| 29 July 2004 | Thursday | 11 Jamadi-us-Saani 1425 |
Blair: a bundle of contradictions
Poland's dilemma
A war designed to stir fear
As South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation (Saarc) is about to enter its third decade, its restive members want the association to move away from studies and meetings to positive actions and real achievements.
The Saarc has progressed too little compared to other regional organizations, including its neighbour, the Asean, which has now 10 member states and is far more active. India, the largest member in the Saarc, wants to see it develop into a vigorous instrument of economic cooperation and regional progress.
The 25th meeting of the council of ministers has ended in Islamabad after taking decisions which seek to enlarge and strengthen cooperation among the members in the areas of tele-communications and information technology.
It has approved a plan of action recommended by the working group on energy and authorized a meeting of Saarc energy ministers to consider the recommendations of the group, and also establishment of a Saarc forestry Centre in Bhutan.
Specific proposals for economic integration, poverty alleviation, infrastructure development and parliamentary exchanges were referred to the relevant regional and national mechanisms and institutions for consideration.
This kind of bureaucratic shuffling and reshuffling cannot satisfy countries in which 40 per cent of the people live below the poverty-line, and social and economic problems are immense.
India has come up with three specific proposals to make Saarc an effective instrument of regional cooperation and integration. It has suggested (1) a South Asia Parliamentary Forum with the speakers of the region playing the leading role, (2) a High Saarc Economic Council with the finance and commerce ministers in the lead role, and (3) an infrastructure fund with a corpus of Rs 10 billion dollars.
India has offered to host the next meeting of the South Asia Association of Speakers and Parliamentarians. The way India thinks the parliamentary forum will be more like the European Assembly giving political support to the economic activities as they grow and spread out. Meanwhile, the IMF says that the initial trade between India and Pakistan has a potential of two billion dollars.
The three Indian proposals are inter-linked. If regional trade has to expand along with other forms of economic cooperation the regional infrastructure has to be adequate for the purpose. Ten billion dollars for infrastructural development is not too large an amount.
In fact, all of that money need not be regional capital. If the projects are found feasible the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, too, may make their contributions.
Having developed the infrastructure at a high cost there has to be enough trade exchanges through such routes. The Saarc Higher Economic Council with finance and commerce ministers as their members can take care of that. Along with he expanding regional trade, the trade within the countries will also flourish.
Even otherwise the Saarc Free Trade Agreement would help expand trade among the seven countries. Then, there is the project of gas pipeline which is to come from Iran and reach India via Pakistan. If India and Pakistan think they need more gas, they can reach an understanding on another project of gas pipeline, this one coming from Turkmenistan and going to India also via Pakistan.
The Saarc energy ministers can take care of that. The possibilities are immense. What is more important is making full use of them and quick, and making the neighbours too happy and richer in the process.
Of course, the gas pipelines' safety must be ensured and these kept free of terrorist attacks. Each country has to do its best in that direction, and the threat of terrorism tackled with a firm hand. Pakistan has no objection to these proposals.
But it wants simultaneous progress in talks to reach a settlement on Kashmir issue which is also acceptable to the people of Kashmir. But India does not want a binding linkage between Kashmir and other issues.
India, being the largest country in the region, has a greater responsibility to strive for a settlement. Small concessions by it can mean a lot to other countries. Pakistan finds after three wars and a Kargil diversion that war is no solution to its problems with India.
Secondly, both India and Pakistan are now nuclear armed powers and hence a war is suicidal for them and the region as a whole. Even without the nuclear dimension the world now finds war abhorrent. Major states now seek economic power.
China is the best example. It refuses to be provoked or diverted by Taiwan from its dedicated economic pursuit. Modern history shows medium-sized countries, too, can become economic powers.
Today, it's not the US alone that wants Pakistan to negotiate with India on all disputes, including Kashmir. China and Europe hold the same view. No big power wants to see an armed conflict between India and Pakistan. But India has to develop a reasonable attitude on Kashmir to make the solution easy. It has to realize it cannot disregard Pakistan in a greatly troubled world.
Pakistan's strategic importance is undeniable. and in the current conflict between the Western world and the Muslims it has a critical role as an exemplar of moderate Islam.
