The Trade Weapon, and Other Myths
Ledeen, Michael
lea V •111111•^ addam Hussein's recent act of bravado—barring American observers from sites believed to be used for the production of weapons of mass destruction—was not an isolated event, but...
...We have permitted them to purchase advanced machine tools to build wing spans for fighter planes, the manufacturing know-how for the Global Positioning System (which they can use to give their missiles lethal accuracy), and small jet engines (for cruise missiles), as well as laboratories for testing "stealth" technology...
...It is folly to provide them with the means to carry out this mission, and to strengthen the rogues with advanced Western technology...
...As the Washington Post's Keith Richburg recently observed, even as the economic success of countries as diverse as Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and South Korea is threatened by the Asian financial debacle, the demands for freedom and democracy are steadily growing...
...Fully Secured and • I.R.A...
...If it did, the oil-rich Middle Eastern countries, along with Nigeria and Angola, would be flourishing democracies instead of corrupt tyrannies...
...In the past two years alone, the Clinton administration, approved the sale of forty-six supercomputers, which is more than those currently in use in the Pentagon, the military services, and the intelligence community combined...
...If we cannot deal with a tiny country in the Middle East, if we permit Saddam Hussein to crush a fledgling democratic movement in Iraq, why should the tyrannical rulers of a billion and more souls in China take us seriously...
...Having achieved limited freedom, the human impulse is to seek more of it...
...has a problem with another country it likes to impose trade sanctions on it...
...What would you say to: 12% Fixed Returns on a 12-month program...
...And now we hear a rising chorus calling for easing the sanctions...
...free trade...
...Thus, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Jack Kemp, Lamar Alexander, Steve Forbes, and Donald Rumsfeld: "There is more freedom in the [Chinese] economic realm than in any other...
...This highly successful strategy—truly one of the great accomplishments of the Reagan administration—was discarded, in part by the Bush administration, and then, with reckless abandon, by Clinton, particularly in the case of the People's Republic of China...
...In like manner, nations that share our values can be swayed by sanctions...
...That he never intended to destroy Communism is a tribute to the potency of the political forces he unwittingly unleashed, and points us in the right direction to understand what needs to be done with the rogue regimes...
...This was a cheap enough price for Saddam to pay for halting the on-site inspections, which enabled him to save some of his capacity to manufacture weapons of mass destruction...
...government with the skills, the institutional memory, and the independence of spirit required to enforce high-tech controls: the Defense Technology Security Agency...
...f and when we do get serious, there is one element of trade embargoes that should be embraced: the prevention of rogues like Saddam from increasing their military power...
...Even the China "hawks," who rightly criticize Clinton for going easy on the bloody regime of Jiang Zemin, and who steadfastly denounce the repression and murder of Chinese democrats, female infants, and religious believers, have failed to demand an end to this folly, and to put together a multinational embargo on future sales...
...The American Spectator • February 1998 27...
...Thus, House Majority Leader Dick Armey: "Freedom to trade is the great subversive and liberating force in human history...
...This is a grave error, and we must hope against hope that we will not have to pay a terrible price for it...
...Like South Africa, Spain (and Chile and Portugal, similarly) moved toward democracy after being subjected to widespread embargoes and international censure...
...The pattern extends to our own backyard: the European Union has passed legislation forbidding European corporations to comply with the American embargo against Cuba, and has threatened to punish any American company that brings suit against Europeans doing business on Castro's island...
...Qualified Maturity dates may vary...
...There is no common economic denominator...
...Not so with tyrants who hate us and everything we stand for...
...After analyzing our performance in the Gulf War, the Chinese leaders have called for the creation of a modern nlike the Asian "tigers," Spain's transition to democracy can hardly be explained by the effects of commerce, for Spain was treated much as South Africa under apartheid...
...What would a decline in the stock market do to your stocks, mutual funds and retirement accounts...
...vote, only Israel and Kazakhstan voted with us in favor of the Cuban embargo...
...Similarly in Iraq, the embargo cuts deepest against the neediest Iraqis, and no less a personage than Hillary Rodham Clinton has gone out of her way to stipulate that the U.S...
...No doubt there are businessmen and politicians who regret the loss of business during the embargoes, but they would defend freedom in oppressed countries–or to not be nearly so outspoken if the embargoes had plainly sucassume that trade by itself can bring freedom...
