UofT G8 Information Centre: 2004 Pre-Summit Conference

2004 G8 Pre-Summit Conference
Security, Prosperity and Freedom:
Why America Needs the G8

In a two-day conference hosted by Indiana University’s Center for International Business Education and Research, scholars and policy makers will examine how best the United States, with its G8 partners and through the G8, can meet its vital security needs in ways that enhance the prosperity that America and its partners need and promote the values of freedom and democracy that they cherish. The conference will address this question in the context of how America’s G8 partners and institutions can best align their policies and interests at this critical time. A special videoconference session from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC will consider the issues of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism.

As the post–September 11 war on terrorism moves through its third year with America’s long-awaited economic recovery still afflicted by uncertainty about its durability, it has become critical for America and its allies to confront the question of how best they can meet their essential military and other security needs in economically sustainable and supportive ways.

It is now clear that the war against terrorism launched after September 11 will be a long, difficult and costly one. At the time America assumed the chair of G8 and moved into active preparations for the 2004 G8 Summit at Sea Island, Georgia, Osama Bin Laden remained free in an Afghanistan where America and its allies held limited control, warlords continued to rule, and a secure democratic future was still not in sight. In Iraq, Baath Party loyalists and terrorist reinforcements continued to challenge the democratic future and freedom that American-led coalition forces sought to provide. While slow progress is being made, the economic burden is becoming formidable: President Bush’s US$87 billion additional spending request for Iraq and Afghanistan and the US$150 billion debt relief required for Iraq are only two examples. Additional recent commitments — US$10 billion for the Global Partnership against Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, large sums to reduce poverty in Africa and around the world, and US$15 billion to combat HIV/AIDS abroad — make clear that an America afflicted by a burgeoning fiscal deficit confronts difficult choices that must soon be made. Above all, it faces the critical question: How can it simultaneously produce security and prosperity, for its own citizens, for those of its G8 partners and for the global community as a whole?

The search for answers begins in the United States. It was America that was directly attacked on September 11. America is the acknowledged leader in the global war against terrorism, and it is also bearing most of the burden thus far. It remains the leading engine of growth in the global economy.

Yet the answers also extend to America’s G8 partners. All saw their citizens die in the September 11 attacks. Some are fighting alongside America — Canada and Germany in Afghanistan, Britain in Iraq. Other G8 partners are at long last emerging as a source of global growth alongside America. Together they have the capacity to shape global order in a more secure, prosperous and democratic direction as a whole.

Since its founding in the troubled 1970s, the G8 Summit has fostered a co-operative approach to many of the world’s most serious threats and challenges — generating trade liberalization, financial integrity, stability and growth, encouraging the development of democracy around the world, and combating terrorism, containing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In light of this collaborative G8 “institution” and the interdependent character of prosperity and security issues, the question of how America can produce both in the years ahead, in ways that enhance its democratic values, becomes a shared challenge for America and its G8 partners. To help identify the answers, Indiana University’s Center for International Business Education and Research, Office of Research and the University Graduate School, West European Studies National Resource Center and Office of International Programs, the G8 Research Group, the Guido Carli Association, the EnviReform project and their many partners are mounting a two-day “Pre-G8 Summit” conference on June 3–4, 2004, on the theme of “Security, Prosperity and Freedom: Why America Needs the G8.” On the afternoon of June 3, a special videoconference session with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Center for Strategic and International Studies on June 3 will examine the issues of WMD and terrorism.

Hosted by Indiana University’s Center for International Business Education and Research, the conference will link leading experts and interested citizens at several institutions throughout North America. It will feature presentations and papers delivered by distinguished American academics and policy makers on an issue vital to America’s future at this time. This debate will be enriched by the contributions of experts from each of the G8 countries who are intimately familiar with the institutions and issues that will confront the G8 leaders when they meet at their Sea Island Summit the following week.

The conference will begin on June 3rd will open with a session in which leading scholars of the G8 examine “Why America Needs the G8: Perspectives from America.” It continues on June 4th with a concentration on the economic issues, exploring in turn foreign direct investment, corporate strategy and corporate governance, trade liberalization, sustainable development, and international finance. The conference will conclude with a panel in which their colleagues from all G8 partner countries outside North America explore “Why America Needs the G8: Perspectives from its G8 Partners.”

