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Zoellick plies a new
trade
By Tom Barry
To
what degree do neo-conservatives and militarists
control US foreign policy? And how much influence
do the less ideological figures such as National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice have over President
George W Bush?
Those were
the questions continually debated by foreign-policy
observers during the last three years of the first
Bush administration. And at the onset of Bush's
second term, assessing the new
ideological-realist balance in the foreign policy team is the
main topic of Washington's foreign-policy community.
The president's nomination
of Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state and her
selection of Robert Zoellick as her top deputy
indicate that the ultra-hawks and neo-con
foreign-policy revolutionaries won't completely dominate
the second administration. Neither Rice nor
Zoellick, who served as the US Trade Representative
(USTR) during the first administration, is an
ideologue. But neither are they moderate conservatives.
Only when compared to such figures as Pentagon chief
Donald Rumsfeld and his deputies, such as Paul
Wolfowitz, Stephen Cambone, and Douglas Feith,
could they be considered moderates.
Both Rice and
Zoellick are non-ideological foreign-policy operatives who
are not idealists or true believers. Rather, they
are realists who accept the neo-conservative premise
of US global supremacy but want
to manage that power wisely to further their notions
of US national security and interests. At first
glance, Zoellick could be mistaken for an
ideologue, as an evangelist for free trade and
a member of the neo-conservative vanguard. But when
his political trajectory is more closely observed,
Zoellick is better understood as a
"can-do" member of the Republican foreign-policy elite -
a diplomat who always keeps his eye on the
prize, namely the interests of Corporate America and US
global hegemony. Based on his record in the
administration of president George H W Bush and the
current Bush presidency, Zoellick is highly
regarded as an astute deal-maker.
Rice's
surprise selection
of Zoellick was greeted with an almost palpable
sense of relief inside Washington's foreign-policy
circles. The great fear, outside the
neo-conservative and militarist camps, was that
Vice President Richard Cheney and company would insist that
the shrill unilateralist John Bolton, current
under secretary for arms control, serve as
Rice's deputy.
Zoellick's track
record
Robert Zoellick, who enjoys long-distance running, has
a long track record in the economic policy
and diplomatic affairs of Republican administrations since
the late 1980s. During the second
administration of president Ronald Reagan, Zoellick,
who began his career as a Harvard-educated lawyer,
served as a special assistant at the Treasury
Department. During the Bush Sr administration,
Zoellick became a key figure shaping post-Cold War
economic policy as a senior officer in both the
Treasury and State departments and a personal
adviser to the elder Bush.
While serving in the Bush Sr
administration, Zoellick was instrumental in
sealing the NAFTA (North American Free Trade
Agreement) accord with Mexico. When the
negotiations hit a rough spot, Zoellick served as
a special assistant to Bush in his relations with
then-Mexican
president Carlos Salinas de Gortari
and managed to
jump-start the stalled negotiations. As an
indicator of the degree that US foreign policy in
the 1990s increasingly became focused on global
economic policy, Zoellick, while serving as a
counselor at the State Department and under
secretary of state for economics, played a key
role in launching the Asia Pacific Economic
Cooperation forum. In recognition for this
achievement, Zoellick received the Distinguished
Service Award, the State Department's highest
honor.
Zoellick shuttled all over the world
during the Bush Sr administration to promote US
global economic policy. Before the founding of the
World Trade Organization, Zoellick was the Bush
administration's top negotiator with the European
Union at a time when the Uruguay Round of multilateral
trade negotiations was blocked by US-European
differences over agricultural trade liberalization.
He helped break the logjam by forging
the Blair House Accord, which helped save the
foundering Uruguay Round. Among other functions
in his role as the roving ambassador for the
United States' free-trade agenda, Zoellick was the administration's
"sherpa" at the Group of Seven summits in
1991 and 1992.
His reputation of being
an Atlanticist was secured during the Bush
Sr administration when he persuaded the US
government to support the reunification of West and
East Germany. According to the New York Times, "He
is most widely remembered in foreign-policy circles
for being the United States' representative at the
multiparty negotiation over the future of divided
Germany. He persuaded the Bush administration to
embrace German unity despite the qualms of allies
and alarm in the former Soviet Union."
Zoellick is highly respected on Wall Street
and by Corporate America at large. Not only a
highly effective government representative of US
capital, Zoellick has benefited from direct
personal ties with the US financial community and
transnational corporations. He has directly worked
in the highest echelons of the US corporate
community, including serving as an executive at
Goldman Sachs. Before joining the Bush Jr
administration as a cabinet official in the
capacity of the US trade representative, Zoellick
served on an advisory council at Enron
Corporation. In addition, Zoellick also served on
the boards of such corporations as Alliance
Capital, Jones Intercable, Said Holdings, and the
Precursor Group.
