The Progressive Response
Volume 6, Number 7
March 12, 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
A RETURN TO INTERVENTIONISM
By Tom Barry
IS THE U.S. A POLLUTION HAVEN?
By Frank Ackerman
BETANCOURT KIDNAPPING HIGHLIGHTS COLOMBIA'S
PITFALLS
By Lynn Holland
II. Outside the U.S.
WHEN HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF, AGAIN AND AGAIN
By Sam Bahour and Michael Dahan
III. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-takes
A RETURN TO INTERVENTIONISM
By Tom Barry
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0203intervention.html .)
Remember when the U.S. government suffered from the "Vietnam syndrome"? It hit hard back in the 1970s. That was when the U.S. Congress, led by liberal Democrats, began taking a closer look at the prevailing U.S. counterinsurgency and national security state policies--the type of U.S. foreign policy mindset that drove the U.S. to support dictators, puppets, and repressive security apparatuses around the world.
For some, especially in the new and old Left, this was the "Age of Imperialism," an era when the U.S. was securing its hold on the resources and the states of the "developing" world. There were analytical weaknesses with this anti-imperialism critique, mainly because it didn't explain well why the U.S. was so deeply involved in places of seemingly so little economic consequence, such as South Vietnam. Nor was the imperial America critique helpful in explaining the idealist side of America's interventionism-the Wilsonian compulsion to bring freedom and democracy to the rest of the world. If the aim was to reform U.S. foreign policy, criticizing the U.S. as a runaway imperial power just didn't fly, either with U.S. policymakers or the U.S. public.
What did seem to work as a way to filter out the tendencies in U.S. foreign policy that supported repression and military intervention in the third world was the human rights critique. For the first time, U.S. aid to the developing country governments, military, and police began to be held up to human rights standards. One of the first casualties of the human rights filter was the U.S.-supported International Police Academy and the related police-training programs overseas. When seen through the human rights filter, it became more difficult for the U.S. to directly associate itself, either through aid or intervention, with regimes that systematically clamped down on leftists and popular organizations. The application of human rights standards to U.S. foreign policy was one of leading symptoms of the Vietnam syndrome at work.
In U.S. military circles, the syndrome exhibited itself in a new skittishness about using U.S. troops to intervene directly in conflicts that had no "exit strategy" or were not easily won. For the right, the Carter presidency was the time when the Vietnam syndrome got the best of America. Stoked by rightwing revisionist history that said the U.S. could have won in Vietnam if it had really wanted to, the rewriting of history in the Rambo movies, and by the rising appeal of America First rhetoric, the intervention phobia started to subside in the 1980s. The political pendulum had swung back to the right, and the Reagan presidency reshaped the American political landscape, making liberal the "L" word whose principles few would unapologetically defend. Interventionism came back into style in foreign policy, but dressed in new rhetoric. Instead of counterinsurgency, we had freedom fighters and democracies to defend in Central America, southern Africa, and Afghanistan.
The war on terrorism has also pushed out all the stops on U.S. interventionism in the third world and transitional states. While the rightists have been critical of humanitarian interventionism and circumspect about U.S. intervention in countries where there is no strong U.S. national interest, they now back the new wave of U.S. military missions to counter terrorism. As the U.S. government embarks on the "broader war" and "lengthy campaign" that President Bush has promised, the fears of the 1970s that the U.S. would get bogged down in Vietnam-like quagmires have faded. So too, apparently, have strong congressional and public concerns that renewed U.S. military aid and training programs will prop up repressive regimes and contribute to human rights abuses.
Colombia may be the place where America's multifaceted war on terrorism may face its biggest test. Given the long history of civil war and the institutional roots of violence in Colombia, it might also be the place that will remind America why a new affliction of the Vietnam syndrome might be a healthy development. With the isolationists of the populist right and the Republican Party now marginalized by the conservative internationals and the global war on terror, the best hope for an anti-interventionist critique of Bush administration foreign policy in Colombia and elsewhere lies with the progressive community. It's a lonely position, as when Rep. Barbara Lee was the lone voice dissenting from an open-ended resolution after 9-11 supporting the war on terrorism, or as Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) discovered this week when he was the only representative to speak out against a House resolution supporting a change of U.S. policy in Colombia. As McGovern stated, the Bush administration should not be given "a green light to involve the U.S. more deeply and more directly in Colombia's escalating civil war." The same could be said about the rash of new military initiatives in countries the U.S. little understands and whose internal conflicts are interpreted simplistically as wars of terrorism.
(Tom Barry <tom@irc-online.org> is an analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) and cordirector of Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) .)
IS THE U.S. A POLLUTION HAVEN?
By Frank Ackerman
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/americas/commentary/2002/0203corn.html .)
