EVER since 9/11, the US and China have been rubbing along nicely. The US needed China’s support in the war against terror and China is anxious to create the best conditions for its economic growth. But how long will this latest honeymoon last?

A string of recent announcements coming out of Washington suggest that the Bush administration may be adopting a rather more abrasive position. First, China was attacked for the huge wave of textile imports that followed the lifting of the global quota agreement at the beginning of the year, a decision the US had 10 years to prepare for. The US has now imposed quotas on Chinese textiles, as has the EU.

Meanwhile, the US treasury has demanded that China revalue the yuan within the next six months, describing its currency policies as “highly distortionary”. In fact, even if China does revalue the yuan, it will make precious little difference to America’s huge current account deficit; moreover China’s own current account is broadly in balance, suggesting that the case for revaluation is hardly overwhelming

A fortnight ago Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, claimed that Chinese military spending was much higher than officially admitted, questioned the motives behind the increased expenditure, and called on Beijing to embrace a “more open and representative government”. A fortnight earlier it had been reported that the Pentagon is preparing to release a report on the Chinese military that warns that the US should take more seriously the possibility that China might emerge as a strategic rival to America: indeed, such was the tenor of the report that it has generated some controversy within the Bush administration.

Prior to 9/11, the incoming Bush administration had adopted an aggressive stance towards China, describing it as a “strategic competitor” rather than the “strategic partner” preferred by the Clinton administration. But 9/11 brought that to an abrupt end: for almost four years, the relationship between the two countries has been relatively mellow. But perhaps that period is also now drawing to a conclusion.

Certainly it would appear that the importance of the anti-terror crusade is waning in the eyes of the Bush administration. The underlying purpose of the war against terror, of course, was never as stated but rather as a lever to begin the transformation of American foreign policy. To regard Bin Laden and Al Qaeda as a serious threat to the US was a patent absurdity: even their capacity to wreak havoc has been profoundly limited. This was a case of the Grand Old Duke of York: terrorism was a pretext.

China is a different matter altogether. Bin Laden was never going to pose even the most minuscule threat to the position of the US as the sole superpower. China clearly could, and in the long run certainly will. Its growing economic power will, in time, underpin wider political and military ambitions. A strong sense of this is already evident in East Asia.

Since 9/11 China has been extremely proactive and sophisticated in the way it has gone about seeking to enhance its position in East and South Asia, concluding a series of agreements, notably with India, Indonesia and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean), aimed at better ties. Its wider significance is clear.

First, this is China’s backyard, and its ability to establish a pivotal position there will be a crucial determinant of its capacity to become a global power. Second, East Asia is destined to become the centre of global affairs, a role previously played by Europe during the cold war. Third, the US remains the dominant security player in the region; as China’s influence grows, however, that of the US will diminish, a process that is already under way. Since 9/11, the US has not been inactive in the region — in particular it has been forging closer links with Japan, directed against China — but its primary attention has been directed elsewhere.

No global power ever gives up its power voluntarily (in the case of the Soviet Union, it simply disintegrated). The US will be no exception. On the contrary, having defeated the USSR in the cold war and now glorying in its status and power as the sole superpower, it will defend its position with ruthless determination. The growing conflict between an extant America and a rising China will become the dominant fault line of global politics. We are not entering a period of calm or quiescence; the contrary in fact.

The lines of future conflict are already anticipated in a Pentagon review of America’s military needs leaked by the Wall Street Journal in March: the review explicitly commits to the idea of huge military spending as a way of deterring would-be superpowers, with China explicitly mentioned in this context. Given the huge military expenditure of the US, Rumsfeld’s hypocrisy in criticizing China’s still very limited military budget is manifest: the hubris and swagger of the sole superpower.

