Who Invited You?

A spectre is hanging over New York City this week, the spectre of Seattle. The collapse of the World Trade Organization's meeting in that city last December after massive public protests is a potent symbol of international unease with the existing system of global finance and trade. Those protests startled the world into recognizing the depth of anxiety among sovereign states and citizens over a globalization process increasingly dominated by the business and financial community.

But the WTO—which before December to most Americans might well have conjured a gasoline additive—is only part of the picture. The extraordinary pace at which the economies of the world have grown evermore intertwined has had ripple effects into the lives of virtually everyone on earth. The WTO was created five years ago as the locus of power was shifting from nation-states to transnational corporations operating across national frontiers. The notion of a "national" product is a quaint concept in an era when manufacturing of everything from jet airplanes to t-shirts has become a matter of international subcontracting—making it ever more difficult for national authorities to oversee the means or conditions of production.

An even more important shift has occurred in the world of finance, in which money ricochets from one corner of the world to another in seconds, 24 hours a day: The amount of money traded and exchanged in international currency markets, according to the historian Paul Kennedy in his book, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century, now far exceeds the amount of manufactured goods traded between nations.

The heads of state who will be attending the sixth annual State of the World Forum this week, traveling six blocks from the UN's Millennium Conference across town, are finding themselves in a tightly circumscribed arena for action in their own countries.

"Recent history," in the words of William Greider, noted political analyst and author of a critique of the currently constituted form of globalized economics, One World, Ready or Not, "is littered with examples of leaders who paid the painful price of putting domestic political priorities over the priorities of international finance capital."

At the same time, the dramatic changes unleashed 11 years ago by former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev—co-chair of this Forum—have continued to reverberate through the system of relationships among nation-states. The transformation of the former Soviet bloc has led in directions that neither Gorbachev nor anyone else may have anticipated, and leaves us with a far more complex mosaic of power than ever before. A political scientist who graduated from his or her studies in 1988 would have been in a most unfortunate position, with the bipolar system of a decade ago replaced by the multi-polar system of today. In the process, the door has opened to entirely new vistas of possibility, as well as new axes of power.

New regional powers and associated alliances are emerging: The European Union has begun to assert its influence on human rights and economic development across the globe, Brazil emerges as a unifying power center in Latin America, a liberated South Africa—and more recently Nigeria—serve as peacemakers, economic engines and vital sources of democratic inspiration to the rest of Africa. Fissures have also become clear as the developing countries of the G-77 demand more equitable terms of trade.

Accompanying these shifts in power has been the rising of a parallel social ecology comprised of citizens organizations, NGOs, and university-based institutions. In many ways, these key elements of civil society are complementing and supplanting the traditional responsibilities of governing, peacekeeping, conflict resolution, humanitarian work, and running social programs for the poor.

The State of the World Forum has as one of its central themes the insistence that it is not enough for political or financial leaders to decide such questions, but that citizens—the frontlines of civic society—deserve a place at the table too.

The formal structures of the world are not yet prepared for this profound shift. "International institutions," says Jim Garrison, president of the State of the World Forum, "were designed in an earlier era to represent the interests of the nation-state. But we are living in a time when the nation-state is diminishing as a result of globalization."

"Who do you represent?" was the essence of the WTO's response to the demonstrators on the streets of Seattle. The Forum is attempting in many ways to answer that question, as heads of state, business leaders, activists, academics, scientists and members of indigenous communities—representing, in sum, hundreds of millions of people—are asserting that they have a voice in determining the scope and nature of the globalizing forces that are transforming our world. The Forum draws upon an existing and far-ranging network of respected civil-society organizations—from indigenous communities to labor unions, environmentalists and academics, scientists, spiritualists, businesspeople and financiers—that have long been pushing for more equitable, democratic and humane organizing principles to inform economic decisions.

While the Seattle protests established the WTO as a symbol of globalization's threat, they also demonstrated how intertwined our fates have become. Economic integration has created new possibilities for leveraging more humane values across national borders. Certain human rights are now firmly established as international goals; elections are monitored by international observers—with trade frequently used as a carrot to advance these social goals. Just as environmental degradation respects no boundaries, struggles for ecologically sound, sustainable development are no longer restrained by those boundaries. The free flow of the Danube River is a matter of concern to all Central European governments; the condition of wetlands and tidal pools along the Pacific of direct interest to Mexico, the United States and Canada; the Amazon jungle a matter of concern to the globe. Transnational environmental movements have arisen over the past decade; and one of the most cutting-edge discussions now underway in international circles and at this Forum is the establishment of an international body to create and enforce environmental and labor standards—a far more democratic and transparent environmental equivalent of the WTO.

In Mexico, where I was living during the Seattle demonstrations, I watched as videotapes of those speeches and street actions were played in a tiny coffeehouse in the city of Cuernavaca, then to ever larger venues where finally thousands of people showed their appreciation for the demonstrators. News that someone was standing up to what had been a faceless, distant force, a force which many Mexicans linked to the policies promoted by international financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF, gave inspiration and fuel to a budding citizens movement demanding greater input into the decisions—both domestic and international—affecting their lives.

Multiplied by millions across the planet, that is the essential legacy of Seattle, and is the spectre that now hangs over everyone—including the United Nations Millennium Summit—considering how to shape the forces of globalization.

copyright © 2000 State of the World, Inc.