Bruce Jones, director of the Centre on International Cooperation and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution (IDRC Photo)

By Christopher Mason
GV Correspondent

OTTAWA - When the world emerges from the global recession, the relationship between developed and emerging economies will be fundamentally changed, international security expert Bruce Jones told an audience in Ottawa recently.

At a lecture organized by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Jones said the financial crisis has dispelled any notion that the developed and emerging worlds do not exist in parallel, instead illustrating how closely interconnected they are.

"The crisis has shown that powerful and emerging economies are not decoupled," said Jones, a Canadian who is director and senior fellow at the New York University Center on International Cooperation and also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "They are intrinsically linked."

Jones co-authored a recently-released book called Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats.

Research by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) shows that historically one percentage point slowdown in global growth has led to an estimated 0.5 percent slowdown in sub-Saharan Africa.

But the current downturn has been felt much more harshly, with estimates showing that GDP growth across Africa will fall below three percent in 2009, down from an average of 5.9 percent between 2001 and 2008, largely due to lower commodity prices and falling foreign direct investment and access to credit.

The fact that the recession has been felt so powerfully throughout the world shows that emerging economies need and deserve more seats at the tables of world policy-making bodies to initiate a "two-way-street" relationship between the developed and emerging worlds, Jones said.

"From the president [U.S. President Barack Obama] on down there is an emerging consensus that emerging economies should have and will have seats at the table in various international organizations," Jones said.

By facilitating a larger diplomatic and economic role for emerging economies, the world's leading powers hope to stave off any security threats brought on by the destabilizing effects of the global recession.

U.S. President Obama has relied heavily on the Brookings Institution for talent and advice in forming his new administration. Jones spoke to how the new president will handle transnational threats with the acknowledgement that there are major shifts happening on the world stage.

Jones argued that global security issues no longer stem largely from competing powers. Rather, today's threats come from those who sit on the margins of the global economy. Countries in competition with one another, like China, the U.S., Russia and European nations, may disagree on many things but they are bound together by trade agreements and other economic and diplomatic links that depend on stable transnational security.

This means that although competition may exist, it is in all of those countries' interests to maintain global security, while threats come from those who do not have the same vested interest in maintaining economic strength.

"Transnational threats are a dominant, if not the dominant, issue today," he said.

The solution in addressing that threat, and the leadership in bringing emerging economies into international bodies, needs to come from the U.S., Jones said.

"There is still only one state who still has the capacity to address global security and that is the United States," he told the audience. "Rising powers see their success in a stable international setting and they recognize the U.S. role in maintaining that."

He added that "emerging economies want to focus on emerging. Security threats are a distraction, but no transnational security threat can be solved by the U.S. alone."

The solution? U.S.-led reforms of international bodies such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the IMF to better reflect the world's geopolitical map so that emerging powers have a vested interest in the global economic and security stability.

Given that many of the threats come from regions that feel marginalized on the world stage, bringing them into the decision-making process will negate a major source of the world's threats to transnational security, he said.

That process will not be easy, Jones said. He identified seven significant hurdles in addressing transnational security threats.

Firstly, the financial crisis. It drains resources and time from world world leaders, limiting their ability to address security threats. It destabilizes regions hit particularly hard.

Secondly, Jones said the U.S. will have to reach a consensus on how to handle its relationship with Russia, deciding how far to go and how much stress to put on human rights when reaching agreements with the country.

In the U.S., Congress will be a hurdle because it is hesitant to extend relationships with China and Russia, Jones said. "There may be significant differences between the foreign policy of Obama and that of the Senate and Congress," he said.

Fourthly, the threat of escalating security risks, namely in the Middle East, may derail any attempts at broader reform.

Jones identified the U.S. relationship with Iran as key to forging links elsewhere. How the U.S. Handles Iran could affect efforts in Russia, China, the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world, Jones said.

In terms of making room for emerging economies within international bodies, Jones said Europe may be among the largest roadblocks. "European seats in, say the IMF, World Bank and G20 are huge obstacles in making room at the table for emerging economies," Jones said. "It's complicated."

He proposes something along the lines of a G16, rather than the G20, made up largely of the G8 nations, a half dozen or so emerging economies and one or two more western nations, rather than the current arrangement which under-represents the developing world.

Lastly, Jones identified weak international institutions as a hurdle to managing transnational threats. "Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Has under-invested in key multi-lateral institutions and surprise surprise, they are not strong enough to handle transnational threats."