UNILATERAL and arbitrary enforcement of nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament is now on top of the agenda of the United States of America. Provided the process is even-handed, transparent and altruistic, these are noble objectives. Put together, these two objectives become comprehensive nuclear disarmament. In good conscience, it is hard not to subscribe to these sublime aspirations.

Now, where to begin nuclear disarmament? Common sense would point the finger to the United States of America. All disarmament, particularly nuclear disarmament, ought to begin with the US. Indeed, Washington ought to lead a worldwide movement — not by percept alone but by a grand example, and with a bang.

There are plenty of perfectly valid, in fact, compelling reasons why the US should be the first in the world to voluntarily disarm itself in a comprehensive manner, beginning with its nuclear weapons of mass destruction, then its chemical and biological weapons arsenal.

To begin with, the US was the first to think in terms of developing nuclear weapons of mass destruction. It is thus the inventor of the idea of weapons of mass destruction. Then, it proceeded to work on the idea of mass destruction. It mobilized the requisite knowledge and devised the technology to develop weapons of mass destruction.

It is the United States and the United States alone that is the author of this diabolical invention. Having invented the science and technology to make nuclear weapons of mass destruction, Washington proceeded to develop an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Today it has the largest such arsenal.

Several estimates of the United States’ capability of mass destruction are doing the rounds. However, one can agree on the estimate that the United States has power ready at hand to destroy all life — repeat all life — on this planet many times over. This is a fearsome thought. But it is also very much a reality on the face of our planet.

One simply shudders to recall that the United States is the only power with nuclear weapons of mass destruction that has actually used these with cold-blooded calculation. Not once but twice. The first nuclear weapon was dropped on August 6, 1945, by the United States of America on the Japanese town of Hiroshima. Within minutes, it killed at least a third of the city’s 300,000 people. Most of those who survived lived precariously with some killer diseases afflicting them. Three days later, the United States dropped its second nuclear bomb on the Japanese town of Nagasaki with a population of 447,000. Here, too, a third of the population was wiped out in a few moments. The rest lived with all manner of horrendous diseases for the rest of their lives.

With its two strikes by nuclear weapons of mass destruction the United States had killed nearly a quarter of a million people. Recorded history holds no example of comparable mass destruction of human life with no more than two strikes.

The excuse then was to hasten the end of World War II. Nothing can be so utterly preposterous. The major part of the war had ended in May with the surrender in Europe by the Nazi Germany. The eastern part of the war was about to end, anyway. It was only a matter of days. Even if the war had prolonged another few weeks it would not have caused the destruction of human being on such a heart-breaking scale.

It should also be noted that the nuclear weapons of mass destruction were dropped not on military targets but on virtually undefended habitations of most thickly populated civilian centres. The idea clearly was to test these weapons of mass destruction. Any suggestion that this was necessary to hasten the end of the war must be rejected as a crudely crafted excuse to cover what ought to be rated as the worst case of crime against humanity.

Since the end of the World War II, the war that was presented to the world as the “war to end all wars,” hundreds of minor wars have been fought. The United States alone has waged 20 wars, the current one on Iraq should be numbered its 21st war to mark the beginning of the 21st century! And this war is supposed to be in aid of the destruction of the weapons of mass destruction. The hair-raising irony is that it is being waged by a power that has the largest arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and is not known to be reluctant to use them.

In addition to nuclear weapons of mass destruction, the United States is also the original author and inventor of chemical weapons of mass destruction. During the Vietnam war the United States field-tested a new generation of weapons of mass destruction. It felt justified in using chemical bombs, euphemistically called ‘defoliants’. In addition to destroying human lives, these chemical weapons laid waste hundreds of acres of dense tropical forests. Chemical bombs, at once, destroy human life as well as vegetation and the soil on which it grows. For years the lands so bombed remained scorched and infertile so much so that they could not grow even a blade of grass.

For more than half a century the United States has virtually bombarded the world ad infinitum with all manner of lectures, sermons, homilies and also dire warnings about democracy, freedom and free institutions, about the sanctity of human life, sovereign equality of states and what have you. The record of the United States itself is, for the most part, a negation of these very virtues and values.

