The Progressive Response
Volume 8, Number 20
August 6, 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
U.S. MILITARY BASES IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
By John Lindsay-PolandNOT A GOOD NEIGHBOR: A CRITIQUE OF KERRY’S LATIN AMERICA POLICY
By Tom BarryHIGH TIME BUSH DEFINES THE ENEMY
By Ronald Bruce St JohnIRAQ’S LABOR UPSURGE WINS SUPPORT FROM U.S. UNIONS
By David BaconPOSING THE RIGHT QUESTION
By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.)DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLATFORM SHOWS SHIFT TO THE RIGHT ON FOREIGN POLICY
By Stephen Zunes
II. Letters and Comments
IS THE NEO-CON LABEL USEFUL?
and a RESPONSE FROM JIM LOBEANALYSIS OF SHRIMP CASE IS WRONG
and a RESPONSE FROM ANDREW WELLS-DANG
I. Updates and Out-Takes
U.S. MILITARY BASES IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN
By John Lindsay-Poland
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new policy brief available in full at http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol9/v9n03latammil.html. This brief will also be available in Spanish in the near future. Please check our website if you are interested.)
The United States maintains a complex web of military facilities and functions in Latin America and the Caribbean, what the U.S. Southern Command (known as SouthCom) calls its “theater architecture.” U.S. military facilities represent tangible commitments to an ineffective supply-side drug war and to underlying policy priorities, including ensuring access to strategic resources, especially oil.
Much of this web is being woven through Plan Colombia, a massive, primarily military program to eradicate coca plants and to combat armed groups (mostly leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). In the last five years, new U.S. bases and military access agreements have proliferated in Latin America, constituting a decentralization of the U.S. military presence in the region. This decentralization is Washington’s way of maintaining a broad military foothold while accommodating regional leaders’ reluctance to host large U.S. military bases or complexes.
After the U.S. military withdrawal from Panama in 1999, military troops and commands were reconcentrated in Puerto Rico, adding fuel to a nonviolent mass movement to throw the Navy out of its bombing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico. On May 1, 2003, the Navy vacated the Vieques range (though it remains in federal hands) and followed in March 2004 by closing the massive Roosevelt Roads Naval Station. Regional headquarters for the Army, Navy, and Special Forces have moved out of Puerto Rico to Texas and Florida; headquarters of SouthCom (the joint command) is located in Miami.
In addition, the Pentagon is investing in expanded infrastructure in the region, with four military bases in Manta, Ecuador; Aruba; Curacao; and Comalapa, El Salvador, known as “cooperative security locations,” or CSLs. These CSLs are leased facilities established to conduct counternarcotics monitoring and interdiction operations. Washington has signed ten-year agreements with Ecuador, the Netherlands (for Aruba and Curacao), and El Salvador and has funded the renovation of air facilities in Ecuador, Aruba, and Curacao. SouthCom also operates some 17 radar sites, mostly in Peru and Colombia, each typically staffed by about 35 personnel. Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, which enjoys a lease with no termination date, serves as a logistics base for counterdrug operations and, increasingly, as an off-shore detention center.
Bases belonging to Latin American militaries but built or used by U.S. soldiers, such as the Joint Peruvian Riverine Training Center in Iquitos, Peru, are not considered U.S. bases but often serve similar purposes. The up to 800 U.S. military and contract personnel operating at any given time in Colombia are also housed at nominally Colombian bases. The Bush administration in March 2004 announced its intention to increase the cap for such personnel to 1,400.
To live up to its democratic ideals, the United States should adopt a new security doctrine for relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. Such a doctrine would value ties with civilians more than ties with the military and would promote civil society as the sphere where democratic decision making must occur. This approach would dedicate more resources to addressing the economic causes of conflict rather than building installations designed for the use of force. It would also commit the United States to transparency about the purposes, activities, and effects of existing U.S. military bases in the region.
U.S. military facilities represent tangible commitments to underlying policies that are either outmoded, as in the case of Cuba, or perniciously expansionist. According to SouthCom, the command briefing guiding the Army’s military presence in the region highlights access to strategic resources in South America—especially oil—as well as other issues with social and political roots, such as immigration and narcotics. A rational U.S. security doctrine would redirect resources invested in military bases to civilian agencies whose mandate is to address such social and political problems, including nongovernmental organizations, local and regional agencies of the hemisphere’s governments, and programs of the United Nations. Such a focus shift would imply changes in U.S. drug policy and would redirect military and police assistance both toward alternative crop and other development projects in the Andes and toward drug treatment and health programs in the United States.
