“China’s President Pushes Back Against Western Culture” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/world/asia/chinas-president-pushes-back-against-western-culture.html?ref=global-home&pagewanted=print

In that essay, Hu writes: “We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration.”  In order to understand China’s fear of democracy, one has to understand the highly regimented nature of China’s rise since 1978.  That type of regimentation cannot be produced in democratic countries, which are notorious about debating an issue to death, about coalition formation on issues of “high politics,” and then passing bills on that issue.  Even then, debates never end  about the pros and cons regarding those policies.  No one has even heard that type of ad infinitum debating on any issue in totalitarian polities.  Debates on policies do take place, but only within their inner sanctums and only among the elites.  That type of regimentation immensely helped China’s emergence as a superpower of the future.

When Professor Joseph Nye wrote his seminal work on “soft power,” I wonder whether he was thinking how soft power is capable of playing a crucial in neutralizing culture conflict, which remains as a major source of tension between the West and the “rest.”  (Incidentally, one can write volumes about cultural conflict between the West and the world of Islam).  Mao Zedong knew that well when he discussed “antagonistic” and “non-antagonistic” contradictions.  Antagonistic contradictions may become the basis of prolonged conflict between cultures that either perceive them as superior to others or cultures that envision that other cultures attempting to dominate and transform the very essence of them.  That thought seems to be driving the thinking of President Hu in the afore-cited essay.  At a time when the U.S. and the Chinese are thinking about the modalities of future competition between the two countries, we need to pay a lot of attention to Hu’s point of winning the “culture war,” which he thinks the West (aka the United States) is waging against China.

A number of students of global affairs are steadily predicting a power shift from the West to the East and the consequent emergence of a post-American era.[2]  In reality, however, the global power shift might not be from the West to the East, but a multi-directional one, as we also witness the emergence of Turkey, Brazil, and South Africa as new global centers of economic dynamism, along with the PRC and India – two spectacularly rising powers.

Perhaps recognizing that it has long been stuck in the dizzying whirlpool of the Middle East and the need to catch its breath by refocusing on its dominance in the Asia-Pacific, President Barack Obama has already withdrawn America’s forces from Iraq; and has redeployed 10,000 troops out of Afghanistan.  This is part of his promise to bring about complete withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014.  However, the United States is opening a new military base in Australia.  By withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan, the lone superpower might also be tacitly conceding its defeat.  The politics of Iraq remains as volatile and divisive as ever.  Except this time, along with the explosive Shia-Sunni division, it is also characterized by the growing presence of al-Qaida.  Afghanistan, on the other hand, continues to prove itself to be the graveyard of empires.  As such, the war in that country continues to underscore the mounting power of the Taliban.

The Asia-Pacific, on the contrary, is welcoming the United States’ decision to escalate its presence, with open arms.  China — whose escalating hegemony appears ominous from the perspectives of small nation-states of East Asia – is creating ample apprehension among them.  Thus, these nation-states initiated a policy of “circling the wagons,” and appear determined to balance the power of China by asking for a resurged presence of the old hegemon, the USA, which has an established record of creating a benign hegemony.[3]  Washington could not have been happier.  The East Asian nations’ welcoming of America to their region only complemented the insistence of the Obama administration that America is a “Pacific power.”  President Barack Obama reiterated that resolve during his trip to Australia by stating that “…we are here to stay.”

India and China, the poorest countries of the not-too-distant past, have long passed the label of “rising powers.”  Now, they appear to be the economic power houses, indeed superpowers, of the future.  China is way ahead of India in this race, and thus remains a focal point of America’s attention.  As the foremost rising power of our time, China has the American example of the post-World War II era to follow.  Its rise not only has to be peaceful, but it also should be eminently constructive in revamping the rules underlying the functioning of the premier global political and financial institutions, like the U.N., the World Bank, and the IMF, etc.  Thus far, however, its leaders have not impressed the world by their proactivism or imagination for playing a constructive role.  They are standing on the sidelines, while being critical of the U.S. and Europe for not being “responsible” in their respective economic policies.  In the meantime, China continues to act as a rising power most comfortable in implementing parochial and inward looking policies of currency manipulation, as well as a heavy reliance on pushing its merchandise to the West.  It behaves as if it is only interested in reaping the benefits of appearing to be a superpower of the future without paying the political or economic price for being one.

India is gradually learning to act as a rising power in its neighborhood.  It has enhanced its presence in Southeast Asia by deciding to explore for oil in the South China Sea and in its cooperation with Vietnam, which has been one of the most vocal critics of China’s assertiveness in that region.[4]  India also has escalated its military presence along its border with China by announcing “$13 billion plans to raise a new mountain strike corps and four mountain divisions.”[5]  That was a clear response to China’s reported buildup on the Sino-Indian borders.   However, the jury is still out regarding the future performance of the successors of the Sun Tzu and Kautilyan styles of Realpolitik.

Europe is facing a crisis related to the future of the Eurozone, which was recently depicted as “a crisis of apocalyptic proportion” by Radoslaw Sikorski, Foreign Minister of Poland.[6]  As Europe is standing at the edge of a precipice, Turkey is emerging as the new power center of Europe.  In that capacity, it is implementing a “truly multidimensional foreign policy” in which it secretly conducted a joint air force exercise with China last October.[7]  In economic affairs, Russia became Turkey’s number one trade partner, replacing Germany.

