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

FRONTIER JUSTICE: A WEEKLY CHRONICLE, NO. 3
By Tom Barry

HEAVY WORDS OR HEAVY ACTIONS
By Frida Berrigan

U.S.-RUSSIAN LESSONS FOR SOUTH ASIA
By Zia Mian, R. Rajaraman, and Frank von Hippel

II Outside the U.S.

AUSTRALIA GROVELS TO ALLY
By James Dunn

III. Letters and Comments

LET ISRAEL FIGHT ITS OWN WAR ON TERROR

SWAMY IS HALLUCINATING

GUJARAT RIOTS NO RELATION TO NAZI GERMANY

I. Updates and Out-takes

FRONTIER JUSTICE: A WEEKLY CHRONICLE, NO. 3
By Tom Barry

(Editor's Note: Frontier Justice is a weekly column that chronicles instance of U.S. unilateralism and assault on the multilateralism framework for managing global affairs. It is part of FPIF's new Project Against the Present Danger. These columns are currently indexed on the Progressive Response index page (at http://www.fpif.org/progresp/index.html ); a new index is in the works, and will be formally announced in the next edition.)

John Bolton, Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security, recently told the Wall Street Journal that signing the letter informing the UN that Washington was renouncing the Rome Treaty to create the ICC "was the happiest moment of my government service." After years railing against the United Nations and all expressions of multilateralism from his perch at the American Enterprise Institute, Bolton certainly has found a satisfying job in the Bush administration. He is the point man in the administration in its campaign to undermine, dismantle, or otherwise sideline all international norms and treaties that could in any way constrain the direct pursuit of U.S. national interests and security.

Bolton has been the leading voice against the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), signed by President Clinton but never ratified because of strong congressional opposition from Republicans. Now, the executive branch has joined the opposition. Among the reasons Bolton and others give for opposing this treaty that would prevent new nuclear testing is that it is not verifiable, but these technical objections are colored by the administration's disdain for almost any rule that would hold the U.S. accountable.

New concerns about the use of nuclear weapons have come from the stand-off between the two new nuclear powers--India and Pakistan--and from the administration's own Nuclear Posture Review that targets seven nations--including five non-nuclear nations--for possible preemptive nuclear strikes with an arsenal of bunker-busting nuclear-tipped missiles. It also comes on the heels of the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty.

A new report this week from National Academy of Sciences, titled Technical Issues Related to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, takes on Bolton's stated grounds of opposition to the CTBT. The report shows that the stated concerns over verification (primarily) and viability of U.S. nuclear stockpile (secondarily) are not technically a problem. According to the report: "Verification capabilities for the treaty are better than generally supposed. U.S. adversaries could not significantly advance their nuclear weapons capabilities through tests below the threshold of detection, and the United States has the technical capabilities to maintain confidence in the safety and reliability of its existing weapons stockpile without periodic nuclear tests."

The Committee on Technical Issues Related to Ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which wrote the report, was formed in mid-2000 at the request of Gen. John Shalikashvili, former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then special adviser to the president and secretary of state for the CTBT. Committee members included former directors of the Los Alamos, Sandia, and Oak Ridge national laboratories; other experts on nuclear-weapon design, testing, and maintenance; a leading expert on seismic verification of nuclear explosions; and a former commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific.

When thinking nuclear, it is well to remember that the United States has been the only country to drop the bomb--a horror directed against the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 57 years ago this week. The standard argument is that this demonstration of U.S. devastating power was necessary to end the war quickly, even though the scholarly consensus holds otherwise. But even accepting this argument, questions persist: Why not drop the bomb on a military target such as an army base? Why the second bombing of Nagasaki that killed 30,000 in the first minutes, and 44,000 more in slower, radiation-caused deaths? (Eighty thousand died immediately in Hiroshima, followed by another 100,000 in the succeeding months and years.) Gratuitous at best, genocidal at worst is the generally accepted conclusion of those who dare to contemplate these questions. Americans, caught up in their exceptionalist convictions, have a harder time examining history and current events from any perspective but their own. Bruce Cummings in his excellent Parallax Visions: Making Sense of American-East Asian Relations at the End of the Century (Duke University, 1999) helps us take off those blinders.

