RECENT weeks have witnessed an evolution in Russia’s global and regional role which suggests that under the leadership of President Putin, the former superpower is gradually regaining its place as a major player in international politics by adjusting to new realities. From the South Asian standpoint, the initiative he took for a dialogue between India and Pakistan, on the eve of the Almaty summit, represented a move to project Russia’s influence in a manner designed to safeguard peace and stability and reduce the explosive level of tensions in the region.

However, the space being provided to Moscow by the Bush administration for an enhanced role is basically designed to secure Russian complicity in Washington’s strategic goals that are reflected in its missile defence strategy. In many ways, a paradigm shift is becoming visible in the relations between the Nato countries that also dominate the global economy, and Russia, which has suffered an economic decline since the end of the cold war.

The total Russian GDP, on a territory that straddles 11 times zones, is no more than that of the Netherlands. More than 70 per cent of its population is currently living a life of deprivation associated with the Third World countries. Accordingly, President Putin has chosen to focus on the country’s economic rehabilitation, and is according a secondary priority to its strategic and great power role.

As the largest country in the world, that extends from the Pacific to Eastern Europe, and which was the chief rival of the West during the second half of the 20th century, Russia retains an intrinsic importance as well as a capacity to play a great power role. It continues to have an awesome nuclear and missile capacity. Since assuming the leadership of the huge country, President Putin has shown a lively awareness of its core interests, accompanied by adaptability, and has won notable successes.

Despite his unilateralist approach, President Bush has also realized that his agenda of gaining unrivalled hegemony can be best achieved by carrying Russia along, and enlisting it in his cause rather than arousing its hostility. He has met Putin several times over the past year and a half, in a series of summit parleys that included meetings at Ljubljana, Shanghai, Washington, Moscow, and lastly the G8 summit in Canada. He has managed to move beyond the constraints of the past adversarial relationship, towards cooperation in multiple areas. The key aspect in the evolution of this relationship has been Russia’s gradual acceptance of the overarching US ambition to dominate the globe, through the BMD, for which it has been rewarded in tangible ways.

Initially, Russia had been suspicious of the goals of the Nato expansion, as well as of its new role in peacekeeping in Europe. Though Russia had been given a role in the Nato-Russia permanent council in 1997, the arrangement came to naught on account of Nato’s role in Kosovo. There was a worry in Moscow that NATO continued to regard Russia as the “potential enemy” in its strategic plans.

However, the Nato-Russia agreement concluded this year has assigned a specific role to Moscow in two-major areas, namely the fight against terrorism, and non-proliferation issues. The formal inclusion of Russia in G8 at the summit in Canada, together with the provision of $20 billion for the orderly dismantling of Russia’s huge nuclear and missile stockpiles have put the seal of finality on Russia’s abandonment of the hostility that was a legacy of the cold war years.

The net outcome of this shift has been that instead of being a contender for influence in many areas, Russia has fallen in with many western goals, even in parts of the world where it claimed a special historic role. The principal factor in this evolution has been the September 11 terrorist attack on the US, which has produced a significant convergence of perceptions. Both the US and Russia are working together in combating “terrorism” and “Islamic fundamentalism.”

Whereas Russia was sensitive to western incursions into the former republics of the Soviet Union, that are grouped together in the Commonwealth of Independent States, it has worked closely with Washington during its war against terrorism in Afghanistan, offering its good offices for coordination with the leaders of Central Asia. It is working closely with the US in the “working group on counter-terrorism.” Its stance, and role in regional conflicts in the Caucasus, the Middle East and lately South Asia has evolved in cooperation with the US, which has found it expedient to provide space for Russian initiatives that support US goals in various parts of Asia.

The outcome of the May 24 summit this year between Presidents Bush and Putin in Moscow has transformed the relationship between the two former rivals. The two leaders signed a declaration on the new strategic framework between them, guided by their common goal of countering terrorism, and promoting non-proliferation. They agreed to reduce the number of nuclear warheads held by each to 2000 by the year 2012, in keeping with the spirit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The new strategic framework is of significant advantages to Russia in many areas. It brings Russia into closer contact with the Nato-led security structure in Europe, thus reducing the possibility of military conflict in Europe. It provides for closer cooperation in the fight against organized crime, a major headache for Russia.

