The Progressive Response
Volume 6, Number 3
January 31, 2002
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>.
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS
By Tom Barry
STATE OF THE UNION: POINT/COUNTERPOINT
By Stephen Zunes
FUTURE OF THE GLOBAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT
By John Gershman
FIRST DAY IN PORTO ALEGRE
By Martha Honey
NEW FROM SELF-DETERMINATION IN FOCUS
II. Outside the U.S.
ANTIGLOBALIZATION MOVEMENT: OPPORTUNITIES
AND OBSTACLES
By Alejandro Bendaña, Centro de Estudios Internacionales
III. Letters and Comments
REDUCING FOREIGN POLICY TO OIL
I. Updates and Out-takes
(Editor's Note: The state of the union and the state of the world are being examined from different perspectives this week, starting with the State of the Union address by President Bush and now by the members of the World Economic Forum in New York and the activists at the World Social Forum in Brazil. In this issue of the Progressive Response, we offer a critical view of Bush's new militaristic internationalism, and summarize the reflections of four members of FPIF's Advisory Committee on the citizen activism around global economy issues.)
ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS
By Tom Barry
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201onward.html .)
President Bush went to Capitol Hill to tell the American people and their representatives that the U.S. is committed to protecting "the civilized world against unprecedented dangers." These threats issue from "an axis of evil" that spans the globe. Riding on his popularity as commander-in-chief, Bush framed his State of the Union address as a new vision for U.S. foreign policy.
Are U.S. policymakers ready to pursue world war against evil? Apparently so. The applause for this aggressive new view of U.S. foreign and military policy rose enthusiastically from both sides of the aisle during the State of the Union address. Afterward, in his televised response to the president, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt assured Americans that Democrats stood "shoulder-to-shoulder" with the administration in its global military campaign. Such support is not limited to political elites. Opinions polls show significant support for taking military action against countries like Iraq and Somalia.
A rapture of patriotism, triumphalism, and militarism has seized America. But, as Bush delivered his call for more war, not everyone was clapping. Listening closely, you could hear the hissing. Looking around, you could see the dissension and disgust. No, not on Capitol Hill, but around the world where Bush is counting on "our allies" to join America's expanded crusade. His description of the U.S. commitment to use "freedom's power" to bring peace and prosperity to the entire world may ring true for many Americans. But for much of the rest of the world, any new assertion of U.S. might and right is greeted with skepticism.
This week at the World Social Forum in Brazil, tens of thousands of activists will be speaking for the world's disadvantaged and disenfranchised. Bush's promise to spread freedom and prosperity in the wake of his global war will be rejected, and rightly so, as imperial drivel. In Porto Alegre, as elsewhere, there will be great sympathy for the American victims of terror. But it will also be noted that U.S.-led globalization strategies, such as those embraced by Argentina, are leading to economic and social disintegration the world over--and widening a global divide.
At the World Social Forum, questions will be raised about whether another $48 billion in the U.S. military budget will increase global peace and security--or whether this new U.S. military spending will, as it has it the past, fan the flames of war between and within states. The world does indeed face unprecedented dangers. But on the other side of the deepening international divide between economic status and worldviews, terrorism is just one of the many new threats to international peace, stability, and development. For the most part, the other dangers are not ones that can be met with U.S. firepower and weapons superiority. President Bush would have gone a long way toward narrowing the global divide if he had moved beyond the platitudes about America's commitment to freedom to assert a new U.S. commitment to rein in corporate power, join the campaign to end world hunger, build democratic means of global governance, and confront the pressing challenge of climate change.
Like Gephardt, many Americans stand shoulder-to-shoulder as the nation marches forward--intervening wherever it chooses, spending whatever it takes, and blithely accepting the collateral damage. But the U.S. government may soon find that its allies are few, that popular support for the new jingoism is shallow, that victories will be few, and that evil often dwells within. "History," said Bush, called America to action. But if we embrace militarism, as the president advises, history will not judge us kindly.
(Tom Barry <tom@irc-online.org> is codirector of Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
STATE OF THE UNION: POINT/COUNTERPOINT
By Stephen Zunes
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201sou.html .)
