The Progressive ResponseVolume 4, Number 38
Editor: Tom Barry (IRC)
Table of ContentsI. Around the World
By Tom Barry
II. Updates and Out-TakesRECONSTRUCTING YUGOSLAVIA: WHAT’S THE
MODEL? BALKANS: REGIONAL CONFERENCE NEEDED MASCULINITY AS A FOREIGN POLICY ISSUE
III. Letters and CommentsCLIMATE CHANGE A PERSONAL CHALLENGE GLOBAL ECONOMY MOVEMENT SUPPORTS GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
I. Around the WorldBy Tom Barry U.S.-China Relations: What Next? Sighs of relief echoed around the country and the world as the Senate approved permanent normal trading relations for China. President Clinton, counting on the permanent normalization of trade relations (PNTR) with China to bolster his legacy, smiled broadly at the news of the overwhelming vote. Clearly corporate America was also smiling at the prospects of increased trading and investment opportunities. In China, the modernizing faction of the national leadership also counted the vote as another victory over the hardline communists associated with the military and many state enterprises. The vote was also regarded as a victory by most Asia scholars and international security experts, who were concerned that congressional rejection of PNTR status for China would strengthen the hand of the Chinese military and undermine prospects for closer security relations in the Asia Pacific. Still, PNTR’s antiglobalization opponents were right to contend that U.S. labor, U.S. citizen groups, and the U.S. government have a responsibility to promote respect for human rights and core labor standards in China--especially given the prominent role of U.S. firms in the most dynamic sector of China’s new economy, namely the export of manufactured goods. Clinton’s legacy as president will also rest on his administration’s effectiveness in advancing respect for human rights around the world. If the president’s promise to put a human face on the global economy is to have any credibility, he must make clear to the Chinese leadership, in both private and public diplomacy, that the approval of PNTR and the trade accord has by no means pushed human rights concerns off the negotiating agenda. Rather, now that the messy PNTR fight is over, human rights and labor issues will come to the fore. However, Washington would do well to remember that U.S. concerns about continuing (and perhaps escalating) violations of political rights in China should be raised in the larger context of U.S.-China relations. Continuing military support for Taiwan, and plans to extend the U.S. Theater Missile Defense system in East Asia heighten Chinese anxieties about U.S. militarism in the region. The U.S. government would also do well to recognize that America’s own record on labor rights is less than stellar, as a new Human Rights Watch report has documented (see below). TNCs, Labor Rights, and Corporate Codes Alice Kwan, of the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC), has been investigating labor conditions in China, particularly in factories producing for Adidas and Nike. In a recent essay, Kwan makes the following points:
Unfair Advantage: U.S. Labor Rights A new report by Human Rights Watch, "Unfair Advantage: Workers’ Freedom of Association in the United States Under International Human Rights Standards," presents a sobering look at labor rights in the country that so often criticizes other countries’ human rights and labor practices. Frequently, the complaint of U.S. trade activists and the U.S. government is that U.S. industries and workers cannot compete on a level playing field with foreign counterparts, because international standards are not enforced by many countries exporting to the United States. Although there are certainly large economic and political disparities in international trade, it is often assumed that international labor standards are routinely respected in the United States. Not so, concludes the Human Rights Watch report authored by Lance Compa, a labor expert who has contributed to Foreign Policy In Focus (see Lance Compa, FPIF Policy Brief, "Democratizing the Trade Debate," at http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol3/v3n23trad.html.) According to this excellent report: "Labor rights violations in the United States are especially troubling when the U.S. administration is pressing other countries to ensure respect for internationally recognized workers’ rights as part of the global trade and investment system. For example, many developing countries charge that U.S. proposals for a working group on labor rights at the World Trade Organization (WTO) are motivated by protectionism, not by a concern for workers’ rights. U.S. insistence on a rights-based linkage to trade is undercut when core labor rights are systematically violated in the United States... "The absence of systematic government repression does not mean that workers in the United States have effective exercise of the right to freedom of association. On the contrary, workers’ freedom of association is under sustained attack in the United States, and the government is often failing its responsibility under international human rights standards to deter such attacks and protect workers’ rights… "Some provisions of U.S. law openly conflict with international norms and create formidable legal obstacles to the exercise of freedom of association. Millions of workers are expressly barred from the law’s protection of the right to organize. U.S. legal doctrine allowing employers to permanently replace workers who exercise the right to strike effectively nullifies the right." The entire report is available online at: http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/uslabor/ (Around the World is a weekly column of news commentary by Tom Barry, FPIF codirector.) For More Information on Labor Issues in China:Asia Monitor Resource Center Canada Asia Pacific Resource Network China Labour Bulletin Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions All-China Federation of Trade Unions Made in China: The Role of U.S. Companies In Denying Human and Worker
Rights
II. Updates and Out-TakesRECONSTRUCTING YUGOSLAVIA:
WHAT’S THE MODEL?
