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The Emperor`s New World: Asian Age
New Delhi, Feb 20: A superpower goes to war to establish that it is super. That is the principal difference between wars begun by the dominant power of the age, and those initiated by lesser mortals.
New Delhi, Feb 20: A superpower goes to war to establish that it is super. That is the principal difference between wars begun by the dominant power of the age, and those initiated by lesser mortals.
War is always an exercise in self-interest, although every generation has attempted to disguise bloodshed with a variation of morality. Self-interest is the only logic behind war; to expect any other is illogical. The compass is set not by the liberation struggle of a Moses but by the doctrines of a Joshua. The only difference between right and wrong is the difference between success and failure. If you succeed you are right; if you fail, you could go horribly wrong. A superpower wastes your time, and its own, when it narrates its doctrines across reams of bureaucratic paper. Its true doctrine is built around two words: either/or. Either you fall into line, or we will come and get you. This is true whether the world is controlled by the Pax Romana or Pax Americana. This is not an ultimatum designed for permanent war, for there is no such thing. But there is something called a permanent interest; or at least an interest that exists as long as you have the will and the ability to enforce it. And there is always a Pope’s Line established to maintain the balance as defined by the presiding genius of the moment. (The Pope’s Line was drawn by Rome in the last decade of the fifteenth century; it divided the world between Spain and Portugal to ensure that the two powers did not waste their energy in internecine conflict as they set out to conquer the world in the name of Christendom. Spain got the Americas, and Portugal got Africa and India.) The last time America went to war was in 2001. It did not go to war because the Taliban was evil. The Taliban consisted of the same people with the same ideology before and after 9/11. Far from confronting the Taliban when it destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas and terrorised sections of its own people, America was gradually coming to an accommodation with this government. American missiles uprooted the Taliban after 9/11 because they were hunting for an enemy that had shaken the empire with its sheer audacity. This audacity could not be left unpunished, or the credibility of America would crumble. Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, was a bit surprised by the American reaction precisely because he had done business with the Americans before 9/11. Americans thought that the world had changed after 9/11 but that was a misperception. The world remained the same, but America changed. The world must now deal with the meaning of this change; and this means that friends as well as foes (not to mention the large floating population in between) will have to find new equations.
A superpower’s real problem with war is not the military element. That is largely preordained. No one in his senses thought that the Taliban could withstand American might in a conventional war (the results of the unconventional one are awaited). No one in his senses believes that Iraq can do anything beyond postponing the inevitable if George Bush begins operations against Saddam Hussein. The problem lies in the definition of victory. That is far more complicated.
What was the purpose of the Afghanistan war? To bring Hamid Karzai to power under (literal) American protection? Surely not. The purpose was to eliminate, or at least arrest, the standard bearers of anti-American terrorism. Specifically, the objective was to get Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, and then, through due process, identify and eliminate the whole Al Qaeda network. By this yardstick the war in Afghanistan has not been yet won by America. Osama bin Laden drove home this fact through his favourite method, a videotape, distributed to the media for international dissemination. No one had any doubts that the tape was authentic. Washington confirmed its authenticity when Colin Powell used the tape as his evidence of collusion between Osama and Saddam (a person, incidentally, that Osama dislikes only slightly less intensely than he dislikes George Bush). Osama’s descriptions of the battle at Tora Bora could only have come from him. His network is clearly still in place, even if reduced in capability. Its loyalty to him is the key to his personal survival. The hunters cannot find him, although he can find his hunters when he chooses to do so. He has not altered his looks, as the tape confirms. He is realistic about his chances of survival, and has suggested that he will soon die in some encounter with the Americans, who are now in physical charge of his operating base in the Afghan-Pak crossover belt.
What is the American objective in Iraq? Regime change is the simplistic answer. It is not a matter of merely finding an Iraqi Hamid Karzai. To begin with the process through which regime change will come will disturb the geopolitics of the region substantially and substantively. Turkey has not agreed to participate in the war against Saddam without securing its own strategic interests. This in effect means that Turkish troops will control the north of Iraq, and occupy it. Iran, which fought a war with Iraq for eight bloody years, will use the disintegration of authority in Baghdad to define the quasi-independence of the majority Shia population in eastern Iraq. How much of all this America is able to shape, or control, is uncertain.
Every emperor has a dream designed for history. It is unimportant that George Bush picked his dream from someone else’s slag heap. He couldn’t remember the name of any country apart from Mexico when he was elected but today wants to reorder the world. America, like George Bush, was in isolationist mood before 9/11; it switched into siege mode after 9/11. The road to George Bush’s dream lies through Baghdad.
