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The Progressive Response 8 November 2001 Vol. 5, No. 37
Editor: Tom Barry
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The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in
Focus (FPIF)--a "Think Tank Without Walls." A joint project of the
Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, FPIF
is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making
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I. Updates and Out-Takes

*** AFRICA AND THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION ***
By William Minter

*** WTO SET TO CRASH AND BURN AT QATAR ***
By John Gershman

*** MILITARIZATION IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION ***
By John Feffer

II. Letters and Comments

*** A COUNTER-AGENDA ***

*** WHAT'S AT THE ROOT OF TERRORISM ***

*** IRRESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM ***

*** PROVOCATIVE AND POIGNANT ***

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I. Updates and Out-Takes

(Editor's Note: The Marxist dictum that the captains of capitalism have a
tendency to hang themselves by their own rope is what appears to be
happening at the WTO. Rather than acknowledge that the logic of free trade
has its limits and pitfalls, the trade ministers of the major capitalist
nations maintain their relentless push to apply rigid free trade principles
to all sectors of the global economy--leaving less room for national
development strategies, judging poor and rich countries by the same rules,
and pushing aside social considerations such as environmental and labor
issues. What's more, they don't even honor their own earlier commitments to
end special-interest protectionism in their own economies or to offer
special treatment and aid to the poorer nations. Clearly, there needs to be
some form of global governance for the world's increasingly integrated
trade, investment, and finances. But the WTO, in its dogged pursuit of a
new round of economic liberalization, is undermining whatever credibility
it has left as a fair arbiter of global economy rules and disputes. With
the economic vitality of the world's wealthier nations waning and the
impoverishment of the South deepening, new global leadership is necessary
to shape rules that lead to broad economic development. Without such
visionary leadership, the prospects for economic progress--North or
South--aren't auspicious. Meanwhile, the corporate leaders who drive the
WTO agenda and who complain about sagging profit levels and sales, have
only themselves to blame for a global economy marked more by the daily
struggle to survive than a rising hope for sustainable development.

FPIF offers in this issue of the Progressive Response excerpts from two
reinforcing perspectives about the state of WTO negotiations at the advent
of the 2001 ministerial meeting in Qatar.)

*** AFRICA AND THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION ***
By William Minter

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary available in
full at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0111africawto.html.)

Two years ago in Seattle, demonstrators in the streets brought previously
esoteric negotiations of government ministers at the World Trade
Organization (WTO) to the world's eye as never before. Less noticed, inside
the meetings, African trade ministers denounced the lack of transparency in
the proceedings. "African countries are being marginalized and generally
excluded on issues of vital importance for our peoples and their future,"
they declared in a public statement. The next day the summit adjourned with
no agreement, as developing countries rebelled at being pushed aside, and
Europe and the U.S. also failed to resolve their own differences.

Demonstrators will be sparse at the tightly controlled site of the Seattle
sequel in Doha, Qatar. The focus on security threats--not from
demonstrations but from international terrorism--is likely to overshadow
the substantive issues at stake. But these issues, cloaked by the technical
language of international trade negotiations, are vital to the fate of
ordinary people around the world, and particularly in Africa and other
developing regions. Since Seattle, African governments have joined with
other developing nations in sustained efforts to develop common positions
and present them to the WTO. African and international nongovernmental
organizations have followed the negotiations closely, and prepared detailed
critiques. Rich country governments and the WTO have promised greater openness.

Despite all this, final proposals presented at the last minute by the WTO's
inner club as the basis for consensus almost totally disregard these
critiques. Instead of dialogue, the U.S. and other rich countries have
opted for raw political power. African countries are under enormous
bilateral pressure to go along with the rich countries' agenda for a new
round of trade talks on their terms, and to accept vague promises to deal
with African concerns later.

Whether or not this power play results in imposing a false "consensus"
declaration in Doha, the contentious issues will not go away. Below are the
points of most concern to African and other developing countries, as
concisely and in as non-technical language as possible.

* Crisis Now Worse than Seattle

Speaking off the record, many developing countries representatives say the
levels of tension between rich and poor countries are now at even higher
levels than in Seattle. Instead of taking the opportunity for dialogue,
rich countries have offered little or nothing to address the concerns of
African and other developing countries. The poor are asked to accept the
agenda whether they like it or not and to swallow their rage as rich
countries, claiming to represent global interests, once again impose their
minority views.

