STRATEGY

by Kevin Carey

G21 Staff Writer

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Kevin Carey

In his end-of-year piece, KEVIN CAREY says that United States foreign policy has not altered rapidly enough in the face of future global dangers.

SUSSEX, ENGLAND - It is too early for the historian to say but it is time for journalists to think about the proposition, cited so widely after the events of 9/11, that "Things" will never be the same again. As far as the inhabitants o New York and the United States are concerned, these "things" are sad and simple enough but there were some grandiose statements, the inevitable accompaniment to crisis management, that need to be examined.

Before that, however, a word about the argot of the debate. On both sides of the Atlantic governments have been asking legislatures to approve of anti terrorist emergency measures though, heaven knows, most of them seem to have enough already. Opposition to such urgings has been based implicitly upon the proposition that we are not at war and that, therefore, the measures are not needed. To most people the idea of war is limited to the open organisation of state-sponsored violence, usually involving defence of the father/motherland and so the idea that "War" per se will continue once Afghanistan has been quieted is an alien notion.

This problem of definition has made any reasonable debate almost impossible. War is actually the suspension of normal diplomatic and judicial means to avert a present and great danger but you cannot tell this to people who think of civil liberties purely in terms of the likely dictatorial behaviour of their own rulers. To suspect the state is an honourable political stance but it should be balanced against the respect you are prepared to accord to the known behaviour of others. I would, in a nutshell, rather be governed even by Messrs Ashcroft and Bush with their massive emergency powers than I would by Osama Bin Laden and a collection of fanatics and psychopaths; as long as there are procedures for altering it, bad law is better than no law at all.

There is also the problem that many of those who are opposed to emergency measures are not genuine, perhaps we may say "old fashioned", dyed in the wool libertarians. There is a streak in every society of irrational anti-American sentiment, a mixture of jealousy, intellectual snobbery and Marxist detritus. Some of the critics, I am sorry to say, have slipped into the moral error I have described twice since 9/11, that of using the language of causality as if some action or passivity of the United States Government with respect to the Middle East "Caused" the disasters at the Pentagon and World Trade Centre. That kind of error is bad enough but still worse is the assertion, widely canvassed on the political 'left', that in some way the United States "Had it coming". For proof you may look no further than the columns of the London Review of Books where the assertion's nakedness is only hidden by the cowardly "Some people say" fig leaf. So, for all these reasons there has not really been a proper debate about the manner in which 9/11 has changed our situation.

I must say a word, too, about the myth of the Middle East. This is not easy because almost every article I have read, by supposedly eminent commentators, contains factual errors about the history of the land that is now Israel and Palestine. The most important historic fact to bear in mind is that it was the Palestinians, not the Israelis, who turned down the 1947 United Nations settlement proposals. It was the Arab world which organised invasions over Israel's 1948 ceasefire lines in 1956, 1967 and 1973 and it was Yasser Arafat who turned down a settlement proposed by Ehud Barak in 2000 which almost precisely mirrored the 1947 United Nations proposals and which was so audacious in its generosity that Arafat's failure to accept it led to Barak's downfall and the rise of the dreaded and dreadful Sharon.

We have now reached the perfect algorithm for militants and terrorists, not inevitable in its arrival by any manner of means but much easier to construct than deconstruct, whereby a democratic Israel cannot make a proposal generous enough that Arafat dare accept it and, conversely, no Arab leader has ever been able to make any proposal with respect to Israel other than that it should be annihilated altogether. Those like the assassinated Sadat who came to a modus vivendi with Israel simply pocketed their own good fortune and kept quiet. The Arab League and its members have so elevated the act of sitting on their hands into an art form that the State Department appears to be a veritable dervish in comparison.

It is also important to bear in mind the smartest formulation of the problem put forward by an Israeli Government spokesman; either Arafat is in control and must therefore be held responsible for terrorist violence or he is not, in which case there is no point talking to him.

Another awkward fact of democratic politics is that, only having won the Presidency (if at all) by the narrowest of margins, Mr. Bush will need the Jewish rather more than the Arab vote at the next election.

Not wishing to discuss the rights and wrongs of the tit-for tat-violence currently going on in the region does not mean that I do not think it is injurious, it is simply that there is nothing to be gained for blaming either side for it as if the blame all had to be apportioned one way. For what it's worth I think Sharon slightly more to blame than Arafat but that does not alter the importance of the fundamental considerations I have already put forward.

In a situation where a democracy is trying to make arrangements with a corrupt dictatorship my instincts are that the dictator is more dispensable when talks break down than is the democratic superstructure of its opponent. If Sharon really is dispensable then the people of Israel will readily dispense with him but who, other than fanatics, is there to dispense with Arafat? The only short-term solution, as I said on the 12th of September, is for the great powers of the world, through the agency of the Arab League, to impose a settlement very like that formulated by the United Nations and proposed by Barak. The chief obstacle to such a course of action is not Israel but its opponents.

The libertarians, democratic standard setters and miscellaneous other idealists should concentrate more of their intellectual resources on the Islamic world. They are sadly in danger of setting such a grotesque double standard that they think that there is more to criticise in the institutions of the United States than in the United Arab Emirates.

So in the Middle East nothing has changed that can be attributed to 9/11.

Nearer to the conflict the geo-political stance of the Soviet Union has become more accommodating more rapidly than it might otherwise have done and Pakistan's links with the United States have resumed their accustomed strength while India, on the other hand, has failed once more by dint of indecision to profit from the situation. As the world's largest democracy it ought to have done better now as it ought for the past half century, not least because of its propensity for manufacture and trade, but its ineptitude is one of those peculiarities which defy a logical explanation.

