Davos Dispatch:
Thoughts on three speeches
January 25, 2004
By Nancy Birdsall, President Center for Global Development
Vice President Cheney’s speech at Davos was widely covered in the world press. He focused on
the risk of “new and far greater terror” than that of September 11 itself, which itself he called
“only the merest glimpse of the terrorism that threatens us all.” In artful language, he argued that
freedom and democracy everywhere would overcome those risks; in the interim, however, and as
a last resort there might need to use force.
There was less coverage of speeches by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and
Canadian Primer Minister Paul Martin. Kofi Annan characterized global risks much more
broadly, “Today, not only the global economic environment, but also the global security climate
and the very conduct of international politics have become far less favorable to the maintenance
of a stable, equitable, and rule-based global order.”
Among other pleas to the business community he had a specific one in the area of trade,
“Business can and should use its influence to help break the current impasse in talks. More than
anything else, we need a deal on agriculture that will help the poor. No single issue more gravely
imperils the multilateral trading system, from which we benefit so much.”
Paul Martin raised three examples of global interdependence beyond that conventionally labeled
“security” in which the dialogue among nations must extend to real politics, with engagement that
is not technocratic and indirect (that, in great international meetings, too often proceeds from set
pieces read aloud - meetings closed to consultation from the outside”), but open and free-ranging:
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First, consider the dilemmas created by the collision between a legal principle of state
sovereignty and the growing recognition that outside intervention may, at times, be
necessary to protect people from humanitarian disaster when their own governments are
unable or unwilling to do so, or in fact may be the cause.”
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A second example where an intellectual leap is required - and where only political
leadership can provide it - arises out of the collision between intellectual property rights
and the need to provide low-cost medicines to the poorest nations in the world.”
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Which leads me to my third example of the kinds of dilemmas posed by modern
interdependence - our stewardship of the global commons, of the resources that are the
common heritage of all humankind. Civilized countries no longer allow the unregulated
pillage of their own natural resources. Why then, do we allow the pillage of international
resources.
Paul Martin closed by repeating a point President Clinton had made, “Most of the people in this
room have benefited from the economic opportunities created by modern interdependence. We
all have a stake in seeing international systems work well, and I firmly believe they cannot work
unless the work for all the people of the world. If we fail to make interdependence work, the
consequences will be dire, and our children and grandchildren will rightly lay the blame at our
feet.”