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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Mon Jul 26 2010 - 08:27:46 EDT
" Ethiopia’s lobbying, meanwhile, has helped to defuse charges that the
government has turned increasingly authoritarian. In a memo sent to
congressional offices, DLA Piper, representing Ethiopia, argued, “The terms
‘political prisoners’ and ‘prisoners of conscience’ are undefined and
mischaracterize the situation in Ethiopia,” and should be removed from a
bill that condemned the Ethiopian regime for detaining opposition
activists."
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/26/the-hired-guns.html The Hired Guns When
leaders of rogue nations hire Washington lobbyists, opposition voices get
crowded out.
Once the province of a few fringe players operating on the margins of
Washington, lobbying for foreign countries has become big business for the
most prestigious firms in D.C. According to data from the Department of
Justice, the number of registrants—forms submitted by people registered to
represent foreign countries—grew from about 1,800 in the first half of 2005
to 1,900 in the first half of 2009, the most recent data available.
Human-rights activists say there has been a steeper rise, particularly in
terms of dollars spent, among some of the most brutal regimes on earth,
including several sanctioned by the U.S. for their human-rights abuses.
The Republic of the Congo spent $1.5 million on lobbying and PR firms and
other representation in the first half of 2009 alone, according to reports
compiled by the Justice Department. Angola, one of the most corrupt nations
in the world, spent more than $3 million in that period. Teodoro Nguema
Obiang, the brutal dictator of African petrostate Equatorial Guinea, who
took power more than three decades ago in a coup, has hired the law firm of
former Bill Clinton aide Lanny Davis to lobby on his behalf, for the annual
sum of $1 million. (Davis says the arrangement is contingent on Obiang’s
progress on human-rights issues.) Chris Walker, of the NGO Freedom House,
says this is all a reflection of the fact that “authoritarian regimes
recognize there is a greater payoff in participating in and influencing the
decision-making process, rather than sitting it out.”
In the past, foreign lobbying by rogues in Washington was a relatively small
game. Nazi agents lobbying in Washington before World War II had tainted the
whole enterprise, a stain that would take decades to erase. Though allies
like Japan or Britain could find representation, the task of shilling for
the nastiest governments fell to those like Edward von Kloberg III. Wearing
a cape and calling himself “Baron,” a made-up honor, he represented Saddam
Hussein and Nicolae Ceausescu, among others. Many developing nations,
including China, meanwhile, had little idea how to win influence in
Washington through lobbying. China has built a lobby since its harsh
experience in 2005, when Congress, playing upon a strong anti-China
sentiment among constituents, scuttled an attempt by China National Offshore
Oil Corp. to purchase American petroleum firm Unocal. Now even new regimes
waste no time finding their men in Washington. After seizing power in a coup
last summer, and facing immediate criticism from the Obama administration,
Honduras’s new military rulers quickly spent at least $400,000 to hire
powerful American firms to lobby for them.
One result is that lobbying has become less transparent. U.S. law requires
lobbyists to disclose all contracts with foreign clients, but the reality is
that filings about foreign clients offer little information, and some
lobbyists simply don’t file. “I was so careful to document every phone call,
every meeting, and then I found that some other people, they don’t file at
all,” says one lobbyist who works extensively with foreign clients. “Does
anything happen to them? Not really.” Since the mid-1960s, in fact, the U.S.
government has never successfully prosecuted anyone for violating the
disclosure rules.
The rise in foreign lobbying may have also compromised the policymaking of
current and future U.S. government officials. With little oversight,
lobbyists can represent the most repressive regimes and then turn around and
work in government. According to John Newhouse, author of a forthcoming book
on the influence of foreign lobbies on American policies, one of John
McCain’s senior foreign-policy advisers during his 2008 campaign, Randy
Scheunemann, simultaneously worked for McCain and as a paid adviser to the
government of Georgia, which had been accused of human-rights violations.
Despite McCain’s reputation as a leading champion of human rights,
Scheunemann largely escaped questions about whether his lobbying might have
affected his foreign-policy advice to the powerful senator. Similarly, while
at Cassidy & Associates, lobbyist Amos Hochstein oversaw the Equatorial
Guinea account, which required him to argue the merits of one of the most
repressive regimes on earth. Still, after leaving Cassidy, Hochstein landed
a prominent job on the (ill-fated) 2008 presidential campaign of Connecticut
Sen. Chris Dodd, a politician also known for his longstanding human-rights
advocacy. Now Hochstein says he helped “move the ball forward on human
rights” in the country.
Lobbying can turn down the pressure on authoritarian regimes. After years of
intense lobbying, Equatorial Guinea’s Obiang managed to transform his image
in Washington from a venal autocrat into a solid American ally and buddy of
U.S. business. In 2006 he strode out of a meeting at Foggy Bottom with
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who declared him “a good friend.” Last
year Obiang met with Obama for a public photo op, which is coveted by
foreign leaders. Similarly, according to several congressional staffers, the
authoritarian regime in Kazakhstan won support for its chairmanship of the
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe by hiring lobbyists to
help quiet congressional critics of Kazakhstan’s human-rights record.
Ethiopia’s lobbying, meanwhile, has helped to defuse charges that the
government has turned increasingly authoritarian. In a memo sent to
congressional offices, DLA Piper, representing Ethiopia, argued, “The terms
‘political prisoners’ and ‘prisoners of conscience’ are undefined and
mischaracterize the situation in Ethiopia,” and should be removed from a
bill that condemned the Ethiopian regime for detaining opposition activists.
All this has taken a toll. Many democratic countries retain lobbyists in
Washington to handle issues like trade disputes or intellectual-property
challenges. But in those free countries, human-rights activists or opponents
of the government could hire their own lobbyists in Washington and make
their cases to the American government. Not so in the world’s most
repressive countries. Though there are rare exceptions, like the Tibetan
government in exile, most human-rights activists in authoritarian countries
cannot make the close connections in Washington, or come up with the funds
needed to match the lobbying of leaders like Obiang. The result: while thugs
get heard in Washington, the voices of their opponents remain silent.
*With R. M. Schneiderman in New York. Kurlantzick is a fellow at the Council
on Foreign Relations.*
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