Bush aides cite 'realism' in tougher foreign policy   3.26.01   Atlanta Journal-Constitution per NewsMax.com

D I P L O M A C Y     new human rights Louis Henkin, esq. Phyllis Bennis Rita Hauser Kissinger book review inflation yields Hitler John Loftus U.S. Congress foreign aid Russia Halford Mackinder Israel Arabia Jay Garner Hi magazine M.H.Heikal speculative sources State Dept archive & refs foreign persecution US CIRF ninja R. Armitage J. Bolton B. Chapman D. Cheney L.Craner R.Huber W.Kansteiner J.Maisto J.Negroponte C.Powell C. Randt Jr O.Reich D.Rumsfeld Shrub Ctr for Public Inquiry CLW FPIF UNFPA Sen. Jesse Helms appt tracking embassy row current policy & rpts Eisenhower NSC Op. Ajax Acheson, et al & links

The U.N. conference was also attended by Cuban President Fidel Castro, who made a brief appearance, delivered a blistering attack against capitalism, and departed on Thursday. Cuban officials suggested he was pressured to leave by Mexico, a charge that was shrugged off by Mr. Fox & Mr. Bush. "I know of no pressure placed on anybody," Mr. Bush said. "I mean, Fidel Castro can do what he wants to do. And what I'm uncomfortable about is the way he treats his people. There's only one country that's not a democracy in our hemisphere and that's Cuba."

For Bush, the sanctions conundrum 5.15.01   Reginald Dale Intl Herald Tribune WASHINGTON   After displeasing much of the world with his brusque repudiation of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming, President GWBush is facing another economic & foreign policy challenge that could further damage his administration's intl standing. Bush must decide soon whether to support renewal of the controversial legislation providing sanctions against foreign companies investing in oil & gas production in Libya & Iran, which expires in August. The 5 year old measure has enraged many of America's allies, especially in Europe, who see it as a U.S. attempt to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction over activities that are perfectly proper under the laws of their own countries. Renewal of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act has started its way through Congress and probably will pass unless Mr. Bush strongly opposes it. So far, the administration has not taken a position, partly because of internal dissent, partly because key personnel are not yet in place and partly because Mr. Bush does not want to look like a puppet of Big Oil. If Mr. Bush decides to support renewal, he again will be telling European allies that their views are unimportant, and he will be telling them on the eve of a visit to Europe next month that is intended to repair strained trans-Atlantic relations. He will provide the rest of the world with further evidence of U.S. unilateralism. He will enrage U.S. oil companies, which are banned from doing business in Libya & Iran under domestic U.S. sanctions, and he will miss a big opportunity to increase oil & gas supplies to avert a looming energy crisis. The Iran-Libya Sanctions Act is only one part of a broader sanctions package. It was intended to level the playing field for U.S. oil companies by extending to foreign companies the bans on U.S. corporations doing business with Libya & Iran. President Clinton, however, waived sanctions against non-American corporations, allowing them to sign lucrative contracts that American companies were barred from signing by their own govt. The latest instance is a report that Wintershall, a German energy co., is seeking permission from Libya to drill in oil fields owned by the Oasis group, a consortium of the U.S companies Conoco, Amerada Hess and Marathon. In Iran, Royal Dutch Shell & Japanese companies are jockeying to exploit the giant Azadegan oil & gas field, from which U.S corporations are banned. Foreign companies have invested more than $10 billion in Iranian energy projects over the past 5 years, and sources say they plan to double that amount in the next five to 10 years. Security experts say the exclusion of U.S. companies from Iran & Libya also prevents U.S. covert operations from being carried out under the cover of oil industry operations. If Mr. Bush opposes the Iran-Libya sanctions, on the other hand, he will anger the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is leading the campaign for renewal, and congressional leaders ranging from Sen. Edw. Kennedy D-MA to Sen. Jesse Helms R-NC , both of whom argue the moral high ground is more important than corporate profits. Those who advocate sanctions maintain that European policies of engagement have not stopped Iran from supporting terrorism and developing weapons of mass destruction or persuaded Libya to offer compensation for the Lockerbie bombing. But neither, of course, have U.S. sanctions. According to congressional sources, at least 45 of 100 senators support renewal of the sanctions, and the measure has what they call wide but not deep support in the House. If Mr. Bush were to fight the measure, he probably could stymie current efforts to rush it through. But he should not stop there. Allowing the Iran-Libya act to die would not end the discrimination against U.S. oil companies that is the result of U.S. sanctions. Mr. Bush should propose amending the whole sanctions package to focus more sharply on weapons & terrorism-related materials, just as Sec.State Colin Powell is recommending against Iraq, so the oil companies can go about their business. And he should take these steps before next month's meetings with European leaders. While Mr. Bush was right, if undiplomatic, in rejecting the unworkable Kyoto Treaty, he would be undiplomatic & wrong to prolong this damaging unilateral sanctions fiasco.

Bush Battles for Broad Trade Power 7.26.01   AP WASHINGTON   Mobilizing with a command center, a new Web site and five-inch-thick binders for lawmakers, the Bush White House is battling to win back broad trade-negotiating powers that Congress denied his predecessor. With a fight brewing on Capitol Hill, the administration is trying to put a human face on the issue. It is targeting four groups of Americans in particular it says would benefit: Hispanics, high-tech workers, ranchers and farmers and women. President Bush already has made personal appeals to the first three groups at the White House; he will reach out to women in coming days. On Friday, Bush addresses the Future Farmers of America on trade, and Tuesday, he will make a fresh appeal to the high-tech industry. "The president wants to bring this debate to kitchen tables across America,'' said Jim Wilkinson, deputy communications director at the White House. Between 1974 and 1994, every president had fast-track authority. After that authority expired in 1994, President Clinton failed twice, in 1997 and 1998, to get a Republican-controlled Congress to renew it. The Bush administration is trying to defuse criticism that sweeping trade authority would simply help Bush's business allies at the expense of environmental and worker protections. Officials also believe "fast-track'' trade authority would boost Bush's standing as a world leader. Also, they argue, the authority would aid the economy by lifting tariffs that discourage other countries from buying American goods and services. A new command center in the White House complex is coordinating trade efforts among seven Cabinet agencies and administration officials who lobby lawmakers. The "trade action center'' provides information on demand to a broad array of officials seeking to spread the message. Daily conference calls and periodic meetings keep the operation humming. Binders prepared for lawmakers of both parties contain talking points tailored by state, with some arguments condensed onto pocket-sized and laminated cards. A document aimed at women says women- owned small businesses employ millions of workers and are starting up at twice the rate of male-owned businesses. Some 40 percent of American private agricultural land is solely owned by women, the paper says. The administration contends that other nations are advancing trade pacts far more quickly than the United States is. Of the roughly 130 free-trade compacts among nations, the United States belongs to only two, another document says. The European Union has free-trade pacts with 27 countries, and 15 more are in the works, it says. To reach beyond the Capital Beltway, the White House is building a Web site advertising what it considers the advantages of increased trade. Top administration officials are managing the effort: Nicholas Calio, Bush's chief operative on Capitol Hill, and Gary Edson, the U.S. deputy national security adviser. Commerce Secretary Don Evans and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick are also lobbying lawmakers. Under the fast-track authority Bush seeks, the president could conclude trade agreements that Congress could accept or reject but could not amend. Bush and Republicans want a bill that allows the president to negotiate a free trade zone throughout the Western Hemisphere or a new round of World Trade Organization talks. Bush believes environmental and labor protections are important but should be dealt with outside the trade regime. A House GOP bill, sponsored by Ways and Means trade subcommittee chairman Philip Crane, R-Ill., does not mention labor or environmental standards. Sen. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat whose committee will handle the legislation, made clear Wednesday the authority must come with a requirement that countries not lower labor or environmental standards to gain a trade advantage. He said he would create a new body of congressional trade advisers that would be allowed to sit in on all negotiating sessions and vote on whether the president met the criteria for getting fast-track authority. House Republicans are pressing ahead with plans to bring a trade promotion bill to the floor next week, before Congress enters its August recess. White House officials believe it may be September before the issue comes to the floor.

