THE doctrine of preemptive war or “anticipatory self-defence” is the US response to international terrorism that President Bush proclaimed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. It was an ultimatum to the world to choose, in his global war on terror, to side “with us or against us”.

On terrorism, the National Security Strategy document of September 20, 2002, spells out America’s determination to “destroy any terrorist or state sponsor of terror which attempts to gain or use weapons of mass destruction (WMD); to exercise our right of self-defence by acting preemptively against such terrorists; denying further sponsorship, support, and sanctuary to terrorists by convincing or compelling states to accept their sovereign responsibilities; make clear that all acts of terrorism are illegitimate; support moderate and modern governments, especially in the Muslim world to ensure conditions and ideologies that promote terrorism do not find fertile ground in any nation”.

In US official pronouncements condemning terrorism, its root cause is stated to be the hatred of terrorists and their sponsors for the rights and freedoms embedded in American civilization. That a sense of injustice, anger and despair could be the prime motivation of those who revolt against defeatism and powerlessness imposed under alien brutal occupation, is a taboo subject for most of the West’s governments and news media. World Bank chairman Wolfensohn is among the few who bear witness to the fact that “aggression, war and the lack of hope, provoke a hate which can lead to terrorism”.

By declaring all acts of terrorism illegitimate, the US rejects the right of resistance against foreign occupation and alien subjugation. Historically this right has been at least tacitly recognized. During World War II, Winston Churchill as prime minister of Great Britain gave the call to resistance by partisans in Nazi-occupied Europe to “set Europe ablaze”. The UN General Assembly has adopted a number of resolutions legitimizing freedom struggles. The great decolonization process of the last fifty years has brought to power leaders who were once considered terrorists. The admission of their countries to membership of the United Nations has accorded them the imprimatur of legitimacy.

Kashmir is an outstanding example of the legitimacy of the struggle for self-determination. Pakistan and the countries of the Third World condemn terrorism while considering liberation struggles to be legitimate.

The war on terror, in which Pakistan is a key ally of the United States, is being viewed by a section of the World media as a war against Islam even though Bush and Blair have been at pains to rebut this notion. Nevertheless, some prominent political and religious personalities in the US and Europe seem to think that there is an organic link between Islam and terrorism.

Margaret Thatcher in the International Herald Tribune wrote: “Islamic terror” as unique: “Islamic extremism today, like Bolshevism in the past, is an armed doctrine. It is an aggressive ideology promoted by fanatical devotees...”.

A segment of the evangelical Protestant community in the US asserts that Islam is “evil”. A part of the neoconservative intelligentsia in Washington is trying to turn the Bush administration’s “war against terrorism” into a war against Muslim civilization and the Islamic religion. (IHT, December 5)

“The Muslims have become the modern day equivalent of the evil empire,” said the Reverend Richard Cizik, vice-president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals. (IHT, May 28, 2003). About 4,500 evangelical preachers have been trained to be sent to Muslim countries to convert Muslims to Christianity — a most ill-advised project that would be seen by the Muslim faithful as an offensive against Islam.

In this context, the Muslim world owes a tribute to the Pope who, by his pronouncements, has countered this bigotry and the pernicious thesis of “clash of civilizations.”

Condoleezza Rice, National Security Adviser to President Bush, observed six months after 9/11 that “an earthquake of the magnitude of 9/11 can shift the tectonic plates of international politics.... This is a period not just of grave danger, but of enormous opportunity”.

President Bush, seizing the opportunity presented by this “tectonic shift”, has defined the goals of his foreign and security policy in his addresses on the State of the Union to the US Congress in January 2002; to the West Point Military Academy in June 2002, and in his National Security Strategy paper of September 20, 2002. These documents and the US Nuclear Posture Review unfold Bush’s vision of a “distinctly American internationalism that reflects a union of our values and our national interests.”

According to the National Security Strategy of the United States, “Our comprehensive strategy to combat Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) includes: proactive counter-proliferation efforts. We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed. To forestall or prevent hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will if necessary, act preemptively. The United States will not use force in all cases to preempt emerging threats, nor should nations use preemption as a pretext for aggression.”

