A Second Chance
Together with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), the Interhemispheric
Resource Center (IRC) believes that it is time for progressives to put
forward their own vision of a post-cold war foreign policy. The following
essay outlines the general principles for a new U.S. foreign policy agenda.
Written by John Cavanagh and Martha Honey of IPS and Tom Barry of IRC,
the following essay is taken from Global
Focus: A New Foreign Policy Agenda 1997-1998, a new book jointly
published by the IPS and the IRC. We believe it is an agenda that is at
the same time visionary and practical—and one that can make the U.S.
government a responsible global leader and partner.
On December 5, 1996, the day that President Clinton named the foreign
policy team to lead his second term, the Washington Post ran a
cartoon by the legendary political satirist Herblock. The cartoon featured
a statue of Uncle Sam dressed as a businessman. One hand gripped a suitcase
emblazoned with the words: “U.S. Foreign Policy: Trade Above Everything.”
(The bottom of the statue bore a sticker: “Made in China.”)
The cartoon both sums up the overarching philosophy of the first-term
Clinton administration foreign policy and offers a glimpse at why historians
of the 20th century are likely to judge Clinton’s first term as a
colossal failure to shape a new era.
On the one hand, the Clinton administration can be applauded for its
rhetorical recognition that we have shifted from the era of the cold war
to the age of economic globalization. On the other, the administration
has thus far misread the challenges of this new era in at least two fundamental
ways:
• A Failure to Reset National Priorities: The theme of
Clinton’s successful 1992 drive for the presidency was “Putting
People First.” The campaign rightly pointed out that the end of
the cold war and the disappearance of the Soviet Union offered an opportunity
to shift national priorities from the costly institutions of “national
security” that maintained the battle against the Soviet Union to
programs that literally put people first in a nation of crumbling infrastructure,
inadequate schools, and fragmented health care. Instead, Clinton only
marginally cut military spending and failed to offer a coherent plan
for the conversion of cold war institutions and priorities to meet the
needs of tens of millions of Americans who are left out, hurt, or marginalized
by the global economy.
In fairness, Clinton’s options for addressing domestic priorities
have been severely constrained by his predecessors in office. After
Presidents Reagan and Bush added more to the U.S. debt in their twelve
years in office than all previous 39 of the top officeholders (much
of it through an explosion in military spending), their successors in
the oval office have few options to increase government spending. New
domestic programs can only be created if military spending is cut. Hence,
the public desperately needs a careful assessment of just how much military
spending is necessary to secure our borders from the threats of the
late 20th century. The assessment of the authors of Global
Focus: A New Foreign Policy Agenda 1997-1998 is that military
spending could be cut in half without compromising the security of this
country’s 260 million people, a sum which holds the potential to
provide dignified work to everyone and still have funds left to address
the hunger and poverty of poorer countries that remain the tinderbox
of global insecurity.
• A Failure to Reshape the Rules of the Global Economy:
Clinton and other administration leaders often articulate the challenge
of U.S. foreign and economic policy as: “How can the U.S. best
compete in a global economy?” They have responded by taking daring
steps to rewrite global trading rules that offer protections for the
global trade and investment forays of large American firms. The chief
foreign policy “successes” of Clinton’s first term were
the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the new World Trade
Organization, agreements that offer a “Bill of Rights” and
protections to global firms, yet offer little or no protection to workers,
the environment, or communities. Human rights and sustainable development,
priorities of the first Clinton/Gore campaign, have fallen by the wayside.
The global casino that is emerging desperately needs new rules to protect
workers, the environment, and communities at home and abroad. The Clinton
administration has yet to enunciate them or even the need for them.
Clinton’s failure thus far in meeting these two fundamental challenges
does not grow from a misreading of the growing interrelationship between
foreign and domestic policy. Clinton often makes this link, stressing
that the United States needs to define its security more in terms of domestic
welfare. Yet rather than making the case for economic conversion or support
for public investment policies, Clinton invariably focused in his first
term on the narrow objective of promoting U.S. corporate interests overseas,
arguing that their prosperity would trickle back home. This has not proved
to be the case.
