Senator George J. Mitchell in Oslo

It's not often America's powerful world leaders come trecking across the Atlantic to visit the Nordic region, but yesterday morning I had the privilege to attend a talk by Senator George J. Mitchell.

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"If you let people go hungry and leave them with nothing, they get angry." Rune Bjørkevik, one of just a hundred guests to attend this morning's intimate conference with the Senator is expressing his view on global policy to the general agreement of the table. "The key is to try and figure out how to create something for everyone," he says.

"But it's not as easy as that," Lynn Kvamme, another guest interjets. "What do you do when one culture's way of doing business is different from your own? If you just create one global policy for an organisation you may miss out on the market altogether by setting standards not applicable in the host country in which you're doing business."

"I think the answer is you have to form your own moral code: as long as you never to do something which you wouldn't be happy to have represented on the front page of the Financial Times then that seems a pretty safe rule-of-thumb," I offer. The comment doesn't go down with too much effect.

"No - it's about hard skills and soft skills, and finding out how to use them with some kind of purpose," someone counters bemusingly from the other end of the table, switching the conversation language into Norwegian.

Held amidst the spenetic visage of the Grand Hotel in the heart of the Norwegian capital, just a stone's throw from Stortinget, the national parliament, the atmosphere at the conference is a peculiar hybrid between the compassionate global politics of one the world's first social-democracies and the hard capitalist opportunism inherent in the companies the guests represent. Present are delegates from Microsoft, Telenor, Fast Search and Transfer - Norway's notorious cocktail party, Champagne-swigging camaraderie of first class minds with just a little self confidence to go with - Xerox, Citigroup, and of course DLA Piper, the senator's own law firm, which is holding the event in conjunction with the American Chamber of Commerce.

The peculiar paradox of this warm left-leaning approach to cold corporate ambition could not make for a more perfect preclude to the Senator's own very eloquently delivered adress, "Global Challenges in the 21st Century".

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“Senator Mitchell is a man who has dedicated his life to making the world a better place. The United States Senate would be better off with a hundred George Mitchells today.” So said Benson K. Whitney, the highly respected US ambassador in Norway when introducing his good friend to the stage.

It’s easy to see how Senator Mitchell became such an influential figure in US politics. He is a complex mixture between quite opposite qualities – softly-spoken but equally determined, relaxed but purposeful, eloquent but colloquial, business-like and at the same time very much the people’s man – but whereas these contradictions usually translate to hypocracy in many of his colleagues, on the Senator they gel together well. He’s a man for whom politics is more than just legislation – it’s the bedrock of life itself. Politics comes naturally to him, that much is clear, though he claims this wasn’t always the case.

“I have to confess I’m a little intimidated talking to this room on corporate globalisation, because most of the attendees here know a great deal more about it than I do” he starts out modestly. “But when I was thinking about this (before giving this speech), I thought back to my introduction to the Senate. I was just a federal judge at the time in Maine, and it didn’t occur to me that I would be asked to be Senator, so like everyone else, I turned off my TV and went to bed on Sunday night at eleven, wondering who they were going to announce as Senator the next day.”

Half an hour or so later he received a phone call from the Governor, asking him if he would report downtown so that he could be announced as the new senator. 

“Can I have some time to think about it at least?” he asked.

He was told – you have an hour. After discouraging words from his two brothers – who are famous state athletes – he was suddenly driven, he said, by this “insecurity complex” brought about by the sibling rivalry. Still, this is said in good humour – it is evident the family are close. 

Here’s a piece of trivia – senator Mitchell was the shortest-reigning senator to ever cast a vote – two minutes after having been sworn in. “That the first of many informed policy decisions I made as Senator,” he cracked.

And on his first night on the job he was asked to give a key-note speech to 3000 chartered accountants on “the tax code”, after all the others chosen to give the speech had cancelled at the last minute. “They kind of figured you would be free to do it,” he was told. When he protested that he knew nothing about the tax code, the response came: “well, you’re not going to get very far in politics with that attitude.” 

And so, a young Senator Mitchell delivered a speech on a subject he knew nothing about to some of the sharpest and most well-informed minds on it in the country – and that’s politics. And here he claims he is doing the same thing, talking about globalisation, but unaided by any notes, and as one of the global champions of many of the world’s most wide-ranging policies affecting globalisation, it’s clear this is modesty. In his final act as senator in 1994, the WTO’s last trade agreements were formed.

“But the vast majority of dislocation that happens to markets is not because of trade agreements but because of innovation,” he asserted. “The word (globalisation) has become a pejorative in itself in many respects. Expanded trade, too, does produce dislocation. While the advantages of globalisation are global, the disadvantages are local. 

