[PEN-L:11155] Future Postings of Progressive Response
Dear members of pen-l discussion list, We at Foreign Policy in Focus have enjoyed the engaging discussions on this list, however due to the high volume of email we receive at this account we will be signing off of the list. This of course means we will not be posting materials from the project. We hope you found the Progressive Repsonse and Foreign Policy in Focus briefing papers worthwhile. If you want to receive the weekly Progressive Response directly please visit our website and enter your email address or follow format below. best regards, Tim McGivern Foreign Policy in Focus [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org To subscribe to The Progressive Response, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words join newusfp in the body of the message.
[PEN-L:10913] Progressive Response: APEC, IRAQ, E.TIMOR
-- The Progressive Response 10 September 1999 Vol. 3, No. 33 Editor: Tom Barry -- The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in PR. -- Table of Contents I. Updates and Out-Takes *** APEC ASEAN: MULTILATERALISM IN ASIA PACIFIC *** By John Gershman *** CONGRESSIONAL STAFF INVESTIGATE U.S. POLICY IN IRAQ *** II. Comments *** THOUGHTS ON EAST TIMOR AND ERITREA *** -- I. Updates and Out-Takes *** APEC ASEAN: MULTILATERALISM IN ASIA PACIFIC *** By John Gershman (Editor's Note: The meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Forum this week and the post-electoral violence in East Timor focus international attention on the role of regional institutions in dealing with regional crises. John Gershman of the Institute for International Development Research offers an overview and a critical analysis of these two multilateral institutions in his FPIF focus essay, "Still the Pacific Century? U.S. Policy in Asia and the Pacific" [forthcoming in an FPIF book published by St. Martin's Press], which is excerpted here.) The Asian financial and political crises exposed the weakness of regional institutions. Unlike the formal institutional structures that manage integration in North America under NAFTA or in the European Union, economic integration in East and Southeast Asia is not guided by structural accords. The inability of ASEAN, the oldest regional multilateral organization, to respond effectively to the regional economic and environmental crises is reflected in Singapore Premier Goh Chok Tong's observation that ASEAN "is seen as helpless and worse, disunited in a crisis." A major stumbling block is ASEAN's principle of nonintervention in the domestic affairs of member countries. More recent developments suggest that this principle is slowly being challenged. For example, the regional impact of the Indonesian forest fires of 1997 led Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines to pressure Indonesia to adopt policies to prevent a repeat occurrence, while Thailand and the Philippines initially opposed Cambodia's entrance into ASEAN. When, on occasion, Asian governments have attempted collective action on economic issues without including the United States, as in Malaysian Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir's proposal for an East Asian Economic Caucus or in the case of the ASEAN Free Trade Area, Washington has objected. For example, one early attempt at a regional response to the Asian economic crisis was Japan's August 1997 proposal for an Asian Monetary Fund. This would have created a fund to protect Asian currencies from speculative assaults in their financial markets. But the U.S. Treasury Department torpedoed the proposal, arguing that it was duplicating the efforts of the IMF. The U.S. does not advocate multilateralism in Asia, per se, but uses multilateral institutions to advance U.S. corporate interests, as exemplified in its approach to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC). APEC consists of 21 countries on both sides of the Pacific. Trade among its members accounts for over half of world trade, and until the crisis, a growing proportion of world output. Technically, APEC is a forum of "economies" not countries, since Taiwan and the Peoples' Republic of China do not recognize each other diplomatically, and Hong Kong entered APEC first as a colony of Great Britain and is now a Special Administrative Region of China. Originally, APEC was an informal group of 12 Asia-Pacific economies: Australia, Brunei, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States. They were followed by China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (1991), Mexico and Papua New Guinea (1993), Chile (1994), and Peru, Russia, and Vietnam (1998). APEC actually contains three parallel processes. The first is the original: economic and technical cooperation promoting economic and human resource development. The second process, a more explicit trade and investment liberalization agenda, emerged in 1993 at APEC's first-ever Economic Leaders Meeting. The "Bogor Declaration" released the following year stated that APEC's goal was "free and open trade and investment" in the region, by 2010 for industrialized economies, and 2020 for developing members. Resistance on the part of Japan and the ASEAN countries to the U.S. agenda has led to relatively vague goals, many of which merely repeated commitments
[PEN-L:10625] RE: Countering bigoted rightwing attack on Free Speech
Dear Mr Craven, I applaud your felicitous comments wholeheartedly! Tim McGivern At 12:42 PM 9/2/99 -0700, you wrote: James Craven Clark College, 1800 E. McLoughlin Blvd. Vancouver, WA. 98663 (360) 992-2283; Fax: (360) 992-2863 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.home.earthlink.net/~blkfoot5 *My Employer Has No Association With My Private/Protected Opinion* -Original Message- From: Nathan Newman [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, September 02, 1999 11:59 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:10598] Countering bigoted rightwing attack on Free Speech PLEASE FORWARD Folks, People may of caught the nasty David Horowitz column in Salon attacking the NAACP's lawsuits against the gun lobby where he argued that black leaders should "[abandon] the ludicrous claim that white America and firearms manufacturers are the cause of the problems afflicting African-Americans. It would mean taking responsibility for their own communities instead." See http://www.salon.com/news/col/horo/1999/08/16/naacp/index.html Jack White, a black TIME magazine columnist, wrote a rather restrained response where he dared to describe Horowitz's screed as being that of a "bigot." See http://www.pathfinder.com/time/magazine/articles/0,3266,29787,00.html Well, Horowitz - the architect of "free speech" campaigns against campus speech codes against racism - has now decided that words hurt as much as sticks and stones. He is now rallying the rightwing to pressure TIME to end any flirtations with actually allowing anti-racist voices in their magazine. Read the following whining letter from Horowitz, contact the people he mentions, and tell them you support the free speech rights of Jack White to label bigotry when he sees it. And tell David Talbot of Salon that he may enjoy providing a provocative range of voices in his online magazine, but he should rethink employing people like Horowitz who seek to silence the voices at other magazines. Let Horowitz ( a public personality for purposes of legal tests of libel and slander) just try to prove spreading verbally (slander) or in writing (libel) 1) intentional untruths known to be untruths and/or 2) untruths with careless disregard for facts (easily obtainable facts that clearly reveal untruths as untruths); 3) concrete damages; 4) malice 5) opinion not clearly labelled as opinion. What do you call someone who writes: "Guns don't kill Blacks, Blacks do"? What do you call someone who writes that racism doesn't exist in America on any institutionalized level? What do you call someone who writes/says as "dysfunction" in African-American communities is due solely to a dysfunctional culture with dysfunctional values about which non-Blacks have little if anything to do? (the old racist tautology: "backward because they are backward") What do you call someone who says nothing about the plethora of anti-Black, Anti-Jewish, Anti-Indian, Anti-Hispanic hate groups armed and openly calling for a "HoRaWa" (Holy Race War)? What do you call someone who ignores the most notable examples of gun violence--white kids and racists killing other whites and targeted minorities? What do you call someone who deiliberately ignores the numerous examples of African-Americans being racially profiled and killed by police and by racist thugs? What do you call someone who deliberately ignores the long-lasting and thoroughly documentable deleterious effects of institutionalized slavery and racism on individuals and families and whole groups? A bigot. A racist. A racist apologist. A whore and toady of the racist privileged. A punk. An opportunist. Add here: ... Anyone remember "Marx and Modern Economics", "Shakespeare: An Existential View", "The Free World Colossus", "The Corporations and the Cold War" and "Ramparts"? He was obviously playing a "market niche" then and is playing another one now. This is an example of what happens when "Radical" is but a market niche rather than a deeply-felt/held ongoing commitment; so easy to go from "ultra-left" to "ultra-right" because the focus was on the "ultra", the self, the narcissism, the know-it-all hubris and the market niche all along. This is my protected OPINION. Horowitz is free to express his, and I and others are free to express our own considered opinions about the essence of the message and the messenger. The fact that he whines so much, shows what a thoroughly disgusting opportunist and weak toady/sycophant he truly is. Jim Craven
[PEN-L:10631] Progressive Response: Implications of US Budget Priorities
- The Progressive Response 3 September 1999 Vol. 3, No. 32 Editor: Tom Barry - The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in PR. - Table of Contents *** DIPLOMACY STARVED *** By Robert Borosage *** EAST TIMOR VIOLENCE: LEGACY OF U.S. INDONESIA POLICY *** By John Gershman - *** DIPLOMACY STARVED *** By Robert Borosage (Editor's Note: The following analysis of the U.S. budget and international programs is excerpted from a timely FPIF Special Report entitled "Money Talks: The Implications of U.S. Budget Priorities." Written by Robert Borosage of the Campaign for America's Future, the report is intended to place the current budget wrangles in Washington into the larger perspective of how budget priorities reflect the role of U.S. in global affairs. The Special Report, which contains numerous helpful tables and charts, is posted on the FPIF website at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/money/index.html) In sharp contrast to its military spending, the U.S. devotes comparatively few dollars to foreign diplomacy, international assistance, and support for international institutions. The total net outlays in FY 1999 will be around $15 billion, less than 1% of the $1.66 trillion federal budget. This budget pays for the vast majority of the U.S. civilian role abroad. It includes 150 different account funds, ranging from food aid to the State Department's antiterrorism programs to the U.S. contributions to multilateral financial institutions like the World Bank and its affiliated regional banks. Major items include the State Department, with its worldwide infrastructure of embassies, missions, consulates, and an overseas staff of more than 35,000. Also included are the Agency for International Development (AID) and bilateral assistance programs, the United States Information Agency (USIA) and a range of activities called "public diplomacy," the Commerce Department's trade offices, as well as the Peace Corps and other humanitarian programs. The funding encompasses assistance to the Newly Independent States (once part of the Soviet Union), U.S. non-military aid commitments to Bosnia, security aid to Israel and the Middle East, and support for the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. (The figure does not include the $14.5 billion U.S. quota increase for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) nor the $3.4 billion credit commitment to the IMF's New Arrangements to Borrow program, still pending before Congress. IMF appropriations are considered monetary exchanges--with the IMF providing the U.S. with Special Drawing Rights--and thus are not considered budget outlays.) Secretary Albright is surely right to suggest that this total is shamefully inadequate. The U.S. is the world's wealthiest nation--and its largest scofflaw. As of mid-1999, our debt to the United Nations totals over $1.6 billion in back dues, and we owe more than $600 million to the international financial institutions (including the Global Environmental Facility). The U.S. provides less of its wealth to support the impoverished abroad than any other industrial country. U.S. spends less than one tenth of 1% of its GDP on official development assistance, and about the same amount on other aid related activities (including peacekeeping). The Organization for Economic Cooperation's Development's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) average is about four times as much or four-tenths of 1%. (And the official target of the United Nations is that donors provide seven-tenths of 1% in aid.) Despite having by far the world's largest economy, the U.S. is no longer the world's largest aid provider. Economically troubled Japan provides more aid in absolute dollar terms, giving $9 billion in 1997; the U.S., Germany and France each provided around $6.5 billion. These numbers are falling rapidly: since 1995 aid from these four countries has dropped 6% in real dollars and total DAC support has dropped 18%. Moreover, U.S. spending on international affairs when measured in constant dollars has been declining steadily since 1980. From 1992 through 1998, funding dropped an average of about 6% annually. Under the projected balanced budget agreements, international affairs funding is slated to be cut another 13% by 2002, and U.S. overseas development assistance could drop to about one-tenth of the global total. By 2002, international affairs spending will be about half of
[PEN-L:10266] Fair Trade and Corporate Welfare
>From Progressive Response By Tom Barry Corporate welfare for U.S. transnational corporations isn't a hot issue in the current budget fight on Capitol Hill. But it should be. Although budget reformers have largely ignored the issue, citizens opposing corporate welfare may find an unlikely ally in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Thanks to a European Union (EU) challenge of U.S. export subsidies, the WTO may soon rule that the Foreign Sales Corporations (FSC) provision of the U.S. tax code is an illegal export subsidy. The FSC, which allows U.S. exporters to exempt up to 15% of export earnings, costs the U.S. taxpayer in excess of $1.8 billion annually. Boeing Co., the biggest beneficiary of the FSC tax break, saved $130 million in U.S. income taxes in 1998, according to Business Week (August 16, 1999). The forthcoming WTO decision should come as no surprise to Washington. The Domestic International Sales Corporation, the predecessor of the FSC tax loophole, was declared a violation of the free trade rules of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade GATT). The EU's challenge before the WTO is the latest round in an ongoing battle between Europe and the U.S. to shape the rules of free trade. Having prided itself on its successful challenges before the WTO of the EU's quotas on U.S. bananas and its ban on hormone tainted U.S. beef, Washington now finds that the logic of free trade may threaten its cozy relationship with Corporate America. A WTO ruling that the FSC program is an unfair trade practice is one of the few WTO decisions that fair trade and consumer advocates can support. This WTO ruling on this type of export subsidy highlights a central issue in the free trade-managed trade-fair trade debate: namely, the degree to which national governments or international trade authorities should intervene in the international market. Critics of the WTO regularly assert that individual nations, when acting in the interests of promoting national economic development, should be able to determine whether certain trading sectors should be subsidized or protected. In contrast, advocates of a globalized trading structure insist on the establishment of enforceable international rules that prohibit most production subsidies and set limits on nationally imposed constraints on trade. A virtue of having an international arbiter such as the WTO that uniformly enforces trade rules and possibly investment rules is that powerful nations like the U.S. may find that they, too, are subject to the international rule of law. Unfortunately, however, the international rules governing trade and investment have been written mostly to favor the wealthier trading nations and their leading corporations--with the result that GATT and now the WTO serve mainly to facilitate the extension of Northern economic power (See WTO and Developing Countries, FPIF Vol. 3, No. 37, available at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol3/v3n37wto.html). The recent spate of disputes between the EU and the U.S.--bananas, growth hormones, and export subsidies--will do little to alter the North's domination of the WTO. Rather these are intra-hegemonic disputes that refine the character of a neoliberal trading regimen. Although a ruling by the WTO against the FSC export subsidy is not a direct attack on a trading system that privileges transnational corporations and the wealthiest countries, it may help focus more international attention on the subsidized, favored position of U.S. and other Northern corporations in the global "free market." FPIF recently released a special report entitled Corporate Welfare and U.S. Foreign Policy by corporate welfare expert Janice Shields. In that report, Shields argued that if the U.S. government as part of its budget process decides against cutting corporate welfare, then at least the government should require that "corporate welfare programs be periodically reviewed and, if costs exceed public benefits, eliminated." In a recent op-ed in the Journal of Commerce (July 29, 1999), Shields of the Institute for Business Research and James Sheehan of the Competitive Enterprise Institute conclude: "Now is the time for Congress to stop doling out favors to special interests and start protecting the public interest." Environmental Impacts of Subsidies One reader of the FPIF special report on corporate welfare pointed out that a narrow accounting of costs and benefits of subsidy programs and their impact on the free flow of trade should not be the only criteria to evaluate U.S. international corporate welfare. Also critical is an evaluation of the impact of these programs on global sustainable development. Just as U.S. subsidized logging programs within the United States need to be evaluated by their environmental impact (in addition to their economic costs and benefits), so too should international corporate welfare programs be subject to sustainable development criteria. Not only should companies with bad
