POLITICS-US: US Elite Rally Behind IMF, UN

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Feb 12 1998 (IPS) - Opposition in Congress to international financial agencies and free trade has spurred some of the most influential business leaders, and former government officials, in the United States to come out in favour of an internationalist agenda.

An extraordinary advertisement published Wednesday in the New York Times and the Washington Post – signed by 150 corporate heads and retired politicians, including two former presidents – called for Congressional approval of billions of dollars for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the United Nations.

The bipartisan group, which included the executive officers of the nation’s biggest multinational corporations, warned of a “dangerous drift toward disengagement from the responsibilities of global leadership” on the part of the United States.

“This kind of modern isolationism seriously damages American interests,” said the statement, which was described as an “Open Letter to the Congress of the United States.”

At a news conference on Wednesday, spokesmen for the group, warned that Washington’s failure to exercise leadership in global economic affairs would result in the end of the seven-year-old economic expansion at home. They also claimed that they spoke for a “silent majority” of citizens who favour the internationalist policies that have prevailed in Washington since the end of World War II.

The letter comes as key proposals by President Bill Clinton, a strong proponent of an internationalist agenda, are under attack from populists in the U.S. Congress on both the right and the left.

These proposals include commitments totaling 19 billion dollars to the IMF to help bail out crisis-ridden economies in East Asia, the payment of about one billion dollars owed to the United Nations in back dues and a possible effort to gain Congressional approval for “fast-track” authority to negotiate new free-trade agreements with developing countries in Latin America and Asia.

All three proposals came to grief in the Congress late last year. Clinton withdrew his fast-track package when it became clear that a strong majority of his own Democrats in the House of Representatives came out against the measure because of its failure to include strong protections for worker rights and the environment. They charged that the bill was designed primarily to promote the investment interests of U.S. multinationals.

The IMF and U.N. appropriations were derailed in November when Republican-led anti-abortion forces in the House said they would go along with the two proposals only if Clinton agreed to deny all U.S. aid to family-planning groups abroad which lobbied governments to ease their curbs on abortion.

Since that time, the crisis in East Asia has only deepened, and the IMF has committed itself to oversee emergency bailouts of Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea totalling about 100 billion dollars. Meanwhile, Washington, by far the U.N.’s biggest debtor, is calling for strong support from the world body in its escalating crisis with Iraq.

Republican leaders are insisting that the IMF and U.N. appropriations will go forward only if the administration compromises on its position on abortion – something it has vowed not to do. And leftwing Democrats and rightwing Republicans have said they will oppose the IMF appropriation for many of the same reasons they opposed fast-track trade authority last year.

It was in this context that the 150 prominent personalities, led by former Democratic President Jimmy Carter and former Republican Gerald Ford, published their letter. Signers were a virtual ‘who’s who’ of the Republican and Democratic cabinets of the past 20 years.

Prominent Democrats included former Treasury Secretaries Lloyd Bentsen and Michael Blumenthal, former Defence Secretary Harold Brown, former secretaries of state Warren Christopher and Cyrus Vance, and former labour secretary Robert Reich, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and former Central Intelligence Agency director John Deutch.

Top Republicans included former Trade Representatives Bill Brock and Carla Hills, former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and Al Haig, former Defence secretaries Frank Carlucci and Eliot Richardson, and former National Security Advisers Robert McFarlane and Brent Scowcroft.

“We cannot afford to wait as the Asia crisis deepens and spreads,” the letter says. “We believe the US must work to restore confidence, stabilise the world’s financial markets and bolster our own growth.”

It then laid out four priorities: approval of the commitments to the IMF, described as “the most urgent case;” retention of the ability of the Treasury Secretary to use an emergency fund to send hundreds of millions of dollars to bolster the reserves of financially stretched countries; approval of one billion dollars owed to the United Nations; and approval of new “fast-track” authority to negotiate new trade agreements.

“Those of us who favour strong economic engagement are in effect the ‘silent majority’ who want to see the United States fulfill its commitments to institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations,” said Peter Peterson, chairman of the “Blackstone Group” and a former Treasury Secretary under Richard Nixon.

“A vocal minority has been able to block a number of important international initiatives,” he continued. “We are here today to speak up and try to change the balance of forces in the direction of what we believe are our country’s genuine national interests.”

Prominent among the corporate signers of the letter were the presidents of the three most powerful business associations in the United States – the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the elite Business Roundtable – as well as the CEOs of such multinational giants as AT&T, Coopers and Lybrand, Chase Manhattan Bank, Exxon Corporation, General Motors, Boeing, Goldman, Sachs & Co., ITT Industries, IBM, Phelps Dodge, and Bank America.