Author Archives: Greg Rushford

Mr. Sang Comes to Washington

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Mr. Sang Comes to Washington

Vietnamese President Truong Tan Sang — a powerful senior member of the ruling Politburo, where the major governmental decisions are hammered out for the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party — will meet with U.S. President Barack Obama in the White House on July 25. One way or the other, Thursday’s meeting for the two heads of state will be important. It comes at a time of increased tensions that have been holding back closer strategic and economic ties between the two former war enemies.

Sang and Obama have an opportunity to forge a deeper (mutually respectful) bilateral relationship. But it is not at all clear whether either leader has the vision or the necessary political instincts to seize it.  The two heads of state may just try to put out an attractive spin, hoping to gloss over important differences on the core issues that presently divide Washington and Hanoi. The two most difficult of those: Vietnamese human-rights practices that insult accepted international legal norms (as seen from Washington’s perspective), and insulting rich-country economic pressures (Hanoi’s view).

The White House has listed “human rights” as the first of three topics that will be on the agenda when the two leaders meet on Thursday. “Climate change” is the second named priority, followed by the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks involving the United States, Vietnam and ten other Asia-Pacific countries.

But the real agenda is broader, involving fundamental decisions that need to be made by both countries on whether to deepen their strategic and security cooperation. The sharp-eyed David Brown, a special correspondent for the Asia Sentinel, has written that President Sang and the Politburo appeared to have been “shaken” when Sang visited Beijing in June. Apparently in his private talks with top Chinese leaders, including President Xi Jinping, the Vietnamese president came away with nice words, but little of substance. Because of the “evidently jolting encounter with China’s leaders,” Brown wrote, a “hurried” visit to Washington was then arranged. In Washington, the Politburo wants Sang to find out whether President Obama — a politician who, in some Asian eyes, has acquired a certain reputation for offering mostly happy talk in his dealings with his foreign peers — will be any more helpful.

Neither government was divulging further details of what Sang and Obama will have to chat about on Thursday. A White House spokesman refused even to say in what room of the White House Presidents Obama and Sang would be talking, much less identify who else might be in that room.

A close look at each of the three specific items on the Sang-Obama agenda suggests that for each president, any truly “frank” diplomatic exchanges would pose awkward questions, not to say outright mutual embarrassments.

For Sang, the most awkward question would be to explain to Obama what benefit Vietnamese leaders think they really gain by holding hostage more than 160 political prisoners. These are Vietnamese citizens who have committed no “crimes” — other than to peaceably voice their complaints that their government is seen as becoming increasingly corrupt and unaccountable.  And Obama might ask about a July 15 Hanoi decree that is aimed at prohibiting speech that goes “against the state of the socialist republic of Vietnam,” or any criticism that the party fears could “jeopardize national security,” Radio Free Asia has reported. The targets are popular internet icons like Google and Facebook.

Of course, it’s always tricky business for Americans to express reasonable opinions on human rights without sounding arrogant and self-righteous to always-sensitive Vietnamese leaders. Press too hard, and too publicly, and the commies could just arrest more innocent bloggers to stick it to the Americans. Press too quietly, and the authorities in Hanoi could just keep on doing whatever they please. Nobody’s ever really figured out the most appropriate diplomatic language.

[And if Obama’s tone on human rights offends Sang, the Vietnamese president might bring up the subject of dioxin. Sang might ask if the U.S. leader feels a sense of shame over the fact that a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi has recently denied to McClatchy reporter Drew Brown that many Vietnamese citizens today are still suffering from the tragic effects of dioxin sprayed by the U.S. Air Force on Vietnam during the shooting war.]

For Obama, perhaps the most embarrassing thing is that his White House — for purely domestic parochial reasons involving his political ties with U.S. organized labor and the globally uncompetitive U.S. textile lobby — has been stridently making demands of the Vietnamese in the TPP trade talks that the Politburo would be foolish to accept. Obama’s rather crude economic pressures, in fact, have been playing into the hands of those in Hanoi who increasingly question the value of closer commercial and strategic ties with the United States.

Beyond the mutual embarrassment potential, it turns out that what the White House wants to talk about regarding climate change illustrates — most likely, unwittingly for both Sang and Obama — just how complicated deepening the bilateral economic relationship has become.

Power Politics

On climate change, it could be that all Obama wants to do is burnish his “green” credentials by giving President Sang a nice lecture on the importance of nations’ working together to combat global warming.

But there’s something else important going on between Washington and Hanoi that illustrates how the politics of climate change have interjected themselves into the bilateral relationship. It’s not certain that the White House staff — which seems to be spread pretty thin these days — has briefed Obama on the implications of a decision last week by the U.S. Export-Import Bank to deny U.S. export financing to build a 1,200-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Vietnam’s Thai Binh province. But for sure, President Sang wouldn’t need a special briefing to understand fully the implications of the American act. This is because the Ex-Im decision goes directly to the heart of how political power is exercised in today’s Vietnam — and touches sensitive nerves in the Politburo.

Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups complained in a July 17 letter to Obama that “this dirty coal plant will emit unacceptable air pollution that will worsen climate disruption and poison local communities.” Obama’s climate action plan, they (rightly) noted, is against U.S. financing of overseas coal projects, on grounds they increase greenhouse gas emissions.

The green lobbyists portrayed the Obama climate-action policies correctly. Ex-Im’s guidelines basically discourage financing for high carbon density overseas projects like coal plants. These days, Ex-Im is more interested in participating in viable renewable-energy projects. Anyway, after conducting an environmental “due diligence” examination, the U.S. export-financing agency found that the Thai Binh plans failed to pass muster. Because of that, the bank did not examine the other details of the project: financing, credit-worthiness, and so forth.

Most of the above was reported by U.S. wire services — but the best part of the story has gone unreported: precisely who wanted U.S. export financing for the Thai Binh coal-power plant?

Ex-Im doesn’t put such details on the public record before projects are approved.  But a little digging reveals that the Ex-Im financing was sought to help one of Vietnam’s giant state-owned enterprises, PetroVietnam Power Corporation, which refers to itself as PV Power. PV Power is a subsidiary of the Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group, which goes by its acronym, PVN. According to a 2011 Vietnamese news report, PV Power’s Thai Binh 2 Thermo Power Plant is a $1.6 billion project. The main players are Korean and Japanese construction firms.

On August 3, 2012 the Charlotte, Va.-based Babcock & Wilcox Co. announced that a Beijing-based subsidiary — Babcock & Wilcox Beijing Co. Ltd. — had won a $300 million Thai Binh-related contract from South Korea’s Daelim Industrial Co. Ltd.  Babcock & Wilcox said that it would do the engineering work in Beijing for two coal-fired boilers for the Thai Binh project, and would also participate in the manufacturing.

While a Babcock & Wilcox spokesman was unable to respond to questions asking about Thai Binh before this article went to press, it seems logical that PetroVietnam and the Korean company could have sought financing from the U.S. Ex-Im Bank to buy U.S.-manufactured equipment. How many American jobs would have been supported with the financing is not on the public record. (Nor is it clear what role coal plays — or perhaps should play — in addressing the energy needs of a developing country like Vietnam.)

The involvement of PetroVietnam, for those who know how what might be called the Vietnamese “political economy” works, suggests that the story’s ramifications go way beyond a normal fight over money and jobs with just one construction project.

State-owned corporations control perhaps a third of the Vietnamese economy. Inefficient, secretive and widely considered corrupt, SOE’s are also cash cows for senior members of the Communist Party. They report to the Prime Minister’s office, and are thus an important source of political patronage. (Imagine if President Obama would appoint the top echelons of a third of the Fortune 500, the likes of Boeing, General Electric, Microsoft, Google, Exxon, and so on.)

In the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks, the Americans are demanding that the Vietnamese enact transparency reforms, and also that steps be taken to bring SOEs more market-oriented. It’s asking a lot, considering that the same government corporations have been making a lot of senior party officials — including at the Politburo level — very rich. The Politburo has been wrestling for most of the past decade over what to do about all this.

PetroVietnam  has become controversial in Vietnam. Last October a report by Thanh Nien Daily, a Vietnamese newspaper, noted that PetroVietnam had been cricitized by economist Le Dang Doanh on grounds it “needs to disclose its finances and profit numbers.”

The Thanh Nien report added that the giant government corporation had denied accusations made publicly by National Assembly members that it had been using its taxpayers’ money to engage in real estate speculation. Then the Vietnamese newspaper asked why PV Power and other wholly-owned subsidiaries of PVN have their own real estate companies. The newspaper even ran a photo of the Nam Dan Plaza in Hanoi, described as “a new luxury department store project developed by PV Power.” (From the view of SOE executives, speculating in real estate ought to be more commercially attractive than power, because the government forces them to set electricity rates too low for Vietnamese consumers to be commercially viable.)

This week, Vietnamese officials who will be travelling with President Sang will be pressing their case with their Ex-Im counterparts. It is unlikely they will succeed. The U.S. officials might wonder whether PetroVietnam officials might just take any profits obtained from low-cost U.S. Ex-Im financing to speculate in even more dicey property deals.

A delicate mix

The Obama administration has turned up the pressure on Vietnam’s human rights practices. The price of Vietnam’s admission to the TPP, and of forging a genuine strategic relationship with Washington, will be explicitly linked to “demonstrable” progress on human rights, as U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam David Shear put it on June 1 to a Vietnamese-American audience in Orange County, California. The ambassador’s context was unambiguous: “I have been telling senior Vietnamese officials since my arrival in Vietnam in August of 2011, that if the Vietnamese people want a Trans-Pacific Partnership, if they want stronger cooperation in regional diplomacy leading to a strategic partnership, then we need to see demonstrable progress on human rights in Vietnam.”

