A dramatic win for Schroeder

IT IS one of the great ironies of the fifteenth German Bundestag election that while the campaign was derided by experts as well as the average German citizen as being one of the most uninspiring and lacklustre in recent memory, it ended in a nail biting finish, with Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder re-elected by a paper-thin margin.

Election results show a tie between the SPD which polled 18,484,560 votes (38.5 per cent) as opposed to the CDU’s 14,164,183 (29.5 per cent) and CSU’s 4,311,513 (9.0 per cent). It is the coalition partner of the SPD, the Greens, who tilted the balance in favour of the SPD.

This was essentially a personality-driven, rather than a party-oriented, campaign, and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of the SPD and his coalition partner Joshka Fischer of the Greens have emerged as two of Germany’s most popular politicians. The way they galvanized their following to drastically reduce the 10 point deficit they started with a few weeks ago, is truly remarkable.

A number of reasons have been cited for the dramatic comeback. One was Schroeder’s anti-war rhetoric which struck a familiar chord in a nation that still carries the scars of two world wars, and has become increasingly pacifist. Secondly, Schroeder’s handling of the floods which devastated parts of the eastern wing of the country, demonstrating that he was a man who cared. Third, the second television debate with arch opponent Edmund Stoiber, which saw the beginning of the tilting of the balance.

But more significantly, there is Schroeder’s personality and charisma. The Germans feel comfortable with him. This is in spite of the many hurdles he has faced and hidden reefs that he has hit, the most recent of which was the one made by the SPD justice minister who compared Bush with Hitler. Somehow or the other, he always manages to exude a breezy confidence and gives the impression that things are under control.

The closing days of the campaign were reflected in some harsh campaign language. Edmund Stoiber, who was projected by his party as a competent leader who had turned the state of Bavaria into a major success story, had been trying to get the German minds back on a stagnating economy. He had hacked away at the high unemployment of almost 10 per cent (or 4.1 million people) crime, poor education standards and the neglect of small business. And when polls showed that he felt victory might be slipping from his grasp, he shuffled his options and pulled the immigration card out of his pack. This came as an unpleasant surprise because until the last weekend the German election campaign was remarkably free of the racist innuendo and anti-immigration rhetoric that had marked this year’s elections in France and the Netherlands.

The styles of the two major contenders could not be more different. When I heard Stoiber in a CDU-CSU election rally in Cologne he came across as a fiery, highly focused and articulate orator. In his broad Bavarian accent he lashed out at the economic mess in which Germany had found itself. He accused Schroeder of completely isolating Germany through his foreign policy.

On the question of war against Iraq, he pointed out that the issue was really a question of getting rid of weapons of mass destruction and not toppling a dictator. “What we need is competence, not play-acting,” was one of the slogans that was used by the rightists.

Schroeder, on the other hand, came across as a suave, urbane and highly balanced speaker. His election rally in Schwerin was informal, friendly and relatively low-key, and a number of foreign journalists got to shake his hand..” A modern chancellor for a modern Germany,” was the election theme that was used. How successful he is going to be during the next four years, remains to be seen.

Stoiber has already predicted that the coalition between the SPD and the Greens won’t last more than a year. Though his supporters are patting the chancellor on the back, the real winner in this election is the Greens who obtained almost two per cent more of the vote than they did in 1998. But more significantly, they acquired 8.6 per cent of the vote compared to 7.4 per cent secured by the FDP. Had the position been reversed, Edmund Stoiber would have been sitting in the chancellery today.

Can Saddam resist US attack?

GEORGE BUSH may be averse to reading up on the Vietnam war, which he managed to duck, but how about recalling the famous “rumble in the jungle” in the Congo, the heavy weight fight between the unbeatable George Foreman, none of whose opponents had lasted more than three minutes in the ring, and the up and coming, always boasting, Muhammad Ali?