This doctrine of unilateral military preemption violates international law on the rights and duties of states and in particular Article 51 of the UN Charter which limits the use of force in self-defence to the sole case of armed attack.

As for a “distinctly American internationalism that reflects a union of American values and interests”, the neoconservative realpolitik is claimed to be a fusion of unilateral projection of force to guarantee American interests and Wilsonian idealism of democracy and the rule of law. But the most inspiring legacy of Wilson — the right of subject peoples to self-determination — a quintessentially American value, finds no mention in the National Security Strategy.

The Bush doctrine dismayed public opinion in Europe and in many other countries in the world. Questions were asked — what if other powerful states assert the right to attack their weaker neighbours by invoking the right to preemption in the name of self-defence? President Chirac and several US legislators themselves worried about the precedent of preemption in the context of India-Pakistan tension and possible China-Taiwan confrontation. Would not the world order be subverted by the implication flowing from preemption, — of might being right?

The fall-out of the preemption doctrine was predictable. India has seized upon it to declare that New Delhi had a better justification to launch preemptive strikes to defend itself against cross-border terrorism from Pakistan.Secretary of State Colin Powell was prompt in dismissing this Indian claim. “I do not think there is a direct parallel between the two situations”, he stated.

But the Indian ministers concerned deemed it fit to reiterate their belligerent statements. And India’s National Security Adviser visiting Washington in mid-May proposed an anti-terror alliance between India, US and Israel that “would have the political will and moral authority to take bold decisions in extreme cases of terroristic provocation.”

Observes the eminent Indian columnist Praful Bidwai: “The BJP’s fascination with Zionism is rooted in Islamophobia, and hyper-nationalism. Its ideology is Sharon’s machismo and ferocious jingoism. It sees Hindus and Jews (plus Christians) as forming a ‘strategic alliance’ against Islam and Confucianism.”

In February 1992, Paul Wolfowitz as undersecretary for defence policy and Zalmay Khalilzad of NSC staff, completed a project initiated by then Defence Secretary Cheney on America’s defence and foreign policy for the post-cold war world, called Defence Policy Guidance (DPG) which was leaked to the New York Times in March that year. By the Times account, the policy paper asserted that “America’s mission was to ensure that no rival superpower emerged in any part of the world. The United States must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role. It described Russia and China as potential threats.”

The authors of the document therefore recommended that “the Pentagon take measures to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in such countries as North Korea, Iraq and some of the former Soviet republics.”

The draft DPG now finds expression in the National Security Strategy document as follows: “We must build and maintain our defences beyond challenge through our willingness to sue force in our own defence and in defence of others; deter threats against US interests, allies and friends, and decisively defeat any adversary if deterrence fails...”.

The overwhelming military might of the United States has enabled it through unilateralism and preemptive war to decree and impose regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq and establish an imperium and Israeli hegemony over the Middle East.

The justification for the war on Iraq was proclaimed by Bush and Blair to be an imminent threat to their countries from Saddam Hussein’s clandestine possession of weapons of mass destruction — chemical, biological and nuclear — and the danger of his delivering thee weapons to Al Qaeda terrorists. The Security Council weapons inspectors could not find them, nor a thousand inspectors deployed by the US in occupied Iraq for over seven weeks have had any success. And now Paul Wolfowitz has admitted to Vanity Fair that the WMD issue was never the US’s prime reason for invading Iraq.

For years before the Bush administration took office, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz were calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein on the ground he posed a danger to the region and in particular to Israel — a call echoed by the neoconservatives associated with them in the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). In their thinking, with Saddam Hussein’s elimination, Israel could choose the peace it wanted with the Palestinians. Malaysia’s outspoken Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad charged at the 116-nation Nonaligned Movement’s (NAM summit meeting at Kuala Lampur that “a war against Iraq was no longer just a war against terrorism; it is in fact a war to dominate the world.”

