This Week:

Quote of the Week

The "Benefits" of "Sensible Economic Policies"

The "Nightmare" in Bolivia: Who's Dreaming?

Greetings,

It's an upside-down world these days in the United States.  While people in the U.S. are worried about threats from Iraq, North Korea, Venezuela, and everywhere else, much of the world is worried about the threats posed by U.S. power.  How to explain the disconnect?  This week I spend a rather large amount of time on one seemingly small and insignificant item in the news, as I think it offers a small hint of an answer to this question.

Having just finished the lengthy Propaganda Series, I plan to spend a week or two catching up on various items that have been neglected for the past couple of months.  Sounds like it might be time for a Stroll Through the News With Nygaard.  Haven't had one of those for a while.  How about next week?  Yeah!

See you then,

Nygaard

"Quote" of the Week:

The Associated Press reported on a January 11th "town hall-type event" that "President" Bush held in Louisville, Kentucky, under the headline "Bush Fields Questions About Spy Program."  As usual, attendance at the event was by invitation only.  Reuters reported that White House press secretary Scott McClellan "said their questions were not screened in advance," but "Nevertheless, none of them criticized the president."  Not even the question Mr. Bush fielded from a 7-year-old boy.  What a surprise.

Mr. Bush offered a bizarre summary of the current situation in Iraq, which he concluded by saying:

"And so things are good....  I just want to tell you, whether you agree with me, or not... we're doing the right thing."

This was met with applause from the invitation-only audience.  That, after all, is why they were invited.

The "Benefits" of "Sensible Economic Policies"

A couple of months ago, President George W. Bush went to Argentina to attend the Summit of the Americas, a gathering of the heads of state of almost all the countries in the Western Hemisphere.  The summit was originally scheduled to finalize the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) and, by extension, the larger economic agenda put forth by the United States.  This agenda is sometimes called the "Washington Consensus," which the Los Angeles Times tells us is "an agenda of economic liberalization and privatization that the U.S. has pushed for years as a strategy for economic growth."  The New York Times, similarly, reports that Mr. Bush offers so-called "Free Trade" as "the key to economic growth in the hemisphere."  [By the way, "Free Trade" is not "free," as I pointed out in my article titled: The Key Fact about "Free Trade:" It's Not About "Freedom" in Nygaard Notes #306.]

Since the policies that make up the heart of the "Washington Consensus" -- things like balanced budgets, tariff reductions, tax reform, privatization, and deregulation -- have been widely implemented in many countries throughout the world over roughly the past twenty-five years, it should be possible to see if they have, in fact, promoted economic growth or not.

As it happens a couple of Washington-based economic think tanks just recently did take a look at the data available, and found no support for the President's claims.  Quite the opposite, in fact.

One group, the Economic Policy Institute, released an Issue Brief on the Bush agenda on October 25th, in which they said,

"These policies [of the Washington Consensus] were sold as a way to increase economic growth and productivity in their economies and to avoid the boom-and-bust cycles that characterized the 1970s.  They have, inarguably, failed to deliver."  The Brief adds,  "When Latin American governments have adopted Washington Consensus policies, growth has slowed, inequality has increased, and other measures of economic and social insecurity have worsened."

The other think tank, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, released a 26-page study in September called "The Scorecard on Development: 25 years of Diminished Progress," which echoes these findings.  This study compared economic performance during two different periods:  the last 25 years, 1980-2005, the years when policies of the "Washington Consensus" were widely adopted, and the two decades before that, 1960-1980.  This report, which examined economies around the globe, stated that

"One region that has been particularly affected by this growth slowdown has been Latin America," which "has suffered its worst 25-year economic performance in modern Latin American history, even including the years of the Great Depression."

The authors acknowledge that it is theoretically possible that the economic performance of the region would have been even worse if Washington's agenda had not been widely adopted.  But they point out that "a long-term failure of the type documented here should ... shift the burden of proof" off of critics of the Washington Consensus and onto its proponents, and should "encourage skepticism with regard to economists or institutions who believe they have found a formula for economic growth and development."  Institutions, that is, like the White House.

(For the record, the Summit of the Americas did not finalize the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas, and in fact roundly rejected the agreement, much to the chagrin of the United States delegation.)

Despite these facts, the media (and, presumably, the people who see and hear it) think of these policies as "sensible" and bound to produce "benefits" for those countries that adopt them.  Consider the following two not-exactly-random quotations from recent news reports:

First is an article which appeared on page 7 of the December 20th edition of the New York Times. The article spoke of a grant of aid from the U.S. government to the nation of Armenia.  The grant, in the amount of $236 million, was the "second-largest grant" ever given by the 2-year-old "Millennium Challenge Corporation," which Mr. Bush claims is "an entirely new approach to development aid." (See my extensive comments on the MCA in Nygaard Notes numbers 213-216).

Here is how the Times summarized the intent of Mr. Bush and his foreign aid "corporation:"  "President Bush advocated the creation of the corporation ... to aid poor countries that rule justly, invest in their people, and have sensible economic policies."

The second not-exactly-randomly-selected quotation comes from the January 12th Star Tribune, my home-town newspaper, in an article that attempted to explain why there are "left-leaning candidates" who "are running strong ...in at least six Latin American countries."  The source for this article was "a Bolivian economist who is studying at the University of Minnesota" who reassured the Star Trib that "Latin America's leftward shift is not an echo from the Cold-War era."  What explains it, then?  Well, according the Star Trib, "It is a modern-day signal that millions of Latin Americans have yet to see the full benefits of U.S.-led economic reforms..."

As you read the next article, keep the phrases "have yet to see the full benefits" and "sensible economic policies" in mind...

