South Asian Stake In Emerging In Global Construct
Monday, 02 August 2010 00:09
In a world beset as it is with multiple challenges- both ideological namely the struggle of market fundamentalists to remain relevant in the free market mechanism against the global demand for regulatory mechanism as well as conflict between Isaiah Berlin's refusal to surrender to "Historical Inevitability" vis-à-vis Samuel Huntington's civilizational clash-- the conduct of foreign policy has become infinitely intricate and multi-dimensional. Though only few countries play key role in global affairs, replacing the go-it-alone policy of former President Bush, yet the conduct of global affairs looks more oligopolistic than the participatory way of doing things that might have been the expectation of the Third World countries.
Historically nations have behaved in Hobbesian way and the primacy of the strongest has been the general rule. As power has been defined as the ability to make others do what you want then the method can be hard power-military and economic-or soft power-the ability to set the political agenda in a way that shapes the preferences of others. If contemporary conflict resolution efforts in South Asia are any guide then Michael Cohen's (New America Foundation-Myth of a kinder gentler war) expression of serious doubt about the success of population-centric counter insurgency (COIN) plan of Generals Petraeus and his disgraced predecessor Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan to embrace the population and spare the use of fire power merits discussion.
Cohen finds that historically such approach has not been successful in US counterinsurgency in the Philippines, British operations in Malaya and Kenya, French efforts in Algeria, American experience in Vietnam. In all cases the so-called Roman method of unrestrained violence to suppress the rebellion had been resorted to making a wasteland calling it peace. The point here is not to discuss how the Americans will extricate themselves from the mess, if Kabul Conference of July 20th is taken as an exit strategy, but to recognize the realities that many Third World countries refuse to do fearing derogation from traditional framework of sovereignty as opposed to the recognition by the European Union members that instrumental value of sovereignty today is much less than it was before.
People well versed in international politics question whether the concept of purely 'national' interests makes sense any longer and consequently that of the primacy of the state. Henry Kissinger, for example, steeped in the study of European history of the nineteenth century believed that geopolitics is based on the recognition and acceptance of the limits of power. There is a clear reluctance in some countries in South Asia to recognize the Indian ascendancy in global power structure and of perceived economic and cultural dominance by India of her neighbors. True we have crafted SAARC that has so far produced more papers than concrete results. In Bangladesh we tend to forget that our trade imbalance is greater with China than with India. Albeit para-tariff and non-tariff barriers are impediments. But greater obstacles are small basket of our exportable goods and the hindrances in the way of foreign investment to make up for the lack of domestic capital. FDI to China, India and Vietnam has increased exponentially.
It is obvious that the recent recession in the world having multidimensional effects would adversely affect FDI as well. This shows that FDI is not affected by the existence of democracy or lack of it. But FDI that helps capital formation can lead a country towards prosperity and create a property owning strong middle class who would insist on liberal values to exist in the society and consequently push for a democratic set up where it does not exist. Admittedly democracy exists in rich countries and once transition to liberal democracy, and not Larry Diamond's "electoral fallacy", has been achieved in developing countries there is no turning back as the people would resist any reversal to illiberal system.
One, however, is not certain if religiosity can act as a barrier to democracy. Al-Qaeda?s appeal for a "purified" brand of Islam, though rejected by the great majority of the Islamic world, can be cited as an example. Equally Jewish orthodoxy has held up a just solution in the Middle East arresting the cooption of the Muslim world with the West to take the advantage of the quantum leap in technology that has abridged the period, thought of necessary, for transition from agrarian to industrial economy suggested by Walt Rostow in his thesis relating to stages of economic development.
In this process of expeditious development in South Asia India like Germany in EU can play an effective role in helping other SAARC members to higher stage of development? This would be in consonance with the US assistance to war devastated Europe making those countries rich thus widening US market and vice versa. EEC's lifting of Portugal, Spain and Greece from relative underdevelopment to the state of developed countries (current Greek insolvency notwithstanding) are another example. One hopes that intra-SAARC cooperation would be seen as efforts towards unified development and not with parochial definition of "national interest". But then would cooperation among SAARC nations be arrested by the clash of civilization paradigm? Are Indo-Pak differences, various wars fought between them and the unending Pakistani cross border terrorism into India is a sign of the validity of Huntington's hypothesis "that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great division among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future".
Indo-Bangladesh relations, India's relations with Afghanistan and Maldives do not support the civilizations divide. But then Huntington himself in the face of continuing onslaught on his thesis (If not Civilizations, What-Nov/Dec 1993- Foreign Affairs) wrote that a paradigm can be disproved only by the creation of an alternative paradigm that accounts for more crucial facts in equally simple or simpler terms. He adds that any paradigm cannot explain all events like the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait but can explain, for example, fighting among Croats, Muslims and Serbs in former Yugoslavia, failure of the West to respond to the Srebrenica massacre, offer of Iran and some other Muslim countries to aid Bosnian Muslims.