[PEN-L:10257] UN Taking Blame for Kosovo
acy at home. So too, the Roman empire. In the last couple hundred years the sun-never-sets-on-us British empire did the same thing. And now, having achieved once unimaginable heights of military, economic, and political power, it's Washington's turn. The law of empire was clear in the U.S. refusal to sign the 1997 convention prohibiting the use of anti-personnel land mines, The rest of the world agreed that anti-personnel mines, responsible for far more civilian than military deaths, should be outlawed. But the U.S., while claiming to support the convention, demanded that it be exempt, and be allowed to continue using land mines in Korea's demilitarized zone and around the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Everyone else should ban land mines, the U.S. agreed, but we should be the exception. And it is perhaps most clear of all in how the U.S., the only country in the world with the power to do so, shifted international decision-making out of the hands of the United Nations, replaced by unilateral action and NATO decision-making. In 1990 the U.S. selected the UN as its legitimizer of choice, orchestrating through bribes and threats and punishments a Security Council vote authorizing Washington's coalition war against Iraq. In the run-up to Operation Desert Fox in 1998, Security Council members were afraid Washington was going to sideline them once more. A parade of Council ambassadors stated explicitly that their resolution did not authorize a unilateral U.S. military strike on Iraq. Their fears were right: then-U. S. Ambassador to the UN Bill Richardson blithely shrugged and told the press, "we think it does." And four days of bombs and cruise missiles devastated Baghdad. By 1999, having denied the UN and European diplomatic organizations the authority and resources needed for serious preventive diplomacy in the escalating Kosovo crisis, Washington took the final step. It abandoned the UN altogether, replacing the legal requirement of UN authorization for the use of force with the projection of NATO, a military alliance, as champion of yet another bombing campaign. Of course the UN is the right organization to be in charge of the Kosovo situation right now--but it must be granted the money, personnel, and authority it needs to do the job. In fact, the U. S. should have promoted the UN as the central actor there years ago--by paying its UN dues, by supporting UN efforts (along with those of European organizations such as the OSCE) to respond proactively before the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo escalated, by supporting the creation of a UN Department of Preventive Diplomacy and a standing, independent, UN-controlled, rapid-reaction civilian/police/peacekeeping force. Setting up the UN to take the blame for U.S. and NATO failures is no way to bring peace to Kosovo--nor to Sierra Leone or Colombia or anywhere else. Being the richest and most powerful nation in the world doesn't give the U.S. the right to trample international law, to run endgames around the UN, or to use or discard the global organization on the whims of superpower arrogance or domestic politics. The world has had enough of empires writing their own rules. (Phyllis Bennis is a Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, a frequent contributor to FPIF, and author of Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today's UN.) - The Progressive Response aims to provide timely analysis and opinion about U.S. foreign policy issues. The content does not necessarily reflect the institutional positions of either the Interhemispheric Resource 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 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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. - To subscribe or unsubscribe to the Progressive Response, go to: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/progresp/progresp.html and follow the instructions. For those readers without access to the www send an email message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words "join newusfp" in the body of the message. To unsubscribe, send an email message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words "leave newusfp" in the body of the message. Visit the Foreign Policy In Focus website, http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/ifbrfndx.html
[PEN-L:10145] A New Iron Curtain
New at Foreign Policy in Focus Containment Lite: U.S. Policy Toward Russia and Its Neighbors by John Feffer If the U.S. government had wanted to destroy Russia from the inside out, it couldn't have devised a more effective policy than its so-called "strategic partnership." From aggressive foreign policy to misguided economic advice to undemocratic influence- peddling, the U.S. has ushered in a cold peace on the heels of the cold war. By pushing ahead recklessly with expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) both in membership and in its mission, the U.S. government is deepening the divide that separates Russia from Europe, effectively building a new Iron Curtain down the middle of Eurasia. www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/russia
[PEN-L:9891] Corporate Welfare and International Investment Rules
New at Foreign Policy In Focus Corporate Welfare and U.S. Foreign Policy by Janice Shields U.S. aid for international investors, exporters, and importers exceeds $32 billion annually and benefits such "needy" recipients as General Motors, Citibank, Archer Daniels Midland, and Boeing. The Market Access Program (MAP), for example, uses taxpayer money to reimburse=20 corporate foreign advertising costs. Proponents of MAP contend that these=20 subsidies generate $16 in export revenue for every $1 in taxpayer costs. Yet,=20 U.S. General Accounting Office studies could not document any increase in=20 exports due to MAP expenditures.=20 To read the complete report: www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/cw/index Are International Investment Rules and the Environment Stuck in the Mud?=20 Written by Lyuba Zarsky, Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development In the MAI (Multilateral Agreement on Investment) process, which the U.S. initiated and led, environmental and social concerns were initially not even on the radar screen. Even after a storm of public criticism, environmental issues made only a minor appearance. Yet the evidence shows that regulation=97or the lack of it=97matters. Foreign investment, both direct and portfolio, could act to promote ecological sustainability, which is=97or should be=97a strategic U.S= .. foreign policy goal. www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol4/v4n22env
[PEN-L:9641] Progressive Response: Immigration Policy Debate
The Progressive Response 26 July 1999 Vol. 3, No. 26 Editor: Martha Honey The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in PR. Table of Contents *** THE LIMITS OF IMMIGRATION POLICY *** By Rachael Kamel, American Friends Service Committee *** FROM INDENTURED "GUESTS" TO NATURALIZED WORKERS *** By Jonathan Brier, CAUSA *** THE CAMPAIGN FOR MIGRANT DOMESTIC WORKERS RIGHTS *** By Stephen Fried, Institute for Policy Studies (Editor's note: The Foreign Policy In Focus project has found that U.S. immigration policy is one of the most contentious and divisive issues for the progressive community. Unless one supports open borders with no immigration restrictions, there is a lack of clarity over what should be the parameters and principles of a just and sustainable U.S. immigration policy. One of the earliest briefs our project published was David Stoll's "The Immigration Debate" (vol. 2, no. 31, available at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol2/v2n31imm.html) in which he proposed certain restrictions and checks on immigration. Because of the opposition this brief generated, we asked a number of organizations to critique it and lay out their proposals for a sane U.S. immigration policy. Unfortunately, the papers we received were disappointing because, while they criticized Stoll's brief, they failed to elaborate on either the broad dimensions or specifics of an alternative policy. The one exception was the well-argued paper written by Rachael Kamel of the American Friends Service Committee. Even though this piece is now almost two years old and has not been updated, we still find its policy framework a useful contribution to the immigration debate. We are coupling this with essays outlining two current campaigns, one based in Oregon and the other in Washington, D.C., involving particular categories of immigrants. One, by Jonathan Brier of CAUSA, argues that the H-2A guestworker program that brings in migrant agricultural laborers should not be expanded because it is being used to replace domestic laborers and ratchet down wages. The other essay, by Stephen Fried of the IPS-based Campaign for Migrant Domestic Workers Rights, argues for the preservation of the A-3 and G-5 visa categories that bring in household workers for diplomats and international civil servants. Because these visas are among the only avenues for poor women from developing countries to legally enter the U.S., the Campaign believes they should continue to operate, but that U.S. labor law protections must be enforced and strengthened . We hope that these essays will help to stimulate a wider debate on immigration issues and we welcome your reactions and comments. ) *** THE LIMITS OF IMMIGRATION POLICY *** By Rachael Kamel, American Friends Service Committee What is immigration policy good for? What is its appropriate scope of action, and what phenomena lie beyond its reach? We at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) believe that these fundamental questions must be addressed before it is possible to evaluate any given policy. The 1990s have been marked by many complex geopolitical and economic transformations. Among these are the emergence of the United States as the world's sole remaining military superpower, the rapidly accelerating integration of global markets, and unprecedented deregulation of the global movement of capital. Such phenomena are related to the widening gap between rich and poor on a global scale (both within and between nations), a marked increase in environmental degradation, a decline in food security throughout the developing world, and a parallel decline in living standards and economic security for working people in advanced industrial countries. Some of these are twenty and thirty year trends that only now have entered into broad public awareness in the U.S., while others have been sharply intensified over the past decade, and all are linked together through intricate webs of causation and interaction. A worldwide increase in displacement and migration, including increased labor migration to the U.S., is also part of this web. Yet none of these phenomena, including migration, are susceptible to control through immigration policy. We believe that the entire debate over whether to restrict, where to restrict, and how to restrict immigration hugely misses the mark. What policy can determine, in large measure, is the conditions under which immigration will take pl
[PEN-L:9239] U.S. Drug Policy in Latin America
The Progressive Response 16 July 1999 Vol. 3, No. 25 Editor: Martha Honey The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in PR. Table of Contents *** COMMENTS ON U.S. DRUG POLICY IN LATIN AMERICA *** by Peter Zirnite and Coletta Youngers *** FURTHER LOOK AT THE CIA-CONTRA-COCAINE CONNECTION *** Intro by Martha Honey, excerpt from Peter Dale Scott's report *** COMMENTS ON U.S. DRUG POLICY IN LATIN AMERICA *** (Editor's note: This summer, the Foreign Policy In Focus project and the Drug Policy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies are co-sponsoring a weekly speaker and film series entitled "Rethinking the Drug War." The July 8 session, "Addicted to Failure: U.S. Drug War Overseas," featured Peter Zirnite and Coletta Youngers, both experts on the militarization of the U.S. antinarcotics efforts in Latin America. Both are also FPIF writers. Below are excerpts from their talks.) Peter Zirnite: South of the U.S.-Mexican border, the United States is engaging militaries as its primary partners in narcotics control. This is at a time when fledgling democracies are trying to solidify their power, keep military involvement in the barracks, and limit military activities to national defense--their rightful role. Washington has had a long love affair with Latin American militaries. And I find this even more scandalous than that illicit liaison that dominated the headlines last summer. While in both cases we have an extremely powerful figure that's taking advantage of a weaker yet willing party, Washington's strengthening of its arms' ties in the name of drug control has given rise to high crimes and misdemeanors that truly undermine the foundations of democracy. And this raises the question, why then has this unseemly relationship failed to attract the media spotlight or generate a loud public outcry? To really understand why we haven't had the outcry that this issue should generate, we have to look at the roots of how U.S. policymakers came to believe that local militaries are the best partners in the war on drugs. And this is a relationship that has deep, deep roots nurtured by two well-documented proclivities of the U.S. The first is the U.S.'s penchant to blame social ills such as drug abuse on outside, foreign influence. An impulse that gives rise to a drug control policy that doesn't focus on demand (almost every other nation's policy does), but instead addresses the supply. The second, and I think this is really the one that addresses the issue of militarization, is our propensity to call in the Marines. You've got a problem, whenever there's a national threat, call in the Marines. President Nixon put the process in motion when he declared drug trafficking a national security threat. Ever since that declaration, national security has been the rallying cry for everyone who advocated more firepower and money for the war on drugs. Last July, for instance, national security was invoked by Republican leaders when they announced their Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act. Republicans ludicrously claim that their $2.6 billion plan will reduce drug flow into this country by 80% by the year 2001. Yet the goal of our actual national drug control strategy is to reduce drug trafficking by 15%, despite the fact that in recent years the flow of drugs has not declined but increased. A decade after Nixon first declared drugs to be a national security threat President Reagan launched a rapid expansion of U.S. military involvement in drug control efforts which remains unabated today. The Reagan administration rationalized the expansion of the military role, in part by linking drug trafficking to leftist guerrillas and governments, specifically in Cuba and Nicaragua. This guerrilla-drug link facilitated the U.S. shift from a cold war posture to a drug war posture by bringing in many of the same old foes. Thus, the Pentagon employs the same tactics used to fight commies to fight drug traffickers. In 1988, when Congress passed the national defense appropriations and authorization, it made the Defense Department (DOD) the lead agency in the detection and monitoring of aerial and marine transit zones into the United States. Congress required DOD to integrate it's communications and technical intelligence networks with other various federal agencies and it also required DOD to coordinate the increased use of the National Guard in anti-narcotics activity. In 1993, President Clinton di
[PEN-L:9016] Foreign Policy In Focus: Export-Import Bank
Foreign Policy In Focus: Export-Import Bank July, 1999 vol.4, no.18 By Janice C. Shields Edited by Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS) The Export-Import Bank (Eximbank) is an independent U.S. government agency established in 1934 to create jobs through exports. According to Eximbank, its programs annually sustain an estimated 200,000 U.S. jobs directly among exporters and suppliers and another one million jobs indirectly among subsuppliers. To carry out President Clinton's strategy for export growth, Eximbank is focusing on "emphasizing exports to developing countries, aggressively countering trade subsidies of other governments, stimulating small business transactions, promoting the export of environmentally beneficial goods and services, and expanding project finance capabilities." In October 1997, Congress reauthorized Eximbank's operations until the year 2001. Eximbank offers a number of insurance and financing programs that are supposed to increase U.S. exports, such as: (1) working capital guarantees that cover 90% of the principal and interest on commercial loans to creditworthy small and medium-sized companies needing funds to buy or produce U.S. goods or services for export; (2) export credit insurance policies that protect against both the political (e.g., nonpayment as a result of war, expropriation, cancellation of an export or import license) and commercial (nonpayment due to unanticipated competition or deterioration of markets) risks of a foreign buyer defaulting on payment; (3) guarantees of commercial loans (including both principal and interest) to foreign buyers of U.S. goods or services; and (4) direct loans that provide foreign buyers with fixed-rate financing for their purchases from the United States. To qualify for Eximbank support, a product or service must have at least 50% U.S. content and not affect the U.S. economy adversely. Eximbank has also cofinanced projects with the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), the World Bank, and regional development banks. In 1998, Eximbank authorized loans totaling $103 million, guarantees of $6.2 billion, and insurance of $4.3 billion for total authorizations of $10.6 billion. This financing and insurance subsidized $13 billion in exports by 2,060 U.S. exporters in 1998. Eximbank claims to have supported nearly 11,000 transactions with $65.5 billion in authorized financing from 1994 through 1998, directly benefiting more than 2,000 communities in the U.S. Eximbank generated a net loss on its operations of $1.7 billion in 1998, compared to income of $390 million in 1997. A large portion of that loss came from an increase in the provision for credit losses, especially due to off-balance sheet risks for financial instruments (guarantees and insurance) not included in Eximbank's statement of financial position. The loss provision reflects the fact that the collection of some loans is doubtful and that Eximbank will most likely need to pay insurance claims and redeem defaulted loans it had guaranteed. Most of the commitments at risk are in China, Mexico, Indonesia, and Brazil, especially in the air transportation sector. Eximbank authorized more loans, guarantees, and insurance for exports to China and Mexico-over $1 billion to each-than to any other countries in 1998. Runners-up included Russia, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Chile, and India. More than 40% of Eximbank's 1998 financing and insurance authorizations supported four industries: (1) "key linkage industries," including mining, petroleum, and steel companies, which produce inputs for durable goods; (2) manufacturers of high-value-added products; (3) exporters of new capital goods, such as computers, telecommunications equipment, aircraft, and automotive equipment; and (4) companies that employ highly-skilled workers, including the chemical, engine, and railway industries. By far the major beneficiary of Eximbank's programs is Boeing, prompting some activists to refer to the agency as "Boeing's Bank." In 1998, $2.6 billion of Eximbank's authorizations assisted Boeing's exports. All of Eximbank's more than $1 billion in authorizations for exports to China involved Boeing. Some of the other large transnationals whose exports received Eximbank subsidies in 1998 include Northrop Grumman, General Electric, Lucent Technologies, Westinghouse, and General Motors. Eximbank's original goals were to increase U.S. exports and create U.S. jobs. Yet, it's questionable whether those goals can be met effectively by Eximbank. According to a Congressional Research Service study, "most economists doubt...that a nation can improve its welfare over the long run by subsidizing exports. Internal economic policies ultimately determine the overall level of a nation's exports" A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study concluded that "little evidence exists that [Eximbank] credits create jobs." Problems With Current U.S. Policy Eximbank operations may even lead to job exports. When U.S. companies
