IT is relatively easy for military rulers to fill top military posts, which are usually not subject to public scrutiny and whose performance is not brought under open evaluation. But to fill top economic posts with persons who are popularly acceptable or very well regarded is not an easy task.

At a time when the Constitution is being totally revamped and the president is to fill numerous top posts in the government in his discretion, at times after consultation with the prime minister, it is not clear how the posts of economic managers such as the deputy chairman of the planning commission are to be filled? The reason is that although such posts are not power centres, they are, nevertheless, key positions in the power set-up.

The office of the governor of the State Bank of Pakistan remains autonomous, though not entirely. But it is not filled by the president nominating him but by the government which should mean the prime minister. Similarly the members of the Central Board of Revenue have been for the first time given constitutional recognition and a five-year term but they too are to be appointed by the government.

However they can be removed from their office only by the president after consultation with the prime minister. The much maligned and frequently reshuffled CBR has acquired a new respectability and a five-year term for each member. Will that help it deliver the goods instead of being consistently accused of excessive corruption and grabbing a part of the money paid by the taxpayers.

The fact is that unlike in the military set-up, power vests in the official economic sector, in the ministers of finance, economic affairs, industries, commerce, water and power, petroleum, natural resources, agriculture, etc. And their performance would determine the success of the economy. And in the long run their performance depends on how the ministers of education and public health perform and give the country a technically trained and higher educated people, while the population division keeps down the alarming population growth.

In fact at the other end it is the entrepreneurs, small investors, traders, workers and peasants and women who will determine the ultimate shape and size of the economy. In these areas arbitrary executive decision or merry use of discretionary powers will not pay great dividends.

What kind of ministers would head the key ministries will depend upon the kind of persons elected to the assemblies and then chosen to become ministers and given the right portfolios. That may depend on the prime minister’s choice subject to the advice or directive of the president and the amount of funds placed at their disposal. Equally important is the issue that if competent persons to hold the economic portfolios are not elected, will they be nominated and then elected. Also important is the final high qualification for the technical members of the parliament. It is being argued that if the ordinary members are to be graduates, the technical members should be accordingly highly qualified. Where will General Musharraf draw the line?

In addition to that a number of inter-provincial constitutional bodies are to be created or sustained for smooth working of the federation and they include the Council of Common Interests and the National Economic Council.

It has also been said that General Musharraf’s proposals would enhance the financial autonomy of the provinces and the provinces would eventually be made self-reliant and would raise up to forty per cent of their own expenditure instead of a maximum of seventeen per cent as it is now. The right way to achieve that is to decrease the number of federal taxes and increase the provincial revenues while reducing the multiplicity of provincial taxes levied in a mindless manner.

But now the local bodies have come up with their claim on the provincial revenues. They too want some of the big revenue heads to be allocated to them. How the provincial finance commissions set up to resolve the issue will do that in a manner satisfactory to all, remains to be seen.

When Mr Shaukat Aziz became finance minister he had spoken of the centre having only three taxes — income tax, customs duty, and sales tax. But in much of the world the sales tax is a provincial tax and much lower — just between three and eight per cent. But in Pakistan it is a federal tax, which is shared, to a small extent, with the provinces. The provinces too were to have only six or seven taxes instead of having twenty-six or more. As the centre has not reduced the number of taxes, the provinces are also not reducing the total number of their taxes and now comes the demand from the local bodies which is very legitimate to make them effective and meaningful.

Mr Shaukat Aziz might have given away some of the federal taxes to the provinces if the federal revenues had increased substantially since he took office instead of taking four years to cross from three hundred and seven billion to four hundred and one billion—-an average increase of twenty-four billion a year.

And that is not for want of targeting higher revenues each year. This year, for example, the revenues have been targeted at four hundred and sixty billion, while the collection last year was just four hundred and one billion against the target of four hundred and fifty-six billion. So how many years will it take for the four hundred billion revenues to touch the five hundred billion mark which is not very high and yet very elusive? Will it take four years again, less or more?

It has all to do with the level of growth, economic activity, and large tax payments. The US for example expects a one hundred and sixty-five billion dollar budget deficit this year which will end five years of budget surplus that last year produced a budget surplus of one hundred and twenty-seven billion. The large deficit is the result of the slump in the stock market which meant a crash in the capital gains payment and the US administration said that the country was not likely to see a surplus before 2005.

