Global Brief #5

The Glendon School of Public and International Affairs | L'École des Affaires Publiques et Internationales de Glendon

www.globalbrief.ca

FALL 2010

W I N N I N G I S B AC K WINNING C HA R L ES EM ME R SO N

IS BACK

CHARLES

G LOB A L B USIN E SS

EMMERSON F U T U R ES

AL A N M I D DLE TO N

ASIAN-

GLOBAL T ER R O R I S M B ASIC S

BUSINESS

AMERICAN

TO M Q U I G GIN

FUTURES ALAN CRISE ET

DANCES

HAUTE

MIDDLETON F I NA N C E CA N A D IE N N E

S I M O N T AY

F R AN Ç OI S BO U T I N- D UF R E SN E

TERRORISM BASICS

BR A Z I L I AN COTTO N

TOM AN D RQUIGGIN ETAL IATIO N R. A . D E OUR O

NEZ À NEZ

PR E TO SAN CRISE ET TOS & S. B . D E M EN E ZE S

HAUTE FINANCE CANADIENNE L ' AV E NI R DE L A

FRANÇOIS BU ND E SW EHR BOUTINWOL F G AN G

K R IE G E R

DUFRESNE EPIGRAM

LES TAMOULS,

D OU G L AS GLOVE R

BRAZILIAN

L'AUSTRALIE

COTTON AND

ET L'ASILE

RETALIATION R.A. DE OURO

MICHAEL

PRETO SANTOS & S.B. DE MENEZES L'AVENIR DE LA BUNDESWEHR WOLFGANG KRIEGER EPIGRAM DOUGLAS GLOVER

BARUTCISKI

WINNING&

VS C AT H E R I N E DAU V E R G N E

Responsibility Private Wealth, Public Squalor and Global Balance

CDN $7.99 ISSN: 1920-6909

ROMÉO DALLAIRE & HUGH SEGAL DEFEATING GENOCIDE BETWEEN MACRO AND MICRO BOUTROS

BOUTROS-GHALI

J O H N H OWA R D D U T I F U L P OW E R I N A U S T R A L A S I A TORONTO AS GLOBAL FINANCIAL HUB CDN $7.99 | ISSN: 1920-6909

MICHAEL BRYANT

CRIMINALIZING AGGRESSIVE WAR BENJAMIN B. FERENCZ

EDITORS’ BRIEF

Winning is Back Only now, winners and losers alike must share the same globalized world

cover illustration: BRAD YEO

versus-responsibility than 21st century genocide. Some parties may seem to ‘win’ in the context of a genocide (for instance, those that refuse to intervene in order to preserve advantage), but the new-century moral, legal and geopolitical pressures to stanch such mass murder surely operate as important counterweights. Canadian Senators Roméo Dallaire and Hugh Segal reflect on the defeat of genocide in our first Feature piece. (In our first Query, famed former Nuremberg prosecutor Benjamin B. Ferencz discusses the criminalization in international law of aggressive wars.) In our second Feature, Simon Tay, Chairman of the Singapore Institute of International Affairs, argues for a revitalization of the US-Asian strategic engagement that is so critical to world order. Charles Emmerson, former Associate Director of the World Economic Forum, adduces evidence for the case that international winning is indeed back, big-time, and problematically so.

François Boutin-Dufresne, a Washington-based economist, explains how, post-economic crisis, Canada has an opportunity to become a haven for international ‘financial refugees.’ (In our second Query, former Ontario Attorney-General Michael Bryant makes the policy case for Toronto, post-G20, becoming a world-leading centre of finance.) Finally, terrorism specialist Tom Quiggin ties together the major summer terrorism arrests in Canada and other recent terrorism-related events to illustrate how terrorism, at its core, must be framed and addressed principally as part of the spectrum of activities that we may wish to call ‘political.’

In the One Pager, Alan Middleton of the Schulich School of Business assesses the trends and winners in global commerce one decade out. In Tête à Tête, former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and past Australian Prime Minister John Howard respectively decipher the winning-responsibility dyad for the world entire and for Australasia. In Situ reports come from Wolfgang Krieger in Berlin, where reform of the Bundeswehr is the order of the day; and from Sao Paolo, where Brazil ponders retaliation in its trade battle with the US over cotton. In The Definition, we ask leading thinkers what winning in international affairs really means in the 21st century. Potash Corporation oblige, Strategic Futures examines the most important natural resources in the year 2020. And GB is in New Zealand’s Cabinet Room, hot on the heels of the recent Canterbury earthquake. Douglas Glover closes things off in Epigram.

Enjoy your Brief. | GB

G LO B A L B R I E F • FA L L 2 0 1 0

GB enters its second year exploring the poetic tension between the resurgent imperative to win (prevail, dominate, crush) in international affairs and global, new-century pressures to preserve and promote the more general good. A state seeks strategic advantage over other states, but must otherwise protect – practically speaking – the ever complex international order that serves its daily bread. A 21st century company seeks to outdo its competitors, but cannot – legally speaking – take such risks as to imperil the health of the hyper-integrated economy that is its competitive theatre. A cultural or national group seeks to monopolize ‘scarce resources’ at the expense of minority groups, but cannot – morally speaking – act to annihilate these weaker groups. In short, winning now has context – and that context is modern responsibility.

Winning without responsibility is nihilism. Consider Pakistan, postfloods. It is losing badly, on countless fronts – meaning that many other countries may seem to be ‘winning.’ But the winners will the total loss of Pakistan at their peril, as well as that of the general international system. Or consider the Arctic. Both the US (although distracted by mid-term elections) and Russia could win wars to claim the contested wealth of this newly important region, but both (Putin most recently) have prudently declared themselves to be committed, along with Canada, Norway and Denmark, to averting any armed conflict through the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea claims process. Armed conflict over Arctic resources and sovereignty might still occur in this new century, but not without all parties being alive to the great costs to the Northern biosphere and to international stability at large. Einstein: “I don’t know what kind of weapons will be used in the third world war [...]. But I can tell you what the fourth world war will be fought with – stone clubs.”

Parts of this issue, and particularly the Nez à Nez debate between Glendon professor-cum-GB assistant editor Michael Barutciski and the University of British Columbia’s Catherine Dauvergne on the recent Tamil boat off ofVancouver Island and the Australian approach to asylum seekers, anticipate a wonderful conference, co-sponsored by the Trudeau Foundation, the École nationale d’administration publique and the Glendon Centre for Global Challenges. This conference, entitled Immigration and Pluralism: Trends, Options, Management, will be held in Quebec City on January 27th, 2011, and will explore, among other issues, the reconciliation of religious freedoms and common citizenship.

There may be no starker case study in winning-

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no . 5

Editor-in-Chief & PUBLISHER Irvin Studin

|

FA L L 2 0 1 0

D E PA R T M E N T S

MANAGING EDITOR

Sam Sasan Shoamanesh Art Direction Louis Fishauf Design Assistant Editors

Michael Barutciski, Marie Lavoie junior Editors Francesca Basta,

Michelle Collins, Marie-Anitha Jaotody, Farheen Imtiaz, Véronique Lehouck, Mary Elizabeth Simovic, Bronwyn Walker Special projects Brian Desrosiers-Tam web manager Aladin Alaily VideoGRAPHER Duncan Appleton Web Design Dolce Publishing PriNting RJM Print Group Advisory Council

Kenneth McRoberts (Chair), André Beaulieu, Tim Coates, David Dewitt, Paul Evans, Drew Fagan, Dan Fata, Margaret, MacMillan, Maria Panezi, Tom Quiggin

EDITORS’ BRIEF. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 ONE PAGER

Alan Middleton | Global business and unexpected winners . . . . . 5 IN SITU

Wolfgang Krieger | La Bundeswehr de demain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 R.A. de Ouro Preto Santos & S.B. de Menezes Brazil’s cotton retaliation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 tÊte À tÊte Boutros Boutros-Ghali | Geopolitical trees and forests . . . . . . . . . . . 18 John Howard | On strategy, identity and duty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 QUERY Benjamin B. Ferencz | Military aggression in the 21st century. . . . . 14

Mailing Address Global Brief Magazine Glendon Hall, Room 301 Glendon Campus, York University 2275 Bayview Avenue Toronto, ON M4N 3M6, Canada Tel: 416-736-2100 ext. 88253 Fax: 416-487-6786 General Enquiries, Feedback & Suggestions globalbrief@glendon.yorku.ca Subscriptions globalbriefsubscriptions@glendon.yorku.ca Advertising globalbriefadvertising@glendon.yorku.ca

Michael Bryant | Making Toronto a world financial centre . . . . . . . 44 in the cabinet room Dusan Petrocic | New Zealand’s Canterbury earthquake. . . . . . . . . 29 nez À nez Michael Barutciski vs. Catherine Dauvergne The ‘Australian approach’ to boat people and asylum is the correct one. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 THE DEFINITION

Article Submissions: globalbriefsubmissions@glendon.yorku.ca

“Winning internationally in the 21st century means...”. . . . . . . 60

Global Brief is published quarterly in Toronto, Canada by the Global Brief Society out of the Glendon School of Public and International Affairs. The contents are copyrighted.

«D’ici 2020, la ressource naturelle la plus importante sera...». . . 62

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PM Agreement No. 41914044 ISSN: 1920-6909

strategic futures

epigram

Douglas Glover | On winning and responsibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

G LO B A L B R I E F • FA L L 2 0 1 0

Glendon School of Public and International Affairs The Glendon School is Canada’s first bilingual (English and French) graduate school of public and international affairs.

It combines a comprehensive bilingualism with a focus on both public and international affairs. Adopting a global perspective, the School explores the relationship between public institutions and their larger environment. Its purpose is to advance research on public and international affairs; provide a high-quality bilingual master’s programme; and offer innovative professional development programming.

L’École de Glendon est la première école bilingue d’affaires publiques et internationales au Canada. Établissement d’études supérieures unique en son genre, l’École est axée sur le bilinguisme anglais-français et spécialisée à la fois dans les affaires publiques et les affaires internationales. On y explore, dans une perspective mondiale, les relations entre les institutions publiques et le contexte général dans lequel elles fonctionnent. Le mandat principal de l’École consiste à faire progresser la recherche sur des questions d’affaires publiques et internationales, à offrir un programme de maîtrise bilingue de grande qualité ainsi qu’un programme de développement professionnel novateur.

www.glendon.yorku.ca/gspia

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F E ATURE S

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The Teeth to Defeat Genocide Changes in law, capabilities and posture will inform the new century’s responsible interventions by ROMÉO DALLAIRE & HUGH SEGAL

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Avoiding A Dangerous Divide The rising continent, and the world at large,

await sustained, sophisticated and sincere Asian engagement from Obama By SIMON TAY

30

WINNING IS BACK WITH A VENGEANCE With power plays clearly back en vogue, the collective responsibilities of the new century will be daunting BY CHARLES EMMERSON

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Reprise ou rechute? Réflexions sur le Canada comme refuge de haute finance globale – réalité et perspectives PAR François Boutin-Dufresne

TERRORISM AS POLITICS BY OTHER MEANS Reducing terrorism to its bare essentials and finding common approaches to tackling its various forms BY TOM QUIGGIN

G LO B A L B R I E F • FA L L 2 0 1 0

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Global Business Futures One decade out, prepare for unexpected winners and losers

ONE PAGER

BY Alan Middleton from Brazil; Teva from Israel; America Movil, Grupo Modelo, FEMSA and Pemex from Mexico; Petronas from Malaysia; CP and PTT from Thailand; Koc Holding, Sabanci Holding and Vestel from Turkey; Sabic from Saudi Arabia; Caltex, Flextronics, Singapore Airlines and Wilmar from Singapore; and Etisalat from the UAE. Many of the major Western brands, of course, will endure, but watch for the new reality in consumer choice and in business competition from the emerging organizations.

Third, conventional wisdom holds that youth drives demand. In developed economies, around 65 percent of GDP growth is driven by domestic consumer demand, whereas in developing economies it is most often export-led growth that drives GDP. As these economies develop, consumer-led growth assumes greater importance. The assumption has been that this will be led by youth. But, by 2050, according to UN data, the over-60 population percentage will grow to 26 percent in South America, and 23 percent in Asia! As such, the picture will be much more variable: growth may come from youth in India, given its youthful demographic profile, but in other countries the demand base will be much broader. Business opportunities will be sought across the full demographic spectrum.

Fourth, it is often said that global brands will increasingly dominate international markets. Given the profile of global brands like Coca-Cola, IBM, Microsoft, General Electric, Nokia, McDonalds, Google and Toyota, we tend to assume that the state of all markets is domination by these brands. But, in fact, it is in relatively few markets like automotive and consumer electronics where global brands are the dominant players. Most markets in both developed and developing economies exhibit growth in both global and local brands. Global brand advantages tend to be in markets where there are economies of scale in production and promotion, and where there is little culturally-based emotional attachment to products or services. Local brand strength lies in specifically targeted appeals to local segments. This is what drives their growth. Contrary to what many believe, the world is becoming neither more nor less homogeneous. In its heterogeneity, success will be available for both local and global brands.

In the net, what will the future be like for business? More diverse than before; more challenging; and more complex, with traps for those wed to linear projections of the next few decades. In other words, it will be a world that will still surprise with unexpected opportunities. | GB

Alan Middleton is Executive Director, Executive Educacation Centre, and Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Schulich School of Business, York University, in Toronto.

G LO B A L B R I E F • FA L L 2 0 1 0

In both the science of chaos theory and the sciencefiction of psycho-history, the notion that seemingly predictable trends can be thrown significantly offcourse by small changes is a central theme. Still, four apparently predictable mega-trends may tell us something about this early new century’s ‘winners’ in business.

First, global growth will come primarily from the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies. As far as China and India are concerned, this is, in many ways, ‘back to the future.’ Until the Industrial Revolution in the West, Asia had consistently accounted for over 70 percent of the world’s GDP. During the Industrial Revolution, the West took centre stage, and by 1975 accounted for about 80 percent of global GDP. Now, according to McKinsey & Co., Asia will account for 40 percent of global GDP in 2010, and for over 50 percent by 2025.

But is BRIC growth the pertinent trend? In any forecasting, business strategies should not be ‘BRIC-centred,’ but rather, more broadly, ‘emerging economy-centred.’ The BRIC societies have nonnegligible political, social and economic challenges – poor infrastructure, political and regional pressures – that may slow or change their economic growth, thus making rapid growth of the BRIC countries neither automatic nor linear. At the same time, there are hopeful signs for growth in Asian countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam; in Central Asia – Kazakhstan and the Caucasus; in Turkey; in countries of the Middle East, like Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE; in Eastern Europe – Romania; in Africa – South Africa; and in the Americas – Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Mexico. The point is that, to understand the world’s potential, much as the G8 morphed into the G20, so too in our thinking about global trends, BRIC thinking must morph into emerging market thinking.

The second mega-trend is that the world’s commerce will continue to be driven by the current global corporations. North American, European, Japanese and Korean organizations seeking growth will engage more fully in these emerging markets.

Western consumers will learn new names as emerging market businesses go global: names like Alibaba, Baidu, Baisha, Bank of China, China Life Insurance, China Mobile, Dongfeng Motor, Haier, Industrial & Commercial Bank, Shanghai Auto and Sinopec from China; Aditya Birla, Indian Oil, Infosys, Mahindra, Reliance, Tata and Wipro from India; Gazprom, Rosneftoil and Sberbank from Russia; Ambev, Banco do Brazil, Bunge, Embraer, Petrobras, Vale and Votorantin

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Canadian Security Intelligence Service

Service canadien du renseignement de sécurité

Dialogue.

Awareness.

Understanding.

Keeping Canada secure and Canadians safe, that is the mission of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

G LO B A L B R I E F • FA L L 2 0 1 0

The Service’s academic outreach program engages a wide range of experts to acquire new perspectives on current and emerging issues affecting Canada’s security.

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For more information, visit our Web site.

www.csis-scrs.gc.ca

La Bundeswehr de demain Une armée pour faire la guerre à tout-va?

IN SITU

Wolfgang Krieger depuis Berlin

Photo: LA PressE CANADIENNE / Musadeq Sadeq

1990, ces projets de réforme se sont heurtés à deux obstacles majeurs: le manque de matériels adaptés, faute de budget et l’impossibilité d’envoyer des appelés en opération extérieure pour des raisons à la fois politiques et militaires, sachant que la durée du service ne permettait pas de leur assurer une formation adaptée et qu’il était, par ailleurs, difficile d’assumer la responsabilité de leur emploi dans des missions qui n’engageaient pas les intérêts vitaux du pays. Pourtant, cahin-caha, les réformes se sont poursuivies. De cette période date la création des forces spéciales. Dans un troisième temps, les leçons tirées des guerres au Kosovo et en Afghanistan ont conduit à une profonde réorganisation interne des

forces et à la création d’une réelle infrastructure de commandement apte à diriger la participation de la Bundeswehr à des missions lointaines de plus en plus militarisées. Un centre de commandement spécialement en charge des interventions extérieures voit ainsi le jour dans la région de Berlin/Potsdam, de même que des services communs aux différentes armes, tandis que les services de renseignement (le BND) s’installent eux aussi à Berlin.

L’initiative actuelle du ministre Guttenberg s’inscrit dans la continuité des réformes entreprises

Wolfgang Krieger est professeur d’histoire moderne et de relations internationales à l’Universite de Marburg, en Allemagne.

Des soldats allemands montent la garde au cours de la cérémonie d’ouverture d’un centre médical financé par l’Allemagne dans le district de Deh Sabz à Kaboul,

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Derrière le débat actuel sur le service militaire en Allemagne et sur la réduction du budget de la défense, l’observateur vigilant serait tenté de soupçonner une stratégie de long terme très subtile. Même si les députés et la presse s’intéressent surtout à la suspension de la conscription, proposition très contestée du jeune ministre de la Défense Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, plusieurs questions fondamentales se posent, qui vont toutes bien plus loin que les économies exigées par la progression vertigineuse de la dette publique.

Pourquoi cette professionnalisation forcée de la Bundeswehr avec pour objectif des effectifs nettement plus restreints, soit 160 000 hommes contre les 240 000 actuels, mais dotée d’une capacité de projection accrue? Est-ce à dire que l’Allemagne serait résolue à s’engager davantage dans des guerres telles que celle menée en Afghanistan?

Sommes-nous confrontés à une nouvelle ambition militaire allemande dans le monde? C’est bien peu probable au vu de la politique militaire conduite depuis la chute du Mur de Berlin d’une part et des changements intervenus dans le contexte politique d’autre part, suite à la formation du gouvernement de coalition d’Angela Merkel.

Depuis les événements de 1989-1990, l’évolution de la politique de défense allemande s’est faite en trois étapes. Dans un premier temps, les efforts ont porté sur le respect des engagements unilatéraux pris par l’Allemagne en vertu du traité «2 + 4» de 1990: ramener la Bundeswehr de 495 000 à 370 000 hommes tout en permettant l’intégration partielle et sous condition de l’ancienne armée est-allemande, la Nationale Volksarmee. Ceci supposait le recours au service militaire pour éduquer la population d’Allemagne de l’Est aux structures de l’OTAN et aux principes d’une armée intégrée. Il fallait aussi revoir les armes et les équipements afin de réduire le nombre des chars et de l’artillerie lourde classique que la dissolution de l’Union soviétique puis le départ en 1994 des dernières forces soviétiques présentes sur le sol de la République fédérale et en Europe de l’Est avaient rendus superflus. Dans un deuxième temps, au-delà des termes employés qui purent varier selon les années et les programmes politiques, les mesures entreprises pour réformer la Bundeswehr ont toutes visé à développer une capacité de projection pour des missions multilatérales, que ce soit dans le cadre de l’ONU, de l’OTAN ou de l’Union européenne. Dès la fin des années

en février 2007.

