The Progressive Response
Volume 6, Number 26
August 29, 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
FRONTIER JUSTICE: No. 5 - EARTHLY SUMMITRY
By John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
WASHINGTON GOES TO WAR
By Jim Lobe
CONTAGION EFFECT IN LATIN AMERICA
By David Felix
II. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-takes
FRONTIER JUSTICE: No. 5 - EARTHLY SUMMITRY
By John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
(Editor's Note: Frontier Justice is a weekly column written alternately by Tom Barry and John Gershman, foreign policy analysts at the Interhemispheric Resource Center, that chronicles instance of U.S. unilateralism and assault on the multilateralism framework for managing global affairs. It is part of the new Project Against the Present Danger. These columns are now indexed on the www.presentdanger.org site at: http://www.presentdanger.org/frontier/2002/index.html .)
A decade after his father attended the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, President George W. Bush has declined to attend the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa, largely because of all the heat he would take as an opponent of the Kyoto Protocol and other efforts to address climate change. The Summit began on August 26th and runs through September 4th. The summit will adopt (if all goes according to plan) two major documents. First, a political declaration that is being pulled together largely by the South Africans. It is likely to be long on rhetoric and short on specifics. Second, an implementation plan, of which 70% or so was agreed to at the summit's final preparation meeting (prepcom) at Bali in the middle of this year.
The U.S. delegation has led a rather inept press effort at the summit, which one suspects is a sound indicator of how seriously the administration is approaching the whole exercise (a story detailed with tragi-comic humor is available at the British Council's www.dailysummit.net).
The media campaign foreshadows a broader story as to how the Summit has highlighted the Bush administration approach to multilateralism. First, the administration has actively worked to undermine almost any statement of commitments, targets, or timetables, arguing that such efforts lead to meaningless rhetoric. This is correct as far as it goes, as anyone looking at the achievements--or lack thereof--following the promulgation of Agenda 21 a decade ago at Rio would agree. But timetables and commitments offer the possibility for "accountability" politics--of holding states accountable to their commitments--and it is here that the Bush administration is actually revealing its spots. Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky claims that "The United States is the world's leader in sustainable development. No other nation has made a greater and more concrete commitment." Yet, on several issues at the summit, particularly water and sanitation, the United States has opposed statements of binding commitments, prompting widespread criticism from the Europeans, among others. Japan, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia (combined known as the JUSCANZ group) have also come under attack for sharing the Bush administration's positions.
The only areas where the administration seeks concrete commitments are in the areas of trade and investment liberalization and commitments to strengthening the private sector's role in defining and advancing sustainable development through "partnerships." In these partnerships governments, corporations, and civil society organizations are supposed to collaborate on addressing a range of sustainable development issues from malaria control to clean water. Commitments from the Bush administration include up to $970 million over the next three years for water, which the U.S. expects will mobilize more than $1.6 billion through partnerships; $43 million in 2003 for clean energy that will lead to an additional $400 million in other resources through partnerships; and $90 million in 2003 to help farmers, particularly in Africa. The total U.S. investment in the partnerships could run as high as $3.64 billion over the next four years, according to Undersecretary Dobriansky. However, the U.S. delegation has provided few details about how much of the money is new aid or redirects previously committed funding. Nor can U.S. officials immediately explain who, besides the recipient countries, would join the partnerships or how they would work.
The focus on partnerships has raised many concerns among environmental and human rights groups, who worry that these partnerships are likely to become avenues for corporate greenwashing in the absence of accountability mechanisms for corporate behavior. Ever since the Reagan and Bush père administrations oversaw the decimation of the UN Center on Transnational Corporations in 1992-93, global justice activists have been looking to find ways to bring a strong corporate accountability agenda into the UN system. A number of groups, including Friends of the Earth and Corporate Watch, have been campaigning for more substantive efforts on the corporate accountability front.
While the administration's opposition to the Kyoto Protocol is well-known, it is also a laggard on other key environmental conventions, including one due to come before the Senate before the mid-term elections in November. This includes the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) that will ban or severely reduce the use of 12 (initially) toxic chemicals. Although the administration has come out in support of the convention, it has yet to introduce it into the Senate and its legislative proposals for implementing the convention will not provide an adequate and comprehensive framework for regulating the use of POPs.
The U.S. has also failed to sign or ratify the Aarhus Convention--also known by its more complete and mellifluous name as the 1998 UN/ECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. This convention offers a rigorous set of criteria for respect for basic rights regarding freedom of information, transparency, and public participation in shaping environmental policy.
