Asia Times: The naughty are rewarded in US's foreign policy shift


	September 25, 2001	atimes.com

Global Economy

The naughty are rewarded in US's foreign policy shift
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Much as the United States used to judge countries by whether or not they supported Washington in its anti-communist crusade during the Cold War, it appears that foreign governments will now be rewarded or punished for whether or not they become part of the war against terrorism, particularly of the Islamist kind.

That was the crux of Thursday night's address by President George W Bush to the US Congress nine days after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. As Bush put it, "Every nation in every region now has a decision to make: either you are with us or you are with the terrorists".

"That will be the first question the US has for any country," according to Thomas Donilon, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher's chief of staff. "What we've seen is a real paradigm shift in foreign policy in which the central organizing principle will be the effort against terrorism."

If true, the implications of this sudden shift in US foreign policy priorities are enormous, not only for the United States itself but for the rest of the world as well. This is because of the unrivalled US economic and military power and its influence in international institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Virtually overnight, a country's performance on human rights, efforts against government corruption, support of democratic institutions, and environmental protection - issues which national and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have spent years trying to move up the Washington foreign-policy agenda as anti-communism faded into history - has been kicked down at least one step on the ladder of US policy priorities to make way for the new anti-terrorist agenda.

Even the pursuit of market-friendly economic policies - the core of the so-called Washington Consensus, which increasingly determined what countries would benefit from the largesse of the World Bank and the IMF throughout the 1990s and what countries would be denied it - may now be subordinated to the overriding goal of smashing Islamist terrorism.

Already, major aid packages are being prepared for Pakistan and Uzbekistan, frontline states in the battle against Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda organisation. Bilateral US economic and military sanctions imposed against Islamabad for developing and testing nuclear weapons are to be eased, according to Congressional aides who have attended recent briefings.

Washington may even be willing to waive and soften aid sanctions against Pakistan that were imposed under a law that bans non-humanitarian aid to governments that come to power through a military coup d'etat, if Islamabad continues to cooperate with US efforts, according to the same sources.

More distant enlistees in Washington's new war also will be rewarded. That was made clear last week during the visit of Indonesia's new president, Megawati Sukarnoputri, who left meetings with Bush not only with pledges of increased economic and trade assistance, but also the easing of curbs on military ties.

The administration has acknowledged that the human rights performance of the Indonesian military, which has refused to cooperate with national and international efforts to hold officers accountable for the devastation they caused in East Timor in 1999, has only worsened in recent months, particularly in Aceh and West Papua.

During most of the Cold War, Jakarta was one of Washington's staunchest anti-communist allies, a status that earned it billions of dollars in economic and military assistance.

Officials also have said Washington will be eager to embrace authoritarian governments from which it has until now kept a discreet distance. These include Algeria and the Central Asian states, especially Uzbekistan. Both Algeria and Uzbekistan face Islamist insurgencies which their own human rights and anti-democratic practices helped provoke, according to the International Crisis Group, a think tank specializing in conflict resolution.

"The risk, of course, is that, by embracing these regimes - particularly providing them with police and military aid - we may actually bolster hard-line elements that will just make matters worse," observed one State Department official who asked not to be identified.

Even some countries that Washington has charged with backing terrorism may now stand to cash in if they turn on their erstwhile allies.

Human rights activists and others were shocked last week when, reportedly acting on orders from the White House, Speaker of the House of Representatives Dennis Hastert intervened to prevent action on the so-called Sudan Peace Act. The act, supported by a broad coalition of rightwing Christian groups, labor unions, the Congressional Black Caucus, and several human rights NGOs, is designed to put pressure on the Arab-dominated National Islamic Front (NIF) government in Khartoum to end an 18-year war against the Sudan People's Liberation Army, a rebel group which has been fighting for self-determination for the mainly non-Muslim, African inhabitants of the southern part of the country.

Until September 11, the Bush administration, while it opposed certain capital market sanctions contained in the act, had strongly denounced the NIF for its ruthless conduct of the war. The NIF, which sheltered bin Laden from 1991 to 1996, also is still believed by Washington to provide a safe haven for a number of the alleged terrorist's associates and business interests. However, US officials now say that, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, Khartoum has suddenly become very cooperative on the counter-terrorist front, providing information on some 26 key figures related to bin Laden and promising concrete steps to bring at least some of them to justice.

"If you take the 11th of September as the beginning of the new world order, they've signaled they want to be on the right side of this particular fence, " said one official. "This is productive right now; we're not going to screw it."

Said one stunned activist: "I can't believe that they would be so cynical as to leave millions of southern Sudanese to their fate, just because a regime, which has worked hand in glove with bin Laden, says it's opening files and may hand over a few suspects."

This, however, looks to be the new realpolitik of US foreign policy.

Administration officials insist they will still press Sudan and other abusive countries to clean up their acts. But, by making counter-terrorism the top priority in bilateral relations, argue analysts, the administration here is effectively handing them cards which will trump other US concerns - at least for the duration of Washington's new war.

(Inter Press Service)

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