A protege of James Baker, who served as
treasury secretary during the Reagan administration and secretary
of state during the Bush Sr administration,
Zoellick has close ties to the Bush family.
He was an adviser to George W Bush when
he was governor of Texas and served as a foreign-policy
adviser to presidential candidate Bush.
A new Republican foreign
policy
Zoellick's essay in Foreign Affairs in
January 2000 titled "Campaign 2000: A Republican
Foreign Policy" highlighted Zoellick's grasp
of the radical new foreign-policy directions that would
come with a Bush Jr administration. Zoellick faulted
the administration of president Bill Clinton for
focusing too narrowly on economic policy and for
promoting social and environmental clauses within
free trade organizations, as Clinton did at the
outset of the World Trade Organization (WTO)
ministerial in Seattle. He spelled out a new
foreign policy that would be based on the
preeminence of military power - a concept of a new
American century in which unquestioned US military
superiority would allow the United States to shape
international order.
Zoellick was perhaps the
first associate of Bush Jr to introduce the concept
of "evil" into the construct of Bush's radical
overhaul of US grand strategy. A year before Bush
was inaugurated, Zoellick wrote: "A modern
Republican foreign policy recognizes that there is
still evil in the world - people who hate America
and the ideas for which it stands. Today, we face
enemies who are hard at work to develop nuclear,
biological, and chemical weapons, along with the
missiles to deliver them. The United States must
remain vigilant and have the strength to defeat
its enemies. People driven by enmity or by a need
to dominate will not respond to reason or
goodwill. They will manipulate civilized rules for
uncivilized ends."
Although regarded as a
pragmatic promoter of US economic interests,
Zoellick has an idealist streak that also aligns
him with the neo-conservatives. In his Foreign
Affairs article, Zoellick points to the need for a
foreign policy that recognizes the "appeal of the
country's ideas are unparalleled", and points
favorably to the idealism of presidents Theodore
Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson in promoting their
visions of an international order based on their
visions of America's transformational role in
world history.
Zoellick's Foreign
Affairs essay was a companion piece to another
predictive about new directions in foreign policy by
Rice. Zoellick worked alongside Rice in the
National Security Council in the Bush Sr administration.
In 1998, Zoellick joined a group of
neo-conservatives and militarists, many of whom would later form
the upper ranks of George W Bush's foreign-policy
teams, in signing statements of the neo-con
Project for the New American Century. The
statements among other things called for increased
military budgets and a policy of regime change in
Iraq.
Coalition of the
liberalizers
The Senate unanimously
confirmed Zoellick as USTR in 2001, and it is
expected that his nomination as deputy secretary
of state will also receive strong bipartisan
support. Although Zoellick failed to seal a Free
Trade of Americas Agreement during his tenure as
USTR, he won respect among the corporate community
for his role in gaining bipartisan support for
Bush's request for "trade promotion authority",
also known as fast-track authority because it
reduces the role of congressional and public
review of new free trade pacts.
When it
comes to global economic policy, Zoellick is not a
free trade ideologue or a committed advocate of
the WTO. Instead, he regards free trade philosophy
and free trade agreements as instruments of US
national interests. When the principles of free
trade affect US short-term interests or even the
interests of political constituencies, Zoellick is
more of a mercantilist and a unilateralist than a
free trader or a multilateralist.
Zoellick coined the phrase "the coalition of
the liberalizers" prior to the failed WTO
ministerial in September 2003. That's what Zoellick called
the group of countries that have joined the
United States in bilateral or regional trade pacts.
In the face of mounting opposition from Brazil
and other developing nations to the US global-economy
agenda, Zoellick began forging a "coalition" of
trade partners that agree to open their markets
and protect US investment in order to ensure
coveted access to the huge US market.
In early 2003, Zoellick outlined a
free-trade strategy that anticipated rising opposition
to Washington's liberalization agenda. Instead
of committing itself to making the
compromises necessary to complete another negotiating round
in the WTO, the Bush administration announced that
it would pursue its agenda through free-trade
agreements (FTAs) with single nations or
sub-regional groupings. "Our FTA partners are the
vanguard of a new global coalition of open
markets," declared Zoellick.
At the
beginning of the Bush administration, the US had
FTAs with only a few nations, including Canada,
Israel, and Mexico. However, once Congress in 2002
gave the executive branch trade promotion
authority - the go-ahead to pursue "fast-track"
trade negotiations - the Office of the US Trade
Representative launched free trade initiatives
around the world outside of the WTO. Zoellick took
the lead in negotiating the Central America Free
Trade Agreement in May 2004. That same month the
USTR announced the start of bilateral trade
negotiations with Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru (and
possibly Bolivia) as part of the planned US-Andean
Trade Agreement as well as the beginning of free
trade negotiations with Panama.