Our stock market is also facing a slump as it often does and on Monday the KSE index stood at 1735 after a fall of 48 points. Our economic slump is a result of low economic activity. What the American example shows is that when the economy grows, more so the tax paying sector, large budget surplus becomes easy otherwise it will be in the red as for a long time our budget has been. And higher economic growth along with social justice is all the more essential in a country with a high population and excessive number of the poor.

The thirty-month-old National Accountability Bureau is here to stay along with the auditor-general with his enhanced authority who will be appointed by the president after obtaining the views of the prime minister. The chairman of the Public Service Commission too is to be appointed by the president after ascertaining the views of the prime minister. It does surprise the people to see a general being appointed as chairman of the public service commission, a tendency noted and lamented in the past as well.

No mention has been made of the chairman of the public accounts committee as that is the key body of the National Assembly to check wasteful spending and, in fact, expose that long after large sums have been wasted. The committee will be effective if the opposition leader or his nominee becomes the chairman after the elections.

THE blasphemy laws were legislated and subsequently made more strict to ensure protection to the minorities. But some recent incidents have shown that even the Muslims were victimized under the present blasphemy law on the complaint of other fellow Muslims.

The most recent example is provided by gory murder of Yusuf Kizab in the Kot Lakhpat Jail by an activist of the banned Sipahe-i-Sahaba. Yusuf had been sentenced to death sentence under the blasphemy laws.

The worst example was the suicide of Father John Joseph some four years ago. On the eve of May 6, 1998 Dr Joseph, the Bishop of Faisalabad, committed suicide in front of the Sessions Court, Sahiwal to protest against the death sentence of a Christian Ayub Masih, pronounced by the court under the blasphemy law.

The minority communities were never satisfied with the blasphemy law. They have been opposing it since its promulgation. Their protest against it became louder when a mandatory death punishment was incorporated in the Section 295-C of Pakistan Penal Code in 1991.

The blasphemy law was enacted by the British to protect the religious sentiments of the Muslim minorities in the subcontinent against the Hindu majority. After the creation of Pakistan as the Muslims were no more a minority, the law should have been abolished. But it was made more stringent: Section 295-A was enacted in 1927 (Pakistan Penal Code). In 1980, Section 298-A was inserted. In 1982, Section 295-B was introduced. In 1986, Section 295-C was legislated. In 1991, life imprisonment was replaced with the mandatory death penalty in the Section 295-C.

When the blasphemy laws were not harsh and the Muslims were tolerant towards the non-Muslim minorities, the latter remained mindful of the religious feelings of the former. As they grew intolerant towards the minorities and the capital punishment was incorporated in the law, the cases of blasphemy started occurring more frequently. From 1948-1979, 11 cases of blasphemy were registered. Only three were reported from 1979-1986. Forty-four cases were filed from 1987-1999. In 2000, 52 cases were registered — 43 against the Muslims and nine against the Non-Muslims.

This shows, the law is being ‘abused’ more blatantly by the Muslims against the Muslims to settle their scores. ‘Blasphemy’ has been made an offence against the state. Anybody can go to a police station and register a case under Section 295-C against any person. The police would immediately register a case and arrest the accused without checking the veracity of the facts. A ‘mohrrar’ (constable) is academically not competent to judge whether or not the circumstances constitute an act of blasphemy.

The greater irony is, the death sentence under S. 295-C to a non-Muslim. This can be challenged in the Supreme Court. Ibne Tamia in his book ‘Asare Mal Maslool’ has referred to a note of Hazrat Imam Abu Hanifa who says that a non-Muslim cannot be sentenced to death for blasphemy because such a penalty falls in the category of ‘hadd’ (a sort of maximum punishment).

When a Muslim blasphemes against the Holy Prophet, he becomes a ‘murtid’ (a person who repudiates Islam after embracing it) whose punishment is death. A non-Muslim cannot be a ‘murtid’ because he is already a ‘kafir’ (non-Muslim). Therefore, the ‘hadd’ punishments are not applicable to the non-Muslims. They could be punished only under ‘tazir’ (non-hadd punishments).

The semi-literate mullas argue in the support of the death sentence saying that there is an ‘ijma’ (consensus) on this issue by the founders of the four ‘Fiqhs’. If this plea is correct, then why Imam Abu Hanifa (the great Muslim scholar and the founder of the Hanafi school of thought) holds a contrary opinion?

