Saddam and the snooker game

Shekhar Gupta

KLAUS SCHWAB set up the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the annual conclave of the world’s richest and most powerful as a capitalist tool. It was a changing, modernising, globalising world where politics and wars were passe, stupid. All that mattered was economy. The rest of the world acknowledged it as such. So much so, that even anti-globalisation protestors, the same three hundred and thirty three (or whatever the exact count) punks that are seen getting free showers from police water-cannons in Berlin, Rio or Seattle, even turned up in snowing, minus 11 Celsius Davos last week to protest against the WEF and its annual Congress. It was an evil instrument of the globalised, heartless world where the Americans and their European stooges will colonise all the rest.

If only they were allowed inside the hallowed Congress Hall, they would have figured how wrong they were. Instead of being in control, the big, ugly America was under siege. And the European ‘‘stooges’’ were kicking them in the shins. The most spirited case for America was made by a very passionate Colin Powell. And his first questioner was the chairman of Rabobank who said, quite simply, that ‘‘we Europeans’’ were brought up in a system of the laws and believed everybody was innocent until proven guilty and why should Saddam be an exception? Fellow Europeans applauded and that wasn’t the only irony. The other was that WEF which was to be the cutting edge of the globalised, or rather MNC-ised, new world, where trade and business were to take precedence over politics and war, now had its agenda turned upside down. The theme, Restoring Trust, was about learning to love your rock star CEOs again. It became, instead, whether or not you trusted America.

THE other irony — or absurdity — is the Indian reaction, the fact that if they had their way, most of the Indians, too, would have joined the chorus with the Europeans. This would have also been in keeping with the holy national line and it is such a pity that the one man who could (and probably does) think differently, and creatively, did not stay long enough. Finance Minister Jaswant Singh, in any case, no longer makes foreign policy, which is a pity twice over. One, he looks bored in his new job just when the international diplomatic stage is buzzing. Second, because India needed someone like him to think, talk, and persuade the rest of us to react differently. In the past five years, a policy shift spearheaded by him had seen us move away from old, pathological anti-Americanism to a degree of pro-Indianism. Today we are back in the past. In the foreign policy establishment, because it is such an easy, lazy option. And in the popular domain, because everybody else seems to think so. Even the Europeans...

The European position has many complexities. They are worried by the prospect of yet another war, about the reaction of their own Muslim populations and the impact on oil prices. But if you talk to them, even to the captains of their industry that flocked to Davos, even as they chide America, it is evident that they also see the opportunity in George Bush’s predicament. Their sullenness is also tactical and they will be on board before the first wave of B-52s takes off for Baghdad. Until then, this is a way to look better before their Arab clients and to also gain some leverage with Washington. Their reaction is not a renewed assertion of old anti-Americanism.

But why are we getting so het up? Our official position has been critical of a war-mongering Washington and our faith in the UN is not merely touching but even dangerous given the legacy of Kashmir. With the return of the Cold Warriors and, thereby, anti-Americanism in our own foreign office we have been so hasty in taking up what seems like a pro-Saddam position that even the Pakistanis are laughing at us. We are making it that much easier for Musharraf vis-a-vis his own public opinion for his helping the US against ‘India’s friend’ Saddam.

THE larger point is, how do we see our own national interest in all this? Do we have the moral or political strength to influence the decision in DC? Will at least our Arab ‘‘friends’’ be grateful for our brave stance? Do we actually think Saddam will survive the war to pay us back in gratitude? And, finally, if the war happens and the Americans succeed, how will the game play out for us? Also, if the Americans go ahead unilaterally, without the UN fig leaf, think of the openings it will create for us the next time Pakistani terrorism picks up and Colin Powell calls us to ask for restraint and counsels us against acting unilaterally. If we cannot see it, it only means we have abandoned the new imagination that brought us such stunning foreign policy successes over the past half-decade, successes that are real feathers in the Vajpayee government’s cap and which it is now in danger of losing.

We err gravely in looking at this as a US-Iraq, superpower-underdog, first world-third world issue. The larger American game is not merely to thrash Saddam. This will be the first step in a lengthy, messy and probably bloody process of ‘‘fixing’’ the Islamic world. This time, the idea is to bring about fundamental changes in the Islamic world, its power equations and even political philosophy. It may or may not work and either way there will be implications for us. But we need to study these rather than pull out the creaky old bandwagon and jump on to it.

So heavy was the air with the talk of war and politics at Davos this year that almost every security and foreign policy expert worth the name was there. Their message was that while the Americans were screaming at Iraq, the real target is Saudi Arabia. The war will lead to a prolonged American occupation of Iraq and they will first shift the centre of gravity of the Islamic world from Riyadh to Baghdad and then do what it takes to de-Islamise the politics of the Muslim (particularly the Arab) world. Thomas Friedman, New York Times’ Foreign Affairs columnist, who has emerged as the most authoritative voice on the developing Middle East situation, explains how Americans cannot forget that a majority of the suicide hijackers involved in 9/11 were Saudi and how irritated they are by the Saudi ambivalence on admitting the significance of this, or even introspecting for a moment if the kind of system they run breeds such hatred and violence. The clear message to the Saudis, he says, is that ‘‘you chose to play with matches for so many years, and we got burnt. We will not let you play with matches again’’.

The war on Saddam, therefore, is like a game of snooker: you hit one ball to pocket another, then the rest of them and reset the table all over again. For the Bush team, it is the beginning of a process to change and, at least in their view, modernise and democratise and restructure the Islamic world. Baghdad will be the launching pad into Saudi Arabia and then every other part of the region where militant Islam breeds. You and I can laugh, but Musharraf isn’t laughing. When he says after Iraq, Pakistan may be the target, he is letting his concern show in a moment of weakness. Not all analysts agree with what Bush is doing, but they all say his team has concluded that band-aid solutions won’t work in the Muslim world, that it needs reconstructive surgery and some minor amputations, like Saddam. Does that work to our benefit or detriment? Given a chance — and the power — wouldn’t we have liked to do just that? This war will not be about oil, but about militant Islam and everybody’s future. This is the big picture we must keep in mind before we rush for the pickets and the barricades, or we would look as silly as those anti-globalisation punks of Berlin, Rio, Seattle, Davos and so on.

Newindpress.com

Feb 2, 2003