The war on terrorism, however, has rolled back respect for right-to-know and participation principles in America. Public information about environmental, industrial, and public health hazards on numerous public web sites has been blocked. On October 12, 2001 Attorney General John Ashcroft reversed administration policy on interpreting the Freedom of Information Act. The heads of all federal departments and agencies are now discouraged from disclosing information unless refusing it would be illegal--a significant departure from previous policy. Industry groups and municipal water suppliers are actively lobbying to amend FOIA and other laws to exempt energy, chemical, and water facilities from public disclosure. At the WSSD, the administration is blocking human, environmental, and freedom of information rights from being enshrined in the plan of action in order to protect multinational companies from litigation and protests by the poor. (These efforts are being supported by some developing countries such as India and China). These trends highlight how the Bush administration's rejection of international law abroad mirrors a growing assault on democracy at home.
(John Gershman <john@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (online at www.irc-online.org).)
For More Information:
FPIF Policy Brief: Ratifying Global Toxics Treaties: The U.S. Must Provide Leadership
By Kristin S. Schafer
Bulletin from Bali: What Are We Going to Do About the United States?
by Eric Mann
Slouching Toward Johannesburg: U.S. is a Long Way from Sustainability
by John C. Dernbach
After Marrakesh
By Paul Baer and Tom Athanasiou
Friends of the Earth position paper on corporate accountability
http://www.foe.org/earthsummit/positionpaper.html
WASHINGTON GOES TO WAR
By Jim Lobe
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a commentary in our series on Defining the Present Danger, available in its entirety at: http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2002/0208war.html .)
War has been declared in Washington, although it's not against any foreign country. At least for the moment, it's an inside the Beltway war, but its outcome will have global repercussions.
The war, which should get into high gear when Congress returns from its August recess early next month, is for the heart and mind of President George W. Bush, who will come under excruciating pressure by October or November to decide whether or not the United States will go to war against Iraq some time during the first half of next year.
This war is strictly among Republicans--between the conservative realists who dominated the administration of former President George H.W. Bush and the predominantly neoconservative coalition of hawks clustered in the civilian leadership of the Pentagon and in Vice President Dick Cheney's office.
A series of leaks this month from senior military brass who have grown increasingly distrustful of the adventurism of their civilian bosses marked the preliminary skirmishes in the conflict. Recently, the war burst into the open when the elder Bush's national security adviser, ret. Gen. Brent Scowcroft, issued a broadside against the idea of going to war with Iraq in the editorial pages of the staunchly hawkish Wall Street Journal.
Arguing that war against Baghdad would likely destroy international cooperation in the war against terrorism, Scowcroft also warned that it "could well destabilize Arab regimes in the region, ironically facilitating one of Saddam's strategic objectives."
The response was not long in coming. On Monday morning, readers awakened to a double blast aimed at both the Times and Scowcroft by two leading neoconservative organs--the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard, which often speak for the Pentagon and Cheney hawks in the administration.
The Standard weighed in Monday morning with its own attack on Scowcroft and the Times in an article entitled "The Axis of Appeasement" by the publication's chief editor, William Kristol, who doubles as cofounder of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a five-year-old front group that consists of close associates of the Pentagon-Cheney forces. (Both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Cheney signed PNAC's first declarations.) It accused the Times of "shamelessly" mischaracterizing Kissinger's position, noting that "the establishment fights most bitterly and honestly when it feels cornered and thinks it's about to lose."
"Reading the Scowcoft/New York Times 'arguments' against the war, one is struck by how laughably weak they are," wrote Kristol, adding "European international-law wishfulness and full-blown Pat Buchanan isolationism are the two intellectually honest alternatives to the Bush Doctrine. Scowcroft and the Times wish to embrace neither, so they pretend instead to be terribly 'concerned' with the administration's alleged failure to 'make the case' (for going to war)."
But the central target of Kristol's attack was Powell, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Bush I and has long been a target of neoconservative wrath. After citing defenses of Bush policy by Rumsfeld, Cheney and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (a Scowcroft protégée), Kristol asked, "Where is Colin Powell?"
According to Kristol, "This secretary of state, because of his popularity at home and his stature abroad, could be particularly helpful if he were to join the president, the vice president, the national security adviser, and the defense secretary in making the case for the Bush Doctrine with respect to Iraq. Instead, he allows his top aides to tell the New York Times on background that he disagrees with the president and is desperately trying to restrain him." "Colin Powell," the piece went on, "is an impressive man. He is loyally assisted by the able (Deputy Secretary of State) Richard Armitage. They are entitled to their foreign policy views. But they will soon have to decide whom they wish to serve--the president, or his opponents."
(The Journal's website this weekend featured an article by PNAC associate and military strategist Eliot Cohen warning that "military leaders must defer to their civilian bosses.") How the Democrats weigh in--and they, too, face strong divisions on the issue of war on Iraq--remains to be seen.
(Jim Lobe <jlobe@starpower.net> is a regular contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and to Inter Press Service.)
