The Australian government's push to rejuvenate relations with Pacific island nations has key role for the private sector.
Australia's Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, Duncan Kerr, told the Australia Papua New Guinea Business Forum in Cairns, the private sector has a vital role to play.
Radio Australia's reporter Jemima Garrett says Mr Kerr told the forum the new Pacific Partnerships for Development are a central part of the Rudd government's push to strengthen and deepen relations with the Pacific and, that if those partnerships are to achieve the millennium development goals, business has an important role to play.
"Business is absolutely essential. We need their input. No country has evolved a successful strategy dealing with poverty without a strong and vibrant private sector."
Mr Kerr said PNG and Samoa are the first Pacific island countries to negotiate their Pacific partnerships.
He hopes to have a completed agreement with PNG or a framework agreement signed before the Pacific forum in August.
Showing posts with label Globalisation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Globalisation. Show all posts
4/24/08
EPA will open economies of poor countries to European pirates
The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) due to be signed between the European Union (EU) and 110 developing countries this year would open up those countries to European pirates and ultimately increase poverty for less developed countries (LDCs), a new report on the EPA said on Wednesday.
“We are not against trade but we are against the type of rules that the EU imposes on us and that is why we say ‘no’ to European pirates,” the report quoted Ms Norma Maldonado from the Central American-based International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN) as saying.
The report put together by the World Trade Movement (WTM) under the title “Raw Deal”, and launched at the ongoing United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD XII) meeting in Accra, claims the benefits of signing a free trade deal with the EU sat firmly with European businesses, rather the developing countries.
Through the EPA, the EU is seeking to open up the markets of 110 African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP), Latin American, Asian and Mediterranean countries for free trade in spite of the fact that all of those countries do not have strong enough economies to compete fairly with the EU.
Critics maintain that the fact that the EU provided heavy subsidies for its local farmers and multinationals, something that developing countries were being asked not to do, made the playing ground uneven.
The WTM through the report has therefore added its voice to the widespread call for the EPA to be rejected outright.
Meanwhile other organizations, including UK-based international charity, Oxfam, have said that a better deal would be to include some amount of development content in the EPA for less developed countries and for the EU to open up its markets for least developed countries (LDCs) now.
The report captured the development impacts of two existing EU bilateral trade agreements with South Africa and Mexico, saying that in both examples the deals were found to be one-sided in favour of the EU.
The impacts highlighted by the report included balance of payment problems, decreased tax revenue, decreased access to credit for farmers, decreased ability to effectively regulate foreign investors and increased unemployment in those two countries.
“An almost 50 per cent increase in South African food and drink imports from the EU, including diary products, cereals, and processed food and drink, coupled with the reduction of tariffs on European sweets in South Africa has resulted in 25 per cent fall in employment in the sweet making industry in that country.”
It said South Africa’s growing trade deficit with the EU had made that country more vulnerable to international debt, particularly destabilizing short-term capital flow.
In the case of Mexico, the report said that country could no longer regulate the proportion of foreign shareholders in banks.
“Mexico can no longer favour domestic companies for government procurement contracts, which amounts to six per cent of GDP, even though UNCTAD has said that favouring domestic companies is a vital tool of development,” it said.
It also projected government revenue loss to the tune of 7.5 per cent of GDP in Namibia.
Meanwhile Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, who have already initialled an Interim EPA, are expected to lose at least 83 million dollars a year in import tariffs on goods from EU.
Ms Maldonado said the EU wanted to impose things on LDCs which they (EU) did not impose on themselves, such as demanding access to LDCs, even though they had huge subsidies on their own agricultural goods.
Ms. Vicky Cann, Trade Policy Officer of WTM, said EU trade deals were unfair and hurt the poor, adding that the evidence was that the EPA would benefit European multinationals and hinder rather than help the development of poor countries.
“In this time of rocketing world food prices, it is hard to believe that Europe seeks to open up developing countries’ markets to heavily subsidized European exports, putting LDCs farmers out of business and undermining food security,” she said.
Charles Santiago, MP for the Democratic Action Party in Malaysia, described the EPA as a re-write of trade rules in favour of EU corporations, following the thwarting of EU’s plans at the World Trade Organization (WTO) by LDCs.
“EU is now targeting LDCs individually to reap the rewards it couldn’t get at the WTO because countries stood up and said ‘no’ together. To developing countries I say keep away from EU free trade agreements, they do not work in your interest,” he said.
Mr. John Ochola from Econews in Kenya called on European citizens and companies to stand up to their governments and tell them not to make the poor poorer.
Meanwhile 25 individual LDCs, including Ghana, have already initialled an Interim EPA, under which a number of exports between them and EU were under a quota-free, duty free regime, pending the signing of the full EPA this year.
Critics have said if the EPA is signed, people in the 110 targeted countries, 1.47 billion of which lived on less than a dollar a day, stood the risk of even further sinking under the doldrums of poverty.
Source: GNA
“We are not against trade but we are against the type of rules that the EU imposes on us and that is why we say ‘no’ to European pirates,” the report quoted Ms Norma Maldonado from the Central American-based International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN) as saying.
The report put together by the World Trade Movement (WTM) under the title “Raw Deal”, and launched at the ongoing United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD XII) meeting in Accra, claims the benefits of signing a free trade deal with the EU sat firmly with European businesses, rather the developing countries.
Through the EPA, the EU is seeking to open up the markets of 110 African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP), Latin American, Asian and Mediterranean countries for free trade in spite of the fact that all of those countries do not have strong enough economies to compete fairly with the EU.
Critics maintain that the fact that the EU provided heavy subsidies for its local farmers and multinationals, something that developing countries were being asked not to do, made the playing ground uneven.
The WTM through the report has therefore added its voice to the widespread call for the EPA to be rejected outright.
Meanwhile other organizations, including UK-based international charity, Oxfam, have said that a better deal would be to include some amount of development content in the EPA for less developed countries and for the EU to open up its markets for least developed countries (LDCs) now.
The report captured the development impacts of two existing EU bilateral trade agreements with South Africa and Mexico, saying that in both examples the deals were found to be one-sided in favour of the EU.
The impacts highlighted by the report included balance of payment problems, decreased tax revenue, decreased access to credit for farmers, decreased ability to effectively regulate foreign investors and increased unemployment in those two countries.
“An almost 50 per cent increase in South African food and drink imports from the EU, including diary products, cereals, and processed food and drink, coupled with the reduction of tariffs on European sweets in South Africa has resulted in 25 per cent fall in employment in the sweet making industry in that country.”
It said South Africa’s growing trade deficit with the EU had made that country more vulnerable to international debt, particularly destabilizing short-term capital flow.
In the case of Mexico, the report said that country could no longer regulate the proportion of foreign shareholders in banks.
“Mexico can no longer favour domestic companies for government procurement contracts, which amounts to six per cent of GDP, even though UNCTAD has said that favouring domestic companies is a vital tool of development,” it said.
It also projected government revenue loss to the tune of 7.5 per cent of GDP in Namibia.
Meanwhile Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, who have already initialled an Interim EPA, are expected to lose at least 83 million dollars a year in import tariffs on goods from EU.
Ms Maldonado said the EU wanted to impose things on LDCs which they (EU) did not impose on themselves, such as demanding access to LDCs, even though they had huge subsidies on their own agricultural goods.
Ms. Vicky Cann, Trade Policy Officer of WTM, said EU trade deals were unfair and hurt the poor, adding that the evidence was that the EPA would benefit European multinationals and hinder rather than help the development of poor countries.
“In this time of rocketing world food prices, it is hard to believe that Europe seeks to open up developing countries’ markets to heavily subsidized European exports, putting LDCs farmers out of business and undermining food security,” she said.
Charles Santiago, MP for the Democratic Action Party in Malaysia, described the EPA as a re-write of trade rules in favour of EU corporations, following the thwarting of EU’s plans at the World Trade Organization (WTO) by LDCs.
“EU is now targeting LDCs individually to reap the rewards it couldn’t get at the WTO because countries stood up and said ‘no’ together. To developing countries I say keep away from EU free trade agreements, they do not work in your interest,” he said.
Mr. John Ochola from Econews in Kenya called on European citizens and companies to stand up to their governments and tell them not to make the poor poorer.
Meanwhile 25 individual LDCs, including Ghana, have already initialled an Interim EPA, under which a number of exports between them and EU were under a quota-free, duty free regime, pending the signing of the full EPA this year.
Critics have said if the EPA is signed, people in the 110 targeted countries, 1.47 billion of which lived on less than a dollar a day, stood the risk of even further sinking under the doldrums of poverty.
Source: GNA
3/7/08
Australia's hidden empire
By John Pilger
That Canberra runs an imperial network is unmentionable, yet the chain of control stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the South Pacific
When the outside world thinks about Australia, it generally turns to venerable clichés of innocence - cricket, leaping marsupials, endless sunshine, no worries. Australian governments actively encourage this. Witness the recent "G'Day USA" campaign, in which Kylie Minogue and Nicole Kidman sought to persuade Americans that, unlike the empire's problematic outposts, a gormless greeting awaited them Down Under. After all, George W Bush had ordained the previous Australian prime minister, John Howard, "sheriff of Asia".
That Australia runs its own empire is unmentionable; yet it stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the ancient hinterlands of the continent and across the Arafura Sea and the South Pacific. When the new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, apologised to the Aboriginal people on 13 February, he was acknowledging this. As for the apology itself, the Sydney Morning Herald accurately described it as a "piece of po litical wreckage" that "the Rudd government has moved quickly to clear away . . . in a way that responds to some of its own supporters' emotional needs, yet changes nothing. It is a shrewd manoeuvre."
Like the conquest of the Native Americans, the decimation of Aboriginal Australia laid the foundation of Australia's empire. The land was taken and many of its people were removed and impoverished or wiped out. For their descendants, untouched by the tsunami of sentimentality that accompanied Rudd's apology, little has changed. In the Northern Territory's great expanse known as Utopia, people live without sanitation, running water, rubbish collection, decent housing and decent health. This is typical. In the community of Mulga Bore, the water fountains in the Aboriginal school have run dry and the only water left is conta minated.
Throughout Aboriginal Australia, epidemics of gastroenteritis and rheumatic fever are as common as they were in the slums of 19th-century England. Aboriginal health, says the World Health Organisation, lags almost a hundred years behind that of white Australia. This is the only developed nation on a United Nations "shame list" of countries that have not eradicated trachoma, an entirely preventable disease that blinds Aboriginal children. Sri Lanka has beaten the disease, but not rich Australia. On 25 February, a coroner's inquiry into the deaths in outback towns of 22 Aboriginal people, some of whom had hanged themselves, found they were trying to escape their "appalling lives".
Most white Australians rarely see this third world in their own country. What they call here "public intellectuals" prefer to argue over whether the past happened, and to blame its horrors on the present-day victims. Their mantra that Aboriginal infrastructure and welfare spending provide "a black hole for public money" is racist, false and craven. Hundreds of millions of dollars that Australian governments claim they spend are never spent, or end up in projects for white people. It is estimated that the legal action mounted by white interests, including federal and state governments, contesting Aboriginal native title claims alone covers several billion dollars.
Lurid allegations
Smear is commonly deployed as a distraction. In 2006, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's leading current affairs programme, Lateline, broadcast lurid allegations of "sex slavery" among the Mutitjulu Aboriginal people. The source, described as an "anonymous youth worker", was exposed as a planted federal government official, whose "evidence" was discredited by the Northern Territory chief minister and police. Lateline never retracted its allegations. Within a year, Prime Minister John Howard had declared a "national emergency" and sent the army, police and "business managers" into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. A commissioned study on Aboriginal children was cited; and "protecting the children" became the media cry - just as it had more than half a century ago when children were kidnapped by white welfare authorities. One of the authors of the study, Pat Anderson, complained: "There is no relationship between the emergency powers and what's in our report." His research had concentrated on the effects of slum housing on children. Few now listened to him. Kevin Rudd, as opposition leader, supported the "intervention" and has maintained it as prime minister. Welfare payments are "quarantined" and people controlled and patronised in the colonial way. To justify this, the mostly Murdoch-owned capital-city press has published a relentlessly one-dimensional picture of Aboriginal degradation. No one denies that alcoholism and child abuse exist, as they do in white Australia, but no quarantine operates there.
The Northern Territory is where Aboriginal people have had comprehensive land rights longer than anywhere else, granted almost by accident 30 years ago. The Howard government set about clawing them back. The territory contains extraordinary mineral wealth, including huge deposits of uranium on Aboriginal land. The number of companies licensed to explore for uranium has doubled to 80. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the American giant Halli burton, built the railway from Adelaide to Darwin, which runs adjacent to Olympic Dam, the world's largest low-grade uranium mine. Last year, the Howard government appropriated Aboriginal land near Tennant Creek, where it intends to store the radioactive waste. "The land-grab of Aboriginal tribal land has nothing to do with child sexual abuse," says the internationally acclaimed Australian scientist Helen Caldi cott, "but all to do with open slather uranium mining and converting the Northern Territory to a glo bal nuclear dump."
Indonesian invasion
This "top end" of Australia borders the Arafura and Timor Seas, across from the Indo nesian archipelago. One of the world's great sub marine oil and gas deposits lies off East Timor. In 1975, Australia's then ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, who had been tipped off about the coming Indonesian invasion of then Portuguese East Timor, secretly recommen ded to Canberra that Australia turn a blind eye to it, noting that the seabed riches "could be much more readily negotiated with Indo nesia . . . than with [an in dependent] Timor". Gar eth Evans, later foreign minister, described a prize worth "zillions of dollars". He ensured that Australia distinguish itself as one of the few countries to recognise General Suharto's bloody occupation, in which 200,000 East Timorese lost their lives.
When eventually, in 1999, East Timor won its independence, the Howard government set out to manoeuvre the East Timorese out of their proper share of the oil and gas revenue by unilaterally changing the maritime boundary and withdrawing from World Court jurisdiction in maritime disputes. This would have denied desperately needed revenue to the new country, stricken from its years of brutal occupation. However, East Timor's then prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, leader of the majority Fretilin party, proved more than a match for Canberra and especially its bullying foreign minister, Alexander Downer.
Alkatiri demonstrated that he was a genuine nationalist who believed East Timor's resource wealth should be the property of the state, so that the nation did not fall into debt to the World Bank. He also believed that women should have equal opportunity, and that health care and education should be universal. "I am against rich men feasting behind closed doors," he said. For this, he was caricatured as a communist by his opponents, notably the president, Xanana Gusmão, and the then foreign minister, José Ramos-Horta, both close to the Australian political Establishment. When a group of disgruntled soldiers rebelled against Alkatiri's government in 2006, Australia readily accepted an "invitation" to send troops to East Timor. "Australia," wrote Paul Kelly in Murdoch's Australian, "is operating as a regional power or a potential hegemon that shapes security and political outcomes. This language is unpalatable to many. Yet it is the reality. It is new, experimental territory for Australia."
A mendacious campaign against the "corrupt" Alkatiri was mounted in the Australian media, reminiscent of the coup by media that briefly toppled Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Like the US soldiers who ignored looters on the streets of Baghdad, Australian soldiers stood by while armed rioters terrorised people, burned their homes and attacked churches. The rebel leader Alfredo Reinado, a murderous thug trained in Australia, was elevated to folk hero. Under this pressure, the democratically elected Alkatiri was forced from office and East Timor was declared a "failed state" by Australia's legion of security academics and journalistic parrots concerned with the "arc of instability" to the north, an instability they supported as long as the genocidal Suharto was in charge.
Paradoxically, on 11 February, Ramos-Horta and Gusmão came to grief as they tried to do a deal with Reinado in order to subdue him. His rebels turned on them both, leaving Ramos-Horta critically wounded and Reinado himself dead. From Canberra, Prime Minister Rudd announced the despatch of more Australian military "peacemakers". In the same week, the World Food Programme disclosed that the children of resource-rich East Timor were slowly starving, with more than 42 per cent of under-fives seriously underweight - a statistic which corresponds to that of Aboriginal children in "failed" communities that also occupy an abundant natural resource.
Blunt instrument
Australia is engaged in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, where its troops and federal police have dealt with "breakdowns in law and order" that are "depriving Australia of business and investment opportunities". A former senior Australian intelligence officer calls these "wild societies for which intervention represents a blunt, but necessary instrument". Australia is also entrenched in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rudd's electoral promise to withdraw from the "coalition of the willing" does not include almost half of Australia's troops in Iraq.
