Will disputes over war damage the WTO round?

Posted by pwg on Tuesday, March 18, 2003

meta-creation_date: March 18, 2003

The WTO Director-General Supachai Panitchpakdi has been quoted by the New York Times expressing concern that the damage to multilateral decision making in the progress to war will spill over into the WTO negotiations.


I can feel the sense of trepidation, Mr. Supachai said in an interview. Whatever happens, if the U.S. will maintain the way we use multilateral solutions, it will be highly appreciated.

Since some of the most difficult issues in the Round ? agriculture, patents and generic drugs ? find the United States and Europe on different sides, this is a widely held fear.

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The view from Paris

Posted by pwg on Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Le Monde sticks it to Washington. But they’re close to correct about the nature of the failures that will continue to echo in other quarters.

The current leaders of the world’s most powerful nation have allowed diplomacy and force to conflict, when they could just as easily have allowed them to work in harmony.


Washington s’est trompé sur la fermeté des intentions de Paris ; trompé sur les réactions de la Turquie dans cette affaire ; trompé sur l’état de l’opinion publique, y compris aux Etats-Unis ; trompé sur sa capacité à faire pression sur les petits pays membres du Conseil de sécurité de l’ONU. Les Etats-Unis se sont trompés sur le rôle qu’ils croyaient possible de faire jouer à l’ONU, celui d’une caisse d’enregistrement d’une guerre préparée à l’avance et décidée depuis longtemps. Ils n’ont pas amélioré leur dossier en disant, tout soudain, comme par hasard à la veille d’entrer en guerre contre un pays arabe, leur souci tardif pour le conflit israélo-palestinien… L’effet a été plus négatif que positif, soldant un échec politico-diplomatique patent, quelle que soit la suite de cette malheureuse aventure. Le Monde 18 March, 2003



Washington misunderstood Paris’ determination; misunderstood the Turkish reaction; misunderstood the state of public opinion, including in the United States; mistook its ability to bring pressure to bear on the minor members of the UN Security Council. The United States mistakenly thought that it could make the UN act as its recuitment agency for a war it had decided on long ago and had already prepared. It did not make things any better by revealing, suddenly, as if by chance on the eve of war, its belated concern about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This had a more negative than positive effect; resulting in total diplomatic and political failure, whatever the outcome of this wretched episode.

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Three reasons for an FTA

Posted by pwg on Tuesday, March 18, 2003

Here are three reasons for trading businesses to take seriously a free trade agreement between Australia and the USA.

First: it will be big.  The World Bank measures the GDP of Australia as larger than the combined GDP of all of the 10 aspirants to EU membership. The USA’s economy is almost as large as that of the current EU of 15 countries. So the combined Australia/US region has a GDP, today, that is almost the same size as that of greater Europe. In fact, it’s economic impact is more widespread because an existing framework of agreements with NAFTA countries (Canada, Mexico), with CER (New Zealand) and with ASEAN members (free-trade agreements with Singapore and probably with Thailand) will transmit growth due to our trans-Pacific link throughout the Asia-Pacific region.

Second: it will evolve rapidly. The growth prospects for the Australia/US ‘region’ are probably not as great as the growth prospects for the enlarged EU. We have bigger distances to contend with and we’re not attempting to achieve the degree of political and regulatory integration that characterizes the EU or Australia’s agreement with New Zealand. But markets are more flexible in Australia and the USA than in most of Europe and external barriers to those countries outside the ‘region’ are lower. So you can expect to see both Australia and the USA move quickly to extend the terms of their bilateral agreement to other regional countries who would like to facilitate trade and economic exchanges without going down the ‘deep integration’ path to adopting the same laws, administration or external relations.

Third: it will be innovative. For all the hand-wringing that has taken place in the academic community over the past half-century about free-trade agreements, they have grown at biological rates without debilitating the multilateral system. But the WTO is in difficulty because it’s membership is too large and too diverse to continue to devise ‘one-size-fits-all’ agreements that respond to every members’ needs. Several of the WTO agreements are not implemented by governments that have neither the resources nor the national priorities needed to do so. The writing has been on the wall now for almost a decade: the multilateral system has to find a more sophisticated way to handle diversity while maintaining the essential uniformity of rights and obligations among its members.  Just as the Australia-New Zealand Closer Economic Relations agreement in 1986 showed the way forward on multilateral agreements on services trade, the negotiators in the Australia-US agreement have an historic opportunity to show how regional agreements can accelerate the facilitation of trade and economic exchanges without harming the global trade enterprise.

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What did Chiraq say about a veto on war?

Posted by pwg on Monday, March 03, 2003

He was, in fact, saying that no matter which of two hypothetical outcomes of a vote on the second Security Council ‘ultimatum’ might occur, France did not at that time accept that an ultimatum was necessary.


QUESTION — The Americans are saying the opposite. Colin Powell thinks he will get [nine votes needed for a majority on the Security Council]

THE PRESIDENT — I’m telling you what I feel. I firmly believe, this evening, that there isn’t a majority of nine votes in favour of that resolution including an ultimatum and thus giving the international green light to war.

QUESTION — In other words, France wouldn’t need to use her veto?

THE PRESIDENT — In this scenario, that’s exactly right. In this scenario, France will, of course, take a stand. There will be nations who will vote no, including France. Some will abstain. But, in any case, there won’t, in this scenario, be a majority. So there won’t be a veto problem.

QUESTION — And if the opposite happens?

THE PRESIDENT — Then, the second scenario: what I believe this evening to be the views of a number of people change. If this happens, there may indeed be a majority of nine votes or more in favour of the new resolution, the one authorizing war, to put things simply. If that happens, France will vote no. But there is one possibility, what’s called exercising a veto, it’s when one of the five permanent members — the United States, Britain, Russia, China and France — votes no, and then even if there is a majority in favour of it, the resolution isn’t adopted. That’s what’s called exercising a veto.

QUESTION — And, this evening, this is your position in principle?

THE PRESIDENT — My position is that, regardless of the circumstances, France will vote no because she considers this evening {emphasis added} that there are no grounds for waging war in order to achieve the goal we have set ourselves, i.e. to disarm Iraq

QUESTION — So, exercising this veto — in fact, some people call the veto the diplomatic atom bomb —, some people, including some members of the governing party, have said this would be firing a bullet in our allies’ back…

THE PRESIDENT — Don’t let yourself by influenced by polemics. I repeat: war is always the worst solution. And France which isn’t a pacifist country, who doesn’t refuse war on principle, who is in fact proving this by currently being the leading contributor of troops to NATO, particularly in the Balkans, France isn’t a pacifist country. France considers that war is the final stage of a process, that all possible means must be used to avoid it because of its tragic consequences. (…)

Extract from an interview with Jacques Chirac on French national television, 10 March, 2003.

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