WASHINGTON, April 17 (UPI) -- The UPI think tank wrap-up is a daily digest covering opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events and position statements released by various think tanks. This is the third of several wrap-ups for April 17.
The Brookings Institution
WASHINGTON -- Brookings Iraq Report: After the Iraq war: The view from Asia
Without much notice or credit, East Asian governments have provided the United States some of the strongest support for the military intervention in Iraq. Australia offered the most robust backing, dispatching combat troops to participate in the operation. Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi offered unequivocal political support and, more surprisingly, South Korea's new president, Roh Moo-hyun offered to send non-combat troops.
Even China distanced itself from the European "axis of opposition" on the Security Council -- France, Germany, and Russia. While China was not prepared to offer explicit support, it made clear it would not stand in the way of U.N. action and even took steps to temper public opposition at home.
Yet the war has caused considerable unease throughout East Asia. Government officials and analysts in this region are looking at Iraq through the lens of its implications for the crisis that affects them most directly -- North Korea. All the countries in the region are anxiously awaiting signs of whether the U.S. action in Iraq presages a more confrontational approach to the DPRK, notwithstanding U.S. assurances that there is no "one-size-fits-all" policy for dealing with proliferation threats, and the Bush administration's repeated statements that it is seeking a diplomatic solution.
For both Japan and South Korea, solidarity with the United States is seen as essential to assure U.S. support for engagement with them on how to handle the North Korean nuclear program. The concern is most keenly felt in Seoul, where the government has made clear that it is strongly opposed to any military action, even if North Korea moves forward with reprocessing the spent nuclear fuel that could provide plutonium for up to six nuclear weapons. For South Koreans, the possibility of a U.S. pre-emptive strike poses an unacceptable risk that the North will retaliate, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties.
Many Koreans, especially younger people, question whether North Korea really poses a threat -- at least to them. The mere possibility of conflict on the peninsula is already having an adverse impact on the South Korean economy. As Roh prepares for his now accelerated first trip to Washington, he is eager to show a willingness to help out where it matters most to the United States -- by providing support on Iraq in the face of strong public opposition, in the hope that President Bush will reciprocate and heed South Koreans' concerns.
The situation is more complex in Japan, where the North Korean missile test in the late 1990s heightened Japanese fears about North Korea's military intentions, and the controversy over North Korea's treatment of abducted Japanese citizens has hardened attitudes toward the North. For this reason, Japan has been more willing to back America's harder line, but most would like to see the United States be more forthcoming in negotiations.
More important is the broader Japanese discomfort with U.S. unilateralism in Iraq, and the apparent U.S. disdain for multilateral treaties and institutions like the United Nations. For Japan, the open-ended security alliance with the United States. has been at the heart of Japan's security strategy for over 50 years and, in the future -- with the possibility that North Korea will become a nuclear-weapon state and the growing military, economic and political power of China -- the reliability of the U.S. commitment could take on even greater salience.
Japanese are even beginning to broach, however tentatively, the question of whether a contingency strategy might be necessary to guard against abandonment by the United States. This even includes discussion of the heretofore taboo question of whether, under some circumstances, Japan might need to build offensive weapons to pre-empt the North Korean threat -- and even the possibility that Japan might need to renounce its non-nuclear commitment. The United Nations, too, has been central to Japan's broad approach to global security, but today some Japanese are beginning to question why Japan should provide 20 percent of the financial support for an organization that is being marginalized by the United States (and where Japan's own quest for a Security Council seat has been relegated to a far-back burner).
For China, the Iraq war has posed the most complex dilemma. It already seems clear that the U.S. action has contributed to China's willingness to be more active in trying to bring North Korea to the negotiating table. China's leaders fear that after Iraq, the United States just might be rash enough to contemplate using force against North Korea. Such an action could unleash a conflict that could send hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing to China, and runs the risk of destabilizing the whole region.
More broadly, some in China wonder whether the Administration's willingness to resort to the unilateral use of force might have implications for future action toward China, perhaps in the context of a crisis involving Taiwan. Notwithstanding the dramatically improved ties between Washington and Beijing, the Chinese have not entirely forgotten the Administration's earlier tough posture toward their country, and they are wary that the pendulum could swing back.
China is also watching with interest and concern the longer-term U.S. strategy toward the Middle East in the post-Iraq-war period. With its rising need for imported energy, China has a growing stake in a stable oil-producing region, but also worries whether growing U.S. influence in the region (as well as Central Asia) might jeopardize China's access to oil in a future crisis. For now, this combination of factors has led China to accentuate the positive in its relations with the United States, for lack of a better alternative, but few in China have any conviction that a more assertive United States will redound to China's interest.
Thus all the major powers in the region have more or less embraced the U.S. action in Iraq, in the earnest hope that such an impressive, largely unilateral, un-U.N.-blessed assertion of military power never, ever happen again.
(James B. Steinberg is vice president and director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution.)
The Institute for Public Accuracy
(The IPA is a nationwide consortium of policy researchers that seeks to broaden public discourse by gaining media access for experts whose perspectives are often overshadowed by major think tanks and other influential institutions.)
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Strategic Plan: Military, Nuclear
On Thursday, NASA Administrator and former Secretary of the Navy Sean O'Keefe addressed the National Press Club about "NASA's Strategic Plan."
-- Alice Slater, director of the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment:
"NASA's strategic plan involves the acceleration of militarizing space. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers was head of U.S. Space Command when it published its 1998 'Visions for 2020' report which talked of 'dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment.' In January 2001 the space commission chaired by Donald Rumsfeld affirmed the same vision -- to dominate the globe from the high ground of space -- with the official imprimatur of an incoming secretary of Defense ... It's particularly troubling that this strategic plan is being announced only days before the convening of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Preparatory Committee meeting in Geneva ... The United States is sabotaging global disarmament. Hopes for meaningful progress towards nuclear disarmament have been shattered, particularly by the shameless grab to dominate space."