Pakistan has also to realize that Saarc has remained stunted for the last 20 years as an association of seven states. Member countries other than India and Pakistan feel that Saarc is largely an arena for the two contending Asian states and the problems of others find small expression and lesser attention there.
Such despair should not be there in the small countries of the Saarc. It is for India and Pakistan to take the lead in that direction and make other members feel more at home in the Saarc conclaves.
Pakistan's efforts to be an active member of other alliances in the West has not been a success. The ECO has a tragic history. Born in the 1950s as Baghdad Pact, after the bloody coup which resulted in the killing of Prince Faisal, Iraq left the pact, and it became Cento and then RCD (Regional Cooperation for Development) and after the collapse of the soviet Union six of the Central Asian republics and Afghanistan joined the RCD and it was renamed as Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO). Despite the increase in its members it has little to show by way of economic cooperation.
Pakistan is a member of the Islamic Conference which is far from an effective and assertive body. Pakistan could not be a member of the Arab League as it is not an Arab state. Nor is the Arab League an effective body and is usually a captive of Arab politics and monarchical machinations.
The feelers about Pakistan joining the Gulf Cooperation Council did not receive a favourable response from other members. Hence Pakistan is forced to look East or to South Asia and Saarc are not matched with deeds.
The targets set are not capped by achievements and Pakistan has to try to put real muscles into the Saarc and make it a more effective body over-riding the political obstacles.
The issue now is whether politics can be separated from economics in South Asia and economic cooperation enabled to flourish, keeping political disputes on the sidelines.
It can be possible but it will be too bumpy a ride and one will never know when economics will become captive to political wrangles. Such stop-go arrangement is not good for steady economic cooperation.
In fact, large-scale economic cooperation will not be undertaken without a political settlement of Kashmir. When too many people get killed in Indian-held Kashmir from time to time, it vitiates the environment altogether.
India and Pakistan have to think of the long term advantages of increasing economic cooperation between the two countries. Initially, the advantages may be in favour of India, but eventually Pakistan will be the gainer.
Think of a large part of defence expenditure being diverted towards economic development. Fewer policemen will be deployed to hunt for Indian spies and foreign agents and more to round up the criminals at large.
At a time when both big and small countries are thinking in terms of promoting regional trading blocs, Pakistan and India must take meaningful steps to make Saarc a truly regional and powerful economic bloc. The people of both the countries want that.
Those Pakistani traders who feared having free trade with India in the past now favour large-scale business relations with the neighbouring country. They are no longer afraid of that.
The problem for both countries is getting over the immediate or short term difficulties and seeing the larger picture in clearer light. When such wisdom dawns, both the countries will be happier. Maybe we have lived with the problem so long that we have become reluctant to make a break now or part with it.
Blair: a bundle of contradictions
On July 21, 1994, Tony Blair became leader of the British Labour Party. Ten years on, the inevitable reviews of his decade as party head are being churned out. Analysts give differing views, but one point on which all seem agreed is the dominant place occupied by Iraq in the prime minister's record.
For Anthony Lynton Blair, there is a real danger that that one issue will define his place in history. When Tony Blair became leader of the Labour party, that party had been out of power since 1979 - it had lost four successive general elections, three to Margaret Thatcher and one to John Major.
Labour was seen as unelectable, a party with policies that could not (or should not) be implemented: nationalization being one of the most glaring. It was also seen as dominated to an unhealthy extent by the powerful, left-wing unions. Making Labour electable and winning the public's confidence was going to be no easy task.
Blair was helped by the fact that his predecessors, John Smith (whose untimely death paved the way for Blair) and Neil Kinnock, had already started the arduous process of party reform. Kinnock took on the militant left who were doing so much damage to the party's reputation, while Smith took on the unions. Nonetheless, much remained to be done.
Blair took on the task with relish and vigour. Clause IV of the party constitution (advocating nationalization) was abolished, policy-making processes were changed to sideline the unions, the pledge to ban nuclear weapons was removed, social policies were devised that were more centrist than left-wing. And the name New Labour was introduced as a clear signal of change from the past.