The fight was at 4.a.m so that the air was cooler and the American TV audience could watch it in prime time. In round two, the weaker Ali appeared to cower against the ropes and Foreman pounded him again and again, whilst Ali whispered taunts in his ear, “George, you’re not hittin’” and “George, you disappoint me”.

Foreman lost his temper and his punches began to flow wild, while Ali let the spring in the ropes help him absorb those he landed. By the fifth round Foreman was exhausted and in round eight Ali simply knocked Foreman to the ground and he stayed there.

History is replete with examples, long before Vietnam, when the weakest win. In his book “Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars” Andrew Mack argues that a country’s relative resolve explains success in what the war jargon now calls asymmetric conflicts.

And Stanley Karnow in his landmark study of the Vietnam War observes, “As a practical strategy the bombing backfired. American planners had predicted that it would drive the enemy to capitulation, yet not only did the North Vietnamese accept the sacrifices, but the raids rekindled the nationalistic zeal, so that many who may have disliked Communist rule joined the resistance to alien attack.”

It goes without saying that victories of the weakest are a minority outcome. One doesn’t have to go back to Thucydides to be convinced of that- the bombing of Afghanistan, Belgrade and the first Gulf war are evidence enough. Yet it happens enough to be worrying.

Ivan Arreguin-Toft writing in Harvard University’s “International Security” has examined all the wars of the 200 year period 1800 to 1998 and found two related puzzles. Weak actors were victorious in 30% of all wars and that in the more recent era it has happened more often. Could it be that strong countries have a lower interest in winning because their survival is not at stake? (The opposite case being true for the weaker party.) Delays and reverses on the battlefield all work to discourage war-weary publics from pursuing a war, if victory seems very far away.

Guerilla warfare as perfected by Mao Tse-tung has been one, well copied, way of reversing the tables. “In guerilla warfare”, the victor in the Chinese civil war wrote, “select the tactic of seeming to come from the east and attacking from the west; avoid the solid, attack the hollow; attack; withdraw; deliver a lightening blow, seek a lightening decision.”

It was probably Mao’s contribution to military thought, influencing wars in Cuba, Algeria, Malaya and the Mujahideen against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan that has changed the balance of the statistics in favour of the weaker one winning over the last half century.

Since strong actors tend to have inflated expectations of their own superiority such tactics can be extraordinarily demoralising, extending a war long after it seems than the conventional forces have been defeated. (The war in Vietnam continued for four years after the US military concluded they had “defeated” the enemy.)

The US should try now to put itself in Saddam’s shoes. Unlike last time Saddam now knows that he is at an immense disadvantage. His air force has gone, half his navy is destroyed, and half his tanks. He probably has no nuclear weapons, but does have chemical and biological weapons with fairly primitive means of delivery. How does he turn the tables?

Clearly his objective should be to draw the US into urban guerrilla warfare, not to meet a military advance head on in the desert as last time. Neither should Iraq even consider an attack on Israel. This urban warfare against the American invaders will be a bloody affair, causing immense civilian suffering, which doubtless will be aired on television all over the world, putting immense pressure on the American leadership to get the war over quickly.—Copyright Jonathan Power

Ducking on warming

IN June the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) put on its Web site a report acknowledging that human activity is contributing to rising temperatures that could have serious effects on the United States.

Hardly radical stuff, but the head-in-the-sand crowd sharply criticized the report, with President Bush deriding it as a document produced by “the bureaucracy.” So it’s sad but not surprising that the next time the agency faced the subject, it unhesitatingly decided to dodge.

In recent years the EPA’s annual assessment of national air-quality trends has discussed not only the pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act, but also emissions of greenhouse gases that most scientists believe are contributing to rising temperatures around the globe.

This year, as The New York Times reported last weekend, that section is missing. Online readers are directed to another Web site for global warming information. An EPA spokesman said agency officials decided to focus the trend review on regulated pollutants, which currently don’t include carbon dioxide, the major greenhouse gas. In addition, he noted, the EPA had just published June’s voluminous climate change report. Faced with summarizing that already-controversial document, and the likelihood that any version would be scrutinized and criticized anew, the agency decided, with the approval of the White House, to punt.

