In last week’s article I looked at the growing strength of the large economies of East Asia and the weight they have now acquired in the global economy and in the world of finance. Increasingly, the United States, the world’s largest economy, has become dependent on the East Asians for sustaining its growth, consumption and investment. How will the East Asians — in particular China which, by one measure, is now the world’s second largest economy — use this newly acquired leverage?

I answered that question by speculating that China and other large Asian economies will work with America rather than against it. They are not likely to challenge the United States the way France and Germany did in the late ‘sixties. The European challenge ultimately led to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates which the US had supported by pegging its dollar to gold at the rate of $35 to an ounce. Once the US had gone off the peg, the laboriously built post-war financial structure came tumbling down.

The foundations of this structure were laid by the victors of the Second World War at the Bretton Woods resort in New Hampshire, United States. Much chaos ensued the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. It resulted in high levels of inflation all over the world, a sharp increase in the price of oil, and the default on sovereign debt by a number of middle income countries, not just from Latin America but also from North Africa and the Middle East.

Dependency produces leverage and leverage can be used in a disruptive way. This, the Asians are not likely to do since, unlike the Europeans, they view the world in an exceptionally long-term context. The evidence that this would be their approach came a day after I had written the first article on the subject. In late October, China announced that it was responding to the Bush administration’s sustained pressure to reduce its $103 billion trade surplus. That would be done by the Chinese going on a spending spree in the United States that would include the purchase of Boeing commercial aircraft in multi-billion dollar deals and the purchase of aircraft engines for the planes the Chinese are themselves manufacturing. The latter will also cost China billions of dollars.

But, as I said last week, finance and economics were not the only items on the Bush’s agenda. They were two other subjects the American president wished to pursue on his visit to Asia. One, to close ranks around North Korea and persuade that country to give up on its ambitions to develop a nuclear arsenal. Two, to begin some systematic work to save the predominantly Muslim countries in the region from coming under the influence of the forces of radical and political Islam. Bush scored some success in the former but appears to have further complicated his relations with moderate Islam.

Let us first take up the question of North Korea, dubbed by President Bush in January 2002 as a member of the ‘axis of evil’. Not surprisingly, this categorization antagonized Kim Jong Il and his comrades. The only way the North Korean leaders know how to react to an adverse change in their environment is to create a sense of insecurity among their neighbours. As the scholar Nicholas Eberstadt wrote in his 1999 book, “The End of North Korea,” Kim and his colleagues are not prepared to follow the very different examples of their two giant neighbours that also once pursued communist ideology with great earnestness.

China’s way out was to concentrate on economic reforms while keeping its political system under the control of the Communist Party. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, chose to open its political system to competition before undertaking economic reforms. Which of these two approaches was more successful is a question historians will ask for a long time. For the moment it is important to understand that the North Korean regime considers both approaches dangerous for its survival. “Credible military menace is now at the heart of North Korea’s economic strategy - and of its very strategy for state survival,” writes Eberstadt. The author argues that the North Koreans are afraid of any “ideological and cultural infiltration” which they equate with “an invasion without the sound of gunfire.”

After much reflection and debate within its own ranks, the Bush administration has concluded that it is dangerous to resort to name calling (membership in the club of evil) or use an example (regime removal by force as in Iraq) to influence the behaviour of North Korea. Engagement with the country within a multilateral context appears to be the only route open to Pyongyang. During his East Asian journey, President Bush offered an assurance of security to North Korea in order to get that country back to the negotiating table. He couldn’t offer a security treaty since that would involve the approval of the US Senate, a time consuming process even at the best of times. Instead, a multilateral assurance of security was put on the table.

The North Koreans’ first response to the Bush proposal was dismissive; later they showed some interest. This flip-flop behaviour is not an indication of Pyongyang’s inability to make up its mind. The North Koreans have perfected the art of using ambiguity as a weapon of diplomacy. It appears at the time of this writing that Kim Jong Il would return to the negotiating table with America, China, Japan, Russia and South Korea occupying the other chairs.

The small opening provided by President Bush may ultimately result in a fundamental change in the way the countries of East Asia relate to one another. As one Asian scholar, Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Services, wrote in a recent article, “the absence of multilateral security cooperation has always been cited as one of the region’s greatest ailments. Nothing comparable to NATO exists and many see the need for such an organization to cope with weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and China’s inevitable rise.” If North Korea can be brought out of isolation and persuaded to join the rest of East Asia, the Americans would put a lot of pressure on getting the countries in that region to organize themselves into a multilateral security arrangement.

Improving America’s understanding among the world’s Muslims was the third item on the Bush’s agenda for the Asian trip. Here he stumbled. He has said all along that the war on terrorism launched by his administration after 9/11 is not a war against Islam. There is no reason why he should not be believed. As is his wont, he neatly divides the world into two halves — good and bad, virtuous and evil, friend and foe.

