The Progressive Response
Volume 6, Number 29
September 26, 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. 8 | Hegemony to Imperium
By Tom Barry
A NEW MULTILATERAL SPIRIT IN WASHINGTON
By Ian Williams
POST-9/11 ECONOMIC WINDFALLS FOR ARMS MANUFACTURERS
By Michelle Ciarrocca, Arms Trade Resource Center
II. Outside the U.S.
NO THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT
By Lev Grinberg
III. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-takes
FRONTIER JUSTICE NO. 8 | Hegemony to Imperium
By Tom Barry
(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, chronicling instances of U.S. unilateralism and its assault on the multilateral framework for managing global affairs. It is part of the new Project Against the Present Danger. These columns are now indexed on the Project Against the Present Danger website (www.presentdanger.org) at: http://www.presentdanger.org/frontier/2002/index.html .)
We are living in a "unipolar moment" declared neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer in a 1991 Foreign Affairs essay. During the Bush I and Clinton years, the neoconservatives and national security militarists complained that the U.S. government was failing to seize the moment of its supremacy. Instead of talking about "new world orders" or focusing on finessing globalization, the U.S. government should have a clear view of U.S. national interests--which in this unipolar moment meant adopting strategies to ensure that the moment was not a fading one. Today, that's the dominant agenda in Washington--and in practice it means that the U.S. no longer considers international rules and norms a helpful framework for managing global relations. To the contrary, they are regarded as fetters on its hyperpower status. Instead, it prefers a world where its unchallenged military power can be used at will to guarantee its supremacy.
What's at risk, aside from a complete breakdown in multilateralism and attendant global havoc, is that the U.S. will no longer be regarded as a benign global leader or hegemon. Instead it will be considered an empire in which only the narrowly defined interests of the U.S. dictate foreign and military policy.
Since the 1880s, America has had hegemonic ambitions to shape the development of the international political and economic systems--first as a junior partner to Great Britain and then in its own right as the world's military and technological power with the leadership that proved key to defeating the Axis powers and setting forth the ideological vision of a postwar framework of capitalist international relations managed by a system of multilateralism under U.S. management.
The industrialized capitalist nations commonly regarded the U.S. as a benign hegemon--one that managed an economic system in which all major players benefited, including former Axis nations, and provided a military umbrella that offered security without financial burden. But the ideological and military rivalry of the cold war checked the geographical reach of U.S. hegemony. The lofty visions of multilateralism, international cooperation, and international rule set forth by the architects of the UN system of global governance still largely framed the official discourse of global affairs, although the chessboard politics of the superpower rivalry defined the era. The Whites under U.S. hegemonic leadership and the Reds under the imperial sway of the Soviet Union kept global affairs firmly rooted in balance-of-power politics.
The bipolar power balance kept the U.S. in check--constraining its unilateral, interventionist impulses while obliging it to rely on the "soft power" of aid and diplomacy to maintain allegiances. By the 1980s the realipolitik constraints on U.S. power began to loosen, as the U.S. sensed the deepening deterioration of Soviet power and of the credibility of the socialist alternative. At the same time, the Reagan administration--benefiting from a new fusionist trend in rightwing thinking uniting anti-socialists, national security militarists, social conservatives, free market ideologues, and neoconservatives--mounted a military and ideological offensive. Its confident assertion that there is no alternative to "free-market democracies," its move from "containment" to "roll-back" strategies, and its new military build-up foreshadowed and laid the foundation for the global power trip of the George W. Bush administration. Although the militarism of the Reagan administration did re-ignite the type of transnational opposition to U.S. global leadership that arose during the Vietnam War (reviving talk of U.S. imperialism), the upsurge in backing for U.S.-style economic and political liberalism actually strengthened U.S. hegemomic influence.
