The Progressive Response
Volume 7, Number 5
February 24, 2003
The Progressive Response (PR) is produced weekly by the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) as part of its Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) project. FPIF, a "Think Tank Without Walls," 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." FPIF is joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. 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/, or email <feedback@fpif.org> to share your thoughts with us.
John Gershman, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) (online at www.irc-online.org). He can be contacted at <john@irc-online.org>.
Editor: John Gershman (IRC)
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
TERROR AND TORTURE IN THE PHILIPPINES
By Frida Berrigan
COPING WITH NORTH KOREA
By Wade L. Huntley
SOUTH KOREA JOINS AXIS OF INDEPENDENCE
By John Feffer
JOHN BOLTON IN JERUSALEM: THE NEW AGE OF DISARMAMENT WARS
By Ian Williams
THOUGHTLESS IN TIME?
By Pascale Combelles Siegel
II. Outside the U.S.
WAR BY TIMETABLE?
By Paul Rogers
III. Letters And Comments
I. Updates and Out-takes
TERROR AND TORTURE IN THE PHILIPPINES
By Frida Berrigan
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0302philippines.html .)
Soon after the terrorist attacks of September 2001, the Bush administration launched the "second front" of its war on terrorism, deploying troops in the Philippines for training and joint military exercises in late 2001 and early 2002. In the next few weeks, even as war in Iraq looms on the horizon, U.S. troops will begin a major new counter-terror operation that, in the words of one official, will "disrupt and destroy" Muslim rebels there. U.S. Special Forces are expected to play a combat, not just advisory, role.
Since the opening of this "second front," the Bush administration has rapidly increased military and economic support for the Philippines. President Bush recently announced a grant of $78 million in new military aid, including $20 million to purchase U.S. weapons and services and $21 million worth of secondhand arms. But the fact that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is as committed to squashing domestic insurgency movements as she is to fighting terrorism, raises concerns that Washington could sideline human rights in the interest of preserving and enhancing its partnership with Manila.
In the letter to President Arroyo that accompanied the announcement of new military aid, Bush wrote "while you have made important strides in the war against terror in your country, additional terrorist attacks against civilians and the resulting loss of innocent life mean there is still much to be done."
While he is right that there is still "much to be done" in the Philippines, it is unlikely that U.S. weapons are the right tools for making "important strides in the war against terror." In fact, a new report from Amnesty International documents the use of torture in the Philippines, suggesting that U.S. weapons and military aid could increase incidents of terror.
The Amnesty International report Philippines: Torture Persists, released in January, found "the persistence of torture and ill treatment in the Philippines today… highlights the serious discrepancy between the law and its application." Amnesty documents torture techniques, including electro-shocks and the use of plastic bags to suffocate detainees, and determines that, "those most at risk include alleged members of armed opposition groups, their suspected sympathizers" along with "ordinary criminal suspects."
Amnesty is not alone in recognizing human rights abuses in the Philippines. According to the State Department's 2001 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, "there were serious problems in some areas. Members of the security services were responsible for extrajudicial killings, disappearances, torture, and arbitrary arrest and detention."
In its human rights report, the State Department also acknowledged that U.S. Special Forces and military advisers helped create an environment in which human rights abuses increased, noting in their report that "there were allegations by human rights groups that these problems worsened as the Government sought to intensify its campaign against the terrorist Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG)."
Given the Filipino military's track record on torture and human rights abuses, Washington cannot help President Arroyo quell insurgency movements, fight the war on terrorism and uphold human rights all at the same. Perhaps insisting on respect for human rights is a better tool for fighting terrorism than weapons and military training.
(Frida Berrigan <BerrigaF@newschool.edu> is a Senior Research Associate with the Arms Trade Resource Center, a project of the World Policy Institute.)
COPING WITH NORTH KOREA
By Wade L. Huntley
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new policy report available in full at http://www.fpif.org/papers/korea2003.html .)
U.S.-North Korea relations are at a point of crisis. Pyongyang's surprise October admission to a secret nuclear weapons program based on uranium enrichment has triggered a cascading breakdown of the 1994 Agreed Framework structure that had kept North Korea's more advanced plutonium-based nuclear program in check.
