One of the laws of politics that is seldom acknowledged is the Law of Unintended Results. This means doing something in the hope of achieving a precise goal, but ending up with another, often unexpected, outcome.
With the Taleban and their " Arab" allies fleeing to hide, this is what seems to be happening with the campaign led by the United States against terrorism in Afghanistan. The scheme began with the limited objective of punishing the Al-Qaeda gang for its role in the Sept. 11 attacks against New York and Washington. Only two months later we are witnessing a number of profound changes in American foreign policy, especially in the so-called Islamic "arch of crisis" from Southwestern Asia to North Africa.
The September attacks were almost insignificant events in terms of affecting the global balance of power and the international status quo. The US remained as much the only "superpower" after those attacks as it had been before them. Nor was there any rival power bloc that could exploit the attacks to its own advantage and try to upset the global status quo. The principal effect of the attacks, and the most lasting ones, were psychological. They persuaded the Americans, at all levels from the ordinary public to decision-makers, that the United States military might did not render it immune against major deadly attacks by determined enemies both inside and outside. They also showed that, when the chips are really down, the US has very few genuine friends to count on. As far as others are concerned, the US would have to depend on tactical alliances based on naked shared interest and cynical political calculations.
The question is: how will all this be translated into concrete policy changes as far as the US is concerned?
Internally, the American sense of vulnerability is certain to encourage a hardening of political attitudes on a wide range of issues. The postmodernist claim that the West, led by the US, has been responsible for virtually every evil in the world, at least for the past six decades, is likely to go out of fashion in the chic intellectual circles of New York and within the leftist-dominated campuses of American universities. The US now sees itself as the victim and thus will be able to mobilize a degree of moral energy behind its foreign policy that had not been seen since Franklin Roosevelt took America into World War II. An illustration of this came the other day when Chelsea Clinton, daughter of former President Bill Clinton, joined a flag-waving march by American students at Oxford University, where she is a student, in support of the US campaign in Afghanistan. A generation ago, her father, who had also been a student at Oxford, had joined a flag-burning march against the US intervention in Vietnam.
In more concrete terms, Washington finds itself in the position that it was in 1941: with London and Moscow as its principal allies in a struggle against a common ideological enemy.
As far as regional politics are concerned, the US has suddenly been whisked back to the 1950s with Turkey and Pakistan as its only wholehearted allies in the Muslim world. In 1956 the then US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, spoke of "the northern tier" as Washington’s strongest rampart against the Soviets outside NATO. The tier at the time included Turkey, Iran and Pakistan that were linked to Britain and the United States through the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO).
CENTO collapsed in the last weeks of the Shah’s regime. But it is now coming back to life in a new form. Britain is certainly there —making a dramatic comeback to the region’s politics as the United States’ principal ally. Pakistan is also there as one of the key elements in the US regional strategy. Turkey is there not only because it has allowed the US to use its air bases for logistical and operational purposes but also by providing combat forces. Also, don’t forget that Turkey has obtained a direct influence in Afghanistan thanks to its protégé, the Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum. Turkish army officers were, in fact, present at all stages of Dostum’s recapture of Mazar-e-Sharif from the Taleban.
Because Pakistan has lost its Taleban pawns in Afghanistan it has little to offer the US in terms of influence in a future government in Kabul. Turkey, therefore, emerges as the key intermediary in that crucial task.
But what about the third member of CENTO, that is to say, Iran? It is no longer a secret that the ruling mullas desperately want a rapprochement with the US but are not yet quite ready to pay the full price. In a surprising speech at the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York earlier this week, President Muhammad Khatami repeatedly referred to Iran as "a full and active member of the international coalition against terrorism."
In a series of interviews he also reminded the Americans that Tehran has recalled hundreds of its Revolutionary Guardsmen from a dozen or so countries where they were allegedly helping train terrorists. He also insisted that all of the five Arab terrorists that the FBI claims are in Iran have left the country.
It is unlikely that Iran, at least under its present government, will return to any CENTO-like arrangement. But one thing is certain: Khatami understands that the basic rules of the power game in the region have changed. He knows that all regional countries would have to review and redefine the policies in view of the new balance of power that is emerging.
Before the September attacks, Iran was working hard on developing an axis with Moscow, based on joint opposition to Islamic "terrorists" in Chechnya and Afghanistan. Now, however, Tehran knows that Moscow is firmly allied to Washington and working on what could be a strategic partnership which, when achieved, could marginalize Iran’s importance as a potential ally. The fact that both of Asia’s giants, China and India, are also being drawn into closer alliance with the US is a further warning to Iranian leaders that they may be left out of the a new balance of power in the region.
All these events heighten the importance of Central Asia and the Caspian Basin, which also have immense energy reserves, and reduce the relative importance of the Gulf and the Middle East, at least from a longer-term point of view. For the first time in more than two decades, the US has entered a major international conflict in the region with none of its traditional Arab allies or Israel actively at its side. Israel’s constant claim that it was a kind of regional rampart for the US has been partly debunked. In fact, many Americans are beginning to see Israel as more of a hindrance than help. A similar view is taking shape of America’s traditional Arab allies.
The feeling across the US is that the Americans stood by those allies in their times of need, but have not been repaid in kind in America’s time of need.
A few days after the Sept. 11 attack, British Premier Tony Blair used a colorful image to indicate changes that will happen once the current crisis is over. He said that " the international kaleidoscope" had turned violently", adding that no one knew what image it would produce once it had been recomposed.
One thing is sure: the best brains in many governments are already working on the possible shape of the kaleidoscope as it begins to emerge within the next few weeks or months.
