The Progressive Response

The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF)—a "Think Tank Without Walls." A joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, FPIF is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section. For more information on FPIF and joining our network, please consider visiting the FPIF website at http://www.fpif.org/.

Tom Barry, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) www.irc-online.org and codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus. He can be contacted at <tom@irc-online.org>.

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Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)

Table of Contents

I. Updates and Out-Takes

AFTER THE FALL: POSSIBLE REPERCUSSIONS OF ARGENTINE CRISIS
By David Felix

ECONOMIC DEBACLE IN ARGENTINA: THE IMF STRIKES AGAIN
By Arthur MacEwan

A NEW MARSHALL PLAN FOR 2002: ADVANCING HUMAN SECURITY AND CONTROLLING TERRORISM
By Dick Bell & Michael Renner

THE BLACK COMEDY OF MISSILE DEFENSE
By Frances Fitzgerald

NEW FROM SELF-DETERMINATION IN FOCUS

II. Outside the U.S.

RUSSIA WORRIES THAT AFGHAN SUCCESS WILL PROMPT U.S. UNILATERALISM
By Igor Torbakov

III. Letters and Comments

AFTER THE FALL

AMERICA'S STRONG ARM

LESSON FROM WACO

I. Updates and Out-takes

AFTER THE FALL: POSSIBLE REPERCUSSIONS OF ARGENTINE CRISIS
By David Felix

(Editor's Note: Protectionism and inward-looking economic policies have returned with a vengeance, at least rhetorically, as Argentina gets its fifth president in two weeks. Eduardo Duhalde, a senator with the Peronist party and unsuccessful presidential candidate two years ago, was installed as president January 1st. Nationalism not globalization, populism not free trade, Peronism not Thatcherism/Reaganism are the messages coming from the dominant political forces in Argentina. Whether such a retrenching in the type of economic policies that formerly characterized Latin America's political economy will stabilize the country remains to be seen, but it is safe to say that Argentina's rejection of neoliberalism spells doom for Washington's plans to build a Free Trade Area of the Americas. FPIF offers two news commentaries from noted progressive economists.)

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0112argentine.html .)

The inevitable has now happened. The strategy of the government of President de la Rua was to revive the sinking economy by re-attracting IMF credits and foreign capital. To appease the IMF and Wall Street, it chose to remain with a policy triad that had ceased to make sense. This was to defend at all costs a severely overvalued peso exchange rate, keep up full servicing of the oppressively large dollar debt, and balance the fiscal budget in the face of skyrocketing unemployment and falling production.

The frantic efforts of President de la Rua's economic policy czar, Domingo Cavallo, to implement the triad produced abject failure on all fronts: debt default, a run from the peso that's rapidly diminishing its value in the exchange market, an expanding fiscal deficit, resounding nyets from the IMF to requests for more credits, as well as from Wall Street to requests to finance the rollover of the existing foreign debt on viable terms, much less to finance new debt. A violent popular uprising drove Cavallo and President de la Rua from office, leaving the economy in shambles and the polity in crisis.

Inevitable? The failure was foretold not merely by academic critics, including this writer, but more importantly by bond investors, who, by 1998 having come to see Argentina as over-indebted and the peso as overvalued, began reducing lending to Argentina and upping the risk premia for holding Argentine paper. More difficult to foretell is what the failure may bring. But before offering prognoses, a brief review of what reduced Argentina from poster child of the IMF and Wall Street during most of the 1990s to pariah today may help lay out alternatives.

The Bush II administration and the IMF are comfortable with their tough love rejection of Argentina's carnal embrace because they are persuaded the immediate global repercussions from Argentina's default will be minimal. The reasoning is that in contrast to the Asian crisis, the default, so long in coming, has given creditors ample time to take protective measures. However, this optimism may underestimate repercussions via slower channels of contagion.

