The Progressive ResponseVolume 4, Number 31
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of ContentsI. Updates and Out-TakesOVERCOMING THE LEGACY OF THE VIETNAM WAR WILL FOX'S MARKET REFORMS RESHAPE MEXICAN IMMIGRATION? REMEMBERING IRAQ—AND DICK CHENEY AND THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF... TEXAS
II. Outside the U.S.AFRICAN LDCs MUST DETERMINE THEIR OWN DESTINY
III. Letters & CommentsERITREA/ETHIOPIA STORY IN SHORT
I. Updates and Out-TakesOVERCOMING THE LEGACY OF
THE VIETNAM WAR
Twenty-five years ago, on April 30, 1975, North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon, ending what Vietnamese call the "American War" and leading to the reunification of the country. The war cost the lives of three million Vietnamese on both sides, and at least a million Laotians and Cambodians. Although most Vietnamese have put the bitter memories of the war years behind them, U.S. policy has still not fully accepted the loss of the war—as if the U.S. had grievances against Vietnam rather than the other way around. Any mention of Vietnam in the United States still evokes the war, first and foremost. Despite five years of diplomatic ties between the former enemies, the legacy of war remains hidden below the surface—sometimes quite literally, in the form of land mines, unexploded ordnance (UXO), and Agent Orange (dioxin). Over 100,000 Vietnamese have been killed or maimed by mines and UXO since 1975, and an estimated one million people suffer from toxic contamination. Additional consequences of unresolved conflicts include the economic and political isolation that still plagues the Vietnamese government, which won the war but has arguably lost the peace. Early postwar hopes for normalization of relations between the former enemies were dashed when Washington refused to provide the reconstruction aid originally promised to Hanoi. When open conflict arose between Vietnam and Pol Pot's Cambodia in 1978-79, the U.S. tacitly supported the Khmer Rouge and their Chinese patrons, establishing full diplomatic ties with China and agreeing to look the other way from Deng Xiaoping's punitive invasion of northern Vietnam. In the geopolitical mindset of the Carter, Reagan, and Bush administrations, China formed a counterweight to the Soviet Union, while Vietnam was dismissed as a Soviet satellite. China received temporary normal trade relations (NTR) status, full diplomatic recognition, and, until 1989, military assistance. Vietnam got a twenty-year trade and aid embargo, which compounded the effects of a vast refugee exodus and other postwar difficulties. The U.S. political establishment reacted to its defeat in Vietnam by adjusting its military strategy to minimize casualties to Americans. But the basic foreign policy errors that led to the Vietnam debacle lie embedded in persistent cold war thinking and in the assumption that the American way is always best. Instead of admitting that it might have supported the wrong side in the Vietnamese revolution, the U.S. has continued to fight the war by other means. The U.S. isolation of Vietnam continued until well after the end of the cold war. President Clinton finally lifted the unilateral trade embargo in 1994 and reestablished diplomatic relations the following year. U.S. investors currently constitute 3.5% of Vietnam's total foreign investment, ranking ninth among Vietnam's trading partners. A bilateral trade agreement, considered by Washington to be the stepping stone to NTR, was negotiated in 1999 and signed in July 2000. But the accord will not enter into force until ratified by the U.S. Congress. With a few exceptions, U.S. assistance to Vietnam's development has been shamefully inadequate. On the most overt war-related issues, landmines/UXO and Agent Orange, it has taken the U.S. a generation to accept the scope of the problems and to consider addressing them in a comprehensive way. In at least one aspect, normalization has had a negative impact on Vietnam: as a condition of new relations, Hanoi has been forced to begin repayment of $146 million in former South Vietnamese bilateral debt. The widespread coverage of the April 30 anniversary in mainstream publications such as Time and People has shown Americans the new face of Vietnam. More than half of all Vietnamese were born after the war. Both they and the older generation desire peace, continued reform, and economic opportunity, ending their isolation while maintaining a distinct national identity. It behooves Washington—considering both economic interest and moral responsibility—to support the Vietnamese in these developments. Doing so, however, requires dismantling the barriers to good relations that remain as legacies of the war. (Andrew Wells-Dang <andrew@apcjp.org> is the program director at the Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace.) Sources for More InformationAsia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace Fund for Reconciliation & Development Human Rights Watch -Asia PeaceTrees Vietnam Quaker Service Vietnam U.S.-Vietnam Trade Council Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation Congressional Hearing on U.S.-Vietnam Trade Hatfield Consultants International Campaign to Ban Landmines U.S. Trade Representative U.S.-Vietnam Agreement
WILL FOX'S MARKET REFORMS RESHAPE
