APART from the controversy on the place of ideology in Pakistan, a second major divisive issue has been as to how the country should be governed and the nature of the political system. It is evident that there is a growing consensus that Pakistan must have democracy. Indeed, in this 21st century, public opinion all over the world has turned decisively against dictatorship and arbitrary rule.

Pakistan was achieved through a democratic struggle and began its initial journey as a democratic state. But the early loss of its founding fathers, Jinnah and Liaquat, allowed vested interests and opportunists to derail the democratic process.

At the same time, it has to be emphasised that democracy can best succeed where the people have a democratic temperament. In this context, it might be instructive to analyse as to how and why the democratic experience has succeeded in some countries. Perhaps, the US and India can be taken as two specimen countries, the former from amongst the developed countries and the latter from amongst the developing nations. A close analysis of their democratic experience suggests certain common features.

Firstly, there exists a strong patriotism in both countries and a clear national will that the country must remain united. While secessionist movements exist in India, the mainstream parties always rally round the flag. Neither the media nor the politicians ever glorify the secessionists. When it comes to external threats, all parties close ranks and adopt a common national stance. In the US, there is a passionate attachment to the national flag. It is also notable that when visiting foreign countries, American and Indian opposition leaders usually avoid criticising the government back home.

Pakistan clearly does not meet this test. Secessionists have already once torn the country apart in 1971. More recently, when Akbar Bugti was conducting an armed revolt against the federation and his followers were burning the national flag, they were being actually glorified by some political parties and sections of the news media. In fact, there are quite a few politicians who keep threatening that Pakistan would be broken up again if this or that did not happen. The controversy over the Kalabagh dam is one such example.

Moreover, Pakistani political parties rarely forge a common front on fundamental national issues. While visiting foreign countries, opposition leaders say the most vicious things against the government and have no hesitation in washing the dirty linen in public. All of this suggests an insufficient commitment to the country’s supreme national interests, including its very survival.

Secondly, democracies function well when there is tolerance and a willingness to listen to the points of view of others. This involves patience and broad-mindedness and an implicit acceptance that one could be wrong and the opponent might be right. A certain minimum politeness and decorum is also a characteristic of a mature democratic society. A democratic culture cannot flourish if there is rampant abuse and mud-slinging on opponents, creating a vicious atmosphere in which violence is invariably around the corner. In many western democracies, there are also strong libel laws that prevent hurling of baseless allegations and character assassination.

The foregoing criteria seem to be missing in Pakistani politics. Political opponents are often at each other’s throats and vicious personal attacks are common. Intemperate language is widely used and threats are commonplace.

Thirdly, a democracy can function well only if election results are accepted gracefully and there is a willingness on the part of the losers to allow the winners to form the government and carry on the administration for the four or five year term fixed by the constitution. This also entails the transparency of the electoral process and the existence of an independent election commission. Of course, vote rigging is not uncommon in many countries, including India, but the way every election result is challenged in Pakistan by the losers shakes public confidence in the electoral process itself. The opposition refuses to accept the election results and the incumbent government is challenged from its very inception.

Fourthly, corrupt politicians tarnish the image of democracy. No doubt, there are many politicians, particularly in developing countries, who do not enjoy a reputation for integrity. But it is also a question of degree. We have had some politicians who have become a byword for corruption. And yet, their supporters continue to remain loyal to them and would probably re-elect them whenever an opportunity presents itself. The courts seem unable to convict them for lack of evidence resulting from intimidation or otherwise. This scenario badly shakes the confidence of the public in the democratic system itself.

Fifthly, a strong judiciary is essential for a democratic society. It ensures that no one is above the law and the rights of citizens will be protected. The judiciary must also uphold the constitution. But in Pakistan, since the days of Justice Munir in 1954, the courts have again and again upheld the negation – even the abrogation – of the constitution. The doctrine of necessity has been invoked time and again to give legal cover to gross violations of the constitution. Similarly, the fundamental rights of citizens have never been adequately protected by the courts, including freedom from arrest and torture.

