The Progressive Response
Volume 7, Number 15
May 19, 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
WILL INTERNATIONAL LAW SHAPE THE OCCUPATION, OR THE OCCUPATION SHAPE INTERNATIONAL LAW?
By Ian Williams
PENTAGON'S "FOOTPRINT" GROWING IN AFRICA
By Jim Lobe
BOMBINGS BRING U.S. 'EXECUTIVE MERCENARIES' INTO THE LIGHT
By William D. Hartung
NAFTA MINUS
By Laura Carlsen
II. Letters and Comments
A CHINA THREAT? And RESPONSE BY CONN HALLINAN
A SHORT LIFE FOR PAX AMERICANA?
I. Updates and Out-takes
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WILL INTERNATIONAL LAW SHAPE THE OCCUPATION, OR THE OCCUPATION SHAPE INTERNATIONAL LAW?
By Ian Williams
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary and available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305intllaw.html .)
The problem with trying to be reasonable with the neoconservative hawks in the Bush administration is that all too often they take it as surrender. The announcement by key antiwar members of the UN Security Council that they would consider lifting sanctions on Iraq has been taken as total agreement with the U.S. agenda. It is clearly not.
The draft resolution put forward by the U.S. administration, drafted by the Pentagon with some cosmetic input from the State Department and the British, makes few if any concessions to legality or respect for the UN Charter and the Security Council. At its core is the entirely expedient wish to get the occupation authorities' hands on the oil revenues. It could be argued that the only reason the Pentagon is bothering with the United Nations at all is its own surprising discovery that no one will buy Iraqi oil on the world market without a UN resolution authorizing sales.
Once the decision was taken to go for a UN resolution, the British input, was, at least in the British view, highly significant in making it more acceptable to other members of the Security Council and to the United Nations Secretariat. Perhaps the most telling comment on the resolution was the immediate resignation of British overseas development minister Clare Short because of the lack of the vital role for the UN that had been promised by Bush to Blair, and by Blair to her.
What the British and the State Department did get were some small cosmetic concessions. The Allies accepted that they were indeed occupying powers in international law, even though American diplomats had chastised Kofi Annan for prematurely suggesting so only last month. The contracts with major suppliers under the Oil For Food program would be honored, which it was hoped would buy off the French and Russians on the assumption that their interests were totally venal. And the Secretary General would be asked to nominate a Special Coordinator, whose job would be to coordinate with "the Authority," as the occupation regime is known.
The key part for the White House, apart from an end to all sanctions except those on weapons, is undoubtedly paragraph 21, which shows the depth of Pentagon shock at the UN's power. The full authority of the Security Council, under Chapter VII, would make Iraqi oil sold by the new regime "immune from judicial, administrative, arbitration or any other proceedings, (including any prejudgment or postjudgment attachment, garnishment, or execution or other action to satisfy a judgment) arising in relation to claims, of whatever kind and whenever accrued, against Iraq or any instrumentality or agents thereof, (or the Authority, or its participating states or their instrumentalities or agents). This awesome American legalese may be cynically translated, as the Senator once said about Panama, "We stole it fair and square," It's ours!
(Ian Williams <uswarreport@igc.org> contributes frequently to Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) on UN and international affairs.)
PENTAGON'S "FOOTPRINT" GROWING IN AFRICA
By Jim Lobe
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary and available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305africa.html .)
Africa appears to be getting more attention from the Pentagon as the U.S. military makes major geostrategic shifts in its global deployments. While the Defense Department has made no formal announcements about U.S. plans to acquire base rights on the African mainland, other moves suggest that interest toward that end is growing.
On May 8, the Pentagon announced that a U.S. counter-terrorism warship, the USS Mt. Whitney, is returning home from its tour off the coast of the Horn of Africa, but not before leaving its command personnel and equipment at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti, which has acted as the main U.S. base for counter-terrorist activities off-shore and in the region since after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The Mt. Whitney's departure means that Camp Lemonier will now be home to 1,800 U.S. troops, sailors, fliers, and civilian personnel at a highly strategic point sandwiched between Ethiopia and Somalia and just across the Red Sea from Yemen.
