America’s new imperatives

IF columns appearing in the opinion pages of newspapers can be seen as judge of public opinion, there can be no doubt that Pakistan was convulsed by the recent visit to the country’s capital by the American president. Bush, given to simple statements that for him embody great truths, made it clear that his administration does not regard India and Pakistan to be in the same league.

With India, Washington was seeking a strategic partnership; with Pakistan it was solidifying a relationship forged after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

India was to become a partner of the United States in the fields of economics, politics and diplomacy. Pakistan was assigned a much more limited task: its job was to continue to fight Islamic extremism and associated terrorism by securing its borders against infiltration and by ridding from its own society all extremist elements. Islamabad was encouraged to use force to achieve this objective, notwithstanding America’s own unhappy experience with this approach.

Much of the commentary in the Pakistani press has focused on the impact of the Bush visit on the evolving relations with India. Most writers are disappointed that Washington has displayed such a heavy bias in favour of New Delhi while shoving Islamabad to the margins, assigning it the unpleasant duty of dealing with Islamic militancy. Will there indeed be a significant change in the nature of relations between America on the one side and India and Pakistan on the other following the visit by President Bush? How will the visit affect the evolution of India-Pakistan relations? Will Pakistan reorient its foreign policy and seek to develop other ties to neutralize the consequences of the Delhi-Washington detente.

These and many other questions were asked by the Pakistani columnists as they filled the opinion pages of several newspapers in the days following the visit by the American president. The titles under which their contributions appeared and the headlines carried by the Pakistani press must be good indicators of public opinion concerning the impact of the visit by President Bush. In light of all this commentary, it would be fair to say that the American president left a feeling of considerable unease in Pakistan.

But the questions repeatedly asked by the Pakistani commentators are not the only ones that need to be raised. There are several others that should be asked. Before mentioning some of these, I should explain why I have devoted so much space to the Bush visit. Economics is my basic concern and my principal interest. Given that, why should I occupy myself so much with issues that have mostly political content?

A country in Pakistan’s situation, highly dependent on external flows for augmenting paltry domestic savings and on exports to finance the purchase of imports vital for the health and growth of the economy, cannot ignore the external political environment in which it is operating. The theme of today’s article is that that environment changed quite dramatically following the visit by the American president. I don’t believe that people writing newspaper columns — many of them full of deep thought — have totally comprehended the full import of the message the American president brought to Islamabad.

In this context, let me return to the other questions that should be asked about the Bush visit. These should include the role China is likely to play in the geographic area that Pakistan occupies along with a number of other non-Arab Muslim countries. Will Beijing become an even bigger player in the region or would it be cowed into submission to Washington? Will China be prepared to accept the dynamics that would result from what Washington is now calling a strategic relationship with Delhi? How will China react to these upheavals in its neighbourhood?

Any sober assessment of the way in which Bush approached South Asia during his recent visit should start with some analysis of the environment in which policies are being made in Washington. Several important policymakers and opinion-makers in that city are determined not to have America challenged once again as it was during the Cold War. The United States must rule the waves alone; not because of imperial hubris but because it is the only country that can bring democracy, justice, and the rule of law to the rest of the world. It is also the only economy in the world that can — and does — influence the economies of all other parts of the globe.

Equipped with this view of the country’s manifest destiny and persuaded that it is indeed God’s will to have America lead the world towards the achievement of a good and just global order, the Americans are prepared to intervene abroad. But for the United States to succeed in this divine mission, its authority must not be challenged; it should not even be seriously questioned. There is, therefore, the need to contain China.

If what I have said reads like a cynical interpretation of what so many serious and earnest policymakers operating out of Washington believe in and act upon, then all that one need to do is to read the rightwing press in the country or listen to the numerous rightwing radio hosts. This is indeed the way President George Bush views the world and in this he is supported by a number of intelligent and well-informed people. More important for the rest of the world is the fact that this is also the view of the growing community of Christian evangelists, President Bush’s largest and most vocal constituency.