U.S. Finding Tangled Alliances on Rights 4.8.01   Barbara Crossette NYTimes Midway through the annual UN review of human rights around the world, the Bush administration has made no significant breaks with recent American policies but is finding it harder to count on the support of traditional European allies, the leader of the American delegation says. The official, Shirin Tahir-Kheli, who represented the earlier Bush administration at the Human Rights Commission in 1991 and 1992, said in a recent interview that she was finding "that the world has changed, not only in East-West terms but in West- West terms as well." "We still like to think of it as partnership across the Atlantic, and we work with that in mind," she said. "But that partnership with what used to be a small group of countries has expanded to a full range of opinions. That assumption of close collaboration is somewhat changed. It's not a disagreement on the philosophy. The values are shared, which makes it even more puzzling." HRtss groups concur, saying the problem stems in part from divisions that appeared between the Europeans & the Americans during the Clinton administration because of American reluctance to give active support to agreements important to Europeans. Among these were the treaties barring land mines and the use of child soldiers, and setting up an Intl Criminal Court. The Clinton administration signed the court treaty at the last possible moment, on Dec. 31, after several years of fighting to change it to meet objections from the Pentagon & the Republican- led Congress. The Bush admin has said it would not send it to the Senate for ratification. Moreover, the confrontation with Beijing over the American spy plane came just as Washington was hoping to censure China at the Human Rights Commission, now meeting in Geneva. Europe has been reluctant to lend support to such a move. European attitudes are also being shaped by the perception that the new administration "has brought the cold war back," said Carroll Bogert, of HRts Watch in New York. "U.S. criticism of other countries on human rights grounds is being held in some suspicion in Europe because they feel that it's part of a return to cold war politics, in which human rights are really an instrument of something else." The issue of China is to be debated around 4.18.01 but the Chinese tactic, successful every year but one over the past decade , is to pre-empt discussion by persuading a majority on the 53-member commission to take China off the agenda. It is the only major country to have used this strategy. Both Russia & the U.S. now allow themselves to be criticized, and speak in defense of their policies & practices. On Thursday, for example, Russia answered criticisms of the actions of its military in separatist Chechnya. The answers did not satisfy human rights groups, but Russian diplomats at least stated their case. The Chinese, on the other hand, are now lobbying "extremely hard" for what is called a no-action motion, Ms. Tahir-Kheli said. "They do business very differently from us," she said. "They play hardball with countries. There are offers of assistance and offers of withdrawal of assistance. For a lot of countries, they loom very large." Ms. Tahir-Kheli, S.Asia scholar who has been a UN diplomat and NSC member, said that in the resolution the U.S. aims to introduce on China, there is ample praise for what Beijing has accomplished, including a better standard of living for the people. "But the issue is that this is the human rights commission, and if you look at their human rights record, that has deteriorated," she said. "We must shine the light on China and what is happening there." The American delegation wants to focus on the use of psychiatric hospitals for dissidents, limits on political and religious expression & repression in Tibet, among other issues, she said. The American position is made even more difficult because of the composition of the current Human Rights Commission. Among the members are Syria, Libya & Vietnam, backed by a strong lobby from the nonaligned movement, which has been resurgent in the UN system. Leaders of this group, including India & Pakistan, do not always allow scrutiny of their rights practices by commission-appointed monitors. Ms. Tahir-Kheli praised independent human rights groups for fighting to open up more countries to scrutiny, and added that the United States would not close its doors. "The U.S. is one of the few countries that says, 'Come in, have a look,' " she said. FOREIGN AFFAIRS   95 to 5 5.29.01   Thos. L. Friedman NYTimes Since the U.S. got voted off the island at the UN HRts Commission 3 weeks ago, Congress has been hopping mad and the U.N.-haters have been on a tear. So I have an idea: Let's quit the U.N. That's right, let's just walk. Most of its members don't speak English anyway. What an insult! Let's just shut it down and turn it into another Trump Tower. That Security Council table would make a perfect sushi bar. No? You don't want to leave the U.N. to the Europeans & Russians? Then let's stop bellyaching about the U.N., and manipulating our dues, and start taking it seriously for what it is, a global forum that spends 95% of its energy endorsing the wars & peacekeeping missions the U.S. wants endorsed, or taking on the thankless humanitarian missions that the U.S. would like done but doesn't want to do itself. The U.N. actually spends only 5% of its time annoying the U.S. Not a bad deal. The vote that got the U.S. booted off the Human Rights Commission was to the U.N. what Senator Jim Jeffords's vote to leave the Republican Party was to the Senate, a wake-up call, a signal that the world will push back against radical Bush policies just as Sen. Jeffords did. When President Bush trashed the Kyoto treaty on climate change, the message the world got was that the Bushies will do whatever they please, on a range of issues, and if the world doesn't like it, tough. So, not surprisingly, when the members of this U.N. commission got a chance to vote anonymously on whether the U.S. should be a member, they stuck it to us. People with power often don't think about it; people without power think about it all the time. But it would be wrong to blame this vote entirely on anger with the Bushies. That lets the Europeans off too easily. As former U.S. delegate to U.N. HRts Commission Nina Shea wrote in The Weekly Standard, the fact that so many Europeans could participate in the U.S. being voted out "reflects the abandonment of their historical commitment to human rights." Repeatedly at the commission, the U.S. has had to break with the Europeans in order to vote its conscience on issues like slavery in Sudan and repression in China and Cuba. Nevertheless, maybe now that Sen. Jeffords has instilled some humility in the Bush team, and ensured that Jesse Helms will no longer be chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which he singlehandedly ground into irrelevance with, among other things, his juvenile anti-U.N. crusades, we can get back to taking the U.N. seriously. The fact is, the world is full of problems that touch America; the U.N. handles problems related to childhood diseases, which Unicef addresses, problems of poverty in Africa, which the U.N.D.P. addresses, problems of refugees which the UNHCR addresses, and problems related to AIDS coordinated by UNAIDS. Also, there are now 16 U.N. peacekeeping missions. For the past decade, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Fiji and Nepal have been doing UN peacekeeping that the U.S. wants done but doesn't want to do itself. These poor countries do U.N. peacekeeping to earn extra cash, and have been paying the salaries of the UN peacekeepers themselves, while waiting for years for the U.S. to pay its dues. So the world's richest country has been taking interest-free loans from the world's poorest, dollar-a-day economies. That's embarrassing. All these problems would exist whether the U.N. were there or not. So what the U.N. provides 95% of the time is a body for coordinating our response to problems we care about. And it does it in a way that ensures that the burden of costs is shared, so that the U.S. doesn't have to pay alone, and that the burden of responsibility is shared, so that wars the U.S. wants fought, or the peace accords the U.S. wants kept, have a global stamp of approval, not made-in-U.S.A. The secret of the Human Rights Commission vote is that it is precisely because 95% of the time the U.N. is simply a tool of the U.S. that a few countries, when they got a chance to stick it to us, did so. But if we can't understand that on just about every other day the real vote at the U.N., the vote that matters, is 95 to 5, 95% of the time it acts in our interests and 5% not, then shame on us. US Not Leader in Human Rights ¹ 5.30.01   Harry Dunphy AP WASHINGTON   U.S. no longer leads on intl human rights issues and often sacrifices its concerns for political expediency, Amnesty Intl U.S. branch said Wed. at its 40th anniversary. "We have no prominent leaders in govt sounding the clarion call for human rights," said William Schulz, the executive director of Amnesty Intl USA. "Instead, we have a U.S. govt that has abdicated its duty to lead."   [ Absolutely false hyperbole. Annual State Dept & other executive branch HRts reports which directly & automatically terminate & otherwise impact foreign & military aid are manifestation of decades of HRts advocacy goals. Even Shrub lauded Rep. Moakley before he died. The fundamental discrepancy of U.S. policy is expedient sacrifice of HRts concern to national security claims, not least in domestic law enforcement. But neither Europe at large nor Canada enforce HRts constraints on international commerce as diligently as U.S. ] Presenting the organization's annual report, Schulz said the group's greatest disappointment was the decline of U.S. leadership on human rights. As examples he cited the U.S. failure to ratify a convention to ban anti-personnel land mines and opposition to establishment of an intl criminal court. "It is no wonder that the U.S. was ousted from the UN HRts Commission," Schulz said. "That defeat was precipitated by waning U.S. influence & double standards practiced by various administrations & Congresses."   [ More balderdash & selfserving ballyhoo. That election result was plainly backlash for the degree of U.S. HRts enforcement heretofore. Characterizing U.S. influence as "waning" is laughably inaccurate. These utterly misdirected criticisms detract attention from genuine shortcomings of U.S. HRts policy. It is easily argued that U.S. can exercise greater leverage unfettered by the need to build consensus among the UN commission because it wields the indisputable power of global Pax Americana. ] Marking its 40th anniversary, the organization provided a platform for the husband of an American Univ. researcher detained in China. He urged the Bush administration to step up efforts to get her released now that a U.S. Navy reconnaissance plane is being returned. Xue Donghua said he had written President Bush to tell him "human beings are more important than expensive airplanes." His wife, Gao Zahn, has been held in China since Feb. 11. China has accused Gao of "activities that undermine state security." Xue said the case of his wife and at least 4 other detained academics is "just the tip of an iceberg. A lot of other people who are detained & released choose to keep silent." Xue said when he asked the State Department for an update on efforts to get Gao freed, he was told the return of the aircraft from China was a diplomatic & military priority.   [ This is an accurate description of U.S. policy failings. If administration militarists weren't so eager to make any & all nations vassal clients of U.S. munitions marketing, e.g. warships & warplanes to Taiwan, while ensuring market demand by selling under the table to declared opponents, e.g. Clinton "dual use" authorization of Loral's China sales, and seeding the market for death merchants, e.g. financing Osama binLaden & now the southern Sudanese, it would be inestimably less expensive to compel tyrants to reform when their security forces are not equipped from U.S. army procurement surplus, e.g. Guatemala, Rwanda, ad infinitum. Just as it behooves U.S. anti-drug abuse policy to emphasize reduction of demand rather than militarize opposition to suppliers as a guise for equipping paramilitary forces to conduct terror campaigns against populations of rebels attempting to defend native resources against transnational corporation resource plunder, likewise it is essential for planetary HRts advancement that the U.S. surrender its crown of munitions industry dominance that overshadows all other nations' combined weapons sales to plunge demand for tools of tyranny. ] … Schulz said the group was doing everything it could to obtain the release of Gao and the other detained academics in China. Amnesty Intl was launched 5.28.01 when The Observer newspaper in London published a piece by London lawyer Peter Benenson calling for the release of "prisoners of conscience" incarcerated because of their beliefs or origins. 40 years later, the group employs more than 350 staff and has an annual budget of almost $28 million. It says it has so far dealt with the cases of 47,000 prisoners of conscience. This year's annual report documents executions outside the bounds of judicial process in 61 countries, prisoners of conscience in at least 63 countries and cases of torture and ill treatment in 125 countries.