One is that a sovereign bond default in each of the past three years, with the latest, Argentina's, being also by far the largest, plus the hardening of the IMF's bailout terms has been a red flag to the international financial markets. The IMF reports that net bond flows to developing countries, which had fallen to zero after 1998, turned negative after mid-2001, and that syndicated bank loans, which are mainly directed to large private firms of developing countries, have taken a similar downward path. Latin American and Asian countries burdened with large hard currency debts are facing hardening terms for rolling over or adding to their debts. And compared to the 1997 Asian crisis, promoting exports to offset the higher debt service has been encountering tougher going. Their major markets, the industrial countries, are all in recession, and the U.S., erstwhile global importer of last resort, is now turning again to selective protectionism. The terms of trade of exporters of primary materials and low technology industrial commodities have been deteriorating, and increasing export promotion will intensify the deterioration. Unless the industrial countries recover soon and strongly from their recession, export-led growth promises to be impoverishing for most developing countries.

The direct trade effects of the Argentine peso devaluation will not be important globally, but would be locally. Argentina is a large enough trading partner with Brazil, Chile, and other neighboring countries for a large real devaluation of the peso to significantly impact their economies. The negative impact would be reinforced were the Peronist government to follow Cavallo's lead in imposing higher tariffs on imports from its Mercosur partners, notably from Brazil. Alternatively, the Peronists might try to build up regional import substitution as a partial substitute for export-led growth by promoting the revival and further strengthening of Mercosur. Success in that effort could have a positive regional impact, but a more contentious global one as well, since it would undercut the U.S. drive for free trade and free capital movements.

A third contagion channel is political. If Argentina's new economic strategy of debt default, expanded public expenditure and more protectionist inward-oriented growth were to bring about a sustainable economic recovery, the strategy would gain popular appeal in other debt-ridden developing countries as a viable alternative to their troubled free market, export-led growth with its heavy dependence on volatile foreign capital.

This presents the Bush II administration with a Hobson's choice. It could hang tough on no emergency loans to Argentina, re-enforced perhaps by a hard line in the forthcoming debt renegotiations, in order to raise the probability of failure for Argentina's breakaway from neoliberalism. That would also increase the risk that the resulting economic chaos could produce political chaos and a return of the jackboots. It would also increase opposition within the IMF directorate to U.S. dominance of IMF policy toward the developing countries, which could further erode the institution's usefulness to the U.S. as a key instrument for globalizing neoliberalism.

The French, Italian, and Spanish governments are publicly demanding IMF financial aid to Argentina. The alternative for the Bush II administration is to retreat from hardline unilateralism to softer Clintonism; i.e., help Argentina financially in hopes of modifying its policy breakaway, protecting Argentine democracy, and easing tensions within the IMF. Which will be the choice? At this date, quien sabe?

(David Felix <felix@wueconc.wustl.edu> is Professor Emeritus at Washington University.)

ECONOMIC DEBACLE IN ARGENTINA: THE IMF STRIKES AGAIN
By Arthur MacEwan

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201argentina.html .)

Argentina's experience leading into the current debacle provides one more lesson regarding the perils of free market ideology and of the economic policies pushed on governments around the globe by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In Argentina and elsewhere, these policies have been embraced by local elites, who see their fortunes (both real and metaphoric) tied to the deregulation of commerce and the reduction of social programs. Yet the claims that these free market policies would bring economic growth and widespread well being have been thoroughly discredited. (In spite of the economic collapse and political turmoil in Buenos Aires, the wealthy appear to have protected themselves by having moved their money out of the country.)

Economic policies in Argentina during the past 15 years have had substantial support among the country's business elite, especially from those whose incomes derive from the financial sector and primary product exports. These groups have gained substantially, and officials in the Argentine government have been active in formulating and executing the policies that have led to the current debacle.

