For decades [1] there has been neither a national interest nor a moral need for farm subsidies. But now in times of soaring world food prices there is not even economic justification. As a brave new world fought it out at the Doha talks, it is growing hungrier by the day.

It is understandable that poorer nations are near paranoid in their fear for their own farmers’ livelihoods should they import a glut of imported American and European food that is a product of sophisticated economies of scale. But with food shortages looming, all countries should now support open trade in food to encourage as much supply as possible for a hungry planet.

The best thing that the United States, the beacon of world capitalism, could now do is to stop interfering with its own farmers, let markets and need determine what they grow and how they farm — and then by such a principled American example persuade the rest of the world to do the same.

Victor Davis Hanson, a former raisin farmer and a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, is the author of “Fields Without Dreams” and “The Land Was Everything.”

The Doha talks collapsed this week, because many nations were unable to agree on reducing or eliminating subsidies on agriculture and oil.

The world is facing a food crisis as a result of a number of circumstances. These include: alarmingly low stocks for staple foods such as wheat, rice, and corn; high oil prices; poor climatic conditions in major food producing areas in particular Australia, but also Argentina, the United States, and Canada.

Natural resources, particularly water and soil, are being over-exploited to the point of collapse. The increase in global prosperity means more people around the world can afford dairy products and meat; rich countries have begun to use food crops for biofuels to supplement oil consumption. Unprecedented levels of investment and speculation on commodity markets are making prices much more volatile.

Most of the world’s developing countries are importers of food. In the past twenty years, the rush to liberalize agricultural markets in developing countries left poorer producers without government support. A massive increase in imports, in many cases heavily subsidized imports, discouraged local production and investment in agriculture.

The Doha Development Agenda was conceived in the aftermath of the 11 September attacks, it was supposed to provide fairer access to the global trading system for poor countries, but has repeatedly become bogged down in squabbles, including the dramatic collapse of talks in Cancun, Mexico in 2003, when furious developing countries walked out.

An agreement would have sent a powerful signal that the WTO's members are committed to globalisation. Under the terms that were on the table, Europe and the US would have trimmed their farm subsidies and reduced support for exports in exchange for cuts in tariffs on manufactured goods in many of the developing countries.

The rich countries of the world have again shown that they are willing to sacrifice lives in the poorer countries for political gains at home. Our television screens will be filled with millions of starving people and big business will reap the rewards. We have shown our lack of concern and will continue to wonder why these countries fail and spawn terrorists. Globalisation is under threat due to lack of commitment. The world economy will suffer because of the lack of political courage.

Ever since the Berlin Wall fell, people have looked at the way Harry Truman, George C. Marshall, Dean Acheson and others created forward-looking global institutions after World War II, and they’ve asked: Why can’t we rally that kind of international cooperation to confront terrorism, global warming, nuclear proliferation and the rest of today’s problems?..............

Today power is dispersed. There is no permanent bipartisan governing class in Washington. Globally, power has gone multipolar, with the rise of China, India, Brazil and the rest.

This dispersion should, in theory, be a good thing, but in practice, multipolarity means that more groups have effective veto power over collective action. In practice, this new pluralistic world has given rise to globosclerosis, an inability to solve problem after problem.

This week, for the first time since World War II, an effort to liberalize global trade failed. The Doha round collapsed, despite broad international support, because India’s Congress Party did not want to offend small farmers in the run up to the next elections. Chinese leaders dug in on behalf of cotton and rice producers……….

The best idea floating around now is a League of Democracies, as John McCain and several Democrats have proposed. Nations with similar forms of government do seem to share cohering values. If democracies could concentrate authority in such a league, at least part of the world would have a mechanism for wielding authority. It may not be a return to Acheson, Marshall and the rest, but at least it slows the relentless slide towards drift and dissipation.

David Brooks in the New York Times. [2]

[3]

The world is currently facing several global issues, issues that cannot be resolved by one nation acting alone. One idea put forward is a “League of Democracies” other ideas may include examples set by the European Union. [4]

Recently Prime Minister Rudd has suggested an Asia-Pacific Community similar to the European Union.

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd [5] said on Wednesday that he wants to see an Asia-Pacific Community by 2020 structured similar to the European Union. Rudd said there was a "brittleness" in bilateral ties, and that while regional bodies like Asean and Apec had achieved much, there was a need for a region-wide architecture to tackle the growing challenges of the Asia-Pacific century.

The United Nations is not finding solutions to the global problems we are currently faced with. It is struggling under the constraints of the structure put in place at the end of World War II.

The UN is failing to deliver [6].

One solution to the problem would be the creation of a new global union of nations. A union of nations formed along the lines of the EU. All countries could be invited to join as long as they accept the charter. The EU, Australia, US, Canada, Brazil and other interested countries could start it off.

Free trade, a common currency, human rights, a global stance on climate change, terrorism, world poverty, the food crisis, peak oil and other global issues could be argued and voted on in a democratic fashion.

We must realize we live in one world and it is only by uniting will we be able to come up with solutions to the massive problems we are currently facing.