But even if this pessimism proves correct, we should not expect a simple rerun of the cold war. There may be obvious similarities, notably that the US will once again be one of the protagonists and that China is ruled by a communist party. But there the similarities end. First, China’s economy is immeasurably stronger than the Soviet Union’s ever was and its growth is continuing at breakneck speed: economic strength is the key precondition for global power and influence. Second, unlike the Soviet Union, which chose confrontation and autarky, China has opted for global integration and its own form of capitalism.

As a consequence, China is already deeply entwined with the global economy. It is the biggest exporter to the US, the largest recipient of foreign direct investment and the main reason why the US is presently able to live with a huge budget deficit and enjoy an enormous house price bubble. The US’s relationship with China is strangely symbiotic in a way that its relationship with the Soviet Union never was.

Perhaps this will act as some kind of constraint. In practice it already has. The US has blown hot and cold over China ever since the rapprochement between Nixon and Mao, but it has so far always resisted seeking to isolate China or prevent its economic rise. China, for its part, has abided by the dictum of Deng Xiaoping and put the priority of economic growth above all else.

But as China and the US bump against each other in a growing number of regions and over an expanding number of issues — trade and financial imbalances between the two, oil and natural resources in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East, regional competition in east Asia, not to mention Taiwan and Japan — then this will become progressively more difficult and relations will become increasingly fraught.

It is not impossible, indeed, that the rise of China will undermine the advantages of globalization in the American mind — as the US economist Clyde Prestowitz has recently suggested — leading to increasing acrimony, the end of globalization as we know it, and a rising tide of protectionism.

The prospect of decades of political tension lies ahead. It will require enormous willpower on the part of the US, China, the EU and Japan to contain those tensions. China will be demonized for its political system and its profound cultural differences — for the first time in modern history, a non-white, non-European-based society will be a global superpower. The West will need to learn to live with difference rather than seeking to denounce and subjugate it. The US will need to learn to contain its primordial desire to have an enemy, be it Native Americans, the Soviet Union, Bin Laden or China. Otherwise the 21st century will be grim indeed.—Dawn/Guardian Service

PAKISTANI spokesmen have been urging the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) to do more to energize the global Muslim community (1.2 billion persons). Let us see if it is well situated to perform such a role.

OIC was formed on September 26, 1969 at a conference of Muslim states at Rabaat, Morocco (within a few weeks of an arson attack on the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem) to promote close cooperation among them in scientific, cultural, and spiritual fields. Member states were also to eliminate social segregation and discrimination, oppose colonialism, support the Palestinians and all other Muslim people in their struggle to safeguard their independence and national rights.

It consists of 56 Muslim countries, including several of the newer nations (Bosnia and the central Asian republics), and some of which many of us may never have heard; for instance: Benin, Burkina Faso, Comoros, Djibouti, Gabon, Guinea Bissau, Surname.

Heads of state and government of the OIC countries constitute its ultimate decision-making organ, and since 1981 they have been meeting once every three years. Their foreign ministers meet every year. The organization’s principal offices, headed by a secretary-general, are located in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia). Ekmelledin Ihsanoglu from Turkey is the current secretary-general.

OIC maintains a number of subsidiary organs of which the following are especially noteworthy: (1) Statistical, Economic, and Social Research and Training Centre (Ankara, Turkey); (2) Research Centre for Islamic History, Art, and Culture (Istanbul. Turkey); (3) Islamic University of Technology (Dhaka, Bangladesh); (4) Islamic Centre for Development of Trade (Casablanca, Morocco); (5) Islamic Fiqh Academy (Jeddah); (6) Islamic Solidarity Fund (Jeddah); (7) Islamic University of Niger (Niamey); (8) Islamic University of Uganda (Mbale). Affiliated with the OIC are the Islamic Development Bank and an Islamic News Agency (Jeddah).

At this time the OIC’s principal activities lie in the areas of education and research. In considering the prospect of its playing a more vigorous role in world affairs, which some of our people commend, it should first be noted that with a few exceptions the Muslim world is downright poor and, for the most part, uneducated. The Ankara-based economic research centre, referred to above, reported recently that 37 per cent of the world’s Muslims lived on or below the poverty line (per capita income of one dollar or less a day). In some Muslim countries the poor are much more numerous: Nigeria 70 per cent; Niger 61.4 per cent; Burkina Faso 61.2 per cent; Gambia 59 per cent.

