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A SENSE OF ASIA

After failed Mideast policy crashed and burned, U.S. response sparked a revolution


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By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Sol W. Sanders

March 31, 2005

The Bush Administration's response to 9/11 was, in a sense, simple: a 50-year-old Middle East strategy had ended in a costly attack on the American homeland. That strategy was to prop up so-called moderate regimes, theoretically maintaining stability while modernization abetted by the vast riches from petroleum resources led to more just and productive societies.

It had failed – and spectacularly.

Obviously something new and different had to replace it.

For traditional diplomats administering those policies – with tweaks by one president or another – the answer was a more refined version. For “The Arabists” [professional experts in State and the academy] and their allies in the business community [read oil], the answer was simple: apply pressure to Israel for concessions to the Palestinians.

Yet any examination of the vast potpourri of peoples, cultures, and competencies from Casblanca to Zamboanga indicated however important it was, the Israeli-Arab conflict was only one of myriad problems, perhaps not the most important. Of the more than 30 Middle East wars in the past half century, only three or four had relevance to Israel-Arab issues.

Saddam Hussein had not marched on Kuwait in 1991 because of “the Zionist threat” but to grab control of Persian Gulf oil. Nor was it the origin of the eight-year Iran-Iraq War with its 1.5 million casualties and $800 billion cost. Nor the Algerian internecine nightmare. Nor the Azerbaijan-Armenian War, Pakistan’s three wars with India, Oman’s war with Aden, the Saudi border war with Yemen, the 35-year-long civil war in Sudan, etc., etc.

Reluctantly, former opponents of “nation building” – American experience in tutelage over a century from the Philippines to Haiti had not been encouraging – turned to activism. President Bush called for evangelizing “democracy”. More hardnosed Administration fellow-travelers called for representative government in whatever modulated forms to encourage more rapid modernization. Iraq, an example of “the perfect storm”, a quintessential tyranny, capable of international mischief, potentially rapidly prosperous, a limited [it was thought] military target, became, along with a much more long-term problematical Afghanistan, the instant implementation of new policies.

Ideas do have consequences. But the history of ideas is replete with strange trails – sometimes u-turns as well as blind alleys. [A friend once remarked Argentine problems were self-created, its culture the dead end of every 19th century European social, economic, and political movement!] But Iraqis, in the face of ethnic and religious feuds and American occupation missteps, risked their lives to vote. At least briefly, the most sectarianly organized society in the world, Lebanon, found unity to end foreign exploitation. Egypt, where modern Islamicist political assassins began, percolated with change. The Arab League publicly acknowledged “reform” necessary – whatever that meant to some of the world’s most corrupt autocracies. The Saudis decided to have “municipal elections” [without women, of course].

If Washington were leading a victorious parade, some of the costumes and slogans were disconcerting. [I remember a poster in a victorious mob when Indonesians, importantly led by moderate Moslems, foiled a Communist takeover in 1965: “Remember CIA means Chinese Intelligence Agency”!]

Encouraging liberty in countries without traditions of individual freedom is risky. [I reminded a young crusading American professor in a South Korean university, railing against then dictator Park Chung Hee’s successful economic policies enriching a few families, that John gave the Magna Carta to the Barons, not the yeomen.] Free elections in some societies, given their dedication to social welfare, emotional appeal and monopoly on “reform”, could deliver them to religious fanatics. [Pace American acquiescence in Tehran’s revolution.]

Contradictions and hypocrisy are built into the process. Pakistan, ironically created by an elite dedicated to the concept Indian Moslems represented a second nation in the Subcontinent but who were themselves secular, is caught in a rising tide of Islamic fanaticism. Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s parliamentary charade, for the moment, probably blocks Islamicist terrorists who would establish a Taliban-type theocracy or play games with the country’s historically corrupt feudal secular parties. Yet supporting Musharraf is tricky as he balances between masking Pakistan’s former weapons of mass destruction proliferation, chauvinists who would risk all in their feud with India over Kashmir, and the country’s legacy of poverty. Despite the Administration’s shibboleth that its relations with Pakistan and India is not a zero sum game, it is. India and Pakistan see everything through the prism of their bilateral relations, a crticial issue for Washington when for the first time U.S. relations with New Delhi, the former Soviet ally, are blossoming and India is potentially the hegemonic power in South Asia.

Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgystan [even Moldava where the ruling Communists just shifted to a pro-EU stance thumbing their nose at Moscow!], are all variants of a revolution sweeping Eurasia. Local conditions are mystifying [including everything from Stalin’s fictitious Central Asian nationalities to China’s 19th century colonial adventure in Singkiang to Iranian students using soccer riots against the mullahs].

Managing a revolution was something the Founding Fathers envisioned and pulled off magnificently. But they didn’t have to work with globalization, the internet, cell phones – and Hollywood.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

March 31, 2005

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