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

FPIF SPECIAL REPORT: TRAINING ARMIES AROUND THE WORLD

RIGHT-WING IDEOLOGY & U.S. GLOBAL MILITARY REACH STAND AGAINST CRIMINAL COURT
By Jim Lobe and Tom Barry

A U.S. CABAL PULLING AMERICA TOWARD WAR
By Conn Hallinan

FPIF TALKING POINTS: MYTHS ABOUT FAILURE OF CAMP DAVID 2000
By Stephen Zunes

II. Outside the U.S.

ANTHRAX, DRUG TRANSNATIONALS, AND TRIPs
By Kavaljit Singh

III. Letters and Comments

RIGHT ON THE MONEY

ABOLISH OPIC

ENOUGH RACISM

I. Updates and Out-takes

FPIF SPECIAL REPORT: TRAINING ARMIES AROUND THE WORLD

The U.S. is equipping and training foreign armed forces with some of the world's worst human rights records. Yet since September 11, the Bush administration has stepped up training operations, while congressional and public oversight has declined. A new study, U.S. Foreign Military Training: Global Reach, Global Power, published by Foreign Policy In Focus, finds that 51 foreign militaries receiving U.S. training through the IMET (International Military Education and Training) program have "poor" or "very poor" human rights records, according the State Department's 2002 Human Rights Report. The study, written by human rights and military analyst Lora Lumpe, details how more than 150 institutions in the U.S. and abroad are now involved in training about 100,000 foreign troops each year, with U.S. Special Operations Forces alone training foreign soldiers in more than 100 countries. The study is the first to describe and link together the broad range of military training programs, and analyze the human rights and civilian oversight issues.

Some of the major findings of the report include:

• Since September 11 the administration has offered new police or military training to numerous countries with poor human rights records, including Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Ethiopia, Colombia, and Yemen.
• The Bush administration's March 2002 Emergency Supplemental Appropriations request asked for more than $1 billion in new military aid, including $100 million in weapons and training for countries without any congressional oversight. The bill specifically proposes that the Pentagon be allowed to discard human rights and other conditions that Congress has previously enacted to minimize abuses of U.S. military aid.
• The Executive Branch is delaying release and seeking to scale back the Foreign Military Training Report, which is the only comprehensive public accounting of global military training programs, thus restricting the flow of information to Congress and the public.

The study concludes that the U.S. government needs to ensure that the fight against terrorism is "pursued by means consistent with our democratic ideals." At a minimum, it calls for an "increase in transparency surrounding military training programs in order to ensure public accountability, as well as greater dialogue and cooperation between congressional committees with oversight responsibilities."

This new FPIF Special Report is available at: http://www.fpif.org/papers/miltrain/index.html

(Also see our printer-friendly version at: http://www.fpif.org/pdf/papers/SRmiltrain.pdf .)

RIGHT-WING IDEOLOGY & U.S. GLOBAL MILITARY REACH STAND AGAINST CRIMINAL COURT
By Jim Lobe and Tom Barry

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary available in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0205righticc.html .)

One cannot fault the Bush administration for a lack of a foreign policy vision. That was the main critique leveled at the Clinton administration by foreign policy pundits. Unsigning treaties, purging multilateral commissions, pumping up the military budget, and deploying U.S. military Special Forces around the globe are all part of the administration's unabashed mission to construct a Pax Americana. It's a go-it-alone strategy based on power politics. As the dominant global military and economic power, the U.S. should acknowledge and embrace its imperial status--and not let entangling alliances and treaties impede the exercise of its supremacy.

The recent administration decision to renounce the government's obligations as a signatory to the 1998 Rome Statute to establish an International Criminal Court (ICC) shocked and dismayed U.S. allies. But it was not surprising. It follows on the heels of Washington's withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse emissions, its abandonment of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and other attacks on the international arms control system. The ICC has long been a target of right-wing critics, who have contended that the court could pursue politically motivated prosecutions against U.S. military personnel.