Short of such a re-examination of the policy foundations for military bases in the region, the United States should review existing agreements for foreign bases using democratic criteria. Bases should not be maintained or established without broad consultation with and agreement of the civil societies and legislatures of the countries in which the bases are located. Without such consultation and agreement, these bases represent a usurpation of democratic control within the host society. Objectionable contract provisions, such as broad U.S. military access to the host-nation’s ports and air space, diplomatic immunity for U.S. military personnel, and prohibitions against access or inspections by local authorities, should be deleted. Bases should only be established for fixed periods of time, should have clearly defined missions, and should require renewal by both U.S. and host congresses.
(John Lindsay-Poland is coordinator of the Fellowship of Reconciliation Task Force on Latin America & the Caribbean.)
NOT A GOOD NEIGHBOR: A CRITIQUE OF KERRY’S LATIN AMERICA POLICY
By Tom Barry
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new policy brief published by the IRC’s Americas Program available in full at http://www.americaspolicy.org/briefs/2004/0407kerry.html.)
Can we look forward to a “New Community of the Americas,” as candidate John Kerry has promised, in a Kerry-Edwards administration?
Unlikely.
Will U.S.-Latin American relations improve under a Democrat administration?
Very likely, given how badly relations have deteriorated under the current Republican administration.
When outlining his own policy agenda for Latin America and the Caribbean, John Kerry charged that the Bush administration’s foreign policy has been characterized by “neglect, failure to adequately support democratic institutions, and inept diplomacy.” He criticized President Bush for his “one note policy” on trade and for failing to act as a good neighbor. In an address to the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials in late June 2004, Kerry said, “Instead of being a good neighbor, the president has ignored a wide range of ills—including political and financial crises, runaway unemployment, and drug trafficking.”
In contrast, Kerry proposes a “new community of the Americas” in which “neighbors will look after neighbors” and will “work together toward shared goals” and “mutual respect.” With his call for social clauses in trade agreements, a social investment fund, and increased support for democratic governance, Kerry gave his Community of the Americas policy agenda a distinctly liberal cast.
Moreover, he called for a policy of good neighbors, citing the administrations of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Kerry would do well to remember that when Franklin Roosevelt first broached the concept of a “good neighbor policy,” initially in a Foreign Affairs article in 1928 and then in his inaugural address in 1932, he was proposing what amounted to a sharp break with the traditional foreign policy in the region. More than a rhetorical flourish, Roosevelt counterposed his good neighbor policy to the existing policy of military intervention and occupation, and ushered in a decade of vastly improved U.S.-Latin American relations. During his term, Roosevelt ended military interventions, insisted that the State Department end its patronizing and racist characterizations of Latin America, and dramatically increased hemispheric consultations.
Such a new departure from past practices is once again urgently needed. But Kerry’s vision, for the most part, is merely a collection of platitudes, and offers few departures from the current policy frameworks that characterize U.S. policy toward the region. Nonetheless, Kerry’s “Community of the Americas” agenda does offer some important openings for dialogue about the principles and policies around which a hemispheric community might be based.
(Tom Barry is policy director of the Interhemispheric Resource Center, online at: www.irc-online.org.)
HIGH TIME BUSH DEFINES THE ENEMY
By Ronald Bruce St John
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0407enemy.html.)
Immediately after 9/11, President Bush addressed the American people, defining policy in the simplest terms. “Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” In declaring a War on Terrorism, he defiantly stated his intent to pursue nations providing aid or safe haven to terrorism, suggesting every nation had a decision to make on the issue.
Three years later, the White House has yet to define clearly what constitutes a terrorist organization. The failure to do so has increasingly contributed to the administration’s limited success in making America and the world a safer place. Filling the gap, individuals and groups are adopting their own definitions of terrorism with worrying, potentially disastrous results.
