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Kent Jones is Professor of Economics at Babson College and the author of The Doha Blues: Institutional Crisis and Reform in the WTO.  The book highlights the real stumbling blocks to trade liberalization and highlights the way around them, in light of the collapse of the Doha Round.  Jones outlines the practical steps that must be taken before the World Trade Organization can achieve accord.  In the excerpt below, Jones begins to outline the problems the Doha negotiations have faced.

Why have the Doha negotiations been so painfully slow and unsuccessful so far?  A review of recent commentary and analysis seems to indicate that the difficulty has many roots, as shown by the following list of contributing factors:

1. -Multilateral trade negotiations have become too unwieldy to manage effectively. Membership in the GATT grew dramatically from the 1960s to the 1980s, and the WTO as of 2009 had 153 members, a large number to manage in a consensus-based decision process. In addition, the number of issues has grown with the expanded scope of the WTo coverage into agriculture, services, and “behind-the-border” trade issues.
2. -The single undertaking was a good idea in principle, but it doesn’t work in practice.  In order to provide the widest possible scope of trade-offs that would provide each member with a stake in the negotiating outcome, and to avoid the fragmentation of the GATT system of codes, the WTO was founded on the principle that “there is no agreement until everything is agreed.”  In conjunction with the unwieldy scope of membership and agenda issues indicated in the first item above, some argue that forcing the negotiating outcome into a single, balanced package for all members is virtually unachievable.
3. -The balance of power in trade negotiations has shifted in favor of large developing countries.  The United States and the European Union had dominated trade negotiations for many years, and while they remain the world’s leading traders (both in imports and exports), their relative importance in trade has diminished, and many faster-growing developing countries, such as India, Brazil, and China, are now asserting greater influence over the WTO negotiating process.
4. -The Doha Development Round was oversold as a trade negotiation to promote development. Leading developed countries agreed to present the Doha negotiations as a “development” round in order to provide developing countries with a strong incentive to participate.  Yet the WTO is not a development agency, even if it plays an important part in development.  It was impossible for the Doha Round to fulfill the expectations of a trade round presumably focused on development goals.
5. -Developing countries are “mad as hell” and won’t take it anymore.  In conjunction with the previous item, many developing countries were disappointed in the outcome of the Uruguay Round, in which they expected large gains from liberalization of textile and clothing trade in exchange for commitments on the protection of developed countries’ intellectual property and on other “behind the border issues.”  The delayed textile/clothing trade liberalization, in which China won the lion’s share of gains, combined with the potentially large costs of intellectual property protection and the financial cost of
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By Gérard Prunier

The so-called, “Darfur peace talk” in Doha, Quatar on February 17th was even more ridiculous than the previous efforts at “building peace” in the desperate province of Western Sudan. The language of the final communiqué sounded like an Arab transliteration of a Henry James novel: they expressed their “high appreciation for His Highness the Emir of Qatar Khalifa al-Thani’s generous sponsorship of the peace process,” they “recognized the constructive support of neighboring countries,” they “accorded a strategic priority to peace,” they “accepted to take the necessary measures to create a favorable environment to help attain a lasting peace settlement,” and they promised “to commit themselves to continue serious discussions leading towards peace.”

The reader remains dumbfounded by the yawning abysses of what we call in Arabic, kalam faadi (empty talk). The whole reunion led to absolutely nothing but pious platitudes, while all hell broke loose between the very parties who were facing each other and discussing in Doha.

In early February violent fighting had broken out in Muhajiriya, in South Darfur. This was followed by the bombardment of Thabit on the 18th and a battle in Sheriya, just west of Al-Fashir on the 19th. Finally there were carpet bombings of various locations in the west of Jebel Mara in Central Darfur. The government congratulated itself on a “new development in the peace process,” and The Justice and Equality Movement(JEM) guerrillas declared on February 23rd that “the signing of the Doha Agreement, February 17th 2009, was certainly a step forward along the road for peace in Darfur.” Then, on February 24th, upon learning about the probable indictment of President Omar el-Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) next March 4th, JEM guerrilla chief Khalil Ibrahim announced that “now the war will intensify.” Did I hear anyone mention the word duplicity?

So, what was Doha apart from an alcohol-free cocktail party? It was:

• A failed attempt by Khalil Ibrahim to free his brother who had been captured by the Khartoum Army after the failure of the JEM raid on Omdurman last May. Khalil’s brother was also his Chief-of-Staff and his main weapons procurement officer. Many other prisoners were to be exchanged (JEM , which had had the upper hand, has captured a lot of government Army officers in Darfur).
• It was also a bid by JEM for center stage. Their desire to be recognized as the main, or perhaps even the sole, interlocutor of the international community among the Darfur guerrillas.
• It was a signal to Muhamar al-Gaddafi, the new “King” of the African Union, that JEM and Khalil were the main players in Darfur.
• It was also a discreet forum in which to try to negotiate the freedom of Hassan al-Turabi, Khalil’s old political mentor who was arrested last month and is now in dangerous detention in Port Sudan (Turabi is 72, he has high blood pressure and Port Sudan is one of the hottest spots on earth. His place of detention is not air-conditioned).

In other words, Doha’s cocktail party was only an episode in the ongoing conflict in Darfur and logically just opened into more violence. As Khalil said, now that the peace talks are over, “the war will intensify.”