[PEN-L:8786] Progressive Response
-- The Progressive Response 2 July 1999 Vol. 3, No. 23 Editor: Tom Barry -- The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in PR. -- Table of Contents I. Updates and out-Takes *** MILITARY INDISTRIAL COMPLEX REVISITED *** by William Hartung II. Comments *** U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS *** *** WAS IT WORTH IT? *** -- I. Updates and out-Takes *** MILITARY INDISTRIAL COMPLEX REVISITED *** by William Hartung (Editor's note. It's been 16 years since Ronald Reagan declared the Star Wars missile defense system an essential component of U.S. military spending. Since 1983, over $55 billion dollars has been spent in the name of protecting the U.S. against missiles launched by the Soviet Union. The end of the cold war and collapse of the Soviet Union should have made Star Wars obsolete. Instead, the U.S. is continuing to fund Star Wars--now retargeted to protect the U.S. from attacks by "rogue states" like Iraq and North Korea. As William Hartung points out in the following excerpts from his recently updated essay, Military-Industrial Complex Revisited: How Weapons Makers are Shaping U.S. Foreign and Military Policies, the arms industry has once again convinced Congress to continue throwing good money after bad. For the full paper see: http://is: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/micr/). Back to the Future? "The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a huge arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence--economic, political, and even spiritual--is felt in every city, every state house, and every office of the federal government . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex." President Dwight D. Eisenhower Farewell Address to the Nation January 17, 1961 Contrary to initial expectations, the military-industrial complex did not fade away with the end of the cold war. It has simply reorganized itself. As a result of a rash of military-industry mergers encouraged and subsidized by the Clinton administration, the "Big Three" weapons makers--Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon--now receive among themselves over $30 billion per year in Pentagon contracts. This represents more than one out of every four dollars that the Defense Department doles out for everything from rifles to rockets. On issue after issue--from expanding NATO, to deploying the Star Wars missile defense system, to rolling back restrictions on arms sales to repressive regimes--the arms industry has launched a concerted lobbying campaign aimed at increasing military spending and arms exports. These initiatives are driven by profit and pork barrel politics, not by an objective assessment of how best to defend the United States in the post-cold war period. President Eisenhower's warning about the "acquisition of unwarranted influence" by the military-industrial complex is as relevant today as it was in 1961. Despite the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the breakup of the Soviet Union, the U.S. military budget is higher today than it was when Eisenhower gave his military-industrial complex speech in 1961. At more than $276 billion per year, the U.S. military budget (in constant dollars) remains near the peacetime cold war average that prevailed during the prime period of U.S.-Soviet rivalry, from roughly 1950 to 1989. This is astonishing considering that Russia has slashed its weapons procurement budget by 77% since 1991, and that Russian forces could barely prevail over a rebel army in Chechnya (inside its own borders), much less project force against neighboring countries. Shaping Policy, or How to Write Your Own Ticket Beyond joining with key legislators to insert specific items into the Pentagon budget--such as in the last-minute maneuvering between the White House and Capitol Hill on the FY 1999 federal budget, the congressional leadership added an astounding $9 billion to the Pentagon's funding, including an extra $1 billion for Star Wars research--companies like Lockheed Martin are also actively engaged in the business of shaping U.S. foreign and military policies to meet their needs. This more sinister form of lobbying can involve changing the terms under which major contractors are reimbursed, such as the "payoffs for layoffs" subsidies for defense industry mergers that Norman Augustine engineered prior to the Lockheed/Martin Marietta mer
[PEN-L:8562] Foreign Policy In Focus
New at Foreign Policy in Focus Military Industrial Complex Revisited: How Weapons Makers are Shaping U.S. Foreign and Military Policies By William D. Hartung As a result of a rash of military-industry mergers encouraged and subsidized by the Clinton administration, the "Big Three" weapons makers, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Raytheon, now receive over $30 billion per year in Pentagon contracts. The Clinton administration's five-year budget plan for the Pentagon calls for nearly a 50% increase in weapons procurement, from $44 billion per year now to over $63 billion per year by 2003. On issue after issue--from expanding NATO, to deploying the Star Wars missile defense system, to rolling back restrictions on arms sales to repressive regimes--the arms industry has launched a concerted lobbying campaign aimed at increasing military spending and arms exports. These initiatives are driven by profit and pork barrel politics, not by an objective assessment of how best to defend the United States in the post-cold war period. www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/micr/index
[PEN-L:8187] Progressive Response: Kosovo
- The Progressive Response 22 June 1999 Vol. 3, No. 22 Editor: Martha Honey - The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in PR. - Table of Contents *** THE U.S. ROLE IN THE BALKANS *** by David Binder and Robert Hayden *** WORDS AS PROPAGANDA *** by Edward Herman *** WHERE THE MEDIA WENT WRONG COVERING KOSOVO *** by Jeff Cohen - (Editor's Note: Over the last several months the Foreign Policy in Focus project has solicited speakers and writers on the Kosovo war, all of whom are critics of the U.S.-led NATO bombing, but not all of whom concur in either their analysis of the history or the role and responsibility of the various actors in the Balkans wars. In their thoughtful essay, David Binder and Robert Hayden, two leading U.S. experts on the Balkans, present an interpretation that many may see as slanted toward Serbia. As Ed Herman and Jeff Cohen rightly note in their essays, in times of war lines get more sharply drawn, language gets distorted, and the government's interpretation of events is portrayed as the objective reality. Herman and Cohen spoke at a June 10 congressional forum on "The Rhetoric of War" chaired by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D/OH) and Rep. John Conyers (D/MI) and facilitated by Foreign Policy In Focus. (Available at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/media/forums/congbrief05.html). Over the next few weeks, we are certain to learn more details about the atrocities by all forces involved in the Kosovo war, as well as about the false and misleading stories planted in the media. The Foreign Policy in Focus project will continue, through its public forums, briefs, and online postings and discussion forums, to help educate and stimulate debate about the U.S. role in the Balkans.) - *** THE U.S. ROLE IN THE BALKANS *** by David Binder and Robert Hayden The Balkans, a region popularly seen as synonymous with indigenous strife, is where four imperial powers came to grief in the 20th century: the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany. Now at the close of the century the United States, heading the NATO military alliance, has inserted itself deeply into the Balkans, first in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. The path leading to deepening American involvement in the region was long and tortuous, starting with President Wilson's sponsorship in World War I of a new entity to be called Yugoslavia. After 1948 when Josip Broz Tito's Communist regime was expelled from the Soviet Bloc, the United States supported the independence of Yugoslavia, the sole Communist country to become something of an economic and international political success during the cold war. A founder of the non-aligned movement, Yugoslavia thrived on its independent position between NATO and the Warsaw Pact during the cold war. When that era ended Yugoslavia suffered the most cataclysmic collapse of any communist state. Major factors leading to the disintegration of Yugoslavia were domestic. In the late 1980s, an economic crisis led to a political crisis in the socialist state. Political leaders stirred nationalist, separatist, passions to gain public support in the various republics. Slovenian and Serbian politicians were the first to do so, promoting the ideas that the Slovenes, on the one hand, and the Serbs, on the other, required independence from the joint state, and that these nations should dominate minorities within their nation-states. Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic was among the politicians who used nationalism most aggressively, alarming first the leaderships of other republics. In a context of rising tensions between the leaderships of Serbia on the one hand and Croatia and Slovenia on the other, international political actors contributed significantly to the subsequent civil wars either by neglect or by inept intervention. When Slovenia and Croatia threatened secession from the Yugoslav federation in 1990-91, the Bush Administration opposed them officially yet also warned the federal government not to try to keep the country together by force, a stance that only encouraged the secessionists. The European Union (EU) was at first divided over the Yugoslav dilemma, with Germany at first alone in encouraging the secession of Croatia and Slovenia, then persuading the other members to support it even though most other EU countries believed that this course would be catastrophic,
[PEN-L:7918] Progressive Response Vol.3, No. 21
The Progressive Response 10 June 1999 Vol. 3, No. 21 Editor: Tom Barry The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in PR. Table of Contents I. Updates and Out-Takes *** DYNAMICS OF U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS *** By John Gershman *** CAPITAL FLOWS AND EXCHANGE RATE POLICY *** By Ellen Frank, Emmanuel College II. Comments *** CHINESE FRIENDS *** *** INTERNATIONAL ACTION CENTER: THINK ABOUT IT *** I. Updates and Out-Takes *** DYNAMICS OF U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS *** By John Gershman (Ed. Note: The following analysis of U.S.-China relations by John Gershman of the Institute for Development Research points the way to a more reasonable and principled approach to U.S.-China relations-an approach not dominated by unwarranted fears of a Chinese military threat and not held hostage to those conservative and progressive nationalists who would deny China membership in the WTO and normal trading status with the United States. This analysis is excerpted from a forthcoming FPIF report, "Still the Pacific Century? U.S. Policy in the Asia-Pacific.") It is ironic that China's ability to play a key role in preventing the Asian and global economic crisis from worsening is because its economy is not an open, liberalized one in the image the U.S. has been trying to export elsewhere. China's lack of foreign exchange convertibility has prevented extensive speculative attacks on its currency. But that does not mean all is well. China is also in the midst of a massive economic transformation: it has allowed the first bank to fail since 1949 and is the process of privatizing large sections of its economy, including enterprises previously managed by the military. The financial sector, both state banks and the provincial and municipal fund-raising and investment institutions known as ITICs, are also in serious trouble. It has also begun a restructuring of the non-bank financial institutions. Managing this transformation, at a time when overall and export growth rates are slowing and the political effects of the dramatic inequality that has accompanied rapid growth is becoming more salient, are massive challenges. The social and ecological costs of China's transformation since 1979 have been immense. Growing inequality within urban areas and between urban and rural areas suggests that significant grievances and unrest lie just below the surface. There are regular reports of demonstrations, particularly in rural areas, relating to corrupt local officials, floods, and high taxes. After the flooding of the Yangtze in mid-1998, there were 130 reports of rural rebellion in four provinces, including attacking and occupying government offices. The tension between neoliberal internationalists and strategic traders is apparent in the negotiations over China's accession to the WTO. The framework agreement negotiated as of May 1999 involved some special benefits for United States companies to the exclusion of other WTO members, such as a delayed reduction of U.S. quotas for Chinese textile exports. The Clinton administration originally planning for one big vote in the summer of 1999, on renewal of China's Normal Trade Relations (NTR, formerly known as most-favored nation (MFN)) and congressional approval of China's entry into the WTO. Revelations of illegal campaign contributions by members of the Chinese military and nuclear espionage by China, the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, and subsequent anti-U.S. demonstrations supported by the Chinese government have combined to cool relations and have administered the coup de grace to the 'strategic partnership' launched with great fanfare by China and the U.S. in October 1997. That partnership was in reality stillborn, but recent events have demolished any illusion that U.S.-Chinese relations had developed in a broader partnership. This is not to say that relations will be bad -- in fact they will probably remain quite stable. The administration is now facing the results of allowing commercial interests to so dominate other concerns in shaping policy, that building a domestic constituency for China's admission into the WTO is difficult. A combination of the failure to reach a quick agreement with the U.S. and the bombing of the Chinese Embassy has strengthened certain forces within China opposed to such significant Chinese concessions. Congressional support for renewal of NTR, let alone China's entry into the WTO, will be difficult, but legislato
[PEN-L:7796] Progressive Response
