In year 2008, before the economic crisis became certain and a conclusion of the Doha Round was being sought, an obvious perception was that a successful and timely conclusion to the Doha Development Agenda will re-affirm that a strong global governance which determines the flow of multilateral trade is intact. In the same year, Dr. Debapriya Bhattacharya – macroeconomist and public policy analyst – opined that ‘we are putting too much value on Doha Round when we are witnessing failure of global economic governance’.

His analysis and the harsh fiscal imbalance the world subsequently underwent imply that in the post-crisis scenario, we must attempt to answer two tough questions pragmatically.

1. How far have we embraced the transition into a relatively more participatory, decentralized system of regional economic governance?
2. Are practices of competition and fair trade providing sufficient ‘fair play’ to developing and least-developed economies and really establishing them as equal stakeholders in world economy?
Due to their smaller administrative size as opposed to global institutions, regional bodies can have greater people’s participation and engage public domains more rapidly.

A decentralized model of economic governance therefore, being interestingly more participatory and more representative of public aspirations, also furthers the synchronization which is mandatory for global governance, by building coherence in the implementation of international economic policies at regional and local levels.

To answer the second question, when we talk about sub-standard manufactured goods being exported from developing or least developed countries, we tend to assume that Lower Tariffs, Relaxation on Trade Barriers like Standards of Products and Increased Trade Quotas to under-developed nations provide them with fair opportunities of growth. Here, institutions of global governance must take into account the acute lack of infrastructure that exists in under-developed economies. Countries suffering from a decline in production of goods due to lack of technology/infrastructure, crisis of energy, absence of access to technical skills and capacity-building and a declining foreign investment due to failure in the maintenance of law and order, are at an obvious disadvantage in perspective of relative multilateral trade.

Competitive practices are not inherent in developing economies and a lack of skill and technology does not allow cottage-industries and small-scale entrepreneurs aiming for productions of scale, to grow. It is therefore imperative that global institutions support vulnerable economies to facilitate the inviting of foreign investment. It is also imperative that financial support to governments be directed towards value-addition of products to ensure that finished-products are being exported and that assistance in value-addition processes of packaging, handling and storing becomes a source of lasting skill-transfer for local labor.

Our investigation into the systems of global economic governance must answer whether or not global governance has the capacity to provide a model that delivers equitable opportunities and facilitates developing and underdeveloped economies, as much as it facilitates the developed ones. It is important that the term ‘fair’, when used in connection to Trade Quotas, Tariffs, Standard Safeguards and Import Sensitive Lists, accompanies a reminder of the conditions in which developing economies are striving for growth.

Progressive multilateral trading system demands of global governance institutions to provide for a greater openness in markets. But this is what multilateralism demands in the short-run because in the longer-run the system is going to need regulations which are empathetic, not framed and implemented at the cost of the developing economies.

Developing economies tend to suffer from a weaker economic standing which in turn leads to their weak lobbying capacity at global forums. The regulatory framework we need therefore, is the framework which bridges this inherent gap.

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July 14, 2015 marked a historic day for advocates of nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation. The world reached an agreement with Iran which essentially stops the country from pursuing the development of a nuclear bomb.

The deal is a culmination of years of negotiations and has brought a decade-old impasse over the Iranian nuclear program to a probable resolution. The deal is historic from the perspective that it underlines the significance of global norms for peace and negotiations in contrast to continued deadlock and confrontation. The deal also conveys to global powers the efficacy of diplomacy in finding common grounds for achieving geopolitical outcomes. The deal signifies that conflicts can reach mutual compromise.

When this deal is hailed as one of the most consequential diplomatic achievements of President Obama’s terms, it is no exaggeration. This is precisely because this deal consolidates the ability of the U.S. to bring world powers to the table, substantiates the role of the U.S. as the focal point in inter-national arbitration and is, in the longer timeframe, likely to strengthen the reliability of U.S. security guarantees to its allies by reducing the uncertainty in its projections of the Middle East.
The agreement — which is the outcome of deliberations between China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the USA (five of which are among the world’s nine nuclear powers), the European Union and Iran – limits Iran’s uranium enrichment activities, removes stockpile of its low-enriched uranium by 98 percent, blocks its attempts to produce fissile materials, prevents Iran from producing weapons-grade plutonium, brings down Iran’s installed centrifuges by two-thirds in number and ensures compliance which will be verifiable through an inspection regime at the sites of storage, of centrifuge production and of enrichment. While many inspection protocols will be followed for 10 to 25 years, others will remain in place permanently.

The take-home from the deal for Iran will be a lifting of the oil and economic sanctions, some of which have been imposed since the 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis. The deal opens doors for global investment in the oil and natural gas reserves of Iran, which roughly make up for 10 percent and 18 percent of world reserves, respectively. For a country which has shrunk its economy by 15 to 20 percent and has lost nearly a million barrels a day of exportable oil since the revised sanctions of 2012, it only reflects pragmatism to have agreed to a deal to bring down the sanctions which have prevented its oil industry from benefitting from modern technology and investment. Most importantly, this deal is Iran’s opportunity to establish its commitment to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which it acceded to in 1967 and reduce its regional and global isolation.

Iran’s capability to go nuclear potentially symbolized an accelerated regional requirement to acquire nuclear deterrence at par. The world is already maintaining a nuclear arsenal at a collective cost of $ 1 trillion per decade, nearly $ 350 billion of which is constituted by the U.S. nuclear spending.
With the enormous monetary stakes involved, it is understandable that the status quo which thrives on the nuclear economy will continue to resist calls for denuclearization. However, nuclear muscle which is built and maintained at a heavy price of compromised spending on human development and has tremendously negative social and economic externalities, validates the demand for global nuclear disarmament. UN estimates put the world population to 8 billion by 2024; the responsibility to sustain this population renders nuclear adventurism too expensive to be affordable in the Post-2015 scenario.
The concept of relative nuclear deterrence has an intrinsic instability. With every new addition to the existing nuclear stockpile, countries – both nuclear and non-nuclear – experience greater levels of vulnerability and insecurity. And this is what makes the Iran Nuclear Deal chiefly relevant because it makes a case for a re-evaluation of military priorities in favor of the tangible well-being of people.

Eventually, it is the well-being of people which is the most prominent guarantee of global security.

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