{"id":122613,"date":"2018-11-26T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T12:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=122613"},"modified":"2018-11-24T09:38:09","modified_gmt":"2018-11-24T09:38:09","slug":"what-the-paris-peace-forum-tells-us-about-france-and-about-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2018\/11\/what-the-paris-peace-forum-tells-us-about-france-and-about-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"What the Paris Peace Forum Tells Us about France\u2013And about the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

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20 Nov 2018 – <\/em>On Sunday, 11 Nov, 60 world leaders joined French President Emmanuel Macron in inaugurating the first edition of the\u00a0Paris Peace Forum<\/a>, a few hours after commemorating the centenary of the armistice that ended World War I. Although President Donald Trump is attending the armistice commemorations too, he will be boarding a flight back to Washington at the time when the forum opens.<\/p>\n

No one knows what to make of the snub\u2014Trump\u2019s participation in the Forum was still a mystery less than a week before the start date. French diplomats speculated sarcastically that the reason for the uncertainty is that no one in the Trump administration had dared mention the conference to the president.<\/p>\n

Indeed, the \u201cAmerica First\u201d leader will find very little to like in the Paris Peace Forum. One of the signature events of Macron\u2019s presidency stands in direct contrast with Trump\u2019s sovereignty\u00a0message<\/a>, and the\u00a0unilateralist<\/a>and\u00a0interest-driven\u00a0<\/a>foreign policy that goes with it. The forum is not a summit or a conference, but a gathering of \u201cactors of global governance,\u201d coming to \u201cdebate\u201d and garner support for collective \u201csolutions\u201d for global governance and peace. Not exactly your Trumpian cup of tea.<\/p>\n

Beyond the feel-good mission statement, the forum is indicative of today\u2019s times. In an era of strengthened nationalism and great power competition, the rest of the world is looking for new approaches to save global cooperation. France\u2014and Macron\u2014are taking the lead to empower a global \u201cresistance\u201d of multilateralists hoping to salvage, or rebuild, a dwindling rules-based order. The question remains open whether the multilateralists can do that without U.S. leadership. Under Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica First,\u201d the United States is self-isolating, and risks missing the opportunity to orient the rules of tomorrow, leaving others a chance to fill the vacuum.<\/p>\n

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Trump arrived separately from other foreign leaders to Sunday’s armistice centenary ceremonies, which occurred under gray skies and cold drizzle. CNN.com<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThe Rest\u201d Matters<\/strong><\/p>\n

In practice, the first edition of the Forum will host around 2,500 people in the Grande Halle de la Villette, a former slaughterhouse turned cultural center on the northeast edge of Paris. Attendees from government, businesses, NGOs, foundations, the media, think tanks, and religious institutions from all corners of the world will take part in dozens of simultaneous\u00a0debates<\/a>\u2014or agoras\u2014on global challenges, will wander around stands presenting and raising support for\u00a0119 global governance projects<\/a>\u2014selected from a pool of 848 applicants\u2014or will join the live\u00a0hackathon<\/a>\u00a0on global financial transparency.<\/p>\n

France has decided to adjoin the first edition of the forum to the commemorative celebrations of the 1918 armistice, so as to ensure strong heads of state and\/or government participation and offer some war-and-peace gravitas to the forum. The world leaders will attend a lunch at the \u00c9lys\u00e9e Palace after the ceremonies, then travel by bus to the forum, where they will listen to opening speeches by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.N. Secretary General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, before participating, on a voluntary basis, in workshops, debates, and other gatherings within the Grande Halle. At the time of writing, it is still unknown who will do what.<\/p>\n

The forum was born out of the ambition to secure France\u2019s place on the map of arenas where the fate of the world is discussed\u2014such as the Munich Security Conference, the Shangri-La Dialogue, or Davos. Most other forums deal with security and the economy, and France hoped to make a different kind of contribution. The country\u2019s priorities as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council and a major advanced economy are far from parochial, and there are few global challenges which France does not want to touch. \u201cPeace,\u201d a universal ideal, is the umbrella concept for the five themes of the forum: development, environment, inclusive economy, new technologies, and peace and security.<\/p>\n

