In his state of the union address US President Bush picked few names of states and groups and labeled them as the source of “evil and terror.” He did not do that at random, neither did he do it for electoral exigencies. It wasn’t even one of those gaffes for which the president is so famous. It is the American military establishment which now lays down the components of US foreign policy and which takes advantage of any militant political presentation smacking of war in different areas of the world.
US President George Bush had poked fun at French criticism of his line of thinking with regard to the “axis of evil”, but what would he say to similar criticism of this coinage coming as it did from none other than former US President Jimmy Carter who estimated that it would take years before its negative effects were eliminated. There is no short supply of analytical writings and comments dealing with President Bush’s State of the Union address, especially the worldwide division it has caused and the extreme caution with which its militaristic undertones were received by the international community.
In spite of all the attempts made by the Americans to cushion the negative impact of the president address, the snowball which President Bush has set in motion is likely to get bigger and bigger as it rolls down the slopes of the world pedestal on top of which the US stands.
There is nothing near in sight to indicate that the US is ready to backdown from the accelerating hawkish trend in its foreign policy. This trend, so it seems, serves a number of American interests in the Middle East and Asia. There are divergent factors at play in the foregoing areas: American interests, oil reserves and the expected hostility to the world’s one and only pole.
American talk about the axis of the troika of evil (Iraq, Iran, and North Korea) is in fact one way of talking about how to protect “America’s trilateral good.” I still recall former US President Clinton’s words that the 20th Century was an American century and America has to strive to make the 21nd American too.
In the previous century America played a role in two world wars and rounded up its successful activities with the use of the atomic bomb against Japan thereby establishing its status as the first victor in the war and adding Japan to the American orbit which came into being as a result of the military and economic collapse of Europe.
America managed to convert the world, with success, into two pacts or axises: the democratic capitalistic alliance of good (America-Western) and the dictatorial alliance of evil (Communist-Eastern). Third World countries, which had not yet made up their minds as to which of the two camps they were to join, became the battle-field in the struggle between the two blocs. During the Cold War both Moscow and Washington were keen to avoid flagrant interference in the spheres of influence of each other as specified in the Yalta agreement for the distribution of the booty in the aftermath of World War Two, but they gave themselves the right to consider the Third World states fair game.
Thus the Arab region and the Muslim World became the battlefield of a military, economic and ideological struggle which lasted for half a century and ended in a victory for Washington and with the defeat of Communist Moscow.
During those 50 years of Cold War Washington policy was based on three axes: The axis of the enemy (Soviet Union), the axis of friends (Western Europe) and the axis of the adversaries (that is the states which were not yet classified as being part of this or that camp such as China, the Arab countries and some other Asian and African countries).
In pursuance of this policy, America made it a point to “isolate the enemy,” to “deepen the friendship of friends,” and to “neutralize the adversary as much as possible.” When the “enemy” finally collapsed the chessboard had, from America’s point of view, to undergo change along the following lines: the absolute subservience of “friends”, and the reclassification of the “adversaries” either as new enemies or new hirelings!
America did not trigger the World War Two but did exploit the ramifications of that war to its advantage by weakening the Europeans who had sit in the drive seat since the industrial revolutions in Europe.
America did not make the plans for the tripartite aggression (Anglo-French-cum- Israeli) on Egypt, but it did exploit the Arab resistance to the British and French in order to inherit their role and their influence in the Middle East.
America did not explode the ideological and political dispute between Russia and China during the Cold War but it did exploit it in order to isolate the Soviet Union and get it stuck in the whirlpool of internal ideological wars. On the other hand one must say that there were wars and struggles whose blueprints were made, wholly or in part, in Washington: the motive being America’s desire to impose its hegemony and to cut to size the influence of its rivals. Some of these wars ended to America’s liking, others went awry. America failed in a number of places. Militarily speaking, its major loss was in Vietnam; politically it was the loss of its influence in Iran as a result of its failure to protect the Shah regime which was washed away by the flood of popular revolution.
In spite of its failure in Iran at the end of the 70s, it managed during the same period to embroil the Soviet Union in a long-drawn war against the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
Washington failed in Iran towards the end of the 70s, but it succeeded in encouraging Iraq and Iran to come to blows and fight a ferocious war with a devastating impact on both and on the financial assets of the Arab Gulf region as well. The United States went on to score another success by exploiting the most dangerous Arab-Arab struggle in modern times resulting from the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, an ill-omened move which left the door wide open for foreign intervention in the region.
That is typical of all empires and big powers, and America is no exception. They trigger off wars to reap their fruits, and they manipulate events that are already underway and urn them to their advantage. That’s the standard behavior of the big powers at all times and at all places. The problem does not lie in foreign plans and intrigues but in the victim’s inability to read them correctly before it is too late. The problem is with the “homefront” which produces the fertile soil which the “foreigner” exploits to sow the seeds and later reap the fruits.
I am not sure whether it was a sheer historical coincidence that the fall of Andalusia and the discovery of America by Columbus occurred at one and the same time. That date marked the birth of a new nation which began, while still in its babyhood, to destroy the natives and replace them with immigrants coming from Europe either to escape adverse conditions there or to gratify their last for the riches of the new world.
The rise of that nation of immigrants, in a matter of few centuries, to become the sole superpower in the world is not to be ascribed, either entirely or in part, to the fact that the immigrants went so often on the rampage killing the indigenous population and looting their property; nor should it be attributed to the in fighting for the booty among the newcomers; nor the civil war which broke out later and the disputed details relating to such mattes as sovereignty, government and the type of relation with the human masses imported by force from Africa; nor to the “Cowboy frame of mind”; nor to the fact that the new nation did not have any cultural heritage of its own.
In spite of the fact that the Americans were bedeviled with such serious shortcomings, they managed to mould this hatch patch of cultures and ethnic groups into one nation. This feat would have never been possible to achieve had it not been for that sound constitutional structure which preserved plurality of ethnic typicalities under the umbrella of one federal state. America would have never been what it is now had it not been for this combination of constitutional structure and federal complementarity. The Soviet Union’s experiment failed because it relied exclusively on the element of geographical expanses made into a union by force, and not on any sound constitutional system that suits the union.
Likewise no European country has yet succeeded by itself to be a match to the United States although both sides have much in common: styles of governing, constitutional formulas and culture. Therefore the European countries (historically much at odd) chose to copy America’s model which joins federal complementarity to a sound constitutional system.
America stands now a unified nation in spite of all the contradictions and ethnic and cultural struggles which went with its birth, whereas the Arab nation is torn apart politically and entity wise inspite of being blessed with cultural unity and having a common history. It is perhaps a sheer coincidence that the fall of Andalusia and the discovery of the American continent occurred at one and the same time. Now it is a significant coincidence that American superiority and military might have reached their peak at a time when Arab weakness is at its lowest.
Arab countries are distinguishable now by their common characteristics and not common policies. The most prominent of these characteristics is the trend to wait and see what America resolves to do then react unilaterally instead of coordinating their policies and taking action ahead of developments and their ramifications.
Now that the Arab nation lacks a common vision of its future, and lives amidst conflicting dreams, or to be more precise common nightmares, with its rulers inclined not to go beyond the formality of issuing written statements, instead of drawing up workable plans, it is little wonder that it is unable to thwart foreign designs against its lands.
(The author is the Director of Arab Dialogue Center in Washington, D.C.)