UN Office of HighComm. of HRts   UNHCHR history contrarian     Corporate Underwriting of UN Pgms   K. Bruno & V. Tauli-Corpuz UN corporate sponsorship agreements with known HRts violators Shell, Rio Tinto, Disney & Nike displaying UN logo Cash crunch hampers relief efforts, UN aid agencies warn 12 July – The heads of the four main UN aid agencies today said that poor funding and lack of security were threatening humanitarian work worldwide. Cash crunch hampers relief efforts, UN aid agencies warn   7.12.01   UN News Ctr ¹

In a rare joint statement, the 4 top-ranking UN humanitarian officials urged wealthy govts to be more generous & consistent in helping the victims of conflicts & natural disasters, calling for a more balanced response to the world's humanitarian crises. The 4 officials, Kenzo Oshima, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs; Carol Bellamy, Exec. Dir. UNICEF; Catherine Bertini, Exec. Dir. World Food Pgm and Ruud Lubbers, High Commissioner for Refugees, released statement in Geneva, where they attended UN's Economic & Social Council annual meeting . Mr. Oshima said that without stronger commitment from donor countries, humanitarian agencies would not be able to serve the needs of those affected by conflict or natural disasters. "We cannot operate effectively when critical components are not met," he said. "It is vital that we consolidate humanitarian gains by ensuring that we have the funds for rehabilitation." Ms. Bellamy reiterated the need for strengthened donor support, but also underlined the need for access to the civilian population, hardest hit in times of conflict. "Humanitarian access & security for staff are often determining factors in reaching & supporting vulnerable groups caught up in conflict," she said. "In the DRCongo for example, women & children on both sides of the conflict depend on our support which, in turn, is dependant upon the good will of local authorities." For his part, Mr. Lubbers deplored the lack of funding for Afghan refugees, one of world's 2 largest refugee populations. "Our message to the donors is: if you want the numbers of Afghans arriving in Europe, N.America and Australia to continue doubling every 2 years, then continue to under-fund Afghanistan," he said. UN humanitarian pgms for 19 worldwide crises have received $974 million of the $2.74 billion the UN has asked for, a mere 35% of the entire amount. However, in some countries, humanitarian appeals have received as little as 4% of the amount needed for 2001. US arrogance in UN HRts Commission flap 5.01   Foreign Policy in Focus ( Global Policy Forum ) Arming dictatorial states, training paramilitary or opposing intl HRts treaties; U.S. does not have best record concerning HRts HRtsWatch & UN U.S. mission ¹ ² ³   re 5.3.01 election loss Conceding the U.S. should pay its UN back dues and that the country has no "intrinsic authority as the arbiter of human rights," the 5.30.01 Ottowa Citizen says the "sole democratic superpower" should nevertheless be on the rights commission. "Only the US offers hope to those who are victims of Sudan's slave holders, Syria's secret police or China's anti-religious persecutions," the newspaper says, referring to states that won seats on the commission. "The removal of the US from the commission reflects the effort by nations that routinely violate human rights to escape scrutiny or sanction" Going it alone: the payback begins 5.13.01   Phyllis Bennis Baltimore Sun Geo.Bush's penchant for going it alone in the world is beginning to bear consequences. Ten days ago, govts from around the world voted to bump the United States off the UN Human Rights Commission. The U.S. setback was not the result of some back-room campaign orchestrated by human rights violators or enemies of the U.S. It was an expression of frustration by Washington's friends and allies, especially in western Europe, at what they see as increasing U.S. rejection of the United Nations and other international commitments, including those on human rights. As Harold Koh, human rights chief in the Clinton administration, wrote in the Washington Post, "the world was trying to teach us a lesson." The Europeans, and others at the UN, know something most Americans don't know. That despite lots of high-sounding human rights rhetoric, the U.S. routinely refuses to sign or ratify important human rights agreements. Sometimes, the U.S. itself violates internationally agreed upon human rights standards. Consider the recent record: * Alone among its Western allies, the U.S. continues to impose the death penalty. It even allows imposition of a death sentence against minors and those found to be mentally incompetent, in direct violation of international human rights law. * The U.S. has refused to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a distinction it shares only with Somalia. It opposed a key provision prohibiting child soldiers under the age of 18, because the Pentagon found it convenient to continue recruiting 17-year-olds for the U.S. military. * The U.S. has refused to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Women, and consistently opposes UN efforts to make women's right to inherit property an internationally recognized human right. This kind of dissing of the UN and global opinion has been going on for years. But Washington's European allies have been especially horrified by some of the most recent examples. Just days before the UN votes, the Bush administration announced its intention to abandon the requirements of the Kyoto treaty on climate change, and to unilaterally renounce the almost 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty that has been a linchpin of strategic arms control since 1972. After years of big talk but little U.S. accountability to multilateral decision-making and international treaties, it's not surprising the Europeans were furious. There have been other examples too, where the U.S. rejected international accords. Washington's refusal to sign the treaty banning anti-personnel land mines, for instance, infuriated countries throughout the world, especially those where thousands of children's and other civilians' lives have been destroyed by mines left behind long after the conflict that spawned them. The U.S. failure to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty enraged countries across the globe. Israel claims that the UN has no authority to judge its actions, but European and third world countries alike reject that view. They see U.S. rejection of international protection for the Palestinians, and its acceptance of Israel's settlements in occupied territory and its tank and helicopter gunship attacks on refugee camps and other civilian targets, as U.S. support for continuing violations of human rights and international law. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the New York Times that the vote on Israel-Palestine was one where the U.S. "left a little blood on the floor." But the U.S. was not defeated in the Commission only because of perceived hypocrisy on human rights. It was, as Powell said, "a vote looking for a venue to happen." In fact, in another secret ballot on the same day, the U.S. lost another influential UN position, the seat on the International Narcotics Control Board that it had held for two terms. Taken together, the losses reflect growing global dismay at what is widely viewed as a "go it alone" tendency in U.S. foreign policy, an approach that dismisses the significance of multilateralism, international law and the United Nations itself. Some U.S. officials claimed that the current lack of an ambassador at the UN made Washington's defeat easier. Career diplomat John Negroponte is slated for appointment by the Bush administration. But it is unclear his presence would have helped. As ambassador to Honduras during crucial years of the Central American wars and the Iran-contra scandal, Negroponte himself has been widely accused of covering up serious violations by U.S. allies. Honduras human rights commissioner Leo Valladares told the Sun "Ambassador Negroponte knew all about the human rights violations, and he did nothing to stop them." And, punditry aside, the U.S. was not replaced by Sudan in the Commission -- it was replaced by Sweden. Like most UN agencies, the Commission's membership is determined by regional groups. The Western Group, including the U.S. and Europe, was allotted three seats for this election cycle, but fielded four candidates -- France, Austria, Sweden and the U.S. If any one of those European allies had withdrawn, the U.S. would have been guaranteed another term. One would have hoped, of course, that the African Group would nominate a country less egregiously symbolic of human