The forum is intentionally non-Western-centric. The\u00a0119 projects<\/a>\u00a0selected to be presented at the forum originate from 42 countries and 10 international organizations. The 15-member\u00a0steering committee<\/a>\u00a0gathers prominent individuals from five continents. France views itself as a bridge between the North and the South in yesterday\u2019s world, the West and the Rest in today\u2019s. Its four-corners-of-the-world colonial past gives France a massive network of partners and allies, in the name of which the country enjoys speaking in international organizations\u2014although, in their eyes, France remains most often a European power, suspect of grandstanding for the sake of its own\u00a0grandeur<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The French state hardly contributes financially to the forum, and the organizers preferred looking for non-Western support. The Mo Ibrahim Foundation is a\u00a0founding member<\/a>\u00a0and Abu Dhabi\u2019s environment agency a \u201cgrand partner<\/a>,\u201d but American philanthropy (Microsoft, the Rockefeller Foundation) and German public and foundation money (Germany\u2019s development agency GIZ, the K\u00f6rber Foundation) end up being unavoidable\u2014that is where the big bucks are. The French have also publicized the forum outside Europe and North America as much as possible\u2014and ended up flying in participants from poorer regions to reach their objective of inclusivity. A diverse crowd will be one of the metrics of the forum\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

Reinventing Global Cooperation<\/strong><\/p>\n

The forum is meant to be a contribution to multilateral efforts and the United Nation\u2019s Sustainable Development Goals. Macron has called\u00a0repeatedly<\/a>\u00a0for \u201cstrong multilateralism,\u201d and under his leadership, in line with a long French tradition, France is contributing to U.N. efforts on global challenges, in particular\u00a0education<\/a>\u00a0 and\u00a0climate<\/a>. However, compared to these more formal initiatives, the Paris Peace Forum has a distinct \u201cMacron touch\u201d: first, an implicit admission that the established multilateral system has failed, second, a brazen ambition that it can be fixed by betting on out-of-the-box solutions.<\/p>\n

At the\u00a0World Economic Forum<\/a>, in January 2018, the French president warned that globalization was in \u201ca significant crisis,\u201d because of \u201cthe concentration of wealth\u201d and a \u201cnew innovation and skills economy\u201d that leave the middle and working classes on the curb. In order to make globalization acceptable to all, new \u201cbasic rules for the common good\u201d needs to be negotiated\u2014on labor, taxation, climate, trade, but also urbanization, migration, and technology. At the\u00a0OECD<\/a>\u00a0in May 2018, Macron doubled down with proposals on reforming the World Trade Organization and introducing new topics for discussions at the OECD or the G20.<\/p>\n

So far, Macron\u2019s attempts to reform multilateral institutions have disappointed. A proposal by France to discuss reforming the WTO with China, Japan, the EU and the United States on November 11 has not led anywhere, mostly because America is uninterested. Frustrated and ambitious, Macron is looking for alternatives\u2014the Paris Peace Forum is the venue to channel all that drive.<\/p>\n

The forum is clearly oriented towards rules creation: Among the projects presented is a \u201cPartnership for Regional Ocean Governance\u201d that aims at fostering a better governance of the marine environment, and the \u201cDigital Peace Project,\u201d a Microsoft initiative to help lay the foundation of a safer digital world. The American tech giants are heavily invested in the forum\u2014Microsoft<\/a>\u00a0is a major sponsor,\u00a0Google<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0participate in debates, Google and Facebook each present three\u00a0projects<\/a>, including Facebook\u2019s on \u201celection integrity\u201d\u2014signaling their interest for innovative rule-making bodies.<\/p>\n

The World without Trump<\/strong><\/p>\n

At this point, it is too early to tell whether the forum will have sustaining power. Will the press, the public, and the participants become interested enough in the projects that they are willing to see their progress through (10 projects will be honored at the end of the forum, and monitored afterwards)? Will participants from non-Western countries feel represented and valued, rather than being used by Macron to give the forum a veneer of inclusion?<\/p>\n