Had Washington, with its almost limitless financial, material and technical resources and assets, been honest and sincere about serving the causes it has been harping on endlessly, this world would have been a place from which poverty, hunger, disease, deprivation of freedoms and denial of basic human rights would have been banished altogether, never to recur or return.

Take a look at the world today. Much more than half the human race is wallowing in poverty, cruelty, insecurity, pain, subjugation and humiliation. Most of these curses and shames are in one way or another linked to the way the most powerful state has chosen to conduct its affairs. Not one among the states that have lived (mostly for want of a choice) under the US tutelage or umbrella answers the description of a free, sovereign, democratic state where human rights and social justice prevailing. Not one.

It must be conceded that in its earlier past the United States had produced some of the shining stars like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and Tom Paine, who gave the world concepts of freedom in political as well as intellectual terms. They produced the first war of freedom and revolution and developed the concept of a republic. Their example provided inspiration for the French Revolution. There is nothing in common between Jefferson’s United States and the United States over which George W. Bush presides, pushing the planet to the gates of a foreseeable inferno — the apocalypse.

If the United States under George Bush and his partners in Britain and Israel are not halted, the chances of survival of this planet should be seen as in irredeemable peril. The manner in which George Bush has heaped scorn and contempt on the United Nations, is not only an insult to the whole civilized world but also poses a mortal danger to its existence where normal, decent human beings may find it possible to live, and manage to live on.

Never in recorded history was this world of ours and the life that it supports, so unsafe and so unstable as today. Tomorrow may be worse, if getting worse than the present state is at all possible, given George Bush’s America being on the rampage. If this tide is to be reversed, the first step should be a worldwide movement to disarm the United States in the most comprehensive manner. It must be persuaded to volunteer to destroy its weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, chemical and biological and others. If it succeeds, it should be able to prevail upon other major nuclear powers to follow suit. This process will find Pakistan to be happy to do likewise.

So long as the United States remains in its present wholly negative mood and employs aggressive means to browbeat smaller members of the world community, it will remain a menace, not a blessing for the world. Imagine a power that can do so much of good to the human race and protect nature actually posing the greatest danger to both. How sad and what a shame!

LAST week we discussed how the war in Iraq might disrupt the oil market and how that disruption might affect the already weakened global economy. A sharp hike in the price of oil will deliver a serious blow to Pakistan dependent as it is on fuel imports for meeting a significant part of its energy demand. The government was hoping to lift the rate of economic growth by at least a percentage point. Its optimism was well founded since some of the restructuring it had undertaken, particularly in the financial sector, had begun to bear fruit.

Investors were coming back and there was some expectation of returning the economy to the rates of growth it had seen in the decades of the 1960s and 1980s. However, a war-induced increase in the price of oil would shave off at least a quarter percentage point from the expected growth rate in 2002-2003 and, if the price rise persists for a while it could take off another half a percentage point from GDP’s growth in 2003-2004.

This new oil shock, even under the worst of circumstances, will not last very long, no more than six to nine months. What is likely to have a much longer lasting impact is the radical change towards admitting migrants from the developing world into the labour deficit industrial countries. This change in attitude is likely to be felt more by Muslim countries, in particular those that have large and young populations but with relatively low absorptive capacity into domestic economies of fresh arrivals into the work force. Pakistan is one such country that will be adversely affected.

I have written on this subject before. I have argued that it makes a great deal of sense for a country such as Pakistan to invest in the development of skills of its large and still rapidly growing population. This should be done not only to help the domestic economy improve its technological base. It should be done also to export the surplus workforce to the countries where skilled workers are in short supply.

An export policy that included the movement of skilled workers to foreign lands made good sense for Pakistan for several reasons. Such a policy helped relieve pressure on the domestic economy for creating new jobs. It added to the size of the Pakistani diasporas that already existed in three parts of the world — in the Middle East, Britain and North America. Large diasporas are good for the homeland. Countries exporting labour receive large amounts of remittances. For all developing countries these remittances now amount to more than $100 billion a year, nearly twice as much as the flow of official development assistance from rich to poor countries.

Wealthier members of the diaspora also become a good source of foreign direct investment (FDI) as has happened in China, El Salvador, Mexico and India. And the members of the diaspora that have acquired valuable managerial and technical skills can — and often do — provide them to their home countries.