It greatly improves Russia’s economic prospects, and provides support to Russia’s entry into the WTO. The cooperation between them in combating international terrorism and the reduced defence burden on Russia are other benefits flowing from the new relationship. As Baker Spring of the US Heritage Foundation states, the Russian people should be cognizant of the many tangible benefits of the new relationship with the US, rather than be “passive and reluctant” supporters of the new policy that is no longer guided by a competition for dominance.

That there exist reservations about the paradigm shift to accepting the US pre-eminence should not cause any surprise. Since the end of the cold war, Russia has sought to resist total US dominance of the world by adopting certain broad principles. It has favoured a greater role for the UN, so that Washington’s goals face international scrutiny. Russia has also joined hands with other powers, notably China, in supporting a multipolar world order. with much of its territory in Asia, Russia attaches importance to relations with major Asian powers, including China, Japan, India and Iran. How is Russia likely to balance its overall relations, given its historical interest in promoting stability and peace in Asia that would be conducive to the pursuit of its national goals?

The relationship with China is likely to be used both to promote Russian economic and strategic interests as well as to secure better balance in the world order. The two are active sponsors of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that has included terrorism as a major challenge in its agenda. Russia will also seek to improve its economic relations with major Asian countries. President Putin had taken the initiative in May last to encourage an Indo-Pakistan dialogue.

In this connection, he had not only tried to arrange a meeting between the leaders of the two countries in Almaty, but also invited them to Moscow. President Musharraf accepted the invitation, while Mr Vajpayee continues to remain adamant. This attempt at mediation has brought about a better balance in Russia’s relations with South Asia nations though the strength of Indo-Russian ties should not be underestimated.

Russia also retains interest in the other major issues of Asia, and the visit of Foreign Minister Ivanov to North Korea reflected Moscow’s interest in playing a great power role in all areas at its periphery. We can expect some follow-up also on President Putin’s initiative in South Asia, and a moderating role by Moscow on Iraq. Russia’s interest in the diplomacy of the pipelines in the Caspian Basin can be expected to continue. The important factor in the nature and effectiveness of a role by Russia would depend upon its progress in economic reconstruction.

This brings us back to the importance of the economic agenda in Russia’s world role. Since the real scope for economic progress will be determined by the relationship with the West, trade and technical cooperation with the EU and the US will remain the most potent aspect of Russia’s foreign policy. Trade with the EU which has reached 37 per cent of Russia’s trade, will rise to 50 per cent in the near future. Though Russia has accepted the demise of the ABM Treaty, it will continue the policy of safeguarding its national interest wherever they are involved. Thus, even as the EU expands to the Baltic states, Russia will want to protect the interest of the large Business populations there.

As its economy becomes stronger, greater assertiveness, and competition for political and economic influence will doubtless replace Russia’s current policy of accommodating European and US goals. However, in the foreseeable future, Russia’s foreign policy will be predicated on cooperating with the West for rehabilitating its economy, which is still very weak after the shift from the command economy of the Soviet period, to the free market system.

One would also expect that Russia’s excessive preoccupation with terrorism, and Islamic fundamentalism, will give way to a more balanced approach, to pacify its own large Muslim population, and to facilitate mutually beneficial interaction with the many Islamic countries on its periphery. A stable and prosperous Russia can be a major factor in a peaceful international order.

INDIA and Pakistan have recently played host to a number of foreign dignitaries who visited South Asia to talk some sense into us and help us live in peace with each other. There were speeches, “high-level” meetings, assurances and hopes of a better future.

All this is of little use in convincing the common man of he sincerity of such attempts. The person in the street, whether in Lahore or Delhi, has long recognized that in addition to the realpolitik interests of the western governments in keeping both India and Pakistan off balance by increasing or decreasing support for either country, the developed countries of the world have a real economic interest in the continuing hostilities between the two countries.

Despite his meagre education and outward silence, he realizes that both India and Pakistan spend a huge amount of their annual budget on defence, which includes buying weapons from the very people who ostensibly come to shame us into more civilized behaviour towards our neighbours.

That their real agendas lie elsewhere is exemplified to him when he connects two pieces of news appearing on perhaps different days in the paper: British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw arrives in India on a peace mission, and the British government has managed to sell 60 Hawk Jet trainers (made by BAE) worth 1 billion pounds to India, which in the words of Indian Air Force Squadron Leader (retd.) Bakshi are “ideal” for ground offensive operations in Kashmiri terrain. That such deals are made during the peace missions has long been clear to the ‘natives’ and recently it has also started becoming clearer to the public in Britain.