If rich countries do succeed in imposing an artificial consensus in Doha,
it will be a hollow victory. They will store up more fuel for future
conflict by demonstrating once again that the wealthy of the world are
oblivious to the opinion of the world majority.

(William Minter is senior research fellow at Africa
Action, whose website at www.africapolicy.org provides extensive policy
analysis about Africa and U.S.-Africa affairs. This commentary was written
for Africa Action and Foreign Policy In Focus, online at www.fpif.org.)

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*** WTO SET TO CRASH AND BURN AT QATAR ***
By John Gershman

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary
available in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0111doha.html.)

Amid widespread recriminations from developing counties and NGOs, the
preparations for launching a new round of trade negotiations at the Fourth
WTO Ministerial meeting in Doha, Qatar on November 9-13 are plunging ahead.
Security concerns and restrictions on the participation of civil society
organizations by the host country will insure a smaller and quieter meeting
that the one held in Seattle nearly two years ago.

The Bush administration has opportunistically draped its call for the
launch of a new trade round in the rhetoric of the fight against terrorism.
So far it appears that gambit has failed to work, with many developing
countries opposed to the outlines of a new round as laid out in the revised
October 27 Draft Ministerial Declaration. Particularly galling to Southern
members was the failure to include brackets indicating disputed language
around text that failed to present alternative or competing perspectives
from Southern members. A statement from Nigeria said the draft, was "empty
of content on the issues of interest to developing countries" while a
coalition of 14 Southern and Northern NGOs argued that "the tone and
content of the new text presumes a consensus on a future WTO agenda which
does not exist."

Nevertheless, the U.S., the European Union (EU), and the WTO Secretariat,
still stung by the failure in Seattle, are pushing the draft ahead despite
opposition from the overwhelming majority of the WTO's membership. The
substantive disagreements also highlight an important problem of process,
namely the recurring practice of the "Quad" (U.S., EU, Japan, and Canada)
to engage in exclusive negotiations among themselves, occasionally and
selectively including other countries, and then presenting a draft text as
a fait accompli.

The major bones of contention in the current situation include so-called
"implementation issues," the relationship between Trade-Related
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) and Public Health, and the inclusion
of the four "Singapore issues" (investment, competition, government
procurement, and trade facilitation, which were introduced at the 1996
Singapore Ministerial). With respect to the Singapore issues, the revised
draft is worse than the initial draft for the developing countries,
according to Third World Network's Martin Khor. For example, with respect
to investment and competition issues, the first draft provided a choice
between either beginning negotiations or continuing the study process in
the working groups. This option no longer exists in the revised draft.

Even among those developing countries that support continued trade
liberalization, the core issue remains that of implementation issues.
Strategic differences exist between those countries that are willing to
support a new round that gives priority to the implementation issues, and
others (especially from Africa and the Least Developed Countries) that want
these issues addressed prior to the launch of a new round.

* No New Round or a Development Round?

The developing country agenda has largely been framed as advocating a
"Development Round," a term that foregrounds their collective concerns
while being vague enough to capture the often disparate interests of the
developing countries, divisions that were acknowledged by the head of the
G-77 when it released its own statement on Doha
(http://www.g77.org/Docs/Doha.htm).

Meanwhile, under the slogans of "No new round, turnaround" and "Shrink or
Sink" Southern and Northern civil society activists have called for a
rolling back of the purview of the WTO and a return to a framework more
akin to the WTO's predecessor, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
(GATT) as a framework for governing international trade. They argue that
such a framework provides greater policy autonomy and room for maneuvering
for developing countries. Such an agenda is reflected in the declaration
signed by nearly 400 civil society organizations worldwide entitled "Our
World is Not for Sale: Shrink or Sink."

Whatever their strategic differences, Southern governments and civil
society groups are largely unified in opposition to the current proposed
agenda as outlined in the draft declaration. In contrast to Seattle,
developed country trade officials and the WTO secretariat will not be able
to pit civil society activists and Southern political leaders against each
other.

(John Gershman is codirector of the Global Affairs
Program of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (online at
www.irc-online.org) and Asia-Pacific Editor of Foreign Policy In Focus
(online at www.fpif.org).)