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À PARAÎTRE EN SEPTEMBRE CHAIRE RAOUL-DANDURAND L’Observatoire sur le Moyen-Orient et l’Afrique du Nord de la Chaire Raoul-Dandurand en études stratégiques présente :

G.I contre Jihad Le match nul

PIERRE-ALAIN CLÉMENT La confrontation entre George W. Bush et Oussama ben Laden s’est terminée sur un prévisible match nul. L’auteur expose les raisons de cet échec mutuel en démontrant que les stratégies des deux combattants ne pouvaient qu’exacerber les tensions.

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depuis 1990 et constitue une étape supplémentaire, la quatrième, pour se débarrasser définitivement de la Bundeswehr de 1955 ou de ce qu’il en reste, autrement dit, une armée de défense traditionnelle fondée sur une culture de la retenue, mais associée à une voix politique forte au sein de l’OTAN, comme le voulait la Constitution fédérale. Quelles sont les chances de succès de ce nouveau modèle d’armée? Sur le plan politique, l’interventionnisme a toutes les chances d’être mis en échec par les forces de gauche (les Verts y compris), alors que se confirme leur hostilité systématique à tout engagement militaire extérieur. Il est loin aujourd’hui l’enthousiasme pour les interventions humanitaires chères au Canada et à la gauche européenne dans les années 1990 qui avait formé une alliance surprenante avec la «guerre contre le terrorisme», cette philosophie élaborée par Washington sous la présidence Bush junior à la suite de Nine eleven et élargie par son successeur Barack Obama. Le fait que la chancelière dirige un cabinet conservateur-libéral n’y change rien puisque son gouvernement n’a plus la majorité au Bundesrat (la deuxième chambre) et que, de toute manière, sa politique est de plus en plus une politique de gauche.

Sur le plan militaire, il faut bien voir qu’une Bundeswehr professionnalisée de 160 000 hommes (et femmes!) ne serait pas tellement plus performante que l’armée actuelle. La fin de la conscription n’aurait aucun effet direct sur le manque de matériels nécessaires au combat dans des guerres asymétriques contre un ennemi diffus et davantage tourné vers les actes terroristes que vers la bataille classique. La Bundeswehr n’a pas l’aviation de combat ni de soutien suffisant; les véhicules blindés légers et les capacités logistiques font aussi défaut. Il n’y pas d’avions de ravitaillement ; le gros porteur Airbus-400 ne sera disponible que dans quelques années. Les forces navales allemandes ne sont pas adaptées non plus.

Pire, la réforme Guttenberg ne changerait en rien la perspective d’une guerre perdue en Afghanistan. Le renforcement du commandement en chef des armées créerait en revanche un bouc émissaire tout désigné pour une défaite prévisible, mais que les responsables politiques ne sont pas prêts à prendre à leur compte.

Au contraire, ils organisent déjà le retrait sous couvert d’une «Afghanisation» progressive et d’une «stabilité suffisante» à Kaboul.

Outre quelques économies qu’il reste encore à réaliser, le seul vrai message porté par cette énième annonce de réforme de la Bundeswehr est que le service militaire n’est plus nécessaire pour diffuser l’Otanisme en Allemagne de l’Est. D’ailleurs, la Bundeswehr recrute déjà plus de volontaires dans ces anciennes contrées du pacte de Varsovie qu’à l’Ouest de l’Elbe. Aux voisins de l’Allemagne et à ceux qui pourraient la craindre, on peut donc dire sans hésiter: n’ayez pas peur! Cette Allemagne jouera un rôle encore plus modeste dans la politique de sécurité à la suite de la nouvelle réforme.

Reste à savoir qui profitera de sa faiblesse. | GB

It’s public knowledge.

http://nathanson.osgoode.yorku.ca

Changes in law, capabilities and posture – both at home and internationally – will inform the new century’s responsible interventions

The Teeth to Defeat

by ROMÉO DALLAIRE & HUGH SEGAL

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Genocide

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General Roméo Dallaire

Senator Hugh Segal

(ret’d), is a Canadian

(Conservative), is

Senator (Liberal), Vice-

Chair of the Special

Chair of the Senate

Senate Committee

Standing Committee

on Anti-Terrorism

on National Security

and a member of

and Defence, and

the Will to Intervene

Co-Founder of the Will

Project’s Research

to Intervene Project.

Steering Committee.

In 1946, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed the following resolution:

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enocide is the denial of the right to existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings; such denial of the right of existence shocks the conscience of mankind, results in great losses to humanity in the form of cultural and other contributions represented by these groups, and is contrary to moral law and to the spirit and aims of the United Nations. Many instances of such crimes of genocide have occurred, when racial, religious, political and other groups have been destroyed, entirely or in part. The punishment of the crime of genocide is a matter of international concern. The General Assembly therefore affirms that genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices – whether private individuals, public officials or statesmen, and whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds – are punishable.

These strong and compelling words condemn the practice of genocide, and promise punishment to those who might conspire to do away with one group based on race, ethnicity, religious or political persuasion.

While the words “never again” rang out internationally after the discovery in 1945 of the extent of the crimes against humanity committed during the Holocaust, since that time, the world has witnessed further mass murder in East Pakistan (Bangladesh), East Timor, Cambodia, Guatemala, Bosnia, Rwanda, Zaire (the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe and in Sudan’s Darfur region. This is merely a sampling of modern cases in which violence was unleashed against civilians with genocidal intent on ethnic, religious or national grounds. According to the NGO Genocide Watch, there are 79 countries guilty of genocide and related crimes against humanity, killing hundreds, thousands or millions in order to eradicate a group or those simply deemed a problem because of their very existence.

illustration: HENRIK DRESCHER

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overnments and individual citizens agree that genocide is evil. Governments and individuals also agree that genocide should be halted when it begins to unfold or, better yet, prevented before it happens. Yet, since 1945, history has shown that the domestic political will to act preventatively is lacking among individual political leaders. The sensitivities about one sovereign state interfering in the affairs of another sovereign state lead to the inevitable response of inaction when the worst occurs. It seems that it is deemed to be diplomatically odious for democratic nations to be proactive on this issue, as it offends the sensibilities of the cautious civil servants who are monitoring the affairs of foreign nations – civil servants who might well be the first to recognize the signs of impending genocide. Often, geopolitical interests, such as oil or regional stability, get in the way of firm prophylactic action before bodies are attacked like cordwood. Sometimes, however, the absence of natural resources or other strategic interests is a comfortable reason to look the other way, as appeared to be the case during the Rwandan genocide. Fatigue with interventions or hostilities elsewhere may also dull a country’s political will to consider forceful action of a diplomatic or military nature. Of equal importance is the fear of top leaders of democracies that they will be embroiled in a quagmire once they commit to intervention, and that they will be punished by voters at the polls should casualties among their soldiers ensue. The costs of such intervention are hard to assess, both in blood and treasure. But the costs of not intervening, as we saw in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda – in terms of strategic instability and endless new structural costs to the international community – are at least as high, without counting the raw cost to humanity of hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands killed. Indeed, the stark and horrific reality of a Rwanda or Cambodia is so far out of the realm of the reasonable that admitting its advent or existence in the first place is often unthinkable – as were the death camps of WW2.

Last year, the Will to Intervene Project, based at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University, released a report with detailed policy recommendations listed for the Canadian and US governments. The report points directly to the UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted in 1951, and which assures penalties for perpetrators. And yet, the report finds that the obligations outlined in the resolution do not create

sufficient personal risk of punishment for those who contemplate ethnic cleansing or genocide. The threat of prosecution has no teeth when the international community itself stands on the sidelines for fear of ‘interfering’ in the domestic affairs of another state, and for fear of whipping up a backlash among the voting public at election time. (See the GB Winter 2010 Tête à Tête interview with Philippe Kirsch on the limits of international prosecution for genocide in light of non-universal ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.) That lesson was learned in spades when the international community failed to stop the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and subsequently had to deal in a reactive manner with the humanitarian disaster that it triggered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighbouring countries. And that lesson is exactly what prompted military intervention, under the aegis of NATO, in Kosovo in 1999. And while the Kosovo intervention was technically illegal, as it violated individual state sovereignty without a prior Security Council mandate, the violation was tolerated based on moral grounds. (See the Tête à Tête interview with Boutros Boutros-Ghali at p. 18 for his views on the recent International Court of Justice advisory opinion on Kosovo and other topical international questions.) In that instance, the international community finally admitted that it was not prepared to allow genocide to be carried out twice in the Balkans, and this was absolutely the right thing to do!

NATO’s New Strategic Concept Committee has been chaired by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She is experienced and respected world-wide, and was an excellent choice to provide a balanced and fair report on the many security challenges that NATO must face in this new century. Albright is, as well, a passionate proponent of the prevention of genocide. In December 2008, she and former US Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, as co-chairs of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, released the report entitled Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for US Policymakers. In it, the authors point out that, still today, leaders within the US and elsewhere debate whether forceful military action in 1994 could have prevented the massacres in Rwanda, or whether international forces in 2003 could have stopped the militia attacks in Darfur. The military actions to protect Kurds in Iraq in 1991, and Kosovar Albanians in 1999, are cited as successful humanitarian interventions. The Albright-Cohen report sums up the art of the possible in its executive summary, which says, in part: “We conclude in this report that preventing genocide is an achievable goal.

Genocide is not the inevitable result of ‘ancient

hatreds’ or irrational leaders. It requires planning and is carried out systematically. There are ways to recognize its signs and symptoms, and viable options to prevent it at every turn if we are committed and prepared. Preventing genocide is a goal that can be achieved with the right organizational structures, strategies, and partnerships – in short, with the right blueprint.”

T

Consideration

should be given to the addition of a new article to the North Atlantic Treaty dealing specifically with genocide and other mass atrocity crimes.

by clearly indicating those events and actions that are explicitly not to be tolerated – ever! Moreover, those who preach genocidal options, or call for the eradication of UN member states, need to be targeted with intense, proactive international initiatives, sanctions, isolation and pressure, including the threat of military action, if others who stand by idly are not to be responsible for the insanity that transpires. Because when genocide is not confronted, insanity soon follows. And with the unthinkable come the knock-on effects from the commission of mass atrocities in distant lands, to which we are all closely connected in a globalized world: pandemics, terrorism, piracy, organized crime, human trafficking, uncontrolled migration, diminished access to strategic raw materials, and the eventual erosion of social cohesion at home when expatriate or diaspora populations seek action that is not forthcoming from their own host governments. The transnational chaos that genocides produce renders it imperative that we put this item higher on our list of foreign policy priorities. | GB

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he problems that the international community faces in preventing future genocides are not insurmountable. However, they must first be identified. First and foremost, the requirement that authorization from the UN Security Council and consent from its permanent five (P5) members are necessary prior to taking any coercive action is a delay that has, and will continue, to cost lives. There is rarely agreement on action of any kind when the current mindset disallows action that is ‘perceived’ as violating state sovereignty. The ‘respect of sovereignty’ requirement has resulted in the UN seldom authorizing operations, even in such cases when a state is effectively killing its own civilians en masse. And, of course, it is self-evident that the requirement for consent is difficult to obtain and impedes possible peace operations when a government itself is complicit in the violence, or has an economic interest in looking the other way – as in the case of Sudan relative to oil, and the Chinese position in the country and on the P5.

Specifically, we need to look at Article 1 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states: “The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” The strict adherence to the UN Charter’s non-intervention bias when dealing with genocide is far too narrow. Consideration should be given to the addition of a new article to the North Atlantic Treaty dealing specifically with genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. This new article should override all other objections, and should connect directly with the doctrine of ‘the responsibility to protect.’

That responsibility is what brought Canadian troops to Bosnia, and Canadian air assets to the Kosovo engagement with other NATO countries.

The policy recommendations listed in the AlbrightCohen Report and Will to Intervene Report have brought structural changes to the US Departments of State and Defense, with senior officials of rank and reach now formally designated to be on genocide

watch, linking defence, diplomacy and intelligence agencies and the White House. This is very much to President Obama’s credit in recognizing that preventing genocide is more than a humanitarian issue. It is also in the national interest of the US to do so, given the security and economic threats that mass atrocities generate.

While the Obama administration is demonstrating leadership on this issue, missing are similar initiatives of other partners in NATO and the broader world community. A global initiative by Canada to first put its own genocide alert infrastructure in place, working cooperatively with, and parallel to, the Obama administration, and implementing the recommendations of the Will to Intervene Report for building capacity in the Government of Canada and the Canadian Forces, and second, to seek similar initiatives in places like NATO Headquarters, the Commonwealth Secretariat, La Francophonie and the UN itself, would be a step in the right direction.

Legitimacy in international politics is about more than sterile definitions of sovereignty. It comes also

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What of Military Aggression in the 21st Century?

QUERY

We have come a long way from Nuremberg, and have miles to go before we sleep

BY Benjamin B. Ferencz

Benjamin B. Ferencz was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, and has been a lifetime advocate of the international rule of law and the establishment of an International

G LO B A L B R I E F • FA L L 2 0 1 0

Criminal Court.

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H

ope is the engine that drives human endeavour. After some 20 million people were killed in WW1, League of Nations diplomats recognized the need to eliminate war as an instrument of national policy. They advised that future wars of aggression should be punished as an international crime. The common response from powerful states was: “The time is not yet ripe.” An additional 50 million victims perished in WW2. In response, an International Military Tribunal was set up in Nuremberg to try German leaders responsible for crimes against peace (aggression), crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The implementation of slowly emerging principles of international criminal law by distinguished jurists from four victorious powers (the US, the UK, the Soviet Union and France) was an expression of hope that future illegal war-making might be deterred.

The main architect for the trials was Robert M. Jackson, on leave from the US Supreme Court. “It is high time,” he reported to President Harry Truman in 1945, “that we act on the juridical principle that aggressive war-making is illegal and criminal. [...]

We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow.” In December 1946, the UN affirmed the Nuremberg principles and judgement. Committees were directed to draft a Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind, including the crime of aggression, and to plan for a permanent international criminal jurisdiction to try offenders. The rule of law, coupled with the humanitarian aspirations articulated in the UN

Charter, would, hopefully, lead to a more peaceful and humane world order. That was the hope.

The UN, of course, could not exist in a political vacuum. Promises of universal disarmament and the creation of an international military force were unfulfilled. The five permanent Security Council members, which had borne major burdens of the war, were entrusted with maintaining the peace.

Each was granted the right to veto any enforcement measures. It soon appeared that sharp ideological differences divided the Council, whose members seemed primarily concerned with protecting their own powers and interests. Realpolitik was alive and well, and thriving. The veto-wielding powers in the Council proved unable “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.” Economic PEACE POSTER: LUBA LUKOVA

and cultural disparities among an expanding array of new nations exacerbated difficulties in what seemed an ungovernable world.

The 1946 mandate to define the crime of aggression was finally approved by the UN General Assembly, on December 14th, 1974, as Resolution 3314. To achieve consensus, last-minute clauses were inserted to the effect that the definition was only a non-binding guide to the Security Council, which was given wide latitude to determine whether an act of aggression had indeed occurred. It was agreed that “a war of aggression is a crime against international peace,” but exculpatory clauses were added, and the whole package was declared indivisible. In effect, the consensus definition was carefully crafted to preserve the status quo. Nonetheless, it reflected the undying determination and hope of many nations that illegal warfare could – at least to some extent – be curbed by law. It was a first baby step forward.

A code of international crimes was completed in 1996 by the 34-member International Law Commission that favoured the original Nuremberg definition. One hundred eighty-five nations, with varied legal and social systems, formed UN committees to fashion a permanent international criminal tribunal. Hundreds of open questions were left to be resolved during a final four-week conference of plenipotentiaries in Rome in the summer of 1998.

In an unforgettable climax, after the official time had expired, Chairman Philippe Kirsch (featured in a Tête à Tête interview with GB in its Winter 2010 issue) announced that the Rome Statute for an International Criminal Court (ICC) had been approved by acclamation of 120 in favour, seven against and 21 abstentions. The then UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, called it “a gift of hope to future generations.”

U

As the national nets criminalizing aggression spread, aggressive states may have to rethink their willingness to attack their neighbours.

G LO B A L B R I E F • FA L L 2 0 1 0

ntil the final session, it was uncertain whether the ICC would be authorized to exercise its jurisdiction over the very contentious crime of aggression. Powerful states were unwilling to give up their power, and states that lacked power could do nothing about it. A last-minute compromise was accepted, where aggression would be listed as one of the four core crimes, although the ICC could not exercise its jurisdiction over that crime until and unless certain specified conditions could be met. There would have to be an acceptable definition, as well as clear confirmation that UN Charter provisions (meaning Security Council rights) would be respected. The Rome Statute was ratified, and went into effect on July 1st, 2002. Special Working Groups of the Assembly of State Parties (ASP) set out to meet the requirements for activating ICC jurisdiction over “the supreme international crime.”

A Special Working Group laboured long and

mightily to meet the preconditions laid down at Rome. Progress was made on a revised definition, but agreement on the role of the Security Council was nowhere in sight. When the Review Conference began in Kampala, Uganda, on May 31st, 2010, an improved definition clarified the distinction between the crime of aggression by an individual – which required a manifest violation by a leader – and an act of aggression by a state in violation of UN Charter prohibitions. New hurdles were added by requiring agreement by 30 states, and approval by at least two-thirds of all parties before an amendment would become binding. No one could be tried for aggression until 2017 at the earliest – at which time the ASP would consider the matter further.

The Rome Statute is a voluntary contract in treaty form entered into by consenting states.

These states were not obliged to be bound by anything that they did not accept. To reassure nations that did not want to be bound, the amendments adopted in Kampala stipulated that State Parties can elect in advance not to be subject to aggression charges. Those that are not ICC members will automatically be excluded from the Court’s jurisdiction unless the Security Council decrees otherwise. Obviously, these constraints will seriously limit the reach of the ICC over the crime of aggression. As a concession to those who oppose any Security Council involvement, it was also stipulated that, if the Council fails to respond to the Prosecutor’s request for a ruling on aggression “within six months,” the Prosecutor can proceed with an investigation; provided such a course of action is approved by the entire pre-trial panel of at least six judges. Clarification of some of the ‘elements’ of an act of aggression, as well as a few ‘understandings’ were added to encourage the acceptance. When a weary Assembly President, Ambassador Christian Wenaweser, announced, after midnight on the morning of June 12th, 2010, that a consensus had been reached, the applause may have reflected relief that the conference had ended on a positive note, rather than an expression of complete satisfaction by all those present.

No one doubted the heroic efforts of the Chairman and Secretariat, but the limited results left much to be desired.

Dwelling on shortcomings is counterproductive.

So what to expect for the future? The prevalent paltry excuse that aggression had not been defined has now been eliminated. Giving the ICC jurisdiction

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Mettre la justice à la portée de tous les Ontariens et de toutes les Ontariennes.

Le droit ne fonctionne bien que s’il traite tout le monde sur un pied d’égalité. La Commission du droit de l’Ontario a pour but d’améliorer l’accès à la justice et de la rendre véritablement juste et impartiale pour tous les Ontariens et toutes les Ontariennes.

La Commission du droit de l’Ontario :

• s’efforce de préciser et de simplifier le droit tout en le rendant plus pertinent et plus accessible pour la population ontarienne. Elle vise également à mettre la technologie moderne au service de l’accès à la justice.