Sixthly, a key factor for the success of democracy in several countries has been the adherence of their main political parties to middle-of-the-road policies. They follow a culture of moderation and avoid extremism. In the US and Britain, as in Germany and France, there is not much difference between the policies of the two main parties. This prevents periodic upheavals in the political arena that can have a paralysing effect for the whole country. There are no calls for strikes to secure political objectives. Rioting in the streets and burning of public transport and shops is rare and in some countries it is non-existent.

The foregoing conditions for a successful democracy are hardly to be seen in Pakistan. In fact, time has shown that Pakistanis as a people are an impatient lot who can become highly emotional at times. There is a tendency to denigrate opponents and adopt totally one-sided attitudes, in which fairness and truth often fall by the wayside. The news media too has shown these very attributes. Reporting is often one-sided and highly biased. Facts are concealed or distorted so that the public is unable to form a balanced view of things. These conditions are not conducive to the promotion of a democratic culture.

It is not enough to say that the “establishment” does not let democracy flourish in Pakistan. All countries have some kind of establishment. India is no different. If democracy can succeed in these countries despite the establishment, this can also happen in Pakistan. Here too we have seen that once the people are determined to bring a change, they have succeeded. In 1971, the voters in East Pakistan defied the establishment in voting for the Awami League. In 1968 and 1977, they defied the establishment and brought about the fall of the incumbent government through street protests.

The above-mentioned background perhaps explains the phenomenon of frequent military interventions in Pakistani politics. For the first six years of Pakistan’s existence, the military was not a factor in politics, though there was an attempt by some leftist officers in the army to stage a coup d’etat in 1951. But with the arbitrary dismissal of an elected government by Governor-General Ghulam Mohammad in 1953, the army chief first got involved in politics, reportedly at Ghulam Mohammad’s request. A year later, General Ayub Khan was made the defence minister.

Similarly, defence secretary Iskander Mirza, a retired army officer, got even deeper into the political set-up, first getting appointed as interior minister and later as governor-general. He became president when Pakistan’s first constitution was promulgated in 1956.

All of this was happening while Pakistan was still formally a democracy. No politician at that time protested as to why the army chief Ayub Khan and defence secretary Mirza were being invited to get involved in politics. In the meantime, politics in Pakistan had become a case of musical chairs. There were frequent changes of governments, political loyalties were changed overnight and, in an ugly brawl in the East Pakistan Assembly, the Acting Speaker was actually killed. This was the way democracy was functioning in Pakistan when martial law was declared and military rule began that lasted 13 years.

The record shows that the people at large actually welcomed Ayub Khan’s military rule as it provided a cleaner and more stable administration. There was a similar popular reaction when the army seized power again in 1977 and 1999. But the motives of the military rulers were not altogether altruistic. Behind the façade of the need for reforms and cleaning up the mess, there has been evidence of Bonapartist ambitions and benefiting from the perks and privileges of power.

In any event, military rule is an aberration and not a permanent solution to a country’s political problems. The greatest weakness of autocratic rule has always been that it has no satisfactory system of succession and no orderly and smooth transition of power. Military rule usually means denial of fundamental rights, including the right of choose, freedom of expression and freedom of the press and is, therefore, not acceptable in the present day world with its emphasis on democratic rights.

However, in the context of a country like Pakistan, military rule can best be avoided if there is a national consensus on establishing democratic norms and a minimum code of political conduct. We have to establish traditions of a genuine democracy by inculcating a spirit of tolerance, fair play, patience and moderation. Otherwise, the country will continue to rotate for the foreseeable future between periods of messy democracy and military rule.

The writer is former ambassador

WE have only reached the middle of the year 2007, but already crystal gazers are looking at the changes expected next year. Mr Bush has until January 2009 but Russia will see the Putin era pass in the spring of next year. With the revenues of oil and gas filling Russia’s coffers with foreign exchange, President Vladimir Putin has been claiming a major role for the former superpower.