MEXICAN IMMIGRATION? Many people on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border, including both immigrants and immigrant rights activists, are hopeful that the defeat of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will serve as a catalyst for widespread change in Mexico. One area in particular where there is great potential for change is on the issue of immigration, where president-elect Vicente Fox's proactive approach is raising hopes on both sides of the border. Fox has called for a more equal relationship with the United States on the issue. He is critical of U.S. policies that treat the problem as a criminal justice and police issue, describes U.S. efforts to curb illegal immigration as ineffective, and has pledged to eliminate the tension along the border that has recently degenerated into violence. Additionally, Fox opens an interesting—and important—discussion by recognizing the development gap between Mexico and the United States as a root cause of migration. One of Fox's most provocative proposals is the creation of a North American Common Market for the free movement of people and goods. Past Mexican leadership has been reluctant to tackle this issue, allegedly because of a clause in the Mexican constitution that prevents Mexico from interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, but more likely because of trade pressures from the United States. The booming U.S. economy could help the Fox administration accomplish its goal of pushing Washington to allow more legal immigrants into the United States. Mexican Immigrants in the United States As part of his pledge to help Mexicans north of the border, Fox has called on the Mexican government to watch over the estimated 20 million Mexican citizens in the U.S. in order to protect them from abuses. He proposes modifying the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to protect undocumented workers, and has pledged to push for an international agreement ensuring access to healthcare for Mexicans living in the United States. Although this proposal is a good one, many similar projects already exist—including one in Atlanta implemented by the Instituto Mexicano de Seguro Social (IMSS), the Mexican Social Security Institute, and Familias Mexicanas, a Mexican civil society organization—to provide health care to Mexicans in the city. What Fox can do to improve the situation of Mexicans in the United States is limited. Nonetheless, he should look into ways to increase funding for the Oficina de Protección Consular—the office in charge of protecting the rights of immigrants in the United States—and ensuring that it complies with its mandate. Development as a Root Cause of Migration Along with his criticism of U.S. militarization of the border, Fox has also denounced Mexico for past policies that "open the escape valve and avoid its own responsibility to create [domestic] jobs." During his campaign, Fox vowed to make the fight against poverty his "first priority," and announced proposals to create jobs in the country and close the "brutal" income gap that leads Mexicans to seek work north of the border. Fox also suggested that the U.S. and Canada develop a revolving fund within the framework of NAFTA to grant low-interest loans to Mexico for economic or ecological projects, or to create jobs through small business development. Fox critics charge that during his term as governor of Guanajuato, he encouraged people to emigrate to find work in the United States in order to lower the state's unemployment rate. Some two million of the state's 6.7 million residents have relocated to el norte. And while Fox has mentioned developing rural Mexico as necessary to stemming emigration, he has also emphasized the benefits of the remittances that migrants send to their families in Mexico. During his campaign, Fox sparked controversy when he discussed his plan to train gardeners to work in the United States and encouraged Mexican immigrants to send more money home. During his term as governor, Fox did implement a state-level rural development program aimed at providing alternatives to migration. But many projects failed because of poor planning or as a result of changes in the government after Fox left. One of the projects, however, aimed to match investments by Mexican migrants in development projects with government funds by expanding a program called Casas Guanajuato, an institution that functions much like organizations in the United States, commonly referred to as hometown associations. Under the program, Mexican immigrants in the United States were encouraged to invest in infrastructure and economic development projects in their communities of origin. Fox describes such programs as a way to "use the money to build a self-sustaining economy with the hope of eventually breaking the cycle of dependence on funds from the United States." Although Fox's efforts to address the root causes of migration should be applauded, they demonstrate a number of inconsistencies. Every one of the projects funded under the binational program was a maquiladora, for example. Overall, maquiladoras do not stem migration, and in some analyses have been pointed to as part of the migration cycle. In order to attract—and keep—new investment, maquiladoras pay low wages, further contributing to, rather than addressing, what Fox himself recognizes as a key factor motivating migration to the United States: the income gap between Mexican and U.S. workers. (Anne Seymour <aseymour@mexicousadvocates.org> is the Program Coordinator of the Mexico-U.S. Advocates Network, a project of Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights. The Network's website is located at http://www.mexicousadvocates.org/ This commentary was excerpted from an article from borderlines—visit http://www.irc-online.org/bordline/—a monthly publication of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC), cosponsor of Foreign Policy In Focus.)
