Commentary
Globalization should be weapon in war on terrorism
By Tom Plate
There's more than one way to attack terrorism. You can try to bomb it to death, or you can try to reduce the pool of its many sympathizers by lifting them out of poverty. It's difficult to say with certainty which method is more effective over the long run; it's easy to say which is more humane.
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For this and other reasons, we need to be more sensitive about the intimate relationship between the world economy and world security. When a Bush official pushing "fast-track" negotiating authority for the president linked trade liberalization to the anti-terrorism campaign, Democrats in Congress, reluctant to grant the Executive Branch that power, accused him of wrapping the issue in the anti-terror flag. Was he suggesting, they said, that opposing freer trade and globalization would somehow help the terrorists?
Robert Zoellick is the top U.S. Trade Representative.
Certainly, salesman Robert Zoellick, the top U.S. Trade Representative, which is a Cabinet-level job, was being opportunistic. But what he said emphatically deserved saying. If terrorism is in fact nurtured in poverty's petri dish, then over the long run the economic development of poverty-stricken nations could prove at least as effective for terrorism-containment as military means. Quite properly, President Bush, in an anti-terrorism speech in California last week, included a pitch for "trade enhancement"authority.
Sure, critics complain that the process of globalization, which is accelerated by lowering trade barriers, deepens the rich-poor divide; this vital issue must be addressed. But it is hard to imagine how economically destitute places such as Afghanistan or Palestine can reduce poverty and raise living standards without opening their markets. The correlation between international trade and overall domestic economic development is simply beyond quarrel. By contrast, those that try to subsist outside the larger fabric of the world economy defeat themselves. Take North Korea, which for decades operated according to the philosophy of national self-reliance. However theoretically noble, this has proven a formula for permanent impoverishment.
Market capitalism is the worst possible economic system — except for all the others. It was not for nothing that the terrorists chose to target the twin towers of the World Trade Center among globalization's highest-profile icons. Vigorous, competitive economic development, whether in Malaysia or Manhattan, is the only solution for the North Koreas or Afghanistans or Palestines of the world.
So let's forgive Zoellick for the sin of climbing aboard the anti-terrorism bandwagon. As he put it, he's right: "Congress now needs to send an unmistakable signal to the world that the United States is committed to a global leadership of openness." Giving the President's team more authority to negotiate market-opening and tariff-lowering deals could prove a timely psychological lift, especially with memories still fresh over the WTC horror, new security restrictions being placed on mass transportation and the anthrax threat clouding the mind.
Allowing terrorism to divert U.S. enthusiasm for guided globalization would be real dumb. Right now, every economic step America takes or fails to take could prove crucial; the global economy is not good. Well before Sept. 11, most of Asia — excluding, notably, China — had drooped into recession. For the first time in years, Taiwan is struggling; South Korea's once-vigorous reform program has slowed down along with its economy. Even well-managed Singapore is hurting; so is Hong Kong.
But worse still is recession-plagued Japan, despite Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's popularity and panache.
"Japan is going to tank big time," sadly predicts Nomura Securities' William Overholt, the respected Hong Kong-based analyst. "The key question for the world economy is whether the U.S. can get moving before Japan sinks." And European growth will sag further if America plunges into serious recession.
All eyes are on the United States — and not just because of its Afghan bombing runs. This is not a time of security crisis alone but of economic crisis, too. America needs to demonstrate better leadership in both areas.
"Will the U.S. Congress rise to the challenge of promoting the open-economy model over the closed-economy model which has impoverished the nation-states we associate with terrorism?" asks Zurich Financial Services' David Hale.
Sending the wrong economic signals to the world at this time could, at the end of the day, hurt far more people than those sporadic anthrax attacks. In a bizarre and, of course, unintended way, the protectionists and the terrorists share a common fear of modernity. Both must be resisted.
Tom Plate, a columnist with The Honolulu Advertiser and the South China Morning Post, is a professor at UCLA. He also has a spot on the Web.