Turkey is playing a similarly spectacular role in the Middle East.  Its intermingling of secularism and Islam is emerging as a popular example for the next corps of Arab leaders replacing the autocrats in the aftermath of the Arab Awakening.  In view of these developments, Turkey is transforming itself from a “peripheral state of Europe” into a “central power” of that region.[8]  Its model of secular democracy is already being emulated in Tunisia; and chances are that it would also be emulated in Egypt, as Islamists are winning electoral majority in that country but promising to opt for a coalition with the secularist parties.

The Arab Awakening (aka Arab Spring) continues to capture the world’s attention.  As the aging dictators fall, Islamists are emerging as some of the most prominent leaders of the Arab world.  The question is not an imminent one, but should be asked:  What is the Arab world going to look like in the next 3-5 years?  Are there prospects for the emergence of democracies, Islamic democracies, or would some of those Arab countries slide under the rule of theocracies?  Three current models of theocracy – Iran, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia – have not made those countries places of economic prosperity, political stability, or the focal point of enlightenment.  If anything, obscurantism is on the rise in Pakistan, and theological autocracy is the order of the day in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

If the convergence of Islam and pluralistic democracy occurs in the post-awakening Arab world, then the opportunities for people of that part of the world are enormous.  There is tremendous human potential waiting to be liberated, educated, enlightened, and to make a dash toward the globalized world from which it was more or less excluded because the autocrats feared progress related to the information age.  And they were right for fearing it, because modernity was bound to become their enemy.  The Arab Awakening arrived in the Middle East and North Africa riding on the shoulders of some of the most recent advances in social/electronic media.  It was the power of social media that the autocratic and archaic control machine could not control, fight, or stifle.

One of the secrets of the Arab Awakening is that it has been an inclusive movement.  Another shocking aspect of it is that there were no leaders who could issue commands for the masses to follow, or whose arrests or assassinations by the ruling autocrats could have seriously undermined the movement.  As liberated Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya are struggling to create a constitutional system of governance, the most important question is whether they will adhere to the principle of inclusiveness, or will they become victims of fissiparous tendencies for which their societies have been notorious?

One has every reason to be wary of the Islamists of the Arab world.  They have spent long years in the dungeons of the autocrats and the Pharaohs.  They have no experience with governance.  They have repeated the slogan, “Islam is the solution,” without having the responsibilities for spelling it out into specific policies.  As they become part of the ruling elites, it will be a test for them.  Their ultimate success may not be that they govern well, even though that would be a wonderful outcome.  Their ultimate success as participants in a democracy is their willingness to accept defeat, if or when they are voted out of office.

One “odd man out” in the rising tide of political change in the Middle East is Iran.  It has increased its influence in Iraq and Afghanistan, most ironically, because of the dismantlement of the Taliban regime and that of Saddam Hussein by its arch enemy, the United States.  However, the Green Movement’s abortive attempt to bring about regime change in Iran has left that country exposed to the covert shenanigans of the United States to overthrow the rule of the Ayatollahs.  Iran’s recent capture of the CIA’s, RQ-170 “Sentinel” drone is evidence of that reality.  The CIA’s monitoring of Iran is only the exposed aspect of its covert actions against that country.  The covert actions that are unbeknownst to the theocratic rulers of Iran are likely to hurt their regime the most.[9]  To add insult to injury, Iran’s strong ally, Syria, appears to be the next country to undergo a bloody regime change.  The loss of Syria would also seriously damage Iran’s presence and influence in Lebanon.

However, Iran is not the only country increasingly troubled by the prospects of regime change in Syria.  Israel is equally concerned, because the ouster of the Assad regime promises to bring about the rising presence and clout of the Islamists, who are not likely to loathe the Jewish state any less than the current Baathist/Alawite rulers of that country.

The emerging realignment of power should be worrisome, especially for the great powers of the West, because it is not only aimed at threatening their erstwhile privileged status in the global hierarchy of nation-states, but it also promises to bring to prominence actors and forces that have not been viewed by them as particularly friendly or cooperative.  There are likely to be many uncertainties, even the outbreak of minor or even major military conflicts, before a new hierarchy of nations is formulated.  The emergence of China and India does not promise the evolution of a Sino-Indian condominium of power.  Instead, the two rising powers might be headed toward an era of increased friction and even military conflict, especially on the issue of border dispute.  One minor example of that friction is underscored by the fact that India’s new Agni-V long-range ballistic missile is being dubbed by its defense analysts as the “China-killer.”

The lessening of the economic status of European states and the rising power of Turkey direly requires the emergence of a new set of “rules of engagement,” whereby Turkey can decide whether it is still interested in joining the EU, and, if so, on what terms?  The “sick man” of Europe toward the conclusion of the first decade of the 21^st Century is Europe, not Turkey.  The rising presence and influence of Islam requires a new rapprochement between the Islamists and the secularists for the emergence of Islamic democracy or a new model of democratic pluralism that resembles the Turkish model.  All of these are tall orders.  But they are also in need of acceptance by the powers of the past and the future.

http://us.macmillan.com/thegreatpowersversusthehegemon/EhsanMAhrari

I attended the first day of the conference.  It was more at the operational and tactical level.  Even the panel on the Human Terrain System (HTS) – a topic of great interest and personal involvement for me – was too tactical in its focus.