The reform efforts paid off as, within just three years, New Labour was swept into office with a huge majority. Eighteen years of Conservative rule came to a crashing end, and the youngest prime minister in almost two centuries came to power.
His message to Labour MPs, however, was full of humility: "We are not the master now. The people are the masters. We are the servants of the people. We will never forget that."
New Labour won office, but the feeling of many - not just those on the left - was that its transformation stripped the party of too much of its core values and ideology. In the drive to become electable, New Labour abandoned its principles: it took on the colours of the opposition Tories (albeit muted down).
The son of a conservative, and himself an acknowledged admirer of Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair was criticized for adopting too many of her ideas and policies. He would refute that accusation, but there is no doubt that the demarcating line between New Labour and the opposition Conservatives and Liberal Democrats (the rising third force in British politics) has become far less clear.
Side by side with the criticism that New Labour lacks ideological substance, is the accusation that its prime concern is image. New Labour under Blair has been characterized by the phenomenal rise of spin: professional PR people whose job it is to ensure that a positive message goes out and negative stories are countered effectively.
Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell were just the most prominent names in a whole coterie of spin-doctors (aka 'special advisers') working for the Blair government. Those in Downing Street have even been accused of spinning against the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, widely seen as Blair's successor.
Blair does not depend on his close circle just for PR: they have a policy-making role as well. Largely unelected, the prominent role in the nation's affairs assigned them by the PM has also come in for attack. Critics complain that, compared to this 'kitchen cabinet' where real decisions are made, meetings of the regular cabinet are just a formality. Debate in parliament has been marginally more vigorous, but with Blairites packing the government benches, the prime minister never had to work really hard to get parliamentary approval. For a government that brought in devolution to Scotland and Wales, its reliance on centralized decision-making has been striking.
Tony Blair had a huge majority in his first term, a marginally smaller one in his second. One would have expected that, with such solid parliamentary support, he and his government would not mind the odd voice of dissent. Think again.
Criticism and dissent are not something Blair's New Labour takes kindly to. Remarkable efforts have been put into 'control' - ensuring that everyone in the parliamentary and wider party is 'on message'.
Those who challenge this regimented thinking are quickly dealt with. George Galloway, Ken Livingstone, Robin Cooke, Clare Short - the list of disaffected Blair dissenters is getting longer.
The policies implemented by Blair as prime minister have been along the lines of those outlined when he was campaigning for the job. New Labour in government has pumped huge funds into public services - the national health service, education, the road and rail network, public transport - but the impact has been dimmed by rising demand and by a Thatcherite obsession with league tables and waiting lists.
This focus on competitive reporting can motivate people to perform better and deliver more, but it can also lead to positions in league tables taking priority over meeting the actual needs of service users.
The economy under New Labour has done well. The Bank of England was early on granted independence. On Europe, the Blair government has not delivered on its pledge to take Britain closer. Many in the business community would like Britain to join the single European currency.
All these achievements (and failings) of Tony Blair as party leader and prime minister are important. But they pale almost into insignificance next to just one policy decision he took: to support the US-led war on terror and, specifically, to back the US in its occupation of Iraq.
The war on Iraq, as justified by Tony Blair, was variously about weapons of mass destruction, about defeating terrorism, about liberating the Iraqi people from an evil dictator and providing them with a better future.
All these justifications have proven either wrong or counter-productive: there were no WMD, terrorism is on the rise, and while the Iraqi people are out of Saddam's clutches, they face a swathe of new problems.
In view of the war's abject failure to deliver any of its objectives, British participation has come in for much questions and criticism - at home as well as abroad. The suicide of government scientist Dr David Kelly was a huge blow to the government.
The Hutton and Butler reports looking into the issue highlighted the many failures in intelligence, but cleared the government and prime minister of any wrongdoing - at least officially.
Unofficially it is a different story. Irrespective of what Lords Hutton and Butler found, the general feeling among the public is that the government did manipulate intelligence to make the case for war, it did throw Dr Kelly to the media wolves, and it was wrong to go to war.
