DeshCalling

Turbulent house

2012-01-27T12:01:00.001+06:00

The army claims to have thwarted a coup

The Economist - Jan 28th 2012

IT WAS, says Gowher Rizvi, a close adviser to Bangladesh’s prime minister, “very quickly nipped in the bud”. He was talking of a coup plot foiled by the army. The schemers—16 were involved, and some are on the run—included disgruntled mid-ranking officers, retired officers, and others abroad. He claims investigators found a list of prominent people to be assassinated, and another list of generals expected to be “potential partners”.

Bangladesh

has faced dozens of coups, failed or not, in its 40 years. But for an army spokesman to give details of one, on January 19th, was unusual. He named the plotters and blamed them for inducing others to revolt (by passing on provocative e-mails and posting on Facebook). The conspirators, he said, shared extreme religious beliefs.

The official view is that dogged opponents of Sheikh Hasina Wajed’s elected regime must now be rooted out, especially from the army. These include Islamists—many supposedly recruited to the army in the early 2000s—and those who oppose ongoing war-crimes trials (over killings during the secession war of 1971).

Mr Rizvi says the government’s legitimacy is assured and reports “absolute calm” in Dhaka, the capital. The army’s discipline looks admirable, he says, encouraged by a popular desire (in contrast to a few years ago) for men in uniform not to meddle in politics.

The equanimity is not shared by all. Many normally garrulous Bangladeshi commentators this week shunned requests to talk. A wide presumption exists that phones are bugged. Speak to one of the men accused of leading the plot, who is in hiding abroad, and a murky picture emerges. Ishraq Ahmed concedes that the arrested men are his friends, but denies religious extremism (indeed, he complains that the authorities have seized his painstakingly collected cellar of wines, Armagnacs and malt whiskies). He says the government “can show no troop movements, no guns, anything” to prove the plot.

Mr Ahmed is a former high-ranking officer from a liberal family. He says he fought “with great responsibility” for Bangladesh’s independence. Now he and other nationalists are merely trying to oppose what they see as a coup-by-stealth by Sheikh Hasina, who is letting Bangladesh be “turned into a Bantustan” run by India.

He makes many claims. Among the more plausible and specific is that spies from India’s Research Analysis Wing (RAW) operate in the country. He claims, too, that for two years RAW has had an office within the headquarters of Bangladeshi Intelligence in Dhaka and a “direct submarine cable for communications” back to India. He claims that Indians conduct electronic surveillance in the country and kidnap suspects from Bangladeshi cities. Indian prodding, he adds, encourages the government to crack down on “anyone with beards. Any practising Muslim is vilified and portrayed as Taliban.”

Mr Rizvi denies all this, saying he is “totally unaware of any Indian presence in Bangladesh”. Yet he accepts that many are uneasy about Bangladesh’s rapprochement with India under Sheikh Hasina. Bangladesh has also met Indian demands to root out Islamists’ training camps, and he concedes that some individuals—though not Bangladeshis—are taken over the border for prosecution in India.

Fractiousness will grow ahead of a general election in 2013. Returned to power three years ago, Sheikh Hasina has seen her popularity slump from 81% to 39%, according to an opinion poll published by the Daily Star on January 8th. More telling, 74% say they oppose her constitutional meddling last year, which changed how elections are organised. That may bode ill for stability. Mughal kings struggled to rule the territory over four centuries ago, lamenting that Bengal was “a house of turbulence”. Little has changed.

The World’s Most Popular Gun

2012-01-26T07:15:00.000+06:00

The Long Road to the AK-47

Victor Davis Hanson

No firearm in history has enjoyed the fame or popularity of the assault rifle known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. Created by a Soviet weapons designer at the dawn of the Cold War, it was mass-produced and distributed worldwide in the millions, leading to its canonization in the revolutionary Third World of the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, far beyond its utility, the AK-47 became a Cold War icon, appearing on revolutionary flags, in songs and poems, and in televised insurgencies as proof of communist fervor and supposed martial superiority. And it continues to play a major role in warfare today, most visibly in guerrilla conflicts in Africa and the Middle East.

The AK-47 has succeeded so wildly because it is almost an ideal realization of the personal firearm: where most weapons have had to contend with tradeoffs between accuracy, lethality, speed of fire, reliability, cost of production, and ease of carrying and use, the AK-47 managed to find a sweet spot maximizing these traits. In fact, the weapon is so reliable, effective, and easy to use by untrained operators that its advent made it widely possible for just about any group, even with little money, modern technology, or formal military training, to mount significant, deadly assaults against a much larger and more advanced force — a fact that has transformed the face of warfare and created a revolutionary romance that still surrounds the weapon.

Since gunpowder is not static in power in the way that human muscle is, once fiery arms were invented in the fourteenth century, they would in theory constantly improve in a way that bows, slings, and swords could not. But in reality, centuries of technological stagnation followed the invention of the first gun: for example, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century “Brown Bess” flintlock musket remained almost unchanged during its use by the British Empire over the course of more than a century. Early muskets and their predecessors had slow rates of fire and poor accuracy and reliability, and thus did not always ensure battlefield superiority over arrows, edged weapons, and hand-launched missiles. Benjamin Franklin famously advocated the use of bows by the cash-strapped Continental Army, arguing that they were cheaper, easier to use, and could send more arrows per minute than the musket could fire balls.

The problem was that the various qualities of a good handheld weapon were often mutually exclusive. Increased lethality, for instance, was usually attained by increasing the weight of the firearm and bullets, which often reduced reliability and mobility, and made weapons too expensive to outfit an entire army. So the development of personal firearms was often haphazard, especially during periods of general peace. Black-powder, muzzle-loading, smoothbore (unrifled) firearms were the norm for centuries. Only in the mid-nineteenth century did sophisticated metallurgy and techniques of mass production at last begin to usher in rear-loading models, cartridge ammunition, more powerful and smokeless gunpowder, rifled barrels, and interchangeable, machined parts. The result was a giant leap in the ability of soldiers to kill one another on a mass scale, as the ancient science of effective body armor was unable to keep pace. By the nineteenth century, the personal arms race was on.

The watershed years were those of the American Civil War, which created a race for more rapidly firing and lethal arms. The war that began with the use of muskets and Minié balls ended with the Henry repeating rifle, which allowed a skilled single shooter to load and fire up to twenty-eight times per minute. The war also saw the development of the Gatling machine gun, and, somewhat later, the Maxim, the first fully automatic weapon. The more advanced models of these machines could in theory spit out six hundred rounds per minute, allowing two-man teams to lay down a volume of fire greater than what was possible from a whole company of riflemen. The new machine guns proved revolutionary, especially in the colonial wars in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, in which small numbers of Westerners could trump numerically superior foes, sending a chilling message of technological superiority. The venerable traditions of the mounted lancer, the cavalryman, and the skilled swordsman slipped into decline with the advent of the machine gun.

But the early machine guns, though rapid-fire and quite lethal, were heavy and they often jammed, leaving their operators defenseless. And they were costly and difficult to move and maneuver. Nevertheless, during World War I, improved mobile Maxim, Vickers, and Colt-Browning machine guns reigned supreme across the trenches, overpowering the firing rates of bolt-action, clip-fed rifles. In response to the machine gun’s lethal tyranny on the battlefield, early twentieth-century tacticians began dreaming of an everyman’s mini-machine gun that would diffuse such killing power into the hands of millions of combatants.

The result was the generation of the so-called submachine gun, most prominently the German MP-18, the Italian Villar Perosa and Beretta Model 1918, and the American Thompson (or Tommy Gun). These weapons fired pistol cartridges, allowing for the employment of existing stocks; they were relatively light at around ten pounds; and they could in theory be shot at astounding rates of fire of well over 400 rounds per minute. Whereas World War I was defined by heavy machine guns battling each other in antipodal fashion across clearly defined fields of fire, battles of World War II were frequently fought in jungles, forests, and urban streets, in which the enemy was typically near and highly mobile. Submachine guns proved popular during this war — and spawned a number of cheaper imitations — thanks to their adaptability to a situation in which constant streams of bullets were directed at soldiers from every direction by constantly moving enemies, and enemies were more likely to be stopped by sudden, rapid fire than by precisely aimed shots from small, longer-barrel weapons.

Yet, for a variety of reasons, the new submachine guns could still not entirely replace clip-fed repeating rifles. While they delivered far more bullets per minute, their short barrels allowed only for poor accuracy and limited range. The less powerful pistol cartridges and greater recoil from near-continuous fire also meant that few submachine guns were deadly beyond two hundred yards — a potentially fatal limitation at the times when rifle sharpshooters had clear fields of fire at over a thousand yards. The constant rapid firing, together with the grime, heat, and filthy conditions of battle, made the submachine guns jam far too frequently. And another problem developed during the war that transcended the weapons’ advantage of rapid firing: heavily-laden soldiers simply could not carry enough additional bullets — often larger-caliber .30 and .45 ammunition — to take advantage of their guns’ voracious appetites.

On the other hand, repeating rifles, even when semi-automatic and equipped with enlarged clips and improved barrel and stock designs that allowed a good chance of hits at great distances, did not allow enough shots per minute for the increasingly close-order combat in which enemy soldiers might appear suddenly en masse, and in all conceivable landscapes. Their longer barrels and clumsy shoulder stocks certainly proved a hindrance during close-in fighting. Other tradeoffs arose as millions of combatants joined the Allies or Axis powers in a global war, allowing little time to ensure traditional marksmanship training for men from such widely disparate backgrounds. The advantages that could be gained from employing a more accurate, slower-firing, traditional semi-automatic rifle were often lost by the inexperience of the users. There had been design attempts during World War I to bridge these differences, the most successful of which was the American Browning Automatic Rifle. It was almost as accurate as a rifle, but with a weight of over fifteen pounds and a small magazine of just twenty rounds, riflemen often had to shoot from a prone position, with a barrel tripod and plenty of available magazines nearby.

But in the post-World War II era, a true breakthrough addressed the apparently irreconcilable advantages of submachine guns and repeating, clip-fed rifles. The brilliant compromise became known as the “assault rifle,” the most prominent of which was the Russian Mikhail Kalashnikov’s AK-47 (for automatic Kalashnikov, model 1947), which came into wide use in the early 1950s. Kalashnikov, who benefited from the designs of earlier German and Russian prototypes, seemingly at last solved the six-hundred-year-long dilemma of providing an accurate rifle that was not only capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute, but was still deadly at ranges of 300-400 yards and beyond. And at under ten pounds, the AK-47 was easy to carry, simple to operate, and highly dependable. Moreover, by using a medium-sized bullet (the 7.62x39mm cartridge, equivalent to about .31 caliber) rather than larger .40 caliber rounds, the AK-47 achieved a deadly muzzle velocity of over 2,300 feet per second. In short, Kalashnikov seemed to have squared the circle by creating a light, cheap, rapid-firing, accurate, reliable, and lethal weapon that was neither rifle nor submachine gun. The gun proved perfect for revolutionaries in Third World countries, and the Kremlin would gleefully reward its new friends with mass deliveries of their wondrous weapon.

The sudden ubiquity of the AK-47 stunned the United States and Europe, and seemed to turn the so-called First World’s advantages in marksmanship and weapon craftsmanship on their heads. Illiterate insurgents, amply equipped with cheap AK-47s — now produced even more inexpensively by an array of Soviet satellite countries — suddenly had at their disposal more firepower than American soldiers. And what did it matter if Western riflemen were in theory better trained or shot a better calibrated and more accurate weapon, when mere teenagers in the tens of thousands could pepper Western troops with bullets?

The widespread export of the AK-47 marked yet another Sputnik-like moment in which state communism seemed to outpace Western entrepreneurialism. And just as the Soviets’ Sputnik success would set off the space race, and as there were other rivalries between the Soviet T-34 tank and its American counterparts, and between MiG-15 and F-86 jet fighters in the skies of Korea, so too was there a competition in assault rifle technology. Not until the early 1960s did the Americans accept that their old reliable M1 and its replacement M14 were woefully wrong for the new non-traditional theaters of the Cold War.

If a new American assault weapon were to follow in the Kalashnikov model, it would have to trump its Russian competitor with greater accuracy and lethality. This goal was seemingly accomplished with the M16 rifle, invented in the 1950s by the legendary arms designer Eugene Stoner. The sleek black assault rifle employed plastic and aluminum alloys to reduce the weight to two pounds less than the rival AK-47. And it used even smaller ammunition — the 5.56x45mm high-velocity bullet that was to become the standard NATO round.

The result was that, by all accounts, the M16 proved to be an exceptionally reliable and accurate assault rifle. Its smaller-caliber bullet was in some ways as lethal as the AK-47’s larger ammunition, as it had a muzzle velocity of over 3,000 feet per second, and the bullet tended to break up after penetrating flesh. The M16 also proved somewhat easier to handle and had less recoil than the AK-47. And soldiers could carry far more of the lighter-weight ammunition. The ensuing shoot-off between the two weapons in the Vietnam War was supposed to make clear the American gun’s advantages in rates of fire, accuracy, and lethality.

But just the opposite proved to be true — at least in the first four years of the M16’s wide use. Jamming was chronic, apparently due to initial design flaws in the gun, manufacturing problems with the gunpowder, and soldiers’ frequent failure to clean the weapon regularly amid the humidity and dirt of the jungle. In contrast, the AK-47 seemed nearly indestructible, in part due to its simpler construction and greater tolerances. In Vietnam, at least, the verdict favored the notion of an uncomplicated assault rifle that compensated for lost accuracy by achieving greater reliability, simplicity of use, and a larger bullet.

The AK-47 further exasperated Westerners by its cheap fabrication from stamped metals and its brilliant operation with just a few working parts. By the late 1960s, soldiers were taking apart, cleaning, and reassembling the weapon in about half the time required for the M16. Something that felt and looked so “cheap,” and that was produced by the Communist Bloc notorious for its shoddily manufactured products, surely, it seemed, could not be comparable to a rifle designed by the Americans, the British, or the Germans, with their far more distinguished firearms pedigree.

Yet the Communist Bloc continued to meet world demand with millions of AK-47s. And when the Soviet Union collapsed, its former republics and clients often sought to unload their stockpiles at discounted prices. Ironically, the United States eventually became the largest purchaser of the AK-47 in its efforts to supply poorer allies — such as some areas of the former-Yugoslavia, post-Saddam Iraq, and Afghanistan — with cheap, reliable assault rifles without its own large fingerprints on the arm sales. The result today is that some 75 million AK-47s have been produced, with most still in circulation, making it the most ubiquitous weapon in the history of firearms — dwarfing the M16’s eight million.

The debate between exponents of the AK-47 and the M16 has never been resolved, in part because both guns continued to evolve with subsequent improved models and have now both been superseded by more recent designs; in part because ideology and national chauvinism were inseparable from dispassionate analysis; and in part because the relative value of accuracy versus reliability is so subjective. In any case, NATO troops in general felt that their improved models of M16s by the 1980s had proved superior, even as some of the old problems of jamming and insufficient stopping power sometimes reappeared during the harsh conditions of sand and heat during the most recent Iraq War.

The story of the AK-47, amid the ongoing saga of rifle evolution, has in recent years spawned a number of popular books. The best is C. J. Chivers’s scholarly The Gun. Chivers takes a properly skeptical view of many of the claims by Mikhail Kalashnikov surrounding the birth of AK-47, and offers a sober and fair account of the acrimonious rivalry between the M16 and AK-47. In dispassionate fashion, Chivers concludes that few inventions of the twentieth century have done so much to kill so many through “war, terror, atrocity, and crime.” But after such a clear-headed analysis of the AK-47, he surprisingly offers the emotional hope that eventually the seasons, aging, and wear and tear will finally rid the world of this nearly indestructible menace — and with it the bestowing into the hands of untrained near-children the world over the power to kill indiscriminately and en masse. To this hope, one might rejoin that the fault is not in our stars, but in our selves.

Larry Kahaner’s book AK-47: The Weapon that Changed the Face of War is a lighter but nevertheless engaging story of the contemporary AK-47 as a cultural phenomenon. He too reminds us that many of the terrorist movements and insurgencies in Asia, Latin America, and especially Africa would have been impossible without the widespread dispersion of the AK-47, the ideal weapon for impoverished, poorly trained mercenaries. He points out that the acrimonious controversy between the AK-47 and the M16 resurfaced again forty years after Vietnam during the post-Saddam Hussein insurgency, when improved versions of both assault rifles collided in the streets of urban Iraq. And the verdict was again ambiguous, as

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troops still largely preferred their own weapons but developed a grudging respect for the insurgents’ “bullet hoses,” which shot streams of deadly large-caliber bullets at close ranges and seemed impervious to the sand and heat of the Iraqi landscape.

Then there is the book by Mikhail Kalashnikov himself. Now a nonagenarian, Kalashnikov was presented in 2009 with the title Hero of the Russian Federation, the country’s highest honor. With the help of his daughter Elena Joly, Kalashnikov wrote an autobiography, first published in French in 2003 and available in a 2006 English translation. Kalashnikov fought during the worst months of the German invasion of

Russia

; in 1941, in a failed counter-offensive, he was almost killed when his Red Army tank regiment was cut off and overwhelmed.

During a long subsequent illness and recovery, Kalashnikov’s innate gun-making talents were noticed. And so, despite his lack of formal design training, he was soon promoted to work with a team of Soviet engineers, quickly emerged as a senior designer, and was mostly responsible for the AK-47. The most fascinating chapters in Kalashnikov’s story are about the nightmare of life in Stalin’s Soviet Union, in which any achievement, commercial or intellectual, earned envy that in turn might translate into accusations of being a counter-revolutionary, would-be elite, often with deadly repercussions.

As Chivers and Kahaner point out, and as is discernible in Kalashnikov’s memoir, his relationship with his own deadly invention over the last two-thirds of a century has proved erratic. Kalashnikov is proud of his promotion to the rank of lieutenant general in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, and under Communist rule he was twice honored as a Hero of Socialist Labor. Yet even as Kalashnikov details the horrors of Stalinist Russia that resulted in his own family’s brutal exile, he concludes, “I consider Stalin as one of the great national leaders of the twentieth century, and as a great army leader.”

Kalashnikov takes great trouble to note that the AK-47 grew out of an effort to protect his homeland from a repeat of the sort of barbaric invasion that Hitler unleashed, adding that he did not profit, at least in Western style, from the sales of some 100 million weapons that bear his name (including variants on the AK-47). And yet Kalashnikov seems almost longingly to note the millions of dollars in profits that came to Eugene Stoner from his M16, even as he ostensibly prefers the public acclaim in Russia that was never accorded to Stoner in the United States. That same paradox characterizes Kalashnikov’s occasional regret that his invention became the signature weapon among terrorists and bandits — many of them now deadly enemies of Russia itself — juxtaposed with his pride in the astounding success of a supposedly defensive AK-47. Speaking at a ceremony honoring the sixtieth anniversary of the weapon, he claimed, “I sleep well. It’s the politicians who are to blame for failing to come to an agreement and resorting to violence.”

So what in the end are we to make of the AK-47, given that people ultimately kill one another and design weapons that do it so effectively? A perfect storm of events explains the gun’s lethal role in eroding civilization over the last six decades. The impoverished post-colonial world was eager for the sort of advanced weapons that had characterized a near-century of endemic warfare in the more advanced West, and the Soviet Union was eager to fan liberationist movements against the West. It took the postwar glamour of international communism, the industrial muscle of the Soviet Union, and a Russian genius with no higher education but great practical savvy to at last provide millions with such parity, meeting the requirements of a new arms lethality at very little cost. The result was the tragedy of a global assault rifle that has been crucial to self-described liberationists in furthering so often the cause of tyranny.

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in classics and military history at the Hoover Institution, and is the author, most recently, of The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern(Bloomsbury, 2010) and the novel The End of Sparta (Bloomsbury, 2011).

Indians Against Democracy

2012-01-25T08:10:00.000+06:00

Pankaj Mishra

New York Review of Books – January 24, 2012

Growing up in India in the 1970s and 80s, I often heard people in upper-caste middle class circles say that parliamentary democracy was ill-suited to the country. Recoiling from populist politicians who pandered to the poor, many Indians solemnly invoked the example of Singapore’s leader Lee Kuan Yew. Here was an Oxbridge-educated and suitably enlightened autocrat, who suffered no nonsense about democracy, and, furthermore, believed firmly in the efficacy of publicly caning even minor breakers of the law. Devising his wise policies with the help of experts and technocrats, he simply imposed them on the population. Lee Kuan Yew’s success in transforming a city-state into a major economic power was apparent to all: clean, shiny, efficient, and prosperous Singapore, the very antithesis of corrupt and squalor-prone India.

Such yearnings for technocratic utopia may seem to have little in common with the middle class protests against “corruption” that recently gained much attention before abruptly losing steam at the end of the year. Led by Anna Hazare—an army veteran described in the foreign press as a “simple man in a Gandhian cap” when he went on a hunger strike last summer— the movement was presented by sections of the media in both India and the West as a long overdue political awakening of the middle class, even as India’s “second freedom struggle.” With his unambiguous denunciations of venality in public life, Hazare seemed to have alerted tens of millions of otherwise apolitical Indians to the possibilities of civil society, mass mobilization, and grass-roots activism.

And yet over the past few weeks the movement has dramatically collapsed, with its support dwindling and the key reforms it supported stalled by Indian politicians, who are determined not to cede their legislative authority to someone they see as an interloper. As he gained prominence, Hazare’s articulate spokespersons had trouble shielding his own less appealing views from public scrutiny. It turns out, for example, that the so-called “Gandhian” methods that he relied on to create a “model village” in his native central Indian town included flogging and beating; he also advocated hanging for corrupt politicians. And then there was his barely disguised Hindu chauvinism; he was ready, he claimed, to go to war with Pakistan in order to maintain the Muslim-majority valley of Kashmir as an “integral” part of India.

Questions are now being raised about how Indian television networks portrayed the movement: whether, as India’s leading scholarly journal, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) asked recently, middle class reporters providing a “saturation” of mostly adulatory coverage of Hazare to an essentially middle class audience exaggerated his influence and impact, converting “a protest into a ‘movement,’ a few cities and a village into ‘the nation.’”