The realization of this dream and the achievement of this mission could be thwarted by two emerging centres of power, China and the Muslim world. There are, of course, major differences between these power centres. China may have the ambition and the capacity to become an economic and military superpower. That will not happen in the case of the Muslim world, notwithstanding the rhetoric of the radicals operating out of the fringes of the world’s Muslim community. Nonetheless, the Muslim community has shown that it can hurt the West. It, too, must be contained.

Whether these two threats are real or not, they must be faced with resolution. There are different approaches to dealing with these potential competitors. This is then the broad context in which Bush’s approach to South Asia needs to be understood. This is also the context in which President Bush’s statement before the news cameras in Islamabad should be interpreted. In remarkably pithy but grammatically awkward statements, which left so many raised eye-brows in Pakistan, what did President Bush really say?

In response to a question on whether the United States can be expected to give the same kind of help to Pakistan that it has offered to the Indians in the field of nuclear technology, this is what the American president said in words that have been quoted frequently in the opinion columns. “Pakistan and India are two different countries with different needs and different histories... our strategies will take into effect (meaning into account) those well known differences.” This one sentence is pregnant with some deep thoughts, introduced to it by the many advisors and think-tanks that work in and with the Bush administration. Let us reflect on those a bit.

In this statement there is an implied suggestion about America’s latest approach towards the Muslim world? I believe that that has changed imperceptibly but significantly and Islamabad would do well to plot the direction in which it has moved. The way Washington would like to influence the world of Islam has evolved out of experience. I can decipher three changes in the course the Americans have pursued since 9/11.

The first was the “shock and awe strategy” that relied on the use of the country’s great military might to force not only the governments in the area but also the populations at large to submit to America’s will. This is what took America into Afghanistan and Iraq. The strategy did not work; Afghanistan was not fully pacified and Iraq has become increasingly restive, and is bordering on civil war.

Along the way, the administration of President Bush began to emphasize the need to bring about social and political change in the Muslim world. Such a push was in keeping with America’s vision of itself: a beacon of light leading towards the shores of enlightenment the people living in the world’s dark areas. That was the theme of the speech the US president gave at the time of his second inauguration in January 2005. Condoleezza Rice, the new American secretary of state, who replaced the pragmatic Colin Powell, went to work in this area with great enthusiasm and an equal amount of energy. She travelled frequently to the Middle East and to other parts of the Muslim world advocating the move towards democracy as an important way of dealing with the increasing menace of Islamic extremism.

However, it soon became obvious that this strategy had its own pitfalls. It brought the Muslim Brotherhood back into prominence in Egypt. And, more recently, it produced Hamas’s total victory in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories. The victory of Hamas was very difficult to swallow; it stuck in the American throat for the reason that the organization was treated as a terrorist group totally inimical to the West and its interests in the Middle East.

Washington was now faced with the uncomfortable truth that pushing democracy in the Muslim world will bring into prominence — perhaps into power — Islamic groups that were not inclined to follow America’s interests let alone its dictates. It was for this reason that President Bush merely kept form in his conversation with President Musharraf in Islamabad. He did not press the Pakistani president to commit himself to some of the moves his democratic opposition wished him to make. There was gentle prodding meant more for consumption back home than directed to words bringing about change in the thinking of the Pakistani president who still wore a general’s uniform.

Not comfortable with the previous approaches — the shock and awe strategy and the push to democratize the Muslim world — America appears to have entered the third phase of its relationship with the difficult-to-handle people of this area. From Pakistan’s perspective, this is by far the most dangerous approach the Americans have adopted for dealing with Muslim countries. In a way, this approach has been forced upon Washington by the American people who have begun to believe in the menace posed to their values and their global interests by the followers of Islam.

As I discussed in an earlier article that dealt with the attempted acquisition of six American ports by a Dubai-based company, the political reaction to this move in the United States bordered on the hysterical. This reaction surprised even the conservatives in the country who thought that after an initial knee-jerk reaction, the population at large would begin to understand that the thwarted attempt by the UAE company was not a crusade in reverse. A Muslim country was attempting to take over a vital part of the American economy in order not to humble it; it was making a purely economic move. But an agitated people could not be appeased and the company had to withdraw its offer.