For more information on The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) see:
U.S. Foreign Policy--Attention, Right Face, Forward March
By Tom Barry and Jim Lobe
The Project for the New American Century
http://www.newamericancentury.org/
FPIF's Focus on the Right
http://www.fpif.org/right/index.html
CONTAGION EFFECT IN LATIN AMERICA
By David Felix
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Global Affairs Commentary, available in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2002/0208contagion.html .)
Washington and the IMF badly underestimated the regional contagion from the Argentine disaster. It is now spreading along both financial and political channels, threatening more defaults and challenges to U.S. regional hegemony. Financial markets view Uruguay and Brazil as headed for default. Uruguay's foreign reserves have fallen this year by more than half.
Despite a hurried $3 billion IMF loan in June, risk premium on Uruguayan government bonds still hovered around 13%, with Moody downgrading the sovereign bonds and the foreign currency liabilities of the country's banks to near junk levels. After Brazil in June drew $10 billion of its $15 billion IMF standby to stanch capital flight, accompanied by messages of full confidence from IMF Executive Director Horst Koehler and U.S. Treasury Secretary O'Neill, Brazilian dollar bonds still carried a 15% risk premium and a Standard & Poor B+ rating--on a par with Senegal and Jamaica.
Brazil is of course South America's largest economy, more than twice the size of the Argentine economy before its collapse. But its government debt, about half of it in dollar liabilities, has risen to ratio to GDP that's nearly 20% higher than Argentina's on the eve of its default. The Brazilian government has been relying on IMF-approved medicine--raising interest rates and cutting primary spending--but has nevertheless fallen into a debt trap dynamic comparable to Argentina's.
Exchange rate depreciation and rising risk premiums keep increasing both the government's and the corporate sector's dollar-denominated debt loads, while higher interest rates for real-denominated bonds add to their domestic currency payment burdens. High interest rates and a credit crunch are depressing industrial output and real wages, with unemployment approaching double digits. The political fallout in Brazil includes a strong likelihood that the runoff in the fall 2002 presidential election will be between two left-wing candidates, each pledged to renegotiate the foreign debt. Analysts disagree on whether even an unexpected victory for the centrist candidate will suffice to avert default.
The political fallout extends to Bolivia and Peru, where left-nationalistic populism is on the rise and neoliberalism has become a political kiss of death. But populism can also evoke responses reminiscent of the "national security state" era. Currently, the affluent Venezuelan classes, furious at the redistributive reforms of the Chávez government, are foregoing the electoral process and openly urging the military to drive out that democratically elected government.
Latin American governments are also retreating from broad trade liberalization to bilateral and sub-regional trade compacts, and are trying to lessen their dependence on the U.S. by strengthening trade ties with the European Union. Here the main motive is resentment and distrust of the Bush administration for its protectionist moves in steel and agriculture, and its retreat from the Clintonian financial bailout stance, as illustrated by the harsh treatment of Argentina. Even Mexico, upset at the Bush administration, is negotiating bilateral trade agreements with Brazil and MERCOSUR.
All this now has the Bush administration and the IMF rushing to shore up defenses against new defaults with an abrupt return to the despised Clinton bailout strategy. On August 4, the U.S. Treasury gave Uruguay a $1.5 billion bridge loan, pending the award of additional IMF credits, which was announced 3 days later. On August 7 the IMF also announced agreement with Brazilian negotiators on a $30 billion standby arrangement of 15 months duration, to begin in September.
At the same time, Argentina has not yet benefited from the Bush administration's reprise of the Clintonian bailout strategy. Having already defaulted, Argentina is still left swinging in the wind without IMF financial support.
(David Felix <felix@wueconc.wustl.edu> is professor emeritus at Washington University in St. Louis. Felix is the author of "After the Fall: The Argentine Crisis and Repercussions" an FPIF policy report available online at http://www.fpif.org/papers/argentina2.html .)
II. Letters and Comments
Re: Seven Reasons to Oppose a U.S. Invasion of Iraq
You are absolutely wrong. First, we have over 3,000 reasons incinerated in New York and Washington. Second, this madman is one of the most sadistic dictators on the planet. Third, he actively tried to assassinate one of our presidents. Fourth, he has murdered and tortured his own people. Finally, and here's where you are so incredibly foolish, we're mad. We've been getting attacked by the fanatics for years and we've had enough of it. Ask the Japanese and the Germans if we were serious in 1941. We're going to kick this guy out of Iraq and then we're going to get Syria, Iran, and probably Libya also. Think we're kidding? Think again.
