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GIACOMO FILIBECK - "It is becoming clear that the United States is making a political and strategic mistake. In the end, this could be fatal for the West, destroying a necessary alliance between the democratic countries of the Northern Hemisphere, and fatal for the entire Middle East."

EUOBSERVER / SALT&PEPPER - The events these past few days have raised fears among some that barely a decade after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the West will become divided into two new new blocs: an anti-American bloc and an anti-European bloc. I do not believe this to be a real prospect. The dispute between the US administration and certain European governments does not greatly involve the peoples of the two sides who are often critical of their own governments.

In an editorial on 9 March, the largest newspaper in the United States, the New York Times, clearly spoke out against an armed intervention in Iraq without the legitimate backing of the UN. The daily also published an article by former US President and winner of the 2002 Nobel peace prize Jimmy Carter who vigorously defended the stance that an attack that was not under the auspices of the United Nations would constitute a violation of international law. It would also be unprecedented in the history of civil nations and contribute to the decline of American prestige on the international scene.

Infatuation with power This reading of recent events is undoubtedly a reply to the analysis of the Democrats that is today shared by a large portion of US public opinion: for them, a unipolar, hegemonic and authoritarian system cannot produce the correct results in terms of achieving peace and democracy around the world. On the contrary, a system like this damages America’s soft power, which until now has been a successful weapon of the United States in international relations.

The true error of the George W. Bush administration from this point of view would be its infatuation with power. The illusion of the empire (hard military and economic power) would make it blind to the need to find solutions with the international community in order to achieve political stability, economic growth and democratic values.

There is no doubt that the painful events of 11 September have affected the policies of the US administration. The now famous "National Security Strategy" presented by President Bush to Congress on 17 September 2002 is extremely clear. America is facing a new and extremely serious challenge. On the one hand international terrorism is penetrating open and democratic societies, using against them modern technologies (that they themselves have produced). On the other hand, the anti-American rogue States are supporting terrorist networks, offering them hospitality and funding and through them waging a non-conventional war against the "Evil Empire".

The wrongs of preventive war In the face of instruments of mass destruction made possible by new technologies and suicide fighting techniques, it would appear impossible for a society open to the movement of goods, people and capital to fight terrorism, leaving it vulnerable to new disastrous attacks. Therefore, the preventive war would be the only possible way of defending one’s own territory and one’s own cultural model. The new and extremely dangerous corollary of this theory is, however, unilateralism whereby if the United States decides an armed intervention it can intervene regardless of the consensus of the United Nations, in contempt of international law and in total disagreement with international public opinion.

There is also another extremely weak element in the theory of preventive war: nowhere is there a direct strategy to get to the root of international terrorism, which finds fertile ground in the despair and poverty of the countries of the Third and Fourth Worlds. Today, a quarter of the world’s population consumes three quarters of the energy, food and natural resources available on this planet. The gap between North and South continues to grow, and new countries end up being sucked into the whirlpool of poverty (witness what is occurring in Argentina and Venezuela).

Snowball effect In this context, as many analysts have already underlined these past few weeks, a unilateral intervention by the United States in Iraq, with the consequent dissolution of the Iraqi State, would probably have a snowball effect and lead to more instability in the Middle East. It could further antagonise the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (already there have been dramatic first signs of this), feed fundamentalist terrorism, weaken moderate Arab governments, trigger migrations and produce a crisis in oil production.

It is therefore becoming clear that the United States is making a political and strategic mistake. In the end, this could be fatal for the West, destroying a necessary alliance between the democratic countries of the Northern Hemisphere, and fatal for the entire Middle East, destroying once and for all the legitimacy of the international institutions and their peace-keeping role. Also, it is becoming obvious that an alternative solution has to be found together with an international interlocutor capable of implementing it in the eyes of the US administration. However, as the situation stands, neither one exists.

A new Marshall Plan As regards Europe, the position taken by France, Germany and Belgium of opposing US intervention gives expression to the will of international public opinion but looks doomed to fail, because alone these countries are unable to express a Middle East foreign policy different from that of the United States. Such a policy should clearly be based on a plan of economic aid and investment, support for local production, education and social development, through the added value of international solidarity, and all this with the purpose of exporting democracy to create peace: in short, a new Marshall Plan.

