Pubdate: Sun, 04 Feb 2001
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2001 Houston Chronicle
Contact:  Viewpoints Editor, P.O. Box 4260 Houston, Texas 77210-4260
Fax: (713) 220-3575
Website: http://www.chron.com/
Forum: http://www.chron.com/content/hcitalk/index.html
Author: Jim Hoagland
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/traffic.htm (Traffic)

BUSH WILL LEARN: GLOBALIZATION BEGINS AT HOME

Even Latin American revolutionaries have use-by dates today: Fresher models 
roll out for changing times. Colin Powell and Jorge Castaneda, Mexico's 
foreign minister, spent one minute discussing Cuba's Fidel Castro and 10 
minutes on Venezuela's Hugo Chavez in talks here the other day.

"The Beard Also Sets" might be Hemingway's take on this evolution in 
revolution. By claiming a key role for himself in oil politics, supporting 
rebel forces in Colombia and befriending Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Chavez 
casts a much longer and darker shadow over U.S. global interests than does 
the fading Castro.

What to do about Hugo will be a major early theme for the Bush 
administration as it confronts the emerging reality that globalization 
begins at home. President Bush has promised to focus early on hemispheric 
affairs, and he is right to do so.

Even the godfather of globalization, former Treasury secretary Robert 
Rubin, pointed out to a Washington audience last month how that phenomenon 
begins at home. Keeping U.S. borders open for eight years to drive a new 
wave of world commerce and finance was a major Clinton administration 
accomplishment, Rubin said.

But the rush of products, people and capital across the borders of the 
Americas and elsewhere brings bad as well as good -- drugs and drug money 
as well as investment returns and cheap toys. There is a dark side to the 
free trade imperative that drives globalization. It needs to be assessed in 
a sober and systematic fashion.

One glimpse of the effects of that dark side on American lives comes in the 
new hit movie "Traffic," a tale of Mexico, the United States and the drug 
trade. Castaneda and his aides went to see the film in Washington after 
finishing their meetings with Powell and Condoleezza Rice. "Traffic" has 
not yet opened in Mexico.

It is a measure of the welcome change occurring south of the Rio Grande 
when a Mexican foreign minister goes from talks with the secretary of state 
and the president's national security adviser to a mere movie. Castaneda's 
more formal predecessors would have been at one of those stultifying policy 
dinners where boilerplate is the main course.

But art can be smarter than life -- smarter at least than those American 
policymakers who proclaim they are winning the "war" on drugs by 
defoliating agricultural fields in Colombia while doing little to restrict 
U.S. demand or to help Americans who have ruined their lives with narcotics 
rehabilitate themselves.

Steven Soderbergh's artful film makes that point, a Castaneda aide noted. 
He found the film "balanced" -- that is, the movie puts heavy emphasis on 
the demand problem here and on the hypocrisy of an overly militarized and 
punitive policy that hits American families harder than it hits the drug trade.

Castaneda spun finely filigreed answers of substance and candor to 
reporters' questions about immigration, reform in Mexico, NAFTA and other 
first-tier problems he discussed with Powell and Rice. But he was too 
shrewd to play critic for me about a movie that offers such an intimate 
portrayal of a vast social evil that unites the gringos and Latinos of the 
Americas as do few other forces. That is, I assume, why he bucked my 
question to his aides.

Castaneda came to office with President Vicente Fox in December. Fox has 
just begun to explain to his nation the mess he found in the Mexican 
criminal justice system and to try to establish control, gradually, of drug 
enforcement and internal security. He will outline his plans when Bush 
makes his first presidential trip abroad later this month to Mexico.

Castaneda's visit came shortly after a similar trip to Washington by 
Canadian Foreign Minister John Manley, who engaged Powell on the challenges 
and opportunities created by the cross-border exchange of $1 billion a day 
in goods and 200 million visitors a year.

Bush hosts Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien on Feb. 5 as the first 
foreign leader he will meet in office. Bush seems open to exploring a 
triangular approach to the problems of the Americas with his two partners 
in NAFTA. That would provide an early and positive sign to the world that 
reports of Bush's unilateralist tendencies have been exaggerated.

The president should also use these opening meetings to show that the 
mechanics of greater trade and immigration will not overshadow the social 
and moral values that should be reflected in U.S. dealings with its closest 
neighbors. If globalization begins at home, so does good foreign policy.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager