"Geneva Accord" Skips Democratization
Leading Israeli and Palestinian signers of the so-called "Geneva Accord"
were in Washington earlier this month for a chat with Secretary Powell and
other promotional activities. Their project, a detailed elaboration on the
failed Oslo Accord, is being advanced by an ad hoc group of from Israel's left
and some purportedly moderate Palestinians. Its two year gestation and
well-orchestrated announcement were in large part financed by Europeans.
Much has been written about this initiative, but one aspect
merits closer attention. A search of the document will not find a
single mention of the word "democracy." President Bush has spoken
persuasively on the need for democracy in the Middle East, and on the
necessity for change in the corrupt and despotic Palestinian Authority,
where Yassir Arafat is back in the saddle. He re-stated this objective
at a White House press conference while the sponsors of the Accord were in town. But
the President's caveats do not appear to have made much impression on the great and the good in Washington, who have been surprisingly complimentary toward this exercise, and have not challenged its authors strongly enough for neglecting a dimension of the region's conflict that Oslo showed is central.
"People's Capitalism"
"Peoples' Capitalism" has long been held out as the answer for those who question inequities in our economic system. Its proponents exult in the expanding numbers of citizens who own stock in private companies, especially after the growth 401(k) retirement plans. Many urge that ownership be spread even more widely through the privatization of Social Security.
These ideas picked up some tarnish over the past year. There was a steady eruption of revelations that in a number of large and admired companies managers and directors were cooking the books and looting assets. Then a significant number of mutual fund managers were discovered trading stocks in their accounts in ways that skimmed off profits due small investors. Other fund managers were found pocketing discounts owed investors who bought into particular families of funds.
One might think that such embarrassments would spur public authorities and the champions of capitalism alike to demand greater transparency and stricter compliance with the rules of the marketplace. After all, if ordinary people think the game is rigged, they'll keep their money in their mattresses, denying vital capital to financial markets. That's the theory.
But somehow the actual representatives of capitalism are not always ardent about effective enforcement of market rules. Jerry Knight, a Washington Post financial columnist, points out that
"Anybody who can get the ear of a member of Congress also ought to ask this question: While you're running up the biggest budget deficit in American history, why did you cut $30 million out of the budget for the Securities and Exchange Commission? The $30 million chip out of the SEC budget is buried in the mega-bucks budget measure that crept through Congress recently."
The Securities and Exchange Commission is entrusted with seeing that financial markets are honest. The players in these markets can't really be expected to act as their own referees -- they have a different job to do. Honest markets will pull in more capital, making the system hum. But some managers -- and their friends in Congress -- seem to care more about their own prerogatives than they do about the vitality of the system.
A group of state officials -- Treasurers, Comptrollers and Attorneys General -- has stepped forward to pick up the slack left by the Feds. One proposal a group of them is advancing would make it easier for independent candidates to run for corporate directorships. This has brought rebuke from some top business figures. "Corporations were never meant to be democracies in this instance, and they're not supposed to be a New England town meeting," scoffs Business Roundtable President John Castellani.
There is a justifiable concern that some corporate responsibility efforts do spill over into attempts at enacting the entire social agenda of the generation of 1968. But most investors don't want that, any more than they want to see their money pumped into extravagant lifestyles for corporate officials. People's capitalism looks like an idea that many capitalists just aren't ready for.
("Mutual Fund Investors Need to Ask Tough Questions of the SEC and Congress"
"After Scandals, State Treasurers Take Aim at Corruption.")
Radio Free Europe: Mission Accomplished
Arch Puddington, who served at Radio Free Europe, recounts its remarkable story in a recent article in The Weekly Standard. (The US Board of Broadcasting Governors just ended broadcasts by the service to Eastern Europe.)
Arch remarks as well on the USG's current efforts to gain a larger radio audience in the Middle East through broadcasts that lace pop music programming with short news reports. He recalls the success RFE/RL had in giving Eastern European journalists the chance to report news about what was actually going on inside those countries to their own people -- so-called "surrogate broadcasting." "[T]hose who are now engaged in the campaign against the newest enemies of liberty should heed its [RFE's] example," Arch advises, "and rather than merely espouse American values, give the Arab world a vision of what their own, unique free societies could be like."
(Arch's article appeared in the December 15, 2003 issue. It is available to subscribers only at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/.)
Labor Debates "Sectoral Strategy"
Debate in the labor movement about the value of "sectoral unionism" continues. A vigorous critique of the approach, which has been advanced by strategists in the Service Employees, Hotel and Restaurant Workers and other unions, was recently published by Bob King, Organizing Director of the UAW, and UAW Secretary Treasurer Elizabeth Bunn. (Their article, "Short Shrift to Globalization" appeared in the Fall Issue of New Labor Forum, published at Queens College. It is available only by subscription.)
Bunn and King argue that the sectoral strategy does not take into account the "regional strengths" of some unions, which make them natural allies of local workers outside a core industry. They add that unions have an obligation to respond to workers who seek their help -- regardless of what sector they may be employed in. The SEIU's Stephen Lerner responds with examples where sectoral organizing has overcome serious obstacles, asks what other strategy offers as much promise?
Labor Stirrings in Iraq
AFL-CIO representatives joined an international delegation from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions on a trip to Jordan to meet with representatives of various Iraqi labor groupings. The Internet and left-wing press are beginning to sprout a good deal of discussion about Iraqi unions, much of it hard to assess. One report that gets a lot of attention has it that, on December 6, U.S. soldiers broke into the offices of a group called the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, broke equipment and windows, and arrested eight officials (who, the ICFTU acknowledges, were later released.) It would not be a big surprise to learn that U.S. officials in Iraq are uninformed or careless about labor groups and issues, nor for that matter, that some Iraqis who purport to be workers representatives have more complicated agendas. Unbiased information will be welcome. Stay tuned.
