Richard Melson

May 2005

Progressive Response

http://www.irc-online.org

The Progressive Response

2 June 2005

Vol. 9, No. 11

Editor: John Gershman
The Progressive Response (PR) is produced weekly by the

International Relations Center

(IRC, formerly Interhemispheric Resource Center),

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John Gershman, editor of Progressive Response,

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Updates and Out-Takes
After the Debacle and Before the Storm, Norman Birnbaum
Syria’s Baath Party Congress a Watershed for President Asad, Ronald Bruce St John
Good Neighbors and the United Nations: Remembering FDR and the Four Freedoms, Tom Barry
Mandela’s Powerful Message: "Africa’s Time Has Come," Emira Woods
Debt Cancellation: Historic Victories, New Challenges, Mark Engler
The Dragon & the Chrysanthemum, Conn Hallinan
Ephemeral Ethics, Col. Daniel Smith (Ret.)

Letters and Comments

APPRECIATION


I. Updates and Out-Takes

After the Debacle and Before the Storm
By Norman Birnbaum

The unequivocal French rejection of the new European Constitution (50% "No" votes with electoral participation at 70%) anticipates the turbulence ahead in much of Europe. The vote represented a clear class division, with majorities against the constitution in the working class (in factories and offices) and amongst voters for the Socialist, Communist, ultra-leftist, and Green parties. These voters were protesting unemployment, the removal of entire factories to cheap labor areas in the new European Union members in eastern Europe (or to Asia), and the threat to France’s welfare state entailed by the European Commission’s obsession with deregulation and the sovereignty of the market. These voters were also expressing their antipathy toward proposed Turkish membership of the Union--a symbolic surrogate for the large presence of Muslims in France. In this, they were joined by voters for the far right (often from the working class themselves) and those who regarded supra-nationality as a threat to France’s cultural and political identity. The "No" vote united both xenophobes and those seeking a different kind of internationalism.

Norman Birnbaum is Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University

Law Center and a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies.

His most recent book is:

After Progress:

American Social Reform And European Socialism In The Twentieth Century,

Oxford University Press.

See complete commentary online at:

http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2005/0506euroconst.html


Syria’s Baath Party Congress a Watershed for President Asad
By Ronald Bruce St John

In the run-up to the June 6 Baath Party Congress, Syrian President Bashar al-Asad is torn by competing forces. In the wake of the hasty removal of Syrian forces from Lebanon, hard-liners are pushing for a reassertion of party control. Reformers see the moment as ripe to accelerate socioeconomic and political change. The end result may well set the stage for Syrian politics for years to come.

Even though the final agenda for the congress remains under discussion, endorsement of additional free-market reforms for Syria’s state-run economy is one likely outcome. Necessary political reforms will likely prove more difficult to address.

Despite Washington’s repeated demands for economic and political reform in Syria, the proclamation of new reforms in Damascus, if that’s what occurs in June, is unlikely to produce a major shift in U.S. policy. The White House has also found Syria to be a convenient scapegoat for the failure of administration policies in Iraq. As the violence in Iraq escalated this spring, the Bush administration repeatedly complained that Syria was the main conduit fuelling the flow of men and money to the Iraqi insurgency. In this sense, current U.S. policy toward Syria reflects more a frustration with the insurgency than either diplomatic reality or domestic conditions within Syria.

Ronald Bruce St John, an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus

( www.fpif.org), has published widely on foreign policy issues.

Author of:

Libya and the United States: Two Centuries of Strife

(Penn Press, 2002), his latest book,

Revolution, Reform and Regionalism in Southeast Asia:

Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam,

will be published by Routledge in October 2005.

See complete commentary online at
:

http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2005/0506syria-baath.html

Good Neighbors and the United Nations:
Remembering FDR and the Four Freedoms
By Tom Barry

We note with pride that UN Secretary General Kofi Annan concludes his recent report,

In Larger Freedom,

(online at http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/contents.htm)

by quoting President Franklin Roosevelt, "whose vision," said Annan, "was so central to the founding of the United Nations."

Just as the Secretary General explicitly draws on FDR’s vision for the UN and on his Four Freedoms speech for inspiration, our initiative and report find the Good Neighbor policy and his vision of interdependence, self-respect, and mutual respect among nations as a source of hope and determination that the present danger can be overcome--and good neighbor practices among nations can become our animating vision.

We face the prospect of having a U.S. representative to the UN who says we could easily afford to lop off ten stories of the UN building. We believe that multilateralism under any name, under any version of the animating vision of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, could only lead to the conclusion that a UN for our time could not possibly make do without those ten stories. To the contrary, the UN needs to be reformed and strengthened in such a way that at least ten more stories would be needed.