As the program indicates, the conference opens with an introductory session on “Why America Needs the G8: Perspectives from America.” Academic experts will consider how the G8, as an informal “soft law” international institution, has enabled America to bind its democratic major power allies to collective commitments that promote America’s objectives in the world. Drawing on what is known about American leadership in the G8 Summit, as well as its performance, session participants will assess the prospects for the U.S.-hosted Sea Island Summit immediately ahead.

Session Two, “Foreign Direct Investment, Corporate Strategy and Corporate Governance,” explores how firms — multinational corporations, small and medium-size enterprises — are coping with the new post–September 11 security reality or taking advantage of it. The added burden that security-related spending has imposed on companies and entrepreneurs will be examined, as will the ways in which managers are minimizing the costs and seizing such opportunities as may arise. Participants will look at America’s most important economic border — that with Canada — to identify the creative solutions at work or at hand, and to consider whether privatization of aspects of border security might result in effective security with reduced costs for all. Additional papers will look at corporate governance issues and U.S. immigration policy.

Session Three on “Trade in an Era of Sustainable Development, Security and September 11th” will examine how post–September 11 security concerns have affected the liberalized international trade system and its associated values of environmental protection and social cohesion. Questions explored will include:

Session Four, “Finance,” explores how security has affected the financial system at many different levels. Will the existing and next steps in the campaign against terrorist finance, together with new mechanisms to ensure good corporate governance, impose transaction and other costs on financial institutions and the financial system as a whole? Considering the contribution of financial development to economic growth, will countries emerging from closed systems, with the need for rapid catch-up in their financial sectors, be vulnerable to rent seeking and corruption, in ways that could inhibit economic development and support terrorist activity as well? The session will also examine whether or not the response of financial institutions — America’s, the G8’s, and others — have generated the form of economic stability, growth and development needed to foster prosperity and security for all.

In Session Five, the conference closes by asking “Why America Needs the G8: Perspectives from its G8 Partners.” Here experts from each of the G8 countries outside North America assess how, where, and how America’s partners are willing to help America meet its integrated security and prosperity needs.

In the security domain, the G8 must consider critical issues of the proliferation of WMD and of terrorism, particularly in its transport and health dimensions. Thus, on afternoon on June 4 will be a special session on security and terrorism, videoconferenced with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Center for International and Strategic Studies.

The first half will focus on “Preventing Proliferation of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction” begins the task of evaluating America’s essential security needs at present and for the coming years. Presenters will explore how these needs can be met in ways that take advantage of, and perhaps reinforce, America’s strengths — economic, technological and other related aspects. This examination of “smart security” will begin with the past and prospective proliferation of WMD, from the Soviet Union to Central Asia (India and Pakistan), the Middle East (notably Iraq and Iran) and Northeast Asia (especially North Korea). It will review the G8’s past successes in this area, from the days of the London Suppliers Group and Missile Technology Control Regime to the Global Partnership against WMD forged at the G8’s Kananaskis Summit in 2002. Effective steps for the future will be explored, with reference to recent initiatives such as those against radiological sources, and the related issues of bio-terrorism and the non-proliferation regime as a whole.

The second half, on “Combating Terrorism,” focuses on the fight against the more familiar forms of terrorism. Its core concern is with the integrity of America’s land, sea and air borders, with particular respect to transportation, and the need for “defence in depth” at distant locations around the world. Because much of the transportation grid carries individuals and animals through which infectious disease and bio-terrorism may be brought into the U.S. and G8 countries, health security is also a featured concern. The session will review the G8’s past successes in this fight against terrorism and explore how existing programs can be conducted more efficiently and effectively, and what more needs to be done in the years ahead.

Prospectus

Special Videoconference Session on Security

	This Information System is provided by the University of Toronto Library and the G8 Research Group at the University of Toronto.
	Please send comments to: g8@utoronto.ca This page was last updated February 08, 2016.