There is now considerable prejudice in Europe and America against young men from Muslim countries. This prejudice was there even before terrorists struck America; it had increased enormously and palpably since that unfortunate event. “Our greatest challenge is overcoming our public image as terrorists,” wrote Asma Gul Hasan in a powerful little book written before “nine-eleven”. Hasan is the daughter of a successful Pakistani physician turned businessman. Her story is that of a child born into a Muslim family — in her case a family that had established itself well in America — and the difficulties she faced in reconciling her Pakistani roots with aspirations common to all young Americans. “There is always a rush to lump all Muslims together, to interpret Islam as a belligerent faith, and to characterize Muslim women as universally oppressed,” Hasan continued.

Although America was the main target of the angry Muslim young men who piloted four planes on suicide missions on September 11, 2001, it is revealing that it is in Europe where the anti-immigration right has been most vocal against admitting newcomers from Muslim countries. The reason for America’s still greater tolerance for the Muslims in its society reflects the greater openness towards foreign cultures. Europe has always been more protective about what it regards its culture and heritage.

To illustrate this point — the difference between Europe and America towards the acceptance of Islam as a force in their societies — it is worth quoting at length from a long article by the journalist Oriana Fallaci published by The Wall Street Journal in its issue of March 13. That was not the first time that Fallaci had vented her extreme anger at the rapid entry of Islam into West Europe. She wrote a book on the subject that drew the attention of both the right and the left in Europe and also contributed to her vilification by a large number of protesters who joined the coordinated protest staged on February 15 against America’s march towards war in Iraq.

“In Europe your enemies are everywhere, Mr Bush. What you quietly call ‘differences of opinion’ are in reality pure hate. Because in Europe pacifism is synonymous with anti-Americanism, sir, and accompanied by the most sinister revival of anti-Semitism anti-Americanism triumphs as much as in the Islamic world. Haven’t your ambassadors informed you? Europe is no longer Europe. It is a province of Islam, as Spain and Portugal were at the time of the Moors. It hosts almost 16 million immigrants and teems with mullahs, imams, mosques, burqas, chadors. It lodges thousands of Islamic terrorists whom governments don’t know how to identify and control. People are afraid, and in waving the flag of pacifism — pacifism synonymous with anti-Americanism — they feel protected.”

Fallaci continued to develop the theme she had first expounded in considerable detail in her book, The Rage and the Pride, that Islam was like a cancer that was rapidly attacking the body of Europe and, like all cancers, needed to be removed before it brought death to its victim. “As I write in my book when I call bin Laden the tip of the iceberg and I define the iceberg as a mountain that has not moved for 1,400 years, that for 1,400 has not changed, that has not emerged from its blindness, freedom and democracy are totally unrelated to the texture of Islam. To the tyranny of theocratic states. So their people refuse them, and even more they want to erase ours.”

There is much greater inhibition — and also much less tolerance — in the United States for the open expression of such hatred against a religion or a class of people. It is this attitude that led to the fall from grace and, eventually from power, of Senator Trent Lott, once the majority leader in the Republican-controlled Senate. Lott’s offence was to endorse the view still held by a significant number of people that the legal protection offered to the country’s black population ever since the issue of civil rights gained salience in the country was a mistake. Had that mistake not been committed, the US would not be faced with the problems it had now to deal with, he told an audience in Washington.

In spite of America’s greater openness towards all cultures and the pride of its people that it has shown the capacity to absorb many of these in its own society, “nine-eleven” produced a reaction against Islam and the Muslim community. The programme of finger-pointing and registering all males from two dozen Muslim countries increased the nervousness of several immigrant communities about their status in the post “nine-eleven” United States. This led to a sizable re-migration of Pakistanis from the United States to Canada, a development that received considerable coverage in the main-stream US press. The treatment that was being meted out to young males from Pakistan (and other Muslim countries) was the principal subject of discussion between the senior policymakers from Islamabad and Washington during the January 2003 visit of foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri to the United States.

