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| Tuesday, 6 April 2004 |
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Getting beyond the Western-centric, powerful-powerless paradigm Asia watch by Lynn Ockersz With US President George Bush reportedly eclipsing Democratic challenger John Kerry in public opinion polls for the first time in the presidential election campaign in the wake of a renewed national debate on defence issues, the Western-centred conceptual basis of the current global order comes to be re-emphasized as a prime issue for analytical scrutiny.
Apparently, the principal strategy right now, of the Bush camp, is to project Kerry as vulnerable and weak on "defence" issues whereas the hardline on this question being pursued by the Bush administration is shown as being in line with core US interests. In other words, the US-led "war on global terror" is being projected as furthering US defence interests, whereas a seemingly soft line on this issue is shown as a betrayal of the national interest. All this comes in the teeth of mounting Western military casualties in Iraq; that is a relentlessly rising human casualty toll. The latest Western casualties were reported in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, where four Western personnel of a US contracting firm were barbarously done to death by an angry local mob. Their charred bodies were subsequently dragged through the streets and made to hang on the girders of a bridge, apparently for public display. Some US defence analysts see these incidents as the gruesome work of "home grown" militants or that of anti-Western, resistance outfits which are spontaneously growing out of the local Iraqi populace. The possibility is ruled out of these militants having once belonged to the Iraqi army. Still, Washington is quoted as remaining committed to its principal policy in Iraq. While it is left to the US public to decide on how effectively US defence interests are being served by the Bush administrations "war on global terror", Iraq and Afghanistan would continue to testify unsettlingly to the counterproductive nature of a defence policy defined mainly on the basis of a law and order approach to defusing what are seen as threats to US security. As could be seen, a predominantly military response to what are interpreted as threats to US defence interests, could only lead to a spiral of violence, incurring deaths on both sides, the US occupation forces and the Iraqi domestic resistance, for instance. Meanwhile, in farther away Nepal, popular resistance is gathering against the Nepali monarch, who remains titular head of state. The principal demand by the populace which is seen as being backed by "Maoist" insurgents, is a return to democracy, or broad-based popular rule. The Maoist-led resistance is also said to be strongest in the poverty-stricken Nepalese countryside, where global development agencies, apparently, have failed to make an impact. The lesson to be drawn is that military responses would prove counterproductive in a situation where "rice and curry" issues have emerged to the fore as prime national questions. The principal conceptual limitation consists in the big powers interpreting "defence" and national interest too narrowly. It would serve global powers better to address the issue of underdevelopment and the concomitant obstacles in the path of democratisation, than to respond militarily and with excessive coercion to what are seen as threats to Western interests emerging in the Third World. This is the connecting link between Iraq, Afghanistan and Nepal, to take just three trouble spots. The defence expert cannot succeed where the development expert has failed. However, development too cannot be narrowly defined as wealth-creation for only some at the expense of the many. The world needs to be seen as consisting of potential partners in progress and not be viewed in a narrow, powerful-powerless perspective, which generates military conflicts. |
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