Traditionally, it has not been official U.S. policy to make such an explicit link with human rights in any commercial negotiation. Shear’s remarks — which he declines to comment further upon — were initially dismissed as unserious by some veteran trade observers who cautioned that they should not be taken literally. Shear was just telling his California audience what it wanted to hear, according to this interpretation. Vietnamese-Americans and their representatives in the U.S. Congress have been critical of Shear, on grounds he has not done enough to improve Vietnamese human-rights practices.

Still, Shear is a senior, well-regarded American diplomat with considerable experience in Asia — he’s served in Japan, China, and Malaysia, and speaks Japanese and Mandarin. Nor does Shear have a reputation for loose talk. In his June 1 Orange County appearance, the ambassador spoke slowly and deliberately, conveying the impression that he was reciting officially authorized talking points. Also, Shear’s reference to how lack of human-rights progress has been the biggest obstacle to closer U.S.-Vietnamese strategic ties was fully consistent with official U.S. foreign policy as expressed often by senior State Department officials. The official State Department position is that U.S.-Vietnam strategic ties will not improve until there is “demonstrable, sustained improvement in the human rights situation.”

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman has declined to engage in any diplomatic walk-back that would put distance between U.S. trade policy and Shear’s remarks in Orange County. So it appears that the White House is comfortable with the notion that the Vietnamese should take Amb. Shear’s words at face value.

Enter the U.S. trade police

From the Vietnamese perspective, what Obama is asking them to do on “human rights” in the TPP trade talks appears, well, insulting.

Obama’s trade negotiators have been insisting in the TPP that the Vietnamese agree to the U.S. labor lobby’s demands that they permit independent union organizing — which U.S. officials insist must be enforceable. Such could be considered “human rights” progress, in American eyes.

Before it signs onto this idea, the Politburo might consider how similar arrangements have worked out for other countries that have struck recent trade deals with the Americans.

In the U.S.-Colombia bilateral trade agreement, that Latin country has been required to set up an “action plan” on labor that contains measurable “milestones” and a “robust enforcement regime,” with American officials playing their roles as the enforcers. The way this works practice in Washington, the American officials pay close attention to AFL-CIO labor activists, who never seem to be satisfied that foreigners are doing enough to live up to American standards.

On April 11, 2013, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and the Labor Department touted how they had pressed Guatemala to submit to “a robust enforcement plan to resolve concerns” that had been raised in a labor complaint by the United States in the preferential trade agreement involving the U.S. and the Latin country. The American officials congratulated themselves for making Guatemala come up with an 18-point plan to satisfy Washington’s demands. The plan “includes concrete actions with specific time frames that Guatemala will implement within six months to improve labor law enforcement.”

This is the first labor case that the U.S. has brought in any of its preferential trade deals — but the Vietnamese would have good reason to suspect that the American labor police have plans for them.

U.S. double standard

Enter the outright embarrassing part of the story for Obama. The reason the Vietnamese find the TPP talks attractive is the possibility of gaining additional access to protected U.S. clothing- and footwear markets — protected by high tariffs that hover in the 16-18 percent range, but for some lines, twice that. The Obama trade negotiators have been demanding essentially that the price of any tariff cuts  for shoes and apparel be that the Vietnamese agree to purchase their fabric from U.S. suppliers.

The idea is hardly attractive to Hanoi.

First, as I reported in “Imperial Preferences” in this space on Sept. 11, 2012, one of the main reasons that Napoleon III sent the French navy to take the port of Saigon in 1859 was to force the Vietnamese to open their markets to exports of French textiles. Economists would agree that current American pressure in the TPP is just a modern-day version of French colonialism.

Secondly, the so-called “yarn forward” rules of origin don’t work. Only about 17 percent of U.S. imports of clothing from Mexico and other Latin American countries that have been forced by U.S. trade negotiators to accept the cumbersome rules actually get duty-free treatment. The importers prefer to pay the duties, rather than jump through the bureaucratic hoops, bear the costly paperwork burden, and such.

And last, think of how President Sang — under fire from Washington because of the Vietnamese government’s many interventions in its economy —  could turn the tables on Obama. Sang might ask: Is it right for the U.S. government to pressure such major American corporations like the iconic Levi, Strauss & Co. and Gap, to agree to buy their (heavy) denim from U.S. suppliers and ship it all the way across the Pacific to Vietnam? Is it right for the White House to pressure Hanesbrands, which has its underwear plants and supply chains in nearby Asian countries like Thailand and China, to buy its cotton instead from the continental United States, and ship that cotton across the ocean? How about Patagonia, which makes down vests in Vietnam from high-tech Japanese materials? Why would the U.S. government want to disrupt the global operations of other respected private-sector corporations: Nike, Adidas, Macy’s, Nordstrom, and so many others?

Obama would, of course, be hard-pressed to respond with credible economic answers to such questions. But the White House has repeatedly insisted that Vietnam swallow the “yarn forward” rules of origin for textiles, and also the high tariffs on footwear.

From a Vietnamese perspective, Obama’s TPP negotiating strategy is reminiscent of how Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon once based American policies during the Vietnam war upon the premise that, with enough pressure from the rich superpower, this small Southeast Asian nation would ultimately bend to America’s will. But unless the Vietnamese get meaningful additional U.S. market access they are seeking in the TPP, it is difficult to think of good reasons why they should cave.

