End of antiglobalization in sight

Edward Gresser, Director, Project on Trade and Global Markets Progressive Policy Institute, Washington, The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore

America's once-proud anti-globalization movement seems about to make its last stand at the end of this month in New York.

Until last spring, it could bring tens of thousands of marchers into the streets, winning some public sympathy with its flair for political theater. Today, lacking an agenda and splintered by the war on terrorism, it seems destined for irrelevance.

How has this happened? And what will the movement leave behind?

Three points -- the circumstances in which the movement rose and fell, its policy legacy and the very old questions it raised -- are especially instructive.

First, the anti-globalization movement was a temporary phenomenon of the 1990s, rather than a new but lasting feature of the American political landscape. Its growth was inseparable from the unique conditions of the last decade; its demise as a political force was inevitable after Sept. 11.

Most people assume the movement was born at the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial conference in Seattle.

But its career really began seven years earlier, as the Cold War faded into history and Congress opened debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

At that moment, two distinct critiques of American policy merged.

One was a leftist criticism of foreign policy, based on a view of the United States as an overly powerful and assertive nation. As Cold War-era conflicts in Southeast Asia and Central America eased, this group looked for a new cause.

Suspicious of markets, and tempted to view business as inherently exploitative, they found their cause in trade -- in particular, trade with the developing world.

For different reasons, more traditional American trade skeptics were shifting away from fears of trade with Japan to poorer countries and lower-wage workers.

Led by the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations' (AFL-CIO) industrial unions, this group also included the shreds and patches of Republican protectionism in the textile industry and the cultural right. The trade agreement with Mexico led both groups to make trade with the developing countries a central concern.

Such a coincidence of views would have been impossible during the Cold War -- the American labor movement, for example, has a tradition of support for foreign-policy activism as long as its record of concern about trade liberalization.

But in the 1990s, with security threats remote, economic affairs claimed the central place in foreign-policy debates.

So, disciples of consumer advocate Ralph Nader could see common cause with textile lobbyists, elderly union presidents with student activists, and cultural nationalists like Pat Buchanan with left-wing academics.

While this coalition never made up a majority, its breadth made it stronger than most previous challenges to American economic internationalism. Within hours after Sept. 11, however, Cold War divisions among trade skeptics re-emerged.

Leftist groups returned to earlier posts -- the Mobilization for Global Justice, for example, was lead organizer of a large demonstration against the World Bank set for late September; it canceled the march and called instead for "a community gathering to organize against and prevent a violent retaliation by the U.S. government to the Sept. 11 attacks".

Having taken fundamentally different approaches to the central issue Americans confront today, the movement's leading elements seem very unlikely to unite again any time soon.

What legacy do they leave?

One that is a bit heartening for supporters of open trade: The American system proved able to both reject a misguided assault on basic principles, and accept specific and better-founded criticism of particular policies.

On the one hand, anti-globalization activists could not block initiatives of genuine historic import. All their principal legislative targets -- NAFTA, the Africa trade program, the granting of permanent normal trade relations for China, and the creation of the WTO -- passed comfortably.

Less noticed but equally significant, Congress (which in the 1980s voted regularly to protect American textile mills and car factories) broke with such legislation in the 1990s.

Activists could claim some successes -- notably a four-year interruption in "fast-track" legislative procedures and a two- year hiatus in full-scale WTO negotiations after Seattle.

But the success of the Doha Summit and House passage of "Trade Promotion Authority" make these seem temporary and phemeral.

On the other hand, the system was able to make some reasonable policy shifts when faced with compelling criticism.

Most prominent of these was a promise by the Clinton and Bush administrations to give African governments more latitude on patent rights on medicines during health emergencies.

Others included a commitment to review the environmental impact of trade agreements; some retrenchment on talks on investment policy; and provisions in this year's Trade Promotion Authority Bill giving some consideration to labor and environmental concerns in future talks.

Finally, the movement can claim a place in intellectual history. Anti-globalization activists, for the first time in many decades, were able to appeal to the American public with a fairly coherent vision of a less materialistic, more ascetic future.

In doing so, they posed for the country a basic question about government and human nature.

Students of Chinese culture may find the question familiar -- because nobody has analyzed it more concisely or acutely than the classical historian Sima Qian. Anti-globalization activists, at their most attractive, stood for renunciation of wealth and ambition.

Their literature often unconsciously echoed the famous passage from the Tao Te Ching: "Though states exist side by side, so close they can hear the crowing of each other's roosters and the barking of each other's dogs, the people of each state will savor their own food, admire their own clothing, be content with their own customs and delight in their own occupations, and will grow old without ever wandering abroad."

Admitting the inherent appeal of such a vision, Sima Qian found it unrealistic and ultimately dangerous; and his analysis rings true 18 centuries after the Han dynasty passed into history.

"From ancient times to the present," he wrote, "eyes and ears have longed for the most beautiful forms and sounds, bodies delighted in pleasure and luxury, and hearts swelled with pride at the glory of power and ability.

"So long have these habits been allowed to permeate the lives of the people, that even if one were to go from door to door preaching the doctrines of the Taoists, he could never succeed in changing them.

"The best government accepts that this is the nature of the people; the next best leads them to what is beneficial; the next gives instruction and orders. Only the very worst compels them to act against their nature."

The succeeding years -- and, above all, the record of 20th- century governments attempting to implement such visions -- have only proven him right. And that is why it is, in the end, a relief to see the anti-globalization movement fade.

This does not mean, of course, that the trade debate itself has ended in the U.S., or that future initiatives will move across entirely smooth waters.

But the larger challenge the anti-globalization movement seemed to pose has clearly lost its force. As theater, this may be a loss. As policy, it is the right result.