World Beat
by JOHN FEFFER | Thursday, July 12, 2007
Published by Foreign Policy In Focus (FPIF), a project of the Institute
for Policy Studies (IPS)
fpif.org: a think tank without walls
We’re Number 96!
Welcome to the new format and location for World Beat, the e-zine of
Foreign Policy In Focus from the Institute for Policy Studies. Every
week we bring you a short commentary and a rundown of the latest FPIF
content. This week: our Independence Day edition.
On July 4th, Americans descend into paroxysms of patriotism. There are
big flags and big parades, big speeches and big fireworks. And don’t
forget the big foam fingers raised high: we’re number one!
As Frida Berrigan has pointed out in TomDispatch, the only people in
the United States who can legitimately wave their fingers in the air
are the employees of the military-industrial complex and the energy
industry. The United States is number one in the world in oil
consumption, military expenditures, arms exports, and the training of
soldiers overseas. Go Army! Go Texas!
The United States doesn’t, however, do so well in other indices.
According to the UN’s Human Development Index (HPI), which combines
such measures as life expectancy, literacy, and per capita GDP, the
United States ranks number 8 in the world. We’re behind Ireland and
Australia.
But the HDI is comparatively kind to the United States. Not so the
Environmental Performance Index, put together by Yale University. This
index looks at such measures as air quality, water resources, and
energy sustainability. America comes out at number 28. Again, those
pesky Irish and Australians do better than us. But this time they’re
joined by Slovakia and Malaysia.
But the worst is yet to come. After all, everyone knows that the UN is
anti-American and Yale University is a safe haven for Marxists and
deconstructionists. Their rankings will naturally put the United States
in a bad light.
So it must come as a shock to the America Firsters that the
intelligence unit of the venerable British magazine The Economist has
devised an index that puts the United States so far down in the ranks
that even Yemen scores better. According to the new Global Peace Index
(GPI), the United States ranks 96. Serbia, which was involved in wars
throughout the 1990s, does better. The country of Moldova, dealing with
the armed, breakaway republic of Transnistria, does better. Even the
land of the killing fields, Cambodia, scored higher! Remember, this is
The Economist speaking, not The Onion.
As FPIF contributor Gretchen Griener explains in Going from Hawk to
Dove, the United States earned substantial demerits in the GPI for its
huge prison population ` 25% of all prisoners in the world are housed
in the United States. Easy access to firearms also sent the U.S. rank
plummeting.
External factors, too, played a role in this humiliation: `the wars and
occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, the burgeoning $613 billion
military budget, and the nation’s vast weapons industry.’ Griener adds,
`The United States also earned the worst rating for the large number of
non-UN deployments, a bad rating for the number of external and
internal conflicts fought, and a bad rating for the transfer of major
conventional weapons to other countries. The Guantanamo detentions have
not helped the U.S. ranking when it comes to respect for human rights.’
Nor surprisingly, the GPI failed to generate headlines in the United
States. But Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) did spread the word among his
congressional colleagues by talking up the index on Capitol Hill.
`We’ve got to clean up our act,’ he told Michael Shanks in an interview
for FPIF. `We are unquestionably the wealthiest nation in the world.
But the question is, in this age of globalization, are we using that
wealth and that power to help others so that we can bring them up? Or
are we using that wealth and that power just to continue our power and
our wealth at the expense of others?’
Exiting Iraq
This Sunday, The New York Times endorsed a rapid U.S. troop withdrawal
from Iraq. As the editorial acknowledges, a majority of Americans came
to this conclusion several months ago. Better late than never. The New
York Times, perhaps more than any other mainstream newspaper, helped
the Bush administration make the case for the invasion of Iraq. Its
editorial reversal may not have the same impact as CBS news anchor
Walter Cronkite’s public turn against the Vietnam War. But it will
contribute to the increasing isolation of the Bush administration.
FPIF military affairs analyst Dan Smith looks a year into the future
and sees a possible reconfiguration of the regional balance of power as
a result of U.S. misinterpretations and mishandlings of Middle Eastern
affairs. `Sensing a possible change in the balance of power in the Gulf
as the coalition military forces leave Iraq, the Iranians secretly
approach Saudi Arabia with a proposal to stabilize the
political-economic conditions in the Persian Gulf ` Caspian Sea oil
fields,’ Smith writes in Exiting Iraq. `The core of the proposal calls
for Riyadh and Tehran to pressure Baghdad diplomatically (and with the
sectarian militias always in the background) to reject any form of a
residual U.S. military presence in Iraq. In return, both Iran and Saudi
Arabia would assist the re-development of Iraq’s oil sector, enabling
the three countries to form a powerful sub-OPEC triumvirate.’
But wait, the Bush administration has no intention of heeding The New
York Times and removing U.S. military forces from Iraq. The president
has deliberately avoided all references to a Vietnam analogy. In
Vietnam, the United States handed over military responsibilities to the
South Vietnamese prior to pulling out. The Bush administration has cast
around for an analogy that doesn’t conjure up images of people
desperate to get on the last U.S. helicopters.