President George W. Bush's State of the Union address on January 29, 2002 was the first in many years to focus primarily on foreign policy. Despite widespread accolades in the media and strong bipartisan support in Congress, a careful examination of the language and assumptions in the address raise disturbing questions about the direction of U.S. foreign policy under the current administration. What follows are some excerpts consisting of the majority of the speech addressing foreign policy issues and interspersed with some critical commentary. This should not be interpreted as in any way minimizing the very real danger from terrorism, or the need for a decisive response, nor to imply that Bush administration policy regarding terrorism and other foreign policy issues has been totally negative. Yet the failure to recognize the misleading verbiage and to recognize the dangerous implications of such words--however eloquent and reassuring to a nation that has experienced such trauma in recent months--will not only make us less safe from the threat of terrorism, but will deprive Americans of our greatest defense and asset: our freedom to question and challenge government policies that are not in the best interests of our country and the world.
"States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.
None of these states are among the most heavily armed countries in their regions, let alone the world. Similarly, unlike such U.S. allies as Morocco, Israel, and Turkey, none of these states currently occupies any neighboring country. It is particularly disturbing that Iran, in its significant if uneven steps toward greater political pluralism and rapprochement with the West, is linked with the hostile totalitarian regimes of Iraq and North Korea.
"By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.
The United States has consistently opposed calls for the creation of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction for both East Asia and the Middle East. The Bush administration is continuing the U.S. policy of nuclear apartheid, where the United States may bring nuclear weapons into the region on its planes and ships and U.S. allies like Israel, Pakistan, and India are able to develop nuclear weapons, but other countries can not. While all three of these countries singled out by President Bush have been linked to terrorist groups in the past, none have ties to Al-Qaeda and there has been no evidence to support the contention that they would pass on weapons of mass destruction to individual terrorists.
"The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.
A worthy goal, except that there is no evidence that these regimes have such weapons to threaten us with or are anywhere close to procuring them. There are far more real dangers to be concerned with facing America and the world already, including AIDS, environmental destruction, growing inequality, and other threats which were not even mentioned in the president's address.
"America will lead by defending liberty and justice, because they are right and true and unchanging for all people everywhere. No nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them. We have no intention of imposing our culture, but America will always stand firm for the nonnegotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, and religious tolerance.
This from an administration which provides large-scale military, economic, and diplomatic support to the reactionary, misogynist, fundamentalist regime in Saudi Arabia, not to mention Israeli occupation forces in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip and Moroccan forces in occupied Western Sahara. Indeed, according to Amnesty International, the majority of recipients of arms transfers from the United States engage in a pattern of gross and systematic human rights violations. Regarding the denial of imposing culture, one only need look at U.S. pressure at the World Trade Organization to eliminate safeguards protecting indigenous film industries and other cultural institutions from U.S.-based multinational corporations.
"Our enemies send other people's children on missions of suicide and murder. They embrace tyranny and death as a cause and a creed. We stand for a different choice, made long ago, on the day of our founding. We affirm it again today. We choose freedom and the dignity of every life. Steadfast in our purpose, we now press on. We have known freedom's price; we have shown freedom's power, and in this great conflict, my fellow Americans, we will see freedom's victory.
It will be very difficult for freedom to triumph if America's closest allies in the war include such regimes as the family dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, the medieval sultanate in Oman, the crypto-Communist autocracy in Uzbekistan, and the military dictatorship in Pakistan. Indeed, it has been U.S. backing of such regimes which has been partly responsible for the rise of anti-American extremism in those parts of the world.
(Stephen Zunes <zunes@usfca.edu> is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco.)
FUTURE OF THE GLOBAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT
(Editor's Note: See http://www.fpif.org/discussion/0201globalization/ for the complete presentations by Thea Lee, Alejandro Bendana, Kristin Dawkins, and John Cavanagh. We encourage readers to send us your evaluations of the antiglobalization/global justice movement; your statements will be posted the FPIF website.)