After Jinnah’s death, the ruling elite embraced the Machiavellian politics of the colonial rulers and divided the nation on religious, sectarian and linguistic bases. The blasphemy law is an integral part of this baleful politics that has made Pakistan a deeply divided society. History is full of incidents that remind us of the great love, amity, unity, and affinity between the Muslims and the non-Muslims. A P akistani author Ahmad Salim relates one such incident in his book, ‘Pakistan aur Aqaliyatein’.

He writes that Ahmadabad was in the grip of Hindu-Muslim riots in 1969. During those days, a small locality, Mimobai that consisted of around 145 houses — 35 belonged to the Muslims and the rest were of the Hindus - had been reduced to ashes. A Sikh namely Kalyan Singh, one of the eye witnesses to this gory event, told the aid workers that an armed mob of furious Hindus came to the non-Muslim elders and asked them to identify the houses of the Muslims so that their (non-Muslims) property is not harmed. But they refused to do that.

The mob threatened to set all the houses on fire. Even this could not intimidate them and the frenzied Hindus torched all the houses. Kalyan Singh said: “The Muslims and the non-Muslims had been living together for centuries in Mimobai. They shared each other’s happiness and grief. How could we face Bhagwan if we had saved our houses while letting the mob torch the houses of our Muslim brothers, sisters, mothers, uncles!!”

“I write it out in a verse - MacDonagh and MacBride And Connolly and Pearse Now and in time to be, Wherever green is worn, All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.”

—W.B. Yeats, Easter, 1916’

You’d have to change the Irish names to Arab ones, but the green of Ireland would serve perfectly well as the green of Islam — and then the poem would be about Jenin.

Yeats wrote the poem about the Easter Rising of 1916 in Dublin, when a handful of Irish rebels challenged the might of the British army in the heart of Dublin. They lost, of course. Most were killed in the fighting or hanged afterwards — but within five years Ireland was independent. Their seemingly futile sacrifice had changed everything. So has Jenin.

The Israeli government’s propaganda machine is making a huge effort to convince the world that Israeli troops did not carry out an organized massacre of Palestinian civilians during the eight days of bitter fighting in Jenin. But in trying to sabotage the investigation of what happened there, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is barking up the wrong tree.

He barks very effectively, in the sense that the United Nations fact-finding team originally invited into the devastated refugee camp by Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres were then held up when the Israeli government decided it didn’t like their terms of reference. In the end UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan caved in and added new military members to the team who Jerusalem thinks will be more receptive to its justifications for the massive use of force in Jenin. It’s another victory for Sharon, but a Pyrrhic one as usual.

Israel’s refusal to let either the media or humanitarian aid organizations into the camp for six days after the fighting ended had already roused the world’s suspicions. Many people will now be persuaded that Sharon, the man who used bulldozers against Palestinian houses in the same way when he commanded in Gaza thirty years ago, and let his Maronite allies slaughter the Palestinians of the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in the Lebanon in 1982, has committed another atrocity. Yet there was almost certainly no massacre in Jenin.

The evidence so far points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the Israeli soldiers, most of them reservists, panicked as their losses mounted in the Jenin camp, and that a number of Palestinian civilians were killed deliberately and wrongly, but the number probably amounts to only a few dozen. There are also numerous reports of Israeli troops using civilians as shields, which is highly illegal, but that has been seen all over the West Bank in this operation.

Israeli troops are certainly less professional than they used to be. Their fire discipline is hardly better than that of the militiamen they face, and a foreign military officer serving with one of the United Nations observer forces on Israel’s borders recently described them to me as “third-rate troops up against fifth-rate opponents.” But it remains most unlikely that there was a mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Jenin, and Sharon’s government is just undermining its own case by obstructing the investigation of events there.

The real importance of Jenin is different, and it was spotted by Israeli writer Uri Avnery even before the killing was over. “When the international media cannot be kept out any more and the pictures of horror are published,” he wrote, “two possible versions may emerge: Jenin as a story of massacre,... and Jenin, the Palestinian Stalingrad, a story of immortal heroism. The second will surely prevail.”

Avnery, now a columnist in the daily newspaper ‘Ma’ariv’, knows all about national founding myths, for he took part in Israel’s own heroic age. — Copyright Gwynne Dyer

THE present situation between Israel and the Palestinians has been retrogressing from bad to worse and may have even touched the worst as of now. From the pristine and heady days of the Oslo Accord it has been quite a consistent and unending retreat for the Palestinians. And it has consequently been the sheer opposite for the Israelis in the form of huge windfalls of gains. It has really never been so good for the Israelis since the Arab-Israeli war of 1966.

