Everything I Know about Foreign Policy I Learned as a Kid

China as Walmart, Walmart as China

2005-06-04T16:15:00.000-07:00

Exports from China, especially in clothing and other textiles, have dramatically increased to the U.S. in the five months following the death of the quota regime that had for decades governed and distorted the world's textile industry. The Bush Administration, seeking to molify domestic concerns over protectionism, has in recent weeks implemented “safeguard quotas” limiting the rise in imports to 7.5%, on seven categories of Chinese textiles, including trousers and shirts. Across the pond the (much-weakened) European Union plans similar restrictions on T-shirts and flax yarn.

China, citing such actions lack "legal grounding" and constitute “unreasonable” protectionism, announced on May 30th an immediate end to the export tariffs it introduced earlier this year (as a conciliatory measure) on 81 textile products to slow the surge in exports. Only ten days earlier the Chinese had said they would increase these taxes on 74 products, some by up to 400%.

While politicians dicker over the details, most of us are heading down to Walmart to take advantage of the everyday low prices. China´s low-cost manufacturing is one significant factor why we shop at Walmart. Where I grew up, we shopped at Barker´s, our low-cost department store before the advent of Walmart. Truth be told, we didn´t worry about jobs in manufacturing or textiles moving offshore - we could care less about where the products we bought were manufactured. We bought from the cheapest source because of the price, and I´ll wager the majority of American consumers do the same. After all, isn´t this what capitalism is all about?

Brazil´s Slaves

2005-05-17T08:24:00.000-07:00

Last week the local papers reminded Brazilians of the signing of the "Lei Aurea" by Princesa Isabel on May 13th, 1888, a law effectively abolishing slavery in Brazil. Of all of the countries in the Americas, Brazil imported the most slaves from Africa and was the last country to officially abolish slavery. While slavery may have been abolished officially, forced labor, or "trabalho escravo", took its place and was officially recognized by the State in 1995. The problem of forced labor in Brazil made international headlines in January 2004, when three Brazilian judicial officials were murdered while looking into allegations of slavery on ranches near the nation´s capital. The following month government officials discovered 32 slave-workers on the ranch of right-wing Senator Joao Ribeiro in the northern state of Para. The officials said the captives worked seven days a week without pay and had no running water or toilets.

This month, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) in Geneva released a report entitled "A Global Alliance against Forced Labour". The ILO defines forced labor as involving "degrading work conditions and the impossibility of leaving the employer owing to fraudulent debts and the presence of armed guards". While examining conditions in several countries, including Myanmar and China, the report also focuses a good deal of attention to the characteristics of slavery in Brazil. ILO estimates there are as many as 25,000 forced-labor slaves in Brazil, primarily in the Amazonian states of Para and Mato Grosso. These workers are primarily recruited from the poor cities of the Brazil´s nordeste region. Recruiters, often referred to as "gatos", lure the poor with promises of good pay for hard work, and some are told the cost of their transportation will be deducted from future wages. The workers are then transported hundreds of kilometers away to work in logging camps, or on ranches raising cattle or tending to crops. Many workers are only told once they arrive at the camp or ranch that they will now be responsible for paying the costs of their transportation, which are often inflated. In addition, if they are held in collection points for days or weeks, all food, housing and other expenses they incur are deducted from their future wages - usually at inflated prices. And the price-gouging does not end there. Since the camp or ranch is typically isolated from nearby cities or towns and transportation is limited, employers often charge a premium for bringing such provisions as food, drink, and other essentials to the site. When you add the inflated upfront costs to the ongoing necessities of food, drink and shelter, it is little wonder how the typical worker quickly becomes trapped economically. Why doesn´t the typical worker just leave when he realizes his predicament? Isolation, threats, violence and sometimes homicide can make it difficult choice. What is currently being done by Brazil to fight forced labor? A high profile advocacy campaign was launched in October 2003 by Brazil´s Congress, and the results are so far promising. Voluntary contributions from communications and publicity agencies have so far totaled $7.3 million, and are being used to display material in 20 of the largest airports. The killings of the judicial investigators prompted state-level campaigns to increase efforts, and media attention has likewise increased exponentially. In addition, a database of offenders has been developed, a mobile inspection group has been formed and strengthened, and a program for the rehabilitation of former slaves has been set up, mainly through income generation, capacity building and legal assistance.The efforts of the Brazilian government to combat forced labor are laudatory, but must continue and intensify. Many countries, as part of a prevention strategy, have turned to microfinance as a way to combat forced labor. Microfinance lends small amounts ($50-100) to individuals or small groups of people who wish to set up their own micro-business. With repayment rates exceeding 90%, it has been an extremely effective strategy in combating poverty throughout the world. The concept is not new to Brazil - President Lula da Silva announced in late March that government-owned Banco do Brasil had earmarked more than 18 billion reals (USD$7.2 billion) for micro-lending in calendar 2004. The microcredits will be made available at an interest rate of 6% per annum, with a four-year grace period and 12 year repayment term. Lula also noted that the state-owned savings bank, CEF, had initiated operations to lend to the poor, and had already attracted more than one million new clients. While we praise the efforts of Lula´s government to combat poverty through microlending, more effort is needed to target these microcredits at the poor cities and towns of the nordeste, where most of gatos actively recruit. Only by concentrating efforts in these hard-to-reach, and previously "unbankable" areas can Lula´s government effectively stem the tide of forced labour.

