[A2k] ACTA and the Threat to Credible Global Governan ce (Aaron Shaw’s weblog)

[Manon Ress]

http://fringethoughts.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/acta-and-the-threat-to-credi=
ble-global-governance/

ACTA and the Threat to Credible Global Governance
June 4, 2008

I’ve recently heard through a grapevine that ACTA negotiants have
reportedly signed non-disclosure agreements as a condition of their
participation in this week’s secret closed-door meeting in Geneva.

This is an amazing and frightening step backwards in the history of
global governance. It also epitomizes the ACTA negotiants’ dismissive
attitude towards the importance of credible, transparent trade policy-
making in the current global environment.

Anyone who would seek to radically transform the world’s trade in
intangible assets without the participation of most of the world’s
governments has learned little from the Asian Financial Crisis, the
Iraq War, or the ongoing real estate and credit catastrophe.

Globalized trade and markets demand globalized governance arrangements
in order to avert all manner of failures and shocks. In order to be
effective, global governance requires the participation and commitment
of all of the major world economies. Without this, ACTA will never
attain legitimacy. In addition, it will further alienate the leaders
of the world’s fastest-growing economies (Brazil, Russia, India,
China, and South Africa - the so-called BRICS) and will reinforce
their sense that the wealthy states of the Global North deserve
neither respect nor legitimacy in future global governance
arrangements. From a strategic, long-term perspective, this does not
promote the interests of the United States, Europe, or any of the
other ACTA participants. Instead, it merely perpetuates an historical
power inequality whose days are numbered.

If today’s wealthy nations wish to have a prayer at negotiating with
the world’s largest economic powers twenty, or even ten years from
now, they had better learn to play by some more inclusive and
democratic rules.