(See "ICFTU to Hold Talks on Reconstruction and Labour Rights with Iraqi Trade Union Groups" December 16, 2003.)
Arab "Anti-Americanism"
Those concerned about America's fumbled "public diplomacy" in the Middle East may be interested in a series of articles assembled for the forthcoming issue of The Middle East Review of International Affairs,
edited in Israel by Barry Rubin and colleagues. The focus is Arab anti-Americanism. One contribution from journalist Adel Darwish stresses the non-Islamic roots of a phenomenon we are often told springs from local religious and cultural traditions that are centuries old:
"Is anti-Americanism an indigenous product of this region? My analysis indicates that in a majority of cases the content of it is actually a European import. For example, one often finds a variation on the social anti-Americanism that derives from the traditional snobbery of British and European conservative trends who are still bemused by the fact that the 'colonies' have 'suddenly' become the world's dominant superpower. Although this light-hearted, snobbish anti-Americanism is quite harmless, even entertaining as Europeans laugh at the Americans' gullibility and their shallow view of the world in an affectionate way, in its Middle Eastern version this takes on more dangerous overtones in which the history and nature of American society are portrayed as evil.
"The other main source of anti-Americanism is the political variety which has long been the property of the left as developed during the Cold War. This fed on American policies which might either have been mistaken or were made to appear so. All positive motives and deeds by the United States were filtered out of the picture."
Towards a Democratic Foreign Policy
The capture of Saddam Hussein may change the dynamics of the Democratic Presidential campaign. Many of the questions asked by prominent Democrats during initial debate about the Iraq war were reasonable ones, and the Bush Administration did make mistakes in its diplomacy, its conduct of the war and, especially, the war's aftermath. But it is also clear that in recent months the Democratic challenge has been taken over by a spirit conjured up from the embers of a "peace" constituency that consistently opposes the threat or use of U.S. military force and that minimizes dangers from abroad. This spirit led the Democrats into an historic defeat in 1968, and has weakened them in many ways since.
It will not be easy for any candidate or force to work successfully against this movement in a Byzantine nominating process that offers many advantages to well-to-do, educated, and ideologically fervent minorities. Division in the labor movement, one force that could resist the continuing disenfranchisement of lower-income, Middle American Democrats by "bring the troops home" activists and their allies, makes a change of course more difficult.
But one group of Democrats has nevertheless offered a useful set of prescriptions for contending with the national security issues that are again the Party's Achilles heel. Many of them are former officials in the Clinton Administration, and all of them were supporters of U.S. military action against Saddam Hussein. (Some joined in signing the letter to President Bush initiated last June by the SD.
Their strategy paper, called "Progressive Internationalism," can be found on the web site of the Democratic Leadership Council. Although it may have seemed like a cry in the wilderness when it was published on October 30, it gained new relevance over the past week.
The signers argue six basic points. The United States should:
1. Advance democracy abroad to make us safer at home.
2. Prevent terrorists and dangerous regimes from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
3. Plug gaps in homeland defense.
4. Transform the U.S. military and use it more effectively.
5. Reinvigorate America's strategic alliances.
6. Restore American global economic leadership.
Some may hesitate at the authors' generous endorsement of free trade, but they do couple it with strong support for democracy abroad and recognition of the importance of union rights. Among the paper's signers are Ronald D. Asmus of the German Marshall Fund, Lael Brainard of the Brookings Institution, Gregory Craig of Williams & Connolly, Larry Diamond of the Hoover Institution, former Senator Bob Kerrey of the New School University, Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, Kenneth M. Pollack, The Brookings Institution, and Jeremy Rosner of Greenberg, Quinlan, Rosner Research.
Labor in China
"The Chinese government is worried about labor problems. Americans are resentful about job losses they blame on the Chinese export behemoth, but China is also full of millions of laid-off workers, and they are getting angrier and bolder."
-- Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, December, 17, after being ejected by Chinese police from the hometown of jailed labor leaders Yao Fuxin and Xiao Yunliang.
(See"China's Velvet Glove" available by subscription only.)
Clark Kerr Dies
Clark Kerr, a labor relations expert who became a central figure in the development of the University of California system, died on December 1 at the age of 92. Kerr joined the League for Industrial Democracy while a student at Swarthmore College, and, although a firm critic of communism, made a mark at the University of California during the McCarthy era as an advocate of freedom of speech and ideas. Despite this, he was reviled by the student left of the 1960s for his reluctance to concede to extremist demands while serving as Chancellor of the University of California system. His attempts to take a stand between campus radicals and the right-wing political backlash they aroused also angered then-Governor Ronald Reagan, who fired Kerr.
Kerr became Chairman of the National Committee for a Political Settlement in Vietnam, an effort to settle the war by pressing both sides to accept free elections. Many SD members worked in that effort, which, despite its failure in Vietnam, became a precursor to campaigns for employing the democratic process to settle disputes in places such as Central America, Chile, Cambodia and the Balkans
Kerr once noted with pride that the University of California system he helped to build and lead would not turn away any qualified student merely for financial reasons. That legacy is now being undone as a consequence of the state's budget and political crises.
Bruce Miller Recovering
Bruce Miller, former Chair of the Wayne County Democratic Party and a force on Detroit's labor and political scene, underwent heart by-pass surgery last Thursday at the Cleveland Clinic. He says he is recovering smoothly, and should be home on Christmas eve.
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