From: Progressive Response [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 05 February 2003 22:09
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Subject: [PR] Powell, State of the Union, Korea, CAFTA, Iran
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The Progressive Response 5 February 2002 Vol. 7, No. 03
Editor: Tom Barry
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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
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John Gershman, editor of Progressive Response, is a senior analyst with the
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**** We Count on Your Support ****
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I. Updates and Out-Takes
*** FRONTIER JUSTICE NUMBER #17 | OF AID AND AIDS ***
*** POWELL S DUBIOUS CASE FOR WAR ***
By Phyllis Bennis
*** STATE OF THE UNION ***
By Conn Hallinan
*** AN ANNOTATED OVERVIEW OF THE FOREIGN POLICY SEGMENTS OF PRESIDENT
GEORGE W. BUSH'S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS ***
By Stephen Zunes
*** PUMP UP THE PENTAGON, HAWKS TELL BUSH ***
By Jim Lobe
*** THE TIME-OUT METHOD DOESN'T WORK ***
By John Feffer
*** U.S.-CENTRAL AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT: LEAPING WITHOUT LOOKING?
***
By Vincent McElhinny
II. Outside the U.S.
*** IRAN: THE NEXT TARGET? ***
By Paul Rogers
III. Letters And Comments
*** FRUSTRATING ***
*** ISRAEL S ALTERNATIVE? ***
*** TERMINATE SADDAM ***
*** THANKS ***
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*** FRONTIER JUSTICE NUMBER #17 | OF AID AND AIDS ***
(Editor's Note: Frontier Justice is a weekly column written alternately by
Tom Barry and John Gershman, foreign policy analysts at the
Interhemispheric Resource Center, chronicling instances of U.S.
unilateralism and its assault on the multilateralism framework for managing
global affairs. It is part of the new Project Against the Present Danger.
These columns are now indexed on the www.presentdanger.org site at:
http://www.presentdanger.org/frontier/2003/index.html.)
By John Gershman
Of all the policy proposals in his State of the Union address, perhaps the
most surprising--and the one for which President Bush has received the most
kudos--was his announcement that the administration will propose $15
billion over five years to combat HIV/AIDS abroad. The proposal marks a
significant departure for a Republican administration, and is widely
recognized as a positive step. The initiative appears driven by a
combination of pressure from activists outside the administration, support
by administration officials like Secretary of State Colin Powell, National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist,
and the administration s need be seen as promoting something that is of
concern to African-American advocacy organizations in the aftermath of the
Trent Lott fiasco.
While generally viewing the proposal positively, many AIDS activists and
experts are still waiting to see whether the administration will actually
be able to wrestle the money away from a less enthusiastic
Republican-controlled House of Representatives. Furthermore, they have
expressed concern that even in this forward-looking proposal the Bush
administration has slighted multilateral efforts to combat
HIV/AIDS--particularly the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and
Malaria--in favor of a renewed emphasis on bilateral initiatives. Only $1
billion of the $15 billion total is scheduled to be channeled to the Global
Fund. The concern about the administration s prioritization of bilateral
over multilateral initiatives is linked to other concerns: insufficient
funds, timing, consistency, and process.
First, some numbers. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has killed at least 20 million
of the more than 60 million people it has infected thus far. In Africa,
nearly 30 million people have the AIDS virus--including three million
children under the age of 15. There are whole countries in Africa where
more than one-third of the adult population carries the infection. More
than four million people in Africa require immediate drug treatment, yet
only 50,000 AIDS victims are receiving the medicine they need.
Experts from UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO) have previously
estimated that at least $10.5 billion annually is needed from donor
countries in order to mount a credible response to HIV/AIDS worldwide,
including massive prevention programs, reduction of mother to child
transmission, and care for the 40 million people living with AIDS. Of the
$15 billion in the Bush proposal, $10 billion represents new money that had
not already been promised or planned for AIDS programs.
The Global Fund is facing a cash crunch because some donors are failing to
fulfill their pledges, which may make the Fund unable to supply the funds
for grants already approved. To date, $2.1 billion has been pledged to the
Global Fund over five years. On January 29, 2003, at the Global Fund s
recent board meeting, executive director Richard Feachem noted that the
Global Fund needs $ 6.3 billion in 2003 and 2004 alone and that so far $1.2
billion has been pledged for that time period. Washington has so far
committed $500 million over two years, while Feachem has urged the United
States to contribute $2.5 billion to $3 billion over the next two years.
