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Archive for November, 2009

Bainbridge Island police say they are looking for a man who they said threatened to kill a 39-year-old and her 12-year-old son early Sunday morning.

Most of the attention around the 10th anniversary of the World Trade Organization’s fateful meeting in Seattle is focusing on what happened on the streets — the protests, the tear gas, the flash-bangs, the significance of the Battle in Seattle.

The protests played a role, for sure, but the deeper significance of the meeting happened behind the police lines, in the meeting halls and guarded conversations in the hallways by the delegates to the ministerial conference. That’s where I was, covering the WTO from the inside, and it is where, perhaps, the post-war structures of the economy ended, setting the stage for a troubled decade to follow, culminating in the Great Recession.

Too broad a brush? Too sweeping a generalization? Perhaps, but the impact of the meeting in Seattle can still be felt around the world.

President Obama’s recent trip to Asia is a good example. Reports from the APEC Ministerial Meeting said the president had to accept a compromise on a climate change proposal. That’s because of resistance from developing economies like India, Russia, and China. Seattle was the first time that developing countries banded together to oppose the developed economies that had dominated the WTO meetings since the end of World War II.

Obama visited China after the APEC meeting — some said much like a borrower meeting his largest banker. China has purchased more than $1 trillion in U.S. debt, which, even at current low rates, generates $10 billion to $20 billion a year in interest payments to China — enough to pay for both the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the 520 Bridge, including overruns.

On that fateful Saturday night 10 years ago when the ministerial was heading toward its final collapse I heard several times that the U.S., European Union, Japan, Canada, and Australia, or some combination, likely would get together and come up with a compromise that would rescue the meeting at the last moment. That never happened. Instead, toward midnight, Mike Moore, an affable Australian who was director-general of the WTO, and Charlene Barshefsky, the U.S. trade representative, finally called a meeting in the main ballroom at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center to announce that efforts to create some sort of compromise had collapsed. The differences were just too great for all 135 countries to agree on a new round of negotiations.

It was a blow for Seattle, the Clinton Administration, world trade, and the economies of the world. Seattle leaders who worked to bring the meeting to the city had hoped for the “Seattle Round” of negotiations to begin, forever planting Seattle in the lexicon of world trade. There had been the Tokyo Round, the Uruguay Round, so why not the Seattle Round? Instead it is remembered for the Battle in Seattle.

President Clinton had hoped the meeting would be a fitting triumph for his administration on trade. Nope. Rather, the WTO was in chaos, and instead of a round of important talks on intellectual property, labor standards, and e-commerce, countries were bitterly blaming each other for the outcome.

I don’t mean to dismiss the impact of what happened in the streets of Seattle that dramatic week. But the collapse of the meeting had more to do with internal problems in the organization than with street protests. Reports from the meeting — when delegates of the world trade group got back to the Geneva headquarters after the collapse of the ministerial in Seattle — said member countries were snapping at each other like vicious raptors. Countries were threatening each other over trade issues. Ambassadors were shouting at each other in the hallways. “Poisonous” was the word used by one observer who was there.

The organization itself was in danger of becoming the dinosaur of globalization, disappearing with only vague theories to explain its sudden demise. Not all agree, of course.

Keith Rockwell, the WTO’s chief spokesman, has a much different view of the impact of Seattle. Rockwell has been at the WTO for more than 20 years, a veteran at trying to put the best face on often difficult and complicated issues. Rockwell disagrees about the significance of events in Seattle, pointing out several other WTO meetings that failed to accomplish goals and the fact that there were violent protests in Geneva 18 months before Seattle. He said the Seattle meeting, taking place in the U.S., attracted a great deal more media.

Rockwell said the Seattle meeting was designed to launch a round, a new series of negotiations, “and people were just not ready to do that. I would include the United States in the group that was not ready to launch the round, by the way. It was a very, very poorly organized event. We did not do a good job of preparing the work for the conference.”

Rockwell recalled that the negotiating text was a nightmare of “brackets,” or segments the WTO members did not agree on and needed to be resolved before a round could start. Another factor was that the WTO was leaderless for months leading up to the Seattle meeting; the members could not agree on a new director-general. “For four crucial months, we had no DG and no deputy directors-general. Moreover, the selection process was so ugly that it turned the whole atmosphere here in Geneva into one which was hostile and unproductive,” Rockwell said.