Even if you were to take a global view of things one sees a crisis of leadership that emanates from the United States which is at the very fulcrum of world events. But in a single superpower situation it is also very surprising indeed and somewhat paradoxical that the United States looks quite powerless and more of a bystander just watching things rather helplessly in the various troubled spots around the globe. One would have thought that with the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States would have at its disposal unimaginable leverages of power and influence thus allowing it an absolutely free and unimpeded run on a global basis and pushing for justice and international fair play.

In terms of sheer performance the United States has not really come up even up to its par in the last year and a half of the Bush Administration which has talked bigger than it has been able to perform. First of all Bush does not work hard enough and one gets the feeling that he does not apply himself to the real demands of his job, He does not put in enough man-hours into his job. Comparisons can be odious because his predecessor Bill Clinton with all his faults was an outstanding workaholic President as compared to Bush.

Not having an ever-present father around was indeed quite an advantage for Bill Clinton who did not suffer from a political legitimacy problem. He was a much better educated man than Bush despite the fact that both had been to Yale which is one of the top Ivy League Universities of America. Clinton of course from there went on to win a Rhodes scholarship that took him to Oxford which gave him the finesse and ease that made him such a great President of the United States whom even the Europeans and the Asians in retrospect remember fondly. In the American political system a great deal depends on the personality, capability and stature of the President. The biggest trouble with Bush is that he appears so unsure of himself that the world experiences a sense of trepidation as to how if at all is he going to cope with his professional situation. Take the 9/11 situation which one assumes was not one of his making. But the question arises why did he not sack the officials who were responsible for America’s security both at home as well as abroad when they had so palpably failed. It is indeed quite a mockery that all those people who were in pivotal positions at the time of 9/11 are still very well entrenched and secure in the same positions.

There is a book in circulation about George W. Bush by the name of Shrub which describes his progression in life from school to university to military/home auxiliary air-force and on to politics at the state-level and now to the national and international levels from the White House as having been entirely prearranged by his benign and caring father’s influence and timely interventions over the years which took really good care of George W. Bush at almost each and every step and turn in life And the greatest practical joke doing the rounds is that Papa Bush has even planted Karl Rove a University History Professor for providing history lessons to George W. Bush in the White House.

To start with in its first few months immediately after inauguration in January 2001 there was that typical Republican isolationist refrain surfacing as if there was really no problem in existence either in the Middle East or the South Asian subcontinent or elsewhere in the world that either deserved any attention or engagement on the part of the US government. It was only when there was an unprecedented wave of suicide bombings and killings in Palestine and Israel that the Bush government started groggily by way of delayed reactions to get itself into some act of intervening through a series of mediation initiatives in the Palestine-Israel confrontation.

Even so in real terms these were far from the natural, swift and effective reflex actions of a sole super power. Indeed there has been a fundamental lack of forethought and even a noticeable lack of will on the part of the United States to play an effective role in maintaining world peace. But the important thing is to get to the root of the matter how and why this sort of an apathetic response should be forthcoming from a sole super power which in the last several decades has more or less seized on each and every opportunity to intervene and enforce its writ and will.

It may also be noted that the Republican Party is a curious mix of ‘the buccaneer American spirit’ that is generally itching for a fight and the very opposite — ‘the isolationist / protectionist streak’ — behind which it tends to withdraw some what like a tortoise getting into its shell and seeking the protection of ‘Fortress America’ pretending that there exists no real danger.once when you are inside it. There is indeed some sort of ‘oscillation syndrome’ that US policy suffers from particularly during Republican administrations. But in my opinion there are several other factors also that play a hand in the occurrence of this phenomenon.

The problem with George W. Bush is that the manner in which he made it to the highest office — with ‘the timely and critical help’ from the American superior judiciary — has marked him out as politically vulnerable to such an extent that he may well follow the footsteps of his father as a one-term President. No sooner had he become President that he lost control of the Senate through a defection of a Senator from his own party.

Even the post 9/11 and Afghanistan happenings having boosted his public approval ratings will not necessarily guarantee him a hold on the Presidency for another term. His election as President till this day is rated as an unfair intervention of the judiciary and he is often described as an appointed President.

His main problem is that the pro-Israel lobby has not quite forgiven him for what they describe as the stealing of the Presidential election of 2000 which would certainly given the office of the Vice President to Senator Joseph Lieberman which they so ardently desired. But in respect of the Middle East and Israel there is possibly more to it than can logically find its roots in only the result of the last Presidential election, that is the manner in which it was fought and the manner it ended through a judicial ruling by the US Supreme Court.