The democratic upheavals of 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the demise of the Warsaw Pact were widely interpreted as cold war victories for free market capitalism. Throughout the region there was a sense of liberation from politically repressive and economically restrictive systems and a widespread desire to "return to the West." Washington viewed its task as assisting with reforms in order to rapidly establish democracy and capitalism in the former communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe. After the breakup of Yugoslavia, several of the newly independent countries of the former Yugoslav federation were assisted by the West as well. The conventional view among Washington policymakers is that their reforms have mostly succeeded. As a March 1999 State Department report put it, "A region that was once the tinderbox of European conflict has become an area of increasing stability, security, and prosperity." This unfortunately timed statement was contained in a document issued just days before NATO began bombing Yugoslavia. In reality, the record of the transitions to democracy and capitalism in Central and Eastern Europe is mixed: there have been successes, and there have also been failures and lost opportunities. Beginning in the early 1990s, there were voices who cautioned that there could be social and political backlashes if swift transitions to market economies caused severe economic disruptions, high unemployment, and increased poverty. Today, those who believe that the reforms worked argue that those fears were exaggerated. On the political side, conditions in the region are vastly improved over the communist period. One-party rule is over. Nearly all the countries have held free, multiparty elections, and civil liberties have been largely restored. On the economic side, however, sweeping claims of victory are premature and obscure the mistakes committed, the continuing turmoil, the regional disparities, and the serious problems that remain. With regard to security, the 1999 war in Yugoslavia demonstrates the persistence of internal instabilities and regional tensions. Yugoslavia was among the first countries in Eastern and Central Europe where economic reforms were attempted following the 1989 revolutions. In late 1989, Prime Minister Ante Markovic announced a program aimed at stabilizing the economy through rapid convertibility of the local currency (the dinar), cuts in government expenditures, and continuation of a privatization program enacted by the federal parliament a few months earlier. These "shock therapy" measures aimed at radical transformation of the economy were foisted upon the government by the IMF and the World Bank, and were promoted by Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs. Almost simultaneously, the Polish government adopted a similar reform package, also recommended by the multilateral banks and promoted by Sachs. In 1990, the Czech Republic announced its own shock therapy reforms after the World Bank and the IMF conditioned loans to adoption of these reforms. More than anywhere else in this region, Yugoslavia defies facile assertions that Central and Eastern Europe have made smooth transitions to Western-style democracy and capitalism, or that fears of a backlash to "reforms" were exaggerated. In Yugoslavia, the inappropriately harsh reforms prescribed by the international financial institutions and foreign advisers were among many factors that contributed to the disintegration of political and civil order and the collapse of the state into nationalist regimes. As mentioned earlier, Yugoslavia, in an effort to cope with its foreign debt, was among the first to try the kind of economic "shock therapy" medicine later prescribed for the other former communist countries. As Susan Woodward (who served as a UN special representative in the former Yugoslavia in 1994) wrote in her history, Balkan Tragedy, the post-cold war period was a time "when the economic austerity and reforms required by a foreign debt crisis triggered a slide toward political disintegration." Yugoslavia was among the many countries whose economy was affected by the increase in energy prices in the early 1970s, followed by a recession in the West and the decline of world trade. At that time, international commercial banks were eager to recycle "petrodollars" by lending money to poorer countries at low interest rates, and Yugoslavia borrowed heavily in order to maintain the growth of its economy. But in the late 1970s another sharp rise in oil prices inflated bank interest rates--which were pegged to the U.S. dollar--to double-digit figures. Meanwhile, the commercial banks cut back on loans to Eastern Europe, including Yugoslavia. Belgrade sought to counter its debt crisis by adopting measures to restrict imports of consumer goods and encourage greater exports. These efforts to improve the trade balance failed; domestic production fell and imports continued to exceed exports. The results were aggravated balance of payments and foreign debt problems. In the 1980s, Yugoslavia borrowed even more from the International Monetary Fund, the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), other