Tom Barry is policy director of the International Relations Center,

online at:  www.irc-online.org, and he coauthored

A Global Good Neighbor Ethic for International Relations.

This is the text of a statement by Barry delivered at a press conference at the United Nations on May 17, 2005.

See complete commentary online at
:

http://www.irc-online.org/

content/commentary/2005/0505barry-unca.php


Mandela’s Powerful Message: "Africa’s Time Has Come"
By Emira Woods

As people begin to line up in movie theaters to visit galaxies far, far, away in the final chapter of Star Wars, Nelson Mandela comes to America to remind us of a continent right here on earth, just on the other side of the Atlantic.

For decades, the world has faced the harsh consequences of its benign neglect of Africa, and done nothing. Mandela in all his glory has come to the United States this month to tell us that "Africa’s time has come."

Emira Woods is the Codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus ( www.fpif.org) at the Institute for Policy Studies ( www.ips-dc.org) in Washington, DC.

See complete commentary online at: http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2005/0505mandela.html


Debt Cancellation: Historic Victories, New Challenges
By Mark Engler

How 100% debt cancellation for poor countries--now being debated by wealthy nations--was transformed from an implausible demand into a winning issue, and what barriers lie ahead for the debt relief movement.

Mark Engler, a writer based in New York City, is an analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus ( www.fpif.org).

He can be reached via his website at

www.democracyuprising.com

Research assistance for this article provided by Jason Rowe.

See complete special report online at

http://www.fpif.org/papers/0505debt.html

The Dragon & the Chrysanthemum
By Conn Hallinan

At first glance, the growing tension between China and Japan seems almost inexplicable. Massive anti-Japanese demonstrations in China over events that took place more than half a century ago? A heated exchange filled with mutual threats over an offshore petroleum field that western oil companies think is not worth exploiting? Has a Shinto shrine and slanted textbooks really driven the two great Asian powers to the edge of a Cold War or worse?

No.

While history does play a role in all this, if you want to understand the antagonism between Beijing and Tokyo, you have to start in Washington and, in particular, Washington State.

Conn Hallinan is a foreign policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and a lecturer in journalism at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

See complete commentary online at

http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2005/0505dragonflower.html

Ephemeral Ethics
By Col. Daniel Smith (Ret.)

In 1975, polls showed that only 20% of the U.S. population age 18-29 trusted the Pentagon. That number tended upward through the next quarter century until, by 2000, the military stood head and shoulders above every other national institution in the public’s trust. A March 2003 poll of 1,200 college undergraduates by the Harvard Institute of Politics found that 75% said the military would "do the right thing" most or all of the time. Gallup reported a similar finding a year later.

That level of trust seems to have crashed -- "big time."

If so, the underlying cause may lie in the broader society of a decade or more ago. With economic pressures growing and two-income families more common, neighbors had less time and energy to interact. Trust on the interpersonal level declined, a trend reinforced by accelerated loss of faith in government, which seemed incapable of meeting both current needs and preserving opportunities for a better future for future generations. The "politics of mistrust" divided the nation, among ordinary citizens as well as the elites who operated in the ephemeral realms where national policy is formulated, where the nation’s reputation should blend with national interests, where acts confirm or subvert words and ideals.

Divisions are inherent in a democracy, but not divisions so deep that trust in the overall system, let alone in specific institutions, is lost. Yet that is where the U.S. seems to find itself six months after the 2004 elections.

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

See complete commentary online at:

http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2005/0505ethics.html

Blood and Oil:

The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency

by Michael Klare

Since September 11 and the commencement of the "war on terror," the world's attention has been focused on the relationship between U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the oceans of crude oil that lie beneath the region's soil. In Blood and Oil, world security expert, Michael Klare, shows how America's own wells are drying up as our demand increases; by 2010, the U.S. will need to import 60% of its oil. And since most of this supply will have to come from chronically unstable, often violently anti-American zones­the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, Latin America, and Africa­our dependency is bound to lead to recurrent military involvement. Blood and Oil delineates the United States' predicament and cautions that it is time to change our energy policies, before we spend the next decades paying for oil with blood.

Michael T. Klare is Director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst and a member of Foreign Policy In Focus’ advisory committee.

He is the author of:

1. Resource Wars.

2. Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws.

3. Low Intensity Warfare.

These and many other informative books are available from the IRC.

Visit our online bookstore at:

http://www.irc-online.org/books.php

II. Letters and Comments

APPRECIATION

Re: Burning Bridges:

The King Takes A Disastrous Step Off the Road to Peace

( http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2005/0504nepal.html)

The article very lucidly portrays the situation in Nepal.

I appreciate FPIF for carrying it on its wavesite.

- Munish Adhikari

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Europe, Syria, FDR, Africa, Debt, Asia, Ethics

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