• fait des recommandations concrètes et éclairées dans un cadre de justice sociale visant à réformer le droit provincial en s’appuyant sur des recherches et des analyses de qualité et approfondies.

www.lco-cdo.org La Commission jouit du soutien financier de la Fondation du droit de l’Ontario, du ministère du Procureur général, de la faculté de droit Osgoode Hall et du Barreau du Haut-Canada. Les doyens des facultés de droit ontariennes ont également participé à sa création.

over the crime of aggression remains on the political agenda – even if the time frame is imprecise. The arguments against criminalizing military aggression were shown to be lacking in persuasiveness what they made up in profusion. The allegation that the crime of aggression would overburden the Prosecutor was rejected. So too the contention that the Prosecutor – bound to act only on the basis of law, and subject to strict judicial controls – would be politically motivated. That concern seemed particularly ironic coming from the nations that dominate the Security Council. The truth is that powerful nations sought plausible excuses, because it would seem too absurd to argue that they preferred war to law.

The world and their own citizens pay dearly in blood and treasure for such short-sighted intransigence. How many millions more must die in uniform or as innocent civilians before the time is ripe to bring criminals before the bar of justice? Allowing aggressors to remain immune from prosecution by the ICC surely does not deter illegal war-making, but rather encourages it.

To be sure, the long historical record of glorifying war causes many doubts about the utility of trying to alter the way that people think about such vital issues. Skepticism may be understandable, but it does not justify inaction.

Unavoidable temporary shortcomings should not obscure progress and the need for change. International criminal courts were inconceivable just a short time ago; today, they exist to punish outrageous crimes committed in various parts of the world. Deterrence is more important than punishment. The ICC’s authority to try perpetrators of genocide, crime against humanity and major war crimes – without prior Security Council consent – was left untouched (and hence reconfirmed) in Kampala.

Aggression remains in the Statute as a recognized and confirmed international crime. If the Security Council fails to determine whether armed force by a state has violated the UN Charter, then the ICC need wait only six months before it launches its investigation. No one can persuasively repeat the canard that aggression is not punishable simply because it is undefined.

True, the ICC must wait until after 2017 before it can again consider including aggression within its active jurisdiction, but this time may be used constructively on other fronts. The powerful ‘court of public opinion’ should be heard. Many states have already recognized that armed might in the nuclear-cyberspace age, may be not only genocidal, but also suicidal. Hopefully, countries, in everincreasing numbers, will ratify the Kampala amendments on aggression, and enact domestic legislation making aggressive war a punishable crime over which they have priority jurisdiction. As the national nets criminalizing aggression spread, aggressive states may have to rethink their willingness to attack their neighbours. They may yet look to the ICC as a more trustworthy body to decide the fate of individual aggressors. It will be up to today’s youth and tomorrow’s visionaries to propagate and hold high the banner of truth that law is always better than war.

It is a message that many leaders have yet to learn. | GB

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TÊTE À TÊTE

Seeing Both Trees and Forests in the Brave New World GB talks new-century politics and geopolitics – from the local to the general – with former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Boutros Boutros-Ghali was

GB: How do you see the future of your own country, Egypt, and in particular the question of presidential succession?

Secretary-General of the UN between 1992 and 1996.

BBG: The problem for Egypt in the next 10 years will be one of demographic explosion. We will have more than 100 million inhabitants, and they will be concentrated on five percent of the territory, which is the Nile Valley. The desert cannot be used – this is problem number one. Problem number two will be that of water. We will need additional quantities of water, and there is only one source of water – the Nile.

But the sources of the Nile are in Ethiopia, in Uganda, in Sudan, in Burundi, and so on. There will be other problems, of course, but they will all relate in some way to these two fundamental problems.

G LO B A L B R I E F • FA L L 2 0 1 0

GB: Are you optimistic about Egyptian leadership post-Mubarak?

BBG: Yes, because I believe that there is continuity in Egypt – a kind of integrity of the country. There is no division; there are no tribes; the only problem that you have is that of a Muslim majority and a Christian minority, but this is not much of a problem at all.

They are all Egyptian, all speaking the same language – something that does not exist in 50 percent of the countries around the world; countries divided into tribes, with different languages and different traditions.

So here, for the first time, you have a country that is based on one unity, which is the Nile River; a country that has a single national language, and indeed the same traditions dating back 5,000 years. So whoever will be the leader of this country, I believe that we will have continuity. Egyptians are all of the same racial group: you cannot make a distinction between a Christian and Muslim Egyptian, physically. You can make a distinction between a Hutu and Tutsi. You can make a distinction in any other country because one belongs to Tribe A or to Tribe B, and one speaks with an accent or without an accent. But here you have a real unity of the country.

GB: Is Egypt, at its core, an African country or a Middle Eastern country?

BBG: I believe that, if you are talking about geography, 18

it is an African country. If you base your criteria on history, then we are more involved in the Jerusalem problem than in the Nile problem. But I would say that geography is more important than history. The future is related to the problem of water in Egypt more than the problem of the future of the Middle East.

GB: Will Egypt solve the water issue? (See The Definition on natural resources at p. 60.)

BBG: Yes, I believe that it will take hard work, but there is no reason why there should not be a solution.

GB: How do you see things evolving regionally for Egypt? Are you optimistic or do you worry?

BBG: In 1945, we were all under the impression that we would be able to create the Arab United States.

Now, in 2010, we are more pessimistic, and we believe that this will not happen soon. Whether there will be Arab unity depends on leadership. With the right leader or leaders, there is no reason for which this unity should not happen; after all, Muhammad Ali created unity. He founded the new Egypt; he created unity between Egypt and the Sudan; he created unity between Egypt and Syria. Nasser created a short-lived union between Egypt and Syria. So there is this political will to have a better integration among the different Arab countries – not because they have the same language or the same religion, but because they are neighbours. You have nearly a half million Egyptians now working in Jordan. You have well over a million Egyptians working in the Gulf. You have countless many thousands of Iraqis living in Egypt today; and how many thousands of Sudanese in Egypt? So the integration at the level of the people already exists.

GB: How do you see Iran and Israel fitting into this conception of Arab unity?

BBG: For the Israeli question, I believe that, sooner or later, within five to 10 years, the one-state solution is the only solution, because you will have more Arabs than Israelis, and you will find more Arabs inside Israel and more Israelis inside the Arab world. So the integration already exists. The two-state solution (including as proposed by US President Obama)

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PhotographS: COURTESY OF BOUTROS BOUTROS-GHALI

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Successful, winning countries, regions and unions will be ones that manage the dialectic between the village and the satellite.

The village represents repli identitaire, while the satellite represents globalization.

can be a step. But there is such integration between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that a one-state solution is very conceivable. We need new solutions, new imagination.

As for Iran, I think that, regionally, the dispute between the Shia and the Sunni has been exaggerated. It reminds me of the historical disputes between the Catholics and the Protestants, which makes me believe that, sooner or later, they will be able to find a common denominator.

GB: What about the nuclear question in Iran?

BBG: I am for denuclearization in Iran, and indeed all over the world. I support the project of US President Obama in this regard.

G LO B A L B R I E F • FA L L 2 0 1 0

GB: In the Winter 2010 issue of GB, Sam Sasan Shoamanesh (GB Co-Founder) and Hirad Abtahi of the International Criminal Court argued for a Middle East (or Western Asian) political-economicsecurity union that includes Israel, Iran and all of the Arab states – going into parts of south and central Asia. How do you react to this proposal?

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BBG: My reaction would be: what would be the degree of cultural integration in this proposed union? As long as nearly a third of the population of my country is illiterate; and as long as they have the same problem in many other Arab countries, then it will be difficult to use language or rhetoric as a tool to encourage integration. As long as you do not speak any foreign language, you will have a kind of repli identitaire in the region, and this is quite dangerous.

Successful, winning countries, regions and unions like the one proposed will be ones that manage

the dialectic between the village and the satellite.

The village represents repli identitaire, while the satellite represents globalization. Today, we are still underestimating globalization, because many states continue to jealously defend their sovereignty.

Let us not forget that 50 percent of the countries that are members of the UN obtained their sovereignty just 50 years ago. For them, sovereignty is something very important; however, I believe that sovereignty is not as important as it once was. After all, sovereignty is a concept that was invented in Westphalia. In the age of globalization, in this new century, the state as a player will not be classically sovereign, as it will not be the only important player in international affairs.

GB: You made a very important intervention when Quebec was attempting to secede from Canada in the mid-1990s. You said that if every nation decided to create statehood for itself, the world would be ungovernable. Based on this political philosophy, how do you reflect on the recent International Court of Justice advisory opinion on Kosovo?

BBG: Quite simply, I am against it, because I do not believe that micro-states will be helpful. Sooner or later, we will inevitably return to a kind of federation or a kind of political-economic integration driven, very practically, by globalization. You cannot, therefore, practically, have a small country like Kosovo separated from its neighbours. You simply cannot.

GB: How do you see Canada’s future, against this background?

BBG: Canada is a success. It has been able to manage

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the dialectic between the satellite and the village. The fact that Canada is an open society, and that there are so many foreigners coming and trying to obtain the Canadian nationality – this is so very important. The power of a country – a key condition for winning in the new century – is the ability to assimilate others.

I used to always say in my country: Are you ready to have a prime minister from Azerbaijan? They would look at me in a strange way. The Americans, I would say, accepted a German-Jew, Mr. Kissinger, as Secretary of State. So unless countries are ready to accept this ouverture, this openness, then they will have problems, as globalization demands it; it imposes it.

The winners in the new century will be at ease with this basic dynamic.

The whole international system was based on one concept: the sovereign state. Now we are confronted by new non-state players that are very often more important than states themselves.

GB: What do you think of Kissinger’s career and his legacy? He is, after all, one of your contemporaries and, like you, one of the grey beards of international affairs.

BBG: For me, the importance of Kissinger is that a foreigner was admitted into the US to play a role in its high policy. As long as you are able to assimilate foreigners who have the qualities necessary for success – and winning – then you will be fine. Otherwise, as I have said, we return to the repli identitaire wherein you are afraid of foreigners; you are afraid of the village that is near your own village; and you are afraid of globalization.You create the conditions for extremism.

GB: How do you see the future of Africa’s conflicts?

BBG: There is a kind of international discrimination at play here between conflicts of the third world, to which nobody pays attention, and those in other parts of the globe that are relevant to international public opinion. If there is a dispute in Georgia, everybody pays attention to the dispute. But if there is a dispute in Mogadishu, nobody tends to the existence of these failed states. (See the Feature article by Roméo Dallaire and Hugh Segal at p. 10.)

GB: How do we deal with the more neglected disputes?

G LO B A L B R I E F • FA L L 2 0 1 0

BBG: The participation of non-state actors may help.

I do not know whether this will solve the problem, but these actors may contribute.

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GB: Do you still see war as a legitimate instrument of international affairs in this new century?

BBG: I would not use the word ‘legitimate,’ but I can tell you that wars were evidently used as an instrument during the last 50 years, and there are more than a dozen wars going on today. These wars are taking different forms: you have the wars in Pakistan,

in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and you have problems in different African countries. So war is not necessarily a dispute between two governments, or between two armies. Instead, it may be a dispute between a group of terrorists and a government; and this may not be a conventional war; but it is still a dispute – a confrontation of importance for the international system.

GB: How do you view the vocation of diplomacy in this new century?

BBG: The key change will be the growing need to involve and legitimate non-state actors. The whole international system, from the League of Nations and to the UN, was based on one concept: the sovereign state. Now we are confronted by new actors – new non-state players that are very often more important than states themselves. So how will they participate, and how will they coexist with the states?

Today, very few people are interested in what is going on in Afghanistan; very few people are interested in what is going on in Somalia; or they may not even know that a state called Somalia exists. So the question is: how can we obtain the support of international public opinion to do anything meaningful in these theatres? The support of international public opinion may be obtained – and I emphasize may – by the participation of the non-state actors. As long as the solution to international disputes depends on a limited few diplomats, we will never obtain the support of international public opinion. And without this support, the chances of success in resolving these disputes or other major issues are slim.

GB: How do you see your former home organization, the UN, changing, or not changing, to meet this need?

BBG: We must prepare ourselves for a new stage in the evolution of international organizations. The first stage was the League of Nations, based on the sovereign state. The second stage was the UN of today.

The third stage will take years of work, but this third generation will have, or must have, the participation of non-state actors.

GB: Which will be the ‘winning’ countries of the early 21st century?

BBG: I do not know. I will tell you why I do not know: it is because I do not know what will be the impact of new technologies in the next five to 10 years.They may change everything. Everything depends on whether a country will be able to cope immediately with a given technological revolution. If it can, it will succeed; it may win. If a country, on the contrary, will not be able to cope with a given technological revolution, then it may lose 50 years. | GB

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The rising continent, and the world at large, await sustained, sophisticated and sincere Asian engagement from Obama

by SIMON TAY

Avoiding A Dangerous US-Asia Relations the Crisis Divide after Simon Tay is the author of Asia Alone: The Dangerous Post-Crisis Divide from America, and Chairman of the Singapore Institute of

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International Affairs.

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n July of this year, 10 foreign ministers from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in Hanoi. They hosted their counterparts from across the region, including US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. ASEAN meetings are sometimes criticized as ‘talking shops,’ but this time dialogue and strategic leadership were needed immensely.

Ironically, the two leaders who most emphasized the need for leadership in Asia and across the Pacific recently left office. Japan’s former Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, and Australia’s former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd (now foreign minister), both championed regionalism early on in their short time in office. And though they are gone, the issue of regional leadership remains. Indeed, it is growing more important by the day.

The security issues facing the region, from the Korean peninsula to the outcome of the upcoming elections in Myanmar (Burma) this autumn, have grown more pressing – perhaps all the more so in view of reports that North Korea is assisting Myanmar’s ruling generals to develop nuclear capabilities. Moreover, the role and attitude of a rising China must be assessed on a regional basis, particularly given that the long-standing dispute over islets in the South China Sea may be entering a new phase. Recent Chinese statements held that the islands constitute a “core interest” – terms usually reserved for Taiwan and Tibet.

All of these issues test the region’s ability to manage peace and mitigate tensions between its main powers, and thus underscore the concern that Hatoyama and Rudd raised. Hatoyama called for an East Asian Community, emphasizing ties with China and South Korea, while questioning the continuing presence of US military bases on the island of Okinawa – the issue that eventually triggered his resignation. Rudd, by contrast, raised the idea of an Asia-Pacific Community with strong ties to the US. These leaders’ departure from office reflected their countries’ internal politics, and their successors will focus more on declining support at home than on regional ambitions. But the

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ILLUSTRATION: BLAIR DRAWSON

questions that Hatoyama and Rudd raised – who is in Asia, and who gets to lead regional cooperation – await a satisfying answer. (See the Tête à Tête interview with former Australian Prime Minister John Howard at p. 52.)

As Australian and Japanese initiatives fade, attention now turns to ASEAN, which has put in place norms for peace that all major powers affirm. The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is a long-standing grouping that brings together foreign ministers, and that is benefitting from renewed attention on the part of US Secretary of State Clinton, who is making her second appearance – a perfect attendance record since coming into office, and a marked improvement on the record of her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice.

But more may be needed. Asia’s major economies continue to grow and integrate, whereas the US economy remains soft, and its leaders’ attention is increasingly focussed on America’s domestic challenges. A shift of relative strategic influence and strength is discernible, especially given the rise of India and China. But old and unresolved rivalries within Asia are finding new expression as political ambitions and military budgets expand.

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The relationship between the US and Asia is changing, and must necessarily change. Both sides must help bridge the divide that would otherwise emerge in order to find a new balance.

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ew fora are emerging. Building on the ASEAN defence ministers’ meeting, a formal dialogue between the defence ministers of eight key countries – China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia, New Zealand, Russia and the US – will run in parallel with the ARF. Secretary of State Clinton has said that the US will join the East Asia Summit, an important annual initiative that brings together India and China, with ASEAN as host. Such a leaders’ meeting for substantive engagement makes sense. After all, there is already APEC for economic issues, as well as the US-ASEAN Summit, inaugurated last year.

However, the ongoing economic crisis and urgent

domestic matters will continue to command much of President Obama’s attention. Indeed, he has scheduled and then postponed visits to Indonesia three times already. To be sure, each time there were extenuating circumstances – a jobs summit, the final vote on the US health care bill, and the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. However, taken together, these cancellations make clear that even a US administration that wants to engage more with Asia may still find itself preoccupied with domestic priorities – especially this year, as mid-term elections approach.

Yet, while the extenuating circumstances may be accepted – including by the Indonesians, who had looked forward to welcoming Mr. Obama to the land where he spent part of his youth – they are neither insignificant nor without consequence. This goes beyond the symbolism of the Chinese Premier deciding to visit Indonesia before Mr. Obama was to arrive in June. It points to deeper questions about America’s future in Asia. And it also touches upon the different visions of the regional architecture that have been put forward by Australia, Japan and ASEAN. The Obama administration began with considerable ambitions in Asia. It showed its commitment in the first US-ASEAN Summit, with the President personally declaring himself the first Pacific President. But at the end of last year, when Mr. Obama journeyed to Singapore for the APEC summit, he was pilloried at home. The well-known financial analysis paper, Barron’s Report, summarized it as: “He came, he saw, he conked out.” John Bolton, the former Bush representative to the UN, was disdainful: “On economics, the president displayed the Democratic Party’s ambivalence toward free trade [...] motivated by fear of labor-union opposition.

On environmental and climate change issues [...]

Obama had to concede [...] that the entire effort to craft a binding, post-Kyoto international agreement in Copenhagen had come to a complete halt.”

Bolton cited an unflattering comparison between the Obama presidency and that of John F. Kennedy.

This comparison came from CNN analyst David Gergen, a former adviser to Presidents Clinton, Reagan, Ford and Nixon, who saw a parallel between Obama’s China meetings and Kennedy’s disastrous 1961 encounter with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna. Gergen summarized that situation in these terms: “Kennedy, the idealist, thought that his charm and his appeals to reason would win over the Soviet leader. Instead, Khrushchev bullied him unmercifully and the men were unable to agree on anything of substance [...] Khrushchev concluded that he could push Kennedy around

Trans-Pacific Partnership. However, the truth is that a number of free trade agreements that the US has already negotiated – with South Korea, for instance – remain mired in Congress, unratified. Trade experts estimate that, on balance, the Korean agreement is more favourable to the US. However, the public mood in the US against trade and globalization muddies the perception. Unless the economic conditions turn and the politics improves, the FTA may never pass through Congress.

Note, too, that the largest number of anti-dumping cases in the WTO in 2009 are brought against imports from China, and the many complaints against goods from China because of doubts over safety and public health. In 2007, contaminated Chinese pet food was suspected of killing hundreds of US pets, while toymaker Mattel recalled millions of mainland-made products over lead paint concerns. These concerns, substantiated in some cases, point to a larger fear of China and Asia outcompeting America by unfair means.

Protectionism has not come down like an iron wall across the world. But globalization and free trade have been knocked back more than once and from more than one source. Rather than a big bang, the ideal of freer trade and the belief that all benefit from interdependence are being killed by a thousand smaller wounds. In this crisis, the negative impression of globalization is gaining ground in the US. To these Americans, the face of this unkind and unfair globalization looks Asian.

When American attention does turn to Asia, its agenda can be worrying. It is now filled with complaints about China, including its undervalued currency, with the Obama administration and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pushing for the yuan’s appreciation. China’s statement in June of this year that it would move to a managed floating exchange rate regime will help keep relations on an even keel, going forward.

Still, stabilizing US-China ties will take more than statements. Many US lawmakers and commentators remain skeptical about how far China will go.

When China managed the float between 2005 and 2008, there was only a marginal appreciation. Unless China is seen to do more, American attitudes will harden. Take Democrat Senator Charles Schumer: The senator has pushed to restrict Chinese imports, and was quoted as believing that “only strong legislation will get the Chinese to change.”

Despite China’s shift, the issue will continue to simmer. Facing mid-term elections this November, many American politicians will be tempted to bring the issue to a boil to gain votes by hitting out at China. That can hurt not just China but the

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and started causing mischief from Berlin to Cuba.”