Tony Blair has hailed the US-UK conquest of Iraq through preemptive war as “a defining moment” for the 21st century. He wants the world to believe that their occupation of Iraq will bring democracy to the Iraqis and an end the Palestine-Israel conflict. If at all this comes about, it will be peace on Israel’s terms — a Palestinian statelet of separated cantons or Bantustans with provisional borders for an indefinite period and no final status agreement on an independent sovereign Palestine with pre-June 1967 West Bank and Gaza borders, nor a just settlement of the refugee problem and no Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem.

The new international order that Washington’s neoconservatives, who espouse Israel’s Likud ideology, would like to construct is to be one in which weaker nations are to be disarmed and democratic institutions installed by military means when necessary.

In his “defining moment”, Blair nevertheless deems it fit to voice Europe’s deep concern over the direction of American foreign and security policy that is being set by the neoconservatives, and advises his hyperpower ally to treat Europe “as a partner, not a servant.”

The writer is a former foreign minister of Pakistan.

IT IS sensible not to employ the humble cliche while writing; but never underestimate its utility. (The word is French and comes from die-casting and block-printing, hence the implication of repetition.) A cliche could never have survived if it was useless. It always conveys an essential, albeit boring, truth. What are the cliches required to conduct a fruitful India-Pakistan policy?

A cool head is paramount. Since most of the dialogue between the two nations leads to a throbbing vein in the temple, the virtues of a cool head can hardly be overstated. A cool head must sit on steady nerves. Truth has been, correctly, called the first casualty of war; nerves are the first casualty of the undeclared war between India and Pakistan. The political market is crowded with those who twist sensitive nerves in order to manipulate policy.

It helps, after all, to have a blank face.

Nothing answers an irritating, or uninformed, or provocative question better than a blank face. The first question raised after Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee’s third and most careful search for peace with Pakistan was: why now? Why not yesterday, or tomorrow? There may be a dozen secret answers to the question. You cannot, for example, shake hands with only one hand. Someone else has to want to shake hands with you. It looks silly to keep shaking your own hand in thin air, waiting for the other guy to turn up. You need therefore reliable information that you will not be left holding thin air when you do your stretching exercises. But this information cannot be passed on at a press conference. This is where the blank face becomes terribly useful, particularly if it has a smile stretched across it. A tight-lipped smile is even better.

But above all else, peace between India and Pakistan requires a warm heart. Intellectuals, fact-clicking historians, professional diplomats and full-time analysts will sneer at the thought. I stand my ground. A cold heart in South Asia leads only to cold blood.

This is Mr Vajpayee’s greatest virtue. He wants peace from his heart. He believes in a future where the people of India and Pakistan can live together as friends, as colleagues in business and trade, as partners in a common culture created by people of many faiths, and eventually as two nations who are forced, by the logic of their self-interest, to find common purpose in key strategic goals. Much of this may sound impossible, or romantic, or too visionary; but he has the courage to start again, even after two failures. It requires courage to start the first time. It needs true conviction to start a third time.

A soft heart has not blinded him to the difficulties ahead, nor diluted the rigorous mental analysis of the process and progress. He has thought about this final peace initiative in his lifetime, his own phrase, for a while. The structure began to be set up from last summer, a moment when India and Pakistan were squaring off for a war that threatened to turn nuclear. A holocaust became part of the public discourse, and estimates of dead were placed at around 12 million. One might have added that the living would probably have envied the dead at the end of it all. But it was in the midst of such a mood that the first play was made: an announcement that mistakes had been made in Kashmir, and they would not be repeated. One vital rectification was made through a commitment, that last year’s elections to the assembly would be completely free and fair.

Pakistan led the chorus of disbelief. Ironically, such was the scepticism attached to this promise made by a BJP prime minister who had the National Conference as a partner in his government, that those who might have benefited hugely from a free election refused to take part. Rebel, or rebellious, political organizations like the Hurriyat or the People’s Democratic Freedom Party led by Shabbir Shah refused to believe that Delhi would permit its ally to be defeated. They are now paying the price of misjudgment. The BJP was wiped out in these elections in Jammu, but the principle won. That set the stage for the future.

