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

BUSH'S HOT AIR PLAN
By Kelly Sims-Gallagher

AFRICA’S POLICY CHALLENGES IN 2002
By William Minter and Salih Booker

SCOUNDRELS & OUTLAWS
By Tom Barry

II. Outside the U.S.

INDUSTRIAL UNREST IN CHINA
By Tim Pringle

NEW FROM SELF-DETERMINATION IN FOCUS

III. Letters and Comments

APPALLING IGNORANCE ABOUT NORTH KOREA

A TAPE-RECORDER PRESIDENT

I. Updates and Out-takes

BUSH'S HOT AIR PLAN
By Kelly Sims-Gallagher

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0202greenhouse.html .)

Having rejected the Kyoto Protocol on climate change soon after taking office, the Bush administration has finally released its alternative plan for addressing the threat of climate change. Unfortunately, the administration seems to have taken a page from Enron's operating procedures on accounting tricks. Although it promises to reduce pollution, it will actually lead to increased emissions. This is partly because the plan requires only voluntary compliance, and partly because the Bush administration is promoting the plan with some artful wordsmithing.

To reduce the threat of climate change, the total amount of greenhouse gases must be reduced in the atmosphere by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide. Once a little molecule of pollution is emitted from a car or power plant, that molecule rises into the atmosphere and traps excessive heat for as long as a century (depending on the type of pollutant). There are now so many of these greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that climate patterns have been altered--resulting in rising global temperatures and a proliferation of abnormal weather events. For climate patterns to normalize, global emissions of heat-trapping gases would have to be reduced by at least 70 percent.

In a tricky maneuver, President Bush managed to sound like he was advocating reducing emissions when he stated that his voluntary goal is to reduce greenhouse gas "intensity" by 18 percent. But intensity is different from quantity of emissions. Greenhouse gas intensity is the amount of greenhouse gas emissions emitted for a given unit of GDP. The Bush plan would put carbon dioxide intensity at 151 metric tons per million dollars of GDP by 2012. The 2000 U.S. CO2 intensity was 183 metric tons CO2/million dollars GDP (and 191 metric tons if you include all GHGs). Therefore, the CO2 intensity of the U.S. economy would decline by 17.4% by 2012, yet under his plan total emissions would increase. Since 1990 GHG intensity has been declining in the U.S. mainly because strong economic growth has outpaced the rise in pollution as the economy has experienced a structural shift to lighter, less polluting industries. But emissions grew dramatically at the same time also because of strong economic growth and a dramatic increase in the amount of emissions from the transportation sector.

From 1990-2000, total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions grew 13.6% according to the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration. Under the new Bush plan, emissions will likely increase by another 13% between 2002 and 2012. So, rather than stanching the rise in pollutants, emissions will rise by 1.4% annually. The plan is just more hot air.

The Bush administration's reluctance to act is unwarranted and out of touch with the American people. One hundred U.S. cities and counties have already pledged to reduce emissions locally as part of the U.S. Cities for Climate Protection coalition. They are proving that with a little effort there are many sensible and low-cost ways to reduce pollution. To the north, Toronto announced last week that it has cut its emissions an astounding 67% since 1990, mostly through better landfill management. Universities and businesses are jumping on the climate-protection bandwagon too. Tufts University has pledged to meet or beat the Kyoto targets of a 7% reduction in carbon emissions, and Nike recently committed to reduce its emissions 13% below 1998 levels by 2005. If the people lead, will the government follow?

(Kelly Sims Gallagher <Kelly_Sims-Gallagher@ksg.harvard.edu> follows environmental policy for Foreign Policy In Focus and is an analyst at the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs, Harvard University.)

AFRICA’S POLICY CHALLENGES IN 2002
By William Minter and Salih Booker

(Editor’s Note: Jointly Foreign Policy In Focus and Africa Action have produced a policy report surveying the policy challenges in Africa this coming year. The report was written by William Minter <wminter@igc.org> and Salih Booker <sbooker@africapolicy.org>, the executive director of Africa Action (online at www.africaaction.org), who is also a member of FPIF’s Advisory Committee. Excerpted below, the entire report can be found at: http://www.fpif.org/papers/africa2002.html .)