In fact, all along, there was little about Hazare and his conspicuously middle class followers that suggested support for greater democracy—which in an overwhelmingly poor country like India has always been synonymous with the promise of social justice and dignity to the majority. Over the past two decades, as India’s economy has opened up to globalization, the ranks of India’s middle and upper middle classes have grown—current figures, in the generally boosterish discourse of investment consultants, range from McKinsey’s cautious but still generous 150 million, or less than 20 percent of the population, to the wild-sounding 300 million.

The international image of an inexorably “rising” India is largely due to these Indian beneficiaries of global capitalism. As Amartya Sen points out, “since the fortunate group includes not only business leaders and the professional classes, but also the bulk of the country’s intellectuals, the story of unusual national advancement gets, directly or indirectly, much aired — making an alleged reality out of what is at best a very partial story.”

With this mostly urban constituency in mind, Hazare’s vision was narrowly focused on the alleged misdeeds of elected officials—above all those in the ruling National Congress Party, which has traditionally sought votes from the Indian poor—and bureaucrats. Among other things, he called for the establishment of an unelected anticorruption agency, which, lavishly budgeted, would have extraordinarily wide powers of surveillance, policing, and prosecution—and, by implication, make the state more efficient and technocratic and less encumbered by the unruly and lengthy processes of parliamentary democracy.

The current Indian government has been marred by a series of corruption scandals, particularly one involving its auctioning of the mobile phone spectrum, which resulted in the loss of an astounding $39 billion to the national exchequer. And yet, by failing to elaborate what he meant by “corruption,” Hazare left many important questions unanswered. For instance, is corruption really a malignant tumor in India’s political and economic system, one that can be excised with some effort, or, is corruption, in many ways, the system itself? As Katherine Boo points out in her new book Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a chronicle of lives in a Mumbai slum, “in the West, and among some in the Indian elite, this word, corruption, had purely negative connotations; it was seen as blocking India’s modern, global ambitions.” But few of these critics of corruption acknowledge that, as Boo writes, “among powerful Indians, the distribution of opportunity was typically an insider trade.” This was demonstrated most recently by a series of taped phone conversations, made public in late 2010 by the news magazineOutlook, between a corporate lobbyist and some of India’s most famous businessmen, journalists, and politicians (some of them can be found among Hazare’s more well-off supporters), which revealed how powerful businessmen not only influenced economic policy-making, ensuring clear playing fields for themselves, but also managed to install their own candidates in senior ministerial positions, such as the telecom minister accused of underselling the mobile phone spectrum to his preferred bidders.

Keeping the definition of corruption deliberately vague, and speaking of it in mostly moral and sentimental terms, Hazare’s campaign acquired some support from the urban poor, even as he worked to put the democratic system at the mercy of a few self-appointed guardians of morality. Hazare never focused on the distress resulting from income inequality, which has doubled in the last two decades, or on the gross abuses of corporate as well as state power: the dispossession, for instance, of the rural poor by mining companies, or human rights abuses by Indian security forces in Muslim-majority Kashmir. There was more clarity to be had about the aims of Hazare’s movement from its affluent supporters, which included glamorous figures from Bollywood, the media, and India’s iconic companies. Many of them call for an end to the state’s subsidies for the poor and low-caste Indians. These “rising” Indians see social welfare programs as wasteful, and endangering the apparently smooth working of the free market, even though, as Amartya Sen recently observed, they “don’t question things such as subsidy on diesel for rich people….Whenever something is thought of to help poor, hungry people, some bring out the fiscal hat and say, ‘My God, this is irresponsible.’”

In part, such responses reflect the misgivings that have emerged as India’s extraordinarily ambitious experiment in mass democracy has collided with its equally bold experiment in free-market capitalism. The complaints against democracy I heard growing up had already become more strident in the 1980s and 1990s, when many previously suppressed and voiceless Indians began to challenge the supremacy of upper-caste politicians, and the “unwashed” masses began to throw support behind their own leaders–rustic politicians with alarming manners–such as Uttar Pradesh’s Dalit “Queen” Mayawati and Laloo Prasad Yadav of Bihar–who embodied, in nervous middle class imaginations, the “Caligulan barbarity” of India, as Salman Rushdie put it, portraying a politician based on Yadav in his novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

Over the years, as India embarked upon rapid economic growth, an expanded middle class and businessmen seeking greater political influence gravitated to authoritarian figures within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the right-wing Hindu nationalist party that held power in Delhi from 1998 to 2004. The most prominent of these is Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, who has attracted many of India’s leading businessmen to his state by offering low corporate taxes and special economic zones and suppressing all trade union activity. Accused of complicity in the murder of more than 2,000 Muslims in the anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, Modi is nevertheless hailed as a “dynamic” leader by India’s leading businessmen, such as Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani—and has been recently praised by Hazare. (Dogged by court cases stemming from the massacre, however, he is unlikely to realize his ambitions to become prime minister.)

In the 2000s, many middle class hopes and expectations came to be invested in Manmohan Singh, prime minister since 2004. Though he belonged to the National Congress party, he seemed to embody the superior wisdom of the technocrats; educated at Oxford, he had worked as a World Bank and IMF economist, and had never been elected to the Indian parliament. Yet under Singh growth in India has remained wildly uneven—and deeply compromised by corporate influence on political processes. A

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diplomatic cable released this year by Wikileaks shows a senior Hindu nationalist politician admitting that virtually all economic growth of recent years has been concentrated in the four southern states, two western states (Gujarat and Maharashtra) and “within 100km of Delhi.” In another cable about Pranab Mukherjee, the finance minister being groomed to be India’s next PM, Hillary Clinton is revealingly blunt: “To which industrial or business groups is Mukherjee beholden?”

During Singh’s reign as prime minister, India has also witnessed a strong backlash against globalization among the poor. The most striking instance is the militant Communist movement representing landless peasants and indigenous forest peoples in Central India—these are Indians fighting their dispossession by mining companies that are backed by the Indian government. Early last year, India’s Supreme Court censured the government for creating an informal militia against Communist militants. Claiming that “the poor are being pushed to the wall,” the court blamed increasing violence in the country on “predatory forms of capitalism, supported by the state.”

Since then Singh has also lost his main constituency: the beneficiaries, both real and potential, of “rising” India. Periodicals such as Foreign Affairs, The Economist, and The Financial Times that in 2005 hailed India as a “roaring capitalist success story” now wonder if India is descending into a Latin-American-style oligarchy. In recent months the global recession has also begun to affect the Indian economy. Inflation is running into double digits. Industrial production has declined; at one point, the rupee had fallen nearly 20 percent again the dollar; and foreign capital—the mainstay of India’s remarkable growth in the last decade—flows steadily out of the country. As though sensing the prevailing winds, India’s biggest companies are putting the bulk of their investments abroad.

Among the middle class Indians convinced that “India Shining” (in the election slogan of the BJP) is on the verge of becoming a superpower, these recent setbacks have been met with stunned disbelief, followed by rage against the most visible target: a corrupt, social-welfarist state. Not surprisingly, the demand raised by Anna Hazare’s middle class protesters was mind-numbingly simple: political corruption must be eradicated from India in order to make the country more business friendly and speed up its tryst with greatness. Initially, Hazare’s message benefited greatly from a rightward shift by India’s corporate-owned dailies and 24-hour news channels, where pundits spoke excitedly of the politicization of previously apathetic businessmen and salary earners, hailing the rise of civil society against a venal and inept government. But when it came to concrete legislative action, the absence of broad support for this authoritarian-minded movement became clear.

In reality, the Indian government is paralyzed between its old promise of basic sustenance and justice to the poor majority, and its increasing—perhaps, unavoidable—embrace of a form of capitalism that, geared toward private wealth creation, makes such social democracy unsustainable. Hazare’s insistence that the government, overruling parliament, adopt his plan for an anti-corruption czar, was far less about protecting the rights of the masses than establishing the grounds for a Lee Kuan Yew-style technocracy: one that with arbitrary and unlimited power over all Indian citizens could bypass democratic institutions, enhancing the political power of an unelected, unaccountable, and fundamentally anti-political elite.

Few assumptions about India’s middle class, or even about the “free” Indian media, as carriers of democratic values have emerged unscathed from his movement. The social media networks that helped Hazare were far from being hard-wired for democracy. Citing an extensive survey that revealed urban youth in India to be profoundly right-wing, the Indian novelist and TV anchor Sagarika Ghose pointed out recently that Facebook and Twitter, crucial to the Tahrir Square uprising in Egypt, are “dominated” in India “by young people openly pouring scorn on ‘pseudo-secular liberals,’ minorities and the so-called ‘anti-nationals.’”

Shrinking into irrelevance, Hazare’s movement still offers an important lesson: that the much-vaunted civil society really is an open space in which the Moral Majority and Tea Party, Gaza’s Hamas, Egypt’s Salafis, and India’s RSS can flourish just as well as such progressive movements as Occupy Wall Street and the Arab liberals who many assumed were the source of last year’s uprisings. Civil society can host an insurrection of the masses, as in Tahrir Square, and also stage, as in India or Thailand, a revolt of the elites. As for the idea that middle classes in developing countries ensure the spread of democracy, it seems just as persuasive as the communist teleology that made revolution by working classes in developed countries look inevitable.

HRW World Report 2012: Bangladesh

2012-01-24T11:09:00.009+06:00

The Awami League government failed to use its significant parliamentary mandate in 2011 to push through policies to ensure strong protections of human rights. Instead of prosecuting members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), who engage in extrajudicial killings, the home minister chose to deny that such violations occur, even in cases where internal ministry investigations found evidence of wrongdoing. The practice of disguising extrajudicial killings as “crossfire” killings seeped from the RAB into other law enforcement institutions, particularly the police. New allegations of torture, arbitrary arrest, and enforced disappearances by police continue to emerge.

The government in 2011 tightened controls over civil society organizations by prosecuting labor union leaders and delaying foreign grants to NGOs. At this writing a bill proposing restrictions on media, which would prohibit the broadcast of certain religious and political speech, was under consideration.

Violence against women including rape, dowry-related assaults, acid attacks, and sexual harassment continue.

Torture, Extrajudicial Killings, and Other Abuses

Despite strong evidence that security forces were continuing to arbitrarily arrest people, often torturing and then killing them in custody, the home minister refused to acknowledge the need for accountability. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said her government had zero tolerance for extrajudicial killings, but failed to properly investigate allegations and prosecute the perpetrators.

On May 21, 2011, William Gomes, a representative of the Asian Human Rights Commission, was allegedly picked up by plainclothes RAB personnel and taken to a place his abductors described as “headquarters,” where he was stripped naked, had his hands and legs cuffed, was forced into stress position, and was verbally abused and threatened with physical torture. He was interrogated about his work documenting human rights violations.

In at least two cases, the Home Ministry ignored its own findings that RAB was responsible for wrongful killings. According to Odhikar, a Dhaka-based human rights organization, at least 1,600 people have been victims of extrajudicial killings since 2004. Before the Awami League came to power, its leaders had accused RAB of widespread extrajudicial killings; they now claim that all deaths occur during armed exchanges with criminals.

The military and police continue to employ torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment against suspects, violating both domestic and international law. Many deaths in custody are never investigated. According to Odhikar, at least 12 people died in custody due to police torture in 2011.

Trials for Bangladesh Rifles Abuses

Military tribunal hearings against members of the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) accused of participating in a February 2009 mutiny continued through 2011. Military courts convicted nearly 1,000 soldiers in mass trials that did not meet fair trial standards, among other things because the prosecution failed to produce individualized evidence against each detainee. In a single trial that concluded on June 27, 657 of 666 defendants were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms ranging from four months to seven years.

Several thousand other soldiers remain in custody awaiting trial in military courts, while another 847 have been charged under the Bangladesh Criminal Code. Some of those charged under the criminal code face the death penalty and many do not have lawyers.

The government did not investigate allegations of torture and possibly as many as 70 custodial deaths during investigations after the mutiny. Many suspects were denied access to legal counsel, particularly in the few months directly after the mutiny.

Civil Society

The government increased surveillance of Odhikar and in particular, Adilur Rahman Khan, Odhikar’s secretary advocate; threatening and harassing staff; and delaying approvals of projects.

After Nobel Peace Laureate Mohmmad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, was removed from his position at the bank because he had exceeded the mandatory retirement age, there were mysterious attacks on his supporters. In May Sagirur Rashid Chowdhury, an accounts officer at the bank, was picked up outside the office by plainclothes men. When he was released his body bore signs of severe beatings. He said his abductors had asked him to issue a public statement withdrawing support for Yunus. In September six women directors and one former director of the board of directors of the Grameen Bank, all beneficiaries of the microcredit system, suffered intimidation by police who came and searched their rooms.

The government continued legal action aimed at intimidating the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS), a trade union group. After revoking BCWS’s registration one agency demanded that two union leaders, Kalpona Akhter and Babul Akhter, both facing criminal charges, resign as a precondition to renewed registration of the organization. BCWS has denied all allegations against it.

International Crimes Tribunal

To address fair trial concerns, the government in June 2011 amended the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act of 1973 to include some basic due process concerns, such as the right to the presumption of innocence and a fair and public hearing. But the law, established to prosecute those responsible for atrocities in the war of 1971, still fell short of international standards. The definitions of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide did not conform to international standards and the government failed to amend the law to ensure due process. Defense lawyers, witnesses, and investigators said they had been threatened.

The tribunal in 2011 began proceedings in its first case, that of Jamaat-e-Islami leader Delawar Hossein Sayedee, accused of involvement in war crimes in the 1971 war.

Women’s and Girls’ Rights

Violence against women and girls and their discriminatory treatment under personal status laws persists. New cases were reported in 2011 of beatings, isolation, and other public humiliation of girls, all imposed following religious leaders’ issuance of fatwas on issues such as talking to a man, pre-marital relations, having a child outside wedlock, and adultery. Women’s groups are particularly concerned that such abuses continue even though the High Court division of the Bangladesh Supreme Court ordered government authorities to take preventive measures and prosecute perpetrators.

The Bangladesh parliament in 2011 enacted a law against domestic violence and rules are currently being framed for its implementation. The government also introduced a national policy to advance women’s rights.

Recruiters in the Middle East are increasingly turning to Bangladesh to hire women domestic workers as other labor-sending countries tighten their regulations or impose bans in response to widespread exploitation. The Bangladeshi government has failed to introduce minimum protection measures for these workers during training or recruitment or to ensure that embassies abroad are adequately equipped with labor attaches and shelters to respond to cases of abuse.

Protection of Indigenous People

Bangladeshi authorities did little to prevent intensifying violence and discrimination against indigenous groups residing in the Chittagong Hill Tracts. There were repeated clashes between ethnic and religious minority groups and “settlers” who belong to the majority Bengali community. These clashes were in part a result of government failure to implement its agreement with the indigenous communities to protect their rights.

Key International Actors

The United States and United Kingdom expressed concern in 2011 about continuing impunity for human rights violations by the RAB. Both countries have provided assistance and training for RAB, though the UK ended such programs in 2011. The US recommended creation of an independent unit to investigate allegations of torture, disappearances, and extrajudicial killings by the RAB.

Bangladesh

and India signed trade and security agreements in 2011. Despite Indian government commitments to order its border forces to act with restraint against Bangladeshi nationals who cross into Indian territory, it failed to properly investigate and prosecute those responsible for abuses, including killings.

Not Fade Away: Against the Myth of American Decline

2012-01-22T08:44:00.000+06:00

Robert Kagan, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe

The New Republic – January 17, 2012

Is the United States in decline, as so many seem to believe these days? Or are Americans in danger of committing pre-emptive superpower suicide out of a misplaced fear of their own declining power? A great deal depends on the answer to these questions. The present world order—characterized by an unprecedented number of democratic nations; a greater global prosperity, even with the current crisis, than the world has ever known; and a long peace among great powers—reflects American principles and preferences, and was built and preserved by American power in all its political, economic, and military dimensions. If American power declines, this world order will decline with it. It will be replaced by some other kind of order, reflecting the desires and the qualities of other world powers. Or perhaps it will simply collapse, as the European world order collapsed in the first half of the twentieth century. The belief, held by many, that even with diminished American power “the underlying foundations of the liberal international order will survive and thrive,” as the political scientist G. John Ikenberry has argued, is a pleasant illusion. American decline, if it is real, will mean a different world for everyone.

But how real is it? Much of the commentary on American decline these days rests on rather loose analysis, on impressions that the United States has lost its way, that it has abandoned the virtues that made it successful in the past, that it lacks the will to address the problems it faces. Americans look at other nations whose economies are now in better shape than their own, and seem to have the dynamism that

America

once had, and they lament, as in the title of Thomas Friedman’s latest book, that “that used to be us.”

The perception of decline today is certainly understandable, given the dismal economic situation since 2008 and the nation’s large fiscal deficits, which, combined with the continuing growth of the Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, Turkish, and other economies, seem to portend a significant and irreversible shift in global economic power. Some of the pessimism is also due to the belief that the United States has lost favor, and therefore influence, in much of the world, because of its various responses to the attacks of September 11. The detainment facilities at Guantánamo, the use of torture against suspected terrorists, and the widely condemned invasion of Iraq in 2003 have all tarnished the American “brand” and put a dent in America’s “soft power”—its ability to attract others to its point of view. There have been the difficult wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which many argue proved the limits of military power, stretched the United States beyond its capacities, and weakened the nation at its core. Some compare the United States to the British Empire at the end of the nineteenth century, with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars serving as the equivalent of

Britain

’s difficult and demoralizing Boer War.

With this broad perception of decline as the backdrop, every failure of the United States to get its way in the world tends to reinforce the impression. Arabs and Israelis refuse to make peace, despite American entreaties. Iran and North Korea defy American demands that they cease their nuclear weapons programs. China refuses to let its currency rise. Ferment in the Arab world spins out of America’s control. Every day, it seems, brings more evidence that the time has passed when the

United States

could lead the world and get others to do its bidding.

Powerful as this sense of decline may be, however, it deserves a more rigorous examination. Measuring changes in a nation’s relative power is a tricky business, but there are some basic indicators: the size and the influence of its economy relative to that of other powers; the magnitude of military power compared with that of potential adversaries; the degree of political influence it wields in the international system—all of which make up what the Chinese call “comprehensive national power.” And there is the matter of time. Judgments based on only a few years’ evidence are problematic. A great power’s decline is the product of fundamental changes in the international distribution of various forms of power that usually occur over longer stretches of time. Great powers rarely decline suddenly. A war may bring them down, but even that is usually a symptom, and a culmination, of a longer process.

The decline of the British Empire, for instance, occurred over several decades. In 1870, the British share of global manufacturing was over 30 percent. In 1900, it was 20 percent. By 1910, it was under 15 percent—well below the rising United States, which had climbed over the same period from more than 20 percent to more than 25 percent; and also less than Germany, which had lagged far behind Britain throughout the nineteenth century but had caught and surpassed it in the first decade of the twentieth century. Over the course of that period, the British navy went from unchallenged master of the seas to sharing control of the oceans with rising naval powers. In 1883, Britain possessed more battleships than all the other powers combined. By 1897, its dominance had been eclipsed. British officials considered their navy “completely outclassed” in the Western hemisphere by the United States, in East Asia by Japan, and even close to home by the combined navies of Russia and France—and that was before the threatening growth of the German navy. These were clear-cut, measurable, steady declines in two of the most important measures of power over the course of a half-century.

Some of the arguments for America’s relative decline these days would be more potent if they had not appeared only in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. Just as one swallow does not make a spring, one recession, or even a severe economic crisis, need not mean the beginning of the end of a great power. The United States suffered deep and prolonged economic crises in the 1890s, the 1930s, and the 1970s. In each case, it rebounded in the following decade and actually ended up in a stronger position relative to other powers than before the crisis. The 1910s, the 1940s, and the 1980s were all high points of American global power and influence.

Less than a decade ago, most observers spoke not of America’s decline but of its enduring primacy. In 2002, the historian Paul Kennedy, who in the late 1980s had written a much-discussed book on “the rise and fall of the great powers,” America included, declared that never in history had there been such a great “disparity of power” as between the United States and the rest of the world. Ikenberry agreed that “no other great power” had held “such formidable advantages in military, economic, technological, cultural, or political capabilities.... The preeminence of American power” was “unprecedented.” In 2004, the pundit Fareed Zakaria described the United States as enjoying a “comprehensive uni-polarity” unlike anything seen since Rome. But a mere four years later Zakaria was writing about the “post-American world” and “the rise of the rest,” and Kennedy was discoursing again upon the inevitability of American decline. Did the fundamentals of

America

’s relative power shift so dramatically in just a few short years?

The answer is no. Let’s start with the basic indicators. In economic terms, and even despite the current years of recession and slow growth, America’s position in the world has not changed. Its share of the world’s GDP has held remarkably steady, not only over the past decade but over the past four decades. In 1969, the United States produced roughly a quarter of the world’s economic output. Today it still produces roughly a quarter, and it remains not only the largest but also the richest economy in the world. People are rightly mesmerized by the rise of China, India, and other Asian nations whose share of the global economy has been climbing steadily, but this has so far come almost entirely at the expense of Europe and

Japan

, which have had a declining share of the global economy.

Optimists about China’s development predict that it will overtake the United States as the largest economy in the world sometime in the next two decades. This could mean that the United States will face an increasing challenge to its economic position in the future. But the sheer size of an economy is not by itself a good measure of overall power within the international system. If it were, then early nineteenth-century China, with what was then the world’s largest economy, would have been the predominant power instead of the prostrate victim of smaller European nations. Even if China does reach this pinnacle again—and Chinese leaders face significant obstacles to sustaining the country’s growth indefinitely—it will still remain far behind both the United States and Europe in terms of per capita GDP.

Military capacity matters, too, as early nineteenth-century China learned and Chinese leaders know today. As Yan Xuetong recently noted, “military strength underpins hegemony.” Here the United States remains unmatched. It is far and away the most powerful nation the world has ever known, and there has been no decline in America’s relative military capacity—at least not yet. Americans currently spend less than $600 billion a year on defense, more than the rest of the other great powers combined. (This figure does not include the deployment in Iraq, which is ending, or the combat forces in Afghanistan, which are likely to diminish steadily over the next couple of years.) They do so, moreover, while consuming a little less than 4 percent of GDP annually—a higher percentage than the other great powers, but in historical terms lower than the 10 percent of GDP that the United States spent on defense in the mid-1950s and the 7 percent it spent in the late 1980s. The superior expenditures underestimate America’s actual superiority in military capability. American land and air forces are equipped with the most advanced weaponry, and are the most experienced in actual combat. They would defeat any competitor in a head-to-head battle. American naval power remains predominant in every region of the world.