The future has to be carefully defined. At what point in time can events be made to swivel in the direction of your choice? It is a decision that only a leader can make, using facts (both public and secret), hints, back-channel suggestions, and instinct. There is no substitute or explanation for instinct. You either have it or you don’t. During Lahore and Agra Mr Vajpayee was sabotaged; but his instincts were correct both times. He reached out to those in Pakistan who were willing to respond. They did respond, they did travel forward until the sight of success created barriers they could not surmount.

The Jammu and Kashmir elections established the first proposition of the Vajpayee formula: the solution of the Kashmir problem must begin in Kashmir. This was not romanticism; this was realism. There was no substitute for the healing touch; and he found a man with those steady nerves in Srinagar who believed as much, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. Winning the peace takes longer, and is more complicated, than winning a war.

He then took that proposition a very dramatic step forward. The key to his third peace initiative is not the fact that it happened, but that it was initiated in the Kashmir valley. Never before has an offer for such a dialogue with Pakistan been made from the soil of Kashmir. On the few occasions when Indian prime ministers have spoken in Kashmir, they have either paid lip service to coexistence with Pakistan or used the opportunity to be hostile. Mr Vajpayee has taken the most decisive step of his political life from the valley. All sorts of signals lay in the gesture. He was speaking on behalf of the Kashmiri people, expressing their growing desire to end these long years of bloodshed.

He was also implicitly recognizing that Kashmir was the critical dispute between the neighbours. By deliberately dispensing with traditional accusations against Pakistan (such a paragraph had been written into the text of his speech but was later dropped) he was sending an assurance that he was ready to forget the past if Pakistan was ready to recognize the future.

That is the substance of the Vajpayee faith. Lose the past, and find the future. He believes that this is the greatest legacy he can bequeath to his own country, and he is not wrong.

That pesky little question will not go away, however blank a face we put on it: why now?

Two seminal events have taken place since the Agra summit two hot summers ago: 9/11 and the Iraq war. The Agra summit collapsed over a wrangle about cross-border terrorism. Would it have collapsed on this issue if it had been held after 9/11? Perhaps the two neighbours would have found different reasons for dispute, but not this.

Mr Vajpayee was not too oblique when he said at his press conference in Kashmir that the world had changed once again after Iraq. He did not elaborate; nor could he. A prime minister can indicate where the feathers are, he cannot ruffle them.

The worry on our subcontinent about American intervention has little to do with the formal agenda, Kashmir. No imposition will work. But there are deep suspicions about a hidden agenda. Iraq was on the hidden agenda long before opinion was shepherded or bullied towards action, and then military success became the sole justification for that action. President Pervez Musharraf first drew attention to this by a deliberately uncharacteristic remark a few weeks ago, when he suggested that Pakistan might be America’s target after Iraq. What did he mean by this? He was giving notice that America did not want to see any Muslim nation with nuclear weapons, because it could not predict how those weapons might be used in the future.

If America does attempt to control, or sanitize, or simply destroy Pakistan’s nuclear capability, then it will seek a parallel approach towards the Indian nuclear programme. It is therefore in the self-interest of both India and Pakistan to come to terms before others impose terms on them. One cannot define how deep this worry is, or indeed how far America is willing to go in pursuit of such an aim. But there is enough worry to make the neighbours talk to each other. That is good news.

As we have discovered in the past, there is nothing more dangerous than good news. But Mr Vajpayee has danced through minefields before. One can only hope that President Musharraf has learnt to foxtrot by now.

The writer is editor-in-chief of Asian Age, New Delhi.

SOME weeks ago thee was a heated debate in the Frontier provincial assembly about what constitutes an Islamic dress. This followed the protests of the opposition on the MMA government’s decision to abolish European trousers and necktie as the prescribed uniform for boys’ schools and their substitution by shalwar kameez.

The discussion gave rise to many sound and many inane arguments about clothes, though what I thought was the 64,000 dollar question was never asked.

Before I come to that question, I wish to divest myself of a thought, a complaint with which you may or may not agree. I am always bothered by the fact that we do not make a distinction between Islamic and Muslim. I have always been surprised to see even learned men and women failing to do so.