rights violations than Sudan. But Africa rotates virtually all its countries onto the Commission; South Africa, Senegal, Cameroon and others are already members. And the heavy European presence actually bodes well for international human rights -- the goal, after all, is not to prevent Sudan or China from being held accountable for rights violations; the goal is to insure that Israel, other U.S. allies, and the United States itself, are held similarly accountable for theirs. One item in the list of "roguish" U.S. behavior may have pushed several countries over the edge, from irritation to fury. That is the seemingly endless problem of unpaid U.S. dues to the UN, totaling over $1.3 billion. Last year the U.S. finally agreed to pay a portion of those overdue assessments IF the UN accepted a long list of unilaterally imposed restrictions crafted largely by UN-bashing Senator Jesse Helms. Congressional opponents are again threatening to withhold back dues -- but it should be noted that even the partial payment agreed to has not yet been sent. The U.S. remains the biggest deadbeat country in the UN. Ultimately, it is not only U.S. hypocrisy and double standards on human rights, not only U.S. rejection of multilateralism in favor of raw power that antagonizes U.S. friends, allies and adversaries alike. It is the ugly arrogance with which Washington wields that power that leads to such animosity. No wonder the French, among our closest allies, have begun referring to the U.S. as the "hyper-power." No wonder Europe decided the U.S. had held its seat in the Human Rights Commission long enough, thank you. One hopes that some here in Washington will take seriously the sobering lesson of what can happen to super- powers, even to empires, that overreach their legitimacy once too often. U.S. Loses Seat on U.N. Rights Commission 5.4.01   Munzi ¹ UN   The U.S., for first time since 1947, failed to win re-election Thu. to Geneva- based HRts Commission that probes rights abuses throughout the world. Instead France, Austria & Sweden were chosen for the 3 seats allocated to Western countries that were up for election. The balloting was conducted among 53 nations voting in the Economic & Social Council, umbrella group for the commission. ''Understandably, we are very disappointed,'' Jas. Cunningham, chief U.S. representative, told reporters, declining to speculate on the reason for the defeat. ''It was an election between a number of solid candidates,'' Cunningham said. ''We very much wanted to serve on the committee.'' Singapore Ambassador Kishore Mahbubani called the vote ''a stunning development. … Whn I heard it, I couldn't believe it.'' Some diplomats said the Bush administration's opposition to the Kyoto climate change treaty, as well as its insistence on a missile defense shield, contributed to the loss. But Joanna Weschler, UN representative of NY based HRts Watch, said both Western & developing countries bore grudges against the U.S. ''Washington should have seen it coming because there has been a growing resentment towards the U.S. and votes on key human rights standards, incl opposition to a treaty to abolish landmines, to the Intl Criminal Court and making AIDS drugs available to everyone,'' she said. Other nations the U.S. has held up to the spotlight in the Geneva commission, such as China or Cuba, resented U.S. actions on the committee and ''made their feelings well known in their speeches,'' she said in an interview. Weschler also said the 53-member commission was turning into an ''abuser solidarity'' group with more & more countries with questionable human rights records gaining election then voting as a bloc against singling out individual nations for human rights abuses. The U.S. came in fourth in the balloting among Western nations with 29 votes. France was high scorer with 52 votes, followed by Austria with 41 and Sweden with 32. The commission just completed on April 27 its annual 6 week session in Geneva to probe human rights violations around the world. Established in 1947, the U.S., Russia and India had served on the rights body ever since. Also elected to the 53-nation human rights commission Thu. were Bahrain, S.Korea, Pakistan, Croatia and Armenia. Chile, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Togo and Uganda won uncontested seats. Countries whose candidates failed to get seats were Iran, Saudi Arabia, Latvia, and Azerbaijan in addition to U.S. 9.21.00 report H.Koh intro part 1 part 2 part 2A part 2B appendix WCAR 8.31.01 Rights leaders petition UN re U.S. rights violations 10.25.00   HYPE Information Service

Following on previous petitions by W.E.B. DuBois and Malcolm X, civil rights leaders this week are petitioning the UN over U.S. violations of the human rights of its own citizens. NAACP chair Julian Bond and others will present a ''Call to Action'' to Mary Robinson, U.N. high commissioner for human rights. "Our hope is to discuss with her our concerns about the continued use of racial profiling, the need for an immediate moratorium on the death penalty at both the federal & state levels and, more generally, reforms in the criminal-justice system," Bond said in a statement co- authored with JoAnn K. Chase, National Congress of American Indians exec. dir.
"Despite its conclusion last month that the federal death penalty is not applied fairly across ethnic groups, the Justice Dept has failed to call for a moratorium . . . " the statement said. The document calls the application of the death penalty "appalling & unjustifiable." "Our 'Call to Action' urges the UN to appeal to the U.S. to honor its obligation under the Intl Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination," which the U.S. ratified in 1994.

Louis Henkin author Foreign Assistance Act ¶48 Jus cogens ASIL 1992 inaug CFR contra Bayard Rustin Foreign Affairs & the Constitution ¹ How Nations Behave "It is probably the case," Lou said, "that almost all nations observe almost all principles of intl law and almost all of their obligations almost all the time." per Chomsky re Kosovo, Henkin ¹ ² in a standard work on world order writes that the "pressures eroding the prohibition on the use of force are deplorable, and the arguments to legitimize the use of force in those circumstances are unpersuasive & dangerous … Violations of human rights are indeed all too common, and if it were permissible to remedy them by external use of force, there would be no law to forbid the use of force by almost any state against almost any other. Human rights, I believe, will have to be vindicated, and other injustices remedied, by other, peaceful means, not by opening the door to aggression and destroying the principle advance in international law, the outlawing of war & the prohibition of force." Founders of the U.N. Charter perceived the greatest threat to the achievement of these goals to be war. According to intl legal scholar Louis Henkin, "war inflicted the greatest injustice, the most serious violations of human rights, and the most violence to self-determination and to economic & social development." Therefore, in order to preserve peace, the founders of the U.N. Charter constructed an international security system, the backbone of which was articles 2(4) and 51. Article 2(4) states: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations." This provision completely outlawed the use of force between States subject to the very limited exception found in article 51. This article reads: "nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken the measures necessary to maintain international peace & security." Unfortunately, after founding the Charter in 1945, the U.N. has experienced many problems in successfully implementing articles 2(4) and 51. Nevertheless, articles 2(4) and 51 remain the international community's primary regulation on jus ad bellum. Some legal scholars like Henkin avoid "philosophical constructs" altogether. On this view, human rights are essentially the result of agreements among states: "In international instruments, representatives of states declare & recognize human rights, define their content, and ordain their consequences within political societies and in the system of nation-states. The justification of human rights is rhetorical, not philosophical. Human rights are self- evident, implied in other ideas that are commonly intuited & accepted."   The Age of Rights (NY Columbia Univ. Press, 1990) p3 1998   acting director, Columbia Univ. Law HRts Inst. Course compares principles of U.S. constitutional rights and intl human rights, bridge which forms basis of his past scholarship. introduction   Refugees & their human rights 4.95   L. Henkin prof. emeritus Columbia Univ. Fordham Intl Law Journal

