by Noam Chomsky
A number of other devices have been employed to nullify the pledge “never [to] join those who would undermine the Universal Declaration” (Christopher) in the case of Article 23. The further dismantling of the welfare system, sharply reduced from the ‘70s, drives many poor women to the labor market, where they will work at or below minimum wage and with limited benefits, with an array of government subsidies to induce employers to prefer them to low-wage workers. The likely effect is to drive down wages at the lower end, with indirect effects elsewhere. A related device is the increasing use of prison labor in the vastly expanding system of social control. Thus Boeing, which monopolizes US civilian aircraft production (helped by massive state subsidy for 60 years), not only transfers production facilities to China, but also to prisons a few miles from its Seattle offices, one of many examples.58 Prison labor offers many advantages. It is disciplined, publicly subsidized, deprived of benefits, and “flexible”—available when needed, left to government support when not.
Reliance on prison labor draws from a rich tradition. The rapid industrial development in the southeastern region a century ago was based heavily on (black) convict labor, leased to the highest bidder. These measures reconstituted much of the basic structure of the plantation system after the abolition of slavery, but now for industrial development. The practices continued until the 1920s, until World War II in Mississippi. Southern industrialists pointed out that convict labor is “more reliable and productive than free labor” and overcomes the problem of labor turnover and instability. It also “remove[s] all danger and cost of strikes,” a serious problem at the time, resolved by state violence that virtually destroyed the labor movement. Convict labor also lowers wages for “free labor,” much as in the case of “welfare reform.” The US Bureau of Labor reported that “mine owners [in Alabama] say they could not work at a profit without the lowering effect in wages of convict labor competition.”59
The resurgence of these mechanisms is quite natural as the superfluous population is driven to prisons on an unprecedented scale.
The attack on Article 23 is not limited to the US. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions reports that “unions are being repressed across the world in more countries than ever before,” while “poverty and inequality have increased in the developing countries, which globalization has drawn into a downward spiral of ever-lower labor standards to attract investment and meet the demands of enterprises seeking a fast profit” as governments “bow to pressure from the financial markets rather than from their own electorates,” in accord with the “Washington consensus.”60 These are not the consequences of “economic laws” or what “the free market has decided, in its infinite but mysterious wisdom,”61 as commonly alleged. Rather, they are the results of deliberate policy choices under really existing free market doctrine, undertaken during a period of “capital’s clear subjugation of labor,” in the words of the business press.62
Contempt for the socioeconomic provisions of the UD is so deeply engrained that no departure from objectivity is sensed when a front-page story lauds Britain’s incoming Labor government for shifting the tax burden from “large businesses” to working people and the “middle class,” steps that “set Britain further apart from countries like Germany and France that are still struggling with pugnacious unions, restrictive investment climates, and expensive welfare benefits.”63 Industrial “countries” never struggle with starving children, huge profits, or rapid increases in CEO pay (under Thatcher, double that of second-place US);64 a reasonable stand under the “general tacit agreement” that the “country” equals “large businesses,” along with doctrinal conventions about the health of the economy—the latter a technical concept, only weakly correlated with the health of the population (economic, social, or even medical).
Washington’s rejection of the Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights guaranteed by the UD does receive occasional mention,65 but the issue is generally ignored in the torrent of self-praise, and if raised, elicits mostly incomprehension.
To take some typical examples, New York Times correspondent Barbara Crossette reports that “the world held a human rights conference in Vienna in 1993 and dared to enshrine universal concepts,” but progress was blocked by “panicked nations of the Third World.” US diplomats are “frustrated at the unwillingness of many countries to take tough public stands on human rights,” even though “diplomats say it is now easier to deal objectively with human rights abusers, case by case,” now that the Cold War is over and “developing nations, with support from the Soviet bloc,” no longer “routinely pass resolutions condemning the United States, the West in general, or targets like Israel and apartheid South Africa.” Nonetheless, progress is difficult, “with a lot of people paying lip service to the whole concept of human rights in the Charter, in the Universal Declaration, and all that,” but no more, UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright (now Secretary of State) observed.66 On Human Rights Day, New York Times editors condemned the Asian countries that reject the UD and call instead for “addressing the more basic needs for people for food and shelter, medical care and schooling”67—in conformity with the UD.
The reasoning is straightforward. The US rejects these principles of the UD, so they are inoperative. By supporting these principles, the Asian countries are therefore rejecting the UD.
Puzzling over the contention that “‘human rights’ extend to food and shelter,” Seth Faison reviews a “perennial sticking point in United States–China diplomacy, highlighting the contrast between the American emphasis on individual freedom and the Chinese insistence that the common good transcends personal rights.” China calls for a right to “food, clothing, shelter, education, the right to work, rest, and reasonable payment,” and criticizes the US for not upholding these rights—which are affirmed in the UD, and are “personal rights” that the US rejects. 68
Again, the reasoning is straightforward enough, once the guiding principles are internalized.
