The Progressive Response
Volume 8, Number 4
February 9, 2004
Editor: John Gershman, Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC)
| Foreign Policy In Focus | |
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) and co-director of FPIF. He can be contacted at <john@irc-online.org>.
Table of Contents
I. Updates and Out-Takes
AFRICA POLICY OUTLOOK 2004
By Salih Booker and Ann-Louise ColganERITREA/ETHIOPIA WAR LOOMS AS WASHINGTON WATCHES & WAITS
By Dan ConnellLIBYAN DISARMAMENT A POSITIVE STEP, BUT THREAT OF PROLIFERATION REMAINS
By Stephen ZunesBUSH AND BREMER BLINKED
By Ian WilliamsBUSH ADMINISTRATION FACES GROWING CHAOS IN IRAQ WHILE SOME PLAN EXPANSION OF WAR
By Jim Lobe
II. Letters and Comments
I. Updates and Out-Takes
AFRICA POLICY OUTLOOK 2004
By Salih Booker and Ann-Louise Colgan
( Editor's Note : Excerpted from a new policy report available in full at http://www.fpif.org/papers/2004africa.html .)
In 2004, despite the fact that two African-Americans occupy both of the major foreign policy posts in the U.S. government, Washington will not give Africa the attention it deserves and requires. The U.S.' Africa policy will continue to be characterized by a duplicity that has emerged as the principal hallmark of the Bush administration approach to the continent. On the one hand, Africa's priorities are being marginalized and undermined by a U.S. foreign policy preoccupied with other parts of the world. On the other hand, the Bush White House is callously manipulating Africa, claiming to champion the continent's needs with its compassionate conservative agenda.
In the past year, the Bush administration's foreign policy priorities have negatively impacted upon Africa, both directly and indirectly. The U.S. preoccupation with the “war on terrorism,” alleged weapons of mass destruction, and Washington's military misadventure in Iraq, has hurt Africa directly in economic and political terms. The White House has also turned Africa into geo-strategic real estate, defining the continent's value in terms of oil and access to military bases, and describing U.S.-Africa relations once more in a cold war era model.
More broadly, to the extent that U.S. actions undermine the very notion of multilateralism, they are directly at odds with Africa's interests. Africa's priorities--the fight against HIV/AIDS and poverty--are being ignored, as U.S. unilateralism threatens the principle of international cooperation.
At the same time, in the past year, the Bush administration has sought to place Africa at the center of its compassionate conservative agenda. Starting with the 2003 State of the Union promise on AIDS, and continuing with the President's first trip to Africa in July, this Administration has misled the people of the U.S., and the people of Africa. It claims to be taking action on African priorities, while in reality it is demonstrating the most negative leadership, masking broken promises and harmful policies with high-sounding rhetoric.
Even the few new initiatives announced by the President, on foreign aid and HIV/AIDS, are not only under-funded; they are fundamentally flawed in their approach. The Bush administration prefers to take a selective approach to Africa policy, choosing a few African countries as eligible for such initiatives, and thereby rewarding those whom the U.S. unilaterally deems “worthy.” This strategy risks neglecting those countries in most need of assistance. Moreover, it blocks the emergence of a more comprehensive and coherent response to Africa's challenges that are rooted in specific regional realities. Such an approach is essential to addressing crises such as HIV/AIDS and poverty.
These trends will continue to drive U.S. relations with Africa in the year ahead. They will shape both the priorities that emerge in the policies of the Bush administration, and the challenges faced by Africa's people, and by Africa advocates in this country. In this election year, it is clear that foreign policy will be a major issue in the public eye. It remains to be seen to what extent U.S. relations with Africa will feature in the debate, and whether a new approach to today's global challenges can emerge.
(Salih Booker is Executive Director, and Ann-Louise Colgan is Assistant Director for Policy Analysis & Communications, at Africa Action ( www.africaaction.org ). This report is published jointly with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org ).)
