The Progressive ResponseVolume 6, Number 41
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of ContentsI. Updates and Out-TakesFRONTIER JUSTICE | TOWARD A REAL SECURITY AGENDA DEBATING POST-SADDAM IRAQ: HARDLINERS V. REALPOLITIKERS POST-SADDAM IRAQ: LINCHPIN OF A NEW OIL ORDER PROGRESSIVE RESPONSE SUBSCRIBERS
II. OUTSIDE THE U.S.GLOBAL VIGILANCE IN A GLOBAL VILLAGE: U.S. EXPANDS ITS MILITARY BASES
III. LETTERS AND COMMENTSABRAMS APPOINTMENT NO SURPRISE MISGIVINGS AND CRITIQUES OF "OUR FATEFUL CHOICE"
I. Updates and Out-TakesFRONTIER JUSTICE | TOWARD A REAL SECURITY AGENDA
World peace depends on strong collective security mechanisms. The new threat of international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and the existence of repressive, militaristic states like Iraq underscore the continuing need for multilateral responses to security threats. The U.S. military must be prepared to protect the nation against external threats. But U.S. military might is an insufficient guarantor of national and international security. Well-funded international institutions and international cooperation in intelligence gathering, peacekeeping, and arms control are essential components to any real security. The United States should adopt a real security agenda--one that addresses the actual dangers that Americans now face--by using its leadership to mobilize international action against these global threats. Such an alternative approach would include:
In the past several decades, the international community has made progress in reaching effective agreements in the areas of human rights, environmental protection, arms control, and collective security. We turn our backs on this progress at grave risk to ourselves and humankind. This framework of international cooperation can help us address current threats such as international terrorism, arms proliferation, and deepening global poverty. Rather than spurning multilateralism, U.S. leaders should dedicate themselves to reforming and reinvigorating the processes and structures of international problem solving. As a world power with national interests around the globe, the United States has the greatest stake in building international institutions, fostering international cooperation, and instituting the international rule of law. A good-faith effort in this regard would include:
Now, more than ever before, U.S. foreign policy should draw inspiration from the deep but often suppressed democratic and internationalist foundations of this nation. Borrowing a phrase from the Declaration of Independence, this administration needs to show "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." We are compelled--both by our consciences and our hopes for future generations--to call for a new foreign policy that successfully meets the new challenges that threaten global security, peace, and development. Threats to our common security need multilateral responses. Not in our name can the U.S. government ignore world opinion, reject international treaties, adopt first-strike prerogatives, and put power before reason. We stand behind a foreign and military policy that uses U.S. power responsibly--one that wins respect at home and abroad through its commitment to global partnerships and prudent international leadership. It is precisely such a policy that will best ensure America's own well-being and protect our own security. (Initially signed by FPIF staff and members of the FPIF Advisory Committee, and now being joined by hundreds of other individuals and organizations. We invite you to add your own voice by signing the statement at www.presentdanger.org .)
DEBATING POST-SADDAM IRAQ: HARDLINERS V. REALPOLITIKERS
While U.S. military strategists are refining their plans for invading Iraq early next year, the configuration of a post-invasion Iraq remains a matter of hot debate within the administration of President George W. Bush. The debate breaks along lines that have become very familiar to those who have followed the administration's foreign policy since Bush first took office. On one side are the neoconservative and unilateralist hawks in and around the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, but who also have key allies strategically placed in the National Security Council and the State Department. On the other side are the more internationalist realpolitikers led by Secretary of State Colin Powell and senior career officers in the foreign service, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the military itself. They are aided by former top officials in the George H.W. Bush administration (1989-1993). The two groups have tangled repeatedly--from the Kyoto Protocol and North Korea to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, of course, Iraq--over the past two years. They fought hard over whether to go the UN Security Council before launching an invasion, and even over how to invade Iraq. The hawks, who opposed going to the UN, initially favored an invasion plan that called for U.S. Special Forces, working with local militias in Kurdistan and other "liberated" parts of Iraq, to direct U.S. air power against strategic targets, bringing about the collapse of the Hussein government in much the same way that the Taliban was defeated in Afghanistan. As insurance, the plan called for some 70,000 U.S. troops to stand by--ready to intervene if the going got tough. This strategy was scorned by the realists, and especially by the military brass, who found it not only hopelessly optimistic, but potentially