EVEN as much of the world was struggling to understand the ominous implications of the hard line taken on the current strife in the Middle East by President Bush in two major addresses, President Pervez Musharraf began a series of visits to several Arab-Islamic states in the region and in South East Asia to discuss some ideas that he hopes will ameliorate the worsening situation.

The mission was marked by an uncharacteristic absence of high rhetoric that defines his style. There is the inevitable question of whether Pakistan has discovered a new path to peace and stability in what has become the most unstable part of the world.The task is daunting and after the short shrift given by George Bush to the bipartisan Baker-Hamilton panel it is also a focus of worldwide concern. For those of us who have despaired of consequences from the first day of the invasion of Iraq, there is some comfort in that a growing number of American analysts – scholars, journalists, diplomats, politicians and military experts – now share the need for a change of policy. In many cases, the clarity of their vision restores one’s faith in the moral substratum of American political culture even if it fails to make a timely impact on governmental decision-making.

Perhaps the latest example of this probity is to be found in the just published essay Manifest destiny: A new direction for America by William Pfaff in The New York Review of Books. Many of us often wonder how and why American exceptionalism rooted in the ethic of European migrants who wanted to make a new moral beginning in a new world got corrupted into an aggressive disdain for the rest of the world. Having rejected fascism and other totalitarian ideologies of the 20th century, how did this country get bogged down in Vietnam and Iraq, the two most telling metaphors of its militarism? The relatively short essay by Mr Pfaff makes it easier to understand this ideological decline.

Ironically its roots are found in the American desire to end tyranny in the world. “The Bush administration,” writes Mr Pfaff, “defends its pursuit of this unlikely goal (ending tyranny in the world) by means of internationally illegal, unilateralist and preemptive attacks on other countries, accompanied by arbitrary imprisonments and the practice of torture, and by making the claim that the United States possesses an exceptional status among nations that confers upon it special international responsibilities and exceptional privileges in meeting those responsibilities.” This has become the source of much disorder in the world.

Iraq is a sordid affair with hardly any redemptive features. Here the American self-belief in its unique moral status and its historic mission was thoroughly exploited to launch a war of ignoble intent. William Pfaff thinks that “it seems scarcely imaginable that the present administration could shift course away from the interventionist military and political policies of recent decades, let alone its own highly aggressive version of them since 2001”. He is not very optimistic about the future either. In his judgment, it would be difficult to reverse the intellectual and material factors underlying American global interventionism.

What threatens the entire region including Pakistan now is that from the very beginning, violence was accepted as a legitimate tool to restructure it. Soon after Iraq was invaded, Graham Fuller, a notable specialist on the region who was a highly regarded CIA official in Kabul during my time there offered a possible justification of military intervention: he wrote about a creative disorder as a pre-requisite for the re-ordering of the Middle East. Many others talked of birth pangs in the same context. I remember writing about it in this paper to point out that the peculiar cultural orientation of the region and its belief system would produce resistance that would turn this disorder into a thoroughly uncreative phenomenon.

In his seminal essay, William Pfaff refers to Joseph Schumpter’s discussion of economic radicalism where creative destruction clears the way for economic progress in certain circumstances. Applied to Iraq’s politics, it has produced nothing but devastation during the four post-invasion years. Iraq’s propensity to self-destruct which is a direct consequence of the invasion threatens the entire region with similar implosions.

I have just re-read the transcript of the speech that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made to a distinguished audience at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London on June 26, 2003. Mr Pfaff recalls it in his article. The saddest thing is that there is little evidence of re-thinking when it comes to her world view. Given this inflexibility, one wonders what President Musharraf wants a new forum of Muslim kings, presidents and prime ministers to do, particularly outside the framework of the OIC and the Arab League.

What were the key concepts that defined her world view that fateful summer? She was troubled by people talking nostalgically of “multipolarity” which she said “was a necessary evil that sustained the absence of war” and which was now behind the West. The world was done with a theory of competing interests and “competing values”. Nato, she declared, needed to be prepared to take on critical missions beyond Europe – “a project already well-begun”. She asked the Europeans to “lay aside the quest for new ‘poles’ and turn our energies to creating what President Bush has called a balance of power that favours freedom”. Events since June 2003 have not vindicated her analysis, and power is getting diffused and dispersed. But Ms Rice has continued to rally support for the unilateralist politics of the administration which she represents. In fact, most of the time she seems to be building up an aggressive coalition against Iran just as she and her colleagues had done in Iraq’s case.

