Among the many quite wonderful sonnets by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
is one entitled
Bluebeard
. It is her retelling of the French folk tale about the rich man whose former dead wives are locked in the one room in his large house where his current wife is forbidden to go. But, of course, she goes there. In the Millay poem, there are no remains of former wives. The room’s only significance is that it is the one place that Bluebeard kept just for himself.
In that sense, the tale is a very poor stand-in for the WTO which should exist to serve all of its members equally. And yet, in the WTO’s quest for inclusiveness – symbolized by the Doha Development Agenda – it consciously elevated one class of members above others. We have not touched here on Ambassador Lighthizer’s critique of the Appellate Body, but one could argue that in the WTO’s quest for institutional identity, an identity bolstered by its own jurisprudence, it abandoned an understanding that for many was the bedrock of the organization, specifically the idea that members can only be expected to comply with those rules to which they have explicitly agreed.
Whether you reject them or embrace them, we assume you are familiar with the larger arguments of which the above are but strands. That said, and without claiming too strong a connection between Millay’s Bluebeard and the challenges facing the WTO, here is the full poem.
Bluebeard
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed … Here is no treasure hid,
No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for Truth, no heads of women slain
For greed like yours, no writhings of distress;
But only what you see … Look yet again:
An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless,
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
Unto the threshold of this room tonight
That I must never more behold your face.
This now is yours. I seek another place.
In candor, it is that last line – coupled with Ambassador Lighthizer’s comment that he could go either way – that led us to turn this Bluebeard into a note on trade policy. As for the penultimate line, as a comment on the future of the WTO, it is way too harsh. We see little prospect of major players abandoning the organization altogether. That is not the question. The question is: will the WTO continue to be or, more accurately, will it ever be again, the principal and indispensable meeting place for nations engaged in shaping and reshaping the global trading system?
Against that background, the selection of the WTO’s next director-general may say as much about the WTO itself as it does about whoever is chosen to lead it.