Prospects for closer U.S.-Vietnamese relations?

The final uncertainties involve just what the Vietnamese really want from their relations with Washington.

“There’s a delicate game going on” presently in the Politburo, explains scholar Carlyle Thayer of the Australian Defence Force Academy. Hardly for the first time in its long history, Vietnam is striving to balance it’s always-contentious relations with China, the Southeast Asian country’s closest neighbor, and at the same time with the United States. “Some in Hanoi want better ties with the U.S., while another group would sabotage those ties,” observes Thayer.

It’s the latter group that currently appears to have the upper hand, according to Thayer and other experienced Vietnam watchers interviewed for this article. That would help explain why Vietnam has arrested more than 40 peaceable bloggers this year, more political prisoners than all of 2012 — perhaps a deliberate hostile signal to the U.S. State Department and the White House.

To be sure, with any issue involving Vietnam there are so many nuances that nothing is ever what it seems to be. Sang’s three-day visit to China that began on June 19 could be interpreted as a sign that closer Vietnamese-Chinese ties were being considered. Even if it’s true that Chinese intransigence marred those meetings, Beijing could recover (by being less aggressive in claiming waters in the South China Sea that are clearly Vietnamese, for instance).

But how to interpret a visit that Vietnam’s deputy defense minister, Sen. Lieut. Gen. Do Ba Ty, made to the Pentagon on June 20, while Sang was in China? The Vietnamese general met with Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey. Gen. Ty’s was the first such visit by a Vietnamese chief of staff to the United States, a Dempsey spokesman observed. The senior Vietnamese military delegation also notably included Lt. Gen. Pham Ngoc Hung, the deputy chief of the general intelligence department. Something’s afoot.

The only reasonably clear conclusion at this point in time is that the traditional Vietnamese foreign-policy balancing act will continue. And because the issues and differences that divide Vietnam, China, and the United States are so difficult to resolve neatly, the situation will continue to remain messier than it should.

 

 

 

 

 

How (Not) to Become a U.S. Ambassador

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There are two paths that aspiring American ambassadors traditionally take to persuade the president of the United States to nominate them for that honor. First, there is the classic, merit-based path where senior U.S. foreign service officers with distinguished diplomatic backgrounds are quietly-and-carefully vetted in the higher echelons of the State Department. Those who survive the scrutiny by their peers have their names forwarded to the White House to get the formal — usually routine — presidential approval. The second route, the political one, is (sometimes scandalously) reserved for famous personalities, presidential cronies, and major contributors of campaign cash who buy their ambassadorships. But now comes the U.S. consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, a Vietnamese-American foreign service officer named An Le, with a novel third way: an oh-so-Asian way.

Le wants to become the next U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. Toward that end, the consul general has been working behind the scenes since at least last July with a network of Vietnamese-American allies, some of whom have political and business connections in both Washington and Hanoi. Although Le has urged his supporters to try to drum up congressional support, the main target of the lobbying campaign is the man who would make the nomination: President Barack Obama.

Toward that end, Le and his allies have demonstrated a certain Asian-style chutzpah. One of Le’s key supporters in the Vietnamese-American community is David Duong, an Obama contributor from the San Francisco Bay area. Duong has given more than $150,000 to Obama and the Democratic Party since 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. According to e-mails exchanged between Le and Duong that this reporter has seen, Duong related that he had approached Obama directly to press Le’s ambassadorial qualifications at a Democratic Party fundraising event held in California earlier this month.

Obama was in northern California raising money on April 3 and 4, the White House has reported. Businessman Duong informed Le in one e-mail that he had presented the president a letter, along with a list of people who have lent their names in support of Le’s candidacy, at one fundraiser held on the evening of April 3.

The list of Le’s supporters— reprinted in the public interest at the bottom of this article — has more than 70 names on it. The first name stands out: former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who is now mayor of Chicago. On April 4, Duong informed Le in an e-mail that he had pressed Obama a second time.  “I had brunch with president and 27 other people this morning and did talk about you and letter delivered to him last night.”

Duong indicated to the consul general that he had received a friendly response from Obama: “We need to work and have a couple congress members and or us senators to recommend you. This will assure you will be in.”

The e-mails reveal that as he has sought to advance what Le has repeatedly referred to as his “candidacy,” the consul general has not been merely a passive observer. Le has participated in drafting and editing various letters of support and introduction. Before California business Duong presented the letter to Obama on April 3, Le advised his ally to correct a typo. Upon being informed by Duong that the letter had been delivered to Obama, Le expressed his gratitude in another e-mail. Writing on his iPad, the consul general related how “I appreciate” the efforts of such good “friends in advancing my candidacy.”

Duong and Le did not respond to several e-mails asking for comment. Nor was an effort to obtain comment from the White House successful. A call to Emanuel’s press office prompted a suggestion that this reporter request a response from the mayor in an e-mail — which was then not answered.