He was diplomatic about Seattle itself. “It’s a wonderful city, full of great people,” Rockwell said, “but I think all of those involved would agree that things could have been done better.”

The protests themselves? Leaving aside those who took part in violent protests, he had kind words for the peaceful protest, calling it a “fundamental democratic right and all of us should extend the highest respect to those who object to any particular set of policies. Amidst the chaotic scenes, there were also some wonderful moments and some great kids in the streets. They made themselves heard and that was a good thing.”

For Rockwell, the simple fact is “that our meeting would have failed wherever it had been held, because we were inadequately prepared and the meeting itself was badly run.”

The next Ministerial Conference was held two years later in Doha, Qatar, with the negotiations named the Doha Round. One reason the round was launched in Doha was that the WTO learned from its experience in Seattle the need to involve developing countries far more. “It was the developing countries which drove the agenda in Doha and the result was the Doha Development Agenda — the first time an international economic negotiation was launched with development at its core,” said Rockwell.

Even 10 years on, the events of the week still stick with me.

Walking downtown that first day, when the demonstrators were trying to keep people from getting to the meeting areas, I was full of hope. After covering Vietnam-era protests, I thought things seemed to be controlled. Strong protests, but abiding by police guidelines.

I knew of a kind of back door at the Sheraton so I was able to slip behind the lines of protesters without incident. My assignment that first morning was to cover the big convening ceremony at the Paramount Theater. Strange times as I sat in the mostly vacant theater for hours, watching as the director-general Moore paced around the stage, talked on the phone and wondered what was happening. Toward noon, with my deadline pressing, they finally gave up on holding the meeting. The Seattle Times was still an afternoon newspaper at that time and there was a chance to get a report into the “Night Sports Final.” That day was a black eye for the WTO, and perhaps prescient, by forcing disappointed WTO officials to scrap plans for then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, to address an opening session of the trade meeting at the Paramount. Most of the top officials were trapped at the Westin, unable to move to the Paramount.

After a while, police just cordoned off a large swath of downtown. It was strange to walk from the Convention Center to the Times building with no people, no cars, so quiet. Yet a few blocks away the demonstrators and police remained locked in a kind of ritual dance until the bitter end.

There were other events that continue to float up into my memory now and then as I think about those days.

About mid-week, Clinton was in town for a lavish lunch at the Four Seasons Olympic Spanish Ballroom. Press, especially we local reporters, were confined to a small balcony above the event unfolding below. A good perch to watch, as it turned out.

A widely reported event at the time was a television technician holding a white napkin in front of the podium for a light check for the bank of television cameras covering the event. When Clinton spoke, he used his well-known knack of taking something happening at the time and turning it into a humorous and effective comment. Clinton related that Moore had said during lunch the white napkin might be the new flag of the WTO. Laughter, and laughter on an international scale, as the translation of Clinton’s comment made it through the international audience. The only problem was that Moore may have been right — the white flag of surrender may truly have become the new “flag” of the WTO.

In his comments, Clinton himself seemed to realize something new was happening. “For 50 years, trade decisions were largely the province of trade ministers, heads of government, and business interests,” he said. “But now, what all those people in the street tell us is that they would also like to be heard. And they’re not so sure that this deal is working for them.”

So, what to make of all this? Several thoughts.

In the late 1990s, as the WTO meeting was coming together, Asia suffered a severe financial crisis. Currencies in Asian countries plummeted and the “tiger” economies began to stall. I was in Taejon, Seattle’s sister city in South Korea, in the winter of 1998. It was bitterly cold and the “city hall” was largely unheated except for offices and meeting rooms. There were stories of Korean families contributing family gold and jewelry to help the cause.

That was the “great recession” for Asia. Countries suffered substantial declines in their economies as their currency suffered. I checked into a hotel in Bangkok on that trip and had a huge suite in a mostly empty hotel for the equivalent of about $90 a night. So the world was primed for change. China, admitted to the WTO after some controversy at the Seattle meeting, survived the ravages of the Asian financial crisis because it pegged its currency to the dollar. Asian economies came to the WTO meeting that year chastened by the financial crisis. Trade worked, but they would need to spend more time on their domestic economies if they were to survive.

