Doha Round Collapses as Inter-Imperialist Contradictions Intensify

The stage was set for a compromise but, in the end, none could be reached. The late July round of Doha talks collapsed in failure, despite a last-minute ministerial meeting and daily updates from negotiators about the progress being made. Once again, the biggest stumbling block was around agriculture, with the big powers, especially the United States and European Union, unable to reach an agreement on how to carve the world up amongst themselves.

Not only were the U.S. and EU unable to extract concessions, what became clear as the last-ditch effort to rescue the deal proceeded was that India, China, Russia and Brazil had very specific agendas on how they could assert their global power and they would simply not back down. While technically the Doha Round is now on hold until after the U.S. presidential elections in November 2008 and the Indian elections in May 2009, it seems unlikely that any agreement can be reached.

The failure is an indication that the relative strength of the big powers and regional powers within the world of international capital is undergoing profound changes. The economic power of the U.S. has been steadily declining over the past two decades while that of the emerging capitalist economies, especially those of China, India and, to some extent, Brazil has been rising. Russia is also rumoured to have played a much more active role at these talks, including announcing, in the midst of the negotiations, that it would be establishing state trading enterprises in agriculture. The Americans interpreted this as an openly hostile act, especially given reports that the Russians were counselling some of the smaller powers on how to protect their interests during the negotiations.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the bi-polar division of the world the policy of U.S. imperialism has been to use its military power to establish a unipolar capitalist world under its dictate. Today, that policy is clearly in difficulty and a multi-polar world is emerging despite all of the efforts of the Americans to prevent it.

This should not in any way be viewed as a victory for the people of the world. Far from it, the collapse of the WTO talks may well usher in a period of unbridled trade wars. Such an occurrence would exacerbate the crisis of overproduction and could quite possibly precipitate a global economic depression. It is clear that the EU and some of the other powers feel that a global depression at this time will result in a further weakening of the American imperialists, to their benefit. For their part, the Americans greeted the collapse of the talks with a renewed commitment to pursue their trade agenda through a series of bilateral agreements, an indication that U.S. imperialism is far from defeated. Indeed, the Americans will most likely use this as an opportunity to step up their attacks on the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America under the guise of free trade agreements.

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