Summits
By Noam Chomsky

The United Nations Summit in New York in September was the
second major gathering of government leaders marking the
millennium. The first was the South Summit in Havana in
April. The UN Summit received considerable national
publicity, while the South Summit was barely reported, a
reflection of the "imbalance" in the global system that it
deplored.

The South Summit brought together heads of state of the
"Group of 77" (G77), now 133 countries, accounting for 80%
of the world's population. The name G77 is carried over from
the founding meeting of the UN Conference on Trade and
Development (UNCTAD) in 1964, attended by 77 of the
"developing countries." The April 2000 Summit was of unusual
importance. The first meeting ever at the level of heads of
state, the Summit focused on the concern that the South is
"collectively endangered" by the global economic system that
has been instituted by the rich countries.

A leading third world journal described the Summit as "a
defining moment in G77 history," ending on "a note of
confidence and determination from the leaders to work
together to bring about a new world order based on equity
and fairness," with South-South cooperation as a centerpiece
and a plan of action seeking significant changes in the
global system (Third World Economics, Penang).

In the New York Times Week in Review, UN correspondent=
Barbara Crossette reported that the Summit "denounced the
global economy and its symbols" (the World Bank, IMF, and
WTO), dismissing it as insignificant because "slogans and
oratory do little to illuminate the profound complexity of
human development in the new economic order." According to
"development experts," for the poor "nothing could be more
irrelevant than global theories or rants against
multinational corporations." "The experts," who recognize
the "profound complexities," prefer serious measures to deal
with them: for example, persuading multinationals to "help
workers improve their lives" and inducing "big international=
institutions" to adopt policies that "work for all levels of
society."

The experts are also bemused by the "irony" that the World
Bank is moving "dramatically into social programs...just as
protestors operating on outdated images single it out for
attack." Translating to the real world, the World Bank is
reacting to protestors who have been operating for years on
quite accurate images, as the experts now tacitly concede;
whether the reaction will pass beyond rhetoric depends
substantially on the dedication of the critics who are
largely responsible for bringing it about.

Each Summit produced a Declaration. The Declaration of the
UN Summit consisted largely of pieties, though at least one
resolution had a certain bite: "to encourage the
pharmaceutical industry to make essential drugs more widely
available and affordable by all who need them in developing
countries." There is little need to elaborate on the
extraordinary human catastrophes to which the resolution
alludes, and it is clear enough who bears the primary
responsibility to address them.

One central topic, much discussed in commentary, was what
Secretary-General Kofi Annan described in his call to the
Summit as "the dilemma of intervention": "national
sovereignty must not be used as a shield for those who
wantonly violate the rights and lives of their fellow human
beings." That much is generally agreed, at least at the
rhetorical level. But a rift appears with Annan's next
sentence: "In the face of mass murder, armed intervention
authorized by the Security Council is an option that cannot
be relinquished." The US and its allies, which monopolize
military power, adopt a very different stance: they insist
on their unique right of armed intervention without such
authorization. Annan is relatively popular in the West
because of his efforts to accommodate the interests of the
rich and powerful, but in this case he sided with the South
Summit, which rejects what it calls "the so-called `right'
of humanitarian intervention" by the powerful in violation
of the UN Charter and "the general principles of
international law."

The Declaration of the South Summit also "firmly reject[s]
the imposition of laws and regulations with extraterritorial
impact and all other forms of coercive economic measures,
including unilateral sanctions against developing
countries." The Declaration calls on "the international
community neither to recognize these measures nor apply
them," alluding obliquely to US initiatives, primarily. The
Declaration insists on "the right of developing countries,
in exercise of their sovereignty and without any
interference in their internal affairs, to choose the path
of development in accordance with their national priorities
and objectives." It views "with alarm the recent unilateral
moves by some developed countries to question the use of
fiscal policy as a development tool," reiterates "the
fundamental right of each State to determine its own fiscal
policies," and reaffirms "that every State has the
inalienable right to choose political, economic, social and
cultural systems of its own, without interference in any
form by other States." It calls for "reformulation of
policies and options on globalization from a development
perspective," and is sharply critical of the specific forms
of international integration that have been imposed by
concentrated political and economic power -- what is called
"globalization" in Western rhetoric, often depicted as a
neutral force to which "there is no alternative," in
Thatcher's famous slogan.

These calls are directed primarily to Washington. The same
is true of the call to "promote respect for all universally
recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, including
the right to development." The first part is ritual
incantation: the right to development the US has forcefully
rejected.

