The Economic Times

Friday, September 26, 2003

Just say no to President Bush

JOSEPH E STIGLITZ

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

For three years, America's President has pursued a unilateralist agenda,
ignoring all evidence that contradicts his positions, and putting aside
basic and long-standing American principles.

Take global warming. Time and again, he questions the scientific evidence.
Bush's position is more than wrong; it is an embarrassment. Indeed, when
asked by Bush to look into the matter, America's National Academy of
Sciences came to a resounding verdict (the only one they could honestly
reach) that greenhouse gases are a menace. But America's automakers love
their gas-guzzlers, and Bush's oil industry pals want no interference with
their destruction of the planet's atmosphere. So no change in policy.

In Iraq, Bush again pursued a unilateralist agenda, saying that there was
incontrovertible evidence of a link with Al Queda, and that Saddam had
weapons of mass destruction. Even before the invasion, there was
overwhelming evidence that Bush was lying. Detection technology made it
clear that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons, as chief UN inspector Hans
Blix pointed out. It's possible that Bush read those reports, but that they
were beyond his comprehension. It is also possible that he did not believe
what he read. Whatever the case, American policy was not based on evidence.

America has not won the hearts and minds of those in Iraq; indeed, it has
lost them, just as it has lost the hearts and minds of much of the world.
The US wants to retain control of the occupation, but it wants others to
receive the bullets now mowing down American soldiers. UN soldiers should
not bear the consequence of America's failure to manage the occupation; US
cries for financial help should fall on deaf ears.

It was not long ago that a Republican Congress held up $1 billion of UN
dues, and threatened that it would only pay what it owed if the UN satisfied
a raft of conditions. America's unwillingness to provide small sums to wage
peace contrasts sharply with the huge amounts Congress quickly granted to
wage war.

Advocates of a softer approach say that if the UN stays on the sidelines, it
will become irrelevant; by participating in Iraq, it will build trust with
America, so that the next time a dispute such as this arises, America will
turn earlier to the UN. Nonsense. Those in the White House today believe in
realpolitik. They don't believe in loyalty or trust.  If there is a next
time, the US will make its judgements on what is in its best interests,
regardless of what the UN does.

I normally write about economics, not politics. But in the new world of
globalisation, there is greater economic interdependence, which requires
more collective action, rules and institutions, and an international rule of
law. Economic globalisation has, however, outpaced political globalisation;
the processes for decision making are far from democratic, or even
transparent. In no small measure, the failures of globalisation can be
traced to the same mindset that led to the failures in Iraq: multilateral
institutions must serve not just one country's interest, but all countries'.

At the recent World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting in Cancun, the
developing countries put America - and Europe - on notice that this system
can no longer continue. In that case, Europe was as much the culprit as
America. Europe has no trouble seeing the dangers of unilateralism in
America's actions, in everything from abandoning Kyoto to its refusal to
join the International Criminal Court. But Europe should also reflect on its
own practices, including trade policy, where the EU works systematically to
unbalance the global trade regime against developing countries, despite
promising that those imbalances would be corrected in the current round of
trade negotiations.

Here, Europe acts like America, which has long talked the rhetoric of free
trade, while its actions have long ignored the principles. Forget about its
rhetoric of upholding fairness and justice; in trade negotiations, the US
ignores the pleas of the poorest countries of the world to eliminate the
cotton subsidies that have had so devastating an effect on them.

If we are to make the world politically more secure and economically more
stable and prosperous, political globalisation will have to catch up with
economic globalisation. Principles of democracy, social justice, social
solidarity, and the rule of law need to be extended beyond national
boundaries. Europe and the rest of the world will have to do their part -
abiding by these principles themselves, and giving each other, and America,
a shove in the right direction. Right now, this entails 'Just Saying No' to
Bush.

(The author is Professor of Economics at Columbia University)

(C): Project Syndicate, September 2003.

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