The end of the cold war left U.S. foreign policy without a defining legacy. In the absence of the anticommunist core of foreign policy, no political sector--left, liberal, centrist, conservative, right--could persuasively articulate a new vision for U.S. global engagement. The "New World Order" of the Bush Sr. administration was met with derision from the right, as were the "assertive multilateralism," "strategic partner," and revived liberal internationalism policies of the Clinton administrations. The left focused almost exclusively on backlash politics opposing the new liberal-conservative consensus on free trade, while alternately supporting and critiquing the liberal-centrist consensus around humanitarian interventionism. Also focused largely on backlash politics against the perceived liberalism of the Clinton presidency and largely bereft of their core anticommunism, the right initially reacted rather than proposed a new vision of U.S. foreign and military policy.
In the mid-1990s, however, a newly coherent vision of U.S. foreign and military policy started taking shape--one that brought together the traditionalist concerns of the social conservatives (culture wars, dominionism of Christian Right), military/industrial complex advocates, and neoconservative ambition to reassume control of foreign policy apparatus. Dismissive of arguments about new transnational threats to global stability (climate change, resource scarcity conflicts, infectious disease), the new vision was at once simple and grandiose. Simple in that U.S. foreign and military policy should not get bogged down in conflicts and humanitarian crises that had no direct bearing on U.S. national interests and U.S. national security. Grandiose in that U.S. foreign and military policy should embrace U.S. global dominance and do whatever is necessary to maintain U.S. supremacy. The radical agenda, clearly articulated and promoted by administration hardliners from the start of the Bush presidency, quickly advanced after the September 11th terrorism.
But what's really new about U.S. foreign and military policy? After all, the U.S. has a long history of throwing its weight around, intervening militarily, sidelining the United Nations, allying itself with dictators and human rights abusers, and asserting for itself the high ground of morality and the blessing of the almighty. It has even dropped the big one--twice--to demonstrate its overwhelming power.
The new U.S. grand strategy incorporates many of the operative features of past stategies, such as unilateralism, exceptionalism, isolationism, and interventionism. But it has largely dropped the notion that U.S. leadership should operate within a framework of rules, norms, and institutions designed to benefit all nations. As a result, its leadership is increasingly seen as less benign. It is not only this absence of the liberal internationalist foundations that distinguishes the new grand strategy for foreign and military policy. Under the Bush presidency, the salient features of U.S. global engagement are its aggressive anti-multilateralism, new militarism (and accompanying disdain for diplomacy), and moral absolutism. Underlying and fortifying all three currents is the language of antiterrorism, which has replaced anticommunism as the core organizing and unifying principle.
(Tom Barry <tom@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org).)
A NEW MULTILATERAL SPIRIT IN WASHINGTON
By Ian Williams
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF commentary, posted in its entirety at http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2002/0209newmulti.html .)
Two technically brilliant speeches opened the 57th General Assembly with appeals to multilateralism and international legality--with, one suspects, different degrees of sincerity. While Kofi Annan held open the possibility that one target of multilateral action could be Iraq--George Bush barely mentioned any other reason.
No matter what the sincerity quotient is, by Monday, Bush had won. It seemed that Saddam was surrendering to the threat of UN action, in which case the U.S. president had shown that tough talk works--or the Iraqi President was also only pretending, in which case the hawks in Washington would have their regime change.
Bush's "Road to Baghdad" conversion to multilateralism can be timed quite precisely to the previous week. Perhaps not since the enemy changed from Eastasia to Eurasia in mid oration in George Orwell's 1984 has there been such an abrupt change of line. Until then most of Bush's administration were threatening unilateral mayhem against Iraq--and then Defense Secretary Rumsfeld pulled his already delivered article from the Washington Post in the first signal that things had changed.
Bush justified some suspicion of how superficial and expedient his new line is the day after his speech, when he guffawed at the suggestion that the U.S. Congress could in any way be influenced by the UN's decisions. However, that should not detract from the effect of his policy switch, which has immediately transformed the debate about Iraq. Although it may be looked at as providing a multilateral figleaf for a nakedly unilateral American policy, it still covers the legal bases for most delegates at the UN.