The administration likes to assert that the U.S. is the greatest single
donor to the Global Fund, with more than $500 million committed to date.
This is a misleading claim given the size of the U.S. economy. For example,
the countries of the European Union, which combined have an economy roughly
the size of the U.S., have given close to twice as much, over $1.1 billion.
Second, timing. AIDS activists and experts note that the Bush plan back
loads a significant chunk of the $15 billion into the end of the five year
period. (For example, only $2 billion is allocated for fiscal year 2004).
This delay is costly in terms of lives lost and greater expenditures later
to treat people who might be prevented from contracting HIV today. The
current situation requires a substantial front-loaded capital investment to
scale up existing efforts, said Prof. Richard Feachem, executive director
of the Global Fund. The programs are ready. Any delay now will be measured
by millions of lives lost and billions of dollars of additional cost to
later respond to the expanded epidemics.
Third, many activists and experts, such as the U.S.-based group HealthGAP,
contrast the administration s proposal with its attempts to derail the
negotiation of an agreement under the World Trade Organization (WTO) that
would strengthen developing countries abilities to gain access to
essential medicines. Although all WTO members, including the U.S., signed a
WTO declaration at Doha in 2001 permitting countries to prioritize public
health and access to medicines for all over the intellectual property
rights of pharmaceutical companies, the Bush administration has worked to
reverse this agreement and undermine its implementation. A full year of
negotiations revolved around one aspect of the Doha Declaration: how to
revise restrictions in WTO rules to permit countries without the ability to
make generic drugs to obtain needed medicines from exporting countries. The
U.S.--along with the European Union, Japan, and the pharmaceutical
industry--lobbied stubbornly for strict limitations and conditions, leading
to an impasse as negotiations ended in December 2002 without an agreement.
Finally, the process of decisionmaking in the Global Fund is markedly
different from that of bilateral initiatives--most notably, the
participation of affected communities and the balance of power between
donors and recipients. The Global Fund represents a major innovation in
multilateral aid programs. It includes communities affected by AIDS,
Tuberculosis (TB), and Malaria at every level of the decisionmaking process
and is governed by a board composed of an equal number of donor and
recipient countries. In its short lifetime (the fund is just over a year
old) the Global Fund has created an innovative, demand-driven model where
country-level grant applications are created and submitted by consortia of
public and private sector NGOs, government officials, and organizations
representing people with AIDS, TB, and Malaria.
All of this is not to say that there isn t room for bilateral initiatives,
but the Global Fund has already demonstrated capacity, is scaling up
existing effective programs, and has brought together governments, civil
society organizations, and the private sector. Unfortunately even when it
wants to do a good thing, the Bush administration appears unwilling to
surrender its unilateralist impulses.
(John Gershman <[log in to unmask]> is a senior analyst at the
Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC, online at www.irc-online.org) and
the Asia/Pacific editor for Foreign Policy in Focus.)
For More Background See:
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria
http://www.globalfundatm.org/background.html
Global AIDS and State of the Union Backgrounder: The Bush Administration
and AIDS Funding
http://www.globaltreatmentaccess.org/content/press_releases/03/013003_HGAP_B
P_GWB_plan.pdf
SAVING FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES: A Proposal for a US Presidential Global
AIDS Initiative
http://www.healthgap.org/PAI.html
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*** POWELL S DUBIOUS CASE FOR WAR ***
By Phyllis Bennis
(Editor s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in
its entirety at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0302powell.html .)
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's presentation to the UN Security
Council on February 5 wasn't likely to win over anyone not already on his
side. He ignored the crucial fact that in the past several days (in
Sunday's New York Times and in his February 4th briefing of UN journalists)
Hans Blix denied key components of Powell's claims.
Blix, who directs the UN inspection team in Iraq, said the UNMOVIC
inspectors have seen "no evidence" of mobile biological weapons labs, has
"no persuasive indications" of Iraq-al Qaeda links, and no evidence of Iraq
hiding and moving material used for Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
either outside or inside Iraq. Dr. Blix also said there was no evidence of
Iraq sending scientists out of the country, of Iraqi intelligence agents
posing as scientists, of UNMOVIC conversations being monitored, or of
UNMOVIC being penetrated.