At the same time, the country's economic policies during the 1990s were developed under the direction of the IMF. From the late 1980s onward, a series of loans gave the IMF the leverage to guide Argentine policymakers as they increasingly adopted the Fund's conservative economic agenda. As the country entered into the lasting downturn of the current period, the IMF continued, unwavering, in its support. The IMF provided Argentina with "small" loans, such as the $3 billion made available in early 1998, when the country's economic difficulties began to appear. As the Argentine crisis deepened, the IMF increased its support, supplying a loan of $13.7 billion and arranging $26 billion more from other sources at the end of 2000. As things worsened still further in 2001, the IMF pledged another $8 billion.

The IMF coupled its largess with the condition that the Argentine government maintain its severe monetary policy and continue to tighten its fiscal policy. Deficit reduction--which according to the IMF is the key to macroeconomic stability (which in turn is supposed to be the key to economic growth)--was undertaken with a vengeance. In early July 2001, on the eve of a major government bond offering, Argentine officials announced budget cuts of $1.6 billion (about 3% of the federal budget), hoping that these cuts would reassure investors and allow interest rates to fall. Apparently, however, investors saw the cuts as another sign that the country's crisis was worsening, and the bonds could only be sold at sharply higher interest rates (14% as compared to the 9% that similar bonds had commanded in mid-June). By December, the effort to balance the budget required far more severe expenditure cuts, and the government announced a drastic reduction of $9.2 billion in its spending, about 18% of its entire budget.

Argentina is now providing one more example of the failure of IMF policies to establish the bases for long-term economic growth in low-income countries. Numerous other countries demonstrate similar sets of problems: much of sub-Saharan Africa; Mexico, and several other countries in Latin America; Thailand, and other parts of East Asia hit by the 1997 crisis; and Turkey, along with Argentina in 2001. IMF policies do often succeed in curtailing inflation; sharp cuts in government spending and restrictions of the money supply will usually yield reduced price increases. Also, IMF programs can provide large influxes of foreign loans--from the Fund itself and the World Bank, from the U.S. government and the governments of other high-income countries, and, once the approval of the IMF has been attained, from internationally operating banks. But nowhere has the IMF policy package led to stable, sustained economic expansion. Also, as in Argentina, it often generates growing inequality.

* Beyond Denunciation: Alternative Strategies

There is a need and an opportunity for the opposition movement to go beyond denunciation of the IMF's conservative policies and to articulate alternative strategies, strategies that would support a democratic, egalitarian form of economic development. Such strategies would promote structural adjustment in low-income countries, but a very different and more fundamental structural adjustment than has been advocated by the IMF. A democratic development strategy could begin with a focus on the expansion of social programs, a greater investment in schooling, health care, and other public services that would establish a social foundation for long-run economic expansion.

A democratic strategy would not ignore macroeconomic stability, but instead of seeking that stability in government cutbacks, it would pursue expanding the government revenues (raising taxes) as a means to provide fiscal balance. Also, a democratic strategy could not ignore the private sector, but it would recognize the problems of allowing the private sector to be guided simply by private profits in an unregulated market. It would, for example, push the private sector toward high-technology activity instead of production based on low wages, and it would seek to provide support for local farmers to maintain their livelihoods and community stability.

The first problem in implementing an alternative development program in Argentina and elsewhere is to overcome the power of elite groups that have directed the existing system. In spite of the current difficulties, the policies that the Argentine government has followed in recent years, and the similar policies pursued by the governments of many low-income countries, have delivered substantial benefits to local elites. Those policies have allowed them to strengthen their positions in their own economies and secure their roles as junior partners with U.S.-based and other internationally operating firms. Changing policies will therefore require changing the balance of power. Shifting the balance of power in a country is never easy, but the emergence of an international movement for change and the growing economic crisis present some substantial opportunities.

If people in low-income countries are to move in an alternative direction, they must find ways to deal with the oppressive burden of foreign debt. Not only is the debt itself a problem, creating a growing drain on countries' resources, but also the need to continually seek new debt in order to repay old debt forces governments to accept the IMF conditions that perpetuate the problem.

