World Peace and Economic Advancement
To the international conference on a new vision and strategy under changing leadership in North East Asia Seoul
Seoul
27 February 2004
I thank President Roh for the invitation to participate in this important Conference being hosted by the Ministry of Finance & Economy and the Korea Development Institute and, in particular, for the immediate relevance of the topic you have allocated me World Peace and Economic Advancement. Too often, the essential connection between these two issues is insufficiently emphasised.
In the brief time available I want to cut straight to what I have been arguing for some time now are the crucial elements of this challenge of world peace and development. At the core of this challenge is a dilemma created by the unprecedented technological revolution which is the basic characteristic of our times. This revolution has created a situation where there is an opportunity, unparalleled in history, either a) to uplift the standard and quality of life of all mankind or b) to virtually destroy mankind. Relatively recent history provides us with some measure of the diversion of resources involved in handling that perplexity. During the Cold War, US defence expenditure, alone, at US$15.8 trillion (in present day values) was unavailable for the former in an attempt to prevent the latter.
In an ideal world, this represented a tragic waste of resources, but the truth was we didnt, and, dont now, live in an ideal world. A ruthless, expansionary Soviet Union constituted a very real threat to the opportunity for freedom in the rest of the world. And while there were legitimate grounds for criticism of some of the policies pursued by the United States in its leading role against this Soviet threat for example its counter-productive adventurism in Vietnam, its complicity in the bloody overthrow of the democratically elected Allende regime in Chile the truth is that the world is indebted to the United States for its steadfastness in facing up to, and finally bringing about the demise of, the Soviet Union.
The too-easy assumption, after this demise, that the world would enter a New Order of relative stability in international relations soon proved to be illusory. States and forces of differing political and cultural persuasion had been united against a Soviet threat which was equally offensive to the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic religious traditions. The menace of Soviet communism made allies of Bin-Ladens and Bushs.
But with the dissolution of the cement of anti-Sovietism, restrained hatreds were released. The violent and tragic manifestation of this hatred on the 11th September 2001 in New York profoundly changed our world in ways with which we are still struggling to come to terms. Our world has become more dangerous, and less susceptible to confident prediction, than at any time in our collective memory. It has been put to me that certain periods of the Cold War were perhaps more dangerous but I believe such reference to the Cold War emphasises precisely the uniqueness of the dangers by which we are now confronted.
While it is true that the Cold War was characterised by rivals possessing an hitherto unknown capacity for inflicting mass destruction upon the enemy indeed to threaten life as we know it on this planet the fact is that this titanic struggle was waged within an historically recognisable framework which had two basic distinguishing features. First, the antagonists were recognised nation-states operating within identifiable borders. Second, it was assumed that the enemy did not willingly envisage its own destruction. Specifically, this assumption provided the basis for the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) under which the massive deployment of WMD was never triggered for fear that such action would provoke retaliatory devastation. Not a morally elegant policy, but one which had the supreme virtue of preventing global nuclear annihilation.
It is, precisely, the disappearance of these two characteristics which explains the uniqueness of the peril confronting our world today. Weapons of mass destruction and the capacity to acquire or produce them still exist. But the enemy, international terrorism, is not confined to or identifiable by, specific geographical borders. And significant elements of the enemy not only do not fear their own destruction, but indeed see a divine merit in it.
There is nothing in our accumulated experience, no textbook, to provide any sort of specific guidance for those in positions of authority who have to make the decisions to meet this uniquely dangerous challenge to an ordered, safe and predictable world. And it is showing.
From a position immediately after September 11th 2001, when so much of the world was united in sympathy with the United States and determined to support it in fighting the challenge of international terrorism, that solid front has been seriously fractured. The widespread questioning of United States leadership, ranging from scepticism to outright opposition, is directed to the new doctrines enunciated by President Bush and the specific decisions taken under those doctrines. The doctrines were set out in the Presidents September 17th 2002 statement The National Security Strategy of the United States of America a statement embracing the concept of the right of the United States unilaterally to take pre-emptive action against countries of its choosing, including, but not limited to, the Axis of Evil. The decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 reflected that doctrine.
