Plain words
Looking back: World in 2002
There is economic uproar in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and so many other countries. Fundamentally rich and viable countries have gone bust thanks to what amounted to US advice via IMF. Europe's continued sluggishness and recession of recent years and months have led to destructive losses on bourses. War diverts everyone's attention. Although, the need is for hefty public sector investment, it is against the globalisation paradigm which hugely benefits mainly Anglo-American MNCs.
The world in 2002 was unipolar par excellence. George W. Bush has relentlessly and with brutal efficiency been imposing his will to extend what is a new Holy Roman Empire's frontiers in Asia. The US has scarcely concerned itself with consolidating the Hamid Karzai regime in Afghanistan; leaving Kabul to the care of ISAF while US forces and bases there will do whatever may be required by the New Rome, otherwise known as White House. Neither people of Afghanistan, or indeed of anywhere else, nor peace in Afghanistan merit attention. Stage of consolidation is not yet.
Pakistanis have watched with fascinated horror the way the US has treated its major European allies over questions of Afghanistan and Iraq. European public opinion remains opposed to American adventurism and continues to show it. Herr Gerhard Schroeder won a general election by taking a brave stand that his Germany would not be bamboozled into supporting Americans' war in Iraq. But then look how sheepishly is the German government returning to the fold albeit with halting steps: it would participate should the UN pass another Resolution authorising it.
Many Pakistanis, and not supporters of religious parties alone, are agitated and unhappy that the FBI and CIA having acquired freedom to pursue and arrest al-Qaeda suspects; it stinks of extra-territoriality rights of yore. Although Pakistan as a commandeered ally has rendered valuable services in the unending War against Terror, the ordinary Pakistanis are major suspects in America.
The INS and FBI are profiling the hapless Pakistanis in a country that was once known as the land of liberty: Pakistani visitors are segregated, interviewed, finger-printed, photographed and told to report to INS centres. Thousands of them were arrested and hundreds were deported in chartered aircraft. All Pakistanis in America -- a few millions -- are living in fear of being arrested as soon as they report to INS centres, as some Iranians and Arabs were. Some have talked of 'concentration camps next'.
Iranian President visited Pakistan ostensibly to sell more oil and gas to India and Pakistan. But anyone could hear the undertone of Iranian worry over American intentions chiefly vis-à-vis oil-rich Iran, an important member of the 'Axis of Evil'. This may extend to Pakistan itself for other (nuclear) reasons. American think tanks have been volubly wondering whether Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are friends or are foes. And Russian President Vladimir Putin has feared that Pakistani atomic weapons are not in safe hands while Bush stood beside him. In short, the worry is that services already rendered in the war on Afghanistan are no guarantee against America turning on Pakistan on the issue of MDW's proliferation, if it becomes necessary for US strategic interests.
The year 2002 saw the last hope of the poor and weak states, the UN, demonstratively becoming the chambermaid of the US. Never before was its powerlessness on such a display than during the on-going Iraq Crisis. For whatever reason, the US Administration is obsessed with Iraq's suspected MDWs. It wants to have a go at Iraqi regime change and has massed enough military wherewithal to finish off Iraq quickly. The US has waited as long as it has because its NATO allies feel they cannot assist what is clearly a Bush campaign -- until there is a fig leaf of UN sanction. The Europeans have pushed Bush into a diplomatic quagmire because the UN needs "proof" from its arms inspectors that Saddam does have any of MDWs. That is taking time; Bush is annoyed although this delay is useful because it gives him an excuse not to move before his deployments are complete and weather is suitable for invasion (Jan-Feb).
Before the year closed, another crisis concerning MDWs broke out. This time North Koreans declared they were at one stage secretly working on a military nuclear programme and that since the US' coercive diplomacy cut off oil supplies to them, they would now restart their nuclear reactor for generating electricity and threw out for good measure UN inspectors and dismantled the equipment monitoring its nuclear installations.
Here is a first-rate cause for the US action, if a military-oriented nuclear programme makes Uncle Sam squash it. In the case of Iraq, there is only suspicion. Here there is clear admission of past sin and current declared intent to do it again. The world regards the US military action on Iraq all but certain whether or not the UN provides its fig leaf. But in the case of North Korea, the US is content with diplomatic huffing and puffing; it chooses to deal with this crisis politically.