For the South Summit, "our highest priority is to overcome
underdevelopment, which implies the eradication of hunger,
illiteracy, disease and poverty." The UN Summit adopted
similar wording. "Although this is primarily our
responsibility," the South Summit declares, "we urge the
international community to adopt urgent and resolute
actions, with a comprehensive and multidimensional approach,
to assist in overcoming these scourges, and to establish
international economic relations based on justice and
equity." It goes on to deplore "Asymmetries and imbalances
that have intensified in international economic relations"
to the severe detriment of the South, and calls for reform
of "international economic governance" and "international
financial architecture" to make them "more democratic, more
transparent and better attuned to solving the problems of
development," reviewing current problems in some detail.

The Declaration also warns that "the prevailing modes of
production and consumption in the industrialized countries
are unsustainable and should be changed, for they threaten
the very survival of the planet." Furthermore,
"technological innovations should be systematically
evaluated in terms of their economic, social and
environmental impact, with the participation of all the
social sectors involved," including "groups that have not
traditionally been part of this process" -- almost everyone.
It calls on "the developed countries to fulfil their
commitment to provide developing countries with financial
resources and environmentally sound technologies on a
preferential basis." Further provisions, also elaborated in
some detail, will not be unfamiliar to the ranting
protestors with their outdated images.

Annan's recommendations to the UN Summit included
implementation of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases;
providing "the necessary resources" for the UN "to carry out
its mandates," specifically its "peacekeeping operations &
debt relief; and "more generous [overseas] development
assistance" (ODA). In all of these categories, the US has a
special responsibility, though it is not alone.

The US has been evading the Kyoto protocol, and has one of
the worst records for violating it: emissions have in fact
considerably increased. The US is notorious for its refusal
to meet its funding obligations for the UN, including
peacekeeping operations. In July, the House and Senate
Appropriations committees again rejected an administration
request for a miserly $107 million for peacekeeping expenses
in Kosovo and East Timor, while cutting the small request
for peacekeeping by almost 50%, to $500 million. Debt relief
remains words, tied to strict conditionalities ("reforms").
ODA has declined sharply in the past 10 years, most
radically in the US, which by now provides virtually
nothing, far less than other industrial countries as a
proportion of GNP; by far the leading beneficiary of the
minuscule ODA budget is a rich country, Israel, with Egypt
second by virtue of its relations with Israel.

When the Cold War ended, the conventional self-applause held
that at last Western elites could now act in accord with
their ideals and treasured values. So they did, expressing
their ideals and values with great clarity as soon as there
was no longer any need for even cynical gestures to the
poor, the space for nonalignment having disappeared.

The standard version holds that the end of the Cold War
coincided with the discovery that trade is more helpful to
the poor than aid. Accordingly, Annan called on the rich
countries to open their markets to goods produced in the
South. On that they have been dragging their feet, while
demanding free access for their own products and services
and using a variety of methods to impose their will. Among
these are trade barriers and subsidies that are direct or
hidden "under the rubric of `defense'," as remarked by
then-World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz, deploring
the mixture of liberalization and protectionism in the
mislabelled "free trade" regime, geared to the wishes of the
masters of the economy. Just as the South Summit was
gathering the Clinton Administration announced its
opposition to a World Bank proposal to allow poor countries
of Africa, Asia, and Latin America to export to the US
without tariffs or quotas; that would provide "a huge
economic advantage for those developing countries," the New
York Times reported, "going significantly beyond the
administration's efforts to get Congress to forgive their
debts as they undergo economic reforms" -- that is,
facilitate the takeover of their economies by Western firms.
The World Bank and IMF endorse the complaint of the South
"that the United States and other rich nations are using
their enormous prosperity and technology to grow rapidly at
the expense of countries being left far behind by economic
globalization" -- to which we should add that a similar
process continues internally.

While the Declaration of the UN Summit is more muted than
that of the South, behind the scenes the mood seems to have
been similar. A good report in the Boston Globe by John
Donnelly is headlined "African leaders lash out," accusing
the UN and the West of "keeping [the] continent in poverty."
The "overriding theme" of the African heads of state,
Donnelly reports, is that "the forces of globalization are
enriching the West anew while sentencing them to even more
misery," essentially the message of the South Summit. "They
said the Western powers talked a good game about the
benefits of globalization to Africa, but then stood by as
corporations plundered riches from the continent," following
the classic pattern, sometimes assisted by World Bank
programs: for example, the Bank's demand for privatization
in Gambia, leading to elimination of the peanut industry by
a foreign buyer that shifted processing abroad so that the
country now imports its own product.

African leaders pointed out that the "voices in the street"
in the West are repeating what "the developing countries
have been saying for many years in various international
fora with little success." Several suggested that "an
alliance was possible." That has been taking shape at the
grass-roots level, an impressive development, rich in
opportunity and promise, and surely causing no little
concern in high places