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SepSecIntelligence
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Seattle, Windsor, and the Riddle of Global Consensus
by Dee Sparling
Copyright © 2000
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
In the wake of the Seattle riots targeting the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the extensive security measures arranged for the more recent Windsor summit of the Organization of American States (OAS), one is reminded again of the clash of global visions which underscores this theme of confrontation: a centralized versus a decentralized global structure.
Here "structure" refers both to economic and political arrangements, which themselves are intertwined, as evidenced by the mandates of the aforementioned organizations. The WTO is primarily an economic structure designed to encourage and stabilize global trade. This sounds benevolent enough on the face of it, until controversy erupts over whether or not certain political protocols are part of the arrangement. The OAS is primarily a political structure designed to encourage political cooperation and familiarity amongst Western Hemispheric nations. Again, this sounds very positive until the organization's political goals are portrayed as levers for extending U.S. economic hegemony. A similar blending of economic and political goals are more openly apparent in the structure of the European Union, which began as an economic entity. Over the course of the Haider controversy in Austria, the EU unabashedly revealed itself as a forum for political coercion as well.
Shorn of its rhetoric, the Seattle protest was motivated by the fear of a supranational organization wielding both economic and political power over the nation-state. With national governments succumbing to the dictates of a higher body rather than responding to their electorates, the average citizen would be left out of the power equation, thereby undermining representative democracy. With national sovereignty goes the citizen's sovereignty. Even without conspiracy theory, the prospect of increasingly remote levers of power does little to promote notions of a "feel-good" human destiny.
Thus, in demanding levers of accountability, the protesters' message was positive and progressive. However, in terms of maligning the organizational structures which will prove inevitable (like it or not) for stabilizing an increasingly complex world, the protest arguably could be construed as conservative and reactionary. When WTO representatives tried to placate the protest by suggesting that both sides believed in the same ideals, only true cynicism would have dismissed the claim outrightly. Far from being a spin-doctored sham, the statement may well have been boldly honest, with the true point of contention being simply one of chosen methods for achieving the mutually-desired imperative of global stability.
That the WTO, the OAS, and the EU might meld economic and political goals should come as no surprise anyway. The startling issue here is that anyone actually believes that economic arrangements and political realities have ever been independent concerns, or ever can be. An activist should never expect this, nor should world leaders ever pretend to offer it. Whether in terms of the Seattle street activist who cannot accept that long-term political stability will only come with advanced global economic integration and vice-versa, or the top-level economist who cannot accept that a culturally-driven lobby might refuse to analyze its identity from a strictly economic perspective, in either case the short-sightedness comes from the inability(?) to understand the complexity of human appetites and motivations.
This clash of centralized versus decentralized global visions will continue until each perspective first begins to make sense within itself, particularly in understanding that international relationships are never one-dimensional. A centrist who feels that economics alone will unite a politically fragmented world is recklessly idealistic. Economics will always be influenced by political identity; and political identity is multi-levelled and multi-faceted, ranging from the jurisdictions and needs of the nation-state to those of the municipality, and from the cultural appetites of ethnicity to the psychology of race relations. Political (and even corporate) leaders will never be entirely rational in their economic decisions. Hence, purely economic arrangements will break down eventually unless strengthened by fundamental political understanding and accommodation.
By the same token, those who prefer an economically decentralized world, arguing that political protection can only be preserved through complete economic autonomy, should expect to experience with it a politically fragmented planet. They will find that history does indeed repeat itself, with economic fragmentation bringing them trade wars, political crises, military conflicts, and perhaps threatening the very political identity which they initially intended to preserve. In the effort to escape the political pressures of economic cooperation, they become more vulnerable to the less forgiving spectre of political annihilation which will tend to haunt a world strewn with desperate, alienated nation-states unfamiliar with (and unconcerned for) their neighbours, and perhaps even dangerously resentful of their continued existence.
In retrospect, the Seattle riots were not about good guys and bad guys. It was not even about alleged corruption or abuse of power. These pitfalls exist in all human affairs, and may or may not exist on either side of this particular encounter. More precisely, Seattle was about the ongoing clash of legitimate visions of the future, and the nature, of the global community. But neither street activists nor supranational economic organizations will be successful in their official mandates unless leaders and followers of both global visions learn to embrace the complexity of international relationships and the interdependency of politics and economics. They must accept that certain global realities challenge their preconceptions, and adjust their perspectives accordingly.
In a world where the clock is ticking down on resolving dangerous ongoing issues such as environmental degradation, global inequities, and weapons proliferation, we need both sides of the Seattle encounter. We need the primal desperation, physical courage, emotional dedication -- the human face -- of the street-fighting activist, reminding us that agreements and proposed solutions are about people after all. But we also need global infrastructures, as imperfect as they may be so far, to facilitate the high-level communication so fundamental to elevating issues from the point of grassroots consciousness to the follow-through stages of drafting and implementing solutions. Today's reality dictates that we no longer plan merely for national futures, but for the human future.
Dee Sparling, June 2000.