--- The Progressive Response 7 June 1999 Vol. 3, No. 20 Editor: Tom Barry --- The Progressive Response (PR) is a weekly service of Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF), a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in PR. --- Table of Contents I. Updates and Out-Takes *** NATO EUROPEAN REGIONAL SECURITY *** *** FISSURES IN THE BEDROCK *** By Jonathan P.G. Bach *** INDONESIA: POLITICS AND HUMAN RIGHTS *** By John Gershman, II. Comments *** SHOULD NOT BE PROUD OF MILITARY SUCCESS *** *** DEEPLY UPSET ABOUT TURKEY *** --- I. Updates and Out-Takes *** NATO EUROPEAN REGIONAL SECURITY *** (Ed. Note: The initiation of serious negotiations between NATO and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is good news, as are attempts to have the UN Security Council sign off on the proposed settlement and stationing of peacekeeping forces in Kosovo. Another hopeful sign is the decision of the European Union (EU) to take the necessary steps to form a common foreign and security policy. The EU will incorporate the functions of the dormant Western European Union (WEU), holding out the possibility that in the near future the European nations may be able to address regional security issues without the involvement and leadership of the United States and without involving NATO. As the EU's military capacity takes shape, there is the danger that, like NATO, the EU may decide to wield its collective military power outside the bounds of the United Nations. Parallel to the initiatives to strengthen the EU's capacity to act independently of Washington, it is imperative that the world's nations also act to strengthen the UN so as to make it a more credible and effective guarantor of international peace. The following analysis of security aspects of U.S.-West European relations is excerpted from a forthcoming FPIF essay, "The Transatlantic Partnership in the Shadow of Globalization," by Jonathan P. G. Bach [EMAIL PROTECTED]. The author is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Saltzman Center for the Center of Constitutional Democracy.) FISSURES IN THE BEDROCK By Jonathan P.G. Bach Not all is quiet on the military front either. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is regarded as the bedrock of U.S.-European relations. A primary reason for its perseverance after the demise of its raison d'être, the Warsaw Pact, is that NATO's rationale extended beyond deterring the Soviet Union. NATO institutionalized U.S. military relations with Europe in a way that interwar internationalists could only dream of. The original impulse rested most immediately, of course, on the Soviet Union as a threat. But there was also a perception that a lack of American military commitment to Europe per se was threatening, allowing instability and its consequences, whether fascist or communist. Decades later, NATO capitalized on this perception by recasting itself as a political/military organization whose existence was justified by this original concern. NATO was billed as tantamount to U.S. commitment, and hence stability, in Europe. The decision to retool NATO for a post-cold war role essentially meant abandoning alternative European security constellations such as: Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), a wide-ranging, informal consultative body that includes both the U.S. and Russia; an approach drawing on nonoffensive defense; or a collective security model. As NATO increasingly became the only game in town, those critical of the alliance hoped it was truly capable of metamorphosing from a collective defense system into some form of collective security for Europe. The principal concern among critical voices was that Washington would seek to develop NATO as a U.S.-led police force to enhance its interests around the world. This prompted the out-of-area debate about whether NATO forces could be used outside its members' territory for reasons other than self-defense, a question answered by NATO's de facto military action first in Bosnia and then in Kosovo. Although European member states support "upgrading" NATO, they are not as sanguine about continued U.S. dominance within the organization. France, historically suspicious of Washington's perception of European defense, postponed reintegrating its forces with the NATO military command, insisting that a French admiral should command the Southern Fleet. Washington's hypocritical position--refusing to subordinate U.S. troops to any other command, while expecting and insisting that other troops defer to U.S. commanders--is becoming more of an issue. In this
[PEN-L:7726] Capital Flows And Exchange Rates
Foreign Policy In Focus Vol. 4, No. 17, June 1999 Capital Flows and Exchange Rate Policy By Ellen Frank, Emmanuel College Edited by Tom Barry (IPS), and Martha Honey (IPS) Key Points o Countries are under increasing pressure to attract international financial capital to meet trade and balance of payments needs. o To enhance their attractiveness to investors, countries are urged to allow full and free convertibility of their currencies while attempting to stabilize their exchange rates. o A stable exchange rate is fundamentally incompatible with unrestricted speculative capital flows. Efforts to stabilize currencies in the wake of speculative assaults are costly and damaging to emerging market economies. As neoliberal policies foster greater privatization of the international financial system, countries must rely almost entirely on private financial flows to finance trade, to settle international accounts, even to meet domestic credit needs. In efforts to attract private funds, countries from Thailand and Mexico to Korea and Brazil have deregulated financial transactions, lifting controls on interest rates, on capital flows, and on the convertibility of domestic currencies. For most countries, this tilt toward financial liberalization has proven more a curse than a blessing. Liberalization schemes, particularly those promoted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S., are fraught with dangers and dilemmas for emerging market economies. One of the most damaging consequences of liberalization is that it imposes upon emerging markets a set of unacceptable and ultimately unworkable exchange rate policies. An overriding goal of U.S.- and IMF-sponsored liberalization programs is to enhance the attractiveness of the target country's financial assets to financial investors. To be attractive, countries must attempt to insure investors against private financial loss. Governments are advised to permit full and free convertibility of their currencies into U.S. dollars so that investors can enjoy full dollar liquidity. To further minimize investors' risk of dollar losses, countries are encouraged to stabilize the value of their local currencies against the U.S. dollar. Full and free convertibility, however, has proven to be incompatible with exchange rate stability. Once countries lift controls on short-term capital movements and allow full convertibility of their currencies, the process of exchange rate determination is privatized as well. For all practical purposes, the external value of a country's currency in a liberalized financial market is determined by speculative trading in the international currency markets-something over which emerging market governments exercise little control. Financial players understand this reality well. But international policy officials routinely misrepresent the dynamics of the financial market. They blame the inevitable currency crises on internal failures of emerging market governments rather than on the speculative nature of international financial markets. Governments-like China-that prohibit trading in their currencies can maintain a stable currency peg by preventing private transactions at other than the stated exchange rate. In contrast, countries that allow full convertibility have only weak levers by which to stabilize their exchange rates. Like Argentina, they can institute a currency board, which issues domestic currency only in proportion to foreign exchange reserves. This is not a simple commitment to keep. In practice, a currency board commits the state to intensely restrictive economic policies that serve to curb private lending and slow wage growth-thereby demonstrating to financial markets the state's serious commitment to the dollar peg. Even then, attacks on the currency by speculators can overwhelm the government's ability to maintain the currency peg, as Argentina recently discovered. Brazil and other governments attempted to stabilize their currencies by catering to the whims and demands of financial markets, adopting restrictive fiscal policies and high interest rates. Implicit in the concept of pegs such as Brazil's is the promise that foreign exchange reserves will, if necessary, be deployed in defense of the peg (to buy domestic currency when speculators are selling it) and that the government will raise interest rates to whatever level is needed to protect investors from currency losses. Countries that wish, like Mexico, to adjust their dollar peg from time to time must generally compensate investors against losses by settling interest rates higher than countries that submit to an unchanging peg. Emerging market efforts to placate investors with pegged exchange rates, however, have proved pointless in the face of expanded currency speculation. Eventually, the real economic stresses of dollar pegging (repressed economic growth to prevent inflation, current account imbalances) become obvious to speculators,
[PEN-L:7512] Turkey: Arm Sales and Human Rights
Foreign Policy In Focus Vol. 4, No. 16 o May 1999 Turkey: Arms and Human Rights By Tamar Gabelnick, Federation of American Scientists Edited by Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS) Key Points o Turkey has long topped the list of U.S. arms importers and recipients of U.S. military aid. o U.S. arms transfers support the Turkish army to the detriment of Turkey's fledgling democracy. o Turkey has launched a major military modernization project and will be seeking even greater quantities of U.S. arms. Considered a strategic NATO ally, Turkey has benefited from a U.S. policy that is long on military assistance and short on constructive criticism. Washington values close ties with Turkey both as a secular state with a predominately Muslim population and as a buffer between Europe and the Middle East and Caucasus regions. Once valued as a deterrent to the Soviet threat, Turkey is now considered a key ally in stopping terrorism, drug trafficking, and Islamic fundamentalism from seeping across the Bosporus Straits. Turkey also offers opportunities as an emerging market and a potential site for the Caspian Sea oil pipeline. Finally, Turkey won U.S. favor by supporting the Gulf War, participating in Bosnian peacekeeping, and providing a base for U.S. fighter planes monitoring the "no-fly-zone" in northern Iraq. The 1980 Defense and Economic Cooperation Agreement reaffirmed the tight relationship between the U.S. and Turkey, which had been threatened after Turkey's 1974 invasion of Cyprus and the subsequent U.S. arms embargo. This accord allowed U.S. military bases on Turkish soil in exchange for help modernizing Turkey's military, opening the door to a flood of U.S. arms transfers. Since 1980 the U.S. has shipped $9 billion worth of arms to Turkey and provided $6.5 billion in grant and loan military aid to purchase U.S. equipment. By fiscal year 1999, Congress phased out this type of military aid to both Greece and Turkey out of a recognition that these relatively well-off states could finance their own arms purchases. Before FY 1999, Turkey had been the third largest recipient of U.S. military aid. The U.S. government believes large quantities of arms sales buy political influence in addition to providing economic benefits. In reality, Washington has held little sway over Ankara's behavior in such key foreign policy areas as promoting human rights and democracy, preserving regional stability, keeping Turkey tied to Western Europe, and promoting economic growth. Additionally, Turkey has only reluctantly accepted the embargo against Iraq and is pursuing a natural gas pipeline deal with Iran in defiance of the U.S. embargo. U.S. arms sales actually undermine many U.S. foreign policy goals by providing physical and political support to the Turkish military at the expense of democratically elected leaders and civil society. The Turkish military's 15-year war against the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in southeast Turkey has involved severe violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including indiscriminate and disproportionate use of force. The war has served as an excuse to repress political leaders, journalists, and human rights activists seeking greater rights for Kurds and a peaceful end to the war. Additionally, in the name of protecting a strictly secular society, the Turkish military uses its inordinate power to suppress religious expression and mild political Islamic activism. U.S. arms sales and continued conflict in Turkey also damage Turkey's economy and prospects for economic cooperation with the West. The 1998 CIA Factbook states that Turkey spends about $7 billion a year on the war with the PKK, which contributed to a 99% inflation rate for 1998 and a national debt equal to half the government's revenue. War-related political and financial instability has discouraged foreign investment. A U.S.-backed plan would route a Caspian Sea oil pipeline through territory where the PKK operates, leaving it susceptible to rebel attacks. An end to the war and improvements in human rights are also necessary preconditions for Turkey's entry into the European Union (EU), which the U.S. believes would draw Turkey closer to the West. Turkey's ceaseless provocation of Greece, again using U.S. arms, is another barrier to EU entry. The Turkish military is planning a massive modernization project, with over $30 billion budgeted over the next eight years. The first major acquisition will be 145 attack helicopters worth $3.5 billion, to be coproduced with the Turkish company TAI. As helicopters have figured prominently in the destruction of civilian targets, U.S. human rights and arms control groups protested vehemently when Boeing and Bell Textron requested marketing licenses for this sale. In response, the State Department approved marketing licenses, but stated that if a U.S. helicopter were selected, it would not issue an export license unless Turkey made
[PEN-L:7105] Progressive Response
- The Progressive Response 19 May 1999 Vol. 3, No. 18 Editor: Tom Barry - The Progressive Response is a publication of Foreign Policy In Focus, a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. The project produces Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) briefs on various areas of current foreign policy debate. Electronic mail versions are available free of charge for subscribers. The Progressive Response is designed to keep the writers, contributors, and readers of the FPIF series informed about new issues and debates concerning U.S. foreign policy issues. We encourage comments to the FPIF briefs and to opinions expressed in PR. We're working to make the Progressive Response informative and useful, so let us know how we're doing, via email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please put "Progressive Response" in the subject line. Please feel free to cross-post The Progressive Response elsewhere. We apologize for any duplicate copies of The Progressive Response you may receive. - Table of Contents *** KOSOVO: A WAR MEASURED BY SORTIES AND CIVILIAN DEATHS *** *** TURKEY: ARMS AND HUMAN RIGHTS *** By Tamar Gabelnick, Federation of American Scientists *** RUSSIAN POLITICS AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY *** By John Feffer - *** KOSOVO: A WAR MEASURED BY SORTIES AND CIVILIAN DEATHS *** Ed. Note: The U.S. war in Southeast Asia--marked by unprecedented area bombing campaigns in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos--is now widely accepted by the movers and shakers in the U.S. foreign policy elite as a mistake. A quarter of a century later, war reporting has made some advances. Instead of waiting until the war is over, the Pentagon and NATO now routinely acknowledge their mistakes but blame those mistakes on errant bombs, bad maps, clouds, and just lousy luck. Like Vietnam, the bombing war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is not just a series of mistakes, it was a mistake from the beginning. The Pentagon learned from its mistake in Vietnam and is now more reluctant to assign ground troops in an internal conflict, relying instead on its superior but sometimes unreliable technology. But like the war and accompanying carpet bombings in Southeast Asia, the bombing campaign in the Balkans should not simply be written off as a well-intentioned but mistaken venture. As the war has steadily expanded to include civilian targets (bridges, factories, railroads, airports, media centers, homes of political leaders, etc.) and as the "collateral damage" of civilian deaths has become routine, this war is no longer just a foreign policy blunder and a transgression of international law. It has assumed criminal dimensions. The U.S., counting on uncritical media reporting and a steady stream of aerial bombings, can no longer lay claim to the moral high ground. Like Kennedy, McNamara, and Johnson (liberals all) before him, Clinton is not just making a tragic mistake--he has blood on his hands. Russia and China have it right (although not for all the right reasons) as do a rising chorus of international peace activists: NATO's bombing should stop immediately. For more information see the FPIF Kosovo Crisis Page at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/media/releases/crisis_eu99.html and Bombs Away, the FPIF policy brief (revised May 18, 1999) at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol4/v4n13koso.html Notice: The International Action Center is organizing the Emergency Mobilization to Stop the War and a march to the Pentagon on June 5, which will demand "money for jobs and education, not for war in Yugoslavia." For details: International Action Center Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.iacenter.org Peace Action is spearheading a new coalition calling for an end to the U.S./NATO bombing of Yugoslavia; an end to the ethnically-targeted violence; and support for negotiations under institutions including the United Nations and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The National Coalition for Peace in Yugoslavia was formed earlier this month by leaders of major U.S. peace organizations, including the American Friends Service Committee, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Pax Christi USA, Peace Action, War Resisters League, Women's Action for New Directions, and Women's International League for Peace Freedom. Peace Action Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] - *** TURKEY: ARMS AND HUMAN RIGHTS *** (Ed. Note: The abundant contradictions and hypocrisies of U.S. foreign policy are readily evident in its policies in Turkey, where human rights violations, re
[PEN-L:7027] Foreign Policy In Focus: U.S.--N.Korea Relations
