A badly splintered world

IN last week’s column I suggested that the votes cast by a number of large Asian countries in the board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Commission on September 24 suggest a political reconfiguration in this part of the world. The meeting pitted the United States against several countries that refused to come under its pressure. This group included Pakistan.

Several countries, once again including Pakistan, had given full support to the United States since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Why this change in stance? The Vienna vote reflected the strategic interests of individual countries in a rapidly changing global environment. For once, countries were not following an approach that would have meant forgoing national interest in favour of the greater international good.

In the period immediately following 9/11 President George W. Bush had urged all nations to get together to address the menace of international terrorism, even if it meant giving up on some past policies adopted in pursuit of national interest. In the case of Pakistan that meant a complete turnaround in its approach towards Afghanistan. Why was Pakistan not willing to toe this line any further?. Why did several other Asian countries also decide to go their own way?

The Vienna vote brought to the surface the way various large countries around the globe have begun to define their interests in the post 9/11 world. In dealing with the world after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, on the United States, the administration of President George W. Bush took one step that had the broad support of the international community and two others that have caused considerable dismay around the globe. The step that had international approval was to give an unambiguous message to all people that acts of terrorism would not be tolerated and the countries that harboured the people or the groups that carried them out would be held accountable.

Once it became clear that the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon near Washington were the work of Al Qaeda and that this group had used the sanctuary granted to it by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, no state questioned Washington’s right to take punitive action. Both Al Qaeda and the Taliban regime were targeted. But Washington waited a while before launching attacks on Afghanistan. It gave Pakistan, one of the three countries that had recognized the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the opportunity to persuade Kabul to save itself from military action. The United States, working through Pakistan, demanded that Kabul expel Al Qaeda from its territory and surrender Osama bin Laden and his associates for trial by some jurisdiction, not necessarily the United States, against the crimes for which they had been indicted. The military assault on Afghanistan came after these demands were unequivocally turned down. Washington had acted fully according to the generally accepted rules of war. It moved swiftly and Kabul fell in just over two months after the military campaign had begun.

Had the United States stayed the course it would have kept the world united behind its leadership and it might also have succeeded in addressing the menace of terrorism inspired by a group of radical Islamists scattered around the globe. Except for the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, these terrorist groups did not have the support of any state. By the time Kabul fell to the Americans it was clear that a two-pronged approach would eventually defeat the terrorists.

One, the support the Americans received in their military campaign in Afghanistan showed that all countries of the world were prepared to work together to prevent terrorist attacks on innocent people. However, “who is a terrorist?” is a question that still remains unanswered at the United Nations where it was raised by the United States at the recently concluded summit of world leaders. It has been difficult to find common ground on this issue since many countries are reluctant to label struggles such as the one in Palestine, or the one Chechnya, or again the one in Kashmir when waged by the people directly affected by occupation as terrorism.

This disagreement notwithstanding there is complete understanding that the attacks such as those against the United States on September 11, 2001, and in Madrid on March 11, 2004, and in London on July 7, 2005, were heinous crimes and that those who perpetrated them must face the full wrath of both national and international law.

As people — policymakers, academics, analysts and journalists — began to explore the phenomenon of modern terrorism, consensus quickly developed on a number of developments that had persuaded so many young people to adopt this tactic in order to draw the attention of the world to their plight. There was agreement that a large number of people in many parts of the Muslim world were totally alienated from the governments that governed them. Many of these governments were not representative of the people, several were dominated by a few classes who sought to protect their own interests, a number of them were profoundly corrupt, many did not govern to meet the needs of the broad citizenry, and several were prepared to resort to ruthlessness in order to suppress all dissent and put down all challenges. That this condition prevailed in many parts of the Muslim world did not mean that Islam was somehow responsible for them. It was an accident of history — or, perhaps, the product of a campaign by some exceptionally charismatic people — that caused so much despair among the young.

There is also now consensus that the process generally described as globalization is contributing to the rapid spread of disaffection, discontent, and dismay among many segments of the Muslim youth. For, those who sponsored the use of terrorist activities such as the attacks on New York, Washington, Bali, Jeddah, Madrid, and London have used two weapons that had proved to be extraordinarily powerful: the use of the human body as a weapon and the use of the internet as a means for communication and acquisition of knowledge.

The third area of agreement concerned the use of force. Most analysts agree that while force used against established states can — and usually does — achieve the desired results, it is not very effective against disgruntled stateless groups who are prepared to die for the cause they are pursuing. In fact a serious and palpable asymmetry in the possession of force between the pursued and the pursuer, the hunter and the hunted, the attacker and the attacked can become a formidable recruiting ground for the disaffected and the disgruntled. That has certainly happened in the case of the crises in Palestine, Chechnya and Kashmir — the three conflicts that have provided Islamic extremists with the causes they need to cement their influence.