Look at the number of emissaries sent by the United States for bringing about or arranging peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the Bush tenure since January 2001. There was the CIA Director George Tenet mission followed by the George Mitchell mission and then the mediation effort made by the redoubtable 4-Star Marine General Anthony Zinni all of which have failed miserably. And to cap it all even an effort to this effect carried out by no less a personality than Secretary of State General Colin Powell has met almost the same fate.

All these abortive missions naturally convey the clear impression that the United States’ diplomacy has for some reason or the other been faltering for a lack of punch. Furthermore all that the present Administration can do is to push around the weak and oppressed. It pushes around Arafat and even asks him to step down even though he happens to be duly elected in his own right as President/Chairman. It puts presssure on Pakistan even though it has been its best support in the post 9/11 war on terrorism — and paradoxically again at the behest of the Indians who want to subjugate and hegemonize Pakistan.

One can cite any number of examples wherein US policy is irrational as well as unbelievably existing in the realm of fantasyland. India is ‘rising’ and China is ‘a hornet’s nest” which is ‘best avoided for the time being’. The fallen Russia is the new ally after having truncated its empire and satellites. But there is probably nothing to beat the Israel-US equation if it can be described as such because Israel is the only country in the world which is in no way deterred by the smallness of its size and has the better of almost every American President almost through a display of brazenness on its part. And I may ask why not?

PRESIDENT Bush has announced his intention to remove Saddam Hussein from power using all the means at the disposal of the US, without counting on support or assistance from the countries of the region. This came shortly after the address at West Point in which the right to launch pre-emptive attacks on potential adversaries was claimed.

Earlier, the Nuclear Posture Review had unveiled the doctrine of possible first use of nuclear weapons against countries that included not only the “terrorist states” but also China and Russia enjoying unprecedented power, and technological superiority, the hyper power is not only projecting its own global military reach, but indirectly encouraging strategic partners in other regions to do likewise. In particular, Israel and India are showing scant regard for human rights or UN resolutions in the name of fighting terrorism.

The world is thus being made aware of a new paradigm of international relations, in which power prevails over principles. Basically, the trend that a country’s influence and standing was a reflection of its economic and military power had never gone away altogether. However, if one were to encapsulate the history of the turbulent 20th century, it had started with the heyday of imperialism, with a few western powers ruling over most of the world. After going through two world wars, it had ended with the demise of colonialism, and a world community of over 180 sovereign states, with the democratic political order, and a market-based economic order, as the accepted norms.

The establishment of the UN system, which had expanded its concerns over nearly all facets of life on this planet, held the promise of a more just economic and political order as the world entered a new century and millennium. The end of the cold war in 1989 had left only one superpower, the US, which prided itself on its ethnical and humanitarian values. The succeeding decade was one of transition, with Russia losing influence as it sought to adjust from its communist past to a market economy, while China took strides through sustained growth by combining economic reforms with a controlled political system. Other centres of power emerged, in Europe, and in Japan, mainly through economic growth. However, the world remained unipolar owing to the overwhelming political, economic and military power of the United States.

The very nature of US pre-eminence has generated trends, now being followed by the Bush administration, that suggest that the world order, that had emerged after the victory of the democratic powers in the Second World War is regressing into a “might is right” approach to international relations.

The pursuit of hegemonic policies by the US, as the unique superpower after the end of the cold war, had begun under the elder Bush. After promising a “new world order” on the eve of the Gulf War of 1991, when the coalition against Saddam Hussain was set up, he proceeded to assert US primacy in the aftermath of that conflict, and established US military presence in the Persian Gulf Region. He did initiate the Middle East peace process, in order to end the main source of the Arab-Israeli conflict, but he failed to win another term, mainly for neglecting America’s internal problems notably a fiscal and trade deficit that kept widening.

His successor, Bill Clinton, won the election on the promise of addressing the US domestic agenda, but with the world experiencing political and economic turbulence, had to resume a more active stance in shaping the transition towards a post-cold war order. As the process of disintegration of the states, especially in the communist eastern part of Europe got under way, and Europe failed to arrest the slide towards chaos, the US under Clinton intervened. The Bosnian crisis was resolved through the Dayton Peace Accords, with the US providing substantial peacekeeping forces.