Duong, who came to America penniless after the communists won the Vietnam War, is the classic American immigrant success story: an entrepreneur whose waste-management company, California Waste Solutions, now has multi-million dollar contracts with government entities in both the United States and in Vietnam (the latter through a subsidiary corporation in Vietnam that has developed a $400 million solid waste landfill in Ho Chi Minh City, according to the corporation’s website and Vietnamese press clips.)

Apart from his business activities, Duong was appointed in 2010 by Obama to serve on the Vietnam Education Foundation, which receives U.S. government funding to give scholarships to provide higher education to Vietnamese students.  The Vietnamese-American entrepreneur had been recommended to the White House by Rep. Barbara Lee, a California Democrat and another recipient of Duong’s political contributions. Duong has praised the “full support” that he has received for his charitable work from the higher levels of the Vietnamese government, including Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

Duong is not the only Vietnamese exile in Le’s network of supporters who has cultivated ties with the current Vietnamese government that he fled from as a child.  Another key supporter appears to be Bui Duy Tam, a medical doctor who has helped introduce the consul general to Vietnamese-American friends in northern California.

Dr. Tam is another immigrant’s success story. An octogenarian, he is well-known in the Vietnamese-American community for his charitable medical works in his homeland, including a campaign to help Vietnam fight liver disease. Deputy Prime Minister Tuong Vinh Trong visited Dr. Tam at the doctor’s home in San Francisco in 2010. “The Deputy PM highlighted the great contributions made by Mr. Tam to the Vietnamese community in the US and to the homeland,” reported Hanoi’s official Voice of Vietnam, which broadcasts in Vietnamese and 11 other languages. “Mr. Tam said he was deeply moved.”

On July 28, 2012, Consul General Le sent Dr. Tam a private e-mail sent on a personal Hotmail account (presumably to avoid federal restrictions like those in the Hatch Act that bar government employees using official U.S. government computers and time to engage in political activities).  “Thank you for your generous draft letter of introduction,” the consul general told the doctor. “Please allow me a few days to review and prepare a re-draft letter, as this is a very sensitive matter,” Le cautioned.

A few weeks after their exchange of e-mails, Le spent time in California on leave. Much of the official downtime in the state was to be spent advancing the consul general’s “candidacy as the next ambassador to Vietnam,” as he put it in one e-mail.

The disclosure of that candidacy is likely to be controversial in the Vietnamese-American community. Many Vietnamese-Americans who fled from communist rule have come to accept the normalization of diplomatic and commercial ties with Hanoi. But while there are naturally differing views on politics, there remain bright red lines for Vietnamese exiles who will always love their homeland, while also having become patriotic American citizens. One of those bright lines —perhaps the clearest — involves the fact that it remains a crime for Vietnamese citizens to assemble peacefully to advocate the democratic right to vote. Vietnamese citizens have been jailed for expressing such beliefs.

I asked Dr. Tam and David Duong if they believed that advocating democracy should be legally barred in their home country. Neither man responded. The fact that such prominent exiles are willing to avert their eyes and keep their mouths shut on core human-rights issues — perhaps because to do otherwise could be inconvenient for maintaining their current dealings with the Vietnamese communist-run government — will be considered offensive by many. And back in the homeland, one can imagine the reaction when this news is brought to the attention of Vietnamese citizens who are presently languishing in prison because they have been brave enough to advocate the right to vote.

The only member of Le’s network of supporters who responded to a request to comment for this article was Truong Ngoc Phuong, who is the executive director of the Harrisburg, Pa.-based International Service Center. The center was established in 1976 to assist Vietnamese refugees who fled from the communist takeover in the preceding year. It now helps others in need as well, including victims of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in Louisiana.

Truong declined to be interviewed on his work with Le regarding the hoped-for ambassadorship (and also further declined to express an opinion on the current Vietnamese government’s anti-democracy laws). Still, the Pennsylvania social worker was willing to explain his support for Le’s candidacy in general terms.

“We are only a small group of community and business representatives who happened to be aware of the wonderful deeds Mr. An Le was able to accomplish as the consul General in Ho Chi Minh City for the past three years,” Truong told me in an e-mail. “Out of admiration for Mr. An Le, and out of respect for the current U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, David Shear, we decided to organized a discreet campaign to mobilize additional support for Mr. An Le’s candidacy.” (The consul general was copied on the e-mail.)

In another communication that Truong has sent to potential supporters of the consul general, he reasons that Le is the Vietnamese equivalent to Gary Locke, who is now U.S. ambassador to China. Locke is a former governor of  Washington state and a former U.S. commerce secretary. “The appointment of Gary Locke as U.S. Ambassador to China provides a precedent worth replicating,” Truong writes. “Ambassador Locke’s exemplary service owes much to his identity as a Chinese-American. His qualifications have enabled him to find areas of productive alignment between the two cultures and countries.”

It is highly unusual — perhaps unprecedented —  for an active member of the U.S. foreign service to run what is essentially a clandestine political pressure campaign aimed securing a White House nomination for an ambassadorship to an important country.

