“Let’s not go backward, but let’s capitalize on 85% of what was accomplished,” was the appeal from WTO Director Pascal Lamy. But one problem is that there is no further time-period in prospect in which negotiations could be resumed that could reasonably stand a chance of succeeding. This is partly because Lamy’s own term at the head of the WTO is set to expire next year, and meanwhile the current presidential campaign in the US and similar elections scheduled within the EU in 2009 (including federal elections in Germany) can be counted on to choke off any remaining political will in those countries to make the concessions necessary to make the Doha round succeed.

On the other hand, as Le Bussy points out, it’s also not as if the WTO can simply set up another meeting in the near future to call all the trade representatives back to try again, for the nine-days-straight negotiations leading up to the announcement of failure on 29 July produced some heavy bad feelings. The US and India are angry at each other because of the safeguards the latter wanted to keep to allow developing nations to re-erect tariff barriers in agricultural products. (From this account in the NYT, it seems that China joined India on that issue at the eleventh hour and so definitively killed the talks. Maybe George W. Bush can discuss this when he goes to Peking for the Olympic opening ceremony.) But the Chinese were already angry at the Americans, joined in that by the Africans, because of the USA’s refusal to discuss cotton tariffs. And the old Banana War (EU edition) came back from the past to mess up the negotiations: the European Union has run afoul of international trade rules in the past over its inclination to favor banana imports from Latin American countries over others, and this apparently is still unresolved. But then the EU Commissioner for Trade, the UK’s Peter Mandelson, had less-than-complete backing from his political masters, following recent attacks on his negotiating stance from the French government (current EU president).

Regression Is All That’s Left?

Of course, international trade will simply go on, and the WTO will remain the one recognized world forum for resolving trade disputes in anything like a proper judicial manner. But this seeming crashing-out of the Doha round also means that there remain too many tariffs and trade restrictions in place throughout the world. Pure economic trade theory preaches getting rid of your national trade barriers entirely, unilaterally, to gain for country the maximum benefits from trade (namely access to a wider range of goods that your country could not produce itself or could never produce so cheaply). Of course in the real world that means unemployment and bankruptcies and so is a non-starter, so that traditional trade-regime negotiations have involved quid pro quo trade barrier dismantlement between states.

This is done most effectively if it involves the whole world, but now that that approach has gone nowhere the only alternative would seem to be regressing to the way it was generally done prior to World War II: bilateral agreements. Brazil has already announced that it will be seeking those with the world’s major trading blocs. But Brazil can do that: as this recent NYT points out, that country is itself becoming an economic giant. As always, it’s the small and weak among the developing countries that suffer when a multilateral process like the Doha round collapses. In bilateral negotiations they will inevitably hold the weaker hand; and they cannot afford the sort of industry and price subsidies commonly employed in the US and the EU (for agriculture, in particular; but also found elsewhere) to manipulate trade flows their way.

                          

“Fortunately”? Actually, it’s useful to keep in mind the fact that the whole constitutional process is not just a matter of smoothing out the potholes and bumps along the way to a common goal everyone can agree is worth attaining. No, some folks out there just wish the whole thing would be canned, once and for all. Among these is in fact The Economist, which last June supplemented its article on Where to File Europe’s new constitution (subscription required) with a starkly eloquent cover-illustration (at least in its European edition): a filled-to-overflowing trash can. But The Economist is the English-language press, of course; and you rather look mainly to EuroSavant for the foreign-language press (although long-time readers will know that I dip into the British press on occasion).

No problem: There’s plenty of anti-EuroConstitution rhetoric there, too, especially if you want to be lazy (OK, I admit it) and head straight to the tried-and-true anti-Euro talking-shop as the housewife heads out for cuts of meat to her local butcher-shop. I refer here, of course, to Le Monde Diplomatique, the monthly sister publication to the leading French daily Le Monde.

GET READY FOR CONTROVERSY

Le Monde Diplomatique is certainly serious and learned, don’t get me wrong, in the best French tradition – it’s just that the opinions you find there inevitably will tend toward the anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-globalization. But, after all, it’s good to keep tabs on the “other side,” so to speak, meaning those with whose outlook on the world you usually disagree; occasionally they may startle you and actually be right (!), and maybe even convincingly change your own point-of-view in some respect. (Although I’m rather less-interested in political criticism not grounded in what you could call the Western rational, scientific tradition – opinions issued from the Al-Azhar religious university in Cairo, for example, or certainly the insane ravings of Osama bin-Laden types.) Just consider my fatal-flaw weakness in the past for L’Humanité, the usually-entertaining organ of the French Communist Party!