Here, those forces that want change can take a lesson from the high-income countries. As the governments of high-income countries work together in pursuing their economic relations with the low-income countries, low-income debtor countries have a common set of interests that could provide the foundation for common action. Working as a bloc, they would have a greater chance of gaining better terms, greater leeway in the conditions that come with foreign finance, and the freedom to pursue the meaningful structural adjustment of a democratic strategy.

Ultimately, the power of such a bloc would depend on the willingness of member countries to repudiate their foreign debts. Such repudiation would have legitimacy because of the coercive practices that have given rise to this debt, and repudiation would have wide popular support.

But would debt repudiation invite economic disaster? In Argentina, quite to the contrary, it was a refusal to repudiate the debt that led into the December debacle. The new government has now defaulted, but not in a controlled manner that might yield the greatest advantage, but as an act of desperation. Also, debt defaults in the past have generally not generated disaster, certainly nothing worse than the current Argentine situation. In any case, if forces in debtor countries could make the threat real, actual repudiation would probably not be necessary. The power that the high-income countries have in the threat to cut off new loans would be matched by the power that low-income countries would have from their threat to cut off the flow of repayments.

There are substantial political barriers to the emergence of democratic development strategies in low-income countries and to joint action by debtor countries. At the end of December, as a new spate of rioting broke out in Buenos Aires, U.S. President Bush told the Argentine government to seek guidance from the IMF and "to work closely with" the IMF to develop its economic plans. And the policies of the IMF are unlikely to change in any significant way. Indeed, as Argentinians went to the streets in response to their long suffering under the aegis of the IMF, the IMF disclaimed all responsibility. "The economic program of Argentina was designed by the government of Argentina and the objective of eliminating the budget deficit was approved by the Congress of Argentina," declared the IMF's spokesperson on December 21.

This continued pressure from the U.S. government and the persistence of the IMF in pursuing its discredited policies make progressive change difficult. Also, powerful elites in Argentina and other low-income countries re-enforce the barriers to change. Yet the economic case for change is overwhelming, and one way or another a political route to this change needs to be found.

(Arthur MacEwan <arthur.macewan@umb.edu> is professor of Economics and interim provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. His most recent book is Neoliberalism or Democracy? Economic Strategy, Markets, and Alternatives for the 21st Century.)

A NEW MARSHALL PLAN FOR 2002: ADVANCING HUMAN SECURITY AND CONTROLLING TERRORISM
By Dick Bell & Michael Renner

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201marshall.html .)

As the endgame nears in the fighting in Afghanistan, with Taliban power collapsed and Al-Qaeda members dead or on the run, it is tempting to believe that military success has decided the outcome of the war on terrorism. The Bush administration has already made it clear that it has limited interest in the long and arduous task of rebuilding Afghanistan. But Washington decisionmakers may want to heed this advice from a senior U.S. military officer and statesman from an earlier era, General George C. Marshall. In outlining the so-called Marshall Plan to rebuild a war-ravaged Europe on June 5, 1947, he warned that there could be "no political stability and no assured peace" without economic security. Europe, much like Afghanistan today, was torn by war, poverty, disease, and hunger, and risked "disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people," and thus deserved American attention and funds to recover and rejoin the world community.

The United States and the other industrial nations should launch a global "Marshall Plan" with the goal of providing everyone on earth with a decent standard of living. What could we achieve if we matched the tens of billions of dollars now spent on the military campaign in Afghanistan on programs to alleviate human suffering?

This is an obtainable goal, and one far cheaper than current military expenditures to ensure global security. A 1998 report by the United Nations Development Program estimated the annual cost to achieve universal access to a number of basic social services in all developing countries: $9 billion would provide water and sanitation for every family; $12 billion would cover reproductive health for all women; $13 billion would give every person in the world basic health and nutrition; and $6 billion would provide basic education for all children. These social and health expenditures pale in comparison to what is being spent on the military by all nations--some $780 billion each year.