That’s what has happened. Asia today is the leader of the world in pulling out of this great recession. Kia, a Korean car barely known in 1999, now is a respected brand, mostly because Korea developed the car for domestic consumption. China is on the verge of a similar push, putting all kinds of pressure on the U.S. auto industry.

What is perhaps most striking to me is the fact that the world’s oldest economic force, agriculture, remains one today. Seattle fell apart because of differences on agriculture. The Doha Round is stalemated because of differences on agriculture.

One of my last assignments with The Times took me to Eastern Washington and a family farm near Palouse, Whitman County. Their farm may have been miles from anywhere, but it did not mean they were not connected. Most wheat grown in Washington is exported, so the family paid close attention to news about the buying intentions of Pakistan and Egypt. Agriculture and trade are often seen as cold, isolated subjects with little humanity to them. That’s not fair. The people who are involved care deeply about their mission, whether it’s wheat from the Palouse or apples from Wenatchee.

In 1995, I rode a Tokyo subway line to its end and went to the crimson-colored pillars supporting the roof of Asakusa, a Shinto temple in the old part of Tokyo. I was with Bill Bryant, then a trade consultant who had worked for years to open the Japanese market to U.S.-grown apples. Bryant, now a Seattle Port Commissioner, was returning a daruma to the temple it came from. Darumas are papier-mache faces — traditional Japanese symbols of persistence and transition — and Byrant was marking the completion of negotiations that opened the market to Washington-grown apples.

At the beginning of a project, an eye is painted on the daruma; when the project is completed, the other eye is painted on. I remember that day well because it said so much about the people who engage in trade.

But now I wonder about the WTO and the fact that it is still arguing about agriculture. The Seattle Round died that 1999 Saturday night because there was no agreement on agriculture. That how we grow food — or rather how our governments support the industry that grows it — ended discussions on other important issues like e-commerce and intellectual property.

Protestors who became the Battle in Seattle originally gathered because they wanted the WTO to be more open in trade cases brought by one country against another, especially about the environment and labor standards. That was lost in the flash-bangs in the streets.

The WTO is still relevant — talk to Boeing, Amazon, Microsoft, orchardists, and growers of wheat or timothy hay. A WTO ruling against Airbus is now part of the lobbying for the new Air Force tanker contract that Boeing desperately wants.

Rockwell, the WTO spokesman, said the WTO remains important because agreement can only be reached through a consensus of all 153 WTO member governments. “The larger number of countries obviously makes things more complicated but it also makes any outcome we achieve more credible and more legitimate,” Rockwell said. “I would argue, too, that our organization more accurately reflects the geopolitical reality of today given the huge role that Brazil, India, South Africa, Egypt, Indonesia, Chile, and others play in this organization.”

Nonetheless, the pace seems slow and out of step with today’s world. The current Director-General Pascal Lamy, noted in a recent talk that the huge particle accelerator near WTO headquarters in Geneva was working again. “In the interest of coherence I guess the WTO should now follow suit and seriously move to a higher speed,” he said.

That’s unlikely. Apparently there isn’t an “app” for that.

President Obama’s address Tuesday at West Point is meant to reassure his military commanders, NATO countries with forces in Afghanistan, the Congress, and the American public. He is expected to call for dispatch of 30,000-40,000 additional U.S. forces to Afghanistan, to emphasize the need for the Afghan government to root out corruption, and to point to various benchmarks by which progress will be measured prior to an eventual American pullout.

The speech follows a several-months-long internal review of options during which leaks and bureaucratic backbiting poisoned the climate for the review. Vice President Joe Biden let it be known that he favored a minimal strategy, focused on attacking Al Qaida and Taliban forces (in both Afghanistan and Pakistan) by drone and special-operations
forces. Military commanders stressed their desire for adequate forces and equipment to maintain security in population centers while also taking the offensive against the enemy in the countryside.

Was the review process a good idea and should it have taken this long?