All of this is by way of introduction to Europe, Shuddering on the Edge of the Abyss: A Special Notebook on Europe, a special collection of articles on recent EU history (together with an extensive supplement of “fundamental texts,” mainly the various European Treaties themselves) to be found on Le Monde Diplomatique’s on-line edition. If you want to do some serious research on the EU, and can read French, this is definitely a “must-see.” But the focus today is upon what you could call the “cover article” to the collection, written by LM Diplomatique editor Anne-Cécile Robert – truly an eloquent disquisition on what is wrong with Europe’s current constitutional process that brings up some painful truths. Committed pro-Europeans, if you prefer to remain in your state of blissful illusion, read no further!

THE IMMATURE GROWN-UP

“The European Union is an adult organization that is nonetheless very immature,” Robert writes. It seems incapable of truly discussing its future in any very profound way – like, what “common project” really remains in an EU that is becoming more and more heterogeneous? Instead, it prefers to avoid these hard issues by getting bogged down in questions of petty political detail (like how many votes for each country, exactly, on the Council of Ministers), and also by what Robert calls “escapes to the front” (les fuites en avant), meaning basically going ahead and enlarging membership massively come hell or high water, whether the EU is institutionally ready for such a step or not.

Early in her article, Robert focuses on the EU’s referenda technique for getting subsequent changes to the corpus of European treaties approved, and it does seem reasonable than any impartial observer would conclude that this has serious problems. Robert poses the attitude EU authorities take when presenting issues in referenda thusly: “This new treaty is no good, but we have to adopt it or Europe will not survive.” In the same vein, one can also recall the practice of doing referenda over – cf. in Denmark over the Maastricht Treaty, and more recently in Ireland over the Nice Treaty – until those unruly pupils in the countries concerned finally come up with the “right” answer in their voting. Perplexed by all this insubordination, those at the lofty summit of EU authority look down and conclude “We’ve got to bring the ‘construction of Europe’ closer to its inhabitants,” as if this were all just a matter of a PR strategy gone bad. How about offering an authentic vision instead, Robert responds, a “civilising project that is clearly identifiable and which can distinguish the EU from the shapeless dross of the liberal – and warlike – process of globalization?” Something that could justify all the concessions of their own national sovereignty that European have consented to (at least those of the six original EEC states) over the course of fifty years?

WAITER, IS THAT A HAIR IN MY EURO-SOUP?

Instead, we have this proposed Constitution which, Robert writes, “arrived literally as a hair in the soup.” (Ugh! Is this a French expression with an even profounder meaning than what you get at first reading? Help me out here, French readers!) What she means is that, while the new Constitution was billed as offering an omnibus solution to all of the EU’s current problems (lack of transparency, the “democratic deficit,” etc.), it actually wound up posing more new problems than solving old ones. What’s more, the whole Constitutional process has missed the main point: the national negotiators go on and on over petty details (again, over the voting set-up in the Council of Ministers, to take the leading example) and take as given the values enunciated in the document’s preamble, such as capitalist competition and monetarist control of the common currency. But could it be that it is this “constitutionalization of economic liberalism,” as Robert calls it, is precisely what many object to in the Constitution?

At bottom, citizens are becoming more and more disillusioned with the EU because it seems incapable of addressing, much less solving, the main problems faced today by Western societies: unemployment, social security, the preservation of peace. Indeed, Robert argues, the “economic liberalism and monetarist rules” regime the Constitution seems designed to entrench actually serves to hinder national governments when they do try to address those problems, such as when France and Germany violated the eurozone’s Stability and Growth Pact; in Robert’s eyes, this was actually a good, encouraging development, as is the EU’s increased willingness to take on the US in World Trade Association (WTO) disputes. The former might go some way towards offsetting the EU’s evident weakening will when it comes to protecting its culture and its agricultural products; the latter might do the same for Europe’s failure last year to stand up to what Robert calls “an American empire which has become psychopathic,” as is allegedly evidenced by the War in Iraq, conducted in violation of international law and the classic laws of war.

