UGLIER SIDE OF US

“If anyone attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on sight,” John A Dix, United States Secretary of the Treasury, 1861.

The United States of America reminded the world last week that its policy of using aid, or rather the threat of withholding that aid, as a tactic for keeping Third World countries in line, was alive and well. Interestingly, its announcement last week that it would suspend some US$47 million in military aid to a number of countries for failing to grant US citizens immunity from the recently created International Criminal Court appeared to have upset many Caribbean leaders. Several of the USA’s NATO allies, which were exempted from the US action, are quite familiar themselves with the American policy, having in the past employed the offer of aid and/or the threat of its withdrawal to coerce developing nations into supporting them in the United Nations and other international bodies on various issues. I suppose that they and the Americans would have described this brutally cynical device as lobbying. And while purists will maintain it is not the same thing, some of these NATO countries would have sent gunboats to ‘persuade’ recalcitrant African and Asian countries to conform. But I have strayed.

In the past, indeed up to not too long ago, major empires had all too often refused to have their citizens submit to the laws of other and lesser States, individually and collectively. The Romans, for example, at the height of the Roman Empire, enunciated the policy: “Civis Romanus Sum’ (“I am a Roman citizen”), which was supposed to bestow on all Roman citizens abroad the right of immunity from punitive laws of the respective countries. The British were no different. They even applied the rule of protection, when it suited them, to those who, although not born in Britain, had, nonetheless, acquired British citizenship. A jingoistic British Foreign Secretary, Henry J Palmerston (Lord Palmerston), who later became Prime Minister, would express outrage at the arrest of a Greek-born British citizen in a relatively weak European country. Palmertson declared arrogantly that “in the high and palmy days of the Roman Empire, all that a Roman citizen in trouble needed to say was ‘Civis Romanus Sum’, and the might of the Roman Empire would have come to his aid”. In the same way, Palmerston continued, referring to the detention of the Greek-Britisher, all that a Briton in trouble needed to say was “Civis Britannicus Sum” (“I am a British citizen”) and the might of the British Empire would go to his rescue. A gunboat was despatched and British dignity was restored.

Is it that American President, George W Bush, is proclaiming to the world a “Civis Americanus Sum” policy by his Administration’s insistence that American soldiers must not be charged with war crimes and brought before the International Criminal Court. The USA, however, reserved the right to unilaterally charge citizens of other countries with war crimes, without the blessings of the United Nations, the ICC and what have you. Had the International Criminal Court been around following on the end of the 1898 Spanish-American war, when the US seized the Philippines, it may have been called upon to try US military personnel, who had killed, or was it wiped out, some 100,000 Filipinos, who protested over a period of time US rule and US occupation forces, and wanted independence. Frances Ghiles’ well researched article, “Another Savage War”, published in the February 6, 1998 issue of the Times Literary Supplement (Page 36), would note an anguished comment by the American author, Mark Twain, about the virtual annihilation of the 100,000 Filipinos. So outraged was Mark Twain that he would protest that the Stars of the American flag, Old Glory, should be replaced with the Skull and Bones!

Few should be genuinely surprised at the arrogant stand of the United States that its soldiers be recognised as beyond the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. What is appalling is its dismissive attitude to developing nations, in particular, demanding in essence that they bow to US pressure on the issue, or risk losing US dollar aid for their military. But what is even more degrading is that there are countries, some of them in the Caribbean, which appear to be grovellingly shuffling their shoes and saying: “Yassuh, Massa Charlie.” Guyana, apparently, has not been threatened. The reason should be clear to many. Guyana, then British Guiana, whose Marxist People’s Progressive Party Government, led by the late charismatic Dr Cheddi Jagan, was deposed in 1953 by the UK Government at the insistence of the United States, is today, although again with a PPP Administration, regarded by the US as a friendly nation. Guyana, in 1953, was a colony of the UK. The devilishly pragmatic American policy of embracing Guyana was clearly formulated to have Guyana act as a constant reminder to Venezuela, which has laid claim to a substantial portion of Caricom’s only South American member State, that Guyana was under its protection.

Let me cite an example of this wide-ranging protectionist policy. When the Paris Club of creditor nations, to which Guyana was indebted and could not pay toward the loans, had been threatening action against Guyana which would have seen the country declared in default, the US intervened and ‘persuaded’ the Paris Club to agree to forgive two-thirds of the Guyana debt. In addition, the creditor nations were to hold off on any immediate demands. The Paris Club, in turn, reportedly on the urging of the United States, pressured Trinidad and Tobago, which owed Paris Club members money, to forgive two-thirds of Guyana’s debt to it, which stood at the time at some US$720 million. The two-thirds worked out to approximately US$480 million, or more than ten times the military aid, which the US had threatened to suspend to 35 countries, unless....! Ironically, Trinidad and Tobago’s debt forgiveness was greater than the combined debt forgiveness of the Paris Club creditor nations to which Guyana owed money. This country lost billions of TT dollars of Guyana’s debt to it, which could have been whittled down by a barter system. Guyana had at first agreed to a system of barter and then reneged. Of note is that American military aid to Trinidad during the four-year period — 1999-2002 — had amounted to some US$6.7 million or an annual average of US$1.675 million. At this rate it would have taken the United States almost 300 years in military aid to this country to reach the US$480 million in debt forgiveness Trinidad and Tobago was pressured to grant to Guyana. The perceptive will read between the lines and see the uglier side of United States foreign policy.