U.S. government officials frequently--although less during the Bush presidency than in previous administrations--hector other nations that they need to institute the rule of law. After all, the rule of law, our democracy, and the U.S. judicial system have made America the "beacon of freedom," according to President Bush. But we are not so fond of this rule of order when we ourselves are judged--and I am not referring to the International Criminal Court but our own U.S. courts. This week the State Department's top attorney urged a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit against ExxonMobil that alleges the world's largest energy company was complicit in the murder, torture, and rape of villagers living near its natural gas operations in northern Indonesia. The State Department told a trial judge that a lawsuit against oil giant ExxonMobil for alleged human rights abuses in Indonesia could endanger Washington's "war on terror" in Indonesia and elsewhere. The civil suit claims that ExxonMobil is responsible for grave human rights abuses committed by Indonesian security forces in Indonesia's war-torn Aceh province, home to a major ExxonMobil natural gas operation.

The State Department's intervention caught human rights groups by surprise, especially because it is the first time it has urged the dismissal of a case filed under the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), a law that permits foreigners to sue for damages for serious human rights violations in federal court against defendants who are present in the United States. The State Department has stayed neutral in similar suits brought by alleged victims of military abuses in Nigeria, Burma, and other countries where plaintiffs alleged that the forces involved were protecting U.S. corporate interests when abuses were committed.

Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch director, said the State Department's actions mocked President George W. Bush's focus on corporate responsibility in light of the many recent Wall Street scandals. The State Department's action comes amid a major push, particularly by hardliners in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office, to normalize military relations with Indonesia, the world's most populous predominantly Muslim nation.

(Tom Barry <tom@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (online at www.irc-online.org) and codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)

HEAVY WORDS OR HEAVY ACTIONS
By Frida Berrigan

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, posted in its entirety at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0207israelbomb.html .)

The Bush administration has sharply criticized Israel's latest attack on a densely populated neighborhood in the Gaza Strip, calling it a "heavy handed action that will not contribute to the peace."

In a mission termed by one Israeli general as a "precision attack," an Israeli F-16 fighter plane dropped a 1,000-lb bomb in an attempt to assassinate a single man, Hamas leader Sheik Salah Shehadeh, who was responsible for a series of suicide attacks in Israel. The Israeli attack, initially hailed as "one of our major successes" by President Ariel Sharon, killed the Hamas leader. But fourteen other people, including nine children, the youngest of whom, Dina Mattar, was two months old, were also killed. Shifa Hospital in Gaza reported that 140 people were injured, 7 seriously. The bomb destroyed five buildings, reducing an area the size of half a city block to rubble.

It is time to cut off the flow of weapons to Israel, which is the top recipient of U.S. military aid at $3 billion a year. According to a November 2001 Congressional Research Service report, "Israel: U.S. Foreign Assistance," American aid to Israel in the past half century has totaled a whopping $81.3 billion. The F-16 fighter plane used in the attack was manufactured in the United States by Lockheed Martin and is one of more than 200 F-16s in the Israeli arsenal.

The U.S. Arms Export Control Act prohibits U.S. weapons from being used for non-defensive purposes. And there is nothing defensive about dropping a 1,000-lb bomb on a densely populated neighborhood in order to kill one man.

Given Israel's violation of U.S. law and the subsequent killing of innocent civilians, it is time for President Bush to take some "heavy handed action" of his own, action that will "contribute to the peace," in the administration's words. For 2003, the Bush administration is proposing that Israel receive $2.76 billion in foreign aid, mostly in the form of military hardware. An additional $28 million will go to Israel for the purchase U.S.-manufactured counter-terrorism equipment. In the past decade alone, the United States has sold Israel $7.2 billion in weaponry and military equipment--everything from fighter planes and attack helicopters to machine guns and grenade launchers.

Freezing this military aid would send a strong message to the Israeli government that bombing heavily populated neighborhoods and killing civilians is as unacceptable from one of its closest allies as it is from Palestinian suicide bombers. This might not stop the killing between Israelis and Palestinians tomorrow, but at the very least the United States will no longer be complicit in the death of innocent children.

(Frida Berrigan is a Senior Research Associate with the Arms Trade Resource Center, a project of the World Policy Institute, and a military analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org). She can be reached at <berrigaf@newschool.edu>.)

U.S.-RUSSIAN LESSONS FOR SOUTH ASIA
By Zia Mian, R. Rajaraman, and Frank von Hippel

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Global Affairs Commentary, posted in its entirety at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0208nukelessons.html .)

