Posted on 11/22/2003 7:42:04 AM PST by mountaineer
In an interview, former US President Bill Clinton offers ideas for the Middle East and other issues
Nayan Chanda: You once likened globalization to weather. Why are a lot of people now angry about globalization?
Bill Clinton: Lot of bad weather. First of all, the system is not working for about half the people on earth. There are lots of reasons for that. While the last twenty years have lifted lots of people out of poverty than ever before, there are more people because all the population growth in the world is in poor countries. The second problem is that globalization will not work in the end unless it spurs more internal economic growth, unrelated to trade in poor countries.
In Japan's heyday as a trading power in the eighties over eighty percent of its GDP was internally generated. In Germany's heyday – Germany was the most trade-dependent rich country in the 20th century – two-thirds of its GDP was internally generated. In America's heyday of trade in the nineties almost ninety percent of our GDP was internally generated.
The first thing we need is to build systems for the developing countries that enable them to do a better job of building sustainable economies within their borders. Then they can take maximum advantage of trade and investment. Second, we have to recognize that we cannot have a global economic system without building a global social system.
That's why we need to have more labor and environmental provisions in the trade agreements, in my opinion. That's why we need to get rid of child labor and put children in school. That's why we need to have a developmental agenda that includes much higher levels of aid and debt relief and other efforts to support the developing world. Until we do those things it is going to be very difficult to sustain support in the developing world for globalization.
There is also a lot of opposition to globalization in the advanced world, in countries where the social safety net is not strong, in countries where people lose their job because of trade and they are not immediately retrained and set up for something else. Basically, what happens is that information technology changes, predictably, have outpaced internal development in poor countries and the development of global social systems to follow the economic system. But you see it moving now, you see it moving in the global fund for HIV-AIDS, TB, and malaria, and the work of the Gates Foundation, and the fact that even Christian evangelicals of America support spending more money on AIDS. It is moving in the right direction, but we have got a good ways to go.
NC: You have pulled off a coup by doing a deal to reduce the price of drugs for HIV-AIDS. How did you do that?
BC: Well, we just started working at it. Ira Magaziner, who runs the AIDS project for me and did health care and information technology for me in the White House, has for the last thirty years or so had a business consulting firm. His specialty in the tough years in the eighties was going in to firms all over the world breaking down their processes to figuring out how they could cut cost and increase productivity. He enlisted a lot of retired business executives, and we went to these companies and asked them if we could work with them to cut costs. If we could increase their profit margin by cutting cost and increase their volume, then we asked them, "If those two things happen, would you cut the price?" That's essentially what happened.
With the promise of higher volume and more productive manufacturing they can sell these drugs at $139 per person a year and still make money.
NC: What was the earlier price?
BC: There was one small bit of drugs being sold for $255 a year ..but most of the generic drugs in the world were selling for between $350 and $500 a year. For example in the Bahamas, when I went to work there we cut their cost from $3,500 a year down to $493. That's the more typical reduction. From $140 to $400 or $500 a year. It's going to make a huge difference.
NC: How are you going to fund the program?
BC: For one thing – no matter what the price is – if nobody is funding it, it won't matter. The numbers of people who are getting the medicine are so small it is disgraceful. In the countries where we are working, we are attempting to get wealthy countries to sponsor them. For example, Ireland and Canada working in Tanzania and Mozambique We are trying to get the Belgians to help, the Norwegians and Swedes to help. I hope the British, the French, and the Japanese and others will participate. We also have agreed to work with the World Health Organization, which has a very ambitious goal of adding 3 million more people to treatment in the next couple of years. The contracts that I have with all these companies includes the ability of our foundation to help buy these drugs for nations in which we are not working but where the World Health Organization and others, like the Global Fund, want to provide medicine.
NC: The gulf between Europe and the US has grown so much in the past year – over the environment, over GMO, and finally over Iraq. Is the transatlantic alliance doomed?
BC: No, it isn't. Because we have too much in common in terms of values and interests. We also have supported the expansion of the EU and the expansion of NATO, the ending of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the work we have done together in Northern Ireland. So there have been a lot of positive things. GMO is a particularly difficult issue because it is hard to sort out what's the science and the fear of environmentally dangerous food from the desire to preserve the present structure of agriculture in some European countries – which I sympathize with but which may not have anything to do with GMO.
And of course there is a difficult problem we had with the Continent over Iraq when the United States decided not to let the UN inspectors finish before starting the conflict, which I think was a mistake. And then the French and the Germans said they would never support deposing Saddam Hussein as long as the inspectors were there even if he didn't cooperate, which I think was a mistake. I think everybody in the whole mix except for Tony Blair basically mishandled that. But we are where we are. I still believe that on balance we and Europe will be working more closely than ever before because we have no choice.
NC: Were you surprised that no WMD was found in Iraq?
BC: I have been a little surprised. I was not surprised that no weapons were found, but what I expected them to find was some of the unaccounted for stocks. Let me be very specific here. I knew nothing about any of this nuclear business – Niger, the yellow cake and all that. But for eight years I monitored the UN's and our own intelligence and what the Iraqis had at the beginning of the first Gulf War, what was destroyed during the Gulf War, and what was destroyed in the inspection process. When two members of Saddam Hussein's family defected to Jordan and told us what he had, we confronted the Iraqis. They basically admitted that they had it all along and they gave up massive volume of chemical and biological stocks and other related laboratory facilities. Then the boys went back home and got killed after a month they got back, which was a terrible mistake. We still continued to do these inspections.
IMHO he's still angling to be the first "President of the UN" when the UN has taxing authority and a standing army to enforce his utopian socialist dreams.
Clinton and his cronies have been working on the Internet tax for years - way before he left the White House - to fund the UN! Clinton told some religious leaders, while he was in office (I use that term loosely), that he intended to be the next Secretary General of the United Nations.
Unilateral? We have dozens of countries supporting us in Iraq, and Liar Bill calls it unilateral! (Or does he think Italy, Spain, Poland, Australia, et al., aren't really countries?) I'm so looking forward to the Germans, French and Canucks doing a complete 180 on Iraq - as Blubba predicts - just because the U.N. co-opts NATO as its security force there.
That is exactly what they have in mind.
I sure hope there are enough sensible people to stop it. (Surely, not even the most radical Libs would condone this!)
Americas first 100% "full blown" kommie president.
some legacy, the steaming pile should be in the basement of a military prison.
TLI
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