World

World

Analysis: Paris attacks will set global agenda

Analysis: Paris attacks will set global agenda

The events in Paris now cast their shadow on three major world meetings. J. BROOKS SPECTOR observes just how much will Paris terror shape those meetings, despite their ostensible agendas.

Last week at this time, government policy makers and leaders of non-governmental organisations were focusing on a trio of international meetings – the Group of 20 Economies (G20), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the 21st United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21) – that, at least, had the potential for real impacts on the future of the global economy. Now, however, virtually everyone at these meetings will be watching those same gatherings to see how they wrestle with the reality of global terrorism, as well as the awesome logistics of preventing any of that from occurring during these three events.

The G20 meeting, taking place on 15-16 November in Antalya, Turkey, one of the jewels of the “Turkish Riviera”, is located about 500 kilometres from a very troubled Syrian-Turkish border. The site for the annual meeting rotates among participating states – and this year’s host is Turkey, following Australia last year and China next year. According the G20’s own fact sheet, “The Group of Twenty (G20) is the premier forum for global economic and financial cooperation that brings together the world’s major advanced and emerging economies, representing around 85% of global GDP. The G20 started in 1999 as a meeting of Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. In 2008, the first G20 Leaders’ Summit was held, and the group played a key role in responding to the global financial crisis. G20 leaders have met nine times since 2008, continuing to focus on achieving strong, sustainable and balanced growth, promoting job creation and financial regulations that reduce risks, and prevent future financial crises, and modernising international financial architecture.”

At least initially, this leaders meeting was set to address three overarching objectives: strengthening the global recovery and lifting national potential; enhancing national economic resilience, and buttressing the sustainability of economic growth. In addition, Turkey had set three specific efforts to aim for, the so-called three “I’s”. The first of these was inclusiveness to ensure growth’s benefits are shared more broadly with all elements of society, and especially a focus on small and medium sized enterprises, and at the international level, to bring more attention to low-income developing nations in the G20 discussion.

Second was a fuller than usual focus on implementation, by which it meant a commitment to lift “the collective economic growth by an additional 2,1% by 2018, which will bring an additional 2 trillion US Dollars to the world economy, equal to the size of the Indian economy” in order to demonstrate the credibility of the G20 as a body.

As part of the gathering, the Turkish government has said it hoped to propose a real implementation monitoring mechanism, as part of the tangible outcomes for this year’s gathering. Meanwhile, the third “I” was meant to be a focus on investment for growth, which the Turks had described as “critical both for lifting the global growth potential and also for generating new jobs.”

In addressing this agenda, beyond the usual member nations and permanent observers, such as South Africa, this time around, Spain, Azerbaijan, Singapore, and the respective chairs of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Malaysia), the African Union (Zimbabwe), and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development grouping (Senegal), have participated in G20 meetings in 2015. Observers may well want to pay attention to how Zimbabwe’s participation relates with the other African attendees – Senegal and South Africa. But just as the plot twists of the film, Casablanca, did, “It seems that destiny is taking a hand” with this year’s G20 meeting.

Just a few days prior to this ingathering of presidents and prime ministers, along with the many hundreds of support teams, and a legion of security forces to keep everyone safe, the atrocities in Paris occurred. And so, instead of the intended laser-like focus on international economic growth and development, the attention of global leaders will, instead, be inexorably pulled towards a contemplation of those events, and their aftermath instead.

Despite the G20’s formal agenda, and the specific Turkish foci, for discussion for some deliverables, it seems almost certain that by the time things wrap up on Monday, and there certainly will be formal acknowledgement of the importance of the economic agenda items in the meeting’s final communiqué, the real action among the leaders may well be about preserving international order, in the face of the kind of terrorism just endured by France. As SA Institute of International Affairs researcher Steve Gruzd noted from Antalya, with regard to terrorism, “it probably overshadowed the economic material they were meant to focus on. Just like Ebola did in Brisbane in 2014.” Gruzd went on to note, moreover, “Everyone seems to be looking to how China will treat the G20 presidency in 2016. The feeling I got was that Turkey was busy in 2015 and held lots of meetings but fell down on one of its 3 ‘I’s’ – Implementation. Some felt it lacked capacity.” Perhaps this was inevitable. The G20 has no real mechanisms for managing its on-going projects, since there is essentially no secretariat or organisational structure, beyond that of the nation hosting each year’s events. And perhaps Turkey has just been too overwhelmed by its own national issues, such as a recent election, and, most crucially, the chaos in Syria, and the flood of refugees from that fighting, to allow it to focus intently on its goals for the G20.

As soon as the G20 wraps up with its group pictures, a number of the senior participants will have to decamp, and then move on to the next event, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Manila on 18-19 November. This grouping brings together twenty-one member nations (again including the US, China and Japan in the group) to focus on the political economy of the Asia-Pacific region. The APEC heads of state first met in 1993. Given the participation of both China and Taiwan, the members are officially defined as member-economies, rather than nations.

The APEC group, actually, has a permanent secretariat – albeit a small one – that has helped to keep the organisation more focused on its defined themes, than a grouping like the G20. But, even here, the real import of APEC, may well become somewhat undermined by the creation of a new regional trade agreement, that is, if the nations that participated in the just-completed Trans-Pacific Pact (TPP) negotiations, actually, succeed in ratifying that massive free trade agreement.

