"Since Mr Ortega's defeat in 1990, US money has flowed to Nicaragua in the form of investments by foreign companies drawn by the country's cheap labour, low crime rates and recent decision to join the Central American free trade agreement.""Pundita,
My reaction to Daniel Ortega's victory in Nicaragua is a measure of how much your ideas have influenced my thinking about US foreign policy. Two years ago I would have agreed completely with Bob Novak's dire view of Daniel Ortega's victory and blamed State's failure to back a particular candidate. But my first thought was about State's America Desk.[*] After US corporations spent a decade pushing free enterprise in Nicaragua, the country is still one of the poorest.
My second thought was about Russia. Despite the many differences between the Russia and Nicaragua, the same basic US actions have been in effect in both countries during the past decade:
1. After getting rid of the devil, the State Department and the IMF push onto the new regime whatever theory is currently the fad in economic circles to bring the poorest out of the worst poverty.
2. The country is then overrun with US companies cutting deals with the most corrupt, inefficient and powerful business interests in the country.
3. Nothing works to help the poorest.
4. The majority in the country then turn against the United States and support the strongman who promises them the most.
5. The US then uses whatever clout it has (loans, aid, entry to WTO, etc.) in the attempt to shore up their favored political party in the country and bully the strongman and his supporters into keeping concessions to US business.
6. The strongman wins and becomes the new devil. Repeat steps 1-5.
There must be a way out of this crazy cycle, which harms the US as well as the country in question.
Jan in Reston"
Dear Jan:
You put your finger on it when you termed the events you describe a "cycle" rather than policy. Policy is an explicitly stated outline of how an entity plans to act under specified conditions.
Of course the US didn't make Nicaragua into the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, any more than the US made the Soviet Union. But successive administrations and Congress along with the State Department become champion scab-pickers. There's no way the majority in the poorest countries can catch a break if the US keeps fueling the same cycle. And in today's world of transnational terror armies that's a deadly cycle for the US.
Here it's easy to be cynical and say that US business interests will always act according to their lights, the ruling class in another country will act according to their lights, Left and Right idealogues in Congress will act according to theirs, and IMF economists will act according to theirs -- and America's superpower status means it's easy to impose the resulting cycle on other nations. But none of that is a policy.
The central problem for America's foreign relations is that we do not yet have a foreign policy that can be universally applied, and which transcends conditions that entrench the cycle you described.
Yet America's foreign relations are under a microscope because of our superpower status; the upshot during this globalized era of instant communications is that we are called out, every time we apply a double standard. This is a key problem with making support of democracy the foundation of US foreign policy. Every time we favor a pro-American regime that represses democracy in their country there is instant feedback.
In a perfect world the solution would be for the US to abandon the double standard. However, we don't yet have the kind of minds in place in government to make headway. We have leftovers from the Cold War, and who are steeped in Cold War thinking.
Speaking of the Cold War mentality, I read that Robert Zoellick and Congressman Daniel Burton threatened to press for yanking a $175 million loan from the Millennium Challenge Corporation to Nicaragua, if Ortega won. I have not investigated the claim and because the article (a laundry list of US actions to influence the Nicaragua election) had some inaccuracies, the story might be inaccurate. Yet it sounds like a threat Zoellick would make. In any case the story makes a good illustration:
Millennium Challenge decides loans on the basis of strict guidelines that are specifically meant to support sound government practices and democracy in a needy country. So, provided Ortega's government adheres to the guidelines, why play fast and loose with the principles of a good US loan program?
I'd be surprised if Ortega intends to adhere to the guidelines but that's not the point. The US sacrifices integrity by using Millennium Challenge capriciously. It doesn't get more capricious than for a superpower government to use a thinly disguised aid program as a means to blatantly influence the outcome of an election in a struggling country.
State and the Congress should wait to pass judgment, at least until Ortega's government is formed and in a position to review the loan conditions.
If the US wants to break the cycle you outlined, the first step is to base US foreign aid and loans on a concrete (i.e., not abstract), empirically verifiable principle that everyone can understand and live with. Then apply the principle consistently with all countries. That's how the US can build a viable foreign policy instead of making Swiss cheese.
Now what would such a principle be? Can we base it on a defense of democracy? We'll examine the question in the next post, which will be on Wednesday at 9:00 AM. The question I pose never was an academic exercise but now with China's pledge to double aid to Africa it's vital to come up with a workable answer.
For a brief, reasonably balanced analysis of Ortega's victory, see the Time article but I like the Guardian piece I quoted at the start of the post because it underscores the points in your letter. The US experiment in making business the centerpiece of US foreign policy, which spawned the America Desk, has been a failure in Nicaragua.
With regard to Novak's analysis, I sympathize with Oliver North's angst over seeing Ortega returned to power. Yet US foreign relations strategy has depended on crystal ball gazing: analyzing what the other guy is going to do in the attempt to predict and control the outcome. The only thing you can predict and control with certainty is how you intend to act. The observation also applies to a government's foreign relations.
China's foreign policy is amoral but consistent to a remarkable degree at telegraphing how they will act toward other governments. US foreign policy strives to be moral but frequently falls into sin -- giving into the exigencies of accommodating special interests and US political infighting -- with the upshot that the US is perceived as inconsistent.
Peoples around the world know they'd be foolish to have high expectations about what a superpower can do for them. Yet what other governments feel they have a right to expect from a superpower is enough consistency on which to base predictions about the superpower's behavior. (If we do X, we know the US intends to do Y.)
That was the major reason Genghis Khan came to be trusted by the diverse peoples in his far-flung empire; he was the soul of consistency. The Khan laid down a few simple rules for everybody to follow. Everybody could set their hourglass by what he'd do if they flouted the rules. He was predictable, and he worked hard at being so. That was viewed as integrity, and for that he was respected.
Realize that the Khan was even more respected than the gods in the various god-worshipping cultures he ruled because the gods were fickle -- sometimes they sent rain in answer to prayers, sometimes they didn't. If the Khan said he was sending something to a government outpost, it got there.
That much dependability is too much ask of any modern government. The idea is for the US to aim for somewhere between the Khan's level of integrity and a policy so riddled with inconsistency that it resembles Swiss cheese.
* The Office for Commercial and Business Affairs at the US Department of State. See December 2004 Pundita post.
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