For example, a Muslim scholar may be a scholar of chemistry and not of Islam at all, and an Islamic scholar may be well-versed in Islam without being a Muslim. Muslim food is not Islamic food, nor is Muslim dress Islamic dress. In fact there are no such things as Islamic food and Islamic dress.

The question that I would have asked in the Frontier legislature, after everyone had given full vent to their unscholarly views about the so-called Islamic nature of shalwar kameez — some had even brought in the Holy Prophet (PBUH) to bolster their arguments — would have been this: “Will some honourable member, or the honourable chief minister or the honourable Speaker, tell me one thing of which I am sadly ignorant — did the Messenger of God wear shalwar kameez?”

I leave it to my readers to imagine what the flustered wiseacres would have said to this, though I know their comment would have been, “That is not the point, etc. etc.”

There is no need for me to go further into this aspect of the discussion so I leave it here. I now go on to elaborate on the matter of dress, public and private, as it has affected me personally, and also narrate some facts and incidents relevant to the subject that I have myself experienced or which have come to my notice. I am no radical or iconoclast so far as dress is concerned, but I do value my independence in the matter, and I used to intensely dislike government orders about what to wear officially when I was in service. What follows is stray random thoughts.

Some readers might recall my piece a couple of years ago about the refusal of Lahore’s Gymkhana Club to serve me when a member friend took me and my wife to lunch there, because I was in shalwar kameez. There was a hot controversy about it in the press, though I admit that I ignited it by writing a letter to the defunct Pakistan Times narrating the incident. Mr Z A Bhutto was Prime Minister at that time and shalwar kameez was, so to say,the court dress, but the club couldn’t care less. In fact its spokesman described it as vulgar and rustic in the ensuing controversy. This was the first and only time I was involved with anyone on the issue of what to wear.

Long before that, when a bureaucrat would rather be seen dead than in shalwar kameez in working hours, I got enamoured of it during a two-year stint in Peshawar. So, in official meetings on my return to Lahore, I used to be the only one dressed in that fashion, unless, by some coincidence, the late M. Masud, a senior of the CSP, known popularly as khaddarposh, was also attending. This dress was such an oddity at that time that whenever I wore it I was invariably asked if I was going to a funeral.

But when General Ziaul Haq, in his attempts to make us “very” Muslim, laid down that shalwar kameez was to be the official dress I began to be seen in a three-piece suit, as long as I was not admonished by my boss. As I’ve just said, I was no radical and my deviation from the dress code could never take the form of a revolt. I just liked to dress as my whim dictated, and honestly believed that only small minds gave it importance. The adage “Dress maketh the man” was invented by tailors and not by sages.

Have you ever seen a full length photograph of Khushwant Singh, the irrepressible Indian writer? He always wears a shalwar. It was the dress of all Sikhs and Hindus in Muslim-dominated Punjab and the Frontier before the partition, till the Sikhs opted for the straight pajama so that they shouldn’t be taken as following a Muslim tradition. Nowadays their example is being followed by some followers of the MQM who make it a point not to wear a shalwar and wear a pajama instead, in order to distinguish themselves from Punjabis, Pathans and Balochis.

With Muslims ruling India for a thousand years, the pajama became as much an Indian dress as the Hindu dhoti, though Mahatma Gandhi didn’t seem to think so as an anecdote will show. In 1942, Mr Ismaili, accompanied by son Gulgee, now the famous painter, came to stay with us in Aligarh — the father to act as lecturer in the Muslim University Engineering College (where my father was principal) and the son to join the college as student. He told us that, in his youth, he had been a passionate admirer of Mahatma Gandhi and, one day, got on to the train in which the prophet of non-violence and civil disobedience was travelling.

All the windows of the third class bogey reserved for the Mahatma were open and it was all that Mr Gandhi could do to keep his dhoti in check in the strong wind. After seeking permission, Mr Ismaili asked, “Mahatmaji, the pajama is also an Indian dress and Pandit Nehru invariably wears it. Have you ever considered using it?” According to Mr Ismaili, the great man gave him an icy look and said, “Mein nay abhi is pay vichar nahin kya,” (I have not yet pondered over the matter), and averted his face.

