Spring / Summer 1998
American Purpose
Issue 1, Volume 12

Publication Date: June 1, 1998
Posted: Monday, June 6, 1998

This issue includes 'When Trade Lets Down the Flag'; 'Does Trade Promote Democracy and Human Rights?'; '"Engagement" or Exploitation in Cuba?'; 'Words or War'; 'United We Stand?'; 'Are We the "Pathfinder"?'; and 'Undercutting American Leadership'.


In This Issue :

When Trade Lets Down the Flag
In the 1925 best-seller The Man Nobody Knows, advertising executive Bruce Barton portrayed Jesus Christ as a successful salesman and advertising man. Advertising is the very essence of democracy. Barton once said. Today we are hearing a new version of this claim: it seems that trade is essential for the spread of democracy and of human rights. The new business lobby USA*Engage tells us, in its statement of purpose, that in an integrated, globalized economy, positive U.S. economic engagement is central to our own economic prosperity and to the worldwide growth of democracy, freedom, and human rights. [More]

Does Trade Promote Democracy and Human Rights?
USA*Engage argues that "sanctions take away America's best tools for advancing human rights and democracy—U.S. political and economic engagement." Another ad by the Alliance of Christian Ministries in China states that "the way to promote human rights in China is to engage and pressure its leaders."5 These statements are reminiscent of some Reagan-era debates about U.S. involvement in hot spots like El Salvador, where the Administration argued that if we were unhappy with the human-rights record of a government, or more specifically of its armed forces, it made no sense to turn away. Instead we should roll up our sleeves and "engage." In the Salvadoran case, this meant a ten-year program aimed at professionalizing the army and police and reducing their human-rights abuses. It also meant constant, unrelenting human-rights pressure. [More]

'Engagement' or Exploitation in Cuba?
The case of Cuba is instructive. USA*Engage argues in its statement of purpose that "American values are best advanced by engagement of American business and agriculture in the world, not by ceding markets to foreign competition. Helping train workers, building roads, telephone systems, and power plants in poorer nations, promoting free enterprise— these activities improve the lives of people worldwide and support American values." In fact there is considerable foreign investment of this type in Cuba, although because of the U.S. embargo none of that investment is by American firms. Canadians are particularly active, and the largest Canadian investor in Cuba is a company called Sherritt that employs hundreds of Cubans in its mining activities. For each worker Sherritt pays $10,000 in annual salary. That is an excellent salary for any poor country, but the problem is that $9,500 stays in the hands of the Castro government and only $500 actually gets to the worker. Foreign companies are forbidden to hire Cubans directly. They must hire people whom the government chooses and pay their wages to the government, in hard currency. The government then pays workers a fraction of the amount they earned, in Cuban pesos. [More]

Words or War
Why Sactions are Necessary
But perhaps all this is peripheral. Perhaps the rhetoric about making a "positive contribution" to "the worldwide growth of democracy, freedom, and human rights" is simply window dressing. Perhaps what really concerns USA*Engage and other business lobbies—the National Foreign Trade Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Manufacturers, to take the three most active examples—is just one thing: sanctions. Indeed, the explicit goal of USA*Engage is to end the use of sanctions—"unilateral sanctions," they say, but we will return to that point—as a tool of U.S. foreign and security policy. [More]

United We Stand?
Opponents of U.S. sanctions also argue that sanctions observed by many nations would be much more effective. True enough. Far better for a regime to be denounced and for trade with it to be restricted by many nations rather than by just one. But the argument against unilateral sanctions has two great flaws. [More]

Are We the "Pathfinder"?
There is a second and perhaps deeper flaw in the argument against unilateral sanctions. Its proponents simply misunderstand the necessity of American leadership if the peace and prosperity we currently enjoy are to continue. They overlook the unique position now held by the United States. Their argument would be far more powerful—though still not irrefutable—if it were made in Belgium or Holland. In a speech in October 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told students at Catholic University that "for almost as many years as I have been alive, the United States has played the leading role within the international system; not as sole arbiter of right and wrong, for that is a responsibility widely shared, but as pathfinder —as the nation able to show the way when others cannot." Is it possible that we must show the way with words and weapons, but refuse a leadership role when commercial advantage maybe lost? [More]

Undercutting American Leadership
The principle that American leadership must transcend American commercial interests would be a great deal clearer if the current Administration behaved as if it were true, or more precisely, behaved that way consistently. The Secretary of State on occasion touts our role as the "indispensable nation" that must lead the world, as in her previously quoted remarks at Catholic University. On other occasions, the Administration seems to share the "business first" perspective. Charles Krauthammer has put it strongly: "China purveyed nuclear power to Algeria, poison gas to Iran and, most ominously, nuclear technology to Pakistan. We winked. Why? Because not since Calvin Coolidge has an American administration lived more by the credo that the business of America is business." Since no administration will admit that it is simply ignoring human-rights issues in favor of commerce, an ideology is required to defend this position. Secretary Albright explained this as well at Catholic University: [More]

Endnotes
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