The current South Asian crisis seems to have ebbed, but the underlying dynamic remains. The next crisis will be even more dangerous if South Asia's nuclear confrontation develops in the same direction as the U.S.-Russian standoff, with nuclear missiles on alert, aimed at each other and ready to launch on warning. As Lee Butler, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, has said, the U.S. and Soviet Union survived their crises, "no thanks to deterrence, but only by the grace of God." Will South Asia be so fortunate?

India and Pakistan are using the U.S. and Russian postures as blueprints. India's Draft Nuclear Doctrine calls for everything that the superpowers have--although at a more modest scale, including a "triad" of bombers and land- and sea-based missiles. It also envisages an "assured capability to shift from peacetime deployment to fully employable forces in the shortest possible time." Finally, it calls for "space based and other assets.... to provide early warning." Pakistan has from the beginning been determined to obtain matching nuclear capabilities.

Early warning systems don't have much point unless retaliatory launch can be ordered in the time before the attacking weapons arrive. Pakistan's Shaheen missiles and the latest version of India's Agni missile use solid fuel. The U.S. used solid fuel in its Minuteman intercontinental missile so that, as its name suggests, it could be kept launch-ready at all times.

A launch-on-warning posture would be far more dangerous in South Asia than for the U.S. and Russia. The time it takes for a missile to travel from the U.S. to Russia or vice versa is a frighteningly short 30 minutes--but it still allows a little time to figure out whether the warning of incoming missiles is real or a human or hardware problem. Available decision time is vanishingly small in South Asia, where the total missile flight time between India and Pakistan is only about 10 minutes.

If we are to help prevent launch-ready weapons from becoming a dangerous reality in South Asia, the nuclear superpowers will have to become more responsible role models. The U.S. and Russia could, for example, now take off alert the nuclear weapons that are to be downloaded over a decade under the Bush-Putin agreement. They could also open talks on options for de-alerting the rest in a mutually transparent manner that would not make their nuclear forces vulnerable to surprise attack. The U.S. could, for example, keep its ballistic missile submarines out of range of Russia instead of sending them forward in a threatening manner--as it does today.

These steps would clear the way to take up India's suggestion for an international conference to identify ways of eliminating nuclear dangers. It would be hard for India and Pakistan to say no. India has proposed this each year since 1998 in a UN resolution on "Reducing Nuclear Danger." The goal should be a global zero alert for nuclear forces.

As the nuclear superpowers unwind their cold war hair-trigger postures, they should do nothing to encourage or assist India and Pakistan to move toward nuclear deployment. Political leaders and military planners in South Asia have sought U.S. command and control technology, citing concerns about nuclear weapons safety. Such technology also could provide them the confidence to deploy the weapons, and in a crisis adopt more threatening and dangerous postures. Down that path lies disaster.

(Zia Mian <zia@princeton.edu> is a Pakistani physicist on the research staff of Princeton University; R. Rajaraman is a professor of physics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. Frank von Hippel is a professor of public and international affairs at Princeton. A version of this FPIF commentary also appeared in The Washington Post.)

II Outside the U.S.

(Editor's Note: FPIF's "Outside the U.S." component 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. If you're interested in submitting commentaries for our use, please send your solicitation to John Gershman at <john@irc-online.org>.)

AUSTRALIA GROVELS TO ALLY
By James Dunn

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Outside the U.S. commentary, posted at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0208friends.html .)

During his recent trip to the United States Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in only the latest example of his blind loyalty to the United States, moved hastily to endorse the first strike (or "pre-emptive attack") doctrine proposed by President Bush. This doctrine could be used to justify a preemptive nuclear strike by the United States.

Although American concern with defending itself against further terrorist attacks is understandable, Washington still needs not only to abide by international rules, as set out in the UN Charter, but also to show the rest of the world the example of a responsible global citizen. In today's world there is a strong emphasis on collective security, which, implicitly, means that no government, however powerful, should assume the right to use nuclear or biological weapons against another state or terrorist group, at least, in an emergency, without the endorsement of the Security Council. Personally I believe that the long-running principle of no first strike should still be observed. It helped keep nuclear weapons under control in the cold war, and should still apply today. But that limitation is not what Mr. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld have in mind. It is yet another example of the Bush policy of placing the United States outside the United Nations and its laws.