Following this pattern of thinking, President Bush believes that there are two types of Muslims — those who follow the great faith of Islam, a religion that teaches peace, and those who are trying to hijack the Islamic faith and cast their struggle as a war between religions. He would like to see the states in the Muslim world follow the more accommodating path. One purpose of his discourse with the moderate Muslim leaders of Indonesia was to convince them of his own open attitude towards the Muslim faith.

But the environment soured as Bush was reaching out to the world of Islam. While he was on his way to Bali, it was brought to the attention of the public that a senior military official — a three star general occupying an important position at the Pentagon — had made a number of derogatory remarks about Islam.

Lt. General, William Jerry “Boykin” had spoken before a number of church audiences and had given a simple message. The US’s war on terrorism was against a religion, not against a group of stateless territories. At one such meeting, the general pulled out slides of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and told his audience that America’s real enemy was “a guy called Satan.” In another speech he recounted his exchange with a Somali warlord and remembered telling him that Boykin’s Christian God was bigger than Somalis’ Muslim God. “I know that my God was a real God and his was an idol,” he told his audience.

How could a senior official of the Bush administration express such views and, even more important, with those views having become public, why was he not immediately removed from office? One answer was provided by E.J. Dionne, a respected Washington based news analyst, in an article published recently. I would like to quote him in some detail since he nicely sets out the corner into which the Bush administration has painted itself in dealing simultaneously with the worlds of Islam and fundamental Christianity.

“The obvious response to the Boykin case is to say that because he is now deputy under-secretary of defence for intelligence, he should be relieved of his post. His religious spin on the struggle against terror would seem to contradict the administration’s official line that this battle is not a religious war. But without intending to, Boykin has revealed the difficulties with our usual arguments on behalf of religious liberty. For the administration, it’s not just that Boykin presents a political problem, because the most loyal part of Bush’s base is made up of evangelical Christians, many of whom share Boykin’s view.. . . Cashiering Boykin would thus raise two problems: the political problem of offending religious conservatives and a theological problem. If Boykin is fired or transferred because of what he said, the administration would have to explain rather precisely where Boykin’s views contradict the president’s — and when they did not. Bush does not want to be drawn into an extended theological controversy.”

But Boykin is not the only professedly devout Christian who serves the Bush administration in a senior place. Another example is that of Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose deep religious beliefs are well known. The way Ashcroft’s justice department has implemented the admittedly draconian provisions of the Patriot Act of 2001 has left a clear impression with America’s Muslims that they no longer enjoy equality in their adopted homeland.

And then there is the problem created by the way President Bush has handled the Israel-Palestine problem with a clear and pronounced tilt towards the Jewish state. One example of this tilt is Washington’s response to the building of a wall by Israel to physically separate itself from the bits of land occupied by the Palestinians. Rather than build a wall around itself, the Israelis have entrapped the Palestinians behind an impervious obstacle which they have no hope of breaching. In July Bush called the wall “a problem;” in October the signal went out to Israel that the Bush administration will not stand in the way as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon continues with his project.

President Bush has still to convince the world’s Muslim population — including the moderate elements in that world — that his administration has nothing against their faith. While the American president himself is seen to be sincere in his pronouncements on Islam, this cannot be said about a number of senior officials in his administration. That gap will have to be breached if America wishes to work with the world of Islam.

WE were — at root — talking fear and loathing, rivalry and ambition, bitterness and hate, but the prime minister merely smiled gently and raised an eyebrow. The higher you go in politics, the loftier the rhetoric about principle and policy, the greater the reluctance to let hate howl its way into the act. Yet look at that particular prime minister now.

Ranil Wickremesinghe is fighting for his political life, and Sri Lanka is fighting to keep one of the world’s most perilous peace processes on track. Why? Because the president, Chandrika Kumaratunga — another chip off the Bandaranaike block — has staged a ludicrous quasi-constitutional coup (made possible by a ludicrous quasi-constitution). And why should Mrs Kumaratunga strike thus? Because she can’t stand Wickremesinghe. Because she boils at the thought of him. Because her life has become hostage to the need to bring him down.

That, in turn, is a pretty ludicrous situation. When I was in his office a few months ago, leading a delegation of journalists anxious to cement the press freedoms that Wickremesinghe, and his campaign to make peace at last with the Tamil Tigers, had begun to put in place, the prime minister talked optimistically about a Sri Lanka free from terror and open for media business, a south Asian tiger in the most benign sense of the word.