Further, CIA and FBI officials still believe the Bush administration is
"exaggerating" information to make their political case for war. Regarding
the alleged Iraqi link with al Qaeda, U.S. intelligence officials told the
New York Times, "we just don't think it's there."
The most compelling part of Powell's presentation was his brief ending
section on the purported al Qaeda link with Iraq and on the dangers posed
by the al Zarqawi network. However, he segued disingenuously from the
accurate and frightening information about what the al Zarqawi network
could actually do with biochemical materials to the not-so-accurate claim
about its link with Iraq--which is tenuous and unproven at best.
A key component of the alleged Iraq-al Qaeda link is based on what Powell
said "detainees tell us ". That claim must be rejected. On December 27 the
Washington Post reported that U.S. officials had acknowledged detainees
being beaten, roughed up, threatened with torture by being turned over to
officials of countries known to practice even more severe torture. In such
circumstances, nothing "a detainee" says can be taken as evidence of truth
given that people being beaten or tortured will say anything to stop the
pain. Similarly, the stories of defectors cannot be relied on alone, as
they have a self-interest in exaggerating their stories and their own
involvement to guarantee access to protection and asylum.
Finally, the "even if" rule applies. "Even if" everything Powell said was
true, there is simply not enough evidence for war. There is no evidence of
Iraq posing an imminent threat, no evidence of containment not working.
Powell is asking us to go to war--risking the lives of 100,000 Iraqis in
the first weeks, hundreds or thousands of U.S. and other troops, and
political and economic chaos--because he thinks MAYBE in the future Iraq
might rebuild its weapons systems and MIGHT decide to deploy weapons or
MIGHT give those weapons to someone else who MIGHT use them against someone
we like or give them to someone else who we don't like, and other such
speculation. Nothing that Powell said should alter the position that we
should reject a war on spec.
(Phyllis Bennis <[log in to unmask]> is a Middle East analyst for
Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org) and a senior analyst at
the Institute for Policy Studies.)
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*** STATE OF THE UNION ***
By Conn Hallinan
(Editor s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in
its entirety at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301souresp.html .)
There were no surprises in President Bush's address to Congress, except
maybe the firm statement that within a month our country will be at war.
The State of the Union is less a blueprint for the future than a series of
metaphors and symbols, be they words like "resolve" or the empty chair in
the President's box representing the dead of September 11, 2001.
Sitting in that box was a firefighter hero from the 9/11 attack on the
Pentagon, as well as an Afghanistan veteran. But absence can be a powerful
symbol as well, and there were numerous metaphorical blank spots in the
tier of seats that surrounded the President's family.
There were not many allies in that box: no France, no Germany, no Canada,
no Russia, no China.
There were no representatives of the 160,000 veterans suffering from Gulf
War Syndrome.
There were none of the 13 million Iraqi children that, according to Eric
Hoskins, leader of the Independent Study Team, "are at a grave risk of
starvation, disease, death and psychological trauma." The Team is in Iraq
examining the possible impact of war.
There were no governors, whose states are going bankrupt while the White
House cuts domestic spending, jacks up the deficit to $315 billion, and
gets ready to spend $100 billion plus on a new war.
There was no one representing the 42 million Americans without health care,
or college students, whose average educational debt is now $27,600. Some
would have showed up if they could have.
Also notably missing from the box were the majority of economists who think
the administration's $674 billion tax cut for the wealthy is seriously
loopy and will have virtually no effect on stimulating the economy.
While growth is up slightly (just over 2%) so is joblessness, and if
unemployment doesn't start coming down from its present 6%, consumers may
stop using their plastic. Watch out then. "The American consumer has been
the last gasp for the U.S. economy, "says Stephen Roach, chief economist
for Morgan Stanley, "If the consumer weakens further, there is not a whole
lot left."
If the war goes wrong (and with war, one can never tell), the Center for
Strategic and International Studies projects that the jobless rate could
jump to 7.5% and the price of gasoline to $3 a gallon. That would tank the
economy.
As the $10 trillion American economy goes, so goes most the world.
Europe's financial situation is delicate; Japan is recession-bound;
Indonesia, the Philippines, and Singapore are in trouble; and Latin America
is still on life support. "This is not a good time for the world to be able
to absorb the cost of war," says Brian Fabbri, an economist with the French
bank BNP Paribas.
And yet we go to war regardless of the domestic and international
consequences and without even a dim idea of what of lies at the other end.