It’s the symbol more than the substance that matters here. Bush long ago abandoned his campaign pledge to support the regulation of carbon dioxide emissions, and he junked the Kyoto protocol on climate change without proposing anything meaningful in its place.—The Washington Post

A shackled prime minister

GIVEN the new constitutional amendment relating to the formation of the National Security Council, the prime minister is like a caged canary (which can no doubt sing to the public) but is surrounded by a number of very threatening unelected fat cats, in the shape of the three service chiefs and the four governors — all appointed by the president.

Currently the president is also unelected, but assuming that General Musharraf is not removed before the end of his term and also, unlike Ayub Khan, does not hand over his presidency along with his job to the next COAS, the next president will presumably be elected.

This means that post-Musharraf NSC will comprise three elected and eight unelected members. The elected members would then be the president, prime minister and the leader of the opposition. The unelected members would be the chairman of JCS and three military chiefs. The key person in any case will be the Chief of Army Staff.

As long as the NSC is not limited to matters of external security only and can advise the president on sacking the prime minister and/or dissolving the National Assembly, the Constitution will remain undemocratic. Pakistan will, in this respect, remain a compromised democracy.

Starting with Z.A. Bhutto, Mohammed Khan Junejo, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, we have had four prime ministers since the end of military rule in December 1971, and two military dictators. The most outstanding political figure produced by Pakistan was Z.A. Bhutto. Intelligent, wily and charismatic, he persuaded the people of Punjab and many of the working classes to support his politics. To come to power he had to remove the Pakistan army from there. By involving the army in the East Pakistan operation which was predestined for a disastrous end, he successfully managed to oust the generals.

One of the most disappointing documents which, it has been my misfortune to come across, is the Hamoodur Rahman report; perhaps all the intelligent comments have been kept secret by General Moinuddin Haider. The report as published has largely ignored the political aspect of 1971 crisis and concentrated on how the military could have prolonged the conflict — a definite possibility with better generalship. Such good fortune may have made it possible for the Pakistan army and the civilians unwelcome in Bangladesh to have been evacuated under UN auspices. This would have been much to Mr Bhutto’s chagrin.

Apparently there was a Polish resolution more or less to this effect which Mr Bhutto peremptorily rejected. The honours for good generalship went to Field Marshal Maneckshaw and finally the 90,000 soldiers and a large number of civilians unwelcome in Bangladesh were left to languish in Indian concentration camps.

In the process of getting credit for obtaining their release and repatriating them to Pakistan, Mr Bhutto gave away India’s obligation under UN resolutions and more or less sold Kashmir down the river at Simla. By also proclaiming that we would eat grass for a thousand years without giving up the Kashmir cause, he confirmed his credentials as a consummate politician.

Mr Bhutto was an extremely powerful prime minister: for all practical purposes he enjoyed the powers of a dictator. In order to consolidate his position he had brought the army to heel and converted it into an internal security force which, for starters, he used to bash the Balochs. He compromised the judiciary, destroyed the civil services by removing constitutional protection and through his so-called organic reforms, and converted them into sycophantic careerists.

The press was muzzled and all opposition was thwarted by the police which was further strengthened by the creation of the FSF. (Federal Security Force). Air Marshal Asghar Khan, whom he regarded as a serious threat, was successfully bottled up in his house in Abbottabad.

The reason for mentioning Mr Bhutto as the ultimate despotic prime minister is that he served as a role model for the three succeeding prime ministers. Mr Sharif in his second term, forgetting that his massive “mandate” rested on a 30 per cent voter turnout and a 17 per cent popular vote obtained a two-thirds majority because of our first-past-the-post election system; proceeded to imagine himself another Bhutto and promptly came to grief.