“In Europe there were three major land wars with France and Germany as the main protagonists (in the twentieth century) – but in the past success of the Atlantic Alliance” this is now no longer a real possibility. “But today it’s  a nuclear  threat, and the number of terrorist organisations has expanded regularly, we face a growing competition for energy security,” he said.

“There is no act or policy which can deal with these issues at once – and just as we face new challenges that alliance has been under threat in the last years.

“That means we must be able to co-operate on military issues, but we must also be able to co-operate on non-military issues.” 

There are, he explained, different principles and circumstances that are relative to all – different religions and ideologies for example – but underpinning them all “there are economic problems.

“Without economic growth and the creation of opportunity there is no solution. The same is true in the middle east. Business leaders can be peace makers. There is nothing more important than opportunity in people’s lives.” 

It’s a point he is amply qualified to deliver, given his large corporate concerns at Disney, DLA Piper, and numerous other conglomerates. “You are not in business just for the profit of your shareholders – think instead of your role in creating jobs.”

 

Jobs

But what, I ask him, about all the blue-collar jobs going overseas? What kind of trade-off must a politician or business leader be prepared and willing to make at the expense of their own country to the betterment of other poorer ones? 

“We have to realistically recognise the enormous benefits while dealing with the disadvantages. We have to make it clear that it doesn’t mean turning back the clock and that this is not a unique situation – it’s not representative of trade agreements. We have to create skills and education to find employment that is more knowledge-based” and on a higher level. He concedes that this may mean less job security – but this is the global trend.

“Every society is filled with stories of people who achieve the pinnacle of success with no education – that will be rare in the 21^st century.” 

In every society, including our own, we have to see every benefit and disadvantage and weigh them up and within that, finding the opportunity, goes his argument.

“That’s the answer to the loss of jobs.” 

He gave an example, from Maine, his home state, where his mother worked in a textile mill all her life. At the time, there were 24, but now today there are none. Her children, he argues, were able to get into higher and more advantaged jobs through the education they received and the increasing growth of the economy in the US On balance, however, he doesn’t think this programme of education and transfer of skills has been done so effectively in the USA.

“The question is do we have the leadership, vision and determination to do it the right way. 

“The same is true in (drafting) economic policy – free-market economies require constant change; business agility is now essential to success. For someone of my age it’s almost unthinkable that GM could be close to collapse – but what works today might not be the right policy.”

In the next five to ten years, we must have “the willingness to accept and embrace change,” he said. He outlined the paradox between politics and business. “Political leaders are risk adverse … often it takes business leaders to make those changes.” 

Environment

How about, asked another member of the audience, environmental changes?

“It’s a profound issue affecting not just the quality of life but the issue of life itself,” he responded. 

“The reality for almost everyone in life” – in marriage, in raising children – “is we make the most important decisions based on less than scientific certainity.

“Is anyone here scientifically sure they married the right person? 

“Policy is made on less than scientific certainty – we have to be prepared to act on less than scientific certainty.”

For example, “we all know that at some point in history oil will be replaced by a new energy source – you can argue whether that’s in 50 - 500 years, but human ingenuity will have to find an answer. 

“The public in the U.S.is very hard to move – we have to arrive at a democratic consensus that the problem exists and then a democratic consensus on what has to be done.”

When senator Mitchell appealed to draft legislation dealing with oil and the environment, for nine years, the proposal was rejected; he couldn’t even get a hearing in congress. The President was against it, indeed, he said, everyone was against such legislation no matter how much he requested, pleased or begged. After a massive Exxon oil spill, within 90 days, the legislation was drafted and signed. 

“So it takes a significant and dramatic event” to draft this kind of legislation. “”The difficulty with global warming is that it’s slow”. Although it may not be scientifically certain, it’s pretty damn certain that the world is heating up due to polluting effects – and this should be enough to act now, he feels.

On energy security “the first thing we have to do is change our wasteful habit of consumption – one in eight barrels of oil is consumed on U.S. highways and we can’t continue like this. 

“We clearly can, must and will increase the fuel efficient standards of our vehicles. The Russians have plenty of gas and they will use that to pursue a number of objectives,” he added. “There are a number of long-range projects under research” – but first and foremost, there has to be the economic incentive for those in every type of business to seek alternatives.

And that point very well summarises Senator Mitchell’s point about policy – it is driven by economics, and without economic incentive, there is little sense in the policy. For a democrat, that's one hell of a statement.