The cost of failing to advance human security and to eliminate the fertile ground upon which terrorism thrives is already escalating. Since September 11, we know that sophisticated weapons offer little protection and cannot buy us a lasting peace in a world of extreme inequality, injustice, and deprivation for billions of our fellow human beings. By choosing to mobilize adequate resources to address human suffering around the world, President Bush has a unique opportunity to seize the terrible moment of September 11 and in the new year earn a truly exalted place in human history.

(Dick Bell and Michael Renner are analysts for Foreign Policy in Focus (www.fpif.org) and are Vice President for Communications and Senior Researcher, respectively, at the Worldwatch Institute in Washington DC.)

THE BLACK COMEDY OF MISSILE DEFENSE
By Frances Fitzgerald

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a speech given by Frances Fitzgerald at an FPIF conference at NYU on Weapons of Mass Destruction after 9-11, and posted online in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/presentations/wmd01/fitzgerald.html .)

That we should be here today talking about national missile defenses involves us all in the comedy--the black comedy, if you will--which that brilliant politician Ronald Reagan set in motion 18 years ago. Yes, it was 18 years ago--some of you were still in grade school at the time--when he made a speech calling upon scientists to render ballistic missiles "impotent and obsolete." What a lovely idea!

On coming into office, the Clinton administration cancelled the deployment plan and shifted 80% of the research money into theater missile defenses. But as the Republicans gained ground in the Congress, the pressures grew to reinstate an NMD. (Among them a North Korean missile test and the Rumsfeld Commission report saying that rogue nations could have ICBMs in five years.) Then came the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and in January 1999--just after Clinton's impeachment--the administration put a limited NMD system (a ground-based interceptor) on the track to deployment.

During the presidential election last year Governor Bush's campaign aides, notably Richard Perle, a former Reagan administration official, criticized the Clinton system as hopelessly inadequate. Bush himself promised to move forward with a multilayered defense of the country that would include sea-, air-, and space-based systems to protect the U.S. and its allies. Then in May this year President Bush gave a much-heralded speech in which he said that his Secretary of Defense had identified a number of "near-term options" that "could allow us to deploy an initial capability against limited threats" from rogue states. From this speech and subsequent officials briefings it seemed that these "near-term options" included land-, sea-, and air-based systems.

Then, from June through September 11 the president and his top national security advisers spent most of their time abroad lecturing European, Russian, and Chinese leaders about the seriousness of the threat of an ICBM attack from a rogue state, such as North Korea, Iran, or Iraq, and in talks with their Russian counterparts, made it clear that the U.S. would withdraw from the ABM Treaty whether the Russians agreed or not.

The policy caused real consternation abroad. The Russians, who wanted to make drastic reductions in their strategic arms, objected that an open-ended NMD program might eventually threaten their nuclear deterrent. They offered to amend the treaty to permit unlimited testing, but insisted that the line be drawn on deployment. (Also they called for a new treaty on offensive arms.) The Chinese maintained that the NMD program was aimed at countering their small ICBM force. Our NATO allies (and congressional Democrats) voiced concern that if the U.S. withdrew unilaterally from the treaty, the Russians would try to maintain some of their older weapons, and the Chinese would have more incentive to build a larger ICBM force. If they did increase their forces, the Indians and the Pakistanis would probably follow suit. So there would be more nuclear weapons, and perhaps worse stocks of nuclear materials in not perfectly secure places that might become available to terrorists or rogue states.

The Bush administration paid no attention to these concerns. Officials just went on lecturing. Indeed, they seemed so absorbed in this activity that they did virtually nothing else in regard to foreign policy. In fact, in that period the Bush administration had no foreign policy--except for this lecturing.

* No Treaties, No Way

The Bush administration for its part has showed no liking for arms control treaties, or treaties of any kind. In its first eight months in office it effectively stalled the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, refused to sign a verification protocol being developed for a treaty on biological weapons, blocked key provisions of a UN pact to stem the illegal traffic in small arms, and backed away from negotiations with North Korea to end its missile testing and get rid of its nuclear materials. Then, while promising to make cuts in U.S. strategic nuclear weapons, the Bush administration declined to make an agreement with Russia on mutual reductions.

