The Progressive Response

Volume 7, Number 17
May 31, 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>.

We Count on Your Support!

Editor: John Gershman (IRC)

I. Updates and Out-Takes

GLOBAL SHOWDOWN IN EVIAN
By Mark Engler

MISSILE DEFENSE
By Michelle Ciarrocca

IS TEHRAN BACK IN THE CROSSHAIRS OF THE NEOCON CRUSADE?
By Jim Lobe

RESOLUTION 1483: LEGALIZING AN OCCUPATION
By Ian Williams

I. Updates and Out-takes

GLOBAL SHOWDOWN IN EVIAN
By Mark Engler

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305evian.html .)

Evian, France--the world capital of designer water--may be a fitting city to host the heads of state from the eight most powerful industrial nations from June 1-3. But the image of wealthy leaders sipping "l'original" gourmet H20 will hardly help the G-8, as the exclusive group is known, to defend itself against charges of being an elitist and undemocratic forum.

Given that many in this group of countries opposed the invasion of Iraq, commentators will be closely watching how tensions between the U.S. and "Old Europe" evolve during President Bush's trip to France. However, the real clash in international vision will be taking place outside the meeting halls, on the streets.

Debt and arms control, two important issues on the Evian meeting's agenda, show that those who gather to protest are not only voicing important criticisms about the illegitimacy of the meeting, but are also proposing vital solutions to international problems.

Protesters' arguments about arms and debt illustrate a larger criticism of the G-8. Having powerful global elites get together to shape the current world order may be realpolitik, but it's not democracy. Nor are the institutions that the G-8 has championed, like the World Trade Organization and the IMF, representative bodies of global governance.

If the goal is freedom, or making the world a safer place, then rule by the rich will never prevail. Until the official venues are reconstituted to allow the voices of the world to speak, protests outside will be needed to call for a real multilateralism.

(Mark Engler is a commentator for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and has previously worked with the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress in San José, Costa Rica. He can be reached via the web site <www.DemocracyUprising.com>. Research assistance for this article was provided by Katie Griffiths.)

MISSILE DEFENSE
By Michelle Ciarrocca

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new policy brief available in full at http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol8/v8n01missile.html . Please also see a new commentary by the same author at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305nuke.html .)

With public attention focused on Iraq, the Bush administration's prized missile defense system has been far from the limelight. But make no mistake, it's still chugging along. Many things have changed since the September 11th attacks, but the current administration's stubborn determination to deploy some kind of missile defense system--whether it works or not--has not wavered. During President Bush's State of the Union address in January 2003, he said, "This year, for the first time, we are beginning to field a defense to protect this nation against ballistic missiles." However, the truth is, this won't be the first time.

Under President Nixon, the Safeguard system was developed and eventually deployed. That system, using nuclear-tipped interceptors, became fully operational on October 1, 1975. It was actually Donald Rumsfeld who pulled the plug on the system four months later during his first stint as defense secretary. Rumsfeld announced that the Safeguard system was being shut down, because it was too costly while offering only meager capability. Today, Rumsfeld is of a different mindset. Acknowledging that the system will only be able to deal with a relatively small number of incoming ballistic missiles, he now calls it "better than nothing."

In March 1983, President Reagan introduced his Strategic Defense Initiative--Star Wars--as a way to render nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete." Since that time the U.S. has spent more than $90 billion (over $143 billion since the early 1960s) attempting to develop various approaches to missile defense. Though the current administration has scaled back Reagan's vision of a multitiered defensive shield fending off thousands of Soviet missiles, its broad description of the program's goals is just as ambitious. President Bush has pledged to install a system capable of defending "our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas" from ballistic missile attack.

The Bush administration has been increasing its support for missile defense while dismantling the international arms control regime both by withdrawing from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and by putting forth a new nuclear war fighting doctrine. Whereas Ronald Reagan left office saying that a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought, two decades later, the word coming from the Bush administration is that nuclear weapons are here to stay. Bush's "new idea" is that the U.S. should develop flexible nuclear weapons that can be employed in a variety of circumstances from busting Saddam Hussein's underground bunkers to bailing out U.S. forces in a conventional conflict. Following the recommendations from the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the declared role of U.S. nuclear weapons could change from a tool of deterrence and a weapon of last resort to a central, usable component of the U.S. antiterror arsenal.

(Michelle Ciarrocca <CiarrM01@newschool.edu> is a research associate for the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center at the New School for Social Research and a regular contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)

IS TEHRAN BACK IN THE CROSSHAIRS OF THE NEOCON CRUSADE?
By Jim Lobe

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305iran.html .)