Meanwhile, the fires consuming Iraq have spread. Iraq itself moves closer to fragmentation. Even the capital is undergoing “ethnic cleansing” by sectarian militias. A recent battle near Najaf that reportedly killed 260 persons was described initially as an operation against a maverick “Mehdi” leading a cult bent upon bringing on the apocalypse – one more sinister image of a dark religion. Later reports suggested that it was the deliberate punishment of Hawatim tribe which did not endorse the views of the dominant sectarian faction in the Maliki government.

In Palestine, the year-long Israeli siege backed by the boycott of the Hamas government by the “international community” has succeeded in pushing the Hamas-Fatah rivalry to the brink. The plan for a national unity administration that would have met the international pre-conditions for lifting sanctions stands wrecked. As in the past, Israel is using the contrived crisis to step up colonisation of the West Bank and Jerusalem. In the highly stressed regional situation, the delicate balance of forces in the body politic of Lebanon faces an outright collapse. Iran is being systematically challenged on its alleged network in Iraq, which, incidentally, could not have sprung up overnight and also with an aggressive deployment of naval power against it.

Hawks in the United States are making alarmist assessments of China’s successful economic diplomacy in Africa and want the creation of an Africa command based in Djibouti. The recent US-backed Ethiopian invasion of Somalia and escalation of pressure on Sudan are being insidiously linked with the global war on “Islamist” terror.

The people of Pakistan are deeply concerned but expect a much fuller statement of how the just concluded presidential mission proposes to address this multifaceted crisis. If Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Turkey cannot make much impression on Israel’s predatory policies, how do we hope to influence Tel Aviv? What leverage do we have to help Saudi Arabia and Egypt heal the wounds that rival Palestinian factions are inflicting on each other?

Did nobody in the foreign office suggest it to Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri that Pakistan’s initiative would have gained some traction if he had met Khaled Meshaal in Damascus? Given the underlying causes of the sectarian conflict in Iraq, what exactly are we advising a selective forum of Muslim rulers to do to bring it to an end? If at the farthest end of the spectrum, which Washington would reject summarily, we envisage an Arab-Islamic force to play a role in Iraq then how do we reconcile it with the earlier support of Pakistani leadership for a continued American military presence in Iraq? Finally, would the proposed forum advance the much-talked about restructuring of the OIC or signal its further marginalisation?

This is, however, not to suggest that a meeting of “like-minded” Muslim rulers should not take place. The world of Islam is at present ripped apart by contrary pulls. It is, therefore, necessary to define the phrase “like-minded”.

In our own history, rightly or wrongly, it got linked in many situations – the Suez crisis of 1956, the Baghdad Pact, the expulsion of Palestinian leadership from Jordan, the protracted crisis in Afghanistan – with Pakistan’s leading role in furthering a western agenda. The linkage has led to undeserved misgivings particularly when the people of Pakistan passionately identified themselves with Muslim causes from the Maghreb to the Indonesian freedom struggle.

There are questions about President Musharraf’s recent Muslim diplomacy which should be answered candidly and robustly. He may well be offering a ray of hope to a deeply anguished “ummah”. It would be better if this source of light is revealed for all to see.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.

THE start of 2007 has witnessed efforts by the Indian leadership to keep alive the promise of the three-year-old peace process launched after the Saarc summit in Islamabad in 2004.

The two-day visit of Indian external affairs minister, Pranab Mukherjee, earlier last month not only enabled contact with President Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz but also substantive talks -- even though the visit was specifically related to extending an invitation for the next Saarc summit that India will host.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also sounded an optimistic note following Mr Mukherjee's return. But despite the positive spin put on Mr Mukherjee's visit, it is evident that the pace of progress of the peace process is being calibrated by India to give the impression of forward movement when there is little substantive progress.

For instance, there was an expectation that some headway would be achieved on two items listed in the eight-point agenda of the composite dialogue, namely the Siachen glacier and Sir Creek. This did not happen. Instead, an agreement on nuclear safety measures was solemnised.

The core issue of Kashmir was not taken up seriously except that its inclusion in the agenda was affirmed along with a note of caution that this complex issue required patient and well-considered efforts that would inevitably take time and that in the meantime the CBMs already taken up should be pursued and resort to an active struggle by militants kept in check.