The Bush administration's de facto policy of "hostile neglect" toward Pyongyang has been a fundamental source of the current crisis. Although North Korea's uranium-based program began well before Bush took office, the current administration bears responsibility for inciting acceleration of Korea's nuclear program and for fostering the fragile conditions under which the program's revelation quickly precipitated a complete breakdown of U.S.-North Korea relations.
For over a decade, U.S. domestic debate about dealing with North Korea has boiled down to engagement versus confrontation. However, through the 1990s, North Korea neither dependably reciprocated accommodation, as engagement advocates had hoped, nor routinely cowered in response to U.S. intimidation, as confrontation advocates had expected. Rather, the one constant of North Korean behavior has been provocation whenever it senses U.S. attention waning. Thus, while U.S. debate is dominated by engagement versus confrontation, U.S. policy success is at least as much a function of prioritizing interaction over neglect. This factor was a driving dynamic in the ebb and flow of post-1994 U.S.-North Korea relations, often undermining the Clinton administration's overarching engagement intentions. Similarly, over the past two years, the Bush administration's refusal to interact with North Korea at any level--or even to be bothered to generate a proactive policy--has served as much to precipitate Pyongyang's recent provocations as has Washington's undisguised antipathy for Kim Jong Il's regime.
Any hope of gaining a negotiated termination of North Korea's nuclear programs relies, first and foremost, on the Bush administration replacing its attitude of neglect with intensive interaction. The issue is not whether to engage or confront--U.S. posture must include both genuine incentives for North Korea to reach an accommodation and credible sanctions if it does not. In short, the U.S. needs to come up with both more carrots and a bigger stick.
Secondly, the Bush administration must be prepared to act dramatically to turn the crisis around. Even at this late date, there is one action that the U.S. could take that would give pause to Kim Jong Il's nuclear ambitions. That action would be to suspend the attack on Iraq.
Besides wielding this bigger stick, the Bush administration would also need to initiate the kind of thorough diplomatic engagement that most Korean experts now recommend. As U.S. actions increase Pyongyang's perceived danger in continuing its nuclear programs, U.S. words must convey equally credible willingness to accommodate Pyongyang's abandonment of those programs. This approach would recognize that confrontation and engagement are not opposing choices but necessary complements in a strategy that both respects regional allies and halts North Korea's nuclear programs at this late date.
Perhaps most importantly, suspending the near-term threat to attack Iraq in order to focus primary energies on ending North Korea's nuclear program would bring U.S. actions back into sync with reality. North Korea, with its pending diversion of sufficient plutonium to build a significant nuclear weapons arsenal and to export both materials and technology to other countries or to agents of terrorism, is today a far greater threat to U.S. security and world peace than is Iraq. This disparity was most recently underscored by the International Atomic Energy Agency's referral to the UN Security Council of North Korean "chronic noncompliance" with IAEA safeguards agreements, culminating in Pyongyang's recent disconnection of IAEA monitoring equipment and the expulsion of IAEA inspectors--in contrast to Iraq, where the IAEA was able to maintain its accounting of safeguarded nuclear materials even during the 1998-2002 suspension of formal inspections. Leaving North Korea's actions unchecked could, in the words of IAEA Director General Mohamed El Baradei, "open the door for countries to walk away from nonproliferation and arms control agreements." By shifting its primary focus from Iraq to North Korea, the U.S. would redirect international attention from a lesser threat that is temporarily containable toward a greater threat that may not be.
(Wade L. Huntley <huntley@peace.hiroshima-cu.ac.jp> is an associate professor for security studies at the Peace Institute of the Hiroshima City University and an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
SOUTH KOREA JOINS AXIS OF INDEPENDENCE
By John Feffer
(Editor's note: This is excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0302korea.html .)