For more information, see:

What's This Organization: An Annotated Glossary of Terms and Concepts about
the WTO
http://www.fpif.org/wto/index.html
By Tom Barry

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*** MILITARIZATION IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION ***
By John Feffer

(Editor's Note: In the name of national security, governments intervene
repeatedly in their economies to enhance the competitive edge of their
military producers in the international marketplace. State-planned
economies have largely disappeared in the post-cold war world, except for
the subspecies known as the military-industrial complex. Multilateral
economic institutions such as the WTO and IMF have helped sustain an
environment in which this far-from-endangered species can flourish. The
security exception enables governments to globalize their military
production while largely bypassing the fiercely competitive forces of
globalization. This investigative article by FPIF analyst John Feffer looks
at the hidden links between globalization and militarization. Excerpted
from a New Global Affairs Commentary available in its entirety at:
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0111mic.html.)

Weapons, from handguns to fighter jets, are a profitable business. Generous
government contracts, huge profit margins, and inevitable cost over-runs
ensure spectacular dividends for weapons producers. Conflicts burning
throughout the world guarantee plenty of buyers. After a post-cold war
decline, global weapons purchases rose in 2000 to $800 billion. In the
aftermath of the September 11 tragedies, arms production and sales
worldwide will likely continue their upward trajectory--encouraged by
national policies and supported by multilateral economic institutions.

Although most military contractors are neither "infant" industries in need
of nurturing nor spent giants on the verge of bankruptcy, states continue
to subsidize the production of arms. Even the most die-hard laissez-faire
governments, committed on paper to maintaining a firewall between the state
and the economy, are propping up their arms manufacturers. The United
States, for instance, provided $1.2 billion in tax relief when Lockheed
merged with Martin Marietta to form the world's largest arms manufacturer,
Lockheed Martin.

According to the logic of free trade, the cornerstone of globalization,
such subsidies are "nontariff barriers to trade." They are, in other words,
an unfair advantage enjoyed by a company doing business in the world
market. And international financial institutions are committed to removing
such advantages.

* Military Subsidies Treated Differently

But every trade accord treats military subsidies as different from all
other subsidies. This is known as the "national security exception."
Included in the original General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in
1947 and every trade accord since, this provision allows states to
subsidize production, promote sales, and impose trade embargoes they deem
necessary for the maintenance of national security. So, according to free
trade rules, if the U.S. subsidizes the production for export of a Boeing
747, other countries can file grievances through the World Trade
Organization (WTO). But the U.S. can subsidize the production of a Boeing
F-15 fighter jet that is sold overseas, and no country will call foul.

In some cases, this security exception channels money from the civilian to
the military sector. The Canadian government subsidized civilian passenger
jets produced by Bombardier Aerospace until other countries protested
through the WTO. So Canada switched to subsidizing Bombardier's military
production. Other countries view military production as the dangling rope
that will pull them out of their current economic difficulties. The South
African government continues to subsidize Denel, the state-owned weapons
producer. As a hedge against Denel's eventual privatization and to boost
industrial production, the government created the Industrial Participation
Programme to solicit civilian investment from European arms manufacturers
that offsets the costs of major weapons systems. In such cases, civil
investment is held hostage to arms acquisitions.

Government subsidies often result in cheaper weapons. For arms importing
countries, the security exception means more bang for the bucks spent
buying weapons abroad--and a heightened risk of regional conflict escalation.

* Challenging the Militarization-Globalization Nexus

The Pentagon, the Commerce Department, and international financial and
trade institutions make for a powerful trinity. At a global level, when
this unholy trinity supports the spread of arms, the increase of defense
budgets, and the dominance of arms manufacturers, the deck is stacked. Yet
there are some ways to challenge this nexus of globalization and
militarization.

The chief dilemma, a variation on the "inside-outside" conundrum, is
whether to challenge these institutions to play by the rules they have
developed or to challenge the rules themselves.

Let's consider the first tactic of using the rules to challenge
militarization. Because of the criticisms of watchdog organizations and
demonstrators in the streets, the IMF is now more willing to argue for
reductions in defense budgets, as it has done in South Korea, Peru, and
throughout Africa. Activists can challenge the institution to follow its
own "best practices." According to this tactic, the IMF's budget-cutting
zeal is turned back on itself in order to reduce military expenditures
worldwide.

By the same logic, the Bush administration could be pressed to extend to
the military sector its well-known aversion to industrial policy (that is,
government policies that foster development through support for selected
industries). The defense industry enjoys the advantages of corporate
welfare through tax loopholes, export assistance, R & D, and various
guarantees. Even a soupcon of laissez-faire would improve this toxic
recipe. Moreover, the Defense Export Loan Guarantee program and the drug
war exemption in the Export Import Bank charter are innovations of the
Clinton administration. Republicans should be encouraged to play the
partisan card and trim the Democratic pork in the military sector.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration's aggressive diplomacy on behalf of
domestic defense contractors could also be targeted as a nontariff barrier
to trade.