The administration’s refusal to define terrorism served the White House well in the early days of the War on Terrorism. Employing terrorism as a catchall term for a potpourri of movements and organizations, Washington was in a position to label just about anyone opposed to its policies as a terrorist organization. Its subsequent inability to prove in a court of law, in the few cases accorded judicial procedure, that individuals and groups so identified were actually terrorists or terrorist organizations proved a later embarrassment.
The administration’s failure to define terrorism is contributing directly to the growing confusion about the nature of our enemies in the War on Terrorism. Struggling to show progress in the war, the White House has eagerly applied the al-Qaeda label to virtually any Islamic group threatening terrorist attacks. With little or no proof, regional terrorist groups invariably have been labeled al-Qaeda supporters or affiliates. In so doing, the administration has contributed to the false impression, despite data to the contrary in its own Patterns of Global Terrorism report, that the sole enemy is a global conspiracy of Islamist groups. An Islamist definition of terrorism plays well with conservative elements in the U.S. electorate, especially after the August 2004 attacks on Christian churches in Iraq; but it is clearly wrong as the government’s own terrorism report amply demonstrates.
We are sliding toward disaster, identifying the wrong enemy and fighting the wrong war. The Bush administration needs to get America back on track, defining clearly the threat we face. At the same time, it needs to reach out to the Muslim community around the world, emphasizing this is not a war on Islam. Failing to do so, White House rhetoric stressing the War on Terrorism will last for years, if not decades, could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
(Ronald Bruce St John, an analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), has published widely on Middle Eastern issues. His latest book on the region is Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife (Penn Press, 2002).)
IRAQ’S LABOR UPSURGE WINS SUPPORT FROM U.S. UNIONS
By David Bacon
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0407upsurge.html.)
Once the U.S. occupation of Iraq began over a year ago, Iraqi workers lost no time in reorganizing their country’s labor movement. Labor activity spread from Baghdad to the Kurdish north, with the center of the storm in the south, in the oil and electrical installations around Basra, and the port of Um Qasr.
Workers quickly discovered that the occupation authorities had little respect for labor rights, however. Once the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) took power in Baghdad in March of 2003, it began enforcing a 1987 law banning unions in public enterprises, where most Iraqis are employed. On top of this, CPA head Paul Bremer added Public Order #1, banning pronouncements that “incite civil disorder, rioting, or damage to property.” The phrase civil disorder can easily apply to organizing strikes, and leaders of both the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) and Iraq’s Union of the Unemployed have been detained a number of times.
Labor repression in Iraq, however, has provoked U.S. unions into speaking out against the war and occupation in a way unseen since Ronald Reagan’s wars in Central America. Bremer’s hostility towards labor made it onto the radar screen of U.S. unions last fall, when a delegation sent by U.S. Labor Against the War (USLAW) to make contact with the country’s reborn workers’ movement brought back accounts of the suppression of labor rights. This spring USLAW, encompassing U.S. unions and labor councils representing hundreds of thousands of members, organized a fund-raising campaign for Iraq’s new unions. This June in Geneva, Neil Bisno, secretary-treasurer of SEIU Local 1199P, delivered $5,000 checks to the IFTU and the Workers’ Councils and Unions of Iraq.
Last January AFL-CIO president John Sweeney condemned enforcement of the 1987 law and called on the CPA “to allow Iraqi workers to associate together and participate collectively in rebuilding the economy.” The AFL-CIO and other international labor federations began working with the International Labor Organization to redraft Iraq’s labor code, which could lead to dropping the 1987 prohibition.
(David Bacon is a reporter and photographer specializing in labor issues, and a regular contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus, online at www.fpif.org. Ewa Jasciewicz, in Basra for Occupation Watch earlier this year, contributed to this report.)
POSING THE RIGHT QUESTION
By Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.)
(Editor’s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0407question.html.)
Emulating the popular game show “Jeopardy,” if the answer is “Iraq,” can you formulate the question?
Consider the following:
- Ambassador L. Paul Bremer left behind 97 edicts telling the interim government and the Iraqi people everything from how to drive their autos and mandatory minimum sentences for carrying grenades and other weapons to electoral and economic laws and forbidding the death penalty.
Among these edicts,
- Bremer created a special commission empowered to review the activities of political parties and candidates and to bar those who affiliated with militias, espouse hatred and terror, or violate other laws.
