U.S. policy: A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers

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

A decade after the Soviet UnionÕs implosion, it is still hard to shake off the shackles of bipolar world strategic thinking. As leaders rush about in personal diplomacy to see what can be done about problems, despite abeyances to the UN and international solidarity what is happening is largely bilateral ad hoc arrangements, and then fairly temporary ones.

Nowhere is that more true than in Asia.

Washington has just had visits from President Gen. Musharraf of Pakistan and Indian Deputy Prime Minister Advani. MusharrafÔs military government ø if dressed in electoral clothes that Washington and London demanded ø was rewarded with $3 billion in aid. Half of that may go for arms purchases at a time when the U.S. is pushing for an Indo-Pakistan settlement to avoid nuclear war in the Subcontinent. But keeping the Pakistan army loyal to Musharraf may be the only way to clean up the remnants of Al Qaida. Musharraf has, if not stemmed Pakistan-assisted violence in contested Kashmir against India, sent his army into tribal areas along the Afghanistan border for the first time ever where he apparently believes Osama Bin Laden may be hiding.

Musharraf did not get the F-16 aircraft his country purchased and partially paid for more than a decade ago. They may come later but right now the U.S. does not want to hand New Delhi a blow. It wants Indian cooperation to send troops to Iraq. .[MusharrafÕs proposal for a multinational Moslem force seems to has died aborning.] And there is the theory, first concocted in the Clinton Administration, that India will become an American ally in South Asia [despite Prime Minister VajpayeeÕs just completed trip to Beijing to bury the hatchet, apparently in the Dalai LamaÕs back with the end of Indian hospitality to the flow of Tibetan refugees] . The Indian navy is already participating in the anti-pirate operations along the oil route from the Mideast to East Asia. Advani did get assurances the U.S. would continue to pressure Musharraf to stem the tide of Pakistan-held Kashmir based infiltrators that take a heavy told of the Indian military [and its prestige with more than half a million security forces unable to suppress Kashmiri Moslem separatism], and apparently implicated in last yearÕ near fatal attack on the Indian parliamentary leadership.

U.S. policy in Afghanistan has settled on a tolerance of warlords while it struggles mightily at the same time in Iraq to wipe out the last vestiges of the BaÕath regimeÕs attempted insurgency against the CoalitionÕs occupation. But no Afghan regime has ever had more than measured control over the country outside Kabul. So long as the Iranians sponsor forces in their adjacent region and the Pakistanis cannot control their border areas ø now thanks to ÒdemocracyÓ in the hands of local Taliban sympathizers ø warlordism will continue. NATOÕs Afghanistan peacekeeping forces with its reluctant German component would or could not change that situation in the face of growing U.S. commitments elsewhere. [It may be President BushÕs bad luck to have scheduled a long delayed Africa trip just when the exploding crisis in Liberia reinforces British, French and UN demands that Washington take its ÒrightfulÓ place as leader of peacekeeping force in a country the U.S. invented, AmericaÕs first effort at Ònation-buildingÓ.]

U.S. pressure on RussiaÕs Putin to end collaboration with IranÕs nuclear program has at least produced Kremlin pro forma statements calling on TehranÕs mullahs to accept additional UN International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. Putin has to consider U.S. ÒinfluenceÓ on the future flow and price of Iraq oil [not to say the Russian oil concessions granted by Sadaam Hussein and his old Soviet debt]. Even Japanese financing of a new Russian pipeline to the Pacific Coast and the development of Siberian oilfields [before ChinaÕs burgeoning population overruns that part of the world] depends on U.S. as well as Japanese markets. And oil and gas is now the main prop for RussiaÕs still rickety economy.

But that is a different strategy than the effort to present Beijing with a unified U.S.-Japan-South Korean phalanx, perhaps with the teeth of an embargo, to halt the North KoreaÕs march toward nuclear weapons and marketing them to pariah states [and perhaps non-state terrorists]. It would need ChinaÕs adherence to be effective. So far, South KoreaÕs President Roh has refused to reverse his policy to try to buy North Korea off. But with falling foreign investment, the worst productivity statistics among the industrial countries, continuing strikes, Roh may have to leave his leftwing following behind for a more hardline policy ø including toward Pyongyang.

ThatÕs just a sample of why the call for universalism in U.S. policy is a luxury Washington policymakers cannot afford.