The announcement followed little-noticed remarks last week by NATO Supreme Commander, U.S. General James Jones, that Washington plans to boost its troop presence in West Africa, a troubled region that now provides more than 15% of all U.S. oil imports, a percentage slated to rise to 25% within 12 years. "The carrier battle groups of the future and the expeditionary strike groups of the future may not spend six months in the Med[iterranean Sea], but I'll bet they'll spend half the time going down the west coast of Africa," Jones told a Defense Writers Group breakfast in late April. While he did not discuss the vast reserves of West African oil off-shore, Jones said the region included "large, ungoverned areas ... that are clearly the new routes of narco-trafficking, terrorists' training, and hotbeds of instability," which Washington and its NATO partners will have to address.
Both moves "capture exactly what the main interests of the administration in Africa are at the moment," according to Daniel Volman, director of the African Security Research Project. "They're very concerned about terrorism and Islamic fundamentalists in East Africa and the Horn, and they're clearly very interested in access to African oil." The new developments also come amid reports of plans for major changes in U.S. deployments around Eurasia in the wake of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and President George W. Bush's administration's adoption of a far more ambitious global military strategy centered on preventing the rise of any possible regional rival in strategic parts of the Eurasian landmass.
The purpose of the new deployments is both to reduce the U.S. military "footprint" in countries where the U.S. military presence has become a political burden for host governments, and to reposition U.S. forces globally for more rapid deployment to likely trouble spots, especially Central Asia, the Gulf, and East Asia. The Pentagon is particularly interested in getting access to facilities throughout the region where it can pre-position weapons and supplies, rather than having to rely on their transport from more distant bases.
(Jim Lobe <jlobe@starpower.net> is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)
BOMBINGS BRING U.S. 'EXECUTIVE MERCENARIES' INTO THE LIGHT
By William D. Hartung
(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary and available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305vinnell.html .)
You had probably never heard of the Vinnell Corp. before the brutal bombing that killed at least nine of its employees in Saudi Arabia this week, but you should have.
This is the second time Vinnell's Saudi operations have been targeted. The first attack, in November 1995, hit the headquarters of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, or SANG, and a nearby office complex that housed Vinnell employees. Though both attacks were decried by U.S. officials as senseless violence, they actually had a chillingly clear, brutal logic.
Vinnell's job in Saudi Arabia is to train the national guard, which Jane's Defense Weekly has described as "a kind of Praetorian Guard for the House of Saud, the royal family's defense of last resort against internal opposition." That is why company employees were targeted in 1995 and again last week. The story of how an obscure American firm ended up becoming an integral part of the Saudi monarchy's handpicked internal security force is a case study in how unaccountable private companies have become a central tool of U.S. foreign policy.
Vinnell was founded in 1931 as a small Los Angeles-area construction firm. According to a 1975 profile of the company in the New York Times, the firm's early growth was tied to the building of the LA freeway system, work on the Grand Coulee Dam, and the construction of Dodger Stadium.
Also in 1975, the company received a $77-million contract to train the Saudi National Guard. The deal raised eyebrows at the time both among Senate hawks like Henry Jackson and John C. Stennis--who questioned the propriety of a private company undertaking such a sensitive military training mission--and reformers like then-Wisconsin Rep. Les Aspin, who found evidence suggesting Vinnell had used a middleman to bribe Saudi officials for the contract. When Peter Arnett, then an Associated Press reporter, asked one of Vinnell's "men in Riyadh" whether he viewed himself as a mercenary he was told: "[W]e are not pulling the triggers. We train people to pull the triggers. Perhaps that makes us executive mercenaries."
The question now is what to do about companies like Vinnell, which is currently a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Mission Systems, and which received a new $831-million, five-year contract in 1998.
Curbing the privatization of our foreign policy would be good for our democracy, good for America's global reputation, and good for the employees of companies like Vinnell, who have all too often been put in harm's way.
