[snip]
>If the assumption of power politics, upon
>which America's post-1945 foreign policy is based, proves correct,
>then, as US preponderance weakens, the normal conditions of
>international relations will reemerge. Independent and jealous states
>jockeying for power and position will of necessity shred the web of
>the integrated global economy.
[In this connection, the following column from today's Guardian is of interest.]
Subtle shifts in the play of the superpowers
Recent talks in Seattle and Helsinki show a difference in approach
By Martin Woollacott
Friday December 17, 1999
Helsinki and Seattle are both handsome port cities facing on to grey northern waters and sharing a certain orderly Scandinavian feeling. By American standards Seattle is, these days, a very well ordered city indeed, in spite of the fact that it houses the original Skid Row and includes among its landmarks a strange little skyscraper, topped with a Chinese style room, where earlier free traders discussed prices and delivery dates for rifles and machine guns with war lords from across the Pacific. In Helsinki, alcoholic excess is also not unknown, and the rifle and machine gun have at times played a critical role in the modern history of a city now neat, prosperous, and ambitious.
These comparisons are interesting to play with because there could not have been a greater contrast between the international gatherings in the two cities this month. It could even be that the respective fates of the global trade talks in Seattle and of the European Union's summit in Helsinki tell us something about how the next century will turn out. One was a failure for American leadership whose completeness has not yet been fully appreciated. The other was a success for European leadership which, with all the usual reservations about the way in which European successes can evaporate, leaving behind a hard residue of the original difficulties, may also not yet have been fully grasped.
The fights in Seattle's streets tended to obscure the fact that this was one of the most inadequately prepared, amateurishly managed, and foolishly organised international meetings for many a long year, the fault for all this lying mainly with the United States. It is true that global trade talks have fallen apart before, but this failure was not in the same category. The US, hosting the meeting and very much the main force behind the idea that the conditions for a new round of trade negotiations could be created, in fact did nothing to create those conditions.
The Europeans were also less than well prepared, and the developing countries were not so much ill-prepared as in a newly assertive mood, determined not to be outwitted by the two economic giants. But the Americans arrived in Seattle with an agenda that reflected their domestic politics - absolutely no American concessions that would lose votes, together with a carefully chosen list of areas for agreement which would bring maximum advantage to the US.
President Clinton's emphasis on labour standards was only the most obvious aspect of this "America first" approach. The World Trade Organisation, partly because of this American position, came to the city with a working paper, based on the preparatory talks, in which not a single item had been agreed. This is almost unbelievable. International negotiations, particularly those involving as many states as were at Seattle, depend on a process in which the majority of issues are conditionally agreed in advance, leaving just the few most difficult matters to be dealt with at the meeting itself. If these can then be settled, then the rest falls into place. Otherwise, talks are simply a disaster waiting to happen.
What matters most about Seattle is not the question of whether or not a further "liberalisation" of world trade is a desirable objective. It may well be the case that international trade negotiations ought to take, as the protesters claimed, a very different direction in the future. The point is rather that, with leadership so abysmal, they can take no direction at all. It is ironic, in other words, that the protest groups took to the streets in such numbers to defeat a project that had already defeated itself.
Even those who feel that overweening corporate pretensions have been dealt a necessary blow at Seattle cannot be happy that the structure in which world trade takes place has been damaged and rendered less capable of adjustment.
America's failure at Seattle is of a piece with its other international policies. It is not unfair to the US, which of course continues to assume many responsibilities and tasks that daunt other nations, to say that as Clinton's time in office approaches its end, a strategy which evades costs and pursues short term advantage has emerged even more than before. Clinton himself seems to want to chalk up as many final successes as he can. That was one of the problems of Seattle. It is to be hoped that enterprises like the Middle East peace talks are not similarly flawed.
What will change when Clinton goes is arguable, but the tired exchange on foreign policy between the candidates so far suggests that some of these tendencies will continue. They have in common an emphasis on building up American military strength and economic prosperity while at the same time stressing that neither should be drawn on for international purposes except in a very restricted number of cases.
At Helsinki, in contrast to Seattle, the European states attended a well prepared meeting which produced significant decisions, notably to expand the list of candidate nations, to put Turkey in the same category as other candidates, and to begin planning for a joint military force. There are question marks, as there always are, over such decisions. Expanding the list of candidates does not in itself, for example, solve the problems of entry. But remember that, only a couple of years ago, even a minor shift toward Turkish entry was blocked by an intransigent Greece and, hiding behind Greece, by an anxious Germany. The changes in military policy are also problematic: do we really need such a force, and, if we do need it, are we actually ready to pay for it? Yet it is indisputable that to waste money on military forces that cannot be used for any actual operational tasks, as many European countries do, is a foolishness that should end. It is true that Helsinki ducked the withholding tax issue and that the whole business of reforming the union's political structures was loaded on to another intergovernmental conference.
But Seattle was a meeting that collapsed, Helsinki a meeting that worked. In one can be seen a faltering American leadership, in the other a more confident European leadership. American unease about the European military force reflects both strategic and commercial concerns but also perhaps a feeling that Europe is less divided and readier to act than it used to be. That for the Americans may be a source both of gratification - it is what they have always said they wanted - and of anxiety. None of this should be interpreted in grandiose terms. America remains a superpower, and Europe remains an entity which is somewhat less than one. But a shift in the balance between the two great centres is, for good or ill, now at least a possibility.
[end]
Carl
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