Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 10:14:37 -0500
From: Chuck0 <chuck-AT-tao.ca>
Subject: Salt Lake City is nervous about anarchists


Debacle in Seattle 
Thursday, December 9, 1999
The Salt Lake Tribune

>From every standpoint, the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle
was a fiasco. The talks among  government ministers, which were supposed
to usher in a new round of international trade negotiations, collapsed.
In the streets, a few anarchists  among tens of thousands of peaceful
protesters turned downtown Seattle into a battle zone reminiscent of the
'60s. 

The blame for the failure of the trade talks rests squarely on the
Clinton administration, which completely misread the depth of division
among nations over trade. In retrospect, it is clear that this was not
the time for such a meeting. Going in, there was no international
consensus pushing for a new round of negotiations to further lower
tariffs, subsidies, import quotas and other barriers to trade. Rather,
as one knowledgable observer put it, the only thing that unified most of
the trade ministers in Seattle was a sense of grievance; they all
believe their nations are being treated unfairly by the global trading
system. 

The Clinton team then made matters worse by staking out intransigent
positions on antidumping laws, labor standards, textile quotas and
tariffs on wood products that infuriated just about every other nation
at the talks. By pandering to labor unions and environmentalists in his
public remarks, the president reinforced positions that are
protectionist. 
           
The dark side of this mess is that the misguided protesters opposed to
free trade have been invigorated by what they claim as a victory. The
reality is that these talks would have foundered without the irritant of
the protests, although the disruptions in the streets undoubtedly made
the trade ministers cranky. Substantively, the protests were irrelevant. 

More ominous is the sense of momentum that the protesters will take into
the coming battle in Congress over the U.S. trade agreement with China.
Many of the groups that attacked the WTO in Seattle have set their
sights on a larger prize: the China trade deal. Members of Congress,
frightened by what they saw on their TV sets from Seattle, might be more
willing to give the know-nothings an ear. 

But there is a bright side. If free-traders underestimated their
political opponents before Seattle, they certainly should not now.
Advocates of trade should be working overtime to tap into the public
curiosity about trade and the WTO that was created by the debacle in
Seattle. 

Responsibility for the other failure in the Seattle, the inability to
keep order in the streets, rests with the leadership of the Seattle
police department, which made a series of well-meaning but unfortunate
strategic and tactical blunders. The anarchists, it appears, were better
led than local law enforcement. But at least in the case of the police
department, the man at the top has accepted responsibility for his
mistakes; the chief of police has resigned. 

There is a particular lesson for Salt Lake City in the law-enforcement
failure in Seattle. If anarchists can exploit a meeting of trade
ministers for their purposes, they certainly can do the same with the
Winter Olympics in 2002. Granted, Seattle may be a peculiar case because
the protest organizers demonized the WTO as synonymous with certain
grievances. That kind of synergy may not apply to the Olympics.
Nevertheless, local and federal law enforcement agencies must be
prepared in Salt Lake City in 2002.

-- 
Chuck0

Mid-Atlantic Infoshop
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        - Jens Bjørneboe