governments, and commercial banks in order to stabilize its foreign debt. Initially there was improvement in the external accounts, but the economy stagnated and debt payments had to be repeatedly rescheduled. Toward the end of the 1980s, only the IMF would provide additional loans. These loans always came with conditions attached, requiring more belt tightening measures from Belgrade. In 1987, the IMF’s conditions also included overtly political demands for increased federal authority over Slovenia, Croatia, and the other autonomous republics, in order to facilitate implementation of the austerity measures and economic reforms. In the republics, these recommendations were viewed with deep suspicion. By 1988, Yugoslavia’s economy had deteriorated badly, with inflation close to 200% and unemployment at 15%. The IMF advanced another loan with conditions that included limits on wages, government spending, and the money supply; the removal of price and import controls; and the beginning of a privatization program. The government’s efforts to enforce those conditions led to further difficulties, including food shortages and pay cuts. In reaction, there was a series of strikes and protests and a wider split between the federal government and the republics, where there was rising opposition to Belgrade’s efforts to broaden the powers of the federal government. Complicating the situation were the heightened tensions among the various ethnic groups. These included Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Montenegrins--who were each the majority within their respective republics but were minorities in one another’s republics--along with other minority groups such as Albanians and Muslims. Beginning in 1990, there were protests in Slovenia, where a Serbian domination plot was suspected. These were met by an explosion of Serbian nationalism led by then-communist party boss Slobodan Milosevic, a neo-Stalinist who supported moves for greater control by the federal government over the various regions. This included Kosovo, which had been granted status as an autonomous province rather than a republic. Milosevic manipulated public opposition to the economic austerity measures to gain support for his brand of Serbian nationalism. Those in Serbia who supported the economic reforms and the federal arrangement as it had existed became politically isolated. Slovenia and Croatia, both exhibiting broad support in principle for the liberal economic system that the reforms were attempting to achieve, became increasingly wary of Serbian nationalism and the threat to the republics. With the economy worse than ever, Prime Minister Branko Mikulic resigned at the end of 1988 and was replaced by Ante Markovic, who proceeded to implement the reforms set in motion by the IMF and the government’s Western advisors. But the economic decline persisted, and at the end of 1989, Markovic unveiled a "shock therapy" stabilization program requiring additional cuts in spending. In 1990, a new privatization scheme was announced in which shares in firms would be given to workers and managers. As late as 1990, Washington still believed things were going well in Yugoslavia. The Central Intelligence Agency reported that the economic stabilization program adopted the year before "makes bringing down inflation its first priority and has currency reform and a tight monetary policy as its centerpieces." The CIA stated in a report submitted to the Joint Economic Committee that the initial results were favorable but that tougher measures needed to be implemented. However, U.S. policy toward Yugoslavia was shifting. Once communism collapsed in Central and Eastern Europe, the special relationship Washington had maintained with Yugoslavia seemed less important than it had been during the cold war. In the early 1980s, the State Department had helped organize a consortium of banks, called "The Friends of Yugoslavia" to assist that country with its foreign debt problem. However, later in the decade, the Bush administration rejected a request by Markovic’s government for economic assistance with the reform process. Fighting broke out in 1991 in Slovenia and Croatia, which had been the first republics to gain their independence. Eventually an extremely bloody civil war and an "ethnic cleansing" campaign were waged in Bosnia-Herzegovina. By 1994, an estimated 200,000 people had been killed, and 3.4 million more were made refugees or displaced persons before that republic achieved independence. In 1999, a decade of violence was capped with a new war in Kosovo, when the NATO alliance attacked Serbia in response to the intensified persecution of Kosovar Albanians. It will never be known whether the train of political and military events that began in 1989 could have been prevented or ameliorated. Although there was a multitude of factors involved, a better outcome may have resulted if the West had adopted a more flexible approach to Yugoslavia’s financial and economic needs before the state broke apart. The U.S. and the West lost whatever chances there were to deal with Yugoslavia’s economic problems before they grew to crisis proportions, helping to ignite extreme ethnonationalism.