Reports that top officials in the administration of President George W. Bush met Tuesday, May 27th to discuss U.S. policy toward Iran, including possible efforts to overthrow its government, mark a major advance in what has been an 18-month-old campaign by neoconservatives in and out of the administration. Overshadowed until last month by their much louder drum-beating for war against Iraq, the neocons' efforts to now focus U.S. attention on "regime change" in Iran has become much more intense since early May and has already borne substantial fruit.

A high-level, albeit unofficial, dialogue between both countries over Iraq, Afghanistan, and other issues of mutual interest was abruptly broken off by Washington ten days ago amid charges by senior Pentagon officials that al Qaeda agents based in Iran had been involved in terrorist attacks against U.S. and foreign targets in Saudi Arabia May 12th. Teheran strongly denied the charge.

Now, according to reports in the Washington Post and the New York Times, the administration is considering permanently cutting off the dialogue, which involved the administration's senior envoy for both Iraq and Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, and adopting a far more confrontational stance vis-à-vis Teheran that could include covert efforts to destabilize the government.

Pentagon hawks, particularly Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith, who have long been closely associated with neoconservatives outside the administration centered at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), reportedly favor using the heavily armed, Iraq-based Iranian rebel group, the Mujahadin-e Khalq (MEK), which surrendered to U.S. forces in April, as the core of a possible opposition military force.

(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.)

RESOLUTION 1483: LEGALIZING AN OCCUPATION
By Ian Williams

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305unres.html .)

If you assume that the United States is unstoppable, then resolution 1483 makes a certain kind of sense in that it oozes oleaginously into the hole that the Iraq invasion made in the UN Charter, and gives it at least the surface appearance of integrity. But by bowing down so quickly, the Security Council actually relinquished one of its last opportunities to get serious concessions.

Instead, it can safely be said the U.S. got everything it wanted out of 1483, which lifts sanctions and effectively allows the U.S. to spend the oil revenue. On May 22, Security Council members legalized the results of an invasion that most of them had considered illegal. In effect, the UN recognized that the U.S. stole Iraq fair and square and can do with it what it wants.

As Kofi Annan said some years ago about dealing with Iraq, diplomacy backed by the credible threat of force goes a long way. And as Teddy Roosevelt said, speaking softly and carrying a big stick can help as well. Washington's diplomatic victory with resolution 1483 reaffirmed the applicability of these principles.

In looking at developing events like these, sometimes the sound of silence is tremendously important. Unusually for this administration, there has been a noticeable lack of the predictable, rabid barking against the French, Germans, Russians, and the UN from the usual suspects around the Pentagon. While that passes for speaking softly, the credible threat of force--the big stick--can be taken as read after recent events.

(Ian Williams <uswarreport@igc.org> contributes frequently to Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org) on UN and international affairs.)

II. Discussion Paper series on Strategic Choices Facing the Peace Movement

(Editor's Note: Foreign Policy in Focus is committed to promoting strategic dialogues within the peace movement--and other citizen movements--on how to engage in the current geopolitical context. The next three discussion papers, excerpted below, are the first in a series of papers intended to provoke and promote such discussion. Your feedback is welcome, including proposals for future discussion papers. Please send all feedback to <john@irc-online.org>.)

TERMINATING THE BUSH JUGGERNAUT
By Jeremy Brecher

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a discussion paper available in full at http://www.fpif.org/papers/juggernaut/index.html . See also the commentary by the same author at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0305movement.html .)

The Bush administration is presenting itself to the world as a juggernaut--a "massive inexorable force that advances irresistibly, crushing whatever is in its path." Bush's National Security Strategy envisions its "war against terrorism" as "a global enterprise of uncertain duration." It says the U.S. will act against "emerging threats before they are fully formed." The Bush administration envisions the coming decades as a continuation of recent U.S. demands, threats, and wars. It intends to continue the aggressive behavior already illustrated by war on Afghanistan and Iraq, armed intervention in the Philippines and Columbia, and threats against Syria, Iran, and North Korea. The Bush administration and its successors are likely to continue this juggernaut until they are made to stop.

This piece explores how Bush's "tenacious new adversary" can most effectively terminate his juggernaut. It starts by looking at the Bush administration's strengths and weaknesses and the ways it might be stopped or removed. Then it looks at the various forces around the world and in the U.S. that might want to contribute to doing so--the elements of the "other superpower." Finally it reviews how these forces might utilize the Bush team's weaknesses to force an end to its policies.

No single force is well positioned to halt the Bush juggernaut. An effective strategy will therefore require cooperation among different forces that have different views and interests. Such "collective security" has been necessary in the past, and it is necessary now, to halt attempts at global domination.

