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April,
2003: Players Who’s Up To What
By Greg Rushford
Published in the Rushford Report
Bush diplomacy: First, fry the French
Many Americans believe, as the Washington Times editorialized on
March 20, that before he launched the war against
Iraq
on the evening of March 19, President George W. Bush “went the extra
mile in an effort to give diplomacy a chance to work in the Security
Council.” The Washington Post has editorialized that it is unreasonable
to blame the war on Bush. Meanwhile, the White House public-relations
machinery and the two top Republicans in Congress, Speaker Dennis Hastert
and Majority Leader Tom DeLay, have been working hard to make French
President Jacques Chirac the main fall guy for the failure of diplomacy.
Did Bush really go the extra mile to work with Chirac? Did he even
take one sincere step to reach out to the French leader? Or did Bush
intend all along to steamroller Chirac and anyone else with the temerity
to question the new
Rome
?
The right answer surely is: “steamroller.” Bush didn’t even
bother to pick up the telephone to call Chirac once in more than five
weeks before March 16, the day Bush held his press conference in the
Azores
to pronounce the end of diplomacy. The last time that the two leaders had
spoken to each other was on February 8. That day, Chirac called Bush to
explain the French reasoning on the war. Only a few days before that,
Chirac had called Bush to express his condolences for the tragic loss of
the space shuttle Challenger, relates spokeswoman Nathalie Loiseau at the
French embassy in
Washington
.
Also on March 16, Chirac suggested giving
Iraq
another 30 days to comply with the Security Council’s demands to disarm
fully. Jean-David Levitte,
France
’s ambassador to the
United States
, said that if the U.N. inspectors reached “a dead end,”
France
would not “exclude the use of force.” That sounds like the beginnings
of something that could have lead to an international consensus — giving
Saddam Hussein’s famous intransigence enough time and rope to hang
himself in the eyes of the world. But the Bush administration’s
immediate answer was to unleash a PR blitz attacking Chirac.
Vice President Richard Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell
hit the Sunday talk shows hard, where they accused the French leader of
merely wanting to help Saddam slip the net. This wasn’t diplomacy, it
was a power play.
The power play was evident by the middle of last year, when Bush
repeatedly made no secret of his determination to go to war to overthrow
Saddam, regardless of the opinion of
U.S.
allies and the Security Council. Bush diplomacy aimed at the United
Nations — if you will forgive two oxymorons — was only launched after
the president had made up his mind that he really didn’t need the
Security Council. While the American public and much of the press have
largely been fooled, experienced diplomats perceived what was going on
from day one.
I reported in October 2002 that “in the 14 months since the
terrorist attacks on the twin towers and the Pentagon, Bush has squandered
an incredible reservoir of good will.” My report was based on detailed
off-the-record interviews with senior American, European, Asian, and Latin
American diplomats — all concerned with the consequences of unnecessary
American heavy-handedness.
On
September 17, 2002
the White House released the 31-page The National Security Strategy of the
United States of America
. To experienced diplomats, this was one of the most important — and
disturbing — presidential documents in a long time, because of its
assertions of America’s unilateral right to launch pre-emptive military
attacks whenever it wanted to. Bush wouldn’t like it much if other
countries — say, if
China
moved to take
Taiwan
by force, or if
India
would give an ultimatum to
Pakistan
— asserted the same right. In the eyes of much of the world, the
doctrine of pre-emption and
America
’s traditional moral authority are incompatible.
A few days after the controversial
U.S.
national-security document was released, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder came
from behind to win
Germany
’s election on Sept. 22. To put him over the top, Schroeder had
exploited popular resentment of
America
’s high-handed tactics. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice blamed Schroeder for “poisoning” the
atmosphere. While there was some truth to that, that atmosphere had
already been fouled by Bush, whose hot rhetoric had given Schroeder
something to exploit.
As if to illustrate its inability to tolerate opposing views, not
to mention sheer pettiness, the White House leaked word to reporters that
Bush had refused to join other world leaders in calling Schroeder to
congratulate him on his win. (Three months later, another politician
running in a tight presidential contest in a country long allied with the
United States
,
South Korea
’s Roh Moo-hyun, also won by appealing to Bush-fueled anti-American
sentiment).
Other leaders who didn’t ask “how high” when the U.S.
president said “jump” — Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Canada’s Jean
Chretien, Chile’s Richard Lagos, Mexico’s Vicente Fox — each ran
into the American steamroller as the world lurched toward America’s
first pre-emptive war last month.
No matter how smoothly the immediate tactical military operation to
dislodge Saddam fares — an unknown as this goes to press — sooner or
later, American diplomacy is going to have to learn to work with the world
again. The question is, how much damage to
America
’s prestige will be done before the bullying stops?
Will the
Iraq
war poison the WTO?
Nobody knows, of course, if the diplomatic unpleasantness over
Iraq
will spoil the chances for a successful conclusion of the WTO’s Doha
Round by the end of next year. When I was in
Geneva
last October, the good news was that the diplomatic atmosphere was
cordial. The poisoned air that had wrecked the 1999 Seattle WTO
ministerial meetings had cleared. But everyone knew, as
New Zealand
’s WTO ambassador, Tim Groser put it, that soon there would be “some
very rough weather ahead, as with any negotiations.”