By the way, what does the Frontier assembly have to say about Iranian diplomats and leaders (other than the ayatollahs) wearing European dress (without the tie) and not taking to the “Islamic” shalwar kameez? Considering that Iran is the only genuine Islamic democracy in the world shouldn’t its government be taught a thing or two by the NWFP government?

WHO could have known that the opening years of the twenty-first century would be so surreal? Following the colonization of Iraq, the conquerors turned their eyes towards Syria. Whatever they saw failed to sustain their interest for long. Their gaze has now been trained on Iran.

Could this have anything to do with the fact that Iran is a prominent oil producer whereas Syria boasts no comparable subterranean riches? Of course not. The heat is being turned on Tehran because the Ayatollahs are supposed to be close to manufacturing weapons of mass destruction. What’s more, the fiercely devout Shias, we’re ‘reliably’ informed, are playing host to Al Qaeda’s fanatical Wahabis.

Well, stranger things have been known to happen. But in this case the charge-sheet is too uncannily familiar for it to be a coincidence. WMDs and Al Qaeda links were the chief counts on the basis of which Baghdad was indicted, condemned and, well, sort of decapitated. To the embarrassment of the executioners, no evidence has emerged, post-occupation, on either score.

Donald Rumsfeld’s explanation for the curious absence of WMDs is that perhaps Saddam Hussein destroyed them before the war. The US defence secretary is backed up by his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, who more or less admits in a Vanity Fair interview that WMDs were essentially a convenient excuse. Iraqi scientists in American custody, including the pair endearingly nicknamed Dr Germ and Mrs Anthrax, have reportedly told their interrogators that the Saddam regime indeed got rid of all chemical and biological weapons years ago.

Tony Blair, on the other hand, continues to insist that lethal arms exist and will be found. The British prime minister can’t resist being more loyal than the courtiers of King George. Hence the reports that his administration leaned on British intelligence agencies to produce indictments of Iraq that were “sexier” than the available evidence merited.

The British prime minister isn’t the only European leader deeply committed to the Bush administration’s conquistadorial agenda. Spain’s Jose Maria Aznar has been singularly uncritical of his American friends, and a handful of East European governments have done what they could to oil the engines of Washington’s war machine.

But none of them is any match for Silvio Berlusconi, who declared shortly after his election as prime minister of Italy two years ago, that he would always agree with US policy, no matter what it was. That declaration of dependence and unquestioning loyalty alone substantiates one of his boasts during the 2001 election campaign: “There is no one on the world stage who can compete with me.”

Unlike Blair and Aznar, Berlusconi is not a career politician. In the Italian context, that could be construed as a blessing. The nation’s established parties, the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, crumbled about a decade ago when evidence emerged of graft, corruption and Mafia influence at the highest level. The only major party that remained relatively unscathed was the communists, who had reinvented themselves in the early 1990s as the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS).

The communists were perceived as comparatively clean primarily because they had never been participants in power at the national level. In the immediate post-war period, the popularity of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) — based largely on the participation of its cadres in the partisan resistance to Mussolini’s Fascists — was seen as a serious threat by the US, whose intelligence agencies devoted considerable resources towards thwarting the possibility of a Communist electoral triumph.

Thereafter the Christian Democrats and the Socialists, with their broadly similar ideological agenda, alternated in power, following a convenient custom that became commonplace among western democracies in the latter half of the twentieth century. Italy boasted the largest communist party in Western Europe, yet it only ever exercised power at the municipal level, even after watering down its ideology and distancing itself from Moscow during its flirtation with what party leader Enrico Berlinguer dubbed Eurocommunism.

Berlinguer was also responsible for the “historical compromise” that nearly led to the PCI effectively sharing power with the Christian Democrats in 1978. But on the day the new government was to be inaugurated, the Christian Democratic party’s chairman was abducted by the Red Brigade while on his way to parliament; 55 days later, Aldo Moro’s body was found dumped in the back of a Renault. In the interim, he is alleged to have revealed a number of state secrets (including the activities of a NATO-sponsored anti-communist resistance network known as Gladio, whose existence wasn’t formally acknowledged until 1990).