Any other changes in the stances of the major and medium powers are illusory and result by and large from the usage of 9/11 for the prosecution of repressive measures under the banner of the "War Against Terrorism" in the safe knowledge that these will no longer attract their customary opprobrium. This is to be expected but is nonetheless sad, yet in a world where politicians are usually called upon to choose between a greater and a lesser evil whereas intellectuals are merely called upon to choose between a greater and a lesser utopia, the Coalition's attitude of studied indifference is surely justified.

Which leads us, almost elegantly, to the Coalition. The first thing to be said about it is that it does not exist and is a simple fiction of the intellectual sort just mentioned; it is not a political reality, nor does it need to be. The United Nations has sanctioned the military action taken so far by the United States with some European allies. There has been some effort to show that we would all welcome collaboration from the Islamic world but I see no signs of mourning that this has not been accomplished.

There was a time in late October when America and its allies were supposed to be losing the propaganda war in Islamic countries but that is only meaningful in the sense that your opponent can win a game if you decide not to turn up. The intense period of global travel, totally misnamed "Global diplomacy" by the media, was simply a matter of keeping up appearances, of ensuring that we all felt that our leaders were doing their best to justify our actions and neutralise the opposition of others; but there is no diplomacy I know which can persuade a phalanx of more or less corrupt and ineffective dictators to adopt a policy which must inevitably tend towards democracy. Even if, which is doubtful, the theocratic impulse can coexist with the ballot box, there is no incentive for assorted Sheikhs and generals to preach virtue for Kabul when they have no intention of following the advice they are supposed to want to give.

This 'lost war' was yet another example of the media's need to magnify our woes. Its icon was the public "Humiliation" undergone by Prime Minister Tony Blair in Syria, largely thought to have damaged his standing, particularly in the Islamic world but, of course, what it did for domestic purposes was more to the point, it shored up support for military action. In democracies it is much more important to convince your own people than anyone else.

Another area of stubborn stability is that of Washington's global foreign policy, particularly in the area of multilateral problem-solving. Whether we are thinking of climate change, international jurisdiction in war crimes, data protection, Internet governance, disarmament, food safety versus untrammelled free trade or intellectual property rights, the State Department has been mulishly indifferent to the claims of its European allies.

Either Mr. Blair and his friends have received benefits for their countries which must necessarily be kept secret or they have got nothing at all.

If the latter is, as I suspect, the case, Washington will soon have to judge how long it can persist in this mindless selfishness before the long term losses outweigh the short term gains.

It has long been a commonplace in Europe that American citizens know no global geography and read papers which almost totally ignore international affairs but that impression must now stretch to the State Department itself.

If there has been one change which will actually count in years to come it is the resolution of the major powers that all parts of the world shall be governable. This sits oddly with the idea of globalisation and the decline of the nation state but the ungoverned will, over the next decade, be blessed -- I use the term advisedly -- with neo-colonial, impartial and constructive administration.

What starts in Kabul will soon be extended to Somalia where the United States suffered such dreadful, if minor, humiliation. The campaign against terrorism might be tempted to take in such maddening dictatorships as Iraq but the short-term prospect is to establish the rule of law where it currently does not exist. Later there will be an assault, physical as well as verbal, on Qadafi and his sort but that will depend upon the elaboration and the deepening of a theory of international intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states.

Which only goes to show the impossibility of consistency in politics; for the establishment of governance by one set of sovereign states will weaken the theory of sovereignty for others. This is a highly significant shift in global politics which will characterise the first half of this century but I hardly think this is what was meant by commentators when they tried to predict the impact of 9/11.

I suppose they thought that the United States would look outwards, consider what it saw and take the kind of action it did after the Second World War. Except, of course, that the essence of the Marshall Plan was the frustration of Soviet expansionism not the achievement of sausage for all between the Rhine and the Oder.

The fundamental political philosophy of the United States, regardless of Party, regardless of the niceties of redistribution, is capitalism, the theoretical justification for greed. There is greed in every sinew of the body politic and it is useless to think it can be got rid of by any kind of medicine, purgative or restorative.

While you cannot change what a body politic is you can change the way it behaves and the best agent of change is fear. The United States is, as yet, not frightened enough of the world in which we live to contemplate any fundamental adjustment of its global stance on justice and poverty. It thinks that there only needs to be a sustained intelligence gathering operation to close down the nasty networks but it is wrong.

As global communications networks spread to the saddest corners of the poorest countries on earth, comparisons will be made and bitterness will prosper. It was West German television, more than any other factor, which destroyed the Berlin Wall; and it will be soap operas of mind numbingly lavish American affluence which will exert pressure. There will be nowhere to hide, no-one else to blame, nothing more to say.

What marked out the events of 9/11 was not only their ferocity but also the instant access to the event everywhere in the world. That is what has changed, what cannot be reversed, what will ultimately make Washington adopt a more enlightened global policy but there are no signs as yet that President Bush realises his danger.

His best political ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair, has publicly warned him and no doubt there have been much more direct statements in private but still America blunders on, dressed, so to speak, in Disney costume, stuffed to bursting with cheap meat and saccharine soda, wheezing in the fumes, playing a "World Series" which only just admits Canada.

The 'left' has lost credibility in making these kinds of statements because it will not discriminate narrowly enough in its outrage; it is time for the pragmatic 'right' to make a fundamental re-appraisal of America's survival strategy.

KEVIN CAREY is social entrepreneur, economist and Director of the UK's humanITy. He can be reached via e-mail at "humanity@atlas.co.uk".

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