Amongst the dreamers

THE days of frost and fog are coming to an end. With the tidings of spring our short season of hope is about to begin. A surge in political ambitions is giving the impression of society’s awakening. One is, however, reminded of Ghalib’s warning that those who have woken up in a dream are still dreaming, because most of the dreamers out on the political stage seem to be entertaining hopes without reason.

The most prominent band of hopefuls is to be found in the establishment. It is apparently brimming with confidence in its ability to first win a fresh term in the presidency for General Pervez Musharraf and then filling the assemblies with his loyal supporters.

This confidence is sustained by a heady feeling of success bred by a string of victories over the past seven years. The rise of the new regime was painless and so was its anointing by the judicial patriarchs. There was no challenge worth writing about to a drastic mauling of the Constitution, including withdrawal of the right to directly participate in governance from a majority of traditionally eligible people.

The election of 2002 caused the establishment some annoyance but it did not fail in finding enough defectors from the opposition needed by it to become the majority party in the National Assembly. If the Seventeenth Amendment necessitated climbing down a step and a half, the position on the top of the pedestal was quickly regained and the retention/giving up of the uniform turned into a non-issue. Eventually, nobody in the opposition did even as much as squirm at the transformation of the constitutionally mandated parliamentary system headed by an effective prime minister into a presidential system commanded by an all powerful head of state.

Encouraged by this track record, the establishment’s drum-beaters are claiming victory before the battle has been joined. They see no obstacles in their path. The commanders of electoral forces, however, appear to be less sanguine. For instance, a cell in Punjab, headed by persons who have held the reins of administration in recent years, is busy planning for ‘positive results’.

Those who have had access to this quiet centre have been vastly impressed by the quality of its research into the past elections and the scientific basis of its projections for the coming general election. The policy, it is said, is to avoid the methods of manipulating elections used in the past and which are known to the people, especially the meddlesome poll watchers, and concentrate on winning over to the official side candidates who can get elected on their own or with a little help from the official machinery within the permissible limits.

Unfortunately for the establishment, its experts are falling into the common error of planning for tomorrow’s battles with yesterday’s weapons. The uncertainties about voters’ behaviour can never be lightly dismissed. Their conduct in the previous election can be a guide to their choices now only if all the variables affecting their lives have remained unchanged. This is not the case in Pakistan.

The reality on the ground is that many factors have obliged the electorate to rethink its options. Some of these factors are: a spurt in inflation, growing unemployment, increased impoverishment of the under-privileged, lawlessness and disorder, shortage of electricity and water, lack of security of life, spiralling costs of education, healthcare and housing, curbs on trade unions and political parties, landless tenants’ hunger for land, erosion of faith in the judiciary, and the alienation of large sections of society from the state, especially in Balochistan, the tribal belt and Sindh.

These concerns of the people cannot be taken care of with the help of arbitrary declarations by official spokespersons or photographs of crowds gathered with the promise of a free meal. Anyone in the establishment who can read the signs of discontent among the masses should be able to rule out the government party’s runaway success in the general election.

Another hopeful party clinging to the hope of benefiting from Pakistan’s general election comprises international leaders responsible for the fight against terrorists. Choosing to put all of their bets on the present set of rulers they have declared transition to democratic governance to be Pakistan’s internal matter, a generous concession though out of sync with their policies in Iraq, Palestine and Somalia, to give only a few recent examples.

This party too has opted for illusion in preference to reality. It seems to have realised correctly that Pakistan’s contribution to the war on terrorism and pseudo-religious militancy will be inversely proportional to the rise of the religio-political groups in the country’s political structure. But it is unable to realise that the present regime is improving religio-political parties’, especially the militants’, electoral prospects by hamstringing the other political parties, by trying to solve political issues through use of brute force (Balochistan), and by costly misadventures (such as inexplicable assaults on mosques and madressahs and undignified retreats).