Gary Sands
Managing Director
MicroEquity
www.microequity.org

Iraqi Police Recruiting Problems

2005-05-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

Today a suicide bomber wearing a pack of explosives blew himself up outside a recruiting center in Hawijah, northeast of Tikrit. Thirty potential recruits were killed in the attck, and 31 were wounded, many of the dead or injured beleived to be from the outlying small villages who had come to join the new Iraqi army.

This wasn´t the first time a young man, posing as a new recruit, was able to infiltrate the system and injure others. And it seems to have little effect on recruiting activity, according to CNN, which recently reported that recruiting activity is up in Iraq. What is driving this activity? With unemployment hovering around 50%, the potential to improve one´s economic wellbeing is driving alot of Iraqis to stand in recruitment lines, sometimes for hours, knowing full well the threat that at any minute a suicide bomber may set off an explosion.

What can be done to stop this deadly series of attacks? Well for one, whenever I used to get in a fight at school with another child, the teachers would separate us, and call us into the principal´s office separately, mostly to hear our side of the story without the influence of the other. But the other reason was to prevent another fight from breaking out. Especially if there were more than one of us involved. The trick was to minimize the danger of another fight breaking out by separating the combatants, thereby diluting the potential of further violence.

If we apply these same principles to the current problems at Iraqi recruitment centers, we would minimise the damage of a potential suicide bomber by creating more recruitment centers with far fewer recruits (or targets) per center. Or why not change recruitment locations periodically, or conduct more one-on-one interviews? Why do the people in charge continue to make it easy for terrorists by herding these important assets into one location?

The Lord´s Resistance Army?

2005-05-10T18:06:00.000-07:00

In case you´ve missed what little coverage there is on Africa in today´s newspapers and television, you may be unaware of the unbelievable atrocities going on in northern Uganda. The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group founded by the semi-divine Joseph Kony some 18 years ago, who believes God has sent him to fight evil and to eventually rule Uganda according to the Ten Commandments. Yet over the last 18 years he has spent most of its energies breaking the 10 Commandments - slaughtering peasants, abducting over 20,000 children to use as fighters or sex slaves, and slicing off the lips and noses of conscripts it suspects of disloyalty. Nearly 90% of the population, over 2 million, have been forced to flee their homes and take refuge in crowded, unhealthy camps.

The new International Criminal Court (ICC) has been called in to enforce order, given that the weak Ugandan army has failed to capture Mr. Kony over an 18-year period. This will be the first test case of the ICC and its credibility is at stake. Yet the ICC is not welcome in Uganda -Rwot Acana II, the chief of the northern Acholi people (those who have been persecuted by the LRA the most) argues the threat of persecution will deter the rebel army from accepting a government-offered amnesty. Mr. Acana and other Acholi argue for the application of traditional Acholi justice - a confession of guilt and undergoing cleansing rituals, after which the rebels can be accepted back into their communities.

I don´t know about your neighborhood, but where I grew up , we were fortunate enough to have a strong rule of law. The first murder I can recall happened when I was a teenager, in the back of a grocery store parking lot. A teenage girl was brutally murdered, the community at large pulled together to condemn the act, and the police were summoned to solve the crime. Several months later the killer was captured, declared insane and locked behind bars for the rest of his life. I´m not entirely sure the application of Acholi justice would have worked in this case, or for that matter in any country, at any time in history. A mere confession of guilt and a cleansing ritual are not going to cure teenagers who have, as part of their initiation into the rebel army, been obliged to club, stamp or bite to death their friends and relatives, and then to lick their brains, drink their blood and even eat their boiled flesh. The ICC must be allowed to enforce an international, and moral, standard of justice.

Soft on Sudan

2005-04-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

Following the massacre of approximately 300,000 civilians with 1,000,000 more driven from their homes by government- backed militias, the U.N. is finally deploying its first peacekeepers to Sudan, a small contingent of 12 Nepalese soldiers. The U.N. says the total contingent of soldiers will number 10,000. Previous efforts by the African Union to broker a shaky ceasefire monitored by a small contingent of unarmed military observers evidently were not very effective.

