A chara, The US Ambassador, Mrs Jean Kennedy Smith, having taken advantage of the Irish Presidency of the European Union as a pretext to air her views, proceeds to lecture us on a range of issues from US generated jobs in Ireland to promotion of peace and democracy expansion of world trade, responding to global challenges etc (Irish Times, July 18th). It is not surprising that the article was at best entirely one sided, and at worst blatant propaganda.
She talks about "promoting peace, development and democracy around the world" while at the same time the United States is the world's largest exporter of arms and military technology. The US is also the most aggressive arms seller, expecting to control 60 per cent of all arms trade by 2000. In all, the US supplies arms and military technology to 141 countries. That's one way of promoting peace, I suppose, just a the US sponsored Contra war in Nicaragua or its illegal invasion of Panama were other ways of promoting democracy.
Or is democracy promoted by the US maintaining the family kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait? She applauds the important role played by Ireland in the UN (peacekeeping missions), but neglects to tell us that Irish soldiers were killed by Israeli organised militias and that the US is the chief backer and armer of the Israelis, and consequently of these militias.
Regarding development, it should be noted that under the US led New World Order the gap between rich and poor is getting wider, not narrower. The UN has estimated that in the developing world about 515 billion would reduce malnutrition by 50 per cent, provide safe drinking water and ensure adequate primary health care. Yet in 1994 alone, the US sold 514.5 billion worth of arms and military technology while conditions in the developing world deteriorated. At the same time, US loans and those of US sponsored banks (such as the IMF and the World Bank) have carried conditions which directly contributed to global inequality.
On the issue of responses to"global challenges", we were assured that the end of the Cold War would lead to better things. An end to the arms race, for instance? No. In the three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall the US averaged $11.4 billion in arms sales agreements in the three years immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the US averaged almost double that amount $21.4 billion.
In singling out Cuba for special attention, the Ambassador stepped into really murky water. Even on the issues of trade and development, the US feels free to ignore international law and international opinion to pursue its interests, as can be witnessed by measures that the European Union was forced to announce recently to protect itself from the terms of the Helms Burton Act relating to trade with Cuba.
What sort of democracy is she promoting, as the US intensifies its illegal blockade of Cuba while ignoring four successive UN General Assembly Resolutions demanding an end to the blockade? She talks about establishing trade standards while the US imposes illegal blockades in defiance of the UN, the EU, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), international law and countless other governments and institutions throughout the world.
It is difficult to escape the conclusion that the US is talking peace, but waging war. Not merely military wars but trade wars, economic wars and, in the case of Jean Kennedy Smith's article, propaganda wars.
Talking peace or waging wars which is it? What an enormous human tragedy that the US appears incapable of using its immense influence and power to promote a better world for all, rather than protecting its own selfish interests no matter what the social or human costs. Is mise, Chairperson. Campaign Against US Foreign Policy, c/o 10 Upper Camden Street, Dublin 2.