One Way We Hand the Enemies of the U.S. Power: Policies that Clash with our Values
By Stephen Damours
Analysts should explore as a central issue in U.S. foreign policy the reality that our enemies' power may be primarily products of unstated policies the U.S. acts on that are in direct opposition to our most deeply held values.
I'm going to state two such policies baldly, even harshly, to illustrate how they clash with American values. Neither policy is ever stated explicitly in these bald terms, but both are implemented as faithfully by the U.S. Government as if they were. I'll then briefly show how they empower our enemies. The two unstated policies that violate our values and empower our enemies are: "Help the rich; hurt or ignore the poor" and "Bully our enemies into submission rather than negotiating with them."
The former, "Help the rich; hurt the poor," is the unstated direct result of the "Washington Consensus" that free trade should prevail and that there should be as little regulation of business as possible at the international level. The assumption is that laissez-faire economics, including unlimited free trade and minimal or no regulation of multi-national corporations, results in optimum economic growth and prosperity for all.
This policy does result in the fastest growth possible of multinational corporations and leaves the poor of developing countries in the dust of neglect and exploitation. Local products are driven off local markets by cheaper imported goods. The poor who make the local products can starve in rural areas or small towns or move to a big city and search for work in a factory for one of the encroaching large corporations. While some of the poor make higher pay, typically wages on the whole stagnate and cities fill with desperate unemployed who will work for very low wages.
Large corporations are in the business of making money, not in the business of education, health care, and stimulating local econoomies toward healthy growth. If these things happen, fine. If not, well, it doesn't really matter to "us" as long as we make our profits. In fact, low wages are better for our profits, so let's keep the workers at the lowest educational level we can and still get the job done.
All of this is not new. But seldom in the media does the public hear, in all our hand-wringing about a leader like Chavez of Venezuela, that he gains power in Venezuela and in Latin America because of resentment of long-standing U.S. policies that favor the rich and the big corporations and that have the effect, intended or not, of making the rich richer and the poor poorer in Latin America and throughout the world. Chavez's socialism is not the answer, but it is a natural reaction to ruthless laissez-faire capitalism, and it runs on the fuel of resentment of the big oil companies and other multinational corporations and generally of American dominance combined with our policies' complete lack of concern for the people of the affected countries. The theory is that fee-market capitalism is a rising tide that floats all boats, but the reality is that it is a rising tide that selectively floats the boats of the rich and the big corporations, often sinking other boats that ca!
n't compete. For example, implementing the "Washington Consensus," the big privately held oil companies have the effect of extracting oil from third-world countries and leaving behind little or no wealth in the hands of the people of those countries. It's not surprising that demagogues in those countries can capitalize on the people's feelings of being ripped off and can gain power as Chavez has done. Nor is it surprising that these leaders use anti-Bush or anti-American rhetoric; Bush is a supporter of the "Washington Consensus" and an oil man himself and has further made himself a worldwide pariah in public opinion by launching and sustainging the Iraq war. That makes opposition to him a sure-fire winner when a key element in the power game is exploiting anti-Bush or anti-American resentment.
Ahmed Ahmadinejad of Iran is another story, with some differences and similarities. Iran is a partial democracy that elects its leaders, but with constraints that Western democracies would not tolerate. Nevertheless, the Iranian people have some political power and the leaders they elect often do in the main reflect their views. A few years ago they were sick of the religious crazies, the extremist Ayatollas who were running their country and they voted in relatively moderate leaders. Then President Bush came out with his famous "Axis of Evil" rhetoric, lumped Iran with North Korea and Iraq, and attacked Iraq. The popular reaction in Iran was fear and resentment of the US, a perception that the U.S., or at least Bush, was acting as an insulting and seriously dangerous bully. Predictably, they reacted by voting in a nationalistic extremist.
Ahmadinejad's power and his election are direct results of our rhetoric against Iran and our actions in attacking Iraq. His power is regularly enhanced by Bush's rhetoric about the so-called Iranian determination to get nuclear weapons. There is plenty of evidence that they are trying to get nuclear power, and there is plenty of evidence that they are not to be trusted, but there is ZERO evidence that they are trying to develop nuclear weapons. This is horribly similar to the Bush administration's false assumptions about Iraq before the war. "They are bad guys, therefore they are trying to get weapons of mass destruction." False conclusion. They are indeed bad guys, but that most definitely does not prove that they are trying to get WMDs. They may be, or they may not. The irony is that our aggressiveness is giving them a strong incentive to go after nuclear weapons. Why give them the incentive? There are many areas where cooperation with Iran would benefit us as we!
ll as them. We can't be friends, of course, but we could be in a cooperative stance with them. That would totally take the wind out of Ahmadinejad's political sails. He would disappear like a fog under the noonday sun. We drove North Korea further toward nuclear weapons until we changed our tune, and abruptly, we're now making progress, however tortured and slow, in our negotiations with them. We have the upper hand in those negotiations, we have the means to force North Korea to toe the line, and we can easily afford to give them the things they want badly enough to give up on the direction they are going in. Negotiating, not bullying, is beginning to produce progress. They are not to be trusted, but bullying has not moved us one inch toward our goal of getting them to back off of nuclear weapons.
The simple fact is that bullying doesn't work. We need to stop bullying Iran and start talking, as we have bgun to do in North Korea. That is a basic principle in all human relations. There is zero chance that we can change their behavior by force, even by bombing if we're so foolish as to do that. They can keep going, and they will. We can't possibly invade Iran on the ground because we have decimated our troop capabilities and equipment in Iraq.
It is the Iranian moderates themselves who are saying they can't get traction against the radicals when we keep driving the Iranian people into the arms of Ahmadinejad with our hostility. When are we going to learn? Do we really WANT to support Ahmadinijad? Certainly he's a useful "bad guy" to contrast with us who are self-evidently the "good guys." He's also a product of a benighted U.S. foreign policy.