At last year's conference of the American-Australian Leadership Dialogue - an annual event designed to unite the foreign policies of the two countries, but in reality an opportunity for the Australian elite to express its historic servility to great power - Rudd was in unusually oratorical style. "It is time we sang from the world's rooftops," he said, "[that] despite Iraq, America is an overwhelming force for good in the world . . . I look forward to more than working with the great American democracy, the arsenal of freedom, in bringing about long-term changes to the planet." The new sheriff for Asia had spoken.
www.johnpilger.com
That Canberra runs an imperial network is unmentionable, yet the chain of control stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the South Pacific
When the outside world thinks about Australia, it generally turns to venerable clichés of innocence - cricket, leaping marsupials, endless sunshine, no worries. Australian governments actively encourage this. Witness the recent "G'Day USA" campaign, in which Kylie Minogue and Nicole Kidman sought to persuade Americans that, unlike the empire's problematic outposts, a gormless greeting awaited them Down Under. After all, George W Bush had ordained the previous Australian prime minister, John Howard, "sheriff of Asia".
That Australia runs its own empire is unmentionable; yet it stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the ancient hinterlands of the continent and across the Arafura Sea and the South Pacific. When the new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, apologised to the Aboriginal people on 13 February, he was acknowledging this. As for the apology itself, the Sydney Morning Herald accurately described it as a "piece of po litical wreckage" that "the Rudd government has moved quickly to clear away . . . in a way that responds to some of its own supporters' emotional needs, yet changes nothing. It is a shrewd manoeuvre."
Like the conquest of the Native Americans, the decimation of Aboriginal Australia laid the foundation of Australia's empire. The land was taken and many of its people were removed and impoverished or wiped out. For their descendants, untouched by the tsunami of sentimentality that accompanied Rudd's apology, little has changed. In the Northern Territory's great expanse known as Utopia, people live without sanitation, running water, rubbish collection, decent housing and decent health. This is typical. In the community of Mulga Bore, the water fountains in the Aboriginal school have run dry and the only water left is conta minated.
Throughout Aboriginal Australia, epidemics of gastroenteritis and rheumatic fever are as common as they were in the slums of 19th-century England. Aboriginal health, says the World Health Organisation, lags almost a hundred years behind that of white Australia. This is the only developed nation on a United Nations "shame list" of countries that have not eradicated trachoma, an entirely preventable disease that blinds Aboriginal children. Sri Lanka has beaten the disease, but not rich Australia. On 25 February, a coroner's inquiry into the deaths in outback towns of 22 Aboriginal people, some of whom had hanged themselves, found they were trying to escape their "appalling lives".
Most white Australians rarely see this third world in their own country. What they call here "public intellectuals" prefer to argue over whether the past happened, and to blame its horrors on the present-day victims. Their mantra that Aboriginal infrastructure and welfare spending provide "a black hole for public money" is racist, false and craven. Hundreds of millions of dollars that Australian governments claim they spend are never spent, or end up in projects for white people. It is estimated that the legal action mounted by white interests, including federal and state governments, contesting Aboriginal native title claims alone covers several billion dollars.
Lurid allegations
Smear is commonly deployed as a distraction. In 2006, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's leading current affairs programme, Lateline, broadcast lurid allegations of "sex slavery" among the Mutitjulu Aboriginal people. The source, described as an "anonymous youth worker", was exposed as a planted federal government official, whose "evidence" was discredited by the Northern Territory chief minister and police. Lateline never retracted its allegations. Within a year, Prime Minister John Howard had declared a "national emergency" and sent the army, police and "business managers" into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. A commissioned study on Aboriginal children was cited; and "protecting the children" became the media cry - just as it had more than half a century ago when children were kidnapped by white welfare authorities. One of the authors of the study, Pat Anderson, complained: "There is no relationship between the emergency powers and what's in our report." His research had concentrated on the effects of slum housing on children. Few now listened to him. Kevin Rudd, as opposition leader, supported the "intervention" and has maintained it as prime minister. Welfare payments are "quarantined" and people controlled and patronised in the colonial way. To justify this, the mostly Murdoch-owned capital-city press has published a relentlessly one-dimensional picture of Aboriginal degradation. No one denies that alcoholism and child abuse exist, as they do in white Australia, but no quarantine operates there.
The Northern Territory is where Aboriginal people have had comprehensive land rights longer than anywhere else, granted almost by accident 30 years ago. The Howard government set about clawing them back. The territory contains extraordinary mineral wealth, including huge deposits of uranium on Aboriginal land. The number of companies licensed to explore for uranium has doubled to 80. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the American giant Halli burton, built the railway from Adelaide to Darwin, which runs adjacent to Olympic Dam, the world's largest low-grade uranium mine. Last year, the Howard government appropriated Aboriginal land near Tennant Creek, where it intends to store the radioactive waste. "The land-grab of Aboriginal tribal land has nothing to do with child sexual abuse," says the internationally acclaimed Australian scientist Helen Caldi cott, "but all to do with open slather uranium mining and converting the Northern Territory to a glo bal nuclear dump."
Indonesian invasion
This "top end" of Australia borders the Arafura and Timor Seas, across from the Indo nesian archipelago. One of the world's great sub marine oil and gas deposits lies off East Timor. In 1975, Australia's then ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, who had been tipped off about the coming Indonesian invasion of then Portuguese East Timor, secretly recommen ded to Canberra that Australia turn a blind eye to it, noting that the seabed riches "could be much more readily negotiated with Indo nesia . . . than with [an in dependent] Timor". Gar eth Evans, later foreign minister, described a prize worth "zillions of dollars". He ensured that Australia distinguish itself as one of the few countries to recognise General Suharto's bloody occupation, in which 200,000 East Timorese lost their lives.
When eventually, in 1999, East Timor won its independence, the Howard government set out to manoeuvre the East Timorese out of their proper share of the oil and gas revenue by unilaterally changing the maritime boundary and withdrawing from World Court jurisdiction in maritime disputes. This would have denied desperately needed revenue to the new country, stricken from its years of brutal occupation. However, East Timor's then prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, leader of the majority Fretilin party, proved more than a match for Canberra and especially its bullying foreign minister, Alexander Downer.
Alkatiri demonstrated that he was a genuine nationalist who believed East Timor's resource wealth should be the property of the state, so that the nation did not fall into debt to the World Bank. He also believed that women should have equal opportunity, and that health care and education should be universal. "I am against rich men feasting behind closed doors," he said. For this, he was caricatured as a communist by his opponents, notably the president, Xanana Gusmão, and the then foreign minister, José Ramos-Horta, both close to the Australian political Establishment. When a group of disgruntled soldiers rebelled against Alkatiri's government in 2006, Australia readily accepted an "invitation" to send troops to East Timor. "Australia," wrote Paul Kelly in Murdoch's Australian, "is operating as a regional power or a potential hegemon that shapes security and political outcomes. This language is unpalatable to many. Yet it is the reality. It is new, experimental territory for Australia."
A mendacious campaign against the "corrupt" Alkatiri was mounted in the Australian media, reminiscent of the coup by media that briefly toppled Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Like the US soldiers who ignored looters on the streets of Baghdad, Australian soldiers stood by while armed rioters terrorised people, burned their homes and attacked churches. The rebel leader Alfredo Reinado, a murderous thug trained in Australia, was elevated to folk hero. Under this pressure, the democratically elected Alkatiri was forced from office and East Timor was declared a "failed state" by Australia's legion of security academics and journalistic parrots concerned with the "arc of instability" to the north, an instability they supported as long as the genocidal Suharto was in charge.
Paradoxically, on 11 February, Ramos-Horta and Gusmão came to grief as they tried to do a deal with Reinado in order to subdue him. His rebels turned on them both, leaving Ramos-Horta critically wounded and Reinado himself dead. From Canberra, Prime Minister Rudd announced the despatch of more Australian military "peacemakers". In the same week, the World Food Programme disclosed that the children of resource-rich East Timor were slowly starving, with more than 42 per cent of under-fives seriously underweight - a statistic which corresponds to that of Aboriginal children in "failed" communities that also occupy an abundant natural resource.
Blunt instrument
Australia is engaged in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, where its troops and federal police have dealt with "breakdowns in law and order" that are "depriving Australia of business and investment opportunities". A former senior Australian intelligence officer calls these "wild societies for which intervention represents a blunt, but necessary instrument". Australia is also entrenched in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rudd's electoral promise to withdraw from the "coalition of the willing" does not include almost half of Australia's troops in Iraq.
At last year's conference of the American-Australian Leadership Dialogue - an annual event designed to unite the foreign policies of the two countries, but in reality an opportunity for the Australian elite to express its historic servility to great power - Rudd was in unusually oratorical style. "It is time we sang from the world's rooftops," he said, "[that] despite Iraq, America is an overwhelming force for good in the world . . . I look forward to more than working with the great American democracy, the arsenal of freedom, in bringing about long-term changes to the planet." The new sheriff for Asia had spoken.
www.johnpilger.com
8/14/07
APEC & FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS IN THE ASIA PACIFIC
by Jane Kelsey
This conference provides a useful opportunity to reflect on the present and possible future role of APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation). In recent years, veteran APEC-watchers have rather complacently dismissed the grouping as irrelevant. But we may have under-estimated its contribution to the new matrix of economic alliances that are emerging within the region.
APEC is easy to dismiss. It has no institutional structure or binding legal agreements and sets ambitious goals for free trade and investment that most of its members appeared to have no intention of meeting. Yet its informality and flexibility may be its major advantage, as its proponents have often claimed. The top-down approach of negotiating ever-expanding formal regional treaties in Europe and the Americas is stalling in the face of popular and political opposition to the neoliberal agenda, the loss of sovereignty and the dominance of superpowers. When APEC tried to present itself as the regional equivalent of the EU and NAFTA it faced similar opposition from member governments and popular movements.
The more recent strategy, led by evangelical neoliberal governments in the region, has been to work less visibly from the 'bottom up'. That has helped create a new momentum that is much more difficult to mobilize against. Yet focusing only on this momentum disguises fundamental problems. These agreements reflect different models for regional capitalism, and the competing power politics and hegemonic aspirations of larger powers in the region. Their coverage and terms are uneven, making integration of the multiplicity of agreements almost impossible. Moreover, if governments try to implement all the current and proposed agreements they will create major social, economic and political conflict. These contradictions echo and are likely to intensify the instability and vulnerability of the multilateral 'trade' agenda.
A Brief History of APEC
APEC's history can be divided into four periods. The original proposals for a regional economic grouping came from Australia, supported by Japan and New Zealand, in 1988. This was a response to the paralysis of the Uruguay round and predictions that the world would split into three axes: Europe, the Americas and Asia (Africa was deemed irrelevant). At that time the Asian tigers were predicted to be the powerhouse of the 21st century, but there was no effective regional economic mechanism. ASEAN was seen as limited and ineffective, especially by Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan who were excluded. China was barely on the radar screen. The US bullied its way in to this arrangement, despite opposition from Australia, but with support from Japan who felt it would otherwise be targeted as the sole superpower in the grouping. Unlike the EU and NAFTA, APEC's rhetoric of 'open regionalism' was designed to act as a catalyst for the global agenda, rather than create a preferential regional bloc. Interest in APEC was hard to sustain once the Uruguay round got moving after 1990 and their next few annual meetings of trade ministers were non-events. President Clinton reluctantly convened the first leaders' summit in 1993, so that the US had something to show for hosting the meeting. There were limited protests in Seattle that mainly involving North American NGOs and unions.
From 1994 to 1996 APEC became infamous for the extravagance of its meetings and its rhetoric. The host 'economy' in 1994 was Soeharto's Indonesia. Under the strong influence of the US, Indonesia got APEC members to adopt the voluntary and non-binding 'Bogor Goal' of achieving free and open trade and investment by 2010 for its 'developed' member economies and 2020 for 'developing' economies. Mahathir immediately signaled Malaysia's dissent. In Osaka in 1995 member governments produced their first Individual Action Plans setting out the steps they would take to achieve the Bogor goal and a Collective Action Plan to develop common policy positions on key issues. This was built on in Manila in 1996.
Over this time, a split became apparent between the aggressive free trade and investment agenda of APEC's Anglo-American members and the economic integration approach of the Asian governments, led by Japan. That internally paralysed APEC. Externally, APEC faced mounting opposition at the annual ministers and leaders' summits. Building on a small gathering of activists in Indonesia in 1994, regional NGOs met in Osaka in 1995 to analyse and oppose these developments. Popular movements, as well as NGOs, held mass mobilizations in the Philippines in 1996. Connections were made with structural adjustment at the national level and the newly created WTO. Media scepticism helped foster a major credibility crisis for APEC.
In 1997 most commentators were writing APEC's obituary. The Vancouver leaders' summit came shortly after the collapse of Indonesian and Thai economies and Malaysia's intervention in currency markets. During the meeting itself the South Korean economy also collapsed. Proposals led by the Anglo-Americans to boost the WTO through Early Voluntary Sector Liberalisation failed to gain support (although some of that groundwork has resurfaced in the sectoral negotiations on non-agricultural products (NAMA) in the Doha round). Bitter divisions continued through 1998 when Malaysia was the APEC chair and the US boycotted the annual meeting. Vancouver saw the last of the major regional protests against APEC: the British Columbia provincial government hosted a mass-scale, politically moderate 'NGO Olympics' in Vancouver that provided little momentum for ongoing regional activism. The small-scale protests in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 blended with the local politics of the reformasi movement.
Since 1999 APEC has slowly emerged from this near death experience in a different, but temporarily more effective, form. This was not immediately apparent. The 1999 meeting was only saved from being a disaster for the New Zealand host by the brokering of a political deal with Indonesia on East Timor. This set a precedent for political, rather than economic, issues to dominate the leaders' meetings. That political element intensified after September 2001 as the US insisted that security and terrorism took centre stage. APEC was portrayed by its defenders as a low-key regional version of the G-8. At the same time, governments still insisted that they were meeting as 'economies', screening out broader considerations of social justice and human rights, and produced market-driven strategies such as the STAR initiative (Secure Trade in the APEC Region).
The role of APEC in promoting neoliberal globalization refocused on what New Zealand officials dubbed the 'Trojan Horse' strategy. The idea was to achieve the Bogor goals and revitalize the WTO from below by negotiating WTO-plus agreements among APEC's neoliberal evangelists. This was part of an international response to the crisis in the WTO and a desire for 'insurance' if multilateralism broke down (1988 revisited). Current research on this trend by Chris Dent from Leeds University reports 16 FTAs operating internationally in 1990; 72 by 1997; and some 178 in 2004, with many more being negotiated or proposed. By the end of 2004, 72 FTA projects were underway that involved APEC members.
The ambitious proposal for a Pacific 5 (Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Chile and the US) was promoted by New Zealand soon after the Vancouver APEC meeting in 1997 had failed to agree on voluntary sectoral liberalisation and the East Asian crisis altered perceptions of the regional and global economy. The US and Australia were unenthusiastic. So New Zealand and Singapore as small country evangelists began negotiations for a bilateral agreement. Singapore was especially keen to distance itself from the 'failed' East Asian economies. Australia, Chile, Thailand, Mexico and Hong Kong China subsequently embraced the bilateral strategy. Meanwhile, the US was pursuing FTAs with many of the same countries, outside APEC, as part of its own geo-political strategy.
A number of ASEAN governments (notably Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia) did not support the 'Trojan Horse' strategy, seeing FTAs as breaking down ASEAN's solidarity and the prospects for an East Asia Economic Caucus - an idea actively promoted by Malaysian' Prime Minister Mahathir since the mid-1990s with implicit support from other ASEAN countries. This has been slowly moving forward. The ASEAN-plus-3 dialogue was institutionalised in 1999.
Thailand, under WTO Director-General-elect Supachai Panitchpakdi, was more favourably disposed to FTAs in general, including within ASEAN. The region's new economic powerhouse, the People's Republic of China, was also warming to the idea. Promoted by Supachai and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji a China-ASEAN Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Co-operation was signed in 2002. This agreed to an 'early harvest' of tariff cuts by China in favour of ASEAN, ahead of those for other WTO members, and a China-ASEAN FTA (CAFTA) to be implemented in 2010. This would potentially create the third largest free trade area in the world.
