Author: Jim Hoagland
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: November 8, 2001
The United States made many demands
on allies and friends in launching military operations in Afghanistan.
None has been more difficult to field than the request made to Israel and
to India: Restrain your own wars against terror so we can get on with ours.
American diplomats are careful not
to put the request that way. To do so would make it sound as if they attach
a more urgent priority to American lives lost to terrorism than to those
of Indians, Israelis and others targeted by suicide bombers and gunmen.
That is inevitably true -- but politically unacceptable to say.
Nor do officials blurt out another
reality: These U.S. appeals for restraint cater to Pakistani and Arab public
opinion -- that is, they try to shore up shaky dictatorships that can provide
help and political cover in the bombing of Afghanistan -- while leaving
democratic governments in Jerusalem and New Delhi to fend for themselves.
Unfair? Certainly. But not surprising.
War runs on expediency, not on logic or morality. The Pentagon needs bases
to carry out the mission of destroying Osama bin Laden, his terror network
and the Taliban.
But the outcome of the global campaign
forced on the United States by bin Laden's group will do much more than
prove the prowess or incapacity of President Bush and his generals to use
force abroad.
The way in which the campaign is
conducted, and the long-term goals it serves, can establish new organizing
principles and priorities for international relations for years or decades
to come. The roles that democracies and dictatorships will be called on
to play in the American agenda of the 21st century will be made clearer
by this conflict.
Bush and his aides should keep that
big picture in mind as they pursue the immediate demands of combat. Crises
of this nature turn politicians into statesmen and reshape world politics
-- if the big opportunities are seized.
India and Israel are the most vibrant
democracies in a vast swath of countries from North Africa through the
Himalayas that should now be seen as a single strategic region. Jerusalem
and New Delhi are also end points of the U.S. campaign. If the struggles
in Kashmir and the West Bank and Gaza are not reshaped and defused by America's
war on terrorism, those bitter conflicts will feed new waves of international
terrorism for the future.
Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, due at the White House on Friday, is still open to the much closer
strategic relationship that Bush promised on coming to office. But that
drive has stalled as Bush has been urged by the bureaucracy to concentrate
on the short-term advantages of a Faustian bargain with Pakistani ruler
Pervez Musharraf.
Vajpayee arrives just as that bargain's
shortcomings become apparent. The promise by Pakistan's intelligence services
to foment uprisings in southern Afghanistan and to arrange defections from
the Taliban and bin Laden's network have fallen flat, even as Bush heaps
more economic aid and political forgiveness on Musharraf.
This may not be simple incompetence.
Olivier Roy, a French political scientist and Europe's leading authority
on Afghanistan, predicts that the Pakistanis will cooperate with the American
effort to oust the Taliban just enough to be able to sabotage it when they
choose.
"What Musharraf and the army care
about are keeping their nuclear weapons and their ability to intervene
in Kashmir, and having a friendly government in Afghanistan," Roy said
at a Brookings Institution seminar here this week. To protect the first
two goals, they will go through the motions of compromising on the makeup
of a new regime in Afghanistan "until the Americans leave. The calculation
of every regime in the area is that they can all outlast an American presence
that will be short-term."
Vajpayee will not engage Bush directly
on Pakistan's current role, I am told. He will instead probe whether this
White House seems ready to repeat one of the fundamental mistakes of the
Cold War, which was to convert tactical relationships with dictators into
ideological, strategic alliances.
Dictators snap the whip and seem
to make things happen quickly. But they own only the moment. That is why
they clutch the present so fiercely. The future belongs to democratic leaders,
who can build and sustain consensus and commitment to ideas and values.
They are Bush's true allies, however difficult dealing with them can be
at a moment of crisis.