The ICC treaty, which was signed by President Clinton, has been signed by 139 countries, ratified by 66, and takes effect July 1. The letter renouncing the earlier U.S. signature that was sent May 6 to UN Secretary Kofi Annan means that the U.S. will no longer be able to participate in the negotiations to set up and staff the ICC. "We've washed our hands [of the ICC process]; it's over," said Pierre-Richard Prosper, Washington's ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, after the announcement.

The decision to "unsign" the ICC treaty followed a high-level debate within the administration between the unilateralists--including Vice President Cheney and Bush appointees at the Pentagon--and senior State Department officials who argued that the move would needlessly alienate European allies without gaining anything in return. As in other recent debates, the hardliners won the day, thereby further diminishing the influence and credibility of moderate conservatives like Secretary of State Powell.

The hawks, who have strong support among Republican right-wingers in Congress, wanted to go much further by launching a campaign to undermine the treaty and the Court by, for example, banning U.S. military aid and other assistance to countries that ratify the treaty or actively cooperate with the Court.

Aside from its implications for the future of international law and the prosecution of international criminals, the recent U.S. decision was yet another signal that the hardliners and neoconservatives in the administration are driving U.S. foreign policy. Significantly, the letter to Secretary General Annan was signed by Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, one of the administration's leading right-wing ideologues.

Bolton, whose office has no authority over human rights or international justice issues, has long been hostile to the UN and other manifestations of multilateralism, including arms control agreements and the campaign to establish the ICC. As vice president of the American Enterprise Institute and a trusted adviser of Sen. Jesse Helms, Bolton argued that the ICC would be a threat to U.S. sovereignty and had a hand in drafting the American Servicemen's Protection Act (ASPA), a still-pending bill that not only bars U.S. cooperation with the court and sanctions countries which ratify it, but even authorizes the use of force to free any U.S. soldiers who might be hauled before the ICC, which will be based in The Hague in the Netherlands. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among other unilateralist members of the administration, also signed a letter endorsing ASPA before Bush's inauguration.

In addition to the ideological opposition to multilateralism within the administration, the U.S. campaign to undermine the ICC is also driven by concerns that as the U.S. military extends its global reach it will likely be increasingly subject to governmental and nongovernmental criticism. In opposing the ICC, the U.S. government is acting to ensure that this discretion to use U.S. troops as the U.S. sees fit is not endangered. Explaining the U.S. position renouncing the ICC, Undersecretary for State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman told reporters: "The United States has a unique role and responsibility to help preserve international peace and security. At any given time, U.S. forces are located in close to 100 nations around the world conducting peacekeeping and humanitarian operations and fighting inhumanity."

(Jim Lobe <jlobe@starpower.net> writes regularly for Inter Press Service and Foreign Policy In Focus. Tom Barry <tom@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center and codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus.)

Related Citizen Action and Agendas

The NGO Coalition for an International Criminal Court is actively supporting the establishment of the ICC. The coalition has a website and a listserv devoted to ICC issues, which are maintained by the World Federalist Movement and Institute for Global Policy.

NGO Coalition for an International Criminal Court
Email: cicc@iccnow.org
Website: http://www.igc.org/icc/

Reacting to the Bush administration's decision to revoke the U.S. government's signing of the ICC treaty, 23 human rights, peace, and religious groups, including AFSC, British American Security Information Council, and World Federalist Association, signed the following statement: "Unsigning is an unprecedented act that has little practical effect, but is symbolically powerful because it undermines American leadership and credibility at the worst possible time. This rash action signals to the world that America is turning its back on decades of U.S. leadership in prosecuting war criminals since the Nuremburg Trials."

A U.S. CABAL PULLING AMERICA TOWARD WAR
By Conn Hallinan

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary available in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0205cabal.html .)

Sometime this fall, probably before the mid-term elections, the U.S. will probably be at war with Iraq. But why are we headed to war in the Mideast? Not because Iraq is engaged in terrorism. According to the CIA, it isn't. Not because Iraqi arms threaten our security. According to most arms inspectors, Iraq is essentially disarmed.

No, it will happen because more than a decade ago a small cabal of political heavyweights in the administration of George Bush the First, who now also run the foreign and defense policy of George Bush II, sat down and drew up a blueprint to rule the world. X-Files fantasies?