(William D. Hartung is a senior research fellow at the World Policy Institute and a contributor to the forthcoming Power Trip: Unilateralism and Global Strategy after September 11 (Seven Stories Press). He serves on the Advisory Committee for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). This commentary first appeared in the May 16, 2003 edition of the Los Angeles Times.)
(Editor's Note: This excerpt of an analysis of Mexican President Vicente Fox's new NAFTA-plus proposal comes courtesy of the Interhemispheric Resource Center's Americas program and is available in full online at http://www.americaspolicy.org/columns/amprog/2003/0305nafta.html .)
In his first public appearance after six weeks of convalescence, Mexico's President Vicente Fox grandiosely announced that the current phase of NAFTA is over, and that Mexico, the U.S., and Canada will embark in June on negotiations toward a "new phase of NAFTA." What's been dubbed as the "NAFTA Plus" would include, according to Fox, "more development, more trade, and more integration."
The declaration caused immediate confusion among the other signatories of the agreement, and even within the Fox cabinet. Canadian officials stated to the Mexican press, "We don't know what he's referring to" and reported they have asked the Mexican government for clarification. The meeting scheduled for June actually addresses private-sector involvement in development, with Canada participating as an observer, and has no such grand plan on its agenda. Moreover, both the U.S. and Canada have reiterated their position not to renegotiate any part of NAFTA and neither has shown enthusiasm for Fox's "NAFTA Plus" agenda.
In proposing a NAFTA Plus, Fox seems to naively assume that having conceded to a grossly inequitable free trade agreement with its northern neighbors Mexico is now "in the club" and can expect privileged treatment on other issues. This assumption has not been borne out, as evidenced by the stalled immigration talks, continued non-tariff barriers to Mexican products, and the massive dumping of subsidized U.S. goods on the Mexican market. Clearly, Washington expects its trade partners to acquiesce to U.S. interests, having recently admonished Canada and Mexico for not supporting the war in Iraq.
A second misconception of the NAFTA Plus proposal is that regional trade agreements are the best place to resolve nontrade issues between neighboring nations. Well-intentioned groups seeking to address the U.S.-Mexico migration crisis have suggested that by conceiving of labor immigration in terms of economic integration the U.S. might take it more seriously. But there is something chilling about reframing the human tragedy on the border in terms of "rationalizing labor flows." Urgent immigration reform in the United States is fundamentally a matter of human decency between neighbors rather than a factor in economic integration.
Instead of a NAFTA Plus, what Mexico needs is a NAFTA Minus. Such a renegotiation would recognize the need for the country to establish policies oriented toward national development, even when those called for temporary protective measures. It would acknowledge asymmetries and dispense with the illusion that free trade will automatically close development gaps and elevate public welfare. It would remove decisions on crucial issues--such as migration and natural resource use--from macroeconomic models and place them in the context of building a strong and sovereign nation.
(Laura Carlsen <laura@irc-online.org> is a Mexico-based associate of the Americas Program of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (online at www.irc-online.org).)
II. Letters and Comments
Re: The U.S. and Post-War Iraq
Since the U.S. went into Iraq for the purpose of establishing and benefiting certain American corporations, what will induce the U.S. to change so Iraq gets a fair deal? I doubt the U.S. will back down even if the U.S. ends up having to use force in Iraq against the people it was saying it had liberated, but re-naming them as "terrorist factions" to get its (U.S.) way. Many of us know what's right, but how to get it is the question.
A major problem is the U.S. public seems to be un- or ill-informed. I believe there is a major communication breakdown in the U.S. For example, with terrorism at a 30-year LOW, Americans still believe "the enemy is at our gates."
- Susan Genelin <genelinsm@aol.com>
Re: U.S. and India--A Dangerous Alliance
I would like to thank you, for the article clarified some of my thoughts on the United States-Chinese relationship. However, what I do not understand is that if China is such a threat to American interests, then why do many American corporations continue to build industrial parks in China? It seems that if the threat needs to be defused then why not pull the economic plug and disable the Chinese economy?