Happily, Clinton now faces what no elected Democrat President has been
granted since Franklin D. Roosevelt: a second chance. Four more years
offer ample room to change course. The authors of Global
Focus: A New Foreign Policy Agenda 1997-1998, experts across
the spectrum of foreign policy, believe there is time to seize the opportunity
offered by the end of the cold war to reset national priorities and to
lead a reshaping of the rules of the global economy.
This book offers a framework and plenty of specifics for seizing this
moment. Each of its 50 sections examines one arena of policy: explaining
the policy, pointing out the flaws, offering policy alternatives that
do put people first, and suggesting resources and organizations that are
worth consulting.
The overarching point of the critiques in the book is not that Clinton’s
administration has been incompetent in executing foreign policy. Rather,
time and again, the critiques focus on the problem that the Clinton policies
are rooted in principles that ill serve the real security needs of the
majority in this country and overseas.
Underlying the critiques are five principles that could better serve
as the foundation for U.S. foreign policy in Clinton’s second term.
These principles are explicated in the rest of this issue of the Bulletin.
Reshaping the Principles that Undergird
Foreign Policy
I. From Markets to Economic Justice
The Clinton administration preaches to the world the virtues of markets.
Freeing markets, Clinton has claimed, will bring broad-based prosperity
and create a fertile breeding ground for democracy. In 1996, Clinton put
it this way: “freer enterprise will fuel the hunger for a more free
society.”
Yet, the current deregulatory, free market policies promoted by our government,
the multilateral development agencies, and most trade agreements offer
protection for private corporations to bargain down wages, working conditions,
and health and safety standards to the lowest common denominator. While
elegant in theory, the free market approach has spread poverty, inequality,
and environmental destruction. While economic globalization has produced
millions of winners, as much as two-thirds of the world’s people
are hurt, left out, or marginalized. Hence, the growing gap between the
winners and losers from corporate-driven globalization becomes one of
the major new sources of tension and conflict in the world today.
Few have spelled out the dangers of this new global economy as clearly
as then-candidate Bill Clinton did in an October 1992 speech on NAFTA
in North Carolina:
For a high wage country like ours, the blessings of more trade can
be offset at least in part by the loss of income and jobs as more and
more multi-national corporations take advantage of their ability to
move money, management, and production away from a high wage country
to a low wage country. We can also lose incomes because those companies
who stay at home can use the threat of moving to depress wages, as many
do today.... [I]f you look at the experience of the maquiladora plants,
those who have moved to Mexico right across the border, there is certainly
cause for concern. We can see clearly there that labor standards have
been regularly violated, that environmental standards are often ignored,
and that many people who have those jobs live in conditions which are
still pretty dismal not just by our standards, but theirs. So there
is some reason to fear that there are people in this world and in our
country who would take advantage of any provision insuring more investment
opportunities simply to look for lower wages without regard to the human
impact of their decisions.
These wise words suggest that much of U.S. policy in the new global economy
is based on a flawed hypothesis, a hypothesis shared by leaders for the
past sixteen years, through two Republican and one Democrat president:
the hypothesis that freer markets bring prosperity and democracy. President
Clinton has once again emphasized this theme in the first three months
after his 1996 re-election by launching new initiatives to expand free
trade in Asia, in the Western Hemisphere, and through the global trade
body.
We suggest (as do the authors in Global Focus: A New Foreign Policy
Agenda 1997-1998) that this formula is seriously flawed in both conception
and execution. The first problem is that markets are nowhere close to
free. The world’s largest two hundred corporations have sales that
are greater than 28 percent of the world’s economic activity. A third
of world trade is simply transactions between units of the same giant
firm. And the relentless pursuit of freer markets and competitiveness
only bring prosperity to some.
