The American frontier

To Teddy Roosevelt the "civilised" people meant the white Christians having a certain kinship of blood and tracing their culture to Greco-Roman civilisations. But then in Teddy Roosevelt's time (1901-09), or even before him, Chief Justice John Marshall had nullified "the right [of Native Americans] to complete sovereignty as independent nations [as this position was] necessarily diminished and the power to dispose of the soil at their own will," on the ground that the right was dictated by "the original fundamental principle that discovery gave exclusive title to those who made it."

Even John Marshall neatly forgot that prior to the European "discovery," the Native Americans had discovered America, but being "savages" and "domestic dependent nations," they did not have the right to sell the land as they wished. It was, therefore, necessary for Tarzan of the Apes to be Lord Greystoke (he was unaware of his aristocratic roots) to claim Jane, which he could not have done while remaining as Tarzan of the Apes.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

Eric Chefitz contends in his book The Poetics of Imperialism that we must be in translation between cultures and between groups within one's own culture to understand the dynamics of imperialism. One could argue that imperialism, meaning in its most general sense the formation of an empire in which one nation has extended its domination over other nations, often through the process of colonialism, is an archaic term irrelevant in the 21st century.

But if one were to take Edward Said's interpretation of imperialism as "the practice, theory and attitude of a dominating metropolitan centre ruling a distant territory" then the term may gain respectable currency in the present day world. One could construe Edward Said's definition to embrace western values, both cultural and political, which are expected to be followed by the "unenlightened" parts of the world.

Even JA Hobson's assertion in his book -- that as a nation enters the machine economy, that nation's manufacturers and traders prevail upon their government to acquire colonies in order to profitably sell their products and to acquire raw materials -- can be translated to the present day world if one were to observe the terms of trade working against the developing countries, diminishing quantum of aid and assistance and increasing conditionality associated with such assistance, and restrictive market access granted by the developed countries to the developing countries.

The unfathomable gulf between these two worlds cannot only be understood by Hobbesian explanation rooted in the acquisitive and violent nature of man but more by the indifference felt by the rich towards the poor. It would, however, be unfair to blame the citizens of the trillion dollar economies of indifference or bias against any particular group of people based on race, religion, colour, or ethnicity. Most of these people, having been blessed with opportunities to better themselves both horizontally and vertically, remain so engrossed with their daily life that unless there are tsunamis, or Katrinas and Ritas they hardly have time to focus their attention on alien environment.

Perhaps the blame for rampant inequality raging in the world could be more appropriately put at the door of the leaders of the developed and the developing countries. How long does it take, one may ask of the leaders of G-8, to fulfill their pledge given decades back to provide 0.7 percent of their GDP as development aid to the needy countries? Why, one may ask, it is necessary to spend more than four hundred billion dollars on defense when there is no enemy in sight? Why, one may ask, is it necessary to spend billions of dollars even after the "liberation" of Iraq, when people of Louisiana and Texas are wading in water and are being housed in shelters because their houses were washed away, and for what reason a segment of the population of the richest country in the world could not move to safer places because they had no transport money?

One commentator has described President Bush as the most fiscally irresponsible president in US history. This criticism may not be totally out of place if one scrutinizes, which American voters rarely do, the allocation of resources to different sectors of the economy. But the Bush administration's defense and Iraq expenditure has a purpose -the spread of democracy throughout the world. President Bush said in his second inaugural address: "The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world." This firm conviction of the Bush administration defines the American frontier.

In a recent speech at Princeton University, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expounded Bush administration's doctrine in greater detail. The root cause of 9/11, she said, was the "violent expression of a global extremist ideology, an ideology rooted in the oppression and despair of the modern Middle East." She was candid (as was Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haas) about the American tolerance of "democracy deficit" in many countries on the mistaken presumption that to act otherwise would threaten a stable status quo and global security.