- The Hague Regulations (1907) and Geneva Conventions (1949) pertaining to military occupation guarantee rights to inhabitants of occupied territories, restrict the actions of occupying authorities, and provide for the continuity of the legal code in place prior to occupation. When occupation ends for any reason, regulations introduced by the occupation authority also end.
- UN Security Council Resolution 1546 (June 8, 2004) recognizes that the “sovereign Interim Government of Iraq” will assume “full responsibility and authority” in the governance of Iraq by June 30, BUT will refrain from “actions affecting Iraq’s destiny beyond the limited interim period until an elected Transitional Government of Iraq assumes office” in January 2005.
Obviously, there is tension between Bremer’s 97 edicts—particularly those with appointment timelines or ones establishing new laws or sentences—and the Hague and Geneva conventions under which the application of occupation statutes end. Having been ceded “full sovereignty” by the occupation authority, the interim government must have the power to rescind or ignore any occupation edict—including the one specifying the procedure by which the interim government can legally disavow any edict.
If the interim government is to succeed, it must be completely free—that is, sovereign—to set Iraq’s course, free from U.S. edicts and ill-conceived UN resolutions.
If Iraq is the answer, the question has to be: “Where do three sovereigns divide one sovereignty?”
(Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, online at www.fpif.org, a retired U.S. army colonel and a senior fellow on Military Affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation.)
DEMOCRATIC PARTY PLATFORM SHOWS SHIFT TO THE RIGHT ON FOREIGN POLICY
By Stephen Zunes
(Editor’s Note: Excperted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0408shift.html.)
Against the backdrop of ongoing death and destruction in Iraq as a result of the U.S. invasion and subsequent occupation, the Democratic Party formally adopted their 2004 platform on July 28 at their convention in Boston. The platform focused more on foreign policy than it had in recent years. It represented an opportunity to challenge the Republican administration’s unprecedented and dangerous departure from the post-World War II international legal consensus forbidding aggressive wars as well as a means with which to offer a clear alternative to the Bush Doctrine.
Even the Republican Party under Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 did not openly challenge such basic international principles as the illegitimacy of invading a sovereign nation because of unsubstantiated claims that they might some day be a potential security threat.
Yet not only have Senators John Kerry and John Edwards continued to defend their support of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq, the 2004 Democratic platform complains that the administration “did not send sufficient forces to accomplish the mission.” The most direct challenge to Bush administration policies in Iraq contained in the platform is its alleged failures to adequately equip American forces.
The only thing the 2004 Democratic Party platform could offer opponents of the war is a sentence which acknowledges “People of good will disagree about whether America should have gone to war in Iraq.” As the Los Angeles Times editorialized, “Indeed they do. That is why we have elections, and it would have been nice if the opposition party had the guts to actually oppose it.”
This does not mean that a majority of Democrats support such right-wing foreign policies. For example, a poll just prior to the convention showed that 95% of the delegates oppose the decision to invade Iraq, something that both their presidential and their vice presidential nominees have steadfastly refused to do.
(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 the Foreign Policy in Focus project, www.fpif.org, and is the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003).)
II. Letters and Comments
Re: They’re Back: Neocons Revive The Committee On The Present Danger, This Time Against Terrorism (http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0407cpd3.html)
Jim Lobe’s article on the revival of the Committee on the Present Danger calls our attention to a very great danger—the projects of the hacks and hawks (insofar these are distinguishable) in and around the committee.
Looking back at its previous incarnations, I do not think the rather general designation “neo- conservative” increases our understanding of these persons very much. The original committee had its origins in the Committee for a Democratic Majority, the segment of the Democratic Party which abjured McGovern and the new left and the sixties movements, which supported Nixon in 1972, and which itself was an alliance of the old AFL-CIO, the Israel Lobby, and some who actually believed in an American world mission (the early Senator Moynihan, who later broke away from his erstwhile friends). It was joined by bi-partisan figures who were ready to take jobs in any administration, and who made a living from exaggerating the Soviet threat. Their own motives were not purely careerist, some were ideologically possessed, and some were not alone advocates of the virtues of American capitalism but managed to unite their ideological interests with the pursuit of money in a higher or lower synthesis, like Richard Perle.
