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The lack of global leadership, what we at Eurasia Group call the G-Zero, has become a common refrain among international thinkers. But while others wring their hands, over in his Ak Orda (White Horde) palace in windswept Astana, Kazakhstan's President Nursultan Nazarbayev is planning to do something about it.
In February, he launched G-Global: a bid to hatch a new world order through the exchange of ideas. Styled as an "electronic Bretton Woods," G-Global will disseminate a plan for global reform in May. On hand to provide intellectual firepower is the Eurasian Economic Club, which, bringing together top economists from Tajikistan to Moldova, has already produced a draft.
Previous schemes include a new, as yet unrealized global currency dubbed the Akmetal and an annual Congress of World Religions in Astana.
What G-Global really shows us, though, is what happens when authoritarian states try to innovate. Billed as a platform for free-wheeling discussion, G-Global comes with a code of conduct that is both granular and draconian. Contributors are forbidden to "maliciously non-adhere to the rules of the Russian language," for example, and are instructed to exclude any "political content" from their posts -- a practice that would seem to put the kibosh on serious attempts at revamping global governance.
With G-Global, Nazarbayev wants to "radically widen the number of participants in seeking anti-crisis solutions for the world."
"The Siberian Mining Institute?" 40,000 posts from one guy?
The road to Utopia could be long, though. Although G-Global boasts 10,000 members from 28 countries, the vast majority (more than 40,000) of the posts on its forum emanate from a single doctoral candidate at Irkutsk State Technical University, formerly the Siberian Mining Institute. None of the 543 participants who signed up in the last month has so far weighed in, suggesting that global traction may still be a ways off.
Take a look at the chart which is page 2. (Page 1 is apparently the same chart in a different language.) Notice there is no control or selection of the "World Government." Also notice the prominent role banks have, consumption and production are tiny little blocks in the bottom of one corner.
See the draft PROPOSAL OF EURASIAN ECONOMIC CLUB OF SCIENTISTS IN THE V ASTANA ECONOMIC FORUM OPTION ONE: MECHANISMS OF DEVELOPMENT OF NEW WORLD FINANCIAL SYSTEM AND THE NEW WORLD CURRENCY
With G-Global, Nazarbayev wants to "radically widen the number of participants in seeking anti-crisis solutions for the world."
Honestly? I think this fellow has become unhinged and can be discounted.
But he won't countenance a similar widening of Kazakhstan's own political process (letting the opposition stand in elections would be a start), which is why this particular snow leopard won't be influencing global leaders any time soon.