Recommendations U.S. and Western economic policies toward the countries of Central and Eastern Europe following the collapse of communism were a patchwork of grants, loans, and technical assistance. The policies were generally not well-conceived, adequately coordinated, or wisely implemented. No one should be surprised that such a mixed bag has netted mixed results. It was most unfortunate that a critical (if not the leading) role was given to the international financial institutions and especially the IMF. Their ideas for transforming the economies of the region were poorly designed and contributed to the deep and prolonged economic downturns and disruptions that spread throughout the region. The repercussions of the unemployment, poverty, corruption, and other social ills and injustices that ensued are still being felt, and large segments of the population are still suffering. A successful assistance program must include the following reforms.
(Richard F. Kaufman <rfkaufman@erols.com> is director of the Bethesda Research Institute and an associate of Economists Allied for Armed Reduction. He specializes in international economics and national security. Janine R. Wedel <wedelj@ojp.usdoj.gov> is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. She has studied East Europe’s evolving economic and social order for 20 years, conducted 8 years of fieldwork in the region, and published 3 books.)
BALKANS: REGIONAL CONFERENCE
NEEDED
While the Dayton and Kosovo agreements have stopped the fighting, they have not included frameworks for ethnic reconciliation or multiethnic societies. At the end of the twentieth century, the challenges in the Balkans remain daunting. Tensions remain high in both Albania and Macedonia. Nationalism continues to fester in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Albania, and Macedonia. Montenegro has threatened to secede from Yugoslavia, and the Muslims of the Sandzak feel threatened in Serbia. Policy should be directed toward finding a regional solution to these problems. The Western powers need to take an unequivocal stand against nationalist leaders and movements on all sides and provide real incentives for the peoples of the Balkans to embark on the path of reconciliation and civil societies. The U. S. should work toward the convening of a Balkan peace conference under the auspices of the United Nations--and with the participation of all Balkan leaders--to determine the future status of ethnic minorities in the Balkan states. (Robert Greenberg <greenberg@unc.edu> is an Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.)
MASCULINITY AS A FOREIGN
POLICY ISSUE
Many observers have remarked on the peculiar American contemporary political culture that equates military experience and/or military expertise with political leadership. It is this cultural inclination that has made it very risky for any American public figure to appear less "manly" than a uniformed senior military male officer. It is a culture--too often unchallenged by ordinary voters--that has given individuals with alleged military knowledge a disproportionate advantage in foreign policy debates. Such a masculinized and militarized culture pressures nervous civilian candidates into appearing "tough" on military issues. The thought of not embracing a parade of militarized policy positions--that increase the defense budget, make NATO the primary institution for building a new European security, expand Junior ROTC programs in high schools, insure American male soldiers’ access to prostitutes overseas, invest in destabilizing antimissile technology, maintain crippling but politically ineffectual economic sanctions and bombing raids against Iraq, accept the Pentagon’s flawed policy of "don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue," and finance a military-driven antidrug policy--would leave most American public officials (women and men) feeling uncomfortably vulnerable in the political culture that assigns high value to masculinized toughness. The result: a political competition to appear "tough" has produced U.S. foreign policies that severely limit the American capacity to play a useful role in creating a more genuinely secure international community. That is, America’s conventional, masculinized political culture makes it unlikely that Washington policymakers will either come to grips with a realistic analysis of potential global threats or act to strengthen those multilateral institutions most effective in preventing and ending conflicts. A feminist analysis turns the political spotlight on the conventional notion of manliness as a major factor shaping U.S. foreign policy choices. It demonstrates that popular gender presumptions are not just the stuff of sociology texts. Every official who has tried not to appear "soft" knows this. For example, early in his administration, Bill Clinton made known his abhorrence of landmines and his determination to ban them. But by 1998, he had caved in to military pressure and stated, instead, that the U.S. would not sign the widely endorsed international landmines