In the aftermath of September 11, the WTO Ministerial in Doha and the passage of fast track legislation by the House of Representatives, many mainstream analysts are claiming that the global justice movement and its efforts to combat the negative effects of corporate-led globalization are dead. Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org), a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, organized a forum on January 25 to discuss these issues. Their conclusions are that while these developments pose new strategic challenges for the movement, it is far from dead. The forum included four speakers who discuss the upcoming meetings and protests at the World Economic Forum in New York City and the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil and analyze the new strategic opportunities and obstacles facing the global justice movement in the year ahead.
The first speaker, Thea Lee, serves as the assistant director for International Economics in the Public Policy Department at the AFL-CIO. She began by arguing against the view that the global justice movement was dead as indicated by the agreement to launch a new trade round in Doha, the authorization of trade promotion authority (fast track) for the Bush administration, and the decline in street protests. Many mainstream analysts argue that the labor and student wings of the movement irrevocably split over the war in Afghanistan, sounding the death knell of the movement. She argued, in contrast, that the purported victories at Doha and authorization of fast track were much less than the rhetoric suggests. She argues that the movement in the U.S. has succeeded in fundamentally shifting the policy debate as to how labor, environment, and development issues should be addressed in trade agreements--not whether they will be addressed. She identified labor's policy agenda as focusing on the new trade agreements being negotiated with Chile, Singapore, and the Free Trade Areas of the Americas, and stated that the AFL-CIO will exercise its power through the streets (protests), the suites (attending the World Economic Forum and similar events), and the social forum in Porto Alegre to advance its agenda. (Available online in a Global Affairs Commentary format.)
Alejandro Bendaña, director of the Center for International Studies, based in Managua, Nicaragua, began by arguing (in contrast to the other speakers) for the utility of the label "antiglobalization movement" on the grounds that it reflects what people believe. He views the opportunities and challenges facing the movement in the coming year as being about the three "A's": Alternatives, Argentina, and Afghanistan. Alternatives will be the primary agenda of the World Social Forum, and in contrast to the previous meetings will strive to be more than "a supermarket of ideas" but began the process of institutionalizing the practice of social forums throughout the world. Argentina is important because reflects the most recent sustained effort by a national government to resist the orthodoxy of the Washington Consensus and therefore reflects the possibility of demonstration effects within Latin America and renewed political space for alternatives to neoliberalism at the level of national policy. Afghanistan is a vehicle to link the antiglobalization and terrorism agendas to discuss the economic roots of terrorism. (Available online in Global Affairs Commentary format.)
Continuing a theme highlighted by Thea Lee, Kristin Dawkins, director of the Program on Trade and Agriculture at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, also noted that Doha was less than a total victory for the advocates of corporate-led globalization. She described how farmers' groups had succeeded in creating a development box within the WTO's Agreement on Agriculture that would allow for developing countries to have waivers for some of the WTO rules, enabling governments to protect some of their farmers. She discussed how farm and environment groups are working for alternative policies, including rapid ratification of the International Convention on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. She also identified a series of other civil society-based initiatives with respect to the global commons such as genetic resources and water. These two issues will be central to the effort to articulate concrete policy agendas at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre and the Preparatory Committee meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg later this year, which is being held in New York at the same time as the World Economic Forum. (Available online in a Global Affairs Commentary format.)
John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, began by challenging the idea that the global justice movement only began in 1999 with the demonstrations in Seattle. Instead, he suggested that the movement is part of two longer histories. The first is a history of local resistance to European colonialism that began over 500 years ago; the second is a more recent period of transnational alliances among citizens' groups that dates to the anti-slavery movement of the 19th century. John argues that the debate over globalization is currently at a stalemate and presents a scorecard of the movement's power and strength along eight dimensions: the ability to influence real events; the ability to get visibility in the media; the breadth and depth of the "Seattle Coalition;" public opinion; moral authority; intellectual power; ongoing protests at the local level; and things going badly for the agents of corporate-led globalization. (Available online in a Global Affairs Commentary format.)
(This summary of the FPIF forum on "The Future of the Global Justice Movement" was written by John Gershman <john@irc-online.org>, who is an analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center. Gershman moderated the panel discussion. The entire forum is available for play through Windows Media Player at http://www.ips-dc.org/brownbag/globalization.htm.)