To persuade the South Korean government to buy F-16 fighter planes, the
U.S. announced that it would not help integrate U.S. weapons and
cryptographic systems should South Korea opt for the French fighter
instead. Here again, activists could charge the Bush administration with
blatant interference in the free market.

Activists can similarly press the WTO to begin severing the ties that bind
together the military-industrial complex. Although there is little support
among WTO members for eliminating the WTO's security exception, WTO members
may successfully challenge subsidized military programs whose primary
purpose is to enhance civilian production. The various incentives that the
U.S. government offers private cargo carriers to purchase Boeing's C-17
Globemaster military transport plane could, for example, be criticized on
such grounds. Similarly, if transportation services are liberalized at the
WTO level, there could be a successful WTO challenge to the Maritime
Security Program in the United States.

The second tactic is to challenge the rules themselves, because the rules
are biased in favor of the powerful. One of the more powerful tools to be
deployed against the military-industrial complex is transparency. By
implementing registers of arms transfers and exposing corrupt deals such as
the recent British-Saudi Arabian weapons-for-oil deal, journalists and
activists can begin to build new systems of rules that will contain global
arms trade in much the way that the Lilliputians used slender filaments to
restrain the giant Gulliver. International codes of conduct, like the one
proposed by former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, could introduce
minimum standards into a destructively liberalized environment.

Such measures would pave the way for more radical steps. A military Tobin
tax, levied on every cross-border military deal, would generate funds for
destroying nuclear and other weapons as well as to convert defense
industries to civilian production. More subversively, such a tax could
throw sand in the cogs of the emerging global military-industrial complex
just as economist James Tobin imagined his tax on financial transactions
would slow the rapid-fire transfer of capital around the world.

As a result of the September 11 attacks, the dangers of globalized
militarism--the deregulation of weapons markets and the privatization of
militaries--has become apparent even to the Bush administration. Weapons
can end up anywhere; terrorists can raise funds in deregulated financial
markets and unregulated black markets; private armies can rival state
militaries. State subsidies for military production, protected by the
security exception, have only increased the number of weapons available. In
this new era, international institutions should permit government
subsidies, investments, and taxes that scale down arms production, redirect
funds from the military to the civilian sector, and otherwise dismantle the
economic motor of globalized militarism. This is the one type of security
exception to free trade regulations and budget restrictions that makes
sense in a world awash in weapons.

(John Feffer is the author of Shock Waves: Eastern
Europe After the Revolutions, the editor of the forthcoming Living in Hope:
Community Challenges to Globalization (Zed, 2002), and recently returned
from three years working on East Asian issues out of Tokyo.)

See related FPIF Policy Brief:

Globalized Weaponry
http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol5/v5n16arms.html
By Tamar Gabelnick and Anna Rich

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II. Letters and Comments

*** A COUNTER-AGENDA ***

I don't mean to quibble about the best way to stop a war, or how to say it.
While I support the agenda [FPIF's "A New Agenda to Counter Terrorism" at
http://www.fpif.org/justice/tobedone.html ], so far as it goes, it fails to
articulate the main reason for opposing this war:

While mentioning that the U.S. should not support "repressive regimes," it
does not go far enough in condemning the well-documented record of the U.S.
as a state committing terrorism, with a proven record of sponsoring and
harboring terrorists. In developing a response to U.S. policy, we must be
clear in our analysis of U.S. war aims, not merely the methods employed to
achieve them.

At precisely the moment when the United States issued demands and
threatened the use of force, it committed a terrorist act. International
law is clear, and I won't go into detail here, but appeals to international
law are not enough. We must explain why the government goes to war, why it
resorts to force. We must be clear to ourselves and those we would
influence and mobilize exactly what this war is really about:

This "war against terrorism" is an excuse for a war for oil and minerals,
for geopolitical advantage, for extension of military power in support of
transnational corporations; it is therefore a war against civilians, a war
against civil liberties, a war against the rule of law in the name of
order. For all these reasons, it is terrorism, not counterterrorism.

Nor is it unprecedented; in the historical and factual sense, and contrary
to the propaganda, nothing has changed: Lawlessness is the norm in U.S.
policy and behavior.