The betting on his successor favours Sergei Ivanov, currently deputy premier. Like Putin, he started his career as a KGB officer and has also been defence minister. This gives him close links with the secret police and the armed forces, the two most powerful organisations in Russia. His overall domestic and foreign agenda is likely to maintain the Putin line.

The US will remain the richest and most powerful nation, though it is expected to rely less on force and more on diplomacy. France, Germany and Britain are expected to maintain pre-eminence in Europe and to continue their Nato links with the US.

With Asia-Pacific nations assuming a leading role in terms of economic and technical growth, the US remains central, with Japan and China assuming a major role. There are new players, Brazil on the Atlantic and India on the Indian Ocean, acquiring a growing role.

After the end of the Cold War, Russia, the successor great power to the Soviet Union, saw its economic and strategic space eroded in a dramatic fashion. The first few years were marked by misery and humiliation, as the old system collapsed without a new one in place. There were food shortages and even Muscovites faced famine conditions with food aid having to be rushed from all parts of Europe and Asia.

With the US assuming the role of the world’s only superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 1990s witnessed a continuous reduction in the role and influence of Russia, despite the fact that Russia remained the largest country in the world, stretching over 11 time zones and in possession of enormous natural resources.

Putin, a former KGB official, was picked up by Yeltsin to assert Russian power over Chechnya and to salvage Moscow’s standing and international role in the world.

Putin became president in 2000, and the rise in the prices of oil and gas bolstered the Russian economy in the following years in such a manner that when he completes his second term, Russia will once again be seen as a genuine great power. However, the country had been pauperised in the mid-1990s when 80 per cent of the population was reduced to a Third World standard of living, with the total GDP of the giant country barely equal to that of the Netherlands.

Since then, as the EU and Nato have expanded largely at its expense, Russia has drawn closer to China and sought to promote a better global balance. It has also laid greater stress on its Asian identity. Following its reduced fortunes in the West, Russia has felt justified in developing closer ties with Asian groups.

It became a dialogue partner of Asean and also joined Apec. However, the most significant grouping of which it became a founder member is the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation that was launched in 2001.

Though founded originally to counter US goals of global hegemony, Putin stated in 2006 that it was by no means a military alliance. Its enlargement (with countries like India, Pakistan and Iran showing interest) would be a carefully considered process, taking into account the “contradictions”, among various countries. Indeed, having the second largest arsenal of nuclear and missile weapons and being a permanent member of the Security Council, Russia still claims a voice and a role in all parts of the world, though its influence remains concentrated on its periphery and is crucial in Iran.

The recent visit of the Russian prime minister to Pakistan and the earlier visit of President Musharraf to Moscow also show a continuing interest of both in friendly relations. Russia also sought and secured observer status at the 10th OIC summit. However, there can be no doubt about the close Indo-Russian relations that ensures New Delhi access to Russian military technology.

The EU countries had been exerting pressure on Russia on account of its human rights record in Chechnya. The events of 9/11 led to the US and the West seeing terrorism in a different light and to showing a better understanding of Russian policies in the Caucasus region. However, the penetration of Central Asia by the US is not welcome and Russia has stepped up efforts to reassert its influence in the former Soviet republics by concluding a gas exports agreement with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan.

Putin’s period of leadership has not been remarkable for the flowering of democratic institutions. But he has succeeded in pulling the country out of the decline and depression of the first decade after the Cold War, using autocratic methods and relying on a state apparatus subservient to his inner circle.

Russia has traditionally flourished under authoritarian regimes, and while a relatively small proportion of the people worry about dictatorial methods and neglect of human rights, the great majority are supportive of Putin’s handling of domestic and international affairs.