Hence, a second Clinton administration would be wise to reexamine the
rules of U.S. participation in the global economy to emphasize economic
justice and ecological sustainability. These principles should underpin
any trade agreements in which the United States participates.
Likewise, U.S. participation in the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund should promote policies that enhance livelihoods and protect
basic rights in a fashion that is conscious of the ecological limits of
the planet. Development is a process that, if it is to be sustainable
and promote the general well-being of the people, must be based on greater
participation and on redistribution of land and natural resources. The
more governments and corporations are accountable to people and communities,
the more we will have dignified jobs, healthy environments, and viable
communities.
II. From Electoral Democracy to a Broader
Definition of Democracy
We applaud the administration for making the case that the promotion
of democracy is crucial to U.S. interests, not only because democracy
is every person’s right, but because democratic countries fight fewer
foreign or civil wars and have greater stability and more widely shared
economic well-being.
Yet the administration’s goal of promoting democracy needs to extend
beyond support for fair elections and democratically-elected governments.
Democracy also means freedom of expression, civilian control of the armed
forces and their budgets, an independent judicial system, and means for
citizens to participate in economic life and the decisions that affect
their well-being. Most in the developing world are denied this broad set
of democratic norms, and the United States currently inhibits progress
by promoting non-democratic economic policies and projects through narrow
trade agreements, World Bank loans, IMF programs, and by exporting as
much as $15 billion in arms each year to repressive governments. Support
for this broad definition of democracy would dramatically shift a wide
range of policies.
III. From Human Rights Rhetoric to Human Rights
Nowhere was the administration’s early rhetoric clearer than in
the new prominence that human rights would assume in foreign policy. This
early rhetoric extended to U.S. relations with the world’s fastest
growing economic superpower: China. Yet, halfway through his first term,
Clinton shifted toward a policy of “constructive engagement”
with China and other human rights violators that happened to be important
trading partners.
Instead, a fundamental determinant of U.S. relations with any government
should be that government’s ability to keep its own forces from threatening,
arbitrarily detaining, torturing, or murdering citizens, or from facilitating
such actions by others. In addition, U.S. policy should promote economic,
social, and cultural rights such as decent wages, health care, and education,
along with the political rights to assemble, speak freely, and choose
one’s government.
At the 1993 United Nations Conference on Human Rights, many raised questions
as to whether it is the duty of governments to promote social and economic
rights. We believe that political rights and economic and social rights
are equally important and dependent on one another; the absence of one
undermines the other. In order to strengthen its ability to promote human
rights abroad, the United States should welcome international scrutiny
of its own performance and commit itself to specific targets in improving
political and economic rights at home.
IV. From Silence on Arms Sales to Demilitarization
Success in promoting economic justice, democracy, and human rights cannot
be achieved without an intense campaign of international demilitarization.
In dozens of countries, the transition to democracy is being held up by
politically powerful military forces that operate above the law and often
systematically violate human rights. Continued arms trafficking—where
the United States by a ratio of 3:1 is the world leader—fuels the
two dozen civil wars raging across the world, and the close to $1 trillion
that countries spend annually on the military drains precious resources
away from social needs.
As the world’s largest arms dealer and strongest military power,
the United States must take the lead if there is to be a dramatic reduction
in arsenals and arms trafficking. For this to be successful, the administration
must resist the pleas of members of Congress and arms manufacturers who
seek federal assistance to preserve arms-related jobs. Instead, the government
must step up conversion efforts to shift the U.S. economy from its dependence
on military production towards economically viable enterprises in energy
conservation, safe energy alternatives, and other non-military areas.
V. From Unilateral Multilateralism to a New
Internationalism
The Clinton administration has acknowledged the need to shift from unilateral
actions in foreign policy to multilateral responses, as much for economic
reasons as for the intrinsic benefits of acting in concert with other
nations. Yet, the administration has undermined this by using the United
Nations primarily as an arena to garner multilateral approval for U.S.
actions and by falling deeply in arrears in payments to the United Nations.
