Title: Message
THE ROVING EYE
Dehumanized globalization
By Pepe Escobar
PARIS - The year is, of course,
2002. Take the ministers of economy and trade of the member-countries of the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) - in theory the
representatives of the 30 richest countries on the planet. Get them together at
the plush Chateau de la Muette in Paris. Feed them champagne and caviar. Forget
about the official sessions and listen to what they say in the corridors. What
do you get? A lot of doom and gloom - or a lesson in dehumanized globalization.
Twenty-nine of those ministers - plus a handful of observers from
developing countries - came to Paris basically to express their barely contained
rage against the so-called Mecca of free trade: protectionist America
post-September 11. They complained about the latest "scandal" - a 70 percent
raise in agricultural subsidies for the next 10 years, approved last Monday by
the US Congress. They complained about 30 percent more taxes on imported steel,
29 percent more taxes on Canadian timber.
America did not even bother to
send its tzar of trade liberalization, Robert Zoellick. The American-in-charge
was Glenn Hubbard, an economic consultant to the White House. He was reassuring:
America would grow between 3 percent and 3.5 percent in 2002, so this was an
"encouraging" prospect in terms of recapturing its position as the main engine
of world growth. But that was about the only consensual issue at the Castle of
the Swallows.
A disgruntled European diplomat observed that "the idea of
creating a fund for aid to development, like the US advanced at the Monterey
summit, is worth nothing at the moment because the same US multiplies its
agricultural subsidies. This will only encourage dumping in poor countries." A
Brazilian delegate to the WTO in Geneva was fuming: "The Americans are going
bananas with their agricultural subsidies plus their taxes favoring their
steel."
Officials from multilateral organizations, on the receiving end
of the poor countries' uncontrollable exasperation, were defining Washington's
New World Order as nothing less than "devastating". An IMF official could be
heard saying that "we are now victims of the hypocrisy of both the US and
Europe". There is an embryonic campaign now rolling in Europe in favor of the
abolition of the World Bank - considered to be a behemoth bureaucracy absolutely
contrary to poor countries' interests. But this did not prevent a World Bank
official from expressing his frustration: "How can we convince these countries
to fight corruption, reduce their public deficits, and when they are qualified
to receive some aid, they simply cannot export because of the barriers imposed
by rich countries."
The European Union, on paper, considers itself to be
a model - because it is actually removing tariff barriers against the poorest
countries. But anybody bothering to read the labyrinth of "annex" rules may
verify that three absolutely essential items exported by poor countries - rice,
sugar and bananas - are liable to be taxed by up to 98 percent .
A
theoretically unrestricted opening of rich countries' agricultural, textile and
shoe markets to developing countries would mean a staggering US$700 billion a
year. This is more than 13 times the current aid for development budget of the
OECD countries: this budget is now 0.22 percent of their GNP. The initial
target, fixed in 1970, was 0.7 percent of GNP. This can only mean one thing: a
total absence of political will to reduce glaring imbalances in the world
system.
As an African delegate put it, the whole system is "a bloated
exercise in hypocrisy". No spinning by any government or multilateral
organization can disguise the fact that the system is "Europe and the US against
the rest of the world" - as recognized by a UN official: "And this is even more
incredible when compared to the project of reducing poverty in the world by
half."
Developing countries' officials, invited as observers to this
OECD meeting, simply are not swayed anymore by the usual mantras: the "virtues
of the free market", or "good governance", or "equality of market access", or
"the merits of an impartial judge like the WTO". They see the whole system as
rigged - an abyss between Virtuous Rhetoric and Opportunistic Practice.
Officials trying to do their job at the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO
are as frustrated as their colleagues working on behalf of poor and developing
countries. Even Anne Krueger, the ultra-orthodox chief economist of the IMF, was
against the latest "regrettable" American trade policies.
Professor
Jagdish Baghwati from Columbia University recognizes that even if Europe - and
Russia, China and Brazil - try to retort in the steel war, America still has its
"commercial nuclear weapon": millions of subsidies. Professor Baghwati sees a
real risk of "aggressive unilateralism" being the new paradigm in international
trade relations as well.
European Union diplomats are saying in private
that as America multiplies its subsidies, Europe will be forced to do the same.
The only victims, of course, will be poor and developing countries. Belgian
Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt put it in no uncertain terms: "This imparts the
feeling that globalization works only one way, it's a game that only profits the
rich. Our self-interest is destructive. We cannot keep from planting the seeds
of an anger against ourselves."
Ignacio Ramonet,
director of the insigthful monthly Le Monde Diplomatique, considers the real
Axis of Evil to be not Iran, Iraq and North Korea, but the IMF, the World Bank
and the WTO. The truth, though, may lie deeper, as these organizations are only
pawns in a much larger, one-sided globalization game.
(Copyright
2002 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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