Manipal, India — By granting itself a
patent on individual freedom combined with democratic elections, the West has
persuaded itself that it is seen as a benign entity in the rest of the world --
almost all of which decades ago was occupied and governed by European countries
intent on using native resources to promote their own interests.
However, the return of Western soldiery to
Afghanistan and Iraq has caused formerly colonized countries to fear that once
again they are at risk of occupation. Both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki have zero control over the militaries
swarming across their respective countries, or over many of the functions
normally associated with sovereignty. "Advisors" in both Kabul and
Baghdad have the final say, a fact that is not hidden from the local
populations.
Today, NATO forces in Afghanistan and
Coalition troops in Iraq are ensuring a steady increase in the insurgency.
George W. Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard, Angela Merkel and other Western
leaders have together performed a miracle -- they have made the Saddamites
popular in Iraq and the Taliban recover its resonance in Afghanistan.
Because of the melding of the identities of
the United States and the European Union into a single "Western"
entity, Bush rarely ventures beyond Europe -- and countries with
European-origin majorities -- in securing military allies for his numerous military
sallies into distant lands. Within the United States, only the west coast has
succeeded, to a limited extent, in freeing itself of the delusion that the
United States is a European country transplanted across the Atlantic. The South
and East are in thrall to a concept of nationhood with a European identity at
its core -- a concept expressed in the many writings of Samuel Huntington.
Years ago, when this columnist traveled to
Athens, Georgia, to give a talk at the University of Georgia, he noticed that
almost all the flags fluttering outside the campus hotel were those of European
countries, despite the growing involvement of Asia in U.S. prosperity. While
India, for instance, frequently figures in the pantheon of rogue states taking
bread from underprivileged U.S. citizens, the reality is that competition from
Europe has impacted a higher proportion of skilled jobs within the United
States than China.
Oddly, few of the anti-immigration voices
in the U.S. media seem to be Native American, the group that has paid an
incalculable price because of immigration into what was once their preserve.
Nor is there criticism of the growing influx of migrants from the former Soviet
bloc, a flood that has clearly escaped the attention of those who seek to block
those coming from countries outside the pale.
The U.S. debate is increasingly taking on
an "us versus them" quality, with "us" being those of
European origin and "them" being the rest. This has long been the
timbre of both debate and policy in Europe. The European Union is consciously
seeking to make it as difficult as practicable for those outside Europe to live
within its boundaries, even while Europeans forage across Asia, Africa and
South America in search of jobs. Were, for example, the Arab states to make it
as difficult for people from Europe to take up residence in the region as it is
for Arab nationals in Europe, several tens of thousands of well-paid
expatriates would be on their way home from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab
Emirates, Kuwait and other countries. Should the EU "Europeans only"
policy continue, it will not be long before an international backlash against
its citizens develops.
The point is that -- unlike the past, when
European manufactures and services were perceived as premium -- the constant
and often exclusive linkage between the United States and Europe has now become
a liability for Washington. Just as the presence of East European troops in
Afghanistan rekindled memories of the Soviet invasion, and the entry of British
forces to Iraq brought back memories of the country's experience with
colonization, the obsessive effort by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
to tag along with Europe in U.S. diplomatic operations throughout the world is
ignoring the real U.S. strength -- its quadricultural chemistry.
The United States is a nation where the
cultures of Africa, Europe, Asia and South America co-exist in a powerful
amalgam that gives immense vitality and cachet to what some say is an oxymoron:
American culture. Rather than dragging Europe everywhere it goes, the United
States needs to expand its bilateral interaction with other continents and seek
to forge partnerships with them that could rival and possibly overtake those
with Europe. The blinkers created by an obsession with a Europe-centered
cultural, strategic and diplomatic identity have already proved immensely
costly for U.S. interests.
In Asia, for example, rather than back the
non-communist Vietnamese nationalists, the United States swerved to the side of
the occupying French, thus giving traction to the Viet Minh. Within the Middle
East, the consistent snubbing of Arab nationalists in favor of feudal and
religious elements has created a cauldron of hate that has made a U.S.
connection the kiss of death for any local leadership. This is now being
evidenced in Lebanon, where loathing for Syria has largely been replaced with
antipathy toward the United States.
In Africa, U.S. diplomats worked against
Nelson Mandela's African National Congress and on the side of the apartheid
regime for decades longer than a country such as India, while in the rest of
the continent -- as also in South America -- the policies set by Washington
have favored Europe-centric elites at the expense of the overwhelming majority
of citizens.
Unfortunately for the United States, while
most EU members (with exceptions such as the hapless Tony Blair) are proficient
in covering up their parochial agendas with red herrings, the much more
straightforward approach of the U.S. leadership has enabled the EU members to pose
as the "good guys," who constantly seek to restrain the "bad
guys" -- namely, the United States. This phenomenon is clearly present in
Iran, where the United States, the European Union and several other countries
have an identical interest in preventing mastery over the nuclear fuel cycle.
Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention North Korea
and Iran, have shown the limits of the self-proclaimed "unipolar"
world. The reality is that in this age of the 24-hour news cycle and the
instant dissemination of knowledge, no country or bloc has the capability to
control events, except in limited circumstances and for a temporary period.
Unless the United States finds partners in Asia, Africa and South America,
Washington will find its diplomacy frustrated by an absence of local support.
If the United States is the spearhead of European civilization, much of the
rest of the world will see it as a negative force seeking to block the historic
inevitability of emerging equality between peoples and cultures.
-(Professor M.D. Nalapat is
vice-chair of the Manipal Advanced Research Group, UNESCO Peace Chair, and
professor of geopolitics at Manipal University. ©Copyright M.D. Nalapat.)
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