As well as being regularly lampooned in the press as Bush's poodle, the common thread coming out is public distrust with the government and the prime minister. In his first speech in Downing Street, Mr Blair had pledged: "It will be a government that seeks to restore trust in politics in this country." He has most definitely failed to do that.
For a prime minister who gives so much attention to image and poll ratings, Tony Blair's Iraq policy has been characterized by a remarkable lack of concern for either. He took Britain to war against Iraq in the face of massive domestic opposition. Anti-war feeling among the British public (and even large sections of his own party) has only grown since then.
Yet Blair remains committed to the cause and utterly unapologetic. He is adamant that going to war against Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do. In doing so, he is so flying against public opinion and so damaging his own standing (in the country and in his party) that analysts have been forced to conclude Tony Blair must genuinely believe in his cause. There can be no rational explanation for his stance.
Irony indeed. The leader accused for so long of lacking ideological substance, is now credited with conviction and a cause. The problem, however, is that the issue and the stance chosen by Blair to demonstrate conviction and ideology, is one that few Britons agree with. Tony Blair could find that believing strongly in the wrong cause is as - or more - damaging than believing in no cause at all.
Poland's dilemma
"We're interested in becoming a concrete part of the arrangement," said Polish foreign ministry spokesman Boguslaw Majewski, after it was revealed on July 10 that Poland has been in secret talks with the United States for the past eight months on locating elements of the US ballistic missile defence system, including interceptor missiles, on its territory.
Then it came out that the US has also been talking to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria about it, but Poland is definitely the leading candidate. Poland's main problem has always been its geography: sandwiched between Germany and Russia, it was regularly conquered by them or partitioned between them.
Poland lost twenty per cent of its population in the Second World War, mainly in Nazi death camps, and then spent the next forty-five years under a Communist dictatorship imposed by its Russian liberators.
You can see why it wants close links with a great power that isn't in Europe, and giving the United States military bases that Washington sees as important is one easy way of doing that.
The project to protect the United States from ballistic missile attack is one of the great boondoggles of all time. After 20 years of development, there is still no evidence that it will ever work reliably - even though the Pentagon is going ahead with the construction of two missile interceptor sites in California and Alaska, presumably to shoot down the ICBMs that North Korea doesn't have, tipped with the nuclear warheads that it probably doesn't have either.
The main function of 'Son of Star Wars' in the US political system has been to serve as a kind of social welfare system for needy aerospace companies and recently retired air force generals.
The Poles don't care whether the missiles work or not, and most of them don't even believe the story that the Pentagon wants a site in Eastern Europe to intercept nuclear missiles fired at the United States by Iran or Syria. (Iran and Syria don't have missiles that could get even a quarter of the way to the US, or any nuclear warheads to put on them, either.)
They suspect that Washington really wants to intercept Russian missiles just after they launch, but that's okay with them, too. Poles mistrust the Russians almost as much as they do the Germans.
What the Poles want is an important American base on their territory, so that Washington doesn't forget about them in a crisis. They'll make do with radar stations if they have to, but, as former defence minister Janusz Onyszkeiwicz put it, "an interceptor site would be more attractive.
It wouldn't be a hard sell in Poland." It's a very understandable Polish reflex, given the history - but it could greatly complicate Poland's foreign relations closer to home.
Germany and France are not at all pleased to see the US seeking missile bases in Eastern European countries that have become, since this spring, part of the European Union.
They see it as part and parcel of Washington's strategy of splitting off the recently ex-Communist countries of Eastern Europe that defence secretary Don Rumsfeld described last year with typical sensitivity as 'new Europe' (good and strongly pro-American), to be distinguished from France, German and other parts of 'old Europe' (bad and allegedly anti-American).
It's working, too. Most of the Eastern European states have sent token contingents to Iraq to curry favour with the United States, and most of them would be happy to have American bases on their soil (though they'll never outbid the Poles).
And it's practically a cost-free strategy at the moment: the Germans and the French haven't been nasty to them, and the Russians have been positively saintly about it all. But it could get ugly further down the line.
If the United States remains on a unilateralist course after this November's election, failing to consult the allies, ignoring the United Nations whenever it gets in the way, and frequently violating international law, all the other great powers will start to respond by trying to create counter-balancing centres of power.
