A threat to the rich

Forcing the poor countries to walk out of the Cancun trade talks may rebound on the west

George Monbiot
Tuesday September 16, 2003
The Guardian

Were there a Nobel Prize for hypocrisy, it would be awarded this year to Pascal Lamy, the EU's trade negotiator. A week ago, in the Guardian's trade supplement, he argued that the World Trade Organisation (WTO) "helps us move from a Hobbesian world of lawlessness into a more Kantian world - perhaps not exactly of perpetual peace, but at least one where trade relations are subject to the rule of law".
On Sunday, by treating the trade talks as if, in Thomas Hobbes's words, they were "a war of every man against every man", Lamy scuppered the negotiations, and very possibly destroyed the organisation as a result. If so, one result could be a trade regime, in which, as Hobbes observed, "force and fraud are ... the two cardinal virtues". Relations between countries would then revert to the state of nature the philosopher feared, where the nasty and brutish behaviour of the powerful ensures that the lives of the poor remain short. More.