PROBLEMS OF THE GLOBAL CRISES PREVENTION: NEW STRATEGY AND INTERNATIONAL FINANCING

Автор(ы): Доктор экономических наук, профессор Санкт-Петербургского государственного университета Маленков Ю.А.

Опубликовано: Euro-Mediterranean economics and finance review. Special Issue for IFC 6. Vol. 6, N°1, 2011 (pp.47- 74)
http://yu800.110mb.com/

Necessity of management of protection against the global threats and prevention of global crises

Prevention of global crises represents a management challenge. Modern management contains various kinds and functions of management, the general (management of planning management of the organization, coordination management, management of the control and others) and specific object-oriented (marketing management, financial management and others).

Today creation of a new kind of management is needed - management of the global crises prevention.

It is caused by the quick rise of the global threats dangers and their ineffective prevention. Each new catastrophe reveals again and again repeating defects of the existing bureaucratic management low quality of monitoring, absence of preventive actions and programs. For example: "...another devastating natural catastrophe. Exactly a year after the Bam earthquake claimed 26,000 lives in southern Iran, the whole of south Asia is reeling following a massive quake off the west coast of Sumatra. Once again the same questions are being asked. Why was there no warning? Why were the authorities not better prepared? Why did so many men, women and children lose their lives? As at Bam, there was no way that the earthquake could have been predicted… Indeed, scientists at the United States Geological Survey tried frantically to get a warning message to the emergency authorities in countries in the path of the waves, but to no avail."

From the point of view of management the global threats should be divided into three kinds:

1. The global threats for which there are developed technologies of the control and protection.
2. Partially supervised or ignored global threats.
3. Uncontrollable global threats.

Technogenic catastrophes are an example of the threats of the first kind. For their prevention development of multilevel protection systems is possible. These threats also include environmental damages by industries.

Threats of the second kind result from uncontrollable factors, for example, mutation, geophysical changes and others. For them timely detection and counteraction is needed.

Threats of the third sort are completely uncontrollable but they are few. They include space and geophysical catastrophes. For example, a sharp change of activity of the Sun, shifts of Earth crust sites (platforms), especially in a zone of oceans. However, according to experts, probability of these events is low. And effective monitoring can weaken even some of them.

The main danger for human community is represented by threats of the first and the second kinds. The effective management of protection against most risky and dangerous global threats is required because each one can destroy all the humanity or its considerable part in the next decades. The scientific analysis shows, that protection management against them is real.

Is modern management of the global threats prevention effective? No, because only isolated management of separate protective processes today takes place. The considerable part of dangerous processes runs on its own and, as it was shown above, is not coped with in general and is underestimated.

Long-range development of the world community without global catastrophes is impossible. The numerous different combinations of continuously interacting global threats cause imminent crises and catastrophes. It is necessary to introduce the Principle of the cumulating probability which means that due to a multitude of mixing threat factors risks of global catastrophes quickly grow. Systems analysis shows that modern world develops according to the model which is possible to name «Multi-barreled roulettes» similar to the charged multi-barreled revolver with a set of cylinders and barrels in which each global threat is similar to a bullet in a separate barrel. Thus with each turn of a cylinder of a revolver the probability of a start of a bullet or realization of global threat cumulatively increases. Each of the global threats waits for its hour. The problem worsens because there are many «barrels with bullets» (threats), and they are connected with each other by feedbacks (Figure 1), that increases cumulative probabilities of global crises even more. Too many turns of "cylinders" have already been realized because of too many combinations of the factors causing crises and catastrophes. Therefore it is necessary to expect, that in the next years any of the global threats or their combination is bound to be realized. The model of the "Multi-barreled roulette" shows that time has come to an end for the solution of the world community survival problems.

Is effective protection from the global threats possible?

Quite a number of the international organizations function In the world in this field. But their results are insufficient and too much time is spent in vain, their decisions often have inconsistent character, and many problems are simply shifted onto the future as it was with the last crisis. The last crisis has been bridled by throwing in huge monetary resources for liquidity maintenance but actually it was only postponed, not finished with.

