The Progressive ResponseVolume 4, Number 28
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of ContentsI. Updates and Out-TakesAROUND THE WORLD OKINAWA AND THE U.S. MILITARY IN NORTHEAST ASIA G8/G7 AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE WOMEN AND THE U.S. MILITARY IN EAST ASIA
I. Updates and Out-TakesAROUND THE WORLD: China and Summits China seeks participation in most multilateral regimes but has publicly shunned expressions from several G8 leaders that it join this group of the world's most powerful countries. One reason is its belief that the G8 furthers U.S. hegemony and a "new interventionism" by Washington and its allies, notably Great Britain. Like most developing countries, China insists that the G8 should not evade the authority of the UN Security Council, particularly the veto power of the Big Five permanent members—of which it is one. China, however, has accepted membership in the G20, which was established at the initiative of G7 finance ministers last year. China's key role in stemming the financial crisis contagion in Asia by refusing to devalue its currency and its substantial foreign reserves holdings mark China as a key player in the global economy, whose voice needs to be heard in deliberations about the world's financial architecture. Whether this presence in the G20 consultative group will lead to granting China observer status and eventually membership in the G8 is a hard call. China may prefer to have the G8/G7 languish in its representation and legitimacy crises, rather than having its own presence boost the group's status as a forum of all the major countries. Meanwhile China is focusing on its own summit this week with Russia's President Putin. During the 1970s and 1980s, Washington, seeking to undermine the Soviet Union, built a "strategic partnership" with China. This partnership involved sharing intelligence about the Soviet Union with the Chinese military, helping modernize China's military forces, granting China temporary Normal Trade Status (while denying this same status to the Soviet Union), ignoring China's gross violations of human rights, and tacitly approving of China's invasion of Vietnam. Now the United States finds itself on the outside of a new "strategic partnership" between Russia and China. The two neighbors share numerous concerns, including a strong critique of the proposed National Missile Defense system and the wave of post-cold war support by G7 powers for interventionism in intrastate conflicts. Both nations adamantly oppose Washington's proposal to amend the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which they says is the cornerstone of global strategic security. Russia's membership in the G8 has created turmoil in the forum and made consensus increasingly difficult. It has resisted, along with France, a consensus forming around the need for increased conflict prevention operations by the UN and the major powers. Chechnya remains a major sticking point, illustrating that this forum of like-minded industrialized nations now has one member that is frequently outside the consensus opinion on human rights and security concerns. Another forum of developed nations, the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD), is experiencing similar problems with Mexico, which was invited into the group on the strength of its commitment to North American economic integration. Mexico has mounted vigorous opposition to a proposed code of conduct for transnational corporations, saying that such a code would discourage the flow of foreign direct investment into its country. Mexico takes seriously its commitment to the Washington consensus of free trade and investment, and regards any attempt to impose social or environmental standards as a threat to its development strategy—even though the proposed code of conduct would be voluntary and have no enforcement mechanism. Like the G8/G7, the OECD operates on the basis of consensus agreement. Diplomats told the Financial Times that they couldn't recall any OECD member having ever pushed its opposition to a proposal so far. Governments that cannot go along with decisions normally abstain rather than put the OECD's consensus principle at risk. Because of his frequent and aggressive defense of economic liberalization, Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is a guy who critics love to hate. But nobody says he isn't smart or doesn't speak his mind. Lately world leaders have hailed the revolution in communications and information technology as a new wave solution to development. As UN Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette told the opening session of the UN Economic and Social Council last week: "The digital revolution holds great promise for economic growth, poverty eradication and development. It has already brought extraordinary benefits to the developed world. And it could improve the chances for poor countries to leapfrog some long and painful stages in the development." Tempering that assessment, Summers told the forum: "In large parts of Africa today, young girls are more likely to die before reaching the age of 5 than they are to learn to read. To put it bluntly, until we see substantial improvement in these figures, the dream of putting the world's poorest citizens on a fast track to technology and growth will remain just that—a dream." The U.S. Treasury Secretary said there are no guarantees that technology will alleviate poverty and income disparity. "When half the world's population has yet to use a telephone and 40 percent of African adults cannot read, there is perhaps an equal chance that technology will speed further divergence," he said. But what will? Clearly economic aid from the wealthier nations must play a critical role. The UN has established a foreign aid target for donor nations of 0.7 percent of the contributing country's GDP. Four European nations exceed that target goal, but the U.S. contributes less than one-seventh of the target. And the amount that the U.S. is budgeting for aid is falling. In 2001, U.S. economic aid will likely reach a half-century low as a share of government spending, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Typically the aid contribution of other industrialized nations is about $70 per person. In the United States, where the annual income is 56 times that of low-income countries, taxpayers contribute $29 on the average to humanitarian and development aid. However, increased aid is not the only answer. Summers should also look at the adverse impact on development of the economic reforms he advocates. (Around the World is a weekly column by Tom Barry, codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus.)
