The Progressive Response

Volume 9, Number 18
August 26, 2005

Editor: John Gershman, International Relations Center (IRC)

The Progressive Response (PR) is produced weekly by the International Relations Center (IRC, formerly Interhemispheric Resource Center, 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 a joint project of the International Relations 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 International Relations Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and codirector of FPIF. He can be contacted at john@irc-online.org.

Table of Contents

I. Updates and Out-Takes

U.S.-China Relations—Opportunities, Risks, and the Issue of Taiwan | Thomas J. Bickford
Clash of Neoconservatives? The Bush Administration and Iran’s New President | Arang Keshavarzian
Bombings and Repression in Egypt Underscore Failures in U.S. Anti-Terrorism Strategy | Stephen Zunes
August Around the World | Col. Daniel Smith, U.S. Army (Ret.)
Security Council Reform Debate Highlights Challenges Facing UN | Ian Williams
Labor’s Foreign Policy Heads in a New Direction | Tim Shorrock

I. Updates and Out-Takes

U.S.-China Relations—Opportunities, Risks, and the Issue of Taiwan
By Thomas J. Bickford

In many respects there has been a marked improvement in U.S.-China relations since the EP-3 spy plane incident of April 2001. The Bush administration views China as an important partner in the Six-Party Talks with North Korea, and the United States and China share an interest in a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula. The Bush administration also sees China as a strategic partner in the global war on terror. For example, China has recently joined the U.S. Container Security Initiative, and starting this summer, China and the United States will begin periodic senior-level dialogues on global issues of mutual concern. The Pentagon has even expanded its program of military-to-military contacts and exchanges between Chinese and U.S. military academies in a sharp reversal of the policy of four years ago. Economic relations have expanded greatly since China joined the World Trade Organization, and despite occasional trade tensions, most U.S. economists and businesspeople regard economic ties as mutually beneficial and rewarding.

However, some Americans view the rise of China as a long-term economic and security concern. As its military capabilities improve, China is increasingly seen as a threat to Taiwan and other U.S. interests. For example, the Pentagon worries that China may be beginning to acquire the means to project power beyond its immediate borders. Economic anxieties about loss of jobs and competition from China are also increasingly linked to political and security issues. China is seen as competing for economic and political influence in Latin America and elsewhere. Even business mergers can have a security aspect; the recent controversy over the proposed purchase of Unocal by a Chinese company is a case in point. There is, therefore, an interesting paradox in U.S. views of China; relations have never been better, yet the two countries could go to war at any time.
 
Thomas Bickford teaches at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh, and specializes in Chinese politics and Asian security issues. He is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (online at http://www.fpif.org).

See new FPIF Policy Brief online at:
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/285

Clash of Neoconservatives? The Bush Administration and Iran’s New President
By Arang Keshavarzian

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election victory in late June was a surprise for pundits both inside and outside Iran. Not only did the proverbial favorite Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani not win, but the turnout was around 60% in both rounds, so the much-debated election boycott did not reduce participation to historic lows. The unpredictability and close nature of the result (as well as of Mohammad Khatami’s victory in 1997) are especially significant in the Middle East, where elections, when they do occur, are often formalities.

Iran now has a 48-year-old devout president with a doctorate in engineering rather than a seminary education. He has been shaped as much by the Iran-Iraq War and the military establishment as by the 1979 revolution and Khomeini’s circle of students. Unlike traditional conservatives, (principally the merchant class and the clerical hierarchy), Ahmadinejad and Iran’s neoconservatives have cobbled together an electoral base comprising the revolutionary military establishment, war veterans, and the economically disenfranchised to trumpet a message that is as threatening to capital interests as it is to supporters of democratization and pluralism.

What does this all mean for Washington’s own neoconservative administration? The night before the first round of elections, George W. Bush described the election as lacking “the basic requirements of democracy” and predicted that “the tide of freedom [that] sweeps this region … will also come eventually to Iran.” It is correct to criticize Iran’s electoral process as less than free and fair since unconstitutional interference during the first-round balloting was particularly troubling. However, Bush’s harsh words and threats seem awkward in a region where Washington’s closest allies (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Tunisia, and Jordan) hold utterly meaningless ballots. Moreover, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Palestinian Occupied Territories, elections have only taken place under highly restricted conditions. Nonetheless, if Bush’s “tide of freedom” is to wash away the Islamic Republic anytime soon, it will have to contend with the election of Ahmadinejad and the 17 million Iranians that voted for him in the second round of the election.
 
Arang Keshavarzian is an assistant professor of political science at Concordia University and a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org). 

See new FPIF Policy Report online at:
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/226

Bombings and Repression in Egypt Underscore Failures in U.S. Anti-Terrorism Strategy
By Stephen Zunes

The devastating bombings which struck the Egyptian city of Sharm al-Sheik on July 24 underscore both the extent of the threat from Islamist terrorists and the failure of the United States and its allies to effectively deal with it.

That the bombers were somehow able to get around the military checkpoints through which traffic on all the major roads leading into the city must pass is a sobering indication of the terrorists’ sophistication and their network of support. The blasts killed 88 people, nearly twice as many as did the more-publicized terrorist bombings in London two weeks earlier. And it could have been far worse: two of the three bombs went off well short of their intended targets.

Why has Egypt become the target of such terrorist violence?

While governments which supported the American invasion of Iraq may have become particularly attractive targets for Islamist terrorists, this is not the case with Egypt, which joined virtually all other Arab governments in opposition to the war.