REMEMBERING IRAQ—AND
DICK CHENEY If you remember Dick Cheney at all, it is probably from his supporting role in the "Dick and Colin Show" (my title, not theirs), that slick exercise in televised spin control that kept America mesmerized during the 1991 Persian Gulf conflict. The show was so popular that it achieved the ultimate "preemptive strike," displacing the afternoon soap operas on more than one occasion. While Colin Powell had the star power, Cheney added a certain low-key, matter-of-fact credibility to the Bush administration's effort to sell the Gulf War as an antiseptic, "humane" conflict. To hear Dick and Colin tell it, every U.S. weapon worked as advertised, "collateral damage" (i.e., deaths of innocent men, women, and children) was limited, and the successful coalition effort to reverse Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait had ushered in a new post-cold war order in which tyrants and human rights abusers would no longer go unpunished. Those of us who stayed tuned to the Gulf War story after it dropped out of prime time soon learned that the Cheney/Powell PR machine had badly distorted the fundamental military and political facts of the conflict. Militarily, it ended up that U.S. "wonder weapons" hadn't been so wonderful after all. MIT weapons scientist Theodore Postol and the Israeli military persuasively demonstrated that the "star" of the air war, Raytheon's Patriot missile, was successful in intercepting Scud missiles just 10 to 40% of the time, not the 90%-plus rate broadcast by Cheney and Powell. (Ironically, just in the past year, Raytheon has been forced to recall as defective hundreds of upgraded Patriot PAC-2 missiles that it had sold to U.S. allies in the wake of the Gulf War). Iraqi military casualties were much smaller than the Bush administration had originally claimed, in large part because tens of thousands of Iraqi soldiers—exhausted from eight years of war with Iran and fed up with Saddam Hussein's empty promises to take care of their basic needs—decided to "vote with their feet" by beating a hasty retreat from the front lines. Meanwhile, deaths of Iraqi non-combatants from disease and hunger spawned by the destruction of Iraq's civilian infrastructure were much higher than originally acknowledged. More than nine years after the Bush administration's glorious victory in Iraq, the flood of unnecessary civilian deaths continues, driven by the Clinton/Gore policy of stiff economic sanctions punctuated by periodic outbursts of massive aerial bombardment. On the global political front, needless to say, the bombardment of Iraq did nothing to stop mass killing and repression in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, southeastern Turkey, or East Timor. In fact, in many of these places, the United States armed and trained the perpetrators of ethnic slaughter in keeping with the "Cheney Doctrine" of "arms for our friends and arms control for our enemies." This deeply hypocritical stance helped enrich U.S. arms merchants, but only at the unacceptably high cost of undermining the prospects for arms control and enduring peace in the Middle East, East Asia, and southern Africa. Yellow ribbons and self-congratulatory rhetoric aside, the main military and diplomatic consequences of the 1991 Gulf War have been the perpetuation of the myth of "war without casualties" (U.S. casualties, that is); the emergence of the United States as the world's leading arms merchant; and the weakening of diplomatic and multilateral approaches to peacekeeping and conflict prevention in favor of a series of ad hoc, U.S.-led "posses" that generally enter zones of conflict too late and use the wrong tools once they get there (e.g., bombing from 15,000 feet as an antidote to ethnic repression in Kosovo). So far, none of the U.S. principals of the 1991 Persian Gulf War have been called to account for the lies and manipulation that they engaged in before, during, and after the conflict. On the contrary, they have profited from the war. And more than any other player in the war, Cheney had to reap his windfall the old-fashioned way, by exploiting conflicts-of-interest to line his own pockets. (William Hartung <hartung@newschool.edu>, a member of FPIF's Advisory Committee, writes on national security themes, including FPIF policy briefs and a Special Report. He directs the Arms Trade Resource Center <berrigaf@newschool.edu>, which distributed a longer version of this copyrighted commentary, which is posted at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/commentary/cheney.html)
AND THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF... TEXAS