The longer the regime is sustained by its promotions, domestic as well as external, the better will the religio-political parties’ electoral prospects become.

The religio-political parties are not without dreamers of their own. To a considerable extent, they share the establishment’s illusions. They think the factors that helped them raise their share of the total votes cast in the 2002 election, including the establishment’s support to them, overt as well as covert, are still operative.

They also seem to believe that the people are alive only to the failures of the federal authority, that their poor performance as custodians of provincial administrations has not disappointed their followers, and that their retreat on the issue of resigning from parliament has been forgotten. These assumptions are unlikely to be proved right around election time and these parties may find the reality to be much different from their dreams.

Large groups of dreamers are also found in what are described as the leading mainstream parties. Their dreams centre on two contrasting strategies.

One group takes the view that there is no point in taking part in an election the results of which have already been determined. Therefore, it is argued, the best course open to democratic parties is to boycott the polls. The illusory part of their thinking is the hope that they can make their boycott of polls effective by persuading a majority of voters to stay at home on the polling day.

The other group contends that firstly the people cannot be persuaded to boycott the election and, secondly, by staying out of reckoning the democratic parties will leave the field open to freebooters, as had happened in 1985. Besides, elections offer a matchless opportunity to engage the masses in a political dialogue, to sensitise them to their political entitlements and responsibilities.

They also believe they can rely on their vote banks to help them acquit themselves creditably. The dreamlike nature of this group’s reasoning lies in the blurring out of the cardinal reality that by joining a predetermined election under a partisan authority they will be conferring legitimacy on an innately illegitimate arrangement.

They also do not seem to realise that political parties can have a dialogue with the masses, can educate and mobilise them, without putting up candidates in a sham election. Nor can they read the writing on the wall that parties that today seek a compromise with the regime will sign their own death warrants and that future belongs to those who will stay firm in resistance to authoritarianism regardless of the setbacks they may face at the moment or the sacrifices they may have to offer.

Where do the people figure in the presence of political hopefuls? Nowhere, so long as they remain content with reconstructing their shattered dreams and do not exert themselves to check the drift towards worse forms of anarchy than the present one and in which they will suffer more than the oppressors they wish to cast aside.

The new wave of globalisation

WAS globalisation meant to be a one-way street that the Asians are now trying to convert into a dual carriageway? As the age of Europe dawned in the year 1500, Asia was still the richest and most prosperous region in the world. It contributed 65 per cent of the world GDP – with China and India contributing about 25 per cent each.

Western Europe, which was now rising, had a 20 per cent share of the GDP. But, that equation was now beginning to change.

Powered by the rebirth of knowledge – during the Renaissance, that came after the Dark Ages – the Europeans crafted instruments for projecting new knowledge and skills across their territorial frontiers. Their long desire for searching for the sources of Asia’s wealth and prosperity had now acquired new capabilities. It was this combination of desire and capabilities that enabled Vasco da Gama to arrive on the shores of Calicut in 1498 and that, six years earlier, had taken Columbus to American shores.

That started the first wave of globalisation when the sea power of Europeans outflanked and dried out the sources of prosperity of overland trading posts that had spawned the Silk Road. The rich fabled cities and centres of learning of Aleppo, Merv, Herat, Bukhara, Samarqand, Kashgar and others fell by the wayside in this first wave of globalisation. New centres of prosperity and new intermediaries of trade developed between Europe and Asia displacing Arab traders who were the principal middlemen of overland trade between East and the West. But 250 years later, the equation between Asia and Europe had still not been changed much by this global trading. By 1750, Asia had lost only six per cent of its share since 1500 and it still contributed 59 per cent of the world GDP.

All this was soon going to radically change during the second wave of globalisation which turned the tables on Asia’s wealth-generating capabilities – the fountainhead of its prosperity. European craftsmen, workers and enterprises could produce an increasing array of new products not seen before by anyone and they could also produce them quicker. These new products and inventions went on to increase ease and comfort as well as deposit more wealth and power at their doorsteps.