-- Bruce Gagnon, director of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space:
"Immediately after his appointment by George W. Bush, O'Keefe told the nation that all of NASA's missions in the future would be 'dual use.' This of course means that the distinction between civilian and military technologies will be rubbed out. The military takeover of the space program is near complete."
-- Karl Grossman, a professor at the State University of New York, is author of "The Wrong Stuff: The Space Program's Nuclear Threat to Our Planet":
"At all of our peril, O'Keefe is moving to expand NASA's program of using nuclear power in space -- including reviving the decades-old notion of building nuclear-powered spacecraft. What if the Columbia shuttle had been nuclear-powered? Nuclear debris would have spread over Texas and Louisiana. Still, two days after the Columbia tragedy, NASA advanced its new $3 billion space nuclear program, Project Prometheus. It is being pushed despite the development of new safe space energy systems, including solar-electric propulsion and solar sails."
WASHINGTON -- The Institute for Public Accuracy
(The IPA is a nationwide consortium of policy researchers that seeks to broaden public discourse by gaining media access for experts whose perspectives are often overshadowed by major think tanks and other influential institutions.)
WASHINGTON -- Syria, Iraq, antiquities, terrorist groups
-- James Abourezk, a former U.S. senator, has met with high-ranking Syrian officials, including President Bashar Assad:
"The proposal that Syria is reportedly putting forward at the United Nations for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction is a very good one."
-- Greg Palast is author of the book "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy":
"The current U.S. plans are to convert Iraq into a Bush-style democracy where money and interests of large corporations count more than votes. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick is talking about 'building economic openness, growth, prosperity' in the region while, behind closed doors, plans are made to privatize Iraqi oil and corporate lobbyists are enlisted to draft new laws for Iraq."
The National Center for Policy Analysis
(The NCPA is a public policy research institute that seeks innovative private sector solutions to public policy problems.)
DALLAS -- Better off without the International Monetary Fund
By Bruce Bartlett
Leaders of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund met in Washington over the weekend for their annual Spring meeting. They were under great pressure from the United States to step in to Iraq and help get that country's economy back on its feet. However, if the Iraqis really want to restore prosperity to their country, they might be better off if the World Bank and IMF stay out.
It is worth remembering that the greatest war reconstruction in history -- that following World War II -- took place without any World Bank of IMF around to help, which may explain why it went so well. However, the conventional wisdom is that foreign aid in the form of the Marshall Plan was the key to restoration of the German and Japanese economies following the war. Hence, the IMF and World Bank are just doing what the Marshall Plan did, many believe.
In fact, the flow of aid from the Marshall Plan was far less significant than the policy changes that it imposed. The most important were requirements that aid recipients permit free trade with other recipients and allow their currencies to be freely convertible. This, far more than the aid itself, is what got Europe growing after the war.
Moreover, the actions of key leaders in the occupied countries probably had more to do with the economic success of those countries than anything the Marshall Plan did. In West Germany, Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard eliminated price controls, stabilized the currency, cut taxes and implemented free market policies. In Japan, Gen. Douglas MacArthur had the good sense to follow the advice of American economists who told him to do the same thing there.
Nevertheless, the myth persists that it was foreign aid and foreign aid only that rejuvenated Germany and Japan. The ultimate refutation of this view, however, is that many of the largest Marshall Plan recipients, such as Britain, did not revive for decades after the war, because they did not implement free market policies. Indeed, Britain went in the opposite direction and imposed socialism, which caused its growth to lag far behind Germany's until Margaret Thatcher finally swept away the wartime taxes and controls beginning in the late 1970s.
Unfortunately, the World Bank and IMF were created during the era when people really thought that foreign aid worked. They have institutionalized this view ever since. Indeed, World Bank Chief Economist Nicholas Stern recently said, "Aid has never been more effective than it is now."
Yet, his own analysis shows that free trade will do far more to improve the lot of developing nations than more foreign aid. Elimination of trade barriers by rich countries would raise 300 million people in the developing world out of poverty by 2015, Stern reckons.
While the World Bank at least understands that free trade is key to growth, the IMF persists in believing that balanced budgets are the only thing that matters. For this reason, it attacked President Bush's tax proposal last week on the grounds that it will increase the U.S. budget deficit.
The IMF position makes some sense in developing countries, where there is no capital market in which to sell government bonds. Hence, central banks tend to print money to finance deficits, leading to inflation and a depreciating currency. But it makes little sense to criticize the United States on the same grounds, because our central bank is independent of the federal government, and the Treasury Department can always borrow as much as it needs to finance deficits. However, the IMF follows a "one size fits all" policy, so everyone must be criticized equally even if it makes no sense.
This does not mean that the IMF is ignorant of its own failures. Indeed, it recently published an important critique of itself. The paper found that the benefits of IMF programs are problematic at best.
One of their key features is integrating financial markets into the world economy. Yet the report found that "an objective reading of the vast research effort to date suggests that there is no strong, robust and uniform support for the theoretical argument that financial globalization per se delivers a higher rate of economic growth." Indeed, some countries adopting financial liberalization "experienced output collapses related to costly banking or currency crises," the report noted.
Iraq would do better to follow the path of Germany and Japan and avoid the World Bank/IMF model if it hopes to restore its economy. Instead of relying on foreign aid, as the World Bank does, and raising taxes to balance its budget, as the IMF wants, Iraq should eliminate all price controls, privatize the oil industry, establish secure property rights, lower tax rates, and link the Iraqi currency to the dollar. If it does all these things, foreign investment will make foreign aid and IMF programs unnecessary.
(Bruce Bartlett is a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.)