The central problem with the concept of the Axis of Evil is that it involves an assumption that the United States is the fulcrum of virtue. This is an assumption which a growing number of people, including long-established friends of the US, find difficult to reconcile with the facts. This difficulty in seeing the United States as the fulcrum of virtue relates, first, to its whole conduct in relation to the invasion of Iraq and second, to its position, more broadly, on a range of issues central to the challenges of our times.
There is not the time to elaborate on that proposition in any detail but I simply, for present purposes, make these points. On Iraq, the broad international unrest with the apparent predetermination of the Bush administration to press ahead with the invasion, regardless of the United Nations, has been enhanced by the shifting grounds now advanced in justification of that decision. Before the war, regime change had been explicitly rejected as a sufficient ground. But when no WMD the explicitly stated casus belli were found, regime change has been advanced as the justification. For much of the international community this unedifying somersault is only explicable by dishonesty or a frightening lack of stringency in the intelligence/command chain or a combination of both. The resultant cynicism has been heightened by the exposure of the fundamental fallacy of the associated pre-war proposition invoked by the Administration alleging links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden and that the war was a necessary element in the fight against terrorism.
One certainly did not have to be a genius to understand the inadequacy of such assertions. Osama bin Laden has shed no tears for the overthrow and capture of the apostate Saddam Hussein, nor for the post-war deaths of Americans at the hands of terrorists, now exceeding the casualties of war. Nor can he feel other than satisfaction at the fact that after this massive projection of United States military power, that country finds itself bogged down in this Iraqi imbroglio with the international coalition against terrorism significantly less cohesive than before the invasion.
The impetus to unilateralism embodied in the September 2002 strategic doctrine has been reflected in a broader range of decisions affecting the global community refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol, vigorous disassociation from the establishment of the International Criminal Court, abandonment of the ABM, rejection of protocols to strengthen the 1987 Convention Against Torture, the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
I am not concerned here, to argue the merits or demerits of those decisions; rather to make the point that we live, and have to make our decisions, in a world where the sole super-power, the United States a military behemoth whose military budget exceeds that of the next eleven countries has demonstrated, as never before, its broad preparedness to act outside the mainstream of international institutions and processes in pursuit of what it deems to be the United States national interest.
And the context in which those decisions have to be made has been further changed and rendered more difficult by the complex impact of globalisation the concomitant of the technological revolution. Powerful economic forces have increasingly impinged upon the political sovereignty of nation states, which has been the dominant feature of international relations for more than three hundred and fifty years. The overall growth in productivity flowing from the globalisation of production creates the opportunity for increasing global welfare. The central challenge confronting national decision-makers in this period has been, and remains, how to create liberalised trading structures which optimise that opportunity while coping politically with the pressure of domestic vested interest groups.
This goes to the very core of the interface between the two elements of todays topic world peace and economic advancement. One of the great obscenities of our world today is that the relatively meagre levels of official development assistance are made illusory by the fact that the rich countries doling out that assistance are preventing the recipient countries from achieving autonomous economic development by denying them open access for their agricultural products. OECD countries in particular the United States, Europe and Japan spend more than $350 billion, or a billion dollars a day, in protecting their agricultural sectors.
The time is long past when we should continue to tolerate the hypocrisy of these countries who, while rightly preaching the merits of the competitive market system, condemn the least privileged nations in the world to perpetual poverty by the refusal to give effect to the principles of that system in their international trading policies. Nothing could be more calculated to provide fertile breeding grounds for the message of hatred of global terrorists. If considerations of morality are not sufficient to change these pernicious policies, enlightened self-interest should.