To go all the way with the U.S.A. would not even be justifiable if we had full confidence in Washington's judgement, but we surely cannot at this time have such confidence. The past record offers a strong warning of the risk of unilateralism when it comes to the world's most powerful state. Post World War history offers several worrying cases. U.S. intervention in Vietnam did nothing to contain the spread of Asian communism. The U.S. assault on the tiny Caribbean state of Grenada was a heavy-handed military action against a regime whose politics might not have been to Washington's taste, but which did not really threaten U.S. interests. U.S. support for right-wing regimes in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Chile helped dictatorships, not the cause of democracy. Past U.S. military support for Iraq in its war against Iran, and for the Taliban in their struggle against the Soviet Union are cases of Washington's strategic misjudgement. Unfortunately, in all these cases we acted supinely, giving the U.S. diplomatic support when we should have been calling for moderation.

The central problem is the nature of the Bush administration. It is arguably the most right wing and aggressive administration in recent American history, and does not deserve the kind of trust that President Bush is calling for--or virtually demanding--in his war against terrorists. His clear preference is for military solutions, with Secretary of State Colin Powell being shunted aside, and the much more important diplomatic and peace negotiation processes being given a lower priority.

The decision by the U.S. to withdraw support for the International Criminal Court is a disturbing aspect of this problem. The excuse that U.S. servicemen could be caught up in the process is quite unacceptable. Our Prime Minister, whom the Americans have briefed on the subject, should reject these arguments, and Australia should support this important initiative. What are we afraid of? From my observations in East Timor, Australian troops are so well disciplined that they have absolutely nothing to fear. But even in the unlikely event that Australian troops were to commit a serious crime, why should they not appear before the International Criminal Court? If our citizens commit crimes overseas they have to face the courts of the country concerned.

(James Dunn <jasdunn@bigpond.com>, an Australian, is a former diplomat and specialist on international human rights who served as a UN Expert on Crimes Against Humanity in East Timor. He is author of Timor: A People Betrayed and a contributing author to Genocide in the 20th Century. He is completing another book on East Timor.)

III. Letters and Comments

LET ISRAEL FIGHT ITS OWN WAR ON TERROR

Re: Heavy Words or Heavy Actions

If the United States stopped selling weapons to Israel there would be no democratic nation in the Middle East because there would be no Israel. We cannot and should not hold Israel to a higher standard than we hold ourselves to. Have we not killed thousands of innocent civilians in the name of protecting our own people? Should we not sell weapons to ourselves for killing thousands of innocent Japanese in WWII? How many innocent civilians have we killed in our war against terror? Every war in the history of the world has had civilian casualties. Would the writer of this article be so angry about collateral damage if the house that blew up killed Osama bin Laden? The man they killed was their version of Osama bin Laden. Good for them. Was it perfectly done? No. It's easy for us to sit back and say how do kill a terrorist when we don't have any military intelligence about the situation. We should let Israel fight its war on terror just as hard as we fight ours.

- John Pulliam <jpulliam21@msn.com>

(Editor's Note: FPIF has received a flurry of letters in response to a Global Affairs Commentary by Arun Swamy, a contributor to FPIF. His response to the letters below and others will appear in the next issue of the Progressive Response.)

SWAMY IS HALLUCINATING

Re: Is India Going the Way of 1930s Germany?

The article by Mr. Swamy borders on the surreal. Even a cursory look at the Germany of the 1930s and India of the 1990s will show that Swamy is hallucinating.

Fascists, whose variant Nazis were, are always hungry for power with extreme contempt for democracy. Once they have power, they don't let go of it and they start physically eliminating all the opposition groups. In contrast, the present "Hindu nationalist" party has power on and off for the last 5 years. The first time, the "Hindu nationalist" government resigned, yes resigned, due to the perceived shortfall of one vote, yes one vote, in the Indian Parliament. Can you conceive of any Nazi or fascist worth his salt to resign from power due to the expected shortfall of one vote?

Th Nazi government, as soon as it came to power, passed a raft of laws to curtail ordinary liberties of Germans and proceeded to build a totalitarian state. In contrast, under the "Hindu nationalist" dispensation not a single basic right of Indians has been taken away.