Such reviews are routine at the outset of incoming administrations, typically to arrive at considered reassessments of policy following the exit of the prior administration. I have participated in some of them. Documents are prepared, usually by National Security Council staff, setting forth the situation to be addressed, outlining the views of affected departments and agencies, and presenting anywhere from two to a half-dozen options for consideration. Each option presented is accompanied by an analysis of its likely pluses and minuses.

It is hard to believe that such a considered assessment was made at the outset of the George W. Bush presidency regarding Iraq. Instead, it appears that Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Under Secretary Wolfowitz, and CIA Director Tenet presented Bush with what they said was “slam-dunk” evidence (Tenet’s famous phrase) that Saddam Hussein was continuing chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs that existed prior to his earlier expulsion of United Nations weapons inspectors. (Fact was, Saddam had stopped the programs although he wanted the outside world to think they continued, lest he be judged a paper tiger). Bush, inexperienced in foreign-policy issues, took their word and adopted their proposed policy.

Obama, also inexperienced in foreign affairs, has taken greater care with his reassessment of Afghanistan policy. He has taken too long with it, however. All the known elements of the reassessment were quite apparent when it began. The inescapable impression is that he took so long because he found all the options unsatisfying — and the resulting domestic political side effects equally unattractive.

The Seattle Times headlined its Sunday editorial, “Tell Us, Mr. President, how to exit Afghanistan.” That was one way to put it. Another way would have been to ask, “What policy in Afghanistan will best protect American security?”

Afghanistan, in many ways, poses a more difficult challenge than either Iraq or Vietnam. When we withdrew from Vietnam, there was a Hanoi regime prepared to take over. By the time we exit Iraq, a stable regime is expected to have taken hold there (although that issue remains in doubt). Afghanistan is a country without a tradition of centralized government. It has been run traditionally by what amount to tribes and regional war lords. Its economy is based in large part on the growing and trafficking of narcotics. Great Britain and the former Soviet Union both spent lives and money, over a continuing period, before giving up on their ventures there, deciding the place was more trouble than it was worth.

Our interest in Afghanistan is not to dominate the country. Nor should it be to try to establish Des Moines in Kabul. Unless it truly is important to our national interests, it should not be the defeat and/or destruction of the Taliban. Rather, it is to deny Afghan border areas as a safe haven to Al Qaida and Taliban-related elements trying to take over nuclear-armed Pakistan. Afghanistan, of and by itself, is not important to us. A reassertion of Taliban domination there would be tragic for the country’s women and young people, in particular. But, if Taliban influence were limited to Afghanistan, no American president would be giving nationwide speeches calling for greater American sacrifice there.

Seen in that light, debates about Afghan “reform” and “cleanup of corruption” are irrelevant. A large number of the world’s countries, including some important to us, are run by corrupt rascals. Also unrealistic are discussions of securing all population centers while simultaneously waging offensives against the Taliban. That would take hundreds of thousands of troops, many billions of dollars, and years to achieve. It would take just as long to do “nation building,” village by village, while winning hearts and minds of the villagers. We pursued such a well-meant course in Vietnam with known results.

On the other hand, we cannot just clear out in face of the present imminent threat to Pakistan, which really matters. Our allies also would clear out.

The policy in Afghanistan most likely to serve American security would be one which continued aggressive actions against Al Qaida and Taliban in Pakistan and in Afghan border areas while, at the same time, moving toward realistic accommodation with those with power on the ground in Afghanistan. Some of our NATO allies there already have made such an accommodation, paying cash to the Taliban to leave them alone in their areas of operation. Such a strategy would need to be accompanied by a continuing presence of American and allied forces — but not indefinitely and not until after the primary threat in Pakistan was thought to be manageable.

As for the domestic politics: Obama already has his hands full with the financial/economic crises and the battle in the Congress and country over a health-system makeover. He also faces federal deficits of more than $1 trillion annually over the next several years. Survey data show a sharply divided electorate. On health care and deficit spending, for instance, Obama is opposed by most Republicans and a growing number of independents. On Afghanistan, he is opposed by most Democrats and a growing number of independents.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week suggested the Afghan commitment could only be sustained by a new “war tax.” (This was an unsubtle warning to Obama, who clearly would not want to sponsor a war tax in the present economic climate.) Up until now, Obama has governed largely through Democratic majorities in Senate and House. Republicans have notably been uninvolved — both left out of the policymaking process and deciding to withdraw from it. But a continuing commitment in Afghanistan can only be undertaken with genuine bipartisan support. As a practical matter, Obama cannot do it any other way; not enough Democrats support the commitment to sustain it.