Mr Bhutto was the most outstanding political figure produced by Pakistan and also its biggest disaster. He represents a watershed in the downhill rush of Pakistan’s economy and its politics. He was the epitome of bad governance. On the other hand, for whatever it is worth, he was also the progenitor of Pakistan’s atomic assets.

Since the Musharraf takeover, the one genuinely major change in Pakistan is the freedom of the press and, to some extent, also of the electronic media (radio and television). No journalist during this period has been dragged out of his bed at 2.00 am and roughed up by the agencies. At least no one has heard of any such incident.

The major flaw in Musharraf’s period in office is that Pakistan has become rather like the nursery rhyme of “Old McDonald’s Farm” (A quack, quack here, A quack, quack there ...A quack, quack everywhere). We now have a general here, a general there and a colonel everywhere. There is an impression that the misdeeds of the military, particularly the army brass, are covered up.

The operations of Wapda and the KESC are less than transparent. The same can be said of the public sector development programme. No economic and financial rates of return have been indicated. As usually happens, by the time the projects are complete they will turn out to have been too optimistic. There is hardly any long-term financing institution left in the country. While the macro economic framework is much better, growth rates are still anaemic, but then that is what happens in all stabilization programmes.

Population growth rates are still too high. The population census — done by the last government — is suspected of under-reporting the population of Sindh and particularly of Karachi. The under-reporting could be to the extent of about 25 per cent for Sindh and Karachi and therefore population growth rates are under-estimated.

The lead up to this under-enumeration was masterly. There was a whispering campaign that in the 1981 census the had been a tremendous over-enumeration in Sindh. Every Sindhi decided to have himself counted as two Sindhis. The truth was otherwise. Dr Mahbubul Haq related the cabinet response when the 1981 census was presented. The governors of Punjab and the NWFP hit the roof. They cried foul so loudly that to calm them down the figures had to be adjusted to their satisfaction.

In this process Karachi suffers the most. When the population of Karachi goes up, the population of Sindh also goes up and the northern provinces get upset. By the same token Sindh rural also gets upset. Perhaps the only way to have a fair census is to get the UN to do it.

Under the new dispensation of checks and balances, the general seems to have missed the point that when you have checks and balances you cannot talk about unity of command. It is a contradiction in terms. As far as future developments are concerned, the constitutional amendments which do not suit the political participants will only stay as long as the COAS has the last word. The process of amending the Constitution has not been changed.

As far as the next prime minister is concerned, he will have to re-learn the ways of prime ministership. He cannot have Z.A. Bhutto et al as his or her role models. The PPP lives off the legacy of Mr Bhutto. Sindh recognizes that the only Sindhi who can govern Pakistan in his or her own right has to be the inheritor of Mr Bhutto’s mantle of succession and a scion of the dynasty. Mr Nawaz Sharif has no such unique position. Whatever following he had was the perception that Pakistan was governed in the interests of Punjab. Whoever is the next prime minister, most probably from Punjab, will have to keep in mind that this sort of thing cannot go on.

The other thing is that he will have to govern under many constraints. It will be best for him to concentrate on good governance. If he compares his ability to abuse power with those of his predecessors, he will be a very unhappy prime minister.

Backlash on health costs

THE United States is the only major industrialized country in the world that lacks universal health care. As anyone who witnessed the meltdown of the Clinton administration’s universal health coverage plan in the early 1990s can attest, leaders in Washington have not agreed on how the nation should guarantee medical access.

However, in recent weeks, in the shadows cast by the media’s spotlight on Iraq, a quiet but powerful coalition of regional and national leaders has been building in favour of making mandatory universal health-care coverage next year’s No. 1 domestic policy priority.

Demand for radical health insurance reform also is being driven by health-care consumers, who are beginning to see the inadequacy of the timid “solutions” that Washington has put on the table so far. State leaders can implement one significant, if admittedly interim, solution right now: They can use billions of federal dollars to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Programme.—Los Angeles Times