For a small country that usually does not make much news, Jordan is making a claim on the world’s attention this week with a series of fascinating consecutive events. King Abdullah II of Jordan has chosen the path of dynamic activism and big initiatives as the route to national well-being, though many around the world feel that his stirring talk of reform and democracy is frequently unmatched by deeds. Perhaps we now have a chance to test the seriousness of Jordan and other such countries in this enticing realm of democratic modernity.
Within the span of a week, Jordan is hosting its annual gathering of Nobel Prize laureates at Petra, to bring the world’s best minds to bear on the challenges of peace and development in the Middle East. It then hosts the annual World Economic Forum Middle East gathering that bring together 1,200 top business, government and media people from around the world. And it caps this off with meetings with senior officials from Israel, Palestine and the United States geared to prodding a renewed Arab-Israeli peace-making process, alongside a meeting of the new G-11 group of lower-middle income countries that seeks to spark a new aid, development and reform partnership with the world’s great powers.
The most intriguing new effort is this G-11 movement, which was launched last year by the heads of state of like-minded lower-middle income countries such as Croatia, Ecuador, Georgia, Honduras, Indonesia, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Paraguay and Sri Lanka. They seek to obtain the best possible opportunities in the global economic, investment, aid and trade arena, which they promise to prod with sustained reforms in their economic, political and rule of law spheres.
As one of the key Jordanian architects of the initiative explained it to me from Amman, more than 1.5 billion people – over a quarter of the world’s population – live in lower-middle income countries that aspire to break through to higher income brackets. The key for the G-11 is to combine prudent economic management that spurs engines of growth, while relying on “targeted help and results-oriented assistance that would simultaneously accelerate reforms in order to achieve higher growth rates and allow millions to escape the poverty trap. Skeptics would argue with justification that there is not much that is really new here in the G-11’s familiar language of reform and growth. It would be easy to dismiss this as merely another clever way for worried leaders of vulnerable countries in turbulent neighborhoods to stay in power and ward off the hordes of their own disenchanted and angry citizens. My suspicion is that the G-8 and other world economic powers should acknowledge this initiative and positively challenge its owners to perform, and not just to talk.
Listen to what the G-11 supplicants say they are committed to: “following a path of prudent macroeconomic management, economic liberalization, ensuring adequate provision of services, especially education, health, and infrastructure, strengthening the rule of law, transparency, accountability, building good governance, zero tolerance for corruption, enhancing the role of civil society, and expanding freedoms to ensure wider buy-in national political, economic and social reform programs.
This sounds like something from a Swedish governance seminar, but in fact it is the plea of a few Third World leaders who say they are prepared to make the plunge and the changes needed to move their societies into a more modern, prosperous, stable world. Are they serious? Are they sincere? There is only one way to find out: test them, or, in the wily ways of Vegas poker, call their bluff. The G-8 should offer the G-11 the requested aid, debt and trade assistance, initially in a phased, selective and conditional manner, while working together with these countries to agree on a truly serious reform program that is both home-grown and adheres to global standards of democratic pluralism and the rule of law.
Ireland, Singapore, South Korea, Turkey and many other lands prove that economic growth and political accord are essential to transforming traditional, vulnerable and sometimes turbulent societies into stable, modern, and prosperous ones. Western efforts to transform Middle Eastern countries to date have failed, including the EU’s Barcelona process, the G-8 initiative, and the effervescent Anglo-American armadas that invade countries and topple their regimes.
The world needs a new and more effective approach to reforming and transforming developing countries. The Arab world in particular needs just one success story of a country that makes the transition to democracy, stability and prosperity, and the others will follow. The G-11 initiative may provide a means to move down this road. It deserves serious examination, and some high stakes poker moves. Jordan and its partners have taken a bold initiative. We should find out if they are serious, and call their bluff, because if they are, this is a poker game in which we all win.
Rami Khouriis published twice-weekly by THE DAILY STAR.