The strategic level was well covered by LTG Michael T. Flynn.  His presentation was good in the sense that he covered a number of intel-related themes that have been around since the days of General Norman Schwarzkopf.  My own take as an outsider (i.e., a person who does not tow any party line) is that our Achilles heel related to intelligence is the ever-growing complexity of our Intel bureaucracy and the mountainous nature of Intel data.  We collect a lot, but have no clue as to what to do with it.  I heard the evidence of that during the panel on HTS.  General Flynn’s point about data-focused intelligence versus problem-focused
intelligence was a thoughtful one.  It also proves another one of my long-standing concerns that we have not yet defined the problem in Afghanistan, as much as we encountered a similar problem in Iraq.

The highlight of the second day was the Intel Chiefs’ Roundtable.  Even though the focus of that roundtable was still more operational than strategic, it was an excellent occasion to hear what those senior leaders had on their minds these days.  In an answer to a question about how to deal with the ever-growing abundance of Intel data and institutional complexity, General Larry James’ remark was somewhat disappointing in the sense that he sounded like he was passing the buck when he said that future development of technological tools would enable us to cope with the problem of sorting out mountainous Intel data.  I don’t wish to be critical, but that also sounded like wishful thinking, which should, in reality, be envisaged as an unaffordable luxury by all senior Intel leaders.

Of course, one alternative to the ever-escalating abundance of Intel data would be to collect less.  However, that is a terrible option because, with the increasing complexity in the global arena, we have no option but to  collect more – especially when one considers the steady progress that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is making in the field of C4ISTAR (Command, Control,
Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition, & Reconnaissance).  But my concern is about the vital necessity for timely analysis in the theater of war, which becomes increasingly difficult if we keep adding more to an already massive Intel database.

I also remain overly concerned about the ever-growing complexity of our Intel organizations.  The senior Intel leaders should be thinking about reorganization.  However, I realize that it is easier said than done.  Besides, reorganization of our Intel institutions is one of Congress’ prerogatives.  I remember what happened to a major round of reorganization of those institutions in the light of the recommendations made by the 9/11 Commission. Since those recommendations came out in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland, all of us were hopeful that they would be taken seriously and that they would not become a victim of the congressional way of handling all issues by viewing them through the prism of “politics as usual.”  Contrary to our expectations, political considerations and political horse-trading took an upper-hand.  Politics aside, looking at this issue from the bureaucratic perspectives, organizations, once created, never die.  Even when they are transformed (i.e., reorganized), they remain very much alive.

My tentative conclusion after attending this very important conference is that we still remain vulnerable because the institutional complexity of our Intel organizations, and the voluminous data that they collect, brings with it lethargy or even temporary inertia in reaching important security-related decisions.  My classic example is the lack of cooperation between the CIA and the FBI before the 9/11 attacks, which is generally regarded as making an inordinate contribution in their inability to forestall those attacks.  One can argue that our security bureaucracies are currently in a cooperation mode on a sustained basis.  However, the worrisome factor is that bureaucratic complexity of Intel organizations has only increased since the occurrence of those
calamitous events on September 11, 2011.  And organizational complexity, more often than not, may become the enemy of timely decisionmaking.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are traditional competitors, but unlike what most American “specialists” on Iran claim, the chief reason is not the religious differences between them.  The chief reason is that in the post 9/11 era, Iran has remained a major Middle Eastern power.  In that capacity, it has consistently remained opposed to the American hegemony of that region.  After the United State’s dismantlement of the regime of Saddam Hussein, Iran had the golden opportunity to assert itself in Iraq, which it has been doing to the utter chagrin of the administrations of George W. Bush and now Barack Obama.  As American forces are getting ready to leave Iraq, Iran’s political prestige in that country remains unchallenged.   On the contrary, the Saudi strategic stock in the Middle East has been dwindling at the same time, and the Iran-Saudi rivalry has remained lopsided in favor of Iran.  Thus, the government in Riyadh is in dire need of asserting itself in the region.

Saudi Arabia faced an entirely different world during the same era.  In the post-9/11 and the post-Saddam eras, Saudi-American
relations have witnessed lots of lows.  Fourteen of the nineteen hijackers of the 9/11 attacks on U.S. soil were Saudi citizens, thereby triggering the charge of the administration of George W. Bush that the Wahhabi world views and the Saudi educational institutions have been chiefly responsible for creating self-styled global “Jihadists.”  The authoritarian regimes of the Middle East, at least temporarily, came under pressure from the United States to introduce democracy starting in July 2004.  Saudi
Arabia, along with Egypt, topped America’s demands for such a transformation.  However, once the Islamist-dominated
democratic government captured power in Iraq and the occupied Palestine, the Bush administration quickly abandoned the demands for democratization.  Bush’s dream of introducing Jeffersonian democracy in the Middle East quickly turned into a pipe dream.

