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A tiny dog threatened to delay the transit of the South Korean president's motorcade to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) venue at Haeundae Beach in Busan in November 2005. The comic spectacle unfolded within a scripted display of authority, where two columns of police conscripts bused from the far corners of the country faced each at attention across one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city center. Where no bus, taxi, or car dared enter, one little dog advanced unhindered in its daily routine. Finally, inevitably, almost as a farcical denouement, the most senior officer commanded a subordinate to chase down the unwitting canine on the next crossing, or else the motorcade might be halted. Captured after some difficulty, the little dog was imprisoned within his master's store, yelping as people applauded the motorcade zooming through the honor guard unimpeded. Meanwhile a barrier separated the APEC venue from the general public, who were required to produce special identification loaded with biometric technology, to gain access. On the streets farming lobbies orchestrated protests rebuffed by the deployment of water cannon and parked trailers, effectively blocking transit through the coastal road. The dog, the barrier, and the protests symbolize the character of globalization more fully than the evangelic faith in a politically and economically integrated world. When Jagdish Bhagwati advocates, that reason deserves as much of a place as the passions, he overestimates the opposition between the two human forces. «Reason and analysis require that we abandon the conviction that globalization lacks a human face, an assertion that is tantamount to a false alarm, and embrace the view that it has one.» Accepting Bhagwati's singular «conviction», though, is as unappealing as championing the dog, the barrier, or the protests. As Stuart Hampshire argues,

Rationality, prudential and moral, as a common human possession or potentiality, is most plausibly identified, as argument and counter-argument, with the just and fair weighing of conflicts of evidence, and of conflicts of desires. Every individual person has used procedures for resolving contrary pulls and contrary impulses: political conflicts and their resolution are strictly analogous.

The Dog, the Wall, and the Protesters: A Critique of Jagdish Bhagwati's Defense of Economic Globalization - Get more documents