“Staying the course” is a popular description of policies in President Bush’s Washington. But the course that should have been stayed is the one that was adopted soon after the 9/11, not the one that is being currently followed. For reasons still not fully understood, President Bush and his colleagues took two additional steps each of which was not supported by most of the world, certainly not by Muslim nations.

The first of these was to attack Iraq in March 2003. America went into Iraq without getting the backing and sanction of the United Nations. By moving into Iraq, President Bush moved against a state and violated its territorial integrity, something that was the pillar of the international political system put into place after the Second World War.

The second step was to articulate a new strategy according to which the United States reserved for itself the right to attack a country preemptively if it feared that its own strategic interests were being threatened. This was quite an extraordinary departure from the international political order that was put in place following the conclusion of the Second World War. The new strategy violated two basic principles on which that order had been constructed. One, that countries must not move on their own to violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states. Two, if there is a reason why the geographic space occupied by a legitimate and internationally recognized state has to be violated it must have international authority. Under the structure that came into being after the Second World War the Security Council under Article VII of the United Nations Charter was given the authority to sanction the use of force against errant nation-states.

The United States actions since September 2002 when Washington revealed its new approach towards the world and since March 2003 when it decided to move against Iraq without the approval of the United Nations and at the head of something Washington called a “coalition of the willing” produced a number of unintended consequences. Two of these should be noted in order to understand the dynamic that was let loose in Vienna on September 24.

First, it made a number of countries very nervous about their own situation. They now understood that their viability and integrity was at the mercy of Washington. The United States could determine on its own when it needed to take punitive action against an errant state. It was reserving the right to define “punitive action” and “errant states” according to its own strategic interests.

The invasion of Iraq made it clear that Washington was prepared to use an extraordinary amount of force in pursuit of vaguely defined interests. This raised the issue of containing the US’s power; for the countries that had been designated as the members of an “axis of evil”, protection against a possible US assault became an issue of paramount interest. Their only protection appeared to be to develop systems of weapons that could deter invasion by the United States. It is not surprising that both Iran and North Korea seem to be intent on acquiring nuclear weapons.

Second, the US attack on Iraq created both a sanctuary and recruiting ground for would-be terrorists. Most terrorists essentially operate at the fringes of societies. This is particularly true of Islamic terrorist groups. Their leaders such as Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri had been rejected by the societies from which they came; the former by Saudi Arabia and the latter by Egypt. They had drifted from place to place looking for both sanctuaries and recruits. They could find both if there were reasons why people or even some states were prepared to work with them.

The attacks of September 11 were condemned by all civilized people in the world and by all states. The terrorists were now looking for a failed state in which they could find space from which they could operate. Iraq is fast becoming such a place.

How should states and societies in which extremism has taken hold protect themselves? This has become a pressing concern in a number of countries, including Pakistan. Since working closely with America is creating many problems, several countries have begun to look for fresh alignments. The vote in Vienna is the first move in that direction.

The new one-party state

IT IS not only the Democrats in the United States who cling fondly to the illusion that if they can only find the right candidate, they will sweep back into power. This is also the collective fantasy of the British Conservatives, who are currently choosing a new leader.

Like the arcane rituals that ultimately brought forth John Kerry, this process is not without its human interest. In each case, there is something of the beauty contest but also something of the freak show.

And yet the ghastly possibility cannot quite be extinguished that it is all a complete and utter waste of time. Perhaps it simply doesn’t matter who leads these parties. Perhaps they would be doomed to lose even if they could rejuvenate Margaret Thatcher or resurrect Franklin Roosevelt.

To this proposition, all politicians who inhabit the shadow world of opposition have a knee-jerk response. Sooner or later, they say, the public will tire of the party in power. Then, under the new, modernizing, charismatic leadership of (fill in the desired name), we shall sweep back into office.

It can happen, of course. In Poland, the two centre-right parties have just won decisively, ending four years of incompetent rule by former Communists. In Spain last year, the Socialists returned to power after eight years in opposition.

Yet democracy in both those countries is a relatively young phenomenon. In more mature democracies, there is a growing tendency for incumbent parties to stay in power longer.

People in the English-speaking world expect their political parties to take fairly regular turns at running the country. Power in Britain has changed hands seven times since World War II — in 1945, 1951, 1964, 1970, 1974, 1979 and 1997. In the United States during the same period, the White House has been home to six Republicans and five Democrats.

But consider Germany and Japan, where democracy has also been functioning smoothly since it was restored after World War II. The German Christian Democrats have lost power only twice since 1949, and they are on the brink of regaining it.