Human Rights Conditions
Under the impact of the popular movements of the 1960s, Congress imposed human rights conditions on military aid and trade privileges, compelling the White House to find various modes of evasion. These became farcical during the Reagan years, with regular solemn pronouncements about the “improvements” in the behavior of client murderers and torturers, eliciting much derision from human rights organizations but no policy change. The most extreme examples, hardly worth discussing, involved US clients in Central America. There are less egregious cases, beginning with the top recipient of US aid and running down the list. The leading human rights organizations have regularly condemned Israel’s “systematic torture and ill-treatment of Palestinians under interrogation,”69 along with apparent extrajudicial execution; legalization of torture; imprisonment without charge for as long as nine years for some of those kidnapped in Lebanon, now declared “legal” by the High Court as a “card to play” for hostage exchange70; and other abuses. US aid to Israel is therefore patently illegal under US law, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International (AI) have insistently pointed out (as is aid to Egypt, Turkey, Colombia, and other high-ranking recipients).71 In its annual report on US military aid and human rights, AI observes—once again—that “throughout the world, on any given day, a man, woman, or child is likely to be displaced, tortured, killed, or ‘disappeared,’ at the hands of governments or armed political groups. More often than not, the United States shares the blame,” a practice that “makes a mockery of [congressional legislation] linking the granting of US security assistance to a country’s human rights record.”72
Such contentions elicit no interest or response in view of the “general tacit agreement” that laws are binding only when power interests so dictate.
The US also resorts regularly to sanctions, allegedly to punish human rights violations and for “national security” reasons. Of 116 cases of sanctions used since World War II, 80 percent were initiated by the US alone, measures that have often receiv
ed international condemnation, particularly those against Cuba since 1961, which are by far the harshest.73 The popular and congressional human rights programs from the early 1970s also sometimes called for sanctions against severe human rights violators; South Africa was the primary target outside of the Soviet sphere. The pressures, which were worldwide, had an impact. In 1976, the UN General Assembly called on the IMF to “refrain forthwith from extending credits to South Africa.” The next day, at US-UK initiative, South Africa was granted more IMF funding than all of the rest of black Africa, in fact more than any country in the world apart from Britain and Mexico. The incoming Carter administration attempted (in vain) to block congressional efforts to impose human rights conditions on IMF funding to South Africa (claiming that it opposed “noneconomic factors,” which it introduced under fraudulent pretexts to block loans to Vietnam).74 After much delay and evasion, sanctions were finally imposed in 1985 and (over Reagan’s veto) in 1986, but the administration “created glaring loopholes” that permitted US exports to increase by 40 percent between 1985 and 1988 while US imports increased 14 percent in 1988 after an initial decline. “The major economic impact was reduced investment capital and fewer foreign firms.”75
The role of sanctions is dramatically illustrated in the case of the voice of the “dirty dozen,” Indonesia. After the failure of a large-scale CIA operation to foment a rebellion in 1958, the US turned to other methods of overthrowing the Sukarno government. Aid was cut off, apart from military aid and training. That is standard operating procedure for instigating a military coup, which took place in 1965, with mounting US assistance as the new Suharto regime slaughtered perhaps half a million or more people in a few months, mostly landless peasants. There was no condemnation on the floor of Congress, and no aid to the victims from any major US relief agency. On the contrary, the slaughter (which the CIA compared to those of Stalin, Hitler, and Mao) aroused undisguised euphoria in a very revealing episode, best forgotten.76 The World Bank quickly made Indonesia its third-largest borrower. The US and other Western governments and corporations followed along.
There was no thought of sanctions as the new government proceeded to compile one of the worst human rights records in the world or in the course of its murderous aggression in East Timor. Congress did, however, ban US military training after the Dili massacre in 1991. The aftermath followed the familiar pattern. Delicately selecting the anniversary of the Indonesian invasion, Clinton’s State Department announced that “Congress’s action did not ban Indonesia’s purchase of training with its own funds,” so it could proceed despite the ban, with Washington perhaps paying from some other pocket. The announcement received scant notice.77 Under the usual “veil of secrecy,” Congress (the House Appropriations Committee) expressed its “outrage,” reiterating that “it was and is the intent of Congress to prohibit US military training for Indonesia”: “we don’t want employees of the US government training Indonesians,” a staff member reiterated forcefully, but without effect.78 Rather than impose sanctions, or even limit military aid, the US, UK, and other powers have sought to enrich themselves by participating in Indonesia’s crimes.