The Anglo-American lobby was once again worried about being left out. In 2004 at the annual trade ministers meeting in Chile, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Taipei and Canada pushed to blend these initiatives into an Asia Pacific FTA - something the APEC business lobby (APEC Business Advisory Group or ABAC) had argued for as a way to overcome the 'spaghetti bowl' effect of the FTAs. China, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia sunk the idea. However, Australia and New Zealand did secure agreement from ASEAN in November 2004 to launch negotiations for a combined FTA in 2005.
As of 2005 almost all APEC members are involved in some kind of FTA negotiations. Governments still routinely commission crude econometric studies that produce fanciful predictions of the gains; but they commonly downplay claims that tangible economic gains will be made. The motives are more strategic than economic. Negotiations between the US and Chile, Singapore, Thailand and South Korea have been largely influenced by geo-political relationships. China and Japan have competing hegemonic aspirations that are apparent in their approach to regional deals, with China in the lead. Countries that agree to negotiate with China, especially ASEAN, seem more concerned about the process of developing their relationship than they are about the economic (and social) outcome. Singapore and Chile justify the agreements as a way to sell themselves as platforms into their regions by providing to foreign investors with guaranteed 'high quality' neoliberal regimes. There is also an ideological 'demonstration effect'. The neoliberal evangelists believe that creating a critical mass will help them pressure other countries to join for fear of being left out, and reduce the influence of domestic opposition.
The result is a competitive form of liberalisation. As occurred within APEC itself, there are competing models of FTAs that cannot be integrated. The US demands agreements that reflect its political, economic and strategic interests. Japan and South Korea are more selective, seeking external opportunities while responding to domestic interests. China is primarily concerned to establish precedents, learn from negotiations that are relatively insignificant or secure their energy supplies. The neoliberal evangelists promote pure WTO-plus bilateral agreements, which they hope can be expanded to cover more parties; they cite the extension of the Singapore/New Zealand agreement, which became the Pacific Three with Chile and ultimately the Trans-Pacific Closer Economic Partnership in 2005 after Brunei joined. Sub-regional initiatives are also underway. Increasingly, these involve governments in a mix of models: notably ASEAN/CER (Australia and New Zealand), ASEAN/China, and the less developed ASEAN-plus-three.
The resulting web of agreements and negotiations is fragmented, unco-ordinated and uneven in content and coverage. It remains unclear whether governments actually intend to implement all these agreements, especially when rich country models are being pushed on poorer Asian countries where the economic, social and political consequences will be severe.
APEC is currently playing four roles in this new regional dynamic:
1. Regular meetings of regional trade and finance ministers and political leaders provide triggers to advance the process at the multilateral and bilateral levels. APEC's 'open regionalism' is premised on the primacy of multilateral negotiations. Since the first WTO ministerial meeting in Singapore in 1996, APEC meetings have acted as rolling WTO mini-ministerials where key WTO players can broker deals and pressure reluctant governments behind closed doors. However, APEC meetings are just one of many opportunities for mini-ministerials and the deep ongoing divisions among APEC members and difficulty of gaining consensus on the Doha round programme means they have had limited impact.
APEC meetings have been much more important as catalysts for the FTAs and RTAs. Evangelical governments use APEC to ratchet up the process. The desire of Trade Ministers and Leaders for headlines that can show some outcome from these meetings has produced opportunistic deadlines for negotiations that require officials and ministers to overcome the obstacles. Sometimes, one government will finesse the process: New Zealand announced conclusion of the FTA with Thailand during APEC in Chile in 2004, even though negotiations were yet concluded, because it feared the Thai government's commitment was weakening in response to domestic pressure.
2. The 'Bogor Goal' of free and open trade and investment by 2010/2020 is used as justification for neoliberal policies and FTAs. Neoliberal evangelists in Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong cite the Bogor Goal as justification for unilateral, bilateral and regional liberalisation. It is referred to in the preamble and/or text of most agreements involving APEC members, so as to legitimize the agreement and justify built in reviews that will extend the original level of liberalisation. It is also used to justify peer pressure within APEC to ensure that bilaterals comply with WTO requirements for FTAs and the WTO-plus APEC objectives and various non-binding principles and guidelines. As part of the 'mid-term stock take' (half way to 2010) it has been agreed that each APEC government's Individual Action Plan is to include a chapter on FTAs, with a template for reporting on existing and proposed agreements that cover APEC's wide-ranging neoliberal agenda. The Trade Ministers meeting in 2005 also called for an active information exchange and forwarding of the APEC best practice guidelines to the WTO.
3. APEC's internal work programme is increasingly focused on promoting and shaping FTAs & RTAs to achieve 'high quality' liberalisation and consistency. Best Practice guidelines for FTAs were developed in 2004 and endorsed by the Ministers and Leaders meetings. The Australian government also produced a handbook on FTAs for a workshop on FTA negotiations in December 2004, which includes a section on how to sell the agreements at home. This is part of the Australian government's 'capacity-building' activities in APEC that are funded by AUSAID. Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade also published a negotiating guide to FTAs in 2005, which includes the best practice principles and a stylized FTA.
In 2003, 2004 and 2005 APEC has held policy dialogues on FTAs at Senior Official level. More are planned, specifically to share the experience of the Trans-Pacific CEP (Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei) as a model for integrating bilateral FTAs. Training programmes have been organised to build micro-networks of officials, with several of the APEC Study Centres playing a key ideological role.
4. APEC's ever broadening programme is used to justify WTO-plus FTAs and coherence with the neoliberal agenda of the international and regional financial institutions. Coverage of FTAs and Closer Economic Partnerships routinely reaches much further than current WTO agreements. This creates precedents that become new base lines that can be used to ratchet up the coverage and the rules in the next phase of FTAs and flow on to the WTO negotiations. Liberalisation of services has overtaken goods as the primary element of FTAs, with increasingly use of a negative list approach, which some governments now claim, has become the norm. Other chapters cover the 'new issues' that were explicitly rejected in Cancun.
This is often justified by reference to 'voluntary and non-binding', 'best practice' principles, guidelines and policies that have been produced by secretive and undemocratic APEC committees for many years. They cover investment, competition, government procurement, structural adjustment, privatization, fiscal austerity, monetary regimes, and more. Most of these have been produced through a combination of trade officials from evangelic governments, plus the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (combining private sector, academics and officials 'acting in their personal capacity') and consultants from the APEC Study Centres. They also often involve collaboration with the Asian Development Bank. World Bank, IMF and OECD. These examples of 'best practice' are increasingly referred to in agreements to justify texts or as the basis for future negotiations.
Strategic Responses
So-called 'free trade' agreements are really strategic initiatives that are driven by a combination of political allegiances, ideology, hegemonic objectives and fear of marginalization. APEC's claim to be a body of member economies, and its myopic objective of 'open regionalism' to achieve free trade and investment by 2010/2020, excludes any critique of neoliberal globalization and hides the critical contradictions that are intrinsic to
- competing models of capitalist expansion;
- competing strategies for regional economic integration; and
- competing power politics and hegemonic goals.
If APEC is basically a pimp for the WTO and FTAs, is it worth the ongoing attention of activists in the region? In the past there have been gains from targeting APEC meetings: local awareness raising, challenges to an agenda that would otherwise have gone unchallenged, and providing leverage to debate the broader agenda that APEC represents locally, regionally and in the media. What form these challenges took was largely a reflection of local priorities and capacity. By the late 1990s they had been superseded by a new focus on the WTO. Successive meetings in Brunei and China also made mobilization impossible. Since then, activities around the annual meetings have been muted, except for anti-FTAA activities in Chile in 2004 and potentially South Korea this year.
The effectiveness of anti-APEC activities can also be seen as a product of the 1990s. Since the crisis in the WTO, and the current blind panic to sign up bilateral agreements, it has become much more difficult to derail the APEC agenda and hence those bilateral deals. This new role for APEC may be short lived. It is likely to become less significant again in the future, once the deals have been done or negotiations have collapsed - especially if ASEAN/China unleashes a new dynamic. New divisions are likely to emerge between Asia/Latin America/ the US and Australia/New Zealand and between the neoliberal evangelists, Chinese and Japanese hegemonic interests, economic nationalists, and US imperialists.
Is there is anything to gain from targeting APEC over the next few years and if so why, how and where? Could a focus on its activities through a revival of popular and media pressure and visibility slow the current process in the short term? Could it put the spotlight on FTAs where that is not impossible within the countries concerned? Is it possible for this pressure to heighten the internal contradictions that ensure that integration of these agreements is impossible in the longer run? Are there forthcoming meetings where the national politics and strength of local organizers makes this possible? Is it a priority for regional movements, given other competing priorities?
Prof Jane Kelsey
Action, Research and Education Network of Aotearoa (ARENA)
* Paper to the Asia Pacific Research Network Policy Research Conference on Trade, Hong Kong, 11-13 July 2005
http://www.arena.org.nz/apecftas.htm
Selected references:
ABAC, 'The First Decade Since Bogor. A Business Assessment of APEC's Progress', Hong Kong: ABAC 2004 www.abaconline.org
APEC, 'Best Practice for RTAs/FTAs in APEC', 16th APEC Ministerial Meeting, 17 November 2004, Santiago, Chile 2004/AMM/003
APEC 'Bogor Goals Mid-Term Stocktake Symposium Summary', Trade Ministers Meeting, 2-3 June 2005 Jeju, Korea 2005/MRT/006anx7
APEC Committee on Trade and Investment, 'Proposed IAP Chapter on FTAs and RTAs', 29-30 September 2004, Santiago, Chile 2004/SOMIII/CTI/007
APEC Finance Ministers' Meeting '2004 Policy Themes: Conclusion Report by the Chair', 2-3 September 2004, Santiago, Chile 2004/FMM/006
APEC-OECD Integrated Checklist on Regulatory Reform: Addressing Regulatory, Competition Policy and Market Openness Policy Issues' Trade Ministers Meeting, Jeju, Korea 2-3 June 20052005/MRT/006anx7
APEC 'Participant's Handbook, Workshop on Negotiating Free-Trade Agreements', 13-15 December 2004, Brunei Darussalam
APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade 'Statement of the Chair' 2-3 June 2005, Jeju, Korea 2005/MRT/008
Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 'Negotiating free-trade agreements: a guide', Canberra: APEC Branch/DFAT 2005
Dent, Christopher 'Bilateral Free Trade Agreements: Boon or Bane for Regionalism in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific?' (forthcoming)
Kelsey, Jane 'Whither APEC?' in Wesley Pue (ed) 'Pepper in Our Eyes: The APEC Affair' Vancouver: UBC Press 2000
McKay, John (Australian APEC Study Centre) 'ASEAN Plus Three & Alternative Visions of Economic Cooperation: Implications for APEC', APEC Study Centres Consortium, May 2005, Jeju, Korea
PECC, 'Asia-Pacific RTAs as Avenues to Achieving the Bogor Goals: Analysis and Ways Forward' SOM Policy Dialogue on RTAs/FTAs, 27 May 2003 Khon Kaen, Thailand 2003/SOMII/RTAs/FTAs/012
Scollay, Robert 'Preliminary Assessment of the Proposal for a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). An Issues Paper for the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC)' Auckland: New Zealand APEC Study Centre 2004
Soesastro, Hadi 'Trends and Issues of RTAs/FTAs in East Asia', SOM Policy Dialogue on RTAs/FTAs, 27 May 2003 Khon Kaen, Thailand 2003/SOMII/RTAs/FTAs/015
Soesastro, Hadi 'APEC's Trade Policy Challenges: The Doha Development Agenda and Regional/Bilateral FTAs', SOM Policy Dialogue on RTAs/FTAs, 27 May 2003 Khon Kaen, Thailand 2003/SOMII/RTAs/FTAs/008
This conference provides a useful opportunity to reflect on the present and possible future role of APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation). In recent years, veteran APEC-watchers have rather complacently dismissed the grouping as irrelevant. But we may have under-estimated its contribution to the new matrix of economic alliances that are emerging within the region.
APEC is easy to dismiss. It has no institutional structure or binding legal agreements and sets ambitious goals for free trade and investment that most of its members appeared to have no intention of meeting. Yet its informality and flexibility may be its major advantage, as its proponents have often claimed. The top-down approach of negotiating ever-expanding formal regional treaties in Europe and the Americas is stalling in the face of popular and political opposition to the neoliberal agenda, the loss of sovereignty and the dominance of superpowers. When APEC tried to present itself as the regional equivalent of the EU and NAFTA it faced similar opposition from member governments and popular movements.
The more recent strategy, led by evangelical neoliberal governments in the region, has been to work less visibly from the 'bottom up'. That has helped create a new momentum that is much more difficult to mobilize against. Yet focusing only on this momentum disguises fundamental problems. These agreements reflect different models for regional capitalism, and the competing power politics and hegemonic aspirations of larger powers in the region. Their coverage and terms are uneven, making integration of the multiplicity of agreements almost impossible. Moreover, if governments try to implement all the current and proposed agreements they will create major social, economic and political conflict. These contradictions echo and are likely to intensify the instability and vulnerability of the multilateral 'trade' agenda.
A Brief History of APEC
APEC's history can be divided into four periods. The original proposals for a regional economic grouping came from Australia, supported by Japan and New Zealand, in 1988. This was a response to the paralysis of the Uruguay round and predictions that the world would split into three axes: Europe, the Americas and Asia (Africa was deemed irrelevant). At that time the Asian tigers were predicted to be the powerhouse of the 21st century, but there was no effective regional economic mechanism. ASEAN was seen as limited and ineffective, especially by Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan who were excluded. China was barely on the radar screen. The US bullied its way in to this arrangement, despite opposition from Australia, but with support from Japan who felt it would otherwise be targeted as the sole superpower in the grouping. Unlike the EU and NAFTA, APEC's rhetoric of 'open regionalism' was designed to act as a catalyst for the global agenda, rather than create a preferential regional bloc. Interest in APEC was hard to sustain once the Uruguay round got moving after 1990 and their next few annual meetings of trade ministers were non-events. President Clinton reluctantly convened the first leaders' summit in 1993, so that the US had something to show for hosting the meeting. There were limited protests in Seattle that mainly involving North American NGOs and unions.
From 1994 to 1996 APEC became infamous for the extravagance of its meetings and its rhetoric. The host 'economy' in 1994 was Soeharto's Indonesia. Under the strong influence of the US, Indonesia got APEC members to adopt the voluntary and non-binding 'Bogor Goal' of achieving free and open trade and investment by 2010 for its 'developed' member economies and 2020 for 'developing' economies. Mahathir immediately signaled Malaysia's dissent. In Osaka in 1995 member governments produced their first Individual Action Plans setting out the steps they would take to achieve the Bogor goal and a Collective Action Plan to develop common policy positions on key issues. This was built on in Manila in 1996.
Over this time, a split became apparent between the aggressive free trade and investment agenda of APEC's Anglo-American members and the economic integration approach of the Asian governments, led by Japan. That internally paralysed APEC. Externally, APEC faced mounting opposition at the annual ministers and leaders' summits. Building on a small gathering of activists in Indonesia in 1994, regional NGOs met in Osaka in 1995 to analyse and oppose these developments. Popular movements, as well as NGOs, held mass mobilizations in the Philippines in 1996. Connections were made with structural adjustment at the national level and the newly created WTO. Media scepticism helped foster a major credibility crisis for APEC.
In 1997 most commentators were writing APEC's obituary. The Vancouver leaders' summit came shortly after the collapse of Indonesian and Thai economies and Malaysia's intervention in currency markets. During the meeting itself the South Korean economy also collapsed. Proposals led by the Anglo-Americans to boost the WTO through Early Voluntary Sector Liberalisation failed to gain support (although some of that groundwork has resurfaced in the sectoral negotiations on non-agricultural products (NAMA) in the Doha round). Bitter divisions continued through 1998 when Malaysia was the APEC chair and the US boycotted the annual meeting. Vancouver saw the last of the major regional protests against APEC: the British Columbia provincial government hosted a mass-scale, politically moderate 'NGO Olympics' in Vancouver that provided little momentum for ongoing regional activism. The small-scale protests in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 blended with the local politics of the reformasi movement.
Since 1999 APEC has slowly emerged from this near death experience in a different, but temporarily more effective, form. This was not immediately apparent. The 1999 meeting was only saved from being a disaster for the New Zealand host by the brokering of a political deal with Indonesia on East Timor. This set a precedent for political, rather than economic, issues to dominate the leaders' meetings. That political element intensified after September 2001 as the US insisted that security and terrorism took centre stage. APEC was portrayed by its defenders as a low-key regional version of the G-8. At the same time, governments still insisted that they were meeting as 'economies', screening out broader considerations of social justice and human rights, and produced market-driven strategies such as the STAR initiative (Secure Trade in the APEC Region).
