In last month's blitzkrieg tour of Central and Southeast Asia, two of the four
stops made by United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton share the
unfortunate bond of enduring an invasion by US air and ground forces. In the
space of a few days, Clinton visited Vietnam and Afghanistan, thus physically
linking what had once been and what has now become the United States' longest
war. One of the more insidious links that tie these conflicts together was
highlighted in a few of the news stories about Clinton's trip. That link, in a
word, is agri-business.
The big news of Clinton's visit to Vietnam was her reproach of the government's
human-rights record. As Jim Arkedis pointed out on ProgressiveFix, the
secretary of state's mention of human rights was more a talking point than
anything else - something to be
noted before moving on to bigger priorities of security agreements and trade
relations.
Clinton's invocation of human rights in Vietnam is nonetheless noteworthy, not
simply for what it says about Vietnam, but also for what it says about the
status of the US's grim record of human-rights atrocities in the region. The
destructive legacy of the US war in Vietnam is so vast that avoiding it would
have left Clinton neck-deep in accusations of hypocrisy.
The State Department's strategy for dealing with the sticky issue of human
rights in the region was to beat us critics to the punch, underscoring US
efforts to ameliorate the effects of one of the nastiest and longest-lasting
forms of devastation forced on the Vietnamese during the war: the chemical
dioxin, otherwise known as Agent Orange.
A deadly agent
Between 1961 and 1971, an estimated 3 million Vietnamese were exposed to Agent
Orange, a chemical defoliant that was primarily intended to make targets more
visible, as well as destroy the agricultural infrastructure of the insurgency.
Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, as well as thousands of American soldiers,
developed cancer and other illnesses as a result.
The damage of Agent Orange has been passed down to the children of these
victims. At least 150,000 of them have been born with missing limbs, deformed
faces, developmental disabilities, and other serious birth defects. Some areas
around the military bases where dioxin was stored still have dangerous levels
of Agent Orange in their soil, posing a continuing threat to the environment,
animals, and people of those communities.
The use of this devastating weapon was made possible by a partnership between
the US government and US chemical companies. During the Vietnam War, seven
major US chemical companies produced Agent Orange, including Dow Chemical Co,
Thompson Chemicals Corp and Monsanto Co, and sold it to the US government for
military uses. Despite the profits earned by these companies from their role in
this massive and ongoing tragedy, Monsanto and others have managed to escape
full accountability for the effects of their products.
In 1984, a class action lawsuit brought by US veterans who had been exposed to
Agent Orange resulted in a $180 million settlement with the chemical companies
in exchange for a no-fault finding and pre-emption of future suits from the
claimants.
A devastating legacy
Two-and-a-half decades later, the US government has finally reopened the issue
and for the first time turned its attention to the people of Vietnam. Thanks to
the leadership of Vietnam veteran and Democratic Representative Eni
Faleomavaega of American Samoa, the US Congress held its first hearings on
Agent Orange that focused on the Vietnamese victims in 2008.
A second hearing was held in 2009 and a third on July 15, when, for the first
time, congress heard testimony from a Vietnamese victim - Tran Thi Hoan - who
was born without legs and with a missing hand due to her mother's exposure to
dioxin. A week before this summer's hearing, senators Tom Harkin (Democrat,
Iowa), Bernie Sanders (Independent-Vermont), and Al Franken
(Democrat-Minnesota) visited Vietnam and toured Agent Orange treatment centers
in and around the central coastal city of Danang.
In actual dollars, the results of such renewed attention have been relatively
meager. Since 2007, congress has earmarked $3 million annually for Vietnamese
victims of Agent Orange. This is, in the words of Faleomavaega, "a pittance".
The Ford Foundation has developed a $300 million clean-up plan underwritten
mainly by the US government. To nobody's surprise, the check has yet to arrive.
The United States has failed to put its money where its mouth is. But at least
it is admitting responsibility. Meanwhile, the corporations that benefited have
not even done that much, and Monsanto places all the blame on the US
government.
This position was backed by the pro-corporate US Supreme Court in 2009, when it
ruled that the companies manufacturing Agent Orange were not responsible for
its effects, since they were only carrying out the instructions of the
government. In effect, the Supreme Court ruling sets the precedent that there
can be no such thing as a corporate war crime, so long as the US government
legally underwrites the military-industrial complex.