Russia is adapting to some negative trends. Owing to the meltdown that followed the defeat in the Cold War, the population has gone down dramatically, by over 800,000 every year as fertility rates have fallen and death rates have risen. For such a huge country, the current population of below 150 million cannot provide the manpower for all requirements and opportunities.

Russia must encourage faster growth and facilitate immigration. There is an urgent need to upgrade educational and health institutions that require better funding and modernised management and staffing. With the second biggest stockpile of nuclear and missile weapons, Russia requires western funding and support to prevent its sensitive technology from being sold to terrorists or maverick governments.

The type of succession being planned by Putin will keep nationalists familiar with the traditional role of the secret police and the armed forces, reconciled to his plans that have been designed to preserve and ensure Russia’s status as a major power. Russia has made a remarkable recovery, and as Putin approaches the conclusion of his second term some even speculate if he might not find a stratagem to prolong his rule.

With the Russian economy improving and the country’s enormous potential being developed, it is clear that the country needs continuity and stability. The annual growth rate since 2001 has been seven per cent, much higher than in most of Western Europe, and the per capita income has risen to $7,000.

While the state exercises control over strategic resources like oil and gas, other sectors of the economy have flourished so that Moscow and other major cities have a prosperous look. The ethnic and religious mix found in what is still the czarist empire stretching to the Pacific requires a strong hand at the helm, and this is going to be provided either by Putin continuing, or by someone very similar to him taking over.

At the same time, the world in the 21st century is a very complex place, with mankind facing new challenges as limits are discovered to available resources and new threats to human survival surface. Science and technology had advanced in the Soviet Union when it competed with the West during the Cold War. Despite the institutional decline and economic meltdown following defeat, the reservoir of trained manpower and Russian national pride must still be there. So despite its diminished population and reduced global status, Russia still has the potential to continue with a significant role in the emerging world order. It may alternate its role between the two new poles of power, one in the US and the other in China.

The very vastness of Russia’s territory and undercurrents of local dissatisfaction in distant parts sometimes lead analysts to wonder if the future of the huge country is as secure as it looks.

Climatic change and the unfreezing of Siberia may produce new changes. This is one reason why a strong centre with both intelligence agencies and the armed forces working together offer the best recipe for keeping the vast country together.

The writer is a former ambassador

THE ratio of foreign soldiers to local citizens in Kosovo (16,500 Nato troops to two million civilians) is slightly higher than the ratio of American soldiers to Iraqi citizens. The soldiers in Kosovo are not fighting a war, but their presence has certainly been needed to keep one from breaking out again -- and there are plenty of people in Kosovo who threaten that if they don't get full independence soon, there will be another war anyway.

During his visit to neighbouring Albania earlier this month, President George W. Bush declared: "At some point, sooner rather than later, you've got to say 'Enough is enough -- Kosovo is independent'." There was great joy in Kosovo (where 90 per cent of the population are ethnic Albanians), but in Moscow there were threats of a veto.

A senior Russian official explained that "Kosovo is an inviolable part of Serbia and the question of its future status can be resolved only with the agreement of both Belgrade and Pristina (Kosovo's capital)." But that will never happen.

A few months earlier Richard Holbrooke, the US diplomat who negotiated an end to the war in Bosnia in 1995, warned in an article published in The Washington Post that "Russia's actions could determine whether there is another war in Europe....If Moscow vetoes or delays (Kosovo's independence) the Kosovar Albanians will declare independence unilaterally. Some countries, including the United States and many Muslim states, would probably recognise them, but most of the European Union would not. A major European crisis would be assured. Bloodshed would return to the Balkans."

The war in Kosovo ended with a Serbian withdrawal eight years ago, but it didn't really settle anything. Determined to stop another genocide of Balkan Muslims like the one that Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic had masterminded in Bosnia in 1992-95, Nato bombed Serbia for eleven weeks in 1999, and in the end Milosevic pulled Serbian troops out of Kosovo. The problem was that Kosovo was legally part of Serbia, and that Nato's action was therefore illegal.

