A tale of four elections

IN 2002, democracy, a system of governance much loved by the West, kept producing results in the developing world the West did not like. This happened in three of the four elections held around the globe in the fall of 2002. Elections were held in Pakistan on October 10. Elections staggered over a four week period were concluded on October 8 in Indian held Kashmir. A run-off election for the Brazilian president was held on October 28. And, finally, on November 3, Turkey held elections to elect a new legislative assembly. All four elections produced surprises.

Election results in Pakistan surprised most political observers. The electorate sent a large number of Islamic clerics to the country’s national parliament. They also set the stage for the establishment of administrations dominated by Islamic groups in two of Pakistan’s four provinces — Balochistan and the NWFP. These two provinces are at the frontline of American-led war against international terrorism. The conduct of that war would be affected if the Islamists take power in these two provinces.

The six-party alliance of religious parties that fought the election under the banner of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) won 47 seats in the National Assembly out of the 272 that were contested on October 10. Why did the MMA do so well? Why did it buck the old trend? An editorial in the Friday Times offered a view — mistaken, I believe, but shared by many other political observers — that the electoral success of the MMA was the consequence of the way General Musharraf had managed the affairs of the state. The general and his associates were said to be particularly culpable in the way they had prepared the political ground before the voters went to the polls.

“For better or worse General Pervez Musharraf must pick up the tab for the MMA’s feast of votes. He allowed the mullahs to vent fire and venom at public rallies and exploit anti-American sentiment in the country. But he restricted the moderate PPP and PML-N for reaching out to their voters,” said the Friday Times editorial.

But this, as I will suggest below, is a highly superficial view similar to those that were presented to the reading public by editorial writers and columnists not only to explain the outcome of the elections in Pakistan. Similar commentary was offered when two other elections — one in Brazil and the other in Turkey — also produced unexpected results. We need a somewhat deeper reflection to understand why the voters in so many countries had marched to the fringes of the political spectrum in their countries.

Two weeks after the Pakistani voters went to polls, voters in Brazil, a world apart, gave a resounding victory to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, president of the Workers’ Party, known by its Portuguese acronym, PT. On October 28, Lula — as he is usually called — a 57-year old former industrial worker, won with 61 per cent of the vote beating Jose Serra, the candidate supported by the government of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso. This was the widest margin of victory in Brazilian history, made possible largely on the pledge to take the country in a different economic direction.

As one political observer noted, “Brazil’s currency and bonds dipped in value even as Lula pledged to operate within the financial framework he inherits from President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a subscriber to the US-advocated policies of free trade, fiscal restraint and privatization that have so far failed to alleviate poverty in Brazil. He promised to keep inflation low, to abide by the terms of a recent $30 billion International Monetary Fund loan, and to pay Brazil’s foreign debt despite past threats to default.” The markets were signalling that they did not quite trust Lula.

On November 3, voters in Turkey did what they were expected to do — they gave the Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials AKP, the largest number of seats in the country’s legislature. “Political movements laced with religion are subject to approval by the military, and the front-running party and its supporters are striving to ensure that the generals do not intervene when the votes are counted,” wrote a political columnist on the day the Turks went to the polls. “In a world preoccupied with political Islam, the challenge embodied by the AKP has consequences beyond this nation of 67 million people,” he concluded.

A similar, but somewhat more positive approach, was taken by Kemal Dervis, the economic czar in the previous government. Dervis was my colleague at the World Bank and is widely credited for having saved Turkey from an economic disaster. “If the government that will be formed in the coming weeks is wise and sincere, it can take Turkey towards sustained and rapid growth after the lost decade of the 1990s,” he wrote in an article contributed to the op-ed page of the Financial Times.

But Dervis warned that the Islamic party that had won so decisively must not sacrifice Turkey’s secular heritage. “Secularism, which is the pillar of the republic Ataturk founded in the 1920s, has significance beyond Turkey. The Turkish model is an example to other countries with a majority Muslim population and Turkey wants to be a bridge between modern Europe and the Muslim world. Few countries can play this important role in a world threatened by religious hatred and intolerance. Any threat to the secular nature of our country would have serious repercussions,” warned Dervis.

