May 2005
Progressive Response
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),
online at:
as part of its Foreign Policy in Focus (FPIF) project. FPIF,
a "Think Tank Without Walls," is an international network of analysts and activists dedicated to "making the U.S. a more responsible global leader and partner by advancing citizen movements and agendas." FPIF is a joint project of the International Relations Center and the Institute for Policy Studies. We encourage responses to the opinions expressed in the PR and may print them in the "Letters and Comments" section.
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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
Syrias 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
Mandelas Powerful Message: "Africas 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 Frances welfare
state entailed by the European Commissions 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
Frances 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
Syrias 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 Syrias state-run economy is one likely outcome.
Necessary political reforms will likely prove more difficult to address.
Despite Washingtons repeated demands for economic and political reform in Syria, the
proclamation of new reforms in Damascus, if thats 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 FDRs 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:
content/commentary/2005/0505barry-unca.php
Mandelas Powerful Message: "Africas 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 "Africas 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
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 publics
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 nations 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
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.
- Munish Adhikari
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PR:
Europe, Syria, FDR, Africa, Debt, Asia, Ethics
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