So here is the future according to Bush the Second. Saddam Hussein is disposed of with maximum power and minimum fuss. Ideally he should be discovered dead in a bunker after a firefight. Crowds throng the streets as Bush waves to Baghdad via satellite from the safety of the White House (Al Qaeda threats have prevented his triumphal cavalcade through liberated Baghdad). A coalition government flies in from London, consisting largely of exiled Iraqis who have been on someone’s payroll for years. Within six months of the war there is a free and fair election in Iraq that legitimises this forward-looking, dynamic administration that has already obtained billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and billions of dollars of promises from Japan.
At which point the American triumvirate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld takes its forefingers out of the pocket and begins to wave it furiously at every Arab regime that has been on its side so far. Reform is now the approved script. The Saudi royal family must cut down on the collective loot, stop funding quasi-terrorist outfits and empower its Parliament. Every royal family in the region must check with Queen Elizabeth about how to slink into a corner, as far from executive authority as possible. Army dictatorships will, of necessity, be less obedient but pressure will be applied there as well. This is rule number one in the New World, now officially labelled the New Middle East (NME for short). NME will hinge around economic reform and a new economic order on the lines of the European Union. Who shall be the driving force? Why, Turkey of course — particularly since Turkey is not going to be let into the European Union (who wants more Muslims out there?). Turkey’s destiny must be the old Ottoman empire, a thought not totally dismissed by the modern Islamists in power there. And the second bulwark? Israel, naturally. Turkey and Israel have always been partners and should work well together, with Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Egypt in harness.
What about that little place called Palestine? Oh yes. Talks between Ariel Sharon’s Israel and a new Palestine leadership have begun; out of them will emerge an independent, democratic Palestine that is co-opted at once into the New Economic Order (NEO for short). In one sweep of the magic wand, history is rendered impotent, the jihad is over, Bush the First is avenged, Bush the Second gets the Nobel Prize for Peace, oil flows at ten dollars a barrel making the world save for consumer goods, after which everyone can get together to tell the Mullahs of Iran where they get off. Since George Bush has been reelected in 2004 there is sufficient time for this agenda to become reality.
By 2008 Saddam Hussein will be a forgotten nightmare, and France and Germany sunk to the level of third powers.
Bureau Report
War is always an exercise in self-interest, although every generation has attempted to disguise bloodshed with a variation of morality. Self-interest is the only logic behind war; to expect any other is illogical. The compass is set not by the liberation struggle of a Moses but by the doctrines of a Joshua. The only difference between right and wrong is the difference between success and failure. If you succeed you are right; if you fail, you could go horribly wrong. A superpower wastes your time, and its own, when it narrates its doctrines across reams of bureaucratic paper. Its true doctrine is built around two words: either/or. Either you fall into line, or we will come and get you. This is true whether the world is controlled by the Pax Romana or Pax Americana. This is not an ultimatum designed for permanent war, for there is no such thing. But there is something called a permanent interest; or at least an interest that exists as long as you have the will and the ability to enforce it. And there is always a Pope’s Line established to maintain the balance as defined by the presiding genius of the moment. (The Pope’s Line was drawn by Rome in the last decade of the fifteenth century; it divided the world between Spain and Portugal to ensure that the two powers did not waste their energy in internecine conflict as they set out to conquer the world in the name of Christendom. Spain got the Americas, and Portugal got Africa and India.) The last time America went to war was in 2001. It did not go to war because the Taliban was evil. The Taliban consisted of the same people with the same ideology before and after 9/11. Far from confronting the Taliban when it destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas and terrorised sections of its own people, America was gradually coming to an accommodation with this government. American missiles uprooted the Taliban after 9/11 because they were hunting for an enemy that had shaken the empire with its sheer audacity. This audacity could not be left unpunished, or the credibility of America would crumble. Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, was a bit surprised by the American reaction precisely because he had done business with the Americans before 9/11. Americans thought that the world had changed after 9/11 but that was a misperception. The world remained the same, but America changed. The world must now deal with the meaning of this change; and this means that friends as well as foes (not to mention the large floating population in between) will have to find new equations.
A superpower’s real problem with war is not the military element. That is largely preordained. No one in his senses thought that the Taliban could withstand American might in a conventional war (the results of the unconventional one are awaited). No one in his senses believes that Iraq can do anything beyond postponing the inevitable if George Bush begins operations against Saddam Hussein. The problem lies in the definition of victory. That is far more complicated.