The only election that went down well with the analysts and columnists in the West was the one held by India in the part of the state of Jammu and Kashmir it has occupied for more than half a century. The election was held over a period of four weeks to minimize the disruption various Kashmiri separatists or Kashmiri independence movements had threatened. The coalition government formed on November 2 in the state represented, according to The Economist, “the best result that could have come out of the state’s recent elections. Led by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the government has a real chance of improving the lot of the Kashmiris, who have endured 13 years of insurgency and terrorism. Mufti Muhammad Sayeed, a 66-year old veteran politician. . . calls it a ‘golden’ opportunity for change. But delivering it will not be easy.”

It is interesting that none of the commentators who spoke so favourably about the outcome of the elections in Kashmir noticed that the election also signalled a move to the right on the part of a Muslim electorate. Sayeed’s PDP is situated to the right of the position occupied by the National Conference, a party dominated by the Abdullah family for six decades.

There was a seismic quality to all these electoral outcomes. Earthquakes are hard to predict; even if they can be predicted, it is not easy to tell what kind of damage they will inflict on the landscape. Political tremors are similar. They wake up those who did not see the shocks coming and they produce results that can go in totally unanticipated directions. This will happen in all the four cases mentioned above.

In all four cases, voters surprised the pundits by producing unanticipated results. In three cases the results, for the West at least, were unpleasant. In Pakistan and Turkey, the voters went largely to the right, towards Islamic parties. In Brazil, they went to the left. In all three cases, the voters abandoned in large numbers the political centre and politics of consensus. Instead, they chose, certainty that only well honed ideology can bring. It does not matter that ideology seldom delivers the results it promises. A stage comes when a significant number of citizens, unhappy with the environment in which they are living, opt for dramatic change. That produces swings. The voters, when they are unhappy with their circumstances, vote with their feet, taking with them society towards one or the other fringe — to the left or to the right.

Several years ago, Albert O. Hirschman, a political economist who was then at Harvard University and is now at Princeton, wrote a book explaining on how people behave when they are not pleased with their situation. Their reaction depends on the institutional milieu in which they live. In mature democratic systems they give voice to their feelings, not only at election times. Through mechanisms such as polls and focus groups or simply by communicating to their representatives they voice their feelings. In the systems that do not offer this choice, citizens simply use their feet and exit.

But exiting does not mean physically abandoning the system. That option is available to only a small number of people and has produced refugees and migrants. For the majority of unhappy people, exit may simply mean relocation from the centre of the system towards the fringes of the established order.

Why did the Brazilians move to the left and the Pakistanis, the Kashmiris, and the Turks to the right? The answer to this question lies in the political histories of these four places. The right in Brazil’s history is represented by several years of military rule which brought a great deal of misery to the country’s population. It was president-elect Lula’s Workers Party that was at the forefront of the struggle to rid the country of the military leadership and re-establish democracy. Having done that, the left was not given the opportunity to govern. Instead, the new post-military political order was captured by the old elite which appeared in the guise of a number of centrist, centre-left and centre-right parties. It was, therefore, natural for the people to give a chance to the left, disappointed as they were about the performance of the parties representing the establishment.

In Pakistan, Kashmir and Turkey the left had thoroughly discredited itself. It was seen by the people to be dominated by leaders who provided rhetoric but little action. Placed in power, the leaders of the left whether the Bhuttos in Pakistan, or the Abdullahs in Kashmir or Bulent Ecevit in Turkey, simply presided over corrupt administrations. The left forced the populations in these places towards the Islamic right.

I don’t believe the triumph of Islamic parties in Pakistan and Turkey signifies the demise of liberalism or secularism. It is simply a reaction to the past — a reaction which should be given the opportunity to run its course. And I certainly don’t believe that the military government under the direction of General Pervez Musharraf created the environment for the electoral triumph of the Islamic right in the northwestern provinces of the country. Even if Ms. Benazir Bhutto had been allowed to lead her party in the elections, it would not have stemmed the flow to the right.