Roh Moo Hyun, the incoming South Korean president, is part of a trend that raises the hackles of the Bush administration: outspoken and uncowed allies. Roh joins an axis of independence that includes France's Jacques Chirac and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder. With friends like these, the Bush team laments, who needs an axis of evil? What's bad for Bush, however, is a boon for the rest of the world and particularly for the Korean peninsula. Roh Moo Hyun is the world's best hope for avoiding war in East Asia.
Roh Moo Hyun is a true outsider, a lawyer who never went to college or law school and passed the fiendishly difficult bar exam through his own efforts. He defended students and labor leaders, the key organizers of Korea's democratization movement, and went on to serve in the legislature. Considerably younger than outgoing president Kim Dae Jung, Roh is a spokesman for the influential generation that graduated from college in the 1980s and is fed up with the cold war that lingers on the peninsula.
Many Koreans hope that Roh's independence will enable him to sweep away Korea's endemic corruption and put economic reform on a more solid foundation. The big corporations have already shown signs of early capitulation by dropping their opposition to class action suits in the financial world, a much-needed step in the direction of greater transparency.
But it is foreign policy where Roh will make his mark. The new president is even more committed than the previous administration to a policy of engaging North Korea. He favors moving forward with North-South reconciliation even before the current nuclear crisis is resolved.
Trigger fingers are getting itchy in East Asia, and only Roh Moo Hyun clings tenaciously to an olive branch. A U.S. "military strike against North Korea is an extremely serious matter that could lead to a war on the peninsula," he has said. "So I oppose even a review of such a possibility." Roh knows that war will bring untold death and destruction to South Korea. And North Korea's collapse would burden his country with refugees and economic and political challenges that dwarf what West Germany faced over a decade ago.
U.S. war plans have traditionally relied on South Korea to provide military support and to establish political control in the event of a North Korean collapse. As such, Roh's pacifist tendencies put more than a speed bump between the United States and full-scale war on the Korean peninsula.
But that's not all. Roh wants Uncle Sam to stop treating his country like an untrustworthy teenager. The Status of Forces Agreement between the two countries (establishes the conditions for U.S. military presence in South Korea) is woefully lopsided when compared to similar U.S. agreements with other countries, such as Germany. In the recent demonstrations around the accidental killing of two Korean schoolgirls by U.S. soldiers, tens of thousands of South Koreans gave vent to years of pent-up frustration and anger.
Roh is no stranger to uphill battles. He pulled off a stunning upset victory in the December elections. Now, facing even longer odds in the international arena, he is simultaneously trying to establish peace with North Korea and negotiate a more just relationship with the United States. Kim Dae Jung's Nobel Peace Prize is a tough act to follow. If Roh pulls off these two foreign policy feats, he will set the stage for a more profound prize: a peaceful, unified Korea.
(John Feffer <johnfeffer@aol.com> is the author of Shock Waves: Eastern Europe After the Revolutions, the editor of the forthcoming Power Trip: U.S. Foreign Policy After September 11 (Seven Stories, 2003), and has recently returned from three years based in Tokyo working on East Asian issues. Feffer is also an FPIF advisory committee member (online at www.fpif.org).)
JOHN BOLTON IN JERUSALEM: THE NEW AGE OF DISARMAMENT WARS
By Ian Williams
(Editor's Note: This excerpt of a new global affairs commentary is available in full at http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2003/0302bolton.html. The piece was commissioned under the auspices of the Project Against the Present Danger (www.presentdanger.org).)
Much of the world is worried about the impending war with Iraq, and rightly so. But this may just the beginning of a new age of disarmament wars.
From the homeland of Armageddon this week came worrying signs that we should begin worrying about the even longer and harder wars to follow. John Bolton, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Disarmament Affairs and International Security, was in Israel this week, for meetings about "preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction."
It seems appropriate for the U.S. and Israel to meet about disarmament issues. After all, Israel is universally acknowledged by everyone--excepting the U.S. government--as a considerable nuclear power, and much of the world regards its prime minister as a profound threat to international security. However, we can be sure that neither item was on Bolton's agenda.