disastrous. Ret. Gen. Anthony Zinni, Powell's Mideast adviser, who served in the late 1990s as the commander of the U.S. Central Command, which includes the Gulf region, even refers to it as the "Bay of Goats." Consistent with the so-called Powell Doctrine, the dissenters called for mustering hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops and major weapons systems for a full-scale invasion that would completely overwhelm defending forces. By the end of last summer, a compromise was struck in which the realists got the better of the bargain, just as they did in September when Bush went to the United Nations. But this agreement on the battle plan does not mean there is any consensus about the configuration of a post-invasion Iraq--over which both factions are still at odds. The neoconservatives in Rumsfeld's and Cheney's office see the invasion of Iraq as the first step in a profound transformation of the Arab world. It is this faction that has argued for establishing a U.S. military occupation similar to that which followed World War II in Germany and Japan. The hawks see as their main partner in this enterprise one particular opposition leader, the head of the exiled Iraqi National Congress (INC), Ahmed Chalabi, a long-standing friend of both Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and the chairman of the Defense Policy Board (DPB), Richard Perle, who is based at AEI. They have also favored establishing a provisional government headed by Chalabi once the invasion gets underway. In addition, they reject any major role for the United Nations in administering Iraq. The realpolitikers, on the other hand, think these plans are as dangerous as the hawks' initial ideas about a military campaign. Their rebuttal was laid out in a new study by a 25-member task force released by the influential Council on Foreign Relations and the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy, named for Bush Senior's secretary of state. Headed by Edward Djerejian and Frank Wisner, two retired foreign service officers who held top diplomatic positions under Bush Senior, the task force rejected virtually every key position pushed by the hawks. (Jim Lobe <jlobe@starpower.net> is a political analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org). This analysis originally appeared in the Asia Times.)
POST-SADDAM IRAQ: LINCHPIN OF A NEW OIL ORDER
Only in the most direct sense is the Bush administration's Iraq policy directed against Saddam Hussein. In contrast to all the loud talk about terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and human rights violations, very little is being said about oil. The administration has been tight-lipped about its plans for a post-Saddam Iraq and has repeatedly disavowed any interest in the country's oil resources. But press reports indicate that U.S. officials are considering a prolonged occupation of Iraq after their war to topple Saddam Hussein. It is likely that a U.S.-controlled Iraq will be the linchpin of a new order in the world oil industry. The Bush administration's ties to the oil and gas industry are beyond extensive; they are pervasive. They flow, so to speak, from the top, with a chief executive who grew up steeped in the culture of Texas oil exploration and tried his hand at it himself; and a second-in-command who came to office with a multi-million dollar retirement package in hand from his post of CEO of Halliburton Oil. Once in office, the vice president developed an energy policy under the primary guidance of a cast of oil company executives whose identities he has gone to great lengths to withhold from public view. The Bush administration's energy policy is predicated on ever-growing consumption of oil, preferably cheap oil. U.S. oil consumption is projected to increase by one-third over the next two decades. The White House is pushing hard for greater domestic drilling and wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the oil industry. Even so, the administration's National Energy Policy Development Group, led by Vice President Cheney, acknowledged in a May 2001 report that U.S. oil production will fall 12% over the next 20 years. As a result, U.S. dependence on imported oil--which has risen from one-third in 1985 to more than half today--is set to climb to two-thirds by 2020. Saudi Arabia is a pivotal player. With 262 billion barrels, it has a quarter of the world's total proven reserves and is the single largest producer. More importantly, the Saudis have demonstrated repeatedly--after the Iranian revolution, and following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait--that they are prepared to compensate for losses from other suppliers, calming markets in times of turmoil. The pariah state of Iraq, however, is a key prize, with abundant, high-quality oil that can be produced at very low cost (and thus at great profit). At 112 billion barrels, its proven reserves are currently second only to Saudi Arabia's. At present, of course, this is mere potential--the Iraqi oil industry has seriously deteriorated as a result of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, the 1991 Gulf War, and inadequate postwar investment and maintenance. Since 1990, the sanctions regime has effectively frozen plans for putting additional fields into production. But once the facilities are rehabilitated (a lucrative job for the oil service industry, including Vice President Cheney's former employer, Halliburton) and new fields are brought into operation, the spigots could be opened wide. To pay for the massive task