By these military and economic measures, at least, the United States today is not remotely like Britain circa 1900, when that empire’s relative decline began to become apparent. It is more like Britain circa 1870, when the empire was at the height of its power. It is possible to imagine a time when this might no longer be the case, but that moment has not yet arrived.

But what about the “rise of the rest”—the increasing economic clout of nations like China, India, Brazil, and Turkey? Doesn’t that cut into American power and influence? The answer is, it depends. The fact that other nations in the world are enjoying periods of high growth does not mean that America’s position as the predominant power is declining, or even that “the rest” are catching up in terms of overall power and influence. Brazil’s share of global GDP was a little over 2 percent in 1990 and remains a little over 2 percent today. Turkey’s share was under 1 percent in 1990 and is still under 1 percent today. People, and especially businesspeople, are naturally excited about these emerging markets, but just because a nation is an attractive investment opportunity does not mean it is a rising great power. Wealth matters in international politics, but there is no simple correlation between economic growth and international influence. It is not clear that a richer India today wields greater influence on the global stage than a poorer India did in the 1950s under Nehru, when it was the leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, or that

Turkey

, for all the independence and flash of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, really wields more influence than it did a decade ago.

As for the effect of these growing economies on the position of the United States, it all depends on who is doing the growing. The problem for the British Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century was not its substantial decline relative to the United States, a generally friendly power whose interests did not fundamentally conflict with Britain’s. Even in the Western hemisphere, British trade increased as it ceded dominance to the United States. The problem was Britain’s decline relative to Germany, which aimed for supremacy on the European continent, and sought to compete with Britain on the high seas, and in both respects posed a threat to Britain’s core security. In the case of the United States, the dramatic and rapid rise of the German and Japanese economies during the Cold War reduced American primacy in the world much more than the more recent “rise of the rest.” America’s share of the world’s GDP, nearly 50 percent after World War II, fell to roughly 25 percent by the early 1970s, where it has remained ever since. But that “rise of the rest” did not weaken the United States. If anything, it strengthened it. Germany and Japan were and are close democratic allies, key pillars of the American world order. The growth of their economies actually shifted the balance irretrievably against the Soviet bloc and helped bring about its demise.

When gauging the impact of the growing economies of other countries today, one has to make the same kinds of calculations. Does the growth of the Brazilian economy, or of the Indian economy, diminish American global power? Both nations are friendly, and India is increasingly a strategic partner of the United States. If America’s future competitor in the world is likely to be China, then a richer and more powerful India will be an asset, not a liability, to the United States. Overall, the fact that Brazil, India, Turkey, and South Africa are enjoying a period of economic growth—which may or may not last indefinitely—is either irrelevant to America’s strategic position or of benefit to it. At present, only the growth of

China

’s economy can be said to have implications for American power in the future, and only insofar as the Chinese translate enough of their growing economic strength into military strength.

II.

If the

United States

is not suffering decline in these basic measures of power, isn’t it true that its influence has diminished, that it is having a harder time getting its way in the world? The almost universal assumption is that the United States has indeed lost influence. Whatever the explanation may be—American decline, the “rise of the rest,” the apparent failure of the American capitalist model, the dysfunctional nature of American politics, the increasing complexity of the international system—it is broadly accepted that the United States can no longer shape the world to suit its interests and ideals as it once did. Every day seems to bring more proof, as things happen in the world that seem both contrary to American interests and beyond American control.

And of course it is true that the United States is not able to get what it wants much of the time. But then it never could. Much of today’s impressions about declining American influence are based on a nostalgic fallacy: that there was once a time when the United States could shape the whole world to suit its desires, and could get other nations to do what it wanted them to do, and, as the political scientist Stephen M. Walt put it, “manage the politics, economics and security arrangements for nearly the entire globe.”

If we are to gauge America’s relative position today, it is important to recognize that this image of the past is an illusion. There never was such a time. We tend to think back on the early years of the Cold War as a moment of complete American global dominance. They were nothing of the sort. The United States did accomplish extraordinary things in that era: the Marshall Plan, the NATO alliance, the United Nations, and the Bretton Woods economic system all shaped the world we know today. Yet for every great achievement in the early Cold War, there was at least one equally monumental setback.

During the Truman years, there was the triumph of the Communist Revolution in China in 1949, which American officials regarded as a disaster for American interests in the region and which did indeed prove costly; if nothing else, it was a major factor in spurring North Korea to attack the South in 1950. But as Dean Acheson concluded, “the ominous result of the civil war in China” had proved “beyond the control of the ... United States,” the product of “forces which this country tried to influence but could not.” A year later came the unanticipated and unprepared-for North Korean attack on South Korea, and America’s intervention, which, after more than 35,000 American dead and almost 100,000 wounded, left the situation almost exactly as it had been before the war. In 1949, there came perhaps the worst news of all: the Soviet acquisition of the atomic bomb and the end of the nuclear monopoly on which American military strategy and defense budgeting had been predicated.

A year later, NSC-68, the famous strategy document, warned of the growing gap between America’s military strength and its global strategic commitments. If current trends continued, it declared, the result would be “a serious decline in the strength of the free world relative to the Soviet Union and its satellites.” The “integrity and vitality of our system,” the document stated, was “in greater jeopardy than ever before in our history.” Douglas MacArthur, giving the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in 1952, lamented the “alarming change in the balance of world power,” “the rising burden of our fiscal commitments,” the ascendant power of the Soviet Union, “and our own relative decline.” In 1957, the Gaither Commission reported that the Russian economy was growing at a much faster pace than that of the United States and that by 1959 Russia would be able to hit American soil with one hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles, prompting Sam Rayburn, the speaker of the House, to ask, “What good are a sound economy and a balanced budget if we lose our national lives and Russian rubles become the coin of the land?”

Nor was the United States always able to persuade others, even its closest allies, to do what it wanted, or to refrain from doing what it did not want. In 1949, Acheson tried and failed to prevent European allies, including the British, from recognizing Communist China. In 1954, the Eisenhower administration failed to get its way at the Geneva Conference on Vietnam and refused to sign the final accords. Two years later it tried to prevent the British, the French, and the Israelis from invading Egypt over the closure of the Suez Canal, only to see them launch an invasion without so much as a heads-up to Washington. When the United States confronted China over the islands of Quemoy and Matsu, the Eisenhower administration tried and failed to get a show of support from European allies, prompting John Foster Dulles to fear that NATO was “beginning to fall apart.” By the late 1950s, Mao believed the United States was a superpower in decline, “afraid of taking on new involvements in the Third World and increasingly incapable of maintaining its hegemony over the capitalist countries.”

But what about “soft power”? Wasn’t it true, as the political scientist Joseph S. Nye Jr. has argued, that the United States used to be able to “get what it wanted in the world” because of the “values expressed” by American culture as reflected through television, movies, and music, and because of the attractiveness of America’s domestic and foreign policies? These elements of soft power made other peoples around the world want to follow the

United States

, “admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness.”

Again, the historical truth is more complicated. During the first three decades after World War II, great portions of the world neither admired the United States nor sought to emulate it, and were not especially pleased at the way it conducted itself in international affairs. Yes, American media were spreading American culture, but they were spreading images that were not always flattering. In the 1950s the world could watch televised images of Joseph McCarthy and the hunt for Communists in the State Department and Hollywood. American movies depicted the suffocating capitalist conformism of the new American corporate culture. Best-selling novels such as The Ugly American painted a picture of American bullying and boorishness. There were the battles over segregation in the 1950s and 1960s, the globally transmitted images of whites spitting at black schoolchildren and police setting their dogs on black demonstrators. (That “used to be us,” too.) The racism of America was practically “ruining” the American global image, Dulles feared, especially in the so-called Third World. In the late 1960s and early 1970s came the Watts riots, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the shootings at Kent State, and then the government-shaking scandal of Watergate. These were not the kinds of images likely to endear the

United States

to the world, no matter how many Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen movies were playing in Parisian cinemas.

Nor did much of the world find American foreign policy especially attractive during these years. Eisenhower yearned “to get some of the people in these down-trodden countries to like us instead of hating us,” but the CIA-orchestrated overthrows of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala did not help. In 1957, demonstrators attacked the vice president’s motorcade in Venezuela, shouting, “Go away, Nixon!” “Out, dog!” “We won’t forget Guatemala!” In 1960, Khrushchev humiliated Eisenhower by canceling a summit when an American spy plane was shot down over Russia. Later that year, on his way to a “goodwill” visit in Tokyo, Eisenhower had to turn back in mid-flight when the Japanese government warned it could not guarantee his security against students protesting American “imperialism.”

Eisenhower’s Democratic successors fared little better. John F. Kennedy and his wife were beloved for a time, but America’s glow faded after his assassination. Lyndon Johnson’s invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 was widely condemned not only in Latin America but also by European allies. De Gaulle warned American officials that the United States, like “all countries that had overwhelming power,” had come “to believe that force would solve everything” and would soon learn this was “not the case.” And then, of course, came Vietnam—the destruction, the scenes of napalm, the My Lai massacre, the secret incursion into Cambodia, the bombing of Hanoi, and the general perception of a Western colonialist superpower pounding a small but defiant Third World country into submission. When Johnson’s vice president, Hubert Humphrey, visited West Berlin in 1967, the American cultural center was attacked, thousands of students protested American policies, and rumors swirled of assassination attempts. In 1968, when millions of Europe’s youth took to the streets, they were not expressing their admiration for American culture.

Nor were the great majority of nations around the world trying to emulate the American system. In the first decades of the Cold War, many were attracted to the state-controlled economies of the Soviet Union and China, which seemed to promise growth without the messy problems of democracy. The economies of the Soviet bloc had growth rates as high as those in the West throughout much of this period, largely due to a state-directed surge in heavy industry. According to Allen Dulles, the CIA director, many leaders in the Third World believed that the Soviet system “might have more to offer in the way of quick results than the U.S. system.” Dictators such as Egypt’s Nasser and Indonesia’s Sukarno found the state-dominated model especially attractive, but so did India’s Nehru. Leaders of the emerging Non-Aligned Movement—Nehru, Nasser, Tito, Sukarno, Nkrumah—expressed little admiration for American ways.

After the death of Stalin, moreover, both the Soviet Union and China engaged in hot competition to win over the Third World, taking “goodwill tours” and providing aid programs of their own. Eisenhower reflected that “the new Communist line of sweetness and light was perhaps more dangerous than their propaganda in Stalin’s time.” The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations worried constantly about the leftward tilt of all these nations, and lavished development aid on them in the hope of winning hearts and minds. They found that the aid, while eagerly accepted, guaranteed neither allegiance nor appreciation. One result of Third World animosity was that the United States steadily lost influence at the United Nations after 1960. Once the place where the American war in Korea was legitimized, from the 1960s until the end of the Cold War the U.N. General Assembly became a forum for constant expressions of anti-Americanism.

In the late 1960s, Henry Kissinger despaired of the future. The “increased fragmentation of power, the greater diffusion of political activity, and the more complicated patterns of international conflict and alignment,” he wrote to Nixon, had sharply reduced the capacity of both superpowers to influence “the actions of other governments.” And things only seemed to get more difficult as the 1970s unfolded. The United States withdrew from Vietnam in defeat, and the world watched the first-ever resignation of an American president mired in scandal. And then, perhaps as significant as all the rest, world oil prices went through the roof.

The last problem pointed to a significant new difficulty: the inability of the United States to wield influence effectively in the Middle East. Today people point to America’s failure to bring Israelis and Palestinians to a negotiated settlement, or to manage the tumultuous Arab Awakening, as a sign of weakness and decline. But in 1973 the United States could not even prevent the major powers in the Middle East from engaging in all-out war. When Egypt and Syria launched their surprise attack on Israel, it was a surprise to Washington as well. The United States eventually had to go on nuclear alert to deter Soviet intervention in the conflict. The war led to the oil embargo, the establishment of OPEC as a major force in world affairs, and the sudden revelation that, as historian Daniel Yergin put it, “the United States itself was now, finally, vulnerable.” The “world’s foremost superpower” had been “thrown on the defensive, humiliated, by a handful of small nations.” Many Americans “feared that the end of an era was at hand.”

In the 1970s, the dramatic rise in oil prices, coupled with American economic policies during the Vietnam War, led the American economy into a severe crisis. Gross national product fell by 6 percent between 1973 and 1975. Unemployment doubled from 4.5 percent to 9 percent. The American people suffered through gas lines and the new economic phenomenon of stagflation, combining a stagnant economy with high inflation. The American economy went through three recessions between 1973 and 1982. The “energy crisis” was to Americans then what the “fiscal crisis” is today. In his first televised address to the nation, Jimmy Carter called it “the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes.” It was especially humiliating that the crisis was driven in part by two close American allies, the Saudi royal family and the Shah of Iran. As Carter recalled in his memoirs, the American people “deeply resented that the greatest nation on earth was being jerked around by a few desert states.”

The low point came in 1979, when the Shah was overthrown, the radical Islamic revolution led by Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, and fifty-two Americans were taken hostage and held for more than a year. The hostage crisis, as Yergin has observed, “transmitted a powerful message: that the shift of power in the world oil market in the 1970s was only part of a larger drama that was taking place in global politics. The United States and the West, it seemed to say, were truly in decline, on the defensive, and, it appeared, unable to do anything to protect their interests, whether economic or political.”

If one wanted to make a case for American decline, the 1970s would have been the time to do it; and many did. The United States, Kissinger believed, had evidently “passed its historic high point like so many earlier civilizations.... Every civilization that has ever existed has ultimately collapsed. History is a tale of efforts that failed.” It was in the 1970s that the American economy lost its overwhelming primacy, when the American trade surplus began to turn into a trade deficit, when spending on entitlements and social welfare programs ballooned, when American gold and monetary reserves were depleted.

With economic difficulties came political and strategic insecurity. First came the belief that the tide of history was with the Soviet Union. Soviet leaders themselves believed the “correlation of forces” favored communism; the American defeat and withdrawal from Vietnam led Soviet officials, for the first time, to believe they might actually “win” in the long Cold War struggle. A decade later, in 1987, Paul Kennedy depicted both superpowers as suffering from “imperial overstretch,” but suggested that it was entirely possible that the United States would be the first to collapse, following a long historical tradition of exhausted and bankrupt empires. It had crippled itself by spending too much on defense and taking on too many far-flung global responsibilities. But within two years the Berlin Wall fell, and two years after that the Soviet Union collapsed. The decline turned out to be taking place elsewhere.

Then there was the miracle economy of Japan. A “rise of the rest” began in the late 1970s and continued over the next decade and a half, as Japan, along with the other “Asian tigers,” South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan, seemed about to eclipse the United States economically. In 1989, the journalist James Fallows argued that the Japanese state-directed economy was plainly superior to the more laissez-faire capitalism of the United States and was destined to surpass it. Japan was to be the next superpower. While the United States had bankrupted itself fighting the Cold War, the Japanese had been busy taking all the marbles. As the analyst Chalmers Johnson put it in 1995, “The Cold War is over, and Japan won.” Even as Johnson typed those words, the Japanese economy was spiraling downward into a period of stagnation from which it has still not recovered.

With the Soviet Union gone and China yet to demonstrate the staying power of its economic boom, the United States suddenly appeared to be the world’s “sole superpower.” Yet even then it was remarkable how unsuccessful the United States was in dealing with many serious global problems. The Americans won the Gulf War, expanded NATO eastward, eventually brought peace to the Balkans, after much bloodshed, and, through most of the 1990s, led much of the world to embrace the “Washington consensus” on economics—but some of these successes began to unravel, and were matched by equally significant failures. The Washington consensus began to collapse with the Asian financial crisis of 1997, where American prescriptions were widely regarded as mistaken and damaging. The United States failed to stop or even significantly to retard the nuclear weapons programs of North Korea and Iran, despite repeatedly declaring its intention to do so. The sanctions regime imposed against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was both futile and, by the end of the decade, collapsing. The United States, and the world, did nothing to prevent the genocide in Rwanda, partly because a year earlier the United States had been driven out of Somalia after a failed military intervention. One of the most important endeavors of the United States in the 1990s was the effort to support a transition in post-Soviet Russia to democracy and free-market capitalism. But despite providing billions of dollars and endless amounts of advice and expertise, the United States found events in

Russia

once again to be beyond its control.

Nor were American leaders, even in the supposed heyday of global predominance, any more successful in solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem than they are today. Even with a booming economy and a well-liked president earnestly working to achieve a settlement, the Clinton administration came up empty-handed. As the former Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller recounts, Bill Clinton “cared more about and invested more time and energy in Arab-Israeli peace over a longer period of time than any of his predecessors,” and was admired and appreciated by both Israelis and Palestinians—and yet he held “three summits within six months and fail[ed] at every one.” Clinton’s term ended with the collapse of peace talks and the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada.

Even popularity was elusive in the 1990s. In 1999, Samuel P. Huntington labeled America the “lonely superpower,” widely hated across the globe for its “intrusive, interventionist, exploitative, unilateralist, hegemonic, hypocritical” behavior. The French foreign minister decried the “hyperpower” and openly yearned for a “multipolar” world in which the United States would no longer be dominant. A British diplomat told Huntington: “One reads about the world’s desire for American leadership only in the United States. Everywhere else one reads about American arrogance and unilateralism.”

This was nonsense, of course. Contrary to the British diplomat’s claim, many other countries did look to the United States for leadership, and for protection and support, in the 1990s and throughout the Cold War. The point is not that America always lacked global influence. From World War II onward, the United States was indeed the predominant power in the world. It wielded enormous influence, more than any great power since Rome, and it accomplished much. But it was not omnipotent—far from it. If we are to gauge accurately whether the United States is currently in decline, we need to have a reasonable baseline from which to measure. To compare American influence today with a mythical past of overwhelming dominance can only mislead us.

Today the United States lacks the ability to have its way on many issues, but this has not prevented it from enjoying just as much success, and suffering just as much failure, as in the past. For all the controversy, the United States has been more successful in Iraq than it was in Vietnam. It has been just as incapable of containing Iranian nuclear ambitions as it was in the 1990s, but it has, through the efforts of two administrations, established a more effective global counter-proliferation network. Its efforts to root out and destroy Al Qaeda have been remarkably successful, especially when compared with the failures to destroy terrorist networks and stop terrorist attacks in the 1990s—failures that culminated in the attacks of September 11. The ability to employ drones is an advance over the types of weaponry—cruise missiles and air strikes—that were used to target terrorists and facilities in previous decades. Meanwhile America’s alliances in Europe remain healthy; it is certainly not America’s fault that Europe itself seems weaker than it once was. American alliances in Asia have arguably grown stronger over the past few years, and the United States has been able to strengthen relations with

India

that had previously been strained.

So the record is mixed, but it has always been mixed. There have been moments when the United States was more influential than today and moments when it was less influential. The exertion of influence has always been a struggle, which may explain why, in every single decade since the end of World War II, Americans have worried about their declining influence and looked nervously as other powers seemed to be rising at their expense. The difficulties in shaping the international environment in any era are immense. Few powers even attempt it, and even the strongest rarely achieve all or even most of their goals. Foreign policy is like hitting a baseball: if you fail 70 percent of the time, you go to the Hall of Fame.

III.

The challenges today are great, and the rise of

China

is the most obvious of them. But they are not greater than the challenges the United States faced during the Cold War. Only in retrospect can the Cold War seem easy. Americans at the end of World War II faced a major strategic crisis. The Soviet Union, if only by virtue of its size and location, seemed to threaten vital strategic centers in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. In all these regions, it confronted nations devastated and prostrate from the war. To meet this challenge, the United States had to project its own power, which was great but limited, into each of those regions. It had to form alliances with local powers, some of them former enemies, and provide them with economic, political, and military assistance to help them stand on their own feet and resist Soviet pressure. In the Cold War, the Soviets wielded influence and put pressure on American interests merely by standing still, while the United States had to scramble. It is worth recalling that this strategy of “containment,” now hallowed by its apparent success, struck some influential observers at the time as entirely unworkable. Walter Lippmann attacked it as “misconceived,” based on “hope,” conceding the “strategic initiative” to the Soviets while the United States exhausted its resources trying to establish “satellite states, puppet governments” that were weak, ineffective, and unreliable.

Today, in the case of China, the situation is reversed. Although China is and will be much richer, and will wield greater economic influence in the world than the Soviet Union ever did, its geostrategic position is more difficult. World War II left China in a comparatively weak position from which it has been working hard to recover ever since. Several of its neighbors are strong nations with close ties to the United States. It will have a hard time becoming a regional hegemon so long as Taiwan remains independent and strategically tied to the United States, and so long as strong regional powers such as Japan, Korea, and Australia continue to host American troops and bases. China would need at least a few allies to have any chance of pushing the United States out of its strongholds in the western Pacific, but right now it is the United States that has the allies. It is the United States that has its troops deployed in forward bases. It is the United States that currently enjoys naval predominance in the key waters and waterways through which China must trade. Altogether, China’s task as a rising great power, which is to push the United States out of its present position, is much harder than America’s task, which is only to hold on to what it has.

Can the United States do that? In their pessimistic mood today, some Americans doubt that it can. Indeed, they doubt whether the United States can afford to continue playing in any part of the world the predominant role that it has played in the past. Some argue that while Paul Kennedy’s warning of imperial overstretch may not have been correct in 1987, it accurately describes America’s current predicament. The fiscal crisis, the deadlocked political system, the various maladies of American society (including wage stagnation and income inequality), the weaknesses of the educational system, the deteriorating infrastructure—all of these are cited these days as reasons why the United States needs to retrench internationally, to pull back from some overseas commitments, to focus on “nation building at home” rather than try to keep shaping the world as it has in the past.