"War destroys any conception of goals, including any conception of the
goals of war," the writer/philosopher Simone Weil once noted, "It even
destroys the idea of putting an end to war."
(Conn Hallinan <[log in to unmask]> is provost at the University of
California at Santa Cruz and a foreign policy analyst for Foreign Policy In
Focus (online at www.fpif.org).)
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*** AN ANNOTATED OVERVIEW OF THE FOREIGN POLICY SEGMENTS OF PRESIDENT
GEORGE W. BUSH'S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS ***
By Stephen Zunes
(Editor s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in
its entirety at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301souann.html .)
"This threat is new; America's duty is familiar. Throughout the 20th
century, small groups of men seized control of great nations, built armies
and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world. In
each case, their ambitions of cruelty and murder had no limit. In each
case, the ambitions of Hitlerism, militarism, and communism were defeated
by the will of free peoples, by the strength of great alliances, and by the
might of the United States of America . Once again, we are called to defend
the safety of our people, and the hopes of all mankind. And we accept this
responsibility."
The attempt to put Baathist Iraq on par with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia
is ludicrous. Hitler's Germany was the most powerful industrialized nation
in the world when it began its conquests in the late 1930s and Soviet
Russia at its height had the world's largest armed forces and enough
nuclear weapons to destroy humankind. Iraq, by contrast, is a poor Third
World country that has been under the strictest military and economic
embargo in world history for more than a dozen years after having had much
of its civilian and military infrastructure destroyed in the heaviest
bombing in world history. Virtually all that remained of its offensive
military capability was subsequently dismantled under the strictest
unilateral disarmament initiative ever, an inspection and verification
process that has been resumed under an even more rigorous mandate. It is
true that the inspector's have reported that Iraq can not account for large
amounts of biological and chemical agents that can be used as weapons of
mass destruction, yet that does not necessarily justify going to war. By
contrast, back in the 1980s, when Iraq really was a major regional power
and had advanced programs in weapons of mass destruction, the United States
did not consider Iraq a threat at all; in fact, the U.S. provided extensive
military, economic, and technological support to Saddam Hussein's regime.
"Americans are a resolute people who have risen to every test of our time.
Adversity has revealed the character of our country, to the world and to
ourselves. America is a strong nation, and honorable in the use of our
strength. We exercise power without conquest, and we sacrifice for the
liberty of strangers."
The character and resoluteness of the American people is worthy of praise.
Unfortunately, the United States government has frequently used its
military and economic power to suppress liberty, such as supporting the
overthrow of democratically elected governments in countries like Guatemala
and Chile while backing scores of dictatorial regimes throughout the world.
The United States has also used powerful international financial
institutions to force poor countries to weaken environmental and labor laws
to enhance the profits of U.S.-based multinational corporations.
"Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every
person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not
America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to humanity."
What would God think of a government that supplies more weapons, training,
and logistical support to more dictatorships and other human rights abusers
than any other? If freedom and liberty are indeed the will of God, the
foreign policy of the Bush administration is nothing short of blasphemy.
(Stephen Zunes <[log in to unmask]> is an associate professor of politics and
chair of the Peace & Justice Studies Program at the University of San
Francisco. He is Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project
(online at www.fpif.org) and is the author of the recently released book
Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism
<www.commoncouragepress.com>.)
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*** PUMP UP THE PENTAGON, HAWKS TELL BUSH ***
By Jim Lobe
(Editor s Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in
its entirety at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301pnac.html .)
While public opinion polls show that most of the U.S. public is concerned
about the economy, hawks in the Bush administration see another problem as
more urgent: the Pentagon is poor. Last week a group of influential
right-wing figures close to Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice
President Dick Cheney complained that the current military budget of almost
$400 billion--already greater than the world's 15 next-biggest military
establishments combined--is not enough to sustain U.S. strategy abroad.
In a letter to the president released on the eve of his State of the Union
Address, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose alumni
include both Rumsfeld and Cheney, as well as most of their top aides,
called for increasing the defense budget by as much as $100 billion next
year.
"Today's military is simply too small for the missions it must perform,"
said the letter whose signatories included mainly key neoconservatives,
former Reagan administration officials, and a number of individuals close
to big defense manufacturers like Lockheed Martin. "By every measure,
current defense spending is inadequate for a military with global
responsibilities."
