President Barack Obama decided to show his “outrage,” since some so-called pundits were upset that he was not showing the kind of passion that George W. Bush had shown after the 9/11 attacks. But, Bush’s record in his so-called “war on terrorism” has been a miserable failure. During his regime, the United States became an occupier of two Muslim countries. That might be one reason why the lone superpower under Obama is facing such an uphill battle in dealing with “violent extremism.” If Obama were to follow Bush’s example, then the United States is likely to face future quagmires and inertias.

Another dim-witted statement that was uttered by one of the “pundits” is when he wondered out loud why Muslims are not condemning what the young Nigerian tried to do. Statements of that nature imply that all Muslims, until every one of them yells at the top of his/her lungs condemning such action over and over again, are condoning terrorism. At no time in the history of human kind was such a reckless notion deemed worthy of air time.

What happened to America’s dealing with terrorism is that, under a new president, another country (Afghanistan) became the focus of it, as if by “winning” in that country the current administration would defeat terrorism once and for all. What the United States is not considering is that there cannot be any victory against the terrorist forces unless it develops comprehensive anti-terrorism policies. Firing cruise missiles or using UAVs to shoot a group of terrorists here and there, or sending Special Forces to take out a few terrorists is not the solution. Actions of that nature only intensify feelings of hatred and revenge against U.S. personnel all over the world. If the United States’ invasion of Iraq taught anything to America, it is that the use of military power (“hard” power) alone is no guarantee of victory.

As President Obama is busy developing some sort of blueprint (I will not call it a strategy, because there is no such thing up to this time), Pakistan and Afghanistan look increasingly precarious places. In both those countries, Islamist forces are on the offensive. Iran, totally unrelated to the latest episode of terrorism, is getting increasingly unstable. The Iranophobes in America are eagerly waiting for the Islamic regime to fall, hoping that the next government will be pro-Western. No one is considering that the alternative to the Islamic Republic might be chaos, which might have its own deleterious spillover effects in Iraq.

Across the Persian Gulf, Yemen is boiling over as another failed state. Northern Yemen and areas of Saudi Arabia contiguous to it have become the new battleground between forces of those two countries and al-Qaida, with the United States increasing its pressure on both of those countries to let loose their hard power on them. America’s answer to problems of al-Qaida is: kill, kill, kill, never mind what happens to Yemen or Saudi Arabia in the process. Farther East to the Arabian Peninsula is the Horn of Africa, which contains Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eretria. Somalia is already the poster child candidate for a failed state, while Ethiopia and Eretria are right behind it.

The question of the hour—indeed, of the decade—is what should be done about all these countries that are steadily becoming havens for al-Qaida. Does the United States have enough cruise missiles to shoot at all of them, ensuring the eradication of all supporters of al-Qaida? Does it have enough drones to fly them on a 7/24 basis on all the aforementioned countries?

In the last presidential election, there was no debate about how to win against the terrorists worldwide. Terrorism as an issue had already fallen way down on the list of American voters’ concerns during that presidential campaign. Candidate Obama made his electoral fortune by banging the drum of the failed policies of Bush, and then insisting that he would go after al-Qaida and would do everything to eradicate it in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Who could have argued against that without having his/her patriotism questioned? What bears repeating here is that the 2008 presidential election campaign was totally devoid of any debate regarding how to be victorious over global terrorist forces because, by then, the 9/11 attacks were fading in American memories.

That fading process would have continued if not for the fact that Obama remained true to his promise and started the use of hard power in Afghanistan and Pakistan, assuming that he would win where his predecessor had failed.

The widening popularity of al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula and on the Horn of Africa, and its sustaining capacity in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, should intensify the feeling in the U.S. that the need of the hour is to develop comprehensive anti-terrorism policies, and not to solely rely on killing (counterterrorism emphasis) and hope that such a measure would also eradicate terrorism. But right now, examining the public debate, one gets the feeling that the American government is in the process of reinventing the wheel. There is the usual blame game that various agencies are still not cooperating; or the process of terrorist monitoring has become so cumbersome that it does not work even when a young man’s father reports to the American embassy that his son might have joined the ranks of the terrorists, yet that young man is allowed to travel to the United States.