Again, these common assumptions require some examination. For one thing, how “overstretched” is the United States? The answer, in historical terms, is not nearly as much as people imagine. Consider the straightforward matter of the number of troops that the United States deploys overseas. To listen to the debate today, one might imagine there were more American troops committed abroad than ever before. But that is not remotely the case. In 1953, the United States had almost one million troops deployed overseas—325,000 in combat in Korea and more than 600,000 stationed in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere. In 1968, it had over one million troops on foreign soil—537,000 in Vietnam and another half million stationed elsewhere. By contrast, in the summer of 2011, at the height of America’s deployments in its two wars, there were about 200,000 troops deployed in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan combined, and another roughly 160,000 troops stationed in Europe and East Asia. Altogether, and including other forces stationed around the world, there were about 500,000 troops deployed overseas. This was lower even than the peacetime deployments of the Cold War. In 1957, for instance, there were over 750,000 troops deployed overseas. Only in the decade between the breakup of the Soviet empire and the attacks of September 11 was the number of deployed forces overseas lower than it is today. The comparison is even more striking if one takes into account the growth of the American population. When the United States had one million troops deployed overseas in 1953, the total American population was only 160 million. Today, when there are half a million troops deployed overseas, the American population is 313 million. The country is twice as large, with half as many troops deployed as fifty years ago.

What about the financial expense? Many seem to believe that the cost of these deployments, and of the armed forces generally, is a major contributor to the soaring fiscal deficits that threaten the solvency of the national economy. But this is not the case, either. As the former budget czar Alice Rivlin has observed, the scary projections of future deficits are not “caused by rising defense spending,” much less by spending on foreign assistance. The runaway deficits projected for the coming years are mostly the result of ballooning entitlement spending. Even the most draconian cuts in the defense budget would produce annual savings of only $50 billion to $100 billion, a small fraction—between 4 and 8 percent—of the $1.5 trillion in annual deficits the United States is facing.

In 2002, when Paul Kennedy was marveling at America’s ability to remain “the world’s single superpower on the cheap,” the United States was spending about 3.4 percent of GDP on defense. Today it is spending a little under 4 percent, and in years to come, that is likely to head lower again—still “cheap” by historical standards. The cost of remaining the world’s predominant power is not prohibitive.

If we are serious about this exercise in accounting, moreover, the costs of maintaining this position cannot be measured without considering the costs of losing it. Some of the costs of reducing the American role in the world are, of course, unquantifiable. What is it worth to Americans to live in a world dominated by democracies rather than by autocracies? But some of the potential costs could be measured, if anyone cared to try. If the decline of American military power produced an unraveling of the international economic order that American power has helped sustain; if trade routes and waterways ceased to be as secure, because the U.S. Navy was no longer able to defend them; if regional wars broke out among great powers because they were no longer constrained by the American superpower; if American allies were attacked because the United States appeared unable to come to their defense; if the generally free and open nature of the international system became less so—if all this came to pass, there would be measurable costs. And it is not too far-fetched to imagine that these costs would be far greater than the savings gained by cutting the defense and foreign aid budgets by $100 billion a year. You can save money by buying a used car without a warranty and without certain safety features, but what happens when you get into an accident? American military strength reduces the risk of accidents by deterring conflict, and lowers the price of the accidents that occur by reducing the chance of losing. These savings need to be part of the calculation, too. As a simple matter of dollars and cents, it may be a lot cheaper to preserve the current level of American involvement in the world than to reduce it.

Perhaps the greatest concern underlying the declinist mood at large in the country today is not really whether the United States can afford to continue playing its role in the world. It is whether the Americans are capable of solving any of their most pressing economic and social problems. As many statesmen and commentators have asked, can Americans do what needs to be done to compete effectively in the twenty-first-century world?

The only honest answer is, who knows? If American history is any guide, however, there is at least some reason to be hopeful. Americans have experienced this unease before, and many previous generations have also felt this sense of lost vigor and lost virtue: as long ago as 1788, Patrick Henry lamented the nation’s fall from past glory, “when the American spirit was in its youth.” There have been many times over the past two centuries when the political system was dysfunctional, hopelessly gridlocked, and seemingly unable to find solutions to crushing national problems—from slavery and then Reconstruction, to the dislocations of industrialization at the end of the nineteenth century and the crisis of social welfare during the Great Depression, to the confusions and paranoia of the early Cold War years. Anyone who honestly recalls the 1970s, with Watergate, Vietnam, stagflation, and the energy crisis, cannot really believe that our present difficulties are unrivaled.

Success in the past does not guarantee success in the future. But one thing does seem clear from the historical evidence: the American system, for all its often stultifying qualities, has also shown a greater capacity to adapt and recover from difficulties than many other nations, including its geopolitical competitors. This undoubtedly has something to do with the relative freedom of American society, which rewards innovators, often outside the existing power structure, for producing new ways of doing things; and with the relatively open political system of America, which allows movements to gain steam and to influence the behavior of the political establishment. The American system is slow and clunky in part because the Founders designed it that way, with a federal structure, checks and balances, and a written Constitution and Bill of Rights—but the system also possesses a remarkable ability to undertake changes just when the steam kettle looks about to blow its lid. There are occasional “critical elections” that allow transformations to occur, providing new political solutions to old and apparently insoluble problems. Of course, there are no guarantees: the political system could not resolve the problem of slavery without war. But on many big issues throughout their history, Americans have found a way of achieving and implementing a national consensus.

When Paul Kennedy was marveling at the continuing success of the American superpower back in 2002, he noted that one of the main reasons had been the ability of Americans to overcome what had appeared to him in 1987 as an insoluble long-term economic crisis. American businessmen and politicians “reacted strongly to the debate about ‘decline’ by taking action: cutting costs, making companies leaner and meaner, investing in newer technologies, promoting a communications revolution, trimming government deficits, all of which helped to produce significant year-on-year advances in productivity.” It is possible to imagine that Americans may rise to this latest economic challenge as well.

It is also reasonable to expect that other nations will, as in the past, run into difficulties of their own. None of the nations currently enjoying economic miracles is without problems. Brazil, India, Turkey, and Russia all have bumpy histories that suggest the route ahead will not be one of simple and smooth ascent. There is a real question whether the autocratic model of

China

, which can be so effective in making some strategic decisions about the economy in the short term, can over the long run be flexible enough to permit adaptation to a changing international economic, political, and strategic environment.

In sum: it may be more than good fortune that has allowed the United States in the past to come through crises and emerge stronger and healthier than other nations while its various competitors have faltered. And it may be more than just wishful thinking to believe that it may do so again.

But there is a danger. It is that in the meantime, while the nation continues to struggle, Americans may convince themselves that decline is indeed inevitable, or that the United States can take a time-out from its global responsibilities while it gets its own house in order. To many Americans, accepting decline may provide a welcome escape from the moral and material burdens that have weighed on them since World War II. Many may unconsciously yearn to return to the way things were in 1900, when the

United States

was rich, powerful, and not responsible for world order.

The underlying assumption of such a course is that the present world order will more or less persist without American power, or at least with much less of it; or that others can pick up the slack; or simply that the benefits of the world order are permanent and require no special exertion by anyone. Unfortunately, the present world order—with its widespread freedoms, its general prosperity, and its absence of great power conflict—is as fragile as it is unique. Preserving it has been a struggle in every decade, and will remain a struggle in the decades to come. Preserving the present world order requires constant American leadership and constant American commitment.

In the end, the decision is in the hands of Americans. Decline, as Charles Krauthammer has observed, is a choice. It is not an inevitable fate—at least not yet. Empires and great powers rise and fall, and the only question is when. But the when does matter. Whether the United States begins to decline over the next two decades or not for another two centuries will matter a great deal, both to Americans and to the nature of the world they live in.

Iran, the U.S. and the Strait of Hormuz Crisis

2012-01-17T21:11:00.000+06:00

STRATFOR - January 17, 2012

By George Friedman

The United States reportedly sent a letter to Iran via multiple intermediaries last week warning Tehran that any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz constituted a red line for Washington. The same week, a chemist associated with Iran's nuclear program was killed in Tehran. In Ankara, Iranian parliamentary speaker Ali Larijani met with Turkish officials and has been floating hints of flexibility in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.

This week, a routine rotation of U.S. aircraft carriers is taking place in the Middle East, with the potential for three carrier strike groups to be on station in the U.S. Fifth Fleet's area of operations and a fourth carrier strike group based in Japan about a week's transit from the region. Next week, Gen. Michael Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will travel to Israel to meet with senior Israeli officials. And Iran is scheduling another set of war games in the Persian Gulf for February that will focus on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' irregular tactics for closing the Strait of Hormuz.

While tensions are escalating in the Persian Gulf, the financial crisis in Europe has continued, with downgrades in France's credit rating the latest blow. Meanwhile, China continued its struggle to maintain exports in the face of economic weakness among its major customers while inflation continued to increase the cost of Chinese exports.

Fundamental changes in how Europe and China work and their long-term consequences represent the major systemic shifts in the international system. In the more immediate future, however, the U.S.-Iranian dynamic has the most serious potential consequences for the world.

The U.S.-Iranian Dynamic

The increasing tensions in the region are not unexpected. As we have argued for some time, the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the subsequent decision to withdraw created a massive power vacuum in Iraq that Iran needed -- and was able -- to fill. Iran and Iraq fought a brutal war in the 1980s that caused about 1 million Iranian casualties, and Iran's fundamental national interest is assuring that no Iraqi regime able to threaten Iranian national security re-emerges. The U.S. invasion and withdrawal from Iraq provided Iran an opportunity to secure its western frontier, one it could not pass on.

If Iran does come to have a dominant influence in Iraq -- and I don't mean Iran turning Iraq into a satellite -- several things follow. Most important, the status of the Arabian Peninsula is subject to change. On paper, Iran has the most substantial conventional military force of any nation in the Persian Gulf. Absent outside players, power on paper is not insignificant. While technologically sophisticated, the military strength of the Arabian Peninsula nations on paper is much smaller, and they lack the Iranian military's ideologically committed manpower.

But Iran's direct military power is more the backdrop than the main engine of Iranian power. It is the strength of Tehran's covert capabilities and influence that makes Iran significant. Iran's covert intelligence capability is quite good. It has spent decades building political alliances by a range of means, and not only by nefarious methods. The Iranians have worked among the Shia, but not exclusively so; they have built a network of influence among a range of classes and religious and ethnic groups. And they have systematically built alliances and relationships with significant figures to counter overt U.S. power. With U.S. military power departing Iraq, Iran's relationships become all the more valuable.

The withdrawal of U.S. forces has had a profound psychological impact on the political elites of the Persian Gulf. Since the decline of British power after World War II, the United States has been the guarantor of the Arabian Peninsula's elites and therefore of the flow of oil from the region. The foundation of that guarantee has been military power, as seen in the response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The United States still has substantial military power in the Persian Gulf, and its air and naval forces could likely cope with any overt provocation by Iran.

But that's not how the Iranians operate. For all their rhetoric, they are cautious in their policies. This does not mean they are passive. It simply means that they avoid high-risk moves. They will rely on their covert capabilities and relationships. Those relationships now exist in an environment in which many reasonable Arab leaders see a shift in the balance of power, with the United States growing weaker and less predictable in the region and Iran becoming stronger. This provides fertile soil for Iranian allies to pressure regional regimes into accommodations with Iran.

The Syrian Angle

Events in

Syria

compound this situation. The purported imminent collapse of Syrian President Bashar al Assad's regime in Syria has proved less imminent than many in the West imagined. At the same time, the isolation of the al Assad regime by the West -- and more important, by other Arab countries -- has created a situation where the regime is more dependent than ever on Iran.

Should the al Assad regime -- or the Syrian regime without al Assad -- survive, Iran would therefore enjoy tremendous influence with Syria, as well as with Hezbollah in Lebanon. The current course in Iraq coupled with the survival of an Alawite regime in Syria would create an Iranian sphere of influence stretching from western Afghanistan to the Mediterranean. This would represent a fundamental shift in the regional balance of power and probably would redefine Iranian relations with the Arabian Peninsula. This is obviously in Iran's interest. It is not in the interests of the United States, however.

The United States has sought to head this off via a twofold response. Clandestinely, it has engaged in an active campaign of sabotage and assassination targeting Iran's nuclear efforts. Publicly, it has created a sanctions regime against Iran, most recently targeting Iran's oil exports. However, the latter effort faces many challenges.

Japan

, the No. 2 buyer of Iranian crude, has pledged its support but has not outlined concrete plans to reduce its purchases. The Chinese and Indians -- Iran's No. 1 and 3 buyers of crude, respectively -- will continue to buy from Iran despite increased U.S. pressure. In spite of U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's visit last week, the Chinese are not prepared to impose sanctions, and the Russians are not likely to enforce sanctions even if they agreed to them. Turkey is unwilling to create a confrontation with Iran and is trying to remain a vital trade conduit for the Iranians regardless of sanctions. At the same time, while the Europeans seem prepared to participate in harder-hitting sanctions on Iranian oil, they already have delayed action on these sanctions and certainly are in no position politically or otherwise to participate in military action. The European economic crisis is at root a political crisis, so even if the Europeans could add significant military weight, which they generally lack, concerted action of any sort is unlikely.

Neither, for that matter, does the United States have the ability to do much militarily. Invading Iran is out of the question. The mountainous geography of Iran, a nation of about 70 million people, makes direct occupation impossible given available American forces.

Air operations against Iran are an option, but they could not be confined to nuclear facilities. Iran still doesn't have nuclear weapons, and while nuclear weapons would compound the strategic problem, the problem would still exist without them. The center of gravity of Iran's power is the relative strength of its conventional forces in the region. Absent those, Iran would be less capable of wielding covert power, as the psychological matrix would shift.

An air campaign against Iran's conventional forces would play to American military strengths, but it has two problems. First, it would be an extended campaign, one lasting months. Iran's capabilities are large and dispersed, and as seen in Desert Storm and Kosovo against weaker opponents, such operations take a long time and are not guaranteed to be effective. Second, the Iranians have counters. One, of course, is the Strait of Hormuz. The second is the use of its special operations forces and allies in and out of the region to conduct terrorist attacks. An extended air campaign coupled with terrorist attacks could increase distrust of American power rather than increase it among U.S. allies, to say nothing of the question of whether Washington could sustain political support in a coalition or within the United States itself.

The Covert Option

The United States and Israel both have covert options as well. They have networks of influence in the region and highly capable covert forces, which they have said publicly that they would use to limit Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons without resorting to overt force. We assume, though we lack evidence, that the assassination of the Iranian chemist associated with the country's nuclear program last week was either a U.S. or Israeli operation or some combination of the two. Not only did it eliminate a scientist, it also bred insecurity and morale problems among those working on the program. It also signaled the region that the United States and Israel have options inside Iran.

The U.S. desire to support an Iranian anti-government movement generally has failed. Tehran showed in 2009 that it could suppress demonstrations, and it was obvious that the demonstrators did not have the widespread support needed to overcome such repression. Though the United States has sought to support internal dissidents in Iran since 1979, it has not succeeded in producing a meaningful threat to the clerical regime. Therefore, covert operations are being aimed directly at the nuclear program with the hope that successes there might ripple through other, more immediately significant sectors.

As we have long argued, the Iranians already have a "nuclear option," namely, the prospect of blockading the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 35 percent of seaborne crude and 20 percent of the world's traded oil passes daily. Doing so would hurt them, too, of course. But failing to deter an air or covert campaign, they might choose to close off the strait. Temporarily disrupting the flow of oil, even intermittently, could rapidly create a global economic crisis given the fragility of the world economy.

The United States does not want to see that. Washington will be extremely cautious in its actions unless it can act with a high degree of assurance that it can prevent such a disruption, something difficult to guarantee. It also will restrain Israel, which might have the ability to strike at a few nuclear facilities but lacks the force to completely eliminate the program much less target Iran's conventional capability and manage the consequences of that strike in the Strait of Hormuz. Only the United States could do all that, and given the possible consequences, it will be loathe to attempt it.

The United States continues, therefore, with sanctions and covert actions while Iran continues building its covert power in Iraq and in the region. Each will try to convince the region that its power will be supreme in a year. The region is skeptical of both, but will have to live with one of the two, or with an ongoing test of wills -- an unnerving prospect. Each side is seeking to magnify its power for psychological effect without crossing a red line that prompts the other to take extreme measures. Iran signals its willingness to attempt to close Hormuz and its development of nuclear weapons, but it doesn't cross the line to actually closing the strait or detonating a nuclear device. The United States pressures Iran and moves forces around, but it doesn't cross the red line of commencing military actions. Thus, each avoids triggering unacceptable actions by the other.

The problem for the United States is that the status quo ultimately works against it. If al Assad survives and if the situation in Iraq proceeds as it has been proceeding, then Iran is creating a reality that will define the region. The United States does not have a broad and effective coalition, and certainly not one that would rally in the event of war. It has only Israel, and Israel is as uneasy with direct military action as the United States is. It does not want to see a failed attack and it does not want to see more instability in the Arab world. For all its rhetoric, Israel has a weak hand to play. The only virtue of the American hand is that it is stronger -- but only relatively speaking.

For the United States, preventing the expansion of an Iranian sphere of influence is a primary concern. Iraq is going to be a difficult arena to stop Iran's expansion. Syria therefore is key at present. Al Assad appears weak, and his replacement by a Sunni government would limit -- but not destroy -- any Iranian sphere of influence. It would be a reversal for Iran, and the United States badly needs to apply one. But the problem is that the United States cannot be seen as the direct agent of regime change in Syria, and al Assad is not as weak as has been claimed. Even so, Syria is where the United States can work to block Iran without crossing Iran's red lines.

The normal outcome of a situation like this one, in which neither Iran nor the United States can afford to cross the other's red lines since the consequences would be too great for each, would be some sort of negotiation toward a longer-term accommodation. Ideology aside -- and the United States negotiating with the "Axis of Evil" or Iran with the "Great Satan" would be tough sells to their respective domestic audiences -- the problem with this is that it is difficult to see what each has to offer the other. What Iran wants -- a dominant position in the region and a redefinition of how oil revenues are allocated and distributed -- would make the United States dependent on Iran. What the United States wants -- an Iran that does not build a sphere of influence but instead remains within its borders -- would cost Iran a historic opportunity to assert its longstanding claims.

We find ourselves in a situation in which neither side wants to force the other into extreme steps and neither side is in a position to enter into broader accommodations. And that's what makes the situation dangerous. When fundamental issues are at stake, each side is in a position to profoundly harm the other if pressed, and neither side is in a position to negotiate a broad settlement, a long game of chess ensues. And in that game of chess, the possibilities of miscalculation, of a bluff that the other side mistakes for an action, are very real.

Europe and China are redefining the way the world works. But kingdoms run on oil, as someone once said, and a lot of oil comes through Hormuz. Iran may or may not be able to close the strait, and that reshapes Europe and China. The New Year thus begins where we expected: at the Strait of Hormuz.

Identifying issues of national interest - a precondition for achieving national unity and prosperity

2012-01-17T14:22:00.000+06:00

বাংলাদেশের গুরুত্বপূর্ণ জাতীয় ইস্যুগুলো চিন্হিতকরণ- জাতীয় ঐক্য ও সমৃদ্ধি অর্জনের পূর্বশর্ত

মেজর ফারুক (অবঃ)

আমরা যদি বাংলাদেশের জাতীয় স্বার্থ সংশ্লিষ্ট ইস্যুগুলো সনাক্ত করতে সক্ষম হই এবং সেগুলো রক্ষায় ক্ষমতাসীন ও বিরোধী দলসমূহের ভূমিকা মূল্যায়ন করি- তাহলে দেখতে পাবো যে, আমাদের অনেক জাতীয় গুরুত্বপূর্ণ স্বার্থই বর্তমান সরকার কর্তৃক সমর্পন করা হয়েছে এবং বিরোধী দল কোন কার্যকরী ও সময়োপযোগী প্রতিরোধমূলক ব্যবস্থা গ্রহন থেকে বিরত থাকায় সরকার সেসব দেশবিরোধী কার্যক্রম বাস্তবায়নে সহায়ক পরিস্থিতি ভোগ করেছে।

বাংলাদেশের বিদ্যমান রাজনৈতিক দলগুলোর ক্ষমতায় যাবার এবং ক্ষমতা আঁকড়ে থাকার দলাদলীকে এবং প্রতি পাঁচ বছর মেয়াদান্তে একটি নির্বাচন অনুষ্ঠান করাকেই এখন গণতন্ত্র বলে চালিয়ে দেয়া হচ্ছে; অথচ সরকার গঠন করার পর আইনের শাসন প্রতিষ্ঠা, প্রশাসনকে দলীয় প্রভাব থেকে মুক্ত রেখে জনসেবায় নিয়োজিত করা, বিরোধী দলসমূহের গণতান্ত্রিক আন্দোলনের অধিকারকে হামলা-মামলা দিয়ে দমন না করা, মত প্রকাশের অধিকারকে রিমান্ডে না নেয়া, দল-মত-ধর্ম-বর্ণ নির্বিশেষে প্রতিটি নাগরিকের জীবন ও নিরাপত্তা রক্ষায় রাষ্ট্রকে নিয়োজিত করা, অভ্যন্তরীণ ও পররাষ্ট্রনীতিতে জাতীয় স্বার্থ রক্ষায় অবিচল থাকা এবং দেশের মানুষের আর্থ-সামাজিক উন্নয়নে আত্মনিয়োগ করা- এ বিষয়গুলোকে গণতন্ত্রের বৈশিষ্ট্য হিসেবে অগ্রাহ্য করা হচ্ছে। এমনকি সরকার কর্তৃক দেশের অস্তিত্ব বিনাশী চুক্তি ও পদক্ষেপও বিনা বাধায় বাস্তবায়িত হয়ে চলেছে।

বাংলাদেশে লক্ষ-কোটি ত্যাগী ও সংগ্রামী দেশপ্রেমীক নাগরিক থাকলেও ৩০ লক্ষ শহীদের রক্তের বিনিময়ে অর্জিত ১৬ কোটি মানুষের এ দেশটি আজ একটি অকার্যকর রাষ্ট্র হিসেবে পরিগণিত হতে চলেছে। পরিণামে জাতির ললাটে নেপাল-ভূটান ও সিকিমের ভাগ্যই শুধু অপেক্ষমান।

চলতি নিবন্ধে আমাদের কিছু গুরুত্বপূর্ণ জাতীয় ইস্যু সনাক্ত করার চেষ্টা করবো এবং সেসব ইস্যুতে ক্ষমতাসীন ও বিরোধী দলগুলোর ভূমিকা সংক্ষেপে তুলে ধরবো।

