Davoos

Minister-president Tony C. L. Blair gaf de slottoespraak van het World Economic Forum in Davos. Dat was op 27 januari 2007 en hij zei o.a.:

Above all, nations find that they need to confront and deal with challenges that simply do not admit of resolution without powerful alliances of other nations. And every nation, even the most powerful, is obliged to find such alliances or find their own interests buffeted and diminished.

That is why we call it interdependence. It is the ultimate joining together of self-interest and community interest. Afghanistan was a failed state, its people living in misery and poverty but in days gone by it would have stayed that way without the world much noticing. September 11th brought it to our notice in the most unforeseen but catastrophic way. Look how the world has changed because of it.

We know Africa’s plight is shameful in a world of plenty. But I have never shrunk from confessing an-other motive. I believe if we let Somalia or Sudan slip further into the abyss, the effect of their fall will not stay within their region never mind their nation. I will argue for the presence of peace in Palestine on its own terms; but there is no question that its absence has consequences on the streets of cities in Britain amongst people who have never been near Gaza or the West Bank.

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Interdependence is an accepted fact. It is giving rise to a great yearning for a sense of global purpose, underpinned by global values, to overcome challenges, global in nature.

But we are woefully short of the instruments to make multilateral action effective. We acknowledge the interdependent reality. We can sketch the purpose and describe the values. What we lack is capacity, capability, the concerted means to act.

We need a multilateralism that is muscular. Instead, too often, it is disjointed, imbued with the right ideas but the wrong or inadequate methods of achieving them.

None of this should make us underestimate what has been done. But there is too often a yawning gap between our description of an issue’s importance and the matching capability to determine it.

In this regard, there is often an easy and lazy critique that puts this down to an absence of political will. In my experience there is, usually, not a problem of political will. By and large it’s there. It is translating that will into action that is the problem. Why? Because it requires focus, time, energy and commitment and though individual leaders and nations can provide those qualities intermittently, sustain-ing them over time, with all the other pressures is just practically impossible.

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Global purpose, underpinned by global values requires global instruments of effective multilateral action. There is an urgency here. What is remarkable about Davos this year—and this has been true for some years now—is the degree of consensus around a values-based international agenda. It is what makes me optimistic. There is a true sense of global responsibility.

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But ours is not the only narrative competing for the world’s attention. There is another. It may be—is—based on a total perversion of Islam; but it has shown itself capable of playing cleverly on the injustice, poverty and alienation felt by many whose lifestyles are a world away from ours. We believe we are doing our best to confront the world’s problems and to lift the scourge from the backs of so many mil-lions whose lives are blighted. But this counter-ideology mocks our efforts, disputes our motives, turns our good faith into bad.

And there is yet another narrative. In 20 years, or sooner, there will be new powers, new constellations of authority, with strong intentions and powerful means of advancing them. What values will govern that new world? Will they be global values, commonly shared or will the world revert to spheres of interest, to competing power-plays in which the lesser or struggling nations are the victims?

If the narrative we believe in—a world of tolerance, freedom, openness and justice for all—is to be credible, it has to be effective. The best answer to fear is always hope. But hope requires belief. And belief comes only from words turned into deeds.

So take these issues: Africa, climate change, world trade.

Imagine over the coming months the world agrees and over the coming years, it acts. Think how attractive our story of the world’s progress would be. Then think of failure and who will weep and who will rejoice. Think of all of this. Then let us agree. Then let us act.