If it was an act, then the President took lessons from the method school of acting, and thought himself into a multilateral position. Kofi Annan's speech was a pithy and eloquent challenge to unilateralism by major powers, and Bush altered his speech that very morning to harmonize with it and to emphasize his own commitment to the UN. As a token of the new outlook of his administration, Bush announced that the U.S. would be rejoining UNESCO, which Ronald Reagan had quit almost twenty years ago at the beginning of the Republican hate affair with the United Nations system. Even more surprisingly, the President did not once mention "Axis of Evil" and with memorable chutzpah promoted Iran from being one its components to be the first victim of Iraqi aggression and a continuing victim of "terrorist" groups hosted by Baghdad.
Of course, he did not mention the former American role in supporting Iraq against Iran in that act of aggression, but then, neither did he remember the U.S. refusal to join the League of Nations when he contrasted the authority of the UN Security Council with that body. His references to the Middle East conflict were unlikely to placate Arabs convinced of American double standards. Put bluntly, their unanswered question is why can't you force Ariel Sharon to admit an inquiry team to Jenin, if you want to enforce entry of inspectors to Iraq.
However, even this was addressed in an oblique sort of way. By stressing the importance of the Security Council, and in effect ignoring the very body he was addressing, the General Assembly, he devalued the bulk of outstanding UN resolutions against Israel which were passed by the Assembly, rather the Council, where the U.S. veto has protected its ally for so many decades.
Taken on its own merits, the American president did make a substantial case against Iraq for its defiance of multiple Security Council resolutions, even if he considerably stretched the already slender evidence of any Iraqi involvement--present or potential--with al Qaeda. While the rest of world is unconvinced that any attack on Baghdad would be part of the "War against Terror," the Council would almost certainly have garnered more than enough votes for a deadline to Baghdad to admit inspectors under the threat of force--and even now will get one demanding slavish cooperation with them. And the sop to Iran shows some solid strategic thinking on both the military and the diplomatic front.
Even before Baghdad offered to let in the inspectors, it was an open question whether the resolution would concentrate on the matter of inspection and disarmament, or would it include all the other deal breakers that the President's speech specified as necessary for the Iraqi regime to show its desire for peace: an end to oil smuggling, a return of Kuwaiti property and missing prisoners, an end to the repression of minorities? These are the types of details now being sorted out in frantic bilateral consultations and cables between capitals.
It may well behoove friends of international law and order in the U.S., and indeed in the UN to regard Saddam Hussein as a lost cause and concentrate on mitigating the effects on Iraqi civilians, and extracting what benefits it can from this narrow window of multilateralism--before the fundamentalists in the administration are let out of their kennels again.
A relaxation of the campaign against the ICC--surely the best venue to try the Iraqi president if apprehended--restoration of funding to the UNFPA, and indeed full and prompt payment of dues to the UN, were once considered fables. It may seem wishful thinking, but the rejoining of UNESCO as well as the signals to Iran, do show that pigs can indeed fly in formation along the Potomac--as long as they are targeted on Baghdad.
(Ian Williams <uswarreport@igc.org> writes for Foreign Policy In Focus and is the author of The UN for Beginners.)
POST-9/11 ECONOMIC WINDFALLS FOR ARMS MANUFACTURERS
By Michelle Ciarrocca, Arms Trade Resource Center
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Brief, available in its entirety online at http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol7/v7n10arms.html .)
Despite a slowing economy and Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut, notions of fiscal conservatism have been brushed aside to fund the fight against terrorism. Boeing Vice Chairman Harry Stonecipher got to the heart of the matter when he told The Wall Street Journal that "the purse is now open," so the Pentagon will no longer have to make "hard choices" among competing weapons projects. Unfortunately, no hard choices were being made in the first place. The highly anticipated Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), an assessment of the nation's defense needs mandated by Congress, was released September 30, 2001. But as Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) quickly noted, the QDR "seems to me to be full of decisions deferred." None of the weapons systems mentioned as a candidate for elimination during the Bush campaign was canceled. Instead, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld set the stage for major increases in military spending, arguing that "the loss of life and damage to our economy from the attack of September 11, 2001, should give us a new perspective on the question of what this country can afford for its defense."
