Grade school is where you learn the rules. You’re told there is one set of rules and they apply to everyone equally. Immediately thereafter, you’re shown the rules don’t apply to everyone equally. Few rules applied to some students, whose families are prominent in the community or whose elder siblings were star pupils. Other students come from poor families or their elder siblings were delinquents. There were extra rules for those students. Unfair application of the rules – and the refusal of school authorities to admit this – is a constant complaint among schoolchildren. Adults rarely have the heart to tell them it only gets worse.
The inequitable application of rules was brought to mind by Mohamed ElBaradei’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Mr. ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is charged with enforcing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. He spoke of ensuring that Iran, which has no nuclear weapons, does not develop weapons while it develops nuclear energy. Iran is not from a prominent world family; it must obey all rules or suffer consequences. Possibly, Iran will obey all rules and still suffer consequences. Mr. ElBaradei also spoke of nuclear nations (the U.S. and Russia) that are supposed to reduce their stockpile of atomic weapons, but have not and of “non-nuclear nations” like Pakistan and India that somehow have acquired nuclear weapons. The rules are not enforced in regard to these countries (nor Israel, for that matter), because they either are the United States or their actions were approved – or at least ignored – by the U.S. Pakistan went so far as to sell nuclear technology to other nations, perhaps Iran, certainly North Korea. No punishment has been dealt to Pakistan; its family is connected to the U.S.
In Hong Kong this week, ministerial-level representatives from many nations are debating new rules for world trade. Poor nations are threatening to derail negotiations (the so-called Doha Round) because the rules have never been fairly applied to the U.S. and European Union. Agriculture subsidies by the U.S. and EU make it impossible for farmers in poor nations to compete and cheap U.S.-EU products are dumped in those nations, destroying local agriculture.
As we move beyond the concept of “nation state” this argument is becoming moot. Control of globalization by multinational corporations has reached the point that if the U.S. and EU are allowed to continue subsidies, these corporations will collect most of them. If the poor nations prevail and the subsidies disappear, the offshore operations of the same corporations will take over the market.
Trade, and the rules of trade, are the world’s new rules. Mr. ElBaradei’s United Nations never lived up to the goal of world forum – too even-handed about rules. What little influence the UN had is now usurped by the World Trade Organization, which is dominated by the nations and corporations to which the rules do not apply.
When the American public was first sold the idea of “free trade,” with the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1989, we were told care would be taken to ensure the environment and workers’ rights are protected.
On the environmental front, we have the dismal sight of the global warming meeting in Montreal, where the U.S., the current superpower, refuses to act to avert planetary disaster. You can bet China, the next superpower, won’t be bound by rules, either.
On the workers’ front we have an estimated 25,000-50,000 slaves in Brazil alone. These slaves produce timber, pig iron, beef and soybeans, which are traded internationally. Free trade. The multinational corporations that deal in these commodities say they can’t know about or be held responsible for everything that happens everywhere, but if one of those slaves swiped a corporate nickel deep in the Amazon jungle, you know there’d be a troop of lawyers on him in a minute.
The Rules
Grade school is where you learn the rules. You’re told there is one set of rules and they apply to everyone equally. Immediately thereafter, you’re shown the rules don’t apply to everyone equally. Few rules applied to some students, whose families are prominent in the community or whose elder siblings were star pupils. Other students come from poor families or their elder siblings were delinquents. There were extra rules for those students. Unfair application of the rules – and the refusal of school authorities to admit this – is a constant complaint among schoolchildren. Adults rarely have the heart to tell them it only gets worse.
The inequitable application of rules was brought to mind by Mohamed ElBaradei’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Mr. ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is charged with enforcing the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. He spoke of ensuring that Iran, which has no nuclear weapons, does not develop weapons while it develops nuclear energy. Iran is not from a prominent world family; it must obey all rules or suffer consequences. Possibly, Iran will obey all rules and still suffer consequences. Mr. ElBaradei also spoke of nuclear nations (the U.S. and Russia) that are supposed to reduce their stockpile of atomic weapons, but have not and of “non-nuclear nations” like Pakistan and India that somehow have acquired nuclear weapons. The rules are not enforced in regard to these countries (nor Israel, for that matter), because they either are the United States or their actions were approved – or at least ignored – by the U.S. Pakistan went so far as to sell nuclear technology to other nations, perhaps Iran, certainly North Korea. No punishment has been dealt to Pakistan; its family is connected to the U.S.
In Hong Kong this week, ministerial-level representatives from many nations are debating new rules for world trade. Poor nations are threatening to derail negotiations (the so-called Doha Round) because the rules have never been fairly applied to the U.S. and European Union. Agriculture subsidies by the U.S. and EU make it impossible for farmers in poor nations to compete and cheap U.S.-EU products are dumped in those nations, destroying local agriculture.
As we move beyond the concept of “nation state” this argument is becoming moot. Control of globalization by multinational corporations has reached the point that if the U.S. and EU are allowed to continue subsidies, these corporations will collect most of them. If the poor nations prevail and the subsidies disappear, the offshore operations of the same corporations will take over the market.
Trade, and the rules of trade, are the world’s new rules. Mr. ElBaradei’s United Nations never lived up to the goal of world forum – too even-handed about rules. What little influence the UN had is now usurped by the World Trade Organization, which is dominated by the nations and corporations to which the rules do not apply.
When the American public was first sold the idea of “free trade,” with the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement in 1989, we were told care would be taken to ensure the environment and workers’ rights are protected.
On the environmental front, we have the dismal sight of the global warming meeting in Montreal, where the U.S., the current superpower, refuses to act to avert planetary disaster. You can bet China, the next superpower, won’t be bound by rules, either.
On the workers’ front we have an estimated 25,000-50,000 slaves in Brazil alone. These slaves produce timber, pig iron, beef and soybeans, which are traded internationally. Free trade. The multinational corporations that deal in these commodities say they can’t know about or be held responsible for everything that happens everywhere, but if one of those slaves swiped a corporate nickel deep in the Amazon jungle, you know there’d be a troop of lawyers on him in a minute.
© Mark Floegel, 2005