The whole scene was futuristic and creepy in its precision and lavishness; clearly no one but the oil multinationals and the Armed Forces has enough money to pay for something that lavish. George W. seemed to have practiced his jock walk. You know, where you hold your arms out slightly and put a lot of hip in your step. Makes it look like you got big muscles and big business. W. narrowed his eyes and, for the first time in such a long time, we heard that phrase in that accent: "Mah fellah Amurrikins." But though W.'s from Texas, he is no LBJ on domestic issues. He is going to privatize public schools and Social Security. He's going to cut taxes, and rich people are going to get their money back—if they ever paid up in the first place. W.'s keeping some money, though, because he needs it for our brave and under-cherished Armed Forces, and our missile defense against the menacing, war-mongering North Korea. The speech went on in W.'s peculiar cadence. He sounded like a graduating senior reciting a poem. He was reciting a poem. He hit the refrain: "They have not led—We will." He said this repeatedly because the moldering presidential historians, consulted earlier by the networks, had mentioned a number of times that this speech had to demonstrate that he could lead. So now, he's going to. He's going to get rid of those old-fashioned arms treaties. He's going to change the tone of Washington to one of civility and respect. W. broke into another poem, this one with the refrain, "It won't be long now." Praise Jesus. He finally stopped. God bless Amurrika. Fifty-two minutes, including cow bells. They released the balloons. Jim Lehrer thought that was the best part. He said Republicans are very good at the balloons. The presidential historians instantly began blathering about how that bit started with doves back in the 1960s, but the doves got too messy because they dropped dead in the hot lights and pooped on the delegates.
II. Outside the U.S.
AFRICAN LDCs MUST DETERMINE
THEIR OWN DESTINY The Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have become objects of the international community. They have ceased to be its subjects. This might be seen to be a "natural" consequence of their smallness, poverty, and vulnerability. They don't count. What they say or do makes no difference to the way things get organized in the global community. Their poverty is objectified, put into statistics and made the discussion issue of innumerable international conferences. They have become an object of charity for northern-based non-governmental organizations and other charitable foundations. Not a year goes by when the international community does not hold a meeting or a conference on the Biblical "poor amongst them." The LDCs are a good subject for academic papers, and for international conferences for enacting yet another ritual incantation of rich country "commitment" to them. It gets the industrialized countries off the hook from doing anything really serious about the poor. This year at the World Summit on Social Development, pious resolutions were passed on the "commitment" of the rich countries to get the poor of the world, especially those in the LDCs, out of their poverty. Commitment number 7 of the final "Outcome" reads: "To accelerate the economic, social and human resource development of Africa and the least developed countries." The industrialized countries do the opposite of what they promise. For example, having promised to "integrate" the LDCs into the "globalized markets," they then raise their technical or health standards to prevent the entry of LDC goods into their markets. Indeed, at times they display such ignorance of basic scientific facts as, in one instance, to prohibit the entry into their countries of fish and fish products from Uganda and Tanzania on the grounds that these would spread cholera in their countries! Similarly, the highly publicized initiative taken by the six Intergovernmental Agencies (ITC, IMF, UNCTAD, UNDP, World Bank, and WTO) in 1997, called the "Integrated Framework," (IF) is in tatters. The agencies recognize this themselves. And now they have voted to raise a princely sum of some $20 million over three years (i.e. $6m per year) to create an Integrated Framework Trust Fund (IFTF) for the LDCs. And this at a time when Japan spent $800 million just to hold a meeting of the G7/8 in Okinawa. This is a telltale sign that the industrialized countries have neither the will nor the intention to do anything really serious about the LDCs. Obviously, they have many more important matters to take care of. One must marvel at their courage (for there is no better word) to try to get away with the promise of a mere $20 million in three years, when $20 billion would not have been enough. The message should be taken seriously by the LDCs. They must not depend on the rich countries to bail them out—either with money, or markets, or technology transfers. These things are not going to happen. The next ten years will be the same as the past ten, and the previous ten. So what should the LDCs be doing? At the end of the day, it is a question of resources. The LDCs lack them, or they believe they lack them. The truth of the matter is that many of them are quite rich in resources. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Angola (both LDCs) are cases in point. But even a small country like Uganda is not poor in resources. A combination of manipulation of these countries from outside (as in the case of the Congo during the cold war), internal civil wars, structural deficiencies in their economies (whereby, in general, "they produce what they do not consume, and consume what they do not produce") have all interacted to make LDCs the basket cases they are. There is a net outflow of capital from African LDCs to the rich North, rather than an inflow. The African LDCs should refuse to accept the $20m largess that the Inter-agencies have promised to them for the next three years. It is an insult. African LDCs should from now on focus on closing the "leakages" that impoverish them. They should mend their own homes so that they can resolve internal conflicts with peaceful means. And they should reorient their economic structures so that, first and foremost, they produce what they consume. That is the only sure way that they can regain their dignity, and be counted as proper subjects of the international community. (Excerpted from SEATINI, produced by the International South Group Network. For more information: <seatinin.zw@undp.org> Tandon is editor the SEATINI bulletin.)
III. Letters and Comments
Please confine yourself to your own business. Do not interfere in the affairs of other countries in the name of analysis. For those of us who know what was going on between these two countries, we can not buy your report. It is simply a pure fabrication, which intends to favor one of the contenders. You are not analysts but SIMPLY STUPID reporters. - Yonas Michael <yonas@hrz2.hrz.tu-darmstadt.de>
ERITREA/ETHIOPIA STORY IN SHORT This war is similar to the Gulf War of President Bush. In the case of the Gulf it was oil, in the case of Eritrea it was ports. The international community, who follow the footsteps of the United States, who follow the footsteps of Israel, did not want the Red Sea to be accessed by the Arab countries. That is the story in short. So, they allow the Tigrayans to act as they please, as they let Sadam Hussein act as he pleased in the beginning. The Tigrayans (TPLF) and Eritreans (EPLF) joined to fight together, reluctantly on the EPLF side, in about the beginning of the 1980s. They never fought together for 30 years. You just mention that conflict erupted—no mention of who started it. But you do mention that Eritreans only reacted, so it must have been started from the other side. Then you go on to say several Eritreans were killed. So according to what you wrote, that territories were taken by Eritrea, it must have been as a result of the fighting like now, for example: Ethiopia has taken undisputed land from Eritrea as a result of the war. This is different from what the international community says: that Eritrea just went, unprovoked, and just sat on foreign land. Even if you do not correct it, I hope deep in your soul you understand it—even you said it!! So, as always it is Ethiopia that fights even as negotiations are going on: The border commission meetings were going on in Addis, as you said, when the fighting erupted. They always do that, because the aim is to wage a war. Simple. -Abeba Isahac <mengis@dellnet.com>
Patrick Gilkes has a miserable track record when it comes to reporting on the Ethiopian invasion of Eritrea. As someone with a long time scholarly interest in the Horn of Africa and who has paid close attention to the political events in the area, I was very disappointed in the August issue piece by Mr. Gilkes and Mr. Plaut on the Ethiopian/Eritrean conflict. The article contains numerous errors and fails to include very relevant and widely reported reports, including the International Institute for Strategic Studies report on arms purchases in the area. It also leaves the reader with the false impression that the IMF/World Bank is in any way a player in Eritrea. Of course, the BBC World Service (of which Mr. Plaut is credited as an editor) has a very biased view in favor of the Ethiopians, something which I can document. They regularly report outright fabrications by the Ethiopian government without bothering to make any attempt to verify their claims. If you have any questions concerning my credibility, you may want to check me out with Alex Cockburn for I have done extensive research documenting the role of the U.S. being behind the Ethiopian invasion of Eritrea. - Thomas C. Mountain <brotom@lava.net> U.S. Eritrean Peoples Friendship Association
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