The Progressive Response
Volume 7, Number 6
February 28, 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
FRONTIER JUSTICE #18 | LIGHTER SHADOWS AMIDST THE GLOOM
By John Gershman
OUR BACKYARD PAX AMERICANA
By Tom Barry
ENDGAMES: WASHINGTON, UN, AND EUROPE
By Peter Howard
WHEN THE WHERE CONVEYS MORE THAN THE WORDS
By Jim Lobe
TURKEY: NEW EUROPE OR OLD?
By Michelle Ciarrocca
II. Letters And Comments
I. Updates and Out-takes
FRONTIER JUSTICE #18 | LIGHTER SHADOWS AMIDST THE GLOOM
By John Gershman
(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 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/2003/index.html.)
Amidst the gloom of debates over war in Iraq and the Bush administration's assaults on the credibility of the United Nations and multilateral institutions more broadly, it may be useful to highlight that progress in other areas is being made--slowly, quietly, and often despite the opposition of the Bush administration. These positive steps, no matter how small, demonstrate the opportunities that committed campaigners and elites can seize despite the opposition of the Bush administration.
Let's not overstate the developments, however. The Bush administration remains committed to assaulting multilateral initiatives in many areas besides the ones we see on the front pages. While the debate on a new Security Council resolution continues, for example, the U.S. delegation to the negotiations on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control was denounced by some U.S. legislators and NGOs for its efforts to weaken the Convention, which, if adopted in May, would become the world's first public health treaty.
The efforts by the Bush administration to try and coerce or purchase allies in its war on Iraq (offering marginalization as the other option) are increasingly recognized as problems at home as well as abroad, as detailed in a recent series of polls by the Program on International Policy Attitudes. When asked, "on average, how do you think people in other countries rate how well the U.S. is managing its foreign policy," a majority of 55% now gives a negative rating (19% neutral, 23% positive). The net rating (percentage giving positive ratings minus percentage giving a negative rating) has declined 6 percentage points since January and 16 percentage points since November, and now stands at minus 31%. Asked how well the U.S. is "handling relations with…our European allies," the percentage giving a positive rating has slipped to 46% (neutral 20%, negative 25%). The net rating is still a positive 21%, but down from a positive 36% in January and a positive 42% in November. U.S. handling of relations with North Korea has dropped sharply, with 42% now giving it a negative rating (neutral 21%, positive 33%). The net rating is now a negative 9%, down 10 percentage points from January. The overall foreign policy rating remains statistically unchanged, however at plus 15%.
On the plus side, at least 43 of the 45 countries that agreed to destroy their remaining stockpiles of landmines by March 1 under the Mine Ban Treaty have done so, making the 1999 Ottawa Treaty one of the most successful disarmament accords. According to UN officials, fifty-five countries have destroyed more than 30 million landmines, while the number of manufacturers worldwide has dropped from about 55 to 14 and there has been a drop in mine production, a virtual halt to antipersonnel mine exports, and clearance of large tracts of mine-infested land. Nevertheless, antipersonnel mines still claim an estimated 15-20,000 new victims each year in some 70 countries, according to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.
The Ottawa Treaty was unusual in part because of the close collaboration between a transnational network of citizens' organizations and a number of like-minded states that broke through a stalemate at the formal UN process and negotiated a treaty over the objections of major powers like the U.S. and China. Today, the treaty has 131 member states, plus a further 15 signatory states who have yet to ratify. Forty-eight nations have failed to sign up to the treaty, including China, Egypt, India, Israel, Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, and America.
While the apparently imminent war in Iraq keeps energy issues on the front page, the Kyoto Protocol remains in play. It could enter into force this summer if Russia meets its stated commitment to ratify it. Canada ratified the protocol late last year, leaving the U.S. and Australia as the only major countries to have failed to ratify the accord.
Finally, the Bush administration continues to try and derail the International Criminal Court (ICC) by negotiating "Article 98" agreements to prevent U.S. citizens from being surrendered to the court, signing at least 21 such agreements with other countries. Despite the administration's machinations, in early February the first 18 judges (7 women and 11 men) were elected to serve and will be sworn in on March 11. The judges hail from the rogue states of Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Ireland, Italy, South Korea, Latvia, Mali, Samoa, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom. Next on the agenda is the election of a prosecutor in April. Eighty-nine nations have joined the ICC as of February 10, 2003, while the U.S. remains opposed. (Domestic support for the U.S. to join the ICC consistently registers in the 61-66% range.) The most recent country to ratify the Rome Statute creating the ICC: Afghanistan.