He is funny and shrewd and approachable. How on earth could anyone — least of all President Kumaratunga — loathe him so? But then, his (newspaper-owning) family and her family go back a long way. There’s the corrosion of history. There’s the fact that he almost got her job last time round (and will surely try again come 2005). There’s his success, and the galling revelation that the voters of Sri Lanka prefer a life of negotiation without bombs and bloodshed.

Do they quite see it that way in the presidential mansion? Of course not. There the chat is all about the sanctity of the state, the need for properly signed accords and due preservation of the old Bandaranaike legacy. But let’s not kid ourselves. This is a feud, up close and personal, putting everything that’s been achieved at risk. This is red mist time.

And meanwhile, as another embattled PM and his chancellor dine late in Downing Street, with John Prescott playing a mix of Jeeves and U Thant, what are we supposed to take away with our After Eights? Here the chat is said to be about more great issues: who shall sit on the national executive committee, how our public services are to be reformed. But nobody believes that for a second.

More red mists (and the strongest argument against paternity leave since records began). Gordon Brown began this latest spasm of contempt and challenge on a Bournemouth Monday, only to see the usual Blair eloquence trump him on Tuesday. He seems to have seethed ever since, through Telegraph features pages to BBC breakfast TV interviews. He’s blowing his mountainous top again, and people are watching and skirting him gingerly. Who wants to be caught in a Pompeii bath-house when Vesuvius explodes?

The natural reaction, as ever, is oil on troubled waters; a Prescottian intervention here, a party appeal there. Will nobody, please, mention the word “Mandelson” for a week! But how much more fear and loathing can this broken relationship between Downing Street neighbours take? It isn’t a falling-out now, but a relentless descent into the pits. It is the one rift that could ditch Labour next time. But is it any longer susceptible to treatment by word, embrace and polite concession?

Take that ancient recipe of pride, rivalry and thwarted ambition, stir in a little Sri Lankan coconut milk for luck, and you know there can be no settled rapprochement. Things have gone too far, too badly. Policy stitch-ups and jobs for the boys have reached the point beyond balm as hate begins to dominate the menu, served hot with a cold side-dish called revenge.

So is this, in the brave new world of Howard Conservatism, the chance his party has been praying for? See how we love each other! Wonder at this extravaganza of amity as our reshaped shadow cabinet surfaces today!

But the trouble with hate, naked and unashamed, is that it doesn’t blow away in an instant, a morning mist before some freshening breeze. Just as jolly Ann Widdecombe can’t shrug and say, with total credibility, that her nightmares are all over now, so Michael Portillo cannot suddenly wander into the sunset without more questions asked. He could have been a big number on Howard’s front bench, but he says he’s lost the taste for the cut and thrust. He says he can’t stand the “distrust” around him any longer.

Distrust, though, is an umbilical part of the hate game. Once contracted, never thrown off. What Portillo means is that too many parliamentary Tories loathe him, a little or a lot, and that there’s no chance they will find love or respect instead. In sum, he isn’t a leader in waiting when Michael Howard is 64 in 2005. Hate rules him out of the action.

And if Portillo feels that, then what about the rest of them? What about the once and nearly Clarke supporters, watching an arch-sceptic succeed and claim a European “unity” that can’t endure any strain. What about IDS and his loyal 75 supporters if they see Francis Maude and other shadow lurkers brought into the fold? What about the voters, who had a pretty settled and dim view of the new leader - and show no polling sign of changing their minds?

Hate is a driving human emotion. Hate - at an individual, personal level - lingers. Hate is not about compromise, but victory or defeat. Hate can break a peace, wreck a government, tear apart a party. Hate is the true hidden something of politics, howling in the night.— Dawn/Guardian Service

FOR three straight days in mid-October, Punjabi and Pakhtoon students fought a pitched battle at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. With sticks, stones, pistols, and automatic weapons they hammered away. Then, on the fourth day, one student died of gunshot wounds and the university closed down. Although classes resumed three weeks later, the fear of revenge killings continues to stalk the campus. This last murder was the fourth this year at Pakistan’s supposedly most prestigious public-sector university.

It should come as no surprise that Pakistan’s public universities are so prone to blood-letting. Even the “big names” — Punjab, Karachi, QAU — are populated by feuding tribes of students. The tribalism is not new but it was greatly accentuated by the banning of student unions over 15 years ago on grounds they brought national politics into educational institutions. Today the only student representation permitted is through ethnic and religious groups. Their hate-filled propaganda succeeds in rallying together the violent lumpen element.

Religious vigilantes are adding to intellectual desertification. On their orders, drama, theatre, and musical events are forbidden, as is any activity that can bring male and female students together. In Punjab University, which is effectively run by the Jamaat-i-Islami, males and females must sit in separate sections of the classroom. A fanatical student mob ransacked the Department of Visual Studies of Karachi University last week, destroying musical instruments, sculptures and paintings.