Albeit twenty years old, Samuel Huntington cites New York Times story (23-09-1993) that slowly but gradually a growing Hindu rage against Muslim minority has been spreading among Indian middle class who, it was thought would be guardian of secularism in India. Topping the list in the Indian Administrative Service examination by a Kashmiri Muslim could be an accident as the election of several Presidents and Vice Presidents of India. But then again the reelection of the Congress Party returning a Sikh Prime Minister to power with a Christian lady as Parliamentary leader do disprove the validity of Huntington's thesis.
Late Edward Said of the University of Columbia (The Clash of Ignorance The Nation-Oct 2001) criticized Huntington for ignoring the internal dynamics of different civilizations and for putting Islam and the West in adversarial position putting both "in a cartoon like world where Popeye and Bluto bash each other mercilessly with one always more virtuous pugilist getting the upper hand over his adversary". Edward Said also laid part of the blame at the door of Princeton University historian Bernard Lewis whose unremitting diatribe explaining the Roots of Muslim Rage got the attention of neo-cons surrounding the Oval Office of George W Bush.
Clash of Civilization concept, perhaps, received more attention due to the disappearance of the Cold War paradigm consequent upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Political changes are also brought about by internal dynamics as the orange revolution, velvet revolution, or changes brought about through peoples' power in the Philippines, changes forced by the people on corrupt and despotic rulers in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Ecuador and the popular discontent over the election in Togo allegedly manipulated by the state machinery.
One could take the essence of George Keenan's 1947 article on "The sources of Soviet conduct" as a prescription for containing and then destroying "democratic despotism" (albeit oxymoronic in phraseology) through implacable opposition to its continuance. Keenan spoke of Stalin?s retention of the "organs of suppression" on the ground of capitalist encirclement resulting in "all internal opposition forces in Russia consistently (being) portrayed as agents of foreign forces of reaction antagonistic to Soviet power". The brilliance of George Keenan lay in his prescient understanding of the fact that the excesses of police apparatus had "fanned the potential opposition to the regime into something far greater and more dangerous than it could have been before those excesses began".
Since the US could not expect in the foreseeable future to enjoy political intimacy with the Soviet regime, George Keenan argued, it must continue to regard the Soviet Union as a rival in the political arena and adopt "a policy of firm containment, designed to confront the Russians with unalterable counter force at every point" One could reasonably translate the cold war prescription from international to domestic politics in order to fight a democratically elected government which turns itself into a despotic one in order to remain perpetually in power. As German philosopher and social theorist Jurgen Habermas observes the state's raison d'etre does not lie primarily in the protection of equal individual rights but in the guarantee of an inclusive process of opinion-and-will-formation in which free and equal citizens reach an understanding on which goals and norms lie in the equal interest of all. He, therefore, puts emphasis on freedom of assembly and freedom of choice.
If the political community is fragmented into opposed religious, ethnic, racial, and ideological groups, more familiarly known as "identity politics", then democratic structure is threatened while ethnic and racial tension in Bangladesh is minimal, religious and ideological divides remain.
One is, therefore, alarmed at the revelation that corporations run by religious fundamentalists make an annual net profit of twelve billion taka of which ten percent is used by fundamentalists for organizational purposes like carrying out regular party activities, providing remuneration and allowances to about half a million party cadres and running armed training camps. Further more while the number of primary schools since liberation has doubled that of Dakhil madrasas has increased eight fold. The continuing efforts by our law enforcing agencies to arrest religious militants and the US description of Bangladesh as a moderate Muslim country are note worthy yet the Western anxiety of the use of Bangladesh territory as rest, recreation and transit place for militants destined for India has to be addressed.
Delhi based South Asia Intelligence Review in its report (April 2005) linked "increasing activities of Islamist extremists with the ruling coalition" in Bangladesh. The then Bangladesh authorities by and large had been dismissive of Indian allegations leveled against Bangladesh. Happily such allegations have reduced since the assumption of power by the present administration that are acutely aware that Euro-American warnings relating to increased religious extremism in Bangladesh can only be disregarded at our own peril.
A recent manifestation of religious intolerance has been the persecution of the Ahmadiyya sect by religious bigots. Analyzing the state of sectarianism in Pakistan Brussels based International Crisis Group had remarked that sectarian conflict in Pakistan was the direct consequence of state policies of Islamisation and marginalization of secular democratic forces. Cooption and patronage of religious parties by successive military governments have brought Pakistan to a point where religious extremism threatens to erode the foundation of the state and society. The choice that Pakistan faced, the crisis group warned, was not between the military and the mullahs, as was generally believed in the West; it was between genuine democracy and a military-mullah alliance that was responsible for producing and sustaining religious extremism.
Pakistan itself being embroiled in fighting the Tehrik-e-Taliban militants that had one time come to within 60 miles of the capital Islamabad cannot afford the luxury of playing double game in the war with militants alleged by the most revelations contained in the Wilkileaks documents. Interestingly as opposed to the Pentagon Papers when the leak was made by only to the New York Times, Wilkileaks this time around worked with NYT, Guardian and Der Spiegel to publicize Pakistan's complex maneuver and "betrayal" of the US forces fighting the al-Qaeda and Taliban in Afghanistan.