What was the purpose of the Afghanistan war? To bring Hamid Karzai to power under (literal) American protection? Surely not. The purpose was to eliminate, or at least arrest, the standard bearers of anti-American terrorism. Specifically, the objective was to get Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, and then, through due process, identify and eliminate the whole Al Qaeda network. By this yardstick the war in Afghanistan has not been yet won by America. Osama bin Laden drove home this fact through his favourite method, a videotape, distributed to the media for international dissemination. No one had any doubts that the tape was authentic. Washington confirmed its authenticity when Colin Powell used the tape as his evidence of collusion between Osama and Saddam (a person, incidentally, that Osama dislikes only slightly less intensely than he dislikes George Bush). Osama’s descriptions of the battle at Tora Bora could only have come from him. His network is clearly still in place, even if reduced in capability. Its loyalty to him is the key to his personal survival. The hunters cannot find him, although he can find his hunters when he chooses to do so. He has not altered his looks, as the tape confirms. He is realistic about his chances of survival, and has suggested that he will soon die in some encounter with the Americans, who are now in physical charge of his operating base in the Afghan-Pak crossover belt.
What is the American objective in Iraq? Regime change is the simplistic answer. It is not a matter of merely finding an Iraqi Hamid Karzai. To begin with the process through which regime change will come will disturb the geopolitics of the region substantially and substantively. Turkey has not agreed to participate in the war against Saddam without securing its own strategic interests. This in effect means that Turkish troops will control the north of Iraq, and occupy it. Iran, which fought a war with Iraq for eight bloody years, will use the disintegration of authority in Baghdad to define the quasi-independence of the majority Shia population in eastern Iraq. How much of all this America is able to shape, or control, is uncertain.
Every emperor has a dream designed for history. It is unimportant that George Bush picked his dream from someone else’s slag heap. He couldn’t remember the name of any country apart from Mexico when he was elected but today wants to reorder the world. America, like George Bush, was in isolationist mood before 9/11; it switched into siege mode after 9/11. The road to George Bush’s dream lies through Baghdad.
So here is the future according to Bush the Second. Saddam Hussein is disposed of with maximum power and minimum fuss. Ideally he should be discovered dead in a bunker after a firefight. Crowds throng the streets as Bush waves to Baghdad via satellite from the safety of the White House (Al Qaeda threats have prevented his triumphal cavalcade through liberated Baghdad). A coalition government flies in from London, consisting largely of exiled Iraqis who have been on someone’s payroll for years. Within six months of the war there is a free and fair election in Iraq that legitimises this forward-looking, dynamic administration that has already obtained billions of dollars of loans from the World Bank and billions of dollars of promises from Japan.
At which point the American triumvirate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld takes its forefingers out of the pocket and begins to wave it furiously at every Arab regime that has been on its side so far. Reform is now the approved script. The Saudi royal family must cut down on the collective loot, stop funding quasi-terrorist outfits and empower its Parliament. Every royal family in the region must check with Queen Elizabeth about how to slink into a corner, as far from executive authority as possible. Army dictatorships will, of necessity, be less obedient but pressure will be applied there as well. This is rule number one in the New World, now officially labelled the New Middle East (NME for short). NME will hinge around economic reform and a new economic order on the lines of the European Union. Who shall be the driving force? Why, Turkey of course — particularly since Turkey is not going to be let into the European Union (who wants more Muslims out there?). Turkey’s destiny must be the old Ottoman empire, a thought not totally dismissed by the modern Islamists in power there. And the second bulwark? Israel, naturally. Turkey and Israel have always been partners and should work well together, with Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Egypt in harness.
What about that little place called Palestine? Oh yes. Talks between Ariel Sharon’s Israel and a new Palestine leadership have begun; out of them will emerge an independent, democratic Palestine that is co-opted at once into the New Economic Order (NEO for short). In one sweep of the magic wand, history is rendered impotent, the jihad is over, Bush the First is avenged, Bush the Second gets the Nobel Prize for Peace, oil flows at ten dollars a barrel making the world save for consumer goods, after which everyone can get together to tell the Mullahs of Iran where they get off. Since George Bush has been reelected in 2004 there is sufficient time for this agenda to become reality.
By 2008 Saddam Hussein will be a forgotten nightmare, and France and Germany sunk to the level of third powers.
Bureau Report