OKINAWA AND THE U.S. MILITARY
IN NORTHEAST ASIA
Staging the G8 meeting in Okinawa—home to two of the largest U.S. bases and the only U.S. Marine base outside the United States—was a deliberate strategy on the part of the Japanese government and its ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Both Tokyo and Washington hope to use the G8 meeting to demonstrate that their bilateral security alliance is stable and lasting. The Okinawa summit, Japan has said, will send out "a message of peace." But as Japanese activist and writer Muto Ichiyo says, "The underlying message is clear: Bases mean Peace." The Okinawa summit is the first meeting of world leaders following April's World Bank and IMF meetings in Washington and November's gathering of the World Trade Organization. It will draw thousands of protesters, including a few groups eager to repeat the antiglobalization demonstrations that disrupted the WTO meeting last fall. But the primary focus of the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) coming to Okinawa will be the U.S. bases. According to a 1998 statement by the Department of Defense (DOD), U.S. bases in Japan and Korea "remain the critical component of U.S. deterrent and rapid response strategy in Asia" that "enables the U.S. to respond more rapidly and flexibly in other areas." In addition, "Japanese peacetime host nation support remains the most generous of any of America's allies around the world, averaging about $5 billion each year." Strangely, the climate shrouding the U.S.-Japanese military alliance, is more warlike than during most of the cold war. What should have logically followed the demise of the Soviet Union (and the subsequent economic collapse of North Korea) was a peace dividend that would take the form of a reduction in forward-deployed U.S. troops and bases, a review of cold war-based alliances, a search for alternative security arrangements, and steps toward denuclearization and demilitarization of the region. At one point, such a scenario was in the works; a decade ago, the Pentagon was planning to cut back to "a minimal presence" in Japan by 2000. But exactly the opposite has happened. Under new U.S.-Japanese defense guidelines approved in May 1999, the bilateral military relationship between Japan and the U.S. has deepened significantly. Japan has agreed to make its ports, airports, hospitals, and transportation system available to U.S. forces during a war in Korea and join U.S. military operations in "areas surrounding Japan"—a broad description that U.S. officials say could involve Japanese involvement in situations from East Asia to the Persian Gulf. The turning point for U.S. policy in Asia came in 1995, when the DOD, in a major reversal, committed the U.S. to an indefinite "forward deployment" of 100,000 troops in Northeast Asia, subject to review in 2015. The author of the Pentagon's study was Joseph Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs during the Bush administration. Nye explained that U.S. officials had decided to halt the reductions because of a reassessment of "the realities of the region" following the demise of the Soviet Union. These realities include the rise of China, new dangers from North Korea, and a new set of concerns led by uncertainty, regional conflicts, and rogue states. While North Korea is fading as the primary focus of the U.S. military alliance with Japan and South Korea, the possibility of a future conflict with China is emerging as a threat in the eyes of U.S. military planners. In its latest planning document, "Joint Vision 2020," the Pentagon for the first time listed China as a potential adversary (couched in the phrase "peer competitor"). The document also foresees closer coordination with Japan and projects U.S. troop presence in Korea even after unification, and it concludes that Asia will replace Europe as the key focus of U.S. military strategy over the next 20 years. The Washington Post called the policies a "momentous change from the last decade of the cold war." U.S. hostility toward China is not confined to the Pentagon. A few months ago, China became the lightning rod for critics of U.S. trade policy, when the House of Representatives voted to approve permanent normal trade status for China. A coalition of unions, religious organizations, and consumer groups led by the AFL-CIO and Public Citizen joined with groups on the right such as the Family Research Council and the Veterans of Foreign Wars to mount a vigorous campaign that portrayed China as a "rogue" nation and an enemy of the United States. Their arguments went far beyond trade. "This is the same communist China we faced 50 years ago in Korea," George Becker, president of the United Steelworkers of America said in a speech to business groups before the vote. "Tens of thousands of American boys are now in military encampments around China, on the sea, in the air and on the ground. And for good reason." By using language like that, opponents