Iran also became one of the beneficiaries of the Hezbollah-Israeli war of July-August 2006.  Since Israel failed to achieve its declared objective of eradicating Hezbollah at the end of that war, even after unleashing the fury of its air power over Lebanon, the bruised but still-standing Hezbollah was perceived in the Middle Eastern streets as a “victor” of that conflagration.  Iran was the chief supplier of weapons and military training for Hezbollah.  It was during that era that King Abdullah of Jordan made his detestable remark about the “Shia crescent across the Middle East.”

As much as Iran became a “rising power” of the Middle East between 2004 and 2008 – when there was no Saddam regime to challenge it, and when the U.S. prestige in the world of Islam was at its lowest as an occupier of Iraq and Afghanistan – the rulers
of that country sabotaged their own regional prestige by defrauding the Iranians and stealing the election for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  The Green Movement – that wonderful precursor to the Arab Awakening – emerged as the response of the young Iranians to bring about regime change.  The Ayatollahs got lucky, in that they succeeded in viciously suppressing the Green Movement.  However, the Achilles heel of the Islamic regime was exposed, and its legitimacy experienced an unprecedented level of erosion.

The Arab Awakening started in December of 2010 in the streets of Tunisia and became a tsunami of political change, and created a precedent of unimaginable magnitude for all the countries of the Middle East, especially for Iran.  The fact that the Arab Awakening was primarily a youth-driven movement, the fact that it appeared unstoppable because it was carried on the shoulders of the social media, and because it largely remained secular and democratic in its orientation, there is little doubt that the Ayatollahs are shaking in their inner sanctums about the resurgence of the Green Movement.  The chief difference between the failure of the Green Movement in overthrowing the Ayatollahs and the spectacular success of the Arab Awakening in overthrowing the rotting dictatorships in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya is that the resolve of the Iranian youth fell short.  Otherwise, there is absolutely no difference between the substantive goals of the Green Movement and the Arab Awakening as social movements.  As such, the success of the Green Movement was only temporarily hampered, but it cannot be permanently
denied.

The Arab Awakening is as much a threat to the Saudi Arabian regime as the Green Movement has been to the regime of the Ayatollahs.  Iran was as brutal about suppressing the Green Movement as the Saudi government was when it sent is paramilitary forces to put down the protest movement in Bahrain under the auspices of the GCC.  The world watched in horror the brutality of Saudi forces in the streets of Manama in March 2011, as if the earlier videos of the violence perpetrated by the Iranian security forces against the Green Movement were being played all over again.  Thus, while those two social movements challenged the political status quo in Iran and Bahrain (and indirectly defied the iron-clad status quo orientation of Saudi Arabia), it makes little sense for Tehran and Riyadh to continue their regional rivalry.  The commonality of the challenges that are ahead of them suggests that they should be minimizing the chances of friction and antagonism.

Then why does that irrational rivalry continue?  Possible explanations for such recurring irrationalities in the Middle East are endless.  I will mention only three.  First, given the fact that the Obama administration has taken the lead in alleging the “Iranian plot,” one is tempted to think that some low-level functionaries in Iran might have been involved in their attempts to conjure up an idiotic plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador.  Secondly, and alternatively, it is possible that the Obama administration, in its desperation to win Jewish votes in the next presidential election, is overstating the significance of that allegation, but is still remaining careful not to claim that Iran’s top leaders were involved in it.  Third, there is also the possibility that, after losing its strategic dominance in the Middle East and North Africa as a result of the turbulence created by the Arab Awakening, the United States wishes to create an anti-Iranian Arab nexus as a smoke screen to recreate its dominance in those regions.  As much as the autocratic Arab regimes served as pillars supporting the U.S. hegemony of the Arab world in the post-World War II decades, the remnants of them may still be counted on to play a similar role in its recreation now.  After all, the relationship between the U.S. hegemony and the autocratic regimes in the Middle East was nothing if it was not symbiotic.

The allegation that Iran’s elite Qods force was involved in the plot to kill the Saudi ambassador is too silly to believe.  The Qods force has ample room to challenge the American hegemony in Iraq and Afghanistan for it to take the suicidal step of attempting to commit a crime inside U.S. borders.   Iran does not even consider Saudi Arabia as a country in the same league to challenge its strategic maneuvers in West Asia or the Middle East.  It is only when one considers the possibilities of U.S.-Saudi maneuvers
to create an anti-Iranian nexus in the Arab world that Saudi Arabia gains significance, and this story also starts to sound familiar.  Even then, the risks of such a potential nexus associated with the long-term prospects of peace and stability in the Middle East are just too grave.

People like Jobs have no nationality and no religion.  They belong to the community of techno-geniuses. As such, they are part of the rarest assets of the globalized world. Their inventions are used by the entire global community to communicate with each other, to understand and to enlighten each other, and, in the process, to create a globalized culture of harmony and respect for our cultural,  ideological, and religious differences.  The language of technology has no room for contention, conflict, or hatred.  It is only concerned about getting over today’s technological glitches and lack of knowledge.  Techno-geniuses endlessly push the human mind toward new vistas of knowledge,  new horizons, and new boundaries of understanding.  As secular prophets of knowledge, they are only interested in slaying the dragons of human ignorance.

Jobs’ precision-driven mind was so conscious of using our time on this earth for improving our quality of life.  His entire short life epitomized the fulfillment of that “creed.”  As he stated in his inaugural address at Stanford University: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.  Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”  In this message, he spoke like a secular prophet.