ERITREA/ETHIOPIA WAR LOOMS AS WASHINGTON WATCHES & WAITS
By Dan Connell
( Editor's Note : Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0401eritrea.html .)
The latest State Department call for progress in the stalled Ethiopia-Eritrea peace accord--issued this week and coming on the heels of similar expressions of concern by European diplomats last week--is welcome news for those fearing the renewal of war. But it doesn't go nearly far enough.
The absence of even the barest suggestion of consequences to either party for blocking the accord renders the statement toothless. European calls for “dialogue” only muddy the waters further. Without international pressure to implement the accord in full, and soon, the downward spiral will continue, driven not only by the unresolved border issues but by internal political considerations.
Four years ago, Eritrea and Ethiopia agreed to put the border dispute that triggered what became one of the most costly conflicts in African history to binding arbitration. Today, with Ethiopia balking at the results, the two states are on the verge of going back to war, as the U.S. twiddles its political thumbs in the hope that the problem will somehow go away.
It won't.
Meanwhile, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi uses the crisis and its emotive appeal to Ethiopian nationalists to shore up his narrowly based regime, even as the country confronts widespread famine due both to a persistent drought and to the redirection of scarce resources to the war effort.
For his part, Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki uses the continued war-footing to bludgeon his critics, suppress dissent, and postpone indefinitely the democratization of the small but strategic East African state, Africa's newest.
The Bush administration, which seeks both countries' support for the “war on terrorism” and for the pacification of Iraq, appears loathe to step into this quarrel, which grows more and more bitter as it festers, even as it poisons the politics of both states. Yet to remain on the sidelines and allow this tinderbox to explode once again will spell disaster--for the two war-weary peoples, for regional stability, and for much more.
Meanwhile, both countries are threatened with famine due both to recurrent drought and to the destructive effects of sustaining a war footing of this scope and magnitude. Both countries need large-scale food aid--Eritrea alone is asking $146 m for this year--but donors are understandably worried about the potential misuse of such aid. At best, emergency aid would take up the slack in these ailing economies and allow more resources to be directed into the war effort.
The Bush administration is in a position to break this logjam and move the process forward. Public statements bemoaning the lack of progress are not useful, however well meant. What is needed is concrete action.
Consequences for sustaining this impasse need to be spelled out--condemnations in international forums, aid withheld, sanctions imposed. And rewards for settling the conflict need to be made clear--reconstruction assistance, demobilization support, trade advantages, new training programs.
Meanwhile, the U.S. should not paper over this problem by remaining in a military and political alliance with both these states. At the least, they should be dropped from the Iraq coalition until they get their own houses in order.
To do otherwise is to make a mockery of claims that U.S. policy in this important region has anything to do with democracy--or peace.
(FPIF policy analyst Dan Connell is the author of numerous books and articles on the Horn of Africa. His latest is Taking on the Superpowers: Collected Articles on the Eritrean Revolution (1976-1982), Vol. 1 (Red Sea Press, 2003). Volume 2 is due out in February. Connell teaches journalism and African politics at Simmons College, Boston.)
LIBYAN DISARMAMENT A POSITIVE STEP, BUT THREAT OF PROLIFERATION REMAINS
By Stephen Zunes
( Editor's Note : Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0401libya.html .)
In a world seemingly gone mad, it is ironic that one of most sane and reasonable actions to come out of the Middle East recently has emanated from the government of Muammar Qaddafi, the Libyan dictator long recognized as an international outlaw.
Libya's stunning announcement that it is giving up its nascent biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons programs and accepting international assistance and verification of its disarmament efforts is a small but important positive step in the struggle to curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs).
It would be a big mistake, however, to accept claims by the Bush administration and its supporters that it was the invasion of Iraq and other threatened uses of force against so-called "rogue states" which pursue WMD programs that led to Libya's decision to end its WMD programs.