FIRST DAY IN PORTO ALEGRE
By Martha Honey
(Editor's Note: For complete report, visit http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201portoalegre.html .)
Under a strong summer sun and a broad political proclamation that "Another world is possible," tens of thousands of activists from around the world are arriving here for the second annual World Social Forum. The host, like last year, is this Brazil's southernmost major city, capital of the state of Rio Grande de Sul. The city and state governments, which are both facilitating and underwriting some of the Forum's cost, have won international acclaim for their progressive policies that provide extensive social services and a high quality of life.
While the mood of the gathering is upbeat, it takes place against the backdrop of unease among progressives in Brazil, following the mysterious assassination of the popular mayor of Santo Andre who was also a top leader of Brazil's Workers Party. No one has been arrested for the murder of Celso Daniel, and rumors abound as to whether police and criminal elements tied to the extreme right were responsible. The Workers Party, which is enjoying an upsurge in popularity, has a chance of winning the next national elections in October.
(Martha Honey <martha@ips-dc.org> is codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and director of the Peace and Security Program at the Institute for Policy Studies.)
NEW FROM SELF-DETERMINATION IN FOCUS
CONFLICT PROFILE: UGANDA
By John C. Clark
http://www.selfdetermine.org/conflicts/uganda.html
CONFLICT PROFILE: KOREA
By John Feffer
http://www.selfdetermine.org/conflicts/korea.html
SOMALIA AT CROSSROADS OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
By Ken Menkhaus
http://www.selfdetermine.org/crisiswatch/0201somalia.html
U.S. MILITARY BASE IN INDIAN OCEAN CHALLENGED BY EXILED ISLANDERS
By Jim Lobe
http://www.selfdetermine.org/news/0201chagos.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. The commentary below by Alejandro Bendaña is part of his presentation at the FPIF forum on January 25 examining the "Future of the Global Justice Movement." For more information about the forum and about how you too can offer your opinion on the future of citizen organizing around global economy issues, please visit: http://www.fpif.org/discussion/0201globalization/ .)
ANTIGLOBALIZATION
MOVEMENT: OPPORTUNITIES AND OBSTACLES
By Alejandro Bendaña, Centro de Estudios Internacionales
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Outside the U.S. commentary from FPIF, posted at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0201south.html .)
Thanks for the opportunity to share some thoughts with you from a South perspective on the future of the obstacles and opportunities for the Anti-Globalization Movement (I don't think we can buck the term--we're almost stuck with it). As you might imagine, the obstacles are in the North and the opportunities are in the South, which is an important distinction to keep in mind, because sometimes our friends in the North have to deal with obstacles so much that the opportunities are underestimated and vice-versa.
Obstacles in the North
Obstacles, well, obstacles are what have always been. The first one is called USA. What's happened, after what is now called 9-11 around here, is that much as we see it, via those other two segments of USA., which might have been a component or a sympathetic ally or a hearing of the broader struggle, has sort of fallen through. We don't know for how long, and we're referring, of course, to public opinion. And we very much look to that, the media. The media in this country has just gone berserk. It's not that it's ever been too sane. But read yesterday in the Washington Post things like: "The United States has warned Iran not to interfere in Afghan internal affairs," and now you don't have an uproar of hysterical laughter but rather have that read with total seriousness, is just mind boggling. The factors of public opinion and media are going to reinforce an imperial tendency, as opposed to putting limits on and containing it.
Obstacles in the North: Europe. Well, as you were explaining, the positions of the European governments in places like Doha were sometimes worse than those of the Americans. And if you look at their positions vis-à-vis the World Bank, they are greater cheerleaders than the Bush administration. If we at one point had hoped to wean some of their development agencies and their development lobbies toward more sympathetic positions, if you look to things like PRSP or what they're trying to do toward corruption--they're going the other way. They are deliberately undermining, much more intelligently so than the Americans, the possibility of building a broader base of many of our countries, and are splitting off some NGOs from social movements. But that's another story.
Opportunities: The Three A's
Opportunities. Opportunities are what we are crystallizing around the World Social Forum. Three A's it is about: Alternatives, Afghanistan, and Argentina.