As a technological genius and innovator, Jobs had a complex personality.  His obsession with efficiency made him an “aggressive outsourcer of jobs to China.” He was frequently referred to as a “freak.”  As such, he and his company manifested paradoxical tendencies.  There was that meditational practice of Zen Buddhism at Apple’s Zen center.  At the same time, Jobs and his
company were “obsessed with touch, feel and weight of its products and delighting  in its ever-growing cash reserves…”  There was also that “most immaterial, boasting of the magic and soul of its machines and the importance of acting out of love rather than money.”  The slogan “think different” was a motto that not only guided Jobs’ life, but the practice of that motto also became a requirement for success on the part of all his employees.

If death is seen as a waste of human talents, that feeling is only intensified when people like Jobs pass on.  The globalized community feels the loss.  It sheds its tears and forgets all irrationalities underlying its ostensibly innate fissiparous tendencies, its divisions, and its hatred.  In grieving  over their deaths it comes together, if only for a few brief moments.

I personally wonder why God takes such great minds away from us.  He already has the collection of all of the great minds and great souls that human civilization has ever created in bygone eras.  But the chief source of consolation here is that there are many more Steve Jobs waiting to emerge.  The human capacity to create and innovate – unfortunately, like its aptitude to destroy – appears  boundless.  The chief underlying theme of the civilizational history of our globe is “constant progress.”  And that promise will be fulfilled through the contributions of Steve Jobs that are yet to come.

As much as President Barak Obama entered office claiming to know the world of Islam – since he is the son of a Muslim father who was never there, but the fact that he grew up in Indonesia, a country with largest Muslim population – the promise related to his upbringing was never reflected in his handling of America’s ties with the world of Islam.  Watching his performance in office, he looks like another Chicago politician, full of verbose rhetoric but palpably short on implementing it.  I don’t question his intentions when he became president.  My sense is that issues affecting the world of Islam never really remained the focus of his attention for long.

When it came to Pakistan, Obama was more interested in fulfilling the intent of his speeches as a presidential candidate – he bluntly promised to take whatever action was needed against Pakistan, if he found evidence of that country’s involvement in terrorism (perhaps he did not use those exact words, but I am not violating his general intent underlying those frequently iterated statements).  Even before the assassination of Usama Bin Laden last May, Obama bought the argument of Vice President Joe Biden that the United States’ best approach to deal with terrorism is the wholesale implementation of a counterterrorism (CT) strategy.  As much as General David Petraeus – a champion of the counterinsurgency strategy – disagreed with him, he was forced to adopt it.  There is no doubt that the use of drone attacks targeting al-Qaida leaders had some success.  However, if the Obama administration thought that the use of CT would result in winning the war in Afghanistan, it was sadly mistaken.  The U.S. Special Forces are reportedly killing many Taliban fighters, but the Taliban are consistently showing their increased capabilities to launch attacks on a number of important targets inside Afghanistan, including the U.S. Embassy.

At least during the Bush administration, Pakistan could get away with the deceptive policy of constantly providing a wink and a nod to the Islamist groups while assuring the United States that it was serious about fighting these groups to help win Bush’s war
against terrorism.  George W. Bush may have chosen to believe that lie.  The Obama administration has learned not to trust the Pakistani leadership.  That attitude has gained in strength in the past three years.

The Obama administration also raised the bar of “credible performance” too high for Pakistan from the very beginning.  The litmus test of credibility was how brutal the Pak Army was going to be in fighting and eradicating the Islamist groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and how efficiently it would be in patrolling the highly porous Pak-Afghan
borders.

What the Obama administration did not understand was that the price for such behavior was going to be too high for Washington to pay.  Simply put, Pakistan, in turn, wanted the reestablishment of the hyphenated Indo-Pak relationship in U.S. foreign policy; it wanted to acquire the same rewards that India was given through its strategic partnership with America; and it also wanted to gain access to the cutting edge of U.S. defense technology and defense platforms to modernize its military.  Even if President Obama wanted to, he would not have been able to sell that package to the U.S. Congress. The Indian lobby inside the U.S. legislature has done an excellent job of creating a highly friendly environment for India – something akin to the Israeli lobby.

Could Pakistan have been satisfied with a lesser package of friendship from the U.S.?  Perhaps, but events were moving too fast for its leaders inside Pakistan.  The Islamists were getting too powerful to be taken on even by the Army without being able to absorb the cost.  And the cost was (and it remains) too high in the form of increased instability.  The turning of Pakistan into a Jihadi suicidal culture is the worst nightmare even for the Army. What is also hurting it is the fact that Islamization has become a mounting challenge within the ranks of the Army.  The Pakistani Army needs a period of peace to figure its long-term strategy regarding the Islamists and the United States’ involvement in Afghanistan.  But it has neither peace from the Islamists nor
less pressure from the United States.

Then came the assassination of UBL at the hands of the U.S. Special Forces.  The Army took it so personally as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, and the fact that it was caught napping, that there was not much room left for trust or cooperation between Pakistan and the United States.  To add insult to injury, the Special Force’s success in killing UBL enabled America’s Defense officials to issue arrogant statements about how willing they are to repeat such future operations inside Pakistan.

