‘IT’S ECONOMIC SECURITY, STUPID’: D’AMATO-KING-AIPAC EFFORT ON IMPORT CONTROLS SHOULD APPLY TO IRAN, BEYOND

(Washington, D.C.): In the years since Bill Clinton
successfully campaigned for president on the motto “It’s the
economy, stupid,” his foreign policy seems to have been
defined by a variation on the theme: U.S. interests will be
determined by short-term economic considerations, no matter how
ill-conceived the resulting policy might be.

The corollary to this governing principle appears to be the
axiom “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”: As long as
other nations are stupidly pursuing trade policies contrary to
either their long-term strategic interests or our own, we have no
choice but to follow suit.

On these grounds, for example, the Clinton Administration
has: facilitated the dismantling of the multilateral regime for
controlling exports of militarily relevant technologies (known as
COCOM); aggressively marketed such technologies to China;
essentially normalized relations with Vietnam; and repeatedly
dallied with the idea of easing the trade embargo against Cuba.
The same considerations are also at work in its decision to
reward North Korea with not only $4 billion in new nuclear
reactors but also with trade relations. And the Administration is
actively contemplating at least the partial lifting of economic
sanctions against Serbia and Iraq in the face of mounting
pressure from its allies.

Convergence Theory

To varying degrees, this expediency-driven policy has been
rationalized as “economic engagement.” It amounts,
ironically, to a capitalist mutation of the Marxian doctrine of
economic determinism and assumes that liberal Western values and
democratic institutions will inevitably follow from exposing
closed economies to market forces.

In practice, however, such a policy is doomed to the same
results as its precursors — appeasement and detente: If
unconditioned upon and unaccompanied by systemic political and
economic reform, the result will be to provide life-support to
totalitarian regimes, extending their brutal hold on power at
home and greatly increasing their potential for malevolence
abroad. Thanks to the Clinton Administration, there is scarcely
an odious regime in the world today that is not already enjoying
trade and financial relations with the United States or that is
reasonably expecting to do so shortly.

What About Iran: ‘CoNogo’

The Clinton Administration has been discomfited in recent
days by growing public debate over its policy of continuing
economic engagement towards a totalitarian regime it supposedly
wants to contain. Iran’s frightening arms build-up, including its
acquisition of key ingredients of a nuclear weapons production
complex from Russia, and its threatening military actions in the
Persian Gulf compelled Mr. Clinton in mid-March to block a
massive investment in Iran by the U.S. oil company, Conoco.

The obvious next question was: Why should the American oil
industry be allowed to persist in buying billions of dollars
worth of Iranian crude oil, as long as it is refined and sold
overseas, thereby providing hard currency flows used to
underwrite the mullahs’ ominous machinations? The typical
answer: We have no choice since we will be unable to persuade
other nations’ companies to follow our lead if we stop; and we
will, therefore, only be hurting American corporate and
employment interests by doing so.

The Third Way

Fortunately, two Republicans legislators from New York —
Senator Alfonse D’Amato and Rep. Peter King — and the
American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) have joined
forces to give the U.S. a choice. Messers. D’Amato and King
introduced legislation last month that has been endorsed by AIPAC
as part of its important new “Plan for Action” against
Iran.

The D’Amato-King bill would, according to the Washington
Post, “prohibit the U.S. government from doing business
with any corporation anywhere that does business with Iran, ban
any U.S. exports by or to such a company and prohibit the
importation into the United States of any goods produced by a
company doing oil business with Iran or selling Iran goods with a
potential military use.” As Sen. D’Amato put it, his
legislation would compel “a foreign corporation or
person…to choose between trade with the United States and trade
with Iran.”

In January 1995, Senator D’Amato elaborated on his concerns
about on-going U.S. trade with Iran:

“We are subsidizing Iranian terrorism by purchasing
their oil and it has to stop. Iran is arming itself to the
teeth, and we are simply ignoring it. We must sever any
remaining trade between the United States and Iran to ensure
that we do not provide them with anything that will come back
to haunt us.”

In the past, such a choice has been forced upon foreign
entities with therapeutic effects. For example, in 1982, the
Reagan Administration imposed crippling import controls against a
handful of foreign companies (including a U.S. overseas
subsidiary) involved in the construction of a strategically
portentous Siberian gas pipeline for the Soviet Union when those
entities shipped equipment to Moscow over White House objections.
Three of those companies ultimately went belly up. A few years
later, similar steps taken in retaliation for Toshiba’s illegal
transfer of sensitive machine tools to Moscow compelled it — and
the Japanese government — to tighten up export practices
governing such technology.

Towards a Policy of ‘Economic Security’

The value of the D’Amato-King legislation could extend well
beyond Iran, moreover. By establishing that foreign concerns can
do business with either pariah states or the world’s most
lucrative market — but not both, it can restore leverage
and moral authority that has dissipated under the present and
previous U.S. administrations. No longer will the only
alternative to Uncle Sam “going with the flow” in
international trade with tyrants be the undesirable option of
unilaterally denying American firms the opportunity to compete
for foreign development projects and sales.

The conundrum for the Clinton Administration, of course, is
that if it embraces this sensible policy toward Iran, how can it
justify foregoing it towards other malevolent regimes? Is North
Korea’s Kim Jong-Il really any less bent on acquiring nuclear
weapons than the Iranian mullahs? Is Hafez Assad of Syria any
less guilty of sponsoring international terrorist operations than
Rafsanjani and company in Iran? Is Beijing any less engaged in a
destabilizing arms build-up and aggressive behavior in strategic
international waterways than is Tehran?

The Bottom Line

Before coming to office, the Clinton Administration
talked about creating a National Economic Security Council
that promised to integrate U.S. economic and national security
interests. Regrettably, once installed, Mr. Clinton opted instead
for a National Economic Council — a change of name that appears
to reflect the change in emphasis: National security concerns
have clearly been given, at best, short shrift in Administration
deliberations about foreign trade and economic policy.

By now, however, it should be clear to President Clinton and
his advisors that “it’s economic security,
stupid.” The Center for Security Policy urges the
Administration to embrace the D’Amato-King-AIPAC initiative on
Iran. It also calls upon Mr. Clinton to recognize — and make
use of — that initiative’s central feature: affording the
United States the credible ability and precedent to deter others
from undercutting prudent economic embargoes on pariah states
like Cuba, Serbia, Libya and Iraq.