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To
engage more and conflict less
By JONATHAN
POWER
August 1, 2001
LONDON - It was a well-kept secret during the Clinton
Administration that his one great foreign policy success
was when he chose to engage rather than confront. It was
the agreement negotiated with North Korea that led to
this "rogue" country putting on ice its nuclear weapons
programme in return for an American pledge to help it
build a civilian nuclear power industry and, in the
interim, to give it a reasonable supply of crude oil.
The alternative, war, had been counselled against by
the brass at the Pentagon because 1) of the uncertainty
that the U.S. air force could locate and destroy the
North's nuclear weapons, if indeed it had them.2) if
North Korea did have a nuclear weapon it could attack
back with it and 3) of the high cost in dead American and
South Korean soldiers if the North's army did cross the
border.
In nearly every other situation, Clinton's instincts
were to opt for confrontation or, at least, a lack of
engagement: the expansion of Nato almost up to Russia's
borders; the tussle with China for most of his term over
human rights to the point of sacrificing increased trade
and the political binding that goes with it; the embargo
and air patrols against Iraq; the embargo of Iran; the
introduction of American military advisers and much
increased military aid to Colombia; and the maintenance
of the quarantine of Cuba.
George Bush came into office with his Secretary of
State, Colin Powell, quickly going on the record as
saying the new Administration wanted to see rather less
of sanctions as a tool of foreign policy and by
implication suggesting that engagement was a better way
to work. Interestingly, it was the Republican
administration of Ronald Reagan which coined the phrase
"constructive engagement" when it decided to drop the
confrontation of its predecessor, Jimmy Carter, and adopt
policies that were meant to sweeten South Africa into
renouncing apartheid. It gave engagement a bad name and
it was eventually sabotaged by Congress, which
overwhelmingly voted to override Reagan's veto of the
Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act.
A better-crafted form of engagement lived on, not as
an embrace of the power structure, which had existed
before, but which introduced economic penalties that
sought only to harm the interests of the elite. A widely
followed investment code gave the private sector, both in
South African and abroad, an active role in agitating for
reform. This alongside the underreported work of the
churches pushed South Africa down the road towards
reform.
Engagement has many virtues over confrontation and
sanctions. Sanctions have a poor record in achieving
success. Often applied across the board they have tended
to hurt the poor rather than the better off. Besides,
they are unpopular with commercial interests at home that
do not wish to see valuable markets put in cold storage.
Moreover, whilst sanctions have only one tool, engagement
has many: its incentives range from export credits,
investment insurance, access to technology and trade,
tariff reductions, aid, help with entry into the global
economic arena and the institutions that govern it,
diplomatic recognition, the scheduling of summits between
leaders, military training, the funding of
non-governmental organisations and the exchange of
students and, if sanctions are already in place as they
were in North Korea, the promise of their removal.
It's a long list but of course it opens itself, once
in place, as much of it is now with China, to being
pocketed and then what? Is it not simply appeasement? And
don't deals like the one fashioned with North Korea
merely encourage other countries to embark on the same
awful policies in the hope that they too might be bought
out by the U.S. or the EU? Critics, moreover, can point
to the nineteen eighties when there was a period of
engagement with Saddam Hussein's Iraq which went badly
wrong when he pushed all other concerns to one side and
invaded Kuwait. Yet in this case it was the type of
engagement that was wrong, not simply generous
agricultural credits but the provision of sophisticated
arms by the U.S, Britain and France and encouragement for
the regime in its war against Iran. This deservedly gives
engagement more of a bad name. Engagement undoubtedly can
be a risk and it doesn't solve all and every case but, if
done without the lure of arms sales, it certainly raises
the threshold for conflict and war and that, as the North
Korean example shows, is worth its weight in gold.
Engagement, because it is a slow process, depends on
the cultivated support of a well-prepared domestic base.
When Jimmy Carter tried to normalise relations with
ex-enemy Vietnam he came up against the antagonism of
Congress and the vociferous criticism of veterans'
lobbies. Years later Clinton had more success because he
had carefully solicited influential congressional leaders
and with the judicious use of American aid and the
incentive of lifting sanctions persuaded Hanoi's
leadership to comply with U.S. demands, not least full
scale help on finding the remains of American servicemen
killed in action.
Today there are four important candidates for
engagement - Iran, Iraq, Cuba and Libya. All of them are
characterised as being the leftovers of yesterday's
battles, even if in the case of the latter three the same
leaders are in power. But Cuba has long ceased to export
revolution, Iraq's military remains in a decimated
condition compared with its heyday and Libya has both
dropped its attempt to take over Chad and has cooperated
with the special court set up to try those accused of
blowing up Pan Am flight 103. Iran, now a democracy, if
an uncertain one, is not likely to return to the
confrontational days of Ayatollah Khomeini and its
nuclear ambitions have been both distorted and
overstated. Whatever the arguments in terms of a
punishing regime of sanctions in the past, the carrot of
dismantling sanctions in return for a more cooperative
relationship makes more and more sense as time goes on.
It would surely strengthen, particularly in Iran, the
power of the reformers.
Punitive policies sometimes are unavoidable, but
engagement, particularly by the U.S., remains a poorly
understood tool. It's early days yet, but if General
Powell can follow through on his initial aspiration this
Bush Administration could leave important parts of the
geo-political map in a better condition than it found
it.
I can be reached by phone +44
7785 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2001 By
JONATHAN POWER
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