If defined as a struggle of nation against nation--the U.S. against Iraq or North Korea or France, for example--the Bush program is likely to prevail. If defined as a struggle of Bush and his advisers against global values, norms, and laws backed by the world's people, it can be defeated.

The first purpose of this piece is to help frame a dialogue on strategy among the many people and forces worldwide that have an interest in or the capacity to contribute to halting the Bush juggernaut. These proposals surely have flaws and can be improved upon by others. In any case they will soon need revision to meet a rapidly changing situation. This piece presents a strategic framework in relation to which such criticism and revision can proceed.

Part of the power of the Bush juggernaut is the image of invincibility it claims and projects. A second purpose of this piece, therefore, is to counter the hopelessness that the image induces by showing that there is at least one realistic strategy by which the "other superpower" can foil Bush's intentions. If other people can come up with a superior strategy, all the better.

The Bush juggernaut presents a clear and present danger to the people of the world and even to the health of our planet. But it is far from the world's only problem. This piece seeks strategies to terminate the Bush juggernaut that don't just restore the status quo but instead open the way for further progress toward global peace and justice.

(Jeremy Brecher is a historian and the author of 12 books including Strike! and Globalization from Below and a regular contributor to Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). The author thanks all those who have commented on various drafts of this paper, and especially John Humphries.)

GOING GLOBAL: BUILDING A MOVEMENT AGAINST EMPIRE
By Phyllis Bennis

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new discussion paper available in full online at http://www.fpif.org/papers/justice2003.html .)

As the Bush administration strengthens its military victory and consolidates its occupation of Iraq, it continues its trajectory toward international expansion of power and global reach. The arrogance of its triumphalism, ignoring civilian carnage and dismissing the destruction of the ancient cities because, in Rumsfeld's words, "free people have the right to do bad things and commit crimes," reflects the hubris of ancient empires. Shakespeare's "insolence of office" could well describe the contempt with which the Pentagon warriors look down on the peoples of the world.

Claiming the right of preemptive war would not, by itself, be proof of empire. Even launching a war more accurately defined as an aggressive preventive war (since a preemptive attack implies an imminent threat) does not by itself represent such proof. But the eagerness of Washington's powerful to launch this war, without United Nations authorization and with such reckless disregard for the consequences, with the expressed aim of toppling the government of an independent country, albeit one mortally wounded from war and twelve years of murderous sanctions, may represent just such proof. Certainly one can argue, as Paul Schroeder does, that there is a critical distinction between hegemony and empire. (The History News Network, Center for History and the New Media, George Mason University, February 3, 2003.) "Hegemony," he writes, "means clear, acknowledged leadership and dominant influence by one unit within a community of units not under a single authority. A hegemon is first among equals; an imperial power rules over subordinates. A hegemonic power is the one without whom no final decision can be reached within a given system; its responsibility is essentially managerial, to see that a decision is reached. An imperial power rules the system, imposes its decision when it wishes."

We are engaged now in building a global movement for peace and justice in a new kind of world--and we need a new global strategy. It will take some time for a unifying agenda for the "global peace and justice movement" to emerge. One feature will have to include universal disarmament, focusing first on the largest nuclear/military powers, including America. Another will be the focus on economic justice as a linchpin of social mobilization. Other issues should include the primacy of internationalism and the centrality of the United Nations in all our work. That means claiming the UN as our own, as part of the global mobilization for peace, and working to empower the UN as the legitimate replacement for the United States empire we seek to disempower. Even now, in Iraq, we must emphasize the need for the UN, not the Pentagon, to take charge of not only the humanitarian crisis but also the move to create a new government.

Phyllis Bennis <pbennis@compuserve.com> is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and writes regularly for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org). This was prepared for the Transnational Institute's Fellows' Meeting, held May 16 - 17, 2003 (online at www.tni.org) and is reprinted with permission.

STAYING SERIOUS: ANSWERS TO THE WARNIKS
By Wade L. Huntley

(Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new discussion paper available in full at http://www.fpif.org/papers/serious2003.html .)

On the eve of the war in Iraq, Pete Du Pont published an essay in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Getting Serious: Questions for the Peaceniks." Du Pont posed six "familiar" questions "we ought to be asking the peace protesters." Although Du Pont's tone is depreciatory and cynical, the challenge to peace advocacy that the questions convey merits serious response, especially in light of the neoconservative exultancy that the disposition of the Iraq war has elicited.