of trade with China—unwittingly or not—have allied themselves with the Pentagon and with proponents of keeping American forces in Asia. The vast U.S. military infrastructure in Northeast Asia is a remnant of the cold war. But it also supports U.S. economic interests like multinational corporations and banks—the primary forces behind globalization. Those interests were neatly defined in the 1997 DOD study, A National Security Strategy for a New Century. In its global security policies, the Pentagon said that the U.S. seeks "a climate where the global economy and open trade are growing." "The overall health of the international economic environment directly affects our security, just as stability enhances the prospects for prosperity," the Pentagon contended. "This prosperity, a goal in itself, also ensures that we are able to sustain our military forces, foreign initiatives and global influence," it added. Over the past several years, trade unionists, human rights organizations, students, and religious groups have built a movement to create an alternative to globalization by ending labor exploitation and imposing rules to protect workers and the environment. Instead of promoting positive change, these critics say, globalization is destabilizing. While laying bare the implications of corporate domination of trade, however, the center-left coalition of U.S. groups opposing free trade has focused almost exclusively on the socioeconomic implications of globalization, ignoring its military aspects. In other words, the nexus between economic globalization and military globalization has not been identified and exposed—in fact, it has hardly been criticized. But it is clear from recent events in Asia that U.S. military strategy further destabilizes as it seeks to "shape" the world in its interests, suppressing expressions of instability by employing nuclear deterrence, selective armed intervention, economic sanctions, and diplomatic pressures. In a post-cold war world—where peace is being negotiated in Korea and the U.S. has the capability of bombing Kosovo with warplanes from Missouri air bases—the military logic of keeping tens of thousands of U.S. Marines, Army, Air Force, and Navy personnel on mainland Japan and South Korea is quickly disappearing. And despite talk of missile threats from both China and North Korea, the U.S. retains an enormous arsenal of atomic and conventional weapons that could overwhelm both countries. In any case, even if there were a missile threat in this region, the Third Marine Division in Okinawa would be helpless to prevent it. The Okinawa G8 meeting is thus an opportunity to rethink U.S. policies in Asia, analyze the relationship between economic and military globalization, and devise new definitions of security. As a first step, the U.S. should use the peace process now under way in Korea to begin reducing the U.S. force structure in South Korea. After North and South Korea establish a process to avoid and defuse future confrontations, the U.S. forces on the border with North Korea could be deployed further south and eventually sent home. Thus far, this idea has only drawn support from conservatives. Speaking of the recent peace talks in Korea, Sen. Jesse Helms, R-NC and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, recently said: "If it's a temporary lull, we'll have to leave those people (U.S. troops) there for a while. But if it's for real, then we ought to make plans to bring those folks home." The U.S. should also being scaling down its presence in Okinawa, first by shutting down the Air Force bases in Kadena and Futenma and relocating those forces to U.S. bases in Guam or California. It should set a schedule for withdrawing Special Forces and Marines as well. Rather than moving the Marine base at Futenma to another site in Okinawa, it should close the base and relocate it to the mainland United States. At the same time, U.S. policymakers and activists committed to improving terms of trade and creating fairness for workers should focus not only on the multilateral institutions backed by multinational corporations, such as the World Bank and the IMF, but also on the U.S. institutions behind them, such as the U.S. Treasury and the Pentagon. Attention should also be focused on how the U.S. military is used to protect the global system of corporate trade; America must instead seek new forms of security that don't require a vast system of military bases and trillions of dollars in expensive weapons systems. (Tim Shorrock <trox51@aol.com> is a Washington-based journalist who has been writing about East Asia and the Pacific Rim for over 20 years. In 1996, he published a series of articles in the U.S. and South Korea based on declassified U.S. documents that revealed previously unknown details about the U.S. role in the 1980 Kwangju Uprising in South Korea.) The author would like to thank Muto Ichiyo of Japan for helping to shape some of the arguments in this paper.