The only way it could have been legal was if the United Nations Security Council had agreed that there were legal grounds for a military intervention, but any such motion would have been vetoed by Russia and China. So the major western powers, with the United States in the lead, attacked Serbia to prevent the genocide they believed was impending in Kosovo. That, under international law, was an unjustifiable act of aggression.

Many people (including myself) supported this act of aggression at the time, believing that Milosevic had to be stopped and that the breach of international law could be papered over later. It was papered over, in a sense, for the UN agreed after the war to take responsibility for the administration of Kosovo. But it was not given independence, because that would be just too flagrant a violation of the international rules.

The fundamental bargain that underpins the United Nations is this: every member gives up the right to attack other states, and in return every state gets a guarantee that it will not be attacked. The guarantee does not say that you will not be attacked except if you are a tyranny, or are oppressing your minorities, or look dangerous to your neighbours. It says “you will not be attacked.” No excuses, no exceptions, no loopholes that a clever enemy could use to justify an attack.

The priority of the American diplomats who drafted the UN Charter in 1945 was to prevent another major war. The worst war in history had just ended: 60 million were dead, and nuclear weapons had been used. A law that bans aggression must be universal, protecting both "good" countries and "bad" ones from attack. So what goes on inside a country is the business of that country's government alone, as long as it does not harm the neighbours.

It was a brutal rule, made for brutally dangerous times. For a moment there, in the mid- to late 1990s, some of us believed that the times had got softer and that the rules could be modified to give vulnerable people and groups more international protection. But we were wrong, for the rhetoric that justified an attack on Serbia in 1999 was then hijacked to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The slope is too slippery, and we have to get back to solid ground.That is why Kosovo has remained a UN protectorate for eight years, rather than gaining the independence that the vast majority of its people crave: to give it independence would be to dismantle the sovereign state of Serbia by force. For Russians, who fear that Kosovo's independence could be used as a legal precedent for breaking up their own multi-ethnic state, it is a red line.

Yet Kosovo cannot be forced back into Serbia, and it cannot be left in limbo forever. If the UN will not grant it something very close to full independence, many Kosovars are ready to seize it anyway, even if that triggers a new war. There are no good options left. Indeed, there were none from the beginning of this miserable tale. ––Copyright

PROMINENT voices in the US are calling for national carbon taxes as a way to fight global warming. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, the Los Angeles Times' editorial board and economists on the left and the right all support a carbon tax as the cure for our greenhouse gas pains.

It isn't, at least for transportation. As the California Air Resources Board votes today in Los Angeles on adopting new carbon standards, we should understand that global warming can't be solved by a single policy or solution.

Carbon taxes — taxes on energy sources that emit carbon dioxide (CO2) — aren't a bad idea. But they only work in some situations. Specifically, they do not work in the transportation sector, the source of a whopping 40 per cent of California's greenhouse gas emissions (and a third of U.S. emissions).

The one sector where carbon taxes will work well is electricity generation, which accounts for 20 per cent of California emissions (and 40 per cent of U.S. emissions). The carbon tax works because electricity producers can choose among a wide variety of commercial energy sources — from carbon-intense coal to lower-emitting natural gas to zero-emission nuclear or renewable energy.

A modest tax of $25 per ton of carbon dioxide would increase the retail price of electricity made from coal by 17 per cent. Given the many choices, this would motivate electricity producers to seek out lower-carbon alternatives. The result would be innovation, change and decarbonisation.

Transportation is a different story. Neither producers nor consumers would respond to a $25-a-ton tax. Fuel producers would not respond because they have become almost completely dependent on petroleum, which supplies 96 per cent of all transportation fuels. They cannot easily find low-carbon alternatives. Even corn ethanol is only slightly better than gasoline.

Drivers also would be unmotivated by a carbon tax. A CO2 tax of $25 a ton would raise the price of gasoline only about 20 cents a gallon. ––Los Angeles Times