When I was growing up in Westport, Connecticut, all of the neighborhood kids would get off the school bus and walk about a quarter-mile to their homes. Along the way we would pass major empty fields of grass, where one of the older boys Jerry would soon lose patience with the rantings and troublemaking of another younger boy William. Nearly every day William would get a beating from Jerry for one reason or another, somedays without any reason at all. Although some of the girls in our neighborhood would protest, the beatings were not too severe, and they would mostly continue walking home. Eventually Jerry got tired of picking on William and the beatins ceased.

Now had the beatings been severe and continued further, and had William or others reported the beatings to their parents, should the proper response from the parents be to send observers to verify what was going on? Yes, and immediately. If the parent(s) were witness to a real-time beating, should they use their authority in the community to intervene? Of course.

What has taken the international community so long to intervene in Sudan? Some observers point to the vested interests (specifically oil) of the members of the U.N. Security Council. This is akin to saying that since one parent happens to dislike the parents of William, they should excuse themselves from intervening and hope someone else takes care of the problem. This is not responsible parenting and this is how the U.N. (as a community of nations) often functions.

Let´s send a message to the U.N. - start acting responsible for those conflicts you have authority over, and then we´ll think about granting you the respect you crave...

Bolting on Bolton

2005-04-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

Should John Bolton, U.S. President Bush´s nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, be appointed to the job? Some believe the strongest argument for Mr Bolton's nomination is his oft-repeated criticism of the UN, which has recently come under fire, among other things, for the oil for food scandal in Iraq. Mr. Bolton is seen by many as well suited to encourage the reforms launched by the secretary-general, Kofi Annan.

But if we are to simplify the argument, to say a school administration considering the appointment of a teacher from another school, we would inevitably look at the track record of that teacher. If we had found that the teacher failed to intervene in a fight among students which resulted in the serious injury of one or more of the students, would we choose that teacher or look for a more appropriate candidate?

Mr. Bolton is known for his past opposition to UN involvement in Congo - criticising the notion that there is any “right of humanitarian intervention” to stop ethnic cleansing or genocide. And a question posed by Russ Feingold, a Democratic senator, during the confirmation hearings is particularly revealing. Asked whether, with hindsight, he would have worked to stop genocide in Rwanda had he been UN ambassador, Mr Bolton replied: “We don't know logistically whether it would have been possible to do anything different”. Would you, as a parent, want a teacher giving this excuse for not intervening in a fight among students?

Dallying in Darfur

2005-03-31T10:10:00.000-08:00

What is going on in Darfur? As you may well have heard over the last 22 months, there has been an ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign in Sudan committed by the Janjaweed militia and Sudanese troops, including widespread killing and rape leading to the displacement of over 2.4 million and the deaths of at least 300,000.

So how has the United Nations reacted as of late? Well, on Tuesday the council authorised sanctions, in the form of travel bans and asset seizures, against those individuals found committing atrocities or undermining peace efforts in Darfur. And the Security Council in New York is now preparing for a vote on whether to refer war crimes in the vast western Sudanese region to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Is this a sufficient response or more dilli-dallying by the much-maligned U.N.? UK lawmaker John Bercow says the UN debate about sanctions against and ICC prosecution of the authors of the atrocities was "breathtakingly secondary to the enforcement of peace", dismissing the UN sanctions as powerless to persuade Khartoum to rein in the atrocities.
"Does anybody really think the government of Sudan ... is to be dissuaded from that massive premeditated military exercise by the thought that some members of the regime will be subject to a travel ban?" he said.
"Does anyone seriously think that they're going to be quaking in their boots at the thought of an asset ban?"

So while the U.N. is busy authorising sanctions on travel, what is being down on the ground to stem the violence? Unfortunately very little. The African Union currently has 2,000 monitors and military observers on the ground to monitor a ceasefire, though very little evidence of this ceasefire has been observed over the last year since it was approved between the rebels and the government of Sudan. Efforts are underway this week to spearhead a cross-party petition in the U.K., so far signed by 100 lawmakers, demanding the African Union be given a UN mandate and UN funding to lead "peace-enforcement operations" in Darfur. After 22 months and 300,000 deaths doesn´t this seem a bit late?

I know how we would deal with a bully in my neighborhood, and it wouldn´t be after 22 months of beatings. When I was beaten to a bloody pulp by four drugged-up youths at the beach, I went to the police, who promised they would try to get the names of the individuals involved and seek to punish them. Unfortunately for me, many of them were underage, and therefore would not feel the full force of law. I went to court, and only one of them was reprimanded, given a warning and set free to carry out another beating on another day. For my much bigger brother, however, this was ineffectual justice carried out by a weak court of law. Another solution was in order, and that was to meet violence with violence. He found two of the four and taught them a lesson. It certainly stemmed the violence in our neighborhood for a long time thereafter...