By almost any measure, the war on AIDS is more important than the war on terrorism. Yet Washington’s fixation with the latter--still loosely defined--campaign threatens to crowd out attention to Africa’s priorities. And those priorities, from obtaining support for international peacemaking and peacekeeping, to canceling illegitimate debts and arresting the growing disparities between rich and poor in the world, to defeating the AIDS pandemic, are all equally global priorities.

In 2001, African leaders, as well as African and international civil society, successfully promoted wider recognition of the urgency of responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. At the World Trade Organization’s summit held in Doha, Qatar in November 2001, developed countries were forced to acknowledge the principle that public health must take priority over rigid patent protections.

African leaders also formally launched the transformation of the Organization of African Unity into the African Union, which will hold its inaugural summit in South Africa in July 2002. They also reached agreement on the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), intended to serve as a common platform for economic planning and negotiating with international partners.

There was no major escalation in African conflicts during the year. Ceasefires remained in effect in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Sierra Leone, and on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border. However, warfare continued unabated in Sudan and Angola, while civilians were threatened by systematic violence in eastern Congo and by serious if less pervasive abuses in a number of other countries.

In 2002, with African economies battered by the global recession, the AIDS pandemic still unchecked, and the threat of new conflict in key countries such as Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Kenya, the challenges for both African leaders and the “international community” will be enormous. The prospects are sobering, and the initial responses to the first high-profile tests of the year—in February a volcano eruption in already-devastated Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, and an arms depot explosion in Lagos, Nigeria—are not encouraging. Nevertheless, the groundwork has been laid for the first large-scale effort to fight back against AIDS. And African resilience and creativity still take unexpected forms, as illustrated by the launching of two new Internet service providers in Somalia within months of the shutdown by U.S. financial sanctions of the one previous provider which Washington accused of having links to international terrorism.

European countries and the World Bank have joined UN agencies and African countries in calling for significant increases in official development assistance, arguing that such investments in health, education, and other sectors are indispensable requirements for economic advance and poverty alleviation. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has won significant support from other “donors” for the goal of doubling official development assistance. U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill has joined critics of the conventional development model in calling for a shift from loans to grants to finance development in the poorest countries. At the same time, however, O’Neill has seized every opportunity, including the World Economic Forum held in February 2002 in New York, to reiterate Washington’s hard-line refusal to accept even a rhetorical commitment to providing increased funds.

The Monterrey Consensus on “financing for development,” (http://www.un.org/esa/ffd/) which was agreed in advance of the March meeting in Mexico, notes “with concern current estimates of dramatic shortfalls in resources required to achieve the internationally agreed development goals.” Yet debate in Washington has remained largely mired in the stereotype of aid as optional and wasteful charity. Without a shift in paradigm (partially visible in the debate over the global health fund), public investment for global and African development is likely to face further setbacks rather than gains in Washington.

SCOUNDRELS & OUTLAWS
By Tom Barry

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0202scoundrels.html .)

It is the time of scoundrels and outlaws.

Not since the 1950s has the political rhetoric about the fight between American good and foreign-bred evil reached such a feverish pitch. As in the 1950s, much of this is fear-mongering and sabre-rattling designed to spur American popular support for the military-industrial complex, as well as to quash progressive dissent at home. The scoundrels in Washington are playing on the fear of terrorism to advance their own ideological agenda at home and abroad.

In expanding the response to the September 11 attacks to include an array of new foreign policy and military initiatives, the Bush administration has shifted the post-9/11 focus from going after the perpetrators of the attacks to a new grand strategy to assert U.S. dominance. They--from Wolfowitz to Powell--are still calling it anti-terrorism, but it’s really about the U.S. right to patrol the globe. We’re globo-cop--at least in places where the administration deems that U.S. interests are at stake.