The main question, therefore, is whether the change in attitude towards Muslim emigration should result in rethinking the strategy I have been advocating for some time, aimed at using a large and young population as an asset rather than a liability. I remain of the view that the backlash against the growing numbers of Muslims in the West would continue to surface off and on. It is not any different from the hostility experienced by other communities when they too increased their presence in Europe and North America. The treatment of Irish Catholics and East European Jews in the United States has occupied serious historians for years. Even today the possibility of the rise of anti-Semitism worries the American Jews as is shown by the furore caused in early March by the remarks of US congressman James P. Moran, a democrat from Northern Virginia.

If this has been the history of the gradual absorption of all newcomers into American society and its economic and political systems, we should not re-orient our development strategy based, in part, on the export of trained workers to the developed world. This is particularly the case as the demographic decline of the West has begun to attract the attention of senior policymakers in Europe, North America and Japan.

In his February 27, 2003, speech, US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan focused on the growing challenges presented by an aging population. He warned that the major industrialized nations may lose control over government finances, private investments and productivity trends unless action is taken soon. The argument runs as follows: “As the elderly retire they stop savings and spend down their retirement funds. The collective shift towards consuming more and saving less leaves a nation with less money for private investments, limiting the increases in productivity needed to improve standards of living.”

Of the major European countries, Italy has the fastest aging population and, therefore, the greatest need for an infusion of young immigrants. Given its historical ties to the Muslim countries of North Africa (the Maghreb), Italy has looked to them to supply the much needed workforce. This is one reason for the expression of extreme ire by Oriana Fallaci against Islam and Muslims present in Europe. While not recognizing that the economic future of her country depends on migration, she does not like the solution — the rapid Islamization of her country and other parts of Europe.

The backlash in Europe and America against the migration of young men from the Muslim countries is a transient phenomenon that would pass once “nine-eleven” and the second Iraq war recede into history. What will not recede is the demographic transition of industrial countries, the serious economic problems posed by it, and large-scale emigration of the young from the world’s populous countries as the only plausible solution. The harassment of Muslim migrants should be treated as only a glancing blow to the economies of the countries from which they come.

THE state vigilantism we see the US and Britain pursuing today in Iraq is a singularly disturbing phenomenon. It may come gift-wrapped and have ‘freedom’ writ large on it. But it has a cold, hard centre. And it has brought carnage, suffering, horror — and now anarchy — in its wake. It is the more disquieting, in the present context, for having a thinly disguised hegemonic agenda and an eye to long-term material gain.

The phenomenon is, clearly, ideologically motivated. Yet the ideology behind it is unlike any the world has witnessed before. The current action in Iraq does not in any way echo the Soviet interventions in the cold war era. Nor does it remind one of the British occupation of India. There may be signs of a throwback to the US attack on Libya in the eighties or even of a parallel with Saddam Hussein’s annexation of Kuwait, but the differences by far outweigh the similarities in these cases.

There is, in fact, a brand new ideological dimension to the present military campaign, one that seems forbiddingly authentic and with roots that possibly go as far back as the Christian zealots who had their sights on Jerusalem and the Holy Land in days of yore. According to a recent American media analysis, the Iraq war is the point of convergence between the Episcopalian fundamentalism of George W. Bush and the “pro-Likud” leanings of some of his neo-conservative associates in the administration. It is indeed more than that. At some level it is the product of what Theodore Roszak terms the “entrenched consensus” of a totalitarian state seeking to realize itself. However,what seems to give it its unique flavour is its somehow inspired one-dimensionalism as embodied in the US president’s single-minded “resolve”.

Here lies the rub. What must concern us is not just the war on Iraq or indeed its consequences for the region but something else: the fact of its being the result of a sort of historical parti pris, a drastic strategic position taken by the US, in a manner reminiscent of Nazi Germany, in relation to the rest of the world.

There can be no turning back from this point for the US. The only way is forward: to Iraq’s two recalcitrant neighbours — Syria and Iran. The warnings emanating from top US officials, and, lately, George Bush himself, in respect of these two countries, indicate, a clear drawing of battle lines for the time being on hold.