Dr. Rice totally disagrees with the cautious belief that greater freedom of choice and liberty would empower extremism. On the contrary, she argues, extremism cannot thrive in a political culture of transparency and openness. Human beings will always choose the natural life over the constant fear of death, choose to be ruled with the consent of the governed and not by coercion of the state, by rule of law and not by the whim of the rulers. In unambiguous terms Dr. Rice affirms the Bush administration's determination to back democracy advocates "with power in all its forms: political and economic, cultural and moral, and, yes, sometimes military. Any champion of democracy who promotes principle without power can make no real difference in the lives of the oppressed people..

By advocating military intervention, if necessary, Dr. Rice appears to echo Robert Kagan's thesis on power and weakness. In Kagan's view, American military strength has produced a propensity to use that strength while Europe's military weakness has produced aversion to the exercise of military power. Europeans' belief in "the post-modern system," Kagan adds, is because they would like inter-state relations to rest on the balance of power and rejection of force, and to step out of the Hobbesian world of anarchy into the Kantian world of perpetual peace.

Former EU External Affairs Commissioner Chris Patten's rejoinder that the European experience of hundreds of years of war has convinced them that compromise is better than conflict sounded feeble against President Bush's declaration that "America has and intends to keep military strength beyond challenge, thereby making the destabilising arms race of other eras pointless." Though President Bush's reelection may not necessarily reflect the sentient response of the American voters of his policy of aggrandisement (almost half the voters voted for John Kerry), his belief in his policy has certainly received intellectual muscle from highly credentialed academicians dubbed as "new sovereigntists" who have advanced deterministic arguments for safeguarding US sovereignty and the US constitution on the ground of the US being fully sovereign.

To them, US sovereignty is absolute, illimitable, and non-dissapatory, and most international laws are too amorphous to justify US consent, intrusive in character, and the international law making process as unaccountable. These people and many other Americans, in the words of Francis Fukuyama, "tend not to see any source of domestic legitimacy higher than nation-state" thereby making multipolarity fractious and irrelevant. This belief is further strengthened by Dr. Rice's omission in her Princeton University speech of any role to be played by the UN "in a world where evil is still very real," though presumably her usage of the term "evil" was meant for terrorism, as distinct from Ronald Reagan's Evil Empire or President Bush's Axis of Evil, which were directed at the Soviet Union and pre-invasion Iraq-Iran-North Korea.

If the determinants of the American frontier are belief in western liberal values, practice of democracy and good governance, and absolute collaboration in the universal war on terror, then this frontier would envelop the entire world. In that case, countries like Bangladesh, apparently having donor-recipient relationship with the US, gains importance in the US foreign policy matrix. The reported creation of a South Asian Security Desk at the US State Department under Christine Rocca to help South Asian countries to combat terrorism provides substance to this premise.

Additionally, the testimony given only a few days back by Stephen Cohen, having unassailable expertise on South Asian affairs, to the US House of Representative Armed Forces Committee on South Asian Security and the US is noteworthy. Speaking on terrorism, Dr. Cohen theorises that a likely source of Islamic terrorism directed against the US could come from "a Pakistan that itself slipped into political chaos or a Bangladesh that seems to be unsure of its identity." Though Bangladesh is doing better than Henry Kissinger's "basket case" scenario, Stephen Cohen finds Bangladesh plagued by "divided leadership, a growing radical Islamic presence, and chronic suspicion of India."

In the ultimate analysis, realpolitik demands that although -- from the Kennedy administration's Alliance for Progress to Nixon-Kissinger's doctrine of multipolarity -- US attempts were not directed at promoting democracy in the Third World and despite skewed nature of US policy towards political Islam and the controversial Bush doctrine of preemption, all nations of the world, particularly those living on the fringe of the technologically advanced nations, have been put on notice to practice a universally accepted code of conduct.

In other words Tarzan of the Apes has to don the attire of Lord Greystoke to remain a functional member of the international community.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.