Increasingly, exploiting popular support for the war against the Islamist terrorists, the administration has used national security as prop for other agendas--thereby trivializing the real need to address terrorist threats. During the Super Bowl, the administration told Americans that smoking marijuana was the equivalent of supporting terrorists. Seeing an opportunity to solidify support in agricultural states, President Bush told the Cattlemen’s Beef Association that agricultural subsidies were necessary because crop and cattle production was a national security issue. “The nation has got to eat,” Bush told the cattlemen. “It's in our national security interests that we be able to feed ourselves. Thank goodness, we don't have to rely on somebody else's meat to make sure our people are healthy and well-fed." He then goes on to promote increased agricultural subsidies to foster increased U.S. exports of cheap U.S. meat and grains--that have the effect of undermining the food security of importing nations.

It is scoundrel time in Washington, as the administration shamelessly exploits post-September 11 patriotism to advance a foreign policy that is unapologetically unilateralist and militaristic. In the process, the administration has trampled civil liberties at home, given authoritarian regimes abroad free rein to clamp down on dissidents, and created a global security framework increasingly characterized by confrontation, brinksmanship, and name-calling.

President Bush would have us believe that we are engaged in an apocalyptic battle between good and evil. But it’s more a clash of scoundrels and outlaws.

Outlaws Rule

International relations have undergone dramatic shifts since the late 1980s. Certainly the demise of the Soviet Union and the increased integration of markets, production, and financial flows are among the most defining factors in shaping this new era. The disintegration of traditional social and economic structures (which have been assaulted by globalization) and the rise in the number of weak or failing states (impacted by falling aid levels, the end of client state politics, and also by the forces of globalization) have created new operating room for outlaw bands of warlords, terrorists, and post-ideological guerrillas and paramilitary squads--many of whom rely on drugs and other contraband to finance their operations and support their members. Not to be overlooked are the international white-collar outlaws--the many transnational corporations, like Enron, whose wealth has given them the power to flout national and international law.

This debilitated state of the UN is compounded by the U.S. flouting of international laws, norms, and treaties. In effect, the U.S. asserts that it stands above the common good. If climate change rules adversely impact the U.S. economy, then the treaty is rejected. If an International Criminal Court would be able to stand in judgement of U.S. citizens, then we prefer a world without such a court. Similarly with international conventions that would regulate arms trade, nuclear proliferation, and the use of child soldiers. Military intervention by the U.S. around the globe doesn’t require UN approval on the assumption that U.S. interests are global--and thus we are always acting in self-defense.

The U.S. picks and chooses when and if it will respect international laws, norms, and trade rulings. It holds itself above international law--and increasingly above international opinion. Its arrogance and outlaw behavior greatly undermine the prospects for successful global governance, further weaken the UN, and contribute to a world where outlaws hold sway. At home, the scoundrel politics of the Bush administration seek to rally Americans in an open-ended war on U.S.-selected outlaws, terrorists, and rogues, using American patriotism and rage as a cover to pursue its conservative agendas. The rest of the world is alarmed at the way the Bush administration is riding roughshod in the international arena--outside of alliances and outside of international law. Americans, too, should wake from their patriotic delusions and begin challenging the scoundrel politics in Washington.

(Tom Barry <tom@irc-online.org> of the Interhemispheric Resource Center is codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus.)

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.)

INDUSTRIAL UNREST IN CHINA
By Tim Pringle

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0202chinalabor.html .)

The overall figures for labor disputes certainly indicate that the Chinese working class is not taking labor violations lying down. According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, there were increases in labor disputes in all types of enterprises in 2000 (the latest year for which figures are available). Of the 327,152 disputes officially recorded, 24.2% were in SOEs, 20% in so-called collectively owned enterprises, 15.5% in foreign-invested enterprises, and 14% in private, Chinese-owned companies. These statistics represent the continuation of a spectacular increase in disputes that began in the early 1990s.

