November 4, 1999

by Peter J.M. Orvetti

Democracy Delayed
Cash For Kosovo?
Money In The Bank

Democracy Delayed

Pakistan Chief of the Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf, the nation's military leader following an October coup, refuses to say when the country will return to democracy, AP reports. Musharraf turned down a request by Commonwealth dignitaries to see deposed prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who has been in captivity since the coup. "I can't give any timetable for a certain reason - not for any malevolent intention, but the reason was I have set myself certain objectives and I am targeting those objectives," Musharraf told reporters. Musharraf said he first wants to revive the ailing economy, reform Pakistan's corrupt politics and create an atmosphere for democracy to flourish before calling elections.

According to Cato Institute fellow Leon Hadar in a statement offered just after the coup, stability inside Pakistan is an important issue. One can expect to see the strengthening of the relationship between Islamabad and Beijing, Pakistan's main regional diplomatic and military ally. Also, the Musharraf government is "the first time that a military regime would be in charge of a government with a nuclear-military capacity. That poses a challenge to one of the arguments of those who support the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty: Can America trust commitments made by unstable governments like that of Pakistan that can be overthrown by radical political and religious forces who may decide to withdraw from a multilateral nuclear arms-control regime?"

Cash For Kosovo?

The European Union is promising Kosovo Western financial assistance to rebuild the Yugoslav province where NATO carried out an air war last spring, AP reports. In a visit late last week, EU Foreign Policy and Security Chief Javier Solana and External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten urged Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leaders to end their political infighting and work to rebuild an autonomous Kosovo.

The Kosovo War was never destined to be the quick fix its executors expected, and throughout the evolution of the quagmire, Cato Institute scholars have produced articles about the flaws of U.S. policy in Yugoslavia. The Selected Cato Readings on the Kosovo Conflict" include the Cato Policy Analysis "Blunder in the Balkans: The Clinton Administration's Bungled War against Serbia" and the earlier Cato Policy Analysis "Washington's Kosovo Policy: Consequences and Contradictions".

The most recent Cato Policy Analysis on the matter, "Faulty Justifications and Ominous Prospects: NATO's 'Victory' in Kosovo" by Christopher Layne, was released on October 25. Layne writes: "With the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo, President Clinton triumphantly proclaimed, 'We have achieved a victory.' Yet the Clinton administration's ill-conceived Kosovo policy has habitually failed to meet its objectives. The threat of air strikes failed to get Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic to sign the Rambouillet peace accord. Once the air strikes began, the unintended consequences were horrific. Not only did the bombing trigger a refugee crisis, but U.S.-Russian relations were driven to a post-Cold War low-a development that makes Europe and the world more dangerous…

"NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia killed hundreds of civilians and exacerbated tensions throughout the region. Moreover, Belgrade's headache may soon become Washington's. U.S. and other NATO troops already have a tense relationship with the Kosovo Liberation Army, which still demands independence, not merely autonomy, for Kosovo. In short, NATO's 'victory' means deploying U.S. troops on yet another multi-billion-dollar, open-ended peacekeeping and nation-building operation."

Money In The Bank

Saudi businessmen continue to aid alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, U.S. intelligence officials told USA Today. Saudi executives have transferred tens of millions of dollars to bank accounts of charities that serve as fronts for bin Laden, U.S. intelligence officials told USA Today. A Saudi government audit obtained by U.S. intelligence shows that five top Saudi Arabian businessmen ordered the National Commercial Bank to transfer personal funds and $3 million from a Saudi pension fund to New York and London banks.

"Osama bin Laden--who seeks to overthrow the Saudi government and is related by marriage to Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a recruiter of Islamic extremists in the Philippines--asserts that 'Muslims burn with anger at America,'" Ivan Eland wrote in the Cato Policy Analysis "Protecting the Homeland: The Best Defense Is to Give No Offense". "The wealthy Saudi's anti-Americanism and financing of terrorism are motivated by his perception that American assistance to Saudi Arabia against Iraq in the Gulf War was an act against Arabs. Such American intervention can spur even normally moderate groups to threaten terrorist acts… Terrorists and religious cults have an obsession with the United States because of its superpower status and behavior…

"If the United States adopted a less interventionist foreign policy, it would be much less of a target for acts of both minor and mass terror. Using similar logic, the nation's Founders, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, fashioned a foreign policy that kept us out of Europe's conflicts so that the European powers would have little cause to intervene in America. That restrained foreign policy served the country well for more than a century and a half, and it should be reinstated….

"With the best of intentions--enhancing stability--the United States has conducted a number of ill-advised interventions in the post-Cold War environment, most notably in Somalia, Haiti, and Bosnia. Instability in such far-flung and international system. In none of those cases did the intervention have any significant relationship to U.S. security. Furthermore, such interventions rarely increase stability or make things better, even in the target country… In response to those types of interventions, a disgruntled faction could sponsor a terrorist attack using WMD or information warfare on U.S. soil. As the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs noted in Proliferation Primer, the United States is now, like Gulliver, a vulnerable giant.(137) Are such questionable interventions really worth the potential catastrophic consequences to the American people? The answer is a resounding no."