Opposition parties are thriving, free press is thriving. Can Arun Swamy deny it? Within 2 years of Hitler's seizure of power, Germany had become a totalitarian state. But the "Hindu nationalists" have been in the central government for the past 5 years, but the Democratic Constitution of India and Parliamentary system has not been tampered with at all and they are nowhere near to doing so. Can Arun Swamy deny it?

As soon as Nazis came to power in Germany, Jews were systematically and by law expelled from the civil and national life. Can you imagine a Jew becoming the German Chancellor under the Nazis? Yet precisely that is what has happened in India. Dr. Abdul Kalam, a Muslim, has become the President of India, supported by the "Hindu nationalists." Under the Nazis, Jews were thrown out of all positions like journalism, academia, opera, political parties, and so on. All this happened within a year of Hitler coming to power. But not a single Muslim has been thrown out of any position of influence under the Hindu nationalists.

Arun Swamy brings up the Gujarat violence. Yes, it is regrettable and shows a bad administration, but does not show fascism as he would like us believe. Moreover, the Gujarat violence has to be seen in its context. For some reason, the Hindu-Muslim violence has been going on in Gujarat for the past 4 decades.

This e-magazine being "Foreign Policy in Focus," one would have thought Arun Swamy castigates the "Hindu nationalists" for being militaristic and aggressive in their foreign policy. But he has missed this aspect completely. India has been at the receiving end of Jihadi terrorism for the past 2 decades and thousands of people have died in Jihadi terror. Not only that, Indian parliament, Kashmiri parliament, and scores of public buildings have been attacked by Jihadi terrorists, supported by Pakistan. September 11th type incidents have taken place in India dozens of times. In spite of that India has not dropped one bomb on another country, unlike the USA which has waged a war in Afghanistan to fight terrorists. So where is the comparison between Nazi Germany and India? Can Arun Swamy deny that?

- V.C. Vijayaraghavan <vij@blueyonder.co.uk>

GUJARAT RIOTS NO RELATION TO NAZI GERMANY

Re: Is India Going the Way of 1930s Germany?

Arun R Swamy's article contains many factual errors.

1. The train that was fire bombed was not going to Ayodhya, but it was returning from Ayodhya. Mention of a train carrying activists which is going to a religious site implies that the activists were about to do something bad, and also implies that there was a provocation for a preemptive strike by a mob on the activists. But the fact is, the activists were actually "returning" from the religious site, and no unfortunate events happened at the religious site. So an attack is not justified. In any case, attack is never justified.

2. The 58 people died on board the train were not all activists. About 44 of them were women and children. Only 14 might be activists. This unpardonable misrepresentation happened in several leading international newspapers, and the same is repeated by Arun Swamy without a second thought or independent inquiry.

3. For Hindus, destruction of their temple at Ayodhya in the 16th century by a Moslem invader is similar to what the destruction of WTC was to Americans. To add insult to injury, the 16th century invader built a mosque at Ayodhya, whereas no such mosque was yet built at WTC site. Remember, destruction of the temple was also associated with systematic looting and plundering of the jewelry and properties of the temple and the whole town itself, not to mention the genocide of millions of Hindus carried out by the invaders! How can the new structure (mosque) be a national symbol? Would U.S. allow a mosque be built at the WTC dedicated to Osama bin Laden? Even if some Moslem enthusiast constructs a holy place at WTC, will the structure be allowed to continue to exist?

4. If it is argued that the Moslem invader was a winner of war, and has a right to erect any monument he chooses, then what about the war crimes committed? Where are the reparations? If the British empire is being asked to pay for the apartheid and slavery in the erstwhile empire, why not go back another couple of centuries to the Islamic rule in India? This question is pertinent today, because some believers of Islam do pay allegiance to Babar, otherwise what was the reason for not releasing the land at Ayhodhya to Hindus?

5. The Gujarat riots were no relation to Nazi Germany. Nazis unilaterally killed unarmed Jews in millions. In Gujarat two equally armed communities fought with acid bottles and other crude weapons, not just in March 2002 but on many occasions before. In fact the Gujarat riots were a closer parallel to Chicago race riots of 1919 and 1960s wherein the white police did nothing to arrest the criminals who burned black homes and killed blacks. Gujarat police likewise were poorly equipped to contain the riots.

6. Swamy's repeating of words like fascism doesn't click. He should present good logic.

- Bhadraiah Mallampalli <vaidix@hotmail.com>

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