of rebuilding, a post-sanctions Iraq would naturally seek to maximize its oil production. Washington would gain enormous leverage over the world oil market. Opening the Iraqi spigot would flood world markets and drive prices down substantially. OPEC, already struggling with overcapacity and a tendency among its members to produce above allotted quotas (an estimated 3 million barrels per day above the agreed total of 24.7 million b/d), might unravel as individual exporters engage in destructive price wars against each other. A massive flow of Iraqi oil would also limit any influence that other suppliers, such as Russia, Mexico, and Venezuela, have over the oil market. In the Persian Gulf and adjacent regions, access to oil is usually secured by a pervasive U.S. military presence. From Pakistan to Central Asia to the Caucasus and from the eastern Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa, a dense network of U.S. military facilities has emerged--with many bases established in the name of the "war on terror." Although the U.S. military presence is not solely about oil, oil is a key reason. In 1999, General Anthony C. Zinni, then the head of the U.S. Central Command, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Persian Gulf region is of "vital interest" to the U.S. and that the country "must have free access to the region's resources." Bush administration officials have, however, categorically denied oil is one of the reasons why they are pushing for regime change in Iraq. "Nonsense," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft in mid-December 2002. "It has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil." In fact, oil company executives have been quietly meeting with U.S.-backed Iraqi opposition leaders. According to Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, "The future democratic government in Iraq will be grateful to the United States for helping the Iraqi people liberate themselves and getting rid of Saddam." And he added that "American companies, we expect, will play an important and leading role in the future oil situation in Iraq." (Michael Renner <mrenner@i-2000.com> is a Senior Researcher at Worldwatch Institute and a policy analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
PROGRESSIVE RESPONSE SUBSCRIBERS The number of Progressive Response subscribers jumped dramatically this year. We now number more than ten thousand, and we thank you for your support and interest. This is the first year that we have asked subscribers to contribute to the support of this weekly progressive response to U.S. foreign policy, and the response has been encouraging. Although we still have a way to go to meet our goal of $23,500, we have been heartened by the number of initial contributions to cover the cost of your subscription. Aside from meeting our budget with your support, we also aim to increase the number of subscribers by 5,000 in the coming year. To help us meet that goal, please forward issues of the Progressive Response to your friends, students, and relatives, encouraging them to subscribe too. Wishing you all the best in 2003. Tom Barry
II. Outside the U.S.
GLOBAL VIGILANCE IN A GLOBAL VILLAGE: U.S. EXPANDS ITS MILITARY BASES
The consequences of September 11th remain visible on several fronts. Politically, the United States decided to use the tragedy and reorganize the world. Its military bases now cover every continent. The largest of these is situated in one of the tiniest states: Qatar in the Persian Gulf. There are 189 member states of the United Nations. The globe's only superpower maintains a military presence in 140 countries, including significant deployments in 25 countries. It has security arrangements with at least 36 countries. Empires throughout history have relied on foreign military bases to enforce their rule. U.S. forces are active in the biggest range of countries since the Second World War. The aim is to provide platforms from which to launch attacks on any group perceived by President George W. Bush to be a danger to America. According to defense analysts, the intention is to have a host of such forward bases--staffed by a few thousand troops and technicians all year round--that can provide support for huge reinforcements as required. These bases are being built in or near any country that President Bush decides constitutes "a clear and present danger." As of the latest count, there are more than 200,000 troops (half of these in Asia-Pacific) on foreign soil and more than 50,000 personnel afloat in foreign waters. In recent years, an average of 35,000 of these personnel have been involved in contingency operations, mostly around Iraq and in the Balkans. Aside from these, the United States maintains more than 800 foreign military installations including 60 major ones. Many current U.S. bases were acquired after previous wars--from the Second World War through the war in Afghanistan. Bases obtained in one war are seen as forward deployment positions for some future war, often involving an entirely new enemy. The Bush administration says publicly that it will leave the Central Asian bases after the "war on terrorism" is over, but privately officials admit they are there to stay. As well as bases, the U.S. is sending in military advisers to a host of countries. Are there alternatives to a global network of U.S. military bases? There are military answers and there are broader political answers. There is a broader political alternative to a globe-girdling network of bases: dropping the notion that the United