However, although the figures reflect widespread dissatisfaction and an increase in rights awareness among workers, they do not tell the whole story. The vast majority of cases in these figures are individual disputes that are settled via China's rapidly evolving dispute settlement procedures. The framework includes settlement committees inside enterprises, tripartite arbitration committees set up at all administrative levels of government (known as Labor Disputes Arbitration Committees) and the courts. Worth mentioning too is the use of China's notorious "re-education through labor" system as a way of dealing with determined labor activists and strike leaders. A worker can find him or herself in front of a Labor Re-education Administrative Committee on the recommendation of their employer. With no trial and only a superficial appeals process, those who "have a job but for a long time refuse to labor or destroy labor discipline, who ceaselessly and unreasonably make trouble, and who disturb the order of production or work" can be sentenced to up to three years in a labor camp.

Aside from the increase in individual labor disputes and litigation, it is the steady, though less dramatic, increase in collective disputes that require organization, unity, and class consciousness that is more significant to those of us who support efforts to build a national, independent labor movement in China. Strikes are a sensitive issue. While they are not expressly forbidden in Chinese law, the right to strike was removed from the Chinese constitution in 1982 and, as already mentioned, strike leaders can be legally detained and sent to labor camps for re-education. But there are signs of a change for the better. China recently ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which guarantees workers the right to strike. While China entered a reservation on the Covenant's clause concerning the right to join a trade union "of his [sic] choice," there was no objection to the clause on the right to strike, indicating that the government is considering a legal clarification at the very least. In fact even the reformist wing of the ACFTU has been lobbying for this reform and the Hong Kong press has recently carried reports that such a move is in the cards.

Meanwhile workers have been striking anyway, despite the risks. While there is no independent union to lead strikes or collect essential information on production days lost, arrested strike leaders and picket line injuries etc., there are basic statistics available. In 1998 there were 6,767 collective actions (usually strikes or go-slows with a minimum of three people taking part) involving 251,268 people, an increase of 900% on the figure for 1992. In 2000, this figure jumped to 8,247 collective actions involving 259,445 workers. In 1998, 24% of these actions occurred in SOEs, although not all can be counted as strikes because many were incidents of laid off workers protesting at not being issued livelihood allowances--i.e. they are not actually withdrawing their labor. Their actions usually involved a march to the local labor bureau or government offices to demand intervention, or blocking a road or railway line.

While these actions at times result in clashes with the police, the central authorities have issued orders to local governments not to exacerbate the situation by using force to disperse workers. The fact that the workers' demands are often very moderate and confined to calling on SOEs to fulfil their legal obligations is probably a factor in the widespread sympathy that these SOE workers receive from fellow citizens, many of whom face a similar situation. The case of the miners from Jishu town cited above was overwhelmingly supported by the local populations of Jishu and nearby Shulan city, despite the fact that miners blocked the railway line for four days, no doubt causing considerable inconvenience. In the words of the manageress of a re-employment agency in Shulan, "The miners are facing terrible hardship and have very bleak prospects. There was no violence or arrests and the workers are talking reason. Nearly everyone is sympathetic." Shi Tanjing of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences argues that another reason behind the increase in strikes is a potent mixture of dictatorial management methods and/or corruption.

Union Independence the Key

During late September and early October 2001, hundreds of workers gathered outside Daqing city government offices demanding that the mayor come out and intervene in a long unresolved redundancy dispute with the Daqing Blanket Factory. There were clashes with paramilitary police while workers played cassette recordings of the Internationale. As this and the other examples and statistics in this article demonstrate, there are thousands of workers involved in labor unrest and many voice a growing sense of having nothing to lose. A direct result of the unrest has been the reappearance of politically motivated labor organizers, labor lawyers, and even the resurgence of a reformist wing in the ACFTU, an organization soundly purged after it offered lukewarm support to the students during the 1989 Democracy Movement.