Religious piety is all-pervasive and evident in the burqas and beards that dominate campuses across the country. The “azan” is regularly given, even during class times, inside departments. Student activists from the universities rove the streets in Peshawar and Lahore, throwing paint on billboards showing women’s faces. Posters on stair-walls in my department instruct one about the proper prayer to use while ascending or descending.

Violence and ethnic conflict are just one manifestation of a deeper and more disturbing reality. Pakistan’s public universities are utterly barren. Apart from an occasional event, there are no seminars, colloquia, public lectures, debates, or open discussions on contemporary scientific, cultural, or political issues. Consequently Pakistan’s universities are factories for the mass-production of “lumpen” graduates. Ignorant and uncurious, with poor reading and writing skills, incapable of coherently articulating an argument, with little sense of politics or history, this kind of student exhibits few of the qualities that one associates with a university education.

Contrary to what is generally held to be true, the intellectual impoverishment of Pakistan’s universities has very little to do with inadequacy of resources, and very much to do with inappropriate values and attitudes. And here the primary fault lies with the teachers rather than the students.

With some honourable exceptions, teachers at public universities care little about the subjects they teach, freely conveying their confusion and ignorance to students. Many admit that they never consult a textbook and choose to dictate from notes they saved from the time when they were students in that same department. Questions in class are usually frowned upon, treated as an affront to authority. Promotions are time-bound and automatic. All teachers receive full salaries until retirement, and incompetence is the most minor of sins. I am not aware of any university teacher receiving punishment for not knowing his or her subject.

No academic staff association, or any other body of teachers, has ever demanded that entrance tests be instituted to select good students and thereby raise teaching standards, nor have penalties ever been discussed for the widespread abuse of a teacher’s power or to combat many widely practised ways of academic fraud. And yet, at a moment’s notice, armies of university teachers sally forth to “defend their rights” and defeat any new scheme that even remotely challenges the present system of their life-time free-loading.

It is absurd to think that paucity of resources lies behind the decline of the intellect in Pakistan or, for that matter, in the Islamic world. Consider mathematics and theoretical physics. The resources needed to develop these are next to zero. Nevertheless they are recognized as hardest and most rigorous disciplines to master in intellectual terms. Together they constitute the foundation of all science, the firm bedrock of scientific inquiry.

Tragically, today there is not even one Pakistani under 50 years of age, living in Pakistan, who has any degree of international recognition as a mathematician or theoretical physicist. But 30 years ago, when I started teaching at Quaid-i-Azam University, one could have counted up to 20 names across the country. This is just one indication of the fantastic decline in intellectual capabilities in Pakistan across the board.

Enter Dr. Atta-ur-Rahman, appointed by General Pervez Musharraf as chairman of the Higher Education Commission and charged with reforming universities. Here is a man of considerable brilliance and dynamism. Most importantly, he has billions in cash to give. In consequence many university departments are today awash in research funds and special incentives have been announced for Ph.D students and their supervisors. An optional tenure-track scheme for rewarding high-performing faculty has been announced, while 300 foreign faculty members are to be hired on contract at international-scale salaries.

Thirty years ago, Atta’s schemes could have worked wonders. Even today, they represent the only serious attempt at university reform in 56 years. No one else has come up with any better ideas. But the rot is now so much deeper that the outcome of any technical fix, however clever, is far from certain.

Pakistan’s violent international image drives away foreigners who may otherwise want to live in Pakistan and help transform its universities; the still dwindling number of Pakistani faculty members who can properly guide Ph.D research is now minuscule; students registered for Ph.D research (and often their supervisors!) are shockingly deficient in their basics; and private universities are tearing away the remaining good faculty from public universities. Therefore, success is likely to be partial. But Atta’s efforts still deserve our cautious support. To keep matters in perspective, the cost of his failure will surely be no greater than losing a single F-16 in an accident.

For decades there have been grandiose declarations of building MITs and Harvards in Pakistan, or at least something close to the many Indian Institutes of Technology. But these have come to naught because the most important single fact has been ignored — good universities are self-governing communities of scholars engaged in free inquiry, discovery, and transmission of knowledge. Such institutions can grow only if personal freedom and liberty are valued and respected, if the urge to innovate and experiment is rewarded rather than punished, and when a society looks towards the future rather than the distant past.

Universities lie at the heart of modern civilization, the secret behind its awesome strength. Without them we cannot hope to confront Pakistani society’s general disaffection with the scientific method, rationality and democracy. Pakistan has yet to get its first real university. Building nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and having generals run the country, is no substitute.

The writer teaches physics

at the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.