I believe deeply that this is directly relevant to the overall theme of this Conference A New Vision and Strategy under Changing Leadership in North East Asia. I can modestly claim to have been ahead of the game by having commissioned the Report, in 1989, The North East Asian Ascendancy by one of Australias leading economists, Professor Ross Garnaut. Everything that has happened since, reinforces Garnauts and my conviction then, that what happens in this region is of supreme importance for the future not only of Australia but, indeed, the rest of the world.
It is my profound hope that the governments of the Republic of Korea, China and Japan will embrace, and act upon, what I believe are the self-evident truths I have just set out. There is new leadership here and in China, and in Japan Prime Minister Koizumi has recently received a new mandate. This leadership has a unique opportunity, in these dangerous times, to insist that considerations of security and the war against international terrorism should be addressed in the broad framework of a real and practical concern for the people of the underdeveloped and developing world. In particular, and immediately, this means using their best endeavours, both directly and through their individually special relationships with the United States, to revive the Doha Round by insisting upon equitable access for the agricultural products of these countries to the markets of the developed world.
These leaders represent 25% of the worlds population and the fastest growing sector of the global economy. And their economies are becoming increasingly inter-dependent. From this uniquely strong base, and from the position where each of these countries has a special significance in the global calculus of the United States, they must be prepared to put some of the mind-sets of the past behind them, and face the policy implications of the facts I have outlined. These facts have been reinforced recently by the President of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn on February 13th (The Australian): In our world of 6 billion people, 1 billion own 80% of global wealth, while another 1 billion struggle to survive on a dollar a day. Two billion people have no access to clean water; 150 million children never get the chance to go to school, more than 40 million people in the developing countries are HIV-positive, with little hope of receiving treatment for this dreadful disease Over the next 25 years, about two billion people will be born but only 50 million of them will be in the richer countries. The vast majority will be in the poorer nations: born with the prospect of growing up into poverty and unemployment and growing up in a world that they will inevitably view as inequitable and unjust. Terrorism is often bred in places where a burgeoning youth population sees hope as more of a taunt than a promise.
These leaders should say to the United States and to Europe we are not going to allow, and nor should you allow, out-dated counter-productive commitments to vested agricultural interests to stand in the way of liberalised access to world markets for the agricultural products of the less-developed world. And they should say to the United States that, with your leadership, we will join with you in a massive programme to assist in addressing the challenges of economic and social development for the least privileged countries.
Within that framework let me, finally, refer briefly to two potential flashpoints one remote from you, the other on your doorstep. Whatever is done in the fight against international terrorism will be inadequate unless there is a resolution of the Palestine/Israel issue. Every proposal over the years addressing this conflict has either ignored or paid insufficient attention to the challenge of creating a viable economic entity within the State of Palestine which must be established in accordance with the intention of the original 1947 United Nations resolution out of which the State of Israel arose. I am absolutely convinced that the United States should take the lead in establishing a substantial fund to create economic and educational opportunities for the Palestine people, particularly the youth of Palestine a Powell Plan for Palestine along the lines of the post-war Marshall Plan for Europe. I would hope the leaders of North East Asia would see merit in this concept and advocate its embrace by the United States administration.
One cannot conclude any remarks in Seoul on this important topic without alluding to the challenge posted by North Korea. Without going into this issue at any length I simply make these points. First, I congratulate the President and government of the Republic of Korea for the positive, constructive approach it has adopted. Second, one of the few silver linings to come out of the dark cloud of September 11th 2001 has been the improvement that has followed in Sino-U.S. relations. China is critical to a resolution of this issue and, I believe, is also playing a positive and constructive role. Third, in return for an iron-clad commitment by North Korea to renounce the nuclear option, there should, as with Palestine, be a U.S. led commitment of resources directed towards lifting the standard and quality of life of your neighbours.
My friends, I repeat we stand at a crucial and unique point in history. The technological genius of mankind offers the opportunity for human fulfilment at a level never envisaged before in history, or it can be instrumental in wreaking unparalleled devastation and despair. I trust that the new leadership of North East Asia will play a significant part directly, and through its special relationship with the United States, in maximising the opportunity of going down that road of fulfilment.