Gergen then compared this to Obama’s meetings with President Hu of China: “Obama went into those sessions like Kennedy: with great hope that his charm and appeal to reason – qualities so admired in the US – would work well with Hu. [But Hu] rejected arguments about Chinese human rights and currency behavior while scolding the US for its trade policies, and [...] stage-managed the visit so that Obama – unlike Clinton and Bush before him – was unable to reach a large Chinese audience through television [...]. This was not at all the kind of summit that an American administration would want – and it does bear some ominous similarities to the Kennedy-Khrushchev talks in Vienna.”

While both Gergen and Bolton criticized Obama, there was an important difference between the two that illustrates expectations about future dealings with China and the rest of Asia. To Gergen, the visit to Beijing and the Asian trip as a whole were taken to signal the changing power balance in the post-American world: “Even though China is still a relatively weak country [...], it is rising rapidly, and people around the globe are wondering if China represents the future – and the US the past. We need to wake up [...]. Unless we do pull together as a great people, we will find that our whole country – not just our President – will be in for a very rough ride. Downhill.” Bolton, on the other hand, assigned blame to Obama personally: “It was much more Mr. Obama’s submissiveness and much less a new Chinese assertiveness that made the difference. Mr. Obama simply seems unable or unwilling to defend US interests strongly and effectively, either because he feels them unworthy of defense, or because he is untroubled by their diminution.”

Bolton might be dismissed as just another antiObama conservative. But the criticisms echoed.

Progressives who had backed Obama also complained, although on different grounds – in particular, compromises offered on health care and the lack of progress on closing Guantanamo. The institutionalized American satire, Saturday Night Live, turned viciously on Obama’s press conference with President Hu. By late November of last year, with American frustration about job levels festering, the President’s approval ratings fell below 50 percent for the first time.

The US economy remains fragile now, and domestic issues continue to take precedence over international ones. The consequence may well be drift in America’s relations with East Asia. Consider trade: When President Obama attended the APEC summit, he won kudos for showing interest in the

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www.lco-cdo.org The LCO is funded by the Law Foundation of Ontario, the Ministry of the Attorney General, Osgoode Hall Law School and the Law Society of Upper Canada. The Ontario Law Deans are also a party to the creation of the LCO.

rest of Asia, since the regional production network hubs are around China. Unless China and others in the region move on their currencies, pressure will grow in the US for action against imports from across the Pacific. This signals a growing belief among Americans that trade with Asia is not always to their benefit. Given this mood, it is possible that the US will either be largely absent from Asia, or engage with it acrimoniously.

In the past, Asians would have sought to accommodate America’s demands. Not so now. China, for one, sees no need to bend to US pressure. Even Japan is openly debating the value of US military bases in the country. Asians are growing more confident and self-assertive, and not without justification.

Still, Asian triumphalism must be avoided. So too must the belief that Asians can go it alone, without America.

There are security threats and rivalries in the region that continue to require US involvement. Moreover, the US is still by far the largest world economy, and a critical market for Asia.

Instead of simply waiting for Mr. Obama, Asians should seek to engage America in new and more sustainable ways. One forum could be APEC. But APEC is focussed on economics, and its membership goes beyond just Asia and the US. Another forum could be the summit that Mr. Obama began with ASEAN. This is important as a complement to the active ties that ASEAN has with China, Japan, India and other key players.

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nother initiative by Asians may be useful – hence the recent proliferation of proposals, including the expansion of the East Asia Summit, which looks likely. While these proposals vary, some key principles can be aligned. First, any new arrangement should aim to ensure a regular dialogue among strategic partners, especially the US. However, we must accept that these dialogues cannot occur too often. The political reality is that, while America continues to be important to Asia, its leadership may not always be present.

Second, any new arrangement cannot be seen as trumping intra-Asian frameworks, in which ASEAN has been central. No major power, including the US, can be allowed to dominate these arrangements. Third, any new arrangement should be inclusive, and based on principles of equality. Asia cannot be run by a small directorate of major powers. Medium- and small-sized states must be included.

The relationship between the US and Asia is changing, and must necessarily change. Leaders, policy-makers, companies and citizens on both sides must help to bridge the divide that would otherwise emerge in order to find a new balance. This new balance of relationships between the US and Asia will shape, for better or worse, the coming years not only for Asians and Americans but, in tandem, for the post-crisis world. | GB

IN THE CABINET ROOM

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ILLustration: Dusan Petricic

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With classical state power plays clearly back en vogue, the collective responsibilities of the new century will be all the more daunting

by Charles Emmerson

WINNING IS BACK WITH A VENGEANCE

Charles Emmerson is a former Associate Director of the World Economic Forum, and currently an independent adviser on geopolitics, living in London. He is the author of The Future

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History of the Arctic.

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utside of the military context, where it is bread and butter, the concept of winning in international relations seems so passé these days. Faced with a series of apparently unwinnable – and essentially non-existential – wars (Afghanistan, the ‘Global War on Terror,’ the ‘war on drugs,’ the ‘war on poverty’) and a series of global collective action problems (ensuring energy security, fighting climate change, rebalancing the global economy) that require cooperation rather than competition, does the very idea of winning not rather miss the point? Have we not gotten beyond all that? Do we not know that, in an interdependent world, our long-term interests can only be advanced collectively?

Sadly, however, the idea of winning is still relevant, and getting more so.

The narrow pursuit of national state advantage does not conform to some of our grander ideas of how global governance should work, but it is the reality of what most states do, most of the time, trying to seek to advance individual interests with little regard for the impacts that such behaviour might have on the global system as a whole – impacts that are often considered negligible, and therefore can be discounted.

This may not matter very much if the global system is, indeed, fundamentally sound and open, and if its stability is in effect guaranteed by a single state – say, the US – or a set of states. In that case, a selfish ‘winning’ policy conducted by a state or states is unlikely to undermine global order as a whole.

There may be free-riders – there always will be – but they are not important enough to be spoilers.

But it matters a lot when, as now, there is ebbing confidence in the fundamentals of the global system – not least, an integrated and more or less even global market, broadly free from political interference – when its traditional guarantors are either weaker (the US) or in disagreement (the West), when free-riders have become far bigger players (China), or when some see a moment of flux as an opportunity to reshape the global system in their image

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illustration: BRAD YEO

(some of the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China). And it matters a lot when so many of the key problems facing the world are inherently interconnected and interdependent: climate change, food scarcity, population and energy poverty.

Even as the world struggles to bridge the gap between the reality of interdependence and the lack of effective governance to manage it, winning may be making a dangerous comeback. A resource-constrained world, going through a period of economic

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States have resumed a role, not as high-minded guardians of the global market – if they ever were – but as active players in it, playing to win.

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turbulence, where the very structure of global order is increasingly up for grabs, provides the backdrop and temptation. Why rely on the market to provide essential goods, for example, when strategic sources can be ‘won’? Why invest in the compromises inherent to global order when domestic constituencies are hurting? Why prevent the state from getting involved in global business decisions when political alliances can help conquer markets?

Backsliding from interdependence and cooperation into beggar-thy-neighbour currency policies, protectionism and short-sighted efforts to ‘win’ access to resources – from food, to oil, to water, to land – is only a partial reality as it stands, but it is a real risk. Worse, once the backsliding has started, it may be hard to stop. Once the idea has taken hold that the global system has become a game of ‘I win, you lose,’ rather than ‘I win, you win’ – if only in the economic sphere – the spirit of trust and compromise, essential to a global system without a global government, is lost.

Policy-makers, particularly in the West, need to recognize that, sadly, they can no longer simply rely on liberal expectations that globalization will become ever more integrated, and that global markets will render the logic of winning inoperative.

History has not ended. Globalization needs to be constantly defended, and made more resilient. There is no iron law that says integration is one-way or immutable. Pretending otherwise is not only risky, but is potentially counterproductive.

This implies a major test, particularly for the West. On the one hand, countries need to play smart on this newly-complex global playing field of

economic and strategic competition. They cannot afford to be naïve. Being wary of allowing Chinese companies control over a significant part of your natural resources sector – in Australia or Canada, say – is not illiberal, or racist, or anti-Chinese. It just makes sense. Most business school graduates would be able to see the risk in terms of pricing power of having your biggest consumer also owning your inputs. (See Strategic Futures at p. 62.)

On the other hand, they need to keep the prize of a basically open and free global system in sight.

They need to convince those who view the current system as unbalanced, and who doubt that it can secure their interests (viz. China) that, in fact, it is the best and only means of safeguarding their interests in the long-term. This means being clear about defence of the free market in the vast majority of cases, and avoiding the temptations of protectionism as a sop to domestic constituencies in difficult times. It also means constantly advocating reform of global economic institutions, and rebalancing within the global economy. In order for things to stay the same, things will have to change.

This is a delicate and hugely important balancing act to pull off. It requires clear-sightedness, and diplomacy. A world where states come to view their role, as they did in the past, in terms of ‘winning’ – whether it is gaining direct control over strategic resources rather than relying on the open market, or securing intellectual property by copying it rather than by inventing it, or claiming ownership over territory rather than submitting to processes of law – is a world full of losers, and worse. (See The Definition at p. 60.)

It is easy to forget, in our post-modern cooperative age, that for most of what we can reasonably call human history, winning has, crudely, been the essence of international relations. Back in the day, the terms of winning were simple enough: victory for one side necessitated loss for another. The winning party in any confrontation could be made clear by a transfer of territory or wealth – understood as more or less finite – from one side to the other. The world was zero-sum.

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t first, in this zero-sum world, winning was about plunder. After the decline of the order provided by the Western Roman Empire, the dynamic barbarian proto-states that shaped Europe in the early Middle Ages were effectively giant Ponzi schemes of plunder, expanding rapidly through military conquest in order to satisfy the demands of the warrior-nobles on whom royal power ultimately depended, and then collapsing or fragmenting

the early 19th century that Adam Smith’s invisible hand was complemented by David Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage. Even then, trade was a battlefield onto which the state would frequently throw its military assets, in pursuit of resources or markets (or, in colonies, both). It was only after the first era of globalization had ground to a bloody halt in WW1 and WW2 (and the Depression that they bookended) that there was a real paradigm shift in international relations from ‘winning’ in its traditional sense to the idea of freely establishing collective economic and political order, and attempting to influence the terms of that order.

F

or most of the 20th century, the free, collective, liberal, open global order that we have now become used to was a fragile one – challenged first by fascism, and then by the alternative global order proposed by Communism. Eventually, however – and, with some irony, due to the existence of American military power – it became established.

In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, after the fall of Communism, the hope emerged that the emerging global commons – global markets, the Internet, the global environment – were now simply too collectively valuable to be fought over, except in a commercial sense. These global commons would inevitably drive states together. Eventually,

There is no iron law that says integration is one-way or immutable. Pretending otherwise is not only risky, but is potentially counterproductive. perhaps, they might nudge states to one side. In its most extreme form, perhaps states would set the framework for global commercial competition and innovation, ensure its security, and then retire from the international scene – focussing only on making for the well-being of their citizens at home.

The idea of winning as an operative concept for states in international relations would have been invalidated; or, rather, it would have been dissipated in international law and in bodies such as the WTO. Humanity would have completed the evolution from the violent logic of prehistory, to the civilized, mutually beneficial cooperation of the

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when their rate of plunder slowed. In this warrior world, authority lasted only as long as it conferred victory. To paraphrase a saying from the world of competitive sport: winning was not everything; it was the only thing.

Later, starting in the 15th century, plundering went into long-term decline in Europe. As permanent, territorially defined states began to replace marauding hordes as the chief political element in Europe, long-term conquest, control and exploitation took over from the cheap thrills of pillage. Europe was gentrified.

Wars and dynastic alliances still advanced the interests of one group over another, but winning now was less about getting hold of high-value moveable goods – as it had principally been for earlier, perfunctory barbarian incursions – and more about territory, population and, in the religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries, about winning people’s souls. Plunder for resources continued, but it was now off-shored, in the rapid growth of European empires, starting with the Spanish and Portuguese in Latin America.

A still more substantial change in international relations came later, with two interrelated phenomena that fundamentally altered the basis of power and, inevitably, the purposes to which power would be turned: the rise of credit and, above all, the growth of trade. Both of these phenomena made territory, population and direct access to resources less crucial factors in establishing the ascendance of one state over another. Credit and trade allowed ostensibly weaker powers – weaker in terms of population, land and resources – to offset those weaknesses. The first means to do this was through greater financial resilience – essentially, the ability to borrow money. The second was through their ability to generate surplus income from trading with others – thus building up capital, and with that, influence and military strength.

If the origins of power had changed, this world was nevertheless viewed in zero-sum terms. Trade was still thought of in much the same way as territory or population – as a fixed quantity in which one state’s gain implied another state’s loss. To win, in these terms, meant to export more than one imported, thus wresting assets from others – a mercantilist perspective personified by the 17th century French finance minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert. Alternatively, winning was about preventing others’ trade, as Britain did in the 1500s with a policy of state-sponsored piracy directed against Spain. Either way, trade directly implicated the state in considerations of power. Trade was war by other means.

The idea of trade as pointing the way to a nonzero-sum world – where everyone could win by sharing the gains derived from unlocking comparative advantage – came much, much later. It was only in

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There is a risk that, as the scarcity of some natural resources increases, more and more states will turn away from the market in an ultimately quixotic search for security.

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liberal paradise. The world would have become flat.

It was not quite to be. The necessity of collective action to address collective problems, such as climate change, or management of the global economy, is no less great. Indeed, achieving global collective action in these and other areas is the greatest ever challenge to human political organization – one that becomes more pressing by the day. But, as the last few years have shown, necessity does not make effective collective action inevitable. Look at Copenhagen – so meagre in its results relative to what many had hoped (and relative to what may still, one hopes, be achieved).

States have resumed a role, not as high-minded guardians of the global market – if they ever were – but as active players in it, playing to win. The remarkable rise of sovereign wealth funds (in itself nothing to worry about, unless their power and scale are abused), the use of energy as a tool of strategy (Russia), the re-emergence of the idea of strategic industrial policy (in the US and Europe, as elsewhere), and the rise of an apparently successful economic model (China) in which business and the state are elided, are all taken as symptoms of this resumed ‘drive to win.’

More than this, it has become increasingly clear that, far from the global commons being a catalyst for the emergence of a community of global public interest, the global commons has in fact become increasingly contested, and occasionally fragmented. This is what is currently happening to what was once viewed as that most quintessentially global of commons, the herald of a new age, beyond the domain of any single state – the Internet. Different state regimes, initially caught unawares by the rapid rise of the Internet and its consequences, are now carefully proclaiming their sovereignty and regulations over it. The result is fragmentation, and the end of Internet dream of the late 1990s. China is insisting that its security and other rules apply to the Internet accessed in China; the UAE, Saudi Arabia and India have been harassing Canada’s Research In Motion to allow their security services to access Blackberry communications; Iran is setting up, in effect, its own Internet. More than this, the Internet has become a ghostly battlefield for states, preparing themselves for cyber-war, and a tool for states and companies to gather sensitive technological and other information about their rivals. Winning has reasserted itself.

An area where the return of ‘winning’ strategies is genuinely dangerous is natural resources. In a sense, the inescapable inequality of distribution of natural resources is a perfect opportunity for the logic of global markets – as a mechanism through which scarce resources can be distributed most efficiently from suppliers to consumers – to come

into play. The risk, increasingly, is that the market will be undermined by bilateral, so-called strategic arrangements that give one country prior access to what are increasingly recognized as finite resources.

There is a risk that, as the scarcity of some natural resources increases – partly because of rising demand from a growing, industrializing global population; partly because of physical scarcity; partly because of production bottle-necks; and partly because climate change will alter the distribution and total availability of some resources – more and more states will turn away from the market in an ultimately quixotic search for security.

Instead of states adopting self-reinforcing liberal strategies – openness, transparency, acceptance of interdependence – they will begin to adopt selfreinforcing, short-term ‘winning’ strategies – bilateral relationships, closed deals, attempts to avoid interdependence.

I

f this does indeed happen – as the rising temperature of state-led resource competition (with China in the lead, but India catching up), coupled with some states’ recent attempts to buy up extraterritorial land rights, suggests is plausible – winning as the dominant mode of international relations will be well and truly back. The consequence would be a selfdestructive, zero-sum world. In the short-term, the greatest losers from this would be the most interdependent economies and countries, such as the UK and Japan – countries that have long relied on global markets to satisfy demand for food, minerals and other resources, and that would see these markets cease to function in the same way.

In the long-term, however, losers would be everywhere. All other things being equal, larger markets are more stable and more flexible than smaller markets. Fragmentation of markets would result in more frequent crises – not less frequent crises. All of this has consequences for the nature and quality of global order.

As the (very imperfect) guardians of an open and liberal global order hitherto – and as their chief beneficiaries – the US and the West have a role to play here.

They need to exert what influence they still have to reinforce the liberal, open, rules-based, market-based core of the global economic order. These principles are not, it should be recognized, a liberal fetish. They are the practical basis of a non-zero-sum world that provides prosperity and security for a rising global population at a time of resource stress and geopolitical flux. Nor is the maintenance of these principles the natural state of international relations. They have to be perpetually defended – particularly in times of stress, as at present. The really big win is at the level of the system, not the state: a world where winning is not the name of the game. | GB

e c n e i c S y l c a i l c i o t i P l o c S P ubli E I R T N + P 2 COU S UNIVERSITY OF WINDSOR

R A E S 2Y E E R G E D 2

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a Master of Public Policy at the University of Michigan, Dearborn

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Brazil’s Cotton Retaliation Brasilia weighs a possible next move against American IP

IN SITU

R. A. de Ouro Preto Santos & S. B. de Menezes

report from Sao Paolo, Brazil

S

Photograph: istockphoto

retaliation against US nationals in the area of IP. In view of the non-compliance with DS 267, which ruled illegal the structure of subsidies given to cotton producers in the US, the WTO allowed Brazil to impose retaliatory duties against the US for a total of US $830 million. From this amount, Brazil was expressly authorized to impose duties in the form of cross-retaliation measures of up to US $270 million. The Brazilian government signalled that it would impose cross-retaliation measures through the suspension of IP rights, based on the WTO’s TRIPS agreement.

Evidently, the threat of undermining the IP rights of foreign companies places tremendous political pressure on the specific targeted country (in the event, the US) for compliance with the original ruling. However, the US and other countries with innovation-based economies may well feel threatened by the possibility that any future trade dispute with Brazil could lead the latter to impose such sanctions on their IP rights – even if the original trade dispute relates to, say, an exotic fruit.

The resulting fear in Brazil is that of lost short- and medium-term foreign investments in the innovative sectors, based on distrust of, or anxiety about, the country’s IP system. In other words, by disturbing the certainty of the set of legal rights that fosters commercial creativity and progress, Brazil could end up rapidly consuming the very fuel that has been driving the country’s growth.

Brazil’s success in the WTO dispute in the US cotton case requires the country to strike a delicate balance, as the application of the retaliatory sanctions would, in the end, have a greater negative impact on Brazil than on the US. While Brazil clearly has the right to retaliate, it should always privilege a negotiated solution. It did this, happily, in coming to a temporary agreement with the US on financial compensation for Brazil in exchange for postponement of the cross-retaliatory measures until such time as the US reviews its cotton subsides policy. Such impure compromises are the necessary backbone of the world’s trading infrastructure. | GB

Mr. Santos is a partner and heads the Intellectual Property Group of Siqueira Castro Advogados in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Ms. Bittencourt is a senior associate with the Intellectual Property Group of Siqueira Castro Advogados.