A quick look at the background on what ambassador wannabes usually do illustrates just how unusual.

The first two paths to an ambassadorship are the usual ones. The current U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, David Shear, comes from the elite ranks of the U.S. foreign service. Shear earned a masters degree from the prestigious John Hopkins School of Advanced International Service, is fluent in Japanese and Chinese, and was a deputy assistant secretary of state for Asia before he was vetted by the State Department and tapped for Hanoi in 2011. That traditional route accounts for about two-thirds of all U.S. ambassadorships. Previous U.S. ambassadors to Vietnam have all come from the elite ranks: foreign service officers with broad national-security experience such as Michael Michalak, Michael Marine and Raymond Burghardt.

The first U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, Douglas “Pete” Peterson, who served from 1997 – 2001, was a political appointment. But Peterson was considered an excellent choice. He was a respected former member of the U.S. congress and a former prisoner of war during the Vietnam war.

As for the political path in general, think of Caroline Kennedy, who is reported soon to replace U.S. ambassador to Japan John Roos, a Silicon Valley lawyer who earned his diplomatic stripes by “bundling” more than $500,000 for the Obama 2008 presidential race. Did Roos buy his ambassadorship? Of course. But thanks to the U.S. system of campaign financing, the bribery laws never come into play as long as there are winks-and-nods when the deal goes down, and not quid pro quos — which there “never” are.

To be sure, thoughtful circles in the U.S. foreign policy establishment rightly cringe at such political appointments. After all, ambassadorships — or any government positions — should never be for sale. Perhaps the surprising thing is that the system often produces good results, as some of the presidential cronies turn out to be skilled diplomats who represent their country admirably. Pamela Harriman, who was dispatched to Paris by Bill Clinton, comes immediately to mind. So does former child movie star Shirley Temple Black, who served admirably as U.S. ambassador to both Ghana and Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and ‘80s. And when the politically connected ambassador happens to be a little light, every U.S. embassy seems to have a top-notch deputy chief of mission to ensure that important American diplomatic interests do not suffer. Like career ambassadors, DCMs come from the elite ranks of the foreign service and can be counted upon to manage the real diplomatic affairs.

Le doesn’t come from such elite ranks. He is a former civilian in the U.S. Navy who, after 15 years of service, joined the foreign service in 1991. Le’s official State Department resume that is posted on the consulate’s website says, confusingly, that he was “born and raised” in Vietnam, which is subsequently contradicted with the assertion that he is “a native of Virginia.” A search of the available public record suggests that Le was indeed born somewhere in Vietnam, although exactly when and where, and when he left his homeland, remains unclear.

Le earned a masters degree from George Washington University in engineering administration in 1978, according to his resume. Le has been a senior member of the U.S. foreign service since 2001. But his State Department service seems to have been focused on the managerial side of diplomacy, involving issues such as buildings and administration, not deep involvement in national-security affairs.

An was the honored recipient in 2006 of the State Department’s top management award, the Luther I. Replogle Award for Management Improvement. However praiseworthy that award — and it is indeed a significant honor — such accomplishments suggest that his lack of experience in high-level diplomacy might not even qualify him to become a deputy chief of mission in the U.S. embassy in Hanoi, much less an ambassador.

Le’s immediate predecessor as consul general in Ho Chi Minh City, Kenneth Fairfax, is now the U.S. ambassador to Kazakhstan. But Fairfax has been one of the stars of the foreign service, whose previous service in sensitive positions included a high-level stint on the National Security Council staff, where he dealt with nuclear weapons issues. These days, diplomats based in the U.S. embassy in Hanoi handle sensitive matters of diplomacy, while the consulate in Ho Chi Minh City headed by An Le tends to be seen as a visa-processing center.

An educated guess would be that Consul General Le will not get the ambassadorship that he is seeking. Imagine the reaction from the U.S. foreign service if Le were to succeed in getting the White House nomination by making a political end run around the normal State Department vetting process, including a direct approach to the president — and at a fundraising event.

***

Note to readers: Below is the list of “Friends & Supporters of Consul General An T. Le in Ho Chi Minh City” that was apparently presented by California businessman David Duong to President Obama at a Democratic Party fundraiser during the president’s April 3-4, 2013 appearances in the San Francisco Bay area. The letter that the consul general approved, according to his e-mail correspondence that this reporter has seen, is un-edited. (The reference to (F) after the names of some of the endorsers — such as former U.S. Ambassador to France Craig Stapleton, himself a former political appointee — apparently refers to the “former” position. Le served in the U.S. embassy in Paris during Stapleton’s tenure.)