While in Israel, Bolton met Sharon and Netanyahu. He promised that after the U.S. has sorted Iraq "it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran, and North Korea afterwards." For Bolton and Sharon, disarmament is what you do to other people, no more and no less.
John Bolton is one of the major reasons why few other countries trust the motives, or indeed the rationality of the U.S. administration (the list of other reasons keeps growing, but the ravings of Wolfowitz, Perle, Cheney, and Rumsfeld spring immediately to an apprehensive observer's mind).
These are the people whose statements scare off the diplomatic ducks that Colin Powell so assiduously tries to line up. In addition, the continual gaffes of hawks like Bolton make the U.S. position seem even more hypocritical in the global arena. For example, the ostensible excuse for attacking Iraq is its defiance of UN resolutions. However, Bolton has defied the UN's very existence for most of his political career. He has made it plain that the U.S. government should not abide by any UN decisions that may prove inconvenient to the U.S. pursuit of its national interests.
However, Bolton is at least consistent. His political career began in UN-bashing. In 1994 he asserted that "there is no such thing as the United Nations" or that "if the UN Secretariat building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference." Nonetheless, his firm principles can be malleable when hit by self interest. Taking ten floors off the 38 of the UN HQ would have left the 27th floor. That's where the UN finance department issued his pay check when he became James Baker's assistant in the UN mission to abrogate Security Council resolutions against the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara.
It is difficult to square his bashing of the UN with the Bush administration's blandishing the Security Council members to "save" the organization, to preserve its credibility and relevance--by doing exactly what it is told. Perhaps because Bolton was absent from Washington, in Israel this week, the administration has reluctantly accepted the desirability for a second UN resolution to authorize war.
(Ian Williams <uswarreport@igc.org> contributes frequently to Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) on UN and international affairs.)
THOUGHTLESS IN TIME?
By Pascale Combelles Siegel
(Editor's Note: The excerpt below is from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0302optimist.html .)
Historical analogies often serve as tools to explain the world we confront today or expect for tomorrow. Harvard professors Richard Neustadt and Ernest May insightfully examined the use (and misuse) of such historical analogies for policymaking in their seminal work Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers. It seems that at least some in the Defense Department might want to review his work.
Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, is generally acknowledged as one of the leading intellectuals in the Department of Defense. He is also "the administration's most persistent advocate of ousting Saddam Hussein" according to a recent report in the Philadelphia Inquirer. In this article, Wolfowitz lays out a case for optimism about a war with Iraq and the positive, long-lasting results of this war.
Post-conflict Iraq is unlikely to be like post-war occupation of Germany or Japan according to Wolfowitz. "'If you're looking for a historical analogy,' the soft-spoken, professorial Pentagon official suggested, 'It's probably closer to post-liberation France [after World War II].'"
This analogy does not stand up to detailed--or even cursory--analysis. There are at least seven key differences:
- In World War II, France was occupied by its arch-enemy, Nazi Germany. Saddam Hussein, however unloved he might be, is home-grown in Iraq.
- By 1944, the French populace was virtually united in its desire for liberation from the Nazis and for the overthrow of the Vichy regime. It is unclear whether Iraqis will consider Americans as liberators or as occupiers.
- France had a long democratic and capitalist economic tradition on which to build. Iraq has never been a democratic state and has rarely been an open market economy.
- French forces played a significant role as part of the forces fighting to liberate France, through both the resistance and the Free French forces under de Gaulle. Such contributions by Iraqis are at best a remote possibility.
- De Gaulle was the recognized and acknowledged leader of the Free French forces with a legitimacy across all segments of the French population. He had authority over essentially all resistance forces (including those led by the Communist Party). No similar charismatic legitimate leader allied with the West exists inside or outside Iraq.
- Liberated France had a huge structure (after some cleansing of collaborators) of bureaucrats on which to base a functioning government (from schools to courthouses to trash collection). Does this mass of competency exist in Iraq?
- Last, and not least, in 1944-45, the United States was part of a true international coalition--the Allies--that was supported by virtually all citizens in the alliance states and with clearly shared objectives in the defeat of the Axis powers (even if holding differing views of the post-war world). In 2003, no such popularly supported "coalition of the willing" exists.
