We need a 21st century war cabinet

(Flickr picture War Cabinet Room, Churchill Museum, Loz Flowers, Creative Commons License)

The situation gets dire in the world and as the readers of Belgian Affairs know, Belgium is particularly hard hit because of the importance of its banking sector and the problems in the car industry. Chief economist Geert Noels of Petercam asks prime minister Herman Van Rompuy to form an 'Economic War Cabinet'.

The members of the war cabinet would have to be specialists who assist the government. The cabinet should combine expertise in various domains, be politically neutral and independent.

Belgium would not be the first country to do so: the UK started its own war cabinet in October last year, the National Economic Council.

What issues should the War Cabinet tackle?

• Important choices have to be made for the financial sector.
• A recovery plan, focusing on the competitive position of the Belgian economy.
• An analysis of various state support and investments packages.

While dealing with the crisis, the Cabinet should safeguard the next generations, in other words, should avoid unacceptably high fiscal deficits.

Our newspaper De Tijd  reported this morning that also Karel Lannoo, specialist financial markets at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) wants a War Cabinet, but this time in order to assist the European Commission.

Twenty or 30 economists would monitor the situation on a daily basis and formulate recommendations for the Commission and the European leaders.

One of our readers reacted on Noels' War Cabinet proposal, saying that it was odd that all of a sudden we should trust the "experts" while the experts in general failed miserably to warn for the crisis and even were in favor of the deregulation which made the crisis possible in the first place.

There is some anti-establishment rhetoric in this, but I am convinced that many citizens share this distrust for the "specialists".

So what should we really do? One needs the specialists, and I agree a War Cabinet is needed. However, it needs to be supplemented with another approach, the Obama-way of mobilizing the citizens, using web2.0 techniques, stimulating communities to discuss what is happening, to make proposals, to mobilize themselves and to support each other.

We live in the 21st century. People don't accept a purely top-down approach, with professors, specialists and politicians telling them what to believe and what to do. That way of communicating is finished.

It is too obvious that the experts don't agree on many points, that they often simply don't know. These are factors to take into account: how can one organize a society in a world which is becoming even more unpredictable? One of the answers is facilitating a conversation, or rather facilitate many conversations, mobilizing the people.

That used to be rather difficult in the past, but new technological practices make it more feasible. People gather now already on forums and sites. Not everybody is on Facebook or Netlog or participates in online discussions, but one can mobilize those who do and send them out to organize discussions in the physical world, giving feedback through social media such as forums, wikis, blogs and capturing the ideas and initiatives in databases.

If we are in a war-like situation, better realize that there are new and better ways to fight it now.

Roland Legrand