The role of APEC in promoting neoliberal globalization refocused on what New Zealand officials dubbed the 'Trojan Horse' strategy. The idea was to achieve the Bogor goals and revitalize the WTO from below by negotiating WTO-plus agreements among APEC's neoliberal evangelists. This was part of an international response to the crisis in the WTO and a desire for 'insurance' if multilateralism broke down (1988 revisited). Current research on this trend by Chris Dent from Leeds University reports 16 FTAs operating internationally in 1990; 72 by 1997; and some 178 in 2004, with many more being negotiated or proposed. By the end of 2004, 72 FTA projects were underway that involved APEC members.
The ambitious proposal for a Pacific 5 (Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Chile and the US) was promoted by New Zealand soon after the Vancouver APEC meeting in 1997 had failed to agree on voluntary sectoral liberalisation and the East Asian crisis altered perceptions of the regional and global economy. The US and Australia were unenthusiastic. So New Zealand and Singapore as small country evangelists began negotiations for a bilateral agreement. Singapore was especially keen to distance itself from the 'failed' East Asian economies. Australia, Chile, Thailand, Mexico and Hong Kong China subsequently embraced the bilateral strategy. Meanwhile, the US was pursuing FTAs with many of the same countries, outside APEC, as part of its own geo-political strategy.
A number of ASEAN governments (notably Indonesia, Philippines and Malaysia) did not support the 'Trojan Horse' strategy, seeing FTAs as breaking down ASEAN's solidarity and the prospects for an East Asia Economic Caucus - an idea actively promoted by Malaysian' Prime Minister Mahathir since the mid-1990s with implicit support from other ASEAN countries. This has been slowly moving forward. The ASEAN-plus-3 dialogue was institutionalised in 1999.
Thailand, under WTO Director-General-elect Supachai Panitchpakdi, was more favourably disposed to FTAs in general, including within ASEAN. The region's new economic powerhouse, the People's Republic of China, was also warming to the idea. Promoted by Supachai and Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji a China-ASEAN Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Co-operation was signed in 2002. This agreed to an 'early harvest' of tariff cuts by China in favour of ASEAN, ahead of those for other WTO members, and a China-ASEAN FTA (CAFTA) to be implemented in 2010. This would potentially create the third largest free trade area in the world.
The Anglo-American lobby was once again worried about being left out. In 2004 at the annual trade ministers meeting in Chile, the US, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Singapore, Taipei and Canada pushed to blend these initiatives into an Asia Pacific FTA - something the APEC business lobby (APEC Business Advisory Group or ABAC) had argued for as a way to overcome the 'spaghetti bowl' effect of the FTAs. China, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia sunk the idea. However, Australia and New Zealand did secure agreement from ASEAN in November 2004 to launch negotiations for a combined FTA in 2005.
As of 2005 almost all APEC members are involved in some kind of FTA negotiations. Governments still routinely commission crude econometric studies that produce fanciful predictions of the gains; but they commonly downplay claims that tangible economic gains will be made. The motives are more strategic than economic. Negotiations between the US and Chile, Singapore, Thailand and South Korea have been largely influenced by geo-political relationships. China and Japan have competing hegemonic aspirations that are apparent in their approach to regional deals, with China in the lead. Countries that agree to negotiate with China, especially ASEAN, seem more concerned about the process of developing their relationship than they are about the economic (and social) outcome. Singapore and Chile justify the agreements as a way to sell themselves as platforms into their regions by providing to foreign investors with guaranteed 'high quality' neoliberal regimes. There is also an ideological 'demonstration effect'. The neoliberal evangelists believe that creating a critical mass will help them pressure other countries to join for fear of being left out, and reduce the influence of domestic opposition.
The result is a competitive form of liberalisation. As occurred within APEC itself, there are competing models of FTAs that cannot be integrated. The US demands agreements that reflect its political, economic and strategic interests. Japan and South Korea are more selective, seeking external opportunities while responding to domestic interests. China is primarily concerned to establish precedents, learn from negotiations that are relatively insignificant or secure their energy supplies. The neoliberal evangelists promote pure WTO-plus bilateral agreements, which they hope can be expanded to cover more parties; they cite the extension of the Singapore/New Zealand agreement, which became the Pacific Three with Chile and ultimately the Trans-Pacific Closer Economic Partnership in 2005 after Brunei joined. Sub-regional initiatives are also underway. Increasingly, these involve governments in a mix of models: notably ASEAN/CER (Australia and New Zealand), ASEAN/China, and the less developed ASEAN-plus-three.
The resulting web of agreements and negotiations is fragmented, unco-ordinated and uneven in content and coverage. It remains unclear whether governments actually intend to implement all these agreements, especially when rich country models are being pushed on poorer Asian countries where the economic, social and political consequences will be severe.
APEC is currently playing four roles in this new regional dynamic:
1. Regular meetings of regional trade and finance ministers and political leaders provide triggers to advance the process at the multilateral and bilateral levels. APEC's 'open regionalism' is premised on the primacy of multilateral negotiations. Since the first WTO ministerial meeting in Singapore in 1996, APEC meetings have acted as rolling WTO mini-ministerials where key WTO players can broker deals and pressure reluctant governments behind closed doors. However, APEC meetings are just one of many opportunities for mini-ministerials and the deep ongoing divisions among APEC members and difficulty of gaining consensus on the Doha round programme means they have had limited impact.
APEC meetings have been much more important as catalysts for the FTAs and RTAs. Evangelical governments use APEC to ratchet up the process. The desire of Trade Ministers and Leaders for headlines that can show some outcome from these meetings has produced opportunistic deadlines for negotiations that require officials and ministers to overcome the obstacles. Sometimes, one government will finesse the process: New Zealand announced conclusion of the FTA with Thailand during APEC in Chile in 2004, even though negotiations were yet concluded, because it feared the Thai government's commitment was weakening in response to domestic pressure.
2. The 'Bogor Goal' of free and open trade and investment by 2010/2020 is used as justification for neoliberal policies and FTAs. Neoliberal evangelists in Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong cite the Bogor Goal as justification for unilateral, bilateral and regional liberalisation. It is referred to in the preamble and/or text of most agreements involving APEC members, so as to legitimize the agreement and justify built in reviews that will extend the original level of liberalisation. It is also used to justify peer pressure within APEC to ensure that bilaterals comply with WTO requirements for FTAs and the WTO-plus APEC objectives and various non-binding principles and guidelines. As part of the 'mid-term stock take' (half way to 2010) it has been agreed that each APEC government's Individual Action Plan is to include a chapter on FTAs, with a template for reporting on existing and proposed agreements that cover APEC's wide-ranging neoliberal agenda. The Trade Ministers meeting in 2005 also called for an active information exchange and forwarding of the APEC best practice guidelines to the WTO.
3. APEC's internal work programme is increasingly focused on promoting and shaping FTAs & RTAs to achieve 'high quality' liberalisation and consistency. Best Practice guidelines for FTAs were developed in 2004 and endorsed by the Ministers and Leaders meetings. The Australian government also produced a handbook on FTAs for a workshop on FTA negotiations in December 2004, which includes a section on how to sell the agreements at home. This is part of the Australian government's 'capacity-building' activities in APEC that are funded by AUSAID. Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade also published a negotiating guide to FTAs in 2005, which includes the best practice principles and a stylized FTA.
In 2003, 2004 and 2005 APEC has held policy dialogues on FTAs at Senior Official level. More are planned, specifically to share the experience of the Trans-Pacific CEP (Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei) as a model for integrating bilateral FTAs. Training programmes have been organised to build micro-networks of officials, with several of the APEC Study Centres playing a key ideological role.
4. APEC's ever broadening programme is used to justify WTO-plus FTAs and coherence with the neoliberal agenda of the international and regional financial institutions. Coverage of FTAs and Closer Economic Partnerships routinely reaches much further than current WTO agreements. This creates precedents that become new base lines that can be used to ratchet up the coverage and the rules in the next phase of FTAs and flow on to the WTO negotiations. Liberalisation of services has overtaken goods as the primary element of FTAs, with increasingly use of a negative list approach, which some governments now claim, has become the norm. Other chapters cover the 'new issues' that were explicitly rejected in Cancun.
This is often justified by reference to 'voluntary and non-binding', 'best practice' principles, guidelines and policies that have been produced by secretive and undemocratic APEC committees for many years. They cover investment, competition, government procurement, structural adjustment, privatization, fiscal austerity, monetary regimes, and more. Most of these have been produced through a combination of trade officials from evangelic governments, plus the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (combining private sector, academics and officials 'acting in their personal capacity') and consultants from the APEC Study Centres. They also often involve collaboration with the Asian Development Bank. World Bank, IMF and OECD. These examples of 'best practice' are increasingly referred to in agreements to justify texts or as the basis for future negotiations.
Strategic Responses
So-called 'free trade' agreements are really strategic initiatives that are driven by a combination of political allegiances, ideology, hegemonic objectives and fear of marginalization. APEC's claim to be a body of member economies, and its myopic objective of 'open regionalism' to achieve free trade and investment by 2010/2020, excludes any critique of neoliberal globalization and hides the critical contradictions that are intrinsic to
- competing models of capitalist expansion;
- competing strategies for regional economic integration; and
- competing power politics and hegemonic goals.
If APEC is basically a pimp for the WTO and FTAs, is it worth the ongoing attention of activists in the region? In the past there have been gains from targeting APEC meetings: local awareness raising, challenges to an agenda that would otherwise have gone unchallenged, and providing leverage to debate the broader agenda that APEC represents locally, regionally and in the media. What form these challenges took was largely a reflection of local priorities and capacity. By the late 1990s they had been superseded by a new focus on the WTO. Successive meetings in Brunei and China also made mobilization impossible. Since then, activities around the annual meetings have been muted, except for anti-FTAA activities in Chile in 2004 and potentially South Korea this year.
The effectiveness of anti-APEC activities can also be seen as a product of the 1990s. Since the crisis in the WTO, and the current blind panic to sign up bilateral agreements, it has become much more difficult to derail the APEC agenda and hence those bilateral deals. This new role for APEC may be short lived. It is likely to become less significant again in the future, once the deals have been done or negotiations have collapsed - especially if ASEAN/China unleashes a new dynamic. New divisions are likely to emerge between Asia/Latin America/ the US and Australia/New Zealand and between the neoliberal evangelists, Chinese and Japanese hegemonic interests, economic nationalists, and US imperialists.
Is there is anything to gain from targeting APEC over the next few years and if so why, how and where? Could a focus on its activities through a revival of popular and media pressure and visibility slow the current process in the short term? Could it put the spotlight on FTAs where that is not impossible within the countries concerned? Is it possible for this pressure to heighten the internal contradictions that ensure that integration of these agreements is impossible in the longer run? Are there forthcoming meetings where the national politics and strength of local organizers makes this possible? Is it a priority for regional movements, given other competing priorities?
Prof Jane Kelsey
Action, Research and Education Network of Aotearoa (ARENA)
* Paper to the Asia Pacific Research Network Policy Research Conference on Trade, Hong Kong, 11-13 July 2005
http://www.arena.org.nz/apecftas.htm
Selected references:
ABAC, 'The First Decade Since Bogor. A Business Assessment of APEC's Progress', Hong Kong: ABAC 2004 www.abaconline.org
APEC, 'Best Practice for RTAs/FTAs in APEC', 16th APEC Ministerial Meeting, 17 November 2004, Santiago, Chile 2004/AMM/003
APEC 'Bogor Goals Mid-Term Stocktake Symposium Summary', Trade Ministers Meeting, 2-3 June 2005 Jeju, Korea 2005/MRT/006anx7
APEC Committee on Trade and Investment, 'Proposed IAP Chapter on FTAs and RTAs', 29-30 September 2004, Santiago, Chile 2004/SOMIII/CTI/007
APEC Finance Ministers' Meeting '2004 Policy Themes: Conclusion Report by the Chair', 2-3 September 2004, Santiago, Chile 2004/FMM/006
APEC-OECD Integrated Checklist on Regulatory Reform: Addressing Regulatory, Competition Policy and Market Openness Policy Issues' Trade Ministers Meeting, Jeju, Korea 2-3 June 20052005/MRT/006anx7
APEC 'Participant's Handbook, Workshop on Negotiating Free-Trade Agreements', 13-15 December 2004, Brunei Darussalam
APEC Ministers Responsible for Trade 'Statement of the Chair' 2-3 June 2005, Jeju, Korea 2005/MRT/008
Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 'Negotiating free-trade agreements: a guide', Canberra: APEC Branch/DFAT 2005
Dent, Christopher 'Bilateral Free Trade Agreements: Boon or Bane for Regionalism in East Asia and the Asia-Pacific?' (forthcoming)
Kelsey, Jane 'Whither APEC?' in Wesley Pue (ed) 'Pepper in Our Eyes: The APEC Affair' Vancouver: UBC Press 2000
McKay, John (Australian APEC Study Centre) 'ASEAN Plus Three & Alternative Visions of Economic Cooperation: Implications for APEC', APEC Study Centres Consortium, May 2005, Jeju, Korea
PECC, 'Asia-Pacific RTAs as Avenues to Achieving the Bogor Goals: Analysis and Ways Forward' SOM Policy Dialogue on RTAs/FTAs, 27 May 2003 Khon Kaen, Thailand 2003/SOMII/RTAs/FTAs/012
Scollay, Robert 'Preliminary Assessment of the Proposal for a Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP). An Issues Paper for the APEC Business Advisory Council (ABAC)' Auckland: New Zealand APEC Study Centre 2004
Soesastro, Hadi 'Trends and Issues of RTAs/FTAs in East Asia', SOM Policy Dialogue on RTAs/FTAs, 27 May 2003 Khon Kaen, Thailand 2003/SOMII/RTAs/FTAs/015
Soesastro, Hadi 'APEC's Trade Policy Challenges: The Doha Development Agenda and Regional/Bilateral FTAs', SOM Policy Dialogue on RTAs/FTAs, 27 May 2003 Khon Kaen, Thailand 2003/SOMII/RTAs/FTAs/008
5/17/07
The collapse of Australia’s Pacific intervention
By Tim Anderson
Posted Friday, 20 October 2006
The strong parliamentary vote of confidence in Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare is a sign that the Howard Government’s Pacific intervention strategy is facing collapse.
The Solomons vote came after Sogavare’s Government expelled the Australian High Commissioner for political interference, faced down the Howard Government over the Moti affair, and seemed on the verge of winding up the Australian “police-and-finance” RAMSI project. The parliament backed Sogavare’s defiance of Australia, with a vote of 28 to 17.
Just as the Australian police and army presence has reached its highest point in the region, political rejection of Howard’s “regional assistance” is hardening in the Solomon Islands, Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea. Pacific leaders are re-assessing the costs of Australian patronage.
At the root of this patronage, and behind the talk of “good governance”, is the fairly standard colonial demand for privileged access to natural resources, a crippling of public institution and human resource building through a doctrine of “open markets”, and “strategic denial” of potential competitors.
Being a neo-colonial project, it requires compliant regimes. Yet the Solomons has turned against Howard, Papua New Guinea under Michael Somare has become increasingly assertive and, after a partisan intervention in Timor Leste’s crisis, Australia faces the likely re-election in 2007 of an Alkatiri-led Fretilin Government.
In the face of the Australian claims, all three neighbouring countries have made some moves to extract better value from their natural resources (oil, gas, mining, forests), to develop some policy areas that Australia has failed to support (rice production, public health programs), and to diversify their development assistance partners (China, Malaysia, Japan, Cuba, Taiwan).
More specific elements of the Australian “regional assistance” plan have sought to embed Australian finance bureaucrats, marginalise Pacific armed forces and build up Australian-sponsored police forces. Yet these police programs have backfired in PNG and the Solomons.
The Enhanced Cooperation Program (ECP) was forced on a reluctant PNG Government in 2004, only to be scuttled by a legal challenge. Canberra bureaucrats had failed to read the PNG Constitution, which does not allow US-style immunities. Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, seemed surprised at the “refusal” of the Papua New Guineans to amend their Constitution, for his convenience.
Much was made of the ECP’s proposed A$800 million “contribution” to PNG. In fact, as Aid/Watch pointed out, A$734 million of this was destined for Australian Federal Police wages and logistics. PNG has grown sick of such “boomerang aid”. PNG Police Association President, Robert Ali, said most of his 300 officers at a Port Moresby meeting wanted the Australian ECP police to leave. Two hundred overpaid Australian police were unlikely to add much, and were mostly a reassuring gesture to Australian investors in PNG.