Have the Pakistan-U.S. deteriorating ties reached a point of no return?  Certainly not; both sides need each other badly. As long as the United States remains in Afghanistan, it needs Pakistani routes to get supplies to the NATO troops.  Similarly, Pakistan badly needs American economic and military assistance.  The only question is who is going to blink first?  Is the Pakistani Army willing to buckle down and accept its previous role of serving America’s security interests and paying the price, in terms of the increased internal instability?  Given a high degree of pragmatism on the part of Pakistan’s Army, it can still be done, but for the right price.  So, an even more important question is how far is the Obama administration willing to go to pay that price?  The answer to that question is likely to emerge in the next few weeks and months.  In the meantime, both sides would be well-advised to tone down their contentious and accusatory rhetoric towards each other.

What is making the emerging American decline more believable, if not ominous, is that the world seems to have run out of ideas  related to sustaining steady economic development and growth.  The EU and the dream of European integration seem to be unraveling.  The EU has always been looked upon by the states of Asia, Africa, and Latin America as a model to emulate sometime in the future.  If that arrangement falls apart, then what is to take its place?  Since no one has an answer to that, the best option for the Europeans, for now, is to do their utmost to save it.  But how?  No one knows that yet.

Looking at this evolving mega-change (or the impending mega-chaos) from Asia, a number of strategic thinkers of that region  have been touting the prospects of a power shift, without proposing which country will take the lead or emerge as heir-apparent to the United States.  One obvious answer is China, but China has a long way to go before it could emerge as an heir to the United States.  While thinking about China’s potential role as the next leader, Asian thinkers miss the point that that country’s economic growth, while a remarkable work in progress, is not providing much evidence from its leaders that they have been seriously thinking or debating the modalities of their potential leadership role.

America’s global leadership emerged from the visionary thinking of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who yanked his country from the jaws of isolationism, then used its economic wealth to fight the Second World War, and then applied its still-intact economic power to rebuild the post-WWII global order.  Even keeping in mind that history does not repeat itself by exactly following the trends of the past, Chinese leaders will have to develop something akin to the Rooseveltian leadership model, if China is to become a successor to the United States in the next decade or so.

One of the chief reasons the United States was able to persuade the non-communist countries of the world to become a member of the post-WWII global economic order was that it was also promoting an economic template that was based on free market, less-to-least regulations, and Keynesian economics.  At least the “developed” nation-states believed in that model.  The so-called non-aligned bloc never subscribed to it, due to the romanticism their leaders had developed about Fabian Socialism or even Marxism.  However, all of them – with India in the lead – realized later on how wrong they really were.  India emerged as a “convert” to capitalistic economy in the early 1990s, thereby becoming a promising rising power of the future.

While one examines China’s role as a successful economy, the so-called “Beijing consensus” is being viewed as one of the models that developing countries ought to consider emulating.  China’s Beijing consensus, according to Joshua Cooper Ramo, has three characteristics: “innovative policymaking,” “rejection of per capita GDP as the be-all and end-all” of developmental priorities – a trait that is envisioned as a rejection of Western policies – and “self determination.”  This last characteristic “emphasizes the need for developing countries to actively seek independence from outside pressure, as it is imposed by ‘hegemonic powers’ such as the United States.”   China’s economic growth is an export-based growth, while its economy is tightly controlled from within.  To top it all, China’s political system is an authoritarian one.  As such, it envisions sustained economic growth as the only way that its system is likely to survive, while allowing minimal political freedom.  So, the Beijing consensus will be attractive to authoritarian countries, where the autocrats are afraid of allowing political freedom to their peoples, and regard economic growth as the only way to sustain political status quo.  This limited appeal notwithstanding, it is too early to declare that another competing model – the Washington consensus, also referred to as the market-based approach – is either dead or proven irrelevant.

For the long-term “proof” of the success of the Beijing consensus, it has to prove its viability in the Chinese economy.  At the same time, it has to be applied, with noticeable success, outside of China.  Similarly, the alleged failure of the Washington consensus has to last for a long time.  There is little doubt that the long-term success and failure of the Beijing consensus and the Washington consensus, respectively, will bring about a power shift the likes of which the world has not seen in quite awhile.

A powerful side-effect of the seeming decline of the United States and the ascendance of the PRC is how those developments would affect East Asia and the Middle East.  East Asia is important to both China and the United States because China considers it as its backyard, while the United States has long maintained its strategic dominance in that region by building an intricate network of alliances with Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, and Australia.  This is also a region where the United States also maintains a powerful naval presence.

Two conflicts of East Asia not only continue to simmer, but they also promise to bring about potential major changes, depending upon the outcome, if they are resolved through the use of the military.  They are North Korea and the Taiwan disputes.  China is very much involved in both of them.  In the case of nuclear-armed North Korea, China wishes to see some type of a political compromise, which would leave the regime of Kim Jong Il or his successor in power.  The PRC will do its utmost to avoid the outbreak of hostilities.  The second conflict of East Asia is the reunification of Taiwan with mainland China.  The PRC is determined to see reunification materialize even with the use of military power.

