Author: Maria Monica Wihardja, CSIS, Jakarta
The world’s rapidly changing geopolitical, economic and social landscape demands that this year’s G20 Summit be different from previous years.
The last 12 months have witnessed the Japanese triple disaster, the Middle Eastern and North African ‘Arab Spring’, nuclear-powered North Korea’s leadership succession to a 27-year-old, Western condemnation of the Iranian nuclear power program, and the shift of US military strategy to the Asia Pacific. Read more…
Author: Andrew Elek, ANU
The World Bank recently published a valuable research paper (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5940 by Justin Yifu Lin and Doerte Doemeland) which presents the evidence needed to justify a globally coordinated initiative in carefully selected infrastructure investment.
A G20 initiative in 2012 could make this happen. Read more…
Author: John West, MrGlobalization
How does a Cold War organisation like the OECD respond to the end of the Cold War? Does it try to hang on to its former identity? Or does it embrace the new ‘age of globalisation’?
The end of the Cold War in 1989 represented a victory of values and ideology — the triumph of pluralistic democracy, respect for human rights and the market economy — for the OECD and its member countries. Read more…
Author: Boris Kheyfets, Russian Academy of Sciences
Russia’s bid to join the WTO was approved on 16 December at long last. This event marked the end of some of the longest negotiations in WTO history, with Russia making its initial decision to join the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade — the precursor to the WTO — in 1993.
But despite the decision to join, domestic debate about the appropriateness of Russia’s membership continues unabated. Read more…
Author: Ram Upendra Das, New Delhi
Asian regional integration initiatives are rich in plans for trade liberalisation and investment cooperation agreements, but they have rarely been contextualised in terms of development goals like creating employment and reducing poverty.
This is possibly due to a lack of proper understanding of the ways in which regional trade and investment integration could promote development outcomes. Read more…
Author: Stephen Howes, ANU
The founding institution within the World Bank Group is the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).
The only part of the institution that was established by the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, the IBRD is the World Bank’s bank. Read more…
Author: Wook Chae, KIEP
For many reasons, the G20 may be justifiably considered the world’s premier economic forum. These reasons are often associated with problems inherent in the earlier G7 grouping.
The most prominent among those problems was that the G7 consisted only of advanced industrial countries and thus could not legitimately claim the privilege of making important decisions on global economic issues. For the G20 to maintain its authority in future it must continue to incorporate the developing world, and Asia in particular. Read more…
Author: Henry Makeham, ACYD
There is still uncertainty surrounding China’s future economic, political and strategic intentions in the Asia Pacific.
Recognising a fundamental paradigm shift in the region, then-Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced on 4 June 2008 his intention ‘to begin the conversation about where we need to go’ to strengthen regional cooperation in the Asia Pacific via the idea of an Asia Pacific Community (APC). Read more…
Author: Wang Yong, Peking University
Prior to joining the World Trade Organization (WTO), the common perception in China was that the WTO belonged to ‘the Club of the Rich’, where wealthy countries imposed rules on poor and weak developing ones.
Now, the WTO is one of the most widely recognised and respected international organisations within China. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
Europe’s woes and another week of volatility in world financial markets saw confidence in global recovery tumble.
The IMF meetings in Washington and the political follow up that is now playing out across Europe have done something to staunch the financial bleeding, but the global economy is still in emergency triage.
Read more…
Author: Andrew Elek, ANU
The global economy has another serious bout of the jitters around the deep problems in Europe and uncertain recovery in the United States.
The IMF meetings in Washington may have temporarily allayed the effects of the collapse in global confidence but there remain big challenges for the G20 in developing a response to the threat of the world’s slipping back into recession.
Read more…
Authors: Nabeel A Mancheri and Shantanu S, NIAS
The India–Brazil–South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA), founded by the Brasilia Declaration in 2003, serves as a coordinating mechanism between its member states.
The Declaration cited three major reasons as the basis for closer cooperation: shared democratic credentials, developing country status and desire to act on a global scale. Read more…
Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, EAF
In East Asia, as elsewhere in the world, the risks that we continue to face in recovery from the global financial crisis, economically and politically, are a consequence not only of failure in national governance but also in the architecture of international governance, including regional architecture.
Failures that frustrated a coherent East Asian and international response to the big problems of the day (including payments imbalances, financial market reform, trade and exchange rate issues) in their global context. Read more…
Author: Wendy Dobson, University of Toronto
With no clear leader and few strong incentives for deep integration, Asian cooperation for the foreseeable future is likely to be intergovernmental, with little pooling of sovereignty to create supranational institutions or agree common rules and disciplines.
As Asia’s weight in the world economy grows, however, its interests will also be served by a strong commitment to global institutions. Read more…
Author: Eko NM Saputro
One of the priority areas for regional cooperation at the East Asia Summit (EAS) has been finance. At the last EAS Leaders’ summit in Hanoi last year this area was given special attention along with education, energy, disaster management and avian flu prevention.
The Leaders’ focus on financial cooperation was both timely and relevant in the current uncertain economic climate. Read more…
