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Choosing Between America's Friendship Or Enmiy

By Gulam Mitha

02 September, 2010
Countercurrents.org

Henry Kissinger once said that “America’s friendship is more dangerous than it’s enmity”. So what does a nation choose dealing with a superpower? The words of Arundhati Roy need to be kept in mind that “Superpowers do not need friends; they need agents”. What is the function of an agent? Simply to do a bidding.

I was born in Mumbai but immigrated to Pakistan soon after the partition. Like many youngsters growing up in Karachi in the 60’s, I was fascinated by America and by the American way of life, culture, education system and their success and achievements in scientific, medical and engineering fields. On the other side was the USSR, another superpower. Being a chess player, I visualized America as the white pieces and USSR as the black pieces. Naturally, my affinity was towards the white pieces so I opted to be the white pawn. I went to America for further education and learnt the good things of life from the American people—their kindness, honesty, generosity and hard work, things that made America great. I was a friend of America and that was good for me. I’d no American enemies and needed none.

But what Kissinger implied was not friendship or enmity of the American people but of the American government. The business of America is business.

I’d left a prosperous Pakistan in late 60’s and returned a decade later to a different Pakistan, its one wing clipped in 1971. It was no longer a nation that subscribed to the American values I’d adopted. The people were still kind but slowly becoming dishonest; they were not as generous because gradually greed was catching on and the hard workers in the rural areas were becoming as lazy as those in the fast growing urban areas. What had happened was the influx of American aid into Pakistan was making the government corrupt and the corruption was staining the fabric of the nation—its people. The nation had become addicted to the American aid and as the flow started to diminish, Pakistan’s feudal landlords, politicians and bureaucrats turned to the IMF and World Bank for conditional aids. Pakistan, addicted to aid is now a nation that is being crushed under a debt load, an economic failure. It just cannot survive without aid. Kashmir is the poisoned chalice for Pakistan’s military and it too is addicted to aid.

Pakistan had cultivated friendship with America right from its independence in 1947 largely to balance the Indian friendship with the Soviet Union. By the time the US became an imperial superpower in 2001, Pakistan was left with no choice but to become its agent and servant, no different than any other Muslim country except Iran. Under the Shah Iran had taken the choice of becoming an agent but over the past 3 decades, the process has reversed where Iran is now America’s enemy. So the critical question that needs to be answered is “which is better—being America’s friend and agent or it’s enemy?”. The nuclear issue with Iran today is to reduce it as America’s agent and servant.

In a 7 August 2010 article posted by Michael Leon, Managing Editor of California based Military Veterans and Foreign Affairs Journal called Veterans Today, Pakistan’s Brigadier Asif Haroon Raja has written that Pakistan continues to remain target of international and internal conspiracies. While internal situation is dismal, external situation is equally grim. Foreign forces of 44 countries based in Afghanistan are getting restless because of unmanageable turbulence in Afghanistan. USA is holding Pakistan responsible for its failure in defeating Taliban. The article is of substantial interest and can be read on http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/08/07/u-s-is-a-bigger-threat-to-pakistan-than-india/. Like the USSR, America too has discovered it’s easier to blame Pakistan for their failure. The fact, however, is that the Afghan fighters, the Taliban, are responsible for defeating one superpower and close to defeating another. Because of its aid addiction, Pakistan has simply been caught in the crossfire as the subservient agent whose N-assets are a threat to American interests and hegemony designs.

Lessons can be secured from events in Iraq under Saddam, who hosted and toasted the Americans for more than 2 decades and acted as their “friend and agent”. In the end, the American friend tied a noose over his neck and let him fall a few feet below the plank with the help of other agents. Similarly Zulfiqar Bhutto was an enemy who refused to succumb to American power so they conveniently got another agent, Pakistan’s Zia-ul-Haq to drop him down at the end of a rope and then picked the bidding agent high up in the air. America does no dirty work. They just get agent friends to do that. Mullah Omar of Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden were hosted and toasted as friends of USA and then conveniently disposed off as enemies when their years of service ended. Manuel Noriega was no different; Americans just simply flew into Panama, grabbed him and then brought him into USA in fetters to put him behind bars, simply to keep his mouth shut forever.

Neither America nor India nor Israel need to be blamed for Pakistan’s economic and strategic failures. The onus of the failure lies entirely on Pakistan’s civilian and military governments for cultivating friendship with America, one that has proven an Achilles heel for the nation. Pakistan could have learnt its lesson after it was first balkanized in 1971 following the great Bhola cyclone of 1970. Its friend did not come to the rescue when India got involved in the Bangladesh Independence Movement. Exactly 4 decades later, Pakistan is in the throes of the second balkanization process following the devastating floods and stands at the edge of destabilization. Will history repeat itself is a question that will be answered in history books.

In all cases but particularly those of Pakistan and Iraq, it is beyond doubt that America’s friendship is more dangerous than is its enmity because in the cases with the axis of evil --Iran, N. Korea or Syria as well as Venezuela or Cuba, America’s enemies are able to survive. Any superpower behaves as a bully but only if allowed to. Yet the best course with America is to understand its economic needs and fulfill them as does India, Canada and China to gain prosperity. Lenin had once said that the American capitalist system will even buy the rope with which to hang themselves.