This would, at any rate, seem to be in the scheme of things. What we perceive here is the world’s sole superpower not simply in dangerous interventionist mode but, in the light of the territorial continuum implied by the ‘Axis of Evil’, pushing for systematic and formal domination of the Middle East. This appears to have been prompted by a number of things. The events of 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ aside, there is the problem of George Bush’s legitimacy as president and, tied in with this, his need to make history more convincingly than his father in the 1991 Gulf war. Then, there is the Perle-Wolfowitz combine with its benevolent focus on Israel.

In equally important degree is the fact of the economic bonanza of the Clinton era having worn thin. We must also take account of the overall perspective of historical fact and necessity, of the hi-tech arsenal of the US crying out to be used for a historic purpose. Above all, the subtle adjustment of the US role — from slightly gratuitous global policeman to superpower visibly in the saddle — is a symptom of its new-fangled ideology: of dynamic and productive engagement.

How, then, are we to construe the so-called ‘roadmap for peace’, announced by George Bush after the trans-Atlantic summit at the Azores? What do the two leaders of the allies, Bush and Blair, mean by this in the context of Palestine? Do they mean peace as an equitable mechanism designed to give Palestinians their genuine social and political rights in an autonomous state? Or is what is on the agenda enforced pacification, a pax Americana, dictated via the newly acquired US base in Iraq and intended to perpetuate the concept of Palestine as a beleaguered ghetto?

As for the three European powers — France, Russia and Germany — the general perception is that, having earlier vigorously opposed the use of force in Iraq, they are now apparently eager to ratify the Anglo-US aggression. Since the fall of Baghdad, their tenor has changed perceptibly. No great clamour has issued from them over the terrible destabilization of Iraq, the collapse of its infrastructure or the brutalization of its citizens in the aftermath of the war.

Instead, thee has been talk, at least in German quarters, of a need for democratization in the region. The overthrow of the Saddam regime has elicited unanimous approval among the ‘peace trio’. And appropriate feelers have been put out in the direction of the US and Britain apropos of UN involvement in post-war reconstruction. It would appear that, while having been loath to sully their hands in an unpopular military engagement in the Middle East, these countries are not at all averse to a moral compromise entailed by their closing ranks with the victors when it comes to sharing the fruits of their enterprise.

Where does that leave the Arab world? Governments notwithstanding, the Arab street is, by all accounts, seething with ill-concealed rage at the humiliating debacle faced by Iraq. By and large, there is a pervasive sense of despair in the Muslim world. As in the case of 9/11 for the US, Muslims everywhere appear to be voicing just one sentiment: their world will never be quite the same again.

Pakistan must bide its time and wait for events to unfold in the Middle East before deciding on a suitable response to the emerging geopolitical realities. It cannot, however, afford to sit still. It must respond to the imperatives of historical change around it with due adjustments in its foreign policy. It is relevant that India has lately been cut to size by the US which seems to have arrogated the right of ‘preemptive strike’ exclusively to itself.

This does not mean that we can throw all caution to the winds — only that we can perhaps focus on framing a foreign policy which is more than just India-and-Kashmir-specific. We must, of course, be alert to the nuances of US policy with regard to Syria and Iran, bearing in mind that a new world order is in the making before us. At the same time, we could be reviewing our slightly worn-out ‘Pakistan first’ slogan. It smacks of complacency more than nationalism. It also has a somewhat insular ring to it. In any case, it should be a given of our overall national posture rather than the crucial impulse behind it.

With the Muslim world in crisis, we cannot today ignore our own specific failure which is due, in part, to the peculiar cleavages at the heart of our society. This consists not just in the contradiction between religion, on the one hand, and liberalism, on the other, but the inability of either to produce a sustainable culture. Broadly speaking, religion in Pakistan has led, at best, to the growth of dogma, sectarianism and militarism. Liberalism has, for its part, fostered an altogether effete breed. Barring a few exceptions, the optimum it has offered has been opportunism, sycophancy and a sterile intellectual posturing coupled with a tendency to apologise for a religion taken as somehow undercutting modernity.

Neither the religious nor the liberal identity will, therefore, really do. Educated Pakistanis will have to endeavour to forge a more composite self-image. It is in their best interest to do so, if only because this may dispel the schizophrenia besetting society and lead to the establishment of a credible democracy. To do anything less will be to have missed a unique opportunity.