Indonesian terror and aggression continue unhampered, along with harsh repression of labor in a country with wages half those of China. With the support of Senate Democrats, Clinton was able to block labor and other human rights conditions on aid to Indonesia. Announcing the suspension of review of Indonesian labor practices, Trade Representative Mickey Kantor commended Indonesia for “bringing its labor law and practice into closer conformity with international standards,” a witticism that is in particularly poor taste.79
Also instructive is the record of sanctions against Haiti after the military coup of September 1991 that overthrew its first democratically elected government after seven months in office. The US had reacted to President Aristide’s election with alarm, having confidently expected the victory of its own candidate, World Bank official Marc Bazin, who received 14 percent of the vote. Washington’s reaction was to shift aid to anti-Aristide elements and, as noted, to honor asylum claims for the first time, restoring the normal defiance of Article 14 of the UD after the military junta let loose a reign of terror, killing thousands. The Organization of American States (OAS) declared an embargo, which the Bush administration quickly undermined by exempting US firms—”fine tuning” the sanctions, the press explained, in its “latest move” to find “more effective ways to hasten the collapse of what the administration calls an illegal government in Haiti.”80 US trade with Haiti remained high in 1992, increasing by almost half as Clinton extended the violations of the embargo, including purchases by the US government, which maintained close connections with the ruling torturers and killers; just how close we do not know, since the Clinton administration refuses to tum over to Haiti 160,000 pages of documents seized by US military forces—”to avoid embarrassing revelations” about US government involvement with the terrorist regime, according to Human Rights Watch.81 President Aristide was allowed to return after the popular organizations that had swept him to power were subjected to three years of terror, and after he pledged to adopt the extreme neoliberal program of Washington’s defeated candidate.
Officials of the US Justice Department revealed that the Bush and Clinton administrations had rendered the embargo virtually meaningless by authorizing illegal shipments of oil to the military junta and its wealthy supporters, informing Texaco Oil Company that it would not be penalized for violating the presidential directive of October 1991 banning such shipments. The information, prominently released the day before US troops landed to “restore democracy” in 1994, has yet to reach the general public, and is an unlikely candidate for the historical record.82 These were among the many devices adopted to ensure that the popular forces that brought democracy to Haiti would have little voice in any future “democracy.” The Clinton administration advertises this as a grand exercise in “restoring democracy,” the prize example of the Clinton Doctrine83—to general applause, apart from those who see us as sacrificing too much in the cause of “global meliorism.” None of this should surprise people who have failed to immunize themselves from “inconvenient facts.”
The operative significance of sanctions is articulated honestly by the Wall Street Journal, reporting the call for economic sanctions against Nigeria. “Most Agree, Nigeria Sanctions Won’t Fly,” the headline reads: “Unlike in South Africa, Embargo Could Hurt West.”84 In brief, the commitment to human rights is instrumental. Where some interest is served, they are important, even grand ideals; otherwise the pragmatic criterion prevails. That too should come as no surprise. States are not moral agents; people are, and they can impose moral standards on powerful institutions. If they do not, the fine words will remain weapons.
Furthermore, lethal weapons. US economic warfare against Cuba for 40 years is a striking illustration. The unilateral US embargo against Cuba since 1961, the longest in history, is also unique in barring food and medicine. When the collapse of the USSR removed the traditional security pretext and eliminated aid from the Soviet bloc, the US responded by making the embargo far harsher, under new pretexts that would have made Orwell wince: The 1992 Cuban Democracy Act (CDA), initiated by liberal Democrats and strongly backed by President Clinton while he was undermining the sanctions against the mass murderers in Haiti. A year-long investigation by the American Association of World Health found that this escalation of US economic warfare had taken a “tragic human toll,” causing “serious nutritional deficits” and “a devastating outbreak of neuropathy numbering in the tens of thousands.” It also brought about a sharp reduction in medicines, medical supplies, and medical information, leaving children to suffer “in excruciating pain” because of lack of medicines. The embargo reversed Cuba’s progress in bringing water services to the population and undermined its advanced biotechnology industry, among other consequences. These effects became far worse after the imposition of the CDA, which cut back licensed sales and donations of f
ood and medical supplies by 90 percent within a year. A “humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained” a health system that “is uniformly considered the preeminent model in the Third World.”85
These do not count as human rights violations; rather, the public version is that the goal of the sanctions is to overcome Cuba’s human rights violations.
The embargo has repeatedly been condemned by the United Nations. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS condemned US restrictions on shipments of food and medicine to Cuba as a violation of international law. Recent extensions of the embargo (the Helms-Burton Act; technically, the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act) were unanimously condemned by the OAS. In August 1996, its judicial body ruled unanimously that the act violated international law.
The Clinton administration’s response is that shipments of medicine are not literally barred, only prevented by conditions so onerous and threatening that even the largest corporations are unwilling to face the prospects (huge financial penalties and imprisonment for what Washington determines to be violations of “proper distribution,” banning of ships and aircraft, mobilization of media campaigns, etc.). And while food shipments are indeed barred, the administration argues that there are “ample suppliers” elsewhere (at far higher cost), so that the direct violation of international law is not a violation. Supply of medicines to Cuba would be “detrimental to US foreign policy interests,” the administration declared. When the European Union complained to the WTO that the Helms-Burton Act, with its wide-ranging punishment of third parties, violates trade agreements, the Clinton administration rejected WTO jurisdiction, as its predecessors had done when the World Court addressed Nicaragua’s complaint about US international terrorism and illegal economic warfare (upheld by the Court, irrelevantly). In a reaction that surpasses cynicism, Clinton condemned Cuba for ingratitude “in return for the Cuban Democracy Act,” a forthcoming gesture to improve US-Cuba relations.86