১। বহিঃশক্তির হাত থেকে নাগরিকদের জীবন ও নিরাপত্তা রক্ষা করাঃ

রাষ্ট্রের দায়িত্ব যে কোন বহিঃশক্তির হাত থেকে প্রতিটি নাগরিকের জীবন ও নিরাপত্তা রক্ষা করা। কিন্তু আমাদের দেশে দেখতে পাই- সীমান্তে ভারতীয় বিএসএফ পাখির মত গুলি করে বাংলাদেশের নাগরিকদেরকে হত্যা করছে; গত ৩ বছরে এ সংখ্যা দাঁড়িয়েছে ২০৩ জন। গত দশ বছরে বিএসএফ এক হাজারেরও বেশী বাংলাদেশী নাগরিককে হত্যা করেছে, আহত করেছে ততোধিক, অপহরন করেছে শত শত, ধর্ষন করেছে আমাদের অসংখ্য মা-বোনকে। কিশোরী ফেলানীকে গুলি করে কাঁটাতারে ঝুলিয়ে রাখলেও ক্ষমতাসীন সরকার এসব হত্যা ও নির্যাতনের কোন কার্যকর প্রতিবাদ বা প্রতিকার নিশ্চিত করেনি। বিরোধী দল শুধুমাত্র গোলটেবিল বৈঠকে মাঝে মাঝে কিছু লিপ-সার্ভিসিং দিয়ে দায়িত্ব সমাধা করেছে। সম্প্রতি বিএসএফ- এর ডিজি ঢাকায় এসে উপদেশ দিয়ে গেছেন- বিএসএফ কর্তৃক সংঘটিত এসব হত্যাকান্ডকে আমরা যেন ‘হত্যা’ না বলে ‘সাধারন মৃত্যু’ বলে আক্ষায়িত করি।

অথচ, নাগরিকের জীবন রক্ষায় একটি রাষ্ট্র কতখানি গুরুত্ব দিতে পারে তার উদাহরন আমরা দেখতে পাই- গিলাদ শালিত নামে ইসরায়েলী একজন সেনাকে বন্দী করার দায়ে ইসরায়েল ফিলিস্তিনিদের গাজা সিটি আক্রমন করে ১৪০০ ফিলিস্তিনিকে হত্যা করেছে, ট্যাংক ও বোমার আঘাতে গুড়িয়ে দিয়েচে ৬ হাজারের বেশী দালান, অবশেষে ১০২৭ জন ফিলস্তিনি বন্দীর মুক্তির বিনিময়ে ছাড়িয়ে এনেছে সেই সেনাকে। অন্যদিকে বিএসএফ ফেলানীদেরকে হত্যা করলেও আমাদের স্বরাষ্ট্রমন্ত্রী ফেলানীকে নিজস্ব নাগরিক বলেই স্বীকার করতে চান না। এ থেকেই বুঝা যায়- নাগরিকের জীবন ও নিরাপত্তা রক্ষায় আমাদের সরকার ও বিরোধী দল কতটুকু গুরুত্ব দিয়ে থাকেন।

২। বিচারবহির্ভূত হত্যা, গুম ও ক্রসফায়ার বন্ধকরনঃ

দেশে বিচার বিভাগের সমান্তরালে চালু হয়েছে আরেকটি বিচার ব্যবস্থা- যা নাগরিককে আটকাবস্থায় হত্যা, ক্রসফায়ার ও গুম করে ফেলার ক্ষমতাপ্রাপ্ত। অধিকারের রিপোর্ট অনুযায়ী - আওয়ামী সরকারের গত তিন বছরে ৩৬৫ জনেরও বেশী ক্রসফায়ারে হত্যার শিকার হয়েছে, গুম হয়েছে ৩০ জন, কারাগারে ও আটকাবস্থায় এডভোকেট মমতাজসহ নির্যাতনে মারা গেছে ২১৫ জন। স্বাধীন বাংলাদেশে ক্রসফায়ার কালচার চালু হয় ১৯৭২-৭৫ সময়কালে যখন প্রায় ৪০ হাজার বিরোধীদলীয় কর্মীকে রক্ষী বাহিনী হত্যা করাছিল; সর্বহারা পার্টির প্রধান বিপ্লবী কমরেড সিরাজ সিকদারকে বন্দী অবস্থায় গুলি করে হত্যা করে তৎকালীন প্রধানমন্ত্রী সংসদে সদম্ভে উচ্চারণ করেছিলেন-‘কোথায় আজ সিরাজ সিকদার’।

বিএনপির গত সরকার এবং ১/১১-এর অবৈধ সরকারের মেয়াদে সংঘটিত ক্রসফায়ারের প্রতিবাদে শেখ হাসিনা সোচ্চার থাকলেও এখন লংকায় গিয়ে তিনি যেন নিজেই রাবন সেজে বসেছেন। এ্যামনেষ্টি ইন্টারন্যাশনাল, হিউম্যান রাইট ওয়াচ ইত্যাদি মানবাধিকার সংস্থা সরকারের এ প্যারালাল বিচার ব্যবস্থা বন্ধের আহবান জানালেও সরকার বিরোধী দলীয় নেতা-কর্মীদের মনে আতংক জিইয়ে রাখার উদ্দেশ্যেই এ মানবতাবিরোধী দমন কৌশল বজায় রেখে চলেছে।

৩। করিডোর প্রতিরোধ এবং রাষ্ট্রের নিরাপত্তা ও সার্বভৌমত্ব রক্ষাকরনঃ

নাগরিকদের জীবন রক্ষার মতই রাষ্ট্রের নিরাপত্তা ও সার্বভৌমত্ব রক্ষা করা না হলে সে রাষ্ট্র শুধুমাত্র নাম ও পতাকা সর্বস্ব রাষ্ট্রে পরিণত হতে বাধ্য। বর্তমান সরকার দেশের অর্থনৈতিক কৌশলগত সম্পদ চট্টগ্রাম ও মংলা সমূদ্রবন্দর, ভৈরব নদীবন্দর, সড়ক ও রেলপথ ইত্যাদি ব্যবহারের মাধ্যমে পণ্য ও সামরিক কনভয় চলাচলের জন্য ভারতকে কৌশলে করিডোর প্রদান করেছে। শেখ হাসিনা ২০১০ সালে ভারতে গিয়ে ৫০টি গোপন বিষয়ে সমঝোতা স্বারক স্বাক্ষর করে এসেছেন- যে বিষয়ে জাতি এখনো অন্ধকারে। ২০১১ সালের ৬ সেপ্টেম্বর ঢাকায় মনমোহন-হাসিনা স্বাক্ষরিত‘সহযোগিতার জন্য কাঠামো চুক্তি’-এর মাধ্যমে বাংলাদেশের বুক চিড়ে ট্রানজিট-করিডোর প্রদান সহ বাংলাদেশের অর্থনীতি, শিক্ষা ও যোগাযোগ ব্যবস্থা, সামরিক ক্ষেত্র ইত্যাদি সকল সেক্টরে ভারতের অনুপ্রবেশের সুযোগ সৃষ্টি করে দেয়া হয়েছে; চিরস্থায়ী হিসেবে স্বাক্ষরিত ঐ চুক্তি বাতিলের অধিকারও বাংলাদেশের হাতে রাখা হয়নি।

করিডোর দেয়ার ফলে বাংলাদেশী পণ্য ভারতের পূর্বাঞ্চলীয় ৭ রাজ্যে বাজার হারাতে বসেছে। সরকার, অর্থমন্ত্রী জনাব মুহিত ঘোষিত কিছু একটা নেবার বিনিময়ে ভারতকে এ করিডোর দিয়ে বাংলাদেশের বন্দর- শ্রমিকদের জন্য মজুরী উপার্জনের ব্যবস্থা করেছে বলে দাবী করছে। অর্থাৎ, দেশের বানিজ্যিক সমূদ্র বন্দরসহ সড়ক ও রেলপথ ভারতের কাছে ইজারা দিয়ে সরকার বাংলাদেশের রাষ্ট্রীয় নিরাপত্তা ও সার্বভৌমত্বের উপর চরম আঘাত এনেছেন এবং হাসিনা-মনমোহন চুক্তির মাধ্যমে জাতিকে চিরস্থায়ী গোলামীর জিঞ্জিরে আবদ্ধ করেছেন।

তিতাস নদীর উপর বাঁধ দিয়ে ভারতের পণ্যবাহী লরী চলাচল করছে। আওয়ামী লীগ সরকার কর্তৃক দেশের এত বড় স্বার্থহানি এবং অস্তিত্ব-বিনাশী করিডোর প্রদান ও চিরস্থায়ী গোলামী চুক্তি স্বাক্ষর করা হলেও বিরোধী দল কোন কার্যকরী ভূমিকা নেয়া থেকে নিজেদেরকে দূরে রেখেছেন। অথচ, জাতির অস্তিত্ব রক্ষার জন্য বাংলাদেশের স্বার্থ-সমর্পনকারী দালালদের সনাক্ত করে প্রতিহত করা জরুরী।

জাতীয়তাবাদীদের মধ্যে অনেকে আছেন- যারা জাতীয় নিরাপত্তা এবং সার্বভৌমত্বকে অগ্রাহ্য করে শুধুমাত্র আর্থিকভাবে লাভবান হলেই ভারতকে করিডোর দেয়া যায় বলে মনে করেন- সেসব বর্ণচোরা দালালদের সনাক্ত করাও জরুরী।

৪। পার্বত্য চট্টগ্রামের অখন্ডতা, সার্বভৌমত্ব এবং নাগরিকদের নাগরিক অধিকার রক্ষা করাঃ

পার্বত্য চট্টগ্রাম আয়তনে বাংলাদেশের দশভাগের একভাগ; এখানে ৭ লক্ষ বাঙ্গালী এবং ১৩টি উপজাতি মিলে ৫ লক্ষ - সর্বমোট ১২ লক্ষ লোকের বাস। ভারতের প্রত্যক্ষ সহায়তায় ১৯৭৫ সাল থেকে কিছু উগ্রপন্থী উপজাতির নেতৃত্বে সেখানে বিচ্ছিন্নতাবাদ এবং বাঙ্গালী নিধন তৎপরতা চলছে। ১৯৯৭ সালের ২রা ডিসেম্বর আওয়ামী লীগ সরকার চাকমা সশস্ত্র সন্ত্রাসী দলের প্রধান সন্তু লারমার সাথে ‘পার্বত্য শান্তি চুক্তি’ নামে এক কালো চুক্তি স্বাক্ষর করে – যার মাধ্যমে পার্বত্য চট্টগ্রামকে উপজাতীয় এলাকা হিসেবে ঘোষনা দিয়ে সেখানে উপজাতীয় শাসন ব্যবস্থা চালু করা হয় এবং পার্বত্য বাঙ্গালীদেরকে নাগরিক অধিকার-বিহীন দ্বিতীয় শ্রেনীর জনগোষ্ঠীতে পরিণত করা হয়।

চুক্তির পূর্বে প্রায় ৩০ হাজার মানুষকে হত্যা করা ছাড়াও চুক্তির পর এযাবত ৭০০-এরও বেশী মানুষকে উপজাতীয় সন্ত্রাসীরা হত্যা করেছে এবং ১৩০০-এরও বেশী মানুষকে অপহরন করেছে। ২০১১ সালের ডিসেম্বর মাসেও ৬ জন পার্বত্য বাঙ্গালীকে উপজাতীয় সন্ত্রাসীরা অপহরন করে নিয়ে যায়, যাদের মধ্যে ২ জনের লাশ এযাবত পাওয়া গেছে। আওয়ামী সরকার সশস্ত্র সন্ত্রাসীদের দখলে পুরো পার্বত্য চট্টগ্রাম ছেড়ে দিয়ে নিরাপত্তা বাহিনী তুলে আনার আত্মঘাতী সিদ্ধান্ত নিয়েছে। অন্যদিকে পার্বত্য চট্টগ্রামে বসত করা বা ভোটার হবার জন্য উপজাতীয় হেডম্যান/চেয়ারম্যান ও সার্কেল চীফদের কাছ থেকে সার্টিফিকেট প্রাপ্তির শর্তারোপ করে পার্বত্য বাঙ্গালীদেরকে উপজাতিদের মুখাপেক্ষী করা হয়েছে। দেশের ১৬ কোটি নাগরিকের সংবিধান প্রদত্ত নাগরিক অধিকার পার্বত্য চট্টগ্রামে অস্বীকৃত। দেশের হাইকোর্ট পার্বত্য আঞ্চলিক পরিষদ আইনকে অসাংবিধানিক ও অবৈধ বলে রায় দিলেও বর্তমান সরকার রিট দাখিল করে সে রায় ঠেকিয়ে রেখেছে।

এখন সকল নিরাপত্তা ক্যাম্প প্রত্যাহার করে সীমান্তবর্তী এ কৌশলগত অঞ্চলটিকে ভারতের মদদপুষ্ট ও এজেন্ট সন্তু লারমার হাতে সোপর্দ করতে সরকার তৎপর হলেও বিরোধী দল পার্বত্য চট্টগ্রামে সন্ত্রাস দমন; সেখানের অধিবাসীদের নাগরিক অধিকার এবং ভৌগোলিক নিরাপত্তা বিধানের লক্ষ্যে আওয়ামী সরকারের দেশবিরোধী পলিসির কোন কার্যকরী বিরোধীতা করছেনা।

৫। ভারতের পণ্য আগ্রাসন এবং বানিজ্যিক বৈষম্য দূরীকরণঃ

মালবাহী ট্রাক, মটর কার, সিএনজি বেবিট্যাক্সি, মটর সাইকেল থেকে শুরু করে - মাছ, গরু, শাড়ী, থ্রি-পিস, প্যান্ট-শার্ট, প্রসাধনী, মশার কয়েল, টুথপেষ্ট –অর্থাৎ বাজারে দৃশ্যমান প্রায় ৯০% পণ্যই ভারতীয়। আর দৃশ্যমান নয়- এমন পণ্য যেমন- ফেনসিডিল ও অন্যন্য মাদকদ্রব্যও আসে ভারত থেকে। বাংলাদেশ বছরে ভারতে রফতানী করে প্রায় ৩৫০ মিলিয়ন ডলারের পণ্য আর ভারত বাংলাদেশে রফতানী করে প্রায় ৩ দশমিক ২ বিলিয়ন ডলারের পণ্য; এছাড়া চোরাচালানীর মাধ্যমে পাচারকৃত পণ্যের মূল্যও প্রায় ৩ বিলিয়ন ডলার। এভাবে ভারত বাংলাদেশের ১৬ কোটি মানুষের বাজার দখল করলেও বাংলাদেশের পণ্য ভারতে রফতানীর ক্ষেত্রে শুল্ক ও অশুল্কীয় নানা প্রতিবন্ধকতা সৃষ্টি করে রেখেছে।

ভারতের পণ্য আগ্রাসনের কারনে বাংলাদেশের শিল্প উতপাদন বৃদ্ধি পাচ্ছেনা। বানিজ্যের এ বৈষম্য দূর করতে বাংলাদেশের উচিৎ- ভারত বাংলাদেশকে যত ডলারের বাংলাদেশী পণ্য ভারতে রফতানীর সুযোগ দেবে; বাংলাদেশও ভারতকে ঠিক তত ডলারের ভারতীয় পণ্য বাংলাদেশে রফতানীর সুযোগ দেবে।

ভারতীয় পণ্য আগ্রাসনের কারনে বাংলাদেশ যে একটি স্বয়ং সম্পূর্ন স্বাধীন দেশ-একথা বুঝার উপায় নেই। কিন্তু সরকার ও বিরোধী দলের কেহই ভারতীয় পণ্য আগ্রাসন থেকে বাংলাদেশের বাজারকে মুক্ত করতে এবং দেশীয় শিল্প-কারখানায় উৎপাদনে সক্ষম সামগ্রীগুলো নিজ দেশেই উৎপাদনের ব্যবস্থা নিয়ে শিল্পের প্রসার, কর্ম-সংস্থান ও আত্মনির্ভরশীল জাতি হিসেবে এ দেশকে গড়ে তোলার কোন বলিষ্ঠ উদ্যোগ গ্রহন করেননি।

৬। ভারত কর্তৃক বাংলাদেশকে আন্তর্জাতিক নদীসমূহের পানি থেকে বঞ্চিত করনঃ

ভারত বাংলাদেশের উপর দিয়ে বহমান ৫৪টি নদীর মধ্যে ৫২টি নদীর উপর বাঁধ তৈরী করে অবৈধভাবে উজানে এসব আন্তর্জাতিক নদীর পানি নিস্কাশন করে নিয়ে যাচ্ছে। ভারত গংগা নদীর উপর ফারাক্কা বাঁধ তৈরী করে বাংলাদেশের উত্তর-পশ্চিমাঞ্চলকে মরুভূমিতে পরিণত করেছে। বর্তমানে বরাক নদীর উপর টিপাইমুখ বাঁধ দিয়ে সিলেটের সুরমা-কুশিয়ারা এবং মেঘনা নদীকে শুকিয়ে মারার পদক্ষেপ নিয়েছে। আওয়ামী লীগ সরকার ইতিপূর্বে ফারাক্কার পানি-বন্টন চুক্তি সই করলেও চুক্তি অনুযায়ী কোন বছরেই বাংলাদেশ পানির ন্যায্য হিস্যা পায়নি। টিপাইমুখ বাঁধ নির্মানের বিষয়ে সরকারের পানিসম্পদ মন্ত্রীর ভাষ্য হলো- এটি ভারতের অভ্যন্তরীণ ব্যাপার; আর প্রধানমন্ত্রীর উপদেষ্টা গওহর রিজভীর ভাষ্য হলো- টিপাইমুখ বাঁধ তৈরী হলে বাংলাদেশ লাভবান হবে। তাই ভারত কর্তৃক ৫২টি নদীর বুকে বাঁধ দেয়ার বিরুদ্ধে সরকার নীরব।

অন্যদিকে ভারত কর্তৃক বাংলাদেশের নদীগুলোকে শুকিয়ে মারা এবং ভারত কর্তৃক পানি আগ্রাসনের স্বপক্ষে আওয়ামী সরকারের সহযোগিতামূলক ভূমিকার বিরুদ্ধে বিরোধী দলের কোন কার্যকরী ভূমিকা নেই। এমনকি, ১৮টি খালসহ বাংলাদেশের তিতাস নদীর উপর বাঁধ দিয়ে ভারতীয় মালবাহী ট্রাক চলাচল করলেও বিরোধী দল এতদিনেও কোন কার্যকরী প্রতিরোধ আন্দোলন গড়ে তোলেনি।

যৌথ নদীসমূহের পানি বন্টন বিষয়ে বিভিন্ন আন্তর্জাতিক আইন ও কনভেনশন থাকলেও সরকার বা বিরোধী দল কখনই জাতিসংঘ সহ আন্তর্জাতিক ফোরামে ভারত কর্তৃক একতরফাভাবে পানি প্রত্যাহার ও পানি আগ্রাসনের বিরুদ্ধে জাতির ন্যায্য দাবী উত্থাপনের উদ্যোগ নেয়নি।

৭। ভারতের হিন্দী আগ্রাসন থেকে বাংলা সংস্কৃতিকে রক্ষা করাঃ

বাংলাদেশে কয়েক ডজন হিন্দী চ্যানেল বছরে হাজার কোটি ডলারের ব্যবসা করছে। বর্তমান সরকার বাংলাদেশের প্রেক্ষাগৃহগুলোতে ভারতীয় ছবি প্রদর্শনের অনুমতি দিয়েছে- যার ফলে বাংলা চলচ্চিত্র শিল্প মাঠে মারা যাবে। প্রতি বছর কয়েকশত ভারতীয় গায়ক, নৃত্যশিল্পী এবং অভিনেতা-অভিনেত্রী বাংলাদেশে এসে অনুষ্ঠান করে। ২০১১ সালে ঢাকায় বিশ্বকাপ ক্রিকেটের উদ্বোধনী অনুষ্ঠানকে ভারতীয় কালচারাল প্রোগ্রাম বললে অত্যুক্তি হবেনা। একই বছর ২৪শে মার্চে (পিলখানা হত্যাযজ্ঞের ২য় বার্ষিকীর আগের রাত) ঢাকায় আয়োজিত হলো ট্রাইনেশন কনশার্টের নামে মূলতঃ ভারতীয় শিল্পীদের নাচ-গানের বলিয়ডী অনুষ্ঠান। বাংলাদেশী টিভি চ্যানেলগুলো ভারতে প্রবেশাধিকার পাচ্ছেনা। পহেলা বৈশাখে বাংগালী সংস্কৃতির নামে যা পালন করা হয়- তার সাথে এদেশের ৯৯ শতাংশ মানুষের কোন সম্পর্ক আছে কি?

ভারতের বাঙ্গালী কবি রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুরকে নিয়ে এদেশে সরকারী খরচে যে মাতামাতি করা হয়- তা কোলকাতাতেও করা হয়না। সম্প্রতি শেখ হাসিনা ঘোষনা দিয়েছেন- রবীন্দ্রনাথের নামে বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় প্রতিষ্ঠা করবেন; কিন্তু প্রশ্ন হলো- তাতে কি একথা ইতিহাস থেকে মুছে ফেলা সম্ভব হবে যে- রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর কোলকাতার গড়ের মাঠে বিশাল মিটিং আয়োজন করে ঢাকা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় প্রতিষ্ঠার বিরুদ্ধে কঠোর আন্দোলন গড়ে তুলেছিলেন; এমনকি তিনি অত্যন্ত অমানবিক সতিদাহ প্রথা (হিন্দু বিধবা রমনী কর্তৃক জীবিতাবস্থায় নিজ স্বামীর চিতার আগুনে পুড়ে বাধ্যতামূলক সহমরন) সমর্থন করে কবিতা রচনা করেছিলেন – “জ্বল জ্বল চিতা দ্বিগুন দ্বিগুন, পরাণ সপিবে বিধবা বালা” ! এরুপ বিভৎস সহমরনের যন্ত্রণা ও দৃশ্য কি পাঠক কল্পনাও করতে পারেন ?

