America and us
By Munir Attaullah
undefined When it comes down to the nitty-gritty of one’s own personal beneficial interests, usually everyone ends up being a ‘realist’. If this is the case even with individuals, is it not even more certain that policy makers charged with taking hard decisions will act in what they perceive as hard national self interest?
Here is some good news and bad news.
The good news is that the Pakistani Bridge legend, Zia Mahmood, after some half-a-dozen frustrating second place finishes over the years, finally won a World Championship last week. Sadly, his celebrated partner on Pakistani teams of yesteryears, Masood Salim, did not live to see the day. He had died a few days earlier.
The bad news is that Zia won playing on an American team rather than a Pakistani one. Here is solid proof for our xenophobes that these damned Americans will stop at nothing to violate our sovereignty and capture our vital resources!
Flippancy aside, it is worth my reviewing today our tortured love-hate relationship, spanning half a century, with the world’s most powerful nation. For, we face a peculiar situation. There is a yawning disconnect between the thinking of most of our ba-sha’oor awam (egged on by many of our opinionated two-a-paisa master analysts) and those responsible for running the affairs of state. The public, overwhelmingly, thinks of America as, if not quite Enemy No 2 (India being the obvious No 1), at least as a wholly insufferable and baleful intruder in our affairs, who we should — and can — well do without. Our rulers on the other hand seem to think — for miscellaneous but good reasons — we cannot currently do without American help and support.
Now who is right, the awam or the rulers? Is it really the case that our policy makers are an unpatriotic lot who think nothing of selling out the nation for their own personal selfish interests? Or, are they that stupid they cannot clearly see where the country’s real interests lie? Or, though they know what they should do, they are too bay-ghairat to stand up and deliver a moo’nh-tor jawab to the forces of evil imperialism?
Alternatively, could it possibly be that the much touted ba-sha’oor awam, through a combination of their own ignorance and influenced by the powerful, emotion-laden propaganda of the right-wing forces wearing ideological blinkers, have got it all wrong?
Yes, there is always that third possibility, as is often the case. That is, there are plenty of arguments available to either side to bring to the table. The question then — at least for a reasonable and sane person — becomes one of weighing up the worth of the various arguments in making up his mind.
But even this seemingly obvious method of making judgements is laced with difficulties. For, it assumes that we make important decisions on a rational basis. But, as we all know, conviction, wishful thinking, and emotion can all too easily cloud (even overcome) rationality (e.g. did Generals Ayub and Musharraf not think India would not cross the Line of Control if they started their adventures?). Could the answer then, to the conundrum I posed, lie in that last sentence? I certainly think so.
Of the emotional anti-American arguments, none is as powerful for us as the one that identifies America as the enemy of the Muslims. Did America not plunge a dagger in the Arab heart by creating and unconditionally backing a state that has dispossessed the Palestinians of their rights and annexed one of Islam’s holiest cities? Has it not launched two unnecessary and vicious wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) against Muslim states and caused untold misery? Does it not support and prop up corrupt and dictatorial Muslim regimes against the wishes of the local people?
For a certain category of person who identifies powerfully with the concept of Muslims as one ummah, such arguments seem pretty conclusive. But let me ask an awkward question: what happened to this thinking during the Zia decade and the Afghan Jehad? Sure, the two wars I mentioned earlier were still in the future. But American support for corrupt Arab regimes and Israel, and the suffering of the Palestinians, was very much a reality even then. So why then did Osama bin Laden, General Gul et al fraternise with America and happily and gratefully take their arms and money to fight what was equally a US war against the Soviet Union? And — forget America — why were our religious parties the biggest supporters of our local dictator of the time (and of Musharraf, later on)?
This should lead one to conclude that, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty of one’s own personal beneficial interests, usually everyone ends up being a ‘realist’. If this is the case even with individuals, is it not even more certain that policy makers charged with taking hard decisions will act in what they perceive as hard national self interest? The luxury of ‘principled stands’ is usually the preserve of those who do not have such responsibility but have the freedom to shout from the sidelines.
Is America in our region to ‘grab’ the Middle East’s oil and Central Asian resources for itself and to squelch Chinese ambitions? But why then did it withdraw from Kuwait and Iraq when all was there for the taking after the first Gulf war? And why did the US completely ignore us and Afghanistan for some 15 years after the Russian withdrawal, until provoked by 9/11? Because, in the modern age, you satisfy your resource needs by buying, selling, and investing, not through conquest and military control.
Is America hell-bent on depriving us of the ‘Islamic bomb’, or at least neutralising in some way our nuclear capability, as many claim? Well, any sane person will have to admit that the rest of the world had some genuine good reasons to be worried about our nuclear capability. There was the proliferation aspect, our steady drift into dangerous Islamic extremism, and our readiness to indulge in reckless adventures (such as Kargil) against India with possibly unpredictable escalatory consequences.
Sure, the Americans would have preferred we had not developed the capability, or tested the weapon. And they applied (unsuccessfully) all the pressure and offered all the inducements they realistically could during the 80s and 90’s in trying to dissuade us from doing so. They could do no more then, and they can do no more now. As for that current fantasy of the likes of Gen Gul that the Americans plan an attack by a trained commando force of a few hundred marines (now allegedly stationed in Islamabad) to take out our nuclear capability, all I can say is WOW! Are we really a banana republic, and our army just a paper tiger?
There is a much simpler and obvious way of viewing our on again-off again relationship with the US. The old adage that states have interests not friends holds true. Think of that humiliating few hours visit to Pakistan of President Clinton in the Musharraf era. The US was then simply not interested in us or our nuclear capability. Today, however, it has every interest, not directly in our nuclear weapons but in our survival as a stable, non-jihadi state, because without our help there is little prospect of the international community resolving satisfactorily the Afghanistan and Al Qaeda problems.
That such interest in us currently coincides with our own desperate security and financial interests is recognised by our hard-nosed policy makers as an opportunity that needs to be seized by us with both hands. The time for ‘an independent foreign policy’ will come only after we have put our own house firmly in order.
The writer is a businessman. A selection of his columns is now available in book form. Visit munirattaullah.com