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ince the dawn of the Marrakesh Agreement establishing the World Trade Organization (WTO), one of its most contested aspects has been the implementation of decisions originating from disputes between member countries. This year, Brazil has inaugurated a new level of what is technically known as suspension of concessions or obligations (informally called ‘retaliation’ or ‘sanctions’) under the Dispute Settlement Understanding of the WTO, by implementing national legislation that allows the country to suspend its obligations under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). Quaere: As Brazil progresses to become the fifth largest economy in the world, can its mixed messages about the importance of IP protection weaken its ability to promote local and foreign investment in innovation, thereby undermining the very fuel that has driven the country’s growth?

Naturally, when the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO rules in favour of a country (as it has in the Brazil-US cotton case, or DS 267), retaliatory measures against the losing country are rightfully called for when implementation of the ruling is not readily available and voluntary. Under certain circumstances, these retaliatory measures can be based on concessions and obligations from a treaty other than the one that gave birth to the original trade controversy. For example, when a country defends impugned health regulations under the Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures, the complaining country may seek authorization from the WTO to retaliate under a completely different trade agreement, such as TRIPS, by suspending the IP rights of nationals of the opposing member.

Based on such settlement rules, the Brazilian government implemented legislation permitting for the suspension by Brazil of IP rights of nationals of WTO member countries anytime that voluntary compliance with a decision by the Dispute Settlement Body does not occur, and when cross-retaliation is authorized by the Dispute Settlement Body of the WTO. As a result, Brazil entered into a collision course with the US; that is, it took serious steps to prepare cross-

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ILLUSTRATION: LEO ESPINOSA

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Profiter d’une économie forte pendant l’instabilité mondiale: avantage Canada?

PAR François Boutin-Dufresne

Reprise ou rechute?

Le Canada et les nouveaux réfugiés financiers François Boutin-Dufresne est économiste en finance et affaires internationales basé à Washington DC.

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a Paix, l’ordre, le bon gouvernement. Voilà qui devrait suffire pour faire du Canada un havre pour les investisseurs en cette période économique trouble. Alors que les gros joueurs économiques sont à panser les blessures provoquées par la crise de l’automne 2008, le Canada devrait savoir profiter de cet intervalle pour devenir la nouvelle référence économique et financière mondiale.

Au moment où ces lignes seront publiées, on sera à mesurer les risques qu’une seconde récession vienne balayer les progrès effectués depuis le creux de l’automne 2008. Ceci est d’autant plus surprenant qu’à la fin de 2009, une forte reprise économique était prévue pour les pays du G7. Force est de constater que celle-ci se fait toujours attendre – surtout par les millions de chômeurs et d’investisseurs déçus par l’ampleur de la reprise. Les derniers mois ont plutôt laissé cours à une cascade de mauvaises nouvelles sur le marché de l’emploi dans la plupart des pays développés – auxquelles on peut ajouter une performance plus que médiocre des principales places boursières de la planète.

Malgré ce climat maussade, certains pays – souvent des petits pays développés comme la Suède, le Canada, l’Australie, et la Norvège – les SCAN – sont arrivés à se hisser tout en haut du peloton des pays les mieux positionnés pour profiter du prochain cycle de croissance. À ceux-là, il faut certes ajouter quelques pays émergents comme le Brésil, l’Inde et la Chine, peu affectés par la récente crise financière, mais dont le processus de croissance économique demeure fondamentalement différent de celui des SCAN. En juin dernier, la réunion du G20 à Toronto a par ailleurs consacré le Canada comme modèle de stabilité économique et financière à l’échelle globale. En dépit des effets néfastes de l’effondrement des systèmes financiers américains et européens, le Canada continue toujours d’afficher les meilleurs

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indicateurs macroéconomiques parmi tous les pays du G20: chômage, inflation, croissance économique, ratio d’endettement public vis-à-vis le PIB, entre autres.

Peu de pays peuvent se targuer d’avoir été aussi bien gérés d’un point de vue économique au cours de la dernière décennie: gouvernements fédéraux fiscalement responsables, banque centrale crédible, système financier stable, etc.

Quand le Président américain louange le secteur financier d’un autre pays, on peut considérer sa situation comme étant vraiment exceptionnelle…

C’est le message qu’a lancé le gouvernement Harper dans les jours menant à la rencontre de Toronto. Avec ses ministres simultanément de passage à Londres, New York et Pékin, le gouvernement canadien publiait un rapport soulignant le leadership économique du Canada en ce qui a trait à la croissance, l’ouverture au commerce international et la performance de son secteur financier.

Cette opération charme avait pour but avoué de faire

Dans les jours menant à la rencontre de Toronto, avec ses ministres de passage à Londres, New York et Pékin, le gouvernement canadien publiait un rapport soulignant le leadership économique du Canada en ce qui a trait à la la performance de son secteur financier.

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connaître le Canada comme une destination idéale pour les investisseurs à la recherche de stabilité dans un contexte où les systèmes financiers des pays du G3 – les États-Unis, l’Europe et le Japon – menaçaient de s’écrouler. À tel point que certains voyaient même Toronto devenir un des plus importants centres financiers de la planète. (Voir Query à la page 44.)

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alheureusement pour lui, à Wall Street et dans la City, le Canada passe souvent pour un des marchés les plus banals de la finance internationale. Nombreux sont les analystes financiers qui préfèrent rester loin du desk Canada dans ces institutions – on ne bâtit une grande carrière de trader en s’intéressant au marché canadien, dit-on. Dans ce qui reste des grandes banques d’investissement à New York et à Londres, on s’intéresse plutôt au Canada surtout comme une staple economy: une économie fortement basée sur les ressources naturelles et le pétrole. Le

dollar canadien demeure, quant à lui, bien rangé dans le camp des devises hautement cycliques et volatiles avec le rand sud-africain, le dollar australien et le real brésilien.

Le Canada souffrirait-t-il d’un biais de réputation dans les grandes places financières mondiales?

Dans les médias financiers spécialisés comme The Economist et le Financial Times, le Canada fait rarement la manchette. Dès qu’on parle du Canada dans la presse financière mondiale, une onde de fierté traverse soudainement le pays d’est en ouest, comme si les Canadiens avaient réussi quelque chose d’extraordinaire. On parle souvent plus de l’Australie – un pays qui a pourtant une bien moindre importance économique à l’échelle globale. Pas de nouvelles, bonnes nouvelles, dit l’adage.

Il demeure surprenant pour un pays du G7 comme le Canada – qui a un marché financier parmi les plus développés de la planète – d‘être si peu présent dans les cercles financiers internationaux. Malgré la bonne performance économique du Canada vis-à-vis des pays du G3, il demeure tout autant surprenant de voir que celui-ci n’arrive pas à se dissocier des aléas économiques et financiers des plus grands marchés de la planète. Un peu comme si les hauts et les bas des marchés financiers canadiens seraient davantage une résultante des développements financiers quotidiens à Shanghai, Londres ou New York plutôt que d’être le reflet de la situation économique réelle du pays.

La panique généralisée qui a emporté les marchés financiers globaux à l’automne 2008 a confirmé une importante loi de la finance contemporaine: en temps d’incertitude, les marchés se réfugient massivement dans les actifs financiers les plus sûrs – les dollars US, les yens japonais, mais surtout les bons du trésor américains et japonais. Ces actifs sont après tout les plus liquides sur les marchés financiers internationaux (banques centrales, investisseurs publics et privés, fonds souverains, etc.). Ce type de comportement reste la preuve que malgré la nette détérioration des perspectives économiques réelles des États-Unis – on sait que cela dure depuis déjà 20 ans au Japon – les marchés continuent de croire qu’ils pourront toujours récupérer facilement les investissements faits dans les devises et les titres gouvernementaux de ces pays. En temps d’incertitude extrême, comme cela a été le cas à l’automne 2008 et peut-être même dans la deuxième moitié de 2010, le besoin de liquidité financière semble prédominer sur la traditionnelle relation rendement-risque se trouvant normalement au centre de toute décision d’investissement.

C’est ainsi que dans les semaines qui ont suivi la faillite de Lehman Brothers en septembre 2008, le désir de liquidité s’est manifesté dans tous les marchés financiers de la planète. En période de crise de confiance, «Cash is

King», dit-on dans les trading rooms de la planète. Au point tel que, pour la première fois dans l’histoire, dans un acte d’exubérance irrationnelle qui se retrouvera dans les annales de la finance moderne, les investisseurs se sont soudainement mis à accepter un taux d’intérêt négatif en échange de Treasuries du gouvernement américain, souvent considérés comme étant les actifs les plus sûrs sur les marchés financiers à l’échelle globale. Ces derniers étaient devenus tellement craintifs et irrationnels qu’ils étaient littéralement prêts à payer le gouvernement pour avoir le droit de détenir des obligations.

A

Les perspectives économiques et financières sont aujourd’hui telles qu’une nouvelle classe de réfugiés financiers s’est créée sur les marchés globaux.

Les investisseurs ont plus que jamais besoin d’avoir accès à des lieux sûrs afin de mieux se protéger en période d’incertitude économique globale.

proportionnellement dépendante du prix mondial des ressources naturelles; l’économie canadienne est relativement moins productive et novatrice que celle des autres pays du G7; le dollar canadien reste une devise instable qui réagit beaucoup plus aux aléas économiques internationaux – comme le prix du pétrole – qu’aux indicateurs propres à la performance réelle de son économie. Par ailleurs, le coût de financement exigé par les marchés financiers du gouvernement du Canada demeure supérieur de quelques points centésimaux à celui du gouvernement américain. À ce compte, les États-Unis demeurent toujours les principaux clients à l’exportation du Canada – leurs importations en provenance du Canada comptent toujours pour environ le quart du PIB du Canada et ce, malgré tous les efforts de diversification économique déployés par les gouvernements fédéral et provinciaux du Canada au cours des 50 dernières années. Une telle dépendance vis-à-vis de l’économie américaine, surtout basée sur l’exportation de biens dont le prix est hautement relié au cycle économique, tels que les matières premières et le pétrole – ne soutient cer-

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u même moment, devant l’énorme dette contractée par les gouvernements japonais et américains pour soutenir leurs économies en crise, les think tanks et médias financiers d’importance discutaient de la faillite maintenant envisageable de ces gouvernements, de la fin de l’ère du dollar comme devise de réserve globale et du début d’une longue période de déflation à la japonaise pour l’économie américaine. Pour ce qui est du Japon, on discutait alors de l’approfondissement de l’abîme dans lequel le pays se trouve toujours depuis sa propre crise immobilière du début des années 1990. À cela, la perspectives d’une dévaluation de la cote de crédit des gouvernements américains et japonais suite à leur déboires fiscaux – une éventualité inimaginable dans le monde d’avant crise – qui aurait pour effet de causer un cataclysme majeur dans les marchés financiers globaux, n’est venue qu’augmenter l’incertitude sur des marchés déjà particulièrement turbulents.

Les perspectives économiques et financières sont aujourd’hui telles qu’une nouvelle classe de réfugiés financiers s’est créée sur les marchés globaux. Dans un monde où les certitudes financières et économiques sont de plus en plus remises en question, les investisseurs ont plus que jamais besoin d’avoir accès à des lieux sûrs afin de mieux se protéger en période d’incertitude économique globale. Alors que les États-Unis, le Japon et l’Europe n’ont jamais été dans une position économique aussi vulnérable, la table devrait être mise pour que le Canada puisse profiter de la faiblesse relative de ses partenaires du G7 pour faire de son secteur financier un marché réellement global.

C’est ainsi que les nouveaux réfugiés financiers pourraient chercher à minimiser le risque associé à leurs investissements en plaçant leurs avoirs dans des obligations gouvernementales canadiennes qui, en regard des perspectives fiscales du Canada, pourraient même devenir le benchmark ou marché de référence global – soit les placements les moins

risqués disponibles sur les places financières internationales. De tous les gouvernements des pays du G7, le Canada n’est-il pas celui qui a maintenant le moins de chances de faire défaut sur les paiements de sa dette? Une plus grande globalisation des marchés financiers canadiens aurait comme corollaire de réduire le coût de financement des entreprises et des entités publiques canadiennes.

Elle augmenterait la liquidité des marchés canadiens en temps de crise, les rendant de facto plus intéressants pour les investisseurs étrangers. À ce compte, le Canada pourra-t-il devenir le prochain refuge global pour les investisseurs souhaitant se réfugier en période de crise?

C’est là un bien grand pari. Sur la scène financière internationale, le Canada peine encore à se démarquer comme économie moderne et diversifiée. Le pays demeure exposé à d’importants risques externes sur lesquels il n’a aucun contrôle: il est largement tributaire de la performance économique de son voisin du Sud; sa croissance économique est dis-

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tainement pas l’idée que le Canada est une économie suffisamment diversifiée.

Par ailleurs, malgré les discours officiels faisant état de la performance des leaders économiques comme Bombardier et Research in Motion, les principaux produits d’exportation du Canada demeurent toujours le pétrole, le bois d’œuvre, l’or et d’autres métaux précieux. C’est ainsi qu’au cours du dernier cycle économique, l’appétit grandissant de la Chine pour les matières premières et des États-Unis pour le pétrole albertain n’a fait que confirmer le rôle du Canada comme l’un des plus importants fournisseurs de produits de base à l’échelle globale. Le pays n’a par contre pas su profiter de ce cycle économique pour diversifier son économie. Il s’est plutôt retranché dans sa zone de confort traditionnelle en se contentant d’exporter majoritairement des produits à faible valeur ajoutée.

De leur côté, les entreprises du

Sur la scène financière internationale, le Canada peine encore à se démarquer comme économie moderne et diversifiée. Le pays demeure exposé à d’importants risques

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externes sur lesquels il n’a aucun contrôle.

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secteur manufacturier se sont plaintes à maintes reprises de l’asphyxie causée par la vigueur récente du dollar canadien, principalement venue de la forte demande des ressources naturelles à l’échelle globale – alors que celles-ci ont systématiquement profité de la faiblesse du dollar canadien des années 1990, ce qui a eu comme conséquence que la compétitivité internationale du secteur manufacturier s’est considérablement réduite. Les entreprises canadiennes réalisent aujourd’hui qu’elles doivent absolument investir pour hausser leur niveau de productivité dans un monde où le marché américain sera de moins en moins dominant.

Finalement, le dollar canadien réagit toujours fortement à la baisse en période d’incertitude, comme s’il ne s’était pas encore tout à fait décolonisé des nouvelles financières venant de Londres ou New York. La persistance de ces fortes variations du dollar continue d’effrayer les investisseurs qui auraient pu considérer le Canada comme refuge financier potentiel en périodes d’incertitude internationale. Ils sont d’avis que la volatilité actuelle aura à terme un impact substantiel sur l’économie canadienne – notamment en gardant le prix des ressources naturelles à des

niveaux déprimés. Ce faisant, ils parient également que le Canada échouera encore dans sa tentative de se transformer en autre chose qu’un fournisseur de matières premières et de se positionner comme un joueur économique et financier global. À moins que le pays manifeste une intention sérieuse de diversifier sa base économique. À ce titre, le Canada pourrait profiter de cette occasion pour lancer de nouvelles grappes industrielles – par le financement de la recherche et du développement dans les universités, par exemple – afin d’orienter l’économie du pays dans des secteurs moins liés aux cycles des ressources naturelles. Le Canada pourrait par ailleurs profiter de cette période trouble pour améliorer l’efficacité de ses programmes sociaux, dans la mesure où ceux-ci auront un impact sur la productivité de l’économie canadienne à plus long terme. À ce compte, les programmes visant le retour des femmes sur le marché du travail – comme les subventions accordées à la garde des enfants en bas âge et les programmes de formation de la maind’œuvre – pourraient être bonifiés afin de générer davantage de gains de productivité pour l’économie canadienne à plus long terme.

Dans une période où les coffres du gouvernement ont été vidés par la récession, celui-ci devrait emprunter davantage sur les marchés financiers pour réaliser ses ambitions de devenir un joueur économique et financier réellement global. Surtout qu’il n’en coûte actuellement moins de trois pour cent par an pour financer les emprunts à long terme (10 ans) du gouvernement canadien. Rarement y at-il eu meilleur temps pour financer des initiatives à long terme visant à diversifier la base économique du pays. Une telle stratégie permettrait non seulement d’accélérer la transition économique du pays vers des filières économiques plus stables et plus productives à long terme, mais elle permettrait également d’augmenter la liquidité du marché des obligations gouvernementales – qui reste relativement peu liquide en comparaison à l’immense marché des Treasuries américains et Bunds allemands.

Ainsi, l’augmentation de la taille du stock de la dette canadienne transigée sur les marchés local et global aurait pour effet de globaliser davantage les marchés financiers canadiens en les rendant plus accessibles aux réfugiés financiers.

Alors que les investisseurs de la planète sont à diversifier leurs avoirs à l’extérieur des États-Unis et dans des devises autres que le dollar américain, le Canada a devant lui une chance unique pour prendre sa place sur la courte liste des nouveaux refuges financiers globaux. Pour y arriver, le pays devra toutefois faire preuve d’audace s’il souhaite faire sa marque comme success story économique financier à l’échelle globale. | GB

CORIM Trim size: Bleed size:

8.5” wide x 10.875” high 8.75” wide x 11.125” high

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How Does Toronto Become a Top Centre for Global Finance?

QUERY

Post-banking crisis, making the case for ruthless positioning of Canada’s biggest city to supplant New York and London

By MICHAEL BRYANT

Michael Bryant served as Minister of Economic Development for Ontario, and previously as Attorney-General.

He was the founding CEO of Invest Toronto, the City’s industry-promotion agency, and is currently Senior Adviser at Ogilvy Renault LLP and Adjunct Professor at the University

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of Toronto.

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aking Toronto a top centre for global finance involves leadership and strategy by the commercial sector, governments and the academy.

It requires something that we may wish to call ‘Reverse Reaganism,’ whereby governments accept the role that they ought to play in shaping their own economy, rather than yielding the planning function to unfettered markets.

Specifically, Toronto needs an industrial policy focus by all three levels of Canadian government (federal, provincial, municipal) – a focus that has not been seen in recent Canadian history. For the record: Canada’s industrial policy is dwarfed by the massive commitment that government makes, through the treasury, and as a priority, to its fiscal performance. So much of governments’ energy goes into the budgetary process; not enough goes into industrial policy. There is simply not enough priority accorded to a strategic economic vision.

Every major industry is the sum of its parts.

Disruptive changes in technology, human capital and consumer demand will be driven by these industry subsets. Toronto can become the global leader in three sub-segments of financial services: ecommerce, Islamic banking and resource financing.

In so doing, the Toronto financial services industry will improve its overall global competitiveness, and reverse its lagging innovation – allowing the city to fulfill its full potential as a global financial hub.

Toronto is already recognized by the Global Financial Centres Index (GFCI) as one of only eight global leaders.Toronto is home to: two of the largest 10 global life insurers (with a third insurer having significant operations in Toronto); five of the world’s largest 50 banks; the third largest exchange in North America, and eighth largest in the world; four of the top 100 global pension funds; and operations of seven of the top 10 largest global hedge fund administrators.

Having said this, Toronto ought to quickly address its competitive weaknesses. Harvard’s Michael Porter observed, in 2008, that “Toronto trails its competi-

tors in terms of advanced university programmes dedicated to finance.” This requires prioritization by the federal and Ontario provincial governments regarding university programmes and recruiting campaigns to attract immigrants with specialized skills in the financial sector.

The good news is that governments recently moved in just that direction, announcing plans to launch a Global Risk Institute in Financial Services in Toronto, with links to Canada’s leading universities and recognized risk experts around the world.

This is being done in partnership with private sector donors. Much credit for this initiative is due to the Toronto Financial Services Alliance headed by former Ontario finance minister Janet Ecker.

Porter argues for increased innovation and scale through federal changes – exposing banks to foreign competition, and indeed allowing bank mergers – and he recommends increasing acquisition activity abroad. On this logic, Toronto requires a highly targeted national strategy that levers the fact that Toronto already has worldleading capacity in financial services, IT design and population diversity. Moreover, Canada’s resource-based economy makes it a natural site for resource financing. Its equity exchanges already have particular strength in mining, energy and emerging companies, including the world’s largest segment of clean-tech companies.