Presumably Du Pont was not addressing his questions to only pacifists or to all opponents of the war. However, the community of peace advocates is itself amorphous and kaleidoscopic. If I am indeed one of the "peaceniks" from whom Du Pont was seeking his answers, it is because I support the following convictions:

Peace is more than the absence of war. For example, Hobbes' famous concept of a "state of nature"--often used by modern realists to describe contemporary international relations--was not merely a condition of open warfare but rather a condition in which, even absent warfare, the fear of violent conflict dominates life. In this same vein, peace advocates seek not merely to end military conflict but to end the fear of militarized violence, whether it stems from interstate conflict, domestic lawlessness, or oppressive government. Note a key implication of this last point: no peace advocate would consider oppressive government a peace solution. Political freedom is a precondition of peace--this is one of the ways in which peace is more than the absence of war.
Peace is possible. Peace advocates contend that peace is a concrete, realizable aim, not a utopian chimera. And history demonstrates the reality of this position. We see progress toward peace in the global delegitimization and abolition of human slavery. We also see this progress in the birth and spread of liberal democratic governance in the modern age. Indeed, most peace advocates see democracy as a great principle, and they simply exhort polities calling themselves free and democratic live up to these claims in practice.
Each of us, as individuals, is morally bound to work to bring peace into our lives and our world, insofar as we are able. This moral motivation does not entail pacifism, but it does firmly reject the Clauswitzian formulation that war is merely "politics by other means."
Building genuine peace requires, among other things, holding agents of war accountable for their actions in both moral and practical terms.

(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).

III. Letters and Comments

EXCELLENT

Re: Bombings Bring U.S. 'Executive Mercenaries' Into the Light

Excellent. It amazes me that even though the "neocons" have been discussed in our ordinary newspapers and electronic media, some even saying what background philosophy they had, politicians in Britain and Australia keep acting as if the Bush foreign policy was about stopping extremist terrorism, and maybe oil. Any thought of cleaning up some of the injustices such as Palestine and Kashmir doesn't ever seem to cross their minds!

- John Massam <john.massam@multiline.com.au>

VERY IMPORTANT

Re: Foreign Policy In Focus website (www.fpif.org)

The information on this site its very important for the global women including a developing country like Bangladesh. Please let us know if we can contribute in sharing our country's information for this great effort. Thanks.

- Tajkera Khair <tajkhair15@hotmail.com>

IV. Announcements

ANNOUNCING POWER TRIP: U.S. UNILATERALISM AND GLOBAL STRATEGY AFTER SEPTEMBER 11

POWER TRIP: U.S. UNILATERALISM AND GLOBAL STRATEGY AFTER SEPTEMBER 11
The Foreign Policy in Focus staff is proud to announce the publication of Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism And Global Strategy After September 11 from Seven Stories Press. Edited by FPIF Advisory Committee member John Feffer, Power Trip is a concise dissection of the new U.S. unilateralism, the first book-length critique of this fundamental shift in U.S. foreign policy to consolidate and extend U.S. global control. Exploring the transformation of U.S. foreign policy begun by the Bush administration when it took office in 2001 and implemented with greater ease and heightened zeal after September 11, Power Trip introduces the cast of characters responsible for the new U.S. power trip and wrestles with the consequences of the new trends in U.S. foreign policy. Featuring contributions by Barbara Ehrenreich, William T. Hartung, Michael T. Klare, Jules Lobel, Ahmed Rashid, Michael Ratner, Stephen Zunes, Tom Barry, Martha Honey, John Gershman and others, Power Trip includes essays on:

the new military strategy of the Bush administration and its preoccupation with controlling
access to natural resources;
the "Axis of Evil" and other targets of the war on terrorism;
the cultural arm of the new unilateralism, from propaganda to Hollywood movies;
the consequences of international critical response to the new U.S. policies;
appropriate alternatives to current U.S. policies.

We would like to invite FPIF friends and supporters to two book parties, both of which will have some of the contributors in attendance:

Washington, DC - Tuesday, June 3, Choate Room, 1779 Massachusetts Avenue (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), 5:30 PM Reception, 6:00-8:00 PM Program

New York City - Wednesday, June 11, Swayduck Auditorium, New School University, 65 5th Avenue (between 13th and 14th Street), 6:00-8:00 PM (co-sponsored by The Nation)

Books are $14.95 plus $3 shipping and handling and are available three ways:

By mail:
Interhemispheric Resource Center
Department PTPR
PO Box 4506
Albuquerque, NM 87196-4506
Please make checks payable to the IRC

By phone:
Call IRC with your credit card information at (505) 388-0208

Online at http://www.fpif.org/advisers/feffer.powertrip.html.

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The Progressive Response

Table of Contents

I. Updates and Out-Takes

II. Discussion Paper series on Strategic Choices Facing the Peace Movement

III. Letters and Comments

IV. Announcements

I. Updates and Out-takes

II. Discussion Paper series on Strategic Choices Facing the Peace Movement

III. Letters and Comments

IV. Announcements

Subscribe to The Progressive Response!