The Committee had several considerable triumphs to its credit. It relentlessly harassed Nixon, Ford, and Kissinger in their efforts to stabilize the relationship to the USSR, sabotaging arms control agreements and projects (recall the late Senator Henry Jackson, whose senior advisor was Perle) on various grounds. One was that the USSR could not be trusted, a complete demonization of the adversary (the Committee also denigrated the efforts of the Europeans to reach agreements with the USSR and especially Germany’s reconciliation with the Soviet Union and opening of ties to Communist Germany and the other Soviet bloc states, Willy Brandt was portrayed as an appeaser or indeed enemy of the U.S. and Commentary in one notable article denounced him whilst praising someone who had volunteered for the SS during the war).
One issue of special interest to it was the emigration of Soviet Jewry and it launched a campaign for this, knowing full well that no Soviet government could allow Jewish emigration alone (had it done so, Russian anti-Semitism would have been heightened) or sacrifice its alliances with the Arab states to please American opinion. Those interested in the sublime moral consistency of the Zionists may recall that when Natan Scharansky came out of the USSR he said that in Israel he would pay special attention to the question of human rights for Arabs in the occupied territories and in Israel. He is now a senior politician and close to the expulsionists, and we can hear as much or as little about Arab rights from him as we do from, e.g. Elie Wiesel or Abraham Foxman.
The Committee was a strenuous backer of the installation of first strike weapons, the Cruise and Pershing missiles in the UK, Italy, the Netherlands, and Germany—which gave rise to massive protests in Europe and heightened tensions between the superpowers. All of these things had one effect clearly wished for by the Committee—it made it very difficult for the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc states to relax their internal repressiveness and so provided gratifying evidence of their incapacity to reform themselves, used to buttress arguments for yet more arms program and propagandistic hostility.
Committee figures streamed into government (Perle, Gaffney, Kampelman) and these were of varying degrees of intelligence, subtlety and moral honesty—I think rather well of Kampelman, who did see the long term utility of co-existence despite his great attachment to Israel. The Israel lobby gang in general, however, was composed of persons who clearly owed primary loyalty to that state and not the U.S., and Reagan had indeed to fire Eugene Rostow as Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, at the insistence of his own Secretary of State who had had enough of him. But Richard Schifter lived to fight on and as State Department official concerned with human rights, was quite effective in blocking U.S. censure of Israel’s atrocious record in this regard.
The remnants of the gang fought hard against recognizing the authenticity of Gorbachov’s reforms, and it wasn’t so many years ago that James Woolsey, at the Munich Security conference, urged on the Europeans the very grave threat to peace posed by Yeltsin.
Clearly, Islamic terror is a welcome occasion for this gang to coalesce and fight again, the more so as the very nebulousness of the enemy opens the prospect of endless conflict. The new group will certainly like the old one make every effort to so shift the boundaries of what is permissible by way of policy that in the event of a Democratic victory, it will warn Kerry that there are lines he must not cross.
Kerry seems to have gotten the message, already endorsing Sharon and (I do not know if it is in the final version) inserting in the Democratic Platform the demand for an indivisible Jewish Jerusalem, sure to prolong the Mideast conflict for another millennium or two. The presence on the new Committee of figures like Senator Kyl suggests a successful recruitment amongst the Republican primitives and unilateralists, not known for their disinclination to accept Chanukah Geld from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
There is in all of this, of course, a long term danger to American Jewry. Pressing for a limitless war to be fought by the daughters and sons of the American working class, its ties to Israel open, the Israel lobby may sooner or later provoke a terrible response—public discussion of the issue of divided loyalty. In any event, the composition and projects of the Committee tell us that there is no point to using euphemisms like the phrase “neo conservative.”
—Norman Birnbaum
Norman Birnbaum’s letter is excellent and there isn’t much with which I disagree. But I still think the word “neo-conservative” is useful for describing groups and individuals in the public sphere who appear to hold certain core beliefs in common, regardless of their actual motivation, be it mercenary or missionary (which is often hard to distinguish). I outlined most of these last year in an essay entitled “What is a Neo-Conservative Anyway?” and posted at http://domino.ips.org/ips%5Ceng.nsf/
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although I would add a few things that I have thought of since then.