Alternatives: The difference between this Social Forum and the past one is that there is a deliberate attempt to be more than what someone called "a supermarket of ideas," or just a big debating platform. We've got to go from debating to alternatives. Which, in terms of methodology, and people have been organizing this and preparing for this, means insuring sustainability, not simply an event in one capital, in one year. Instead, a multiplicity of forums. You might think about that in North America. As the European Citizens Congress identified itself as a European Social Forum, there have been national forums in Africa--there's an African Social Forum. So we're talking about a framework for discussion and alternatives, which at the same time is more inclusive, more interactive, and more focused. That doesn't mean it still won't be a circus when you get there, but this is a process. This is a time to come out to crystallize ideas and propositions and above all for networking and alliance building, because, without falling into the notions of transnational global society and all of that, there is a need for national movements of labor, environmentalists, and others to link horizontally and vertically with each other. That the social forums regionally and nationally provide that type of space and events, such as the one being held in Porto Alegre, will be important in that context.
It's also important, and this has to be kept in mind, because it has a political state base. In this case we're talking about Porto Alegre, the city, the municipality, and the state of Rio Grande Del Sur; it's more than the streets. It's the streets and the political structure sympathetic to what is going on in the streets. Not without its tensions and contradictions, but most of you will know about important experimentation that's gone on in participative democratic terms in both those states. And they are indeed hosts of and not simply witnesses to this event. And we hope that other places, when this group meets again, can incorporate that.
Which gets us to our second point, which is Argentina. I believe that the biggest significance of Argentina is that, for whatever reason and for however long, a state, and indeed one of the not-least-important ones, has decided to buck the system. Now, one thing is the antiglobalization at the level of people's coalitions--even municipalities and city councils. But at the level of the central government, at the level of a country that important, in a continent that is very important in the thrust of globalization and investment and trade patterns and, of course, the model it represents. So it is not only its breakdown, but you see in its breakdown the emergence of a resistance. We needn't go into that, and many of you have been following that, but the importance is the notion of the state challenging the neoliberalism globalization struggle or framework. More so, this opens up a debate in Argentina which, of course, will have to be led by the Argentines, because there was a social explosion that carried that.
Guess what, September 11 did not affect the capacity of people to mobilize in the South, and to protest, and to resist in different ways and different forms. And it ain't over yet. So you will have a tug between international sets of pressures and forces and the national one, and the government, with all its weaknesses and contradictions, is sort of wavering in the wind. What will determine if this government goes forward or not will be, of course, the balance of forces internationally and nationally. But that's where we have to look at the regional picture. If indeed, in conjunction with social movements in particular in Brazil, you keep in mind the Brazilian contradictions with the FTAA, and if you keep in mind Venezuela and Chavez and his type of resistance, you have the potential underpinnings of stronger, collective, governmental, regional challenges to the broader scheme, to the rules of the game. And not only in finance, but in trade also.
We can build on that, we can push on that, but we have to think that out, about what it could mean in terms of strategy, both in terms of stopping the FTAA by 2005--generating these types of contradictions, making, of course, the political, organizational, and mobilization links between trade and finance--but at the same time hitting them on the debt question, and debt as the lynchpin of the entire system.
(Alejandro Bendaña is a member of FPIF's Advisory Committee. He can be reached at: <Pedro47@aol.com>.)
III. Letters and Comments
REDUCING FOREIGN POLICY TO OIL
The opening sentence [in "Somalia as Military Target," at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201somalia.html], "The East African nation of Somalia is being mentioned with increasing frequency as the next possible target in the U.S.-led war against terrorism" is incomplete. After the U.S. "anti-terrorist" activities in Afghanistan, which are being revealed as an attempt to secure protection for a U.S. oil pipeline, and the reports of oil and gas being found in Somalia, we can indeed expect an "anti-terrorism" effort by the United States. After the totally unsuccessful campaign against "terrorists" in Afghanistan (most of whom have escaped or been released), we can surely expect the same in Somalia. Terrorism is not the issue; oil is.
