04/06 - COMFORTABLE DIVERSITY
by Jim Hoagland

ROME - When Russian President Vladimir Putin visits here tomorrow, few protesters are expected to take to the streets. But hostile demonstrations may well erupt later this month, the government fears, when the once-obscure Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development holds a meeting in Bologna. Welcome to the post-political era of globalization.
"The contrast is remarkable," notes Giuliano Amato one month into his new term as prime minister of Italy. "We are comfortable in the diversity of our nations. But there is a huge and growing problem of legitimacy for organizations that deal with the world economy. In Seattle and elsewhere, people ask: Why are you guys the ones deciding? But Mr. Putin is not perceived here at the moment as one who decides on the fates of others."
Ideas about the world economy, European unity and the dangers--for America--of establishing a global Pax Americana dance like sprites on the polished conference table in Amato's office as he talks. He speaks clearly and imaginatively where most of his intensely political predecessors practiced the art of obfuscation. He is as keen an analyst of the changing nature of global power as most of them were parochial distributors of benefits and pork.
Earlier this year Amato, then serving as Italy's treasury minister, looked to many to be by a wide margin the best-qualified European to replace Michel Camdessus in the International Monetary Fund's top job. But it was Germany's turn to fill the lofty international post. The center-leftist Amato stayed at home to be named prime minister in June after the Cabinet unexpectedly collapsed. Putin's visit here will be his second foray abroad since his election in March, and it will contain some diplomatic drama. For one thing, Putin may be carrying an invitation for Pope John Paul II to visit Moscow. For another, Amato expects Putin to demonstrate that he is committed to establishing "a more vigorous Russia" that will reverse the trends of recent years, "when the state was fading away and the most solid institution was the anti-state."
But the relatively low level of public interest in the Putin visit to Italy reflects the continuing decline of the mobilizing force of politics and diplomacy in societies more taken today with the Internet than with ideology, more suspicious of the World Trade Organization and the World Bank than of armies of empire.
"The pace of change brings many contradictions into being," Amato says in his fluent English, honed while he studied for a master's degree in comparative law at Columbia University in the early 1960s.
"Intellectuals in France and elsewhere fear that through globalization the United States is forcing a kind of uniform view of the world and of society on all other countries. That of course is not the case. But it becomes a sophisticated version of Yankee Go Home. Because the U.S. is a lonely superpower, with no rivals, it can easily be perceived this way."
At the same time "many other people turn to the United States as the only power capable of righting global wrongs. But not even the Americans can give order to such a fluid situation," Amato continues. "This leads to other frustrations and disappointments. The impression of a Pax Americana is not in U.S. interests, nor is it in U.S. interests to stay on this lonely peak of power."
While remaining commercial competitors with differing social models, Europe and the United States should work closely together to provide new transparency and legitimacy for international organizations, Amato says. America's power and culture will become less of a lightning rod "when the European Union and others take on more responsibility for organizing decision-making at the global level."
He cites the adoption of a single currency, the euro, by 11 of the 15 EU members and the union's plans for a European-commanded rapid reaction force within NATO as examples of burden-sharing Americans should welcome. And he professed no anxiety over Europe's seeking political union through the back door by creating a currency and an army to bring into being the political structure that will direct their use. The United States and just about everybody else established political control first, I point out.
"But Europe's history is different," Amato responds. "Can it work this way? That it has been working is the best answer we can offer. Think of what these 15 states were doing to each other 50 years ago. We would have to be blind and mad to let this opportunity to go forwardescape."