pair it with “benefit.” Pathways to the Present supplies these two sentences:
Multinationals benefit consumers and workers around the world
by providing new products and jobs and by introducing
advanced technologies and production methods. On the other
hand, these powerful big businesses sometimes skirt the law by
using their economic clout to unduly influence politicians or by
devising dishonest ways to keep profits growing.That’s not adequate. Often multinationals bribe the elites of poor countries like
Equatorial Guinea, Kazakhstan, and Nigeria. IBM, Monsanto, Schering-Plough,
and many other companies have had executives or corporate policies in one
country or another found to be corrupt. In Equatorial Guinea, for example, oil
companies pay millions of dollars to the regime’s leaders for the privilege of
taking the country’s oil—supporting their children in luxury when they study
abroad, leasing buildings from them, and simply paying bribes. Meanwhile,
three-fourths of Equatorial Guinea’s population suffers from malnutrition. Why
do our oil companies do business this way? Because they pay royalties of only
about 10 percent for taking Equatorial Guinea’s oil—far less than they would
pay in a justly-run nation.^15 In the process, these companies comprise an
antidemocratic force that helps to solidify the control of a rapacious elite on
the country. This is exactly the opposite of what U.S. influence should
accomplish, according to either the realpolitik or “international good guy”
model. Eventually, as in Iran, our entwinement with regimes like Guinea’s may
come back to haunt us.
The undue impact of multinationals on governments isn’t limited to foreign
countries. Textbooks need to discuss their influence on U.S. foreign policy,
beginning perhaps with the administration of Woodrow Wilson. Pressure from
First National Bank of New York helped prompt Wilson’s intervention in
Haiti, for example. After Russia’s new communist government nationalized all
petroleum assets, Standard Oil of New Jersey was “the major impetus” behind
the U.S. invasion of Russia in 1918, according to historian Barry Weisberg.^16
Textbooks mystify these circumstances, however. The closest they come to
telling the story of economic influences on our foreign policy is in passages
such as this, from the current American Pageant:
Hoping to head off trouble, Washington urged Wall Street
bankers to pump dollars into the financial vacuums in Honduras