M.D. Nalapat
Manipal, India — Just as any CEO would,
George W. Bush and his CFO Dick Cheney have focused on ensuring as high a
monetary return as possible to those who invested in their campaigns. Whether
it is the oil companies based out of Houston, Texas, or corporations like
Halliburton, those who put their dollars behind the Bush-Cheney ticket have
been rewarded beyond their most optimistic calculations.
The downside has been a recession caused by
the financial cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined with the higher
oil prices generated by the geopolitical experiments of the current U.S.
administration and the get-rich-anyhow outlook of financial institutions. Had
the U.S. economy not been faced with these multiple shocks, stock and housing
prices would most likely have continued to rise, thereby bailing out those
institutions that advanced funds to subprime borrowers.
However, while individual corporations have
benefitted exponentially from 2001 to 2008, the bulk of U.S. consumers have had
to be content with modest or negative gains, thereby leading to the present
loss of confidence in the future of what will, for another generation at least,
be the primary economic engine of the globe.
After witnessing the colonial-style
scramble for profits from the oil sector in Iraq -- which in its transparent
rapacity most resembles Belgian policy in the Congo during much of the past
century -- as well as the manner in which some corporate and other entities
have leveraged their political connections to secure monopolies in Iraq and
Afghanistan, savers in East and South Asia as well as Russia have steadily lost
confidence in the integrity of the U.S. dollar and shifted to the euro. This
has contributed to a slide in the greenback's value that may wipe away any
gains in the anemic anti-inflation measures taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve
thus far, and exacerbate the decline in both business as well as consumer
confidence.
Now that their joint term is heading to a
close, the Bush-Cheney team is shutting down the party, while hoping that raw
emotion -- as well as the atavistic negativism in many U.S. voters toward the
attractive but perhaps too driven Billary Clintons -- could place an
understanding John McCain in the White House, and thereby avoid an accounting
of just what went wrong during the Bush-Cheney terms and why.
The nightmare scenario for Bush-Cheney
would be the victory of Barack Obama, a prospect that appears to be receding in
the racial-patriotic soup being brewed and served up by foes within and without
the Democratic Party of the junior senator from Illinois. Obama's successes
have managed to a visible degree to change perceptions of the United States
within countries that were at the business end of European colonialism,
although his recent setbacks are again reinforcing stereotypes that paint the
United States as indistinguishable from Europe on the issue of colonization.
In a calculus where profits are everything,
it is small wonder that the latest U.S. State Department litany of international
human rights abuses -- excluding those caused within Afghanistan and Iraq by
collateral damage -- gave China a pass while rounding heavily on Myanmar, which
is in effect a colony of the People's Liberation Army. Unfortunately for George
W. Bush and the financial interests that caused this Nelsonian gaze on China's
record, the indigenous population of Tibet and the neighboring provinces seem
finally to have lost hope that the galloping takeover of what was once their
exclusive religious, social, geographical and economic space by Han Chinese
will slow down or be reversed.
In "autonomous Tibet," almost all
significant business entities are controlled by Han Chinese, as are the
administration and the military. Any "Tibetan" components are usually
diluted in their commitment to protect indigenous rights by intermarriage with
Hans or by way of financial and authority transfers in exchange for
subordination to the wishes of a Chinese Communist Party that has placed Han
nationalism together with Get Rich Anyhow policies at the core of the
"new" communist ideology.
Whether it is a mullah in Xinjiang, a
bishop in Shanghai or a Buddhist elder in Lhasa, none can aspire to be even the
titular head of a religious entity such as a mosque, church or temple unless he
fully subordinates himself to the Chinese Communist Party, a group not known
for its spirituality or devotion to any power higher than itself.
The shackles placed on religious observance
in Tibet -- especially the mindless prohibition of even a photograph of the
Dalai Lama -- have finally led one of the most nonviolent populations on earth,
the Tibetans, to vent their feelings against what they perceive as Han
colonization.
Although forecasts are risky and usually
inaccurate, the odds are that the protests that have erupted in Tibet this past
week will flare again, perhaps after a repression-induced lull. They may lead
to copycat actions in the northwest province of Xinjiang, where too the
predominantly Muslim population is deprived of the freedom to conduct its
religious observances even in the moderate manner witnessed in the past.
The Bush-Cheney genuflection toward Beijing
in matters concerning Tibet, Taiwan and other issues that may reduce the flow
of profits into the treasuries of favored corporations has created a cynicism
about U.S. policy in East Asia that is reaching the levels of that in the
Middle East. However, even the current U.S. administration, together with other
China-friendly governments such as those in Ottawa and Canberra, may find it
difficult to ignore their own public opinion.
White U.S. voters, by backing Barack Obama
in large numbers, have shown that the world's First Civilization is
transforming itself from within, from exclusivism to inclusivism, from racial
values to human values. This transformation may in time even affect the present
Mugabist -- frankly racist -- policies of the European Union.
Had China been a democracy, it might have
designed a system of governance that would coopt the Tibetan people into a
Greater China without forcing them to abandon their culture, traditions and
religious beliefs. However, the Han-driven nationalist ideology of the CCP
leaves President Hu Jintao scant room for maneuver. His own stint in Tibet in
1988-89 marked a departure from some of the more culturally sensitive views
expressed by Mao Zedong.
Even if many in Xinjiang follow the example
of indigenous Tibetans and go out into the streets to protest Han domination,
the authorities in Beijing will still be able to damp the situation down to a
"safe" level. The real nightmare scenario for Beijing would be if
Christians in the rest of China, perhaps also other groups such as the Falun
Gong, decided to follow the Tibet example and convert the streets of China's
urban centers to the present chaos of Lhasa. Such a spread of indigenous unrest
into the Han population might prove uncontrollable, unless economic growth
expanded beyond even the present impressive levels.
By failing to fashion political
institutions that can accommodate the needs of people of faith, the CCP may
have created the conditions for a Bamboo Revolution that could lead to a repeat
of what happened to the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. It may seem a far
cry from the current triumphalism in Beijing to the meltdown that occurred in Moscow
or Bucharest -- but the gongs in Tibet may have begun sounding that dirge.
As for Bush-Cheney, after repeatedly
certifying Pakistan's dictator Pervez Musharraf as the First Democrat of his
country, it should not pose much of a problem to claim similar qualities in Hu
Jintao -- who in Tibet may be facing a challenge that will make the protests of
1989 look like a schoolyard drill.
-(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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