Kennan and Isolationism

2005-03-30T15:34:00.000-08:00

The death this month of George Kennan, hailed as one of America´s great diplomats, has led many of us to reconsider his legacy. Kennan, like Bush, believed America´s “spiritual vitality”, democratic ideals, and founding principles of liberty, justice and tolerance would set an example for other nations, eventually leading them away from communism. In much the same way George Bush intends to show democracy as an alternative to autocratic, dictatorial regimes, and has been credited in some corners with the recent revolutions in Georgia, Lebanon, and now Kyrgystan.

But wait - there´s more. As Mr. Kennan grew older and hopefully wiser, he came to change his views. By the 1990s, he wanted America to withdraw from its public advocacy of democracy and human rights: “this whole tendency to see ourselves as the centre of political enlightenment and as teachers...strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious, and undesirable.”

Perhaps George Bush is now taking note of the frequent Anti-Americanism prevalent throughout the world, largely based on Kennan´s exact words. But in many countries, Bush is still characterised as arrogant, naive, and imposing. What would my neighbors say about someone who acts this way? For example, a Jehovah´s witness knocking at their door? They would politely say "We´re not interested" and close the door, pehaps annoyed that someone has tried to impose upon them different ideas. Maybe if the idea is compelling enough there is no need to preach?

Cuban Capitalists

2005-03-29T18:33:00.000-08:00

The besieging of the wives of 75 dissidents by a mob on Palm Sunday was a strong political statement by Fidel. Yet this attack was carried out by a mere 200 members of a government-backed organisation clearly orchestrated by Fidel. And it may be true that the economy is looking better after economic assistance from Venezuela and China, but despite food shortages, frequent blackouts, and crumbling infrastructure, the vast majority of Cubans are patiently waiting for change.

Last year´s May Day speech was a lackluster affair, with little revolutionary fervour beyond uninspired flag-waving among a crowd of one million, many of whom were bussed in from the neighbouring countryside by their state employers. For a growing number of Cubans, however, that patience may be waning. Cubans increasingly have access to the hard currency revenues of tourism, and are using their newfound wealth to acquire cable television and to access the internet. The hours spent by unemployed youths watching graphic displays of gun violence on HBO and seeing the latest ultra-rich lifestyles of gansta-rap on MTV are not cathartic, and it won´t be long before envy for Western lifestyles and consumerism rises to a dangerous level. Indeed, this is already happening, with Cubans increasingly frequenting dollar stores (which open and close according to the whims of Castro) to purchase portable stereo systems and the streets of Havana filling with hustlers hawking cigars, hostels, restaurants, and women.

The economic woes of the Soviet bloc forced Castro to open the island to Western tourists and influences, occasionally reversing reforms, yet he can´t turn back the clock on an enterprising people who have voraciously embraced the temptations of American-style consumerism. In the past, Cuba's president has cleverly outwitted American officials in the past, notably the Mariel exodus in 1980, when Fidel released 125,000 discontents, criminals, and mentally ill upon the shores of Florida.

So how should the Bush Adminstration handle this thorn in their side? When I was 16 and licensed to drive, I would shuffle back and forth from one parent to the other, asking for permission to take either of their cars out on a Friday night. Sometimes I would succeed, other times I was denied and had to rely on friends who would pick me up at my house. I believed the only way out of this quandry was to purchase my own vehicle, yet that was prohibited by my parents. The pressures within me to buy a car did not go away, and only increased over time. Eventually these pressures reached boiling point, and I went against my parents wishes and purchased a 1969 Volkwagen Bug for $75, in effect declaring my freedom from their tyranny. If the Bush Administration were truely serious about regime change they would borrow a page from Castro´s book and encourage consumerism by lifting the trade embargo - building upon the desire of Cubans to better their position in life and creating an exodus of capitalist consumers within Cuba. Of course, once the floodgates are open, Cuba will have changed forever, and in many ways for the worse. Pity the tourist who waits to travel to Cuba, only to find another Cancun...

Asian Quake

2005-03-28T09:48:00.000-08:00

If you are fortunate enough to own a television or radio, you probably have heard news of the 8.5 Richter scale earthquake off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. If you don´t have a television or radio, and you live in Indonesia, how would you get this news? The international community largely failed to get the news out of the tsunami that struck on December 26th.

Well, if we look back at how news of this nature (storm/tornado/hurricane approaching) would typically spread in our neighborhood, it would have been by telephone, with one well-informed neighbor who had been watching the news contacting another and so on until the whole neighborhood was informed and prepared. Why can´t these same logistics be applied for getting the word out to nations who might be threatened? The technology has certainly advanced, with cellular phones used throughout SouthEast Asia by a substantial population. And with the Short Messaging Service feature of these cellphones being widely used throughout the region, why can´t some well-informed neighbor (such as the Tsunami Center in Honolulu) get the word out via SMS to regional tsunami agencies, governments, embassies, businesses, hotels, residences and so on down the line?