remarks   Harold Hongju Koh 9.29.99   asst Sec.State for Democracy, HRts & Labor Columbia Univ. Law School NYC   … what makes the great Lou Henkin an American hero is not just his brilliance and his scholarly achievement, but his total incorruptibility and integrity. If Lou says it, it must be right, or presumptively so, not just because there is no one smarter, but because there is no one more honest. your Dean, David Leebron, said in his introduction to the tribute issue of the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, working with Lou on human rights is like having Madison in the room teaching the Constitution. … Lou's own govt service never limited his capacity to criticize U.S. foreign policy. … epitome of the citizen lawyer, dedicated to public service, always ready to serve when his country calls, whether it was to fight in World war II, to be the advisor to the U.S delegation on the Law of the Sea, or, as he has recently graciously agreed to do, to serve as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee. … clerking for Learned Hand & Felix Frankfurter, he moved not to the academy, but to my current institution, the State Dept, where he spent time in both the Bureau of European Affairs and the Bureau of UN Affairs, in the process taking time to serve in the UN Legal Dept and to be U.S. representative at the convention that eventually drafted the 1951 refugee convention. … contributions to intl humanitarian law, particularly in the area of refugees, his central role regarding ratification of treaties, his unparalleled command of both public intl law & constitutional law, and his creation of the field of the law of U.S. foreign policy, have made him single- handedly one of the most influential human rights NGOs in this world. … leading case book on human rights, to go along with the leading text on public international law, the law of U.S. foreign policy, along with a few restatements of foreign relations law, about 12 volumes of the American Journal of International Law, and a couple sets of Hague Lectures … "human rights paradigm," as you could call it, has evolved through 4 overlapping, but identifiable phases. in the wake of the Holocaust, the paradigmatic human rights violation was genocide with Nuremberg & Tokyo on accountability and on institution building. But the focus of the first period was on universalization of norms: I call this the age of "universalization." In the second phase, the Cold War, the genocide norm began to recede and the human rights paradigm shifted to reflect Cold War realities. The focal point of global concern shifted from mass murder to the plight of individual dissidents & prisoners of conscience. We can think of this as the period of Amnesty Intl, Sakharov and Sharansky, when response mechanisms began to focus more insistently upon human rights monitoring & advocacy. Norms became institutionalized, not just through intergovtal institutional mechanisms, but also through national & regional mechanisms. It is during this period that the State Dept human rights bureau that I now serve came into place, as well as institutionalization on the non-govtal side of the human rights equation. It was during this period of "institutionalization" that we saw the dramatic growth of NGOs such as the Lawyers Committee, on whose board Lou sits, and the HRtsWatch, on whose board Alice Henkin sits. Third phase began with Cold War end. As ideology became a less salient factor, Francis Fukayama famously declared that we had reached the end of history. But as we know, the history did not end. Instead, the focal point shifted from ideology to identity, and we saw a horrific renewal of ethnic conflict & refugee outflows. The paradigm violation became

group & ethnic conflict, and the search for solutions shifted toward preventive diplomacy, sanctions, and the development of what I call "transnational networks:" govts, intergovtal organizations, NGO's, and courageous individuals, what I call "transnational norm entrepreneurs," like Aung San Su Kyi, the Dalai Lama, Jose Ramos Horta, Bishop Belo, and others, who sought to operationalize the norms of intl human rights law.
So if the first phase was the phase of universalization, if the second phase was the phase of institutionalization, the third phase has been one of "operationalization" of human rights law, an era in which various mechanisms for enforcement of human rights norms have grown more robust and been supplemented by transnational public & private networks.

Today, 10 years after the Cold War, we are now entering a fourth phase, which I call the "age of globalization." It is a complex phase of history in which all of the elements that I have described are now simultaneously present. We live in a world in which the threat of genocide has not been dispelled, in which dissidents remain imprisoned, in which ethnic & group conflict continues to rage. We now have unwieldy response mechanisms that now involve intergovtal institutions trying to apply international norms, transnational networks, new tools of accountability & monitoring and, where necessary, diplomacy backed by force, followed, as we saw in Kosovo and E. Timor, with mechanisms of force backed by diplomacy.
In this world, conflict has few boundaries. Disputes escalate rapidly. Groups are regularly pitted against groups and in such situations, no one is safe from human rights abuses, be they relief workers, NGO workers, doctors, nuns, journalists, or children. As recent events have demonstrated, massive abuses of human rights, including intentional targeting of civilians, have increasingly become viewed as an effective means of carrying out this kind of intl struggle. We saw it in Bosnia, where civilians were raped & shot en masse, in Rwanda, or today in recent months in Sierra Leone, in Kosovo, or most recently in E. Timor, where militias have killed & looted, hacking civilians to death on the very doorstep of the UN compound.

… where do we go from here? Some people say the U.S. Govt has no human rights policy. In my time in this position, I have tried to argue that we do. That policy has 4 parts.
First, we have tell the truth about human rights conditions, however painful or unwelcome that truth might be to foreign govts or even to our own govt. Lou Henkin is famous for saying, "In the cathedral of human rights, the U.S. is like a flying buttress. We support that structure, but only from the outside."

The fact that we have failed to ratify so many key human rights conventions, like the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, and the American Convention on Human Rights, remains to me a continuing embarrassment. We need to do more to bring our national standards, and especially the standards of our several states, into line with intl standards.
For although we're proud of our domestic human rights record, we have not fully internalized human rights norms into our domestic law. We have to do more to assure that our asylum policies, our police system, our prison system, and our criminal justice system are second to none in meeting intl standards.

Second, we need to stand on principle and continue to articulate basic, fundamental rights & freedoms, and to protect them as we can.

Third, we need to be consistent and take consistent positions with regard to the past, present and future abuses. With regard to the past, we need to promote principles of accountability & reconciliation. To do that, we do need to continue working toward the development of an effective & independent intl criminal court. We need a court that is strong enough to bring to justice violators of human rights & humanitarian law, while at the same time ensuring that that court will safeguard the legitimate role of national judicial systems and won't become a vehicle for frivolous & politically motivated charges.
If such a court can be created and if the U.S. can join it, it will be a critical part of our tool kit for deterring gross abuses and for insuring that those who do commit atrocities do not do so with impunity. To stop ongoing abuses, we should use an inside/outside approach with those countries with whom we have diplomatic relations that combines strategies of internal persuasion with techniques of external sanction & pressure.

To prevent future abuses, we need to promote early warning, preventive diplomacy, and tools of societal reconciliation. I'm not advocating an open-ended commitment to humanitarian intervention without limiting standards or principles. But as Sec. Albright has repeatedly said, as President Clinton said at the General Assembly earlier this week, supported by the views of Sec.General Annan, there are moments when collective military intervention is appropriate & feasible, and at times, sadly, when it is the only way to halt or prevent the mass slaughter of innocents or other large-scale human rights calamities. Fourth and finally, our human rights policy must recognize that no govt can promote human rights alone. We have to build partnerships & strategies of partnership between human rights advocates, corporations, labor unions, intl financial institution, and other organizations. We cannot allow dichotomies to be created between business & human rights, between labor & human rights, when in fact their interests are often coincident. The U.S. Govt cannot afford to be isolated from the NGO community, the media, or the academy. To make progress we have to work together and challenge each other to come up with more creative solutions. When I joined the State Dept, my Yale students gave me a going-away present, a set of calligraphy scrolls that, in Chinese characters, bore of one of my favorite sayings: "Theory without practice is as lifeless as practice without theory is thoughtless."