They are on hold for the moment, because none of them really wants to go down that road, but it's clear what they will do if they conclude that it is necessary.
They will start building up their arms, of course, and in the case of China that is probably all they will do. In Europe, however, the great powers will also start to come together in what won't be called an alliance, but will gradually become exactly that - and its chief members will be France, Germany and Russia. That's the only combination big enough to say 'no' to overwhelming American power.
If it comes to that, five years down the road, life will get very hard for Eastern European countries that have become too closely bound to the United States - especially if they have American missile interceptor sites on their territory.
And if you think that this scenario hasn't already occurred to the chief American negotiator on the potential deal with Poland, under-secretary of state for arms control John Bolton, then you are seriously underestimating the man. The real question is whether it has occurred to the Poles.
-Copyright
A war designed to stir fear
Can a mere documentary decide the next US presidential election? Satirist film maker Michael Moore, so far as the jittery Bush administration is concerned, is one of the most dangerous men in America today.
They rightly reckon that in a close race Moore is costing Bush vital votes in November. No documentary ever exerted the impact that Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11', a bitterly funny assault on Bush, has made at the box office.
Moore is not just 'preaching to the converted' but reaching the shopping mall cineplex masses, a majority of whom still believe the carefully cultivated lie that Saddam Hussein instigated the 9/11 attacks. If not, then what, they may well ask, was the point of the costly Iraq invasion anyway?
Films rarely matter in reality except as money-spinning reaffirmations of conventional wisdoms and shopworn fantasies. In wartime, films wave the flag and demonize the foe.
At any time commercial releases are loath to challenge popular prejudices and illusions, and prefer instead to play along in order to please ticket-buying crowds. Yet Moore, creator of black-humoured political probes such as 'Roger & Me' and 'Bowling for Columbine,' slipped through the strict gatekeepers of the corporate entertainment industry to score a sizzling success and, incidentally, perform a great public service.
Moore's marvellous knack is his wry ability to express raw truths that audiences may suspect but are too uncertain or timid to express. In its opening weeks 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Americans flocked to see his heart-achingly funny expose of Bush's trail of truculent twaddle, despite the fact that the original distributor, Disney, balked at releasing this controversial item.
'Fahrenheit 9/11' publicizes facts that were in plain sight all along. Behold footage of the 2001 inaugural where Bush's stretch limo is pelted with eggs by crowds outraged at his theft of the election because of Florida vote-rigging, a staged 'riot' of Republicans to stop a recount, and the decision by conservative Supreme Court appointees to crown him.
Moore shows the spineless acquiescence of Democratic Party leaders to this electoral travesty. Not one Senator of either party signed a demand by Black Congresspersons for a formal debate regarding the deliberate and illegitimate disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of black Florida voters, which helped hand the presidency to Bush - an outrage that has yet to be remedied.
What is most shocking is that most Americans never were informed because such scenes were withheld or underplayed by national news networks, mostly owned by, shall we say, cautious conservatives.
Many Americans are now realizing there is nothing that Bush's band of corporate bullies, neocon firebrands, and Christian fundamentalists would not do for the sake of power.
Moore contends that the authoritarian urges of George W. Bush, not Osama bin Laden, has done the most to make America an increasingly scary and strange land. With bemused distaste Moore charts how Bush's wealthy cronies bailed him out of numerous business flops in order to gain access to his daddy in the White House, who was vice-president or president from 1981 to 1992.
Bush was literally lifted into the ranks of multimillionaires through the auspices of influence-seeking big businessmen, with lavish Saudi backing as well. All these devoted pals appreciate that there is no higher and quicker return on investment than is gained through tax breaks, government contracts, and other special favours.
The idealized America that actor John Wayne valiantly fought for in all those old 1950s movies is long gone. Bush, the self-styled 'war president,' is actually the feckless, absent-without-leave National Guard pilot during Vietnam whose closest chum in that safe branch of the service became a Saudi representative.
Moore cites an enormous cash flow from the Saudis to Bush's family and friends over three decades. Just two days after 9/11 well over a hundred members of Osama bin Laden family were spirited out of the US while police were tossing less well-connected foreigners into prisons and throwing away the key.
