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Geopolitics & human rights

Bilateral free trade and investment agreements are not only economic instruments. They are tools to advance corporate and state geopolitical and “security” interests. Pro-free market journalist Thomas Friedman wrote: “The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist — McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the United States Army, AirForce and Marine Corps.”

Neoliberal globalization and war are two sides of the same coin. Throughout many parts of the world there has been little “hidden” about the links between corporate interests, globalization, and militarization. Under the guise of the war on terror, the war on drugs and “humanitarian” missions, U.S. military forces continue to back U.S. corporate and geopolitical interests from Iraq to Colombia, from Honduras to the Philippines. We can see it in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and how the US Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded “reconstruction” contracts to corporate backers of the Bush Administration. We see it in plans for a U.S. free trade agreement with the Middle East by 2013, based on imposing a network of bilateral FTAs on individual Middle Eastern governments. We can see it in the renewed U.S. military presence in South East Asia, especially in their joint exercises with the Philippine military alongside a continued wave of killings of hundreds of activists linked to movements resisting imperialism. Their mission is to make the world safe for capitalism and the U.S. empire and to crush communities and economies organized around different values and principles. Free trade and free market policies are frequently accompanied by repression of dissent.

Meanwhile human rights is invoked cynically by governments to stave off criticism of FTA negotiations with countries whose human rights record is widely denounced as appalling. Canada, for example, claims that its controversial FTA with Colombia will help strengthen its social foundations “and contribute to a domestic environment where individual rights and the rule of law are respected”. Opponents argue that this deal will benefit Canadian mining and agribusiness TNCs, at the expense of the majority of Colombians who live with daily killings of trade unionists and other activists by paramilitaries linked to the state, while adding legitimacy to the pro-US, neoliberal Uribe regime (see Canada-Colombia section).

While US economic, trade and foreign policy invokes the “war on drugs” in relation to Central America and the Andean countries, Washington has "rewarded" its allies in the "war on terror" (e.g. Australia and Thailand) by negotiating FTAs with them while trumpeting its FTA with Morocco as proof of its support for “tolerant and open” Muslim societies. And it has demanded that the governments of Gulf countries scrap their boycotts of Israeli goods as part of FTA negotiations. Other governments also explicitly link their international trade and economic policy with security and geopolitical interests. For example, the EU-Syria agreement has a special provision committing Damascus to the pursuit of a “verifiable Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and chemical, and their delivery systems”.

Besides the obvious ways in which US geopolitical concerns are embedded in Washington’s pursuit of bilateral trade and investment deals, other countries are also pursuing bilateral free trade and investment agreements to further geopolitical goals. Increasingly, we can see access to energy resources (eg. oil, gas, uranium, agrofuels and water) as a factor in determining the priorities of signing bilateral FTAs for countries such as China and Japan (see Energy & environment).

Photo: Limam Bachir / Western Sahara Resource Watch

last update: May 2012


Peru protests could mar FTA debates
Peruvian Congress Agrarian and Foreign Trade Commissions have started to discuss the US-devised free trade agreement.
Shifting centres of gravity in Latin America
COPA the Panamanian airline is now flying the Brazilian company Embraer’s E-190 commercial airliners on routes previously dominated by Boeing 737s. This detail highlights broader shifts in the economic balance of power in Latin America away from United States corporations.
CJI calls for full implementation of the human rights and democracy clause in Article 2 of the Lebanese-European Association Agreement
The Campaign for Judicial Integrity (CJI), a Lebanese policy and advocacy group active in promoting reform of the Lebanese judiciary and legal profession, urged the European Union to give the highest priority for the full implementation of the human rights and democracy clause in Article 2 of the Lebanese-European association agreement before fiscal reform and tax increases.
Punishing the victim: PCHR position paper on the decision to stop international aid to the Palestinian National Authority
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights says that the EU has failed to enforce Article 2 of its Association Agreement with Israel and suspend the privileges given to Israel until it fulfills its obligations on human rights and democracy.
The US and China: strategic disconnect
A large set of strategic economic and security questions will challenge both US and Chinese leaders over the next decade. These relate directly to the growth of Asian regionalism, with attendant political institutions, decisions regarding new regional trade and investment agreements, as well as a potential new security architecture for at least East and South Asia.
‘Thaksinisation’ strains Thai-US relations
When Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra went to Washington DC last September to meet President George W Bush, they agreed that the Thai-US free-trade agreement (FTA) would be completed by this June. At a subsequent meeting with Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he also asked for US assistance in southern Thailand. Obviously there was a clear link between the trade and defence policies of the two countries.
Varieties of imperial aggression: The Andean trade treaties
One crucial element common to all these bilateral trade talks is the ruthless determination of rich countries to destroy poorer countries’ national sovereignty.
War support could win US contracts
Australia’s support of the US in Iraq could help local companies crack the huge US government contract market, an American consultant on the US-Australia FTA says.
Bahrain societies flay move to normalise ties with Israel
Nineteen societies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have rapped moves to normalise relations with Israel and called for joint national and regional efforts to abort the US-initiated Broader Middle East project.
US Middle East economic policy: Are trade-based initiatives an effective tool in the war on terrorism?
An assessment published by a US military research outfit.