- Joseph Lynn <jrl4552@hotmail.com>
RESPONSE BY CONN HALLINAN
Dear Joseph: It is a good question and it reflects how complex international relations have become. First, while Americans are indeed investing in China, by international standards it is nickel and dime stuff. Taiwan and Japan are the major investors. Second, Americans see China as a huge potential market, the biggest in the world. Personal income is twice that of India (and this seems to be accelerating, although it is also quite uneven. Many rural areas in China are poorer than they were 20 years ago). The Americans want China as a market, but not as competition, in either the economic or political realm. Asia is our largest market, and has been for many decades. The U.S. Navy calls the Pacific the "American lake." The U.S. wants the Chinese economy to be large enough to purchase American goods, and for Chinese labor to be cheap enough to guarantee enormous profits for American firms. But the Americans don't want the Chinese to replace them, or even give us a run for our money in Asia or elsewhere in the world. Hence the seeming contradiction: building industrial parks and trying to contain China.
I would suggest that all this is a very bad idea. Unless the U.S. is willing to actually go to war with China (a hard thing to imagine because it could well involve nuclear weapons) it is unclear how it can really "contain" China. India simply can't afford to get into a major arms race (China spends about $37 billion a year on arms, India $14), and it is not at all clear that the U.S. economy can handle a $400 billion military budget over the long haul either. What we should be doing is signing a peace agreement with North Korea, pulling our troops out of Japan and the Philippines, and reactivating all the international arms agreements we have tanked over the past two years. India is going to find that it has signed a pact with the devil. Those always come out badly.
Re: Pax Romana versus Pax Americana
Mr. Bello appears to have written an extremely cogent and well thought out article. My own assessment of the near-term future of Pax Bush is that the invasion of Iraq signaled a disastrous change in the course of American history, leading eventually to most if not all of the things Mr. Bello warns us about.
There are a few other elements in the equation that need to be noted. One is the long-term decline in oil production, which promises to wreak havoc on the economy in the coming decades. While the Bush strategy was designed in part to gain control over dwindling oil resources, it neither promotes Middle Eastern democracy or stability, but neither. Upgrading and modernizing Iraq's oil reserves may apply a short-term panacea, but it may also allow for continued increases in consumption of a non-renewable resource.
Obviously, the debt, tax, and expenditure picture for the United States government is another complicating factor for U.S. hegemony. If one reads Giovanni Arrighi's seminal work, The Long Twentieth Century, one will find ample historical evidence that the current policies and practices of Bush-onomics have large congruencies to other empires, such as the British and Spanish, in their latest decadent phases. The overreliance on military expenditures, huge debt levels, and overconcentrations of wealth mirror other empires on the threshold of decline.
The problem of globalization and interconnectedness of economy aggravate the problems that America will face in the coming years. An analogy not dissimilar to cancer can be made to our body politic.
Thank you for publishing Mr. Bello's insightful article.
- Karl Eysenbach <karenykarl@aol.com>
A SHORT LIFE FOR PAX AMERICANA?
Re: Pax Romana versus Pax Americana
There have been other "Empires" between the Roman and the new American, and we can learn from them. I was born when "the sun never sets on the Union Jack" in an ex-British Colony, then an independent British "Dominion." Through older eyes, I see parallels between British attitudes of those times and American attitudes today.
One thing that we see as a serious danger to the world, given the current American obsessions with "irresistible force" and "free market," is the anachronism of the not-readily-accountable U.S. Presidency. Modeled as a replacement for King George the Third of Great Britain, the President, his unelected "advisers," and behind-the-scene backers, seem basically able to do whatever they like.
Most democracies in the world are parliamentary systems, where the real power is in the elected legislature, which is accountable to the public, and thus pays close attention to public opinion. The President (or Monarch or, in our case, Governor General) is in a more ceremonial or overseeing role.
(Previously isolationist) Americans are not well informed about the world and many seem to believe that the U.S. has the "only true democracy." This makes change unlikely, so the World will have to duck for cover.
For the sake of the Planet and its lifeforms, may Pax Americana (which is unlikely to be peaceful) have a short life!
- Kathleen Guy, Aotearoa-New Zealand, <clifton@inet.net.nz>
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