The letter, which also suggested that Washington should prepare for
confrontations with North Korea, Iran, and China, was published Monday in
the Weekly Standard, the Rupert Murdoch-financed neoconservative journal
edited by William Kristol, PNAC's cofounder and chairman.
Publication of the letter comes as public confidence in Bush's leadership,
and particularly his apparent eagerness to invade Iraq, has slipped
substantially, according to recent polls. The same surveys show increasing
concern as well about his management of the economy, including the return
of $300 billion budget deficits fueled mostly by military and
security-related spending and tax cuts.
It also comes as veteran foreign policy analysts here and abroad are
warning that anti-American sentiment is rising sharply in both the Islamic
world and among U.S. allies in both Europe and Northeast Asia due to the
perception that the Bush administration is insensitive to their views and
seeks permanent military domination of Eurasia.
In his State of the Union Address Bush will lay out his budget and other
priorities for the coming year. In the following days, the administration
will make specific budget requests. If the administration asks for the
increases urged by PNAC, public concerns about Bush's intentions both here
and abroad are likely to rise steeply.
On the other hand, PNAC's past letters, particularly its recommendations on
its anti-terrorist campaign and policy in the Middle East, have anticipated
to a remarkable degree the administration's policy evolution. Just nine
days after the September 11, 2001 attacks, for example, PNAC issued an open
letter that called on Bush to take his anti-terrorist war beyond
Afghanistan by ousting Saddam Hussein in Iraq, severing ties with the
Palestinian Authority, and preparing for action against Iran, Syria, and
Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The administration, which already won an $80 billion increase in the
defense budget for fiscal 2003, has called for further increases up to $442
billion by 2007. But hawks have warned that this will not match what is
needed if Bush's global ambitions are to be realized.
"A year into this activist foreign policy," wrote Frederick Kagan, a
military historian and Robert Kagan's brother, late last year, "the defense
agencies that will prosecute the war on terrorism remained starved of
resources. Increases of some 100 billion dollars annually or more--over and
above the increases already called for--will be necessary to provide for a
defense establishment able to fulfill the president's national security
strategy."
The hawks insist this is realistic, because an increase of 100 billion
dollars will bring the defense budget's percentage of gross domestic
product (GDP) to only four percent, still lower in percentage terms than
what the Pentagon received in the mid-1980s. "Less than a nickel on the
dollar for American security in the 21st century is cheap at the price,"
according to the letter.
(Jim Lobe <[log in to unmask]> is a political analyst Foreign Policy In
Focus (online at www.fpif.org). He also writes regularly for Inter Press
Service.)
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*** THE TIME-OUT METHOD DOESN'T WORK ***
By John Feffer
(Editor s Note: Excerpted from a global affairs commentary available in
full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301timeout.html .)
For the past two years, the Bush administration has treated North Korea
like a child throwing a tantrum. Rather than charm a crying child with a
piece of cake or apply a switch to its backside, the current child
psychology approach is the "time out"--separate the child from the group
until it calms down. Similarly, the Bush administration has hoped that
isolating and ignoring North Korea will make it "come to its senses" and
stop bothering the other kids in the playroom.
But North Korea is still putting up a fuss. In recent weeks, it threatened
to restart reactors that make bomb-grade plutonium and to end a unilateral
moratorium on missile testing. It withdrew from the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty and is also likely continuing with an alternative
uranium enrichment program. In response, the United States has cut off fuel
shipments and delayed food aid, but has so far ruled out a military option.
The multilateralism-averse Bush administration even wants to bring the
problem to the United Nations. In the degraded political atmosphere in
Washington, with a war pending in Iraq and unilateralism run amok, this
non-apocalyptic approach to North Korea passes for diplomacy.
Diplomacy it is not. Diplomacy resolved the last nuclear standoff on the
Korean peninsula after Jimmy Carter's intervention in 1994 preempted the
Pentagon's planned preemptive strike. Thereafter, the Clinton
administration treated North Korea like a donkey that could be prodded
along the path of appropriate international behavior by an alternation of
carrots and sticks.
The Bush administration decisively rejected Clinton's carrot-and-stick
approach. It threw additional burrs (troop concentrations, conventional
weaponry) into the negotiations with North Korea that doomed the talks. It
snubbed Kim Dae Jung and his engagement policy. It further isolated the
already isolated country by lumping North Korea with Iran and Iraq in an
"axis of evil." It looked for ways to unravel the Agreed Framework.
