Author: Brahma Chellaney
Publication: The Hindustan Times
Date: September 10, 2002
URL: http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_62860,00120001.htm
The hoopla surrounding the anniversary
of the September 11 terrorist strikes only helps highlight that the focus
of the Bush administration a year later is not on rooting out global terrorism
but on getting rid of a toothless but unsavoury dictator, who, far from
being a menace to US security, is not a threat even to his neighbours.
Yet, Bush's obsession with Saddam
Hussein is such that the president has allowed himself to be distracted
from more pressing priorities and America's global leadership responsibilities.
It has not occurred to Bush that he is needlessly aiding the rise of anti-US
sentiment in the world.
The attraction of a 'winnable' war
against Saddam versus an interminable, unwinnable war against terrorism
is such that the more Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar have become difficult
to trace, the more menacing and larger-than-life Saddam has emerged in
Bush's portrayal.
When Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee meets with Bush, he will discover that the latter's mind is preoccupied
with Iraq. The series of ongoing high-level Indo-US meetings were designed
to help revive the momentum in bilateral relations. But their timing is
hardly favourable.
Before last September 11, India's
was a voice in the wilderness. Since then, India's voice is being
heard internationally, although not to the degree that would significantly
ease the terrorist pressures on it. India's gain, however, has been counterbalanced
by Pervez Musharraf's emergence as the largest beneficiary of the events
of the past year.
The more vexing development is that
the Indo-US relationship, which had been progressing speedily under Bush,
has begun to lose its momentum in recent months as the focus of official
dealings has shifted from bilateral to Indo-Pakistan issues. Simultaneously,
the mood has soured, especially since the issuance of the US travel advisory
and the State Department's opposition to the Israeli Arrow anti-missile
system sale. Without a revival of the momentum in bilateral ties, however,
India risks undermining its enhanced international profile that has resulted
from closer cooperation with Washington.
Yet, there is no way India can be
seen as supporting US military strikes on Iraq - a potential litmus test
of friendship for those in Washington determined to oust Saddam at any
cost. But if war is unleashed on Iraq, can India even stay tight-lipped?
India faces a real dilemma: keep quiet for the sake of warmer ties with
the US and be seen as indirectly backing undisguised aggression, or oppose
the strikes and risk losing the new closer relations.
A bigger issue for India is the
future of Bush's war against terror, a war that has gone astray in terms
of its goals. A year after identifying Al-Qaeda and the Taliban as its
biggest enemies, the US has failed to capture the top bosses of either,
although Al-Jazeera is able to interview such figures in Pakistan. But
the US has gone on to name a new enemy.
India has an important stake in
the future of the US war on terror. With many terrorist nests in
Afghanistan destroyed, FBI raids on suspected terrorist hideouts in Pakistan
recurring, and the jehadis on the run, Indian security has benefited. Indian
security, unlike US security, is imperilled not so much by non-State terrorist
cells as by State-cultivated and State-protected terrorist bands. But when
non- State terrorist actors are in retreat, the Pakistani State would be
harder pressed to export terror to India at the same level.
It thus follows logically that Indian
security interests are linked to how the US war against terror carries
on. It is not good news for India that that war is going off its course
on to a new target whose links with international terrorism, by the Bush
team's own reluctant admission, are questionable. It is for that reason
that Bush is now seeking to publicly arraign Saddam on phoney charges related
to weapons of mass destruction because he knows such weapons evoke popular
revulsion.
As a wounded tiger that can occasionally
roar but not kill or maul, Saddam would, if allowed to stay on in power,
serve US interests, as he has done for the past decade and more. The US
needs 'rogue' emblems to rationalise its military presence in regions of
concern, its non-proliferation and export-control policies, and its sanctions
approach. And Saddam is the best-known symbol of a 'rogues' gallery' whose
other figures, except for North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, have either been de-fanged
by US policy (including Libya's Muammar Qaddafi) or been rendered tame
(like Cuba's Fidel Castro). So much so that Washington has officially dropped
the term 'rogue state'.
With such success, Bush ought to
have kept his attention on the real rogues of the Al-Qaeda type and stepped
up pressure on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for having contributed the most
to the rise of fundamentalism and terrorism. But Bush's past seems to be
guiding his present thinking. Bush and some of his key team members are
from the energy industry and they are eyeing the 10 per cent of the world's
oil on which Iraq sits. Their apparent goal is to install a Hamid Karzai
in Baghdad.
Bush's bellicose stance on Iraq,
in fact, is driven by his successful blending of the war on terror with
US energy-security strategy. That has already led the US to build military
presence in the oil-exporting Caspian Sea basin and Central Asia and strengthen
safeguards on its access to Persian Gulf oil.
In the name of fighting terror,
the US has set up a network of forward bases stretching from the Red Sea
to the Pacific, making its forces active in the largest array of countries
since World War II. US forces are now positioned in five nations adjacent
to India - Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgystan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan
- even as Washington enters into strategic tie-ups of varying types with
India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Bush also realises he can never
win his war on terror because terrorism, like poverty, is as old as humankind
and will remain prevalent. But he can win a war against Iraq by deposing
Saddam.
So it is not the world that has
changed since last September 11. It is the US that has changed, as shown
by Bush's increasingly unilateralist, uncompromising approach to global
issues. If the world was changed by any attack, as Vir Sanghvi perceptively
pointed out in his Sunday column, it was by the 1945 US nuclear bombing
of Hiroshima - an event that has kept the world perpetually hostage to
nuclear terror by heralding an era of security pivoted on deterrence.
Today Bush no longer feels the need
to 'rally the world' because America's strategic expansion gives it unparalleled
reach. In the process, Bush is not heeding the most important lesson of
past mistakes, which is that by focusing on politically expedient, narrow
goals, the US ended up creating monsters that it now confronts, be it Saddam
or Bin Laden.
Bush also does not appreciate that
consistency is a virtue in foreign policy. Just as his swagger on Iraq
contrasts sharply with his sweet- talk with other dictatorships, Bush flaunts
his double standards on the key issues of democracy, terrorism and weapons
of mass destruction.
The international sympathy and open-ended
licence to respond that the US won after last September 11 have largely
been squandered. Washington has demonstrated that the war on terror,
the new offensive to oust Saddam, and any other campaign would remain primarily
an instrument to advance its interests. And those interests under Bush,
India should note, are more likely to be of the short-term variety. That
is why America's long-term strategic interests on India do not appear to
weigh substantially more in US policy than its tactical, short-term interest
to prop up the Musharraf dictatorship.