I was sent to Munich in 1921 to reopen our consulate general, which had been closed in 1917 by the war. From what I saw, I developed great doubts about the wisdom of Woodrow Wilson in brashly forcing the issue of self-determination. His sweeping ideas and superficial knowledge of practical aspects of European life promoted disintegration. Every other person I met in Munich seemed to be involved in some kind of intrigue, because the whole of Europe was in a state of flux. The German and Austro-Hungarian empires had been replaced by shaky republics in which most citizens had little confidence and which were viciously hated by fanatical minorities. The chaotic conditions gave genuine reason to fear Bolshevism might take same advantage of confusion in Germany & Austria as it had Czarist imperial collapse in Russia. Above all, while I was in Munich I watched the wildest runaway inflation in modern history wipe out savings of generations of Germany's & Austria's most decent, substantial people, leaving millions of them in dazed despair. That inflation did more than any other single factor to make Hitler possible.   1964   Diplomat Among Warriors Robt Murphy

the undead   ç Farewell to the nation-state   Dr. Kissinger & the breakdown of national borders ¹ 7.2.01   Michael Elliott Time With new book, Does America Need a Foreign Policy?, on the shelves, Kissinger is once again helping to shape American thinking on foreign relations. This is the 6th decade in which that statement can be said to be true. Kissinger's new book is terrific. Plainly intended as an extended tutorial on policy for the new American Administration, it is full of good sense and studded with occasional insights that will have readers nodding their heads in silent agreement. A particularly good chapter on Asia rebukes anyone who unthinkingly assigns to China the role once played by the Soviet Union as the natural antagonist of the U.S. But for all its virtues as a tour d'horizon of the challenges facing Washington, Kissinger's book can be read in another, and more illuminating, light. It is, in essence, an extended meditation on the end of a particular way of looking at the world: one where the principal actors in international relations are nation-states, pursuing their conception of their own national interest, and in which the basic rule of foreign policy is that one nation does not intervene in the internal affairs of another. Students of international relations call this the "Westphalian system," after the 1648 Peace of Westphalia that ended Europe's Thirty Years War, a time of indescribable carnage waged in the name of competing religions. The treaties that ended the war put domestic arrangements, like religion, off limits to other states. In the war's aftermath a rough-and-ready commitment to a balance of power among neighbors took shape. Kissinger is a noted scholar of the balance of power. And he is suspicious of attempts to meddle in the internal business of others. In a book that drips with devastating, if understated, contempt for the Clinton Administration and all its workings, nothing provokes Kissinger's ire more than America's "humanitarian" interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo. Yet Kissinger is far too sophisticated to attempt to recreate a world that is lost. "Today," he writes, "the Westphalian order is in systematic crisis." In particular, nation-states are no longer the sole drivers of the international system. In some cases, groups of states, like the European Union or Mercosur, have developed their own identities & agendas. Economic globalization has both blurred the boundaries between nations and given a substantial international role to those giant companies for whom such boundaries make little sense. In today's world, individuals can be as influential as nations; future historians may consider the support for public health of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to be more noteworthy than last week's United Nations conference on aids. And a whole raft of institutions are premised on the assumption that intervention in the internal affairs of others is often desirable. Were that not the case, Slobodan Milosevic would not have been surrendered last week to the jurisdiction of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. The consequences of these changes are profound. Kissinger is right to note that globalization has undermined the role of the nation-state less in the case of the U.S. (Why? Because it's more powerful than anyone else.) Elsewhere, the old ways of thinking about the "national interest", that guiding light of the Westphalian system, have fewer adherents than they once did. Not long ago, the national interest of, say, the Netherlands could be defined by a necessity to protect Dutch blood and soil. It would be absurd to imagine that the modern Dutch think that way now. For a sensible Dutch govt, it makes sense to define the things that really matter in terms of the international opportunities available to its companies, and in the commitment to global environmentalism that its citizens apparently avow. As more govts start to think along such lines, Washington risks looking like an outlier. When the U.S. asserts a self-centered policy on, say, missile defense or global warming, it is speaking a language that many others now consider archaic. (Not all: remember China.) In fact, even in America, the old ways of thinking about foreign policy are visibly under threat. It is American-led NGOs who have argued loudest for humanitarian intervention and for elevating the environment into an issue of foreign policy. Perhaps most interestingly, 25 years of mass immigration to the U.S., the bulk of it from Latin America & Asia, may make it harder for tomorrow's policymakers to forge a defined national interest than it was for the men who shaped Washington's thinking after World War II. All of which is a long way of saying that Kissinger's next book should not be about the rest of the world, but his own country.