The "time-out" strategy is really a form of preemption without
intervention. Hardliners in Congress expected the Agreed Framework to be
rendered irrelevant by regime collapse in Pyongyang. More recently, hawks
in the Bush administration pushed for a military option when the current
crisis broke. But the State Department is mindful of how countries in the
region feel about war with North Korea. South Korea doesn't want to suffer
the lion's share of the casualties resulting from such a conflict. Japan
remains hesitant, and China outright opposes the military option. Meanwhile
the North Korean government soldiers on, following the Cuban example by
shifting the blame for its problems onto U.S. intransigence.
North Korea has signaled its willingness to negotiate a way out of the
current crisis. It would consider rejoining the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty if the United States resumes heavy fuel oil shipments as mandated
under the 1994 Agreed Framework. It would suspend its nuclear program if
the United States provided an assurance of non-aggression. "We have no
intention of invading North Korea," President Bush has said several times.
But Pyongyang wants more--a pledge of non-intervention that would extend
beyond simply invasion--and wants it in writing.
Isolating and ignoring North Korea brought us to the current crisis. It's
time to throw away the "time-out" strategy and invite North Korea back to
the table to hammer out an alternative to Korean War II.
(John Feffer <[log in to unmask]> is the author of Shock Waves: Eastern
Europe After the Revolutions, the editor of the forthcoming Power Trip:
U.S. Foreign Policy After September 11 (Seven Stories, 2003), and has
recently returned from three years based in Tokyo working on East Asian
issues. Feffer is also an FPIF advisory committee member (online at
www.fpif.org).)
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*** U.S.-CENTRAL AMERICAN FREE TRADE AGREEMENT: LEAPING WITHOUT LOOKING?
***
By Vincent McElhinny
(Editor s Note: This excerpt from a commentary comes to FPIF courtesy of
the Americas Program at the Interhemispheric Resource Center and is
available online at
http://www.fpif.org/americas/commentary/2003/0301cafta.html .)
The potential benefits of trade can be an important engine for economic
growth and poverty reduction. However, only when trade is built upon solid
institutional foundations are these benefits typically realized. There is a
widely shared frustration by many working in Central America that these
conditions may be lacking. The region remains critically vulnerable to
recurrent economic and ecological shocks. After a decade of post-civil war
and economic reforms that have already lowered trade barriers, eliminated
state subsidies for many producers in the region, and increased trade,
broad-based development in the region remains elusive. Poverty has not been
reduced, and income inequality has increased--as have unemployment and
underemployment--and the World Food Program reports that 8.6 million
Central Americans (1 in 4) continue to suffer from hunger or food
insecurity. Meanwhile, social violence has reached epidemic proportions,
now approximating the worst political violence of the civil wars years in
El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In desperation, more Central
Americans set out every day to attempt the dangerous entry into the United
States.
Given this panorama, one wonders at the rush by U.S. and Central American
negotiators to conclude a U.S.-Central American Free Trade Agreement
(CAFTA) in just twelve short months--especially given the lack of any
empirical assessment of the potential social, economic, or environmental
impacts that the agreement would have in the region.
The U.S. trade agenda should be grounded by more intensive investigation of
the links between trade liberalization and sustainable-equitable
development. Research on trade liberalization has failed to persuasively
demonstrate that countries that trade more also achieve lower levels of
poverty and inequality. The evidence is mixed. The case of Mexico is
particularly instructive. Export volume has tripled under the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and economic growth averaged a robust
6% from 1996-2000. But research by the Inter-American Development Bank
(IDB) has shown that the top 20% of the income strata captured the
investment benefits of NAFTA, while over 60% of Mexicans remain trapped in
poverty. Additionally, many of the competitiveness and productivity gains
that NAFTA promised for Mexico have been slow in coming. Clearly the
trade-development relationship depends upon other factors (good government,
low inequality, adequate human & physical capital investment, substantive
adjustment assistance). To date, little is known about the possible impact
of CAFTA. Impact assessments on the employment and poverty effects of the
proposed agreement are necessary to clearly identify the winners and losers
from trade liberalization in Central America.