While Saddam Hussein was less than cooperative with United Nations Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM) efforts in the 1990s, it appears that they were successful in ridding the country of its chemical and biological weapons and related facilities. The Iraqi regime was more cooperative during that period with the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with the IAEA announcing in 1998 that Iraq's nuclear program had been completely dismantled. When IAEA inspectors returned in the fall of 2002 as part of UN Security Council resolution 1441, they reported that no signs that the program had been revived. Iraq also allowed the return of a revived and strengthened inspections regime for chemical and biological weapons systems (known as UNMOVIC) at that time, which also found no evidence of any proscribed weapons or weapons programs.
Despite this, the United States invaded Iraq and overthrew the government. As a result, Libya presumably knows that unilateral disarmament and allowing UN inspectors does not necessarily make you less safe from a possible U.S. invasion.
More likely, Libya simply recognized that they would not get anything worthwhile as a result of continuing with an expensive, dangerous, and complex process of weapons development and would instead continue to face international isolation and difficulty obtaining certain dual-use technologies which could enhance the country's economic development.
(Stephen Zunes is an associate professor of Politics and chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco. He serves as Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org ) and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (online at www.commoncouragepress.com ).)
BUSH AND BREMER BLINKED
By Ian Williams
( Editor's Note : Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0401iraqelect.html .)
The meeting between the UN, the Coalition, and the Iraqi Governing Council on 19 January suggests that the harsh realities of an election year in the U.S. may be making elections more feasible in Iraq. It is also very likely going to speed up the return of the UN international staff there.
However, this is not the UN succumbing to American pressure. Rather, in a stand-off over several months, with Kofi Annan refusing to return under American conditions, Washington has blinked first. Scarcely a week before, it seemed that Paul Bremer was dismissive of the whole idea of the meeting between the IGC and the UN, and unlikely to bother turning up to the meeting. It was the Iraqis who wanted UN involvement.
And then he swung around a week before and flew to New York for the meeting, where, according to participants, the American team was "extraordinarily polite." Although Annan is properly cautious, not least after some fairly heavy previous American pressure to send in the UN without condition, he seemed to be giving serious consideration to a bigger UN role.
After the meetings, Annan said that the IGC and CPA had asked that the "UN should quickly send a technical mission to Iraq to advise on the feasibility of elections within the next few months and, if not, what alternatives might be possible." Taking UN involvement the following year for granted, the issue now is, he said "whether the technical, political, or security conditions exist for general direct elections to take place as early as May this year." He was, he said, giving this serious consideration, and it is likely that it will go ahead, although not at any great speed.
Annan had previously said, in response to requests by Ayatollah Ali Sistani, that he did not think that elections would be feasible under present Iraqi conditions. But the Ayatollah wanted a more detailed examination, and an announcement from the British in Basra the day after the UN meeting that they thought that elections were not so far-fetched may help his case.
In fact, initially, the issue for the Coalition, at least the American part of it, was not so much the feasibility of elections to the Legislative Council, but their desirability. The wrong people could end up getting elected. It is not just the expedient friends of democracy in the Pentagon who have such worries. Experience in other transition countries shows the perils of letting the first rush of post-tyrant elections set arrangements and parties in stone. However, British observers think that the Shi'a threat has been over-stated and suggest that the Shi'a are not necessarily either as sectarian or as monolithic a bloc as many fear.
In any case, while democracy may seem the worst of all possible options, it is only so, "except all the others," in Churchill's words. The IGC knows that any handover of sovereignty to a Coalition-nominated body under the planned arrangements would bear the stigmata of Quislinghood. The two alternatives appeared to be getting Kofi Annan and the UN to bless the timetable and all its details, or elections.
(Ian Williams is a chief UN Analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org ). He is also a correspondent for the Nation & Middle East International.)
BUSH ADMINISTRATION FACES GROWING CHAOS IN IRAQ WHILE SOME PLAN EXPANSION OF WAR
By Jim Lobe
( Editor's Note : Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0401chaos.html .)