Foreign Policy in Focus: U.S.-North Korea Relations May, 1999 vol 4, no.15 By John Feffer, AFSC Asia Desk Edited by Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS) Key Points o The North Korean "threat" is a key justification for U.S. military spending, the presence of U.S. troops in Asia, and a new theater missile defense system. o North Korea has criticized the U.S. for not lifting economic sanctions. The U.S. has criticized North Korean missile exports and has suspected Pyongyang of secretly developing a nuclear weapons program. o Despite their often hostile rhetoric, North Korea and the United States have cooperated successfully on MIAs as well as famine relief and technical assistance programs. North Korea is the United States' longest-standing adversary. The U.S. helped to divide the Korean peninsula at the end of World War II, then waged war against North Korea in the 1950s. It has maintained economic sanctions against Pyongyang for nearly fifty years. In this post-cold war era, North Korea remains a useful demon. The Pentagon has inflated the North Korean threat in order to rationalize its desire for a missile defense system, to justify a capacity to fight two wars simultaneously, and to explain the need to maintain 37,000 troops in South Korea (and 100,000 troops in Asia overall). Relations between the two countries worsened in the early 1990s when North Korea expanded its nuclear program and the U.S. considered bombing the suspected weapons development facilities. In 1994, after Jimmy Carter sat down with North Korean leader Kim Il Sung, the two sides eventually negotiated their way back from the brink of war. The resulting Agreed Framework required that North Korea freeze its nuclear program in exchange for shipments of heavy fuel oil from the U.S. and two light-water nuclear reactors to be built by an international consortium funded largely by Japan and South Korea. As part of this agreement, the U.S. and North Korea pledged to move toward full normalization of relations. The Agreed Framework averted war but did not create a lasting peace. The U.S. government has continued to criticize North Korean sales of advanced missile technology to countries such as Pakistan and Iran. In August 1998, without notification, North Korea launched a missile/satellite that passed over Japan and demonstrated its possession of three-stage rocket technology. At the same time, U.S. and South Korean intelligence agencies leaked information that an underground facility in North Korea might house a nuclear weapons program. The Clinton administration, reluctant at first to give much credence to the underground nuclear facility, eventually insisted on access to determine if North Korea had departed from the terms of the Agreed Framework (to which it had so far adhered). North Korea, too, has a list of grievances. It has charged the United States with violating the Agreed Framework by not delivering the heavy fuel oil according to schedule and by not moving forward as planned with the light-water reactors. It has also accused the Clinton administration of backtracking on its promise to normalize relations and thus to lift economic sanctions. Finally, North Korea hascriticized the U.S. military buildup in Northeast Asia. The relationship between the two powers is not entirely antagonistic. In response to the food crisis that intensified in North Korea beginning in 1995, the Clinton administration has provided millions of dollars in humanitarian aid (over $170 million in 1998), principally through the UN. In April 1999, the U.S. government agreed to its first direct assistance to North Korea: 100,000 metric tons of food as well as a project coordinated with several U.S. nongovernmental organizations that will introduce new potato varieties to North Korean farms. The two countries are also cooperating to find the remains of U.S. soldiers killed in the North during the Korean War. And North Korea has sent several delegations to the United States for technical assistance regarding energy and agriculture. One factor that has changed the terms of engagement on the Korean peninsula is South Korea's new president, Kim Dae Jung. Although past South Korean presidents supported Washington's hard-line policies, Kim Dae Jung has come out clearly for engagement. On taking office in 1998, Kim immediately unveiled his "sunshine policy." According to this policy, South Korea no longer seeks to reunify the peninsula by absorbing North Korea. Despite some patronizing overtones, whereby a more advanced South reaches out to help a backward North, the sunshine policy's promotion of economic and social contacts between the two Koreas is a marked improvement over aggressive rhetoric and gestures. Clinton administration policy toward North Korea is currently caught between a fifty-year legacy of containment and a tentative commitment to engagement. An agreement signed in March 1999 regarding U.S. access to the
[PEN-L:6583] Progressive Response: NATO, Korea, Kosovo
--- The Progressive Response 7 May 1999 Vol. 3, No. 17 Editor: Tom Barry -- The Progressive Response is a publication of Foreign Policy In Focus, a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. The project produces Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) briefs on various areas of current foreign policy debate. Electronic mail versions are available free of charge for subscribers. The Progressive Response is designed to keep the writers, contributors, and readers of the FPIF series informed about new issues and debates concerning U.S. foreign policy issues. The purpose of the "Comments" section of PR is to serve as a forum to discuss issues of controversy within the progressive community--not to express the institutional position of either the IRC or IPS. We encourage comments to the FPIF briefs and to opinions expressed in PR. We're working to make the Progressive Response informative and useful, so let us know how we're doing, via email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please put "Progressive Response" in the subject line. Please feel free to cross-post The Progressive Response elsewhere. We apologize for any duplicate copies of The Progressive Response you may receive. - Table of Contents I. Updates and Out-Takes *** NATO SUMMIT UNSPUN *** by Daniel Plesch, British American Security Information Council (BASIC) *** U.S.-NORTH KOREA RELATIONS *** by John Feffer, American Friends Service Committee II. Comments *** EXCELLENT ANALYSIS BUT MISSING FACTORS *** *** AHISTORICAL JUNK *** *** A NIT TO PICK: AMBIGUOUS DEMAND *** - I. Updates and Out-Takes *** NATO SUMMIT UNSPUN *** (Ed. Note: Prior to the NATO Summit, the FPIF project produced a policy brief analyzing the continuing role of NATO. Written by Tomas Valasek of the Center for Defense Information, "NATO at Fifty" can be accessed at http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol4/v4n11nato.html. The following analysis of NATO after the summit and immersed in the Kosovo bombing campaign comes from Daniel Plesch, director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), who made a presentation at a Capitol Hill forum sponsored by the project in conjunction with several congressional representatives (Kucinich, McKinney, Conyers, and Stark) on April 29. See the FPIF's Kosovo Crisis Page at http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/media/releases/crisis_eu99.html for more on the Kosovo crisis and the congressional briefings cosponsored by the project.) *** NATO Summit Unspun *** My organization has been involved in advocating, lobbying, coaxing, and cajoling political leaders and the alliance itself for the best part of a decade now in how to avoid and prevent situations like the one we are in now. These horrors are tragically not the last in this part of the world and certainly we know that these issues are presented to us as immensely complicated problems. If you permit me, I will sketch out a rather simple description, which will lead from that into how NATO leaders were handling these issues at last week's summit. If you can take leave of imagination with me and think of the Balkans as some of our own troubled inner cities, and if you think of trying to manage law and order in Washington, DC, or somewhere else, the only tool available to you is the SWAT team of a private security force, which is about the equivalent of the NATO military. Not under the town council--if you will, the United Nations--but a private security force that does not come when you call 911 unless you've got a credit card to go with it. In this case, neighborhoods would be burning--and all over DC, without neighborhood programs, without community policing, without the whole infrastructure. We have learned in our cities that relying on the SWAT teams and police cruisers is not the way forward. If you look at models in Boston or other places in this country, we can see that it is the complex, much derided social work model that provides security. That helps to dispense with the SWAT team approach and permits for other tools in the tool box. The political actions of our leaders in this country in particular speak to the current situation at hand. What this country does, many others follow. My own country, the United Kingdom, and other countries in Europe, have so far followed the U.S. in ensuring that when policy makers, politicians, parliamentarians wish to take action to prevent and manage conflict, virtually the only tool available to us is military force. In Kosovo today we are using air power, which is largely ineffective. We are told that Serbian military forces are arriving in Kosovo in larger qua
[PEN-L:6587] Population and Environment
Foreign Policy in Focus Vol. 4, No. 14 italicPopulation and Environment/italic by Robert Engleman, Population Action International Engleman's essay discusses world population growth and its relationship to localized and global environmental problems, including women's economic, health and education issues. Recommends environmentalists should urge Washington to increase its population assistance to levels consistent with commitments made at the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994 and to restore funding to the United Nations Population Fund. www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/briefs/vol4/v4n14pop * Foreign Policy In Focus is a joint project of the Interhemipsheric Resource Center (IRC) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). In Focus briefs document the problems of current U.S. foreign policy and offer recommendations for alternative policy directions that would make the United States a more responsible global partner. To order Foreign Policy In Focus, call (505) 842-8288 or visit our website for ordering information at: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org. To subscribe to the New U.S. Foreign Policy discussion list, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Inside the body of the message write: Join newusfp [Your Email Address]. *
[PEN-L:6340] Progressive Response: Bombs, Refugees, Military Spending
-- The Progressive Response 30 April 1999 Vol. 3, No. 16 Editor: Tom Barry -- The Progressive Response is a publication of Foreign Policy In Focus, a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. The project produces Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) briefs on various areas of current foreign policy debate. Electronic mail versions are available free of charge for subscribers. The Progressive Response is designed to keep the writers, contributors, and readers of the FPIF series informed about new issues and debates concerning U.S. foreign policy issues. Please feel free to cross-post The Progressive Response elsewhere. We apologize for any duplicate copies of The Progressive Response you may receive. -- Table of Contents *** BOMBS AWAY *** By Tom Barry, Codirector, Foreign Policy in Focus Program *** OPTIONS FOR REFUGEES *** by Karen AbuZayd, representative of the U.N. High Commission on Refugees *** CONGRESS MOVES TO BOOST MILITARY SPENDING *** By Chris Hellman, Senior Analyst, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- *** BOMBS AWAY *** (Ed. Note: The following is the latest FPIF policy brief, Vol. 4, No. 13. It calls for a unilateral end to the NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. See the FPIF's Kosovo Crisis Page for more information and perspectives: http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/media/releases/crisis_eu99.html) *** Bombs Away *** By Tom Barry, Codirector, Foreign Policy in Focus Program Key Points * The bombing of Yugoslavia was not authorized by the UN. * The dynamics of conflict and intervention in the Balkans embody many of the new peace and security challenges of the post-cold war era. * The U.S.-led NATO command--caught up in its own credibility crisis and lack of strategic mission-has made the Balkans a more volatile, dangerous place. By calling for air strikes against Serbian targets the Clinton administration made good on its threat to Yugoslavia's president Slobodan Milosevic: either accept NATO peacekeeping forces or face the wrath of the West. On March 24, 1999, "smart" laser-guided bombs began falling over the provinces of Serbia and Kosovo to demonstrate NATO's resolve to stabilize the region. Well into the second month of the bombing campaign, Serbian forces have managed to continue their own campaign to assert ethnic control over Kosovo by ridding the province of the insurgent Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians (who constitute 90% of the province's population). Failing to achieve a quick fix, NATO has steadily expanded the range of its bombing missions. The high-tech onslaught targets not only military facilities and forces but also Serbia's entire public infrastructure. In the face of unexpected Serbian resolve, NATO is introducing Apache attack helicopters and has intensified the bombing campaign. Increasingly, NATO strategists are considering the introduction of ground troops. The launching of NATO's bombing campaign came on the eve the alliance's 50th anniversary. Functioning during the cold war as a U.S.-led defensive alliance to protect Western Europe against Soviet aggression, NATO in the post-cold war years has sought to recreate itself as the main guardian of regional interests and stability. Rather than disbanding with the demise of the Soviet Union, NATO has expanded its membership and mission at the urging of Washington. As predicted by NATO critics, the revived NATO has seriously undermined security relations with Russia and has further degraded the UN's authority. Unlike the bombing campaign against Iraq in response to its occupation of Kuwait, the bombing of Yugoslavia was not authorized by the UN. The Serbian forces made no extraterritorial advances but were pursuing within their own country a counterinsurgency campaign against an emerging guerrilla army. Citing the need to preserve stability in Europe and to protect the Kosovar Albanians against Serbian ethno-fascism, NATO--led by Washington--initiated an offensive operation against a sovereign European state. It is the latest and most aggressive of the U.S.-led "humanitarian interventions" of the post-cold war period. The dynamics of conflict and intervention in the Balkans embody many of the new peace and security challenges of the post-cold war era. The containment, revolutionary, and rollback strategies that characterized the bipolar security environment of the cold war decades have given way to a situation in which civil wars, ethnic and religious conflicts, humanitarian crises, failed states, and looming environmental problems are the leading challenges to maintaining global
[PEN-L:6273] Foreign Policy In Focus: Bombs Away
Foreign Policy In Focus: Bombs Away May 1999 Vol.4, No.13 Written by Tom Barry, Codirector, Foreign Policy in Focus Program Edited by Martha Honey (IPS) Key Points o The bombing of Yugoslavia was not authorized by the UN. o The dynamics of conflict and intervention in the Balkans embody many of the new peace and security challenges of the post-cold war era. o The U.S.-led NATO command-caught up in its own credibility crisis and lack of strategic mission-has made the Balkans a more volatile, dangerous place. By calling for air strikes against Serbian targets the Clinton administration made good on its threat to Yugoslavia's president Slobodan Milosevic: either accept NATO peacekeeping forces or face the wrath of the West. On March 24, 1999, "smart" laser-guided bombs began falling over the provinces of Serbia and Kosovo to demonstrate NATO's resolve to stabilize the region. Well into the second month of the bombing campaign, Serbian forces have managed to continue their own campaign to assert ethnic control over Kosovo by ridding the province of the insurgent Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians (who constitute 90% of the province's population). Failing to achieve a quick fix, NATO has steadily expanded the range of its bombing missions. The high-tech onslaught targets not only military facilities and forces but also Serbia's entire public infrastructure. In the face of unexpected Serbian resolve, NATO is introducing Apache attack helicopters and has intensified the bombing campaign. Increasingly, NATO strategists are considering the introduction of ground troops. The launching of NATO's bombing campaign came on the eve the alliance's 50th anniversary. Functioning during the cold war as a U.S.-led defensive alliance to protect Western Europe against Soviet aggression, NATO in the post-cold war years has sought to recreate itself as the main guardian of regional interests and stability. Rather than disbanding with the demise of the Soviet Union, NATO has expanded its membership and mission at the urging of Washington. As predicted by NATO critics, the revived NATO has seriously undermined security relations with Russia and has further degraded the UN's authority. Unlike the bombing campaign against Iraq in response to its occupation of Kuwait, the bombing of Yugoslavia was not authorized by the UN. The Serbian forces made no extraterritorial advances but were pursuing within their own country a counterinsurgency campaign against an emerging guerrilla army. Citing the need to preserve stability in Europe and to protect the Kosovar Albanians against Serbian ethno-fascism, NATO-led by Washington-initiated an offensive operation against a sovereign European state. It is the latest and most aggressive of the U.S.-led "humanitarian interventions" of the post-cold war period. The dynamics of conflict and intervention in the Balkans embody many of the new peace and security challenges of the post-cold war era. The containment, revolutionary, and rollback strategies that characterized the bipolar security environment of the cold war decades have given way to a situation in which civil wars, ethnic and religious conflicts, humanitarian crises, failed states, and looming environmental problems are the leading challenges to maintaining global peace and stability. Strutting on the world stage with the arrogance of power (and liberal rhetoric) so typical of the U.S. foreign policy establishment, the Clinton administration decided to demonstrate the U.S. and NATO's determination to rid Europe of its most persistent challenge to stability. Although world opinion (with the prominent exceptions of China and Russia) largely applauded this latest U.S.-led "humanitarian intervention" (earlier cases include Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia), the bombing campaign raises an array of troubling questions about the action's legal, moral, institutional, military, and political implications. Clearly, the bombing circumvents the authority of the United Nations and thereby violates international law. An argument can be made that when international human rights norms are grossly violated by sovereign nations, the necessity for swift intervention offsets the need to respect international laws and institutions. Yet even accepting this argument, questions remain about whether the severity of the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo warranted this abrogation of international law and the further degradation of the UN. Also of concern is Washington's increasing practice, reinforced by its new stature as the world's single superpower, to regard itself as the final arbiter of when and where intervention is needed to enforce international norms. Having NATO-as the world's most powerful military alliance-available to enforce the U.S. vision of international stability, heightens this concern. Aside from these important questions of law and
[PEN-L:5846] Progressive Response: Kosovo Options