Very briefly, these core beliefs include:
1) an ultra-Hobbesian view of human nature;
2) the conviction that the world is divided between forces of good and evil and that foreign policy is a key battleground in the struggle;
3) the belief that the U.S.A. has been and remains the world’s greatest force for good (and thus its enemies tend to be bad or worse); and thus it would be morally wrong for it to tie itself to multilateral institutions, permanent alliances, or even international law in ways that might constrain its ability to do good;
4) the conviction that the fate of the U.S. and Israel, which also exists on a superior moral plane, are tied together, if not, in William Bennett’s words, “one and the same” and that a “strategic alliance” between them is a moral necessity.
Neo-conservatives also incorporate and endlessly recite several “lessons” of the 1930s, World War II, and the Nazi Holocaust; most importantly that:
1) in domestic politics, liberals or secular humanists are Weimarian wimps who won’t stand up to bullies;
2) appeasing (or negotiating with) bullies, especially of the “totalitarian” variety, only encourages them to become more aggressive;
3) military power is the only kind of power that really counts when the chips are down; and
4) American isolationism represents a serious threat to beleaguered innocents everywhere, (a notion, incidentally, widely shared by many liberal interventionists), so “endless conflict,” as Mr. Birnbaum refers to it, against external enemies (be they Nazis, Soviets, “Islamo-fascists,” or Chinese) is a necessity to keep the U.S. fully engaged and mobilized.
There are other corollaries—“Old Europeans,” for example, are liberals (or “from Venus,” as Robert Kagan would have it) or worse (particularly in the case of the French); multinational corporations and globalization are amoral and thus cannot be fully trusted—but the essential point is that most of the members of the new CPD subscribe to these views and thus qualify as neo-conservatives.
As for tactics, neo-conservatives, like most political philosophers who prize power, accept that ends may certainly justify means and that dubious alliances—such as with the Soviets in World War II, with Argentine neo-Nazis in the 1970s and early 1980s, apartheid South Africa, Arab and Afghan jihadis, and Chinese Communists in the 1980s, and the Christian Right since the late 1970s, are perfectly justifiable so long as they are used to overcome a greater evil or achieve a greater good. When asked about the anti-Semitism of many Christian Right leaders, after all, it was Irving Kristol who said, “It’s their theology, but it’s our Israel.”
A propos Mr. Birnbaum’s last point, it’s worth noting the irony that neo-conservatives, while predominantly but by no means exclusively Jewish, began their right-wing journey in the late 1960s in part because of their fear that the prominence of Jews among the leaders of the anti-war and counter-cultural movements would provoke an anti-Semitic backlash among the mainstream U.S. body politic. Of course, the great fear now, which I share, is that the prominence of Jews among the neo-conservative hawks who led the drive to war both in and outside the administration may have a similar effect, even though the majority of American Jews are no more enthusiastic about the war than the general public and certainly do not agree with the worldview whose components I have listed above.
In any event, I think that worldview is what defines “neo-conservative,” and if someone can think of a more appropriate and less euphemistic word for the same thing, I’ll certainly adopt it.
—Jim Lobe
ANALYSIS OF SHRIMP CASE IS WRONG
Re: Corporate Welfare for Jumbo Shrimp (http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2004/0406shrimp.html)
A commentary on the current U.S. shrimp antidumping case, “Corporate Welfare for Jumbo Shrimp” by Mr. Andrew Wells-Dang, contained many assertions about the case and the U.S. antidumping law that are blatantly wrong and need corrections.
The U.S. shrimp industry represents the more than 70,000 jobs employed in harvesting and processing shrimp. Since 2000, the industry has been devastated by dumped imports. Since 2000, imports have surged 71 percent as import prices plunged 41 percent. That is no productivity miracle—it is dumping. As a result, domestic prices were dragged down by as much as 61 percent. Average daily crew wages dropped 42 percent. The value of the fishery was virtually cut in half. By contrast, less than 6,000 U.S. jobs are directly linked to processing imported shrimp. Very few of these jobs would be affected by fair pricing of shrimp.
Consumer demand was not the cause of surging imports. The U.S. International Trade Commission found that imports “increased more rapidly than did consumption” and declared that consumers have not benefited from dumped imports. While imported shrimp prices were cut by over one-third, the price that restaurant consumers paid for shrimp increased by as much as 28 percent. Increased consumer prices led to a $4.2 billion bite out of America’s favorite seafood by middlemen in 2002, profits above the standard 182 percent markup.
