Economics a key to peace?

Editorial

Canada is entering into a free trade agreement with the European Union, which portends good things, both economically and in a broader sense.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is said to be the largest trade deal into which Canada has ever entered. The EU’s 28 member-countries represent a $17 trillion economy, which is greater than the trade covered by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Under the deal, almost all – 98 percent – of tariffs on products traded between Canada and the EU will be eliminated. Canada’s trade with the region is anticipated to increase by 23 percent.

Politics has changed dramatically since the “free trade election” of 1988. At that time, when then prime minister Brian Mulroney was trying to bring about Canada-U.S. free trade, his Conservative party stood alone. The New Democrats, long the voice for Canadian organized labor and protectionism, were completely opposed to it. John Turner, then the Liberal leader, said that preventing the deal was “the fight of my life.” Now, New Democrats, whose leader Thomas Mulcair is determined to convince Canadians that he leads a middle-of-the-road party, is supportive of the EU deal. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau is making similarly supportive noises, while acknowledging that all the facts are not yet at hand.

While Canadians seem to have developed more confidence in our ability to compete freely in the international marketplace, perhaps this seismic shift is about more than economics. Perhaps we see ourselves as fully citizens of the world, as something beyond our borders. Certainly, the EU is evidence of the human ability to see beyond past limitations. Burdened with history far more grievous than anything Canada has suffered, Europe has come together, based on an economic rationale but also on a humanitarianism that might have seemed inconceivable just decades after Europeans killed their neighbors by the millions.

Among the most intractable conflicts still boiling in Europe are the bigotries among the peoples of southeastern Europe, the Balkans. As the states of the former Yugoslavia recover from their catastrophic wars, one after another is positioning itself to enter the EU. Observers see hope that generations-old enmities will dissolve as Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and others begin to self-identify as “Europeans” in addition to their narrower national identities. It may be that the fraternity that eluded these peoples through centuries of conflict may come at last from economic self-interest.

The example may have special resonance for another longstanding conflict. This month, the World Bank released a study indicating that the inaccessibility to Palestinians of much West Bank land and resources is seriously harming the Palestinian economy, implicitly urging Israel to relax Palestinian access to West Bank resources. Unemployment, especially among the enormous young population, is among the greatest threats to Palestinian – and, therefore, Israeli – stability.

We already have evidence that a few years of economic development in the West Bank (and, before Hamas took over, in Gaza) reduced extremism and made coexistence more feasible. This is not to overlook the irrationality of much terrorism. And, where religious fanaticism holds sway, poverty is often a subordinate factor in radicalization, as demonstrated by the 9/11 terrorists, who were mostly not victims of poverty; on the contrary. Even so, economic advancement is likely the most effective – and, despite the immense challenges, perhaps the easiest – means to reduce tensions between Israel and the Palestinian leaders and their populations.

Yuval Diskin, a former head of Israel’s security body Shin Bet, recently warned that conditions are ripe for a “Palestinian Arab Spring.” By this, he did not appear to mean the rising up of Palestinians against their domestic oppressors, but more likely against the old standby, Israel. Under the circumstances, and given the limited progress of American-backed peace negotiations, preparing the soil for economic growth in the area might be the most fertile hope for lasting peace.

Over the past three decades, most Canadians have come to see free trade as a benefit, not a social and cultural threat. Europeans have come to the same conclusion. Could economic self-interest among Israelis and their neighbors finally trump the endless antagonisms of the past? Economic development is the only way to find out.

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