All of this in aid of Israel?

NO man in right mind would be persuaded to believe that George W. Bush, the president of the mightiest power in recorded history, is really so upset and afraid about Saddam Hussein or his suspected nuclear potential or capability.

There are other nuclear powers, not all of them hundred per cent loyal and obedient to the United States. About them Bush is making no noise. North Korea is one but Washington is not excessively worried.

Why, of all states with nuclear something, only Saddam Hussein has come to be the chosen and favourite target of George W. Bush in Washington and Tony Blair in London? The two together add up to power of mass destruction greater than any other conceivable duo in the world today or was ever on this planet’s 600 million years. But it is these two most powerful members of the world community that are hoisting desperate storm warnings.

Let us see what exactly is this Saddam Hussein.

Who put him where he is, doing all that he has been doing to torment his own people and his neighbours? Why is he today being made out to be something so much bigger than life that the White House is having sleepless nights?

Now the bare facts.

Saddam Hussein was lionized to serve one major purpose of the United States. It was to fight Iran. That war was waged in order to avenge the string of embarrassments that the United States had heaped upon itself after it toppled its own favourite, the Shah of Iran. Remember the ‘bastion of security,’ according to Nobel Peace Laureate US President, Jimmy Carter? Remember that pampered occupant of the Peacock Throne whose royal flight, after his ouster, could not land anywhere in the United Sates? Remember the same Shah of Iran now lies buried in the desert of Egypt, the homeland of his first queen?

The United States has propped up and supported Saddam Hussein in every possible manner through so many of his military misadventures. During the Iraq-Iran war the United States was behind Saddam four square. It was during that period that Saddam was assisted to go through the first steps in playing with some sort of nuclear toys. If the United States could ensure the liquidation of Zulfikar Bhutto for his nuclear vision, is it possible to believe that the same United States could not do the same with a budding danger like Saddam? Why is the US so jittery after a quarter of a century of Saddam? Saddam Hussein is one of the most disagreeable of Arab autocrats. It should have been the easiest of enterprises for CIA to eliminate him — if the United States really wanted to liquidate this dictator. For so many years the US has been in the business of removing rulers it did not fancy. This is no secret. History of South America, and the Arab world itself is the most eloquent witness to this undeniable fact.

Who gave the nod to Saddam Hussain to launch his utterly unprovoked and ultimately disastrous aggression on its small neighbour Kuwait? What it was that ambassador Ms April Glaspie whispered into Saddam Hussein’s ears during a late night (or was it a very early morning?) powwow is no longer anybody’s secret. Why did the United States fail to abort and prevent the Iraqi aggression on Kuwait? Elementary, Dr Watson. The answer is that the US thrives on inter-Arab conflicts, playing one tin-pot autocrat against another — its own creations on both sides.

In the aftermath of Saddam’s misdeeds, the United States military industry sold weapons worth more than two billion dollars in the Middle East, principally to its most loyal ally, the Saudi Arabia. Driving a wedge through the Arab fraternity has been a long-standing Washington interest, mostly to serve the perceived interests of Israel.

George W. Bush and other leading American politicians, make no bones about the paramount element in the domestic and world policies of the United States governments. This streak is shared by the two main political forces in the life of the United States. This deafening furore over the alleged danger from the weapons of mass destruction in the arsenal of Saddam Hussain’s at this juncture is entirely in aid of Israel.

Its current undeclared war on Palestine has left Israel morally derelict and militarily exhausted. It just cannot go on indefinitely with this unabashed aggression — use of tanks and gunships against Palestinian teenagers and infants. The US now wants somehow to establish a formidable military presence in the heart of the Arab world to provide an unsure Israel with a sense of security. Once George Bush lands his troops and guns on Arab soil close to Israel, whatever the pretext, who is going to ask him to clear out and whose word is US going to listen to?