In light of this experience, official Washington seems to have concluded that the best way of dealing with the Muslim world is to economically isolate it until its leaders and people are prepared to work with the West on the latter’s terms. If Washington persists with such an approach, it will have dire consequences for a country such as Pakistan. Islamabad should take full cognizance of this development.

With novices in the saddle

IT is the march of folly. In 1914, the British, French, and Germans thought they would be home by Christmas. On April 9, 2003, corporal David Breeze of the 3rd Battalion, 4th US Marine Regiment — the very first American to enter Baghdad — borrowed my satellite phone to call his home in Michigan. “Hi you guys, I’m in Baghdad,” he told his mother. “I’m ringing to say ‘Hi, I love you. I’m doing fine. I love you guys.’ The war will be over in a few days. I’ll see you all soon.”

They were tough, those marines, big-boned men with muck on their faces and ferocity in their eyes — they had been fighting for days without sleep — but they too were on the same lonely journey of despair that the Old Contemptables and the French poilus and the Bavarian infantry embarked upon almost a century ago.

Was this because we no longer have leaders who have experienced war at first hand? When I grew up, Churchill and MacMillan were prime ministers, men who fought in the First World War and who led us through the Second World War. Eden had been in the wartime cabinet with Churchill. Tito had been wounded by German shellfire in Yugoslavia, Jack Kennedy had commanded a torpedo boat in the Pacific, de Gaulle fought in the Great War, and later helped to liberate France from the Nazis. But Blair, however much he may claim to be a friend of God, has no such distinction; nor Bush, who dodged Vietnam; nor Cheney, who also dodged Vietnam; nor Gordon Brown, nor Condoleezza Rice; nor John Howard of Australia. Colin Powell was in Vietnam; but he has gone, trailing his ignominious February 2003 UN performance on weapons of mass destruction.

Instead, the little men dressed up in the clothes of dead titans. Bush and Blair thought they were Churchills or Roosevelts. They flaunted themselves along with Aznar of Spain as the Big Three: Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin; though I never discovered which of them was supposed to play the Soviet mass, murderer, as they conspired in the Azores for war. They claimed that Saddam was the Hitler of Baghdad. My old, messianic friend Tom Friedman, a New York Times columnist, got it right when he described Saddam as part Donald Duck and part Don Corleone, but this was not the kind of reality that Bush or Blair were interested in.

They were the quick-fix men, the instant statesmen, the guys who had a handle on war. Post-war control and reconstruction? Forget it, the Iraqis will do as we tell them after they have greeted us with roses and songs. Winston Churchill set up a British cabinet committee to organise the administration of post-war occupied Germany in 1941: four years before the end of the Second World War, and at a time when we still expected a Wehrmacht invasion of Britain. The Churchill frauds had not even bothered to create such a committee for days before their invasion of Iraq. For this was to be an ideological war. From its creation by the loonies of the American right — as a pro-Israeli policy to aid Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu — and then foisted on Bush, to the hell-disaster that Iraq now represents, the real war had to be turned into myth; nightmares into dreams; destruction into hope; terrible truths into profound mendacity.

Even today the occupation powers tell awesome lies. Democracy is taking hold when the “Iraqi” government controls only a few acres of Baghdad greensward. The insurgency is being crushed when 40,000 armed Iraqis are ripping into the greatest army on earth; freedom is taking hold when thousands of Iraqis are dying each month. “Operation Swarmer” is now supposedly targeting those who want a civil war in Iraq. Some of the men who are trying to provoke civil war however, work for the Iraqi interior ministry, and are paid, ultimately, by us.

For the truth, we should turn to a well-known analyst who warned us that in Iraq, the British have been “led into a trap from which it shall be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told. Our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows ... We are today not far from a disaster.” This is the most concise and accurate account I have yet read of our present folly.