The explanation administration officials offered for their refusal to negotiate offensive reductions with Moscow was that strategic arms control is time consuming and out-dated. The argument is frivolous at best. A more plausible reason lies in a report on U.S. nuclear planning and arms control sponsored by the National Institute of Public Policy that appeared in January 2001. The authors of the report include Stephen J. Hadley and Robert Joseph, now the two officials responsible for strategic policy on Bush's NSC staff and Stephen A. Cambone, now deputy undersecretary of defense for policy, and a number of former Reagan administration officials.

In the report the authors argued that the United States now faces an unpredictable world--one potentially more dangerous than that of the cold war--and that nuclear arms control treaties hinder America's flexibility to adapt its nuclear forces to any threat. "Washington," they argued, "cannot know today whether Russia, or for that matter China, will be neutral, friend, foe, or part of a hostile alliance in the future." Thus, "It cannot therefore be sensible now to codify the character and quantity of U.S. strategic forces to some approximation of parity in U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear force reductions." At present, they wrote, it may suit U.S. interests to make deep reductions, but these cuts should be made unilaterally so that the U.S. preserves the right to develop new weapons when and for whatever purposes it sees fit.

Interestingly enough, the authors spoke of ballistic missile defenses only as defenses for U.S. ICBMs and as an aid to offensive operations against a regional power's mobile missile launchers--such as, presumably, the Iraqi Scuds in the Gulf war. They made no claim for national missile defenses, or for population defenses of any kind.

Implicit in this paper--and in administration policy before September 11--was the assumption that the U.S. as the sole superpower didn't have to make deals with other countries, that its security could best be assured by unfettered autonomy and its ability to deploy superior military force.

We don't really know what happened at the recent Bush-Putin meeting, but it appears that all that Colin Powell and the other internationalists managed to achieve was to get the White House to kick the ABM Treaty issue down the road a piece. But because of the work that has already begun at Fort Greeley the White House can't keep on doing this: the administration will have to decide one way or another quite shortly. Then we will see whether unilateralism or internationalism has prevailed.

* Unilateralists Stronger Now

Let me close by saying this. The international issues at stake are crucial, but there's a domestic issue as well: and that's the corruption of the national discussion about weapons of mass destruction. The unilateralists have a principled position: they firmly believe that arms treaties do not serve U.S. national security interests. They're stronger in Washington now than they were during the cold war, and yet they never come out and say this.

Instead they continue to perpetuate, and hide behind, the fiction of national missile defenses. Even in this time of crisis they do not tell us the truth. And the Democrats are not brave enough to tell us the truth, either. Surely this is a disservice to the American public.

(Frances FitzGerald <frankiefitz@hotmail.com> is the author of Way Out There In The Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War (2000).)

NEW FROM SELF-DETERMINATION IN FOCUS

FPIF's Self-Determination In Focus project, which provides analysis of ethnic, religious, and nationalist conflicts around the world, has recently produced three conflict profiles. The profiles are listed below and are available at: www.selfdetermine.org. Also see a news analysis warning that the U.S. war on terrorism may feed warlordism in Somalia and other countries. In his commentary, "Warlordism and the War on Terror," Ken Menkhaus writes: "In Sierra Leone, Liberia, Congo, Colombia, Angola, Somalia, Sudan, and elsewhere, war is waged mainly to enable the protagonists on all sides to loot and profit from extralegal control of trade in everything from diamonds to timber to diverted food relief. The key to these protracted armed conflicts is that, despite public appearances, neither rebel nor 'government' forces have an interest in ending the war, and even less of an interest in a return to rule of law. In some instances governments and rebels even collude to perpetuate the wars from which they profit."

