Re: past and future of multilateral institutions

        Those interested in the April 16 demo might also benefit from 
something
I accidentally unearthed the other day: Samir Amin, "Fifty Years is
Enough, " a fifty-page special in Monthly Review (April 1995),
re-analysing the Bretton Woods institutions in the context of postwar
capitalist dynamics (and  American economic dominance), and assessing
possible avenues of  (feasible) reform. 

        This reading and other considerations make me hope that April 
16thers
will also direct their attention to the panoply of forces to which the
WB/IMF are themselves subject:
                -- key congressional committees and other state bodies that
influence/determine WB/IMF policies 
                -- conservative congressmen (some of whom see even the 
WB/IMF as
bastions of liberal internationalism)(and who withold funding from the
United Nations and its agencies)
                --key lobbyists and lobbying firms,  which construct and 
sustain the
connection between the corporate world and the American state and
congress -- identifying those that have allowed particular corporate
interests to be favored by the multilaterals
                - right-wing think tanks that have furthered 
conservative/pro-corporate
international policies
                - embassies of countries that have been especially 
complicit in
mismanaging their resources, enacting harsh policies, agreeing to
ecologically damaging forms of exploitation, etc. 
                - perhaps the headquarters or local office of a corporation 
or two --
who have somehow been involved in or profited from particular WB/IMF
policies.

        When one thinks of  even these local manifestations of  the
corporate-political networks that oil the gears and pull the strings...
the World Bank and IMF seem more than ever the easy targets -- but are
they the most essential?

        For an example of  REALLY bad guys at work (in a slightly different
domain), consider the following, from the Washgington Post:


The Second Amendment, Going Global 
By Kathi Austin

Sunday, March 26, 2000; Page B01 

Seventeen months ago, in the aftermath of gory civil wars in Sierra Leone
and Liberia and conflicts in neighboring countries that had left more
than 250,000 people dead, the Economic Community of Western African
States (ECOWAS) decided to try something unprecedented: It announced a
three-year moratorium in all 16 member nations on the export, import and
manufacture of small arms. 
Since most of the guns came from outside the region--and because ECOWAS
had insufficient money and technical expertise to implement a ban--the
West Africans appealed to the international community for help. The
United States was among the governments that agreed to contribute,
pledging $200,000 toward the moratorium and $1 million more for measures
to support conflict resolution. 
These were modest, even minimal grants. But they didn't get past Sen.
Jesse Helms. 
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a longtime ally
of the National Rifle Association, invoked a provision of the U.S.
Foreign Assistance Act to block the funding. In an Aug. 24, 1999, letter
to the U.S. Agency for International Development, Helms explained his
opposition: "The Small-Arms Moratorium project proposes using U.S.
taxpayers' money (among other things) to lobby or promote policies in
foreign countries that may very well be a violation of the second
amendment to the U.S. Constitution--if the federal government attempted
such activities here at home." 
The proposed aid, Helms wrote, was "nothing less than a brazen
international expansion of the President and Vice President's domestic
gun control agenda." 
I've been documenting conflict in Africa firsthand for 12 years, and it's
not clear to me what the Second Amendment has to do with blood-soaked
Sierra Leone. 
What does seem clear is that blocking support to ECOWAS was a warning
shot in the American gun lobby's plans to go global. The NRA, its allies
and affiliates are campaigning against what they describe as a worldwide
conspiracy of gun snatchers. The immediate goal appears to be frightening
American gun owners, thereby raising money and membership at home. But
there is a broader result: thwarting international attempts to contain
the spread and misuse of small arms. 
The most sensational atrocities in the West African wars may have been
amputations, carried out with machetes and knives. But the bulk of the
killings were committed with rifles, machine guns and semiautomatics--far
more efficient instruments of death. 
There are about 500 million of these cheap, durable and readily available
small arms circulating in the world today. Most of them are manufactured
in the United States, Europe, Russia or China, and many are initially
purchased legally. Over the past few years, I have seen a growing
awareness in international circles of the fact that it is far too easy to
transfer such arms illicitly from one country to another--and from one
small, ugly war to another. 
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has recently made three
powerful speeches on the subject. In various regional and multinational
forums, governments have begun trying to take steps to regulate the small
arms trade. Notably, U.N. members are drafting a firearms protocol to
supplement the convention against "transnational organized crime," and
preparations are being made for an international conference on illicit
small-arms trafficking next year. These efforts are being countered by
America's ever-vigilant gun lobby--particularly, but not always openly,
by the NRA, which in one of its anti-U.N. ads warns of "shooters and
sportsmen, collectors and businessmen, sacrificed on the altar of
politics . . . ." 
The State Department actually consulted with NRA representatives about
its $200,000 contribution toward the West Africa moratorium. But the
NRA's participation in those talks was little more than a smoke screen:
Its ally, the big-game hunters' group Safari Club International, actively
attacked the moratorium because it might interfere with its members'
sport. Off the record, an NRA lobbyist told one of my colleagues that his
group was worried that such policy initiatives would have "inadvertent
effects on hunters and sport shooters." 
But, my colleague said, who would want to go hunting in West Africa? The
"big five" African trophies (lion, elephant, rhinoceros, buffalo,
leopard) are found primarily further east, particularly in Tanzania and
Kenya. "There is not a lot of hunting in Western Africa," the lobbyist
agreed, then added without irony: "But it may open up." 
That seems highly unlikely during the three-year span of the ECOWAS
moratorium. In any case, it is appalling to think that the entertainment
of a few big-spending sportsmen should supersede the concerns of
countries that have witnessed bloodshed on a scale most Americans can
barely imagine. 
But that, apparently, is the gun lobby's continuing goal. In the same
letter in which he rejected the ECOWAS grant, Helms asked the USAID
inspector general to take a close look at all U.S.-supported programs
aimed at preventing and addressing the consequences of conflict in
Africa. The State Department officials I have spoken to interpret this
move as a threat to any future attempts to restrict the flow of arms. 
Despite its name, the NRA has long engaged in international activism.
Besides subsidizing sport shooters associations and gun clubs abroad, it
contributes money to pro-gun political candidates as far away as
Australia and New Zealand, and has conducted public campaigns against
attempts at gun regulation in South Africa, the United Kingdom, Canada,
Japan and elsewhere. It also helped found such proxy groups as the World
Forum on the Future of Sport Shooting Activities--headquartered in
Brussels--with which it shares board members and lobbyists. At the U.N.,
these allies bog down attempts to control the illicit gun trade by
attempting to confine the debate to small technical fixes such as the
marking of guns at manufacture. 
Meanwhile, the NRA recently produced a series of television infomercials
accusing the United Nations of a global "gun confiscation" campaign. As
the words "United Nations 'Cleansing' Globe Of Gun Rights" move across
the screen, one spot--already being broadcast-- begins with NRA President
Charlton Heston intoning, "If you follow politics at all, you know a lot
of people in Washington, D.C., want to take away your right to keep and
bear arms. The truth is they have the whole world on their side, because
the systematic disarming of a free people is happening across the globe
today." He continues, "From around the world, the message is clear--your
guns are next. Only one thing stands in their way, the Second Amendment
and the NRA." 
Later in the same ad, the group's executive vice president, Wayne
LaPierre--the one who has been sparring with Clinton--warns that "at the
United Nations and around the world, the movement against your gun rights
is gaining money and momentum fast. Their target is the United States.
Their objectives are international gun registration, global gun
confiscation, and an end to your right to keep and bear arms." 
All the players in the gun lobby can be expected to be on hand next year
for the U.N. conference on illicit arms trafficking (date and site yet to
be determined). During the Cold War, most small arms tended to be sold
and transferred by governments; today most of the traffickers are
private. Patchy legal controls and ineffective international oversight
means that they go almost unregulated: While more than 80,000 Rwandans,
for example, have at some time been jailed for allegedly participating in
that country's 1994 genocide, no charges have been brought--or even
realistically considered--against those who armed the perpetrators, even
though they violated an international arms embargo. 
At one of the preparatory meetings for the conference--a joint briefing
by U.N. delegations, U.N. officials and nongovernmental associations--one
of my colleagues heard the ambassador from Sierra Leone describe how war
had devastated his country. Then she listened, astounded, as a chief NRA
lobbyist, Tom Mason, rebuked the ambassador for advocating stringent
oversight of the flow of arms. Other participants were equally
flabbergasted; at meetings over the next several days, participants shook
their heads over the audacity of an American gun lobbyist advocating more
guns, not fewer, to a country desperately seeking peace. 
Unregulated small arms are a serious problem. The illicit trafficking of
guns fuels conflict, destabilizes entire regions, threatens U.S.
peacekeepers abroad, squanders U.S. money needed for aid and development,
and encourages extremists. Some governments are trying to do something
about it. It would be tragic if their efforts were stymied by illegal
arms sellers, safari hunters and anti-U.N. conspiracy theorists. 
Kathi Austin is the director of the arms and conflict program of the Fund
for Peace, a nonprofit organization based in Washington and San
Francisco. Loretta Bondi, the program's advocacy director, helped prepare
this article. 
© Copyright 2000 The Washington Post Company