There is as yet no electronic commerce hub in the world. E-commerce consists of the buying and selling of products or services over the Internet and other computer networks. The growth of such trade has been so rapid, and on such a scale, that most statistical analysis cannot track the growth in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange, inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.

Toronto, which is second only to New York City in number of IT design industry employees, ought to bet on e-commerce becoming the leading growth area within the financial services cluster. Combine its design and finance strengths, and Toronto be-

ILLUSTRATION: JOYCE HESSELBERTH

on profit- and loss-sharing, and a prohibition on charging interest for loans. Islamic banking is growing globally at a rate of 10 to15 percent per year.

Sharia-compliant assets reached about US $400 billion throughout the world in 2009, according to Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services; the potential market is US $4 trillion. According to CIMB Group Holdings, Islamic finance is currently the fastest-

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comes a natural home for e-commerce.

Regulatory harmonization, research funding, export promotion and post-secondary programme funding ought to be prioritized by governments – before e-commerce becomes the equivalent of biotech, which too many governments discovered belatedly (with moderate benefits). Leadership by government, finance and design leaders requires prioritization in funding, and strategic focus akin to that of the rigorous, ruthless approach of the Singapore Economic Development Board (discussed below).

Islamic banking complies with the principles of Islamic law (Sharia), which include emphasis

Toronto can become the global leader in three sub-segments of financial services: e-commerce, Islamic banking and resource financing. In so doing, it will improve its overall competitiveness, allowing the city to fulfill its potential as a global financial hub.

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growing segment of the global financial system, and sales of Islamic bonds may rise by 24 percent to US $25 billion in 2010.

At present, nearly 40 percent of global Shariacompliant assets are managed by Iranian banks.

The global emergence of Islamic banking is being led by Western financial institutions like HSBC, Citigroup and UBS. Although Canada’s largest bank (Royal Bank) offers Sharia-compliant products and services, very few other Canadian financial institutions have followed suit. Toronto’s diverse population, combined with its financial expertise, makes it a logical growth region for Islamic banking. Canada’s Muslim population is about 750,000 to one million people, with about half living in the Greater Toronto Area.

The federal government ought to publicly pledge its political support for the growth of Sharia banking. To date, regulatory changes have not been necessary, but fear of regulatory

Toronto requires a highly targeted national strategy that levers the fact that it already has world-leading capacity in financial services, IT design and population diversity.

Canada’s resource-based economy makes it a natural site for resource financing.

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restrictions will slow potential growth. The strategy here simply requires leadership – public, private and academic. Economic benefits will accrue to the swift – not the politically timorous.

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n respect of natural resource financing, the goal is to continue expansion in Canada; that is, to lead in financial services for energy and natural resource sectors. Said Michael Porter on this point: “Just as financial institutions in California were at the forefront of the development of oenological financial products, so should the Canadian financial sector develop specialty products designed for the country’s energy and natural resources industries. The Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and TSX Venture Exchange have already moved in this direction, with more than half of the 3,800 listed companies in natural resources industries (especially mining, oil and gas, and forestry). Given the enormously growing demand for both energy and natural resources, especially in developing countries, this may be

a high-growth niche particularly well-suited for Ontario’s financial sector firms. The absence of a Sarbanes-Oxley equivalent makes Toronto’s stock exchange even more attractive to foreign firms.”

In conclusion, Toronto business and political leaders need to lead through rigorous focus on particular niche areas where Toronto already enjoys enormous strengths. Leadership in any of the foregoing sub-segments of the finance cluster – ecommerce, Islamic banking and resource-sector finance – could well propel Toronto’s financial destiny to the global leadership position to which it ought to aspire.

The aforementioned prescriptions can only be realized through extremely focussed leadership. Such leadership must be harnessed into a body responsible and accountable for these goals. As mentioned above, Singapore achieved this with remarkable success through the Singapore Economic Development Board. If the existing Toronto Financial Services Alliance, or some other body, is to play that role, this must be clarified and blessed by all three levels of Canadian government. The opportunity for malcoordination cannot be underestimated.

The coordinating body, in whatever form, must be an execution shop – not a policy shop.

The Singapore Economic Development Board is a one-stop catalyst, broker and financier. Toronto’s coordinating body needs analysts and researchers digging into balance sheets. Show an investor or existing company a profit. Show a company that had not been considering expansion or new investment in Toronto why Toronto is the place where they should do business. Aim for pre-packaged financing as an incentive. Animate what it looks like with economic development partners. Grab the company by the balance sheet, and their hearts and minds will follow.

Finally,Toronto business and political leaders ought to consider the establishment of a City Wealth Fund, similar to well-known sovereign wealth funds. Investors are private and public: they use their equity stake to participate in management, to keep the company in Toronto, and to create a Coke-Atlanta relationship for Toronto and the fund’s investors. The fund – totalling, say, half a billion dollars over five years – would be privately operated. The terms would be negotiated among the investors. The first deal could be done in the spring of 2011. Then deal-flow would follow, and the rest would be momentum through commercial success. The focus of the fund could be one or all of the three niche financial services areas discussed above. This idea is ambitious, but not absurd. Ten years from now, every city will have such a fund, but it will have started in Toronto. | GB

Millennium Promise

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“The Millennium Villages project has achieved remarkable results and has demonstrated the impact of greater investment in evidence-based, low-cost interventions at the village level to make progress on the Millennium Development Goals.”

– Overseas Development Institute Millennium Promise partners with world leading organizations, including Columbia University’s Earth Institute and the United Nations Development Programme. Our flagship initiative, the Millennium Villages project, works in some of the poorest and most remote communities in sub-Saharan Africa to support high impact interventions in agriculture, education, health, infrastructure and business development. Key successes include: • more than doubling average food production • providing over 80,000 children with locally-produced school meals • distributing more than 330,000 bed nets to prevent malaria Millennium Promise also supports African governments and other organizations to scale up successful programs. For example, we support the government of Mali as it works to expand Millennium Village interventions to two million people in 166 of its poorest communes.

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Terrorism As Politics

By Other Means

Understanding the Ottawa arrests, the Tamil boat, and the Air India report in order to tackle terrorism in its various forms

BY TOM QUIGGIN

Tom Quiggin, of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies, is a member of the European Experts Network on Terrorism and a Canadian court expert on terrorism.

NORTHERN IRELAND

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errorism, like war, is the continuation of politics by other means.

Indeed, terrorism has been an integral and normal part of politics or the spectrum of ‘political’ activity for almost as long as organized polities have existed. Dealing with terrorism is therefore not a new challenge, despite the various claims to such effect by opportunistic political leaders or those in the modern fear industry.

Studies and practical experience have shown that the majority of terrorists are normal people.

On average, they are well-educated and come from secular educational institutes, with academic training frequently in the sciences or in technology. Most terrorists come from stable, middle-class or privileged families. They do not typically suffer from mental disease or defects. Nor are they drug addicts or the victims of poverty. They are terrifyingly normal.

However, the requirement to confront transnational terrorism suggests that a shared view or conception of terrorism should exist across national boundaries – a shared view encompassing terrorist objectives, ideology, strategy and tactics.

From there, a coherent and common response to terrorism (properly understood) is required, especially from democratic states; that is, from those states that, by virtue of their openness and cross-integration, are perhaps most vulnerable to attack and more susceptible to the fear of terrorism. In the absence of such a shared view and common response, international efforts to address terrorism will continue to conflict with each other, while allowing terrorism to gain greater traction among potentially sympathetic populations.

Several recent important events or ‘moments’ in Canada have underlined the challenges that are common to many other governments today.

In 2010 alone, Canada has seen the arrest of several individuals linked to global jihadism, the arrival of some 490 Tamils by ship off of Canada’s west coast (see the Nez à Nez debate

at p. 56), and the fallout from the newly released Air India Royal Commission of Inquiry.

While seemingly disparate, each of the arrests, the Tamil ship and the Air India report directly or indirectly demonstrate how an essential lack of contextual knowledge hampers the responses to the particular challenges posed by terrorism. As with terrorist activity in many countries, the root causes or drivers might be ‘over there,’ but many of the people and the potential attacks are located ‘over here.’ There is therefore no distinction in these cases between the ‘foreign intelligence’ and the ‘domestic intelligence’ required for action. The problems and solutions are both transnational.

In late August 2010, three individuals were arrested in Ottawa and London (Ontario) on terrorism charges. They were apparently inspired by the ideology of global jihad. The charges laid referred to the facilitation of terrorist activity. The police specifically noted that the individuals were in possession of “schematics, videos, drawings, instructions, books and electronic components designed specifically for the construction of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).” The IEDs, according to the police, may have been intended for use in both Canada and Afghanistan.

Earlier in the same month of August, a wellprovisioned ship carrying some 490 Tamil refugees docked at Vancouver Island in British Columbia.

Suspicion continues to exist that at least some of the refugees may be linked to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), a group proscribed as a terrorist entity in Canada and many other countries.

The ship’s arrival presents the Canadian government with a conflicting series of problems as it tries to balance valid national security concerns about transnational terrorism against human rights considerations and the imperatives of Canada’s relatively open refugee system.

In early June 2010, the long-awaited Royal Commission of Inquiry report into the 1985 Air India bombing was released. The report examined past

ists and how it operates.” International experience suggests that this is not just a Canadian problem.

All terrorism is political. Many types of terrorism exist, but each of these has the same objective of effecting change within, or in respect of, a political system through the threat or use of violence. Among the various species of terrorism frequently indentified are ethno-national, political-religious, extreme left-right, single-issue and state-sponsored terrorism.

Terrorism is, as a rule, a violent methodology of politics, pursued by the weaker party. It normally fails to meet its objectives. If a terrorist group actually had widespread influence, it would not need to resort to the high-risk status of becoming a terrorist

PhotographS: The Canadian Press | 9/11 photo above: Greg Semendinger/NYPD

NEW YORK CITY 2001

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issues concerning the 1985 murder of 331 people by Sikh terrorists in Canada – many of them naturalized Canadian citizens – who put bombs on two Air India flights. (Until the attacks of September 11th, 2001, Air India had been considered the world’s largest modern terrorist attack.) The Commission also conducted an extensive examination of current policy issues relating to aviation security, intelligence sharing, terrorism financing and the general culture of intelligence.

In the report, retired Canadian Supreme Court judge John Major noted that, in spite of all of the past events and efforts, it is clear that “Canada has a great deal to learn about terrorism – why it ex-

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Terrorism needs to be confronted by a state’s political will – not by its physical power. To be effective, the state’s intelligence and enforcement agencies need to occupy and maintain the moral high ground.

OKLAHOMA CITY

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group. Evidence and opinions vary, but it appears that ‘conventional’ terrorist campaigns can meet or partially meet their objectives some 10 to 30 percent of the time, while sustained suicide terrorist campaigns may have a slightly higher success rate.

T

he primary weapon of terrorism is fear – not the bomb or the gun. Terrorists need to instill fear in order to control minds and to gain advancements from those they are attacking. This methodology cannot normally be defeated by firepower or coercion. It can only be confronted by knowledge, experience and organization.

Terrorism is also an asymmetric threat in that the perpetrators of a terrorist attack avoid attacking the strongest points of their adversaries, while seeking to exploit vulnerabilities at the weakest points. Terrorist attacks (and goals) depend on surprise – not just in the timing of the attack, but also in its methods and means. Victory for the terrorist cannot come from battlefield success, but it might be derived from a gradual wearing down of the will to resist of the targeted power.

Terrorism is driven by politics even when the justifications given for the killing of innocents and the recruiting tools of terrorist groups are cast in religious, ethnic, linguistic or moral terms. The core goals of such terrorism, however, are common, and this commonality must be universally understood among those nations that might be targeted. Terrorism, for instance, is not fundamentally caused or driven by the theological differences between religions, or by the differences in legal precepts between a religion and a state system. Al Qaeda, along with its affiliated groups, does not attack the West over theological differences between Islam, Judaism and Christianity. The grievances expressed by Al Qaeda are broadly political in nature, and address, explicitly and implicitly, such issues as economic oppression, colonialism and political corruption.

While public documents and communiqués put forth by Al Qaeda or its followers normally start with statements invoking religious themes, the grievances expressed (real or imagined) and the objectives are always political in nature.

It should follow, on this logic, that terrorism (as a political act or campaign) cannot be eradicated, despite claims to the contrary by political leaders. As long as oppression or the perception of oppression remains, and as long as there is non-parity in the strength of the parties on the various sides of the political argument, there will be those who choose violence as a means of advancing their aims. Given current world conditions, it is safe to presume that terrorism will remain an integral part of the political

process for the foreseeable future in much the same way that car accident deaths are part of civil life.

Terrorism needs to be confronted by a state’s political will – not by its physical power. This will of the state must be expressed primarily through its various intelligence and enforcement organizations. If the state’s intelligence and enforcement agencies are to be effective, they need to occupy and maintain the moral high ground. This high ground is required in order to attract the human sources that are required for the ‘tip,’ and to obtain the concomitant investigative intelligence required to disrupt terrorist plots and convict those involved.

(Note Justice Major’s observation in the Air India report – an observation that, again, has general application for many democratic states fighting terrorism: “There is a need for greater specialization and a more concentrated focus on the means for investigating and supporting the prosecution of national security offences.”) The high ground is also necessary to maintain the confidence of the citizenry of the affected or targeted state.

Effective intelligence services require effective knowledge that is also shared among nations. Currently, most knowledge (for example, about the said objectives, ideology, strategy and tactics of terrorist groups) exists outside of government. Even in areas of presumed government competence, such as defence, intelligence and security, the reality is that most pertinent knowledge exists outside of government ownership or control. Intelligence agencies should be seeking to collect and coherently analyze as much information as possible in order to give insightful advice to their respective governments. The focus needs to be on open source intelligence, where most of the information lies and is, for a price and some effort, readily obtainable.

Unfortunately, many intelligence agencies still think that their role is to ‘steal secrets’ from that steadily decreasing pool of material held in secret by other governments and groups.

As noted in the Air India report, intelligence agencies still have a lot to learn about terrorism. If a greater emphasis were placed on knowledge and open source intelligence, agencies and governments would also find themselves in a better position to share and discuss how to form a common understanding and response.

The military approach, for its part, has limited utility in that only some seven percent of terrorist campaigns have to date been ended by military action, while other factors were involved in the other 93 percent of cases (according to the RAND Corporation). In order to arrive at these figures, RAND, known for its close relationship to the US military, studied the outcome of hundreds of terrorist campaigns. The idea that the application of military power can solve political problems, however,

remains a powerful illusion, and continues to dominate counter-terrorism policy in many countries.

Of all the common obstacles to an effective counterterrorism programme in any country, the most severe and long-running impediment is the confusion between secrecy and security. The problem is most peculiar to intelligence agencies, but it has manifestations throughout almost all government agencies and departments. Secrecy remains a necessary and valid concept in democratic governments. It is required for a variety of valid reasons, such as the general shielding of current investigations or operations, or the specific protection of the names of sources and agents who provide critical information. Unfortunately, intelligence agencies (more than all other organs of government) tend to believe that, in order to maintain ‘security,’ it is necessary to classify or over-classify almost all information. The result is the creation of an internal series of security walls that ensure the creation of information silos. The critical information flows required to find and analyze the ‘fine grains’ of intelligence are stopped.

A

PhotographS: The Canadian Press

Intelligence agencies tend to believe that it is necessary to classify or over-classify almost all information.

The result is an internal series of security walls that ensure the creation of information silos.

LONDON 2005

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useful example of openness and effectiveness can be found in Singapore – a country not known for being ‘soft on security.’ Previously, Singapore’s Internal Security Department (ISD) was a highly secretive government agency. Its employees were forbidden from identifying themselves as members of the agency; there were no signs on their buildings. However, senior figures in Singapore came to the conclusion that if the citizens of Singapore were to trust the agency, and if the agency was going to be able to obtain critical information from the populace, then the agency would have to start being a visible and normalized presence in Singapore. Today, ISD employees freely identify themselves, attend regular conferences on security, and do not attempt to hide behind false identifications by saying that they work for ‘the government.’

Intelligence agencies in many countries often forget that their role is a supporting one. Intelligence is a support function designed to enhance the decision-making role of others. It was not designed to become a function unto itself. All too often, intelligence agencies adopt a culture of independence, forgetting that they are not there to serve themselves, but rather to provide inputs for policy-makers, the police and other interested parts of government. Tragedy and scandal usually follow this inability to remember the core role of intelligence. When intelligence agencies become policy-makers and political actors in their own right, and seek to subvert both their intended roles and

laws, terrorism gains more recruits. The fallout from Guantanamo Bay, for instance, will feed the strength of multiple terrorists and political opponents of democracy for years after it is (eventually) closed.

It is not an event that shapes the future. It is the response to the event that shapes future outcomes.

So it is with terrorism as well. The response to terrorism must be common – at least across the developed democratic countries. If one country, or one group of countries, is pursuing a militarized ‘war on terror’ approach, while its neighbours and allies are pursuing largely political approaches, potential weaknesses will exist based on these divisions. Terrorist groups have demonstrated an ability to study and learn the various strengths and weaknesses of host countries, and to ruthlessly exploit (or ‘arbitrage’) the differences between them.

In order to have this common approach, a basic transnational understanding of the nature of terrorism must be reached. If a terrorist group operates across national boundaries, then all of the countries involved must also have a common picture of that particular group’s objectives, ideology, strategy and tactics.

Terrorism, as noted above, is the methodology of the weaker power as it attempts to change the policies of the stronger power. If a terrorist group has attacked a country, then that country is, by implication, the stronger power, and it behooves it to act as such. Leaders of secure and confident nations do not resort to creating a climate of fear, while busily undercutting their own principles and strengths. They respond, rather, by maintaining their moral high ground, and using their natural strengths and advantages, and a strong sense of proportionality, to undercut the narrative of violence and fear put forth by terrorist groups.

Terrorism is not the ‘greatest threat of the 21st century.’ This wild claim quite simply aids terrorism by plugging an amplifier into the propaganda machine of terrorist actors. The burning of Korans – threatened or actual – simply adds to the problems, doing nothing to solve them. Multiple challenges are confronting democratic states at this time, and terrorism is just one of the more visible problems.

Terrorism need not be the fear-inspiring and divisive phenomenon that it has become. A shared understanding of terrorism among like-minded democratic states can lead to a common response that makes the most of our highest principles and values. Terrorists and their supporters would sooner see democracies fear-ridden, divided and sliding down to their level, where they can exploit the climate of fear. The attempt to ‘combat’ terrorism in a war-like manner by circumventing laws and undermining principles has resulted, so far, only in the further securitization and juridification of our societies. If we further submit to the politics of fear, terrorism steadily gains the upper hand. | GB

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Photograph: The Canadian Press / Mark Graham

Straddling Advantage and Responsibility in Asia

TÊTE À TÊTE

As Australia settles into a new Prime Minister and government, GB speaks with Australia’s winningest recent PM about strategy, ‘winning’ and responsibility Conversation with john howard

GB: How has Australian identity evolved from the early post-WW2 period to this early 21st century?

JH: It has been a very natural evolution – especially over the last 30 or 40 years. I still see Australia as part of Western civilization, in the Asia-Pacific region.

Australia has always had, and will continue to have, close links with Europe and North America. When I was Prime Minister, I frequently talked about never having to choose between our history and our geography. We are a country of Western roots and, in my view, always will be. However, we are also living cheek-by-jowl with the fastest-growing power in the world, which is so economically important to us.

There is no reason for which we cannot retain our identity as part of Western civilization, but continue to operate in a very comfortable and harmonious way in our part of the world. Increased globalization and change mean that some of these historical differences diminish over time, and indeed the generality of the English language worldwide helps us enormously. English is the lingua franca of Asia.