মুয়াজ্জিনের আজানের শব্দকে বেশ্যার খদ্যের ডাকার শব্দের সাথে তুলনা করতে পারেন-এমন ব্যক্তিরা (কবির চৌধুরী) যদি বাংলাদেশের জাতীয় কবি/অধ্যাপক হিসেবে আক্ষায়িত হন- তাহলে সে জাতির সংস্কৃতি কোলকাতার বাংলার মত ধীরে ধীরে হারিয়ে যাবে- এটাই স্বাভাবিক। অথচ আজ বাংলাদেশে কবি কাজী নজরুল ইসলাম, মাইকেল মধুসূধন দত্ত, জীবনানন্দ দাশ, জসীম উদ্দীন, কায়কোবাদ, ফররুখ আহমেদ, সৈয়দ আলী আহসান ইত্যাদি গুনী কবি-সাহিত্যিককে কতটুকু মর্যাদা দেয়া হয় ?

মধ্যবিত্ত পরিবারের ঘরে ঘরে হিন্দী চ্যানেলের অনুপ্রবেশ- এখন একটি জাতীয় সমস্যা; কেননা এটি জাতীয় সংস্কৃতির প্রতি বিরাট হুমকিস্বরুপ। আমাদের অধিকাংশ বড় বড় কবি-সাহিত্যিকগন তরুণ-তরুণীদের জন্য যৌন সুরসুরিদায়ক বই, নাটক ও ফিকশন লিখেই মহা খ্যাতিমান; জাতীয় স্বার্থ সংশ্লিষ্ট ইস্যু নিয়ে গভেষনা এবং জাতির সংস্কৃতি, ঐক্য, স্বাধীনতা-সার্বভৌমত্ব রক্ষা –ইত্যাদি বিষয়ে চেতনা বিকাশে তাদের অনেকেই উদাসীন। এমতাবস্থায়, আমাদের জাতীয় সংস্কৃতির বিকাশ এবং বিজাতীয় অপসংস্কৃতি রোধে সরকার ও বিরোধী দলের কার্যকরী পরিকল্পনা হাতে নেয়া জরুরী।

৮। বিচার বিভাগকে দলীয় প্রভাব থেকে মুক্তকরণঃ

ক্ষমতাসীন দলের প্রতি আনুগত্যশীল বিচারক নিয়োগ, প্রধান বিচারপতিকে সরকারী ত্রাণভান্ডার থেকে আর্থিক সহায়তা প্রদান করে ক্ষমতাসীন দলের নির্দেশিত রায় আদায়করন (যেমন - ৫ম সংশোধনী ও তত্বাবধায়ক সরকার ব্যবস্থা বাতিলকরন) এবং রাজনৈতিক বিবেচনায় ক্ষমতাসীন দলের প্রধান নেত্রীসহ অন্যান্নদের বিরুদ্ধে দায়েরকৃত ৭১০০টি দূর্নীতি ও ক্রিমিনাল মামলা প্রত্যাহার করে নেয়া এবং বিরোধী দলীয় নেতৃবৃন্দকে নূতন নূতন মামলা দিয়ে হয়রানী করা- ইত্যাদির কারনে বর্তমানে বাংলাদেশে আইনের শাসন উপস্থিত নেই বলেই ওয়াকিবহাল মহল মনে করেন।

বিরোধী দলের গণতান্ত্রিক আন্দোলন ঠেকাতে যত্র-তত্র ১৪৪ ধারা জারী (২০১১ সালে ১৪৪ ধারা জারি করে ১০৩টি সভা-সমাবেশ বন্ধ করে দেয়াহয়েছে), গণ-হুলিয়া জারী, গণ-গ্রেফতার, ভ্রাম্যমান আদালত বসিয়ে আন্দোলনকারীদেরকে কোনরুপ আত্মরক্ষার সুযোগ না দিয়ে তাৎক্ষনিক দন্ড প্রদান, সিটিং বিচারপতি কর্তৃক লন্ডনে দলীয় মিটিং ও টিভি টক-শোতে অংশগ্রহন এবং সর্বোপরি- নবনিযুক্ত প্রধান বিচারপতি কর্তৃক ক্ষমতাসীন দলের প্রয়াত নেতার স্বপ্ন বাস্তবায়নের ঘোষনা-ইত্যাদি বর্তমান বিচার ব্যবস্থাকে দলীয়করনেরই স্পষ্ট প্রমান বহন করে।

সরকার আদালতের ঘাড়ে বন্দুক রেখে নিজেদের পছন্দমত রায় আদায় করে নিচ্ছে, আদালত কর্তৃক তত্বাবধায়ক সরকার ব্যবস্থা বাতিল করিয়ে দেশে গভীর রাজনৈতিক সংকট সৃষ্টি করা হয়েছে। এমনকি, আওয়ামী লীগের প্রয়াত নেতাকে ‘স্বাধীনতার ঘোষক’ ও ‘জাতির পিতা’ হিসেবে ঘোষনা দেয়ার রাজনৈতিক সিদ্ধান্তও আদালতের মাধ্যমে আদায় করা হয়েছে।

আদালত জিয়া প্রবর্তিত বহুদলীয় গণতন্ত্রের সূচনাকারী ৫ম সংশোধনী বাতিল করে কার্যতঃ ৪র্থ সংশোধনীর একদলীয় বাকশালী ব্যবস্থাকেই পূনপ্রতিষ্ঠিত করেছে। লক্ষ্যনীয় যে, আদালত ১/১১-এর ক্যু-কারী এবং জরুরী আইনের চাবুক চালিয়ে দীর্ঘ ২ বছর যাবত অবৈধভাবে রাষ্ট্রীয় ক্ষমতা ভোগকারীদের বিরুদ্ধে এযাবত কোন ভূমিকা গ্রহন করেনি। এ্যাটর্ণী জেনারেল ক্ষমতাসীন দলের রাজনৈতিক কর্মী হিসেবে আচরন করে চলেছেন এবং আদালতের অনুমতি নিয়েই সরকার নির্দেশিত পুলিশ ও গোয়েন্দা সংস্থা অভিযুক্তদেরকে রিমান্ডে নিয়ে বর্বরোচিত নির্যাতন চালাচ্ছে; যে নির্যাতনের উদাহরন হলো- আমার দেশ পত্রিকার ভারপ্রাপ্ত সম্পাদক মাহমুদুর রহমানকে রিমান্ডে নিয়ে গিয়ে বিবস্ত্র করে নির্যাতন আর বিরোধী দলীয় কেন্দ্রীয় নেতা সালাউদ্দিন চৌধুরীকে আংগুলের নখ তুলে ফেলে নির্যাতন।

বিরোধী দল দলীয়কৃত আদালতের এহেন রায় ও কর্মকান্ডের প্রতিকার করাতো দূরের কথা; স্বয়ং বিরোধী দলীয় নেত্রীও সরকার প্রভাবিত আদালতের রায়ে নিজ বাড়ী থেকে উৎখাতের শিকার হয়েছেন। তাই, জাতীয় স্বার্থেই বিচার ব্যবস্থাকে দলীয়-মুক্ত করতে হবে।

৯। সুষ্ঠু ও অবাধ নির্বাচন অনুষ্ঠানের জন্য নির্দলীয় ও নিরপেক্ষ তত্বাবধায়ক সরকার ব্যবস্থা পূণঃপ্রতিষ্ঠা করনঃ

বাংলাদেশে সরকার গঠন অর্থই - নিজ দলীয় নেতাকে মহিমান্বিতকরন, দলীয় আদর্শ পুরো জাতির উপর চাপিয়ে দেয়া, ইচ্ছে মত ইতিহাস বিকৃত করা, ক্ষমতা ও অর্থবিত্ত লাভের আলাদীনের চেরাগ হাতে পাওয়া এবং রিমান্ড, নির্যাতন ও হামলা-মামলা দিয়ে বিরোধী দল ও মতকে দমন করে ক্ষমতাকে চিরস্থায়ীভাবে পাকাপোক্ত করার ব্যবস্থা করা। এসব কারনে কোন দলীয় সরকারের অধীনেই নির্বাচন সুষ্ঠু ও অবাধ হবার বাস্তব পরিস্থিতি বাংলাদেশে বিদ্যমান নেই বলেই সংবিধানে ১৩তম সংশোধনীর মাধ্যমে তত্বাবধায়ক সরকার ব্যবস্থা প্রবর্তিত হয়েছিল। কিন্তু এবার আওয়ামী লীগের আন্দোলনের ফসল ১/১১-র জরুরী আইনের সরকারের পরিচালিত নির্বাচনের মাধ্যমে ক্ষমতায় এসে আওয়ামী লীগ সরকার নিজ প্রভাবিত বিচারকের মাধ্যমে রায় আদায় করিয়ে এনে তত্বাবধায়ক সরকার ব্যবস্থা বাতিল করে দিয়েছেন এবং দলীয় সরকারের অধীনেই পরবর্তী নির্বাচন অনুষ্ঠিত করে তাদের ভীশন-২০২১/২০২৫ বাস্তবায়নের ঘোষনা দিয়েছেন। সুতরাং, বুঝতেই পারছেন----!

সরকারের ক্ষমতা কুক্ষিগত করার পরিকল্পনায় এখন আর রাখ্-ঢাক্ নেই। এমতাবস্থায় বিরোধী দল দলীয় সরকারের অধীনে নির্বাচন বয়কট ও প্রতিহত করার ঘোষনা দিলেও বাস্তবে কতটুকু তার বাস্তবায়ন ঘটাতে সক্ষম হবে- সেটা ভবিষ্যতের ব্যপার। তবে, এ যাবৎ সরকার কর্তৃক কয়েক ডজন সিরিয়াস ইস্যু তৈরী করা হলেও বিরোধী দলের শুধুমাত্র পর্যবেক্ষকের ভূমিকা পালন- পুরো জাতিকে হতাশায় নিমজ্জিত করেছে।

১০। জাতীয় নিরাপত্তায় আঘাতকারী পিলখানা হত্যাযজ্ঞের মূল ষড়যন্ত্রকারীদেরকে সনাক্তকরণঃ

২০০৯ সালের ২৫-২৬ ফেব্রুয়ারী ঢাকা সেনানিবাসের অদূরে অবস্থিত বাংলাদেশের সীমান্তরক্ষী বাহিনী বিডিআর-এর সদর দপ্তর পিলখানায় সংঘটিত এক হত্যাকান্ডে ৫৭ জন বীর ও চৌকশ সেনা অফিসারকে সামরিক ইউনিফর্ম পরিহিত অবস্থায় হত্যা করা হয়। বিডিআর সদস্যদের বিদ্রোহ হিসেবে উক্ত ঘটনাকে রুপদান করা হলেও এটি ছিল একটি পূর্ব-পরিকল্পিত অপারেশন যার মিশন ছিল- সীমান্ত নিরাপত্তায় নিয়োজিত সেনা অফিসারদেরকে নির্মূল করে বাংলাদেশের নিরাপত্তা ব্যবস্থাকে ধবংস করা এবং মুক্তিযুদ্ধে গৌরবময় ভূমিকা পালনকারী বিডিআর বাহিনীটিকেই বিলুপ্ত করে দিয়ে আগ্রাসন প্রতিরোধে অক্ষম ভারত-প্রশিক্ষিত একটি অনুগত বাহিনী সীমান্তে মোতায়েন করা। এ লক্ষ্য বাস্তবায়নে পিলখানায় ঘটনার পূর্বেই সাধারন সৈনিকদেরকে উত্তেজিত করার উদ্দেশ্যে লিফলেট ছড়ানো হয় এবং মিশন বাস্তবায়নকারী গ্রুপ ডিএডি তৌহিদের নেতৃত্বে ক্ষমতাসীন দলের কয়েকজন শীর্ষ নেতার বাসায় গোপন পরিকল্পনা বৈঠকে অংশ নেয়।

বিডিআর-এর ডিজি জেনারেল শাকিলকে সকালে হত্যা করার পর হত্যাকারীরা প্রধানমন্ত্রীর সাথে মিটিং করে ‘সাধারন ক্ষমা’ লাভ করে পিলখানায় ফেরত গিয়েই মহা উল্লাসে অধিকাংশ অফিসারকে খুঁজে খুঁজে বের করে হত্যা করে। দূষ্কৃতিকারীদেরকে দমনের জন্য প্রদর্শন স্বরুপ ট্যাংক আনা হলেও রহস্যজনক কারনে ট্যাংক বহরকে পিলখানা কমপ্লেক্সে প্রবেশ করার অনুমোদন দেয়া হয়নি। পিলখানার বাইরে শত শত সেনা-র‍্যাব-পুলিশ সদস্য সশস্ত্র অবস্থায় হাজির থাকা সত্বেও হত্যাকারীরা ৫৭ জন অফিসারকে হত্যা করার পর মৃতদেহগুলি আগুনে পুড়িয়ে গণকবরে পুতে ফেলার, অস্ত্রাগার লূট করার, সদর দপ্তরের গুরুত্বপূর্ণ সকল রেকর্ড ধ্বংস করার, অফিসারদের পারিবারিক বাসস্থানে হামলা করার এবং সবশেষে শত শত অস্ত্রসহ পিলখানা কমপ্লেক্স থেকে অবাধে সটকে পড়ার সুযোগ পায়; পিলখানার ভেতরের এত ঘটনার কোন খবর - দেশের শক্তিশালী গোয়েন্দা সংস্থা ডিজিএফআইকেও সংগ্রহের সুযোগ দেয়া হয়নি।

তৎকালীন সেনাপ্রধান ও ১/১১-এর ক্যু পরিকল্পনাকারী জেনারেল মঈন ইউ আহমেদ- এ ৫৭ জন অফিসার, তাদের পরিবার এবং একটি নিরাপত্তা বাহিনীর সদর দপ্তরকে রক্ষার উদ্দেশ্যে কোন কার্যকরী রেসকিউ অপারেশন পরিচালনা থেকে বিরত থাকতে বাধ্য হয়েছেন - তার কারন তিনিই ভালো জানেন।

পিলখানা হত্যাযজ্ঞের পেছনে তথাকথিত মৌলবাদী জঙ্গীরা দায়ী বলে বানিজ্যমন্ত্রী ফারুক খান, স্বরাষ্ট্র মন্ত্রী সাহারা খাতুন, যুবলীগ নেতা নানক- ইত্যাদি নেতারা পিলখানার গেইটের সামনে দাঁড়িয়ে এবং মিডিয়ায় বক্তৃতা-বিবৃতি দিয়ে দেশবাসী ও বিশ্ববাসীর দৃষ্টিকে বিভ্রান্ত করার চেষ্টা করেছেন। সরকার কর্তৃক বিএনপি-কে দায়ী করার অপচেষ্টাও হয়েছে। বন্দী অবস্থায় প্রায় ৫০ জনেরও অধিক বিডিআর সদস্য রহস্যজনক কারনে মারা যায়; ফলে চাপা পড়ে যায়- ঘটনার অনেক মূল্যবান এভিডেন্স। সেনাবাহিনী কর্তৃক পরিচালিত তদন্তে ডিএডি তৌহিদ গ্রুপের সাথে ঘটনার পূর্বে গোপন বৈঠককারী আওয়ামী লীগ নেতা মিঃ নানক, মির্জা আজম এবং ব্যারিষ্টার তাপসকে জিজ্ঞাসাবাদকরন প্রক্রিয়া থেকে বাইরে রাখা হয়েছে। ডিএডি তৌহিদের সাথে এসব নেতার মোবাইল কথোপকথনের রেকর্ডও এখন লাপাত্তা বলে শোনা যায়।

স্বাধীনতার ঘোষক, মুক্তিযুদ্ধের সংগঠক ও সেক্টর কমান্ডার, সাবেক সেনাপ্রধান এবং নিহত প্রেসিডেন্টের বিধবা পত্নী হিসেবে খালেদা জিয়াকে এরশাদ সরকার কর্তৃক মঈনুল রোডের বাড়িটি সরকারী বিধান অনুসারে লীজ দেয়া হয়েছিল; এখন খালেদা জিয়াকে উৎখাত করে বিডিআর-এর শহীদ পরিবারদেরকে বেগম জিয়ার বাড়ীর জাগায় পূনর্বাসিত করা হলে- তা হবে- সরকার কর্তৃক পিলখানার শহীদ পরিবারদেরকে ব্যবহার করে রাজনৈতিক প্রতিহিংসা চরিতার্থকরন।

পিলখানা ষড়যন্ত্রের নেপথ্য নায়কদেরকে খুঁজে বের না করা পর্যন্ত সেনাবাহিনী - জাতীয় নিরাপত্তা ও সার্বভৌমত্ব রক্ষায় সক্ষম বাহিনী হিসেবে- জাতির আস্থা পূণঃপ্রতিষ্ঠিত হবেনা।

পিলখানা ষড়যন্ত্রের পরিকল্পনাকারী, ষড়যন্ত্র বাস্তবায়নে সহায়তাকারী এবং ৫৭ জন সেনা অফিসারকে রক্ষায় যারা ব্যর্থ- তাদের সবাইকে জবাবদিহিতার আওতায় আনা- এখন জাতীয় দাবী।

১১। সংবিধান থেকে আওয়ামীলীগ সরকার কর্তৃক বাতিলকৃত ‘আল্লাহর উপর অগাধ আস্থা ও বিশ্বাষ’ পূণঃপ্রতিষ্ঠা করাঃ

বাংলাদেশের মুসলিম, হিন্দু, খৃষ্টান, বৌদ্ধ –সবাই ধর্মপরায়ন। এ সকল ধর্মগ্রন্থেই এক ও অদ্বিতীয় স্রষ্টা মহান আল্লাহর কথাই বলা হয়েছে; যদিও বিভিন্ন ধর্ম বিশ্বাষীগন তাঁকে আল্লাহ, ঈশ্বর, ভগবান ইত্যাদি নামে ডেকে থাকেন।

বর্তমান বাংলাদেশ ১৯৪৭ সালে সংখ্যা গরিষ্ঠ মুসলিম জনসংখ্যা হওয়ার কারনেই পশ্চিমবংগ থেকে আলাদা হয়ে পাকিস্তান নামে স্বাধীন রাষ্ট্র হিসেবে আত্মপ্রকাশ করতে পেরেছিল; নতুবা এটি আজ পশ্চিমবংগের মত ভারত শাসিত একটি রাজ্য হিসেবেই পরাধীন থাকতো। তাই বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা অর্জন এবং স্বাধীন বাংলাদেশী জাতি গঠনের মূলে- ধর্ম বিশ্বাষই মূল নির্ণায়ক।

ইসলাম, হিন্দু, বৌদ্ধ, খৃষ্টান- ইত্যাদি সকল ধর্মের মূল যে মহান সৃষ্টিকর্তার উপর বিশ্বাষ- তা জাতীয় ঐক্য সাধনের জন্য দেশের সংবিধানে বহিঃপ্রকাশ হওয়াই বাঞ্চনীয়। স্বাধীন বাংলাদেশে সকল ধর্মের মানুষের ধর্ম বিশ্বাষকে রাষ্ট্রের মূলনীতির মর্যাদা দেয়া- জাতীয় অস্তিত্ব রক্ষার জন্যই একান্ত অপরিহার্য।

আমেরিকার ডলারে লিখা- ইন গড উই ট্রাষ্ট, যুক্তরাজ্যের পতাকাতে তিনটি ক্রস অংকিত, ভারতের পতাকাতে অশোকচক্র তথা ধর্মীয় প্রতীক বিদ্যমান। যুক্তরাজ্যে খৃষ্টান পার্টি এবং ভারতে হিন্দুত্ববাদী শিব সেনা, বজরং দল, রাষ্ট্রীয় স্বয়ং সেবক সংঘ (আরএসএস) ও বিজেপি বিদ্যমান; বাংলাদেশে হিন্দু-বৌদ্ধ-খৃষ্টান ঐক্য পরিষদ ও আওয়ামী উলামা লীগ থাকলে এখানে ধর্মকে আদর্শ হিসেবে গ্রহনকারী রাজনৈতিক দল নিষিদ্ধ হওয়াটা- গনতান্ত্রিকতা হতে পারেনা। ভারতে খৃষ্টান পাদ্রীদেরকে জ্যান্ত পুড়িয়ে মারা, দলিত হিন্দুদেরকে নিম্ন বর্ণের মানুষ বলে অস্পৃশ্য গণ্য করা, গুজরাটে সাম্প্রদায়িক দাঙ্গা বাধিয়ে হাজার হাজার মুসলমানকে কুঁপিয়ে ও পুড়িয়ে মারা, মুসলমানদের কয়েকশত বছর পুরনো বাবরি মসজিদ হিন্দু উগ্রবাদীদের দ্বারা মহা উল্লাসে ডেমোলিস করা এবং আদালতের কাছ থেকে অন্যায্য রায় বের করা ইত্যাদি যদি ভারতের ধর্মনিরপেক্ষতার উদাহরন হয়- তাহলে আমরা সে ধর্মনিরপেক্ষতা গ্রহন করতে পারিনা। কেননা, সাম্প্রদায়িক সুসম্পর্ক বজায় রাখার ব্যাপারে ইসলাম প্রদর্শিত নির্দেশনাই পৃথিবীতে অনুকরনযোগ্য আদর্শ।

পাশ্চাত্যে খৃষ্টান ধর্ম যাজকদের চার্চ-ভিত্তিক প্রতাপ, বাইবেলের মনগড়া ধর্মীয় ব্যাক্ষা প্রদান, বাইবেলের বিভিন্ন ভাষায় অনুবাদকরন নিয়ে পোপ পল-৪ এর নির্দেশে অনুদিত বাইবেলসহ সেইসব বাইবেলের সংরক্ষনকারী অসংখ্য মানুষকে পুড়িয়ে মারা- ইত্যাদি অতিরঞ্জিত বাড়াবাড়ির কারনে চার্চকে রাষ্ট্র পরিচালনা থেকে দূরে রাখার উদ্যেশ্যেই ‘সেক্যুলারিজম’ চালু হয়। সেই সেক্যুলারিজমের বংগানুবাদ ‘ধর্মনিরপেক্ষতা’ দেয়া হলেও সেই ধর্মনিরপেক্ষতা বা সেক্যুলারিজম বাংলাদেশে অপ্রাসংগিক।

খৃষ্টান ধর্মের নিয়ন্ত্রনকারী ধর্মনিরপেক্ষতা আর ইসলাম নির্দেশিত ‘সকল ধর্মের স্বাধীনতা ও অন্যান্য ধর্মবেত্তাগনের প্রতি শ্রদ্ধাবোধ’ -এক কথা নয়। যেমন – যীশু খৃষ্টকে স্রষ্টার বার্তাবাহী (রাসুল) হিসেবে স্বীকার না করলে কেহ মুসলিমই হতে পারেনা। মাদার মেরীকে নিয়ে খোদ বাইবেলেও কোন আলাদা অধ্যায় নেই; অথচ পবিত্র কোরানে ‘সুরা মারিয়াম’ নামে একটি পৃথক অধ্যায় রাখা হয়েছে যেখানে তাঁকে সবচেয়ে পবিত্র মহিলা বলে ঘোষনা দেয়া হয়েছে। অন্যদিকে, হিন্দু ধর্মের পবিত্র গ্রন্থ উপনিষদে বলা আছে- ‘একাম ইভাদ্বিতিয়াম’ ["Ekam evadvitiyam" "He is One only without a second." Chandogya Upanishad 6:2:1] এবং ‘না তাসিয়া প্রাতিমা আস্তি’ ["Na tasya pratima asti" "There is no likeness of Him." Svetasvatara Upanishad 4:19] অর্থাত- ‘ভগবান এক ও অদ্বিতীয়’ এবং ‘ঈশ্বরের কোন প্রতিমা নেই’। সুতরাং, বাংলাদেশের সকল ধর্মপ্রাণ মানুষের মৌলিক বিশ্বাষের ভিত্তি যে- এক ও অদ্বিতীয় আল্লাহ/গড বা ঈশ্বর; সে এক ও অদ্বিতীয় সত্তার স্বীকৃতি আমাদের সংবিধানে স্থান পেলে তা সকলের মধ্যে বিশ্বাষগত ঐক্য সৃষ্টি করবে- যা জাতীয় ঐক্য প্রতিষ্ঠার জন্য অপরিহার্য।

বর্তমান সরকার সংবিধান থেকে ‘মহান আল্লাহর প্রতি অগাধ আস্থা ও বিশ্বাষ’ ঘোষনাটি তুলে দিয়ে বাংলাদেশের সকল ধর্মের মানুষের সার্বজনীন বিশ্বাষের মূলে আঘাত করেছেন। সংবিধান থেকে জাতির বিশ্বাষের ভিত্তি এ কথাটিকে তুলে দিয়ে সরকার পুরো জাতিকে নাস্তিক হিসেবে ঘোষনা দেয়ার ধৃষ্টতাপূর্ণ অনধিকার চর্চা করেছেন। তাই সংবিধানে জাতির এ সার্বজনীন বিশ্বাষকে পূণঃপ্রতিষ্ঠিত করা- প্রতিটি নাগরিকের কর্তব্য।

একদিকে সংবিধান থেকে মহান আল্লাহর প্রতি বিশ্বাষকে বাতিল করে দেয়া অন্যদিকে নির্বাচন আসলেই দলীয় নেতাগন কর্তৃক হজ্জ ও ওমরা পালন করে মিডিয়াতে প্রচার, মাথায় হিজাব বেঁধে মোনাজাতরত অবস্থায় ছবি তুলে লক্ষ লক্ষ পোষ্টার বানিয়ে সারা দেশে বিতরন- এসব আচরন মানুষের কাছে প্রতারণাপূর্ণ বলে বিবেচিত হবার ঝুঁকিই বেশী নয় কি ?