We recognize that even with clear principles, there is a need for great
flexibility in U.S. foreign policy. With the end of the cold war, the
United States faces a world of greater uncertainty than it has at any
time since the 1930s. Maps are being redrawn. Fission in multi-ethnic
states is occurring around the world. This is not the “belle epoque”
that those proclaiming the end of history predicted.
Uncertainty is deepened by the crumbling of core concepts that we have
taken for granted for the past half century: social welfare states in
the North and the concept of development in the South. The globalization
of economies has undermined the social welfare state across Europe and
North America as the balance of power between capital and labor has shifted
in favor of globalizing capital. The end of the cold war has ended the
rationale for pumping aid into a number of U.S. allies, and three successive
UN development decades have failed to produce anything resembling development,
causing faith in the concept to fade. Now, the United States has joined
with the World Bank in favoring structural adjustment rather than aid
to accelerate the integration of countries into a global system of production
and marketing.
Defining U.S. Global Leadership
New principles and a new awareness of how U.S. foreign and domestic policies
interact still beg the larger question: What role should the United States
play in the world?
The United States is no longer the dominant force in the world that it
used to be, as competitors for markets and resources grow in Asia and
Europe. Nonetheless, the United States remains the world’s largest
economic and military power; U.S. GDP still exceeds a quarter of the world’s
total. The United States is the world’s only superpower and the only
country with the preparation and experience to act, for good or bad, as
a catalytic force in international affairs. Our government has functioned
as the world’s policeman, banker, ideological leader, forger of international
agreements, and leader of the United Nations.
Today, however, the United States no longer has the resources to act
in this fashion, particularly in terms of military deployment. This offers
a positive opportunity. The United States can no longer, and should no
longer, act unilaterally as it has in the past; the limits to U.S power
require more multilateral operations.
It should be added that the United States is not alone in its failure
to articulate a coherent world view. But, given the preeminent U.S. role
in the world, this failure is highly visible. An engaged citizenry can
help launch a debate over the new global political and economic scene,
and the U.S. role in it.
We know a great deal about what that role should not be. The Bush administration’s
designation of the post-cold war era as a “new world order”
dominated by U.S. military power and control of the UN was misguided.
So too are incipient attempts to define the new world order in terms of
free market democracies.
The administration should be careful about articulating one foreign policy
for the entire world. Its environmental, human rights, labor, trade, and
debt policies—while rooted in universal principles—should take
into account regional and country differences. Certain of these policies
should be geared to other countries’ levels of development.
Although the United States should use its leadership to encourage more
participation in global decision-making—both by major powers and
Southern nations—we should not ignore that in Bosnia, Iraq, and elsewhere,
without the U.S. lead there is no leadership. The challenge is to use
U.S. leadership in more responsible ways, based on a broad definition
of U.S. interests, as well as to foster the leadership of other nations.
As the United States exerts this more responsible leadership, it would
do well to acknowledge its historic role in creating many of the problems
that plague the world today: from Afghanistan to Haiti, from Nicaragua
and Guatemala to Russia and Iraq.
In short, the U.S. role as a global leader should:
- Facilitate more multilateral consideration and action on global peace
and security, including new regional security arrangements and peacekeeping
actions. With admittedly more limited resources, the United States needs
to exercise its leadership through multilateral channels and to strengthen
those channels with adequate economic support.
- Move to define a responsible new world order by initiating a new round
of Bretton Woods talks to set new rules and create new institutions
to meet the social and environmental challenges of the 21st century.
- Encourage more global cooperation and regional responsibility for
development and security.
There is no question that the United States has a major role to play
in shaping the global political, military, and economic environment. As
the world’s leading financial and economic power, the United States
will play a particularly large role in global economic management. The
key question is whether this role will be shaped in a short-term, unilateral,
and competitive fashion or whether it can be transformed into a longer-term,
multilateral, and cooperative approach. Four more years offers ample time
for a new approach.