...When the moment of truth comes, the two crucial factors will be our own military power (which must be so great that the leaders of the old regime dare not challenge it, even to save themselves from ruin) and our political resolve (for if we are seen to be unwilling to fight for our own cause, our military strength will be discounted...
...The advocates of sanctions do not make the important distinction between friends and enemies, perhaps because they believe, as do so many Americans, that all people are fundamentally the same, and that the methods that work in our society will work in others as well...
...Some countries democratized after a period of sanctions, while others democratized after a period of extensive trade and economic expansion...
...It follows that we should not sell advanced military technology to dangerous countries, or to countries that resell the technology to rogues or potential enemies, and we must also do everything in our power to prevent other countries from doing it as well...
...But freedom is not so easily contained...
...The first, and by far the best opportunity was the Gulf War, but we stopped short of finishing the job...
...It would seem self-evident that we want to maintain the greatest possible margin of military superiority against all enemies, actual and potential...
...And this is only a part of a long list...
...We had considerable commerce with the Soviet Union, but no serious adult thinks that East-West trade hastened the fall of Communism by enriching Soviet citizens and demonstrating the advantages of freedom...
...The relationship between economic success and political freedom is far more complicated than the models offered either by the advocates of free trade or of economic sanctions...
...Generalissimo Francisco Franco knew that once he died, Spain would do away with his authoritarian regime and move toward democracy...
...Over a year ago China signed an agreement to develop oil fields in southern Iraq (Italy, France, Russia and Ukraine have similar deals), and has sold, inter alia, missiles, warships, fighter aircraft, and chemical agents to Iran—where the Chinese are also building two nuclear power reactors...
...There is merit to the claim, but it is far from a complete explanation of the campaign against sancthink that sanctions relieve us of the need to tions...
...Are you like most people...
...The mid-December Islamic conference in Tehran—attended even by such allies as Saudi Arabia and Egypt—was a clear rejection by Muslim nations of the Clinton administration's "dual containment" policy...
...Sanctions do work in America, as witness the considerable success of domestic boycotts, against grapes and lettuce, or investments in unpopular causes, or the wrong sort of motion pictures...
...deterrence does work...
...Sometimes the leaders of the old regime initiated the political transformation, while in others the changes were instituted by the former victims...
...tance, but Saddam's victory was manifest...
...On the other hand, the advocates of free trade as the engine of democracy are also wrong...
...Your Principal is...
...nervous about the stock market...
...Deng Xiaoping's decision to liberalize the Chinese economy may eventually have political consequences...
...It is only a matter of time before the Chinese people come to doubt the capacities of the oppressive Communist gerontocracy, and we must encourage them, and their leaders, to doubt and ultimately change it...
...Yet it has been carried out with hardly a voice of protest from the Congress, the press, and the intelligentsia, all of whom bear considerable responsibility for it...
...What are we to do with Spain, the first country to effect a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy...
...The Soviet dictatorship rested on the systematic use of terror, as do those in Cuba, Syria, Libya, Iran, and Iraq today...
...21% Fixed Returns on an 18-month program...
...Above all, the South African government was sufficiently sensitive to civilized international opinion to reform itself once it had been sufficiently stigmatized by nations with which it wished to associate...
...Quite the opposite...
...As in the Gulf War, and again when Iraq smashed its opponents in the north, we failed to use power to destroy an enemy, or to prevent him from growing stronger...
...He invaded in order to crush Iraqi opponents whom we had supported, but we stood by as they were decimated...
...26 February 1998 • The American Spectator army capable of winning a "high-tech" war, in which we are the obvious target...
...By the end of the Cold War our military power was so clearly superior to theirs that they were afraid to lash out against us...
...The democratization of South Africa and the European satellites was a return to the fold of civilized societies living under the rule of law, while the Taiwanese and South Koreans came to understand that democracy was an integral part of the most successful societies, and they wanted to join the club...
...The most grandiose claims for the revolutionary political effects of commerce are silly...
...In South Korea, democracy resulted from challenges to the system from below, ultimately toppling the old regime...
...S.E.P...
...The two cases most often cited to support this claim are Taiwan and South Korea...
...Nor would the political situation change if Cuba were flooded with investors and tourists, and the standard of living of the Cuban people rose dramatically...
...So strong is the international opposition to our policies that, in an early November U.N...
