What came out of the first draft of the hemisphere-wide trade treat was a skeleton “that gradually will be fleshed out”.

- Fabricio Van Den Broeck.

The nearly religious faith in the liberalization of markets as an essential means towards development, and the belief that economic growth and social welfare would flow unstoppably from it, have been debilitated.

Over the past decade, all has not been a bed of roses in the trade talks, and there are few left who would bet that the FTAA will take effect in January 2005 as was originally planned.

From the Latin American side, the cracks are gradually becoming visible in a treaty that was thought out in terms that benefit the interests of the United States too much. The United States represents 70 percent of the hemisphere's gross domestic product and already has trade partners this region of the world where more than half of the people live in poverty.

The cracks are evident in the agricultural trade issue, one of the thorniest, in which Washington is steadfast in its refusal to give up its farm subsidies; in the environmental area, which in the FTAA rules is considered a minor issue, subject to the logic of investment; in intellectual property, where regulations are to be even more strict than those of the World Trade Organization (WTO); in the discriminatory treatment of national investment with respect to foreign investment; and in the de fact preeminence of the prerogatives of the private sector over those of the state.

There are cracks in the area of human rights, damaged not only in content (demands for health services and education are ignored, as are economic and social rights, as they are turned into private contractual relations), but also in the ability to respect, protect and guarantee them.

With alarm we have seen — let's put it this way — the liquidation of the decision-making power of the state, as if it has been forgotten that democracy is not possible without a strong state, and that the FTAA should extend even further the public authorities, the only way to control capitalism that could easily turn authoritarian.

We also see the overwhelming predominance of the market as a mechanism for regulating social live and the emergence of a “supra-national” sovereignty that, in practice, seems difficult to distinguish from the power represented by the U.S. government.

The white smoke coming out of the latest FTAA ministerial conference, in Miami, only tells us of a minimal agreement — “decaffeinated”, said someone — the result, undoubtedly of the pressure on some Latin American countries to take into consideration the asymmetries and imbalances between them.

As such, what came out of the first draft of the FTAA treaty is a skeleton “that will be fleshed out,” said one of the trade ministers in attendance, while the thornier issues were dispatched to the realm of the WTO.

The future of the FTAA is not what it once was. But it is difficult to know if it will be better or worse. It will depend on how things play out between the U.S. government and countries like Argentina and Brazil, capable of serving as a counterweight from their position in Mercosur (Southern Common Market). It will also depend on how the bilateral trade treaties with the U.S. unfold. There is the risk that the FTAA will end up, at least for awhile, a patchwork quilt.

And it will depend on the opinion of civil society, which is increasingly suspicious of an accord of this magnitude, one that would affect the lives of everyone in the Americas, and is being negotiated behind closed doors.

“The worst thing about the Iraq war is that it sets the precedent for unilateral action by Washington and makes clear that there is nothing to stand in its way,” says Venezuelan commentator Ignacio Avalos Gutiérrez. To avoid this sort of unilateral action in the future it is essential to rebuild the United Nations, he adds. By making the most of the wonders of the Internet and entering the White House web site www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html one can begin to develop a better understanding of the war in Iraq and the collapse of the dictatorship.

The pieces start to fit together and pretexts dissipate. It is a matter of having enough patience to put up with a difficult writing style to read the “National Security Strategy for the United States of America”. It is a set of ideas better known as the Bush Doctrine, which, if truth be told, is more the product of the neurons of those who make up the president's inner circle than of his own.

There encapsulated and blessed is the thesis of preemptive war, according to which — and without the need for juridical adornment — war is justified wherever and whenever the U.S. president decides that there is some threat to the interests of his country.

Many have said, with reason, that in practice this is the thesis for ongoing war against the rest of the planet. If they don't like us, at least they will fear us, thinks Bush, aping all of the empires that came before his in history.

Also suggested is that U.S. leadership is good for everyone, based as it is on the mixture of legitimate economic and political interests and its just intentions for the rest of the world.

The corollary is the need — moral obligation? — to propagate what is new and good about “the American way of life”, a ready-to-use package with no need for cultural context, in function of a kind of Messianic evangelism which affords it a nod from God.

The current government of the United States believes, therefore, in the advantages of ideological cloning, thanks to which the world will become one, as the progressive acceptance of fast-food continues to demonstrate.

This holy (and oil) war against Iraq, disguised as a battle against a dictator who in other times was an indispensable U.S. ally, is just the second chapter in the book of war that began a short time ago with the episode in Afghanistan.