‘স্রষ্টার উপর বিশ্বাষ’ থাকা ব্যপারটি যেহেতু শুধুমাত্র মুসলমানদের একচেটিয়া অধিকার নয় বরং সকল ধর্মের মানুষের মৌলিক বিশ্বাষগত অধিকার- সেহেতু- এ বিশ্বাষকে আমাদের জাতীয় বিশ্বাষ হিসেবেই সংবিধানে পূনঃপ্রতিষ্ঠিত করতে হবে। ক্ষমতাসীন দলের নাস্তিক্যবাদী বিশ্বাষের বিপরীতে প্রধান বিরোধী দল বা জোটের ভূমিকার প্রতি দেশবাসীর দৃষ্টি থাকবে।

১২। উপসংহারঃ

আলোচ্চ নিবন্ধে গুরুত্বপূর্ন ১১টি জাতীয় ইস্যু সনাক্ত করার প্রয়াস পেয়েছি। নিবন্ধের কলেবর সীমিত রাখার স্বার্থে যে বিষয়গুলো এখানে আলোচনা করার সুযোগ হয়নি - তার কয়েকটি হলোঃ

ক। প্রতিরক্ষায় সক্ষম একটি কম্ব্যাট ইফিসিয়েন্ট সেনাবাহিনী গড়ে তোলা, একই সাথে একটি দক্ষ ইন্টেলিজেন্স ও কাউন্টার ইন্টেলিজেন্স সংস্থা গড়ে তোলা।

খ। শিক্ষাংগনে সন্ত্রাস দূরীকরন সহ গোটা শিক্ষা ব্যবস্থাকে আন্তর্জাতিক মানে উন্নীতকরন।

গ। পুরো যুবসমাজকে দক্ষ জনশক্তি হিসেবে গড়ে তোলা এবং ব্যাপকভাবে জনশক্তি রফতানীকরন।

ঘ। শিল্পে স্বয়ং সম্পূর্ণতা অর্জন এবং ব্যাপক কর্মসংস্থান।

ঙ। বহিঃশক্তির এজেন্ট হিসেবে ক্রিয়াশীল সকল সন্ত্রাসী গ্রুপ নির্মূলকরন এবং সাম্প্রদায়িক ও রাজনৈতিক সহিংসতা দমনকরন।

চ। স্থল ও সমূদ্র সীমা চিন্হিতকরন এবং জাতীয় খনিজ সম্পদ সংরক্ষন করন।

ছ। দূর্নীতি দমন কমিশনকে সরকারী প্রভাব-মুক্ত করন; শেয়ার বাজারের লুটেরা সহ দূর্নীতিবাজদেরকে চিন্হিতকরন এবং অর্থনৈতিক সেক্টরে ট্রান্সপারেন্সি ও জবাবদিহিতা নিশ্চিত করে জাতিকে দূর্নীতির শৃংখল-মুক্ত করন।

জ। বৈদেশিক সম্পর্কের ক্ষেত্রে ট্রান্সপারেন্সি বজায় এবং জাতীয় স্বার্থ (অর্থনৈতিক, নিরাপত্তা ও সার্বভৌমত্ব) রক্ষার প্রক্রিয়া নির্ধারন।

ঝ। দূর্নীতিবাজ, ক্রিমিনাল এবং অদক্ষ ও টাউট প্রকৃতির লোকদের কবল থেকে জাতীয় রাজনীতিকে মুক্তকরন।

ঞ। ধর্ষন, এসিড নিক্ষেপ, যৌতুক দাবী, ইভটিজিং, নারী ও শিশু নির্যাতন- এর বিরুদ্ধে দূর্বার সামাজিক আন্দোলন গড়ে তোলা এবং আইনের কঠোর প্রয়োগ নিশ্চিতকরন।

ট। নিস্বঃ ও অসহায় মানুষের অন্ন, বস্ত্র, আশ্রয় ও চিকিৎসা সেবা নিশ্চিত করন।

ঠ। ধর্ম, বর্ণ এবং দল-মত নির্বিশেষে প্রত্যেক নাগরিকের বাক্-স্বাধীনতা ও মানবাধিকার নিশ্চিত করন।

ড। ‘সহযোগিতার জন্য কাঠামো চুক্তি’ নামক ভারতের সাথে স্বাক্ষরিত চিরস্থায়ী গোলামী চুক্তির জিঞ্জির থেকে বাংলাদেশকে মুক্ত করন।

আমাদের বিদগ্ধ বুদ্ধিজীবি, শিক্ষাবীদ, গভেষক, বিশেষজ্ঞ এবং দেশপ্রেমিক রাজনীতিকগন জাতীয় ইস্যুগুলো সনাক্তকরন এবং সেগুলো রক্ষায় জাতীয় ঐকমত্য সৃষ্টিতে এগিয়ে আসলেই- আমরা শক্তিশালী জাতি হিসেবে বিশ্বে প্রতিষ্ঠিত হতে পারবো; সেই স্বর্ণালী দিনের প্রত্যাশায় - আসুন সকলে মিলে নন্দিত শিল্পী আব্দুল জব্বারের এই গানটি গাই-

আমাদের বন্দী করে যদি ওরা ভাবে-

দুনিয়ায় পাপের ভারে পূণ্য গেছে ডুবে,

ভুল ভুল ভুল কত বড় ভুল

আমাদের সন্তানেরা জেনো সে ভুল ভেঙ্গে দেবে।।

তারিখঃ ১৬ জানুয়ারী, ২০১২

ইমেইলঃ farukbd5@yahoo.com

India Military Eyes Combined Threat

2012-01-17T07:56:00.000+06:00

By Nitin Gokhale

The Diplomat – January 17, 2012

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may have told the country’s parliament last month that he doesn’t expect an attack by China, but

India

’s military is taking no chances.

The world’s second-largest army, which celebrated its 64th Army Day on January 15, is on the cusp of implementing a major transformation in its organizational structure and war strategies to meet a possible combined threat from China and its ally

Pakistan

The change follows more than half a decade of annual exercises involving one of India’s three strike corps and a desert corps, which have engaged in operations to fine-tune a strategy that would enable India to take Pakistan by surprise.

Under this concept, the defensive corps close to the border with Pakistan have been re-designated “pivot” corps, and have been handed enhanced offensive elements under integrated battle groups (IBG) that consist of division-sized forces comprising armor, artillery and aviation assets designed to swiftly hit Pakistan before the strike corps, located deeper inside India, would be able to mobilize.

This is supposed to offer India the so-called “cold start” option, under which the IBGs would swing into action in less than 48 hours.

Speaking to me for Indian broadcaster NDTV last week, Indian Army Chief Gen. V.K. Singh explained the concept, although he refrained from actually referring to it as “cold start.”

“Our aim was to make the army more agile, more lethal, more responsive, and networked army that is able to meet with the future threats,” he said. “To that extent, certain steps were laid down. One of the things we looked at was the restructuring of our organizations into groupings that will take place in battle. So, we have validated these. Certain changes have come about because of our validation in test bedding. These are coming into effect.”

The transformation study, carried out under Singh while he was commanding the Eastern Army as part of a previous assignment, started validating the concepts from 2010. As the Times of India noted, Exercise Vijayee Bhava (Be Victorious), for instance, practiced blitzkrieg-style operations to hit the enemy hard at short-notice. According to the paper, it essentially revolved around the armor-intensive 2 Corps.

However, the two-month-long Exercise Sudarshan Shakti, conducted in November and December of last year, not only took the concept further, but added several new dimensions to India’s war-fighting theories. For the first time, the Army successfully used its satellites and UAVs to provide a real-time picture and information of the war zone to battlefield commanders.

In addition, real-time links between sensor and shooter were tested, which enabled commanders to make decisions instantly, even as information was being shared among platforms and personnel.

Led and implemented by the Indian Army’s biggest and most lethal formation, the 21 Corps, the exercise witnessed the participation of over 60,000 troops and 300 tanks and brought together all elements – including air power – on one single platform. The air power on display reportedly included combat jets like the Su-30 MKI, Jaguars, MiG-27 and MiG-21, AWACS and helicopters.

But if “Sudarshan Shakti” was meant to authenticate India’s new war fighting strategy against Pakistan, a series of changes in the Northern and Eastern Commands of the Indian Army have quietly taken place over the past four years aimed at reorganizing India’s preparedness against China. As mentioned earlier, two new mountain divisions raised for deployment on the China frontier are now ready, which has added teeth to the Eastern Command and allowed the Army to reorganize a Reserve Corps into a full-fledged formation against China.

The reality is that although India has three “strike” or offensive corps aimed at Pakistan, it still lacks a dedicated offensive formation against China, regarded by the military as the bigger threat. A projected plan to raise a Mountain Strike Corps (since the terrain along the Chinese frontier is super high altitude) is currently pending with India’s Finance Ministry since it involves massive investment, to the tune of over $10 billion dollars, over the next five years. The Defense Ministry as well as the Army HQ is, however, hoping to kick-start the process of raising this formation sooner rather than later.

“At the moment we’re a threat-based organization. We’re moving towards a threat-cum-capability based one. And as the years go by, we will become a totally capability-based force,” Singh told me. “It has various implications like what kind of equipping norms you have, what kind of training that you do, what kind of resources you have to rapidly deploy to various places. So these are things that are being put into effect now, and by the time we see the result, it will take some time. It’s not that overnight we can change something.”

As I mentioned in my analysis following Army Day last year, the latest shift is aimed at strengthening the Army’s capabilities to fight what one general has called a war on “two and a half fronts” – a reference to possible simultaneous confrontation with Pakistan and

China

in addition to being deployed in a counter-insurgency situation internally.

So far, the four wars between India and Pakistan and one between India and China have been standalone conflicts, but Indian strategic thinkers say a future scenario under which close allies China and Pakistan launch a joint offensive against

India

is a distinct possibility. The Indian Army therefore wants to be ready for such an eventuality. And the way forward, the Army has concluded, is to become a fleet-footed force capable of quick mobilization and deployment.

According to an Indian military handout, the transformation “envisages seamless integration of available forces without the constraints of inflexible ‘commands.’"

“So far, each command and formation operated well within its prescribed boundaries and deployed the combat as well as support services only within its own jurisdiction,” the handout noted. “The transformation, however, seeks to break down these artificial boundaries to minimize losses and increase optimal utilization of resources. So in the years to come, the Indian Army will move from a 'command-based' deployment to a 'theater command' format where the 'front' or the spearhead will be seamlessly integrated with resources in the "depth" or the rear.”

Most senior military commanders agree that such massive exercises, which put to test both men and machine, help hone the skills of various frontline formations. Inter-services synergy based on advanced technology has been on the rise in the past five years and is therefore a major gain for the Indian military since future wars, whenever they take place, will be swift, short and fought under a technology-intensive umbrella.

Triumph of the New Wilsonism

2012-01-16T08:16:00.000+06:00

Nikolas K. Gvosdev, Ray Takeyh

The National Interest - January 4, 2012

WHEN OPERATION Odyssey Dawn commenced in the skies over Libya on March 19, 2011, it represented a major turnaround in U.S. policy. Only nine months earlier, U.S. ambassador Gene Cretz had characterized the regime as a “strategic ally” of the United States due to Libyan cooperation on counterterrorism and nonproliferation issues (and its halting, tentative steps toward greater openness). Now Libya found itself on the receiving end of conventional U.S. military power for repressing a civilian population agitating for governmental change. Considerations that over the past sixty years might have stayed the hand of an earlier president—fears about regime change leading to a hostile government taking power in an oil-rich and geostrategic Middle Eastern state, or concerns about the potential debilitating costs of intervention—were set aside. And while Muammar el-Qaddafi’s distant past as an international renegade and sponsor of terrorism was invoked by Barack Obama, there was little effort to portray twenty-first-century Libya as a looming security threat to the United States. Indeed, given the more recent history of Libyan-American rapprochement, including Qaddafi’s active cooperation with the West in the struggle against al-Qaeda, such an attempt would have rung hollow. Instead, the Obama team embraced Qaddafi’s treatment of his population as the central rationale for the operation.

This marks a fundamental break with past American emphasis on serious threats to U.S. national security as the prime motivation for action, especially armed intervention. In making the case for war against Saddam Hussein in 2003, the Bush administration highlighted the Iraqi tyrant’s abuse of his citizens and his war crimes against Iran and the Kurds. But the case for invading Iraq rested not so much on humanitarian concerns as on displacing a volatile actor who threatened core American security interests. Saddam’s suspected depositories of unconventional weapons and his ties to terrorists became the central rallying cries of the proponents of coercive regime change, while humanitarian impulses to liberate an oppressed population were a secondary justification. In the case of Libya, however, no such national-security arguments were seriously proffered in support of the necessity for military action. The Obama administration never suggested that its intervention was designed to redeem any critical national interests; as a matter of fact, outgoing defense secretary Robert Gates loudly and repeatedly proclaimed that there were no vital interests at stake in Libya.

Moreover, the Libya operation took place against a backdrop of regional ferment that already had claimed the political lives of two close U.S. partners, Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and was threatening to depose other American friends from Jordan to Yemen. Saddam Hussein had been an avowed enemy of the United States, which lent a certain geopolitical logic to George W. Bush’s invasion. But now Washington was demonstrating a willingness to side “with the street” against regimes that were pro-American. Six years ago, writing in these pages, Dov Zakheim expressed the prevailing U.S. outlook in dealing with friendly autocrats in the region:

Given their steps, however halting, toward creating freer societies, their willingness to countenance a Middle East peace settlement and the virulent anti-Americanism of much of their opposition, it must be asked whether it is really in America’s interest to distance itself from such regimes. Constructive engagement with friends who are slow to respond but respond nonetheless is one thing; rejection is quite another.

The gap between that philosophy and recent U.S. actions poses some questions: Are we witnessing a subtle paradigm shift, where governments’ treatment of their citizens, as opposed to their geopolitical conduct, is more important as a factor for U.S. policy? Does the Libya operation provide a model for low-cost, no-consequence interventions that Obama and other presidents may seek to employ elsewhere in the region and around the world? In short, has America entered a postrealist phase in its foreign policy, where it believes that it is possible to promote U.S. values at minimal cost to U.S. interests?

If these questions can be answered in the affirmative, then America could stand at the threshold of a new foreign-policy era dominated by a twenty-first-century iteration of Wilsonism—the widespread application of American power on behalf of humanitarian ideals even when it risks compromising key interests. What this would mean for America and the world remains an open question of profound dimension.

FOR DECADES, the specter of an Iran “lost” after the overthrow of the shah has hung over America’s Middle East policy. Washington saw how a revolution initially defined by calls for democracy and liberalization ended up ushering in an Islamic Republic bitterly hostile to U.S. interests. As Jeane Kirkpatrick concluded in November 1979:

The American effort to impose liberalization and democratization on a government confronted with violent internal opposition not only failed, but actually assisted the coming to power of new regimes in which ordinary people enjoy fewer freedoms and less personal security than under the previous autocracy—regimes, moreover, hostile to American interests and policies.

While experiments with democracy could be tolerated in some parts of the world because vital U.S. interests were not at stake, there was no room for error in the Middle East during the Cold War. In January 1980, Jimmy Carter made it explicit that the United States would respond, by military means if necessary, to any “grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil” to the Western world.

In the years following the rise of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a generation of hereditary monarchs and authoritarian presidents throughout the Middle East convinced Washington that, as much as their illiberal regimes might offend American democratic sensibilities, the alternatives would be worse—whether revolutionary regimes more inclined to side with the Soviet Union or Islamists convinced that America was indeed the Great Satan. The “Reagan Corollary” to the so-called “Carter Doctrine,” announced in October 1981, more explicitly committed the United States to preserving the internal stability of Western partners in the region, beginning with Saudi Arabia and its ruling House of Saud.

The unelected, absolute monarch of a theocratic state seemed to be an unlikely partner for an American president who, in quoting Winston Churchill in 1982, had reaffirmed his commitment to establishing “conditions of freedom and democracy as rapidly as possible in all countries.” But when King Fahd visited Washington in 1985, he received no lectures about the urgent necessity to democratize his realm. Instead, Reagan took the view that the best way to promote democracy in the long run was to prevent countries from going communist or Islamist in the short run.

America

’s experience in East Asia and Latin America during the Reagan years buttressed this approach. Over time, in places such as Chile, South Korea and Taiwan, authoritarian presidents created the frameworks for gradual transitions to democracy without undermining their security relationships with the United States. Instead of siding with protestors calling for immediate democratic reform, Washington supported existing regimes in cracking down on the opposition, provided a long-term, gradualist program for change was being implemented.

So the Middle Eastern imperatives of geology and geography conspired to disabuse American officialdom of any Wilsonian impulses to push for democracy and human rights. The region’s oil was necessary for the free world’s economic vitality, and its strategic outposts were needed for the containment of the Soviet and Iranian menaces. The constellation of conservative monarchies and presidential dictatorships was important in subduing the radical clients of the Soviet Union; Saudi Arabia’s embrace of the mantle of the defenders of Islam was essential in negating Iran’s theocratic rage, while Saddam Hussein proved indispensible in checking Iran’s ambitions. And when Hussein himself sought to reorder the region’s politics more to his liking with his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the United States assembled an international coalition that ejected him from his conquest and crushed his military.

The U.S. strategy succeeded. After Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat expelled some twenty thousand Soviet military “advisers” from his country in 1972, the Soviet Union never made substantial inroads into the Middle East. (While Syria remained a close client of Moscow, it could never aspire to play the same role as Egypt.) The radical Arab republics failed to dislodge the conservative order and nudge the region toward neutralism or, even worse, communism. The region’s oil, especially after the collapse of oil prices in the 1980s, continued to lubricate the Western economic surge. The revisionist states of Iran and Iraq were confined in their boundaries, stripped of their ambitions for regional hegemony and power, and served as regional counterweights to each other.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 did not fundamentally alter the trajectory of U.S. policy. Replacing the “Red Menace” was now the “Green Crescent”—fears that militantly anti-Western Islamist groups were on the march. When Algeria’s Islamists seemed on the verge of taking control of a key North African state after the results of the first round of elections in 1991, the West acquiesced in the Algerian military’s January 1992 decision to cancel further balloting. In Egypt, the most populous state in the Arab world, a terror campaign by Al Gamaa al-Islamiyya to bring down the government by targeting police and foreign tourists reinforced the belief that the regime of Hosni Mubarak must get America’s unconditional support or Egypt could be “lost” to a hostile ideology. This was, remember, a time when Bill Clinton was hoping to expand the Middle East peace process by having more leaders—even if not democratically empowered—join Egypt in concluding peace treaties with Israel.

If preventing the Soviet Union from furthering its toehold in the region was the paramount objective of earlier administrations, the Clinton team focused on isolating the so-called “backlash states” that “seek to advance their agenda through terror, intolerance and coercion.” This propelled the United States to prevent the potential resurgence of Iraq, to prolong the policy of coercing Iran, and to continue to isolate bad actors such as Libya and Yemen. All this necessitated partnerships with authoritarian monarchs and presidents and militated against any “third wave of democratization” in the Middle East to complement developments in Eastern Europe and Latin America. But the Clinton administration was also uneasy about accepting the cold dictates of realism that rated interests over values. Hence, continued support for autocrats was justified by arguments that governments in the region lacked the skills to engineer transitions to democracy. That is why the U.S. government, working with private-sector democracy initiatives, began to churn out programs to train judges, publish guides on voting procedures and extend financial support for NGOs that pledged their commitment to liberal values (but which commanded very little popular support). Still, one heard little sustained public criticism about Egypt’s deformed politics, Saudi support for inflammatory Islam or a Persian Gulf order comfortable with its autocratic ways.