treaty until the Defense Department came up with an "alternative." Feminist questioning also produces a more realistic accounting of the consequences of macho policies. Despite slight increases in the number of women in policy positions, U.S. militarized policies in the post-cold war era have served to strengthen the privileged positions of men in decisionmaking, both in the United States and in other countries. For instance, the U.S. government is currently promoting NATO as the central bastion of Western security. Although it is true that there are now women soldiers in all NATO governments’ armed forces (the Italians were the most recent to enlist women), NATO remains a masculinized political organization. The alliance’s policies are hammered out by a virtually all-male elite in which the roles of masculinity are silently accepted, when they should be openly questioned. Thus, to the extent that the U.S. succeeds in pressing NATO to wield more political influence than the European Parliament (where women have won an increasing proportion of seats), not only American women but also European women will be shunted to the wings of the political stage. Consider what feminist analysis reveals about the consequences of militarizing antidrug policy. The American government’s new billion-dollar-plus aid package to the Colombian military will, as its critics have noted [See FPIF brief "Colombia in Crisis," v 5, n 5], further intensify the civil war and human rights abuses. But less discussed is the fact that this policy will serve to marginalize women of all classes in Colombia’s political life. This--the obsession of America’s politicians and senior appointees with not appearing "soft" on drugs--militarizes drug prevention efforts and, in so doing, disempowers women both in the U.S. and in the drug producing countries. Women--both as grassroots urban activists in American cities and as mobilizers of a broad, cross-class peace movement in Colombia--have offered alternative analyses and solutions to the problems of drug addiction and drug trade. However, their valuable ideas are drowned out by the sounds of helicopter engines and M-16 rifles. This example illustrates a more general phenomenon. When any policy approach is militarized, one of the first things that happens is that women’s voices are silenced. We find that when the U.S. touts any military institution as the best hope for stability, security, and development, the result is deeply gendered: the politics of masculinity are made to seem "natural," the male grasp on political influence is tightened, and most women’s access to real political influence shrinks dramatically. (Cynthia Enloe <cenloe@clarku.edu> is a leading feminist scholar and a professor of government and women’s studies at Clark University. She is indebted to Carol Cohn, Mary Katzenstein, and Linda Yarr for their thoughtful readings and suggestions regarding this brief.) Sources for Further InformationOrganizationsCenter for Women’s Global Leadership Committee on Women, Population and the Environment Nationwide Women’s Program Women in Conflict Zones Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) Women In International Security World Wide WebInternational Campaign to Ban Landmines International Criminal Court (ICC) Caucus Youth and Military Online News
III. Letters and CommentsCLIMATE CHANGE A PERSONAL CHALLENGE Well done article on the status of global warming [FPIF Policy Brief, "The Climate Crisis and Carbon Trading," by Ross Gelbspan, http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol5/v5n20climate.html]. I agree with the author that "emissions trading" is not a good way to go if we really want to do something about slowing global warming. To even have a glimmer of hope of slowing down global warming now, we must get down to the consumer's level: auto drivers, jet setters, big home owners, purchasers of products that require lots of energy to make, or lots of energy to ship. To do that, the focus has to be on me, you, our neighbors, our coworkers, and the rest of us "consumers." - Michael Neuman <NeumaM@mail01.dnr.state.wi.us>
GLOBAL ECONOMY MOVEMENT SUPPORTS GLOBAL GOVERNANCE I read your article on globalization with great interest [Progressive Response, "In the Aftermath of Seattle: Backlash Reigns," by Tom Barry at http://www.fpif.org/progresp/vol4/prog4n37.html]. I wonder though who you are thinking of when you say that the citizen global economy movement has not taken a principled stand in support of multilateral global governance. From my perspective, this is clearly false and misleading. At the International Forum on Globalization teach-in during the April demonstrations during the IMF/WB meeting in DC, as well as the IFG teach-in in NY September 5th for the Millenium Assembly, there was clear support expressed for the UN and its institutions and calls by David Korten, among others, for new institutions to replace the WB, IMF, and WTO and perform the kinds of functions that the world needs. - Susan Davis <THISSDAVIS@aol.com>
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