The "Nightmare" in Bolivia: Who's Dreaming?

After the election of Evo Morales to the presidency of Bolivia in December, the United States media was filled with reports of his supposed hostility to the United States.  Many news reports seemed fascinated by a single word that Morales allegedly used in a speech on the day before his landslide election: "nightmare."  A Los Angeles Times report that appeared in my local paper referred to him as "a former coca farmer who has pledged to torpedo U.S. anti-drug efforts here and be a 'nightmare' for Washington."  The Baltimore Sun called him "a socialist coca farmer who vowed to be 'a permanent nightmare for the United States.'"  A widely-published Associated Press article reported that Morales "has promised to become Washington's 'nightmare.'"

These reports all reveal a certain kind of assumption on the part of the reporters who wrote them.  Many U.S. journalists apparently assume that Morales must be motivated by either A) Personal hostility toward the United States, or B) A cynical desire to manipulate some hostility towards the United States that must exist among potential voters, or C) Some sort of personal vendetta against the United States.  I mean, why else would a candidate "promise" or "pledge" or "vow" to become a nightmare for the United States government?

To accept this kind of assumption, one would have to accept that the primary concern of Morales--and, by extension, the Bolivians who voted for him--is the United States. After all, Morales WANTS to be a "nightmare," it is reported, and his PROMISE to become one resonates with Bolivian voters.  I imagine that this interpretation of Mr. Morales' remark makes perfect sense to many U.S. readers, since it is so easy to believe that people in such small and poor countries spend most of their time thinking about ... us.  If that's easy for you to believe, then I have a few trillion cubic feet of Bolivian natural gas to sell you.  Just kidding.

Starting From a Different Place

I have not been able to find a transcript of the original speech, either in English or Spanish (if any readers know where to find it, let me know!), but when I find myself reading about political developments in small countries that the U.S. has historically considered to be in its "back yard," I start with a different set of assumptions.  My first assumption is that the people in those countries are primarily concerned with pursuing their own welfare.  Next, I imagine that they are only concerned about the United States to the extent that the United States has attempted to--or actually has--used its massive power to interfere with that pursuit.  In other words, I assume that they are pretty much like people in my own country.  Weird idea, huh?

If my beginning assumption is more accurate than the U.S.-centric (dare I say "imperialist"?) assumption that seems to form the starting point for the reporters who wrote the news articles I quoted above, then it is doubtful that Morales used the word nightmare as a "vow" or a "promise" or a "pledge."  While I was unable to find a transcript of Mr. Morales' speech, I was able to find a non-U.S. news report, from the British news agency Reuters, which casts the word "nightmare" in a different light.  Here's how they put it: "Morales ...calls his socialist movement a 'nightmare' for Washington, criticizes U.S. anti-drug policies and promises to nationalize Bolivia's huge gas resources."

This report fits with my guess as to what Morales meant by the word "nightmare."  I'm guessing that, rather than making a "vow," he was pointing out that his intention to pursue nationalist, Bolivia-centric policies IS, in fact, perceived as a nightmare by the United States, or at least by the Free Marketeers who seem to be in control of the foreign policy establishment.

Furthermore, he was likely stating, or implying, with his comment that he is fully aware of the dangers facing a president who overtly rejects the "U.S.-led economic reforms" that are, by definition, "sensible economic policies."  (Remember those phrases, the ones in quotation marks?  They're the ones I told you to keep in mind from the last article.)

A History of Nightmares

Any political leader in the Western hemisphere is well aware of the fate of other nationalist leaders who have dared to reject these "U.S.-led economic reforms."  Even a partial list is quite impressive: Aristide in 1990s Haiti, the Sandinistas in 1980s Nicaragua, Allende in 1973 Chile, Goulart in 1964 Brazil, Arbenz in 1954 Guatemala.  All of these democratically-elected leaders were destabilized and overthrown by, or with the aid of, the United States.  And, as recently as 2002, the U.S. supported, and perhaps participated in, a military coup against democratically-elected Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, another "left-leaning" leader who is not being "sensible."

This history, while well-known to voters in Latin America and around the world, is largely  unknown to United States voters.  To U.S. voters--including the journalists whose reports both reflect and shape their thinking--the idea that the U.S. government might not have the best interests of the people of Latin America in mind sounds strange, indeed.  The U.S., after all, is "sensible," and seeks only to bring the people of the world many "benefits," even though it may be true that these benefits are things "that millions of Latin Americans have yet to see."

Now recall another quotation.  This time it's last week's Nygaard Notes "Quote" of the Week, which was the comment of a Spanish diplomat, speaking of post-election Bolivia:  "The big issue is going to be helping him [President Morales] reconcile the demands of the society he represents with the rules of the game in international relations and in the market."

What if this is, indeed, the "big issue" facing the newly-elected President?  And what if his  "pledge" or "vow" or "promise" was not to be a nightmare for anyone, but simply to orient his country's policies toward "the demands of the society he represents" and away from the desires of the U.S.,  which sets up, and clearly desires that nations play by, "the rules of the game?"  Wouldn't it be accurate to call this a "nightmare" for the rule-makers?  Especially if he intends to "nationalize Bolivia's huge gas resources."

It's a subtle difference, the reporting of some words as a "promise" as opposed to a comment  about the nature of the Bolivia-U.S. relationship.  But this subtle difference in interpretation reflects a profound difference in understanding of the world, about who is "sensible" and who is not, about who is a "nightmare" for whom, and why.

And when we consider that such interpretations are not random and occasional, but rather fit into a pattern that is repeated over and over again, in almost every daily news outlet that people hear or see, we can start to understand why the average United Statesian understands the world so differently than the average person in... well, in almost any other country in the world.