- Harvey Glommen <higlommen@pclink.com>
The United States cannot and should not attempt to resolve the terrorist revolution that has racked Colombia for the past thirty-plus years through direct armed intervention. However, the U.S. could follow any number of alternative strategies that will have the same effect, achieving peace in a nation that is a democratic ally.
I have recently returned from a three-week visit to Bogota and the surrounding countryside and my comments are based on numerous conversations with generally middle class residents. The FARC is as well-funded through the drug trade as the government is including aid from the United States. Colombians propose a solution to the problem that is completely unpalatable here: legalize and control marijuana and cocaine as we do tobacco and alcohol. They call this the Al Capone solution. Since the FARC enjoys almost no political support other than from the drug industry, the movement would evaporate once the flow of cash stopped. More politically feasible alternatives require an increased supply of military weaponry and training and a firm support for the elected government. Long-term resolution will require efforts to strengthen the middle class, which has been suffering the impact of a decades-long recession. Foreign investment is vanishing because of the FARC's "taxes." It can only be restored when the environment is free from violence. Ending the violence will also free money now used for the military to aid those who have been displaced by years of fighting. Housing is desperately needed for the refugees around the cities.
I urge you to reconsider your "hands-off" view and recognize that this is not Vietnam, but a people who are like us who desperately need help.
- Reed M. Ennis <together@visi.net>
Evidently, Somala [see http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0201somterror.html ], no longer a nation, is hardly a country either. It appears to be nothing but an area containing a number of warring clans. It would seem to fit the description recently given me by a priest who until recently was a missionary in West Africa. He said, "Africa has been running on the momentum of European colonialism but now that momentum is running down." Of course the implication of his assessment is that Africa is reverting to its natural state, savagery. Do you reckon he is correct in his pessimism? Once a Peace Corps Volunteer in Liberia (1962-4), but having at a remove watched Liberia degenerate these past twenty years, it is difficult for me to be optimistic about Africa's future. Moreover as a Catholic whose church is booming in Africa I fret about the threat to the Church if indeed Africa more or less disintegrates into warring tribes and clans.
-William D. Livingstone <Deadstonez@aol.com>
The assertion in "Gulf War: Eight Myths" [at http://www.fpif.org/papers/8myths/index.html] that U.S. intervention in Kuwait was not about the principles of self-determination or international law is premised upon the logic that because the U.S. does not militarily intervene against every arguable act of aggression taken anywhere in the world, thereafter deterring aggression must be dismissed as pretext. [This is] as flawed as saying that because the U.S. did not intervene, as Britain and France did to defend Poland against Nazi invasion, or because France and England did not intervene to defend Libya or Ethiopia from Italian invasion, therefore World War II was not about self-determination or international law either.
Nations, like people, can have principles and yet not chose to go to war over them until they are most flagrantly trampled. None of the examples offered by Prof. Zunes: East Timor, Western Sahara, Cyprus, or Israel are remotely comparable to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait for their nakedly aggressive nature. To belabor the obvious: neither Western Sahara nor East Timor were ever recognized as independent countries by the United Nations or anyone else at the time of their invasion. They were free-floating territories of unsettled international status, comparable perhaps to much of Africa in the 19th century, and their seizure might have been an act of colonization, but not aggression against an established member of the international community. Turkey intervened in Cyprus to support its countryman in a long-standing ethnic struggle, and limited its actions to occupying that portion of the country with a Turkish majority that undoubtedly welcomed it.
Of course Western opinion at least has long accepted that Israel's attack on Jordan, Syria, and Egypt in 1967 was to preempt their planned invasion of itself, and Israel has always been committed, at least in principle, to the surrender of virtually all of those territories occupied in that war in exchange for international recognition and security guarantees. In the Gulf War the U.S. acted neither as the world's policeman nor as a vigilante, but rather as a concerned world citizen which led a "posse" of other countries in correcting an extreme and flagrant violation of international law against a country with which it had longstanding and important ties. That not every breach of international law around the globe merits the same response hardly makes U.S. motivations any less sincere.
- Michael E. Piston <michael@piston.net>
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Codirector, Foreign Policy In Focus
Email: ipsps@igc.org
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