The underlying cause of the crisis is threefold. First, foreign governments and international organizations subsidized or otherwise encouraged the production of shrimp for export. Second, antibiotics deemed harmful to humans are used to increase production yields of farm-raised shrimp. The U.S. tests less than one percent of shrimp imports, but as recently as April 8, 2004, the U.S. Government has found illegal antibiotics in Vietnamese shrimp. Third, major export markets for shrimp (EU and Japan) experienced substantial market restrictions, by way of import bans, tariff increases, vigorous testing for antibiotics, and weak demand. Vietnam faced 100 percent testing of its shipments to the EU—creating a virtual export ban for a year.
The United States, with zero tariffs on shrimp, weak food safety enforcement, and a relatively robust economy became the market of last resort. Foreign producers looked to unload excess inventory at any cost. Antidumping laws, endorsed by all 142 countries of the World Trade Organization, address situations just like this.
The Department of Commerce’s preliminary determination has confirmed the allegations that Vietnam is dumping shrimp. SSA demands fair pricing, which actually results in Vietnamese farmers being paid more for their shrimp. U.S. and Vietnamese shrimp fishermen, farmers and processors are facing the same problem—the pressure of the large corporate importers and distributors of shrimp who control about 85 percent of the U.S. market. SSA hopes to work with Vietnam to create a sustainable future for the families in both countries that depend on shrimp. Restoring fair pricing will help us both and not raise consumer prices or reduce consumption.
—Eddie Gordon, President, Southern Shrimp Alliance
RESPONSE FROM ANDREW WELLS-DANG
Eddie Gordon repeats the slippery shrimp cocktail that he and his associates have (so far successfully) fed to the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission. Some of Mr. Gordon’s “blatantly wrong” statements include the following:
(1) “Foreign governments and international organizations subsidized or otherwise encouraged the production of shrimp for export.” At least in the case of Vietnam, farmers receive no subsidies from the government, as the British NGO ActionAid’s research on Vietnamese farmers makes clear. The World Bank and other international organizations have not been involved. As for just encouraging exports, there is nothing illegal about that. Take a look, say, at the US Chamber of Commerce, OPIC, and the Ex-Im Bank?
(2) “Consumer demand was not the cause of surging imports.” As every economist knows, supply equals demand. It is equally fishy to say that supply causes demand as the reverse. Domestic production meets only 10% of the rising US demand for shrimp. The fact that imports are taking market share from domestic products is not proof of dumping.
(3) “Antibiotics deemed harmful to humans are used to increase production yields of farm-raised shrimp.” This is another red herring. Imported shrimp need to meet the same safety and cleanliness standards as domestic shrimp; if they don’t, they will not be accepted by importers and consumers. Again, this has nothing to do with dumping. Mr. Gordon is insinuating that all Vietnamese products are unclean, and then claims he wants to “work with Vietnam.” I doubt he will find many takers.
Mr. Gordon’s logic boils down to this: if foreign producers compete successfully in the US market, that’s “dumping.” But if the U.S. subsidizes the Southern Shrimp Alliance, why, that’s “fair pricing.” How exactly will high U.S. duties—which, thanks to the Byrd Amendment all go into the pockets of Mr. Gordon and his clients—result in Vietnamese farmers being paid more?
In the Commerce Department’s preliminary ruling on the shrimp case, the two countries labeled “non-market economies” will face tariff rates from 8-113% for Chinese firms and 16-93% for Vietnamese. (The other four countries in the suit got off comparatively easy, mostly in the 10-20% range.) A Chinese official called this decision “unfair and unacceptable,” while the Vietnamese, fearing the loss of millions of jobs, are vowing to “fight until the end.”
The preliminary decision is bad economics and bad politics. Bad economics because, as with the recently rescinded steel tariffs, it hurts more American jobs than it saves. More Americans are employed in the shrimp importing, distributing and consuming industries than in the production sector that Mr. Gordon represents. This is not to mention the much, much larger groups of American consumers of shrimp—who benefit by greater supply and lower prices—and outside producers who sell to the US market. With higher tariffs, importers, consumers and foreign farmers will all lose.
—Andrew Well-Dang, Fund For Reconciliation & Development, Hanoi
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