That this deal, which had been outstanding for seventeen years, was finally signed during a mission to “draw the two countries back from the brink of war” would appear almost comic were it not so morbid. Perhaps the people of India and Pakistan would understand the perverse “necessity” of selling these jets in light of the recent economic recession in Britain, but unfortunately, and most realize this, it will only serve the short-term profit objectives of a handful of multinational corporations (MNCs), BAE prominent among them.

According to the recently published annual report on weapons exports, the British government approved a sharp increase in arms sales to Israel last year, despite its military activities in the occupied territories. In addition, the Guardian recently reported that “Britain also approved large increases [in military sales] to Pakistan, involved in a bitter dispute with India over Kashmir, and to countries with poor human rights records, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia.”

This comment in British media goes a long way in exposing the hypocrisy of the New Labour government, which did not waste any time after its election to unveil its “ethical foreign policy.” A cornerstone of that foreign policy was a ban on exports to countries engaged in suppressing civilians through violent means (Israel, India) and countries without democratic rule (Pakistan). In addition, there was to be a ban in exports to countries with potential to be engaged in wars in the near future.

That this so-called ethical foreign policy fell by the wayside a long time ago does not surprise anyone. As with everything else that New Labour touched, the main concern was with the immediate popularity poll showings and not with long-term commitments of any sort. While for the British chattering classes, the issue represents another hypocritical turnaround of the government, for Pakistanis and Indians, the issue carries more serious implications.

It represents another facet of the continuing imperialism that actively arranges situations where countries remain in a state of constant tension with their neighbours, earning at the same time the contempt of the western governments for not being able to solve their problems peacefully. It also keeps the developed economies prosperous by selling deadly weapons and thus causing many deaths directly and indirectly. Directly by the use of weapons sold by them to our governments; Indirectly, because of the diversion of precious resources to buying arms that should have gone into building hospitals, safe roads, and sanitation facilities.

Of course, we in the subcontinent should not feel singled out by the British for this favour of sale of arms, for this breach of stated policy. Such favours have recently also been bestowed upon South Africa, a country racked by AIDS, poverty and 35 per cent unemployment. Recently its army was reported to have only a handful of operating tanks and largely unfit troops. It has nevertheless agreed with the UK to buy two dozen sophisticated Hawk warplanes for 17 million pounds each — twice the price they really needed to pay if they looked for it elsewhere, according to independent analysts.

The Tony Blair government backed a 1999 promise to compensate for these high prices by what was touted as a South African Marshall Plan. The arms firm involved, BAE, would pour cash into civilian industrial investment, they said. Three years have passed and thus far those dazzling proposals for so-called offsets have not materialized. The South African top air force officials are on record having recommended the cheaper rival, the Italian MB339FD. Their objections became redundant, however, when Prime Minister Blair “convinced” President Thabo Mbeki in 1997 of the fairness of this deal, and how far it would go in furthering the “healthy relationship” between their two “great” nations. The key selling point of the British war planes — the civilian investment package — has not materialized save for 4m pounds investment by BAE in an ailing timber mill, hardly a venue for sophisticated transfer of technology that was also part of the sale plan.

Economics and politics have always been bedfellows. Recently, however, the large corporations, whose profitability has become synonymous with economic growth of a country, have been choking their political partners. The distinction between the interests of the defence industry (a political entity) and arms manufacturers such as BAE is a case in point.

While it is often stated that the defence industry, the manufacture of lethal weapons, is important because of its contribution to GDP and because it provides jobs, the reality is that there is always an alternative to any industry. Several recent studies have shown that the defence industry as a whole is not critical to the British economy although it makes several important non-economic contributions such as technological developments that spill over to civilian industries.

A study commissioned by the ministry of defence, proposes the hypothesis of a 50 per cent reduction in arms exports over two years, and comes up with these conclusions. There would be a one-off adjustment cost of between 2.1 billion and 2.5 billion pounds; there would be a loss of about 49,000 jobs, but this would be offset by the creation, over the following five years, of 67,000 jobs (albeit at marginally lower wages); there would be an ongoing structural cost to the MoD (due to higher procurement costs) of between 40 million and 100 million pounds — in other words, between 0.2 and 0.4 per cent of the 2000 defence budget.

Another study similarly shows that the total arms exports account for less than 1.2% of Britain’s overseas earnings and less than 0.3% of total employment. The figure for small arms is even less significant. Despite these relatively inconsequential contributions of the defence industry to the overseas earnings and overall employment, Britain remains one of the biggest arms exporters in the world. Why?