Advancing upon the experience of the first, the second wave of globalisation was powered by the Industrial Revolution that was unfolding around the second half of the 18th century. Unable to resist the new capabilities created by this revolution in European, and later American, lands, Asia’s prosperity had plunged to a mere 20 per cent of the world GDP by 1950.

But 500 years after Vasco da Gama arrived at Calicut, much of Asia has rediscovered its productive capabilities and is now spearheading the third wave of globalisation. It is increasingly mastering the same magic formula that caused the first two waves to succeed and is reaping its benefits as well.

How would this third wave of globalisation that is reversing traditional notions proceed as it gathers momentum? Has the world learned enough of the right lessons from the previous two waves and developed a framework of institutions that can absorb and soften the impact of globalisation and channel it into two-way flows that create a win-win situation for all?

The Asian meltdown of 1997-99 that damaged the hard-won achievements of some countries had sent ripples of concern across several states, leading them to worry about whether there was any political and cultural agenda lurking behind economic globalisation.

But Asia has now grown more confident of its technological prowess, the productivity of its workforce, and its ability to turn the challenges of globalisation into opportunities. Earlier Asian concerns about the political and cultural aspects of globalization have also been somewhat allayed by successful entries into the global economy of China and India, both of whom bring their own brands of social and political values and perspectives. Japan, of course, set the precedent a century ago.

Besides, the dependence of the global economy on China and India has grown to an extent where any serious damage to their economies might well be reflected in empty shelves in supermarkets and shopping malls across the US and Europe and bring airlines reservation systems, banking and credit card operations to a standstill.

The fact that this is a win-win situation for all is also supported by evidence that businesses and households are able to enjoy quality products and services at 10-15 per cent of what it would cost them if these were to be produced in the US. There is enough optimism generated by these experiences to expect that as Asia raises its share of world GDP to 45 per cent within a generation, responsible governance would continue to be working towards smooth and mutually beneficial adjustments.

It is becoming increasingly possible that efficiency-driven economic globalisation can coexist with political and cultural plurality. So why are some Muslim governments and their leaders so engrossed in their never-ending political and security battles that they continue to turn a blind eye to the harsh economic realities confronting their countries?

Most OIC countries are on the periphery of the agenda that is shaping the future – the dialogue on issues generated by this third wave of globalisation. The agenda of most OIC countries – whether “rich and undeveloped” as UNDP describes them or “poor and undeveloped” – shows unending preoccupation with internal security and wars of one kind or the other.

The trouble with the leaders of many Muslim countries is their failure to appreciate the universality of underlying social and technological forces that create capabilities in human beings and lift societies from lower to higher levels of existence – irrespective of their race, creed or colour. What enabled the Iberian powers Portugal and Spain to reach across the seven seas and land their men on the shores of India and America is no different from what enabled the US to reach across the galaxies and land man on the moon. Or what is now enabling China, India and other Asians to swamp the US, European and other markets with their goods and services.

Whatever the race, creed or colour, every wave of globalisation has been triggered by the same force -- the critical mass created by sufficiently large numbers of people acquiring a leading edge in education, skills and technological prowess in their societies. It is this combination of social and technological factors that has endowed people of every creed and colour to rise and reach out beyond their borders. But on both these counts, several OIC countries remain as backward and dysfunctional as in the days of Vasco da Gama.

Fortunately, the roles of winners and losers are not fixed, although the cause and effect relationship cannot change. Most of Asia has now come out of the dark ages like Europe did 500 years ago. These countries have successfully reversed the trend and are leading a new wave of globalisation. A question mark hangs over Asian nations that are OIC members. Will they soon become part of this third wave or remain incapacitated?

The writer is a former head of Board of Investment and federal secretary.
Email: smshah@alum.mit.edu

Chirac’s gaffe

FOR over two years all the big western powers have insisted that Iran's nuclear power programme is secretly intended to produce nuclear weapons, and that the minute it gets them, it will launch them at Israel. But last Thursday France's President Jacques Chirac said something very different. He said that Iran would never use them first.

