Political Culture

October 14, 2005
Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112924594344968218.html?mod=opinion&ojcontent=otep 
At Unesco's General Conference, a jamboree on Paris's Left Bank thrown every two years, an international treaty expected to be adopted next week will protect the planet's cultural diversity. Who could oppose something that sounds so noble? There's little diversity of opinion on this point: 190 governments love the idea, leaving only one -- dubbed arrogant, misinformed, obstructionist, etc. -- in dissent. No prize for guessing whom we're referring to.
America's honeymoon at the U.N.'s culture arm didn't last long. Two years ago, Laura Bush raised the Stars and Stripes at the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization and lunched with Jacques Chirac. After a 19-year boycott prompted by rampant -- even by U.N. standards -- corruption and anti-Americanism, the U.S. came back into the fold, picking up the tab for nearly a quarter of the agency's budget. But then came the -- hold your breath -- Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
The fine print of this treaty hardly clarifies matters. Merely note that France championed this bit of international lawmaking, with the main supporting role played by Canada's prickly cultural capos. Regulatory measures and public financial assistance -- translation: trade barriers and government subsidies -- are all kosher in nurturing and supporting artists. Works of art and the spirit must not be considered to be goods, the French culture minister says, which might come as news to anyone who spends very real money on DVDs or cinema tickets.
Once 30 nations ratify the treaty, France will have an official U.N. seal of approval to keep subsidizing its film industry and Canada to block American magazine imports. China and other repressive countries are enthusiastic, too: The convention could easily justify pulling satellite television channels off the air or closing down newspapers in the name of -- to use a wonderfully Orwellian term recently coined by the Chinese -- cultural security.
American diplomats are furious, but why Unesco's hallmark project for its 60th year comes as a surprise is beyond us. After all, Ronald Reagan pulled the U.S. out of the agency in 1984 in part to protest its embrace of the New World Information Order, which was a blank check for dictators to muzzle the press. Fights over alleged American cultural imperialism -- a phrase popularized by Jack Lang, a former French culture minister -- are nothing novel, either.
The commercial twist is, however. The French want the treaty in hand for December's World Trade Organization meeting in Hong Kong that will likely reopen talks on freeing up trade in audiovisual products. Since 1995, the EU, at French insistence, has opted out of WTO cultural free trade commitments. (That's the old l'exception culturelle that France so badly wants to keep alive.) The French are also eager to use the Unesco treaty to dissuade other countries from signing bilateral deals with the U.S. that liberalize trade in movies and CDs.
We were manipulated, complained an ambassador from one of the 25 EU countries, which early on agreed to vote as a single bloc here. This is all the work of the French industry. Of course, Hollywood's interests are firmly on the side of free trade. This fight will rage on.
America's friends counsel the U.S. to ignore the vaguely-worded document altogether. Why make a fuss? they ask. That the U.S. treats its possible legal obligations so earnestly counts as one cultural difference between the U.S. and most other Unesco members. And in voting against this treaty, Washington wants to put a marker down for the coming battle over a possible Unesco bioethics convention, which may impact the way that pharmaceuticals are developed and traded, all in the name of culture and diversity, no doubt.
The doublespeak employed here is a powerful weapon in the rhetorical arsenal of the anti-globalization -- not all that different from anti-American -- crowd. Last month, when the EU proposed to open trade in wine with the U.S., the European Parliament invoked cultural diversity to denounce the deal -- and thus leave the Europeans with less of it. Non to McDonald's type Chardonnay, wailed a French MP.
The irony is that open borders and free trade have made the world an ever more -- excuse the word -- diverse place. Witness the sudden revival of the Gallic language in a prospering Ireland that can afford to take a renewed interest in its roots. Or the global popularity of African music, or Indian food or Brazilian film. The biggest export market for French films, by the way, is the U.S., which doesn't put up any cultural walls.
If Unesco was honest with the world, its latest creation would be called the Convention on Cultural non-Diversity.