It should be known to everyone with a grain of gray matter that among the Arab people there is now the deepest possible anger and revulsion at the United States’ indiscriminate and sustained patronage and protection for Israel’s war on Palestine. As a result, the docile kings, Maliks, Emirs and Sheikhs are not the most confident and secure of rulers in the Arab states. The first tremors have already been felt in Jordan. Discontent is simmering all over.

The Middle East rulers and their governments do not possess the courage to openly acknowledge, let alone articulate, the profound disquiet of their own people about the US policies and actions. Who knows these potentates would actually welcome Washington’s intervention and presence as their own life insurance in case their people’s discontent erupts into active agitation.

At the moment the entire Arab world is a hayrick of seething anger. The slightest spark can cause a conflagration that not all the nuclear might of the United States and its British allies would be able to put down. It is simply shattering to imagine the consequences of a widespread eruption of Arab anger. The boys who so cheerfully convert themselves into live bombs should have given the normally intelligent Jews the correct message.

One would expect that the Jews would have no difficulty in understanding the Palestinian suicide bomber phenomenon because not very long ago, they were themselves suicide bombers. When they were fighting for their state, the Jews were rated as uncontainable terrorists. And they revelled in what was about the most well organized terror-based movement. All this is not pre-history. It is the story of only yesterday, that is the 1940s of the twentieth century. Remember Begin was a ‘Wanted’ man?

It would not need the wisdom of a Socrates to decode the message contained in some of the recent events in non-Arab lands. The meaning of the election successes of the Muslim fundamentalists in Pakistan is quite clear. Never before had the Mullahs scored so notably as they did last October at the polls in this Islamic republic of Pakistan. The election results in self-proclaimed secular Turkish republic should ring deafening alarm bells in Washington and London. And what about the Bali bomb explosions?

All of this is giving saner elements all over the Muslim world the deepest anguish. But in terms of violence there is no comparison between a teenage suicide bomber and the tanks and gunships killing unarmed civilians and destroying properties in the small, wholly undefended Palestine territory? Israel is militarily the strongest force in the Middle-East. It has gone berserk only to tame small boys.

Will the silent world put these two opposites in the scale of justice and assess their real moral content? It has taken an otherwise meddlesome Amnesty International more than a year to take notice of what has been happening in Palestine. A good look at AI’s reaction would instantly uncover its very casual nature. It does not amount to even a mild tut-tut over Israel’s depredations.

The situation in, around, and attending on the happenings in Palestine has become awfully dangerous. The world was never so utterly unsafe. With the United States on the warpath and the United Nations reduced to a passive spectator, the smaller members of the world community are assailed by the grimmest misgivings and fears. If the US does go ahead (or allows itself to be pushed by Israel) with its plan to launch a military campaign in the name of taming its own creature Saddam Hussain, history will never forgive it.

Either-or again

I thought that I might change course this week and write about subjects that are less earnest and high-minded than the war against terror, a catch-all for displaying a multiplicity of virtues and sins, so jumbled up that is hard to tell one from the other.

I wanted to write about the crowd trouble at the one-day cricket matches in India and offer special thanks to Mr Advani that so far he has not blamed the ISI for this hooliganism. Who knows, he may still do so. At our end, we could blame RAW. After all, India was ‘gifted’ the match at Rajkot though the bottles were being hurled at the West Indies fielders, a neat way of winning.

Such is the madness that holds sway. Had this crowd hooliganism occurred in Pakistan, the FBI may have been looking for an Al-Qaeda connection. As the sun begins to set, the shadows are getting lengthier.

But one must return to the war against terror. There is, first of all, the extra-judicial killings in Yemen that Amnesty International considers to be in violation of international human rights law and which this newspaper, in an editorial, called ‘a licence to kill.’

Not so, says the lady, Ms Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. “The president has given broad authority to a variety of people to do what they have to do to protect this country (USA)” she told a television show. “It’s a new kind of war. We’re fighting on a lot of different front,” she added.