After the collapse of the ECP, Michael Somare made this point: “We would like to remove the umbilical cord of depending [on] Australia and diversify our relations with the region and the world”. It’s not clear that Canberra understands what lies behind this message.
Recent conflict with the Solomons centred around a proposed inquiry into the 2006 riots. The Howard Government seemed determined to avoid any sheeting of blame to the RAMSI force. Yet as Honiara Bishop Terry Roberts wrote, “the ‘spark’ that sent the rioters into central Honiara was the use of tear gas by the Australian RAMSI contingent”. Australian police ignored a plea by Speaker of Parliament, Peter Kenilorea, not to use tear gas on the people. Bishop Roberts observes “Honiara people have never liked the Australian RAMSI contingent [who are] sullen and hostile … ‘Helpim fren’ has turned into ‘Spoilem fren’.”
Apart from inept policing, the RAMSI intervention is seen to have been partisan, in propping up the former Kemekza-Rini Government, to have backed big expatriate Chinese commercial interests (such as the Pacific Casino Hotel) and to have done nothing about illegal logging. Regional watchdog magazine Masalai I tokaut notes that, after the RAMSI mission arrived, logging tripled but “government revenues remained largely static”.
After Solomons Attorney General Julian Moti fled PNG for the Solomons, Downer suspended ministerial talks with the PNG Government and was reported to have said Australia “would not continue to prop up corrupt governments” in the region and would “not just shovel aid into neighbouring countries”. Yet behind this insult lies the fact that very little Australian aid reaches Pacific peoples.
PNG is the best example of this. The $10 billion in Australian “aid” over the 30 years since independence may have secured the rights of Australian mining and gas companies in PNG, but it has not helped mass education, nor helped construct a decent health system. Adult literacy and infant mortality rates in PNG are well below the developing country average. Withdrawal of aid to PNG would have a much greater impact on the handful of Australian companies that hold most of the AusAID contracts. Only a handful of PNG companies get the “trickle down”; most people in PNG get nothing.
The most stark political intervention in the region has been the Australian-backed campaign that toppled Timor Leste’s Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. The new country’s first elected prime minister had driven the most independent policy in the region - securing a better deal over oil and gas royalties and bringing in new development partners. Japan helped East Timorese rice production, when Australia would not. China began talks over help in refining gas, while the Howard Government robbed the country’s oil and gas resources. And Cuba helped Timor Leste build a decent health system. Alkatiri attempted to NOT alienate the big powers, but a partisan Australian intervention changed all that.
Whatever the prior links between the ex-army coup plotters and the Howard Government, Australian forces quickly aligned with the loose coalition of anti-Fretilin elements that clustered around President Xanana Gusmao. The Australian media, in particular Murdoch’s Australian but also the ABC’s Four Corners, played a key role in deposing Alkatiri (still the Fretilin General Secretary) and installing Jose Ramos Horta as interim Prime Minister.
However national and municipal elections show that Fretilin remains overwhelmingly the country’s most popular party. There is no close rival. Ramos Horta, with no party base, is propped up by the continued Australian presence. Yet the Australian presence, hostile to Fretilin, maintains a rallying point for disaffected groups, including those terrorising the many thousands still trapped in displaced person camps. This tense situation is dangerous, undermining “normal” politics and is breeding a new militia, the longer it persists.
Understandings of the fragility and serious consequences of Australia’s Pacific interventions are poor in Australia, with the corporate media (and an intimidated public media) overwhelmingly promoting the Howard Government line. Further, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Defence Forces have been drawn into this imperial project.
AFP chief Mick Keelty joined the Howard Cabinet chorus that the Moti affair was not at all “political”. (Certainly, if “not political” is measured by the numbers of Cabinet Minister interventions, the Moti affair was very apolitical.) Keelty did not explain just why he had chosen the middle of a political crisis to chase the Solomons Attorney General, over sex charges that had been dismissed several years ago in Vanuatu. But we can remind ourselves that the Solomons and the PNG interventions have meant hundreds of millions of dollars to Keelty’s AFP.
Political rhetoric on all sides can be transitory. However we will be able to measure the collapse of the Howard Government’s Pacific intervention strategy by significant setbacks to its core elements. That is, are our neighbours effectively reclaiming control of their natural resources? Are they developing independent policies that allow them to build public institutions and develop their human resources? And are they effectively diversifying their development partners? It will be to the benefit of their peoples if they do.
Tim Anderson is a lecturer at the School of Political Economy, Sydney University and is a member of the Committee of Management of AID/WATCH
Posted Friday, 20 October 2006
The strong parliamentary vote of confidence in Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare is a sign that the Howard Government’s Pacific intervention strategy is facing collapse.
The Solomons vote came after Sogavare’s Government expelled the Australian High Commissioner for political interference, faced down the Howard Government over the Moti affair, and seemed on the verge of winding up the Australian “police-and-finance” RAMSI project. The parliament backed Sogavare’s defiance of Australia, with a vote of 28 to 17.
Just as the Australian police and army presence has reached its highest point in the region, political rejection of Howard’s “regional assistance” is hardening in the Solomon Islands, Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea. Pacific leaders are re-assessing the costs of Australian patronage.
At the root of this patronage, and behind the talk of “good governance”, is the fairly standard colonial demand for privileged access to natural resources, a crippling of public institution and human resource building through a doctrine of “open markets”, and “strategic denial” of potential competitors.
Being a neo-colonial project, it requires compliant regimes. Yet the Solomons has turned against Howard, Papua New Guinea under Michael Somare has become increasingly assertive and, after a partisan intervention in Timor Leste’s crisis, Australia faces the likely re-election in 2007 of an Alkatiri-led Fretilin Government.
In the face of the Australian claims, all three neighbouring countries have made some moves to extract better value from their natural resources (oil, gas, mining, forests), to develop some policy areas that Australia has failed to support (rice production, public health programs), and to diversify their development assistance partners (China, Malaysia, Japan, Cuba, Taiwan).
More specific elements of the Australian “regional assistance” plan have sought to embed Australian finance bureaucrats, marginalise Pacific armed forces and build up Australian-sponsored police forces. Yet these police programs have backfired in PNG and the Solomons.
The Enhanced Cooperation Program (ECP) was forced on a reluctant PNG Government in 2004, only to be scuttled by a legal challenge. Canberra bureaucrats had failed to read the PNG Constitution, which does not allow US-style immunities. Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, seemed surprised at the “refusal” of the Papua New Guineans to amend their Constitution, for his convenience.
Much was made of the ECP’s proposed A$800 million “contribution” to PNG. In fact, as Aid/Watch pointed out, A$734 million of this was destined for Australian Federal Police wages and logistics. PNG has grown sick of such “boomerang aid”. PNG Police Association President, Robert Ali, said most of his 300 officers at a Port Moresby meeting wanted the Australian ECP police to leave. Two hundred overpaid Australian police were unlikely to add much, and were mostly a reassuring gesture to Australian investors in PNG.
After the collapse of the ECP, Michael Somare made this point: “We would like to remove the umbilical cord of depending [on] Australia and diversify our relations with the region and the world”. It’s not clear that Canberra understands what lies behind this message.
Recent conflict with the Solomons centred around a proposed inquiry into the 2006 riots. The Howard Government seemed determined to avoid any sheeting of blame to the RAMSI force. Yet as Honiara Bishop Terry Roberts wrote, “the ‘spark’ that sent the rioters into central Honiara was the use of tear gas by the Australian RAMSI contingent”. Australian police ignored a plea by Speaker of Parliament, Peter Kenilorea, not to use tear gas on the people. Bishop Roberts observes “Honiara people have never liked the Australian RAMSI contingent [who are] sullen and hostile … ‘Helpim fren’ has turned into ‘Spoilem fren’.”
Apart from inept policing, the RAMSI intervention is seen to have been partisan, in propping up the former Kemekza-Rini Government, to have backed big expatriate Chinese commercial interests (such as the Pacific Casino Hotel) and to have done nothing about illegal logging. Regional watchdog magazine Masalai I tokaut notes that, after the RAMSI mission arrived, logging tripled but “government revenues remained largely static”.
After Solomons Attorney General Julian Moti fled PNG for the Solomons, Downer suspended ministerial talks with the PNG Government and was reported to have said Australia “would not continue to prop up corrupt governments” in the region and would “not just shovel aid into neighbouring countries”. Yet behind this insult lies the fact that very little Australian aid reaches Pacific peoples.
PNG is the best example of this. The $10 billion in Australian “aid” over the 30 years since independence may have secured the rights of Australian mining and gas companies in PNG, but it has not helped mass education, nor helped construct a decent health system. Adult literacy and infant mortality rates in PNG are well below the developing country average. Withdrawal of aid to PNG would have a much greater impact on the handful of Australian companies that hold most of the AusAID contracts. Only a handful of PNG companies get the “trickle down”; most people in PNG get nothing.
The most stark political intervention in the region has been the Australian-backed campaign that toppled Timor Leste’s Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. The new country’s first elected prime minister had driven the most independent policy in the region - securing a better deal over oil and gas royalties and bringing in new development partners. Japan helped East Timorese rice production, when Australia would not. China began talks over help in refining gas, while the Howard Government robbed the country’s oil and gas resources. And Cuba helped Timor Leste build a decent health system. Alkatiri attempted to NOT alienate the big powers, but a partisan Australian intervention changed all that.
Whatever the prior links between the ex-army coup plotters and the Howard Government, Australian forces quickly aligned with the loose coalition of anti-Fretilin elements that clustered around President Xanana Gusmao. The Australian media, in particular Murdoch’s Australian but also the ABC’s Four Corners, played a key role in deposing Alkatiri (still the Fretilin General Secretary) and installing Jose Ramos Horta as interim Prime Minister.
However national and municipal elections show that Fretilin remains overwhelmingly the country’s most popular party. There is no close rival. Ramos Horta, with no party base, is propped up by the continued Australian presence. Yet the Australian presence, hostile to Fretilin, maintains a rallying point for disaffected groups, including those terrorising the many thousands still trapped in displaced person camps. This tense situation is dangerous, undermining “normal” politics and is breeding a new militia, the longer it persists.
Understandings of the fragility and serious consequences of Australia’s Pacific interventions are poor in Australia, with the corporate media (and an intimidated public media) overwhelmingly promoting the Howard Government line. Further, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Defence Forces have been drawn into this imperial project.
AFP chief Mick Keelty joined the Howard Cabinet chorus that the Moti affair was not at all “political”. (Certainly, if “not political” is measured by the numbers of Cabinet Minister interventions, the Moti affair was very apolitical.) Keelty did not explain just why he had chosen the middle of a political crisis to chase the Solomons Attorney General, over sex charges that had been dismissed several years ago in Vanuatu. But we can remind ourselves that the Solomons and the PNG interventions have meant hundreds of millions of dollars to Keelty’s AFP.
Political rhetoric on all sides can be transitory. However we will be able to measure the collapse of the Howard Government’s Pacific intervention strategy by significant setbacks to its core elements. That is, are our neighbours effectively reclaiming control of their natural resources? Are they developing independent policies that allow them to build public institutions and develop their human resources? And are they effectively diversifying their development partners? It will be to the benefit of their peoples if they do.
Tim Anderson is a lecturer at the School of Political Economy, Sydney University and is a member of the Committee of Management of AID/WATCH
5/5/07
Filipino workers exploited in global clamor for profits
Filipino workers exploited in global clamor for profits
May. 5, 2007 12:00 AM
Regarding "Resorts tap Filipino laborers" (Republic, Sunday):
Some countries export goods like rice, sugar, and oil. The Philippines exports people. Ten percent of the Philippines' population lives overseas; annually, 800,000 Filipinos toil in 200 nations.
Since 1974, the Philippine government (partnered with private recruitment firms) has officially brokered its people as an "ideal" commodity for global consumption. These labor-exporting practices help the Philippines manage its debts to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, while strategically feeding the voracious labor appetite of economically privileged nations like the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom.
The Philippines hails these migrants as "heroes" for the remittances they send home. In 2006, Filipinos sent home some $15 billion, more than 10 percent of the country's gross national product. But such "heroism" comes with a price.
The Philippines faces escalating public discontent about the costs its migrants pay - social costs such as children who rarely see their parents or a steady stream of coffins containing the remains of overseas Filipino workers. A brain drain now sieves critically needed Filipino service providers to overseas jobs: doctors, nurses and teachers.
Globalization is supposed to create opportunities. But for whom? Under what conditions? As practiced today, corporate-led globalization fuels socioeconomic inequalities in pursuit of profit. For example, offshoring production to Mexico's maquiladoras (foreign-owned factories) is not about benevolent corporations providing jobs to Mexicans. Their motive is profit - from the 48-hour workweek, significant tax breaks, and a less-than-living wage.
It is naïve to assume (as the article suggests) that Filipino labor recruitment by Arizona resorts is simply about a labor shortage. Contracted to a single employer, Filipino workers relieve the resort industry of providing full employment benefits, not to mention job security for Filipinos and U.S. workers.
The Philippines and its labor practices are but one cog in the globalized economy. This fuller global picture gets buried from public view, especially amid Arizona's rancorous anti-immigrant fervor.
Rather than blame unauthorized migrants, we must fix an unjust labor system that catches us all in a web of exploitation and inequality.
Put simply, the plight of Filipino resort workers who come to the U.S. on a legal work visa is not so different than that of the typical unauthorized migrant. Filipinos may be here legally, but both are part of a powerful and exploitative system.
- Anne Guevarra,Phoenix
The writer is a sociology professor at Arizona State University's West.
May. 5, 2007 12:00 AM
Regarding "Resorts tap Filipino laborers" (Republic, Sunday):
Some countries export goods like rice, sugar, and oil. The Philippines exports people. Ten percent of the Philippines' population lives overseas; annually, 800,000 Filipinos toil in 200 nations.
Since 1974, the Philippine government (partnered with private recruitment firms) has officially brokered its people as an "ideal" commodity for global consumption. These labor-exporting practices help the Philippines manage its debts to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, while strategically feeding the voracious labor appetite of economically privileged nations like the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom.
The Philippines hails these migrants as "heroes" for the remittances they send home. In 2006, Filipinos sent home some $15 billion, more than 10 percent of the country's gross national product. But such "heroism" comes with a price.
The Philippines faces escalating public discontent about the costs its migrants pay - social costs such as children who rarely see their parents or a steady stream of coffins containing the remains of overseas Filipino workers. A brain drain now sieves critically needed Filipino service providers to overseas jobs: doctors, nurses and teachers.
Globalization is supposed to create opportunities. But for whom? Under what conditions? As practiced today, corporate-led globalization fuels socioeconomic inequalities in pursuit of profit. For example, offshoring production to Mexico's maquiladoras (foreign-owned factories) is not about benevolent corporations providing jobs to Mexicans. Their motive is profit - from the 48-hour workweek, significant tax breaks, and a less-than-living wage.
It is naïve to assume (as the article suggests) that Filipino labor recruitment by Arizona resorts is simply about a labor shortage. Contracted to a single employer, Filipino workers relieve the resort industry of providing full employment benefits, not to mention job security for Filipinos and U.S. workers.
The Philippines and its labor practices are but one cog in the globalized economy. This fuller global picture gets buried from public view, especially amid Arizona's rancorous anti-immigrant fervor.
Rather than blame unauthorized migrants, we must fix an unjust labor system that catches us all in a web of exploitation and inequality.
Put simply, the plight of Filipino resort workers who come to the U.S. on a legal work visa is not so different than that of the typical unauthorized migrant. Filipinos may be here legally, but both are part of a powerful and exploitative system.
- Anne Guevarra,Phoenix
The writer is a sociology professor at Arizona State University's West.
5/2/07
Foreign Policy In Focus: Asia Pacific Economic Cooperatio
Foreign Policy In Focus: Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
November 1998, Vol. 3, No. 35
Written by John Gershman, Institute for Development Research Edited by Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS)
Key Points
* APEC is the largest, most diverse trans-Pacific forum of its kind.
* APEC has adopted a declaration that envisions elimination of all trade and investment barriers by 2010 for the wealthiest countries and 2020 for the poorer ones.
* APEC is in crisis due to the region's social and economic crisis and the growing opposition to the U.S.-dominated trade and investment liberalization agenda.