Watching the process of recrimination, looking for fall guys, the blame game that is currently in progress in Washington, one wonders whether the lone superpower would ever become invulnerable to the actions of those who attach no value to life, neither of their own nor of others.
If there is a fall guy inside the United States in this whole process of countering terrorism, it is the cumbersomeness related to securing America that has become the chief culprit of making America unsafe. The strength of the terrorists stems from the fact that they operate on the basis of simplicity: one person or a few persons specialize in or invent new ways of creating death and mayhem. All they have to do is to find just one or more loopholes in the cumbersome security processes. At least in incidents of this nature, the culprit is the incompetence of the intricate bureaucracies, which promise to become even more intricate and, in all likelihood, more incompetent in the coming months.

The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission of creating an intelligence czar was a wise one. Instead, Congress diluted most of the recommendations of that Commission by playing politics. Today, we have eight or more intelligence agencies. All of them are busy fighting budget and turf battles and performing the redundant tasks of collecting intelligence. Those types of redundancies are also contributing further to the aforementioned cumbersomeness. As the co-Chairs of the 9/11 Commission observed in their OpEd of January 11, 2010, “The DNI [Director of National Intelligence] has been hobbled by disputes over its size, mission and authority, but forcing information-sharing and enabling the NCTC’s [National Counterterrorism Center] best analysts to do their work should not be subject to dispute.”

What America needs is an anti-terrorism strategy that is geared toward homeland security, but a strategy that also deals with causes of global terrorism that is focused on Africa, the Middle East, and South, Central, and Southeast Asia. Of these regions, Africa—the Horn and the trans-Sahel region, North and West Africa—is where terrorism is likely to run rampant during the next decade. South Asia and the Middle East will remain hotbeds of terrorism from now until at least the middle of the next decade. Central Asia appears calm; however, we know so little about that region because countries of that area are governed by autocrats who want absolutely no outside scrutiny of their tyrannical rule. So, it is a safe bet that one or more countries of Central Asia is likely to experience internal turbulence or even violent regime change. In all likelihood, such change would not result because of terrorist groups, but such groups are most likely to take every advantage of the resultant political turbulence.

If the prognostications of increased transnational turbulence are correct, then it behooves the United States to have trans-regional strategies to counter such events. Merely appointing “czars” and “special envoys” is not enough. However, considering how unprepared the United States has shown itself to be about dealing with terrorism last December, one has little reason to remain optimistic.

The administration of President Barack H. Obama has started the highly intricate process of developing its own strategy with a bang in different regions of the world.  Here are the ingredients of that strategy: multilateralism, looking for a fresh start—which promises to be substantially different from the preceding administration—search for common ground involving Russia, invitation of negotiations with America’s traditional adversaries like Iran and North Korea, and at least the initial hope that approaches toward Palestine, Pakistan, and Afghanistan are likely to be radically different than the one the Bush administration pursued unsuccessfully.  This is a huge agenda.  But Obama’s administration has the enormous characteristic of freshness, metaphorically as well as substantively, in the sense that it is not carrying any baggage that had so infamously bogged down George W. Bush in an ostensibly endless inertia.

President Obama has insisted in talking to everyone, especially to America’s traditional adversaries.  Talking is better than not talking, he uncomplicatedly observed during the presidential campaign.  America’s strict observance of this principle promises to open a lot of doors.  It will also lower the feeling of fear and paranoia on the part of Iran and North Korea, who were simplistically and wrongly depicted by the Bush administration as members of an imaginary “axis of evil.”

