The Selling of American Foreign Policy

...Are the relatively meager profits that American companies make from these countries truly worth the moral capital that the United States must forfeit each time one of them lands a contract with a dictatorship...

...And the White House has done just that...

...But what explains our eagerness to provide Syria, Sudan, and Burma with financial sustenance...

...In March, administration officials told the International Herald Tribune that "a possible new horizon for relations could take the form of a common Western position offering Tehran the prospect of slowly expanding economic ties, if Iran were willing to respect a general code of peaceful coexistence...

...Such sentiments mirror Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's recent assertion that our policy of "critical silence" toward Iran has failed—this despite the fact that the Iranian economy is reported to be on the brink of collapse...

...So taken is the administration with the notion of a world where only economics matters that it has actively encouraged the efforts of American companies to auction off previously restricted technologies to foreign bidders...

...Another state whose value as a market precludes serious criticism is Mexico, source of three-quarters of the cocaine that flows into the United States each year and a country which, according to the State Department, "poses a more immediate narcotics threat to the United States" than any other in the world...

...The moral of the story has yet to be written, but a fitting conclusion is not too difficult to imagine...

...As investigations into the foreign-donor scandals proceed, it appears increasingly likely that commercial diplomacy, having diminished our moral standing in the international arena, may yet exact a similarly high price from its creators...

...Yet last year Occidental Petroleum informed the White House of an oil deal that would pump 150,000 barrels a day from a Sudanese oil field—netting considerable profits for both Occidental and the Sudan...

...Even so, Ron Brown secured billions of dollars worth of Indonesian contracts for American companies, including a construction deal for General Electric reported to be worth $2.6 billion...

...But greed is no foundation upon which to base a foreign policy...

...Already, U.S...

...Indeed, many in the administration seem embarrassed by such arguments...

...To allay concerns that the United States no longer cares about human rights abuses, the president and his allies in the business community assert—despite mounting evidence to the contrary in places such as China, Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia—that trade and investment encourage the democratization of authoritarian states...

...It has not...

...With an annual per capita income of less than $900, the Republic of Sudan would seem an unlikely target for commercial diplomacy...

...By promoting commercial diplomacy at the expense of our strategic interests, President Clinton has essentially rolled the dice, betting that security issues represent nothing more than what one administration official described to the New York Times as "stratocrap and glob-aloney...

...Perhaps the size of the Chinese market may justify overlooking that nation's brutal human-rights record and its belligerent international conduct (though our $40 billion trade deficit with China recommends otherwise...

...And to pacify those alarmed by our willingness to sell sensitive technology to unfriendly countries, President Clinton speaks of building "peace through trade, investment and commerce...

...In a remarkably candid essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, President Clinton's first-term undersecretary of commerce writes of the need "to reach a renewed consensus about the central-ity of commercial interests in foreign policy" and insists that "the United States should use all its foreign policy levers to achieve commercial goals...

...American foreign policy, after all, has always stood—and should continue to stand—for something more than crass commercialism...

...On the advice of its Commerce Department "war room," the administration "engages" nations of all stripes...

...As Jeffrey Garten, the co-architect of the policy, recently wrote, "You can't understand the 1996 money mess without grasping the environment in which commercial diplomacy was born...

...They always pay their bills," trumpeted Kenneth Brody, who ceaselessly promoted the home of Hezbollah as fertile ground for American corporations before stepping down as chairman of the U.S...

...Similarly, though the Russian army was until recently busy bulldozing entire Chechen cities, the president issued a communique announcing his wish "to extend Most Favored Nation status to Russia on a permanent and unconditional basis...

...Our purpose," he said, "is to create American jobs, not promote peace...

...This new double standard has been most evident in the case of Japan, with which the Clinton administration spent the larger part of its first term bickering over car parts...

...The administration will not admit that its overriding foreign policy concern is to make money for American corporations...

...In the wake of last year's Marine rape case on Okinawa, it appeared for a time that the American military presence in Japan might be in jeopardy...

...In 1994, the administration announced that it was abolishing almost all export restrictions on computer and telecommunications technology...

...exports...

...the American ambassador to South Korea litters the embassy lawn with new-model American cars while throwing an "automobile show" to promote U.S...

...Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate imprisoned by the Burmese government, has pleaded for the president to act on the proposed embargo...

...The White House, however, has an obligation to distinguish between corporate interests and the national interest...

...Indeed, at the forefront of this effort have been the administration's commercial diplomats at the Commerce Department, a group notable for its failure to submit high-tech export licenses to the Pentagon for review—including those for missile-related and stealth technology—according to a 1995 GAO report...

...When in 1994, during a particularly tense period in commercial relations between Japan and the United States, a crisis erupted in North Korea that required the deployment of an American task force, the Japanese proved noticeably less than helpful...

...In May 1995, after months of recriminations with the Japanese, White House spokesman Michael McCurry took the unprecedented step of predicting that our military alliance with Japan would be harmed if a particular trade disagreement were not resolved in our favor...

...The brainchild of the late Commerce secretary Ron Brown, commercial diplomacy seeks, according to Brown's former deputy Jeffrey Garten, to use "Washington's official muscle to help firms crack overseas markets...

...Even Burma—perhaps the world's most brutal police state—remains immune from the censure of one of its largest investors...

...While the administration's "strategic trade" theorists referred publicly to Japan in terms once reserved for adversaries, real threats were emerging in the region...

...Though economic considerations have always been present in the formulation of American foreign policy, rarely before have they dominated the other components of our international policy as they do today, in the era of "commercial diplomacy...