For its part, since Vietnam, Monsanto has moved to change its image, no longer
producing chemicals that help kill the enemy, but instead seeds and other
agricultural products that help feed the world and turn fence-sitters to our
side in sites of conflict. Figuring out how to help farmers in war-torn areas
is a big part of this business, as are those sweet contracts with the US
Defense Department that flow from it.
Agri-business and the spoils of war
Herein lies the connection to the other big news story of Clinton's trip. Last
Tuesday, when she touched down in Kabul for a meeting of the 70 nations giving
aid to Afghanistan, Clinton announced, in the voguish verbiage of today's
foreign policy establishment, a "surge" in civilian efforts.
This is a fancy way of assuring the Afghans and the international community
that the US counter-insurgency war is about much more than drones and fire
fights. The United States, she insists, is committed to making Afghanistan a
better place for the Afghan people. This policy is also about making profits
better and better for Monsanto and other big agriculture companies.
As a prelude to Clinton's trip to Kabul, National Public Radio's Marketplace
aired a story highlighting one of the many promising aspects of the
non-military side of the US presence in Afghanistan. The story featured the
National Guard's Agri-business Development Team, which has been touted as one
the wars "quiet successes". The program is supposed to help Afghan farmers
incorporate scientific and technological innovations into their farming
practices to make them more efficient and sustainable.
Monsanto is a key participant in the program. In addition to contracting with
the US government, it has hosted Afghan agriculture officials at its
headquarters in St Louis, Missouri.
While Monsanto has kept a low profile in all of this, US Secretary of
Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who is a friend of big-business agriculture, has been
less than quiet about who stands to benefit from this kind of program. In his
interview with NPR, he expounded on how US agri-business would eventually
profit from the work of the Agricultural Development Teams:
If we can
grow a middle class in Afghanistan and if we can create wealth and
opportunities through agriculture, through their own exports, then eventually
they will need more of our agricultural products. They may begin to consume
more meat, for example. So that might increase beef exports, for example. So
building a middle class through a strong agriculture helps our producers
eventually by creating additional markets that don't exist today.
I'm not sure quite where to start ... with the absurdity of believing that the
United States can whip up a middle class in Afghanistan, or with the audacity
of presuming that corporate agri-business should be profiting from the war
there. Then again, the latter would be more the norm than the exception. Before
leaving Iraq, US administrator Paul L Bremer issued a directive that protects
the intellectual property rights of genetically modified seeds. With this
protection, Monsanto and other big agri-companies can go to Iraq, advertise the
wonders of their seeds, then charge expensive licensing and renewal fees.
Big agri-businesses realize that bringing local farmers from war zones into the
agri-business system of production and consumption is good for business and,
with the some exceptions, good for reputations. This is what, in the language
of neo-liberalism, we call a win-win situation. Thanks to the over-reaching of
big-agri corporations through the World Trade Organization and other
neo-liberal institutions of international trade over the past decade, however,
the circle of critics continues to grow and strengthen. Indian activist and
philosopher Vandana Shiva, who has led the fight against agri-business'
destruction of local farming and the environment in India and elsewhere for
over two decades, has now become a regular in the mainstream international
press. In January, she even appeared on CNN to discuss the plight of Indian
farmers who are deeply and forcibly indebted to agri-business, and thousands of
whom have committed suicide out of desperation. Shiva effectively challenges
the notion that the big agricultural companies are spreading peace and
prosperity around the world. "Pesticides," she says, are "the real weapons of
mass destruction." There is no reason to believe that the outcome in
Afghanistan will be any better for small farmers there than in India.
Unfortunately, for all of their suffering, these individuals and their families
will not be seen as victims of war crimes or human-rights abuses.
Until we figure out a way to implement international accountability into the
military-industrial complex, it is unlikely that big business will ever promise
compensation, let alone actually pay, Afghan farmers for the destruction of
their poppy crop or for the thousands of individual economic, ecological, and
human tragedies that will likely ensue from big agri-business' war in
Afghanistan.
Hannah Gurman is an assistant professor at NYU's Gallatin School. She
teaches and researches widely on issues of US foreign policy and American
culture. Currently, she's researching the return of counter-insurgency in the
American military establishment.
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