World Peace Or Pax Americana?
By Mir Adnan Aziz
26 March,
2008
Countercurrents.org
President John F Kennedy made a commencement address at the American University in Washington. The day was June 10, 1963. Later, US intelligence reports had the Soviet Communist Party Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, term it the best speech ever by a US president. The speech had a profound effect on world opinion as it reflected a total commitment to a future of hope and the possibility of real world peace.
An excerpt from that famous address has President Kennedy describing the road to world peace as: ' I have therefore chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and truth is too rarely perceived - yet it is the most important topic on earth - world peace. What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave.
I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow - to hope and to build a better life for their children - not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women - not merely peace in our time but peace for all times. We shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid we labor on, not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace'.
Five years ago, the world saw with utter dismay the unleashing of a war coined, as if to mete out even more agony, 'Operation Iraqi freedom'. Those watching the nightmare unfold live on their television sets did so with a sick-gnawing realization, that the shock and awe was not a Hollywood fiction flick but a real life horror. Today the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates are colored with blood, witness to a great tragedy. The Iraq of today, Mesopotamia of yester years, a symbol of the Iraqi nation and past Arab glory, has been reduced to a crucible of grotesque horror and destruction.
Almost three thousand years ago Sun Tzu, author of 'The Art of War', wrote: 'the first step in defeating your enemy is to know him'. America omni potently secure in its military might blindly invaded Iraq proving itself, as it did in Afghanistan, an extremely poor and naive student of military warfare and history itself.
In today's world, the search for a tragically missing four year old, Madeleine McCann, creates worldwide media frenzy and the recent Tibet unrest attracts immediate undivided global attention and condemnation. Mind numbing though is the global acceptance of thousands of human fatalities in Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya and Gaza. These barbaric horrors are callously described as collateral damage; a hateful euphemism invented to justify killing of the defenseless.
In this 'strategy of annihilation', out of a total Iraqi population of about 27 million, more than 700,000 have been killed, millions wounded or maimed and 4.5 million have become refugees. In more just times this could have well been termed a holocaust - a genocide. The capital cost of the Iraq war to date is in the $500 billion bracket and as some economists suggest, might end up in the $5 trillion one. Oil, at $36 a barrel before the Iraq war, has been traded at a record high of $111 this month.
President Bush's fatally flawed 'dead or alive' approach to world
peace treated the globe as his OK Corral and everything within a military
problem. This has led to a mushrooming of global instability, insecurity
and violence. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace notes: 'Bush's
attempt to create a new Middle East by using force or the threat of
force has backfired everywhere'.
"State Department to force diplomats to take Baghdad jobs" read a recent news caption. It went on to say: "State Department announced it will force diplomats to serve at its Embassy in Iraq to fill a growing number of vacant positions or risk dismissal".
The $1billion new US Embassy, coming up by the Tigris, is an apt reminder as to who will be Iraq's future master of destiny. Being built on a massive 104 acres, the completely self-sufficient complex will be the size of Vatican City. The Embassy's huge area is six times larger than the United Nations compound in New York and two-thirds the acreage of Washington's National Mall.
In the 'free' Iraq of today, as in most of the world, the saviors are 'forced' to serve in such massive fortifications. Those already there, dare not venture out of the Green Zone. In Afghanistan, another newborn 'democratic and free' country, the State's writ has shriveled to within Kabul.
The country where welcome with rose water and rice was sought resonates
with incessant explosions and cries of the dying and mutilated. From
dawn to dusk, each blood-splattered day is but a surreal image of
what was thought to be a new Iraq. This is the paradox of American
global policies. A collateral of these policies, death and destruction
reigns supreme, bestowed on the worlds hapless in the garb of freedom
and deliverance.
Immediately after September 11 the entire body politic of America - not just the ' Washington elite' but the average American changed. The demolition of the Trade Towers saw a habit transformed into a belief that they had acquired the right, duty and mandate for pre-emptive strikes and occupation wherever they deemed fit. It was a presumption that amounted to nothing but hubris across the board.
The track record of U.S. foreign policy since 1898 has been an amazing saga of intervention and aggression on a grand scale. It also has been remarkably consistent. Like the present quagmire in Iraq and Afghanistan, its involvement in both World Wars was that of choice by 'determined' leaders operating out of the White House.
'Operation Iraqi Freedom' and 'Operation Enduring Freedom' in Afghanistan are not unique or unprecedented. They are part of a now eerily familiar and chilling pattern where, to fulfill imperial agendas, 'freedom' is sought to be imposed. This has always resulted in blood, chaos and devastation for those set out to be forcibly liberated.
America was and has not been in actual danger from any country since the Soviet Union and its ICBMs during the Cold War. This, however, has not helped the countries that Washington has chosen to invade, occupy or bomb (itself or by pliant proxies) to the 'stone age'. Before September 11 continental America had not come under attack since the British redcoats occupied Washington in 1814 and burned all its public buildings to the ground.
Historically the United States spent decades cultivating 'Islamists', currently perceived by them as mortal enemies. They were cajoled and manipulated as Cold War allies and ultimately used as mere cannon fodder. Using September 11 as a justification the Bush administration signed on overtly to an already followed neo-conservative declaration. The world was defined as a 'clash of civilizations', and the global war on 'terrorism' was launched targeting Al-Qaeda – freedom fighters and partner in arms during the Cold War era.
The wars over state, territory, and politics that defined that era gave way to cosmic battles between 'good and evil'. In recent years what the world was and is being coerced into, is to side with a West portrayed as a defender of secular democratic values and its opponents who want to unleash 'global anarchy'.
