The Battle in Seattle Reconvenes in a New York Ballroom

It wasn't quite as contentious or freewheeling as the anti-WTO street protests last December, but the panel convened at the sixth annual State of the World Forum on Wednesday to probe the "Lessons of Seattle" proved to be an especially lively and informative, even raucous 90-minute dialogue.

The session began with the recitation of a traditional Native American verse (translated by Seattle-area poet David Wagoner) about what to do when lost in the forest: "Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost…. The forest knows where you are. You must let it find you." It was an admonition for the audience and panelists to be reflective and deliberate before losing themselves in argument.

The panel brought together representatives from business, global finance organizations, academia, the press and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and in brief opening statements, the breadth of disagreement about Seattle became clear. For Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, the lesson of Seattle was that citizens of the world are not content to let the course of globalization be set by international financial institutions. The World Trade Organization had brought the protests on themselves by subjugating cultural, environmental, health and labor issues to its trade agenda, in violation of the will of the people.

Thomas d'Aquino, CEO of the Business Council on National Issues, an association of leading Canadian corporations, disagreed strenuously. The Seattle protests, in his view, were a misguided and counter-productive exercise. The proper course for critics of the WTO would have been to engage with the institution and work to improve it. If the NGOs that organized the protests, and the 50,000 people who actually took to the streets, had a genuine interest in protecting their rights, aiding the developing world and making global trade rules more equitable, he said, they should have relied on the democratic process and petitioned their elected officials to address their concerns. Direct action aimed at shutting the meetings down in Seattle, Mr. d'Aquino said, was simply divisive, or worse, an arrogant display of hardened positions and a refusal to compromise.

Mats Karlsson, Vice President for External Relations at the World Bank, echoed those sentiments, lamenting that while "fear of globalization is legitimate…. People need to respect the facts and respect each other." Confrontation is not a constructive solution, he said.

At bottom, perhaps everyone in the room agreed that WTO trade rules needed to be improved—though some would disagree over precisely to what degree. The central disagreement was a familiar conundrum: whether to work for change from inside the system or to force change from without. Lori Wallach argued that had the WTO not proceeded in an opaque and exclusionary manner, demonstrations wouldn't have been necessary. "The reason people ended up banging on the walls was because years of politely knocking at the door was met with a slap in the face."

One audience member, a Member of Parliament from South Africa, pointed out that representative government is not always sufficiently representative. Sometimes direct action is required to gain attention for a movement and redirect the agenda.

Thomas d'Aquino argued that the demonstrators didn't effectively move the WTO's agenda, but placed themselves outside of the mainstream of discourse.

Guy de Janquieres, who covers global trade for the Financial Times, observed that the trouble could be traced to the failure of governments to make their case to their citizens about global trade. In decades past, international trade policies were negotiated, he said, like sex: "in private and between consenting adults." But since the end of the Cold War, such secrecy is no longer so easily rationalized and talk of international trade policy—again, like sex—has come out from behind closed doors into the headlines and on TV. Citizens want input in the discussion, but governments simply aren't used to asking for it.

Coming full circle to the poetic beginnings of the discussion, Wallach and d'Aquino traded rhymed closing statements. The bottom line lesson of Seattle, Wallach said, is that the rules regulating global trade must be fixed or nixed. To that end, Global Trade Watch is pushing a "Shrink or Sink" campaign that aims to seriously curtail (shrink) the WTO's regulatory jurisdiction or put it out of business (sink). Mr. d'Aquino, for his part, said that while he may agree with some of Wallach's aims, such "my way or the highway" positions are anti-democratic and won't accomplish anything.

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