One possible answer is to do with the clout that BAE has in political circles rather than the importance of the defence industry to the country’s economy. It is not hard to trace the strong links between the ministry of defence and BAE since BAE started its life as a state entity. However, the real answer to the disproportionate influence it wields at 10 Downing Street lies with the funding of political campaigns, and old boys networks that are at the heart of a parliamentary political system. With its annual sales of 13.1 billion. pounds, BAE can afford to be very generous indeed to whichever party it chooses.

This generosity manifests itself in personal relationships with the right people. To take the most obvious case, “Sir” Dick Evans, the chairman of BAE Systems is an influential man. Evans got Blair to write a piece for the BAE Systems newsletter in the run-up to the 1997 election saying: “Winning exports is vital to the long-term success of Britain’s defence industry.”

ASIDE from the obvious physical discomforts, being ill for a long period of time fills the spirit with a terrible feeling of helplessness, but also with periods of analytic lucidity, which, of course, must be treasured. For the past three months now I have been in and out of the hospital, with days marked by lengthy and painful treatments, blood transfusions, endless tests, hours and hours of unproductive time spent staring at the ceiling, draining fatigue and infection, inability to do normal work, and thinking, thinking, thinking.

But there are also the intermittent passages of lucidity and reflection that sometimes give the mind a perspective on daily life that allows it to see things (without being able to do much about them) from a different perspective. Reading the news from Palestine and seeing the frightful images of death and destruction on television, it has been my experience to be utterly amazed and aghast at what I have deduced from those details about Israeli government policy, more particularly about what has been going on in the mind of Ariel Sharon.

And when, after the recent Gaza bombing by one of his F-16’s in which 9 children were massacred, he was quoted as congratulating the pilot and boasting of a great Israeli success, I was able to form a much clearer idea than before of what a pathologically deranged mind is capable of, not only in terms of what it plans and orders but, worse, how it manages to persuade other minds to think in the same delusional and criminal way. Getting inside the official Israeli mind is a worthwhile, if lurid, experience.

In the West, however, there’s been such repetitious and unedifying attention paid to Palestinian suicide bombing that a gross distortion in reality has completely obscured what is much worse: the official Israeli, and perhaps the uniquely Sharonian, evil that has been visited so deliberately and so methodically on the Palestinian people. Suicide bombing is reprehensible but it is a direct and, in my opinion, a consciously programmed result of years of abuse, powerlessness and despair. It has as little to do with the Arab or Muslim supposed propensity for violence as the man in the moon.

Sharon wants terrorism, not peace, and he does everything in his power to create the conditions for it. But for all its horror, Palestinian violence, the response of a desperate and horribly oppressed people, has been stripped of its context and the terrible suffering from which it arises: a failure to see that is a failure in humanity, which doesn’t make it any less terrible but at least situates it in a real history and real geography.

Yet the location of Palestinian terror — of course it is terror — is never allowed a moment’s chance to appear, so remorseless has been the focus on it as a phenomenon apart, a pure, gratuitous evil which Israel, supposedly acting on behalf of pure good, has been virtuously battling in its variously appalling acts of disproportionate violence against a population of 3 million Palestinian civilians. I am not speaking only about Israel’s manipulation of opinion, but its exploitation of the American equivalent of the campaign against terrorism without which Israel could not have done what it has done. (In fact, I cannot think of any other country on earth that, in full view of nightly TV audiences, has performed such miracles of detailed sadism against an entire society and gotten away with it.)

That this evil has been made consciously part of George W. Bush’s campaign against terrorism, irrationally magnifying American fantasies and fixations with extraordinary ease, is no small part of its blind destructiveness.

Like the brigades of eager (and in my opinion completely corrupt) American intellectuals who spin enormous structures of falsehoods about the benign purpose and necessity of US imperialism, Israeli society has pressed into service numerous academics, policy intellectuals at think tanks, and ex-military men now in defence-related and public relations business, all to rationalize and make convincing inhuman punitive policies that are supposedly based on the need for Israeli security.

Israeli security is now a fabled beast rather like a unicorn. It is always being hunted or looked for and always never found, and yet everlastingly made the goal of future action. That over time it has in fact become less secure and more unacceptable to its neighbours scarcely merits a moment’s notice. But then who challenges the view that Israeli security ought to define the moral world we live in? Certainly not the Arab and Palestinian readerships who for 30 years have conceded everything to Israeli security. Shouldn’t that ever be questioned, given that Israel has wreaked more damage on the Palestinians and other Arabs relative to its size than any country in the world, Israel with its nuclear arsenal, its air force, navy, and army limitlessly supplied by the US taxpayer?