Indeed, when Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani removed his father and took control of Qatar in 1995, this coup d’état was quietly hailed as the possible beginning of a generational transfer of power in the Middle East that would bring younger, more liberal leaders to power. These expectations were heightened when Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father Hafez as president in Syria in 2000 and quickly dropped hints about “reform.” This “Damascus Spring,” when liberal-leaning discussion groups sprang up in the capital, proved short-lived. But these assumptions helped define a strategy of accepting the status quo for the foreseeable future while training a group of democracy activists and waiting for the next generation of supposedly more liberal leaders to take power.

IT WAS perhaps inevitable that the tragedies of 9/11 would jolt the Washington establishment and call into question the value of America’s long-standing relationships with regional despots. Indeed, the argument was soon advanced that the United States was being imperiled by the lack of democracy in the region, which nurtured a dysfunctional political culture serving as a feeding ground for organizations such as al-Qaeda. The approach embraced by previous administrations was explicitly rejected; the United States could not wait for generational change to “drain the swamp” through gradual reform and liberalization. Speaking in Cairo in 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice bluntly commented that “for sixty years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East—and we achieved neither.”

But the use of U.S. power to promote democratic change through direct intervention remained a contested proposition. In the past, concerns about costs to U.S. interests had always acted as a brake on American interventions unrelated to national interests. Large-scale interventions, particularly using conventional military forces to achieve forcible regime change, were expensive and risky. Reagan’s Grenada operation and George H. W. Bush’s Panama incursion were the exceptions, not the rule. The limitations of the Cold War also meant that large swaths of the world were effectively “off-limits” for U.S. action. These considerations were very much evident in the arguments marshaled by former national-security adviser Brent Scowcroft in his famous Wall Street Journal op-ed of August 2002, which decried the rush to war in Iraq.

But the 1999 Kosovo operation marked a critical turning point in how Washington conceptualized the risks and opportunities of intervention. In contrast to the first Gulf War, which occurred with the concurrence of Moscow and Beijing, this action lacked their support. But opposition to military intervention in the former Yugoslavia wasn’t sufficient to prevent it from occurring. And the operation took place in a part of Europe that only ten years earlier would have been deemed a no-go area for NATO forces. The apparent ease of the campaign—an air war that was nearly casualty free for the allies and produced a capitulation and transition without need of ground forces—also changed the intervention calculus in Washington, displacing the failed legacy of Vietnam with a belief that a “shock and awe” campaign could produce dramatic on-the-ground transformations.

There was near unanimity in Washington that Saddam Hussein, as Scowcroft noted, was

a menace. He terrorizes and brutalizes his own people. He has launched war on two of his neighbors. He devotes enormous effort to rebuilding his military forces and equipping them with weapons of mass destruction. We will all be better off when he is gone.

But there were very different ways to prosecute the war. An invasion designed to decapitate the regime and ensure that Iraq was disarmed would look very different from a campaign aimed at reconstructing the country in the image of postwar Germany or Japan. So the subsidiary theme of the invasion was that removing Hussein would not be enough; a prospective democratic government in Baghdad would establish an inclusive polity that would be accountable at home and align itself with U.S. security interests abroad, including concluding a peace treaty with Israel and aggressively containing Iran and Syria.

In some of his most eloquent speeches, George W. Bush cast aside the assertion that the Arab masses were ill equipped for self-determination and democratic accountability. But he also cautiously emphasized that America would safeguard its interests while redeeming its ideals. The assumption was that, starting in a reformed Iraq, an empowered Arab citizenry would choose leaders focused on fixing broken economies, addressing institutional decay and the consequences of the region’s demographic bulge—rather than striving to thwart U.S. security interests. To be sure, the process would be unsteady and sometimes tumultuous, but in the end large areas of a new Middle East would be governed by popularly elected regimes that would freely choose to join a U.S.-led global order as opposed to plotting against its norms.

The first part of the Iraq invasion fulfilled the promise of Kosovo: Saddam Hussein was removed quickly with few coalition casualties. But securing the democratic peace in Iraq proved far more elusive, reawakening the ghost of Vietnam as more soldiers were killed and wounded and as costs kept rising (to a cumulative total of $1 trillion). And Iraqi elections have overwhelmingly empowered ethnosectarian parties whose leaders did not play out the role scripted for them by Washington. None of the grandiose expectations of American officials were fulfilled. Indeed, from an unwillingness to condemn Hezbollah or Syria to the maintenance of close ties with Iran, first the Bush and now the Obama administrations have expressed repeated frustrations with the government of Nuri al-Maliki.

Elsewhere the picture was similar. The 2005 Cedar Revolution in Lebanon initially brought to the fore a pro-Western coalition of parties but ended up strengthening Hezbollah’s hold on the country. The Bush administration’s flirtation with the proposition that promoting democracy advances American security in the Middle East came to a sudden end with the results of the January 2006 elections in the Palestinian territories. There was an air of unease about the entire situation, as the radical Islamist group, Hamas, seemed poised to undo the political hegemony of Fatah. In previous decades, Washington might have called for postponement of the elections or acquiesced to their rigging by Fatah to produce a more desirable government. However, the Bush administration had invested so much in its democratic advocacy that it almost had no choice but to watch the ballots being cast and hope for the best. When it was over, Hamas won seventy-four out of 132 parliamentary seats and claimed the post of premiership. In due course, Palestinian unity would fall apart, and Hamas would confine itself to Gaza, from which it would periodically launch missile attacks against Israel. Not for the first time, the Middle East escaped Washington’s preferred template and confronted the United States with choices and decisions that it had hoped to avert.

In the aftermath of the Palestinian elections, the Bush administration’s democratic enterprise limped along, devoid of ambition or any clear agenda. Coercive pressure for reforms in places such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia was abandoned. The administration returned to “practical” issues—stabilizing Iraq, resuming the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and attempting to restrain Iran’s ambitions. The Bush team fell back on the earlier paradigm of relying on hereditary monarchs and authoritarian presidents to deliver stability in the region. The league of despots proved as useful to the Bush administration as it did to its predecessors. In a sense, realism seemed to have overwhelmed the ideological convulsions of post-9/11 Washington.

The second half of the Bush administration focused its efforts not on forcible regime change but on regime rehabilitation followed by gradual liberalizing amelioration: cultivating liberalizing autocrats who could retain control over the process and keep U.S. security interests intact but who would lay the groundwork for an eventual democratic transition. As Zakheim noted:

Brandishing “democracy” like a sword over the rulers of other nations, distancing itself even from those rulers who initiate reforms, on the grounds that they are moving too slowly, and creating an atmosphere that leads them to believe that they will be destabilized if not forcefully removed, will not enable the United States to achieve its objectives in the Middle East.

The U.S.-Libya relationship became the incubator of this approach after Qaddafi renounced state support for terror activities, ended Libya’s embryonic mass-destruction weapons program and aligned Libya with Western interests. This laid the basis for Tripoli’s rapprochement with Washington, a policy that enjoyed strong bipartisan support in the U.S. Congress. In 2007, the late Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, concluded:

I am very proud of America’s success in convincing Qadhafi to become a decent citizen of the global community. . . . Our engagement with Qadhafi and the prosperity it has brought Libya serves as a model to countries currently sponsoring terror or compiling weapons of mass destruction. They should know that they, too, can come in from the cold.

In dealing with hereditary politics in the Middle East, the United States held out hope that the Taiwan scenario (the passage of power from an autocratic father to a more liberalizing son) might be duplicated in the region—especially when it came to two sons, Seif al-Islam el-Qaddafi and Gamal Mubarak, who were seen as liberalizing “heirs-in-waiting” to take over Libya and Egypt from their elderly fathers. Having younger, Western-educated sons take control from aging parents seemed the best way to encourage democratization in the Middle East.

For its first two years, the Obama administration continued to adhere to this script. Then a university-educated fruit seller in Tunisia immolated himself, and everything changed.

The Arab Spring was bound to present the United States with stark choices. Suddenly a regional revolt in the name of democracy and accountability confronted pliable American allies who sought to cloak their repressive tendencies in the name of resisting Islamic radicalism. Mubarak, Qaddafi and others threatened by revolts from below had assumed that close cooperation with America’s security agenda for the Middle East would buy their regimes a certain degree of immunity from U.S. criticism and pressure. They were wrong.

Initially, many expected the Obama team to embrace the two-track approach undertaken by earlier administrations in other parts of the world, particularly in East Asia during the 1980s: up-front backing for an embattled leader to take whatever steps were needed to secure his regime and restore order with a promise to initiate reforms over the long term. Indeed, the initial responses of the Obama administration to unrest in Egypt seemed to indicate that Washington might follow the script that Ronald Reagan and his team crafted to deal with Chun Doo Hwan of South Korea: getting a leader to first accept term limits for office, then slowly laying the groundwork for the transition that culminated in the 1987 elections. But when Obama’s special envoy to Egypt, Frank Wisner, expressed support for the old approach, his remarks were repudiated in Washington, and Obama abruptly changed course to push for Mubarak’s complete and immediate removal.

Realist voices in the administration raised all the traditional cautionary flags. But they were brushed aside. In Egypt, the notion that any post-Mubarak government would be less sensitive to core U.S. interests was seen as a condition that Washington would have to live with; in earlier times it was considered an eventuality to be crushed. The concerns that Libya might disintegrate as a nation-state, facilitating the rise of Islamist militants in ungoverned spaces, were set aside for the benefit of preventing a feared humanitarian crisis. Certainly, by the end of 2011, political figures and movements that the United States worked hard for decades to keep away from the levers of power—the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, Libyan Islamists, Rachid al-Ghannouchi in Tunisia—were all playing roles in the postdictator political arena.

Undoubtedly the death of Osama bin Laden, the successful elimination of other key al-Qaeda leaders and operatives, and the belief that al-Qaeda was “losing its struggle for relevance” in the region, to quote from Obama’s May 2011 address at the State Department, contributed to the assessment that backing revolutionary ferment in the Arab world would not automatically hand power over to an implacable foe of the United States. Obama has expressed his optimism that successor regimes will not seek to alter fundamentally their countries’ ongoing cooperation with the United States, particularly in continuing efforts to combat terrorism and broker a lasting Middle East peace settlement. He has declared that “America’s interests are not hostile to peoples’ hopes; they’re essential to them.” But it remains a big question whether Islamists will undergo a democratic transformation and eventually create moderate governments.

Indeed, there has been a real shift in American attitudes, a willingness to take the risks of losing short-term security advantages in favor of encouraging long-term societal change. To be sure, such a paradigm shift is not categorical or complete. America’s foreign policy is never without its inconsistencies and contradictions. Washington continues to cater to Saudi sensibilities, and it looked askance as Riyadh marched into Bahrain to buttress its Sunni satrap through continued repression of the majority Shia population. The fact that the Gulf monarchies demonstrated limited appetite for viable political reforms has not elicited loud American objections. The need for Gulf oil and military bases and the common cause of containing a recalcitrant Iran continue to overwhelm Washington’s democratic penchants. Nonetheless, a new tendency has fractured America’s long-held realism in the Middle East. How these states conduct their internal affairs and treat their citizens will be taken into account as the United States determines its alliances, shifts its loyalties and considers its interests. No country has ever conducted its policy solely on the basis of humanitarian considerations, but, given the events of the past year, they are poised to exercise more influence over decision making than ever before.

A FOREIGN-POLICY doctrine must be suited for its times, tailored to exploit available opportunities, and flexible enough to take advantage of sudden and subtle shifts in the international system. Many critics allege that realism is hardly suitable for the changing regional landscape confronting Washington today, that America needs a foreign policy based on values, and that embracing and encouraging rapid political change throughout the Middle East is both necessary and desirable.

But what is to be done if change must be nudged or forced? The 2003 Iraq War vindicated many realist objections, but the apparent success of the 2011 Libya operation—which ended up deposing Qaddafi from power without the loss of a single American life and without any serious rupture in U.S. relations with other powers—begs the question as to whether the Obama administration wants to enter a postrealist era where the old trade-offs between pursuing American ideals and securing U.S. interests are no longer relevant.

In the past, debates over the advisability of intervention were driven by two considerations: the potential cost of the proposed action and the likelihood that it would precipitate a clash with another major power. Obama acknowledged as much in March 2011 when he observed: “Given the costs and risks of intervention, we must always measure our interests against the need for action. But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what’s right.” The Arab Spring could offer the United States a template for future limited interventions that could uphold American values without exacting much cost in return.

One of the factors that may be driving the administration’s confidence that a new era of interventionism is warranted comes from the reality that so-called “rogue regimes” around the world are under a new set of pressures. In the 1990s, regimes from Iran to Cuba found relief from unilateral U.S. sanctions and pressure by turning to European states that were willing to continue engagement. The Europeans embraced a policy of critical dialogue, which stressed that through diplomatic discussions and economic incentives rogue regimes could be persuaded to modify their behavior. The proponents of such an outlook argued that even rogue states contain factions of moderates and pragmatists that serve as potential interlocutors. From this perspective, an inclusive approach was designed to empower the pragmatists and diminish the standing of the hard-liners. Clever despots could exploit the divergence between the United States and Europe, as punitive U.S. measures were frequently undermined by a European policy of commerce and dialogue. Meanwhile, U.S. pressure on Europe, manifested primarily through the imposition of secondary sanctions on European firms doing business in places such as Tehran and Havana, often backfired.

During the first years of the Bush administration, transatlantic ties were aggravated over a whole host of issues, ranging from climate change to the Iraq invasion. In particular, the United States and several of its key allies in Europe, especially Germany and France, saw the Middle East from vastly different perspectives. Yet during the latter part of the Bush presidency, the first signs of convergence began to emerge. Once the allies put the divisive issue of Iraq behind them, they found much common ground. Washington accepted the need for international coalitions to deal with regional problems, and a new generation of European leaders such as France’s Nicolas Sarkozy began to see that financial incentives and soothing words were unlikely to temper hardened ideologues.

What the Arab Spring has demonstrated is that many autocratic regimes around the world are particularly vulnerable to protest movements that originate in concerns about poor economic prospects. The despots of anemic economies cannot pay off their revolting masses if sanctions prevent them from selling their commodities or raising loans once easily available from Paris or London. Over the last several years, European governments began to place a greater emphasis on values over business interests, imposing stronger economic sanctions on illiberal regimes even when European economic interests could be negatively affected. While traditional concerns of statecraft—among them access to energy and security cooperation—remain key motives for both American and European policy in the Middle East, the question of how governments in the region treat their populations is gaining traction as a point which must be given equal consideration. The emergence of a broad transatlantic consensus makes it harder for other power centers to wholeheartedly oppose all interventions.

Thus, there is a growing perception that concerted opposition to any new humanitarian interventions will be limited. Certainly, while other great powers such as China, India or Russia may not join the effort, just as they abstained from the Security Council vote that authorized the Libya no-fly zone, it is not entirely clear that Beijing, New Delhi or Moscow would risk frayed relations with the West in order to prevent such operations from going forward in areas of the world where they do not have fundamental interests. This outlook may be summarized as: let the Western countries expend their blood and treasure if they wish. A Beijing, for instance, that still remains preoccupied with domestic economic growth and stability will not be handing out blanket security commitments to authoritarian governments around the world with any sort of guarantee that is equivalent to NATO’s famed Article 5. Of course, there will be exceptions involving countries in their immediate neighborhood. Russia, for example, might assent to a NATO mission in Libya but be much more hostile to an intervention in Central Asia seeking to displace a pro-Russian government.

But what of the times when Russian and Chinese opposition in the Security Council has seemingly torpedoed calls for intervention or otherwise watered down its provisions? To some extent, this has served as a convenient excuse when the Western powers themselves have been unsure or unwilling to get involved, such as in Darfur. But as we have seen in recent years, when the United States is particularly committed to action, these countries begin to give ground, allowing for an opening wedge to emerge that could serve as justification for intervention.

In addition, China has discovered that it can retain and perhaps expand its influence even after an intervention creates a supposedly “pro-Western” government. China has much greater access to the Iraqi oil industry in the wake of the U.S. invasion than it did during the days of Saddam Hussein. Beijing counts on the attractiveness of its terms for economic engagement; governments unable or unwilling to meet Western criteria have found in China an alternative partner for economic development. An interesting test will be whether, despite early criticisms of Beijing for its lack of support for intervention against Qaddafi, a new Libyan government ends up turning to China for the same reason that has led so many other states in Africa and Latin America to do so in the recent past: the country’s no-strings-attached aid and development policies. If this happens, it would further diminish China’s appetite for trying to directly challenge U.S. interventions around the world.

Finally, there is the ongoing revolution in military affairs—particularly the emergence of new technologies such as unmanned drones and advances in cyberwarfare—that hold out the promise of low-cost interventions that do not require a large conventional force. The Libya operation is estimated to have cost only $1 billion, a trifle compared to what has been spent in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Obama national-security team has embraced Libya as a useful example in these times of budget austerity for facilitating U.S. values and interests around the world. Deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes commented:

When we came to office you had a situation where there were very large U.S. military footprints in Iraq and Afghanistan. And what we’re moving towards is a far more targeted use of force in which we apply direct power against . . . those who pose a direct threat to the United States and then galvanize collective action against global security challenges.

Instead of relying upon large concentrations of ground forces to deliver knockout blows, the belief is that a combination of air power and special-forces units allows for small, light-footprint, rapid-strike missions that take out an opposing regime.

If, in order to alleviate concerns about costs, the United States in the future will be forgoing large-scale interventions in favor of covert actions and small-scale special military operations, then it suggests that a postrealist approach will focus on taking steps that are likely to produce a satisfactory outcome rather than guarantee an optimal one.

If the current situation holds—that no durable anti-American coalition is emerging to put checks on the exercise of U.S. power around the globe—then the postrealist view may gain greater traction. The strictures of the Cold War imposed a certain discipline on the process of deciding whether and when to intervene militarily in a given conflict. Intervention in some states was ruled out for reasons of geography—in the case of close proximity to the Soviet Union, for instance. Security considerations governed other situations. There was a reluctance to take action against a reasonably pro-Western, authoritarian regime for fear that it might be replaced by a pro-Soviet successor. None of these considerations is weighing on the minds of policy makers today.

Instead, if an intervention can be sold to policy makers as quick and inexpensive, with little likelihood that other major powers will significantly raise the cost of action, the propensity for intervention rises. In addition, if policy makers believe that the successor government is likely to be no worse than, or even better than, the status quo, then the path to intervention is cleared. After laboring for several years to wind down the Bush legacy in international affairs, the Obama team may be prepared to start implementing this new approach.

Felani Exposes Hypocrisies

2012-01-14T07:09:00.002+06:00

The Bangladesh Chronicle – January 12, 2012

By Shimul Chaudhury

On 7 January 2011, a poor Bangladeshi teenage girl named Felani was brutally murdered by the elite Border Security Force (BSF) of the powerful neighbor India in the border region. Hundreds of such deaths have occurred over the last decade partly because of Bangladesh’s inability to protest and to bring the issue to the notice of the international world and partly because of India’s huge influence on world politics. What makes the Felani tragedy different is the degree of BSF brutality and the indifference of the Bangladeshi regime that represents her.

The image of Felani’s death, her tangled body hanging on the fence India has made around Bangladesh melts even the hardest of the hearts. Felani and her father Mr Nurul Islam worked as maidservant and day labourer respectively in the other side of the border. They were coming back to Bangladesh from India by crossing the border barbed wires, as the next day was her wedding. Mr Nurul Islam successfully crossed the fence. However, full of romance in the heart and wearing gorgeous dress, Felani was perhaps a little absent-minded, as her mind was more occupied with the most important event in her life that was supposed to happen the next day. She could not cross the fence and got tangled on the barbed wires.

Sensing the impending dangers of being killed by the ruthless BSF, she because fearful for her life and started screaming. Her father could not dare go near her, as such a move would lead to his definite death by the BSF. The thirsty Felani kept screaming for her life and was saying water, ˜water…. The Indian BSF heard her cries and sshot her dead without wasting time. She was hanging on the fence for about five hours until her killers took her away. When she was handed to the Bangladeshi border guards, the jewelries she was wearing were not there.

The shock and despair of the Bangladeshi people forced the pro-Indian Bangladeshi regime to make some noise over the death of Felani, as a result of which India in its own ritualistic way made some false promises of not repeating such brutalities. The Bangladeshi government has carried on its business as usual, while, since Fenali’s death, Indian BSF have murdered dozens of more poor Bangladeshis in the border region.

I have sifted through many Bangladeshi newspapers (both Bangla and English) to see if Felani is remembered at all on the day of her first death anniversary. I have been disappointed. Most of the newspapers did not bother to write anything on Felani. Nor did they cover the isolated events that took place to commemorate her violent death. The silence of Bangladesh government on Felani’s death anniversary is not surprising to the Bangladeshi people who have been observing its disgraceful subservience to India.

Felani did not come from a rich, privileged family. Nor did she belong to any of the political dynasties of Bangladesh. She was poor and did not have the luxury of receiving any formal education. Her killers belong to a very powerful country which sways the politics of her country. Perhaps, these are some of the reasons why she is not remembered adequately even in her own country. Or, perhaps, through her death, Felani has pointed to the blatant hypocrisies of a big section of the Bangladeshi intelligentsia who are reluctant to write or say anything that may go against the wishes of India.

Many newspapers in Bangladesh are run by left-leaning editors who are supposed to have concern for the have-nots and the downtrodden. However, their loyalty to India overwhelms their leftist political philosophy. Many in the Bangladeshi media exercise their freedom to condemn the misrule of the pro-Indian Awami League. But when it comes to India’s hegemonic attitude and its exploitation driven foreign policy to Bangladesh, we see a mysterious silence. Surprisingly, the Bangladeshi intellectuals who make regular statements to establish patriotic credentials show complete cowardice when it comes to exposing India’s political and economic exploitation of their country. While the Indian BSF personnel are killing many of their fellow countrymen, these intellectuals may be demonstrating extreme desperation to be on the good books of Indian High Commission in Dhaka.