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GPF List-Serv
November 22 - December 10, 1999
Season's Greetings from Global Policy Forum!
Seattle came as a great and unpleasant surprise to the corporate chieftans, "third way" politicians and media spin-meisters. They have long been insisting that a neoliberal globalizing world is the only possible future and that it will produce the greatest good for the greatest number of world citizens. Suddenly theirs was not the only voice. The critics had achieved critical mass, as tens of thousands of protesters from all over the world erupted into the "consensus" and demanded a democratic voice in shaping the world's future.
At GPF we have been actively involved in the Seattle spirit as it has developed in recent years. We have welcomed the citizen protests at the G-8 economic summits, the protests against the WTO, the movement to stop the Multilateral Agreement on Investments, and, of course, the campaigns of criticism against the World Bank and the IMF. These and related campaigns have created global networks, mobilized citizen groups, developed analysis, and always insisted that another, more just world can be constructed.
But the captains of the economy have not been idle. At the same moment that protesters gathered in Seattle, Exxon and Mobil announced the completion of their merger, creating the world's largest, most powerful and most global corporation -- composing vast networks of prospecting, drilling, tanker fleets, pipelines, refineries and filling stations, located in most of the world's countries. Alongside the other oil giants - Elf-Total-Fina (also created this year), BP-Arco-Amoco (created in 1998) and the Royal Dutch Shell Group - the new tyrannosaurus of the corporate world will not willingly cede ground to the swelling citizens movement.
The Bretton Woods Institutions, though far from Seattle, have been deeply shaken by the newly-contested policy environment. Battered by the global economic crisis and reports of their own malfeasance, and challenged by the growing citizens' protest movements, the IMF and the World Bank have lost their former smug self-confidence. When IMF chief Michel Camdessus abruptly resigned on November 9, after 13 years in office, it seemed a victory for the critics of the IMF and a measure of the eroding confidence in the "Washington Consensus" orthodoxy. But another, quite different omen, soon appeared on the Bretton Woods horizon. On November 24, Joseph Steiglitz, Vice-President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, suddenly announced that he, too, was resigning. An outspoken critic of the Washington consensus and of the IMF, Steiglitz had recently been publicly chastised by World Bank President James Wolfensohn. Faced with the choice of staying muzzled at his post or returning to the relative freedom of academe, Steiglitz decided to depart. His decision leaves the clear impression that Wolfensohn and the US Treasury intend to stifle public debate about this all-important policy issue, as they hastily reconstruct a new "Washington-plus" formula.
At the United Nations, the Security Council has continued to wrestle with the question of Iraq. We last reported on the Dutch ambassador's November 19 comment that the Permanent Members are the "hereditary five" -- a comment that summed up the frustration and anger of the Council's ten elected members. Since then, negotiations have increased in intensity and acrimony, as the Council moves towards a new comprehensive resolution that may be put to a vote at any hour, but that almost certainly will not resolve in any satisfactory way the Iraqi people's humanitarian crisis or their political agony.
Uncharacteristically, the Council decided to change its rules of procedure to allow the newly-elected members to attend its private consultation sessions as observers during the month of December (their two-year terms begin in January). Seemingly a very modest step, this change was nonetheless fought fiercely by the Permanent members, who tend to object to anything that strengthens the elected members' role in the Council. The breakthrough was largely due to the diplomatic and tactical skill of Ambassador Fernando Petrella of Argentina. Having lobbied for many months, Ambassador Petrella still encountered obstruction from the P-5. So one day, he announced that he was planning to make the Jamaican ambassador (the newly-elected member from the Latin America and Caribbean Region) a member of the Argentine delegation for the month of December. Faced with this radical proposal, with all the unpredictable precedents it might set, P-5 delegates dropped their opposition and quickly agreed to the new arrangement.
One of the enduring crises on the Council's agenda is the civil war in Angola. As the government's forces appear to be decisively winning the war, attention shifts from the problem of Savimbi to the problem of the Angolan government and how it may manage the peace. A new report from our Global Witness friends in London is titled "A Crude Awakening : The Role of the Oil and Banking Industries in Angola's Civil War and the Plunder of State Assets." We recommend this report, which follows GW's outstanding report on the Angolan diamond trade (see link below).
At GPF as the holidays near, we celebrate the two millionth hit to our web site this year. We sadly say goodbye to intern Soo-hyung Lee from Seoul, Korea, who has done excellent work for us since the end of August. And we welcome Rebecca Culley, who joins us after two years in China, following her graduation from the University of Chicago.
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