Though the Pakistani president had informally floated several ideas to achieve progress -- such as demilitarisation by both sides that would serve to reduce violence and human rights abuses -- India had not reacted and was persisting in repressive tactics and maintaining a large military presence in occupied Kashmir. Despite its declared commitment to the peace process, numerous Kashmiri civilians were being killed every day with accusations by India that Pakistan was extending support to terrorists.

The need to reach a modus vivendi between the leadership of the two countries has been felt with increasing urgency since the break-up of Pakistan in 1971 and the Shimla agreement that followed. This urgency has increased after 1998 when both went overtly nuclear. Even the UN Security Council resolution passed in June 1998 following the nuclear tests in May stressed the urgent need for both countries to resolve their disputes, notably the one over Kashmir, peacefully.

The 1999 bus summit at Lahore saw the then Indian prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, avail himself of the launching of the bus service between New Delhi and Lahore that was meant to herald an era of peace and cooperation. The Kargil episode revealed deep-seated misgivings about a stable peace without progress in resolving the Kashmir dispute. The US intervened to prevent escalation, and it took two years for the dialogue to resume, through the Agra summit.

The events of 9/11 first encouraged India to try military pressure, but after 10 months of eyeball to eyeball confrontation, India had to abandon the path of coercive diplomacy. Another 15 months elapsed before the peace process was revived in January 2004.

Since January 2004, the composite dialogue process has been pursued in an organised manner. The meetings on the eight-item agenda have been pursued at the foreign secretary level on Kashmir and peace and security, while the remaining six items (Siachen glacier, Wullar barrage, Sir Creek, trade, cultural issues and travel and communications) are being pursued at the expert level. After the completion of each round, the foreign secretaries meet, followed by a meeting at the foreign minister level. Summit-level meetings are held at every opportunity presented by major multilateral gatherings such as Saarc summits, non-aligned summits and UN General Assembly meetings. President Musharraf has even attended cricket matches in India.

The peace process, which has been welcomed by all major powers, has been accompanied by confidence-building measures, including the exchange of trade delegations, meetings between delegations of lawyers, women's organisations and academic groups and media representatives.

Apart from increasing rail and road connections, including the bus service between the two parts of Kashmir, trade has also been liberalised and other exchanges will be facilitated by progress on the core issue of Kashmir. In the sphere of peace and security, progress has been achieved in nuclear safety and control which is crucial between two nuclear powers.

There are two areas where the ultimate goal of normalisation of relations is being obstructed. One is Kashmir and the other is India's regional and global strategy in which the establishment of a relationship of trust and confidence between the two countries remains elusive.

On Kashmir, India has persistently adhered to its stand of treating it as an integral part of the country and ruled out any territorial concessions or advice on paying heed to the will of the Kashmiri people. Though President Musharraf's four-point formula stresses the need to pursue a solution acceptable to all three parties (Pakistan, India and Kashmir) India has shown little flexibility.

In the broader strategic perspective, the alliance with the US, which is committed to supporting New Delhi’s great power ambitions and has agreed to transfer nuclear technology, as well as with Israel appear to make India an integral part of the anti-Islamic front. It also continues to strengthen anti-Pakistan trends in Afghanistan and other countries in the region. India continues to be non-cooperative on issues of energy and water.

The fourth round of the peace process is due to begin in March this year. There are several initiatives by President Musharraf on Kashmir that require a response. Hurriyat leaders have shown readiness to rely on the peace process and to abandon the path of armed struggle in the belief that a peaceful settlement is possible. Their optimism will be justified only if India shows greater flexibility and permits some progress on Kashmir.

There is no doubt that the two countries need to normalise their relations if they want to win a decisive victory over poverty and backwardness which constitute their main challenges. The factors favouring the continuation of the peace process are clearly identifiable, notably pressure exerted by the international community, specially the major powers, their economic imperatives and broad popular support for the process. However, to arrive at a realistic assessment, one must note factors that raise legitimate doubts about the prospects. India has continued its feverish build-up of its armed forces, including high-tech weapons, compelling Pakistan to divert precious recourses to maintaining deterrence. This factor plays a major role in the strategic alliances of the two countries, that of India with the US and of Pakistan with China.

The peace process has been increasingly influenced by the views and interests of the military on both sides. Though nearly six decades have passed since independence, and a new generation has taken charge, hardened attitudes have not changed and religious passions remain strong. One feels that there is a lack of leadership in India that could rise above its past.