Through his presidential campaign, and first year in office, Obama typically has used speechmaking as a means of driving his agenda forward. But, on a war and peace issue such as Afghanistan, speechmaking alone won’t do it. There must be a considered policy that a majority of Americans will agree is needed to protect the country.

Will Obama’s speech outline such a policy? At this moment, it seems unlikely. He is more likely to emulate earlier presidents, in similar situations, who took split-the-difference steps to postpone until later the ultimate and politically risky final policy decisions. On the other hand, if he steps up and brings it off, his stature can be enhanced after an uneven first year in office.

Regarding global warming, Democrats claim Republicans are in denial while Republicans counter that Democrats are in a state of panic. Why are “denial” and “panic” derogatory terms? I find panic and denial indispensable. In fact, my reaction to anything is either panic or denial. These are all I need.

Denial is underrated. Wikipedia explains: “Denial is a concept introduced by Sigmund Freud. A person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it. Instead of dealing with it, they insist that it is not true despite what might be overwhelming evidence.”

The author of the above probably has a collapsing third marriage, a son in jail, a bulimic daughter, and five stepchildren, all of whom are failed acrobats. In contrast, I, a world-class denier, have been married to the same woman for 39 years and saw both my daughters finish high school without getting addicted, arrested, or pregnant. So much for honestly facing and dealing with problems.

Recall all your worries about things that never occurred. Denial would have served you better. Denial allows me to blissfully ignore my own failures, the disapproval of others, and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Panic is also underrated. I was once in an apartment that caught on fire. “Don’t panic,” I counseled myself. I did not panic, but the fire kept raging. I then realized that not panicking was not a solution. Panic is simply the absence of denial. Panic is the inescapable result of seeing the world as it is. There are rare occasions when panic is preferred over denial, for example, when dealing with the police, the IRS, or Mormon missionaries.

When not divorcing their spouses or bailing their sons out of jail, psychological counselors instruct their clients to reject immature, emotional reactions and adopt mature, reasoned, and empathetic positions. Instead, they should be teaching how to employ panic and denial. Consider a few examples:

Your spouse is not speaking to you:

• Immature Reaction: I did nothing wrong. The hell with him/her.
• Mature Reaction: He/She has been under a lot of pressure. I must be more sensitive, considerate, and caring.
• Proper Reaction (denial): Thank God I’m single. The immature reaction will aggravate the tension but so will the mature, “After what she did, she is now pretending to be a saint.” Denial allows everyone to calm down.

You are traveling in Europe and the Euro is now worth $1.50:

• Immature Reaction: Spend, but be furious at constantly getting ripped off.
• Mature Reaction: Eat at cheap restaurants, stay at cheap hotels, and have a lousy trip.
• Proper Reaction (denial): Pretend that one Euro equals one dollar and have an enjoyable trip. You can later panic when you receive your AMEX bill.

You read that Iran and North Korea are developing nuclear weapons:

• Immature Reaction: Nuke ‘em.
• Mature Reaction: Negotiate.
• Proper Reaction (denial): Iran and North Korea no longer exist. They changed their names to Martinique and Barbados. Perhaps I will visit this winter. Since your reaction makes not a jot of difference, why not have happy thoughts and spend February in “Martinique”?

You are at a stop sign. The car waiting ahead of you displays a Sunset Club sticker:

• Immature reaction: Blast your horn and scream, “Move it, you old biddy.”
• Mature Reaction: Calmly wait until there is no traffic in sight. She will eventually cross the intersection.
• Recommended Reaction (panic): Throw your car into reverse and get away as fast as you can. As previously stated, there is a time for panic. Absent panic, you could be waiting for three days.

UPDATE: Reported Clemmons sightings in the University District and Beacon Hill have turned up nothing. Details after the jump.

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