Free trade, according to its critics, runs the risk of creating pollution havens--countries where lax environmental standards allow dirty industries to expand. Poor countries are the usual suspects; perhaps poverty drives them to desperate strategies, such as specializing in the most polluting industries.
But could the United States be a pollution haven?
The question arises from a look at agriculture under NAFTA, particularly the trade in corn. In narrow economic terms, the United States is winning in the market for corn. Exports to Mexico have doubled since NAFTA's first year, 1994, to more than five million tons annually. Cheap U.S. corn is undermining traditional production in Mexico; prices there have dropped 27% in just a few years, and a quarter of the corn consumed in Mexico is now made in the United States. But in environmental terms, the U.S. victory comes at a great cost. Corn production is moving from Mexico, where it was more sustainable, to the United States, where it involves serious environmental impacts.
You won't hear this, or any other discouraging words, from the advocates of trade promotion authority (fast track) and the Free Trade Area of the Americas, when the issues return to the political agenda in the coming months. In the official story, ever-freer trade creates rising economic tides that will lift all boats. And since richer people pay more attention to pollution, everyone's environment will get cleaner, too. It's supposed to be a win-win story all around. In reality, free trade creates losers as well as winners within each country. U.S. industrial workers and Mexican peasant farmers are economically worse off as a result of NAFTA. When it comes to the environment, free trade can lead to lose-lose outcomes, as in the case of corn.
How bad could it be for the United States to win the corn war? Mainstream commentary on the outcome ranges from calmly positive to positively gloating. Yet there are ominous environmental costs to the U.S. style of growing corn. The growing sales to Mexico bring more of these costs to the Corn Belt and the nation.
Corn is a highly chemical-intensive crop, using significantly more chemicals per acre than wheat or soybeans, the other two leading field crops. Runoff of excess nitrogen fertilizer is a major cause of water pollution, leading to the huge "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico around the mouth of the Mississippi River. Intensive application of toxic herbicides and insecticides threatens the health of farm workers, farming communities, and consumers. Genetically modified corn, which now accounts for about one-fifth of U.S. production, poses unknown long-term risks to consumers and to ecosystems.
Sales to Mexico are particularly important to the United States because many countries are refusing to accept genetically modified corn. Europe no longer imports U.S. corn for this reason, and Japan and several East Asian countries may follow suit. Mexico prohibits the growing of genetically modified corn, but still allows it to be imported; it is one of the largest remaining markets where U.S. exports are not challenged on this issue. Despite Mexico's ban, genetically modified corn was recently found growing in a remote rural area of Oaxaca. As the ancestral home of corn, Mexico possesses a unique and irreplaceable genetic diversity. Although the extent of the problem is still uncertain, the unplanned and uncontrolled spread of artificially engineered plants from the United States could potentially contaminate Mexico's numerous naturally occurring corn varieties.
An even greater threat is the economic impact of cheap U.S. imports on peasant farmers and rural communities. Traditional farming practices, evolved over thousands of years, use combinations of different natural varieties of corn carefully matched to local conditions. Lose these traditions, and we will lose a living reservoir of biodiversity in the country of origin of one of the world's most important food grains.
The United States has won the gold medal in the corn trade. But the prize looks tarnished when viewed through the lens of the U.S. environment, or of Mexico's biodiversity. Pollution havens don't always have to be poor.
(Frank Ackerman is Director of Research and Policy at the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University. This commentary comes to FPIF courtesy of the Americas Program (online at www.americaspolicy.org) at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC).)
BETANCOURT KIDNAPPING HIGHLIGHTS
COLOMBIA'S PITFALLS
By Lynn Holland
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0203colombia.html .)
As part of the plan to take control, government officials entered San Vicente, which until recently served as the capital city of the rebel territory. A number of presidential candidates, preparing for a first round of elections in late May, offered to join Pastrana 's excursion but were warned to stay away. Ingrid Betancourt, having planned a human rights rally in San Vicente, made arrangements to make the trip by helicopter, but when she arrived in Florencia, outside of the rebel area, no helicopter was available. She and her assistants were then refused open seats on the President's helicopter (which was also carrying a number of foreign journalists to San Vicente to hear speeches). Betancourt and her group decided to travel to San Vicente by car instead, and were abducted along the way.
A former representative and senator in Colombia, Betancourt has been a staunch critic of the rebels and their links to the drug trade. Yet she has been equally critical of corruption in government. As a reformer, she has called attention to the connection between the ruling parties and the billion-dollar drug cartels, and to how persistent corruption in the judicial system and public administration has locked Colombians in a spiral of poverty and crime.