And though the U.S.-led invasion has certainly increased the ranks of Islamist terrorists in the Middle East and beyond, Arab dictators such as Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak have been targeted by al- Qaida and like-minded Islamist extremists long before the ill-fated U.S. conquest of Iraq.

Rather than pushing for greater democracy primarily in Syria, Iran, and other countries controlled by dictatorships the United States does not like, might it serve our purposes better if we also promoted democracy in countries ruled by dictatorships like Egypt, over which the U.S. government can exert far more influence? Indeed, the overwhelming majority of al- Qaida’s leadership and members come from U.S.-backed dictatorships, not the autocratic anti-American regimes which have become the focus of Bush administration and Congressional leaders of both parties.

Stephen Zunes is the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org) and a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003)

August Around the World
By Col. Daniel Smith, U.S. Army (Ret.)

FPIF analyst Dan Smith provides a broad overview of current security challenges and developments. But despite these changes, the “war on terror” remains the defining paradigm of the second Bush term. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers and even Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in an attempt to broaden the terms of reference for the Iraq war (and incidentally dilute the criticism of how the war is being run) floated the phrase “global struggle against violent extremism.” Bush did not salute. Rather, five times during his remarks he restated the phrase by which he hopes to be remembered: “war president.”

Already, the families of 1,828 U.S. service men and women, 93 Brits, and 101 other coalition soldiers, plus unknown numbers of Iraqi and Afghan families, remember George Bush as a war president – one who unnecessarily started a war and who, by unnecessarily dividing and radicalizing not just the U.S. public but publics around the world, continues to fan the war fires.

Two things seem certain. One, more families will come to regard, unkindly, George Bush as a war president. Two, in the end, the Myers-Rumsfeld formulation will have to be accepted as the best approach to coping with violence perpetrated by extremists.

Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at HTTP://www.fpif.org), a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a senior fellow on military affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. 

Security Council Reform Debate Highlights Challenges Facing UN
By Ian Williams

Within a day of arriving at the United Nations John Bolton, the former lobbyist for Taiwan and advocate for one permanent seat on the Security Council, the United States, had cut a deal with the Chinese representative. China wants to stop an additional permanent Security Council seat for Japan. The United States had promised Japan its support in return for its loyalty over Iraq, but hated Germany more than it loves Japan. So the two agreed to thwart the attempt by the G-4 (Brazil, Germany, India, and Japan), to secure permanent seats during the current reform proposals.

Initially, they wanted to ensure that the G-4 Proposal for six new permanent seats, (including two for Africa) and four new temporary seats, is thwarted in the General Assembly, but neither are very likely to let a majority against them in the Assembly dissuade them from exercising their veto against Charter changes.

Sadly, despite the cynicism of their motives, the end result will probably be better for the UN and World. Although the United States may be vindictive in its motivation toward Germany and other nay- sayers to the Iraqi invasion, it has been consistent and correct in saying that all the proposals currently under discussion result in far too large a Security Council to be effective.

One hopes it will be a lesson to would-be permanent members that kow-towing to Washington does them no good at all. It is also true that the issue of who is on the Council has diverted attention from the much more important question of what it actually does.

Ian Williams contributes frequently to Foreign Policy In Focus (online at http://www.fpif.org) on UN and international affairs.

Labor’s Foreign Policy Heads in a New Direction
By Tim Shorrock

Lost amidst the publicity about the breakup of the AFL-CIO at its convention last month were two events that, in their own ways, could point to a radically new foreign policy for American unions and workers.

The first was the convention’s passage of a resolution placing organized labor squarely behind a rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq—the first time that the AFL-CIO has ever taken a public stance against an ongoing U.S. war.

The second event unfolded on the conference floor in the waning hours of the convention, and went virtually unmentioned in the mainstream and left-wing press. This was an unsuccessful resolution, advanced by the California Federation of Labor with the support of a dozen other labor councils, calling on the AFL-CIO to make a thorough examination and public explanation of its foreign policy activities, from the Cold War to the present, and to “exercise extreme caution” about seeking or receiving money from instruments of U.S. foreign policy, particularly the National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Together, these two agencies account for more than 90 percent of the funds provided to the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS— aka the Solidarity Center).

As the debate about labor’s future played out over the last year, with the SEIU and Teamsters pressing for a huge infusion of resources into direct organizing and the AFL-CIO arguing for equal focus on political campaigns, little was said by either side about foreign policy.

Still, there are signs that unions on both sides of the split have abandoned the AFL-CIO’s old-style labor diplomacy in favor of direct contacts with workers and unions overseas. It is in such campaigns, emerging directly from workers’ struggles and demands rather than from the dictates of labor bureaucrats or government funding, where the future of labor’s foreign policy lies.

Tim Shorrock has been writing about labor and foreign policy for many years. He is the co-chair of the National Writers Union DC chapter and represented his local at the founding convention of U.S. Labor Against the War in October, 2004. He can be reached at timshorrock@gmail.com or through his occasional blog, Money Doesn’t Talk, It Swears, at http://timshorrock.blogspot.com. He’s a regular contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus (http://www.fpif.org ).

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The Progressive Response aims to provide timely analysis and opinion about US foreign policy issues. The content does not necessarily reflect the institutional positions of either the International Relations Center or the Institute for Policy Studies.

We're working to make the Progressive Response informative and useful, so let us know how we're doing, via email to irc@irc-online.org. Please put "Progressive Response" in the subject line. Please feel free to cross-post the Progressive Response elsewhere. We apologize for any duplicate copies you may receive.

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