The weakness of accepted measures of global threats protection is shown in the following:

• For many years not a single of the global threats (the ecology, poverty hunger, prevention of local wars and others) have been effectively prevented.
• Only in separate fields minor results are reached, but the global threats are not eliminated.
• For the last half a century there were no new ideas in the field of the global threats protection of the world community except the utopian concept of creation of the World government which will be analyzed later.
• The international control system of global threat protection is absent today as well as the system of international financing.
• There is no general strategy of the global threats prevention; only the general declarations of intent take place.

The basic management problem of the global crises prevention consists in the absence of the general platform for association of economic and intellectual efforts and potentials of different countries. The experience shows that even in the most obvious questions they are not able to reach the compromise. A problem of climate change serves as an example. Developing the general strategy for all the countries failed.

Today there are 195 official independent countries of the world, among them 192 members of the United Nations. Is it possible to come to the unified decisions for all of them?

In their behavioral analysis A.Tversky and D.Kahneman came to the conclusion: "The psychological principles that govern the perception of decision problems and the evaluation of probabilities and outcomes produce predictable shifts of preference when the same problem is framed in different ways…. Because of imperfections of human perception and decision, however, changes of perspective often reverse the relative apparent size of objects and the relative desirability of options".

Among the countries, politicians, diplomats, public figures there always wil be contradictions on the decision of the international problems. But what is to be done when these contradictions interfere with survival of the world community?

The analysis of numerous discussions of various international problems shows, that the bias in the acceptance of the strategic decisions infringing on opposite interests is objectively inherent to people. It is shown more and more often that separate groups of powerful people protect their own interests at any rate. It is very difficult to reach coordination when the number of such groups exceeds 3-5. and it is practically impossible, when this number reaches 200 countries.

Countries in decision-making unite in the alliances, and some countries depend on others and accept their decisions. But even taking into account alliances the number of differently oriented groups today reaches at the very least 30 – 40 and unified coordinated strategic decisions are impossible to reach. And the essence of the problems of the global threats prevention is often distorted, because at the heart of divergences are attempts of politicians to achieve preferences in relation to their countries.

Only one concept has appeared for the last 600 years which, apparently, might have solved a problem of the inconsistency of the various countries and influential groups, consisting of politicians and financiers.

It is the concept of creation of the uniform World government.

The basic idea of this concept is that in the conditions of the uniform government all the internal contradictions and conflicts among the various countries and people will disappear, including wars as the single government cannot be at war with itself.

This idea appeared in the Middle Ages when Italy was torn by conflicts and the struggle for power by many counts. Its author was Dante Alighieri, a famous Italian poet. Later the philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote the essay "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch" in which he described: "three basic requirements for organizing human affairs to permanently abolish the threat of a future war, and, thereby, help establish a new era of lasting peace throughout the world".33 Albert Einstein is believed to have remarked: "There is no solution for civilization or even the human race, other than the creation of world government".

In the second half of the XX century an attempt was made to institutionalize that idea by proclaiming in 1949 the International Registry of World Citizens in the USA. Over 750.000 individuals in 150 countries registered in that domain with responsibilities and rights on a world scale.

For a number of decades this idea stayed dormant, but in 2010 it reappeared in Russia. This idea, though, is highly inconsistent. The World government is offered to be created on the basis of the reformed United Nations Organization. But the author specified earlier that «after 10 years with encouraging meeting in Rio (Conference of the United Nations on environment and development, 1992) any of the strategic problems put in the Agenda for 21st centuries to the full have not been executed. Moreover there appeared new global problems and threats and former threats have become aggravated». There is a natural question: if, as the author states, the United Nations Organization could not solve any global problem, why the same organization in the form of the World Government, only considerably increased in number, which will lead to much more bureaucracy, can decide it?