That rough weather has now arrived.
Last month, WTO official Stuart Harbinson, a highly respected
former
Hong Kong
diplomat who is heading the crucial agriculture negotiations, circulated a
revised first draft of the so-called agriculture “modalities” paper to
WTO member countries. Modalities, overly simplified, are important
formulas that establish numerical targets aimed at setting the parameters
for how far trade liberalization might go when the Doha negotiations get
down to cutting the actual deals.
Harbinson’s was a good-faith effort to set the stage for the
serious milestone looming in September, when WTO ministers convene in
Cancun
. Alas, the good faith was met with a firestorm of unserious political
posturing from all directions.
Of course, such firestorms come with the territory. It is possible
to imagine a deal on agriculture in the
Doha
negotiations. Certainly, American and European trade officials like Robert
Zoellick and Pascal Lamy, two of the most resourceful negotiators in the
business, probably already have figured out how to do this.
Problem is, compromises struck at the technical levels won’t be
good enough. To make agriculture work in
Doha
, the deals will have to be cut at the highest political levels. That
means presidents. Men like George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac.
Everyone knows that even under the best of circumstances, any
French president who would endorse the necessary free-market reforms of
the EU’s farm programs that would make
Doha
work, would face domestic social and political unrest.
In order for
Doha
to succeed, the French and American presidents must strike a personal
rapport. They must be understanding of each other’s political problems.
They must be flexible. They must pick up their telephones and call the
other guy.
Uh oh.
The “anti-free enterprise” United Nations
There is tension between Republican conservatives in
Washington
, between those who differ on whether international organizations like the
United Nations and the World Trade Organization deserve American support.
On one side, multilateralists like Sens. Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel are
obviously comfortable in working patiently in international organizations.
But the right-wing part of the Republican party links a unilateralist
tradition from Henry Cabot Lodge, who wrecked the
League of Nations
, to George W. Bush, who has not bothered to hide his insistence that the
U.N. Security Council either must bend to his will or get out of the way.
The right-wingers — who are not conservatives, but reactionaries, in my
view — run things these days.
“I think they do have a lot of dictatorships,” Rep. Jack
Kingston, a right-winger from
Georgia
, said of the United Nations last month. “They’re very anti-free
enterprise and it shows in the way they vote.”
As for the congressman’s own free-enterprise credentials, turns
out that
Kingston
’s opinions on free trade turn mainly on
U.S.
cotton subsidies and peanut quotas. He doesn’t think much of
China
. One of
Kingston
’s ideas on how the
United States
should compete with
China
is by amending the United States Code to authorize the use of prison labor
for private commercial advantage. The idea is that American corporations
could use cheap prison labor to produce items that would otherwise be made
in
China
. To
Kingston
, prison labor is fine when the
United States
does it.
The agitated Dan DiMicco
Last month, I offered Daniel DiMicco, the chairman of the American
Iron & Steel Institute and the CEO of Nucor Corp., 1,200 words of
column space to reply to a speech that I recently made to steel executives
in
Tampa
.
The speech — reprinted in the March 2003 Rushford Report —
related some facts that should be embarrassing to the U.S. steel lobby:
Domestic steel mills complain about imports, but their own business
plans turn upon access to foreign semi-finished slabs to keep the mills
running. Domestic mills, as
Washington
lawyers Kenneth Pierce and William Barringer documented in Paying the
Price for Big Steel, have received some $100 billion in trade restraints
and subsidies in the past three decades, while they continue to complain
about foreign subsidies. I even explained how mills in the western
United States
complain that mills east of the
Rockies
“dump” steel at “unfairly” low prices.
I asked DiMicco in an e-mail: Do you admit these things or deny
them?
There was no response. I asked again. Still nothing.
Now, this is not a man who is normally shy about voicing his
opinions. DiMicco has called his free-trade critics names like
“barbarians,” for example.
Last month, DiMicco was sighted making the rounds on Capitol Hill,
where he loudly called his critics more unpleasant names. “I wouldn’t
say he was yelling and screaming,” says one bemused congressional source
who asked not to be quoted by name. “But Mr. DiMicco sure was rather
agitated.”
Will
U.S.
furniture makers declare war on
China
?
The American Furniture Manufacturers Association, which is based in
High Point
,
North Carolina
and has some 200 member companies, has hired veteran
Washington
trade lawyer Joseph Dorn, a partner in King & Spalding, to look into
the possibility of filing an antidumping action against
China
.
Looks like a classic case:
U.S.
furniture makers are obviously hurting. Jobs have been lost. Imports have
been rising. Last September, Jon Hilsenrath and Peter Wonacott reported in
the Wall Street Journal that “some industry observers believe
U.S.
production of furniture will vanish.”
While some domestic manufacturers blame
China
, others are taking steps to adjust. Stanley Furniture Co, for example,
has announced that it will be importing more children’s furniture —
bunk beds, for example — from
China
and the
Philippines
. And Ethan Allen Interiors, Inc has opened a furniture store in
Tianjin
,
China
, with two others slated to follow.
Sounds like a familiar choice for a declining American industry:
either fight the foreigners, or join the market.
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