It was written about the British occupation of Iraq in 1920 by Lawrence of Arabia. In the long nights of 2003, when the dangers of each day under US bombardment were replaced by the insomnia of bomb-blasts in the Baghdad darkness outside. I would curl up like an animal in my bed and thumb through the predictions of this present folly.

I read a fearful prophecy by the evangelical preacher Pat Buchanan written five months before we illegally invaded Iraq. “This invasion will not be the cakewalk neo-conservatives predict,” he said. “Terrorist attacks in liberated Iraq seem as certain as in liberated Afghanistan. For a militant Islam ... will never accept George Bush dictating the destiny of the Islamic world ... Pax Americana will reach apogee but then the tide recedes; for the one endeavour at which Islamic peoples excel is expelling imperial powers by terror and guerrilla warfare.”

There were the dreary precedents. Muslims drove the Brits out of Palestine and Aden; the French out of Algeria; the Russians out of Afghanistan; the Americans out of Somalia; and Beirut, the Israelis out of Lebanon. As Buchanan wrote, “we have started up the road to empire, and over the next hill we will meet those who went before.” However, we shall not count the bodies.

What was it Bush told us a few weeks ago? That 30,000 Iraqis had been killed since the invasion, his very words a racist admission; for what he actually said was: “30,000 more or less”. More or less, give or take a few hundred. Would he have dared to say that US casualties were “2,000 more or less”? Of course not. Our dead are precious; they are individuals with widows and children.

The Iraqis? Well, they are lesser beings whose casualties cannot be revealed to us by the Iraqi ministry of health, on orders from the Americans and British; creatures whose suffering, far greater than our own, must be submerged in the democracy and freedom in which we are drowning them; whose casualties “more or less” are probably nearer to 150,000. After all, if 1,000 Iraqis could die by violence last July — in Baghdad alone; and if they are being killed at 60 or 70 a day, then we have a near genocidal bloodbath on our hands. Iraqis, however, are now our Untermenschen for whom, frankly, we do not greatly care.

Civil war? There never was a civil war? It is a tribal, not a sectarian society. Some organisation wants a civil war; oddly, it was an occupation force’s spokesman, a certain Dan Senor, who first warned of civil war in Iraq at an Anglo-American press-conference in 2003. Why? We talk of civil war far more than the Iraqis do. Why? Repeatedly, we are told that Iraqis and westerners are kidnapped by “men wearing police uniforms” or by “men wearing army uniforms”.

What is this nonsense? Are we really to believe that there is a vast warehouse in Fallujah containing 8,000 made-to-measure police uniforms for potential insurgents? No! The truth is that many of the policemen and soldiers of Iraq, upon whose loyalty and courage our retreat, according to Bush, depends, are themselves insurgents. So deeply have the nationalists/Islamists forces infiltrated these men that the Bush-Blair promises of withdrawal are the very opposite of the truth. We are on our own. We may persuade our ex-spooks, like the former “interim prime minister” Iyad Alawi, who obediently claimed the other day that there was a civil war in progress, to try to frighten Iraqis. The reality is that our armed presence in Iraq is destroying an entire people.

So we proceed down the crumbling staircase. Let us forget the weapons of mass destruction; the 45-minute warning; the links between Saddam and 11 September 2001; the dossiers; and the lies; and our torture — yes, torture, at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay; and the ever-widening chasm between Blair’s tomfoolery and the truth. Bush told us that “More sacrifices will be required”. You bet they will be if we continue this march of folly. — (c) The Independent

Are human rights higher than sovereignty?

AS the United Nations is reforming its Human Rights Commission into Human Rights Council, the United States has published 2005 country reports on human rights practices accusing countries like China, DPRK and Myanmar of having poor records and claiming human rights are higher than sovereignty.

Experts say the essence of such a claim is a pretext for interfering in other country’s domestic affairs.