Their names should be familiar: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. Their goal is to "shape" the world to "preclude the rise of another global rival for the indefinite future," in the words of one of the group's leading thinkers, Zalmay Khalizad (now special envoy to Afghanistan).

The tone of these people is chilling. Our allies are cast as a bunch of spineless whiners, international agreements are dismissed as straitjackets, and the "enemy" portrayed as a mob of wogs, easily scattered by a show of cold steel. In his briefing of senior White House staff on the Mideast, Bernard Lewis of Princeton (another "team" member) argued that "in that part of the world, nothing matters more than resolute force and will."

Homework was undoubtedly the collected works of Cecil Rhodes and Rudyard Kipling.

When Bush addressed the nation Sept. 20, he called on the American people and our allies to join a "war on terrorism." But in the intervening six months, the goals of that war have changed drastically. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told Lemann that the policy was not just to go after terrorists, but to prevent the accumulation of weapons of mass destruction in "the hands of irresponsible states."

This is a handy little distinction, because on Feb. 5 the CIA said there was no evidence that Iraq has engaged in any terrorism directed at the United States or its allies. And while the administration has trumpeted that Iraq blocked all arms inspections three years ago, few people outside of Washington (except British Prime Minister Tony Blair) actually think that Iraq has such weapons.

(Conn Hallinan <connm@cats.ucsc.edu> writes for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org) and is a journalism lecturer and the provost at the University of California, Santa Cruz.)

FPIF TALKING POINTS: MYTHS ABOUT FAILURE OF CAMP DAVID 2000
By Stephen Zunes

(Editor's Note: This series of FPIF talking points is also available at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0205talkmideast.html .)

1. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations, along with leading members of Congress of both parties, have deliberately misrepresented what happened in the peace process before, during, and after Camp David, as well as what has transpired since the outbreak of the second intifada in late September 2000. This has served to justify a policy of supporting an increasingly repressive occupation army, something that would otherwise be unpalatable to the American public.
2. The Palestinians bear some major responsibility for the tragic turn of events following the unsuccessful end of the talks hosted by President Clinton. However, a careful examination of the events appears to indicate that the primary fault for the failure of the peace process and the subsequent violence lies squarely with the occupying power--Israel--and its patron--the United States.
3. Throughout the peace process, the Clinton administration seemed to coordinate the pace and agenda of the talks closely with Israel, ignoring Palestinian concerns.
4. The U.S. insistence to jump to final-status negotiations without prior confidence building measures--such as a freeze on new settlements or the fulfillment of previous Israeli pledges to withdraw--led the Palestinians to question the sincerity of both Israel and the United States.
5. Claims that Barak offered 95% of the West Bank to the Palestinians at the Camp David summit are misleading. This figure does not include greater East Jerusalem, which includes Palestinian villages and rural areas to the north and east of the city unilaterally annexed by Israel. Nor does this figure include much of the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea coast and parts of the Judean Desert, which would have remained under exclusive Israeli military control for an indefinite period. Taking these additional areas into account, this offer totaled only slightly more than 80% of the West Bank, forcing the Palestinians to relinquish land needed for their development and absorption of refugees.
6. Also under Barak's U.S.-backed plan, the West Bank would have been split up by a series of settlement blocs, bypass roads and Israeli roadblocks, by some interpretations dividing the new Palestinian "state" into four non-contiguous cantons. In addition, Israel would have supervision of border crossing between the new Palestinian state and neighboring Arab states. Israel would also control Palestinian airspace, seacoast and aquifers.
7. Although Barak's offers did go further than any previous Israeli government, they fell well short of what Israel was required to do under basic international legal standards--such as the Fourth Geneva Convention--and a series of UN Security Council resolutions. These include the departure from the Jewish settlements, rescinding the annexation of greater East Jerusalem and withdrawal from territories seized in the 1967 war in return for security guarantees.
8. Clinton naively thought that he could pressure Arafat to accept Israeli terms, even though negotiations up to that time indicated that the two sides were still far apart on some key issues. Even if Clinton had been successful in forcing Arafat to agree to Israeli terms, there simply would not have been enough support among the Palestinian population to make it a viable agreement.
9. The Palestinian uprising in late September was a spontaneous eruption exacerbated by excessive use of force by Israeli occupation troops. There is no evidence that Arafat or anyone else the Palestinian Authority planned it.
10. Clinton's peace plan in December improved Israel's July proposal only slightly and was initially rejected by the Palestinians. However, Israeli-Palestinian talks in Taba the following month, without active U.S. participation, led to major concessions by both sides and came within striking distance of a peace agreement. The Israelis balked at the last minute, however, soon followed by Barak's electoral defeat.
11. The bipartisan consensus in the U.S. is that the fate of the Palestinians is up to their Israeli occupiers. Statements by both the Clinton and Bush administrations and congressional resolutions passed by huge bipartisan majorities have made it clear that Washington conditions Palestinian independence to Israeli terms.