If the TPP comes into effect, a significant chunk of the impetus for APEC discussions, it could be argued, may well ebb away. The TPP would have enforcement and dispute resolution mechanisms – something lacking in APEC. China was not part of the TPP negotiations, but has signalled some interest in considering participation in it, despite the TPP’s apparent place (and the initial impetus from the US) as a counterbalance to China’s growing economic heft.

Of course, here too, given the attendance of many of the globe’s most important economies, and the dependence of so many of them on the safety and security of the trade routes that bring energy supplies from the Middle East to the Far East, largely through the Straits of Malacca, in light of the Paris events, international security will almost certainly infiltrate the discussions. This will come in spite of the ostensible financial and trade focus of APEC’s formal agenda. For example, Russia’s Vladimir Putin has already signalled he will not attend – sending his deputy Dmitri Medvedev instead – so he can focus on the aftermath of the downing of the Russian airliner from Sharm el-Sheikh. This was a disaster that seems increasingly likely to have been due to a bomb placed on board by ISIS or one of its supporters. Nevertheless, one should not look to APEC either to take formal action on terror issues, beyond noting its grave concern over the way terror can destabilise the global economy, and inhibit the economic growth it is supposed to support.

Then, just a few days after APEC, the formal COP 21 summit on global climate change takes place from 30 November until 11 December. At that meeting, thousands of delegates from around the world will converge on Paris for the negotiations, with a horde of national leaders joining at the beginning to give their nations’ initial statements, as with United States President Barack Obama, or towards the end of the meeting, or both, assuming there is a final document to be signed and celebrated. Given the circumstances, French authorities have been at great pains to assure the world their security efforts will be comprehensive and all embracing – and that the meetings will be secure.

What this will mean in practice, of course, is there will be overwhelming security precautions that will affect every person attempting to attend any part of the meeting, and pretty much any person who has to use a road in Paris, or be near the convention site. As a result, international security and terrorism will be ever-present on the minds of both attendees and Parisians alike.

As Politico noted, “The COP21 global climate change summit will go ahead in two weeks as scheduled, with top leaders from Europe, the US and elsewhere confirming that they will be in Paris despite the terrorist attacks. ‘COP21 must be held,’ French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, said on Saturday, according to the Agence France-Presse. However, already tight security will be further strengthened for the two-week summit, he said. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, and U.S. President Barack Obama both said they will go as planned on November 30, when heads of state from the 196 governments involved are invited to give opening speeches.

Miguel Arias Cañete, the EU’s climate and energy commissioner, also said he will be there for the summit’s second week, when ministers will try to hammer out a deal on an agreement aimed at curbing curbing greenhouse gas emissions to slow global warming…. ‘The feeling is we should go on with business as usual, because you can’t give in to these terrorists,’ a European diplomat said Saturday, adding that his prime minister will attend. ‘My feeling is heads of state will still go, unless they absolutely cannot.’

Politico went on to note the uncertain impact of security on the vast numbers of people who had planned to attend rallies and demonstrations on climate change issues in Paris. “A number of NGO representatives said it was still too early to judge the effect of Friday’s attacks on campaigns and attendance at the COP21. ‘There might be certain people who, like with Charlie Hebdo, choose to come to make a statement on this,’ said Wendel Trio, director of Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, a coalition of advocacy groups, referring to the January shootings at the French satirical paper. ‘There might be certain others who will be afraid that these marches would be a target, though I would doubt it because there’s not really a precedent.’ CAN Europe is not organising the marches, but has thousands of people from member groups preparing to go to Paris. The murderous attacks were a shock to negotiators, who have been concentrating on working out a climate deal, and not on the security aspects of the summit.” And now they have to think about that, as well as merely saving the Earth.

It seems that those who carried out their most recent terror attacks in Paris have – at least partially – gained precisely what they that had hoped to achieve. They have captured the attention of the entire globe, and its national leaders. As a result, we are all waiting for their next move. DM

Photo: Leaders wave as they pose during a family photo at the G20 Summit in Antalya, Turkey, 15 November 2015. In additional to discussions on the global economy, the G20 grouping of leading nations is set to focus on Syria during its summit this weekend, including the refugee crisis and the threat of terrorism. EPA/ANADOLU AGENCY/POOL.

Gallery

Please peer review 3 community comments before your comment can be posted

We would like our readers to start paying for Daily Maverick...

…but we are not going to force you to. Over 10 million users come to us each month for the news. We have not put it behind a paywall because the truth should not be a luxury.

Instead we ask our readers who can afford to contribute, even a small amount each month, to do so.

If you appreciate it and want to see us keep going then please consider contributing whatever you can.

Support Daily Maverick→
Payment options

Become a Maverick Insider

This could have been a paywall

On another site this would have been a paywall. Maverick Insider keeps our content free for all.

Become an Insider

Every seed of hope will one day sprout.

South African citizens throughout the country are standing up for our human rights. Stay informed, connected and inspired by our weekly FREE Maverick Citizen newsletter.