G8/G7 AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
At the center of the current debate of global governance is the G8/G7, a self-constituted forum of the major free-market democracies, whose deliberations and declarations have come to shape key decisions in the management of global political and economic affairs. The G8 Summit of 2000 will be the fourth time that Japan has hosted the leaders' summit. New security developments in the region (such as the Korean reconciliation talks) and in the world (such as the proposed U.S. deployment of a national missile defense system) will figure prominently in the agenda. The security agenda is likely to be influenced too by the protests mounted by Japanese and foreign nongovernmental organizations against the continued presence of some 63,000 American troops in Japan. Global governance lies in shambles, but there is little indication that the world's most powerful political leaders have the inclination or will to reform current institutions or create new ones. Within the multilateral institutions, blame and recriminations abound, leaving no room for self-criticism and change. Neither have the various groupings of like-minded nations—the G8/G7 and the G77 as the most prominent—provided the kind of enlightened leadership and visionary thinking necessary to upgrade global governance. Due to its booming economy, its lead in information technology, and its lack of military competitors, the U.S. once again exercises hegemonic power in the capitalist world—which now encompasses virtually the entire planet. As such, the U.S. must assume a large part of the blame for the dismal state of global governance, and a large part of the responsibility to set international affairs on a more forward-looking path. A new approach to U.S. participation in the G8/G7 would be a good place to start. In its deliberative capacity, the G8/G7 could play a key role in highlighting the need for substantial reforms in the decisionmaking institutions of global governance and in forging an international consensus on the policies needed to address global climate change and other pressing transnational issues. Washington and the other G8/G7 leaders could begin by taking the representation and legitimacy critiques more seriously. Within successful global governance, there can be a constructive role for self-constituted groupings of like-minded countries such as the G8/G7. Unfortunately, this is not the case today. Without the presence of other strong country groupings (particularly of developing countries) and in the absence of more democratically constituted multilateral institutions, the G8/G7 countries have assumed an unhealthy degree of power. Rather than working to foster forums of other like-minded nations, the U.S. has historically sought to undermine groups that it cannot or does not control. Just as the wealthy industrialized countries benefit from sessions involving only other like-minded nations and leaders, so too will poor and developing countries benefit from strategy meetings with their counterparts throughout the South and in the transitional states. The concerted campaign led by the U.S. to crush the factions within the UN supporting a "new international economic order" and its aid embargo against leaders of the nonaligned movement are cases in point. The apparent reemergence of the G77 at a meeting in April 2000 is a positive development that deserves U.S. support and encouragement, and more weight needs to be given to the G24, a smaller grouping of developing countries and emerging markets. At the center of global governance, however, must be effective, representative intergovernmental institutions, starting with the United Nations. The representation and legitimacy problems of the G8/G7 need to be addressed, but these problems cannot be adequately considered without first addressing the representation and structural problems that beset the UN. One reason the G8/G7 has grown to be a such an influential player in global governance is the out-dated structure of the UN Security Council, whose permanent membership is limited to five nuclear powers, thereby keeping G8/G7 members Japan and Germany on the outside. If there are strong, credible, effective, and representative institutions at the center of global governance, the legitimacy of self-constituted forums like the G8/G7 will be less of an issue. Policies are needed that will ensure a system of global governance that has both strong decisionmaking institutions at the center and informal, consultative groups around the perimeter. In their role as responsible global leaders, G8/G7 policymakers should adopt agendas that foster such a global governance system. At the same time the leaders and ministers can advocate policy that will go a long way toward meeting its stated objective in 1975 of "strengthening democratic societies everywhere." These include:
The G8/G7—with its annual summits, ministerial meetings, and consensus process of agenda-setting—has established a valuable process for establishing international policy agendas for groups of countries with similar interests and concerns. However, for this deliberative process to be constructive, it must in the G8/G7 case focus on the grave security (arms proliferation), economic (increasing social polarization and marginalization), and environmental problems (global climate change) for which these countries are themselves primarily responsible. (Tom Barry <tom@irc-online.org>, a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center, is codirector of Foreign Policy In Focus.)