This is a scarifying scenario, so many loose cannons or hitmen (and women) on the prowl in other countries, in total disregard of the laws of those countries. Ms. Rice makes it sound even more sinister when she declares that the president (George Bush Jr.) is “well within the bounds of accepted practice (sic) and the letter of his constitutional authority.” I am a little surprised at the ringing endorsement of extra-judicial killings by Ms. Rice.

It is true that she was on the board of the oil giant Chevron, but she is also an Afro-American and I would have thought that she might have been more sensitive about civil and human rights. It was not so long ago that Martin Luther King was assassinated and he had laid down his life for a better life for the members of his race, of which Ms. Rice is one. Much blood was spilled and much is still being spilled whenever Los Angeles policemen beat up an Afro-American ‘suspect’ black and blue before taking him into custody.

Remember Rodney King? And the LA riots that followed? Ms Rice is right to be an American first. But she, more than the other hawks, should know the consequences of a lawless society. And to justify extra-judicial executions is to take the road to international mayhem. That’s what Timothy McVeigh believed in, that’s the ‘white supremacists’ who are very much around south of the Mason-Dixon line, believe in.

George Bush Jr. has once again repeated his either-or doctrine. “Shortly after Sept 11, 2001, I announced a doctrine that said: either you’re with the United States and those who love freedom or you’re with the enemy. And that doctrine still stands today,” he declared. In theory, as a platitude, no one can quarrel with that.

Most people of the world are against terrorism and most people of the world love freedom. This is a self-evident good, like motherhood and probably apple-pie and turtle doves. But it is when one gets down to the nitty-gritty, to the fine print of the doctrine that double standards come into play. The Israelis are against Palestinian terrorism but not against their own terrorism that they practise with such abandon against the Palestinians.

Ariel Sharon, a “man of peace” according to George Bush has advised that after Saddam Hussain has been taken out, the United States should take out Iran. He does not even merit a rap on the knuckles for this irresponsible war-mongering. Has he, inadvertently, unveiled the bigger picture?

Saddam Hussain has weapons of mass destruction. So has Israel. Iraq can’t be trusted but Israel can. Who makes this judgment call? Of course, Iraq has oil and Israel does not. It would seem that weapons of mass destruction plus oil that makes for a deadly mix. Not weapons of mass destruction by themselves.

There is one other aspect of the war against terror that George Bush Jr. has not mentioned in his either-or doctrine. That is the treatment of those with Middle East appearance and Muslim names in the United States. The judicial process has all but been suspended as far as they are concerned. Not visitors alone but even those who are US citizens.

Stories keep appearing about the way they are being treated; all of them, willy-nilly, being watched with the darkest suspicion. Perhaps, they should be asked to take some sort of loyalty test and provided with a loyalty card that they can show, along with their social security card or driving licence to prove that their hearts are in the right place.

Those who love freedom must also believe in the freedom of others and their civil and human rights. Love of freedom is a two-way street. Perhaps, there is a need for another Emancipation Proclamation. George Bush Jr. should emulate Abraham Lincoln, not Churchill!

Total information awareness

ANYONE who deliberately set out to invent a government programme with the specific aim of terrifying the Orwell-reading public could hardly have improved on the Information Awareness Office.

Tucked away in the outer reaches of the Defence Department, brandishing an eerie and cryptic logo — an all-seeing eye atop a pyramid and the slogan “Scientia Est Potentia” (“Knowledge Is Power”) — the office is headed by retired Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter, the Reagan administration official who was convicted in the wake of the Iran-Contra scandal of five felony counts of lying to Congress, destroying official documents and obstructing the congressional inquiry into the affair.

Not surprisingly, there have already been some fast-breathing reactions to recently published information about the office, including allegations that it is funded by the Homeland Security Bill (it isn’t) and that Adm. Poindexter has compiled a computer dossier on every American (he hasn’t, or not yet).