The radical change in American foreign policy and the consequent Iraqi crisis have occurred at a time when the countries of Europe still do not have the instruments for a common foreign policy. In this way, the EU countries have reacted according to their own national interests, with the result that the total of individual diplomacies has not produced a common position. France’s resistance in the UN Security Council and its heightened opposition to the position of the United States have brought to the fore the paradox of a powerless Europe.

American unilateralism is in fact the product of the political inconsistency of the European Union and its incapacity to propose diplomatic alternatives to the United States’ stance. The uncoordinated national diplomatic efforts of the individual European states express nothing other than an empty game of power and sovereignty, incapable of producing any concrete result. On the other hand, there where a result could be expressed, at the level of the Community institutions, a democratic government of the Union responsible for foreign and security policy is lacking.

Citizens in charge of own destiny And this is what 80% of the Union’s citizens, many of whom demonstrated through the streets of Europe on February 15, are calling on the Convention to create. A European government would have the diplomatic strength to launch a Marshall Plan for the Middle East that brings with it development, peace and democracy and that guarantees disarmament. The Union’s citizens know that they will be in charge of their own destiny only when Europe speaks in the world with a single voice.

They also know that by maintaining sovereignty for foreign affairs, Europe’s individual states are dooming themselves to division, subordination and decline. Europe’s citizens know the paradox of a powerless Europe that is leaving Europe without the capacity to act: only Europe’s leaders seem deaf to their requests and blind to the needs of the world.

The only hope is that the Convention will be able to see what the governments are not seeing and will listen to the voice of European citizens. If this occurs, the lessons of these past few days will not have been in vain and will write an important page in history. It takes courage, the courage that Europe’s citizens are asking the members of the Convention to have.

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GIACOMO FILIBECK - President of the European Youth Convention and of the European Youth Forum Website  European Youth Forum  European Youth Convention     Written by Giacomo Filibeck Edited by Honor Mahony

washingtontimes.com March 12, 2003 James Morrison

     A former prime minister of Lebanon, who called his country the "first victim of terrorism," believes the only way to stop terrorists is to crush regimes that "teach people to hate and kill."

     Michel Aoun, on a recent visit to Washington, called terrorism a "safety valve" for the dictatorial regimes that support such activity to divert attention from the failure of their own policies.

     "If we are to effectively fight terrorism, we have to understand that it is inseparable from the regimes that harbor it," he told a forum of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

     "Terrorism is a internal safety valve for these regimes and a key instrument of their foreign policy applied as blackmail to others. Therefore, the eradication of terrorism must by necessity begin with the toppling of non-democratic regimes that teach people to hate and kill and that push people to acts of suicide," he said.

     Only democratic governments can bring freedom and respect for human rights, said Mr. Aoun, a Christian Lebanese who was forced from power by Syrian occupation forces in 1990 and now lives in Paris. He, however, noted the "magnitude of the difficulties" involved in promoting democracy in countries that have never known freedom.

     "That ... seems to me to be much harder to achieve than victory on the battlefield, the outcome of which can be sealed in days or weeks," he said.

     "Indeed, democracy is not an infrastructure that one builds in a few months. ... And it cannot be achieved through a simple voting exercise. It is first and foremost an education of concepts.

     "That is why any regime change must be accompanied by a fundamental change in the system of education to facilitate the learning of new concepts and applying them to public life."

      Mr. Aoun also said economic assistance must follow regime change.

     "If democracy is the key to liberate the individual from fear, economic development is key to liberate the individual from need," he said.

     Mr. Aoun blamed Lebanon's problems on Syria, a "regime that is the antithesis of democracy." The State Department classifies Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism.

     He also paid "genuine homage" to the Americans killed trying to bring peace to Lebanon in the 1980s, when terrorists killed 63 persons in an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut and 241 American troops in a strike on U.S. military barracks.

     "They came to Lebanon for peace, and real peace must be achieved," he said. "God bless their souls."      

     Venezuela seeks proof

     Caracas is calling on the United States to provide evidence of terrorist finance networks in Venezuela in response to recent comments from the U.S. ambassador there and a top U.S. general.

     "Whoever has evidence of situations like those described must first give them to corresponding authorities," Foreign Minister Roy Chaderton told the Union Radio station in the capital, Caracas, on Monday.