Defense spending for FY 2002 totaled $343.2 billion, a $32.6 billion increase above 2001 levels. Congress is currently debating President Bush's $396 billion FY 2003 military budget request, a $52.8 billion increase. Long-term plans envision the national defense budget increasing to $469 billion in FY 2007, 11% higher than the cold war average.
The failure of policymakers and defense officials to cancel unnecessary weapons programs is, in large part, due to the undue influence exerted by the top defense contractors. More than any administration in history, the Bush team has relied on the expertise of former weapons contractors to outline U.S. defense needs. Thirty-two major Bush appointees are former executives, consultants, or major shareholders of top weapons contractors. Seventeen administration appointees had ties to major defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, or Raytheon prior to joining the Bush team. These include former Lockheed Chief Operating Officer Peter B. Teets, now undersecretary of the Air Force and director of the National Reconnaissance Office; Secretary of the Air Force James Roche, a former Northrop Grumman vice president; and Secretary of the Navy Gordon England, a former General Dynamics vice president. The theory behind Rumsfeld's reliance on former corporate executives is that they would be more willing to cut costs and try new approaches than the average Pentagon bureaucrat. However, that clearly has not been the case.
The geopolitical reach of the defense megafirms is reinforced by millions of dollars in campaign cash. In 2000 the top six military companies spent over $6.5 million in contributions to candidates and political parties. In addition to these hefty campaign donations, defense contractors spent an astonishing $60 million on lobbying in 2000, the most recent year for which full statistics are available.
(Michelle Ciarrocca <CiarrM01@newschool.edu> is an analyst with the Arms Trade Resource Center who writes for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
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>.)
NO THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT
By Lev Grinberg
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new FPIF Outside the U.S. Commentary, posted in its entirety at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0209israel.html .)
Following the end of the 1967 Yom Kippur War, the Israeli government decided to knock down the barriers separating Eastern Jerusalem and annex the eastern Palestinian neighborhoods. Expecting immediate American pressure to withdraw from the conquered territories, the government rushed in and took control. The pressure never came. That expectation was based on past experience: In 1956 the U.S. forced Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Desert back to the international border, in three months. In 1967, though, surprisingly, no such demand was made. On the contrary--the Americans allowed Israel to start a construction lunge, building neighborhoods in Eastern Jerusalem, settlements in the West Bank, in Sinai, and in the Golan Heights. Not only was there no pressure to withdraw, but Israel received a generous three billion dollars of funding annually, which went mainly to subsidize the American weapons industry.
The difference between 1956 and 1967 is in the political context. In 1956 Israel attacked Egypt in cooperation with the UK and France, who were grabbing to get the Suez Canal back under their control, after being nationalized two years earlier by Gamal Abd el-Nasser. The U.S. and the USSR, WWII victors, were interested in blocking the declining empires of Great Britain and France, while encouraging the independence of the post-colonial world. And so Israel was punished on the attack in 1956, and made to retreat. In 1967, on the other hand, the U.S. and USSR were deep in the cold war, and the cooperation between the USSR, Egypt, and Syria encouraged the U.S. to support and boost Israel's military power.
The Israelis, who felt threatened and surrounded by enemies until then, and who still had not overcome the Holocaust's trauma, were thrilled with the backing of the mighty U.S., and blinded by the power. Some took it as divine influence and turned to messianic beliefs, and yet others saw it in terms of pure military force and developed a shallow, pervasively militaristic outlook. However, in effect, Israel became trapped by the U.S.: it has become the spearhead of American presence in the Middle East, which carries with it a dear price of aggression, arrogance, and continuing conflict. Already in 1973 it became clear that the "aerial arms train" sent by the U.S. could not save the 2,700 Israeli soldiers, victims of a moronic policy relying solely on military force. In other words, the American support was a historical disaster to Israel. The occupation and settlement regime that followed, for 35 years now, corrupted Israel morally and politically. The messianic-religious and military elites shape the discourse of Israeli politics, and no policy holds against their interests.