The UN Charter stipulates that every country must abide by the principle of enjoying equal sovereignty and not interfering in other nation’s domestic affairs. Each country has the right to choose its own human rights development model without interference from outside. To protect human rights is mainly to prevent foreign invasion or occupation, racial discrimination and international terrorist activities.

Therefore, to claim that human rights are higher than sovereignty is against the international law. It is an excuse for western countries to interfere in other nation’s domestic affairs and push forward power politics under the pretext of human rights. After 9/11 incident, the US government introduced a series of restrictions limiting the freedom of American people. It’s a typical example to show that sovereignty is higher than human rights.

The UN General Assembly passed a declaration on not interfering or intervening other nations’ domestic affairs in December 1981. The declaration stressed that each country has the obligation of not using or distorting human rights issue or taking it as a way of interfering in other nations’ domestic affairs, imposing pressure upon or causing doubts and unrest in other countries. The notion that ‘human rights are higher than sovereignty’is against the UN General Assembly resolution and thus illegal.

In its 2005 country report on human rights practices published recently by the US State Department, the US has attacked China’s human rights situation. It does so as it wants to continue its hegemony in the world. It attacks China’s human rights records every year. It means the US government feels China’s peaceful development has constituted increasingly serious threat to its global hegemonism.

The US has always held a hostile attitude towards China. The reason is that the US wants to change China’s political and social system to make it conducive to the US interests. In addition, most of Americans including congressmen and government officials don’t know China’s real situation and are still biased against China’s ideology.

The US wants to use its human rights weapon to stir discontent and sabotage the peaceful development from inside China. After 9/11, the Bush administration has bound ‘democracy, freedom and human rights ‘together to ‘reform’ any country that has different ideology and political system. In its view, as long as it’s a socialist country under the leadership of the Communist Party of China and doesn’t allow any outside interference or sabotage to its national security, no matter how much efforts China has made or how great the progress is, the US still thinks China’s human rights situation is ‘bad’.

In the UN Human Right Commission, America and other developed countries have advantages while the UN Human Rights Council will keep developing countries as the majority because it’s participated according to regions. If the current draft resolution on the council is not greatly changed, it will surely be helpful to contain the US hegemonism and power politics and bring hope for protecting the sovereignty and human rights in developing countries. It will promote a peaceful solution of disputes through dialogues, but not use or threaten to use force to interfere in other nation’s domestic affairs.

The Human Rights Council’s status will be enhanced and its function will be strengthened. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that it is a new institution and will make the UN human rights work enter into a new era. Since some countries often attack those who have different political systems and policies under the pretext of human rights, the UN Commission on Human Rights’credibility was harmed and its capability of functioning was also substantially restricted.

The new UN Human Rights Council will be at the same level as the UN Security Council with its own charter and can guarantee that the human rights issue will be equally attended as the security and economy. This will be conducive to dealing with the complicated human rights situation.

China has whole-heartedly worked according to the UN Charter and paid great attention to international conventions or treaties and played a good role in the drafting of the international documents such as the Declaration on the Right to Development and the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. China has signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation between China and the Office of the UN Human Rights Affairs in 2000. Chinese government officials, lawyers and non-governmental organization experts have conducted a lot of dialogues and exchanges with the US, EU and Asian, African and Latin American countries.

The Chinese government has always stated that China is willing to strengthen dialogues and reduce differences with other countries or organizations, but not confront them. In recent years, government and non-governmental personnel have often gone abroad, or invite human rights officials and experts to come to China. It has helped mutual understanding between China and other related countries and organizations on human rights.

China has joined 20 international human rights conventions or protocols. This has proved that China is determined to protect the basic human rights of the people which accounts for one-fourth of the world’s total population. Since the 1990s, China has taken part in many UN peace-keeping and anti-terrorism activities.

In 2001, China signed many anti-terrorism treaties. He said China also pays great attention to international exchanges on human rights issues. China Society for Human Rights Studies and China Foundation for Human Rights Development have visited many countries in European Union, America, Africa and Oceania countries and also invited many international human rights activists to visit China to improve mutual exchanges. — People’s Daily Online