And so the administration has seized on the Korea analogy: a
more-or-less permanent U.S. military presence for decades. `The
consensus among military officials reported by The Washington Post on
June 11 forecast at least 40,000 U.S. troops remaining in Iraq for a
decade,’ write FPIF contributors Anne Miller and Kevin Martin in Earth
to Bush: Iraq Isn’t South Korea. `Nor would this plan necessarily
change under a Democratic president. According to a recent NPR
commentary by veteran reporter Ted Koppel, Hillary Clinton has
privately said she expects a significant number of U.S. troops to
remain in Iraq for the next ten years, even if she were to serve two
terms as president.’
Talking Turkey
The Iraq War has profound ripple effects. Take the case of Turkey,
traditionally a close U.S. ally. But Ankara refused Washington’s demand
to use Turkey as a jumping off point for the invasion of Iraq. And
U.S.-Turkey relations have continued to sour because of the support
that the Kurdish part of Iraq has provided to Kurdish separatists
across the border in Turkey.
As a result, Turkey is having second thoughts about throwing its lot in
with Europe and the United States. It’s not just about fear of large
changes, writes FPIF contributor Pinar Bilgin.
`It has also to do with how some within Turkey have portrayed the
reform process as part of a Western strategy aimed at dismembering the
country and/or watering down its secularism in order to render the
country a better model for other `Muslim’ societies to emulate in
advancing a `Greater Middle East,” she writes in Turkey’s European
Dilemma. `The U.S.-led war on Iraq, which was justified on these
grounds and made it possible (albeit in an unintended way) for Kurdish
separatists to use the region as a base to launch attacks inside
Turkey, provided more ammunition to those who produce such conspiracy
theories. Also presented as evidence have been the discouraging remarks
by some EU politicians regarding the futility of Turkey’s efforts to
Europeanize given its lack of `Europeanness’ and the increasing
pressure on Turkey to identify the killings of Armenians during World
War I as `genocide.”
According to a recent Pew poll that shows U.S. popularity in the world
in a continued freefall, only four percent of Turks have a positive
attitude toward the spread of American ideas, which puts them on par
with Palestinians and Pakistanis. Turkey also tops the poll in terms of
its dislike of the way the United States does business.
Turks are not the only ones who are rejecting the American model. `Pew
reports that majorities of people in 43 out of the 47 countries they
studied now believe that the United States promotes democracy mostly
where it serves its interests,’ writes FPIF columnist Zia Mian in
Freedom, Democracy, and Free Enterprise? People around the world
connect U.S. policies to human rights violations and widening
disparities of wealth.
And what about Americans who cling to the illusion that the United
States is still number one? `To hang on to what they have and try to
get what they can, no matter what it takes, will mean opposing
immigration reform, supporting corporations, and wanting their
government to sustain the global empire that brings some benefits in
the form of cheap goods, cheap energy, especially oil, and services,’
Mian writes. `There are many politicians in both the Democratic and
Republican parties who are willing to offer this path: their only real
disagreement may be how much force to use to sustain the American way
of life.’
A Real Stinker
Maybe it was the title of the last World Beat, but somehow our email
distribution system failed to deliver The Bad Egg to many of our
subscribers. If you want to read more about Dick Cheney and his assault
on U.S. foreign policy, click here for last week’s edition.
Links
Frida Berrigan, `A Nation of Firsts Arms the World,’ TomDispatch, May
21, 2007; 3/
Human Development Index, 2006;
hdi2004.pdf
Environmental Performance Index, 2006;
Glo bal Peace Index,
Gretche n Griener, `Going from Hawk to Dove,’ Foreign Policy In Focus
(); The United States ranks behind
Yemen, Cambodia, and Serbia in the Global Peace Index.
Michael Shank, `Meeks on Global Peace Index,’ Foreign Policy In Focus
(); The United States ranks 96th in the
world in terms of peacefulness. Rep. Meeks explains why.
`The Road Home,’ The New York Times, July 8, 2007;
html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
Dan Smith, `Exiting Iraq,’ Foreign Policy In Focus
(); Here’s how the U.S. pull-out might
happen.
Anne Miller and Kevin Martin, `Earth to Bush: Iraq Isn’t South Korea,’
Foreign Policy In Focus (); The
Iraq-South Korea connection: a warning flag, and a chance to open up
debate on U.S. "occupations" around the globe.
Pinar Bilgin, `Turkey’s European Dilemma,’ Foreign Policy In Focus
(); In the courtship of Europe and
Turkey, both sides are having second thoughts.
Pew Global Attitudes Project, `Global Unease with Major World Powers,’
June 27, 2007; 256
Zia Mian, `Freedom, Democracy, and Free Enterprise?’ Foreign Policy In
Focus (); The United States has been
aggressively exporting its economic and political model but, as
columnist Zia Mian explains, finding fewer and fewer buyers.
World Beat, `The Bad Egg,’ Foreign Policy In Focus
()
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/18/133
http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/documents/
http://www.yale.edu/epi/2006EPI_Rankings.pdf
http://www.visionofhumanity.com/rankings/
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4352
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4350
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/opinion/08sun1.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4349
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4354
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4353
http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?ReportID=
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4358
http://www.fpif.org/fpifzines/wb/4351