The involvement of civil society in helping to chart out a course for
development in Central America is also necessary. Such participation is the
bedrock of political legitimacy that many observers say is lacking with
respect to economic policy in Central America. In order to make informed
decisions about the potential risks and opportunities involved in the
proposed CAFTA, all parties involved should have as much information
about--and input into--the negotiating process as possible. Impact
assessments should be made available to civil society groups in order to
provide for their informed input into the negotiation process. Public
hearings sponsored by a joint United States Trade Representative
(USTR)-government team should be held regularly, not only in Washington but
in each of the five Central American countries, prior to the beginning of
negotiations and as a periodic mechanism to disclose information relevant
to the negotiation process.
(Vincent McElhinny <[log in to unmask]> is program manager of the
Inter-American Development Bank-Civil Society Initiative at the InterAction
in Washington, DC.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
II. Outside the U.S.
(Editor's Note: FPIF's "Outside the U.S." component aims to bring non-U.S.
voices into the U.S. policy debate and to foster dialog between Northern
and Southern actors in global affairs issues. Please visit our Outside the
U.S. page for other non-U.S. perspectives on global affairs and for
information about submissions at: http://www.fpif.org/outside/index.html.
If you're interested in submitting commentaries for our use, please send
your solicitation to John Gershman at <[log in to unmask]>.)
*** IRAN: THE NEXT TARGET? ***
By Paul Rogers
(Editor s Note: Excerpted from a new Outside the U.S. Commentary available
in full at http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2003/0301iran.html .)
President Bush s State of the Union address comes as near to a declaration
of war on Iraq as is possible without the guns beginning to fire. It
rehearsed all of the reasons for an attack relating to Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction, made no mention of oil, and made it clear that the U.S.
was prepared to go to war with minimal international support if need be.
The speech was significant for two other reasons, involving the war on
terror and Iran, respectively. First is George Bush s affirmation that
there are direct and compelling links between the Saddam Hussein regime and
al Qaeda, with evidence on this promised in the next few days. The
connection between terminating the Iraqi regime and fighting the war on
terror is crucial in obtaining domestic support for war on Iraq, even if it
is likely to cut little ice across much of the rest of the world.
Within Iraq there is a small paramilitary group called Ansar al-Islam,
loosely linked to al Qaeda, which is active in the north of the country.
This group has the tacit support of the regime but it is marginal in Iraq
as a whole. More generally, al Qaeda has shown virtually no interest in
Iraq until very recently, for the obvious reason that Saddam Hussein s
Ba ath party runs a secular regime of a kind that is anathema to al Qaeda s
aims for the region.
This makes it highly implausible that substantial links exist between the
regime and al Qaeda. In turn this suggests that the equivalent of the Gulf
of Tonkin incident of 1964, which enabled the U.S. to engage more forcibly
in Vietnam, may provide a suitable pretext for U.S. onslaught on Iraq.
The second point about the State of the Union address has been largely
neglected in immediate commentary but tells us a lot about the longer-term
U.S. plans for the region. It concerns President Bush s extensive mention
of Iran, which almost went as far as to imply that Iran would become an
immediate focus of attention once Iraq was made safe.
The war with Iraq will certainly be intended to destroy the Saddam Hussein
regime, but its much more significant purpose is to consolidate power in a
fractious yet strategically crucial region. If the regime is terminated by
U.S. military force in the coming months, then there will be an immediate
military occupation while some degree of stability is ensured, leading to a
regime in Baghdad that is a client of Washington. At that stage, many of
the U.S. occupying forces may well be withdrawn, but we should also expect
the rapid development of an extensive and permanent U.S. military presence.
A consolidated and substantial military presence in Iraq has, in
Washington s eyes, several major advantages. It ensures the security of
Iraqi oil for the long term, it limits dependence on a potentially unstable
Saudi Arabia and it increases the security of America s closest ally in the
region, Israel.
Moreover, it makes it abundantly clear to Iran that the United States is
the controlling power in the region. This is important because of Iran s
remarkable combination of oil reserves, massive gas reserves (second only
to Russia), potential control of the Straits of Hormuz, a burgeoning
population and a geographical location at the heart of south-west Asia.
From the Bush administration s point of view, dominating Iran in this way
is therefore a perfect answer to controlling an unstable yet crucially
important region.
The dominant view from Tehran is likely to be that U.S. forces pose a
threat extending right through the Persian Gulf in the shape of the U.S.
Fifth Fleet and, even more significantly, right up Iran s long western land
border with Iraq.