Against globalization and budgetary and monetary rules to preserve the value of the euro? For protection of European agriculture (read the infamous Common Agricultural Project), violation of the Stability Pact, and laws to “protect” European culture from the outside (mainly, one imagines, from Hollywood movies)? I warned you that you can count on Le Monde Diplomatique to bring you opinion from the other side of the ledger (if not the other side of reality). Still, such points of view are worth considering (and that’s why I offer this one to you), because these accusations that the EU has no vision beyond a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, and that it fails to address the real problems European citizens struggle with today, strike too close to the thinking mind for comfort.

                          

(Of course, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to hit them with this tough new reality just before the Prez was scheduled to give them a call asking them to forgive the Iraqi debt they hold. Josh Marshall feels that there really should be some official in place to coordinate things between Washington’s various diplomatic and security agencies so that embarrassing things like this don’t happen – something perhaps like a “National Security Advisor”?)

Ah, but remember that you are now in EuroSavant territory, my friend, which means that you get to hear from the other side. Are the French gnashing their unhygienic teeth in frustration? Are the Germans crying into their beer? I’ve got time to check out the one (France); stay tuned to this site to see if I also squeeze in the other.

DASHED-OFF DOCUMENT

I think Libération has it best (“Peace Camp” Removed from the Reconstruction of Iraq): “Last spring,” it’s article begins, “the American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, warned that the countries opposing the war in Iraq would suffer ‘consequences.’ The hour for those has rung.” That funeral-bell was chimed in the Pentagon document, signed by Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and made public on the Pentagon’s web-site last Tuesday, which excludes companies from countries which did not support the American war-effort from being primary bidders on 26 contracts to be awarded for work involving the reconstruction of Iraq’s infrastructure, which will collectively total $18.6 billion. Or rather, the document explicitly enumerates the 63 countries which are considered to be eligible; names like France, Germany, Russia, and Canada are off the list, while other economic and technological superpowers like Palau and Tonga (as Libération writer Pascal Riché reminds us) are on it.

Indeed, Riché makes it clear that he finds that document to be bizarrement troussé – “bizarrely dashed-off.” Limiting competition for the contracts this way (as we noted above) is supposed to be “necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States”; it “will encourage the expansion of international cooperation in Iraq and in future efforts.” Riché’s plain-text translation: Those countries who want contracts for their companies have first to put troops on the ground. And about those “future efforts”: when the next war comes, he writes, everyone will know the rules of the game! (“[C]hacun saura à quoi s’en tenir!“)

What Riché finds the most strange about all of this is that it comes right at a time when the Bush administration seemingly was trying to mend fences with potential supporters among other countries. Instead, it has sparked off a wave of outrage; we’ll be surveying other commentary in a little bit, but Libération uniquely managed to dig up the declaration of deputy Canadian prime minister John Manley. President Bush has defended the exclusion policy with the fact that, after all, that money comes from American taxpayers; well, Manley counters that Bush can’t expect to take money for Iraq from Canadian taxpayers (the Canadian government has earmarked 190 million dollars for Iraqi reconstruction – it doesn’t say American or Canadian) with one hand and with the other “exclude Canadians [as primary bidders on these contracts] just because they’re Canadians.”

(A quick couple of notes in addition to that: Le Monde, in an excellent article we’ll deal with more extensively soon, adds the observations of new Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. He cites a figure of $300 million – this time US dollars for sure – that Canada has earmarked for aid to Iraq, as well as the fact that Canada has provided the most Western troops for Afghanistan. “I find it very difficult to comprehend,” is his verdict on the Pentagon’s move. And this clarification: Note that companies from these countries will not be allowed to bid as primary bidders, but will be allowed to work as sub-contractors to those who do win these bids. Josh Marshall explains how this is not so much of a consolation as it may seem.)

THE PLAYERS AND THEIR PARTS

Let’s cut now to a more detailed rundown of the international outrage over this decision in the French press. Hey, what do you know, there’s a good one in Les Échos, the primary French financial/business newspaper. (The brief opera-critic reviews that follow are mine, and not from Les Échos):

- France (cool, waiting for its chance for revenge): We’ll be studying the American decision to determine its legality.
- Canada (shocked – I know, we’ve covered them already): We’re shocked. Guess it’s going to be hard to give any more money for Iraq.
- Germany (self-righteous, with perhaps an overblown picture of its power on the international stage): This decision is not acceptable. We can’t believe the information we’re getting is correct.
- Russia (there’s no way I can believe this guy is really so naïve – this is from foreign affairs minister Igor Ivanov): Countries prepared to participate in Iraq’s reconstruction should be allowed to do so.

