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Self-defeating strategies
By Malini Parthasarathy
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As a consequence of the American military campaign in Afghanistan, a host of giddy and self-deluding notions have surfaced... India, Sri Lanka or Israel now have the temptation to solve problems militarily.
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MOST OF the world shared the horror and grief of America at the devastation and the toll of more than 3000 lives wrought by the savagery of the brutal attacks on September 11 by the murderous terrorist group Al-Qaeda and few quarrelled with the inevitability of some sort of American retaliation against the group of assassins and their sponsors - the Taliban regime in Afghanistan - that would bring to justice those who had wreaked such deadly havoc on thousands of innocent people going about their daily business. But the extended scope and scale of the military retaliation, particularly the relentless bombings of the Afghan landscape which have turned thousands of equally innocent civilians into refugees, even as it has not yet been able to achieve its primary target of capturing Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar and others thought to have organised the September 11 attacks, has begun to cause considerable disquiet.
The didactic tenor and the sometimes imperious language of the utterances of the U.S. President, Mr. George Bush, and his senior colleagues, Secretary of State, Mr. Colin Powell, and Defense Secretary, Mr. Don Rumsfeld, as they urge the ``civilised'' nations of this world to join the ``international coalition against terror'', suggest that new norms and rules of international conduct are being pressed upon the rest of us with the objective of ensuring that the new American preoccupation with terrorism be given primacy above every other political, economic and social objective, be it the fight against hunger, disease or illiteracy. After September 11, a large part of the international community did concede the concept of the right of American retaliation in Afghanistan. However, in doing so, many nations in the developing world might not have fully realised that the scope and parameters of this retaliatory exercise would broaden to include the virtual construction of a new administration in that region, in other words, ``nation-building'', a concept Mr. Bush had earlier said that he despised.
As a result of the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York on September 11, the logic of retaliation has now stretched to accommodate the concept of allowing a locus standi for the original victim-state (the U.S.) to become the arbiter of destinies in a country thousands of miles away on the ground that it had ``harboured'' and ``supported'' the original attackers. That the U.S. is able to have the world accept this logic is an indication of its own global dominance. But it is a precedent that countries like Israel with adventurist and expansionist designs of its own find irresistible. Thus the copycat missile strikes on the West Bank which have left a number of Palestinians dead, at least equal to those Israelis killed in the suicide bombings of the Hamas. What is becoming an acceptable norm of international conduct is the idea of retaliatory action of the ``eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth'' variety. The danger in this new approach exemplified by the American military campaign in Afghanistan is that the deep anger that is felt against the U.S. and the West in the developing world, particularly the Islamic part ever since the U.S. military action against Iraq a decade ago, would only intensify.
Compounding this sense of deepening crisis is the obvious failure of the Bush administration to sensitise its strategy to the ground realities in the Middle East. Even the Clinton administration had been forced to concede that attempts to broker peace in the region would have to include a recognition of the fact of Palestinian anger at the denial of political space for their aspirations to territorial sovereignty. But the approach of the Bush administration remains mired in the obstinacies of the past. The appalling and self-serving indifference to the latest series of missile strikes by Israel on Gaza which were tantamount to punishing the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mr. Yasser Arafat, for the aggression of the Hamas terrorists who have not shown themselves amenable to Mr. Arafat's persuasion, is a dangerous strategic mistake. For the U.S. to countenance and to endorse the provocative suggestions of Israeli leaders that the onus is on Mr. Arafat to stop the terrorist attacks is to weaken its own credibility at a very critical point in its international campaign against terror. If this approach, reflecting as it does, the keenness of the United States to have its own strategic and political objectives undisturbed by inconvenient questions, is seen as an endorsement of similar strategic gambles by other dictatorial and unrepresentative regimes elsewhere, it can only mean much worse times for a deeply troubled and polarised world.
It is therefore not surprising that some of the members of the much touted anti-terror coalition, including Britain and France, have begun murmuring, albeit politely, that it is also time to take a hard look at the roots of the alienation and disquiet that have brought on this mindless and murderous fanaticism, particularly in the Middle East. But driven as it is by its all consuming focus on the campaign to root out terror, the United States has revealed itself as being more than willing, for its own ends, to rewrite the norms of international conduct and to force the community of nations to put terrorism at the top of the global agenda. This has set a precedent which countries such as Israel are now so vengefully seizing upon.
It must also be noted that hardliners in this country too, particularly Hindu nationalists in the BJP and the Sangh Parivar, have called for strikes on terrorist camps in Pakistan. It is another matter that because of the nuclear status of both India and Pakistan, it is unlikely that there will be a replay of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation, given that if such an attempt is ever made by India, the threat of nuclear retaliation by Pakistan remains a formidable deterrent. But the more worrying point is that as a consequence of the American military campaign in Afghanistan and the international campaign against terror, a host of giddy and self-deluding notions of grandeur have surfaced in their wake. Governments facing similar terrorist challenges, whether in India, Sri Lanka or Israel now have the temptation to solve these problems militarily, avoiding the more protracted yet more enduring processes of political negotiations. These delusions of grandeur which might cost a global power such as America relatively little in the long run would however devastate civil societies such as ours. Sri Lanka is a painful and tragic example of such destruction.
The Vajpayee administration has made very little effort to explain what is by all accounts a factually strong case for India on Kashmir. Instead of making plain to the world that contrary to the propaganda of Pakistan's President Musharraf, Kashmir is no Palestine for the obvious reason of the sharp difference in the historical circumstances of the two disputes, New Delhi is eagerly investing all its energies in distilling parallels from the American military campaign that can be put to quick use in the effort to win the propaganda battle over Kashmir. Perhaps, the unfortunate consequence of watching U.S. marines descend on our neighbourhood is that an all-encompassing complacency seems to have settled upon our decision-makers who appear to have practically abandoned doing their homework on executing an authentic process of devolution of powers to the Kashmiri people which might persuade them to reject the terrorists' call for ``jehad''. While there is no question that India or Sri Lanka for that matter would have to be as ruthless against terrorists, whether it be the Lashkar-e-Taiba or the LTTE, and should seek to eliminate such terror campaigns, there is still no alternative for these governments but to seek political solutions in negotiations with credible interlocutors who alone can truly sideline terror and its fanatical sponsors.
The United States with all its global preeminence is today paying a price of sorts for its decision to strike back with bombs in Afghanistan. The credibility of its global power pretensions is being severely tested as its traditional policy positions come under intense pressure from its new short term objectives. Thus, the obvious return of its partisanship in the Middle East and its opportunistic tryst with a military regime in Pakistan despite the professions of its repugnance for non-democratic dispensations are examples of an American foreign policy fast losing credibility and moral authority. But the price that India or Sri Lanka will pay if either succumbs to the temptation of such shortcuts would be much higher, possibly even the unravelling of their civil societies.
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