"I would say that what is dangerous about this situation is not the fact of [Iran] having a nuclear bomb," Chirac said in reply to a journalist's question during an interview that was originally meant to be about climate change. "[Iran] having one [bomb], or perhaps a second bomb a little later, well, that's not very dangerous."

Shock! Horror! Chirac is bucking the party line, which is that Iran is run by a bunch of fanatical crazies who would immediately use their new nuclear weapons against Israel. Didn't Iran's own president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, say that Iran would wipe Israel from the map? (No, he didn't, actually, but a little creative license in the translation of his speech from the Farsi can make it sound like he did.)

"Where will [Iran] drop it, this bomb?" Chirac asked scornfully. "On Israel? [The missile] would not have gone two hundred metres into the air before Tehran would be razed to the ground." He spoke as if deterrence would work even against Iran. As if the country were run by sane human beings who don't want their children to be burned, crushed and vaporised by Israeli and American nuclear weapons. He's not supposed to talk like that in public.

"Chirac gave us a moment of honesty," said Alireza Nourizadeh, chief researcher at the London-based Centre for Arab-Iranian Studies. "His comment was basically what I believe to be the position of Britain, the United States and much of the West: if Israel is attacked, there will be no hesitation to bring retaliation and destruction to Iran." And that, Chirac concluded, meant that Iran would not use its nuclear weapons to attack Israel, should it ever acquire them.

In Chirac's view, the danger is not that Iran would be irresponsible with its nuclear weapons, but that they would lead to a general proliferation of such weapons in the Middle East. "Why wouldn't Saudi Arabia do it?" he asked. "Why wouldn't it help Egypt to do it as well? That is the real danger." But he's not supposed to say that either. Those are the West's allies, the very countries that the United States is currently trying to mobilise as the leaders of an anti-Iranian alliance of Sunni Arab countries.

Chirac was simply stating the truth as he (and many others) see it, but his comments completely undermined the joint western position, so the following day he was forced to retract them. He still didn't say that he was wrong, however, just that he had thought he was "off the record" when discussing Iran, as the interview was originally about climate change.

France is clearly very worried by the drumbeat of anti-Iranian propaganda in Washington, which sounds alarmingly similar to the campaign of misinformation waged by the Bush administration before it attacked Iraq. Last month Chirac was forced to cancel a planned visit to Tehran by the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, because his allies did not trust France to stick to the party line. They were doubtless right in their suspicions -- but France is right, too.

France is right to argue that Iranian nuclear weapons, if they existed, would be primarily defensive in nature and would not be used to attack Israel, because nuclear deterrence still works and Iranians do not want their country to commit suicide. It is also right to worry that an Iranian bomb would create pressures for further proliferation, as Arab countries that have lived under the threat of Israeli nuclear weapons for forty years decide that living under the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons as well, with no means of deterrence or retaliation, is simply intolerable.

France is utterly hypocritical in worrying about Middle Eastern countries owning nuclear weapons when it has had them itself for almost half a century, but that is equally true for all the other great powers. And it is jumping to conclusions when it assumes that Iran's stated (and quite legal) desire to enrich uranium for nuclear power generation conceals a drive to get an actual nuclear weapon as soon as possible.

The truth may be that Iran is for the moment seeking only a "threshold" nuclear weapons capacity: a level of technological expertise from which it could, in an emergency, develop actual nuclear weapons in only six months or so. Such a position is entirely legal, and some forty countries currently occupy it.

The truth may also be that the nuclear-armed neighbour Iran really worries about is not Israel but Pakistan, whose 1998 nuclear tests scared Iranian strategists half to death. They don't worry about the intentions of Pakistan's current dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, but they know that it is a one-bullet regime and they worry a great deal about what kind of fanatics might succeed him in power.