States is the world's policeman. The UN Security Council was supposed to have at its disposal contingents from the member nations' armed forces under the strategic direction of a Military Staff Committee. The committee, made up of the chiefs of staff of the five permanent members of the Security Council, was to advise on the military requirements for maintaining international peace. The cold war prevented that blueprint from becoming reality. Now the UN Charter could show the way to a less expensive, less one-sided approach to maintaining the peace. Indeed, the establishment of new bases may in the long run be more critical to U.S. war planners than the wars themselves. The U.S. military interventions cannot all be tied to the insatiable U.S. thirst for oil even though many of the recent wars do have their roots in oil politics. They can nearly all be tied to the U.S. desire to build or rebuild military bases. The new U.S. military bases, and increasing control over oil supplies, can in turn be tied to the historical shift taking place since the 1980s: with the rise of the "euro bloc" and "yen bloc," U.S. economic power is perhaps on the wane. But in military affairs, the U.S. is still the unquestioned superpower. It has been projecting that military dominance into new strategic regions as a future counterweight to its economic competitors, to create a military-backed "dollar bloc" as a wedge geographically situated between its major competitors. The Bush administration's first National Security Strategy, released recently, takes an unprecedented step away from cold war views to confront a world beset by the likes of Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda terrorists. Critics are already describing the new strategy as arrogant and dangerous--a far cry from the tone of humility in foreign affairs promised in President Bush's inaugural address. To supporters, it represents an overdue codification of America's mission of global leadership. On one thing analysts on both sides agree: In many ways it merely makes explicit what has been U.S. practice for years. (Madhavee Inamdar <madhavee@telus.net> is based in Vancouver, where she is a researcher in Peace and Conflict Studies. She is a columnist and editorial writer for Khaleej Times, a UAE-based newspaper. She has degrees in international politics and strategic studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University and University of Hull.)
III. Letters and CommentsRe: Iraq Focus Many useful and important petitions have been shown/explained on the Internet. I'm impressed with them. Your site helps me, & perhaps others, to see a situation from yet another vantage point. We understand action(s) which we'd like to see take place in preventing any war. But I strongly believe that the manner in which such action is worded means as much as the number of people who sign a petition. When we read a well-thought-out and -worded document such as the one you've written, we can see and understand the immensity of the situation. Potential war and prevention is a delicate title. Anytime readers are educated in the process of understanding how to sign their name to something, they see an even larger picture than they expected. Thank you for writing a text that is informative and succinct. A paper which also give a scholarly interpretation of how people will be effected in the future. Thank you. Peace, - Camille Pierce <scholar@cruzio.com>
ABRAMS APPOINTMENT NO SURPRISE Re: Neoconservatives Consolidate Control over U.S. Mideast Policy The appointment of Elliot Abrams to the top U.S. Mideast policy spot in the National Security Council should surprise no one. In fact, any observer of the hostile policy of the radical Republican right-wingers in the Republican-controlled Congress during Clinton administration toward the Oslo process and the policy of the Israeli government under the leadership of Yitzhak Rabin supported by president Bill Clinton could discern this trend underpinned by ideological affinity and identification with the reactionary Israeli militant right represented by the Likud party and the extremist settlers' organizations. - eliezer haffner <e_haffner@hotmail.com>
I have signed the statement because I feel that it may be useful, and it reflects many of my sentiments. However, I think that it is too mild a statement, a bit too academic in flavor, for it seems to ignore the nature of the beast in Washington. I don't believe that you can convince the beast not to be beastly on the basis of intellectual arguments while it seeks to further its policies of narrow self interest, knowing that seemingly no one can challenge it. You have to demand that it stop being beastly or it will be fiercely resisted. Of course, you may not be addressing the Bush administration, but rather hope to enlist the support of all those who are in any way appalled by its policies, both for humane and practical reasons. With that I am with you. Good luck--to all of us. - Morton K. Brussel <brussel@uiuc.edu>
