The Cancun Round of the WEO conference collapsed sometime around mid-day, on Sunday, September 14, 2003.

Why should anyone care about one of the many seemingly futile and interminable international conferences being held every day, sometimes half-way round the globe? Do we not have enough problems of our own? Is it not true that charity should begin at home?

Well, for a start, the open economy of Malaysia does depend heavily on international trade, and the Cancun meeting was an attempt at removing tariff and other barriers that stand in the way of global trade.

It does strike at the heart of the debate, not only on what kind of a new world order would be desirable, but also on the issues of international justice and world peace.

In the realm of international relations, politics and economy are the twin siblings that are seldom separable. In this sense, the Cancun negotiations and the whole process of which it is a part are as important as the Security Council meetings of the UN, in forging the semblance of a world community.

They represent the half-way mark, since the last round of negotiation in the Qatari capital, Doha, towards final conclusion in 2005 in the establishment of universal agreements on most areas of international trade.

Too big, too cumbersome

Now that Cancun has joined Seattle in the annals of the great WTO fiascos, recriminations and ill will are bound to haunt further talks, and the whole future of WTO and globalisation are now cast in great uncertainties. Everybody may have turned out to be a loser.

So, what went wrong?

Some commentators suggested that the WTO is simply too big and too cumbersome for it to work efficiently. At present, the WTO has 146 members, rising to 148 when Nepal and Cambodia take their seats in a month. Decisions are taken by unanimity, which means that any deal can be voted down by just one state.

In the case of Cancun discussions, what emerged for the first time in international negotiations was the new G21 coalition of some 20 nations from the developing world that rallied around Brazil, China and India. They managed to garner some kind of tenuous unity around some common positions, and flex their muscles against the might of the US and the EU, in forcing the discussions into an impasse.

The obvious solution is to review the structure of the WTO, by devising a two-tier system of international governance in world trade, with an elected core group making decisions with greater efficiency. Naturally, poor and developing nations would regard this proposal with suspicion, and for good reasons.

The difficulty in agreeing to a global structure that will legislate and enforce international trade agreement is merely symptomatic of deeper malaise infesting international negotiations. Parties sitting down at the conference table are separated by a bottomless chasm of political and cultural differences steeped in their respective national histories.

Different routes of historical development meant different perceptions of self-image and national interests. These glaring contradictions have been brewing since the end of WW2, although the politico-military logic of the Cold War has suppressed them for four decades or so.

The disintegration of the Berlin Wall and the entire East European Bloc did open up new possibilities for the creation of a truly global community, especially with the advance in information technology. Unfortunately, globalisation means different things to different people and different nations.

Therefore, the Cancun meeting was doomed to failure before it started. Groups of nations with diametrically opposed agenda were condemned to talk at cross-purposes.

Agenda of the rich

For the rich nations in North America and Europe, with Australia and New Zealand always added as an after-thought, their agenda was to see a globalised economy built upon the economic principles of free trade and monetarism.

Translated into trade jargons at Cancun, this thrust from the developed world meant the dismantling of trade barriers in the four contentious areas of investment, competition, government procurement and trade facilitation.

Their supporters argued that successful negotiation in these areas would release over US$300 billion into the global economy, and it would help lift many poor nations out of poverty.

The trade issues involved were as complex as the resistance from middle-income and poor nations was vociferous. Countries in Asia, South America and Africa were particularly vocal in pushing forth their own agenda.

Primarily, they wanted deeper cuts in import barriers set up by rich countries, and an end to government subsidies in the US and EU for their agricultural products, which let cheap western food flood the global market place.

The countries that formed the loose G21 coalition represented most of the world's population, living in poorer parts of the globe, lagging in industrial development, and relying heavily on agriculture for their livelihood. More importantly, farming is a way of life for these deprived billions of teeming humanity in Asia, Africa and South America.

Powerful lobby

Unfortunately for them, international trade in agricultural commodities has always been controlled by big government and big business in the west. There, farmers form a powerful lobby in domestic politics. Besides, the production of food is also a matter of national security. Vested and national interests dictate that the rich nations of the world are hard put to changing their existing agricultural policies.

The new global alternative network of anti-globalisation campaigners have long pointed out the tragic disparity between the rich and the poor of the world. The EU subsidy for cattle is US$2 per head.. More than one third of the world's population live on a daily income less than that amount.

The statistics made available by the many UN agencies give a grim picture of life in the poor parts of the world. One billion people have no access to safe drinking water. Over two billion people do not have sanitary facilities. In areas of health, education, employment, and social welfare, they lag behind people in the western industrialised countries by perhaps a century. How is globalised free trade going to help them?

(As I write, I am reminded of those poor Malay and Dayak fishermen and farmers in Sarawak, especially those living in the coastal regions. Many of those I have visited seem occupied everyday with looking for their next meal, literally.)

The macabre death of Lee Khung-Hae at Cancun last week is a personified illustration of this universal tragedy.

Lee was a Korean farmer who took a patch of hash mountain land and turned it into a thriving modern farm over a life time. When Korea was flooded with cheap foreign import following trade liberalisation, he was ruined.

He was among 150 Korean farmers who demonstrated at the frontline in Cancun. Climbing to the top of the fence, and shouting for his comrades to continue the struggle, he plunged a knife into his heart. At his funeral, a banner reaffirms his struggle: "Stop WTO agriculture negotiations which are killing millions of Korean farmers."

Victory for developing world

Corrupt and business-dominated politics in Korea certainly has a great deal to do with Lee's despair, and his ultimate statement of protest in the form of self-destruction. In fact, domestic politics everywhere in the developing world is as much to be blamed for the suffering of the poor, as the exploitation of poor countries by the prosperous and mighty economic superpowers of the west.

In this context, our Minister for International Trade Radifah Aziz was less than prudent when she declared the Cancun collapse as a victory for the developing world. Her rhetoric of post-colonial psychosis cannot erase the stark reality in Malaysia, that our nation's resistance to totally free flow of investment and trade is often motivated by the need to protect politically connected vested interest groups, rather than a genuine concern for all Malaysians.

In fact, powerful vested interest groups of all countries in both the developing and the western worlds have been the defining voice in articulating what is perceived as their respective national interests.

Even if good governance and liberal democracy have been realised in Malaysia and other developing nations, the chasm between nations will remain, as long as politics and political behaviour are legitimated by self, vested, and national interests, rather than by broad-based ethical principles.

Without an overhaul of concepts of political organisations, especially those of nation and nationalism, we will always live in a world disorder akin to Hobbes' "state of nature".

In this international state of nature, a state of war exists between nations, and peace is but an interval and a period of preparation between wars. To each nation, every other nation is a potential enemy; alliances are always marriages of expediency, and force, cunning and deceit are always justified weapons in seeking national survival.

In this international jungle, fear is the overriding sentiment of each nation; in this "brutish" (Hobbes' description) existence, any attempt at building international institutions must end in discord and acrimony.

The Cancun failure is just another indicator of a spiritual crisis to which the human race has chose to turn a blind eye, at their great perils.