In fact, the programme is still a research project of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the high-tech innovators who helped create the Internet — and who claim that this project is equally benign. Among other things, the Information Awareness Office is trying to find ways of better identifying potentially dangerous people by using video cameras and biometrics, and of processing large amounts of data from different sources so as to predict and prevent terrorist attacks (the “Total Information Awareness System”).—The Washington Post

Once more unto the breach

IRAQ’s grudging formal acceptance of UN Security Council resolution (Unscr) 1441 means it has passed the first “test” set by the international community in its renewed, US-led quest to obtain the disarmament of Saddam Hussein.

That the security council was able to achieve consensus on the terms and conditions of a new UN inspection regime is on the face of it a welcome success for diplomacy. But these terms remain controversial and are open to interpretation.

The evident misgivings of some countries about the resolution, despite its modification, suggests this unanimity is skin-deep and may prove temporary.

The UN vote also seemed to be a robust answer to US president George Bush, who has repeatedly accused the UN of lacking the “backbone” to enforce its own rules. Bush has until now pursued his concerns about Iraq through the UN, rather than launching into unilateral military action, which is a cause for some quiet celebration by allies such as Britain.

The British prime minister, Tony Blair, and US secretary of state, Colin Powell, had urged Bush to take the UN course. They will not be thanked for their efforts by influential Pentagon hardliners led by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

They believe no UN inspection and disarmament regime, however tough, can be effective. They have not in any case relinquished the broader objective of deposing Saddam. They believe these twin objectives are more likely to be met by military intervention. For them, war remains not only inevitable but also desirable. For that reason, they hope and expect the inspections process will fail.

Thus, despite the UN agreement and the current focus on Hans Blix and his weapons inspectors, who formally resumed their task yesterday in Baghdad, it is clear the fierce argument over ways and means that preceded the passage of Unscr 1441 is far from over.

Iraq’s next “test” is to provide an inventory of all its weapons, says Britain’s foreign secretary, Jack Straw. “The next step is for Iraq to provide an accurate, full and complete declaration of all aspects of its biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programmes by December 8,” Mr Straw says, or else it will face 1441s “severe consequences”.

But the UN and in particular, the permanent Security Council members, are heading towards the possibility of a much bigger test of their own. Iraqi officials and European diplomats predict that the Baghdad regime will do everything it can to demonstrate compliance with 1441 — there will be no shooting over the heads of inspectors this time around, no locked doors or off-limits sites.

International media will be encouraged to follow the progress of the inspections. The weapons inventory sought by the UN has probably already been compiled. It is likely to closely resemble the evidence handed over by Iraq to the UN last month at a meeting in Vienna, presented in the form of four CDs. These CDs are understood to detail Iraq’s ownership of dual-use technology, its various weapons-related components and equipment, and its research facilities.

Although, this is not the same as admitting to possession of assembled, deployable, world-threatening WMD weapons, indeed Iraq continues to insist adamantly that it possesses no such weapons — a claim repeated in its inspections acceptance letter this week. By any reckoning, this claim is going to be very difficult to disprove.

The big test for the Security Council, as the inspection process unfolds and the Iraqis appear to be complying in all principal respects, will come if and when the US decides that it nevertheless has evidence of non-compliance. Or, that waxing impatient, US hawks try to provoke a crisis, for example, in the northern or southern no-fly zones. It is quite possible and indeed probable that there will be genuine differences of opinion among the permanent five (P5) about whether Iraq, at any given moment, has committed the sort of “material breach” that is a casus belli under 1441.

It is quite possible that the US will say “Oh, yes, it has!” and France or Russia will say “Oh, no, it hasn’t!” Such pantomime will at least have a seasonal air with the approach of Christmas.

It is entirely possible that Blix will report back to the council after 60 days, as mandated, and say that he has reached no firm conclusions and needs more time to pursue his inquiries. If the P5 accept that assessment, bang goes the Pentagon’s war schedule. Suddenly, there will be a rather large number of heavily-armed Americans sitting in and around the Gulf with not a lot to do except sunbathe.