In Japan, voters swing even less. Last month, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic Party won a decisive election victory. This means that, apart from a brief period in 1993-94, the LDP has been in power for more than half a century. With its elaborate code of politeness and its intricate social hierarchies, Japan is the nearest thing to another planet you are ever likely to visit. Yet in some ways Japan is not Vulcan at all. It is simply the future of planet Earth. Ahead of the curve in so many ways, Japan may also be showing us where 21st century Western politics is heading: the new one-party state.

The phrase “one-party state” is usually associated with undemocratic regimes. Yet one-party states can also arise in free societies.

The Japanese example is in fact far from unique. The Social Democratic Party governed Sweden without interruption from 1932 until 1976. The Christian Democratic Party occupied a position of similar dominance in Italy from 1945 until 1980. The Labour Party ran Israel from independence until 1977.

It has happened in the English-speaking world too. In Britain, the Tories were in power (albeit sometimes in coalitions) from World War I until the end of World War II, with only the briefest of Labour interludes in 1924 and 1931.

In the United States, the Democratic Party had a virtual stranglehold on Congress from the 1930s until the 1960s.

To be sure, in every case apart from Japan, all these near-monopolies on power expired after about 40 years, slightly more than a generation. But if a week is a long time in politics, a generation is an eternity.

Could the rest of the developed world be turning Japanese? Maybe. Parties out of power usually tell themselves that sooner or later the incumbent will be tripped up by the economy. That was indeed the pattern throughout the 20th century. Yet this is to overlook four things.

First, economic volatility has declined markedly since the 1970s. In all the G-7 industrialized countries, annual growth rates vary much less than they used to. So do inflation rates. Recessions are happening less often, and when they do, they are not too steep and not too protracted.

Second, the huge increase in international capital flows means that it is far easier than it used to be for advanced economies to finance both budget and current account deficits.

The third point is simply that people now have lower expectations of economic policymakers than they did in the 1970s. If growth slows, they are more likely to blame Asian competition than the president or prime minister. If inflation or interest rates jump, they know the central bank is responsible, not the treasury.

Finally, all western societies are following Japan in getting steadily older. Already, nearly one in six Brits is 65 or older; 30 years from now it will be one in four. The US figures are not so very different. The bad news for Democrats and Tories alike is that “time for change” is a slogan that excites young people. Old folks, as a rule, tend to prefer the devil they know. Tony Blair turned 52 in May. My guess is he’ll still be around to congratulate the next — Republican — US president. Maybe even his successor too. —Dawn/Los Angeles Times Service

A disaster to remember

DISASTERS are always most poignant, most chilling, when you know the terrain and the people. So I had stood on the sea wall in Galle, watching kids fly kites, a few months before the tsunami engulfed the south of Sri Lanka.

So I remember sitting in a waterfront square in New Orleans early — too early — one morning, hearing the band from the night before still playing.

So the roads north from Islamabad, deep into the Hindu Kush, are roads I have travelled in peace and in war. What you mostly miss from Pakistan earthquake coverage is a sense of the people. Not bodies pulled from beneath piles of rubble, but the sheer mass of humanity exploding round every bend of every road.

What’s Pakistan’s population now? Maybe 162 million, heading for 163 million before autumn ends. When I first went there in the 1960s, for one of those ritual wars against India, that figure was only 68 million or so, but even then accelerating pell-mell as medicine brought infant mortality down. The nation General Musharraf strives to control doubles in size every 33 years. Half its citizens are 15 or under. It is a constant crowd, a teeming throng.

And that gives this earthquake its deadliest edge. The towns and cities are full, concrete blocks and wooden shacks hurled together in a desperate effort to cope, but it is the countryside that somehow seems over-born: village after village perched on steep, sliding hillsides or hunched in valleys, a clutter of huts and tin roofs, a TV satellite dish and, if their luck has held, one imposing mansion a hundred yards away where the village boy who went to Bradford or Atlanta 30 years ago to make good has returned to spend his retirement, his accumulated largesse, and to die.

It is this landscape, down rocky, rutted tracks, crisscrossed by streams with broken bridges, that the earthquake has shaken to its frail foundations. Sometimes early death counts — see New Orleans — are too fearful; but this time, I guess, there can be no good news. This time the toll will rise and rise — with so many children lost since, simply, there are so many children.

The chill grows deeper, then. “I am driven with a mission from God,” George Bush may — or may not — have said the other day. God may — or may not — have told him to “end the tyranny in Iraq”. How does that strike us? As devout, foolish, or (as a harassed White House spokesmen quickly added) “absurd”? But the past 10 months, right on through an absurdly benighted 2005, have been full of missions from somewhere and perhaps from someone.

Where was the weekend’s earthquake most devastating? In Kashmir, where the war I covered long ago, like so many other Indo-Pakistani wars, began, a land divided by armies, terrorism and religion. But look around as more disasters pile in. Who has died in the past few days? Thousands of Muslims in Pakistan, surely hundreds of Hindus or Sikhs or Christians across the border in India.

