Focus on Trade

IN THIS ISSUE

PACIFIC ISLANDS TROUBLED BY TRADE
By Nic Maclellan

THE ISLAND OF DIEGO GARCIA, B 52'S AND YOU AND ME
By Lindsey Collen

WEAPONS OF THE POOR
By Supara Janchitfah

NEOLIBERALISM THROUGH THE EYES OF WOMEN
Joo-Yeon Jeong & Seung-Min Choi

THIS is the last issue of Focus on Trade for 2001, an incredible year by any measure.

In our reports and articles we have covered the major (at least from our viewpoint!) events of the year: from the exhilarating success of the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre where 15,000 activists gathered to show that "Another World is Possible" to the G7 summit in Genoa where, despite the state of siege and police brutality, 300,000 non-violent protestors demonstrated their absolute rejection of neo-liberal globalisation.

Throughout the year, we sensed that the mood was changing. In the face of growing opposition and with the shadow of recession stalking the "new economy" the titans of globalisation were no longer striding with such certainty. And it seemed to us - in the brief Indian summer after Genoa -- that the media was finally getting the message. Politicians and the media started looking beyond the violence to the issues -- of unfair trade, of illegitimate debt, the devastating power of footloose capital and the lack of democracy in the global system. What's more, establishment opinion leaders, such as the Financial Times and the Economist were conceding that globalisation's glitter may not all be gold.

In the short term, September 11 changed all that. Not only did the astonishing attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon overshadow everything that had gone before, but the subsequent US-lead "War against terror" has totally (if not permanently) shifted the way in which the world interprets and responds to events. The results for the "anti-globalisation" movement are ambiguous. On the one hand, the criminalisation and zero-tolerance of dissent will make it incredibly difficult to reactivate the kind of protests that greeted the IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington and Prague and the G7 in Genoa (although even before September 11 the elites were showing a preference for remote, demonstrator free locations). On the other hand, the (arguable) proposition that "poverty is the breeding ground for terrorism" may force the rich countries to respond more generously to injustice and inequality, even out of self-interest.

This makes the work of the international movement for social justice both more complicated and simpler because while there is now a general agreement that the world is divided by deep cleavages of inequality and injustice, there is no agreement of the causes or the solutions. The pro-globalisers - characterised by US trade representative Robert B. Zoellick - see the problem in typical neo-liberal terms, arguing that more trade, more openness and more growth are the "tools against terror" and that liberal democracy is the solution to isolationism and fundamentalism. We must be able to show that simply doing more of the same is not the solution.

While the space for protest and dissent in the US may be getting smaller, massive job losses and the effects of the recession are stirring the social movements and trade unions and in many other parts of the world anger is growing. In the past week, mass street demonstrations against the government's economic policies forced Argentina's president and finance minister to resign. (And while Buenos Aires burns, the IMF is hiding in the corner, washing its hands of the whole affair and insisting in the most unconvincing manner that the whole disastrous economic plan was the idea of former Finance Minister Cavallo, who is neo-liberal to his bootstraps. Several months ago, the IMF congratulated Argentina for having the first genuinely "nationally-owned economic restructuring programme" not doubt seeing the wisdom of distancing itself from an utterly predictable disaster. The experience should send alarm bells ringing in every country with a "nationally-owned" PRSP.)

In Asia, the US bombing of Afghanistan has fuelled latent anti-US sentiments and national governments, faced with poor economic prospects due to the global recession, are looking for new solutions while in Europe, the wave of radicalism unleashed by Genoa continues to grow.

September 11 has been and will be used to justify anything and everything and post September 11; there is a temptation to re-interpret everything as though the world changed utterly in those few minutes. This is true, but only partly so and perhaps only to the extent that we allow it to be true. For the vast majority of people, the world kept spinning after September 11 and their future looks as grim now as it did then.

Part I of this issue of Focus on Trade, Walden Bello explores the wide-ranging implications of the war on Afghanistan. The other places visited in this issue rarely make the headlines: Nic Maclellan writes about the impact of structural adjustment in the Pacific, Lindsey Collen pleads for the US military base of Diego Garcia to be returned to its people, Supara Janchitfah describes the "weapons" of the poor farmers of Thailand and Joo-Yeon Jeong and Seung-Min Choi show how the women of Korea bear the brunt of the wrenching post-crisis economic restructuring.

Part II (in a separate email) contains articles by Walden Bello, Raj Patel, Aziz Choudry and Victor Menotti on what happened in Doha, why it happened and how we should respond.

Finally, we would like to wish all our comrades, colleagues, friends and readers every good wish for the coming year.

FOCUS ON TRADE