Terrorism and relations in four geographical categories will define US foreign policy in the twenty-first century, US Ambassador to Guyana, Ronald Godard said.
The four geographical categories are the European Union and Japan, the US' traditional allies; Russia, its former cold war adversary; China which is steadily becoming a more important military and economic power in the world; and the Middle East "which most analysts agree is the most volatile threat to world peace," Godard said.
Another major challenge for the US is working out an acceptable consensus on global climate change with the EU and the rest of the world. In addition, the Free Trade Areas of the Americas (FTAA) will be another challenge of the George W. Bush administration.
At a well-attended lecture held at the Foreign Service Institute on New Garden Street on Wednesday, Godard said that the US, as the single most powerful and influential country in the world, had an inescapable global responsibility to provide leadership. However, he said, he had no illusions that the US was going to please everyone. "We are inevitably going to have rocks thrown at us. Sometimes we will be criticised for not doing enough." His presentation sparked a lively debate from the floor.
The central theme will remain the same regardless of which political party won the White House or whether, Democrats or Republicans, controlled the US Congress. "Each (administration) has built, instead of sweeping aside what was there before," he said.
Probably the most dangerous of the challenges for US foreign policy was the September 11 terrorist attacks, Godard said, which dramatically brought home the Middle East situation and the need for world peace. Osama bin Laden's chilling call for war between Islam and the west, he said, underlined the need to address the political and social discontent long breeding in Muslim countries. The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians was a major contributing factor to that discontentment as well.
Peace process
The US, he said, had a crucial role to play in the Israeli/Palestinian peace process noting that during the last half of the twentieth century a succession of US presidents made major efforts to encourage a settlement. The US was fully prepared to create conditions for establishing an independent Palestinian state, which would exist side by side with Israel. While the US wanted to be helpful in this process, he said, there was no magic solution. The killing on both sides had to stop and the negotiations had to be given a chance to synthesise a settlement agreeable to both parties.
One of the most pressing challenges of the US Embassy in Guyana and around the world was for US diplomacy to reassure Muslims that the US and the West were not against them. He felt that the seven million Muslim Americans understood that military action in Afghanistan was not targeted against them, and they had overwhelmingly supported US efforts against the Taliban. He said that bin Laden and al Qaeda, his terrorist organisation, had hijacked the Muslim religion and unfortunately the Taliban and his network had become indistinguishable. Many Muslim nations, he noted, had joined in the fight against terrorism.
Speaking of continuity in US foreign policy, which he said was based on politics and popular support, Godard stressed that while in a change of administration there was going to be differences in emphasis and style, no US president "none has made abrupt breaks with the policies of their predecessors."
He recalled the George Bush, Snr administration which negotiated the North America Free Trade Area (NAFTA) agreement but it was a Democrat, President Bill Clinton who guided that policy through the US Congress, doing it against the wishes of congressional supporters. Right now, he said, President George W. Bush was going through a hard struggle similar to what Clinton had endured.
Noting the importance of US foreign policy and the need for support, Godard said that senior diplomats stationed in Washington spent 50% to 70% of their time briefing members of Congress or in public awareness programmes selling US foreign policies to the public. "It is hard work but it is the only way that a democracy works," he said.
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and EU friends were still vital but there would be problems with the traditional alliances. There would continue to be charges of US unilateralism "occasionally with justification but usually not," he said. In turn, he said, the US would continue to be impatient with the EU for not reaching decisions quickly and not seeming to be flexible in dealing with the US. Similarly, the US was going to haggle with the Japanese over a wide range of trade issues.
Climate change
Stating that the US has to work out an acceptable consensus with the EU and Japan and the rest of the world on climate change, he was confident that an acceptable common position would be found in the negotiations on the Kyoto Treaty that lay ahead. The US has been widely criticised for refusing to sign on to it. In the US, he said, there was growing concern about environmental issues, which were being placed more and more at the centre of US policy considerations. Based on this trend, he said that several regional State Department offices, to manage environmental affairs, had been established in 11 embassies overseas. In this hemisphere, they are located in Brasilia and San Jose. The US embassy in Georgetown, he said, has been in close touch with representatives from both offices and they have had their personnel here on discussions on environmental issues.
The new US/Russia relations, he said, would be based on broad areas of cooperation, counter-terrorism, reducing the number of nuclear weapons in their inventory and taking steps to strengthen the Russian economy to allow them to draw closer to the west and become a greater part of the Euro/Atlantic partnership, Godard said.
In relation to China, he said, the US will continue to build a stronger relationship with that country to foster economic modernisation and development. The US, he said, supported China's membership in the WTO.
Closer to home, he said, the production and trafficking of narcotics in Colombia threatened to turn it into a narco state. The US, he said, was committed to an Andean plan to deal with this issue.
Trade
In terms of sustainable development and trade in the area, Godard said, making the FTAA a reality was part of Bush's vision. The FTAA's top priority was the growing political cooperation to make the region a free trade area by the year 2005. Through the Organisation of American States and the Summit of the Americas process, he said, the US was making closer trade ties in this hemisphere a possibility.
In the Caribbean context, he said, the US regarded the FTAA process as an opportunity for the smaller economies to promote their integration more effectively into the economic mainstream of the hemisphere. Since the beginning of the FTAA process, he said, the US recognised that the smaller economies faced more challenges in this process and had legitimate needs with respect to capacity building and implementing the eventual obligations of the FTAA agreement.
Noting that the smaller economies would be putting forward a number of proposals to meet their unique needs, he said that the US would consider those legitimate topics for negotiations and looked forward to considering these.
Immigration, too, he noted, had brought the region and the US together adding that in the latter part of the twentieth century the Latin American and Caribbean populations had grown exponentially with about 400,000 Guyanese among them. As such, he said, families and cultural ties had added to the need for intensified regional economic cooperation.