Meanwhile, modestly publicized Hurricane Stan, the one that didn’t threaten Texas or Louisiana, has just killed hundreds more — Roman Catholics — in Central America: more schools swept away, more children gone. Let’s put 2005 in pulpit perspective. The tsunami, as the old year ended, destroyed Buddhist and Hindu temples, mosques and churches with indiscriminate violence. It swept away the agnostic pleasure domes of Thailand’s tourist coast. It drowned people of almost every religion and none. Add New Orleans for the cymbal clash of the born-again and the black, for Southern Baptists and old-time religionists, and what have you got? A year of disaster spread and shared. A year with a mission to destroy.

Here is a year when those (like me) who can find no faith look out in bemusement at a globe defined and divided by religion. Oust the godless Saddam from Iraq. Bring Sunni and Shia together to worship the great lord democracy. Trade new popes and Paisleys for old. Never stop talking about Jerusalem — or the “glory” of the suicide bomber.

It is all, this bleak morning in Azad Kashmir, somehow beside the point. So many dead children, but what does their death mean — except that our earth is fragile to the core and that no nation and no mission can escape its power? Some of the dead lain out here will be militants, used to cross-border infiltration, assassination, bombing. But they will have perished, too, like the kids in the streets, the politicians in their offices, the mullahs at prayer — all victims of our doomed human mission to understand. — Dawn/Guardian Service

Immigration debate

THE sleeper issue in the 2008 presidential election is immigration. Actually, as a recent straw poll shows, it’s waking up. Since the 1960s, the elites in both parties have been solidly pro-immigration. Democrats, for their part, have figured they could burnish their anti-racism, pro-multiculturalist credentials by opening America’s borders to the world’s teeming masses.

During this period, the vision of “affirmative action” — special help for the mostly black disadvantaged — morphed into a new vision, “diversity.” The idea behind such diversity was not a temporary compensation for the needy, but rather a permanent balkanization of the country, based on ethnicity.

Oh, and by the way, if the new immigrants, most notably Hispanics, wanted to vote Democratic — well, that was OK, too.

As for Republicans, they might have been expected to oppose this Democratic agenda, drawing upon their Lincolnian “one nation” legacy of nurturing a middle class. But GOP leaders joined with Democrats to usher in newcomers for two reasons.

First, business-minded Republicans liked more workers coming in at the bottom, busting unions and holding down wages. New immigrants were popular as inexpensive domestic servants, both rich donkeys and rich elephants agreed. And second, the GOP’s ascendant neoconservative faction sought to “modernize” the party, burying once and for all the racial edge associated with Southern senators Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.

The neocons were further bewitched by the vision of everybody, from every corner of the world, becoming a liberty-loving small “d” democrat, inspired by the power of American ideas. And so, from the barrios of East L.A. to Baghdad and back to Brooklyn, the New GOP sought to implement that vision.

Some parts of this bipartisan pro-immigration policy worked as planned. Unionization has plummeted, nannies and landscapers are plentiful, and there are plenty of new poor people for bureaucratic welfare statists to lavish taxpayer-supplied “compassion” down upon. For those who happen to speak an exotic language and don’t mind working in a dicey environment, there are plenty of bilingual-education teaching jobs available.

Other parts of the open-borders plan have worked less well. After 9/11, for example, we found out just how rotten our immigration and identification mechanisms were. The 19 kill-jackers had reportedly garnered 63 pieces of fake ID. So now we know — or should know — that homeland security is a joke if the government can’t figure who people are and how they got here.

More broadly, the American middle class is finally saying, “Enough.” Enough of illegal immigration, enough of multiculturalism, enough of carelessness about homeland security. The Silent Majority will no longer allow an arrogant elite to speak for it on fundamental issues of national and cultural destiny. The Lincoln vision — a house not divided against itself — looks pretty good right now.

George W. Bush has been a victim of this political shift. He was pursuing the same lenient bipartisan immigration policy of his presidential predecessors, and hoped by speaking a little Spanish he could garner some Latino votes. But Congressional Republicans, galvanized by Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, rebelled against the latest lax amnesty plan, now shelved.

Now Tancredo, a tireless advocate for better border control, says he will run for president if nobody else will adopt his platform. Adding weight to his threat, Tancredo just finished second in a 2008-preference straw poll conducted by Michigan Republicans. He finished second behind Sen. John McCain of Arizona, but ahead of such better-known White House hopefuls as Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee and Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts. The Republican Party is changing.

But interestingly, the Democrats are changing too. The Democratic governors of Arizona and New Mexico, Janet Napolitano and Bill Richardson, have both taken extraordinary steps to regain control over their border with Mexico.

So now it’s a bipartisan rebellion against loose and lax immigration controls. It’s about time.—Newsday