Moore reminds viewers that Osama bin Laden originally was nurtured by the US. In 1980s Afghanistan the US financed Osama and other feudal fundamentalists because a Soviet-backed modernizing regime obviously, in Bush's stock phrase, "hated the freedom' of those kindly Afghan war lords. Bush's backers always have had a soft spot for feudalism.
Moore's tenacious in-your-face bonhomie is irresistible to watch as he collars glib US politicians who squirm as he tries to enlist their children in the reckless Iraq war they so heartily approved.
The US Patriot Act, he shows, was a thick compilation of things that hidebound reactionaries dearly wanted to enact at the first pretext they came along. Moore circles the US legislature in an ice cream van, reading passages of the draconian legislation that US legislators signed without bothering to have read first.
George Bush, sitting clueless in a primary school classroom for ten minutes after being informed of the 9/11 attacks, is a priceless scene. There is the now profoundly embarrassing shot of George in a nifty flying suit smirking on an aircraft carrier deck with the woefully wrong 'Mission accomplished' banner unfurled like a tombstone epitaph behind him.
Bush's macho threat to the Iraqi resistance to "smoke 'em out" intersects with a scene from an ancient cowboy movie where he lifted this brave and silly B-movie phrase.
Moore shows how US troops, largely trawled by sharp-eyed recruiters from poor American neighbourhoods laid waste by official neglect, were carted off to serve the interests not of the nation but of Halliburton, Unocal and Bechtel.
An Iraqi family, raided at night by a snatch squad of GIs, weeps and trembles before their new masters. In wavering torch beams, children cower as another 'suspect" is swept up, mostly because he is a young man.
Moore provides Abu Graib-like glimpses of routine racist mistreatment of Iraqis. As Moore sadly says, "Immoral actions lead to more immoral actions.' These systematic abuses are what happen when cynical elites send ignorant and mostly poor youngsters off to fight for trumped-up reasons.
Backing Moore's case, a recent Senate intelligence committee's report found "no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated against the United States." The troops righteously imagine they are exacting revenge for 9/11. A lie. But what then?
One of us has a relative, an American combat veteran who wandered by mistake long ago into the 'closed ward" of a US veterans hospital where the most gruesome cases are delicately tucked away. What he glimpsed inside left him shaken ever afterward.
You'd have to see his eyes as he told the tale. In 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Moore marshals forbidden images of the gaping wounds of maimed soldiers and civilians, the charred corpses of US mercenaries dangling on a bridge, and a long rows of flag-draped coffins.
Yet even these hideous costs might be made somewhat bearable if they really were necessary. They weren't. Moore's gripping interview with parents of a dead American soldier peels away the reflex-like obedience that passes for patriotism in many quarters in America.
The real war, Moore argues, is being waged on Americans by their own leadership. This is an endless war, designed to stir fears and make citizens suckers for the real agenda, which is the upholding of social hierarchy based on greed. Why else does the government plant spies in innocuous do-gooder groups while giving Osama bin Laden a two month head start to get away?
Why does this administration, which cut counterterrorism funds before 9/11, try so hard to slash money for military veterans to enable more tax breaks for the rich? Oil, of course, is far too obvious a motive for our most sophisticated minds to accept as the key reason for Iraq. Although, if there is a glaring omission in Moore's documentary, it is the intimate link of Bush administration neocons to the truculent Israeli right wing.
Moore cogently argues that the reasons Americans are told they are fighting are phony ones. Yet the gimmicks that the powerful rely upon are not working as well as usual anymore.
Today, a CBS News/New York Times poll finds a majority (51 per cent) believe the U.S. should have left Iraq alone. Almost two-thirds of Americans (62 per cent) say the war has not been worth the cost.
Apart from tens of thousands of dead and mutilated Iraqis, the war cost nearly 900 American lives, almost 5,000 wounded and 250 billion dollars. Word has leaked out that Bush people already are scrambling around to contrive a pretext to suspend the November elections.
One suspects too there are plenty of people on their knees in the White House praying for another fundamentalist attack on the US - and that a meteor hits Michael Moore.