Figured in terms of PPP (purchasing power parity) dollars. per capita GDP in the United States, as of a few years ago, was $ 34,320. Among the high-income Muslim countries it went something like this: UAE 20,530;Qatar 19844; Brunei 19,210; Kuwait 18,700; Bahrain 16,060. Contrast this now with the situation in some of the less developed Muslim countries: Burkina Faso 1,120; Chad 1,070; Guinea Bissoua 970; Niger 890; Nigeria 850; Yemen 790. At a recent OIC meeting in Islamabad (May 2005), it transpired that half of its members had not been paying their dues.

From time to time one hears a plea for establishing an “Islamic common market.” Its proponents seem to be unaware that 90 per cent of the Muslim world’s trade is done with non-Muslim countries and not within its own ranks. Muslim countries do not have a whole lot to sell to one another.

The OIC’s record as a political actor is poor. To date, it has done little to resolve conflicts between, and within, Muslim countries themselves. Iraq and Iran fought a mutually devastating war for more than eight years and OIC did nothing to stop it. Nor did it make any exertions to bring peace to the warring factions in Afghanistan. A much older organization of Muslim states, the Arab League, has done no better in this regard. It may be no exaggeration to say that Muslim states do not have the capacity or the will to mount sustained and united political action to safeguard their identity, honour, and interests.

A curious case on the other side should be noted. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the emirates established the Gulf Cooperation Council (a sort of a rich people’s club) in 1981, basically to keep revolutionary or even liberal democratic impulses out of their respective societies. They have worked together fairly well in slowing down the forces of political change. Acting severally as well as collectively, the Council members have also extended loans and grants to a number of lower-income Muslim countries.

It seems to me that each Muslim country must first overcome its own educational, technological, economic and political under-development before it can usefully join others in larger projects of mutual help. It may be useful to recall here Allama Iqbal’s advice on a related subject. Discussing the prospect of a worldwide Muslim political union, he wrote: “Each Muslim nation must focus her vision on herself alone, until all are strong and powerful to form a living family of republics.” Islamic solidarity, he added, could express itself through any number of forms. (“Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam”).

How does a Muslim community energize itself? The first order of business would be to spread education among its people. A few weeks ago I heard a panel discussion on Pakistani television in which one of the participants insisted that the substance of education in this country must have the purpose of producing good Muslims. I do not wish to argue with this gentleman in this space. Allow me to submit, however, that in my reckoning the purpose of education must be to enable persons to understand their physical and social environment so as to be able to deal with it effectively and make the human condition as productive, fulfilling, and comfortable as possible, enable them to subdue the forces of nature and put them to work in the service of mankind.

In considering the subject under review my thoughts go to an address that Mohammad Khatami, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, delivered at an OIC meeting in Tehran on December 9, 1997. I shall report his thinking in some detail partly because it corresponds to my own. He began with a familiar question: How did it happen that Muslims who had once created a great and glorious civilization, which enriched not only their own successive generations but also the outsiders, fell behind to be subjugated by a neighbouring civilization (western) that had drawn some of its inspiration and vital principles from the one they themselves had left behind.

Muslims declined, said Khatami, because they had stopped being inquisitive and stopped learning. Civilizations lived on and thrived as long as they acted on man’s quest for knowledge, retained the capacity to respond to his ever-changing needs and ask relevant questions. Our needs, and the questions to be asked, are not the same as those of our predecessors. Our current degradation results from the fact that we no longer ask what the relevant questions are. The absence of questions leads to the absence of thought, which in turn leads to passivity and subordination to those who are more inquisitive, dynamic and enterprising.

