TUESDAY, MAY 4, 1993
24
In showing that interest, I hope that our
friends will understand the difference between trade and
I
economics on the one hand and politics on the other. hope they won't get the two confused. I must say it would
help me to make that point rather more successfully if it
was a little clearer that China, a GATT applicant of
course, understood that the two are different, as well.
I understand and respect the fact that United
States foreign policy has traditionally been infused with
a sense of values. Those who have benefitted from the
consequences of that, as my generation did, for example,
in Western Europe, do ill to criticize it. Foreign policy
shouldn't be just about a utilitarian sense of national
interest. Self interest invariably is served by trying to
behave well, too. But as we say in England, I think one
has to take account of running the right horse on the
right course. I don't believe that trade and economics
are a good vehicle except in extreme cases for pursuing
political goals.
One reason why I take that view is because as
Marxists, when there were any, used to believe, there is a
relationship between economic and social progress and
political progress. I don't argue for one moment that
Washington or Westminster style democracy is everywhere a
consequence almost mechanistically of a given level of GNP
growth. Different cultures, different traditions,
different periods of history produce different results.
/But I