(See the new FPIF Special Report: The U.S. Role in the Breakdown of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process, written by Stephen Zunes <zunes@usfca.edu>. Zunes is the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org), and an associate professor of politics and chair of the peace & justice studies program at the University of San Francisco.)

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.)

ANTHRAX, DRUG TRANSNATIONALS, AND TRIPs
By Kavaljit Singh

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from an Outside the U.S. FPIF commentary available in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0204trips.html .)

Against the backdrop of September 11th terrorist attacks in the U.S., the anthrax attacks in late 2001 raised highly controversial issues related to intellectual property rights. Just a few months earlier, the world had witnessed heated debates on the patent controversy when the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers' Association of South Africa (PMASA), a body representing South African subsidiaries of 39 drug transnational corporations (TNCs), took the South African government to court to prevent it from importing cheaper versions of patented drugs for patients suffering from Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). However, under tremendous pressure generated by health activists and concerned groups around the world, the drug TNCs unconditionally dropped the lawsuit against the South African government.

No doubt, it is unfair to compare the AIDS pandemic in South Africa with the current anthrax crisis in America. As compared to over 4.7 million patients suffering from AIDS and nearly 300 AIDS patients dying every day in South Africa, the anthrax attacks in the U.S. only killed five people, made 13 others fall ill and caused more than 30,000 people to take precautionary antibiotics. Both instances relate to public health, but more importantly, the bone of contention revolves around the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The wider concerns for protecting public health were expected to usher in substantial changes to the existing TRIPs agreement at the Fourth WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar held November 9-13, 2001. Not only health activists and NGOs, but also several poor and developing countries had shown determination to raise this vital issue at the Doha conference. But the outcome of the Doha conference was disastrous for the world's poor because it provides few concessions on the drug patents issue. Except for providing least-developed countries an additional 10 years to implement TRIPs and giving autonomy to governments to define public health emergencies in which TRIPs could be suspended, the Doha conference failed to resolve the fundamental conflicts between patents and public health. The lip service approach to this vital issue can be gauged from the fact that the declaration on the TRIPs agreement and public health was issued separately, not as part of the main Ministerial Declaration. With the key issues related to drug patents remaining unresolved, the world is likely to witness patents versus poor patients conflicts in the coming years.

The agreement reached at Doha for a new round of negotiations is a significant achievement for the U.S., the EU, and Japan as it opens up new opportunities for TNCs to further expand their global reach. It is important to highlight the hypocritical stand of Indian authorities on WTO issues, which was completely exposed during the Doha Conference. A few weeks before the Doha conference, Indian authorities took a strong posture seeking drastic changes in the TRIPs agreement as well as opposing any new round of negotiations until contentious issues related to the implementation of Uruguay round of negotiations were resolved. Not only the poor and developing countries, but also several Indian and international NGOs joined the ranks in support of Indian authorities. But within hours after asserting that "a new round of trade talks at the WTO is not necessary, it is evil," India's Commerce Minister, Murasoli Maran, agreed to a new round of formal negotiations without any major gains in key areas such as textiles, agriculture, TRIPs, and transfer of technology. This is hardly surprising given the fact that the same Indian government is not just pursuing amendments in domestic patent laws to conform with the WTO regime but also is pushing a liberalization agenda in several sectors of economy (for instance, financial sector) that are well beyond the purview of WTO.