The author also offers the way of the solving of a poverty problem by creation of the global fund the source of which are payments of the countries «whose gross national products per capita exceeds world average level: a) for consumption of natural resources b) for emissions of polluting substances in environment and other anthropological influences». Thus it is proposed that more developed countries must give a substantial part of their finance of their own accord to poorer countries. The main goal is the alignment of GNP per capita in the world. But the approach on the basis of mechanical leveling of the world GNP per capita is totally unrealistic. Any country will disagree to give voluntarily substantial part of their GNP (reaching 30 – 40%) to other countries. This way is utopian and it does not only provide protection from the global threats, but, on the contrary, it increases risks of the global confrontation.

Let's consider the idea of the World government from the point of view of its justifiability.

There are some strong arguments proving that the World government cannot solve a problem of global crises prevention. Because the developed countries will not reduce the standard of living of their population with a view of the increase of the standards of living in other countries.

Countries, even under globalization, still remain divided by national discrepancies in culture, values and habits. For example: "A new study has delivered a damning verdict on the integration of Germany's immigrants, concluding that an alarmingly high percentage of them live in a parallel world with poor prospects of a decent education and career advancement... foreigners who come to live in Germany tend to remain strangers, even after 50 years and three generations in some cases… A separate study by the Bertelsmann Foundation estimates that failed immigration is already costing the country up to ?16 billion ($20 billion) per year". Recently there were movements for national identity in the European Union. A problem among two or three nations is very difficult to overcome, let alone many nations and countries. It is especially difficult to reach the consensus among the poor and the rich countries.

The idea is also unacceptable for power structures of the countries as their top management will never agree to lose their power, independence and posts.

In conclusion it must be said: the idea of the World government is idealistic, non-practical and impossible.

At the same time the inefficient counteraction to the global threats in the modern world is caused by a number of reasons.

In the power structures of any country there is no full understanding of the hopelessness of the world community development on the «Multi-barreled roulettes» model.

In the world there is no global monitoring and no control of the whole set of the global threats, no estimation of the degree of their dangers, no effective early detection systems. All protective minor actions depend mainly on the social initiatives and are poorly financed.

There is no global system of planning of the global threats prevention. Some countries, within the limits of national safety, allocate the finance for protection against several threats, but it is absolutely not enough for the prevention of even one global threat.

There is no system of the international financing of the global threats protection. Problems of global threats protection are not being solved. For the decision of a problem of the global threats huge investments of the international finance are required, but today there are no rational ideas of the forming up of their sources.

Coordination of the global threats protection is also totally inefficient. Even on the simplest questions there are constantly opposite points of view of the different countries and time is wasted.

Decisions on protection from the global threats in the world are carried out accidentally if not chaotically. Somewhere separate problems are dealt with, and somewhere only the problems of the development of the economy are concentrated on. So during the last oil spill by BP (British Petroleum) Corporation, despite great damage done to all the world community, the problem was solved only by BP Corporation. A lot of time thus was lost and the huge damage was caused.

The general conclusion is: global management of global threats protection as system capable to deal effectively is absent and is not provided by the international financing. Various countries and the international organizations perform only separate kinds of minor activities on prevention of catastrophes but they are irregular and are insufficiently financed.

All the existing approaches to the coordination of international global crises protection have come to an end unsuccessfully. Even on the most important and simple problems of ecology it is not possible to agree about joint activity.

The international summit in Nagoya (October 2010) showed failure of achievement of reasonable compromises: "An agreement has been debated for years with developing countries arguing their genetic resources have been exploited by rich countries and large corporations. But negotiators did not make much progress and many points in the protocol remained open".

One of the main reasons of inefficient opposition the global threats is the absence of the general strategy in this area.

Existing methods and concepts cannot provide for the decision and prevention of global crises. It also means that absolutely new non-standard strategy of the global crises prevention is necessary. And the global threats and barriers to the global crises prevention like giant Tsunamis accumulate negative power, rapidly increase in scales and wait for their hour.

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