Muslim rejuvenation will require not only a reflection on our past but a deep understanding of the present age. Between our own earlier civilization and our life today stands the western civilization which has many accomplishments to its credit even if it has some negative implications for the non-western people. Leaving aside its superficial expressions, we must understand its philosophical basis and its fundamental values, and take all that is invigorating and progressive in it. We cannot simply repudiate, or ignore, this western civilization if we are to create a new one of our own.

Attempts to recreate the past and live in it are both futile and retrogressive. Take from the past the essence of our identity, and then let us dedicate ourselves to establishing an “Islamic civil society,” not on a global scale but in our respective countries. It will be different from the modern western society, based on the Greek and Roman traditions, but the two need not be in conflict in all their manifestations. Islamic civil society can incorporate the wholesome characteristic and dispositions of the western.

Muslims can and should live in peace with other societies. That would entail a dialogue with them, which in turn would require a sophisticated understanding of their cultures and moral values. Basing ourselves in the Prophet’s (PBUH) Medina, we should understand that it has no place for any kind of dictatorship, be it that of a single person, faction, party, or even the majority of the people. In the Islamic civil society man is entitled to respect simply by virtue of being man. Its members have the right to determine their own destiny, supervise the administration of their affairs, and hold the government accountable.

The Islamic civil society is not one in which only Muslims are citizens and entitled to rights. Non-Muslims are also citizens and they too have rights under the law. Protection of the individual’s rights is a basic duty of the state. This society does not seek to dominate other peoples, nor will it submit to another’s domination. It does not yield to external coercion, and it does not resort to duplicity in treating other nations.

The attainment of such a society will come gradually. It requires scrupulous cognizance and re-examination of our doctrinal and intellectual traditions as well as a scientific and philosophical understanding of the modern world. Men of learning and thinkers have a pivotal role in this enterprise. Progress will come if the political system encourages thought instead of restricting it.

OIC is nice to have, but nothing will be gained from attributing to it capabilities that it does not have and is not likely to acquire in the foreseeable future. Let us focus our energies on putting our own house in order, and in that context, President Khatami’s insightful prescription would seem to merit our most serious consideration.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA.

E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

THE president of Pakistan is busy in conducting war on terror and in finding a solution to the 58-year old Kashmir dispute which he says he could resolve in two weeks only if India and Kashmiris were to go along. To win support for these stupendous tasks he must travel round the world and he does that often.

The prime minister revels in an economy which is growing faster than ever before and yet bypasses the poor. He visualizes a Pakistan 25 years ahead that, the government’s planning documents say, is “developed, industrialized, just and prosperous through rapid and sustainable development in a resource constrained economy by deploying knowledge inputs”. Interpret it as you will to the despair of the present generation and hopes of the next. But unlike the president, the prime minister is in no haste. Both economic well-being and Kashmir solution, he thinks, lie at the far end of a marathon. In either case it cannot be a sprint.

The president’s worry is terror, the prime minister’s inflation. Both exult in good governance. Governance, unlike economy, does not lend itself to cliches but good governance itself has been made into a cliche ever since we brought the World Bank and Asian Development Bank into it. Administering a country well is not a project that can be put together with money borrowed or our own. It is a distillation of the laws, traditions and practices through generations. It has no connection with material goods.

In the sixties, a decade of record growth, the West Pakistan secretariat had five cars in a pool for use by the entire establishment from chief secretary down to a section officer (as this scribe then was) on advance written requisitioning. No car was assigned to an official, not even to the chief secretary. Now the secretariat of each province has scores of cars if not a hundred. A car that then cost ten thousand rupees now costs a million. The NA speaker’s, of course, has cost 11 million. The speaker of India’s Lok Sabah uses an indigenous car priced at half a million.

Take another instance. The chief executive of West Pakistan — an upright, formidable Nawab of Kalabagh — had just one spartan office. The chief executive of Punjab is now said to have four or five — each more plush than the other. And yet another instance: the commissioner of Peshawar division (at that time three-fourths of the NWFP) drove his own Volkswagon.