China's workers are fighting back. What is so obviously lacking is an independent workers' organization or trade union that can link up the myriad disputes, negotiate with employers, and put the interests of its members before those of the government, employers, or Party. The struggle to establish such an organization continues, but it is still recovering from the brutal repression of the Workers' Autonomous Federations in 1989, and the Chinese state continues to imprison independent trade unionists and labor activists. Yet there does appear to be an underlying trend in both official and dissident circles, driven by the labor unrest, which points to change. Like South Africa and Poland, the ruling class knows that sooner or later, if it is to avoid being toppled from power in a violent explosion of pent-up anger, it must allow workers some space to organize. For people concerned with labor rights in China, our job is to do everything possible to support the strikes and protests and make that space available as soon as possible.

(Tim Pringle <duxiu@hotmail.com> is a labor researcher based in Hong Kong. This piece was originally published by the China Labour Bulletin (online at www.china-labour.org.hk ) and is reprinted with permission.)

NEW FROM SELF-DETERMINATION IN FOCUS

Angola In Conflict
By Thomas Turner

The death of Jonas Savimbi may help to bring an end to Angola's murderous civil war. At the same time, it may make much-needed government reform more difficult, by lessening the pressure on the MPLA government to change. Over the years since Jose Eduardo dos Santos succeeded Neto as president of Angola and head of the MPLA, the ideological content of the movement faded. Its rivalry with UNITA became a power struggle between incumbency based on oil wealth and insurgency based on diamonds. Meanwhile, millions of Angolans have been forced to flee their homes. Many are starving. For years Angola faced a choice between "a murderer and a thief," as an Angolan complained to a foreign journalist. The "murderer" has been eliminated, but the other problem remains intact. Under dos Santos, a vast amount of oil revenue disappears without a trace, money which could go a long way to easing the problems of Angola's poverty-stricken majority.

(Thomas Turner <tomedwin@excite.com> is professor of Political Science at the National University of Rwanda and professor of International Relations at the Higher Institute of Human Sciences of Tunis, in Tunisia. He is the author of Ethnogenèse et nationalisme en Afrique centrale: les racines de Lumumba (Paris, 2000)).

See new FPIF Conflict Profile at: http://www.selfdetermine.org/conflicts/angola.html

III. Letters and Comments

APPALLING IGNORANCE ABOUT NORTH KOREA

There is value in the article “Reviewing the Korea-U.S. Summit: What Lies Beneath” [posted at http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0202bush-seoul.html] but it is not to be found in calling President Bush "simple-minded." Nor is it to be found in what Brent Choi thinks may be on Chairman Kim’s or Jong-Il's mind. There is appalling ignorance nowadays about the history and culture of American foreign policy, and even worse, about the history of the Juche government in Pyongyang. It bothers me that not a single person in the Bush administration has ever been to North Korea, has ever met a single, high-ranking North Korean official, or has ever read Juche philosophy. What worries me as much is that Brent Choi may fall into the same category. I have spent 4 separate weeks all over North Korea and hundreds of hours with their leadership.

- Dr. William J. Taylor, Jr. <wtaylor@csis.org>

A TAPE-RECORDER PRESIDENT

Thank you for your kind comment. The real problem of Bush administration is that President Bush is just like a tape recorder. His speech on North Korea issues reflected both the moderate group and the hawks group in his administration. So it sounded very contradictory. And Mr. Bush does not realize this very problem--which is the reason why I described him as a “simple minded person.” If you don't like that expression, what about “overly simplistic,” “unwise,” or “counterproductive.” The main points that I was trying to make in my article were these:

• Since taking office the Bush administration has deliberately undermined peace progress on the Korean peninsula.
• White House is already interfering in the South Korean presidential election scheduled in December.
• The North Korean moratorium on missile tests is ending at the end of this year, and if this very important issue is mishandled, it will create very serious problems in 2003.

Mr. Taylor said, "... not a single person in the Bush administration has ever been to North Korea.”

As far as I remember, Mr. Armitage and more than one other of Bush administration went to Pyongyang in the early 1980s and met high-ranking North Koreans. There are many good North Koean specialists in the State Department, but the problem is that the White House never listens.

- Brent Choi <brent1@joongang.co.kr>

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