The latest voice added has been that of British Prime Minister David Cameron on a visit to India warned that the British like the Indians "are determined that groups like the Taliban, the Haqqani network or Lashkar-e-Toiba should not be allowed to launch attacks on Indian and British citizens in India or in Britain". Expectedly the remarks were not well received in Pakistan that the country was exporting terror. Pakistan felt saddened by the remarks by the British leader and thought that these were contrary to ground realities. The British obviously came to India to expand economic and commercial ties and to upgrade the Indo-British relations to a higher level.
It is not surprising that the upcoming visit by President Obama and French President Nicholas Sarkozy to Delhi is affirmation of India's heightened role in global affairs furthered by its inclusion as a member of G-20. These opportunities are not of India's alone but of whole South Asia as advised by Henry Kissinger (The chance for a new world order-January 2001-International Herald Tribune) that "if Pakistan turns into a failed state with nuclear weapons, a vast challenge to international order will come about. India threatened directly by Jihadist terrorism, is only at the beginning of a process, which we should welcome, of involving itself in the political evolution of the region between Singapore and Aden".
Kissinger's observation was made in the background of a historic shift in the gravity of world affairs from the Atlantic to the Pacific and the Indian oceans. The responsibility and political capital the key players are devolving upon India are to be used wisely for the peace and prosperity of the South Asian region taking Pakistan on board. Kissinger believed that imposition of American foreign policy devoid of balance of power diplomacy would, in the case of US-Russia relationship, lead to dissolution of Atlantic Alliance. In other words truant nations should be handled with "smart power" and use of hard power that has the possibility of nuclear conflagration is no option at all.
Bangladesh historically endowed with secular and liberal traits should take lessons from history and contemporaneous experiences of others. Questions may be asked as to why the international community should be interested as to how different state institutions function in a juridically defined territory. Thomas Hobbes thought that sovereign statehood was a necessary political arrangement for ensuring social peace. If a government can not ensure peace and deliver political goods to which it is committed then, Hobbes argues, there is no point in having a state. But since states do not dissolve by themselves many despotic rulers continued to exercise control over captive population often supported and assisted by the erstwhile super powers due to the logic dictated by the cold war. Consequently at various stages of the cold war, as theorized by George Keenan, the US sometimes by assisting despots presiding over failed states countered Soviet moves taking a long term, patient but firm and vigilant policy to contain Russia's expansive tendencies.
The end of the cold war occasioned by the collapse of the Soviet empire has brought about a fundamental change in the western attitude towards the rest of the world. The West is no longer willing to overlook "democracy deficit" for its strategic interests. Source of threat to global stability has moved from nuclear war to regional rogue states to transnational or non-state actors. Effectively American definition of the threat has de-escalated from "evil empire" to "axis of evil" to "evil actors".
The international community, therefore, demands that democracy should be not only an international norm but a domestic norm as well. If a state were to disenfranchise entire or part of its population then democratic states may justify foreign intervention to enfranchise the people of the non-democratic states; they may intervene to install a democratic government through internationally supervised elections. Such interventions were justifiable, said Tony Blair, referring to NATO?s actions in Kosovo advocating his Doctrine of International Community containing explicit recognition that states now a days were mutually dependent and that national interest of states was "to a significant extent governed by international collaboration"
Connectivity associated with globalization?s progressive advance or denial of such connectivity has assumed great importance for Western assessment about a country's fulfillment of its international obligations to remain a member of the society of states. It has been argued that since civility can not be apportioned according to race, religion or color the comparatively less developed economies can not be allowed to remain disconnected from the international community on the pretext of their poverty or on grounds of so-called Asian values which is mistakenly defined as putting greater emphasis on collective welfare at the cost of individual liberty. On the contrary promotion of individual liberty ultimately contributes to peace and development by eliminating intra and inter group friction.
For countries like Bangladesh transiting through perilous phase of political development, growth of her democratic personality stunted on several occasions by extra-constitutional forces, the authorities would be well advised to avoid Machiavelli's advice that it is better to be feared than loved. Authoritarian obstinacy, portrayed by courtiers are akin to leaders' refusal to compromise on matters of principles, to address reasonable concerns of the oppositional and neutral forces' demand for fine tuning the administrative process that may result in massive politico-economic regression.
It is not important who scores points over whom. It is far more important if the changes sought would guarantee emergence of a system for true reflection of people's will. One hopes for good sense our leaders in collaboration with regional and key international players shall provide the people with an opportunity to acquire a better quality of life than the one they are living at present.
The writer is a former Ambassador and Secretary from Bangladesh.
SAAG
SAAG is the South Asia Analysis Group, a non-profit, non-commercial think tank. The objective of SAAG is to advance strategic analysis and contribute to the expansion of knowledge of Indian and International security and promote public understanding. In so doing, the SAAG seeks to address the decision makers, strategic planners, academics and the media in South Asia and the world at large. The group holds the concept of strategy in its broadest meaning-including mobilization and application of all resources to understand national and international security. The aim of the group is not to compete with Governments, Academics, NGOs or other institutions dealing with strategic analysis and national security but to provide another point of view for the decision makers and other national/international think tanks
No comments:
Post a Comment