And so these different backgrounds and identities mean less and less as each year goes by.

GB: How has Australia arrived at its current strategic posture vis-à-vis Asia?

John Howard was Prime Minister of Australia between 1996 and 2007.

GB: How do you see immigration policy evolving in Australia in this early new century?

JH: When I was Prime Minister, when we saw an increase in migration, we did some things in relation to illegal immigration that were correct, but controversial. One of the consequences was that public support for orthodox migration rose because the Australian community thought that the government was taking control of immigration flows; therefore, they were relaxed about increases. The population always gets nervous about immigration when it feels that it is not being controlled. That is the psychological reality, whether we are speaking about Australia, Britain, America, Canada, Europe, whatever. Australia is in a unique position because we are our own continent; so it is rather easy to control these things. Still, I favour continuing high immigration for Australia. We have a non-discriminatory immigration policy. We take people irrespective of their race or national background. We are a long way from the White

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JH: It would be fair to say that engagement – close economic and political engagement with Asia – did not only start with Prime Minister Keating.

Fraser and Hawke were quite heavily involved in Asia. Each Prime Minister has done it a little differently. Keating tended to confront our country from time to time with an ‘either-or’ proposition (that is, we are either Western or Asian), which is something to which I was very opposed. I never thought that there was any difficulty in remaining a Western country while interacting with Asia.

Asia is just so important to us in every way – economically, strategically. I often have to remind North American and European audiences that our nearest neighbour is the most populous Muslim country in the world, Indonesia. And one of the biggest things to have happened in the last decade is that Indonesia has become a functioning

democracy – the third largest democracy in the world. That is a pretty remarkable achievement – one for which the country has received far too little credit.

Economically, of course, Japan has been a mainstay of the Australian economy for many years.

China has just surpassed Japan as our major export destination, but Japan has been a faithful customer for close to 40 years. Indeed, a lot of Australia’s post-WW2 economic crisis was due to the trade and larger economic relationship with Japan. I think, therefore, that it is very critical that we do not make the mistake of ignoring the historical character of the Japanese relationship as we build a relationship with China. We can have both, and we can do both. But China has been tremendously important because of the enormous volume of resource purchases that they have made recently: they import Australian minerals, and resources are clearly critical to China’s economic rise. This dynamic is part of the reason for which Australia has come through the recent economic downturn better than most countries.

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Australian policy that was removed in the 1960s by one of my predecessors, Harold Holt. And it is a different world today: for one thing, there is more Mandarin and Cantonese spoken in Sydney than any other foreign language.

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Keating tended to confront our country from time to time with an ‘either-or’ proposition about Asia.

I never thought that there was any difficulty in remaining a Western country while interacting with Asia.

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GB: How do you assess the state of Australia’s most complex bilateral relationship – the relationship with Indonesia?

JH: As I said, it is a very important relationship.

Not an important one economically, but a very important one politically. And it has been a difficult relationship. We had difficulties over East Timor.

However, it really is in the last few years that the relationship has been better than it had been for a long time. Part of this has to do with the fact that we are now both democracies, and Indonesia’s current President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, is a very progressive man. He is well-disposed toward Australia and the US; he is a modern, progressive Muslim who understands the importance of fighting terrorism; and he is a man whom I got to know very well when I was Prime Minister. We were able to do a number of things together, particularly in the context of the assistance package that we gave to Indonesia after the 2004 tsunami.

GB: Was the Timor Leste intervention in 1999 a turning point for Australia’s strategic posture in Asia?

JH: Timor was a defining moment in the relationship with Indonesia because we effectively altered a quarter of a century of bipartisan accommodation of Jakarta. That accommodation was a classic example of realpolitik – of good relations with Indonesia being more important than the details of East Timor’s situation. The change in Australia’s position on Timor and Indonesia was, in the end, in no small measure due to the different attitude of Dr. Habibie, who succeeded General Suharto. He never had the attachment to East Timor that Suharto had. Because of that, the East started to ease away, and we quite famously changed our policy. I wrote to Habibie, suggesting that they adopt a different attitude on Timor. The upshot of that was that Habibie went further than we had thought that he would, and there was an independence ballot. Of course, as everyone knows, we led the UN-sanctioned intervention. It was a very effective multilateral force led by an Australian, General Peter Cosgrove. Miraculously, there were not many casualties. And the intervention caused a lot of difficulty with the relationship for a while, because there was an element of international humiliation involved for Indonesia. However, in the long run, it was the right thing to have done, both from our point of view and that of the Indonesians, and most importantly for the East Timorese.

GB: Timor changed the Australian (domestic) psyche, did it not?

JH: I think that what Timor gave Australia is a capacity, and a belief in a capacity, to do things in the region. Australia has been looked at more seriously and with greater respect because we pulled off something very effectively. Everything had hung together during the intervention, and people suddenly realized that we did have a capacity – not to just throw our weight around, but to act in a very positive, constructive fashion. Timor was a very important moment in Australia’s diplomatic and foreign policy experience, and we threw off this idea that everything was subservient to good relations with Jakarta – because, in the end, of course, good relations with Jakarta did necessarily mean maintaining the previous policy on East Timor.

We worked it out, and there were new people in charge in Jakarta, and they have different views than the old people.

GB: What about Australia’s relations with the rest of Southeast Asia or the South Pacific Islands?

JH: In the early part of the decade, we changed our policy in relation to the Pacific Island states.

We adopted a more assertive policy regarding attaching conditions to aid and any requested intervention. We said, yes, we will continue to give aid, but it will be strictly conditional on less corruption and also improved economic governance among countries in the region. The 2003 intervention in the Solomon Islands – Regional Assistance Mission in the Solomon Islands – was very successful. It was a multilateral intervention that was warmly welcomed by the Solomon Islanders. The Australian public felt that we had a particular responsibility in that part of the world. Some of this was conditioned by memories of WW2, where, for example, in East Timor, a lot of the East Timorese sheltered Australians and Japanese. And, of course, there has always been in Australia a warm affection for the people of Papua New Guinea, because many of them worked with the Australian soldiers in the beginning of WW2. So there was a sense in the Australian community that we should be more involved – that this was our patch – but they wanted their money wisely spent; so they supported the conditionality attached to aid.

GB: How will Australia’s strategic identity manifest itself in the region in the next decade or two?

JH: Obviously, there will be variations on this, depending on who is in charge of our foreign and defence policy. Still, I think that we should continue to be a country that is very heavily involved

in our region, but also a country that sees itself as a citizen of the world.

We should not involve ourselves in the region to the detriment of our relationship with the US, the UK, Canada and many other countries with which we have a historical and cultural affinity, as well as a values affinity. I always thought that one could do that, and that one could combine the two – that one did not have to choose. In the time that I was Prime Minister, we were quite successful in doing it, because we certainly built an even closer relationship with the Americans, while also building a very close relationship with the Chinese – all the while maintaining our historical role with the Japanese and, I would argue, also improving our relations with India.

Indeed, I believe that we have an opportunity to lift our game with the Indians. There is enormous potential in this relationship – one built on history and cricket, with cricket perhaps being even more important than history. We also have quite a large Indian population in Australia, and this population will only grow.

The common language between the two countries means that the exchanges are very easy, and that people are learning more and discovering more about India. The future can only be better and better in our relations with our region – and so it should be, because this is our first and most important area in any direction. But, as I say, we can do this without shedding ties with other parts of the world, or with other countries with which we have had a historical association.

GB: What are the key pressures or challenges in Asia for Australia over this period?

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JH: The key pressures are to understand and anticipate some of the ways in which countries like China and Japan might continue to brush up against each other. I thought that one of the more intelligent things that was done on the foreign policy front in Asia a few years ago was the development of the trilateral security dialogue between Japan, Australia and the US. There was talk about extending it to India. The point of that exercise was to emphasize in a completely non-provocative fashion that certain countries had values in common. To my mind, it was a very effective –

not counter, because counter is the wrong word – point of balance. Nobody can possibly object to countries that have similar democratic traditions banding together. I thought that Bush’s foreign policy on that front was very astute. He kept the temperature down, just as we in Australia endeavoured to do over Taiwan. I think that everyone wants to keep the temperature down over Taiwan. I think that the future will see some kind of rapprochement between the Taiwanese and the mainland Chinese, and that maybe some kind of Hong Kong-type arrangement will be brought to fruition. I certainly get that impression.

One of the good things is that Asia is coming out of the economic downturn with less damage than many might have expected. Indeed, there is some truth to the argument that this has been an Atlantic recession, rather than a world recession.

Indonesia, for example, has been far less damaged by this recession than it was by the Asian downturn 10 years ago. Asia has done quite well, relatively speaking. | GB

Timor gave Australia the belief in its capacity to do things in the region.

We are now looked at more seriously because we pulled off something very effectively.

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NEZ À NEZ Asylum, the Tamil Boat and the Australian Way The ‘Australian approach’ to boat people and asylum is the correct one.

Proposition:

Michael Barutciski vs Catherine Dauvergne

Michael Barutciski est directeur des études supérieures à l’École des affaires publiques et internationales de Glendon, ainsi que membre de la rédaction de Global Brief.

Catherine Dauvergne has taught law, including refugee law, in both Canada and Australia. Her most recent book is Making People Illegal: What Globalization Means

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for Migration and Law.

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MB (for): Certains diront que la réponse du gouvernement canadien à l’égard des 492 boat people sri lankais arrivés pas loin de Vancouver au mois d’août dernier a fait l’objet d’une attention médiatique disproportionnée. Bien que le nombre de ces boat people soit petit par rapport aux millions de réfugiés à travers le monde, il représente une situation difficile et distincte de celle des demandeurs d’asile qui débarquent dans nos aéroports ou qui arrivent par voie terrestre. S’il est vrai que tous ces migrants se présentent aux frontières sans avoir été invités, les boat people arrivent en masse dans des conditions visiblement dramatiques qui nécessitent une réponse humanitaire immédiate. Par conséquent, ils représentent symboliquement un défi politique considérable pour une bonne partie de la population qui se pose des questions par rapport à l’intégrité territoriale du pays. Chaque société aura ses propres réponses au dilemme des boat people et il faut éviter les opinions ou critiques prématurées. D’ailleurs, les Canadiens ne sont pas les seuls qui changent leur discours humanitaire dès que le problème se présente à leurs portes.

En ce sens, on pourrait dire que l’Australie fait face sur une base quotidienne au problème potentiel évoqué par certains pessimistes canadiens: l’arrivée régulière de bateaux transportant des boat people (ayant fui différents pays en Asie) qui ont l’intention de demander l’asile et s’installer pour profiter de la prospérité du pays d’accueil. Il y a eu plusieurs réponses différentes de la part des autorités australiennes au cours des dernières années.

Si on peut parler d’une «approche» australienne, je pense qu’on pourrait la décrire de la manière suivante: les bateaux sont interceptés et les boat people sont envoyés dans des centres de détention situés sur des îles éloignées du continent australien (par exemple Christmas Island, Nauru, NouvelleGuinée) où chaque cas est étudié individuellement.

Les personnes reconnues comme «réfugiés» sont alors réinstallées en Australie ou dans des pays d’accueil qui décident de les accepter. Le message aux boat people est clair: vous allez être protégés si

vous craignez la persécution, mais vous n’allez pas décider par rapport aux options concernant l’endroit de cette protection. La logique de cette approche reflète un effort de compromis dans le sens qu’on protège tout en préservant la souveraineté territoriale. Évidemment, cette approche tend à décourager les demandes abusives provenant de migrants qui veulent contourner les lois d’immigration.

Compte tenu des différents facteurs et enjeux, il s’agit d’un compromis raisonnable qui mérite d’être examiné et peut-être développé dans plusieurs régions souvent confrontées au même problème (Méditerranée, Caraïbes, etc.).

CD (against): I do not agree that intercepting boats and directing asylum seekers to foreign shores is either reasonable or a compromise. Moreover, much of the Australian population, and indeed the current Labor government in Canberra, does not think so either. Since Labor came to power in 2007, boat interceptions have stopped, and all asylum seekers attempting to reach Australia in boats have been brought to Australian territory, where their claims have been decided on an individual basis. The number of claims is very small – about one tenth of the average annual numbers in Canada – and the number of boats has amounted to less than a dozen a year over the past decade. Proportionately more claimants do arrive in boats; that is a geographic fact.

The reason for which Australia abandoned what is these days known as the ‘Australian approach’ is that the federal (Commonwealth) government knew that it was in breach of international law. From 2001 to 2007, Australia sent asylum claimants to detention and assessment in countries such as Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Nauru is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention (although PNG is), and sending people there is a blatant breach of the Convention.

Boat interception is also a breach – in a more complicated way – of international law of the sea. The policy may also have become unattractive because Australian payments to Nauru alone amounted to something in the neighbourhood of AUS $40 million – a hefty price to pay for an initial 300 or so claimants processed in 2001 and 2002.

In July of this year, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard suggested that boat arrivals be sent to East Timor for assessment. The East Timorese, not having been consulted, reacted strongly, and the idea wilted in the face of the recent election. It may yet be revived.

Is there a better way to achieve what Australia’s Howard government did between 2001 and 2007?

(See the Tête à Tête interview with John Howard at p. 52.) Whatever tweaking one could add, I would still say no. Interception and offshore processing are both human rights breaches. While societies may indeed have differing opinions, the 147 nations that have signed on to the Refugee Convention do not have differing legal obligations.

Photograph: The Canadian Press

A boatload of 260 Sri Lankan asylum seekers bound for Australia is intercepted by the Indonesian navy, October 2009.

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MB: Il va sans dire que les droits humains sont importants. Comme tout pays qui veut assumer le leadership sur le plan humanitaire, il est clair que le Canada doit respecter ses engagements en vertu de la Convention sur les réfugiés. Cependant, je ne suis pas d’accord avec l’interprétation des normes internationales que vous proposez. Le gouvernement australien avait interrompu la pratique pour des raisons politiques et non parce qu’elle était illégale. En effet, l’interception et le transfert des boat people n’est pas facile à concilier avec l’image humanitaire que les Australiens essayent de projeter

dans le monde. La raison principale pour laquelle on n’a pas parlé de l’approche australienne ces dernières années est simple: il n’y a pas eu beaucoup de boat people qui se sont présentés dans les eaux territoriales de l’Australie. Dès que le nombre a commencé à augmenter, l’option est revenue sur la table de discussion. C’est pour cela que le gouvernement actuel est en train d’examiner les possibilités d’interception et de transfert vers les îles voisines.

Autrement dit, ni le gouvernement ni la population ne s’oppose de façon fondamentale à l’idée d’avoir recours à ce moyen exceptionnel.

Une analyse objective des normes internationales nous oblige à admettre que très peu de tribunaux ont eu l’occasion de se prononcer sur le dilemme des boat people. Après tout, dans nos démocraties ce sont les tribunaux qui tranchent et qui ont le dernier mot par rapport aux ambiguïtés concernant les règles de droit (et non les comités de l’ONU ou les ONG comme Amnesty). Dans la mesure où les instances

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La seule obligation internationale pertinente à notre débat est le principe général qui interdit de renvoyer les réfugiés vers des pays où ils craignent la persécution.

Ce n’est pas l’équivalent d’un droit

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à l’asile.

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judiciaires australiennes ont dû se prononcer sur la légalité de cette approche, elles n’ont pas accepté l’interprétation large du droit international que vous suggérez et elles ont plutôt renforcé l’idée que le gouvernement préserve une certaine discrétion par rapport aux options de protection. La Cour suprême des États-Unis a été encore moins généreuse dans son interprétation du droit international quand elle a autorisé le renvoi des boat people en Haïti et à Cuba pendant les années 1990.

Il y a 60 ans, nos gouvernements ont négocié la Convention sur les réfugiés et ils se sont assurés qu’il n’y aurait pas d’obligation d’accorder l’asile – même aux personnes reconnues comme réfugiés.

La seule obligation internationale pertinente à notre débat est le principe général qui interdit de renvoyer les réfugiés vers des pays où ils craignent la persécution. Ce n’est pas l’équivalent d’un droit à l’asile. Tout espoir de développer un véritable droit à l’asile est disparu avec l’échec de la conférence internationale qui avait pour but d’adopter une Convention sur l’asile pendant les années 1970.

Donc, si le Canada peut s’assurer que les boat people tamouls seront accueillis dans un pays de la région de l’océan Pacifique et qu’ils ne seront pas renvoyés au Sri Lanka, il peut les transférer sans qu’il y ait violation de la Convention sur les réfugiés. Le fait que le pays participant au partage du fardeau ne soit pas lié par la Convention sur les réfugiés n’est pas le critère déterminant: l’important est qu’il ne refoule pas à son tour les boat people. Il faut noter qu’aucun des pays participant à l’approche australienne n’a été accusé d’avoir refoulé les boat people transférés. L’objectif du droit des réfugiés est simplement d’assurer qu’il y aura une forme de protection accordée aux boat people et non de désigner le pays qui doit accorder l’asile. Bien que les normes concernant le droit de la mer mentionnent l’obligation de prêter assistance en haute mer, elles ne viennent pas changer ce constat car elles demeurent ambiguës par rapport à la question clé du débarquement des personnes secourues.

Mais le vrai débat n’est pas de nature juridique.

Nous partageons tous les deux une perspective qui met l’accent sur l’importance de la protection des réfugiés. La question est plutôt de trouver la bonne stratégie de protection si on veut avoir des résultats concrets. Selon moi, l’approche militante, qui consiste à présenter des interprétations exagérées des normes internationales, n’a aucune chance de réussir. C’est la leçon qu’il faut tirer des décisions de la Cour suprême des États-Unis et de la Cour fédérale d’Australie. Je considère qu’on arrivera à un meilleur système de protection à long terme si on reconnaît les différents intérêts légitimes, y compris ceux qui ne sont pas liés à la protection (par exemple les risques concernant la sécurité), et qu’on cherche le compromis. Le statu quo que

vous encouragez ne propose rien pour aborder les problèmes actuels et fait en sorte qu’on va continuer à répéter les mêmes débats. Entre temps, une bonne partie de la population du pays d’accueil, qui est préoccupée par la menace à l’intégrité territoriale, continuera à faire pression sur le gouvernement et je ne suis pas certain que les options explorées aient forcément comme objectif de trouver un compromis raisonnable entre la protection des réfugiés et le contrôle des frontières. Il ne faut pas oublier qu’il y a d’autres options: de la même manière que les Américains ont parfois renvoyé les boat people haïtiens et cubains directement dans leur pays d’origine, les gardes côtières espagnoles, italiennes et grecques sont régulièrement accusées d’avoir renvoyé des boat people de l’autre côté de la Méditerranée afin d’éviter toute obligation de protection.

Dans ce contexte, peut-on vraiment défendre le statu quo?

CD: Of course, I would not defend the status quo, and certainly not those aspects that you and I clearly agree upon: that returning individuals to places where they may fear persecution, without examining claims to refugee status, is a breach of international law.

However, beyond this point, your reply here points to one of the most significant problems of the Refugee Convention, which is that there is no forum to supervise its interpretation and enforcement. Ordinarily, a legal dispute will be authoritatively settled by a court. Either side will muster arguments – including the support of scholars like us – and an authoritative voice will decide. The Refugee Convention says that disputes can be resolved by the International Court of Justice. But that will never happen because only state parties can bring complaints. Yet state parties will not do this – in part because each departure from the law for one state brings a little more breathing room for all of the others. No international body is supporting what the US Supreme Court has said about boat arrivals; and the Australian Federal Court, for its part, skirted the issue. This argument will not be resolved, and that is a significant weakness in the law.