Zoellick termed
his free trade strategy one of "competitive liberalization".
By establishing numerous bilateral
and regional agreements outside the WTO, the
US hopes to undermine opposition to its aggressive
liberalizing agenda and weaken developing
country demands for US market access, subsidy
reductions, and special treatment in the WTO.
In a July 10, 2003, op-ed in the Wall Street Journal,
the administration's trade czar clearly articulated
the United States' global trade and investment
strategy. He explained that under WTO consensus
procedures, "one nation can block progress" in
extending economic liberalization to new areas.
Explaining that Washington can pursue its
liberalization agenda outside the WTO, Zoellick
warned: "It would be a grave mistake to permit any
one country to veto America's drive for global
free trade."
Although other nations
remain committed to a multilateral forum and
universal trade rules, Zoellick signaled that Washington
was willing to proceed unilaterally. He
predicted, "The WTO's influence will wane if it comes
to embody a new 'dependency theory' of trade,
blaming developed countries ..." Seeing the recalcitrance
of many developing countries to approve new trade
and investment rules, the Bush administration has
adopted a "my way or the highway" approach to
global economy issues. This unilateral posture
with respect to trade and investment rules mirrors
its unilateralism in foreign and military policy.
The day the WTO talks broke down in Cancun,
Mexico, the USTR said that the "won't do"
countries had won the day over the "can do"
countries. Referring to the developing country
coalitions that had come together to block the
must-do agenda of Washington and the European
Union, Zoellick issued a veiled threat to the
multilateral process: "We're going to keep opening
markets one way or another."
The
Bush administration's decision to raise
agricultural subsidies by US$80 billion in the 2002 farm
bill underscored the charges that the US is a
free-trade hypocrite. But protectionism and subsidies
have political payoffs. When Zoellick returned
from the failed Cancun talks, he was praised by
leaders of the American Farm Bureau Federation for
not budging on the issue of farm subsidies. This
hypocrisy galls many developing countries, who see
their competitively priced exports blocked by US
protectionism while at the same time heavily
subsidized US exports flow into their own domestic
markets.
The USTR relentlessly pressured
other nations, particularly poorer ones, to
liberalize their economies. For itself, however,
free trade serves more as a battering ram to knock
down national barriers to US trade and investment
than a universal principle. In a speech to the
right-wing Heritage Foundation in Washington,
Zoellick made the case that there is no
alternative to globalization and that US companies
and consumers were already benefiting in countless
ways from this new wave of corporate-led economic
integration. To drive his point home about all the
new opportunities, Zoellick noted: "Even the
funeral business has gone global, with a
Houston-based company now selling funeral plots in
20 countries."
Neo-con-realist
balance
The selection of Rice and Zoellick
to direct the State Department points to President
Bush's determination to consolidate his foreign
policy team. Although Rice and Zoellick are not
blazing hawks like Rumsfeld, Cheney and
Wolfowitz, they are loyalists and hardliners when
it comes to promoting US military supremacy and
corporate economic interests. Set to replace Colin
Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, Rice and
Zoellick can be counted on for reducing frictions
within the foreign policy apparatus and seeking
more "policy coherence" with the Pentagon and
Cheney's office.
Part of that
policy coherence was expressed by Zoellick in
the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks,
when he conflated his free-trade initiatives with the
"war on terrorism". "Now we have a clear enemy who
is not only trying to do us great damage, but is
also trying to terrorize us ... to paralyze us by
terrorizing us," said Zoellick. "The terrorists
deliberately chose the World Trade towers as their
target. While their blow toppled the towers, it
cannot and will not shake the foundation of world
trade and freedom. Our response has to counter
fear and panic, and counter it with free trade."
This coherence was also on exhibit during
a speech by Zoellick at the Institute for
International Economics in 2003, when he linked
economic agreements with political adherence to US
foreign policy. "The US seeks cooperation - or
better - on foreign policy and security. Given
that the US has international interests beyond
trade, why not try to urge people to support our
overall policies? Negotiating a free trade
agreement with the US is not something one has a
right to do - it's a privilege."
Although
not part of the new right's militarist and
neo-conservative camps, Zoellick's personal
arrogance, his unilateralism, and his loyalty to
Bush and the Republican Party's new radical elite
make him a perfect fit for Bush's new foreign
policy team.
Tom Barry is policy
director of the
International Relations
Center and author of numerous books
on international relations.
(First
published by the Right Web Program at the
International Relations Center. Copyright 2005
IRC. All rights reserved. Used by
permission.) |
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