Aside from these issues, what worries the East Asian countries is a palpable Chinese determination to increase its hegemony in East Asia by such actions as declaring the South China Sea as an area of its “core interests.”  Such a declaration implies that leaders in Beijing would unilaterally determine the modalities of their behavior involving the strategic interests and sovereignties of a number of East Asian nations.  It is this unyielding Chinese resolve that also forces the United States not to allow China’s bullying of its East Asian neighbors.  Consequently, the United States has been consistently conveying to China that it is siding with the East Asian countries in their resolve to seek a political solution and will not allow China to follow the principle of “might is right.”

The Middle East is also quite important to both the U.S. and the PRC.  The former has been a dominant strategic actor in that region for the past several decades.  Plus, that region has large oil reserves that both China and the United States need for their continued growth.  Without making too much publicity, China does envision the Middle East as an area where it could enhance its presence and influence as America’s clout dwindles.

The Arab Awakening in the Middle East and North Africa has created different challenges for the United States and China.  First and foremost, it has established once and for all that the long-term American idiosyncrasy of promoting a political status quo that guaranteed autocratic rule and the related subservience of that region to the American hegemony are things of the past.  Second, since the Arab Awakening has already resulted in the ouster of three notorious and enduring dictators from Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, the chief American worry is about what political arrangements will replace those dictatorships.  The best case scenario is that a pluralistic democracy emerges in all three countries, and the political subservience of those countries to the United States does not materialize.  What that means is that the policies of the future governments of those countries – and of other Arab states where dictatorships are under constant challenge – toward the Palestinian conflict will also undergo radical change, thereby forcing the United States to revisit its own long-standing policy of remaining at peace with Israel’s continued occupation of Palestine.  The worst case scenario for the United States is the capturing of political power by the Islamists in one or more of these countries.

Speaking of changes in the Middle East, Israel’s policy toward the Palestinian conflict has been anachronistic.  It also belongs to a era when sustaining Israeli dominance of the Palestinians was envisaged only through its continued occupation or, at the most, offering the Palestinians paltry changes that would still retain their status as an occupied nation.  As such, that era appears to be already under a lot of pressure from the Arab side.  As the Arab Awakening is radically altering the nature and style of politics of the Arab Middle East, there is a dire need for the birth of an “Israeli Awakening,” whereby its leadership foresees living with the Palestinians as free people with all the dignity that the acquisition of sovereignty promises them.

The Chinese leadership is very apprehensive about the repeat of the Arab Awakening inside its borders.  The mere mention of the phrase “awakening” triggered an overreaction in February 2011, whereby the security thugs were sent to suppress any outbreak of anti-regime demonstrations.

Even assuming that there will not be an outbreak of a Chinese version of an awakening in the future – a rather audacious assumption, to say the least – leaders in China know that they will have to change their ways of doing business with a democratic Middle East.  The report that Chinese officials met with the officials of the regime of Muammar Qaddafi in July of this year to sell arms – when the uprising to his rule was in full swing – underscores how serious the PRC was in its attempt to forestall the tide of internal change in Libya.  China now knows that gone are the days when the representatives of the dictators from the Middle East were sent to Beijing, or representatives of the Chinese government would sneak into Arab capitals to sign lucrative arms or economic deals without any fear of publicity or its related negative spillover effects.  The PRC also understands that it has to adapt and adopt a new style of doing business with a democratic Arab world.

All changes almost inevitably are analyzed along the continuum of good news and bad news for the winners and losers, respectively.  However, given the global implications and attendant intricacies of the impending power shift, it cannot be all good news for the emerging superpower and bad news for the declining one.  The winner and the loser will have to deal with a mixed bag of good and bad news.

The greatest challenge for the United States is that it has to come to grips with becoming a second- or even a third-rate nation.  It will also have plenty of opportunities to do its utmost to reverse its decline, and even to become an ascendant power.  It has not been successful in its attempts to reverse its fortune between 2008 and 2011.  However, that does not mean that it will continue to fail in the coming years.  The good news for the United States is that, even its reduced global power status will not affect its political stability.  So, being able to maintain its system stability while it looks for avenues to regain its global power status is indeed better than just good news.  On the contrary, we cannot think along the same lines about the PRC.  As an authoritarian system, it has no choice but to sustain its economic prosperity.  Otherwise, the revolution related to the “rising expectations” is likely to prove deadly for survival of the Chinese political system.  No one is more aware of that reality than the Chinese leadership.

As a democracy, the United States’ chances of adaptability to the radically altering global realities are very good.  As a weakened, but still a stable polity, it can continue to find avenues for new ways of dealing with change and even in terms of coming out on top of rising challenges.  The same cannot be said about the PRC.  In this sense, China has more reason to ensure its success both globally and internally, in order to survive.

Hating of other people or their beliefs is a disease that has been around throughout the human history.  Of course, the world saw the ugliest face of that hatred Europe in the Holocaust.  Since the World War II, Europe claims to have grown out of its capacity to hate.  Even the creation of the EU is presented by the European spin masters as the European way of demonstrating that they are way ahead of the world in their broadmindedness and their global perspectives.  But that is only partially true.  Europe and the Europeans might have truly repented their erstwhile hatred of the Jews, but at least the right wing nuts of that continent have long found an outlet for their mental illness when they berate or insult Islam in the name of freedom of expression.  Even in making the freedom of expression a sacred exercise, the Europeans have shown their contempt for the non-democratic parts of the globe.  The message being that only the citizens of a democracy have the mental aptitude to understand that secular humanism is the ultimate form of human development.  A secular humanist is a rational animal and he/she can critically analyze all the irrationalities of a religion.  That principle does not fully apply to Christianity (for no one would dare insult Christ inside Europe); however, it is readily applied to Islam and its Prophet.

