My experience of meetings is that they generally amount to a lot of talking and very little action and this week’s G20 summit appears to have maintained that formula.
We were informed that the world’s leading economies had agreed to pump several trillion dollars into the global economy to stimulate demand. However after the journalists had filed the reports and the city suits had reclaimed the square mile, it became apparent that the summit, while not quite amounting to the Emperor’s New Clothes, reflected compromise on a global scale. There was a consensus that the IMF should be given more power to bail out countries teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and a general commitment to reform global regulation and tax havens. Aside from that the summit’s most important achievement lay in what the G20 decided not to do.
The preamble to the summit’s communiqué contained a strong commitment to free trade and globalisation as the best way of achieving global economic growth and the G20 leaders agreed, on this day at least, to eschew the temptations of protectionism, economic nationalism and dirigisme. Amen to that. If this commitment is honoured then it should prove to be the most effective, not to mention cheapest, way of preventing a global depression. Indeed there are hints that most major economies will begin to see a limited recovery by the end of this year (aided by low fuel and food prices), although Britain’s economy will likely limp into 2010 before it begins to experience its recovery. Although economic recovery will likely be slow in coming and sluggish when it does eventually get going, the point is that it will happen; economic cycles are as inevitable as night and day. Although Government stimulus plays a key role in a speedy recovery, Government spending during this recession, and more particularly intervention in the financial markets, means that taxpayers (and their children) will be paying higher rates for the foreseeable future. It was heartening then to see that Brown has been warned off a further Government stimulus by the combined resistance of the Treasury, Mervyn King and even the German Finance Minister. Indeed with increased public spending, quantitative easing and massive borrowing inflation seems a more dangerous spectre than depression. Furthermore Brown may want to learn the lesson of the over-leveraged banks, should market conditions change.
There has been much talk this week about whether it is worth sending boys and girls from free Western countries to die in order to protect a Government that is about to legalise rape and condone the treatment of women as chattel. I have already written about this striking contradiction and indeed little has been made of Afghanistan’s brutal blasphemy laws or the fact that the democratic Government is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent. The real problem lies in the fact that the allies have never agreed to clear strategic objectives for the Afghanistan mission.
One worthy Nato objective is to prevent Afghanistan again becoming a failed state, in which the Taliban allow terrorist groups to setup operating bases from which to attack Western (or Asian) cities. Undoubtedly Nato intervention has also helped to improve the lives of Afghan women through the overthrow of the Taliban and the provision of education and health services for the female population. Yet Afghanistan is still a profoundly conservative society. In rural areas such as Helmand the economic lives of villagers are little changed from medieval times, and cultural memes can date back to the biblical era. Afghanistan is a country in which women can be stoned for adultery, shot dead for appearing on TV, sprayed with acid for attending school and banned from obtaining medical treatment. Women may be gang raped to settle a tribal feud, married off before they reach puberty or sold into domestic slavery to pay off a debt. And while developed countries must do everything they can do combat such cultural memes, it must be recognised that Afghan is society will not change within our lifetimes.
So while every effort must be made to spread universal human rights, the West should accept that Afghanistan will never be Switzerland. Nato’s primary objective must be to reach a point were the country can maintain its own security and is run by a Government that is (relatively) democratic and (relatively) free of corruption. The West can fight Afghanistan’s enemies, but changing the mindset of its people may prove to be an impossible battle; however that’s not to say we shouldn’t try.