Any reasonable Israeli must object to a war endangering him and his family, spelling a disaster to the future of his country. But we are stuck in the same 35-year-old problem: our government is run by messianic-nationalists and a war-craving military elite, who get support and encouragement from the extremist conservatives of the Bush administration. We are captives of the U.S., unable to say No. There is no political force able to defend the vital interests of the state of Israel and its citizens, because the U.S. has invested large funds and prestige in Israel, and now it wants to get some profit back. We must stand against this war, as independent Israeli citizens. The U.S. is not doing us any favors--it is endangering us for its own aggressive interests as a financial and military superpower.
We have to say: No Thank You, Mr. President!
(Dr. Lev Grinberg <lev@bgumail.bgu.ac.il> is a political sociologist, senior lecturer in the behavioral science department of Ben Gurion University.)
III. Letters and Comments
Regarding the Chicken Hawk leadership issue [see Jim Lobe, "Chicken Hawks as Cheerleaders"], I wish to propose a solution. Before anyone without combat experience can advocate a war with Iraq, they must sign an irrevocable commitment to serve in the U.S. occupying force there following the war. Certainly many of the Chicken Hawks did take active measures to avoid combat in their time but that is in the past. What jars our sensibilities now is their cavalier attitude that says, "Go get 'em gang, we're behind you all the way." Let them put up or shut up by committing themselves to be behind the combat troops literally as well as rhetorically.
What would they do there? The Commander-in-Chief of the occupying forces will have needs for civil affairs support in many fields as he attempts to guide the post-war reconstruction of a devastated Iraq. As an example, Tom DeLay, a hawk's hawk, could serve as a political adviser to guide the formation of an American-style democracy. Kenneth Adelman, a noted historian, could direct the rebuilding of the nation's libraries.
George Will, a master of all fields, could serve as Commissioner of Baseball to bring America's glorious pastime to Iraq. Vice President Cheney could bring his broad experience as CEO of an oil equipment corporation to restore Iraqi oil production in order to lower oil costs to Americans. There is no end to the possibilities for imaginative service by those hawks without warrior qualifications.
Of course, they would want to live with the service personnel in their barracks to bond with them and share to the fullest the joys of occupation duty in Iraq. Body armor in July might be uncomfortable and occasional booby traps, ambushes, sniper fire, and other greetings from restless natives might detract from their pleasure, but it would clearly demonstrate that the term "Chicken Hawk" no longer applied to those who had called loudest and longest for war with Iraq.
If the Chicken Hawks were required to perform some service under arduous conditions in Iraq after the war, they might not be quite so willing to send the warriors out there in the first place.
- Admiral Eugene Carroll <ecarroll@CDI.ORG>
Re: "Dealing In Double Standards" by Stephen Zunes
It is certainly welcome to find mention of specific UN resolutions that should have been enforced, which would have set a better precedent for Iraq. I was also glad to find this below in the full article on Double Standards by Stephen Zunes, but regret that it was cut in the shorter version for the list: "Meanwhile, Turkey remains in violation of UN Security Council resolutions 353 and 354 calling for its withdrawal from northern Cyprus, which this NATO ally of the United States has occupied since 1974."
Although the U.S. media has largely ignored the current news on Cyprus, there has been a major effort over the last year to bring resolution to the situation before the European Union admits Cyprus. The Turkish Cypriot leader has so far continued to insist on recognition of separate sovereignty for the occupied area, however. Turkey has threatened to annex the area under occupation if Cyprus is admitted, so a crisis may be near at hand, unless the moderates in Turkey and among Turkish Cypriots manage to prevail.
- Anne Larson <alarson@igc.org>
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