The Progressive ResponseVolume 4, Number 46
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of ContentsI. Around the WorldBy Tom Barry * NATO: "A Relic of the Past"
II. Updates and Out-TakesTHE COMING APATHY: AFRICA POLICY UNDER A BUSH ADMINISTRATION BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND SOUTH ASIA
III. Letters and CommentsLEVERAGE OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
I. Around the WorldBy Tom Barry Many observers believe that the NATO transatlantic military alliance established more than five decades ago is a cold war relic. Not Defense Secretary William Cohen, who sees NATO as being "fundamental to our security" and the cornerstone of the U.S.-European alliance. In a speech last week to NATO defense ministers, he warned that the EU’s plans to create an independent rapid response military force would make NATO "a relic of the past." Great Britain, America’s loyal military ally and attack dog in the NATO alliance, took heed of the defense secretary’s warning and at the EU meeting reacted strongly to a draft statement describing the planned EU defense force as having an "autonomous capacity to take decisions." That indication that European countries might be interested in operating outside the U.S.-dominated NATO framework was struck from the final EU statement. While all militarization initiatives should be considered with caution and skepticism, the EU’s plan for a 60,000-member Rapid Defense Force is a hopeful sign that Europeans are assuming more responsibility for addressing their own security issues outside of the NATO framework. When combined with the conflict-prevention objectives of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), this new European resolve to form a collective military force to address regional threats is an encouraging sign that NATO--which led the massive bombing campaigns in Iraq and Kosovo--will someday be a relic of the U.S.-dominated past and will be replaced by a more forward-looking alliance directed and financed by Europeans themselves. Ideally, such an alliance should focus on conflict prevention and resolution. Rather than directly addressing whether the proposed European Defense Force will be independent or in direct coordination with the U.S. military, the EU ministers passed a vague statement supporting the establishment of the regional army that made no mention of its relationship with NATO. The myth that the U.S. is a neutral party in the Middle East is getting ever more tiresome. The latest case of this pretense of objectivity was the recent visit to the Middle East by the U.S. commission headed by former Senate majority leader George Mitchell. A new report by the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (CPAP) illustrates America’s long-running bias in favor of Israel in its summary of the politics of U.S. aid to the region. One-sixth of all U.S. foreign aid has flowed in recent years to Israel. This $3 billion in annual economic and military aid does not, however, represent the full extent of U.S. financial support to Israel, according to the CPAP study. This figure does not include such other large items as "joint defense projects" between U.S. and Israel or the U.S. loans to Israel--repayment of which is commonly waived. According to CPAP, the Congressional Research Service found that in the 1994-98 period Israel received $29 billion in waived loans. As if all this aid were not enough to demonstrate America’s abiding support of Israel, President Clinton has asked for an additional $450 million in aid to Israel--despite the international condemnation of Israel’s current crackdown on mostly unarmed Palestinian protesters. The death toll from the past two months of violence has climbed over 300--more than 90% of whom are Palestinians. (For more information: http://www.palestinecenter.org/) * International Criminal Court The Republican congressional leadership has already made it clear that it intends to shape the Bush administration’s foreign policy priorities. Sen. Jesse Helms has launched a bill in close cooperation with right-wing zealot House Whip Tom DeLay to bar U.S. cooperation with the International Criminal Court (ICC). International laws and norms are fine for other countries, but not for the United States of America; this is the core of the Republican-led opposition to the ratification of the ICC. The treaty, which is supported by the EU, Canada, and nearly every other U.S. ally, has been signed by 116 countries and ratified by 23. Supporters say the international court, which will adjudicate the world’s most heinous human rights crimes, will be operative in two years, but they are concerned that its legitimacy and power will be undermined if the U.S. remains in opposition. The U.S. government, driven by the concerns of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is concerned that the ICC will have the authority to prosecute American soldiers and officials participating in U.S. military operations abroad. David Scheffer, U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues, has presented a new proposal to the ICC negotiators that offers additional guarantees that the court would not admit a case without rigorous review and without sufficient chance for the country of the alleged violator to hear the case. The proposal, which would ratchet up the admissibility review before a case is accepted, would not require that the existing treaty be revised. A new report, "The United States and the International Criminal Court: The Choices Ahead," published by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Committee on International Security Studies, concludes that congressional critics of the ICC have overstated risks to American servicemen deployed abroad. Its authors, Sarah Sewall and Carl Kaysen, say that opposition to the ICC will damage the long-term security interests of the U.S. and undermine American claims to international leadership. (Around the World is an occasional column by Tom Barry, FPIF Co-director.)