-- The Progressive Response 23 April 1999 Vol. 3, No. 15 Editor: Tom Barry -- The Progressive Response is a publication of Foreign Policy In Focus, a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. The project produces Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) briefs on various areas of current foreign policy debate. Electronic mail versions are available free of charge for subscribers. The Progressive Response is designed to keep the writers, contributors, and readers of the FPIF series informed about new issues and debates concerning U.S. foreign policy issues. The purpose of the "Comments" section of PR is to serve as a forum to discuss issues of controversy within the progressive community--not to express the institutional position of either the IRC or IPS. We encourage comments to the FPIF briefs and to opinions expressed in PR. We're working to make the Progressive Response informative and useful, so let us know how we're doing, via email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (that's irc, then the number one NOT the letter L.) Please put "Progressive Response" in the subject line. Please feel free to cross-post The Progressive Response elsewhere. We apologize for any duplicate copies of The Progressive Response you may receive. -- Table of Contents I. Updates and Out-Takes *** KOSOVO OPTIONS *** By Julianne Smith, Michael Ratner, Phyllis Bennis, Adm. Eugene Carroll, Jim Hooper, II. Comments *** KOSOVO FARCE AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER *** By Ruizhuang Zhang -- I. Updates and Out-Takes *** KOSOVO OPTIONS *** (Ed. Note: Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-OH) together with the Progressive Challenge and Foreign Policy In Focus sponsored on April 21 a congressional briefing entitled "Kosovo: What are the Other Options?" The opinions expressed by five of these panelists are excerpted below. Other speakers were Karen AbuZayd, Regional Representative, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Paul Rowland, Field Representative for Serbia, National Democratic Institute (NDI). Rep. Kucinich's opinion about the Kosovo bombing is found in an op-ed he authored that is posted on the FPIF's Kosovo Crisis Page at http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/media/opeds/kosovo04.html. Looking beyond the legality, morality, and strategy of the current crisis, Kai Bird in an article in The Nation, April 26, points out that the UN needs to be reformed if it is to function as a credible, effective institution. "We need a standing UN army available to smother ethnic violence and serve as neutral, truly international peacekeepers. We need to empower the UN, reform it, democratize it and recognize that, like democracy at home, a democratic UN will be a messy beast, but it will belong to us all.") *** Julianne Smith, Senior Analyst, BASIC *** (Excerpted from a longer essay available on FPIF's Kosovo Crisis Page at http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/media/opeds/kosovo06.html) While public opinion regarding Kosovo changes as rapidly as the spring weather in Washington, one fact remains constant: the current crisis has most of the population in the Western world scratching their heads and asking themselves, "Just how did we get into this mess anyway?" Is NATO that short-sighted? Was Clinton's domestic battle with impeachment so distracting? Is the post-Cold War security environment so boring that we can no longer hire decent intelligence gatherers? If one simply connects the dots, the answer becomes apparent. Almost a decade after the end of the Cold War, the West has yet to invest in the preventive tools it needs for standard maintenance of a security system plagued by leaks. This capability gap has, in turn, left NATO with the current flood of disaster, which is now threatening the entire region with long-term damage. At present, NATO has two options: it can use the summit to announce a quick fix for Kosovo (unrelenting military might either through ground troops or the continuation of the air strikes) and hope that it'll be able to paint over the leaks that such a quick fix would inevitably produce. Alternatively, NATO can use the summit to take an inventory of its current toolbox, admit that such tools have not yet been effective in Kosovo (and probably won't be effective for future Kosovos), and work to outline a long-term regional approach to security in the Balkans. Such an approach would: * establish formal relations between NATO and other security organizations such as the OSCE and the EU, thereby enhancing the civilian-military component of security; * assign one of those bodies the task of coordinating the civilia
[PEN-L:5625] Progressive Response: NATO-Russia, Global Economy
[PEN-L:5641] Progressive Response: NATO-Russia, Global Economy
-- The Progressive Response 19 April 1999 Vol. 3, No. 14 Editor: Tom Barry -- The Progressive Response is a publication of Foreign Policy In Focus, a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. The project produces Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF) briefs on various areas of current foreign policy debate. Electronic mail versions are available free of charge for subscribers. The Progressive Response is designed to keep the writers, contributors, and readers of the FPIF series informed about new issues and debates concerning U.S. foreign policy issues. The purpose of the and "Comments" section of PR is to serve as a forum to discuss issues of controversy within the progressive community--not to express the institutional position of either the IRC or IPS. We encourage comments to the FPIF briefs and to opinions expressed in PR. We're working to make the Progressive Response informative and useful, so let us know how we're doing, via email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (that's irc, then the number one NOT the letter L.) Please put "Progressive Response" in the subject line. Please feel free to cross-post The Progressive Response elsewhere. We apologize for any duplicate copies of The Progressive Response you may receive. -- Table of Contents I. Updates and Out-Takes *** CONTAINMENT LITE: U.S. POLICY TOWARD RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS *** By John Feffer *** GLOBAL SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT RESOLUTION *** By Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith II. Comments *** QUESTIONS ABOUT FPIF'S KOSOVO BRIEFING DOCUMENT *** *** ULTERIOR MOTIVES? *** -- I. Updates and Out-Takes *** CONTAINMENT LITE: U.S. POLICY TOWARD RUSSIA AND ITS NEIGHBORS *** By John Feffer (Ed. Note: As NATO marks its 50th anniversary in Washington this week, it finds itself immersed in a war in the Balkans, raining bombs on the Yugoslav federation in the name of humanitarianism. In 1949 the U.S. established NATO as a military alliance to defend the West against the perceived threat of Soviet expansionism. When the Soviet Union imploded, the U.S. and other countries of the Atlantic alliance sought to bring Russia into a strategic partnership. Today, NATO's new militarism and its expansionism have undermined that partnership. The following analysis is excerpted from a new FPIF essay by John Feffer on U.S. policy in the former Soviet Union.) *** Containment Lite: U.S. Policy Toward Russia and its Neighbors *** If the U.S. government had wanted to destroy Russia from the inside out, it couldn't have devised a more effective policy than the so-called "strategic partnership." From aggressive foreign policy to misguided economic advice to undemocratic influence-peddling, the U.S. has ushered in a cold peace on the heels of the cold war. Containment remains the centerpiece of U.S. policy toward Russia. But it is a "soft" containment. It is Containment Lite. On the foreign policy front, for instance, Containment Lite has consisted of a three-tiered effort to isolate Russia: from its neighbors, from Europe, and from the international community more generally. The Clinton administration's policy of "geopolitical pluralism," designed to strengthen key neighbors such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan, has driven wedges into the loose confederation of post-Soviet states. By pushing ahead recklessly with expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the U.S. government is deepening the divide that separates Russia from Europe, effectively building a new Iron Curtain down the middle of Eurasia. Instead of consulting with Russia over key foreign policy issues such as the Iraq bombings and allied policy toward former Yugoslavia, Washington has attempted to steer Moscow into a diplomatic backwater where it can exert little global influence. Part of this three-tiered foreign policy of "soft" containment has been to eliminate Russia's last claim to superpower status--its nuclear arsenal--without providing sufficient funds for mothballing the weapons and without pursuing commensurate reductions in U.S. stockpiles. By pursuing a missile defense system, the U.S. has put several arms control treaties in jeopardy; by opposing key sales of Russian military technology, the U.S. has applied a double standard on proliferation. Announcing the largest increase in the military budget since the end of the cold war, the Clinton administration began 1999 with a clear signal that Russia's decline would have little effect on the Pentagon's appetite. While Russia's geopolitical fortunes have been grim, its economic position is even grimmer. In 199
[PEN-L:4051] Re: Re: local money
Peter is correct- the biggest battle is getting people involved in the LETS system as you need a wide diversity of people and businesses involved to make the system work. On the second question, I do think that LETS fill a void for local resources but not because of insufficiency of money as I think we all would agree that there is not a lack of capital-just in its equitable distribution. Jim, I think the problem is not printing the stuff but getting other people to accept it. Seriously, there are two intertwined issues, building local networks of cooperation and exchange and covering for the local (and perhaps national) insufficiency of money. It's an interesting set of questions. Peter The set of 5 questions Peter asks really get to the heart of LETS but they are very hard to answer because of the small scale nature of LETS systems. For the most part they are not inflationary because they are pegged to the dollar or per hour of work. I doubt that they have helped curb unemployment on a large scale but many LETS programs allow for no interest loans to help people get involved with the system so there is really no reason why they couldn't be used to help start a business. I recently wrote this for an article exploring "alternatives" to the global economy. I also included some resources that examine local currency. I highly recommend the articles in the special issue of Yes. Local Currency Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) are a dynamic way to help control local economies in an era of globalization. LETS, in essence, are bartering networks that community members use to exchange skills, resources, and products using locally produced currency. Unlike countertrade, which focuses on international transactions, LETS are designed to enable communities at the local level to regain control of the social and environmental effects of commerce. LETS can protect communities from some of the destructive tendencies of the global economy such as speculation, rapid movement of capital, and the extraction of wealth. By setting the value of local currency to a labor hour, keeping money local, foregoing interest payments on money lent, and making speculation unprofitable, LETS set a good example for how national currencies could or perhaps should operate. Operating outside of the global economy is one goal of LETS. This advantage keeps speculators away and protects localities. In addition, by using money as a form of exchange rather than as a method of exploitation, LETS helps build a sense of community. Because local currency can only be used in a limited area, wealth created by LETS stays local, further enriching the community. One of the major drawbacks of LETS is the dearth of local currency organizations in developing countries. Local exchange trading systems have succeeded in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, but the issue of whether local currencies can be successful in the South is questionable. Local exchange trading systems are feasible alternatives for small communities, but they are only capable of addressing local needs. With the global nature of the worlds economy, local currency cannot promote large-scale development. Instead it can serve as a good example of the type of initiative that is needed at the global level. Resources Ithaca HOURS Box 6578 Ithaca, NY 14851 Voice: (607) 272-4330 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.lightlink.com/hours/ithacahours/ Contact: Paul Glover Nick England and Patricia Knox, A New Green Economy? LETS Do It, Earth Island Journal, Winter 1995. Susan Meeker-Lowry, Printing Our Own Money: How to Rebuild Communities by Issuing Local Currencies, Toward Freedom, February 1996. Money: Print Your Own, Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, Spring 1997. David Morris, Bringing the Money Back Home, Utne Reader, July-August 1992. Erik Leaver Interhemispheric Resource Center Box 4506 Albuquerque, NM 87196 505-842-8288 http://www.zianet.com/irc1
[PEN-L:2198] Re: Re: IN FOCUS: World Bank's Private SectorAgenda
Ken- Thanks for the critique--it is always good too keep pressuring the project to stay to the left. In the recommendation section it was noted that: If the World Bank sees the private sector as a partner and contributor to its overall development approach, then it must clarify the development goals it hopes to achieve with private sector investment and must create measurable standards by which the developmental impact can be judged. The important word here is IF. While the project dosen't support the use of the private sector in the Bank it does recognize that this is an area that the Bank is continuinging to support and with the existing political constraints, the approach in the brief may (shudder) be the best that we can hope for right now. Best, Erik Leaver Communications Director In Focus At 10:40 PM 1/14/99 -0600, you wrote: Once upon a time there were Utopian Socialists now there are just Utopian Capitalists. Utopian capitalists typically would modify capitalism (in their heads) to accomodate (pacify?) women, small and medium-sized business, environmentalists, etc. Privatisation is OK but lets have privatisation that helps local business, doesn't ruin the environment and so on ad nauseam. Include any progressive cause that should be supported. The big bad boogey man is BIG CAPITAL and HE should be replaced by little local capital, environmentally friendly (THERE IS NO FRIENDLY GIANT), of indeterminate gender but a young frisky thing who finds Judith Butler a turn-on. Cheers, Ken Hanly P.S. Many of the critical remarks re the World Bank etc. are bang-on. It is the positive that is so horribly negative. Interhemispheric Resource Center wrote: Foreign Policy In Focus: World Bank's Private Sector Agenda
[PEN-L:2179] IN FOCUS: International Financial Flows
Foreign Policy In Focus: International Financial Flows December 1998 Vol. 3, No. 41 Written by Sarah Anderson, Institute for Policy Studies Edited by Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS) Key Points o International finance flows have exploded during the 1990s as countries, particularly in the developing world, have bowed to the conventional wisdom that they should remove barriers to these flows. o The flood of capital into countries like Mexico, while fueling economic growth for a period of time, has done little to improve the lives of the majority of people. o The roots of the crisis may lay in the financial liberalization that encouraged a flood of short-term private flows into Thailand, the Philippines, and elsewhere in the early 1990s. After a decade of rapid growth, the international financial system is now plagued with extreme volatility and crisis. International financial flows have exploded during the 1990s as countries, particularly in the developing world, have bowed to the conventional wisdom that they should remove barriers to these flows. As a result, three major trends have emerged: 1. Dominance of private capital: As recently as 1990, financial flows into developing countries from public institutions (e.g., the World Bank) were larger than those from private sources (e.g., Citicorp); today private capital dwarfs the value of public lending. In 1994 and 1995, roughly three-quarters of the resource flows into the developing world were from the private sector; by 1996, private flows were over 85 percent of the total. 2. Short-term portfolio flows: Foreign direct investment remains the largest source of private financial flows, but short-term portfolio flows have grown at the fastest pace. Between 1990 and 1996, the movement of portfolio equity flows into the South surged from $3.2 billion to $45.7 billion as a number of debtor countries followed U.S., World Bank, and IMF advice (often in order to satisfy loan requirements) to open their stock markets to foreign investors and deregulate their financial markets. Even some countries not under IMF or World Bank programs bowed to pressure from inside and outside to liberalize their financial systems or be left behind in a dynamic global economy. 3. Highly concentrated investment: Despite the surge in private flows, the entire developing world is not awash in foreign capital. In fact, three-fourths of private investment goes to just 10 countries, often called the "emerging markets" because of their profitable trade and investment opportunities and prospects for economic growth. Meanwhile, the rest of the developing world has experienced not only reduced aid flows but also the inability to attract private capital in the form of loans for investment. Supporters of a deregulated global economy have heralded the capital influx as the developing world's ticket to prosperity and a sign of sound economic management in the recipient countries. Critics have argued that the flood of capital into countries like Mexico, while fueling economic growth for a period of time, has done little to improve the lives of the majority of people. Moreover, they have argued that the flood of unregulated capital inflows has made countries vulnerable to economic instability caused by rapid capital flight. With the advent of the Asian financial crisis in mid-1997, the debate over financial flows has finally reached the front pages of newspapers. Between July 1997 and January 1998, currencies and/or stock markets plunged by at least one-third in seven nations. The fact that three of these were the highly touted "newly industrializing economies" (NICs) of South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and four were would-be NICs (Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines) has greatly shaken confidence in the global economy. Walden Bello, of the Bangkok-based group Focus on the Global South, has made a convincing case that the roots of the crisis lay in the financial liberalization that encouraged a flood of short-term private flows into Thailand, the Philippines, and elsewhere in the early 1990s. The flows generated high growth rates, yet most funds were not channeled into productive long-term uses; instead much of the short-term capital artificially inflated both real estate and stock markets. In some countries, the problems were exacerbated by imprudent lending practices by the banking sector. When investors began to lose confidence in these markets, economic instability was made much worse by draconian austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the speculative activities of currency traders. Coming at a time when the international financial system was still recovering from the aftershocks of the 1994 Mexican peso crash, the Asian crisis prompted even stalwart supporters of economic globalization to engage in a debate over the need for what Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin calls the "new