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), founded by a dozen countries in 1989, has become a forum of twenty-one countries that addresses economic issues in the Asia-Pacific region. This diverse group includes the U.S., Canada, China, Taiwan (officially Chinese Taipei), Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, South Korea, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, and Chile. At the
November 1998 meeting, three additional countries-Peru, Russia, and Vietnam -will join as full members.
Together, the APEC countries account for over 50% of the world's merchandise trade, half the global GNP, and two-fifths of the world population. Operating from a modest secretariat in Singapore, APEC sponsors regular meetings and annual summits of senior government officials and heads of state. APEC operates by consensus rather than through binding agreements and the type of legalism evident in the North American Free Trade Agreement. In this process of "concerted unilateralism," APEC members define broad regional goals but leave the specific aspects of implementation to each nation.
APEC consists of three occasionally overlapping processes. The first is economic and technical cooperation promoting economic and human resource development, or "Eco-Tech." Second is trade and investment liberalization, an agenda that emerged at its 1993 meeting when President Clinton invited the 18 APEC leaders to Blake Island, Washington, for the first-ever APEC Economic Leaders Meeting. The Bogor Declaration, adopted in 1994,
proclaimed the elimination of all trade and investment barriers by 2010 for APEC's wealthiest countries and 2020 for its poorer ones. Subsequent meetings led to a refinement of these goals in terms of Individual and Collective Action Plans that were to provide the actual liberalization commitments.
At the 1997 Vancouver meeting, APEC leaders agreed to liberalize trade in nine sectors on a fast track basis covering $1.5 trillion in trade (known as Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization). Those sectors include: chemicals, fisheries, forestry, energy goods and services, environmental goods and services, gems and jewelry, medical equipment, toys, and a telecommunications mutual recognition agreement. Of these, the last was approved in June 1998, while liberalization in fisheries and forestry remain actively resisted by Japan.
The third-and weakest-process is the sustainable development agenda, which also emerged within APEC in 1993. To date, this process has been characterized by a flurry of small-scale, capacity-building projects and little else beyond statements of principles and a meeting on marine resources earlier this year.
The weakness of the sustainable development agenda has five major causes: poor leadership by the wealthier countries, most prominently the United States; popular opposition to APEC's free trade agenda; the failure to connect the trade, investment, and environmental tracks; the weakness of prosustainable development forces within negotiating governments (most of which are dominated by commercial interests); and the inability of pro-sustainable development forces from civil society to penetrate the national and regional processes of policy formulation.
The challenge of working with diverse economies and varying perspectives on trade and investment regulation gives APEC a certain informality and lack of cohesiveness. Although the APEC forum has declared its support for free trade, many members oppose mandatory implementation schedules for comprehensive tariff and quota reduction. Indeed, some
countries-principally Malaysia and Japan-have insisted that the liberalization goals be nonbinding and have opposed the U.S. demand that all economic sectors be opened to foreign trade and investment. Countries that oppose the U.S. in its drive to convert APEC into another free trade area would prefer that APEC remain a consultative organization that
facilitates technical cooperation on economic matters.
Both APEC's inability to develop a positive response to the ongoing Asian crisis and U.S. criticism of recent interventions by Hong Kong, Malaysia, and China in currency and portfolio capital markets set the stage for a clash at the 1998 APEC meeting over the scope of appropriate responses to the economic crisis and the utility of APEC itself.
Attention by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to APEC has been growing since the first Heads of State Summit in 1993. The Indonesian government blocked a planned NGO forum in 1994, but NGOs success-fully organized parallel summits in 1995 (Osaka), 1996 (Manila), and 1997 (Vancouver) and plan to do so in Kuala Lumpur (1998) and Auckland (1999).
Problems With Current U.S. Policy
Key Problems
* Washington's free trade model for the Asia-Pacific region has met with resistance from countries less enamored by the ideology of economic liberalization and determined to maintain their own development strategies.
* U.S. policy in APEC promotes an economic model that downplays human rights and sustainable development.
* U.S. policy has focused on enhancing U.S. corporate interests rather than addressing the social and ecological costs of the current economic crisis.
Between 1989 and 1992, APEC had a relatively low profile within U.S. foreign economic policy. During that period, NAFTA and the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were Washington's top free trade priorities. The 1993 Seattle APEC meeting, hosted by President Clinton, marked both a higher priority U.S. role in the Asia-Pacific region in general and a more coherently articulated free trade and investment
agenda for APEC. Clinton's free trade vision received strong backing from Australia and New Zealand, but other countries-notably Malaysia-were less than enthusiastic.
For the U.S. government and business community, APEC offers an opportunity to exercise economic leadership in an important world region. U.S. economic objectives, however, have been at variance with those of a number of the Asian members and with the goals of NGOs that are trying to get a voice at the table in order to raise issues about human rights, labor, and democratization. Washington regards APEC as an instrument to assert its
economic liberalization agenda, reduce its merchandise trade deficit with the region, and build a regional free trade bloc with strong U.S. participation, while serving to discourage Asian nations from organizing into an exclusive trading bloc.
The Asia-Pacific region has surpassed Western Europe to become America's largest regional trading partner-both as a supplier of U.S. imports and as a customer for its exports. Like NAFTA, APEC is regarded by the U.S. both as a regional bulwark against advances of the European Union and as a lever to strengthen Washington's economic liberalization agenda at the World Trade Organization (WTO). By developing initiatives supported by a significant group of APEC members, the U.S. uses APEC to build a "critical mass" for incorporating its global liberalization agenda into the WTO.
Washington has not been entirely successful in promoting its economic goals in the Asia-Pacific region. In the context of the economic crisis, the U.S. trade deficit with the region has been rising, but the U.S. has been able to boost its share of foreign direct investment (FDI) in those countries hardest hit by the crisis.
The primary resistance to expanding NAFTA into a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) comes from opponents within the U.S. who either oppose the free trade agenda or oppose attaching labor and environmental agreements to new trade accords. In the Asia-Pacific region, however, opposition to the U.S. free trade juggernaut comes from both governments and citizens of the region. Although the Clinton administration has succeeded in winning rhetorical commitments to free trade, its proposals for the establishment of a mandatory timetable for the implementation of a free trade area have been consistently rejected.
The Clinton administration's continued insistence on liberalization-especially in the face of a massive economic crisis-is widely reviled in the region as a vulture strategy. Rather than trying to address the social costs of the crisis, Washington has focused on pursuing policy reforms that would enable U.S. corporations to pick at the choice carcasses of Asia's economic crisis. The U.S. had harsh words in particular for the 1998 host, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, for his use of capital controls.
Washington's narrow economic approach to APEC is problematic. The U.S. argues that economic liberalization, democracy, and security in the region are all mutually reinforcing (forming "three pillars" of foreign policy in Asia). But with the scramble for market share dominating the U.S. agenda, other issues get short shrift. U.S. policy demonstrates no abiding concern for the patterns or effects of either economic growth or crisis in the region, and Washington is a recalcitrant supporter, at best, of the calls for demo-cratic reform from the region's citizens.
Absent liberalization, the U.S. has no serious proposals to offer at APEC regarding the economic crisis beyond those already proposed by the G-7. A former member of APEC's Eminent Person's Group, C. Fred Bergsten has proposed that APEC formulate a neo-Keynesian program to spend the $30 billion Japan recently offered the troubled Asian economies. The Japanese, stung after the U.S. denounced a similar plan just over a year ago, are likely to gracefully decline if such a proposal is offered.
While the U.S. concentrates on overcoming the objections to what regional leaders see as Washington's agenda for a U.S.-dominated pattern of globalization, other problems raised by U.S. citizen groups and regionally based NGOs receive little attention. A central complaint is that APEC is opaque and undemocratic. As a result, citizen organizations have difficulty raising their concerns about the development process in the Asia-Pacific region.
Although the U.S. has raised concerns about human rights and environmental degradation in the region, it still allows its commercial ambitions to overshadow these issues. This is clear in the current U.S. drive for liberalization in forestry and fisheries. Rapid liberalization, in the
midst of a massive economic crisis and without regulations insuring sustainable harvests, will only accelerate the region's rates of deforestation and overfishing, already among the world's highest.
Toward a New Foreign Policy
Key Recommendations
* Washington should drop its insistence on comprehensive trade and investment liberalization and recognize the validity of a plurality of development models and priorities.
* The U.S. should support initiatives to develop rules for regulating short-term capital flows and to address the social and ecological costs of the current crisis.
* The U.S. should insist that APEC become more transparent, participatory, and accountable.
As the liberalization locomotive within APEC is stalled and new, large-scale free trade agreements are unpopular at home, Washington could seize the opportunity to pursue a less narrowly focused policy agenda toward APEC. Trying to force liberalization on APEC member states has failed, and maintaining it as the centerpiece of U.S. policy in the region
is counterproductive to Washington's stated goals of promoting democracy, equity, and environmentally sustainable development. At a time when even mainstream economists endorse capital controls, U.S. policymakers should rethink their commitment to comprehensive economic liberalization.
The conflicts over appropriate responses to the crisis have challenged APEC's raison d'etre. As the world's broadest regional economic institution, APEC is worth preserving if it can do two things:
1) catalyze constructive action on the important regional and global policy issues raised by the current crisis (such as regulating short-term capital flows and addressing the social and ecological costs of the crisis) and
2) move toward a more balanced sustainable development agenda. As first steps, the U.S. could gain support for such an agenda by abandoning its liberalization-for-everyone approach, increasing its support for capacity-building efforts at the national and regional levels, and leading by example at home.
U.S. policy should focus simultaneously on improving the transparency of APEC negotiations and on expanding the APEC agenda to include issues of concern to civil organizations other than Chambers of Commerce. Any effort to make the APEC process more transparent and participatory should encourage more citizen involvement at the national level (particularly in the U.S.) in discussions about APEC policy. Also important is the
participation of nonbusiness citizen groups at the committee and working-group level. Although the Clinton administration has occasionally included NGO representatives in some U.S. delegations, this sporadic inclusion falls short of the steps needed to open up the U.S. policymaking process. Within APEC, the U.S. should facilitate NGO access to meetings and
should make documents publicly available.
Human rights issues, while not on the formal APEC agenda, are slowly forcing their way onto the backdrop of the meetings. This is primarily because of demands by citizens in the region for democratization and respect for human rights, including demands by groups in the 1998 host country, Malaysia. Human rights have also been highlighted when previous host governments have harassed NGOs or citizens engaged in protest or parallel activities. The Philippine government banned Nobel Peace Laureate José Ramos Horta and other potential "troublemakers" from attending the Manila People's Forum in 1996, and Canada is in the midst of an investigation of police repression of protestors that may implicate the Canadian prime minister. The Malaysian government has made it clear it will tolerate no "unruliness."
The informal bilateral discussions that parallel the multilateral meetings enable U.S. officials to raise issues not on the official APEC agenda. These are prime opportunities to raise issues regarding the social and environmental impact of the economic crisis and to emphasize respect for human rights. While it is laudable that Clinton will not meet with Prime Minister Mahathir to protest the detention of former deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, the inconsistency and hypocrisy that characterize U.S. policy in the region reinforce regional sentiment that America's promotion of democracy, worker rights, and environmental protection are self-serving in nature. To overcome these criticisms and to chart a more responsible foreign policy toward APEC and its member countries, Washington should indicate that the U.S., too, needs to improve its own practice regarding the environment and human rights.
Specifically, we recommend that Washington take the following actions:
* Stop insisting on comprehensive trade and investment liberalization and recognize the validity of Asian development models that allow for the judicious intervention of government as a legitimate strategy in pursuing industrialization and food security.
* Support regional mechanisms to scale-up successful strategies of community-based natural resource management, encourage the transfer of clean production technologies, and promote energy conservation.
* Consistently implement existing labor rights provisions in U.S. trade legislation, such as GSP provisions regarding the Export-Import Bank, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) operations, and the IMF.
* Create citizen advisory groups paralleling APEC working-groups to enable NGOs and citizens to participate in the formulation of U.S. policy within APEC.
John Gershman (jgershman@igc.org) is a Research Associate at the Institute
for Development Research.
Sources for More Information
APEC Education Network
Box 353690
Seattle, WA 98195
Voice: (206) 543-0663
Fax: (206) 616-1978
Email: Hellman@u.washington.edu
Website: http://www.apec.org/
Contact: Donald Hellman
APEC Secretariat
438 Alexandra Rd.
Alexandra Point
Singapore
Voice: (65) 276-1880
Fax (65) 276-1775
Website: http://www.apecsec.org.sg/
Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace
110 Maryland Ave. NE, Box 70
Washington, DC 20002
Voice: (202) 543-1094
Fax: (202) 546-1094
Email: apcjp@igc.apc.org
Website: http://www.apcjp.org
Contact: Andrew Wells
Asian Human Rights Commission
Unit D, 7 Floor, 16 Argyle St.
Mongkok Commercial Centre
Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR
China
Voice: (8522) 698-6339
Fax:(8522) 698-6367
Email: ua@hk.super.net
Website: http://www.hk.super.net/~ahrchk
Focus on the Global South
c/o CUSRI, Prachuabmoh Bldg.
Chulalongkorn University
Phyathai Road
Bangkok 10330
Thailand
Voice: (662) 218-7363
Fax: (662) 255-9976
Email: admin@focusweb.org
Website: http://www.focusweb.org
Contact: Walden Bello
Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development
1831 Second St.
Berkeley, CA 94710
Voice: (510) 204-9296
Fax: (510) 204-9298
Email: lzarsky@nautilus.org
Website: http://www.nautilus.org
Contact: Lyuba Zarsky
Publications
Vinod K. Aggarwal and Charles E. Morrison (eds), Asia-Pacific Crossroads: Regime Creation and the Future of APEC (New York: St.Martin's, 1998).
Walden Bello and Jenina Joy-Chávez-Malaluan, APEC: Four Adjectives in Search of a Noun (Philippines: Manila People's Forum on APEC, 1996).
Focus on Trade, an electronic magazine produced by Focus on the Global South.
Donald C. Hellman and Kenneth B. Pyle From APEC to Xanadu: Creating a Viable Community in the Post-Cold War Pacific (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998).
Lyuba Zarsky, "APEC and the `Sustainable Development' Agenda," Asian Perspectives, 1998.
World Wide Web
APEC Education Foundation
APEC Secretariat
http://www.apecsec.org.sg
Good links on APEC
http://www.nautilus.org
Human Rights Watch
http://www.hrw.org/
U.S. State Department Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eap/index.html
November 1998, Vol. 3, No. 35
Written by John Gershman, Institute for Development Research Edited by Tom Barry (IRC) and Martha Honey (IPS)
Key Points
* APEC is the largest, most diverse trans-Pacific forum of its kind.
* APEC has adopted a declaration that envisions elimination of all trade and investment barriers by 2010 for the wealthiest countries and 2020 for the poorer ones.
* APEC is in crisis due to the region's social and economic crisis and the growing opposition to the U.S.-dominated trade and investment liberalization agenda.
Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), founded by a dozen countries in 1989, has become a forum of twenty-one countries that addresses economic issues in the Asia-Pacific region. This diverse group includes the U.S., Canada, China, Taiwan (officially Chinese Taipei), Hong Kong, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, South Korea, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, and Chile. At the
November 1998 meeting, three additional countries-Peru, Russia, and Vietnam -will join as full members.
Together, the APEC countries account for over 50% of the world's merchandise trade, half the global GNP, and two-fifths of the world population. Operating from a modest secretariat in Singapore, APEC sponsors regular meetings and annual summits of senior government officials and heads of state. APEC operates by consensus rather than through binding agreements and the type of legalism evident in the North American Free Trade Agreement. In this process of "concerted unilateralism," APEC members define broad regional goals but leave the specific aspects of implementation to each nation.
APEC consists of three occasionally overlapping processes. The first is economic and technical cooperation promoting economic and human resource development, or "Eco-Tech." Second is trade and investment liberalization, an agenda that emerged at its 1993 meeting when President Clinton invited the 18 APEC leaders to Blake Island, Washington, for the first-ever APEC Economic Leaders Meeting. The Bogor Declaration, adopted in 1994,
proclaimed the elimination of all trade and investment barriers by 2010 for APEC's wealthiest countries and 2020 for its poorer ones. Subsequent meetings led to a refinement of these goals in terms of Individual and Collective Action Plans that were to provide the actual liberalization commitments.