MORE INTERNATIONAL LEGAL TROUBLE ON THE WAY?

The French spokesman was not only talking through his hat when he spoke about the American move’s questionable legality. Le Monde (Those Excluded From Iraq Reconstruction Criticize Washington) covers this well. It amounts to another dispute looming at the World Trade Organization. (Darn, and we just resolved one of those – when the WTO ruled American steel import quotas illegal under the international trade regime in November, and the Bush administration backed down. And we’ve got another big one coming up at the very beginning of 2004, over allegations of systematic subsidies for exporting American firms.) France is not dealing with this alone, but has pulled in its friends at the European Commission to study things along this angle as well. You see, an agreement that the US and the EU signed under the rubric of the WTO, namely the Agreement on Public Markets (my translation from the French) doesn’t allow you to discriminate between foreign and domestic companies when it comes to awarding contracts for government work. But then Le Monde notes that State Department spokesman Richard Boucher maintained that the Pentagon’s decision is perfectly in line with WTO regulations; these 26 contracts, which will formally be administered by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, don’t count because the CPA is not subject to such WTO obligations.

A quick switch now to L’Express (Iraqi Reconstruction: Brussels Denounces the American Decision), which reports that, even as it dug up from its files the text of that Agreement on Public Markets for study, the European Union also appealed to the Bush administration to “itself review the compatibility [of the new Pentagon policy] with the [WTO] rules before envisaging any action.” “Right now we don’t really need another quarrel at the WTO,” said European Commission spokesman Reijo Kemppinen. (What sort of a name is that?! It’s Finnish! Yes, they’re part of the EU too, since 1995!) Kempinnen still called the move a “political error,” a “very bad signal coming at the moment when the international community is trying to work in a constructive fashion to make Iraq an open, democratic, transparent, and prosperous country.”

HOPE FOR HELP EXHAUSTED

When it comes to pure commentary on the Pentagon’s move, little can hold a candle to Le Monde’s companion article Washington Dictates Its Way on the Subject of Iraq, although this is more because of the commentary the newspaper gathers here than any that it contributes itself. OK: Washington is taking the risk of new contortions (“crispations“) at the heart of an international community already profoundly divided by this conflict. No problem there. But much more interesting are the comments of Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution, whose judgment it is that the Bush administration did something like this – which “reopened wounds that were barely beginning to close” – for domestic electoral reasons, and because it “never really thought that it would obtain more support on the part of NATO” in Iraq – this even as Colin Powell recently addressed the (NATO) Atlantic Council over getting NATO military assistance in Iraq, and reported that “nobody objected to the idea.” Thomas Carrothers, of the Carnegie Foundation in Washington, agrees that “the administration has lost hope of getting troops from the excluded countries,” and points out in particular the position of Russia in all of this. Russia rightly feels herself pushed out of Iraq to the profit of the Americans, a sentiment sure to shift what has been up to now her relatively ambivalent attitude towards what was going on there. “It would have been enough to grant one or two medium-sized contracts to Russian enterprises for that country to be much more positive.”

As things stand instead, as Le Figaro reminds us, of the 71 companies which have so far been awarded $8 billion worth of contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan, every single one contributed to George W. Bush’s election campaign in 2000, to the total tune of more than half a million dollars. French companies (which, understandably, are loth to contribute to the Bush-in-2004 campaign – and American law prohibits them from doing this anyway) have at least two consolations to fall back on: 1) Several are still being paid for work in or deliveries to Iraq under the old “Oil for Food” program which is still in place, and which is administered not by the Americans but by the UN. Actually, the cheques are signed by Iraqi authorities (presumably acting for the CPA); and they continue to sign the cheques. 2) As that great philosopher and musician George Harrison once sang, “All things must pass.” The CPA and even the American administration in Iraq are not there for the long-term; indeed, a new Iraqi regime is supposed to be handed power in mid-2004. Considering the enormity of the $18.6 billion and the 26 huge contracts, with up to 300 sub-contractors that need to be gotten on-board as well, all that work will barely have gotten started once that new Iraqi administration is supposed to take over. “The cards can then be re-shuffled,” Le Figaro writes. “That is the secret hope of all those excluded from the Wolfowitz list.”