On the other side of Iraq

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

The post-Iraq world is not waiting in Asia even though the outcome of that Mideast nexus of international problems will be crucial to the region.

U.S. efforts are getting nowhere to force the North Koreans to negotiations with all the parties interested in curtailing its weapons of mass destruction coupled with the peculiar threat of its collapsing economy.

Washington not only fears a nuclear-armed North Korea, but sees Pyongyang peddling nukes as it already does missiles to pariah states and perhaps stateless terrorists. One more bombastic North Korean statement follows another. The UN’s meddling special representative Maurice Strong adds to the muddle of Pyongyang’s attempt to blackmail Washington into another unenforceable bilateral agreement. And South Korea’s new President Roh and his group of amateurish advisers are trying to square the circle: continue an appeasement line, defying Washington, but counting on American security guarantees.

The Chinese, who because of their economic and technological support, hold the key to putting real pressure on North Korea in the short term, are fending off Washington’s entreaties. That may be, in part, because China’s leadership turnover has come a cropper. Jiang Zemin has given up the ceremonial presidency and even formal Party leadership. But he continues as chairman of the central military commissions. And whatever progress toward a “normal” government in China, “power [there probably still] comes out of the barrel of a gun” as Mao once pontificated. It certainly did for Deng Hsiaoping, the Maximum Leader, who through the military commission held on for more than a decade to decision-making into his dotage.

Optimists say that doesn’t matter, that the new Fourth Generation of Chinese leadership is installed. Never mind that none of them has had any foreign exposure, never mind that many of them are “princes” – sons and daughters of former Party leaders, and Party hacks, who got there through their connections. They are, we are told, technocrats, who will move China into the modern world and make policy pragmatically.

Alas! we already have had a flavor of the new technocratic approach – and the threat Beijing poses for the world – with a possible pandemic right now floating out of south China. Chinese authorities have known since November that a new, somewhat mysterious pulmonary disease had broken out but until mid-March authorities tried to hush it up. It is also a reflection of the eroding character of Hong Kong’s “one country, two systems” compact with the Mainland that it did not come to grips with the news, apparently in deference to Beijing. As travelers have carried the disease around the world, it could become a major medical disaster as it is highly contagious and has already brought death on three continents.

To the south, domestic situations in both countries is aggravating the festering conflict between India and Pakistan. Kashmir has taken a new turn with an episode of unspeakable violence in which highly armed, apparently well trained, terrorists slaughtered 24 Hindu children, women and men. These “Pandits” had stayed behind when other Hindus fled because of their good relations with their Moslem neighbors.

Although Indian authorities were quick to name Pakistan-held Kashmir based groups responsible, it seems clear a new element has entered the fray – possibly remnants of Al Qaeda or one of the other international Islamic terrorist operations.

This new development could make moot Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee’s refusal to talk to Pakistan President — Gen. Musharraf until Islamabad halts what the Indians – and many outside observers — Islamabad’s support of infiltrators into Kashmir. It could just be that Kashmiri violence, at the heart of the conflict between the two nuclear powers, has got beyond Pakistan’s influence/control as it has long been beyond the India’s massive security forces. Meanwhile, Vajpayee’s hard-line supporters are inflaming sentiment among India’s traditionally passive 250 million Moslems with Hindu revivalist direct action; a former Indian cabinet minister of Vajpayee’s party who indicted local government figures in last spring’s anti-Moslem pogrom has been assassinated. It doesn’t calm the atmosphere that both powers have concluded new missile tests.

All this has taken a toll on the much ballyhooed reconciliation – even alliance in some quarters — between Washington and New Delhi. India charges that the U.S. has a double standard for its pursuit of its own terrorist enemies and those of the Subcontinent where it urges New Delhi to negotiate with Pakistan. Vajpayee has become more and more vocal against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, publicly bragging how he refused in three personal telephone calls from President Bush to endorse Washington’s position.

Whatever the prospects in Iraq, when U.S. policymakers will turn their attention back to Asia after its culmination, they will find the same old set of problems, but in worse shape.