[PEN-L:2178] IN FOCUS: World Bank's Private Sector Agenda
Foreign Policy In Focus: World Bank's Private Sector Agenda December 1998 Volume 3, Number 40 Written by Andrea Durbin, Friends of the Earth Edited by Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS) Key Points o The World Bank announced in its 1995 annual report that the "private sector is now a recognized area of emphasis." o The bank will often require a government to cut domestic spending, open up markets for foreign investment, expand exports, and liberalize trade policies to promote a favorable business climate for the private sector. o The bank will acknowledge that these conditions have not delivered the economic growth they expected and that structural adjustment can have serious and negative impacts on the poor, women, and the environment. In the early 1990s, the World Bank underwent a mid-life crisis. During this period, private capital flows to emerging market economies in the developing world increased significantly, surpassing the amount of money available through official development assistance. These private capital flows grew from $42 billion in 1990 to $256 billion in 1997, while official development assistance through the World Bank and other government aid programs declined by nearly a quarter. Through structural adjustment lending in the 1980s and heightened support for private sector development in the 1990s, the World Bank has contributed to this changing trend. Consistent with U.S. political interests to promote a private sector agenda, the World Bank has accentuated the private sector in its operations and highlighted financial support for the private sector in its own agenda in the last few years. Contending that one way to alleviate poverty and improve the living standards of the poor in the developing world is to promote private sector development, the World Bank announced in its 1995 annual report that the "private sector is now a recognized area of emphasis." The World Bank promotes its private sector agenda in several ways. One way is through structural adjustment lending that promotes privatization, investment liberalization, and export-oriented growth. The bank devotes significant resources to advise governments on how to privatize. Through its structural adjustment lending, the bank will often require a government to cut domestic spending, open up markets for foreign investment, expand exports, and liberalize trade policies. All of these conditions promote a favorable business climate for the private sector, particularly foreign businesses investing in developing countries. The World Bank, and its sister institution the IMF, have long been criticized by NGOs for their rigid application of these conditionalities on governments. Albeit reluctantly, the bank will acknowledge that these conditions have not delivered the economic growth they expected and that structural adjustment can have serious and negative impacts on the poor, women, and the environment. Beyond establishing a good business climate through structural adjustment lending, the World Bank promotes its private sector agenda by financing private enterprises. Two of its lesser known agencies, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), exclusively finance and underwrite private companies. These agencies are very similar to the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, and they support a similar agenda. The IFC provides project loans to companies, makes equity investments in private projects, and mobilizes capital in the private financial markets for the private sector. The IFC acts as a catalyst for private investment because its participation enhances investor confidence and attracts other financiers to a deal. In 1998, the IFC funded $2.7 billion in new investments-a record level of new commitments-and mobilized another $2.4 billion from other private banks. In the last five years, the IFC's lending has increased by an average of 10% a year, while the World Bank's lending to governments has remained steady. In 1988, the World Bank added its newest agency, MIGA, to offer political risk insurance for private investors to cover expropriation, civil disturbance, or currency inconvertibility. MIGA's stated purpose is to help developing countries attract foreign investment by providing risk insurance. Political risk insurance is in increasing demand for investment in emerging markets, having more than doubled since 1990 and reaching $38.9 billion in 1997. Companies want to reduce their risks and losses or at least have these losses covered. As with the IFC, the demand for MIGA's services is increasing. In 1998, MIGA approved 55 guarantee contracts totaling $830.9 million in coverage, bringing the total coverage issued in the decade since its founding to $4.2 billion. This year, MIGA asked its shareholders, donor governments like the United States and other G-7 nations, to increase their contributions. To demonstrate its overall commitment
[PEN-L:1489] protected economic sectors
Pen-l'ers- We are looking for some assistance in putting together a document which outlines the barriers to trade and investment in the United States for a new book that the In Focus project is producing on U.S. Foreign Policy. I am looking for any documents, organizations, or people which have in-depth information on which sectors of the US economy are protected from foreign competition (by tariffs, regulations, quotas, etc.) and more importantly why from a progressive viewpoint. (there are a lot of documents that talk about why from a conservative viewpoint). Ideally we would just highlight a few (steel, sugar, etc) because I'm sure that there are more tariffs and quotas regulating imports than imaginable. We have already found one good document, the 1998 European Commission on US Barriers to Trade and Investment. But I assume that this document is only good for EU-US trade and we can't assume similar barriers across the globe. Any help is appreciated. Please contact me or my assistant Ryan. Thanks, Erik Leaver [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ryan Hughes [EMAIL PROTECTED] IRC (505) 842-8288
[PEN-L:1022] IN FOCUS: Asian Financial Crisis
Dear Friends- I hope that this report, released today, will be useful. Please feel free to distribute it to interested parties. Sincerely, Erik Leaver Communications Director Foreign Policy In Focus --- Foreign Policy In Foucs: Asian Financial Crisis November 1998 Volume 3, Number 36 Written by Tim Shorrock Edited by Martha Honey (IPS) and Tom Barry (IRC) Key Points o The Clinton administration continues to promote the deeply flawed "Washington consensus" of neoliberal globalization in the APEC countries. o President Clinton, Treasury Secretary Rubin, and the IMF find themselves isolated in Asia, particularly on the issue of controlling flows of "hot money." o The Asian crisis, including the end of Japan's "bubble economy," has created economic conditions that make it difficult for Asians to buy U.S. exports and that devalue Asian exports, leading to unprecedented trade deficits in the United States. In mid-November 1998, President Clinton will travel to Malaysia to attend the annual meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation council, a group of Asian and Pacific Rim countries committed to free trade and liberalized capital markets. The gathering will take place as the impact of the Asian financial crisis-which began almost exactly a year ago with the collapse of currencies and stock markets in Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea-is being felt around the world, triggering fears of a global depression and deepening the plight of workers and the poor everywhere. The crisis finally came home to Americans last summer, when the stock market took a nosedive as investors began to dump stocks in corporations whose profits had plunged as economic growth in Asia-which buys nearly one-third of all U.S. exports-sank to its lowest rates since the early 1960s. The panic on Wall Street was also triggered by the stunning collapse of the Japanese banking system, which has sparked a regional capital crunch and created Japan's worst recession since the end of World War II. President Clinton and his chief economic advisers, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and Deputy Secretary Larry Summers, will arrive at the meeting ready to push what has come to be known as the "Washington consensus"-which is the conviction that the expanded liberalization of trade and capital markets, tough policies toward overleveraged corporations and banks, and a blanket rejection of controls on capital flows constitute the only path to economic prosperity. The United States, as the largest donor to the International Monetary Fund, will also be a staunch defender of the IMF's policies. The IMF administered the multibillion dollar Asia bailout launched last winter but has become the target of fierce criticism at home and abroad for pushing Asia further into recession with its demands for high interest rates and rigid monetary and fiscal policies. Although the fund has recently softened its policies, in many of the APEC discussions, Clinton, Rubin, and the IMF will find themselves isolated, particularly on the issue of controlling the flows of "hot money." That term refers to the sudden and speculative shifts of investments from country to country that many economists now see as a key factor in the collapse of the so-called Asian "tiger economies." Economic policy divisions widened in September 1998 after Malaysia, an autocratic state friendly to multinationals, decided to yank its currency from the market and banned foreign investors from withdrawing their capital for one year. The idea of some kind of capital controls has gained support in Japan and other Asian countries. Even some mainstream U.S. and World Bank economists support the concept of capital controls-but not the Clinton administration. Shortly after Malaysia's announcement, Summers said it would be a "catastrophe" if countries developed "the idea that withdrawing from the global system was right and building a better functioning market economy was wrong." In November 1998, U.S. APEC Ambassador John S. Wolf said: "We think it's important to avoid excessive government interference or rigid controls, which would shrink the pool of capital that is available. That would make the cost of capital prohibitive for emerging markets." But clearly hot money was one of the factors behind Asia's collapse. In 1997, following a series of corporate bankruptcies and bank failures, foreign investors and bankers began a stampede out of the Asia region, sending the Asian economies into freefall. In just one year, Asian stock markets declined on average between 40% and 60%, while the value of most Asian currencies fell between 35% and 85% against the dollar. That made it difficult for them to buy U.S. products, while lowering prices for their own exports by more than half. As a result, the U.S. trade deficit is projected to hit $300 billion in 1999 after a record of about $240 billion this year. Japan, once the
[PEN-L:610] Looking for Writers
Dear PEN-L'ers The Foreign Policy In Focus project is looking for experts that can write four page briefing papers on the following topics: * U.S. Policy on Privatization of Social Security Overseas * U.S. Policy on Current Crisis in Brazil * Role of U.S. in Liberalizing Capital Flows through Trade Negotiations * U.S. Policy on Currency Markets * U.S. Policy on National Monetary Policy and Central Banking * U.S.-China Economic Relations * Japan: Trade and Financial Issues Each of these briefs are four pages each, totaling approximately 2400 words, and have the same categories of information and analysis: Description of Issues and Policy; Problems with Current Policy; Toward a New Foreign Policy; and Sources for More Information. There is a small stipend for each brief. For those of you unfamiliar with the project, Foreign Policy In Focus is a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center (IRC) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). In Focus briefs document the problems of current U.S. foreign policy and offer recommendations for alternative policy directions that would make the United States a more responsible global partner. If you are interested please respond directly to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or to the project editor, Tom Barry at [EMAIL PROTECTED] Thanks, Erik Leaver Communications Director Foreign Policy In Focus Box 4506 Albuquerque, NM 87196 505-842-8288 www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org
[PEN-L:303] IN FOCUS: An Enforceable Social Clause
Foreign Policy In Focus: An Enforceable Social Clause October 1998 Vol. 3, No. 28 Written by Terry Collingsworth, General Counsel, International Labor Rights Fund Edited by Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS) Key Points o The failure of sustainable economic growth to take hold in the developing world demonstrates that "free trade" is not delivering on its promise to bring prosperity to the world's poor. o The new global economy forces developing countries to compete based on their willingness to offer the lowest possible wages to multinational firms, ensuring that the world's poorest workers remain poor. o If a major goal of the trading regime is to eradicate poverty, this needs to be made explicit in the trading rules with an enforceable social clause that prevents the worst forms of worker exploitation and protects fundamental labor rights. The recent Asian crash has provided economic policymakers with a refresher course on a lesson learned by most of our depression-era grandparents through painful experience: Laissez-faire capitalism does not lead to broad-based economic development. With the meltdown in Russia, Japan in crisis, Central and South America hanging on the precipice, Africa as desperate as ever for economic assistance, and growing economic inequality in virtually every country, we are at a crucial moment in economic history. The economist cabal is split over what action to take. Free market purists argue for no intervention-let the market discipline investors who thought the Asian mirage was real. The other faction, led by U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, argues for International Monetary Fund (IMF)-led bailouts to restore investor confidence, or at least to subsidize some of their losses with public funds. Neither of these investor-oriented, trickle-down perspectives offers hope for the countless millions of working poor who will lose (or suffer a reduction in) their meager incomes because of the global economic crisis. There is virtually no high-level policy discussion on the need to reevaluate the global trading system based on its clear failure to create sustainable economic growth in developing countries that have largely followed the neoliberal economic prescriptions. Following the searing experience of the Great Depression and World War II and mindful of the threat of Soviet communist domination, the architects of the post-war order understood that delivering economic benefits to the poor was a necessary ingredient for an economic model that could counter the Soviet challenge. Whatever the motivation, there was an express recognition that trade was not an end in itself-increased trade was to be the engine for bringing prosperity to the world's poor. For example, the preamble to the original General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), signed in 1947, stated: "Relations among countries in the field of trade and economic endeavor should be conducted with a view to raising standards of living and ensuring full employment." This central mission statement justifying the trading system has been forgotten. Ironically, now that the global economy has become sufficiently integrated so that trade could truly be utilized as a tool for eradicating poverty in the developing world, the trading system has become the nearly exclusive domain of private capital. The new captains of the global economy view the goals of trade in entirely different terms from the drafters of the original GATT. To them, the new global economy offers a way to have the best of both worlds: products can be made with third world labor costs and sold for first world prices. Nike, to take a well-known example, shifted its shoe and apparel production from Oregon to Korea, Indonesia, and Vietnam and then to China and Bangladesh, not to spread the benefits of development and raise living standards for the working poor, but to take advantage of the merciless competition for investment between developing countries that have been forced to undercut each other in the race to offer the world's lowest wages. Promoting sustainable economic development is not an objective of Nike and its well-developed competitors. In fact, the global manufacturers that rely upon cheap labor in the third world have a clear conflict of interest with any developing country's development aspirations, which could raise the price of labor. The mobility of these companies as they search for ever cheaper sources of labor and abandon workers who had an expectation that they would eventually earn a living wage confirms this reality. Any development-oriented changes in the global economy must come from regulation of private investors rather than from a naïve hope or cynical assertion that these companies will regulate themselves. The health of the world's economy is dependant upon a revival of the concept that trade is a tool to increase prosperity for all participants in the global economy. An enforceable social
[PEN-L:1215] Investment Liberalization/Capital Flows/Trade Democratization