WOMEN AND THE U.S. MILITARY
IN EAST ASIA
Despite reconciliation talks between North and South Korea, the U.S. has declared that it will maintain 100,000 troops in East Asia for the next 20 years even if the Koreas are reunited. Joint Vision 2020, a Pentagon planning document, concluded that Asia will replace Europe as the key focus of U.S. military strategy in the early 21st century and pointed to China as a potential adversary. Instead of seeing U.S. troops sent home and military bases closed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, East Asians have seen signs that the U.S. military is digging in deeper and that the cold war in the region continues, despite the lack of credible threats to the United States. The popular resentment—and especially the anger of many Asian women—at the U.S. military presence in East Asia was highlighted in a series of meetings and protests that occurred around the G8 Summit in Okinawa. Contributing to the focus of the U.S. military's impact on women was another incident in Okinawa of sexual harassment a couple of weeks before the July 2000 Summit—this case involving a drunken Marine accused of molesting a 14-year-old schoolgirl while she slept in her home. Currently there are 37,000 U.S. military personnel in Korea and some 63,000 in Japan, including 13,000 on ships home-ported there. The islands of Okinawa, the southernmost prefecture of Japan, house 39 bases and installations (75% of all U.S. bases in Japan) although Okinawa is only 0.6% of the country's land area. Stationed in Okinawa are 30,000 troops and another 22,500 family members. There were extensive U.S. bases in the Philippines until 1992. In 1991, the Philippine Senate voted against renewal of their leases. The U.S. subsequently proposed a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) to cover situations when U.S. troops are in the Philippines for joint exercises or shore leave. The VFA gives access to Philippine ports and airports on all the main islands for refueling, supplies, repairs, and rest & recreation (R & R)—potentially far greater access than before, but under the guise of commercial arrangements and without the expense of maintaining permanent workforces and facilities. The VFA was ratified by the Philippine Senate in May 1999. Research conducted by a group called Okinawa Women Act Against Military Violence shows that U.S. troops in Okinawa have committed more than 4,700 reported crimes since 1972, when Okinawa reverted to Japanese administration. Many of these were crimes of violence against women. In Korea, too, the number of crimes is high. A particularly brutal rape and murder of a barwoman, Yoon Kum Ee, in 1992 galvanized human rights advocates to establish the National Campaign for the Eradication of Crime by U.S. Troops in Korea in order to document these crimes and help victims claim redress. Violence against women is seriously underreported, due to the victims' shame and fear or their belief that perpetrators will not be apprehended. Women who work in the bars, massage parlors, and brothels near U.S. bases are particularly vulnerable to physical and sexual violence. The sexual activity of foreign-based U.S. military personnel, including (but not exclusively) through prostitution, has had very serious effects on women's health, precipitating HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions, drug and alcohol dependency, and mental illness. In Korea, Japan, and the Philippines, Amerasian children born to women impregnated by U.S. troops are a particularly stigmatized group. They are often abandoned by their military fathers and raised by single Asian mothers. They live with severe prejudice and suffer discrimination in education and employment due to their physical appearance and their mothers' low status. Those with African-American fathers face even worse treatment than those having white fathers. Health effects linked to environmental contamination caused by military operations also need detailed investigation. In Okinawa, a 1996 report on babies born to women living near Kadena Air Force Base showed significantly lower birth weights than those born in any other part of Japan, attributable to severe noise generated by the base. At White Beach, a docking area for nuclear submarines, regional health statistics show comparatively high rates of leukemia in children and cancers in adults. In 1998, for example, two women from White Beach who were in the habit of gathering local shellfish and seaweed died of liver cancer. The drinking water from wells in the area of former Clark Air Force Base (Philippines) is contaminated with oil and grease. At 21 of the 24 locations where groundwater samples were taken, pollutants that exceeded drinking water standards were found, including mercury, nitrate, coliform bacteria, dieldrin, lead, and solvents. These contaminants persist in the environment for a long time and bioaccumulate as they move up the food chain. (Gwyn Kirk <gwyn@igc.org> and Margo Okazawa-Rey <mor@sfsu.edu> are founder-members of the East Asia-U.S. Women's Network Against Militarism. Rachel Cornwell is a graduate student at Emory University, formerly Program Assistant for the Demilitarization and Alternative Security Program of the Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace.)
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