...We have sold them enormous quantities of supercomputers, the central nervoussystem of modern warfare...
...The view that sanctions are counterproductive is often reinforced by the claim that a contrary policy—wide-open trade—is more likely to weaken the tyrants and spread democracy...
...Events proved him right: despite dark warnings about dire consequences, the toughest proposal from Washington was to restrict travel by top Iraqis...
...The common denominator is freedom: once freedom was introduced, either in the economic or the political system, the people pushed for its expansion...
...the Chinese gerontarchs, and the likes of Singapore's Lee Kwan Yew sound as if they believe they can grant economic freedom while maintaining political control...
...There are no hard and fast rules for such policy, but they often include: support for opposition movements and leaders, covert action to subvert the regime, the use of military and/or paramilitary forces against various targets, and an outspoken determination by our own national leaders to directly challenge the rogues...
...If we want to bring down the rogue states, we will have to use power against those regimes, as we did against the Soviet Union...
...Yes, STOCK MARKET RETURNS without STOCK MARKET RISKS...
...While Forbes, Kemp et...
...Prospectsare not as dim as might be imagined...
...Neither sanctions nor free trade will bring down a tyrannical regime with the will and power to maintain itself against all domestic challengers...
...have said that "there is no new Cold War, and China is not a new Cold War enemy," a recent Chinese military "study document" says the opposite, and blames us for it: "A new Cold War has begun against the socialist state," conducted by "hostile Western nations...
...In Cuba, for example, economic misery has increased since our embargo began to bite following the fall of the Soviet Empire, but there is no sign of either intensified resistance to the regime or greater willingness by Castro and his henchmen to reform the system...
...ut if some of the claims on behalf of free trade are wildly overstated, recent history provides some examples to support the belief that economic success may encourage a peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy...
...The decisive element is the political will to change the regime, either by the leaders, or by sufficiently powerful opponents...
...One of the lessons of the fall of the Soviet Empire is that the desire for freedom is not easily divisible into limited areas of human activity...
...No matter how great the misery of the Cuban people, Castro will survive so long as he is willing and able to kill anyone who tries to bring him down...
...And the remedies for the Asian epidemic, "more transparency in decision-making, opening of markets, less corruption and cronyism," all work for a further, and deeper, democratization of Asian societies...
...Egypt has announced it is negotiating with Oaddafi for the construction of a pipeline from Libya...
...These remedies are primarily political, not economic, and they come at a moment of economic weakness, when the people are losing faith in the capacities of the old regime...
...Nor is there a clear causal relationship between democracy and the adoption of free-market economic institutions...
...China may become an enemy, and if that happens we do not want the Chinese to have the best weapons we can design...
...The leaders of the rogue regimes have been quick to exploit the criticism of American policy, and Saddam was no doubt encouraged by the open splits on sanctions to defy the U.S...
...The policy is under attack primarily because it has The American Spectator • February 1998 23 failed to accomplish its principal objectives: weaken the rogue regimes, and eventually bring them down...
...Did you know that if your funds are in the stock market, your principle is at risk...
...Call 1-800-575-1566 to find out what your stock broker doesn't want you to know...
...We know how to do this, having used such an embargo to deadly effect - against the Soviet Union...
...The military defeat of the Red Army in Afghanistan, and the setbacks suffered by Soviet proxy forces in Grenada and Angola, were at least as important as economic failure, as was Ronald Reagan's outspoken denunciation of the evils of the Soviet Empire, broadcast relentlessly beyond the Iron Curtain by the radio transmitters of the West, and published in myriad newspapers, magazines, and samizdat during the years of oppression...
...The resistance to American policy is not restricted to such rogue regimes as Iraq...
...E mbargo supporters have only one recent success to point to: South Africa, where most everyone, from Nelson Mandela to the apologists for apartheid, agrees that the moral and economic isolation of the country encouraged the National Party to end white minority rule and turn the country over to the black majority...
...ceeded...
...To be sure, China is not an enemy today, and we all hope it will not become one...
...Instead of dealing with the serious matters of military and political power, our national debate has been hung up on the pseudo-issue of embargoes vs...
...But wealth alone does not drive the passion for democracy...