At the 1997 Vancouver meeting, APEC leaders agreed to liberalize trade in nine sectors on a fast track basis covering $1.5 trillion in trade (known as Early Voluntary Sectoral Liberalization). Those sectors include: chemicals, fisheries, forestry, energy goods and services, environmental goods and services, gems and jewelry, medical equipment, toys, and a telecommunications mutual recognition agreement. Of these, the last was approved in June 1998, while liberalization in fisheries and forestry remain actively resisted by Japan.
The third-and weakest-process is the sustainable development agenda, which also emerged within APEC in 1993. To date, this process has been characterized by a flurry of small-scale, capacity-building projects and little else beyond statements of principles and a meeting on marine resources earlier this year.
The weakness of the sustainable development agenda has five major causes: poor leadership by the wealthier countries, most prominently the United States; popular opposition to APEC's free trade agenda; the failure to connect the trade, investment, and environmental tracks; the weakness of prosustainable development forces within negotiating governments (most of which are dominated by commercial interests); and the inability of pro-sustainable development forces from civil society to penetrate the national and regional processes of policy formulation.
The challenge of working with diverse economies and varying perspectives on trade and investment regulation gives APEC a certain informality and lack of cohesiveness. Although the APEC forum has declared its support for free trade, many members oppose mandatory implementation schedules for comprehensive tariff and quota reduction. Indeed, some
countries-principally Malaysia and Japan-have insisted that the liberalization goals be nonbinding and have opposed the U.S. demand that all economic sectors be opened to foreign trade and investment. Countries that oppose the U.S. in its drive to convert APEC into another free trade area would prefer that APEC remain a consultative organization that
facilitates technical cooperation on economic matters.
Both APEC's inability to develop a positive response to the ongoing Asian crisis and U.S. criticism of recent interventions by Hong Kong, Malaysia, and China in currency and portfolio capital markets set the stage for a clash at the 1998 APEC meeting over the scope of appropriate responses to the economic crisis and the utility of APEC itself.
Attention by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to APEC has been growing since the first Heads of State Summit in 1993. The Indonesian government blocked a planned NGO forum in 1994, but NGOs success-fully organized parallel summits in 1995 (Osaka), 1996 (Manila), and 1997 (Vancouver) and plan to do so in Kuala Lumpur (1998) and Auckland (1999).
Problems With Current U.S. Policy
Key Problems
* Washington's free trade model for the Asia-Pacific region has met with resistance from countries less enamored by the ideology of economic liberalization and determined to maintain their own development strategies.
* U.S. policy in APEC promotes an economic model that downplays human rights and sustainable development.
* U.S. policy has focused on enhancing U.S. corporate interests rather than addressing the social and ecological costs of the current economic crisis.
Between 1989 and 1992, APEC had a relatively low profile within U.S. foreign economic policy. During that period, NAFTA and the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) were Washington's top free trade priorities. The 1993 Seattle APEC meeting, hosted by President Clinton, marked both a higher priority U.S. role in the Asia-Pacific region in general and a more coherently articulated free trade and investment
agenda for APEC. Clinton's free trade vision received strong backing from Australia and New Zealand, but other countries-notably Malaysia-were less than enthusiastic.
For the U.S. government and business community, APEC offers an opportunity to exercise economic leadership in an important world region. U.S. economic objectives, however, have been at variance with those of a number of the Asian members and with the goals of NGOs that are trying to get a voice at the table in order to raise issues about human rights, labor, and democratization. Washington regards APEC as an instrument to assert its
economic liberalization agenda, reduce its merchandise trade deficit with the region, and build a regional free trade bloc with strong U.S. participation, while serving to discourage Asian nations from organizing into an exclusive trading bloc.
The Asia-Pacific region has surpassed Western Europe to become America's largest regional trading partner-both as a supplier of U.S. imports and as a customer for its exports. Like NAFTA, APEC is regarded by the U.S. both as a regional bulwark against advances of the European Union and as a lever to strengthen Washington's economic liberalization agenda at the World Trade Organization (WTO). By developing initiatives supported by a significant group of APEC members, the U.S. uses APEC to build a "critical mass" for incorporating its global liberalization agenda into the WTO.
Washington has not been entirely successful in promoting its economic goals in the Asia-Pacific region. In the context of the economic crisis, the U.S. trade deficit with the region has been rising, but the U.S. has been able to boost its share of foreign direct investment (FDI) in those countries hardest hit by the crisis.
The primary resistance to expanding NAFTA into a hemispheric Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) comes from opponents within the U.S. who either oppose the free trade agenda or oppose attaching labor and environmental agreements to new trade accords. In the Asia-Pacific region, however, opposition to the U.S. free trade juggernaut comes from both governments and citizens of the region. Although the Clinton administration has succeeded in winning rhetorical commitments to free trade, its proposals for the establishment of a mandatory timetable for the implementation of a free trade area have been consistently rejected.
The Clinton administration's continued insistence on liberalization-especially in the face of a massive economic crisis-is widely reviled in the region as a vulture strategy. Rather than trying to address the social costs of the crisis, Washington has focused on pursuing policy reforms that would enable U.S. corporations to pick at the choice carcasses of Asia's economic crisis. The U.S. had harsh words in particular for the 1998 host, Malaysia's Prime Minister Mohamad Mahathir, for his use of capital controls.
Washington's narrow economic approach to APEC is problematic. The U.S. argues that economic liberalization, democracy, and security in the region are all mutually reinforcing (forming "three pillars" of foreign policy in Asia). But with the scramble for market share dominating the U.S. agenda, other issues get short shrift. U.S. policy demonstrates no abiding concern for the patterns or effects of either economic growth or crisis in the region, and Washington is a recalcitrant supporter, at best, of the calls for demo-cratic reform from the region's citizens.
Absent liberalization, the U.S. has no serious proposals to offer at APEC regarding the economic crisis beyond those already proposed by the G-7. A former member of APEC's Eminent Person's Group, C. Fred Bergsten has proposed that APEC formulate a neo-Keynesian program to spend the $30 billion Japan recently offered the troubled Asian economies. The Japanese, stung after the U.S. denounced a similar plan just over a year ago, are likely to gracefully decline if such a proposal is offered.
While the U.S. concentrates on overcoming the objections to what regional leaders see as Washington's agenda for a U.S.-dominated pattern of globalization, other problems raised by U.S. citizen groups and regionally based NGOs receive little attention. A central complaint is that APEC is opaque and undemocratic. As a result, citizen organizations have difficulty raising their concerns about the development process in the Asia-Pacific region.
Although the U.S. has raised concerns about human rights and environmental degradation in the region, it still allows its commercial ambitions to overshadow these issues. This is clear in the current U.S. drive for liberalization in forestry and fisheries. Rapid liberalization, in the
midst of a massive economic crisis and without regulations insuring sustainable harvests, will only accelerate the region's rates of deforestation and overfishing, already among the world's highest.
Toward a New Foreign Policy
Key Recommendations
* Washington should drop its insistence on comprehensive trade and investment liberalization and recognize the validity of a plurality of development models and priorities.
* The U.S. should support initiatives to develop rules for regulating short-term capital flows and to address the social and ecological costs of the current crisis.
* The U.S. should insist that APEC become more transparent, participatory, and accountable.
As the liberalization locomotive within APEC is stalled and new, large-scale free trade agreements are unpopular at home, Washington could seize the opportunity to pursue a less narrowly focused policy agenda toward APEC. Trying to force liberalization on APEC member states has failed, and maintaining it as the centerpiece of U.S. policy in the region
is counterproductive to Washington's stated goals of promoting democracy, equity, and environmentally sustainable development. At a time when even mainstream economists endorse capital controls, U.S. policymakers should rethink their commitment to comprehensive economic liberalization.
The conflicts over appropriate responses to the crisis have challenged APEC's raison d'etre. As the world's broadest regional economic institution, APEC is worth preserving if it can do two things:
1) catalyze constructive action on the important regional and global policy issues raised by the current crisis (such as regulating short-term capital flows and addressing the social and ecological costs of the crisis) and
2) move toward a more balanced sustainable development agenda. As first steps, the U.S. could gain support for such an agenda by abandoning its liberalization-for-everyone approach, increasing its support for capacity-building efforts at the national and regional levels, and leading by example at home.
U.S. policy should focus simultaneously on improving the transparency of APEC negotiations and on expanding the APEC agenda to include issues of concern to civil organizations other than Chambers of Commerce. Any effort to make the APEC process more transparent and participatory should encourage more citizen involvement at the national level (particularly in the U.S.) in discussions about APEC policy. Also important is the
participation of nonbusiness citizen groups at the committee and working-group level. Although the Clinton administration has occasionally included NGO representatives in some U.S. delegations, this sporadic inclusion falls short of the steps needed to open up the U.S. policymaking process. Within APEC, the U.S. should facilitate NGO access to meetings and
should make documents publicly available.
Human rights issues, while not on the formal APEC agenda, are slowly forcing their way onto the backdrop of the meetings. This is primarily because of demands by citizens in the region for democratization and respect for human rights, including demands by groups in the 1998 host country, Malaysia. Human rights have also been highlighted when previous host governments have harassed NGOs or citizens engaged in protest or parallel activities. The Philippine government banned Nobel Peace Laureate José Ramos Horta and other potential "troublemakers" from attending the Manila People's Forum in 1996, and Canada is in the midst of an investigation of police repression of protestors that may implicate the Canadian prime minister. The Malaysian government has made it clear it will tolerate no "unruliness."
The informal bilateral discussions that parallel the multilateral meetings enable U.S. officials to raise issues not on the official APEC agenda. These are prime opportunities to raise issues regarding the social and environmental impact of the economic crisis and to emphasize respect for human rights. While it is laudable that Clinton will not meet with Prime Minister Mahathir to protest the detention of former deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, the inconsistency and hypocrisy that characterize U.S. policy in the region reinforce regional sentiment that America's promotion of democracy, worker rights, and environmental protection are self-serving in nature. To overcome these criticisms and to chart a more responsible foreign policy toward APEC and its member countries, Washington should indicate that the U.S., too, needs to improve its own practice regarding the environment and human rights.
Specifically, we recommend that Washington take the following actions:
* Stop insisting on comprehensive trade and investment liberalization and recognize the validity of Asian development models that allow for the judicious intervention of government as a legitimate strategy in pursuing industrialization and food security.
* Support regional mechanisms to scale-up successful strategies of community-based natural resource management, encourage the transfer of clean production technologies, and promote energy conservation.
* Consistently implement existing labor rights provisions in U.S. trade legislation, such as GSP provisions regarding the Export-Import Bank, Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) operations, and the IMF.
* Create citizen advisory groups paralleling APEC working-groups to enable NGOs and citizens to participate in the formulation of U.S. policy within APEC.
John Gershman (jgershman@igc.org) is a Research Associate at the Institute
for Development Research.
Sources for More Information
APEC Education Network
Box 353690
Seattle, WA 98195
Voice: (206) 543-0663
Fax: (206) 616-1978
Email: Hellman@u.washington.edu
Website: http://www.apec.org/
Contact: Donald Hellman
APEC Secretariat
438 Alexandra Rd.
Alexandra Point
Singapore
Voice: (65) 276-1880
Fax (65) 276-1775
Website: http://www.apecsec.org.sg/
Asia Pacific Center for Justice and Peace
110 Maryland Ave. NE, Box 70
Washington, DC 20002
Voice: (202) 543-1094
Fax: (202) 546-1094
Email: apcjp@igc.apc.org
Website: http://www.apcjp.org
Contact: Andrew Wells
Asian Human Rights Commission
Unit D, 7 Floor, 16 Argyle St.
Mongkok Commercial Centre
Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR
China
Voice: (8522) 698-6339
Fax:(8522) 698-6367
Email: ua@hk.super.net
Website: http://www.hk.super.net/~ahrchk
Focus on the Global South
c/o CUSRI, Prachuabmoh Bldg.
Chulalongkorn University
Phyathai Road
Bangkok 10330
Thailand
Voice: (662) 218-7363
Fax: (662) 255-9976
Email: admin@focusweb.org
Website: http://www.focusweb.org
Contact: Walden Bello
Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development
1831 Second St.
Berkeley, CA 94710
Voice: (510) 204-9296
Fax: (510) 204-9298
Email: lzarsky@nautilus.org
Website: http://www.nautilus.org
Contact: Lyuba Zarsky
Publications
Vinod K. Aggarwal and Charles E. Morrison (eds), Asia-Pacific Crossroads: Regime Creation and the Future of APEC (New York: St.Martin's, 1998).
Walden Bello and Jenina Joy-Chávez-Malaluan, APEC: Four Adjectives in Search of a Noun (Philippines: Manila People's Forum on APEC, 1996).
Focus on Trade, an electronic magazine produced by Focus on the Global South.
Donald C. Hellman and Kenneth B. Pyle From APEC to Xanadu: Creating a Viable Community in the Post-Cold War Pacific (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998).
Lyuba Zarsky, "APEC and the `Sustainable Development' Agenda," Asian Perspectives, 1998.
World Wide Web
APEC Education Foundation
APEC Secretariat
http://www.apecsec.org.sg
Good links on APEC
http://www.nautilus.org
Human Rights Watch
http://www.hrw.org/
U.S. State Department Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs
http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eap/index.html
5/1/07
APEC is coming
What a complete was of resourses for this neo liberal pony show and front for American Imperialism & Militarism in our region.
I'll be posting stuff from various anti APEC archival stuff over the next few days.
I'll be posting stuff from various anti APEC archival stuff over the next few days.
Jordan Baker
May 1, 2007
Latest related coverage
Sydneysiders will have to put up with street closures, motorcades to and from the airport and lots of police around the Opera House, Government House and Darling Harbour before and during APEC this September.
Organisers today released early details of a four-phased traffic plan for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in early September, when US President George Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin come to town along with 18 other regional leaders.
Some 400 business leaders, 6000 delegates and 1500 members of the media will also descend on the city.
Motorcades of various sizes will travel between the airport and the city - US Vice-President Dick Cheney had 20 vehicles when he was in Sydney - and cars parked in clearways will be towed.
From Friday, September 7 - which has been declared a public holiday - until the following Sunday, access to parts of the city will be restricted and there will be high levels of security.
Some vehicles will have to be searched.
Motorists will be told which streets will be restricted closer to the date.
Other measures include:
- High visibility policing of clearways and CBD roads, including enforcement of
restrictions.
- Traffic escorts of APEC leaders to venues and hotels.
- Selected routes for commercial deliveries to enter and leave the northern part of the city will be provided closer to the event dates.
- Security measures at some businesses within the northern part of the CBD.
- Entry to some streets might require vehicles to undergo security searches.
- Access to residential and business premises will continue, although at certain times there may be a police or security presence at or nearby premises.
- Continued use of electronic traffic signs on major roads within the metropolitan road network and throughout the CBD.
- The signs will be updated by the NSW Roads and Traffic Authority to alert motorists, residents and businesses of changes
Earlier today NSW Deputy Premier John Watkins questioned the value of APEC for Sydney and said the city would face massive disruption.
He said it would have been better to hold APEC in Canberra.
In reponse Prime Minister John Howard said he was "amazed" by the NSW Government's attitude.
"This will be the most prestigious gathering of world leaders ever in Australia, and is the NSW Government saying that Australia’s biggest and most international city can’t handle that?" the Prime Minister said.
"These are the economies of our region - this is the Pacific region, the Asian-Pacific region which is our future.
"And small- minded, retreating New South Wales is saying we can’t handle it. I know there will be disruption, and that’s because of security, but security is not the fault of democracy, security is the fault of terrorism, and instead of trying to wedge the Federal Government on that issue, the NSW Government should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder and saying, we want this event in Sydney; we want this event to be a great success; and it will bring millions of dollars to the NSWs economy, there will be thousands of visitors coming for APEC."
.
Last Updated 01/05/2007, 19:09:14
The Australian chaiman of an international business advisory council says the New South Wales, isn't welcoming the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation Summit in September.
Karon Snowdon reports Sydney is to host the leaders summit in September which will also attract around 8-thousand government and business delegates.
But the State Deputy Premier John Watkins says the high security surrounding the event will only disrupt the Sydney business district and won't provide anything tangible for the city, unlike the Olympics.
The attitude has been criticised as small minded by the Prime Minister, John Howard.
Now Mark Johnson, the Chair of the international business council which provides advice to the APEC leaders summit has weighed in.
"I'ts a little parochial and so in that sense its disappointing," Mr Johnson said.
If we don't want to be a wrold city in a world economy we can turnacks on lots of these things and suffer a diminished standard of living.