Clinton, despite the personal scandals that affected his own image, set certain standards of conduct for the US as the unique superpower, and made effective use of the UN in his moves to establish peace and stability in the Balkans and the Middle East. With its military prowess, and unrivalled political and economic clout, the US became, in the words of Madeleine Albright, Clinton’s secretary of state during his second term, “the indispensable power” in tackling threats to peace and order in any part of the world.

While exercising its decisive role, the US under Clinton laid stress on working with the international community, and played its role in advancing worthy causes that were of interest to the world as a whole. For instance the US signed the Kyoto Protocol on the environment, and endorsed the concept of the International Criminal Court, that represented the first major attempt to outlaw genocide and the kind of crimes committed in Bosnia and Rwanda.

President George W. Bush won a controversial election in 2000, and assumed power in January 2001. He had very limited foreign policy experience, but surrounded himself with a team that believed in the exercise and paramountcy of power. They also represented the Republican Right, that had opposed CTBT, and advocated missile defence to give the US absolute military domination. The Bush policies from the beginning were unilateralist, and major agreements reached by the previous administration were repudiated. Thus the first few months saw the US reject the Kyoto protocol, in deference to the oil interests that wanted a free hand to explore oil in Alaska. The process to engage with North Korea was abandoned, and Washington adopted an approach that created fissures between the US and Europe.

This unilateralism found its most significant expression in the announcement of the plan for Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) on May 1, 2001, without advance consultation with the European allies. Preliminary soundings on the concept had revealed major differences with European countries, and the reaction to the idea of the ABM Treaty being repudiated had been generally adverse. Yet, the US did not feel constrained in going ahead with these initiatives.

The terrorist attacks on the US on September 11, 2001, led the superpower to declare war on terrorism all over the world. This appeared to make a multilateral, rather than a unilateral approach, an imperative necessity. Despite having created a global coalition against terrorism, the US continues to demonstrate a total preoccupation with its national views and goals, and to adopt policies that amount to dictation, which is seen as contradicting Washington’s own prescriptions on democracy.

The support accorded to the states that are indulging in state terrorism in defiance of the UN resolutions, such as Israel and India, has encouraged them to adopt repressive and unjust policies and to violate basic tenets of human rights at will. The US has shown itself ready to scuttle UN peacekeeping operations, by insisting that its contingents be granted immunity from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, that came into being on the of July 1, this year. There is both disapproval, and consternation among the Europeans over the cavalier manner in which the US is exercising its power even over issues, such as peace and stability in the Balkans, in which it has played a crucial role. In the Middle East, Bush’s vision for the future of Palestine is based on total acceptance of the concepts advanced by Sharon, and very little regard for Arab sensitivities or justice.

This raises the question, proceeding from the policies and attitudes of the Bush administration, and those of its strategic partners in the Middle East and South Asia, whether we are witnessing the birth of a new imperialist era. Certainly, the tone and temper of the US under Bush is based on the fact that the military and technological ascendancy of the US was never so complete. Signs of the gap between US capabilities and those of Europe had become visible even during the peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Kosovo. More recently, in Afghanistan, European contingents have had to rely on the US logistic support.

Conscious constantly of the unchallengeable superiority of the US, President Bush and his close advisers are engaged in exercises to project this power in ways reminiscent of the age of gunboat diplomacy in the 19th century. The announced intention of resorting to pre-emption in use of its overwhelming conventional and nuclear might, and the arbitrary inclusion of a number of states in the “axis of evil” has raised concerns even in western countries over the apparent revival of imperialism in an age that was expected to focus on globalization and welfare.

Paul Kennedy, in his “Rise and Fall of Great Powers” had predicted a gradual decline of the US, fifteen years ago. However, he has recently revised his views, on account of the fact that US hegemony is being sustained by the economic and military clout it has acquired over the intervening period. The US economy has grown steadily to a point that though military spending has been increased to $400 billion, this constitutes only 3% of its GDP. The level of sophistication and reach acquired in weaponry makes the US strong enough to act unilaterally wherever it wishes, and provides the basis for the indifference shown to allies and potential foes alike in various decisions being taken by the Bush administration.

Observers not only in the Middle East and Europe, but also in the US are voicing fears that the Bush leadership has got their priorities wrong. In asserting its undeniable power, the US appears to be excessively concerned with a military response to threats to its security, after the trauma of 9/11, which represented the first major attack on the US mainland after the war of 1812. Europe, with its long history of wars and inter-state conflicts, is inclined to look for political rather than military solutions.