...even before Saddam's slap in the face of the United States and the United Nations, many of our European allies, Arab leaders, and our "friends" in Moscow had indicated their desire to weaken or even lift trade sanctions on Iraq, and this attitude is spreading to the other three countries against which we have organized embargoes: Iran, Cuba, and Libya...
...The rogues are still there, and none of them seems to have been significantly weakened by sanctions...
...t he critics of sanctions are right, at least up to a point: there is no reason to believe that sanctions, in and of themselves, will bring down tyrants and encourage freedom...
...With No Market Risk...
...During the Clinton presidency we have provided the Chinese with some of our best military technology, much of it at bargain-basement prices...
...Trade can help maintain that freedom, and help expand that freedom to other realms...
...We have had ample opportunity to do this in Iraq, but we have repeatedly declined to act...
...the economic failure of the Soviet Empire was a major factor in its collapse, and that failure was neither accelerated nor prevented by our trade policies...
...Several Canadian companies are active investors in Cuba, and recently a South Korean delegation participated in a trade show in Havana...
...Saddam's affront to the United States is a serious matter, because it was taken in order to enhance Iraq's military power...
...There's also a tendency to with the rogue nations...
...The Chinese know all about this explosive dilemma, and their leaders are quick to warn the Chinese people that they are not about to permit a replay of the Soviet debacle...
...The latter preceded the former in the recent Asian cases, while political freedoms came first in Central and Eastern Europe, as they had a generation earlier in Japan and Germany, where the basic rules of democracy were imposed by 24 February 1998 • The American Spectator occupying armies...
...But, unlike the Asian "tigers" of Taiwan and South Korea, Spain's transition to democracy can hardly be explained by the effects of commerce, for Spain was treated much as South Africa under apartheid: stigmatized, sanctioned, and condemned throughout much of the world...
...But South Africa was not a rogue regime, whatever its internal evils...
...lea V •111111•^ addam Hussein's recent act of bravado—barring American observers from sites believed to be used for the production of weapons of mass destruction—was not an isolated event, but part of a growing challenge to our use of trade sanctions to punish regimes we do not like...
...In most cases, the transition was guided by exceptional leaders like King Juan Carlos in Spain and the son of Chiang Kai-Shek in Taiwan...
...The one encouraging note so far is that some of those Americans who participated in the unfortunate decision to end the Gulf War without bringing down Saddam's regime now insist that Clinton see the error of their ways, and carry out a serious policy...
...The key element in the fall of the oppressive regimes is not economic, but political: the people and the rulers lost faith in the old methods, and undertook to change them...
...The ostensible point of our policy is to prevent Iraq from rebuilding its frightening military machine, but our weak reaction enabled him to preserve and perhaps even to expand his ability to wage war...
...will not punish Iraqi children for the sins of their fathers: food and powdered milk flow freely into the country...
...The same holds true for countries like Poland (Lech Walesa) and Czechoslovakia (Vaclav Havel) and even the Soviet Union, where Mikhail Gorbachev came to understand that the Communist system he inherited needed drastic overhaul...
...Such a vast international consensus against the embargoes suggests that there is something fundamentally wrong with our strategy...
...But even if we manage to slow the growth of Chinese military power, we will want to use political weapons to encourage the democratization of the People's Republic...
...Italy, traditionally most attentive to Washington's concerns, has announced its intention to normalize relations with Libya, where, despite our impassioned pleas to the contrary, MICHAEL LEDEEN, foreign editor of TAS, holds the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute and is the author most recently of Freedom Betrayed: How America Led a Global Democratic Revolution, Won the Cold War, and Walked Away (AEI Press...
...This will enormously help the Chinese design advanced weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, as well as aircraft and missiles, and it will provide them with a quantum jump in their ability to encrypt their own communications and decipher ours...
...MIB Financial A full service, asset growth and protection company 1 We have something with STOCK MARKET RETURNS— without STOCK MARKET RISKS...
...We have sold them the crucial "hot section" technology that gives modern aircraft engines their special thrust, thereby ensuring that the next generation of Chinese fighter aircraft will have the world's best engines...
...Providing China with the wherewithal to become an effective threat to us, and thereby strengthening the rogue nations whose hostile intentions are beyond doubt, is the truly criminal act of Bill Clinton's presidency...
...they expect and even welcome our attacks...
...He believed that the transition would be successful, at least in part because a moderately successful middle class had been created during his rule, and that middle class—in Spain, as elsewhere, the truly revolutionary force of modern history—wanted a greater share of political power...