(John Gershman <john@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and the Asia/Pacific editor for Foreign Policy in Focus.)
For More See:
INFACT, COWBOY DIPLOMACY: How the U.S. Undermines International Environmental, Human Rights, Disarmament and Health Agreements
http://www.infact.org/cowboyd.html
Program on International Policy Attitudes
http://www.pipa.org/
Coalition for the ICC
http://www.iccnow.org/
International Campaign to Ban Landmines
http://www.icbl.org/
OUR BACKYARD PAX AMERICANA
By Tom Barry
(Editor's Note: The policy report excerpted below is shared with us from the Interhemispheric Resource Center's Americas program and is available in full at http://www.americaspolicy.org/reports/2003/0302paxam.html .)
In his first months in the White House, President Bush repeatedly promised that he would work to make this the "Century of the Americas," but after September 11, 2001, the president left behind his neighborly focus. Instead, his new vision evoked a global Pax Americana--the type of U.S. hegemony historically exercised in the Western Hemisphere would be extended to the entire globe.
The president's grand new strategy of U.S. foreign and military policy envisions a world in which U.S. politics, culture, and economics are the coin of the realm, and where there are no existing or potential threats to U.S. supremacy. Conjured up by a small circle of neoconservatives in the early 1990s, this dream of a global imperium draws heavily on the U.S. experience in asserting its power in Latin America and the Caribbean.
U.S. unilateralism, exceptionalism, interventionism, neoimperialism--all of which have come to the fore in U.S. foreign policy during President George W. Bush's administration--are homegrown products of what U.S. policymakers still commonly refer to as America's back yard. For almost 200 years, the United States has been exercised economic, diplomatic, and military policies aimed at maintaining a Pax Americana in the hemisphere-the U.S. dominated the region's economy, ensured that no threats arose, and prohibited foreign interference.
Today, as it attempts to extend this imperium to the rest of the world, the Bush foreign policy team is facing rising opposition both at home and abroad. In the Americas--where Pax Americana has had a long test run--there are new challenges to U.S. hegemony in the form of mounting political resistance to the U.S. neoliberal model, growing and increasingly effective social movements, and the failing drug war.
Perhaps the most troublesome obstacle to Bush's new global vision is that here in the secure base of Pax Americana there is an ever-rising flow of Latin Americans and Caribbean islanders who see no economic future in their own countries. At a time when the U.S. seeks to protect its homeland, these refugees from hemispheric Pax Americana are pushing across the increasingly militarized border separating the imperial center from its troubled hinterlands-not an auspicious sign for the stability of a Pax Americana writ on a global scale.
(Tom Barry <tom@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) where he codirects the joint IRC-IPS Foreign Policy In Focus project. He has written numerous books on Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. For more information, visit www.irc-online.org.)
ENDGAMES: WASHINGTON, UN, AND EUROPE
By Peter Howard
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available online at http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2003/0302endgame.html .)
Transatlantic ties have frayed as pundits and politicians have hurled invectives and insults across the ocean over France and Germany's opposition in both NATO and the UN Security Council to the Bush administration's war plans in Iraq. What makes this high stakes drama so confusing to the public is the Bush administration's red herring--Iraq. This row is not about Iraq, it's about the new world order.
Contrast this debate with transatlantic cooperation in the war on terrorism. A broad coalition of allies is extremely willing to join in the fight against al Qaeda. "Old European" countries have disrupted alleged al Qaeda cells and in Germany one person was convicted for being complicit in the planning for the September 11 attacks. U.S. allies are supportive in the war on terrorism, but they clearly see a difference between the war on terrorism and war in Iraq.
The dispute in NATO and the UN is not really about Iraq. It never was. It's about the America. More specifically, it's about the Bush administration's post-September 11 doctrine to use U.S. military power to achieve national security objectives. On September 20, 2001, Bush adamantly declared: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." Bush's subsequent national security strategy articulated the aggressive position of preemptive military action to eliminate potential threats. The United States is now committed to use its superior military force to shape the world in America's interests. What scares France and Germany is that Bush means it. Iraq is merely a symptom of this new disposition, a war the U.S. chooses to wage on its own terms.
What the French, Germans, and others fear most is the massive concentration of international power in and around a Bush-led United States. It's not the power capability that has produced the transatlantic rift; it's the fear that America's power is now unchecked and unmitigated by international institutions and norms. It's the fear that the U.S. can go to war without them.