Naturally, the Pentagon and perhaps the White House will be disinclined to accept such an outcome. It is also possible, though it is hoped this will not happen, that US hardliners will use those parts of 1441 that do not relate entirely to inspections to find other grounds for claiming a “material breach”.

Such a trigger can be found in 1441’s operational paragraph eight that states: “Iraq shall not take or threaten hostile acts directed against any representative or personnel of the United Nations or of any member state taking action to uphold any Council resolution”. The ruling applies principally to the safety of the inspectors. It could also quite properly be read as prohibiting any Iraqi anti-aircraft or missile battery action, defensive or otherwise, against US or British aircraft currently patrolling the no-fly zones and mandated to do so by previous UN resolutions.

Incidents involving the two sides in the zones have been taking place on a regular basis in recent weeks. Now, if the Iraqis so much as illuminate an allied plane with their radar, this could be claimed by the US hawks as a cause for starting a war that may otherwise be slipping from their grasp.

It is easy to see how unwelcome and unacceptable such a claim might be to, say, France or Russia or even Britain. It might constitute, in their view, the very sort of “flimsy pretext” for war that UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan this week warned the Bush administration against. “Whatever reason we decide to use military action, the circumstances must be seen as reasonable and credible and not contrived and stretched,” Annan warned. Put another way, the world will have to be convinced.

So, despite all the manoeuvrings to achieve unanimity on 1441 and despite the subsequent celebration of a successful exercise in multilateral diplomacy, it all still comes down to this simple reality: unless Iraq unexpectedly misbehaves egregiously or is caught red-handed in the coming weeks, the US cannot count on international support for military action. The pressure will be to continue down the diplomatic/inspection route.

If, dissatisfied and convinced of Iraqi cheating, the US tries to force the issue without incontrovertible proof, the current P5 consensus will shatter. France, Russia and others may just walk away and if the US then decides to go to war anyway, as it insists it has the right to do, the situation will be back to where it was last summer and Washington will, take or leave the odd Brit and Arab client, be on its own.

This will hardly surprise or worry the Pentagon hawks. They have said all along that going through the UN and consulting the international community was a waste of time.

In the manner of England’s Henry V before the battered walls of Harfleur, their battle cry will ring out: “Once more unto the material breach, dear friends, once more? for America and King George!”—Dawn/Guardian News Service

Green states

In the absence of a national policy, states are beginning to take steps to reduce America’s contributions to global warming. President Bush shied away from requiring companies to report their emissions of atmosphere-warming greenhouse gases; Wisconsin implemented a mandatory reporting system.

Congress couldn’t pass a national standard to boost the amount of electricity produced from renewable sources; 15 states (including Texas under then-Gov. Bush) have imposed their own. Mr. Bush rejected the Kyoto protocol and broke a pledge to regulate power plants’ carbon-dioxide emissions; New Jersey set a state goal for greenhouse gas reduction by 2005, and Massachusetts imposed its own cap on carbon emissions from six major facilities.

Congress flinched at meaningful improvements in auto fuel efficiency standards; California ordered cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks, a measure now under court attack from both the auto industry and the Bush administration. States are demonstrating that it is possible to take meaningful steps now to lower emissions of the gases that scientists believe are contributing to a rise in global temperatures.

The range of state efforts, catalogued in a new report from the Pew Centre on Global Climate Change, is not just an example to federal policy-makers of what can be done. It’s also a signal that many responsible officials, like many business leaders, recognize the wisdom of acting sooner rather than later. A patchwork of local requirements will be a headache for businesses; in many cases, states aren’t the ideal venue for such regulation. But if the patchwork increases pressure on the federal government to stop ducking, that’s not so bad.

The administration last week unveiled its latest move on global warming — a detailed, far-ranging agenda for climate and warming research. More study is good: There is much still to be learned about climate science. But much already is known, and the longer Mr. Bush waits to act on that knowledge, the steeper the eventual price will be. Responsible leaders are reacting at the international and local level: When will the president catch up? —The Washington Post