It is more or less guaranteed that this new proximity of U.S. forces will
cause serious concern in Tehran, with three probable effects. First, it
will bolster support for the more conservative elements, particularly among
the clerics. Secondly, it will allow an opening for Russia to expand its
influence in the country.
Thirdly, and perhaps most significant of all, it will almost inevitably
increase Iran s desire to develop its own strategic deterrent, based
largely on missiles and chemical and biological weapons. This will be seen
as an absolute necessity in the face of U.S. power in the region, even if
it risks a further confrontation.
There is one further factor in all of this--the role of European states.
France, Germany and other western European countries have worked quietly
and persistently to improve relations with Iran. Moreover, their connection
with the country is free of the embittered historical memories that remain
from the U.S. role in the overthrow of Mossadeq in 1952 and the embassy
siege of 1979 80.
The possibility that regime termination in Iraq could then lead on to a
confrontation with another part of the axis of evil , Iran, is something
that would cause real concern in Europe. It may well be that the real
crisis in European American relations will eventually come not over Iraq,
but over Iran. The gravest long-term consequence of the strategy outlined
in the President s State of the Union address is, therefore, that war with
Iraq is not the end of U.S. ambitions in the region, but only the
beginning.
(This article was first published in its entirety on the global issues
website www.opendemocracy.net as part of an ongoing debate about Global
Security. Paul Rogers is professor of peace studies at Bradford University
and is openDemocracy's international security correspondent. He is a
consultant to the Oxford Research Group. The second edition of his book
Losing Control has just been published by Pluto Press.)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
III. Letters and Comments
*** FRUSTRATING ***
Re: Invasion Can Be Stopped
(http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301activists.html)
The writer of this article is under a number of illusions: that the Bush
administration cares what the peace movement says or does, for example.
Or what the government of France says or does, for that matter. The war
will begin when the troops and weapons are in place. This was obvious as
early as early as last spring, when the buildup and the accelerated weapons
production schedules were announced. Nothing you, or anyone else, says or
does will affect the schedule in the least.
Frustrating, isn't it?
- S.M. Stirling, <[log in to unmask]>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** ISRAEL S ALTERNATIVE ***
Re: Israel
What would be the alternative policy for a country, such as Israel, that is
surrounded by hostile countries? Anti-semitism seems to have united the
Arab nations and most of Europe. The situation with Israel and Palastine is
bleak. Extreme members of BOTH sides have committed atrocities. My support
leans toward Isreal, most importantly because Israel did not desire to
displace Muslim people, the Muslim leaders decided to target the Jews as
the Arab enemy.
The Arab people, as a people not individuals, will not stop the hatred they
feel toward the people of Israel. Europe has backed them up due to a
general feeling of anti-semitism and their own financial dealings with
Iraq. The international media has decided to ignore the actions of Arabs
for the majority of Israel s existence. Now they focus their sympathy
toward the poor Palestinians being harassed by Israel s military.
- A. Sapharas <[log in to unmask]>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** TERMINATE SADDAM ***
Re: The Coming War With Iraq: Deciphering the Bush Administration's Motives
(http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301warreasons.html)
Michael Klare lists 3 motives announced by the Bush administration for
going to war with Iraq: (1) Eliminating weapons of mass destruction, (2)
Combating terrorism, (3) The promotion of democracy.
However there is another most important reason in most reasonable people's
minds: putting a stop to Saddam's career of murder. He has already attacked
his own Kurds, his own Shiites, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi, and Israel, using
weapons of mass destruction. Add to that, his routine assassination of all
who oppose or even comment on his regime. Murder is simply in his nature; a
leopard can't change its spots. He will continue to the full extent of his
abilities. The UN has had 12 years but has failed to do the job, and in
this time thousands more innocent men have been murdered and women
suppressed or mutilated and children deprived of a fair upbringing.
In the name of humanity, we need to terminate him once and for all.
- Ian Bryce <[log in to unmask]>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
*** THANKS ***
Re: The Coming War With Iraq: Deciphering the Bush Administration's Motives
(http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0301warreasons.html)
Great article. I appreciate the systematic approach to analyzing the Bush's
supposed motives as well as the economic and historical context that
explains his truer motivations. While I was aware that oil was at the heart
of this war, this was the first article that I have come across that really
explained why. Thanks.
- Shawna Bouwers <[log in to unmask]>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
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