 

LIST OF ENDORSERS OF MR. AN LE’S CANDIDACY

Title First Name Last N. Position Business/Organization City St. Zip
T.H. Rahm Emanuel Mayor City of Chicago Chicago IL

60602
Mr. David Duong President California Waste Solutions Oakland CA

94607
Mr. Pedro (Sonny) Ada President Ada’s Trust and Investment, Inc. Hagatna GU

96932
Mrs. Jennifer M.A. Ada Ambass-at-Large Governor of Guam’s Trade Mission to VN Hagatna GU

96932
Mrs. Stephanie Au Behavioral Cons. Spencer, Shenk, Capers & Associates Irvine CA

92618
Mr. Charles R. Bailey Representative (F) Ford Foundation/Vietnam Chestnut Ridge NY

10977
Mr. Mark Baldyga President/Owner Baldyga Group, LLC Tumon GU

96913
Mr. David C. Ball Owner DesignBalls Studio Grapevine TX

76051
Mr. Greg J. Baroni President/CEO Attain, LLC Vienna VA

22182
Mr. Elvin Y. Chiang Senior Advisor Ernst & Young, LLP Tamuning GU

96913
Dr. Hung Manh Chu Professor/Dean West Chester University West Chester PA

19382
Ms. Sandy Dang Principal 11plus Philanthropic Consulting, LLC Washington DC

20015
Mr. Huy Do Chair/President Strategic Alliance VN Ventures Internl. Brisbane CA

94005
Mr. Duc Do Editor Thoi Luan Newspaper Westminster CA

92684
Mr. Thien-Chuong Duong,Esq Patent Attorney AD Intellectual Property Consulting Palo Alto CA

94306
Dr. Huan Giap,M.D Director Scripps Proton Therapy Center San Diego CA

92121
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96910
Mr. Loc Hoang IT Director University of Maryland College Park MD

20742
Mrs. Diane Hsiung Prog. Associate American University Washington DC

20016
Ms. Kim-Yen Huynh Founder/President Asian-American Business Women Assn. Huntington Beach CA

92647
Dr. Johannes Kratz Physician Massachusetts General Hospital Boston MA 02115
Mr. Larry Trung La President Meiwah Group Washington DC

20036
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20008
Dr. Tommy Le, PE Vice Chair County Board of Electrical Examiners Silver Spring MD

20906
Mr. Anh-Tuan, P.E Le Managing Cons. Green Orange Fountain Valley CA

92708
Mr. Marc Levin Managing Partner Levin Capital Management Chicago IL

60611
Mr. David Lublin Professor American University Washington DC

20016
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92708
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77022
T.H. Constance A. Morella Congressman (F) U.S. House of Representatives Bethesda MD

20817
Mr. Steve A. Nagel Council Member City of Fountain Valley Fountain Valley CA

92708
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95116
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89109
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92683
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91105
Mr. John Wynn Nguyen President Imperial Investment & Development Inc. Milpitas CA

95035
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91790
Dr. Thuan Hoa Nguyen Physician Kaiser Permanente Silver Spring MD

20902

 

Ms. Hoa Nguyen Tec. Bus.Analyst METRO/Public Transportation Houston TX

77002
Dr. Ai Nguyen Owner Pain Clinic of Westminster Santa Ana CA

92706
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95014
Mr. Chris Nguyen Co-Chair Stanford U. Vietnamese Student Assn. Arcadia CA

91007
Mr. Dzuong Ky Nguyen Professor Stanford University Stanford CA

94305
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92067
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90095
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22042
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95112
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22003
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92708
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94105
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96923
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20008
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20036
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98009
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98111
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84604
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96816
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06830
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77061
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60661
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20910
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92683
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91007
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92708
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96913
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02114
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92121
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92506
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20902
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80219
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95035
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95054
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20016
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20189
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20852

 

Beggaring Thy Neighbors

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Beggaring Thy Neighbors

Poorer countries no longer have rich ones to blame for inequalities in trade. Now they’re the ones pulling the strings.

BY GREG RUSHFORD | MARCH 25, 2013

 

The miseries inflicted by colonial powers on Africa, Asia, and Latin America are undeniable to economic historians. Borders were drawn that made no economic or ethnic sense; little was invested in the human capital or the institutional structure needed for growth and stability. And while the sun set on the western colonial empires more than a half century ago, the leaders of what are today called developing countries all have reason to appreciate William Faulkner’s line: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

One living legacy is a crazy quilt of trade preferences and protection buttressed by a mix of geopolitics, nostalgia, and rich-country interest group protectionism — distortions that undermine growth in export-oriented agriculture and make it tough for women in some of the poorest countries in the world to sew their way out of poverty. Indeed, most developing country leaders view rich-country protectionism as the cause of the deadlock in the World Trade Organization’s so-called Doha Round of negotiations aimed at sweeping trade liberalization.

The advanced economies do indeed deserve a disproportionate share of the blame. But as economist Simon Evenett of Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen has observed, “the beggar thy neighbor game is not confined to North-South trade.” The African Development Bank recently reported that only about one-tenth of the continent’s total trade is neighbor-to-neighbor. The numbers for Latin America and Asia are higher (22 percent and 50 percent respectively). Poor countries complaining about commerce-impeding barriers would be well advised to check the mirror to see where their troubles lay.

Most levies imposed by America and Europe have fallen to just 2 to3 percent, while a handful of newly rich countries led by Hong Kong and Singapore have dispensed with tariffs on virtually everything.