II. Updates and Out-Takes
THE COMING APATHY: AFRICA POLICY UNDER A BUSH ADMINISTRATION By Salih Booker, Africa Policy Information Center (Posted at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0012africa.html ) "There’s got to be priorities," George W. Bush responded when asked about Africa in the second presidential campaign debate. Africa did not make his short list: the Middle East, Europe, the Far East, and the Americas. A Bush presidency portends a return to the blatantly anti-African policies of the Reagan-Bush years, characterized by a general disregard for black people and a perception of Africa as a social welfare case. Vice President Dick Cheney is widely expected to steer the younger Bush on most policy matters--especially foreign affairs. Cheney’s perspective on Africa in the 1980s was epitomized by his 1986 vote in favor of keeping Nelson Mandela in prison and his consistent opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa. In Africa, a Bush White House will likely concentrate on helping its oil industry friends reap maximum profits with minimum constraints, and it will have absolutely no sense of responsibility for past American misadventures, or for global problems like AIDS or refugees. But events and activism in Africa plus grassroots pressure in the U.S. and internationally could change all of that, as it did during the White House tenure of the last Republican Africaphobe. Ironically, those chosen to set international priorities for Bush will likely include two loyal African-Americans, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who will probably not deviate from the Bush-Cheney exclusion of Africa from the U.S. global agenda. Neither Powell nor Rice has shown any particular interest in or special knowledge of African issues. Both have repeatedly pledged their allegiance to a strong unilateralist view of the use of U.S. power, based on the traditional geopolitical concepts of the national interest held by the white American elite. Africans are invisible on their policy radar screens--though all too visible on CNN for the Texas governor’s taste. "No one liked to see it on our TV screens," said Bush, when asked about genocide in Rwanda in 1994, but Clinton "did the right thing," he argued, in deciding not to act to stop the slaughter. Bush ignored the fact that the U.S. also failed to support--and indeed blocked--multilateral action by the United Nations. This false dichotomy between bilateral intervention and noninvolvement is common among U.S. policymakers, but the concessions of Bush’s team to multilateral options are likely to be particularly scant. The need for multilateral support for peace and security rather than continued expansion of unaccountable bilateral military ties is one of the highest priority issues affecting Africa. But hard-line U.S. unilateralism will likely make a bad situation worse. When not ignoring African security crises, the new administration will likely attempt to "delegate" African peacekeeping, using this as a rationale for expanding relationships with privileged partners, such as Nigeria, while denying resources for strengthening multilateral involvement. In fact, we may well see a repeat of this year’s abortive effort by congressional Republicans to cut funds for UN peacekeeping in Africa to zero. On two other African priority issues, however--debt cancellation and the HIV/AIDS pandemic--public pressure has a chance to cross traditional political barriers and make unexpected breakthroughs, as did the struggle for sanctions against apartheid in the Reagan era. Action on both issues currently receives nominal support across party lines, as evidenced in Bush’s unexpected--though qualified--rhetorical endorsement of debt relief in the debates. But any significant action will require spending money and opposing vested economic interests, and therefore movement on these issues will initially become even more difficult than it has been to date. (Salih Booker <apic@igc.org> is the director of both The Africa Fund in New York and the Africa Policy Information Center in Washington.) BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND SOUTH ASIA By John Gershman, FPIF Asia-Pacific Editor Under a George W. Bush administration, U.S. policy toward South Asia will continue--if not accelerate--Washington’s tilt since 1998 away from Pakistan and toward India. Independent from its ongoing conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir, India now has a prominent place on the U.S. foreign policy map. This is not likely to change under a Bush administration. Bush listed India, along with Russia and China, as the "big ones" that his foreign policy team will work on to get right. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will likely remain on the sidelines of U.S. concern in the region, and Afghanistan will play an increasingly prominent role in shaping U.S. relations with the region. Nuclear weapons will continue to be an ongoing focus of U.S. policy toward India and Pakistan. But a Bush administration that is dubious about multilateral arms control agreements is not going to pressure India and Pakistan to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (which Bush opposes). A Bush administration will likely look for assurances from India and Pakistan that both countries will refrain from weaponization of their nuclear capabilities, and increased transparency as a form of confidence building. Although a Bush administration will likely talk about respect for the world’s largest democracy, the real emphasis will likely be on pushing for greater commercial ties with a country that has become a fast-growing export market for U.S. goods, and a key player in the transnational production of software and other high-tech products. The growing wealth and prominence of Indian-Americans in high-tech sectors will encourage this approach. Oil interests in Central Asia and the interests of U.S. energy firms in India are likely to move to center stage in U.S. foreign economic policy. George W. Bush has close ties to the U.S. energy firm Enron, Houston’s wealthiest company and one of the largest contributors to his campaign. Kenneth Lay, the chief executive of Enron, has personally given over $100,000 to Bush’s political campaigns--more than any other individual. He is also one of the "Pioneers"--a Bush supporter who has collected at least $100,000 in direct contributions of $1,000 or less. Enron’s investments in India have been controversial. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International blamed the company for financing local police attacks on citizens protesting the construction of a natural gas plant. But security issues in the region will become more dominated by concerns about terrorism and the increasing strength of Islamist groups, supported in part by the Taliban. This shift will accelerate the de facto tilt toward India. Bush’s likely National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, a Russia expert, is likely to be personally involved as Russia and even (to a lesser degree) China are becoming more prominent players in the poorly defined borderlands of South, Central, and East Asia. The expansion of unrest stretching across South and Central Asia to China will lead to some unusual alliances. For example, the U.S. has already begun informal cooperation with China, providing information on Uighur separatists. In addition to the sanctions efforts, the Clinton administration is currently working with Russia and three Central Asian states (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kirgyzstan) to develop a plan to hit at both bin Laden and the Taliban. Commandos from the three Central Asian states are in training with U.S. Special Forces under NATO’s Partnership for Peace program. While the main U.S. target would be bin Laden, Russia and the Central Asian states would probably also want to strike against Chechen militants and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), respectively. The IMU has launched guerrilla incursions into the three Central Asian states, while Chechens and the IMU are also working with the Taliban in northern Afghanistan. This past fall the Clinton administration classified the IMU as a terrorist organization. If, as is likely, the Bush administration continues the Clinton administration’s approach of not having an Afghan policy but a "get Bin laden" policy, the war in Afghanistan and the broader regional instability will continue. (John Gershman can be contacted at <jgershman@igc.org>.)
III. Letters and CommentsLEVERAGE OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
John Lyle has raised an important issue--the leverage of U.S. foreign policy. I'll leave aside the matter of whether or not the U.S. should unilaterally attempt to change North Korean structures, and address the question on its own terms. It should be remembered that the current sanctions imposed against North Korea pertain to its international conduct, not its internal policies. By the U.S. government's own assessment, North Korea has not engaged in international terrorism since the late 1980s. North Korea has suspended its missile tests. It has demonstrated in the past year that it wants to join the international community. Sanctions are an impediment to this process. Moreover, sanctions are a weak form of leverage, particularly when they are not supported by the population of the targeted country. Sanctions against Iraq and Cuba have proven both ineffective and extraordinarily harmful to the civilian populations, while having substantially less impact on the elites. If the U.S. and other countries had more substantial economic and diplomatic connections to North Korea, they would have more leverage. Trade, aid, and access to international institutions are more sophisticated means of influencing the behavior of states. - John Feffer <Johnfeffer@aol.com>
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