As used in the U.S., the term Realpolitik is often similar to power politics, while in Germany, it describes modest (realistic) politics in opposition to overzealous (unrealistic) politics. In the German Green Party, people willing to compromise are referred to as Realos (realists), and opponents as Fundis (fundamentalists or ideologues).   vs. Ñoopolitik Associated with 9th century nationalism, most famous German advocate of Realpolitik was Otto von Bismarck, Kingdom of Prussia First Chancellor (1862-1870) to Wilhelm I, who used Realpolitik to achieve Prussian dominance in Germany, manipulating political issues to antagonise other countries, possibly with the intention of war. He acted with little regard to ethics, morals or legalities. Prussia's seemingly illogical move of not demanding territory from a defeated Austria, a move that later led to the unification of Germany, is one of the often-cited examples of Realpolitik. Policy of realpolitik was formally introduced to the Nixon White House by Henry Kissinger. Cf. Ðiplomacy 1994 In this context, the policy meant dealing with other powerful nations in a practical manner rather than on the basis of political doctrine or ethics. Ex. Nixon's diplomacy with the People's Republic of China,despite U.S. opposition to communism and previous doctrine of containment. In Kissinger's "shuttle diplomacy" after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, he persuaded the Israelis to withdraw partially from the Sinai in deference to political realities created by the oil crisis. Realpolitik is distinct from ideological politics in that it is not dictated by a fixed set of rules, but instead tends to be goal-oriented,limited only by practical exigencies. Since realpolitik is ordered toward the most practical means of securing national interests, it can often entail compromising on ideological principles. U.S. under Nixon & Reagan administrations often supported authoritarian regimes that were human rights violators in order to, theoretically, secure the greater national interest of regional stability. Careful Realpolitik practitioners tried to avoid arms races. The term was coined by Ludwig August von Rochau, German writer and politician in the 19th century, following Klemens von Metternich's lead in finding ways to balance the power of European empires to keep peace between European pentarchy, 5 great European powers of 18th & 19th cent. Britain, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia recognized in the Congress system aka Concert of Europe following the era of Napoleon and the French Revolution where the old powers met from time to time in an International Conference, or Congress in order to plan a solution by mutual agreement (hence "concert"), whenever some problem arose that threatened peace between European nations. The French Revolution of 1789 spurred a great fear among in European leading powers of lower classes violently rising against against monarchs. Leading personalities of the system were British foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh, Austrian Chancellor Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and Alexander I the Tsar of Russia. The Concert of Europe lasted between 1814 and 1898 and in time assumed an official status of the type of the League of Nations. Meetings incl. Congress of Vienna (1814-1815), Aix-la-Chappelle (1818), Carlsbad (1819), Verona (1822) and London in 1830, 1832, and 1838-1839. The Congress of Berlin in 1887 raised the Concert of Europe to the status of de facto world govt. Ex. in 1827 three Great Powers, Britain, France and Russia, joined in the Battle of Navarino to defeat an Ottoman fleet. Fatally weakened by the European revolutionary upheavals of 1848 with their demands for revision of the Congress of Vienna's frontiers along national lines, last vestiges of the Concert expired amid successive wars between its participants, Crimean War (1854-56), Italian War of Independence (1859), Austro-Prussian War (1866) and Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). The Concert of Europe was laid to its final rest in the waters of Manilla Bay on the morning of May 1, 1898. On August 13, the day after the Spanish-American war ended, the German fleet withdrew, fully aware that the Concert of Europe had been superseded by "The New Order of Freedom". The Concert of Europe gradually fell apart mainly because of disagreements between the great powers, particularly between Britain and the countries with more conservative constitutions. Despite overall failure of the Congress System. it marked an important step in European and World diplomacy. In its approximately 85 years life it erected an imposing structure of International Law. [ Realpolitik was the expedient tradition that allowed Hitler to take Jew bank financing, incl lots of Wall St funding, thinking himself strong enough to resist the demands it placed on his policies. ] Be vigilant against 'new empire theory' 4.26.02   editorial People's Daily Recently, around the time when the US govt dished out the "Theory of Defeated Nations", External Policy Advisor Robert Kubo of British Prime Minister Tony Blair published in the British paper, Observer, his fantastic talks, which advocate saving the world with new imperialism. Exactly the same as past colonialism & imperialism which needed to find an excuse for colonization, aggression and expansion, modern power politics & new interventionism also need a certain kind of theoretical packing and creation of public opinion. This clamor for the self-styled "longing for new empire", which puts a fashioned cloak on the mummy of old colonialism and divides the world into 3 types of country groups:   "front modern countries" composed of Somali, Afghanistan and other former colonial countries;   "rear empires & rear modern countries" composed of former colonizers;   "traditional countries" made up of China, India, Pakistan and some other countries. In brief, "new empire theory" maintains defeated country group formed by former colonies are breeding grounds of turmoil & threat. It stands for use of the means of new colonization, thinking it is acceptable for "rear empire" to export stability & freedom abroad. "New empire theory", based on colonialist concept & logic, advocates rear modern country group be accustomed to double standards, i.e., they should guarantee security through law & cooperation within themselves, whereas in dealing with former colonial countries outside Europe, they should adopt the previous century jungle law-force, preemptive attack, deception, as well as any methods needed for dealing with those countries still living in the 19th century. Moreover, "new empire theory" lists many developing countries in "defeated countries" group that endanger world security & stability, claiming these countries have lost the legality of using force. To green light new imperialist military intervention, "new empire theory" gives farfetched footnotes that making Afghan warfare serve as "defensive imperialism" is "understandable". "New empire theory" sums up European union as "voluntary imperialism", asserting that rear modern European union has offered a "cooperative empire" prospect, sticking the label "voluntary global economic imperialism" on IMFund and World Bank. On the other hand, in order to legalize the new empire group's intervention in affairs of nearby regions, "new empire theory" fabricates concept of "neighboring country imperialism". Based on war chaos & instability of the Balkan region, (NET) thinks rear modern country group not only should send out peace-keeping & intl protection forces, but also should provide police, judges, chief wardens, bankers, etc., at the same time, they should supervise & organize election. Put plainly, if new empire group only rely on creed of "neighboring country imperialism", they can more unscrupulously interfere in regional affairs of neighboring countries, even including even toppling regime of a country and changing its social system. Essence of "new empire theory" aims to clear the way for power politics in the new age; it runs counter to trends establishing just & reasonable international new political order. If hegemonic logic & jungle law per "new empire theory" is acted upon, the results are utter disorder. Norms of international law centered on State sovereignty, territorial integrity and national dignity will be wantonly trampled upon, unilateralism & new interventionism pursued by certain countries & country groups will run wild. After the human society entered into the 21st century wherein peace & development are stressed, fact that "defeated nation theory" and the "new empire theory" echo each other should arouse the full vigilance of the international community.

Confronting anti-American grievances 9.1.02   Zbigniew Brzezinski NY Times Wash.DC   Nearly a year after the start of America's war on terrorism, that war faces the real risk of being hijacked by foreign govts with repressive agendas. Instead of leading a democratic coalition, the U.S. faces the risk of dangerous isolation. Bush administration definition of the challenge that America confronts has been cast largely in semi-religious terms. The public has been told repeatedly that terrorism is "evil," which it undoubtedly is, and that "evildoers" are responsible for it, which doubtless they are. But beyond these justifiable condemnations, there is a historical void. It is as if terrorism is suspended in outer space as an abstract phenomenon, with ruthless terrorists acting under some Satanic inspiration unrelated to any specific motivation. President Bush has wisely eschewed identifying terrorism with Islam as a whole and been careful to stress that Islam as such is not at fault. But some supporters of the administration have been less careful about such distinctions, arguing that Islamic culture in general is so hostile to the West, esp. to democracy, that it has created a fertile soil for terrorist hatred of America. Missing from much of the public debate is discussion of the simple fact that lurking behind every terroristic act is a specific political antecedent. That does not justify either the perpetrator or his political cause. Nonetheless, the fact is that almost all terrorist activity originates from some political conflict and is sustained by it as well. That is true of the Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland, Basques in Spain, Palestinians in West Bank & Gaza, Muslims in Kashmir and so forth. In the case of 9.11.01, it does not require deep analysis to note, given the identity of the perpetrators, that MidEast political history has something to do with the hatred of MidEastern terrorists for America. Specifics of the region's political history need not be dissected too closely because terrorists presumably do not delve deeply into archival research before embarking on a terrorist career. Rather, it is the emotional context of felt, observed or historically recounted political grievances that shapes the fanatical pathology of terrorists and eventually triggers their murderous actions. American involvement in the MidEast is clearly the main impulse of the hatred that has been directed at America. There is no escaping the fact that Arab political emotions have been shaped by the region's encounter with French & British colonialism, by defeat of Arab effort to prevent the existence of Israel and by subsequent American support for Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians, as well as by the direct injection of American power into the region. This last has been perceived by the more fanatical elements in the region as offensive to the sacred religious purity of Saudi Arabian custodianship of Islam's holy places and as hurtful to the welfare of the Iraqi people. The religious aspect adds fervor to their zeal, but it is worth noting that some 9.11.01 terrorists had non-religious lifestyles. Their attack on the World Trade Center had a definite political cast to it. Yet there has been a remarkable reluctance in America to confront the more complex historical dimensions of this hatred. The inclination instead has been to rely on abstract assertions like terrorists "hate freedom" or that their religious background makes them despise Western culture. To win the war on terrorism, one must therefore set 2 goals: first to destroy the terrorists and, second, begin political effort that focuses on the conditions that brought about their emergence. That is what the British are doing in Ulster, the Spaniards are doing in Basque country and the Russians are being urged to do in Chechnya. To do so does not imply propitiation of the terrorists, but is a necessary component of a strategy designed to isolate & eliminate the terrorist underworld. Analogies are not the same as identity, but with that in mind one might consider the parallels between what the U.S. faces today in regard to MidEastern terrorism and the crises that America confronted domestically in the 1960's & 70's. At that time, American society was shaken by violence undertaken by groups like the Ku Klux Klan (often in semi-autonomous klaverns), White Citizens' Councils, the Black Panthers and the Symbionese Liberation Army. Without civil-rights legislation and the concomitant changes in America's social views on race relations, the challenge that those organizations posed might have lasted much longer and become more menacing.   [ Not least from the exposure & subsequent restraining legislation of Cointelpro proved to be the incitement that turned ardent reform organizations into terrorist militants. ]

Narrow, almost one-dimensional definition of the terrorist threat favored by the Bush administration poses the special risk that foreign powers will also seize upon the word "terrorism" to promote their own agendas, as Pres. Putin of Russia, PM Sharon of Israel, PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India and President Jiang Zemin of China are doing. For each of them the disembodied American definition of the terrorist challenge has been both expedient & convenient.

When speaking to Americans, neither Mr. Putin nor Mr. Sharon can hardly utter a sentence without the "T" word in it in order to transform America's struggle against terrorism into a joint struggle against their particular Muslim neighbors. Putin clearly sees an opportunity to deflect Islamic hostility away from Russia despite Russian crimes in Chechnya and earlier in Afghanistan. . Sharon would welcome deterioration in U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia and perhaps American military action against Iraq while gaining a free hand to suppress the Palestinians. Hindu fanatics in India are also quite eager to conflate Islam in general with terrorism in Kashmir in particular. Not to be outdone, the Chinese recently succeeded in persuading the Bush administration to list an obscure Uighur Muslim separatist group fighting in Xinjiang province as a terrorist organization with ties to Al Qaeda.