What is a country to do in the face of perceived American aggressiveness? Any student of realpolitik would have the immediate answer--resist and try to construct an alternative balance of power. The intellectual anchors of the Bush administration's national security policy--Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz--are well-schooled in realist theories of international politics. Each was a distinguished professor of international relations before returning to government, ardent advocates of a realist approach to world politics, and both have sought to bring realism's appreciation for the use of power to Bush's foreign policy. And they have successfully done so.
Should these arch-realists be surprised by the French response? Not at all. The U.S. allies most opposed to the war in Iraq are opposed to the unilateral and unconstrained application of U.S. power. They fear that the U.S. will go into Iraq with out them. This is why they oppose the Bush administration's plans for war in Iraq.
In the end, it is likely that the French, Germans, and Russians will bite their tongue and swallow the bitter pill of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. A second UN resolution will keep them involved and preserve their diminishing voice in maintaining international order. But it is a pill they won't swallow easily, and the Bush administration must beware of the growing international apprehension at the vast power of the United States. It is this type of resentment that could produce a significant international trend toward anti-U.S. balancing, through alliances and nuclear weapons proliferation. Iraq remains a red herring. The real drama is the shape of Bush's new world order, one with the U.S. squarely on top.
(Peter Howard <phoward@american.edu>is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Residence, School of International Service, American University and writes for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
WHEN THE WHERE CONVEYS MORE THAN THE WORDS
By Jim Lobe
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.presentdanger.org/commentary/2003/0302neocon.html .)
If Secretary of State Colin Powell, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the U.S. public, and other moderates ever had any doubts about the extent to which the most hard-line hawks have captured U.S. foreign policy, President George W. Bush's Wednesday night address on democratizing Iraq and the Arab Middle East should have dispelled them.
While Bush's words did not go much beyond what lesser officials have been saying for several months, where he said them--the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)--spoke volumes about the trajectory of his views. More than any other think tank in Washington, AEI and its associates, led by Defense Policy Board chairman Richard Perle, have acted as the public vanguard of the most unilateralist and hawkish views adopted by the Bush administration since its inception, and particularly since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.
With long-standing and unusually close ties to the hawks clustered around Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, Perle and other AEI neoconservatives have led the charge in the media and Washington policy circles toward war with Iraq and toward aligning the administration's overall Mideast policy with that of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Working with William Kristol, the chairman of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which is also housed in AEI's building in downtown Washington, Perle and fellow AEI "scholars" Michael Ledeen, Tom Donnelly, Marc Reuel Gerecht, and Joshua Muravchik, among others, have also repeatedly assailed administration "realists" led by Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, and CIA and State Department experts who have argued that the administration's plans for "transforming" the Middle East without pressing Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians risks destabilizing the entire region and strengthening the appeal of Osama bin Laden and other radical Islamists.
"The fact that Bush would choose AEI, of all audiences, to talk to about his vision for a democratic Iraq and peaceful Middle East, has to be profoundly demoralizing to Powell," noted one congressional aide whose boss has supported Powell's efforts to keep the hawks in check.
Echoing more of the neocon rhetoric that has come to the fore in recent months as a major justification for war against Iraq, Bush insisted that there was no reason that Iraqis and other Arabs should not enjoy the blessings of freedom and democracy like everyone else. "There was a time when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong," he said. "Some say the same of Iraq today. They are mistaken The nation of Iraq is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom."
"A new regime in Iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region," he went on, echoing the democratic domino theory that Anthony Cordesman of the conservative Center for Strategic and International Studies--a prominent realist analyst close to the State Department and the CIA--has stated "crosses the line between neoconservative and neo-crazy."
(Jim Lobe <jlobe@starpower.net> is a political analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)
TURKEY: NEW EUROPE OR OLD?
By Michelle Ciarrocca
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0302turkey.html .)
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld hit a nerve last month when he dismissed French and German opposition to the U.S. rushing to war in Iraq, saying bluntly to reporters, "You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't." He added: "I think that's old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east."
For Turkey, an old member of NATO and a key ally in the first Gulf War, the U.S. is offering to help Turkey become part of the "New Europe" in return for its cooperation if U.S. forces invade Iraq.
The U.S. has discussed an overall aid package that could include up to $15 billion in aid to offset the damage a war in the region could have on Turkey's fragile economy, but the details are still being worked out. The U.S. has also offered Turkey generous terms to purchase new arms. Reuters reported that the Bush administration had approved $324 million in U.S. Export-Import Bank credits for Turkey to purchase eight Seahawks and six Black Hawk helicopters.