Mr Johnson is also the Deputy Chairman of the country's biggest investment bank, the Macquarie Bank
4/20/07
TONGA: Economic summit forges private/public partnership
despite mass and popular Tongan opposition to the privitisation & WTO agenda and calls for democracy.
19/04/2007
Tonga's first ever national economic summit has ended, with agreement on seven key projects needed if the country's economy is to be turned around in the next two years. That's the target set by the Ministry of Labour, Commerce and Industry, as the Kingdom faces the expensive task of rebuilding the capital, Nuku'alofa after last years riot. The economic summit brought together government officials and business people in a bid to work out a coordinated strategy on investment, exports and national development.
Presenter/Interviewer: Bruce Hill
Speakers: Lisiate A'kolo, Tonga's Labour Commerce and Industry Minister
Transcript
Listen | Audio Help
19/04/2007
Tonga's first ever national economic summit has ended, with agreement on seven key projects needed if the country's economy is to be turned around in the next two years. That's the target set by the Ministry of Labour, Commerce and Industry, as the Kingdom faces the expensive task of rebuilding the capital, Nuku'alofa after last years riot. The economic summit brought together government officials and business people in a bid to work out a coordinated strategy on investment, exports and national development.
Presenter/Interviewer: Bruce Hill
Speakers: Lisiate A'kolo, Tonga's Labour Commerce and Industry Minister
Transcript Listen | Audio Help3/28/07
South Pacific bloc signs constitution
Monday, March 26, 2007. 6:47pm (AEST)
South Pacific bloc signs constitution
More than 20 years after it was established, a South Pacific diplomatic grouping called the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) has signed a constitution.
The leaders of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands signed the constitution of the MSG last week.
When formed in 1986, the MSG's role was to ease trade between the island nations.
The current head of the group's secretariat, Johnny Koanapo, says it will will give its members a united voice on political and regional issues.
The group has already voice its support for Fiji's interim Government, and criticised Australia and New Zealand for attacking it.
ABC
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200703/s1882022.htm3/27/07
Australian PM outlines indefinite military agenda in South Pacific
Australian PM outlines indefinite military agenda in South Pacific
By the Socialist Equality Party (Australia)
18 January 2007
http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/sep-j18.shtmlAustralian Prime Minister John Howard has revealed the real
motivations behind his government's interventions in the South Pacific
and foreshadowed permanent military operations there. Speaking to the
Sunday Telegraph on December 31, Howard acknowledged his concern that
hostile rival powers, such as China and Taiwan, could "take over" the
region. The prime minister also pointed to Washington's expectation
that Australia would take responsibility for maintaining "stability"
in an area US imperialism regards as its own sphere of influence.
Howard's comments are intended to signal that his government will not
back down in the face of mounting hostility to its activities in the
region, and will be prepared to utilise military force to suppress
opposition. The Telegraph interview confirms that Australia's recent
interventions in East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea
(PNG), Tonga, and Fiji are only the beginning of its long-term plans.
Howard's Pacific agenda is marked by recklessness, arrogance and
complete disregard for international law. The government—and behind it
the entire Australian political establishment—aims to politically and
economically restructure the South Pacific in line with the strategic
and economic interests of Australian imperialism. National sovereignty
and the basic right of ordinary Pacific Islanders to determine their
own future are regarded by Howard and his accomplices as totally
irrelevant.
The emergence of Australian neo-colonialism in the Pacific occurs amid
the eruption of US militarism and the re-surfacing of bitter
inter-imperialist antagonisms, comparable to those that dominated
world politics in the 1930s. Under the banner of the "global war on
terror", the Bush administration has torn up international law and
conventions, embarking on pre-emptive wars of aggression in an attempt
to overcome America's declining economic status relative to its
European and Asian rivals. Bush's recently announced escalation of the
Iraq war, and its likely extension to Iran and Syria, underscores the
speed with which the American ruling elite is resorting to outright
criminality and truly barbaric methods of rule.
No part of the globe—including the South Pacific—is immune from the
consequences of the breakdown of the international order established
after World War II. Howard pointedly warned the Australian people to
get used to permanent military deployment throughout the region. "This
is a long, hard road, and it will need great patience and
understanding by the Australian public to live with, probably for a
period of 10 to 20 years, with a two-steps-forward, one-step-backward
situation," he told the Telegraph.
"I can understand Australians saying, `Well, look, let's forget about
it. Leave them to their own devices; don't waste any money', but
that's the wrong approach to take, because they will fall into the
hands of the evil from other countries and we have to work very hard,"
he continued. "Certainly there's a bit of a battle between China and
Taiwan... If we just throw up our arms and go away, you'll end up with
these places being taken over by interests that are very hostile to
Australia."
Notably, the prime minister made little effort to repeat his
government's usual justifications for Australia's neo-colonial
interventions: rescuing "failed states", preventing terrorism,
providing humanitarian aid, combating corruption, promoting democracy
and the rule of law, etc. That he set these aside, pointing instead to
the "evil" from Australia's rivals, indicates his alarm at the growing
opposition to Canberra's manoeuvres among ordinary Pacific Islanders
and the move by sections of the political elites in East Timor, Papua
New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Fiji towards other powers, especially
China, as a counterbalance to Australian demands and dominance.
China's growing influence
The South Pacific has long been an arena for great power rivalries
between the old colonial powers, France, Britain, and Australia, as
well as Asian countries including Japan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The
rising economic and diplomatic influence of China, however, is a new
and profoundly destabilising factor that is challenging
long-established relations. While Howard describes the South Pacific
as Australia's "special patch", Beijing now has substantial economic
interests in the region, and is seeking to develop its geo-strategic
position.
The Chinese and Taiwanese governments are competing to secure
diplomatic recognition from the various Pacific states. Of the 24
countries in the world that recognise Taipei over Beijing, six are in
the Pacific (Palau, the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Nauru, Solomon
Islands, and Kiribati). Governments in the region have played off the
two powers against each other, granting diplomatic recognition and
support in the UN General Assembly to the highest bidder in terms of
aid and trade agreements. Both China and Taiwan have been accused of
bribing favoured politicians and factions to ensure the installation
of friendly governments.
China's interest in the South Pacific, however, goes far beyond the
question of Taiwan and the "one China" policy. An estimated 3,000
state-owned and private Chinese companies operate in the region,
including in mining, logging, fishing, and tourism. Economic ties are
rapidly developing. Bilateral trade between China and Papua New
Guinea, the South Pacific's largest economy (and until 1975
Australia's colony), has increased from $A5 million in 1991, to $A233
million in 2000, to $A540 million in 2005.
The region's natural resources now help fuel China's ongoing
industrial expansion. Papua New Guinea, for example, was China's
second largest source of logs in 2005, behind Russia, and 80 percent
of PNG's log exports go to China. One of China's largest overseas
investment projects, the Ramu nickel mine, is located in PNG. Opened
late last year, the mine was developed by China's Metallurgical
Construction Corp after Beijing reached a $US915 million financing
agreement with the PNG government. The investment was directly driven
by a shortage of raw materials for China's stainless steel industry.
The Beijing bureaucracy is investing considerable resources in its
diplomatic relations with the South Pacific countries. China now has
more diplomats in the region than any other country, and Pacific
leaders visiting Beijing are granted lavish receptions. While there
are no official figures available, Chinese aid to the South Pacific is
estimated at more than $A300 million annually—a sum nearly twice the
total gross domestic product of the three poorest nations in the
region (Kiribati, Nauru, and Tuvalu). Much of Beijing's aid is devoted
to prominent "prestige projects"—sports stadiums in Fiji and Samoa, a
parliamentary complex in Vanuatu, and new foreign ministry
headquarters in PNG—and unlike Australian aid money, Chinese funding
does not require Pacific governments to fulfil "good governance" and
other obligations.
Several American and Australian foreign policy analysts have warned of
the long-term strategic implications of China's growing influence. In
World War II, the US was forced to wage a series of bloody battles
against the Japanese to secure control of the Pacific Islands. After
the war, US authorities considered the entire Pacific Ocean to be an
"American lake". In partnership with allies such as Australia,
Washington's intent was to maintain exclusive control and prevent any
potential adversaries from gaining a foothold in the strategically
significant region.
Stratfor, an American security and intelligence think tank, has warned
that, "China's need to counter American power—combined with Beijing's
limited naval capability—makes a Pacific Island strategy as natural to
them as it was to the Japanese decades ago." Stratfor raised the
prospect of Beijing attempting to counter US naval dominance by
stationing missiles in South Pacific countries. "While Beijing is
unlikely to deploy forces to the South Pacific soon, its relationships
with the island nations offer it a strategic tool to counter US naval
power in Asia. The Chinese military has paid great attention to the
development of shore-based anti-ship missile systems it eventually
could deploy throughout the South Pacific and Southeast Asia."
The US has already made clear its unwillingness to allow any erosion
of its military position in the Pacific. Washington paid considerable
attention to a satellite tracking station constructed by the Chinese
government in Kiribati in 1997. While Beijing insisted the station was
only used for scientific and commercial purposes, the Bush
administration alleged that it was being used to develop a Chinese
space warfare program and also spy on the US military's missile
testing facility in the neighbouring Marshall Islands. This facility
is vital for the development of the Bush administration's Strategic
Defence Initiative ("Son of Star Wars") missile defence system. The
Chinese tracking station was shut down in 2004 after Kiribati's
government recognised Taipei. Although never proven, Washington was
widely believed to have been involved in behind-the-scenes manoeuvres
encouraging the diplomatic switch.
Canberra as Washington's proxy
Canberra fears Beijing's growing influence in the South Pacific for a
number of reasons. China's increasing commercial ties—particularly its
aggressive pursuit of oil, gas, minerals, timber, and fishing
investments—threatens corporate Australia's dominant position in the
exploitation of the region's natural resources. Canberra's foreign
policy establishment is also hostile to Beijing and Taipei's aid and
trade rivalry, which it considers a threat to its efforts to cultivate
compliant pro-Australian regimes in the Pacific states.
Canberra's alliance with Washington is a critical factor shaping the
Howard government's response to Beijing's entry into the South
Pacific. Bush has previously designated China as a "strategic
competitor" and looks to Canberra to defend US interests in the region.
In the Sunday Telegraph interview, Howard explained, "That's why we've
been increasing the size of our army. It's all designed to give us the
capacity to deal with things in the region. And this is our
responsibility. The rest of the world looks to us to do it, and the
more we are able to play our part effectively here, the less is
legitimately expected of us in other parts of the world. That's not to
say we won't do other things, but if we can have an effective
stabilising role in the whole Pacific region, I can assure you that is
mightily important to the Americans and to our allies in Europe."
The Howard government has unconditionally backed the Bush
administration's criminal interventions in the Middle East,
dispatching troops to both Afghanistan and Iraq. In return, Washington
has provided critical backing for Canberra's operations in the
Pacific. Underlying this quid pro quo is a convergence of interests,
with the Howard government advancing its agenda in the region under
the aegis of US imperialism's claim to global hegemony. This is the
essence of Howard's self-proclaimed role of "deputy sheriff".
The Bush administration's so-called war on terror and its doctrine of
"regime change" and pre-emptive war were the basis for the Howard
government's takeover of the Solomon Islands in 2003, when it
dispatched hundreds of soldiers, police, and bureaucratic personnel to
the tiny country. The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands
(RAMSI) was subsequently hailed as a model military-led intervention
into a "failing state" that could be applied throughout the region.
When announcing the expansion of the Australian military last year,
Howard named Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Vanuatu as further potential
targets.
The Bush administration has repeatedly expressed its appreciation of
Canberra's role. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked last
month whether she was disappointed that Australian troops were not
playing a more front-line role in Iraq. "I would never use the word
disappointment in the same line with Australia," she replied. "This is
a country that, not only in Iraq, not only in Afghanistan, not only in
tsunami relief, not only in support for all that we're doing in the
Asia Pacific, but also in taking really primary responsibility in
places like the Solomon Islands, Fiji, East Timor, has put its
resources and its assets at the disposal of peace and security in the
region, and in the spread of freedom. And I just can't think of a
better friend and a better ally."
Nevertheless, Canberra and Washington do not share identical positions
in relation to Beijing. The Howard government has generally adopted a
less belligerent stance than the Bush administration. This is due to
the Australian ruling elite's interest in maintaining its lucrative
exports of natural resources such as gas, gold, iron ore, coal, and
aluminium to China. These exports have been crucial for Australia's
economic growth—and Howard's electoral successes—over the past decade.
Canberra is currently seeking to negotiate a free trade deal with Beijing.
Despite these differences, the Howard government and the Bush
administration agree that no potentially hostile power can be
permitted to advance its strategic and economic interests in the South
Pacific at their expense. That Howard abandoned his usual caution in
the Telegraph interview and identified China as a rival indicates just
how much is at stake.
The struggle against neo-colonialism
The Howard government's vision of neo-colonial military-led
interventions in the Pacific lasting 10 to 20 years presents enormous
dangers to working people and youth in the Pacific Islands and in
Australia.
It will inevitably produce a catastrophe. The population of the
Pacific Islands have suffered a long history of British, French,
German, and Australian colonial domination. It is impossible that such
forms of rule can be peacefully imposed in the twenty-first century.
Pacific Islanders have every right to resist Canberra's machinations
and it is only a matter of time before Australian soldiers and police
are targeted. The initial stages of such a struggle are already
evident in East Timor and the Solomon Islands. Canberra will respond
by escalating its violence and repression, unleashing military force
on a scale not seen in the Pacific since World War II.
The domestic repercussions will be no less calamitous. Democratic
rights are already under sustained attack, and this will intensify as
opposition to Howard's agenda mounts. Bourgeois democratic norms and
basic legal and constitutional rights are fundamentally incompatible
with a state of permanent military mobilisation. In its efforts to
forge a constituency for war and divert mounting social tensions, the
political and media establishment is pumping out the poison of
national chauvinism—involving the incitement of anti-Muslim racism and
promotion of "Australian values"—and glorifying militarism.
Young people face a future of being dragooned into the armed forces as
cannon fodder for military interventions. School children are already
being encouraged to enlist in the cadets and then the army. The Howard
government has introduced a military "gap year" for those who have
finished school but do not wish to immediately begin their tertiary
education. Last year Howard announced that an additional $10 billion
will be spent to recruit another 2,600 troops, on top of a 1,500
increase announced in December 2005, bringing the total increase to 20
percent. Half a billion dollars has also been committed for the near
doubling of the Australian Federal Police's "international deployment
group"—an outfit focussed on operations in the South Pacific.
Inevitably, these initiatives will soon be accompanied by moves to
introduce conscription.
The billions of dollars in public funds being poured into the military
represent a massive social misappropriation. While funding for public
health and education, social infrastructure, and welfare and social
services have all been gutted by successive state and federal
governments, "defence" spending has skyrocketed. Australia is now the
eleventh largest military spender in the world and ranks ahead of
countries such as Israel, Turkey, Brazil, and Iran.
The political starting point for a struggle against the turn to
militarism and war is the recognition that not a single element within
the Australian political and media establishment opposes any aspect of
the Howard government's neo-colonial operations in the South Pacific.
To the extent that the opposition Labor Party and its new leader Kevin
Rudd have any criticisms of the government, they are all from the
right. Rudd accuses Howard of incompetence for allowing an "arc of
instability" to develop, and advocates greater tact in diplomatic
efforts aimed at browbeating Australia's neighbours. Like the Greens,
Labor calls for the redeployment of Australian troops from Iraq to the
South Pacific in order to bolster operations in East Timor, the
Solomons, and elsewhere.
The unanimous defence by Labor and the minor parties of Australia's
Pacific interventions ultimately derives from their support for the
profit system and the nation-state system upon which it rests.
Opposition to war, militarism, and neo-colonialism can only be
advanced on an independent socialist and internationalist basis.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) will be standing candidates in the
New South Wales state election scheduled for March 24 and the federal
election due later this year. Our campaign will be focussed on
building a mass movement of the working class against militarism and
war—in Iraq, the Middle East and in the South Pacific. We demand the
immediate withdrawal of all US, Australian and other troops from Iraq
and Afghanistan, and all Australian soldiers, police, and bureaucratic
personnel from the Pacific. We demand an end to all those regional
"aid" programs that function as nothing more than international slush
funds for Australian corporations.
Instead, billions of dollars in genuine aid must be spent to lift the
Pacific Islands out of poverty and undo the terrible legacy of
colonialism and the damage still being inflicted by International
Monetary Fund and World Bank programs.
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