As I have said before, you cannot bring peace through war. Globalization, too, will not achieve peace because it is another form of war - economic war. Globalization makes rich countries winners and poor countries losers.
Read what George Monbiot says in the Guardian today:
"Take, for example, the issue of 'tariffs', or taxes on trade. A new report by Oxfam, published today, shows that the poorer a nation is, the higher the rates of tax it must pay in order to export its goods. The United States imposes tariffs of between 0-1% on major imports from Britain, France, Japan and Germany, but taxes of 14 or 15% on produce from Bangladesh, Cambodia and Nepal. The British government does the same: Sri Lanka and Uruguay must pay eight times as much to sell their goods over here as the United States."
We say we want to change the world so there would not be so many terrorists. We cannot do this through brutally competitive means. We lord it over poor countries in what is normally callled "negotiations," some of which will be taking place at the WTO meeting in Cancun, Mexico, next week. We are going there, we say, in order to "aid" developing countries.
Instead of all the fancy talk that goes on in these meetings, why do we not reduce the tariffs on goods from poor countries? This simple measure will help poor countries more than all the glittering economic proposals we present.
The WTO is a farce. It is just another way for the rich to advance at the expense of the poor. This will not improve the world order. It merely increases despair in many countries, a condition breeding terrorism.
Instead of a competitive approach, we must adopt a cooperative approach with poor nations. By helping them now we stand to make the world more peaceful in the future.