Now consider West Africa’s Benin, one of the poorest countries in the world (GDP per person in terms of purchasing power: $1,700). Benin’s meager trade and living standards are held back by agricultural and industrial tariffs averaging 14 and 12 percent respectively. And it’s pretty much the same throughout the poorer corners of the world. In Cameroon (GDP per capita: $2,300), farmers hide behind agriculture tariffs averaging 22 percent, while manufactured goods are hit with 12 percent import levies. The parallel figures for Burundi (GDP per capita: $600) are 20 percent and 11 percent; for Gambia (GDP per capita: $1,900) 17 percent and 16 percent.

India’s economic reforms, which included sharp reductions in industrial tariffs (to 10 percent) are widely credited for the quadrupling of average living standards over the last two decades. But India still protects food imports with 31 percent average tariffs, with peaks up to 56 percent (for coffee and tea).

In the Doha negotiations, the rich countries have agreed to allow Benin, Burundi, and the rest of the world’s poorest countries to maintain their tariffs. (Perhaps not surprisingly: They collectively represent a very modest market for western exports.) But more muscular emerging market economies — notably India and South Africa — have threatened to make further tariff reform a deal-breaker. In fact, they are demanding the right to raise tariffs sharply under some circumstances.

Arguably, the greater barriers to intra-continental trade (especially in Africa) are bureaucratic and logistical. To carry goods from Kigali, Rwanda to Mombasa, Kenya, trucks “have to negotiate 47 roadblocks and weigh stations,” the African Development Bank reported in 2012. At the time, the Bank also noted, there was usually a 36-hour wait at the South African border for trucks to cross the Limpopo River into Zimbabwe. It was much the same story getting through customs from Burkina Faso into Ghana, from Mali into Senegal — actually, from just about anywhere to anywhere in Africa.

Take your pick as to which misery is worst: The mud-plagued, potholed roads that drive up the costs of doing business, or the border checks with corrupt customs officials seeking alms.  Paying bribes is so common that the African Development Bank report published a table listing the borders where officials are the most corrupt (Ivory Coast-Mali seems to be the prizewinner).

African reformers freely acknowledge such problems. Nigeria’s trade minister, Olusegun Aganga, has publicly lamented that “billions of dollars” and “millions of jobs” have been lost due to the “the fragmentation of Africa in terms of trade.” And some progress is being made. The World Bank noted that Ghana and Nigeria are discussing cuts in bilateral tariffs and otherwise making their cross-border trade flows more efficient. The New Times, a Rwanda newspaper, recently celebrated the fact that roadblocks between Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi had been pared from 30 to 15 (which are still way too many).

Meanwhile, there is still a Sisyphusian quality to poor-on-poor trade disputes, with modest advances matched by threats of retrenchment. South Africa, which by virtue of its relative affluence and stability is the economic leader of southern Africa, has been railing against cheap chickens from Brazil, metal screws from China, and even artificial turf from rival soccer competitors India, Thailand, and Malaysia. When we do these things, we are only following “common sense,” and not indulging in “protectionism,” Pretoria officials insist.

“Common sense” is apparently infecting middle-income countries not above the impulse to close the door behind them. Argentina is now considering stiff tariffs on plywood from Brazil and China. Turkey is in the process of imposing tax hikes on terephthalic acid (useful stuff that goes into plastic bottles and clothing) from more than a dozen trading partners including Indonesia and Brazil. Malaysia has imposed “antidumping duties” on newsprint from the Philippines and Indonesia. For their part, the Indonesians are in the process of “safeguarding” their domestic sorbitol industry (a versatile sweetener) against competitors in Malaysia, India — and curiously, communist North Korea, which isn’t known for offering sweet deals to anyone.

The ongoing phenomenon of quasi-colonial economic ties has also been a major source of tension — and a major impediment to a Doha-enabling compromise. Countries that were previously extorted for their resources are now receiving preferential treatment from their former colonizers, much to the chagrin of others. Ecuador, a major banana producer, has complained about preferential trade deals France has given its former colonial banana suppliers, notably Cameroon. Mauritius has railed against European farm subsidies, even as it maneuvered to retain its preference to export sugar to the European Union.

Camps are also emerging as blocs of developing countries pit themselves against others. When the Doha talks last went into hibernation (2008), Uruguay and Paraguay were complaining that Indian-led demands, on behalf of 44 poor countries, for continued agricultural protectionism would cripple their exports to Latin neighbors. On the opposite end, Cambodia and Bangladesh’s efforts through Doha to curb the United States’ 15 and 17 percent respective tariff on their garment trade are facing stiff opposition from African countries that already enjoy duty-free access to U.S. apparel markets. 

Economists speak in unison on relatively few issues — one of them being the critical role open trade has played in bringing a billion people out of poverty in the last two decades. And it’s hard to imagine that, without more of the same, another billion will be given the means to live above subsistence in the next two. All the more ironic, then, that poor countries are way too often part of the problem in negotiating trade liberalization, rather than part of the solution. As Pogo, the once-celebrated bard of the newspaper comic strip world put it: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”