizing and democratising globalization’. Fundamental change of institutions was needed, Valaskakis insisted, ‘not just tinkering on the margins’. If Microsoft proposed an update of its operating system every two years of so, how can we go on governing our world under a system that dates from the 17th century, he asked. ‘We are not ready for world government, but what we need is world governance.’ The Club of Athens planned to bring together thinkers and actors, and ‘to bridge the chasm between the two’. A traumatic shock - such as the September 11th terrorist attacks - was not enough to bring about the needed change, he said. There also needed to be ‘the correct diagnosis of the trauma’. In an inter-dependent world, isolationism was not an option, he claimed. ‘However powerful you are, you cannot solve your problems alone,’ he said, speaking to the Americans present. He concluded with the warning that ‘there is a high probability of more cracks in the concrete of the current world governance model’.

The current conference, organized by Caux Initiatives for Business (www.cauxinitiativesforbusiness.org) runs from 20th - 24th July, and is attended by over 300 people from every continent. http://www.cauxinitiativesforbusiness.org/home.htm

Andrew Stallybrass, Christoph Spreng

See Conference Report