Several inferences can be drawn from the anthrax crisis in the U.S. First, by sacrificing the public health concern of its own citizens to protect the private interests of drug TNCs, the U.S. has unabashedly acknowledged the supremacy of patents over public health. Second, the present patent regime not only poses a grave danger to public health in the poor and the developing world, even the developed world is also not immune to it. Hence, this episode should serve as a wake up call to the rest of the developed countries who usually follow the footsteps of the U.S. on patent issues. Poor and ordinary people, whether they live in New York or New Delhi, have a basic right to sound health, and therefore, safeguarding public health must take precedence over patents and monopoly profits of the drug TNCs.

Third, apart from universal health programs and other publicly funded interventions, it is of utmost importance that monopolies in the drug industry be dismantled to ensure that crucial drugs are made accessible to poor patients at affordable prices. Therefore, strict regulation of drug TNCs must be an integral component of building a public health system in the developed as well as the developing world.

Fourth, with critical support from the developed countries not forthcoming, the responsibility for demanding a comprehensive review of TRIPs, including reduction in the duration and scope of patent protection for drugs that are essential for public health, rests with the poor and developing countries. This calls for greater unity and solidarity among the poor and the developed world on issues of common interest at the WTO and other international economic negotiations.

Finally, it is high time that the primacy of national health policy over international agreements, including the WTO, be restored.

(Kavaljit Singh <kaval@nde.vsnl.net.in> is the Director of Public Interest Research Centre, Delhi and is also associated with Asia-Europe Dialogue Project (online at www.ased.org).)

III. Letters and Comments

RIGHT ON THE MONEY

War mongrels seems to fit those in the current administration in this rush to war. 9/11 and Bin Laden seem like afterthoughts to the real agenda, as mentioned in this article ["A U.S. Cabal Pulling America to War" at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0205cabal.html]. Power is the name of the game and there is room for only one power. Why the rest of the world allows the United States to continue to run amok is not a mystery. Behind the power fetish is the money fetish, and the corporations of the world. The U.S. foreign policy mimics the needs, desires, wants, and greed of the corporations. We can blame this rise to corporate power on the not-so Supreme Court. Giving corporations the status of humans is as dumb as making George W. Bush president. Your article is right on the money.

- Fred Jakobcic <fjakobci@chartermi.net>

ABOLISH OPIC

As a concerned citizen primarily, an environmentally conscious individual secondly, and almost as an after-thought, a small business owner, I believe that the insidious government agency OPIC should be put out of its misery sooner than later. [See FPIF Policy Brief: Overseas Private Investment Corporation at http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol2/v2n17opi.html ]. Just a mention that the OPIC was intimately involved in the vast and underhanded dealings of Enron (Cuiaba, Chiquitano Forest) should in itself warrant an immediate and scrutinizing investigation of the agency as a whole. Pontificating that this agency finances and insures well-intended projects is an absolute farce, and should not be tolerated by the American people, nor by the officials they elect to represent their best interests. The dictum of this agency was backward from its inception in 1971, and it should be done away with expeditiously.

- Bradley S. Romo <sales@eatinin.com>

ENOUGH RACISM

I agree 99% with your recent article in the Progressive Response ["Neoconservative/Christian Right Axis" at: http://www.fpif.org/progresp/volume6/v6n13.html ]. I am upset about this line: "...Rumsfeld's staff, chief hawks--both Jewish neo-conservatives--include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith..." Unless these people are members of right-wing Jewish groups, the mention of their Judaism is racist and provocative, and there is no reason to point it out. Plenty of Jews are as disgusted as you are with both Sharon and Bush (including some Israelis). There is enough racism in all corners of the Israel-Palestine conflict without progressives falling into this unproductive trap, which dilutes our effectiveness.

- Mow Kazati <mowkat@webryders.com>

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