During the past decade -- particularly since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US -- Westerners have generally considered international terrorism to be the most urgent threat to human security. Accordingly, vast resources have been mobilized and expended to counter its many forms.
Unfortunately, however, the US-led invasion of Afghanistan and the subsequent invasion -- without UN authority -- of Iraq underscore the primacy of military solutions in the strategic thinking of affluent nations. At the same time, developing countries have continued to grapple with the persistence of mass poverty, endemic disease, malnutrition, environmental degradation and gross income inequity, all of which have caused a degree of human suffering that far exceeds what has been caused by terrorist attacks.
We need, therefore, to revisit today's global challenges from a Third-World perspective. Indeed, a fundamental lesson of terrorist attacks and insurgencies, we now know, is that no nation, however self-sufficient, can afford to remain heedless of whether others sink or swim.
For much of the developing world, the basic instability of international relations -- owing to terrorist strikes, guerrilla warfare and the preemptive wars that the US threatens on its enemies -- is aggravating socioeconomic anxieties and fueling doubts about the benefits of globalization. Certainly, we are all beginning to realize how precarious that process is and how easily market mechanisms can be rolled back by cultural resentments stemming from economic exploitation, political oppression and social injustice.
People in the industrialized countries are already an estimated 74 times richer per capita than those in the poorest countries. Today, one-quarter of the world's population still lives on the equivalent of less than one US$1 a day, and the World Bank says that the daily spending power of 1.2 billion people is roughly equal to the price of a hamburger, two soft drinks, or three candy bars in the West. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 815 million people, including 200 million children under the age of five, go to bed hungry each night.
Obviously, there must be an intensification of efforts to reduce global poverty, which has become a breeding ground of resentment, envy and despair -- hence, a ready producer of violence and suicide bombers.
The G8 countries' agreement last year to a debt write-off for the 18 poorest states -- 16 in Africa and two in Latin America -- is a splendid, but insufficient, beginning. The 100 most indebted countries still find the burden of servicing their collective US$2.3 trillion in official debt increasingly hard to bear, leaving them hard put to finance national programs spelled out by the UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDG), which seek to halve global poverty by 2015.
If we are to close the global gap in personal security and economic well-being, the community of nations will need to cultivate a new ethos of mutual responsibility. The Philippine government has proposed that half of all scheduled debt payments be withheld for a specified period, to be invested in reforestation, clean water, housing, food production, healthcare, sanitation, basic education, farm-to-market roads, ecologically sound tourism, micro-finance, and related MDG projects. For lenders, debt could be converted, wherever possible, into equity in MDG projects with earning potential, while building up poor countries' capacity for self-reliance.
But self-reliance will be impossible to achieve as long as the rich countries favor free markets and free trade only when it suits them. Even UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has warned that the unrestrained tide of globalization might not raise all boats, but only the yachts -- while overturning a lot of canoes.
The most glaring injustice in this respect has been the failure of the US and the EU to deliver substantially on their promises of market access to agricultural exports from poor countries. Bimal Ghosh, a former director of the UN Development Program, famously calculated that the daily subsidy for every cow in the EU, currently amounting to US$3.00, exceeds the daily income of millions of poor people around the world. The poor countries argue that broader liberalization in the EU, the US and Japan alone would yield benefits worth up to US$142 billion by 2015.
The G-8 nations and the global alliance that the US leads must aim not merely to defeat terrorism. They must address all aspects of human security, including people's well-being and safety in their homes, neighborhoods and workplaces. And they must win people's allegiance by the power of their values and their ideals -- not only by isolating terrorists and extremists, but also by helping, in meaningful ways, poor countries to prosper.
Above all, those who lead us today must create a genuinely new global order in which all peoples take part -- with dignity and an assurance of fairness.
Fidel Ramos was president of the Philippines and is currently chairman of the Ramos Peace and Development Foundation and the Boao Forum for Asia.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations