By Frank Vogl
Earth TimesJanuary 28, 2002
The anti-globalization movement is no longer on the White House radar screen. Protesters of global trade, finance, labor and environmental systems are out of sight and out of mind. Globalization's critics may be meeting in mid-Manhattan and in Porto Allegre, but big business, the Bush Administration and the leadership of the multilateral institutions neither seem to know nor care. The all-consuming passion in Washington DC is the war on terrorism. People who want to riot in the streets, smash cars, wear black masks and confront the police will be seen as being as bad as international terrorists. There is zero tolerance on Capitol Hill and in the White House for anyone who threatens to use violence in the face of U.S. authority.
As far as the establishment is concerned the anti-globalization movement is irrelevant. There will not be a sentence in President Bush's state of the union speech tonight that touches on the issues foremost on the movement's agenda. The President and the Congress are totally absorbed with domestic and international security.
The tragic events of September 11 have changed the dynamics of the globalization dialogue. Last summer the protesters gathered in their thousands in Genoa at the G-7 Summit. They captured the news and the media's sympathy. They went on to plan demonstrations for late September in Washington DC at the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Fearful of chaos in this city the Bank and IMF canceled their meetings.
But since then the mood has changed, as have the policy priorities of the establishment. The international investment strategies of big business at least for the time being have also been changed by the recession (2002 may see the lowest volume of foreign direct investment to developing countries in a decade). On the merits of the arguments themselves, the establishment view inside Washington has hardened against the anti-globalizers. The slow-down in the global economy has unleashed new hardships on the poorest countries, and business and government agree that this demands measures to stimulate trade and investment, not check commerce with new rules and regulations.
World Bank and IMF economists have been working overtime to draft papers to demonstrate that trade and investment liberalization have done great good for the world's poorest peoples. A central theme of the anti-globalizers, that globalization has made the rich richer and the poor poorer, is being fiercely attacked. A host of experts from the major Washington "think tanks" and the World Bank are debunking this assertion. For example, World Bankers David Dollar and Aart Kray declare emphatically in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, which is a summary of a larger study, that: "So far, the current wave of globalization, which started around 1980, has actually promoted economic equality and reduced poverty."
Concerns about international environmental treaties have been relegated to the lowest imaginable priority in the Bush Administration. It was not so many months ago that the Administration was being attacked around the globe for its stand on the Kyoto Protocol. Now, with solidarity with the U.S. in the war against terrorism being the number one preoccupation, the foreign criticisms of 'unilateralist' Washington are muted. And some in power here see this as a vindication. They believe that the Japanese and an increasing number of European leaders now share their view that the Kyoto Protocol isn't worth the paper it was written on.
On labor issues, the Administration is equally dismissive, at least for the time being. There were many Democrats in the Congress with some sympathy for the protectionist views of organized labor and the concerns of labor exploitation in poor countries. You'll recall these were critical issues in the demonstrations in Seattle a couple of years ago that wrecked hopes of launching a new World Trade Organization round of negotiations.
But, in the aftermath of September 11, the Congress did not have the stomach to confront the White House over trade. International delegations went quietly to Doha and agreed to a new WTO round last November. The Congress gave the new negotiations its blessing.
While the anti-globalizers made human rights and multinational corporations a major plank of their criticisms, now the only human rights issues on the White House agenda concern foreign criticisms of the way the U.S. treats captured terrorists. The formidable concerns of the anti-globalizers seem somehow distant as if they belong to another era.
Meanwhile, while the leaders of the World Bank and the IMF continue to be well briefed on the views of non-governmental organizations, the facts are that they are under intense pressures to deal with crises that are remote from the agendas of the anti globalizers. The World Bank's leadership is under intense political pressure to find effective ways to swiftly rebuild Afghanistan. The IMF's bosses have their hands full dealing with the crisis in Argentina and seeing that it does not spillover to wreck emerging markets' finance don't forget the Argentine default is the largest in history.
For the anti-globalization movement the post-September 11 mood and today's prevailing realities pose core challenges. It, too, must recognize that times have changed. A splintering of the movement is assured. It was never a cohesive coalition, but now some organizations are likely to work hard to distance themselves from the more radical elements and seek negotiations with the establishment, not street confrontations. They may emerge in time as the alternative globalization lobby, looking to change policies towards global trade and investment, not wreck prevailing systems.
Others may believe that their cause will be ill-served if they are seen to be associated with violence and they may simply become cautious until the "war on terrorism" assumes a lower profile. Still others will, no doubt, press ahead as if nothing is changed they may find to their surprise that they are far fewer in number than they expected and that the media is far less sympathetic to their views than it was just six months ago.
Frank Vogl is president of Vogl Communications, Inc in Washington DC
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