Hardball

SHOW: HARDBALL 5:00 PM EST November 4, 2005 Friday

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Tonight, violence in Argentina, as more than 1,000 antiAmerican protesters at the Summit of the Americas clash with police. Peter DeShazo is the former deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs under President Bush and President Clinton. He`s the director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here in Washington. Peter, thank you for joining us. What do you make of this? PETER DESHAZO, DIR. OF AMERICAS PROGRAM, CSIS: Well, there have been protests at just about every other summit. There were protests in Quebec City in 2001. That`s really nothing unusual. There is frustration in the region with the lack of jobs and with persistent poverty, and the United States. The vision of the United States has suffered in the region with the invasion of Iraq. But again, protests against the summit and against a U.S. president, that`s not unusual. MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you to segment it. The influence of the Iraq war on this crowd, a minority influence or a majority influence? DESHAZO: I think the war has been largely unpopular in Latin America. (CROSSTALK) MATTHEWS: Why do they care enough to go out -- I mean, most Americans have never been in a riot, they haven`t gone out and put on riot gear and gone out and faced the police. What drives you to the level of this performance, this street theater here, knocking down buildings and breaking glass and destroying property? Can you be driven to that level of hostility by a war in Iraq waged by a country a global way? DESHAZO: Well, there may be -- I can`t speak for the people who are protesting, I don`t know exactly what is driving them. But, you know, clearly, breaking the law and taking the law into their own hands is something that goes beyond democratic protests.

MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about the trade issue. The poor people of the world, or at least some of the people who speak for them, seem to feel that poverty is -- grows because of the globalization factor. Is it -- is there in fact evidence of that in countries like Argentina? Are the upper middleclass and the wealthy doing better with free trade because they can sell to us, but yet the poor people`s -- value of their labor drops? I mean, what -- is there an actual objective reality to this anger? DESHAZO: Well, free trade is one of the motors of economic development. At the summit, there are different viewpoints as to what creates economic growth, how to create jobs. That`s part of the debate that will be going on. But the U.S. position clearly is that free trade is an important component of economic growth, especially sustainable economic growth. MATTHEWS: But the losers here are out in the streets. Why are they losers? DESHAZO: Again, you`d have to -- I don`t know exactly who these people are. Maybe they`re not losers, maybe they`re people who are there for political purposes. I really couldn`t say. MATTHEWS: I wonder about that, too. Sometimes so-called students are really just lefties who sit around on campus and talk left-wing politics over coffee and then they see an opportunity like this and they feel like their real Che Guevara types -- I don`t know. There may be a lot of romance in this, throwing fire bombs at Americans and at your own police. But we`re watching it right now and it looks -- it doesn`t look necessarily deadly, but it seems a bit scary. And, Peter, you think this lines up with the kinds of things we`ve seen here in the States, like in Washington, D.C., when every time the World Bank has a meeting, or anybody is getting together here, or the International Monetary Fund, or the meetings up in Seattle, those kinds of world globalization meetings? DESHAZO: It doesn`t surprise me that there are protests taking place. I think what`s more important is to look beyond this to the issues of the summit itself. There are issues of real importance that are being discussed there, issues that have a bearing on the well-being of all of the citizens of the hemisphere. And that`s really where attention ought to be focused.

MATTHEWS: OK. Peter, thank you very much. Peter DeShazo of the Center for Strategic and International Studies here in Washington.