For America, potential risk is that its nonpolitically defined war on terrorism may thus be hijacked and diverted to other ends. The consequences would be dangerous. If America comes to be viewed by its key democratic allies in Europe & Asia as morally obtuse & politically naive in failing to address terrorism in its broader & deeper dimensions, and if it is also seen by them as uncritically embracing intolerant suppression of ethnic or national aspirations, global support for America's policies will surely decline.
America's ability to maintain a broadly democratic antiterrorist coalition will suffer gravely. Prospects of international support for an eventual military confrontation with Iraq will also be drastically diminished. Such an isolated America is likely to face even more threats from vengeful terrorists who have decided to blame America for any outrages committed by its self-appointed allies.

A victory in the war against terrorism can never be registered in a formal act of surrender.

[ Because "terrorism" is a crime, not warfare. Prosecution by courts instead of military engagement is the only rational means of ending it ]

U.S. says 'Hi' to young arabs   8.18.03   NPR Govt funded magazine aims to boost America's image Hi magazine first issue cover story: American college experience through eyes of Arab students. poetry, popular MidEast art form, resurgent in America jazz: Norah Jones making marriage work yoga trends in U.S. & MidEast American Moments pictorial essay of everyday events around U.S. sandboarding, w/ roots in ancient Egypt, becoming popular sport in U.S. profile of Arab-American actor Tony Shalhoub technology: Translation software cultural experiences of young Lebanese journalist on first trip to U.S. At bustling Virgin Megastore in Beirut, a 20-year-old Lebanese design student Lara Hawi seems impressed with Hi after leafing through the magazine for the first time. "The name is attractive and we lack Arabic magazines that are not all full of interviews & stupid things." … Ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi Levant will soon start marketing the magazine, and CEO Elie Khoury says he's confident it will be well received. "It's a quality youth-targeting magazine that opens a door of dialogue … that is without doubt an American effort, but it's certainly not a propaganda thing," Khoury says. … Beirut Daily Star newspaper exec. editor Rami Khoury (dis)agrees, (saying) Hi magazine is misguided, in his view a waste of money. "It's another example of the confusion and I would even say total incompetence of U.S. official organs in dealing with the issue of Arab public opinion. I think they just don't get it." In a working class Beirut neighborhood, several college students perused the magazine outside a local snack shop. 20 yr old Hassan Moustafa said the content seemed rather familiar and not terribly challenging. "I would be more interested if the magazine talked about why Americans support Israel or why they did what they did in Iraq." His friend, 21 year old Ahmad Jabbouri adds most Arab youth already admire American culture & people. It's American govt that's the problem, he says. Moustafa says it's clear to him Americans know nothing about Arabs. He says what's needed is not another magazine marketing American culture to Arabs, but rather a publication informing Americans about the Arab world.

U.S. State Dept "Hi" magazine eyes Arab "future leaders" ¹   8.9.03   Islam Online Wash.DC   U.S. funded Arabic language "Hi" magazine has its eyes on young Arabs who will lead their countries in the future, 8.9.03 Wash.Post quoted an American diplomat. It will cost American taxpayers about $4 million a year. "It's good to get them in a dialogue while their opinions are not fully formed on matters large & small," said State Dept special coordinator for public diplomacy Christopher W. S. Ross. "This is a long-term way to build a relationship with people who will be the future leaders of the Arab world," he stressed. The new monthly glossy financed by State Dept debuted in July 2003 to target Arabs aged 18-35. … Arab- American analysts counter that U.S. had better review its biased foreign policy rather than publish a new lifestyle magazine. U.S. diplomatic sources said that U.S. admin has earmarked an annual budget of $4.2 million for "Hi". Last year, U.S. admin launched Arabic-language Radio Sawa, which broadcasts a mix of Western & Arab pop music along with news bulletins, and is one of the projects created by White House Office of Global Communications. Although Wash.DC edited "Hi" has a statement printed on each issue that it is published "on behalf of the U.S. State Dept foreign media office", it steers clear of politics, not to mention widely disapproved U.S. foreign policy and global hegemony, incl invasion of Iraq &. Arab-Israeli conflict. "This is a lifestyle magazine," argues Hi's Libyan American managing editor Fadel Lamen. "It's a new phenomenon in the Arab world to do a lifestyle magazine that doesn't touch on the political." Ross, for his part, says: "There are plenty of political magazines. This is, in a very subtle way, a vehicle for American values. There have been people in Congress who have said, 'Why can't we explain our American values?' Here is one way to do that." "State Dept conceived of the magazine after 9.11.01" added former ambassador to Syria & Algeria Ross, who is fluent in Arabic. Lebanese American Univ. of Mississippi journalism prof.Samir Husni, hired as consulting editor, said the monthly cast a spotlight on the positive sides of U.S. community and avoid tackling its problems. "It's not going to have in- depth investigative pieces on problems of America. We're emphasizing positive things," said Husni. "It's like Reader's Digest of America, a Cliffs Notes of what's going on in America from American point of view." In its premiere issue, State Dept spokeswoman said "Hi" is primarily aimed at hatred harbored by Arabs for U.S., spotlighting similarities between Arab & American youth and getting Arab youth to fall for American lifestyle.

This issue allotted a free space advertising for American universities, which have witnessed a drop in the number of Arab students since the attacks.
Arab community in U.S. contends U.S. admin addresses the wrong problem by trying to beautify its tarnished image through a series of publications & and radio programs, noting that the main problem lies in U.S.double standard foreign policy.

"The problem with young Arabs is not how they perceive U.S. culture or American way of life," says Egyptian-born Stonehill College MA journalism prof. Mohammed Nawawy, co-author of book on Al jazeera TV network."They're watching American movies and wearing American jeans and lining up to get visas to come to U.S.. The problem is how they perceive U.S. foreign policy; that can only be changed by actions on the ground in Iraq & Israel," he added.

Georgetown Univ. Ctr for Contemporary Arab Studies Samer Shehata echoes the same opinion. He, like Nawawy, believes Arabs do not hate America or American culture, but loathe its MidEast foreign policy. "A magazine directed at Arab youth, regardless of how well done, will not convince people otherwise," he averred, referring tot he eye-catching glossy magazine.
Speaking to Islam Online.net last week, Jordanian journalist Samehal-Mueittah described the new publication as "a U.S. PR campaign to beautify its stained image in the eyes of Arab & Muslim worlds afte 9.11.01." He was also skeptical about success of "Hi", noting that the U.S. embassy in Amman had in vain tried to win hearts of Jordanians. "If Americans issued & aired a myriad of Arab-directed magazines & radios, they would never succeed in changing anything," he said.

The magazine features stories on many issues, incl pop songs, Arab singers, e-matchmaking, digital art, and different ethnic communities in U.S. Thus far,the magazine is distributed in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, Sudan, Israel, Kuwait, Yemen, Bahrain and United Arab Emirates, among others. Hi's publishers are still seeking permission to sell the magazine in Syria and SaudiArabia.
Now, circulation is only 50,000, but State Dept hopes to expand that to 250,000, said Wash.Post. Wash.DC based Magazine Group co. which produces "Hi" also publishes magazines for bodies, such as National Concrete Masonry Assn & Jewish Women Intl.

Halford Mackinder,   author 1904 Geographical pivot of history, 1919 Democratic Ideals and Reality:

"Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;
  Who rules the heartland commands the World Island;
    Who rules the World Island commands the World."
i.e. East Europe = strategic route to Heartland; interpreted as requiring buffer state to separate Germany & Russia

enthusiastically taken up by the German school of Geopolitik, in particular by
German military instructor & Friedrich Ratzel nephew Karl Haushofer, mentor of
  scientific asst protégé & Thule Society member Rudolf Hess,
    Hitler's Nazi Party deputy fuhrer & Mein Kampf transcriptionist.