MISGIVINGS AND CRITIQUES OF "OUR FATEFUL CHOICE" Having received my latest Progressive Response,I learned about your "Our Fateful Choice" document. It is a good piece, expressing many important arguments and positive ideas. Also, it is signed by a number of people for whom I have a great deal of respect--a respect I also have for you and your work. I am pleased that you are issuing the statement, and I hope it has some impact. Nonetheless, I do not want to add my name to the "Our Fateful Choice" statement. Although I share the statement's abhorrence of the Bush administration's policies, I think it differs from my own views in important ways. My primary dispute with the statement is that I believe it accepts the Bush administration's framework of defining "terrorists with global reach" as a--perhaps "the"--principal threat to U.S. and global security. In my view, what we call "terrorism" has root causes in the structures of inequality, the poverty and the exploitation that dominate the world economy and in the corresponding harsh inequalities of power--and the arrogant exercise of that power--in international political affairs. The U.S. government and U.S.-based firms, while by no means the sole forces effecting these global problems, have been and are major forces establishing and maintaining the situation that I see at the base of "terrorism." In order to deal with U.S. foreign policy, I believe we need to start from a recognition of this U.S. role in world affairs. I recognize that your statement does list other threats, and you do raise issues of human rights and suggest that economic issues are of some importance. Yet I believe that your focus on the political realm binds you to an approach that downplays, and may in effect ignore, what I see as the root causes of the issues of concern. Before going further, I should explain why I use the term "terrorism" in quotations, as I do so to underscore my objection to what I see as the failure of your statement to fully confront the role of the U.S. in world affairs. Any reasonable definition of "terrorism" would include the terror that the U.S. government has brought to bear upon peoples around the globe, recently and over the longer term. To speak of "terrorism" without acknowledging the actions of the U.S. government will, I think, lead us to a poor policy response. In addition, I have some serious misgivings about the way in which your statement portrays U.S. history. The statement implies that the current policy is a major departure from past U.S. policies. While I do not deny that the actions of the Bush administration are especially aggressive and dangerous, I think they depart much less from past policy than you indicate. Certainly the U.S. government has undertaken unilateral, preemptive interventions at many times in the past. In the Middle East, one might point to the U.S. government's role in the overthrow of the Mossadegh government in 1953. No, this did not involve full-scale war, but it was certainly a unilateral and preemptive action. In the realm of full-scale war, there is of course Vietnam. The U.S. government's actions there were certainly unilateral, and they were preemptive in the sense that they were undertaken without any threat posed to the United States itself. These examples, of course, are simply part of a long list. Moreover, in your description of U.S. efforts to establish a new world order in the wake of World War II, I think your focus on the United Nations leads to a distortion of history, a distortion that portrays a much more benign role for the U.S. in world affairs than is justified. My reading of the history of that period suggests that U.S. business and the U.S. government were engaged in a clear and conscious effort to establish their international dominance. The IMF and World Bank were structured in a manner to assure U.S. control and have been used consistently to pursue the international interests of the United States--which has meant the interests of U.S.-based internationally operating firms and corresponding strategic-military interests. I do not think it will do us much good to fail to recognize the reality of U.S. history and paint a misleading picture of our past. As a consequence of the analysis that I believe is implicit in your statement, you end up in a dispute with the Bush administration that is largely a dispute over strategy, not a dispute over ends and interests. You argue that the Bush people are doing the job of maintaining our security in the wrong way. They should, you maintain, protect us from "terrorism" and do so through "collective security." I do not think a U.S. government, the Bush administration or any other, can do a very good job of protecting us from "terrorism" until its ends and interests are altered. Yes, the government can stop individuals or groups from perpetrating some of the particular horrors that have filled our TV screens in recent years, but, while U.S. political and economic ends and interests remain as they are, I expect that we will continue to get terrible responses and "blowbacks." So, yes, those people responsible for the September 11 attacks should be brought to justice, but it should not be a selective justice. It should be a justice that also deals with actions taken by U.S. actors and allies. Otherwise it will be simply a "justice" of the powerful. In the realm of the practical, I do not disagree with the particular proposals that you put forth. This is part of what I meant when I said your statement is a good one. But I would be much more comfortable with something more. Even if we recognize that it may not be practical to demand changes in U.S. ends and interests at this time and thus put forth lesser demands, we should at least recognize the roots of the problems. Again, let me reiterate my view that "Our Fateful Choice" is a good piece, expressing many important arguments and positive ideas. I hope you will take my disagreements in the context of this view. - Arthur MacEwan <arthur.macewan@umb.edu>
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