Editor,
It's interesting that the Daily Lobo columnist Craig E. Butler opened his recent column with the supposed intention of answering why the existence of NAFTA and the World Trade Organization causes street battles between activists and police. What makes this interesting is that Butler never makes even the slightest attempt to answer the question that he poses. To merely say that globalization's "approach" is "stepping on a lot of sensitive toes" is hardly an answer.
For anybody who is interested in moving beyond the most facile analysis, there are quite a number of reasons why many people, not just "activists," are up in arms about trade agreements like NAFTA and multilateral organizations like the World Trade Organization.
Take, as just one of many examples, Chapter 11 of NAFTA. This legislation grants Canadian, Mexican and American corporations the right to sue the governments of the three NAFTA member countries in response to any environmental and consumer-safety legislation that reduces corporate profits. This legislation has been used by corporations on several occasions to stop national, state and local governments from enacting legislation that would protect consumers and the environment.
In the case of a relatively poor country like Mexico, the mere threat of a huge corporate suit under Chapter 11 is enough to make elected government officials think twice about enacting environmental and consumer-safety legislation. In other words, NAFTA and Chapter 11 remove the citizenry from the decision-making process over local, state and national law.
In this regard, NAFTA is an affront upon democracy, which is a concept that is far older and far more universally accepted than "globalization."
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That said, it is indeed true that there has been commerce between different parts of the world for centuries. There is nothing necessarily wrong with international commerce. In fact, most critics of the current phase of world economic integration would agree that some international commerce has had beneficial effects. But to say that the onset of international commerce represented the beginning of "globalization" is to deprive that term of any contextual meaning.
The protesters in Seattle, Genoa and elsewhere aren't upset about the simple trading of goods between countries. The protesters are upset about the affront upon the rights of citizens of all countries to determine the rules under which their economies will operate within a world economy. They're upset about multi-lateral "trade" agreements that simply amount to a Bill of Rights for Corporations at the expense of democratic decision-making.
So the real issue is not whether or not economic relations will exist between countries, but on what terms will countries operate within an international economy. To sum up globalization as simply "the future" is to say essentially nothing.
The future is what human beings make of it. The actions of those who protest the current un-democratic and horribly inequitable phase of world economic integration are extremely valuable. Those actions are already helping to shape the future world economy. For example, in response to massive criticism, the International Monetary Fund no longer insists that there be no regulations on the types of international speculative capital flows that contributed to the financial crises in East Asia in 1997 and Mexico in 1995.
For those who truly want "globalization" to be a success, they should applaud the protesters for creating the pressures that may ultimately open up negotiations over trade and economic integration to the participation of civil society. By instilling greater democracy into trade negotiations between countries, the critics of the current phase of "globalization" may ultimately help to create a world economic architecture that is more equitable and more conducive to democratic decision-making.
Justin Delacour
Graduate Student in Latin American Studies