The single most disturbing aspect of the idea of intercepting boats and deciding claims elsewhere is that it is always accompanied by the dimension of global inequality. These proposals (and the brief Australian example) all amount to prosperous Western countries that host comparatively few asylum seekers suggesting that they should host even fewer asylum seekers; that, instead, claims should be assessed somewhere far away – inevitably in some poorer state with inferior resources, less capacity to conduct security assessments, less capacity to feed people, and a less robust legal system. Such proposals may make Western governments feel more

secure, but this is illusory. If there is anything that 21st century politics has taught us, it is that security threats travel the globe with great ease.

Western states seem much more interested in keeping asylum seekers away – because the international obligations that they bring are very real – than in thwarting the choices of those who seek protection. If it were only about thwarting choice, then the proposals would be directed to that end: Canada could determine the claims of those who arrive in the US; Australia could determine the claims of those who arrive in Canada; and so on. But no one speaks in these terms.

MB: Effectivement c’est un aspect frappant du sys-

CD: I think that, at some point, human rights obligations must be treated as absolute obligations. That is what the idea of a ‘right’ means. Human rights do impinge on sovereignty. That is precisely the point.

People arrive as asylum seekers in many ways; boats are just one method. Rights ought not to differ according to method of arrival – especially as those who arrive in precarious boats are most often disadvantaged in comparison with those who fly in on tourist visas. The Australian experiment of 2001 to 2007 also included creating two tiers of refugees – systematically stripping residency and family reunion rights from those who arrived in boats. This policy was also abandoned when Labor came to power. In Canada’s last episode of significant boat arrivals, prior to the very recent Tamil boat – during the summer of 1999 – the acceptance rate of the resultant claims was 2 percent; that is, far lower than the average over that decade of approximately 40 percent. This lack of generosity was a result of a defensible application of international and domestic law. If anything, it was more stringent than generous.

The ‘burden’ of refugee reception falls overwhelmingly on the developing world, which last year was host to 80 percent of the world’s 16 million refugees. Asylum seekers (all methods of arrival) were a far smaller number, rounding up to 1 million – the greatest number of whom were in South Africa. No programme is needed to keep people at a distance from prosperous Western countries; in fact, quite the opposite. It is possible to imagine a different kind of compromise than the erstwhile Australian example, but we have not yet seen such a thing in action; and there are reasons to believe that politics cannot deliver. International refugee law, therefore, remains the best hope for human rights responses. | GB

These proposals (and the Australian example) all amount to prosperous Western countries that host comparatively few asylum seekers suggesting that they should host even fewer.

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tème actuel de protection internationale des réfugiés: contrairement aux autres domaines liés aux droits humains, il n’y a pas de mécanisme supranational de supervision pour les réfugiés. Cette absence s’explique justement parce que les réfugiés et les boat people soulèvent des questions qui touchent directement à la souveraineté nationale. Comme le système international concernant les migrations est fondé sur une approche essentiellement étatique et consensuelle, pourquoi est-ce que le Canada ou l’Australie se lierait par une nouvelle institution internationale qui pourrait se mêler à des aspects fondamentaux de la souveraineté territoriale? Ils ne l’ont pas fait jusqu’à maintenant et ce n’est pas par hasard. C’est un sujet délicat et il ne faut pas pousser trop loin car la réaction des populations d’accueil peut facilement se tourner contre les étrangers et ainsi permettre aux gouvernements de justifier les politiques sévères qu’on a vues en Méditerranée et dans les Caraïbes. C’est la leçon à tirer du dilemme que les boat people représentent pour nos démocraties libérales. Il y a risque surtout d’exposer un problème éthique qui caractérise parfois notre approche de protection: on accorde un traitement généreux aux rares boat people qui arrivent à pénétrer nos eaux territoriales (comme c’est le cas actuellement avec les 492 Tamouls au Canada), mais on fait tout pour que les demandeurs d’asile n’aient pas accès à notre territoire.

Dans ce sens, je comprends l’inégalité internationale que vous critiquez. J’ajouterais simplement qu’il faudrait se méfier d’un résultat qui serait potentiellement ironique. Si on appliquait les principes de façon absolue, comme vous avez suggéré, les premiers pays de contact avec les boat people seraient obligés d’accorder l’asile. Étant donné que ces pays se trouvent généralement pas loin des conflits dans les régions défavorisées, il y aurait un effet de containment qui convient parfaitement aux pays riches tels que l’Australie et le Canada. Si on veut encourager une véritable coopération internationale (impliquant un partage du fardeau), il faudra repenser la stratégie car on risque de renforcer cette inégalité que vous

avez décrite. D’ailleurs, quand le gouvernement canadien affiche sa volonté d’explorer des mesures de coopération internationale avec des pays de la région du Pacifique (par exemple la Thaïlande), il est possible qu’il pense simplement à se décharger du fardeau humain et peut-être de compenser financièrement ses partenaires asiatiques moins riches. Est-ce qu’il pense à s’engager pour assurer que les boat people seront effectivement protégés et traités dans des conditions humaines? Je suis persuadé qu’il y a place ici pour un compromis qui pourrait satisfaire à la fois les défenseurs modérés des boat people et les autorités étatiques qui comprennent l’importance de préserver une sorte de solidarité humanitaire transnationale. Bien que je suis mal à l’aise avec certains aspects du discours politique utilisé par l’ancien gouvernement Howard, l’expérience australienne demeure néanmoins le meilleur exemple (et espoir) international de réforme par rapport au statu quo.

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THE DEFINITION Winning in international affairs in the 21st century means... …pour l’individu, plus que jamais, émerger comme citoyen global, à l’aise bien au-delà de la société qui nous a vu naître. Désireux de vivre dans la diversité et la richesse de l’humanité et de contribuer au développement de la conscience que nous formons une communauté humaine solidaire a tout égard: politique, stratégique, social, culturel, environnemental.

Et pour l’État, gagner au 21e siècle veut dire réaffirmer haut et fort que l’individu est citoyen avec ses droits et ses responsabilités, s’assurant que le marché ne réduise pas le citoyen qui n’est plus qu’un acteur économique et un consommateur.

L’État devra aussi sortir de sa zone de confort et tisser des liens avec d’autres groupes de pays et de sociétés bien au-delà des alliances stratégiques et économiques traditionnelles».

Pierre Pettigrew a été ministre canadien entre 1996 et 2006, notamment des Affaires étrangères et du Commerce international. Il est aujourd’hui conseiller de direction aux affaires internationales chez Deloitte.

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...thinking and acting globally. Inter-

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national affairs are being radically reshaped not even one decade into the 21st century. The evidence of a new multipolar world is everywhere: the shift of power dynamics from the G8 to the G20; the continuing emergence and growing influence of China and India; and the gradual decline of the P5’s power to shape events in the international arena. At the same time, new alliances and new powers are themselves subject to trends and events largely outside of state control, including the Internet, the global economy and global warming. In this context, the winners in international affairs in this century will, in all probability, be those that lead in the creation not only of alliances and rules for states, but also of alliances and rules for business, media and civil society. National outcomes and national laws now matter less than ever before. Those fixated on the national interest, too narrowly defined, likely risk enjoying only the most ephemeral and illusory victories over the course of this century.

Thinking ahead, the complexity of contemporary international affairs is daunting – and, as such, lends itself to the setting of micro-level objectives

and the pursuit of short-term impacts. How can one possibly plan for a future that is so difficult to see or understand? And yet, reality compels us to recognize that states and businesses can no longer afford to think or act in the present alone. They have to confront the complexity of international affairs, and make sure that they also strategize far into the future – investing as needed in their own intellectual capital, as well as in progressive alliances with others. For a time, it seemed as if the idea of strategic planning had fallen out of fashion, as events so often appeared to render plans irrelevant. However, in this century, such plans will be essential to winning, where winning will be most needed – namely, in the areas once considered ‘soft’: education, the environment, technological innovation, women’s advancement, and the establishment of a truly global rule of law. The future importance of being ahead of the curve on these issues can hardly be overstated.”

Mark Freeman is Chief of External Relations, International Crisis Group. He is the author of several texts, including Necessary Evils: Amnesties and the Search for Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2009).

...in the case of India, deftly navigating the growing geopolitical competition that it faces from China in regions ranging from the Asia-Pacific to Latin America, Africa and Europe. This competition covers the search for markets, technological innovation, mineral resources, military alliances and diplomatic networks and postures.

India has a slight edge over China with the ‘softer’ (arguably, more attractive) values that it can project to the outside world. It has a stable democracy, freedom of the press and more general human freedoms that, together, translate into the possibility that many other countries (although certainly not all) in the Asia-Pacific region are less afraid of its emergence than they are that of China.

Indian victory in this dyadic, new-century contest with the Middle Kingdom requires it to ruthlessly lever its attractiveness for long-term advantage.”

Balaji Chandramohan is the Asia-Pacific correspondent of World News Forecast and Editor, Asia, with World Security Network. He is based in New Delhi and Wellington, New Zealand.

ILLUSTRATION: NOAH WOODS

If there is one thing of which we can be certain, it is that conflict over resources, land, money, ideas, values, faiths, and much more will persist throughout the 21st century.

Those who are likely to thrive in this new international arena where militaries and money are of limited value are those who will be most able to harness the power of persuasion to advance their ends.

By persuasion, I mean neither forcing nor cajoling. Instead, persuasion is the ability to convince another to pursue (or to refrain from pursuing) a particular course of action because it meets both one’s own and the other side’s interests. The component skills of successful persuasion include: perspective-taking, listening, empathy, framing, creativity, collaboration and, most of all, patience.

Robert C. Bordone is Thaddeus R. Beal Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Harvard Negotiation & Mediation Clinical Program, Harvard Law School.

For the rest of this answer and others, visit the

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…persuading. The era in which deploying sheer military might or flexing one’s vast economic muscle might be sufficient to win (or, more modestly, end or manage) a conflict has passed. Stunning technological advances in the last decade, combined with the break-neck pace of economic, cultural and ideological globalization during the same period, make using military force or economic sanctions to succeed on the world stage a costly strategy.

Because nation-states with powerful armies and mighty economies rely so heavily on global markets and global security for their continued success, deploying armies or sanctions to win a point necessarily imposes pain on the very entities that would use these methods. At the same time, simply staying out of the way of others through practiced isolation is an equally maladaptive way to thrive on a world stage that is so interconnected and interdependent. These old tools, then, cannot be the main ingredients for victory in international affairs in our time.

And yet, despite the reduced efficacy of economic and military force for resolving conflict, if there is one thing of which we can be certain, it is that conflict over resources, land, money, ideas, values, faiths, and much more will persist throughout the 21st century.

GB website at: www.globalbrief.ca

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STRATEGIC FUTURES « D’ici 2020, la ressource naturelle la plus importante (sur le plan stratégique) sera... …encore et toujours le pétrole. Selon les projections de l’Agence Internationale de l’Énergie, le pétrole restera, à cette date, la principale composante de la consommation mondiale d’énergie malgré la progression d’autres sources comme le nucléaire ou le charbon.

Le poids stratégique du pétrole résidera notamment dans trois éléments assez distincts. Le premier, évident et parfois négligé, est qu’il sera toujours essentiel aux forces militaires qui ne l’auront pas remplacé pour assurer leur mobilité. Ensuite, le pétrole domine les décisions stratégiques de la Chine, puissance ascendante. L’expansion prévue de la marine chinoise et le développement d’une approche dite du «collier de perles» pour assurer le contrôle chinois sur des ports asiatiques stratégiques servent notamment à contrôler l’approvisionnement en pétrole. Cela causera des frictions très probables avec la domination maritime américaine. Enfin, les revenus du pétrole renforceront la puissance financière des pays exportateurs: les pays du Golfe, la Russie ou bien la Norvège. Un chiffre suffit: la société de consultants McKinsey & Co. projette que les avoirs étrangers des pays exportateurs atteindront 9 000 milliards de dollars américains en 2013. À ce rythme, ce sera une force financière de 20 000 milliards en 2020, investie globalement.

Difficile à ignorer».

Amine Jaoui est conseiller en stratégie économique et politique auprès d’un gouvernement du Moyen-Orient.

…l’eau – sa qualité, sa distribution à l’échelle glo-

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bale, et tout cela dans le contexte des grandes tendances de précipitation à travers le monde. (Peutêtre aussi l’uranium, en passant)».

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ignorantes et meurtrières (l’Irlande durant la Grande Famine, la Chine du Grand Bond en avant, la Corée du Nord, le Zimbabwe), les guerres et la désintégration des États (l’Éthiopie, le Congo, le Soudan), ainsi que les grands déséquilibres internationaux (les subventions agricoles des pays de l’OCDE, les hausses soudaines des prix de l’énergie et des autres intrants agricoles). Il est probable que la dégradation d’un tiers des terres arables du monde, les changements climatiques, la pression sur les ressources hydrauliques et la croissance de la population aggraveront la situation. Il y aura cependant un aspect tragique à ces famines qui causeront des millions de morts. Elles sont entièrement évitables. En 2020, et bien au-delà, la capacité globale de production alimentaire excédera les besoins de l’humanité par une solide marge».

André Beaulieu est Vice-président Création de valeur et achats chez Bell Canada et un membre du projet de Stratégie de positionnement mondial pour le Canada du Conseil international du Canada.

…l’eau. Notamment en raison de l’urbanisation et de l’augmentation de la population mondiale.

Déjà source de conflit aujourd’hui, l’eau douce sera de plus en plus rare et chère. Inégalement distribuée à la surface de la planète, l’eau risque de manquer particulièrement en Asie et en Afrique. Il faut espérer que les hommes sauront à la fois avoir la volonté de diminuer les gaspillages, notamment dans l’irrigation, et d’inventer de nouvelles techniques pour la rendre plus accessible, entre autres dans les quartiers sous-intégrés des plus grandes agglomérations du monde».

Greg Fyffe est professeur adjoint à l’Université d’Ottawa où

Pierre Verluise est docteur en géopolitique de l’Université

il enseigne le renseignement et la sécurité, ainsi que la pensée

Paris-Sorbonne et fondateur et directeur du site géopolitique

stratégique. Il dirigeait le Bureau de l’évaluation internationale

www.diploweb.com.

au Bureau du Conseil privé (Ottawa) entre 2000 et 2008.

…toujours la nourriture. Il y aura des pénuries régionales importantes et prolongées qui seront causées par les mêmes facteurs ayant perturbé la production et la distribution de nourriture depuis le début de l’ère moderne: des politiques nationales

…l’eau douce. Menacée

par la croissance démographique, économique et le changement climatique, l’eau douce est pourtant essentielle à la vie; elle doit donc être conservée et partagée. Les pays sont inégaux face à cette richesse.

Certains ne disposent pas de réserve suffisante

Déjà source de conflit aujourd’hui, l’eau douce sera de plus en plus rare et chère.

Inégalement distribuée à la surface de la planète, l’eau risque de manquer particulièrement en Asie et en Afrique.

…l’eau. Pendant que notre appétit pour les commodités modernes s’accentue et la population mondiale augmente de façon exponentielle, la quantité d’eau douce nécessaire pour rendre la vie possible s’amplifie à un taux alarmant. Les leaders mondiaux doivent préparer immédiatement un plan de conservation et une convention internationale crédibles et réalistes».

Marie Lavoie est professeure agrégée à l’École des affaires

Will Paterson est juriste associé au Tribunal pénal

publiques et internationales de Glendon, ainsi que membre de

international pour le Rwanda (Arusha, Tanzanie).

la rédaction de Global Brief.

Il écrit à titre personnel.

Photograph: istockphoto

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pour permettre un niveau de développement humain et social adéquat. La communauté internationale devra continuer à débattre les enjeux de l’«or bleu» tout en tenant compte de la situation des pays arides et semi-arides, ainsi que de l’approvisionnement durable des générations futures».

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EPIGRAM

On Winning and Responsibility Toward a theory of temporary advantage in the chaos of life

By DOUGLAS GLOVER

Douglas Glover is a Governor-General’s Award-winning novelist and short story writer.

His last book was The Enamoured Knight, a study of Cervantes and

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Don Quixote.

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The idea of winning smacks of the absolute and archaic. The pulse of history, liberal guilt and the endof-history, millenarian dream of global homogeneity are against it. We all go to the worms. Civilizations rise and fall. What remains of countless ‘wins’ are a few stone remnants and a museum display of corroded armour.

Language, as always, is dire with prognostication.

One can win the battle but not the war. And even if one wins, it might be a Pyrrhic victory. In the modern parlance, quagmire is a metaphor turned into a technical term for a victory that won’t stick. Paradoxically, it seems, both sides have to agree on who won – otherwise ones does not get victory; one gets a festering sore or a quagmire. We see an early model in the Book of Judges: after wandering in the Wilderness, fording the River Jordan, and conquering city after city, the Israelites find total victory slipping from their grasp (quagmire) due to an inability to compass Jehovah’s original programme of ethnic cleansing.

Winning is elitist and anti-democratic. Only a few can win; the masses are losers. Think of the difference between performing an action in order to do it well (from aesthetic or utilitarian motives) and performing the same act in order to win (to defeat an opponent). Competition drives excellence, we think, in imitation of the ancient Greeks; although nowadays it also drives the invention of credit default swaps, offshore manufacturing, and the bankrupting of middle-class homeowners. Winning outcomes are always asymmetrical, or they are shadowed by their opposites – failure, resentment and loss. The legendary priest-kings of the Grove of Nemi won their crowns by slaughtering previous kings in combat, only to be slaughtered in turn by new champions.

As often as not, winning is a matter of who tells the story, and where the story ends. George W. Bush had his ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment, only to watch the story of Iraq unfold new chapters of anarchy. If history teaches a lesson, it is that winning is temporary, relative, and open to question.

Human beings are a wayward and squabbling lot; as far as winning is concerned, someone is always moving the goalposts or changing the rules. And sometimes one wishes that politicians and their enablers, the media, would scale back the dramatic hyperbole. We should perhaps forget winning and think: temporary advantage in the chaos of life.

In the culture of sports (not to mention politics and the arts, treated as a sport as they often are in the media) where the ancient dramas of agon – struggle, defeat and victory – are played out in a glamourous and gossipy arena, winning has become a fantasy of inhuman ability (thank goodness for steroids), fabulous wealth and hysterical spectator identification, a fact not lost on marketing shills – hence the taint of commercial tawdriness attached to winners these days. Above all, winning is entertainment. Disguised as an index of achievement, the cult of winning packages experience as a dramatic action: desire, conflict, suspense, climax and catharsis.

People who forget other people speak easily of winning and turn life into a game. And perhaps there is nothing more human than wanting to transform the most awful circumstances – say, war, or the ruthless competition for scarce resources – into a tennis match, all gallantry, rules and referees. But this is pure escapism, denial and tragedy.

As the planet grows smaller (and the cosmos beyond grows more mysteriously expansive), it becomes indispensable to compose a larger theory of winning that includes the entire human race and Nature herself within a broad and unconventional accommodation to Fate and Law. At its very best, the ideal of globalization is about winning on a planetary scale – not about the politics of conflict and advantage at the level of tribes, villages, regions or states – but about negotiation, planning and compromise at the level of the species.

The radically conservative ideology of eco-politics posits not a programme of competition, conquest and consumption, but of renewal and sustainability. The great, nearly half-century of war from 1914 to 1945 ended not with the punitive hubris of the Treaty of Versailles, but with the Marshall Plan that turned Germany into a winner of a different sort, and irrevocably altered Europe’s moral trajectory.

There is a definition of the word ‘winning’ that has little to do with conquest or chicanery, with struggle, defeated opponents and humiliation. We speak of a winning smile or disposition, winning as charming and agreeable, winning that is persuasive, seductive, and ultimately results in possession. Winning in this regard is not a matter of violence and triumph, but of attraction by force of personality, nobility, generosity and beauty – winning as an expression of play and rhetoric, under the sign of the winged god Eros. | GB

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