Republic of Congo (Congo-Brazzaville)
By John Clark
http://www.selfdetermine.org/conflicts/congo.html

Democratic Republic of Congo
By Thomas Turner
http://www.selfdetermine.org/conflicts/drc.html

Kosovo
By Fred Abrahams
http://www.selfdetermine.org/conflicts/kosovo.html

Warlordism and the War on Terror
By Ken Menkhaus
http://www.selfdetermine.org/crisiswatch/0112quidproquo.html

II. Outside the U.S.

(Editor's Note: FPIF has a new component called "Outside the U.S.," which aims to bring non-U.S. voices into the U.S. policy debate and to foster dialog between Northern and Southern actors in global affairs issues. Please visit our Outside the U.S. page for other non-U.S. perspectives on global affairs and for information about submissions at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/index.html.

With the war in Afghanistan apparently winding down, the international coalition that the Bush administration assembled to pursue al-Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban will be tested as the "war on terrorism" moves beyond Afghanistan. As Igor Torbakov notes in a commentary excerpted below and available in full at http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0201russia.html , Russian policymakers fear an even more resurgent U.S. unilateralism.)

RUSSIA WORRIES THAT AFGHAN SUCCESS WILL PROMPT U.S. UNILATERALISM
By Igor Torbakov

With the military campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the mopping up stage, the United States and Russia are struggling to identify the boundaries of strategic cooperation. Initial optimism about broad cooperation has faded. In Moscow, officials and foreign policy experts are now concerned that the United States is experiencing "dizziness from success," and is embarking on a unilateralist course.

The U.S. decision to unilaterally withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty appears to have seriously undermined prospects for a substantive U.S.-Russian partnership. Russian commentators link this "unfriendly move" directly to America's sweeping military success in Afghanistan. The unexpectedly rapid collapse of the al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorist forces significantly diminished the value of Russian support for the U.S.-led war effort, many experts in Moscow believe. The anti-terrorism campaign also confirmed the United States' seemingly unsurpassed military might in the very region where the Soviet army was so bitterly humiliated in the 1980s.

The perceived disregard for Russia by the United States might erode Moscow's willingness to further support the U.S.-led campaign against terror. Russian officials are wary about possible U.S. military operations against so-called rogue states. Analysts in Moscow do not exclude potential American unilateral "forceful actions" in Iraq, Somalia, and some other countries. "I think this will lead to the collapse of the international coalition," Rogov suggested.

(Igor Torbakov is a freelance journalist who specializes in CIS political affairs. He holds an MA in history from Moscow State University and a Ph.D. from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. A similar essay originally appeared on Eurasianet (http://www.eurasianet.org/ ) on December 10, 2001.)

III. Letters and Comments

AFTER THE FALL

A very insightful piece ["After the Fall," by David Felix at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/0112argentine.html ], catching the main features of Argentina's current crisis.

- Carlos Vilas <cvilas@ciudad.com.ar>

AMERICA'S STRONG ARM

The current "post 9/11" multilateralism espoused by the Bush administration is limited in scope to military and economic strong-arm tactics to achieve the U.S.'s unilateral goals. Absent from this discussion is environmental interdependence, and present is the selfish maintenance of an overly consumerist social agenda, that threatens all of us in ways much more tragic than crashing airliners.

While the world is preoccupied with dealing with Washington on terrorism and security issues, Bush and Co. are ramming through or ignoring relevant environmental legislation that will have far-reaching consequences not only for Americans but for all world citizens.

Free trade issues lack the environmental debate once associated with bilateral negotiations. More at issue is the hard-line stance in Washington concerning opening foreign markets to multinational hegemony, disruption of local agriculture, and free use of biotechnology to ensure American domination of market forces. All without regard to local ecology and environmental impact.