- Doug Carlisle <dougcarlisle@hotmail.com>
Re: Seven Reasons to Oppose a U.S. Invasion of Iraq
The article is well written as far as it goes. However, I would submit that the motivation for the saber-rattling is not only to finish what the father left unfinished, but to support multinational corporate interests and religious zealots who believe they are helping to fulfill biblical prophesy. The anti-Saudi voices are suggesting seizure of Middle East oil. War and subsequent nationbuilding will freeze wages, further bankrupt the American economy, insure no prescription drug or health programs for the growing senior population, and siphon badly needed income to shore up corporate bottom lines after the Enron-World Com method of accounting. Muslims now hold the Temple Mount. A new temple can be built, and the next coming will be just around the corner. When business, the media, religion, and government team up, law, truth, and the future of millions of innocent people will be the first victims. Websites such as FPIF may become grounds for secret arrest and incarceration.
- Robert A. McWhorter <Goldenram2@juno.com>
John Pulliam's attempt [See letter to Progressive Response: http://www.fpif.org/progresp/volume6/v6n24.html ] to analogize Israel's killing of innocent Palestinians to the U.S.'s killing of innocent Japanese in WWII, or the U.S.'s killing of innocents in our war on terror amounts to comparing apples to oranges. Let us not forget that Japan and Osama Bin Laden attacked the U.S. first and we simply responded to the attacks. With regard to the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, the Palestinians did not attack Israel first. In fact in 1967 Israel initiated the war and attacked Syria, Egypt, and Jordan. For the past 30 plus years, Israel has been trying to keep possession of those lands it conquered in the war it initiated, in violation of the Geneva Convention. Furthermore, Israel has repeatedly attempted to have its cake and eat it too, by retaining possession of conquered land, but refusing to grant citizenship to the inhabitants of the conquered land. If Israel returns the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, and the Palestinians continue with their attacks against Israelis within Israel's recognized international boundaries, then I could find some basis for John Pulliam's comments.
- David Walter <davemw@earthlink.net>
I live in Zimbabwe and I am not referring to any specific article. Thank you Mr. Walter Kansteiner [U.S. Asst. Secretary of State for Africa] for trying to make sense prevail on the Zimbabwean situation. It is clear to us here that the African continent is being slowly, but very surely, taken over by Islamic nations. Gaddafi has literally taken over huge areas of our land, has controlling shares in some of our banks, owns hotels, and is making demands for much, much more to pay off the immense debts owed by Mugabe for oil from Libya. It occurred to me how easy it would be for the Arabic world (or Islamic world) to take over the entire African continent without having to cause so much as a ripple. The immense wealth of the oil rich countries, combined with the mineral and agricultural wealth of Southern Africa, with all the ports accessing every part of the world, would make the African continent the wealthiest and the most powerful in the world, and that includes America, which is skating on very thin ice over an abyss of economic depths brought about by corrupt corporate CEOs.
Please look to Africa to find the source of your main concerns--and to define clearly the meaning of international terrorism. We live with it by the day and we are helpless to stop the Libyans moving into our country by the tens of thousands, acquiring instant citizenship, passports, jobs, and farms--as well as the right to vote! If that isn't Arab invasion, then I do not know what is. It wouldn't surprise us either, if bin Laden isn't here. We have some other uglies hiding out in Zimbabwe. It has everything he needs to keep his private wars rolling. Please America: stop being blinkered by focusing on Iraq alone.
- Susan Colquhoun <suecol@zol.co.zw>
Please consider supporting Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF). FPIF is a new kind of think tank—one serving citizen movements and advancing a fresh, internationalist understanding of global affairs. Although we make our FPIF products freely available on the Internet, we need financial support to cover our staff time and expenses. Increasingly, FPIF depends on you and other individual donors to sustain our bare-bones budget. Click on https://secure.iexposure.com/fpif.org/donate.cfm to support FPIF online, or for information about making contributions over the phone or through the mail.
We Count on Your Support. Thank you.
Subscribe to The Progressive Response!
To subscribe to The Progressive Response, send a blank email to:
To unsubscribe from The Progressive Response, send a blank email to:
lists-unsubscribe@irc-online.orgSimply click the appropriate hyperlink above, or send a blank email to the appropriate email address above.
The Progressive Response aims to provide timely analysis and opinion about U.S. foreign policy issues. The content does not necessarily reflect the institutional positions of either the Interhemispheric Resource Center or the Institute for Policy Studies.
We're working to make the Progressive Response informative and useful, so let us know how we're doing, via email to irc@irc-online.org. Please put "Progressive Response" in the subject line. Please feel free to cross-post the Progressive Response elsewhere. We apologize for any duplicate copies you may receive.
IRC
Tom Barry
Editor, Progressive Response
Codirector, Foreign Policy In Focus
Email: tom@irc-online.org
IPS
Martha Honey
Codirector, Foreign Policy In Focus
Email: ipsps@igc.org
This page
was last modified on
Thursday, August 29, 2002 5:31 PM
Contact the IRC's webmaster with inquiries regarding the functionality of this website.
Copyright © 2001
IRC and IPS. All rights reserved.