Norway and other Scandinavian countries have long been suffering from an intense feeling of superciliousness.  Insulting the Prophet of Islam, making derisive remarks about Islam, or drawing cartoons making the minarets of a mosque look like missiles have long remained academic exercises in which a number of blond and light-skinned men and women of Europe have indulged.  They never thought that the ugly face of right wing Christian fundamentalism—that so intensely disliked Islam and Muslims—was also capable of going to the extreme of massacring their own innocents.  There is something about hatred that most us fail to understand. When it is expressed unfettered or without legal or other constraints, it reaches a point when it is gushed out with utmost intensity and ferocity.  However, for the Scandinavian frame of reference—yes liberal as well as conservatives among them—massacring the innocents was only the savagery that only the dark-skinned believers of Islam are capable of perpetrating. Europe—especially the Scandinavian part of Europe—was too special, superior, or civilized to indulge in such ugly actions.

Now the deed is done.  We are told that Norway lost its innocence.  Well, unfortunately, the process of losing its innocence had long begun in that country: when some of their newspapers wanted to show their solidarity with other European newspapers by republishing the insulting cartoons of the Prophet of Islam.  It is hoped that the massacre of 76 Norwegians will not only start a general exercise of soul searching inside that country, but in the entire continent of Europe.

The European governments ought to spend some time seriously considering the proposition that the bestiality of Europe that showed its ugly face during the outbreak of the two World Wars might have never gone away.  It has been only hiding in the comfortable closets inside their polities.  It continues to show its face in all the right wing political manifestations.  Especially when it comes to the treatment of Islam, the ugly face of European uncouth behavior is being witnessed in activities that include banning of the Burqas or hijab, refusal to allow the construction of the mosques, etc.

Like the treatment of drunkenness, the first step is to acknowledge that Europe has a problem in its treatment of Islam and Muslims.  Then the next step will be to start a critical thinking that involves a healthy debate over Islam and Muslims, over multiculturalism and integration. Demanding that Muslims of Europe respect European values is a valid one.  Debates over it are the way democracies resolve their complex issues and search for common grounds, if those issues are indeed a source of consternation for the Europeans.  In this exercise, the most important guiding principle ought to be zero tolerance toward all mindless expression of Islamophobia.  Norway has found out the most painful way that a mind that can hate others will have no problem in manifesting that hatred even more intensely toward their own kind.

Washington operates on its own logic (or the lack thereof) and its own myths about every major issues faced by any sitting president.  The current myth is that the Afghan conflict is resolvable on the U.S. terms.  And the U.S. terms include killing as many Taliban as possible, thereby persuading the remainder of the Taliban that their best option is to negotiate their continued survival with the U.S. government.  Since America’s leading politicians are driven by how best to define the American version of victory in Afghanistan, they tend to forget that the other side is equally capable of calculating the modalities of such a victory on its own terms. Therein lies the rub for several reasons.

First, the Taliban is not interested in negotiating peace with the U.S. on the terms that are best suited for the Americans.  Second, the war in Afghanistan has not reached a point when the Taliban as a group is convinced that their best option is to negotiate with the Americans.  In fact, an entirely contrary argument on the issue can be made.  The war is not going well for the Americans, and they, as usual, are watching the clock and are getting increasingly eager about a phased withdrawal from that country.  In fact, President Barak Obama’s chances of reelection in 2012 depend heavily (right behind his success in creating a high rate of employment inside the United States) on his ability to demonstrate to the American voters that he is indeed in the process of phasing out America’s continued presence from Afghanistan while winning the conflict.

Unfortunately for the American side, the Taliban know that fact very well.  As it becomes increasingly crucial for the Americans to get out of Afghanistan for electoral reasons, the Taliban can correctly envisage that situation as a harbinger of victory.  All they had to do is just prolong the battle and wait.

Under these circumstances, it is futile to expect a mass switching of the side by the Taliban.  Thus, stories on that topic in the American media remain anecdotal rather than portraying them as a rising trend among the Taliban, especially in the South, which is an area of strong Taliban presence and influence.

Is there any scenario when the American occupation forces of Afghanistan can bring about a successful conclusion of the conflict?  Given the intensity of the hatred, suspicion, and ill will that both sides hold toward each other, one cannot think of any such scenario.  Mullah Mohammad Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban, who has been pursued as a “high value target” by both Bush and Obama administrations, is not expected to find any reason to negotiate with the  American side.  Besides, what makes the Americans or President Hamid Karzai to think that Omar would be interested in sharing power with the Karzai government, which has been the focal point of his contempt and anger since it came into existence?

On the basis of these factors, the successful end of the Afghan conflict has to be along the lines of a clear-cut defeat either of the Taliban or the Americans.  Given the fact that Afghanistan continues to serve as a graveyard of empire, at least the burden of history as well as the current ground realities are very much against the Americans.