Why this discrimination? First, there are memories of 1949-50, which was the first major setback to a US, the victor of the Second World War having nuclear bombed Japan. Today the line up in Asia's northeast is similar to 1949-50, though they are not quite as ready to prick the American enthusiasm's bubble. Secondly there is no known oil under North Korean soil and no Israel to be benefitted by its destruction. So diplomacy will do in the case of North Korea's truculence which itself may be a diplomatic ploy to force the US to resume oil supplies and stop dictating. Which is why China and Russia have chosen to stand behind North Korea to remind the Americans of the earlier campaign.
Behind the likely Iraqi campaign stands Israel, as noted. Israel regards two Middle Eastern powers as a radical threat to its security. Iraq in the first instance and Iran later. So, both these states became members of the "Axis of Evil" while Israel's murderous shenanigans in Palestine are totally evil per se. No amount of slick propaganda of terrorism of Palestinians can wash. Why? because Israelis are, all said and done, aggressive trespassers, indeed pure colonial occupiers on a par with French colons in Algeria. Their military occupation of West Bank and Gaza areas is now 35 years old and Israelis refuse to hear of ending their occupation. Instead, they want the destruction of those whose sympathies for Palestinians may go beyond words. The US dutifully rants against them as "Axis of Evil".
But the US may have other motives. A lot of political criticisms of his Administration's policies is being drowned out in war rhetoric. Embarrassment from senior Administration members in fishy business of oil -- from Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, oil's linkage with the two Bushs, father and son, Condeleeza Rice down to recipient of fees from oil giants by Zalme Khalilzad and Hamid Karzai -- has to be buried under patriotic rhetoric. By whipping up a hysteria of fear for Americans' safety Bush has reduced the opposition into incoherence and sheepish defensiveness.
The clay feet of this new god are however a significant circumstance. It concerns the soundness or otherwise of the American economy. Trade cycles are normal. But the kind of structural weakness revealed by the collapse of a number of blue chip transnational corporations through fraud and theft, such as in Enron and WorldCom cases, has unnerved and unsettled many Americans. The kind of un-employment being witnessed in Europe, Japan -- above its unusual level for it -- and elsewhere is something of a revelation.
It was the US, on a lead from Margaret Thatcher, that reversed the Keynesian paradigm which had given Europe, Britain and America more than a quarter of a century of unparalleled prosperity and near full employment. The beginning of 1980s marked the beginning of virtually a new capitalist faith. What has this neo-classical capitalism done for the world in these 20 years is the question.
There is no doubt that the top 1500 MNCs have become richer -- more rich than even they dreamed of. But the economy as a whole has not prospered by anything like that. Indeed the normal trade cycles in their down swings have been biting ever deeper. Hidden unemployment has grown as has poverty; by now 15 per cent of Americans live below poverty line. The near crash of stock markets in the US, Japan and EU nations has impoverished millions of investors. The future looks uncertain to all workers, both white collar or those in overalls. Disparities of income have increased in all societies, with rich becoming richer and poor becoming poorer still across the globe.
What has happened inside OECD economies has been replicated at the international level. To most of the third world this paradigm called globalisation has meant underdeveloped nations lowering their tariffs to nothing; they are forbidden to subsidies -- either their exporters, consumers or agricultural producers. Most of them have ended up as failed states by becoming debt-ridden and quite unviable. The new contradiction is not so much between the rich industrial democracies and poverty stricken countries, ruled mostly by dictators. Its place has been taken by the impoverished hungry masses in the third world versus the ever richer MNCs, for common people in the rich developed world are not being benefitted much by the exploitation of what are former colonies.
There is economic uproar in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and so many other countries. Fundamentally rich and viable countries have gone bust thanks to what amounted to US advice via IMF. Europe's continued sluggishness and recession of recent years and months have led to destructive losses on bourses. War diverts everyone's attention. Although, the need is for hefty public sector investment, it is against the globalisation paradigm which hugely benefits mainly Anglo-American MNCs. This perception has led to two overlapping movements throughout Europe and Americas: One is against this crassly cruel capitalism and the second is to oppose American wars for oil and strategic advantage among other, reasons, for propping up Israel, its deadly unreasonableness notwithstanding.
MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.
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