Retired Gen. Anthony Zinni began warning that ousting Saddam Hussein, let alone invading Iraq, risked destabilizing the entire Middle East back in 1998, when he led U.S. Central Command and testified against the Iraq Liberation Act that made “regime change” official U.S. policy. And just six months before the actual invasion last March, in October 2002, he told the annual Fletcher Conference on National Security Strategy, “we are about to do something that will ignite a fuse in this region that we will rue the day we ever started.”
While President George W. Bush tried hard to project a sense of confidence and control concerning Iraq and the larger Middle East in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday, a careful look at the news this week suggested that Zinni's fears were not unfounded.
Talk of possible civil war in Iraq finally reached the front pages of U.S. newspapers, while reports that at least some elements of the administration are pushing for military action against Hezbollah in Lebanon and targets in Syria surfaced for the first time since last summer. At the same time, by omitting any reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his speech, Bush indicated he has no intention of seriously pressing either party toward a cease-fire, let alone peace talks designed to meet the goal of the “roadmap”: securing Palestinian statehood by next year.
In other words, the outlook for the region between the eastern Mediterranean and Iran 10 months after U.S. troops launched their drive from Kuwait to Iraq is in for more--possibly a lot more--turbulence.
Long before this week, demands by Iraqi Kurds for virtually total autonomy, including the retention of their own pesh merga force, in a new, federal Iraq have been drawing grim warnings from neighboring Turkey, Iran, and Syria--which all have large and restive Kurdish populations.
But last week's rejection--by Iraq's most powerful Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani--of a U.S. plan to transfer sovereignty to a transitional government that will not be directly elected by the Iraqi people, has brought home the message that whatever progress Washington is making in suppressing the insurgency in the "Sunni Triangle" of central Iraq could very quickly be overwhelmed by the lack of a credible political strategy.
“CIA officers in Iraq are warning that the country may be on a path to civil war,” was the lead sentence in a front-page article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on January 22. The article, written by veteran Knight-Ridder reporters who have consistently led the mainstream media in uncovering secrets the Bush administration would rather not have exposed, quoted senior U.S. officials as saying that failure to satisfy demands for direct elections could spark an uprising by much of the heretofore friendly Shi'a population, who make up 60% or more of Iraq's 24 million people. That message was underscored by the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of Shiites in protest demonstrations over the past week--a display of discipline and organization that clearly surprised the administration.
If the Shi'a turn against the U.S.-led coalition, "this would be like losing the Buddhists in Vietnam,” Anthony Cordesman, a Mideast expert at the conservative Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told the Financial Times, referring to the U.S. war against that Asian country in the 1960s and'70s. “It would mean losing the war.”
(Jim Lobe is a political analyst with Foreign Policy in Focus (online at www.fpif.org ). He also writes regularly for Inter Press Service.)
II. Letters and Comments
EXCELLENT ARTICLERe: Misleading Statements in the 2004 State of the Union Address
An excellent, well thought article concerning the President's speech. I wish we were not preaching to the choir, however--the people who most need to know these things are the ones who will only listen to the sound bites presented by corporate media. We need to find ways to get this information out to the people who only hear the one-line versions. Until the Democrats finally decide on a candidate, they can't send a concise message about what they intend to do differently, and until the Progressives form a party of their own and stop waiting for the Democrats to take care of things, there is no other message successfully getting to the masses.
- Cherie Braun < cherienb@aol.com >
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Re: Misleading Statements in the 2004 State of the Union Address
This evaluation of the State of the union is also misleading rhetoric. No proof or sources are presented to support the author interpretations. If people want to make an argument, they can twist the facts either way. This article is not helpful in educating the people; it just attempts to mislead them, just as President Bush did.
- Dr. Walter F Leise III < Wleise@midway.uchicago.edu >
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Re: Misleading Statements in the 2004 State of the Union Address
Fantastic. I was yelling many of these points at the TV during the whole parade of lies, and was very disappointed that no one challenged any of his misleading statements. This article deserves wider distribution.
- Andrew Rogers < studio@joslinlakedesign.com >
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