Today’s quotation in the Financial Times attributed to Danielle Pletka, the Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy Studies of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), was a stunner. “If we …begin to sanction foreign companies through more stringent sanctions in the Iran Sanctions Act, I think there will be serious repercussions for our multilateral effort.”
Whatever would possess AEI and Pletka, who personally has been one of the most prominent and enthusiastic cheerleaders of the rapidly spreading state divestment movement against companies doing business in Iran, to offer a cautionary note about adopting unilateral sanctions, let alone stress the importance of preserving multilateral unity with limp-wristed European allies in dealing with a charter member of the “Axis of Evil”? Judging from its provenance at what must be considered Neo-Con Central, it certainly couldn’t be common sense.
In fact, Pletka’s observation probably reflects growing tensions between AEI’s corporate contributors, many of whom are represented on its board of trustees, on the one hand, and, on the other, the hard-line neo-conservative views of its foreign-policy fellows, such as Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Michael Rubin, Joshua Muravchik, and Pletka herself; academic advisers, such as Gertrude Himmelfarb, Eliot Cohen, and Jeremy Rabkin; and its board chairman, Bruce Kovner.
As AEI jumped on the divestment bandwagon initiated by Perle protégé Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy (CSP) earlier this spring with its publication of a list of evil-enabling companies, some of its corporate contributors with interests in some of those same companies — or in countries where those companies are based — objected. After all, multinational corporations, such as ExxonMobil, Motorola, American Express, State Farm Insurance, Dow Chemical, Merck & Co., Dell Inc. – all of which are represented in various ways on AEI’s board of trustees – not to mention General Electic, Amoco, Kraft, Ford Motor, General Motors, Eastman Kodak, Metropolitan Life, Proctor & Gamble, Shell, General Mills, Pillsbury, Prudential, Corning Glass Works, Morgan Guarantee, and Alcoa – all of whose foundations have reportedly contributed significant amounts of money to AEI – generally oppose economic sanctions that interfere with their investment and commerce, especially if they are unilateral and especially if they result in many jurisdictions (i.e. states) enacting different sanctions with which companies must comply.
“I know for a fact that some companies who are AEI contributors have complained to the president of AEI
about AEI’s involvement in this,” said William Reinsch, the president of the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), an association of some 550 of the biggest U.S. companies that, among other things, opposes unilateral economic sanctions. “There has been a significant level of upset by a number of .” In some cases, he added, companies complained about their inclusion on the list posted by AEI, while “others believe that it’s not an appropriate activity for AEI to be engaged in.”
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http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=54
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