Opinion
The Seattle WTO Fiasco
The readers of Henry Kissinger got a clearer grasp of the WTO Seattle Fiasco after going through his communicative analysis (The Seattle Fiasco, DS, Dec 22). The points he has brought out need careful study and analysis by the politicians and administrators in the third world countries, to develop and plan tiered responses to the periodic crises seen in the fluctuating globalisation projects now being seemingly monopolised by the industrialised countries.
It is the phase difference, either in the time of frequency domain, of responding to, and handling crises by the national governments in the South. The cushioning base is not properly developed to absorb the time delays in taking corrective actions in national interest. Everything comes late in life, compounded with fresh problems in a developing society. Economic stability needs an undercoating of political stability without breaks, to be able to play the cards as per planned programme over a period of time.
The slow bureaucracy is a handicap in an administrative system not geared to rapid changes in a globally changing market; and the negative consequences of this flywheel effect is enormous in the LDCs; compounded with safety-first tactics of the political leadership. This recurring external challenges have to be faced, as the consultancy solutions come from the western sources, who amongst them control the market. This includes the neutral international agencies under the UN system - which is increasingly growing helpless in the presence of a lone-superpower - in the world entering a millennium of deep-seated economic disparities, traditionally fuelled or nourished during the post-colonial period.
Kissinger has contrasted President Clinton's playing to the gallery at Seattle to the Truman doctrine (earlier, after the great depression at the beginning of the 1930s, Roosevelt had also delivered a package of reforms). The US presidency is a victim of circumstances, and the US national goals have a higher priority than international parleys on consensus. The American wealth and prosperity bubbles do have adverse repercussions in the rest of the globe. But the line of thinking is unlikely to change until there is a more lasting upheaval in the Wall Street, which plays a significant role in Washington's policies for home and abroad.
The fragile and brittle economic base in the developing countries is further ensnared in the urban migration stresses, the burden of the unproductive SOEs, the restive labour unions in the overpopulated countries, and the general environment of indiscipline, defiance of the authority, terrorism and open corrupt practices. There is a huge gap between the top and the bottom of the economic scale, defying quick fixes.
Kissinger has outlined some suggestive strategy for the reorientation of the US foreign policy during the next century. Even if such a package were forthcoming soon, the international flux of political and economic changes in the world capitals would delay the reaping of the benefits in a visible manner.
The poor are trying to unite through regional blocs, but how much the bite of the stand would be effective? The bottom is always sluggish, but changes at the top are inevitable at the global level; and there lies the salvation in unplastered form, later to be moulded into local entities.
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