Two systems of values in American diplomacy

A. R. M. T. B. Ratnayake

With due regard to our fundamental priorities and on the basis of combining the national interest of our country with universal values, we freed the nation from the menace of the deadly terrorism of the LTTE. It was done in a way accepted by all the races of this country, including the Tamil people who valued peace and harmony. Now all of them have entered the democratic streams of life happily and in brotherhood with the majority Sinhala people.

Muammar Gadaffi	Osama-bin Laden

The world watched this process approvingly and the international community even provided moral and material assistance to it. It was because the annihilation of terrorism was on the top of the agenda of all the countries of the world, particularly that of the USA.

Peace and harmony

The LTTE leader Prabhakaran faced his doom in the process of the war with the people of this country. It is indeed different from how America entered the land of Pakistan breaking all the laws and principles of territorial sovereignty, took Bin Laden out of his home and killed him in the eyes of the whole world without any trial. In the equal manner, the leaders of Iraq, Libya were also killed without any respect for their right to be heard. Thus the definition of human rights seems to be the exclusive domain of the USA and there seems to be two systems of values, that is, one for the USA and another for small nations.

Then there are the non-government organizations which take a fancy in tarnishing the image of small nations. Alongside the United Nations, there emerged this category of international bodies that came to be called non-government organizations. It was a feature of the post-war world. They were expected to assist the activities of the UN system in maintaining peace and harmony among the nations. Therefore they were given an important place in the field of international affairs and were supposed to be paragons of objectivity, trustworthiness and impartiality.

Democratic system

However today, when browsing through their reports, particularly of Amnesty International, one cannot fail to be struck by the fact that they are born of lies. They pretend to have a special mandate to serve the international community but it is indeed a mandate of only collaborating with the super-powers whose policy is to create trouble in small states and plunder their resources. Unfortunately, there seems to be nobody to correct this dangerous foreign policy thinking and approach. They freely continue to disseminate information collected from the murky spring of falsehood.

They receive massive funds from interested parties and are ready to make any kind of statement, before any audience, at any time and place. Universally recognized principles of state-to-state relations, such as mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-interference in internal affairs are no more operative as far as small countries are concerned.

Human rights violations

In a democratic system, there can be protests, agitations and other forms of harmless activities, but can those be associated with killing of innocent human beings at the whims and fancies of a terrorist group? Is it not the policy of the UN and the major powers to annihilate the killers of human beings, whether they are terrorists or murders of other forms? If the USA can kill Bin Laden on the presumption that he master-minded the attack on its World Trade Centre, why cannot Sri Lanka get rid of the terrorist who continued a campaign of killing its citizens and destruction of its assets for three decades?

At first, international organizations led by Amnesty International, carried out a campaign of collecting and condensing misinformation about human rights violations in the USSR and finally disrupted its unity. Fortunately, Russia has regained its original place in world politics and playing its part, justly in the United Nations. If not for Russia and China, Syria would be now, have faced the same fate as Libya and so on.

Further, the policy of NGOs was designed to ensure peaceful international surroundings, so that there could be cutbacks in unproductive expenditure of small states, access to the wealth of the world experience, tranquil skies overhead and greater scope of democratic life. Today, hardly anyone can remain indifferent to international happenings, for interaction with the surrounding world is increasingly a part of the life of the international community. It is indeed on the kind of relations we have with our neighbours, near or distant that depend our own survival and that of the mankind as a whole and the well-being of nations and individual families.

Japan is the first country in the East to emerge as an economic power by adapting its own ways of development. Thus, it is generally cited as the best example of a modern nation outside the Western hemisphere, to emerge as an economic power while retaining her true Japanese identity. Then China became a mighty power that looked a challenge to the America's influence in this part of the world. Finally India has taken her turn of emergence as a powerful nation in this region.

Amongst all these developments, America is trying to strengthen its power by gaining control of the oil-rich countries of the Middle-East. In that exercise it has already dismantled the regimes of many countries in the region including Iraq, Egypt and Libya. Presently it is mobilizing the international organizations to crush the regime of Syria while also sending danger signals to Iran.

International community

According to the UN Charter, it has a duty to exercise continuous vigil and to monitor the world situation for preservation of peace. The international community had accepted that the LTTE was a terrorist organization and many have banned it in their countries. In Sri Lanka they killed all Tamil politicians who did not toe their line and killed any Sinhala individual that came within their reach. The Sri Lankan government has been fortunate enough to be able to eliminate this deadly terrorism in the country and to bring peace and tranquility to the people including the peace-loving Tamils.

It is no exaggeration to regard UN diplomacy as a human activity conducted through individuals. If such individuals do not respect fair-play and justice and are bent on satisfying the whims and fancies of interested parties, it will have no place in what can be called the global village.