     "That evidence ... could lead to the opening of an investigation. A simple denunciation isn't enough."

     Ambassador Charles Shapiro told reporters last week of his concerns that terrorists have established bases throughout South America. His comments followed similar remarks by Gen. James T. Hill, head of the U.S. Southern Command.      

     U.S. won't punish Israel

     The U.S. ambassador to Israel is denying news reports that Washington is outraged by Israeli security leaks about a planned date for an invasion of Iraq.

     "I don't know where those press reports came from, but they are without foundation," Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer told reporters Monday, after meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.

     The Israeli daily newspaper Ma'ariv, for example, reported that the Bush administration was so angry with Israel that it would withhold information about the actual date of the start of military action.      "The cooperation between our two countries is unbelievably good, and it is unparalleled in the history of our relations," Mr. Kurtzer said. "There's no way we are going to surprise our ally."

     Mr. Shalom on Sunday had a long phone conversation with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, United Press International reported.

To contact James Morrison, call 202/636-3297, fax 202/832-7278 or e-mail jmorrison@washingtontimes.com.

www.guardian.co.uk Wednesday March 12, 2003 The Guardian

42%

The amount by which Venezuela's economy is set to shrink in the first quarter, because of the collapse of oil production and the lack of foreign investment, according to a new survey by the Venezuelan subsidiary of the Spanish bank BBVA. The country has been hit by a crippling general strike and has seen mass protests against the authoritarian leftwing president, Hugo Chavez, in recent months.

· Spotted in the Financial Times, March 1

www.nytimes.com

he particulars of their individual stories vary, but in recent years all five Andean nations of South America have suffered crippling bouts of political violence and instability. President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada's hasty escape from his presidential palace in Bolivia last month — he hid in an ambulance to flee a riot — was only the latest indication of just how tenuous democracy's hold is on the region.

Washington policy makers should approach the Andean region as a whole and work alongside other Latin American nations, like Brazil and Mexico, to strengthen democracy in the region. Too often in the past, America's approach has been scattershot.

Colombia, the third-largest recipient of American foreign assistance, is a case in point. Under Plan Colombia, the Bush and Clinton administrations have poured billions of dollars into fighting that nation's drug trafficking, which finances violent left-wing guerrilla groups and right-wing paramilitaries. The effort is now starting to reduce coca cultivation, but there are signs that such farming is merely shifting to neighboring countries.

Meanwhile, Colombia's guerrillas recently killed one American contract employee and kidnapped three others involved in the antidrug effort. The Bush administration has sent in 150 more military personnel to assist in the search for them, raising the alarming possibility that Americans could become directly engaged in the conflict.

Colombia, a nation where democracy and brutal civil warfare have tenuously coexisted for decades, deserves our support. But Colombians must do their own fighting, and American aid must remained conditioned on the Colombian military's respect for human rights.

Elsewhere, the region is disillusioned with the last decade's free-market reforms. Too often twisted into a corrosive form of crony capitalism, the "Washington consensus" did little to improve living standards or alleviate poverty. The economic disillusionment has devalued the appeal of democracy as a form of governance and empowered once-marginalized political forces.

In Venezuela, a country of great strategic importance given its vast oil reserves, a demagogic president, Hugo Chávez, has shown that a populist backlash can be as destructive as corrupt political establishments that pay lip service to free markets. Encouragingly, Presidents Alejandro Toledo of Peru and Lucio Gutiérrez of Ecuador appear inclined to follow a more responsible middle course.

Their challenge is to please international capital markets and internal demands for a more equitable distribution of national wealth, and to do so simultaneously and at a difficult economic moment. America needs to be sympathetic, providing aid and promoting trade, but without being an overbearing pitchman for any one set of economic policies.

www.agriculture.com By Ohio State University News Service

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Although America's minds are on Iraq and the potential impacts of war, the agriculture industry should be keeping a close eye on the developments with North Korea, says an Ohio State University agricultural economist.

Matt Roberts, with the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics, said a war with Iraq may cause little, if any, economic impacts, but a conflict with North Korea could cause a dramatic disruption in agricultural trade and market prices.