Regrettably, the Paris Peace Forum will not address some of the most pressing issues regarding peace and security in the world today: civil\/proxy wars in Yemen and Syria, North Korea\u2019s nuclear weapons program, or rising tensions between the United States and China. Truth be told, these are long-term crises implicating great powers\u2019 spheres of influence and high-stake military interests, hardly solvable by a bottom-up approach.<\/p>\n

Yet, Macron, who likes to portray himself as a clear-eyed pragmatist willing to engage with autocratic or populist leaders, imagined the forum to be a platform where everything can be debated\u2014including a very un-French\u00a0ban<\/a>\u00a0on nuclear weapons. All leaders in attendance will have a chance to present their vision, including Russian President Vladimir Putin or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan. The Chinese president is not in attendance, yet his big political project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), will be presented by the Chinese embassy as a project under the label \u201cinclusive economy.\u201d Beyond the obvious understatement of BRI as a simple \u201cproject,\u201d its inclusion is indicative of the ambiguity of the French approach: Should committed multilateralists be focused on the diffusion of liberal norms and standards? Or should the forum be truly inclusive, up to the point of presenting all worldviews, including those antithetical to the idea of a rules-based order?<\/p>\n

In that case, what about Donald Trump? In the most recent\u00a0phone call<\/a>\u00a0between Trump and Macron in October, the French president did not even mention the forum to his American counterpart\u2014and keep in mind that this is a presidential initiative gathering 60 world leaders, not a small event. The limits of the Macron-Trump partnership is on full display here: It works as long as they deal with bilateral issues, but they stand on opposite side of the political spectrum on everything else. So as to avoid jeopardizing their relationship, the Frenchman appears to be avoiding all irritants, including the forum.<\/p>\n

The American president\u2019s absence at the forum reflects the American unmooring from the world of multilateralism.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yet this is a mistake. Donald Trump needs to hear what the \u201cgood will powers,\u201d as French minister of foreign affairs\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0them, and civil society from all over the world have to say. At its heart, the Paris Peace Forum fundamentally aims to be a rejection of the world of Trump, Putin, and Xi, a \u201ccivil society\u201d answer to the deficiencies of great powers, and a \u201cpopulist\u201d response to out-of-touch governments and sleepwalking institutions, in the hope of transcending the status quo and reviving multilateralism. American NGOs, think tanks, foundations and businesses are heavily invested in the project. But the American president\u2019s absence at the forum reflects the American unmooring from the world of multilateralism and international institutions that it did much to shape since the armistice, from the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 to the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of power in the 21st century. Once again isolating itself under President Trump, the United States is losing an opportunity for America to influence tomorrow\u2019s rules of engagement, and gifting others, including China and Russia, a chance to advance their competing visions.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

C\u00e9lia Belin<\/em> is a visiting fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings. Her areas of expertise include trans-Atlantic relations, U.S. foreign policy toward Europe, French politics and foreign policy, the role of civil society in foreign policy, religion\/secularism, and strategic prospective analysis. Prior to joining Brookings, she served for over five years as an advisor on U.S. affairs and trans-Atlantic relations in the French\u00a0foreign ministry\u2019s Centre d\u2019Analyse, de Pr\u00e9vision et de Strat\u00e9gie.<\/em><\/p>\n

Democratic World Federalists – What is world federalism? A government system where states\/provinces are subordinate to a central governing body. A centralized global government system where nations would play a subordinate role under a world government, where all officials would be elected to their positions. In this new global government, local problems would be allowed to be solved locally,\u00a0national problems solved nationally, and global problems solved globally.<\/em> Our world federation will be\u00a0built on the principles of democracy, republicism, secularism, and federalism<\/strong>. Together these concepts support a worldwide structure that can tackle today\u2019s most pressing problems.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 dwfed.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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