Many fear that the main casualty of this conflict will be the United Nations. Despite all its limitations and lack of efficiency in certain weighty cases, the world body has played a positive role. The U.S. trampling of the U.N. threatens to leave us without structures to arbitrate conflict. Just now, when globalization is multiplying the needs for mediation in major political, economic, environmental and cultural issues.

As far as serving as guarantor of international law, the U.N. has been pathetic throughout the current crisis. The worst thing about this war is that it sets the precedent for unilateral action by Washington and makes clear that there is nothing to stand in its way (It could be said, with some nostalgia, that under the threat of the former Soviet Union we were better off).

It seems we run the risk that, once the conflict in Iraq is over, the U.N. will languish until it becomes as useful as a Chinese vase, no matter how beautiful it is. Let's not rule out the possibility of “privatization”, a phenomenon of this era of single-mindedness. Then only nations that pay a fee can have access to the services of an arbitration tribunal or the backing of a military force in the case of dispute.

The rebuilding of Iraq is an urgent matter (as well as a good business deal, they say), undoubtedly. But little is said, unfortunately, about the rebuilding of the U.N., which is an essential process to prevent the Bush Doctrine from replacing, as apparently is intended, existing international law.

If the U.N. is not reconstructed, it leaves the door open for each country to take military action, attending only to the size of armies and arsenals of missiles, without the need to cite any motive beyond the suspicion of the other's bad intentions.

We are, therefore, on the threshold of a major defeat for civilization, and any likeness to the jungle is pure coincidence.

Advances in genetics have caught us unprepared, we suffer a ''normative deficit,'' says Venezuela's former minister of Science and Technology. In our eagerness to dominate nature, surpass its limits and adapt it to our own pretensions – evident since we stood up on our two legs and looked beyond the ends of our noses – that humankind has arrived at the most sacred terrain of life: its genetic foundations.

With the Human Genome Project concluded we already know – so to speak – what we are: 30,000 genes, give or take a few. And we know, in passing, that some insects have 30 percent of same genes we do, that we have just 300 more genes than mice and that everything indicates that we have almost exactly the same ones as monkeys. A blow, someone ignorant of these labors might think, to our trite idea of superiority in the realm of living beings. But those in the know affirm that the matter rests not so much on the number of genes but on the way they relate to each other.

The arrival on the scene four years ago of Dolly the lamb marked a significant landmark in the history of science and, of course, that of homo sapiens. All signs are that within a few years human cloning will be a real option, and the British have already made the first step in that direction by allowing the use of human embryos in harvesting cells capable of generating any tissue of the human organism.

We hold in our hands, then, a crucial issue that has become quite thorny, because we lack many answers and even well formulated questions. We seem to be tormented by fears and hopes, in equal shares. Fears caused by a certain idea of nature and what is considered natural, which does not permit any manipulation of the environment. And hopes fed by the idea that biotechnology is the new panacea and that there is no evident limit to its transformational potential.

These advances ultimately catch us unprepared, with very little in the way of a political, institutional or moral platform that would enable us to deal with them.

The market, meanwhile, does not hesitate, it goes right after what it wants. Its influence is increasingly evident in the direction taken by genetic research and development and its applications. Regulations are being created that promote the private ownership of knowledge and technologies, and all signs indicate that the matter of human cloning will largely unfold in accordance with the law of supply and demand.

The advances and applications in the arena of biology bring with them new ethical dilemmas. The ground under our most basic points of reference has cracked and we have a ''normative deficit'' that we must urgently resolve.

We need an ethical ideal that is capable of guiding human conduct. An ''ethic of responsibility,'' according to the teachings of some philosophers, based on the moral achievements accumulated throughout human history. But one that is updated in function of today's complexities, capable of leading us through unprecedented situations and harmonizing our coexistence based on the values of liberty, equality and solidarity.

There are forces advocating a different relationship between science, technology and society, in other words, urging a new ''social contract'' that says the market should not be the end-all orientation of science and its applications, and that research should be guided by agendas linked to the broadest interests of society. Scientific research should not be conducted as isolated disciplines, but rather on a basis of approaches that are inter- and trans-disciplinary, as the only way of comprehending and transforming reality in a harmonious way.

It means reconciling freedom to research with public responsibility, access to science's results and benefits with the legitimate individual interests of those who promote it, dissemination of knowledge with ownership, economic growth with environmental balance, the forces of the market with so-called ''non-solvent demands,'' the long term with the short term, and the collective good with private interest.

In essence, we must realize that it is essential to create adequate mechanisms for citizens to be kept well informed and able to choose the direction and the applications of scientific and technological development. For as the winds of the new era are blowing, if we do not do so, we cannot truly speak of democracy.