"A potential war with Iraq is simply creating short-term financial uncertainty, which may result in higher interest rates if tensions continue," said Roberts."Any long-term ramifications may result in the slow-down of imports and exports due to heightened security, and in what we call reputation effects — America’s standing in the international community when it comes time for other countries to make American purchases."

North Korean involvement could hamper ag trade

Such impacts would be minor and diminish as time moved on, but a war with North Korea could have a longer-lasting effect, said Roberts.

"South Korea is a very industrialized nation and is a close trading partner with the U.S. I think it's the fifth largest export market for our beef and pork," said Roberts. "Any attack would probably involve the near leveling of Seoul (the South Korean capital) from the north, so the economic disruptions would be immense. We would feel that in our agricultural community. The lesser demand for meat would reduce the demand for feed grains. In other words, a decrease in exports translates into a decrease in grain prices."

Although any conflict with Iraq or North Korea would produce some economic instability, the biggest impact a war would have on the U.S. agricultural community would be one of a social nature, said Roberts.

"The National Guard and (Army) Reserves draw heavily from rural areas: police forces, firefighters, farmers. If a war with Iraq is not a quic k and decisive one or if tensions continue to increase on the Korean peninsula, it's possible we'll start to see more people drawn out of our rural and farming communities," said Roberts. "Their absence would just compound the stresses that some of these families already face with drought and finances and a tough winter."

One impact Americans have felt with a looming war with Iraq has been an increase in gas prices, currently averaging $1.68 a gallon — a 54-cent increase from this time last year.

"Probably the biggest economic impact we would see with a war with Iraq would be sustained high gas prices," said Roberts.

With natural gas prices following suit, it could mean higher-priced fuel and fertilizers for farmers.

"We import more of our natural gas than we once did. It's the primary feedstock from which anhydrous is made, so that has some potential to impact farming profitability this year," said Roberts. "I don't think this is shaping up to be a year like 2001 where there was a gross anhydrous shortage, but those gas prices will stay higher. We may see a slight shift from corn planting to soybean planting because corn production requires higher input costs."

Venezuela also a piece of crude oil price puzzle

The other piece to the crude oil price puzzle is the political unrest in Venezuela that has substantially reduced the flow of petroleum products. Venezuela is the United States' third-largest oil exporter, behind Mexico and Saudi Arabia.

"Venezuela pretty much shot itself in the foot with this situation," said Roberts. "Venezuela has always been a reliable partner for us, until now. Many of our refineries were built to process Venezuelan oil, but they have had to alter their processes and it has made them less efficient."

Carl Zulauf, an Ohio State agricultural economist, said that another impact a war with Iraq could have would be a renewed emphasis on U.S. energy independence. This would result in the increased use of alternative fuel s like etha nol and biodiesel, crop byproducts.

"In the short run, this is probably good for U.S. agriculture, in particular corn producers because of increased demand for ethanol," said Zulauf. "In the long run, the impact could be more problematic if some other source of alternative fuel emerges that displaces the demand for ethanol."

Last year, the ethanol industry set an all-time production record and production in 2003 is likely to follow suit. According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, American ethanol producers made 177,000 barrels of ethanol per day in January. Total production is projected to hit 2.5 billion gallons by the end of the year.

"In the past year, since harvest, ethanol has truly been a savior to the corn market. Our corn exports have been very weak. However, ethanol production has exploded over the last six months, to the point where ethanol is consuming around 8 percent of American corn production," said Roberts.

Biodiesel, another renewable fuel, is also making headlines in U.S. energy production. Last March, the Minnesota legislature passed a law mandating a 2 percent inclusion of biodiesel into the state’s petroleum diesel supply beginning in 2005. Minnesota is the first state to require the addition of biodiesel in commercial diesel supplies.

More recently, a bill was introduced to the U.S. Congress that would give biodiesel the same tax incentives that ethanol currently receives.

"Much of the tax incentive for ethanol is because it is exempt from the highway excise tax, but it has begun to impact the budget of the interstate highway system," said Roberts. "If biodiesel is exempt from those same taxes, concerns are being raised that as the production of alternative fuels increases, it will seriously impact that budget and the money is going to have to come from somewhere."

More emphasis on alternative fuels, however, would provide support for farm prices.

"Over the course of the year, my feeling is th at national p rices have been a dime higher because of increase in our ethanol production," said Roberts. 03/11/2003 12:22 p.m. CDT