- Don Baron

LESSON FROM WACO

Jayne Docherty, in her book Learning Lessons From Waco subtitles her careful analysis of the futile negotiations between the U.S. government's police system and the Branch Davidians "when the parties bring their gods to the negotiation table." Docherty, who teaches in the Conflict Transformation Program at Eastern Mennonite University, uses the actual transcripts of the negotiations to analyze how they failed to resolve a clash of world-views or even authentically consider the legitimacy of each other during the time leading up to the final conflagration.

The Branch Davidians were defending their passionate commitment to a millennial worldview, a part of which was preparations for the "end times." These preparations occupied the attention and loyalty of the adult members of the enclave. Across the chasm, federal and regional law enforcement officials quickly coalesced into a "Critical Incidence" team that quickly had its protocols, strategies, values, and outcomes in operation. Their worldview focused on disarming the enclave, arresting those responsible for the deaths of the federal agents and disbanding the entire compound. The day-to-day interchange between these two worldviews extended for over 50 days, yet could not discover any common ground sufficient to yield an agreement that would defuse the lethal zero-sum outcome that was building.

These "lessons from Waco" contain new directions for peacemakers considering how to effectively engage the conflict raging between Israel and the Palestinians. They also give an alternative historical experience to the "real politic" habits of diplomacy.

A primary consideration should be to understand historical clashes of world-views between theocratic movements and secular states. The three monotheistic religions birthed in the Mideast each have embedded in their DNA genetic impulses toward theocracy. Obviously differing in how a theocracy should be constructed and governed, nevertheless Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all have, from time to time, created or attempted to create an entire social structure using their theologies and their moral codes. Yet none has been able to sustain a theocracy for an extended period of time. It is not long before the theocratic leaders begin to use the rationality and institutions required for governance. To do so requires compromising the ideals of their faith for the practical concessions demanded by day-to-day operations and settling claims brought by diverse interests among the population. The structures of governance grow in importance and in tension with the "purity of faith" that originally fueled the theocracy. Finally, even though the political leaders may give personal allegiance to the faith, they decide and act based primarily on civil, political considerations. "Faithfulness" is increasingly relegated to sacred spaces and actions, becoming a matter of individual adherence and practice leaving only the prophetic critique or moral outrage to give voice to the slippage from the founding ideals.

Is peace possible right now in the Mideast, especially as the clash between the dominant theocratic forces of Israel and the intense renewal forces of the Palestinians continues to spiral through lethal intensifications? How will the demands and needs of these forces be resolved?

We can contribute, I believe, to the process toward peace by giving full recognition to the forces at work:

1. Peacemakers can recognize the "sacramental" nature of the Israeli settlements, created not only out of an intense desire to prepare a boundary buffer for a stronger secular state but also a faith-based sign. The settlements are, for many in the Jewish theocratic movement, preparations for the coming messianic fulfillment for the people of Israel, when the ancient boundaries of Israel are reclaimed, owned, and offered up to God.
2. At the same time, peacemakers must recognize the deep convictions driving the Islamic renewal movements among the Palestinians. While we may not understand young men willing to give martyred testimony to an Islamic nation reclaiming the stretch of the Ottoman Empire, it does no good to label them "suicide bombers" or "terrorists," even if, from a secular point of view, that is what they appear to be.

I have no clear idea how this conflict can be resolved. Approaching a peace accord from the worldview of civil diplomacy and a strictly political framework has not worked and will probably not in the future. As good as the Mitchell proposals are, they simply do not take into account the clash of theocratic worldviews and therefore will not diffuse the situation and will only allow these worldviews to continue seething.

However, in learning again "lessons from Waco" one option might contain the possibilities for a mediated peace. The U.S. could either recruit a team of mediators skilled in working with conflicts created by clashing worldviews or support a UN initiative to do so. This would mean that the U.S. would also need to remove itself from being a shadow "God Father" who will reward the parties with approval and promises of aid. To be successful, the mediation process cannot be merely a sub-text for the U.S.'s attempt to maintain a protective hegemony among client states for its national interests (which includes in no small measure the assured supply of oil).

- Wallace Ford <wford@rt66.com>

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