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Fall
Books America a unique catalyst for good or ill
GLOBAL FOCUS: A
NEW FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA 1997-1998 Edited by Tom Barry and Martha
Honey Interhemispheric Resource Center (Box 2178, Silver City, NM 88062),
282 pages, $15.95 paper |
THE NEXT FIFTY
YEARS: THE UNITED NATIONS AND THE UNITED STATES By By Tom Barry with
Eric Leaver Interhemispheric Resource Center, 202 pages, $11.95
paper |
By GARY
MacEOIN
Global Focus is an extremely ambitious and highly
successful attempt to reassess the appropriate U.S. role in the post-cold war
world. The editors have brought together 50 experts, including such authorities
as Wayne Smith (on Cuba), William Minter (Africa), Michael Klare (Pentagon) and
Admiral Eugene Carroll (Peace). They were backed up by a similar army of
readers and consultants assembled by the Resource Center in a joint project
with the Institute for Policy Studies. In 59 monographs the authors cover
international trade, investment, cooperation and peace, Latin America, Europe,
Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The United States, the authors argue, has not yet readjusted
foreign policy "from cold war assumptions to 21st century realities." Although
no longer the global force it used to be, as competitors for markets and
resources emerge in Europe and Asia, the United States is still the world's
only superpower, "the only country with the preparation and experience to act
for good or evil as a catalytic force in international affairs."
Particularly disturbing is the "thin democracy" the United States
is promoting in Central America and elsewhere, a context that lacks freedom of
expression, civilian control of armed forces and budgets, an independent
judiciary and opportunity for citizens to participate in economic life. The
United States maintains this facade of democracy "through narrow trade
agreements, World Bank loans, IFM programs and the export of $15 billion in
arms each year to oppressive governments."
The globalized economy that is a dominant characteristic of
today's and tomorrow's world creates a fundamental challenge to workers
everywhere. Wages and working conditions have fallen one percent a year for the
last 20 years in the United States, and much more steeply elsewhere. More than
30 percent of the world labor force is unemployed or seriously underemployed.
In the rich countries the number of "3-D" jobs (dangerous, dirty, difficult)
done for very low pay by illegal or unprotected immigrants is rising rapidly.
Prison labor is a growing part of the manufacturing work force not only in
China but in the United States.
Even the strongest national governments cannot by themselves
reverse these trends by labor laws and policies, and the United States
consistently resists efforts at international cooperation to protect workers.
Of 178 international conventions regulating everything from freedom of
association to the rights of indigenous and migrant workers, enacted since
1919, the United States has ratified only 11. Its enforcement of such worker
protections as it has incorporated in NAFTA and other agreements is weak and
inconsistent, dominated by political considerations.
A recurring theme in this book is the distorting impact of the
military-industrial complex on all aspects of national life. The consensus of
the authors is that, without any threat to national security, we could shift
enough dollars from the Pentagon to "provide dignified work to all U.S.
citizens and address the hunger and poverty of poorer countries, which
constitute a tinderbox of global insecurity." Specifically, the need for NATO
today is questioned and its expansion is condemned.
In The Next Fifty Years Tom Barry presents the United
Nations as the key institution for dealing with the global economy that is
already here. The United States played the central role in creating the UN, and
was a strong supporter as long as it could manipulate the UN for its own
purposes. As a more militant Third World bloc emerged, the tide changed, so
that by the 1980s the United States found itself in the minority more than four
times out of five.
Its reactions have been childish, including refusal to pay its
dues, which are now considerably more than a billion dollars in arrears.
Instead of paying, this country denounces the bloated UN bureaucracy. Like all
big structures, the UN has its inadequacies, but a former assistant secretary,
Erskine Childers, put the issue in perspective by pointing out that the state
of Wyoming, with only 450,000 people, has more civil servants.
Ironically, the United States resists moves by other members to
reduce its proportion of the total budget (25 percent), because that would mean
a cut in its ability to manipulate the world body.
Gary MacEoin is an author, journalist and Latin America expert.
He lives in San Antonio.
National Catholic Reporter, September 5,
1997
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