Insecurity complex

“Have you got
your lanyard, sir?” inquired a security official in the lobby of the
Westin hotel Saturday morning. “No, I’m media,” I replied, “and I still
haven’t registered for the conference.” The security guy made it clear
I wouldn’t be going anywhere without official ID consisting of a
plastic card clipped to an orange cord dangling from my neck. After
all, this was the Halifax International Security Forum, a gathering of
more than 300 prominent politicians, military commanders, business
executives, well-connected journalists and academics—all (unlike me)
certified members of the trans-Atlantic power elite.

They had been brought together by a Washington-based think tank with
assets of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars called the German
Marshall Fund of the United States. They were there to discuss a wide
range of international topics including why we aren’t beating the bad
guys in Afghanistan, what to do about the nuclear weapons ambitions of
those pesky Iranians and how to handle obstreperous African pirates.
The Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency had generously kicked in $2.5
million of taxpayers’ money to help make it happen.

While I waited for the registration desk to open, retired general
Rick Hillier, formerly Canada’s top soldier, breezed by, pumped my paw
and said he didn’t have time to talk just then, as he was in hot
pursuit of a coffee and cigar. Minutes later, lanyard round my neck, I
repaired to the press room where panel discussions from the conference
hall upstairs were piped in. I found the one on African pirates
fascinating. The panel consisted of two defence ministers, a big-eared
one from Holland and our own Peter MacKay, plus an American admiral in
charge of US naval forces in Europe and Africa. (There were no
representatives from Africa.)

The panellists agreed it’s tough for the world’s most powerful
navies to prevent pirate attacks in the busy sea lanes off the Somali
coast. So far this year, Somali pirates have hijacked at least 35
commercial vessels, taking more than 585 crew members hostage. The
panellists also agreed with MacKay that the root cause of piracy is the
poverty, hunger, lawlessness and war rampant in that part of Africa.
But no one blamed rich nations, including their own, for African
misery. Yes, there were a couple of references to illegal over-fishing
in African waters, although no one mentioned the illegal dumping of
toxic wastes.

Nor did they talk about the ruinous trade, aid and development
policies that rich countries impose on poor ones. Development loans,
for example, that create crushing Third World debt without conferring
much economic benefit and that end up forcing African governments to
cut or privatize public services in order to make interest payments;
one-sided trade policies that force African farmers to sell their
commodities cheaply in western markets while rich countries dump cheap,
subsidized food, sometimes in the form of “humanitarian aid,” putting
local farmers out of business; routine exploitation of African
resources by western companies and the steady flow of weapons from rich
countries to poor ones ravaged by war.

I rushed upstairs later to talk to Peter MacKay. The defence
minister said he was proud international aid vessels were getting to
Africa escorted by the Canadian naval ships already there to fight
piracy. “It has literally enabled thousands and thousands of tonnes of
food product to get to those war-torn, impoverished countries,” MacKay
said. But he didn’t seem to grasp the fact that all that aid wouldn’t
be needed if western economic policies hadn’t already guaranteed a
steady transfer of money and resources from poor to rich.

And that was the problem with the conference. Three hundred of the
world’s most accomplished people conferred among themselves all weekend
without listening to anyone else. Maybe if even one African had been on
the piracy panel, he or she might have been able to speak truth to the
power elite.

This article appears in Nov 26 – Dec 2, 2009.