Then a night highway robbery made news. The news now is when some one takes to highway unescorted. If the numbers and money, the ingenuity of soldiers and advice of foreign consultants could make an administration better, there would not have been a nostalgia today for the peaceful fifties and sixties. We had ample of all four in the succeeding decades and now more than ever before.

It is nothing short of a national misfortune that the president and the prime minister both believe and chose to inform the world on the same day (the former at the press club of far-away Australia and the latter in a policy statement in the National Assembly) that the governance of the country had been set right — only the foreign and financial problems remain.

To the visionaries of the regime and to its ideological opponents governance may have wider connotations, but what really matters is whether the public affairs are being justly and promptly administered. The ideology of the state or form of government is not a prerequisite for good administration, but it is generally agreed that a system which is both democratic and secular safeguards the life, rights and dignity of all citizens better than a dictatorship or an oligarchy or a theocracy.

Viewed in this perspective, the public administration in Pakistan has remained on the decline, but an ordinary citizen was never more disillusioned with its performance or suspicious of its motives than he is today. Every successive regime has done more to impair the independence and capacity alike of the executive officers and judges to serve the people and dispense justice than the one preceding it. The common tool employed was, and remains, to make them accountable to the transitory men in power rather than to the permanent institutions of the state.

The cardinal feature of Pakistan’s administrative system — call it colonial inheritance if you like — was that the professional administrators and political leaders work in tandem but under the law following the rules of business, and the judges are independent of both. This system, over half a century of independence, has been torn down piece by piece till all the three — the politician, the administrator and the judge — merged into one indistinguishable whole in which dissent has come to be viewed as misdemeanour.

This web has to be broken into three independent strains before a semblance of governance is restored. For good governance the discarded rule of merit and shattered pride of the civil servants have to be restored. Of that there is no sign. The trend is in fact the opposite. Arbitrariness in appointments and humiliation in treatment both are on the increase.

The country wouldn’t be able to deal effectively with the foreign terrorists, which is the president’s first priority, nor with its own saboteurs and murderous fanatics unless it has an utterly professional and confident administration. This writer, with his background of the North-West Frontier tribes, has no doubt that if the political agent (counterpart of the DC in the tribal area) supported by his personal levies and local militia (commanded by an army colonel on deputation) were to be in place as they were in the sixties, the need for a full-scale army operation against our own tribes in South Waziristan would not have arisen.

Then, isn’t it embarrassing for the whole nation that the public expression of confidence both by the president and the prime minister in their good governance was preceded and followed by sectarian killings in Islamabad, the country’s capital, and Karachi, its principal commercial centre? Pakistan cannot win its argument on Kashmir in negotiations with India nor would be able to enlist the world support in its cause if lawlessness which has roots in sectarian hatred, persists and keeps aggravating.

After all, our claim to Kashmir is based on religious affinity. If, instead, religion has become a source of bloodshed, why should the Kashmiris be drawn into the bloody affray? In their own territory, Kashmiris are being killed because they are ‘rebels’ or freedom fighters and not because they are Muslims. By joining Pakistan they could get killed because they are Muslims but, to the killers, of inappropriate persuasion.

Misgovernance is preventing the benefits of a growing economy from reaching the people. For long large amounts of development funds are being given to the parliamentarians to spend for personal or political gain. Now, according to the ruling League’s secretary-general Mushahid Hussain, the prime minister has also approved allocation of funds even to the district presidents and defeated candidates of his party to enable them to win the coming elections. Despite this squandering, less than half (at least in Sindh) of the funds budgeted for development were used in the first nine months of the year. The problem thus seems to be not the shortage but excess of money.

Pakistan’s per capita income, the prime minister claims, now stands at 730 dollars. According to the World Bank, it was only 470 dollars in 2003. The extra 260 dollars obviously have not reached the common man. If the prime minister’s claim is right, his governance is not just wrong it is also wasteful and corrupt.