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HIGHLIGHTS |
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HIGHLIGHTS |
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Budapest Community Building Meeting The Commission on Globalisation Workshop in Budapest There is a particular quality to debate in the State of the World Forum, which the Commission on Globalisation has inherited. It is difficult to pin down, but eminently recognisable when it appears. The ethos of the State of the World Forum has always encouraged mobile minds. There is a particular combination of quickness and depth, married to a willingness to tackle sensitive and complex subjects regardless of personal risk. This chemistry works better in the physical proximity of a meeting than it does in the desiccated world of cyber space debate. The bringing together of those with opposing viewpoints but a common devotion to teasing out the truth can be an exciting experience. These traits were very much on display on the 17th, 18th and 19th October in Budapest. The core event was high quality conference, summoned into existence by George Soros under the deeply unmemorable title "Reshaping Globalisation: Multilateral Dialogues and New Policy Initiatives". The conference brought together many of the luminaries of the debate on globalisation. John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, Professor Richard Higgott, Director of the Centre for the Study of Globalisation and Regionalisation at the University of Warwick and Professor Jan Aart Scholte have all written brilliantly on globalisation. Ernesto Zedillo, the former President of Mexico, gave a thoughtful keynote from a practitioner's view point. The room positively groaned with expertise from a dozen nationalities. The debate was learned, careful and yet strangely constrained, as if the participants chose not to stray into risky areas. Into this wise and in many senses noble gathering rode a posse from the Commission on Globalisation. At surprisingly short notice the Commission arranged a pre-conference workshop entitled "September 11th: its impact on the effectiveness civil society's engagement in issues of global concern". This title was the only stodgy thing about the five and a half hours of debate. It was as if the horror of September 11th had receded just far enough to permit rational and incisive discussion. The debate was fresh and rich and frightened and surprisingly consensual. Walden Bello and Susan George of ATTAC led the charge in response to opening comments from Marcello Palazzi and Jim Garrison. Professor Tamas, a former Hungarian MP, was incisive to the point of cutting, but the bloodshed was productive of an honest debate which stripped away the flummery of initial positions. He was dismissive of the anti-globalisers of the "independent non-communist left" for pursuing "revolutionary theatre with reformist aims", while "displaying a distaste for dirtying their hands in bourgeois electoral politics". Cho Khong, chief political analyst at Shell International, was as always precise and delightful in the accuracy of his insight. Hans Peter Duerr, a State of the World Forum veteran, brought both the passion and the insight of a leading physicist. Multi-stakeholder dialogues are not the world's most effective way of drafting agreed communiqués. What took place was not so much a meeting of minds as a dance of minds. It is a tribute to the idea of the Commission on Globalisation that none of the participants in the debate left the room with their views unchanged. I would not claim that everyone shares my view that the events of September 11th have fractured the coalition of coincidences which gave the anti-capitalist demonstrations from Seattle to Genoa their extraordinary political influence. The media now have a better story, in which they themselves are the front line. The frisson of anarchist violence that accompanied the demonstrations now looks tame by comparison with the calculated horror which bin Laden has wrought. The old far Left has lost the cover of a popular broad coalition into which they could insert their dusty nostrums. The opportunists of the campaign, the trades unions and the mainstream ngos, who were happy for the riots to promote their causes up the political agenda while they washed their hands of the violence, are now reassessing their involvement. The campaigning anti-globalisers will need to reassess their strategy and seek to assess how far they have been fractured into their American, European and Southern components. Everyone however recognised that the world had changed. The world with all its "radical insecurity" has come to the USA. The debate about globalisation has moved into a new and more complex phase. It can no longer be conducted in abstracts. The world can no more be treated as a secular parlour game for the political classes of the planet. We are forced to confront the dark brilliance of bin Laden and the possibility that Samuel Huntingdon's "dud analysis of the clash of civilisations could become an ugly reality". The workshop strode into the dangerous territory of the rhetoric of civilisations. It engaged with the politics of oil and the links between the fossil fuel economy and corporate globalisation. It sank its teeth into and worried away at the emerging issues of a new multi-lateralism and the re-invigoration of the debate about global governance. The debate spilled over into the conference itself and invigorated with its cut and thrust and bludgeon. September 11th in all its ghastliness was a moment of kairos along with 1956, 1968 and 1989. This was the moment when economists no longer dominated the debate. The moment when politics, spirituality and the concept of what is it to be human were admitted into the dry two-dimensional world of the globalisation debate. Admitted not as some eccentric marginalised, footnote for the compassionate, but as central to our evolution as a species. If the Commission on Globalisation does nothing more than replicate this level of debate every few months during its existence, it will have fulfilled a vital role as a sacred space that is a forcing ground for new ideas and new syntheses. The key is to connect. To connect passionate people with differing world views, held within the seriousness of the challenges we all face. To connect debate to policy, and policy to power. Stakeholder is a dreary abstraction. The stakeholders themselves, as represented in the Commission on Globalisation, are alive with thought and enquiry. The Commission on Globalisation does note seek to govern the world, but it can and must make a major contribution to world governance. Perhaps it should take its initials seriously. COGs are for connection and holistic connection is what we all need in this time of troubles.
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