...In such cases, the usual bag of diplomatic tools, the carrots and sticks so appetizing to Foggy Bottom, can have significant effect...
...Insofar as the collapse of the Soviet Empire had economic causes, they were rather the consequence of the irremediable faults of the Communist system itself...
...The critics argue that we are only impoverishing the Cuban people, without improving their chances for freedom...
...The rogue regimes do not wish to associate with us, they are not in the least inclined to internal reform, and they are not sensitive to criticism...
...Despite our call for a multinational embargo on Tehran's mullahcracy, Total (France) and Gazprom (Russia) have signed a big oil and gas deal with Iran...
...The third opportunity was Saddam's frontal challenge to the United States last fall, and we dithered ourselves into prolonged talks which only elevated Saddam's status to that of legitimate interlocutor...
...Gorbachev seemed to believe he could grant political freedom while maintaining economic control...
...Both the claims for embargoes and for wide-open free trade are excuses for the lack of serious policy designed to bring down the rogue regimes, or, at a minimum, to protect ourselves from the fulfillment of the rogues' evil intentions...
...Stalin's power was not seriously threatened by the economic ravages of the thirties, nor were his successors undermined by the economic successes of the 1950's...
...Unlike Cuba, Libya, Iran, and Iraq, South Africa was not at war with the West and did not support terrorist attacks against us and our allies...
...And, insofar as American foreign policy is concerned, there is an important difference between friendly and hostile tyrants: we have considerable political leverage over friendly countries, but precious little over enemies...
...Both have democratized in recent years, albeit in very different ways: Taiwan's ruling elite announced it would withdraw from all top governmental positions, and imposed a democratic system from the top down...
...Gorbachev's failure suggests that the Chinese may face the awesome choice of granting political power to larger segments of the population— thereby risking profound political upheaval—or clamping down on the economic freedom that has so enriched the nation in recent years...
...Here again, Bill Clinton's repeated failures in Iraq have dangerous global consequences...
...They're a great weapon to use against friends, but for all intents useless against regimes that February 1998 • The American Spectator 8 t en i \it s r 1-4 lc hool d South African President Nelson Mandela recently paid two visits, and publicly denounced our embargo policy...
...They expect and even welcome our attacks...
...In each case, the transition to democracy coincided with spectacular increases in living standards, and the new wealth created in Taiwan and South Korea was closely linked to trade: exports to the advanced industrial countries generated a lot of capital...
...The latest symptom of this collective insanity comes from the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense William Cohen is busily dismantling the one organization in the U.S...
...China provides them considerable military support, and there are grounds to fear that this is not merely a quest for financial gain...
...The second chance came in the late summer of 1996, when Saddam invaded the "no fly" zone we had established in northern Iraq...
...Even friendly tyrants, like the shah of The American Spectator • February 1998 Iran, Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, or Chile's General Augusto Pinochet, can be pressured to grant political concessions to their domestic opponents...
...No one is so prescient as to be able to confidently predict the outcome of such a crisis, and until the issue is decided we must be on our guard...
...South Africa, Taiwan, South Korea, Spain, and Portugal all wanted to be part of the Western world...
...The advocates of "Most Favored Nation" status for China repeatedly made this case during the debate last summer...
...22 Whenever the U.S...
...Indeed, there is an impressive and growing body of opinion—including many who might have been expected to embrace sanctions—that economic embargoes not only fail to bring down evil regimes, but they punish the people of the target nations instead of the ruling tyrants, and may even backfire and rally the people around the regime...
...The advocates of sanctions argue that their critics are driven by greed: there are profits to be made by trading hate us anyway...
...Clinton ordered our armed forces to lob a few cruise missiles at meaningless targets from a safe dis25 he rogue regimes do not wish to associate with us, they aren't inclined to internal reform, and they're not sensitive to criticism...
...Our China policy is the extreme case of the "free trade solves all problems" school...
...This issue is an integral part of any serious policy toward the rogue nations...
...Many tyrannies—like Saudi Arabia, China, and Zaire, to take just three—have long had vigorous international trade, but show little inclination to expand their citizens' freedoms, and in many cases the profits, or hefty commissions therefrom, have gone straight into the pockets of the repressive elites...
Vol. 31 • February 1998 • No. 2