So maybe Chirac's gaffe was not as accidental as it seemed. Maybe he wanted people to re-examine all the lies and half-truths we are told about Iran as Washington seems to be gearing up for another attack. And maybe we should. ---Copyright

The Clintonian candidate

THERE’S a Clinton in the presidential race. The surprise: It may not be Hillary. The truly Clintonian figure running for the Democratic nomination is Barack Obama. The senator from Illinois, it's struck me lately, seems in many ways more like Bill Clinton than does the senator from New York.

When it comes to Obama and Bill Clinton, there are superficial similarities -- the absent father, the humble roots combined with Ivy League pedigree. Leave aside who would be the first black president, as many said of Clinton -- both represent generational change, Clinton as the first baby boomer president, Obama as the first would-be president of the post-baby boom.

Man from Hope -- meet Audacity of Hope.

Of course, the fit isn't exact: Obama, unlike Clinton, doesn't seem to have been running for the presidency since birth. But there are deeper ways, in his intellectual approach, his message and his personal style, in which Obama evokes Clinton.

Like Clinton before him, Obama presents himself as a new kind of politician who can rise above and bridge partisan differences. Go back to Clinton's 1991 announcement speech, and it's easy to imagine Obama speaking.

"Today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common sense way," lamented one politician. The other called for "a new kind of leadership . . . not mired in the politics of the past, not limited by old ideologies." Can you tell the difference? The first is Obama, the second Clintonbut either could have been channeling the other.

Like Clinton, Obama has a homing instinct for the middle -- maybe too much of one. To read his book "The Audacity of Hope" is to be struck by his constant desire to understand -- even more, to respect -- conflicting views on whatever issue he happens to be discussing.

This is impressive until it becomes, finally, exasperating in its seemingly compulsive even-handedness. "I'm not unsympathetic to Justice Scalia's position," Obama, recovering law review president that he is, writes about the debate on constitutional interpretation. "Like many conservatives . . . I believe we ignore culture factors at our peril," he writes about the values debate. "Not all these fears are irrational," he writes of anti-immigrant sentiment.

In fact, Obama fits himself explicitly into the Clinton mould. "In his platform -- if not always in his day-to-day politics -- Clinton's Third Way went beyond splitting the difference," he writes. "It tapped into the pragmatic, non-ideological attitude of the majority of Americans."

To Clinton critics drawn to Obama, equating them seems too facile: Obama's centrist tropism is born of a desire to accommodate and transcend differences, they argue, while Clinton's was an artefact of ruthless calculation in which he submerged differences for political advantage.

To Clinton advocates still unsure about Obama, the younger man has yet to demonstrate the capacity, in his own "day-to-day politics," to put his brand of Third Wayism into action. Clinton's Sister Souljah moment may have been the premeditated political move of a Slick Willie -- Obama suggests as much in his book -- but Obama doesn't have anything similar to brandish as a badge of New Democratic difference.

It's hard to name a prominent moment when, like Clinton pushing welfare reform, he deviated from party orthodoxy. Sorry, senator, but voting for class action lawsuit reform doesn't cut it. Obama's book features an erudite discussion of the folly, and futility, of resisting globalisation -- at which point he summarily announces that he voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement nonetheless. His signature divergence from the other leading candidates in the Democratic field comes from the left: He opposed the Iraq war from the start.

Obama is like Bill Clinton in his natural ease with people and his ability to win them over. A New York Times story about Obama's law school days described how Obama "cast himself as an eager listener, sometimes giving warring classmates the impression that he agreed with all of them at once." As they debated whether to use the term "black" or "African-American," "students on each side of the debate thought he was endorsing their side," the story said. " 'Everyone was nodding, Oh, he agrees with me,' " said professor Charles Ogletree.

Sounds like everyone who's ever emerged from a meeting with Bill Clinton.—Dawn/ Washington Post Service