Foreign Policy In Focus, a joint project of the Interhemispheric Resource Center and the Institute for Policy Studies, is pleased to announce the release of three new papers on international trade. Investment Liberalization Agenda by David Ranney, Univ. of Illinois Capital Flows and the Environment by Hillary French, Worldwatch Institute Democratizing the Trade Debate by Lance Compa, Cornell University If you would like copies of these reports please send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and indicate if you would prefer the report via mail or email. Erik Leaver In Focus Communications Director Box 4506 Albuquerque, NM 87196 505-842-8288 [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org
[PEN-L:139] Foreign Direct Investment/Portfolio Investment
The Foreign Policy In Focus project (a joint effort of the Institute for Policy Studies and the Interhemispheric Resource Center) has just released two reports on Foreign Direct Investment and Portfolio Investiment written by George DeMartino and Ilene Grabel of the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver. If anyone would like email or hard copies of these reports please send me an email or give me a call. Erik Erik Leaver Communications Director Box 4506 Albuquerque, NM 87196 voice: 505-842-8288 fax: 505-343-0271 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: www.foreignpolicy-infocus.com
In Focus: Free Trade Area of the Americas
U.S. Foreign Policy In Focus: Free Trade Area of the Americas Volume 3, Number 6 April 1998 Karen Hansen-Kuhn, The Development GAP Editors: Martha Honey (IPS) and Tom Barry (IRC) Key Points * The economic crisis in Mexico has dampened enthusiasm in the U.S. for the extension of free-trade agreements throughout the Americas. * Nine negotiating groups have been set up to work toward the establishment of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). * Negotiations on the FTAA will commence in September 1998 and are scheduled to conclude by 2005. In April 1998 the leaders of 34 Western Hemisphere countries will gather in Santiago, Chile, for the Second Summit of the Americas. While the Summit agenda includes such broad concerns as education, democracy, and poverty, issues related to economic integration will clearly dominate the meeting. Contrary to the expectations created at the December 1994 Summit of the Americas, the expansion of free-trade agreements throughout the hemisphere has proceeded slowly. At the Miami meeting, President Clinton was poised to fulfill President Bush's dream of a free-trade agreement stretching from Anchorage to Tierra del Fuego. In the summit's final declaration, the participating countries promised to create an historic Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) linking all of the hemisphere's economies (except Cuba's) by the year 2005-a goal that seems unlikely given the failure of existing free-trade agreements to generate significant economic benefits. During the first summit, President Clinton lauded those governments that had adopted "sound policies to tame inflation, to restore economic growth." Mexico was held out as the model of economic reform and NAFTA as the model trade agreement. Just ten days later, however, the Mexican peso underwent a massive devaluation. That, coupled with the austerity conditions attached to the bailout package financed by the U.S. Treasury and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), sent the Mexican economy into a deep depression and further lowered the purchasing power of Mexican wages and the prices of export goods, contributing in turn to job losses in the United States. The effects of the crisis reverberated well beyond Mexico. Mexico's currency crisis and the current financial crisis in East Asia rocked stock markets around the world, and confidence in the free-trade model of globalization has been shaken. While these continuing economic crises have dampened public and congressional enthusiasm in the U.S. for free-trade agreements-as demonstrated in November 1997 by the Clinton administration having to withdraw its request for fast-track authority to negotiate new agreements-governments have continued the process set in motion at the summit. At their March 1998 meeting in San José, Costa Rica, the hemisphere's trade ministers agreed to launch the official negotiations for the FTAA on 30 September 1998. They also established nine international negotiating groups, each headed by a different country, to address such topics as market access and investment. The final declaration from the meeting called on the negotiating groups to make "considerable progress" toward an FTAA by the year 2000. Despite its lack of fast-track authority, the Clinton administration continues to press for a conclusion of the negotiations by the year 2005. While the United States has advocated a series of interim agreements on such issues as government procurement and customs procedures and the U.S. business community has lobbied for a regional agreement on investment to lock in "best practices" in the hemisphere, other governments and business interests have been very reluctant to enter into any agreements until progress has been made on a number of fronts. The understanding reached in San José follows on the negotiating principle established in the Uruguay Round of the GATT-that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Over the past few years, numerous trade and investment agreements have been signed by different countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. In addition to regional pacts, such as NAFTA, Mercosur, the Andean Pact, and the Caribbean Community (Caricom), there are bilateral agreements, such as the one between Chile and Mexico, as well as accords between regional groupings and individual countries. Part of the formidable task of the working groups set up at the Miami Summit was to document and compare exactly what agreements have already been reached in the region. Much of this work has been completed. Even more significant, especially in light of the U.S. preference that governments participate individually in the negotiating process, was an agreement reached in San José that specifies that countries are free to negotiate as blocs. Problems With Current U.S. Policy Key Problems * Despite their apparent differences, both NAFTA and Mercosur are similar accords. * Through their provisions on trade and investment, both
Re: In Focus: Free Trade Area of the Americas
Louis- I agree that change can only happen with the people but I disagree that it is only going to come through direct action alone. We have the responsibility to work through the goverment as well as through direct action in order to bring legitimacy to our work and to create enforcable mechanisms for progressive policies. The main goal of the In Focus project is to bring academics, ngos, activists, policy makers and citizens together to create a united voice for a more progressive foreign policy. By teaming the Institute for Policy Studies (inside the Beltway thinktank) with the Interhemispheric Resource Center (a research institute located in NM) we have tried to incorporate perspectives from within and outside of the beltway. With over 150 organizations and individuals involved in the project we are one of the few efforts that are succeeding in revisioning a wholistic foreign policy. Inherent in politics and in our project is some compromise- which may dilute the message somewhat as you point out. This actually is the crux of our movement both in the policy arena and with direct action--do we compromise and get something or stand strong and get nothing? I would argue that compromise and direct action both have had successes and failures. Adhearing to one model is not the answer as you suggest. On another note we mentioned the Inside Washington publication because very few people are carrying news about the FTAA, Mercosur, and the Andean Pact--even as the FTAA negiotiations are underway this week. I don't think anyone would subscribe but that people could go to the library and seek it out. Sincerely, Erik Leaver Foreign Policy In Focus Communications Director At 11:25 AM 4/15/98 -0400, you wrote: At 08:58 AM 4/15/98 -0600, you wrote: Okay, I'm taking my checkbook out right now and sending in $625 for a sub to this INSIDE WASHINGTON PUBLISHERS biweekly. Right. Inside Washington? Inside Washington? Hm. That's the problem. The material we have been receiving from this think-tank smacks of the sort of inside-the-beltway mentality that will never get to the bottom of the problem. One does not recommend to the bourgeoisie that it pursue a development model that takes the interests of labor, ecologists and indigenous peoples into account. What happens is that the affected parties themselves--like the Colombian peasantry--get a hold of some guns and threaten to shoot the dogs who stealing food off their plate. And here in the United States we organize demonstrations to keep the Marines out of Colombia. That is how genuine progress takes place, not pleading reason with the likes of Chase Manhattan Bank, Occidental Oil and their servants like Clinton and Gore. Louis Proyect
In Focus: Asian Financial Crisis
Foreign Policy In Focus: Asian Financial Crisis Volume 3, Number 8 April 1998 Written by Tim Shorrock Editors: Martha Honey (IPS) and Tom Barry (IRC) Key Points * The $120 billion bailout for four troubled Asian economies, crafted by the IMF and the U.S. Treasury, is the largest financial rescue plan in history. * In Asia, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs as insolvent factories close; total job losses could be in the millions. In the U.S., one study predicts that one million industrial workers could be laid off as Asian countries export their way out of the crisis and cut into U.S. markets. * The IMF bailout has sparked a lively debate in Washington about economic policy, but opposition to IMF policies is coming mainly from the right. A series of bank failures and corporate bankruptcies in 1997 sent Asian currency markets tumbling, sparking a sudden flight of foreign capital that sent the economies of four East Asian nations into a free-fall. To contain the damage, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the U.S. Treasury quickly crafted the largest financial rescue plan in history. Over $120 billion from the IMF, the World Bank, the U.S. government, and other institutions went to South Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines to help their governments pay billions of dollars owed to U.S., European, and Japanese banks, to reestablish business confidence, and to persuade foreign investors to return to their markets. In exchange, the four countries agreed to restructure their economies by shutting down insolvent enterprises and banks, ending monopolies, phasing out government restrictions on investment, and opening their markets even further to foreign capital. Those moves have paved the way for a massive sell-off of Asian assets to foreign companies. The "Asian crisis," as these events have been dubbed by the U.S. press, is having a dramatic impact on workers in Asia, and its ripple effects are being felt throughout North America. Already, hundreds of thousands of Asian workers-10,000 a day in South Korea alone-have lost their jobs as factories close down. Families are suffering as state controls on food prices, transportation, and other commodities are phased out. By the end of 1998, job losses are expected to be in the millions. In Indonesia, an authoritarian country ruled by the powerful Suharto family, food riots and antigovernment demonstrations are spreading across the country as Suharto and his generals intensify their political control. In the United States, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has estimated that over one million industrial jobs are threatened as Asian countries export their way out of the crisis, adding to the huge U.S. trade deficit. U.S. jobs will also be lost as Asian goods, which are suddenly less expensive because of currency depreciations, replace U.S. exports to Asia and other emerging markets. Those job losses, according to the EPI, will be concentrated in key manufacturing industries, including steel, electronics, apparel, and automobiles. In Washington, the Asian crisis and the Clinton administration's request for $18 billion in additional funds for the IMF have sparked a lively political debate about the IMF and future U.S. economic policy. Groups on both the left and right challenged the IMF's programs in Asia as a waste of U.S. taxpayer money to bail out international banks that poured capital into questionable Asian projects. But the Clinton administration, led by Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, mounted a strong counterattack, arguing that the IMF bailout is necessary to restore economic stability in Asia and to prevent a broader crisis that could cause serious damage to the U.S. economy and an even greater loss of jobs. The administration also linked the Asian crisis to U.S. national security interests, saying that serious social unrest in Indonesia and other Asian countries could somehow lead to involvement by the U.S. military and could threaten the use of the Indonesian sea lanes, through which about 30% of global shipping passes. The U.S. Senate, with strong support from the business community (and with organized labor largely on the sidelines), passed the bailout legislation by a vote of 84-16 in March 1998. In the House, most of the opposition came from Republican conservatives who believe the IMF is violating free market principles. Democrats who opposed fast-track trade legislation, such as Rep. David Bonior, D-MI, and Rep. Barney Frank, D-MA, agreed to support the IMF replenishment on two conditions: that the IMF pay more attention to labor and environmental issues, and that Treasury establish an advisory panel from U.S. business and labor to review IMF programs. Meanwhile, U.S. steel, shipbuilding, and semiconductor companies secured an amendment that will: 1) impose penalties on Asian countries that dump their goods in the U.S. market by selling them at below-market prices, and 2) prohibit the IMF money
IMF Bailouts and Global Financial Flows
U.S. Foreign Policy In Focus: IMF Bailouts and Global Financial Flows Volume 3, Number 5 April 1998 David Felix, Professor Emeritus, Washington University in St. Louis Editors: Martha Honey (IPS) and Tom Barry (IRC) Key Points * The IMF has been transformed into an instrument for prying open third world markets to foreign capital and for collecting foreign debts. * This transformation violates the IMF charter in spirit and substance, and has increased the costs to countries requesting IMF financial aid. * The IMF's operational crisis stems from growing debtor resistance to its policy demands, soaring fiscal costs, and accumulating evidence of IMF policy failure. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is the central agency for enforcing the Bretton Woods Articles of Agreement, whose terms serve as its charter. The objective of the agreement, which was reached by the major capitalist powers toward the end of World War II, was to establish a postwar economic order in which international trade and investment as well as stable, convertible exchange rates would not conflict with high employment, progressive taxation, and other components of welfare capitalism. Controlling international capital flows was judged essential for this entire set of goals to be mutually attainable. Hence, Article VI requires the IMF to deny emergency credits if used "to meet a large or sustained outflow of capital," authorizes members "to exercise such controls as are necessary to regulate international capital movements," and mandates the IMF to ask for such controls. In practice, the IMF has neither requested such controls nor suspended credits when they were used to finance capital flight. During the first three post-war decades, however, its importance as an emergency lender was subordinated to cold war-motivated official grants and credits in the 1950s and 1960s, and (as "foreign aid fatigue" set in) to commercial bank lending to assorted third world countries in the 1970s. Since then, the U.S. has found the IMF increasingly useful for handling third world debt crises and for opening third world commodity and asset markets to foreign capital. From minor lender of last resort, the IMF has become the enforcer of foreign debt service and a promoter of integrating developing countries into the G-7 financial markets. In pursuing these functions, the IMF has made capital controls a major target of attack, moving from neglect to active violation of Article VI. This pursuit has augmented the policy changes that the IMF routinely demands of countries seeking its credits. Prior to the 1980s the IMF's primary intent was to relieve foreign exchange crises at moderate socioeconomic cost to the supplicant economies. As such, the fund insisted on combinations of monetary-fiscal tightening and devaluation but left capital controls largely untouched. After 1980, however, the goal became to resolve these crises by attracting private capital. Thus, measures that cut deeply into the structures of the supplicant economies and increased their adjustment costs were added to the IMF's policy demands. Supplicant countries are now forced to ease capital controls and rely instead on higher interest rates to halt capital outflows and attract inflows. Often these moves have generated massive bankruptcies, a systemic banking crisis, and a credit crunch that has depressed domestic output and employment. To attract equity investment, supplicants are expected to privatize state assets, reduce social expenditures, and repeal laws protecting employment or privileging domestic over foreign firms. One component of the operational crisis enveloping the IMF is an increasing resistance to the augmented hardships the fund imposes and to IMF meddling in politically sensitive areas. Debt relief has also hardened. When official loans constituted most of third world debt, the IMF could ease debt servicing by persuading official creditors to stretch out repayments. But leaning similarly on private lenders deters new lending, undermining the goal of advancing global financial integration. Protecting debt service has thus become de rigeur for the IMF, and to pacify panicky creditors the fund has even required supplicant governments to sign retroactive rewrites of private debt contracts. During its 1995 crisis, for example, Mexico was forced to transform tesebonos (government notes payable in pesos at a price indexed to the peso/dollar exchange rate) into U.S. dollar payments. In compensation for its hard-line policy on debt servicing, the IMF has been expanding its emergency credits. But as currency-cum-banking crises have become more frequent, a second component of the IMF's operational crisis has emerged-legislative resistance in creditor countries to the rising fiscal burden of replenishing IMF coffers and providing supplemental loans. The Mexican bailout, for example, dwarfed previous bailouts, and the Asian bailouts are nearly