The United States government is, one hopes, in a period of serious reflection over whether and how to conduct a war against Iraq. Our past experiences will play a role in shaping our thinking and approaches to this challenge. We must, as May cautioned, carefully test our history for relevancy and "think in time" rather than substitute inappropriate analogies for thought. Relying on the wrong analogies can promote a false sense of confidence and send the nation down false-and dangerous--paths. Sadly, all indications are that the current administration is thoughtless, rather than thinking, in time.
(Pascale Combelles Siegel <pcsiegel@verizon.net> is an independent defense analyst based near Washington, DC. She has worked for NATO, the National Defense University, and the Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique in Paris.)
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>.)
WAR BY TIMETABLE
By Paul Rogers
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new Outside the U.S. commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2003/0302war.html .)
The huge anti-war marches and events around the world on the weekend of 15-16 February 2003 may be the most significant political demonstrations since the cold War era. In their scale, they resemble the 1986 and 2001 people power movements in the Philippines which removed Presidents Marcos and Estrada, and the mass outpouring of popular feeling across the Soviet bloc in 1989.
If the size of the demonstrations greatly exceeded the expectations of the organizers, their timing was also important. They closely followed the report from Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq, to the UN Security Council that was clearly far too soft for the Bush administration. One evident implication of Blix's tone and content was that inspections should continue. Indeed, a significant part of his speech was devoted to detailing the impressive inspection process that has been built up in only eleven weeks, as well as the substantial expansion in UNMOVIC's activities that is currently under way.
This combination of popular discontent, Security Council discussion, and the concurrent splits in NATO have combined to refocus intense attention on the political process, leading to a central assumption that the risk of war is primarily dependent on what happens at the United Nations.
This may be missing a key element. While so much emphasis is on the UN and attitudes in western capitals, what is actually happening on the ground may be the real determining factor of what happens next. In this respect, the pivotal reality at present is that the Pentagon is simply not yet ready for war against Iraq.
What, then, is the likelihood of war? To get as accurate an answer as possible to this, military planning is the vital consideration. All the indications are that the military build-up has been going on regardless of the political process and that there is a real sense of frustration among Bush's security team over the involvement of the UN. The bottom line is that everything will be in place by mid-March or very soon after; war is planned to begin around five weeks from now.
Alliance disunity, popular anti-war movements, and problems at the United Nations are all annoying complications, but to the security hawks they are not particularly relevant. The war is going to happen. Given the absolute determination of people such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others, it is going to be very difficult to stop it.
(This article was first published in its entirety on the global issues website (online at www.opendemocracy.net) as part of an ongoing debate about Global Security. Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University and is openDemocracy's international security correspondent. He is a consultant to the Oxford Research Group. The second edition of his book Losing Control has just been published by Pluto Press.)
III. Letters and Comments
Re: Addressing Iraqi Repression and the Need for a Change of Regime
I could not agree more with this article. The old expression "kill them with kindness" comes to mind. The perception in many Arab states is that the USA is "the great Satan." What better way to deter that line of reasoning than by saturating that part of the world (especially Iraq) with aid, medical supplies, etc.. Initially this would be dismissed as simply another Yankee ploy; however, if it was as adhered to, eventually the perception of the West, in general, and the U.S. in particular, as the enemy would disappear. Whatever the cost of such a humanitarian effort, it could, in no way, shape or form, cost more than an unnecessary war. When one factors in the possible damage to American prestige and the loss of global good will, war makes no sense at all.
- Lloyd John Gagne <gagnelyd@hotmail.com>
Re: Chicken Hawks as Cheer Leaders
Excellent article. I am a an ex-Marine, Korea 1951, infantry and came home with a hole in the head due to a grenade. Not trying to impress you as there were thousands who had it far worse than I did, but I want you to know that I am a documented combat vet and am against this idiocy. It is a complicated matter but this is not the way to "solve" the problem. Thank you.
- Allen Demroske <dagnatha@jamadots.com>
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