This simplistic view of a new geopolitical landscape is a total dichotomy. It overlooks the key role that the West played in nurturing groups, precisely as a means of isolating and undermining movements that were viewed by them as politically threatening and dangerous.
Over the past 80 years and more, powerful governments in the West and their 'allies' in the Middle East helped create 'radical Islamic groups'. They were used as a bulwark against nationalist parties or pan-Arabism throughout the region. They gave the nod to, encouraged, funded and armed these movements to challenge local anti-colonial, liberationist or communistic outfits. The United States, sometimes overtly at others covertly, funded and encouraged right wing 'Islamic activism', only to find themselves looking down the gun barrel.
Relentless champions of democracy figuratively, they practically propped up throughout the Muslim world rulers seen as mere extensions of the State Department and despised by the local populace. The fact that these tin-men were unpopular and grossly unrepresentative never deterred or bothered them. Unfortunately, they saw democracy in the Muslim world with a political majority rule, as a phenomenon described by John Stuart Mill as 'tyranny of the majority'.
The current American claims of standing up to 'evil' religious groups in the name of universal values are extremely bitter and deeply ironical. It was precisely their earlier disregard of democracy in the Middle East and South Asia which helped give rise to a layer of apparently 'radical' Islam. This was the logical result of elevation of its own powerful interests over the needs and desires of local people everywhere. What we have today is not a World War between a principled America and 'psychotic' groups from another civilization. It is rather the messy bloody residue of their decades of meddling the world over.
Today the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. This downhill track may lead to an attention diverting and 'redemption' seeking conflict with Iran. A plausible scenario for a military collision involves Iraqi failure to meet the American benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the same. With the adoption of extreme positions, some provocation in Iraq, Israel or the U.S. can be blamed on Iran. This may culminate in a 'defensively pre-emptive' U.S. military action. If this nightmarish scenario unfolds, the whole world will be swept up in the vortex of an uncontrollable inferno.
A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and potentially expanding war is already being articulated. The fundamental assumption now oft challenged is if military force is a wise, prudent or a legitimate response to actions of a regime or group of people seen as 'hostile' by America. It is precisely this assumption that has been trashed in Afghanistan and Iraq, the catastrophic mess that they are today. It also proved false regarding the much trumpeted axis of evil. The US, grudgingly, is engaged with Syria through back channel diplomacy. A defiant North Korea, loath to endure an 'operation Korea freedom', went nuclear whereas Iran has withstood all pressures to give up its own nuclear right.
Initially justified by false claims about WMDs in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as a 'decisive ideological struggle' of our time. This oracle though is impossible to fathom logically. The perpetually shifting cross hairs are focusing on Pakistan too. With a constantly increasing shriller pitch our tribal areas are being referred to as the most dangerous place on earth. This has been accompanied by a constant litany to do more, meaning thereby, to annihilate our own to rid America of its phantasmal demons.
This is reminiscent of earlier collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamic 'extremism' and al-Qaeda are being presented as an equivalent to the threat posed by Nazi Germany and the then Soviet Russia. A ludicrous parallel between 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, that precipitated America's involvement in World War II, has also been drawn.
This demagogic narrative overlooks the fact that Nazism was based on the military power of Europe's most industrially advanced state. Stalinism, on the other hand, was able to mobilize not only the resources of the victorious and militarily powerful Soviet Union but also had worldwide appeal through its Marxist doctrine. In contrast, Muslim states of today are far weaker compared to the military and economic means of America and the West.
The agitation throughout the Muslim world is reflective of suppression and injustices. Iraqis are engaged in strife because the American occupation of Iraq has destroyed their state. Kashmiris are up in arms because they have been denied their promised freedom. Palestinians are victims of a holocaust, their land usurped by Israel. Afghanistan is a land where NATO is seen as an occupying force, their 'government' a facilitator of alien agendas. Chechens, fiercely independent Muslims, were never subdued totally by an expanding Russian Empire since the 1500s.
To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Pakistan and Iran are the epicenters, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is like, to name but a few earlier prophecies, 'Mission accomplished' and 'the birth pangs of a new Middle East', gone totally haywire. The latter has yet to deliver even a stillborn.
This viscously bloody circle has to be broken by accepting that the
Pakistani national interest now, calls for a significant change of
direction. There is in fact a dominant consensus, as the elections
have proved, in favor of drastic policy changes. In our tribal areas
and across our Western border, all institutions that symbolize Pakhtunwali
have been drenched in blood. It has failed to subdue a people, fostering
nothing but hatred and that centuries old urge for 'Badal' or vendetta.
It would augur well for the world if regional political processes are encouraged and explored. An essential element of the needed policy alteration is bringing the Taliban into the political mainstream, resolution of the Kashmir dispute as per aspirations of the brutalized Kashmiris and creation of a Palestinian state.
Ending occupations and shaping a regional security dialogue should be the mutually reinforcing goals of such a strategy. These goals, however, will require a genuinely serious U.S. commitment and involvement. The future of the United States and the world lies in a more rationally balanced and less grandiose approach to American foreign policy. Throughout history the interventionist and triumphlist mode has proven to be counter-productive, if not actually self-destructive.
For once, history today seems siding the people of Pakistan not military regimes and American dictation. Now our ' friends' have to choose as to which side of history they wish to stand on in relation to Pakistan. Better still, if they could only but heed a nation's collective soul call - please let us be.
The world, in these last years has had enough peace of the grave and security of the slave. The Romans gave the world pax Romana, a choice of submission to the Empire or unleashing of their legions of death. Today, we all could do definitely far better without any Augustus Caesars or the new definition of peace on earth - pax Americana.
