MANIPUR, India, April 26 (UPI) -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other war planners in the Pentagon may bridle at the comparison, but the reality is that the U.S. military establishment follows the example set by the State Department in at least one crucially wrong assumption: the belief that European traditions and analytical models can suffice to analyze Asia.
After all, since Asia was carved up among
different European countries until a few decades back, clearly that meant the
Europeans knew their way around.
However, times have changed, and today's
Asia is a fusion of local with Western mindstreams that paradoxically make the
peoples of the world's biggest continent more difficult to understand by
Western scholarship.
An example is Iraq. Several Asian
scholars -- including the writer, in these columns -- had warned that the
absence of involvement of local anti-Saddam Hussein militias and the prominence
given to the British -- the former colonizers of Iraq and therefore a people
the locals are understandably sensitive about -- by U.S. war planners was
likely to lead to a bulge in support for the Saddam regime, fighting what is
perceived as a new Western war of conquest.
Had the Kurds, the non-Saddam Sunnis and the Shiiites been given just six months in advance of the March attack to form units that could have marched alongside U.S. formations and helped interdict Saddamite unconventional attacks on logistical chains, with the British confining their operations to air and sea rather than the much more visible land theater, the reception Rumsfeld's boys are getting in Iraq would have been different.
In Afghanistan, after all, it was hardly
coalition troops that secured crucial territory in the drive that toppled the
Taliban regime. It was the ragged formations of the Northern Alliance.
Had the al-Jazeera television network
beamed images with a heavy infusion of Arab manpower alongside the Americans,
there would likely have been the Saddamite defections that were expected but
instead never materialized.
Those outside former European colonies in
Asia find it hard to understand or even recognize the visceral feelings held in
these territories about their former masters. As we all know, today the British
are less a rampaging neo-imperialist herd than a quaint and lovable bunch of
people talking in a funny accent.
Unfortunately, that is not the view of
the "street," whether in Baghdad or in New Delhi, nor even in Kuala
Lumpur.
For them, Empire was just yesterday and
could be revived any time. This is why public opinion in countries such as
Indonesia and Malaysia has been so negative about the Australians who are seen,
unfairly to both, as cousins of the British leading the "liberation"
charge in East Timor. A force under local leadership could have avoided this
negative reaction.
Hopefully, developments in Iraq will lead
to a reality check among strategic planners in the United States, a country
that ordinarily is not regarded as colonialist by Asians.
In terms of vital interests, Washington
has an equal interest in Asia as in Europe. Indeed, given current economic and
demographic trends, it is very probable that in the next decade and a half Asia
will overtake Europe in strategic importance to the United States, even by
conservative yardsticks.
This mandates a policy for Asia and
Asia-related security issues that is insulated from Europe, given the tension
that exists in the Asian mind about the European colonial experience. Just as
the United States does not insert Asia or Asian countries into Europe or into
discussions concerning European security, it needs to give up the practice of
allowing one or the other European power to piggyback on the United States in
any security plan related to Asia.
In Iraq, a war against an Asian regime,
the info-warriors in Washington have set up a coalition tailor-made for Osama
bin Laden's propaganda, and made this, in the perception of Asians, yet another
White Man's War against them.
Given not just the history but the
present capabilities of the countries in Asia that are potential allies of the
United States, it would be a grave mistake to bring in NATO in Asia. This would
only help those now waging war on the West and, more broadly on democratic and
liberal values.
Instead, what is needed is for Washington
to take the initiative in creating an Asian NATO -- a North America Asia Treaty
Organization, or NAATO -- that would include Canada, the United States, Mexico,
India, Japan, the Philippines, Australia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar,
Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan. Israel is a special case, forming
part of the European sphere, and hence a suitable entrant into NATO.
As for others, countries such as Vietnam
and Indonesia will hopefully sign up in the course of time, after political and
other conditions are met within them.
NAATO would be headquartered in Singapore
and, as in NATO, there would be facilities across the region that would be
available to all members for training and refitting.
Such an Asian version of NATO would put
to rest any suspicions in the Asian mind that Washington has allowed itself to
act not as a superpower neutral between the two continents Europe and Asia, but
as a genuine friend of Asian countries working to increase their own security
in a highly volatile region.
NAATO would exclude countries that have
authoritarian structures, such as military or single-party systems, as one of
its primary functions would be to protect the values precious in democracies.
It would also exclude countries that call themselves religious states, or
states in which the laws, customs and institutions give one faith primacy over
the rest. The test has to be whether people of all faiths are given equal
rights under the law, and whether they enjoy the democratic freedoms NATO is
intended to defend.
The induction of Canada and Mexico from
North America would introduce views and systems different from that in the
United States, and thus provide some of the diversity that is a given in Asia.
Together, the 15 countries listed above
would provide an array of capabilities that would equal that of NATO in several
respects.
For example, India has excellent urban
warfare and counter-terrorist warfare capabilities, thanks to the decades of
low-intensity war in Kashmir and other hotspots within the country.
Together, the financial resources of
Kuwait, the technological capacity of Japan and the software prowess of India
could design and produce weapon systems and aerial platforms that would be able
to challenge those produced by the Europeans.
The United States has to come to a
decision on whether it will continue to function as the spearhead of the
"Western" -- read European-peoples -- alliance in other regions of
the world, or it will accept its own diversity of interests by crafting a
policy for Asia that takes account of the colonial past of the continent. Just
as Asian troops have no place in Europe, European troops have no place in Asia.
If Asia is to be defended, it should be
done by Asians themselves, with the help of multicultural powers such as the
United States. This will be ensured through the formation of the North America
Asia Treaty Organization.
-(M.D. Nalapat is director of the School
of Geopolitics at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India's largest
private university.)
No comments:
Post a Comment