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Foreign Affairs
March/April 1998
Comments
The president of Human Rights Watch argues that by blocking international treaties banning land mines and child soldiers, the United States has become an obstacle to the advancement of human rights law."The international community is growing more comfortable with leaving the United States out on questions of international human rights law . . . Rather than fearing the development of international human rights law, Washington should embrace it. Failing to do so risks abandoning America's role as a voice of freedom for all."
Debora L. Spar The Harvard business school professor contends that the conventional wisdom_that U.S. multinationals exploit foreign workers_is wrong. She points out that the glare of 1990s publicity is driving many firms to export human rights."Customers still seem to favor brand, price, and quality over perceptions of humane treatment and social responsibility. But these preferences are starting to change. In a 1995 survey, 78 percent of respondents said that they would prefer to shop at retail stores that had committed themselves to ending garment worker abuse; 84 percent said they would pay an extra $1 on a $20 item to ensure that the garment had been made in a worker-friendly environment."
A set of principled criteria for responding to claims for ethnic self-determination is long overdue. Policymakers' foremost goal should be protecting human rights.
Essays
Harvard economist Martin Feldstein points out that the IMF, initially devised to maintain a system of fixed exchange rates, took on a new role during the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s - providing moderate amounts of credit, facilitating debt renegotiations, and recommending responsible macro-economic policies. But, he argues, the IMF is also applying the lessons of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, where a fundamental economic restructuring was necessary, to Asia. So in Korea, for example, the fund called for reform of inefficient conglomerates and inflexible labor laws. However beneficial in the long run, Feldstein contends, such changes are not needed to resolve the current crisis. By stepping in too far and too soon, the IMF discourages countries from seeking modest help. Even worse, it encourages bankers to undertake more risky loans, making another crisis more likely."In the Asian currency crisis, the International Monetary Fund is risking its effectiveness by the way it now defines its role as well as by its handling of the problems of the affected countries. The IMF's recent emphasis on imposing major structural and institutional reforms as opposed to focusing on balance-of-payments adjustments will have adverse consequences in both the short term and the more distant future. The IMF should stick to its traditional task of helping countries cope with temporary shortages of foreign exchange and with more sustained trade deficits."
"Why should Korea be required to raise taxes and cut spending to lower its 1998 budget deficit when its national savings rate is already one of the highest in the world, when its 1998 budget deficit will rise temporarily because of the policy-induced recession, and when the combination of higher private savings and reduced business investment are already freeing up the resources needed to raise exports and shrink the current account deficit?"
Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power Daniel Yergin, together with Dennis Eklof and Jefferson Edwards, argues that, though the immediate effect of Asia's crisis will be an oil price shock, in the longer term, Asia's energy needs will be the problem. Asia's energy demand will be more than nine million barrels of oil per day higher in 2010 than it was in 1996 - a difference greater than the entire current output of Saudi Arabia. But market integration and cooperation will prevent conflict as countries work together to utilize Central and Southeast Asian natural gas reserves. China, for one, has already reached agreements to develop oil fields in Kazakstan and build a massive pipeline to its Xinjiang province. The South China Sea will remain a concern, but the current crisis will help nations move toward the market and away from state control of energy. "Once Asia begins to recover, meeting the region's energy needs will again become a preoccupation - and an anxiety. The specter of increased demand or energy producing tensions, competition, and outright conflict between the region's important countries will then reemerge. Increased energy consumption will inevitably clash with limited regional supplies, particularly of oil."
Timothy Garton Ash, European traveller par excellence and fellow at St. Anthony's College, Oxford, argues that Europe's great drive toward unification can distract attention from the liberal order that already exists in most of the continent. But this extraordinary achievement is itself threatened precisely as a result of Europe's forced march to unity, especially Helmut Kohl's push for European monetary union. Europe's leaders set the wrong priority after 1989 by neglecting the east and federalizing the west. As Ash sees it, they fiddled in Maastricht while Sarajevo burned. Europeans should instead consolidate and spread across the continent the order that already exists. It provides for security and liberty; more would be less."What we have already achieved in a large part of western and southern Europe is a new model of liberal order. But this extraordinary achievement is itself now under threat precisely as a result of the forced march to unity. What we should be doing now is rather to consolidate this liberal order and to spread it across the continent. Liberal order, not unity, is the right strategic goal for European policy in our time."
"Many younger Germans see no reason why Germany needs to be bound to the mast like Odysseus to resist the siren calls of its awful past. They think Germany can be trusted to keep its own balance as a responsible, liberal nation-state inside an already close-knit community of other responsible, liberal nation-states . . . In opinion polls, a majority of Germans still do not want to give up the deutsche mark for the euro. So Germany, this newly restored nation-state, will enter monetary union full of reservations, doubts, and fears."
Last year, the world gathered at Kyoto to grapple with the threat of global warming. But, according to Harvard Professor Richard N. Cooper, the Kyoto approach_negotiations to set national limits on the emissions of the greenhouse gases that are heating the earth_cannot solve the problem. The emissions targets, he points out, will never be met without the cooperation of the developing countries, and they will not consent. We would do better to attack global warming through mutually agreed-upon actions, especially a nationally collected tax on greenhouse gas emissions."Because it is premised on setting national emissions targets, the Kyoto strategy will not be able to solve the alleged problem of global climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions . . . A successful attack on global warming will only happen through mutually agreed-upon actions, such as a nationally collected tax on greenhouse gas emissions, rather than through national emission targets."
Once the playground of tyrants like Uganda's Idi Amin, Ethiopia's Mengistu Haile Mariam, and Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, Africa is finally shedding its postcolonial heritage of despotism and chaos. In Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, a new generation of nationalist leaders with strong and disciplined armies is emerging to take control of the continent. Their fights against the old foreign-supported order have left them suspicious of anything that comes from abroad, especially from France. Still, they are far more accountable and egalitarian than their predecessors-and they want to get into the United States' good books.
One cannot seem to get through a foreign policy debate these days without someone proposing the rule of law as a solution to one problem or another. The rule of law is undeniably important to peaceful, free, and prosperous societies, but it is no quick fix. Imparting the rule of law to a society with no history of it involves changing the attitudes of masses and elites and creating a political culture in which nobody is above the law. Unfortunately, proponents of rule-of-law reform tend to have simpler, less lasting things in mind, like writing legal codes and sprucing up courts.
Russia's post-Soviet orientation is in serious trouble. The West does not want to see any structure in Eurasia that permits Russian hegemony, but abetting continued chaos in the former Soviet space is hardly in the West's interest. Central Asia and the Caucasus are rife with flash points that could ignite and draw in outside powers, and the presence of nuclear weapons raises the stakes even higher. The United States should support integration, not division. For its part, Russia should work with nearby countries to help unite diverse peoples in a stabler system.
Book Reviews
Mengistu Haile Mariam, andIn The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, David S. Landes argues that Europe's temperate climate encouraged hard work and capitalist development, while the heat of the tropics brought reliance on slaves. Will the legacy of these differences persist?
Barry Buzan and Gerald Segal's Anticipating the Future boldly treks across disciplinary boundaries to look far ahead, but the authors understimate the impact of the information revolution.
In "The Rise of Illiberal Democracy," Fareed Zakaria suggests that enlightened autocrats are better than benighted democrats. He's wrong.
Fareed Zakaria is correct to note that liberalism and democracy are distinct, but he fails to realize that each feeds the other.