Recalling the price Turkey had to pay for the first Gulf War and its aftermath, which is estimated to range from $40 billion to $100 billion in lost trade over the past decade, plus a flood of Kurdish refugees, Turkey is hesitant to support another war on its border. Turkey currently estimates that its financial losses in another Gulf War would be about $28 billion. Turkey is also in the midst of a severe recession. In the past year more than two million jobs have been lost and the economy shrank by 9.4% in 2002.
Beyond the economic impact a war in Iraq would have on Turkey, of greater concern to Ankara is the possibility that the war could result in the creation of an independent Kurdish state and re-ignite separatist movements within its own Kurdish population. To ensure that doesn't happen, Turkey wants to deploy thousands of its own troops into northern Iraq and obtain U.S. assurances that it will block the formation of a Kurdish state, a position accepted by the Bush administration in an agreement signed on February 27th. Turkey also seeks to keep the oil fields near Kirkuk and Mosul in northern Iraq out of Kurdish hands.
With all of these issues in mind, Turkey hosted a meeting of regional neighbors in January to discuss the situation in Iraq, attended by foreign ministers from Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Egypt. At the end of the conference, the six nations issued a joint declaration urging Iraq to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors. Commenting on the declaration Syria's foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa said, "the open message and the hidden message is peace, and no war."
Just as the first Bush administration used generous packages of military aid, arms transfers, and loans to persuade nations in the region to join the anti-Iraq coalition, the current administration is providing similar incentives. But despite U.S. military and economic offerings, Ankara has maintained it will await a UN decision before deciding whether or not to support U.S. military action. Bulent Arinc, the speaker of the parliament, said, "it would be wrong for the government to send a request to parliament when the conditions for international legitimacy have not been met." There is also strong public opposition to a war in Iraq, with polls showing that 9 out of 10 Turks are against Turkey's participation in the war, and there have been daily anti-war demonstrations.
The combination of popular opposition to the war, economic uncertainty, and the long-standing desire to suppress demands for Kurdish self-determination (which a post-war Iraq would almost certainly accelerate), are mixed with political divisions between the ruling Justice and Development Party (an Islamist party) and the secular-dominated military. All of these factors have led the ruling party to delay the vote on the deployment of U.S. troops on its soil. Despite Rumsfeld's endorsement, the Turkish face of "New Europe" faces some old challenges.
(Michelle Ciarrocca <CiarrM01@newschool.edu> is a research associate at the Arms Trade Resource Center, a project of the World Policy Institute. She writes regularly for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
II. LETTERS
Thank you for this piece. I found it lucidly written and well-argued. It has allowed me to articulate more fully my own sense of a disconnection between administration policy and administration rhetoric.
- Thomas P. Joyner <tomjoyner@cfl.rr.com>
This was an excellent review of the 2003 State of the Union Address regarding foreign policy. It was of course particularly strong regarding the current administration's attitudes and intentions regarding Iraq. I only wish a way could have been found to compare Bush's "Preemptive Strike" philosophy to that of Imperial Japan in the early 1940s. Bush has now publicly concluded that America can justly inflict Pearl Harbors of its choosing on anyone it sees as a present or future threat. If I were a Japanese, I would have to see much irony in this, as Japan has been condemned for this way of having done things for over 60 years, and yet now the American President is taking the strategy of the Imperial Japanese (and Nazis, of course) for his own.
- Mark Sawyer <msawteach@hotmail.com>
Re: Balkans Overview: Need for a Regional Solution
After reading some of your good material about the U.S./Iraq war situation I decided to look further to decide whether and how much to support you. I found this article very disappointing. It almost completely glosses over the negative role the U.S. played in encouraging the breakup of Yugoslavia. It is essentially the same mushy, incomplete picture we get from the mainstream media, with a few details added.
- John M. Morgan <jmrpress@1st.net>
Thank you for publishing this analysis. Seminal.
- Bill Ritchie <billalb@aol.com>
I wondered why you did not include the United States in your comment about Russia having enough nuclear weapons to destroy the earth 4 times over. We had those weapons too--in fact, we started the whole thing with Hiroshima. What made us think that other countries would not want to develop the same weapons (as a deterrent of course). Throughout history a new weapon of what always seemed like mass destruction has always been envied and reproduced by other peoples. Bush also never mentions the weapons of mass destruction currently massed on the border of Iraq. Nor does he acknowledge our vast arsenal of many kinds of weapons. Seems as if the UN would be going after us instead of Iraq.
- Lynn Anderson <adlynnja@msn.com>
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