Chanakya, the famous minister of Chandragupta Maurya, wrote in his Arthashastra 2,000 years ago that there was no morality in interstate relations and that it was power that counts. The challenges of the 21st century demand a different approach if civilisation is to be saved. One hopes that this will be realised in the land of Chanakya as well.

The writer is a former ambassador.

TWENTY-EIGHT years ago, when we knew very little about the way human activities affect global climate, independent scientist James Lovelock warned that the sheer scale of human activities threatened to destabilise the homoeostatic system that keeps the Earth's climate within a comfortable range for our kind of life, the system he named "Gaia."

"We shall have to tread carefully," he said, "to avoid the cybernetic disasters of runaway positive feedback or sustained oscillation." Then he said something that has stuck in my mind ever since. If we overwhelm the natural systems that keep the climate stable, Lovelock predicted, then we would "wake up one morning to find that [we] had the permanent lifelong job of planetary maintenance engineer....The ceaseless intricate task of keeping all the global cycles in balance would be ours. Then at last we should be riding that strange contraption, the 'spaceship Earth', and whatever tamed and domesticated biosphere remained would indeed be our 'life support system'."

I have a nasty feeling that we are almost there. The years have passed, our numbers and our emissions have grown -- have almost doubled since 1979, in fact -- and the crisis is now upon us. The fourth assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published on Friday, says that global temperature rises of between 2 degrees and 4.5 degrees Celsius are almost inevitable in the course of this century -- but much higher increases of 6 degrees C or even more cannot be ruled out.

The IPCC reports are produced by some 2,000 of the world's leading climate scientists, nominated by their various national governments, and they operate by consensus, so any predictions they make are likely to err on the conservative side. And they say the argument is over: "It is highly likely [greater than 95 per cent probability] that the warming observed during the past half century cannot be explained without external forcing [i.e. human activity]." Indeed, the sum of solar and volcanic influences on the system ought to be producing global cooling right now, if it were not for the human factor.

It's already worse than you think, the IPCC reports, because the sulphate particles that pollute the upper atmosphere as a result of human industrial activity are acting as a kind of sunscreen: without them, the average global temperature would already be 0.8 degrees C higher. And the report goes on to talk about killer heat waves, more and bigger tropical storms, melting glaciers and rising sea levels -- but it doesn't really get into the worst implication of major global heating: mass starvation.

If the global average temperature rises by 4.5 degrees C, shifting rainfall patterns will bring perpetual drought to most of the world's major breadbaskets (the north Indian plain, the Chinese river valleys, the US Midwest, the Nile watershed), and reduce global food production by 25 to 50 per cent. If it goes to 6 degrees C, we lose most of our food production worldwide.

The world's six and a half billion people currently produce just about enough food to keep everybody alive (although it is so unevenly shared out that some of us don't stay alive). Any major reduction in food production means mass migrations, war, and mass death. It is getting very serious.

Obviously, the main part of the solution must be to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and stop destabilising the climate, but we are probably not going to be able to get them down far enough, fast enough, to avoid catastrophe. Short-term technological fixes to keep the worst from happening while we work at getting emissions down would be very welcome, and a variety are now on offer. But they are all controversial.

Bring back nuclear power generation on a huge scale, and stop generating electricity by burning fossil fuels. Fill the upper atmosphere with even more sulphate particles (you could just dose jet fuel with one-half per cent sulphur) to thicken the sunscreen effect. Scrub carbon out of the air by windmill-like machines that capture and sequester it. Seed clouds over the ocean with atomised sea-water to make them whiter and more reflective. Float a fleet of tiny aluminium balloons in the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight or orbit a giant mirror in space between the Earth and the Sun to do the same job.

The purists hate it, and insist that we can do it all by conserving energy and shifting to non-carbon energy sources. In the long run, of course, they are right, but we must survive the short run if we ever hope to see the long run, and that may well require short-term techno-fixes. Welcome to the job of planetary maintenance engineer.

We won't like the job a bit, but Lovelock stated our remaining options eloquently twenty-eight years ago. If the consumption of energy continues to increase, he wrote, we face "the final choice of permanent enslavement on the prison hulk of spaceship Earth, or gigadeath to enable the survivors to restore a Gaian world."

Maybe in a couple of centuries the human race will be able to restore the natural cycles and give up the job again, but it won't happen in our lifetimes, or our children's either. — Copyright