Betancourt has also asked tough questions about what will happen to villagers residing in the FARC zone once the rebels pull out. These villagers have repeatedly voiced their terror of reprisals from the paramilitary "death" squads should the Colombian military enter the zone. In January, I talked online with Betancourt about this. When I asked if there were a policy on how these people would be protected, she replied that the government had offered "no guarantee that the people will be protected as the FARC retreats."
Colombia's anti-insurgent paramilitaries, as human rights watchers have amply documented, are a big part of the problem of providing for the safety of civilians. They have long operated as an extension of the military, and have been blamed for more than half of the 40,000 civilian deaths reported in Colombia over the past decade. They receive as much as 70% of their funding from drug trafficking, and also benefit from up-to-date intelligence and supplies provided by Colombia's regular military services.
With the most recent installment of military aid to Colombia-$300 million-the U.S. Congress has demanded that the Pastrana government cut all ties to the paramilitary organizations and vigorously prosecute human rights violations by the armed forces. The fulfillment of this demand will require active monitoring of paramilitary activity and plenty of American pressure on Colombian officials. Instead, Pastrana has cut the budgets of government agencies charged with investigating human rights cases and has failed to prosecute members of the military for assisting paramilitary violence.
(Dr. Lynn Holland <Lhlland@aol.com> is a professor of political science at the University of Colorado at Denver.)
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.)
WHEN HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF,
AGAIN AND AGAIN
By Sam Bahour and Michael Dahan
(Editor's Note: The following is excerpted from a new Outside the U.S. Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety at http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0203history.html .)
The first Palestinian refugee camps were a product of the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. In 1967, when Israel militarily occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, a second wave of Palestinian refugees was created. Today, Ariel Sharon and his government are creating a third wave of Palestinian refugees by attacking those very same refugees who, decades ago, fled for their lives and have been living under illegal Israeli occupation ever since.
It was twenty years ago when Sharon himself was responsible for the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon. Today, the Sharon-Peres coalition is repeating history by entering refugee camps within the Palestinian Authority, killing people, and destroying homes and property.
They are repeating history when they insist on keeping Arafat prisoner in Ramallah, as Sharon tried and failed to do in Beirut. When tank shells are used for "pinpointed" assassinations and kill a mother and her children "mistakenly" (tell us please where is the pin and the point?). When an entire family is killed in Jerusalem while celebrating a child's Bar Mitzvah (the Jewish coming of age ceremony); when missiles are fired from F16s into densely populated areas in Ramallah, Gaza, and Bethlehem; when death and destruction, debasement and humiliation are part and parcel of official Israeli policy toward millions of Palestinians, history is repeating itself again and again.
The Sharon-Peres coalition has no plan. Tenet, Mitchell, and the Saudi Arabian initiative have all been rejected. Sharon's only response is to say, "the Palestinians have to be hit harder." And after they are hit hard? They then need to be hit harder? And harder? And then? The Israeli government has rejected every proposal to try to calm the violence. The only response that the government has is to increase its war against the Palestinians. And make no mistake; this is not a low-level conflict, but a war against the Palestinians. Sharon is not simply a hard liner--he has absolutely no intention of reaching any agreement whatsoever with the Palestinians. Anyone who thinks that he does is only fooling himself or herself, while every day innocent people are being slaughtered in the streets of Ramallah and Jerusalem, Jenin and Tel Aviv.
Sharon has rejected and will continue to reject any proposal that attempts to calm the situation, while at the same time raising the stakes even higher. The only action that Sharon is capable of taking is to create a smoke screen, which will allow him to continue his personal vendetta against Arafat. This is the only conclusion that one can reach--Sharon has neglected his responsibility as a leader and is willing to place his own personal agenda ahead of the common good and common interest of Israel.
For those in the military, we would like to remind them of one of the basic laws of physics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This is a simple fact. "Hitting the Palestinians harder" will only serve to create more and more people willing to commit acts of violence, and will only serve to send a message to the Palestinian people that Israel has no intention of trying to reach a political solution.
It is time to send a clear message to Sharon and to the international community as well. There is no military solution for the conflict. Constantly bombarding the Palestinians will not make them give up their hope and legitimate desire to live in a free and independent state. Stifling them with roadblocks and indiscriminate violence will not soften them up, but will only serve to increase their commitment to achieve their goals.
In a few weeks, Jews all over the world will be celebrating the holiday of Passover, which is also known as the "Holiday of Liberty" from Egyptian slavery. It is time to apply the inalienable principle of liberty, which Jews cherish so much, to the Palestinian people. The only possible hope for a solution is the complete and total end of Occupation, the Israeli withdrawal to 1967 borders, and the establishment of a free and independent Palestinian state. As the Israeli government is not willing or not capable of implementing this simple and fair solution, we call on the international community to put as much pressure as possible on Israel in order to stop the cycle of violence. Failure to do so will only encourage Sharon to implement his own agenda, and history will continue to repeat itself.
(Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American living in the besieged Palestinian City of Al-Bireh in the West Bank and can be reached at <sbahour@palnet.com>. Michael Dahan is an Israeli-American political scientist living in Jerusalem and can be reached at <mdahan@attglobal.net>.)
III. Letters and Comments
The article "Jonas Savambi: Washington's Freedom Fighter, Africa's Terrorist" (online at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0202savimbi.html) though useful, demonstrates a somewhat simplistic view of the post-independence war in Angola. It pays little attention to the colonial history of Angola and the differences in the way in which the 3 major ethnic groups were colonized. The war sprang principally from the desire for political hegemony on the part of each of Angola's linguistically and ethnically different groups. The role of the Soviet Union and the U.S. were always opportunistic, with each of the groups also playing the opportunistic game. The Soviets (now having opportunistically joined their Western kith and kin) wanted independence for Angola only on the basis that it become a satellite; the U.S. opposed independence in principle but would settle for a neo-colony arrangement.
So long as there is no serious move to share power on the part of the culturally (asimilado-influenced) different MPLA there will be no peace in Angola. The Ovimbundu are 35-40% of Angola's population--and would easily dominate any government if voting follows (it usually does) ethnic lines in any election. The MPLA wouldn't want to settle for that--for fear of losing access to the oil proceeds paid by the U.S. oil companies. The solution is a creative approach to proportional democratic representation to the issue.
- Alassan Kamara <paradox200096217@aol.com>
"Outlaws and Scoundrels" (online at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0202scoundrels.html) is a great article, but I would offer one correction. Amerika is not seen by us as the global cop, but rather the global mugger.
- Isabel Foot <dizz@interlog.com>
In the section on U.S. involvement in "East Timor Conflict Profile" at http://www.selfdetermine.org/conflicts/timor.html you say: "During the post-1999 ballot violence, the Clinton administration exerted enormous pressure on the Habibie administration to allow a multinational force to take charge of East Timor." Indeed Clinton did send Admiral Dennis C. Blair to talk to Gen Wiranto. However, it is reported that all they did was to play golf. This is hardly the way or place to conduct a serious message to the person in charge of the troops there. And since ETAN reports that: "The defense bill establishes a Regional Defense Counter-terrorism Fellowship Program. Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) added the program to the bill at the behest of Admiral Dennis C. Blair, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command. What will be taught remains undefined." The ability of using such as Admiral Blair to convey messages or carry out serious policies regarding human rights is to be questioned. As to the U.S. Navy providing logistical support and the U.S. Marines training there recently, we have this from ETAN: "DynCorp Technical Services, Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded a $460,000 increment as part of a $6,020,751cost-plus-award-fee contract for extension of East Timor base support." So, the U.S. may be more interested in developing a long-range base of operations there, than really helping the people.
- Donald L Ferry <wolfbat359a@mindspring.com>
Your letter addresses three issues, and allow me to respond in turn.
First of all, I doubt that any of us are privy to what occurred during the Admiral Blair visit to Indonesia, but U.S. pressure on Indonesia went far beyond this--and most commentators agree that the most effective pressure was through the global financial architecture. Second, contact with the Indonesian military is a dilemma. The military, often touted as the only institution that can keep Indonesia together, has also proven to contain terribly destructive elements who disregard human rights and put at risk Indonesia's cohesion. One of the most pressing problems of Indonesia is how to make the Indonesian military more professional and responsive to civilian control. I doubt that the military will suddenly develop professional conduct and a respect for human rights if kept in splendid isolation. One of the worse human rights offenders across Indonesia, BRIMOB (the mobile brigade police), gives only several weeks training to recruits--none of it from foreign providers. Still, it is a difficult area, and should the U.S. resume military-to-military ties, one hopes that links will not be made with units and sections of the security forces guilty of serious human rights abuses. Third, I am not aware of any concrete evidence that the U.S. is going to establish a permanent base in East Timor. It is conceivable that they may use East Timor as a through port (like those in Singapore and Malaysia). However, any contact of this nature will have to acquire the acquiescence of the East Timorese legislature.
In summary, the inference of your letter was that the U.S. policy with regard to East Timor was about securing strategic advantage. I am not sure that the Clinton administration was completely altruistic in its consideration either, but the simple fact of the matter is that if a handful of liberal democracies, led by the U.S. and Australia (aided by the likes of my native country--New Zealand), had not acted, the rest of the international community would have left East Timor to its fate as a terrorized and occupied territory. Therefore I stand by my decision to stress something of America's positive role during the events of 1999.
- Anthony L. Smith, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore
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