...The Clinton administration also decided to exempt Syria from the anti-terrorism legislation despite its certification by the State Department as a sponsor of terror groups and perpetrator of mass human-rights abuses, so Syria continues to enjoy millions of dollars in American investment...

...Unfortunately, no evidence exists to suggest that nations such as China and Syria share this conviction...

...Candidate states require no background Lawrence F. Kaplan is a Merrill Fellow of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C...

...Under the terms of a 1994 accord that the administration signed with North Korea, American companies may now engage in a variety of commercial transactions with that nation's Stalinist regime...

...Instead, in the words of the New York Times, 1996 was Burma's "worst year of repression in this decade...

...It would be wrong to fault American business for the excesses of commercial diplomacy...

...The White House now intends to "review" the trade embargo on Iran...

...As it subsidizes potential adversaries with lucrative trade deals and sensitive technology, the Clinton administration frequently wields trade as a weapon with which to bludgeon our strategic allies...

...Sudan's links to terrorist activities and its war on its Christian population have earned the country a place on the State Department list of rogue states with which American companies are prohibited from doing business...

...government award prizes to firms that demonstrate concern for human rights "like the Malcolm Baldridge Awards given to American companies for excellence in products and services...

...their legitimate goal of maximizing profits merely conflicted sometimes with the nation's moral, strategic and even economic aspirations...

...Yet, not two weeks after discovering that the commander of Mexico's much lauded anti-drug effort was himself a drug dealer, President Clinton certified the commitment of our third largest trading partner to fighting narcotics trafficking...

...government's Export-Import Bank last year...

...firms have begun to import minerals from North Korea, invest in the state's oil refineries and power stations, and process North Korea's international financial transactions...

...On a typical day, the national press will report items such as the following: The Navy evicts a Marine Corps battalion from its base in southern California—to make room for a Chinese shipping company linked to arms smugglers...

...Instead, it has trotted out well-worn—and largely bankrupt—theoretical justifications of our dollar-based diplomacy...

...The garage-sale quality of our foreign policy has spawned a level of corruption among the nation's political elite that, even in this era, numbs otherwise cynical minds...

...Still more troubling is the eagerness with which the administration has compromised our moral authority in its efforts to drum up business contracts...

...It also led the way in shutting down Cocom, a multilateral organization charged with monitoring high-tech exports during the Cold War...

...It's all about widening market access," admits Undersecretary of Commerce Stuart Eizenstat...

...While waiting for that to happen, Garten suggests that the U.S...

...If you open a wild bazaar, as we did, you have to expect the occasional pickpocket...

...If making money is all we are about, then the answer is yes...

...When it emerged that the CIA, which the administration had retooled for "economic espionage," had been spying on Japan's trade representatives, our already strained security relationship deteriorated still further...

...Envisioning an international arena dominated by "geo-eco-nomics," where political and military concerns take a back seat to the global search for new financial markets, the administration has largely abandoned the strategic and ideological pillars of American foreign policy...

...Though the pariah status of states such as Iran, North Korea, and Syria constrains trade with these nations, the Clinton administration tirelessly promotes business deals with other countries that pursue human rights and security policies as threatening to our national interests, if not more so, than those pursued by the "official" collection of rogue states...

...A typical example of an unsavory regime whose economic power ensures its exclusion from the State Department embargo list is the government of Indonesia...

...Then earlier this year, the president authorized the launching of commercial satellites able to photograph small objects with the precision of a spy satellite...

...All that stood in the way of this happy marriage was the 1996 Anti-Terrorism Act—from which the president promptly exempted the newest Islamic republic...

...during a meeting with Taiwanese officials, the senior American emissary on the island protests that he does not wish to discuss Taiwan's security, but rather the type of securities that are purchased on Wall Street...

...The White House assumes that the rest of the world will recognize the diminished utility of military power—the notion that war will soon go the way of dueling...

...If doing business with the devil carries with it unacceptable costs for the nation, it will also take a toll on those who have enshrined this practice as national policy...

...Last July, Congress passed legislation that would institute a trade embargo against Rangoon if it did not improve its abysmal human-rights record...

...So it remains today...

...The White House has also tried to woo North Korea with trade deals...

...Clinton, however, refuses to apply sanctions that would jeopardize the $220 million American companies have invested in Burma...

...Similarly, Lebanon, occupied by Syrian troops and host to an alphabet soup of terrorist organizations, is now open for American business...

...checks...

...With most of our other bases in East Asia long since mothballed and an increasingly belligerent China probing our military commitment to the region, the White House had come perilously close to alienating a strategic ally for the sake of selling a few mufflers...

...As Robert Kagan has observed of corporate behavior during the Cold War, "It was not that businessmen were bad...

...That history has already shown the hollowness of this prediction—from the Marne to the Persian Gulf—is of little concern to the White House...

...Like Burma, Indonesia routinely arrests journalists, academics, students, and union officials for no greater offense than the practice of free speech...

...Though well aware that the primary consumers of commercial-satellite imagery will be nations that cannot afford their own spy satellites, the White House has brushed off Pentagon concerns that peddling high-resolution photographs for profit may not be such a good idea...

...no profit margin is too small, almost no regime too distasteful for the apostles of commercial engagement...

...The political costs of commercial diplomacy, however, pale beside the strategic and moral compromises made for the sake of financial gain...

...Indonesia's excuse for its repressive policies has become a mantra throughout East Asia: "Our human rights concept is not individualistic, but relies more on the interests of the community, the nation and the state," proclaims the nation's foreign minister...