Moro is also believed to have prepared a memorandum profoundly critical of his party’s perennial prime minister, Giulio Andreotti. Mino Pecorelli, the editor of the weekly Osservatore Politico, reputedly one of Italy’s best informed journalists at the time, implied that Moro’s fate was sealed because neither Washington nor Moscow was keen on the PCI sharing power, alleging that a “lucid superpower” was behind the kidnapping. Pecorelli himself was shot dead in May 1979 in what was seen as a politically motivated Mafia hit. Last November, an appeals court in Perugia sentenced Andreotti to 24 years in prison for ordering the murder in order to prevent further revelations from Pecorelli.

Last month, Berlusconi told a New York Times correspondent: “If I left political life right now, Italy would fall into the hands of communists.” Times have changed — the PDS, which was the main component of the Olive Tree coalition that ruled Italy until a few years ago, could at best be designated a social-democratic party, but the refrain remains the same.

Berlusconi, who was last year named by Forbes magazine as the third most powerful billionaire in the world, also described his political career as a “great sacrifice”, whingeing to the NYT: “I have a sailboat, but in two years I’ve only been on it one day. And I haven’t been to my house in Bermuda for two or three years.”

The truth is that he entered politics in 1994 because, as he told a journalist friend, “We have to do something or they will destroy everything we have built up” — “they” being the Italian left, which was regrouping in the wake of judicial moves against leading Christian Democrats and Socialists. One of Berlusconi’s chief benefactors, former socialist prime minister Bettino Craxi, was on the run, and the industrial magnate’s media empire appeared wobbly. “If I don’t [go into politics],” he informed another sympathetic journalist, “they will tear me to shreds.”

So Forza Italia (its nomenclature borrowed from a football chant) was formed not to save Italy but to save Berlusconi’s Fininvest empire. His holdings include three private TV channels, a leading newspaper, the nation’s main TV advertising agency, the largest book and magazine publisher, a construction company and a dominant supermarket chain. Berlusconi also chairs the AC Milan football club.

Yet there was more than pure capitalist greed involved in his political ascent. The Mafia, hemmed in by increasingly activist judges and the demise of its Christian Democrat and socialist contacts, wanted a political force it could rely on. According to recent testimony by a Mafia supergrass, the Mob not only heavily supported Forza Italia in 1994 — when Berlusconi spent all of seven months at the helm, his coalition with Gianfranco Fini’s “post-fascist” National Alliance and Umberto Bossi’s xenophobic, nominally separatist Northern League collapsing after he was indicted for tax fraud — but also stood by it in the 2001 elections. “It’s very simple,” according to ex-mobster Antonino Giuffre. “We are the fish and politics is the water.”

The judiciary is one of the few branches of Italian political culture that Berlusconi has thus far been unable to control, albeit not for want of trying. Even the UN has noticed that he acts as if he were “above the law”. Two of his closest aides have been on trial for corruption and mafia links, while the prime minister himself faces bribery charges. His trial has now been separated from that of the others, and it could be years before a verdict is pronounced; until this concession was extracted, there was the possibility that Berlusconi would end up in prison during his nation’s presidency of the European Union, which begins next month. (The prospect of Italy’s six-month stint at the helm is nonetheless concentrating minds in Brussels as well as Rome, given Berlusconi’s undisguised antipathy towards the head of the European Commission, former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi.)

Berlusconi had declared that no matter what verdict the judges reached, he wouldn’t stand aside as head of government. The respite offered by a separate trial does not mean, however, that his tussle with the judiciary is over. The concentration of corporate and political power in Berlusconi’s hands, with the possible connivance of organized crime, epitomizes everything that is wrong with post-war Italian politics. The process of regime change begun in the 1990s has gone into reverse. Forza Italia and its allies can offer no solutions because they are a part of the problem.

Berlusconi is sworn to stick by the Bush doctrine, whatever it entails. Most Italians should by now be well aware of what the Berlusconi doctrine entails. They must decide, at the first available opportunity, to reject it.

E-mail: mahirali@journalist.com