As a result, the daily, minute occurrences of what Palestinians have to live through are hidden and, more important, covered over by a logic of self-defence and the pursuit of terrorism (terrorist infrastructure, terrorist nests, terrorist bomb factories, terrorist suspects — the list is infinite) which perfectly suits Sharon and the lamentable George Bush. Ideas about terrorism have thus taken on a life of their own, legitimized and re-legitimized without proof, logic or rational argument.

Consider for instance the devastation of Afghanistan, on the one hand and the “targeted” assassinations of almost 100 Palestinians (to say nothing of many thousands of “suspects” rounded-up and still imprisoned by Israeli soldiers) on the other: nobody asks whether all these people killed were in fact terrorists, or proved to be terrorists, or — as was the case with most of them — about to become terrorists. They are all assumed to be dangers by acts of simple, unchallenged affirmation.

All you need is an arrogant spokesman or two, like the loutish Ranaan Gissin, Avi Pazner, or Dore Gold, and in Washington a non-stop apologist for ignorance and incoherence like Ari Fleisher, and the targets in question are just as good as dead. Without doubts, questions, or demurral. No need for proof or any such tiresome delicacy. Terrorism and its obsessed pursuit have become an entirely circular, self-fulfilling murder and slow death of enemies who have no choice or say in the matter.

With the exception of reports by a few intrepid journalists and writers such as Amira Hass, Gideon Levy, Amos Elon, Tanya Leibowitz, Jeff Halper, Israel Shamir and a few others, public discourse in the Israel media has declined terribly in quality and honesty. Patriotism and blind support for the government has replaced skeptical reflection and moral seriousness. Gone are the days of Israel Shahak, Jakob Talmon, and Yehoshua Leibowitch.

I can think of few Israeli academics and intellectuals — men like Zeev Sternhell, Uri Avneri, and Ilan Pappe, for instance — who are courageous enough to depart from the imbecilic and debased debate about “security” and “terrorism” that seems to have overtaken the Israeli peace establishment, or even its rapidly dwindling Left opposition.

Crimes are being committed every day in the name of Israel and the Jewish people, and yet the intellectuals chatter on about strategic withdrawal, or perhaps whether to incorporate settlements or not, or whether to keep building that monstrous fence (has a crazier idea ever been realized in the modern world, that you can put several million people in a cage and say they don’t exist?) in a manner befitting a general or a politician, rather than in ways more suited to intellectuals and artists with independent judgment and some sort of moral standard.

Where are the Israeli equivalents of Nadine Gordimer, Andre Brink, Athol Fugard, those white writers who spoke out unequivocally and with unambiguous clarity against the evils of South African apartheid?

Every Palestinian has become a prisoner. Gaza is surrounded by an electrified wire fence on three sides; imprisoned like animals, Gazans are unable to move, unable to work, unable to sell their vegetables or fruit, unable to go to school. They are exposed from the air to Israeli planes and helicopters and are gunned down like turkeys on the ground by tanks and machine guns. Impoverished and starved, Gaza is a human nightmare, each of whose little pieces of episodes — like what takes place at Erez, or near the settlements — involves thousands of soldiers in the humiliation, punishment, intolerable enfeeblement of each Palestinian, without regard for age, gender, or illness.

Israel is frequently referred to as a democracy. If so, then it is a democracy without a conscience, a country whose soul has been captured by a mania for punishing the weak, a democracy that faithfully mirrors the psychopathic mentality of its ruler, General Sharon, whose sole idea — if that is the right word for it — is to kill, reduce, maim, drive away Palestinians until “they break.” He provides nothing more concrete as a goal for his campaigns, now or in the past, beyond that, and like the garrulous official in Kafka’s story he is most proud of his machine for abusing defenceless Palestinian civilians, all the while monstrously abetted in his grotesque lies by his court advisers and philosophers and generals, as well as by his chorus of faithful American servants.

In sum, Palestinians must die a slow death so that Israel can have its security, which is just around the corner but cannot be realized because of the special Israeli “insecurity.” The whole world must sympathize, while the cries of Palestinian orphans, sick old women, bereaved communities, and tortured prisoners simply go unheard and unrecorded. — Copyright Edward W. Said 2002.