As for deterrence, we agree that there can be no real security at home
without democracy abroad, "no peace without justice." But justice requires
mutual recognition of reciprocal responsibility. Justice demands first and
foremost that we hold accountable the government that acts in our name when
it violates international law and acceptable standards of human conduct. We
have not only a right to object, but a duty under law and the common
decency it expresses, to resist unlawful orders that require atrocities
against unarmed people.

But justice alone cannot deter violence and guarantee peace: Only by
demanding that our own government conform to a universal standard of
justice, uniformly applied rather than selectively enforced, and submit to
the jurisdiction of an international court, can we expect any other state
or people to accept such rules in derogation of their own sovereignty or
right of self-defense, or can we credibly claim a right to self-defense in
response to aggression.

Just as the first casualty in war is the truth, the first battle against
such a war is to define the language that justifies resistance, defends
liberty, and promotes solidarity. We must denounce every restriction on the
right of expression, the right to information, and the right to assemble.
We must defend these rights not only for citizens and immigrants in the
U.S., but everywhere.

By conceding the validity of the government's claim to conduct this war in
self-defense against terrorism and in our name, the agenda has surrendered
this first confrontation for the hearts and minds of people in this, the
rogue state responsible for more terror abroad than any other since World
War II. (Again, I won't list the atrocities, but any appeal should include
them, from meddling in elections, to propping up the dictators, to
genocidal wars.)

Second, we must not grant nor accept the current U.S. regime as legitimate,
let alone its right to decide what constitutes a legitimate regime
elsewhere: This war does not confer legitimacy on an illegitimate regime
here anymore than it would in Afghanistan, Israel, or Iraq; to the
contrary, the means by which this war is conducted and the ends to which it
is dedicated remove any veil of credibility this regime might otherwise claim.

Third, we affirm the right of self-defense, embodied in the common
tradition of human experience, shared by all societies and cultures, and
recognized in international law. This extends to collective and preventive
defense by use of armed force, but requires those who claim and exercise
that right to respond to an attack or threat of attack with measures that
are proportional, to minimize casualties of non-combatants, and to stop the
use of force when the threat is no longer immediate.

Fourth, no unilateral or multinational process for prosecution and
punishment of an aggressor, no matter how broad its acceptance or deep its
commitment, can be effective, let alone legal or just, without a standard
of evidence and a procedure for evaluating it impartially and fairly.

- Doug Vaughan

(Editor's Note: See a reply from FPIF to a similar critique of the New
Agenda to Counter Terrorism at:
http://www.fpif.org/progresp/volume5/v5n36.html.)

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*** WHAT'S AT THE ROOT OF TERRORISM ***

Thank you for a well-balanced, thoughtful group of proposals. I like all of
your ideas; I only take issue with the broad proposition regarding a "root
cause" of terrorism, namely the argument that we must do more to promote
and defend "basic human rights and democracy" abroad, presumably in
terror-sponsoring nations. The actual root cause of terrorism is precisely
our effort to do this. What bin Laden, the Mullahs of Teheran, the
terrorists in Sudan, the ISI in Pakistan, and the teachers of Islam in the
schools sponsored by Saudi Arabia deplore, above all else, is Western
democracy and human rights. This is because those ideals threaten their
geopolitical objectives. Efforts to bring Western-style law and democratic
institutions to those peoples would undoubtedly result in increased
terrorism, as do all peace initiatives in the Middle East. Nevertheless, we
must step up that effort, as you say, although it will incite, rather than
quell, acts of terror. The main tool of terrorists is disinformation, and
only a free society can permit, well, websites like this. Do you think more
of "Radio Free Islamic Iran, Sudan, Somalia, etc." might be useful? Ah,
maybe we have to sell them radios first.

- William Youmans

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*** IRRESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM ***

"Pearl Harbor Redux: The Warning Failure"
http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0110cia.html is unworthy of your website.
The White House and Congress were warned for years about potential
terrorism in the United States. The warnings fell on deaf ears. Blaming the
intelligence agencies is irresponsible journalism.

- Ralph Horst

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*** PROVOCATIVE AND POIGNANT ***

I thought FPIF Policy Brief "Women in the Middle East"
http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol5/v5n30women.html was very informative and I
would like to thank you very much for identifying many of the questions I
had about history of sexism versus the current situation in the Middle East
and around the world. Your article was very provocative and poignant.

- Emily Black

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