Bandung + Bretton Woods

     This is the story of two international conferences that attempted to help the world community recover from the ravages of World War Two.

     Both conferences hosted delegates representing over half the world's population. Both conferences were driven by political, economic, and cultural ideals intended to increase prosperity and guarantee peace and stability for the decades ahead. Both conferences concluded with impressive declarations of principles and calls for action.

     Yet the enduring legacies and influences of these two conferences are almost exactly opposite. The Bandung Conference, held in Indonesia in April 1955, succeeded in adopting a 10-point Declaration on Promotion of World Peace and Cooperation which has been all but forgotten in the contemporary age. In contrast, the Bretton Woods Conference, held in New Hampshire in July 1944, created economic institutions whose legacy is felt intensely the world over: the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (now known simply as the World Bank) and the International Monetary Fund. In addition, the Bretton Woods Conference established the fundamental principles by which states would, in future, conduct business and trade: by lowering trade barriers, reducing state intervention in the running of economies, and ensuring that countries with the lion's share of capital to begin with (mainly because they were home to the world's largest multinational companies) would have their advantages and privileges guaranteed for the immediate future.  

     Free market globalization has undoubtedly been good (relatively speaking) to the 45 Allied nations that attended the Bretton Woods Conference. But it has been less beneficent to the 29 countries (predominantly from Asia and Africa) in attendance at Bandung. Most of these countries had recently been released from the yoke of colonialism and, in 1955, sought concrete ways to loosen their dependence (political, economic, and cultural) on the leading industrialized nations, particularly their former colonial masters. Did they get a fair hearing? Did they get a chance to allow their developing economies to make a significant impact on the world market? Did their call for economic cooperation and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations make a lasting impression outside the Freedom Building (Gedung Merdeka) in Bandung? 

     In the economic and political realms, the answers are obviously "no." But, perhaps, in the way we continue to tell stories about the Bandung Conference, in the way its spirit of independence and defiance endures, in the way its lessons can still serve an important purpose, there is a cultural dimension that should not be underestimated. That is the hope we cannot afford to lose.