Multilateralism has served America’s interest in its entire post-World War II history.  The United States led the Herculean task of rebuilding global economic institutions and regimes like the United Nations, the Bretton Woods Agreement, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.  America had the required economic prowess while other global actors—the Soviet Union, the U.K. and France—were simply exhausted with their economies devastated by the ravages of war.  But it was the frame of mind and global vision of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt more than America’s economic power that enabled the United States to become the leader of the so-called “free world,” a position it has never really relinquished, even today.

America’s leadership position was seriously—and hopefully not permanently—damaged in the post-9/11 era, when unilateralism and the hubris of the Bush administration acted like termites,  voraciously eating up most of the goodwill that the United states had created all over the world.

Obama is off to a good start.  He already has spoken to the world of Islam, stating that America will deal with it respectfully and on the basis of pragmatism; he has invited Iran to unclench its fist and initiate an era of negotiations on the basis of mutual respect; and he has appointed George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke as special envoys for Middle East and South Asia, respectively.  He has sent his Vice President, Joe Biden, to talk to the Europeans and to the Russians. 

Cumulatively speaking, this is a radical departure from the Bush administration.   Now, an intricate series of negotiations must start.  What the Obama administration must keep in mind is the fact that although it is approaching a number of actors with an open mind and unclenched fist, it may not get an immediate enthusiastic response or positive results.

In the case of Russia, the United States is faced with a country that has decided to become significant by taking the wrong route of unilateralism and hubris, which were hallmarks of the Communist superpower.  Russia cannot assert itself in that manner toward its neighbors, who have the bitter experience of being the captives of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) throughout the Cold War years, and then wonder why they so eagerly seek the shield of NATO.  Russia’s neighbors are watching warily, and with dismay, the incessant de-democratization of that country.   They do not know what to make of Russia’s energy-related assertiveness, which has taken the form of neo-mercantilism.  They watched in horror Russia’s clear over-reaction to the stupid decision of Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia to confront it militarily.

While Vice President Joe Biden is suggesting that the United States wants to “press the reset button” of ties with Moscow, Russia was busy working up a deal with Kyrgyzstan, whereby its President, Kurmanbek Bakiev, invited the United States to get out of the Manas air base, a development that will complicate America’s logistical problems of keeping the supply lines open to its forces in Afghanistan.  However, the stateship of Russia also works like an aircraft carrier: it changes its direction rather slowly.  Thus, it will be awhile before positive responses to the U.S. overtures might emerge.  While it does not pay to be overly pessimistic about Russia’s response, one does not have to hold ones breath for a long time to envisage such a development.  The signals regarding Russia’s willingness to cooperate, or not, will come soon enough.

The U.S.-Iran ties have mammoth complications of their own.  The first hurdle is the bad blood related to America’s support for Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi from 1953 through 1978.  That era has the same legacy of shame and bitterness for Iran as China’s memories related to the “decades of humiliations” at the hands of the West and Japan.  At the same time, the United States has not forgotten the ignominy it had suffered during the “hostage crisis” of the late 1970s.  That crisis also played a dominant role in making Jimmy Carter a one-term President. 

The second hurdle is America’s Iran-Libya Sanction Legislation, which Iran envisions (quite correctly) as aimed at bringing about “regime change.”  All such legislation has to be categorically nullified before any serious negotiations take place between Washington and Tehran.  The United States has to accept the legitimacy of the Iranian government if it wishes to give real meaning to negotiating with it from the position of “mutual respect.”

The third hurdle is Iran’s nuclear research program, which the United States regards as aimed at developing nuclear weapons.  While it is hard to categorize America’s concerns as baseless, one must also fully understand Iran’s security concerns.  Iran has the same sense of insecurity that drove India to seek nuclear weapons.  At least India had the tacit support of, and some semblance of security guarantees from, the FSU while it was around.  Iran had no such support or guarantees from any major power.  What country would come to its assistance if the United States were to decide to bring about regime change in Iran?  What great power came to Iraq’s rescue when Iraq was similarly threatened by the Bush administration?  Could Iraq have gone through the bloody process of regime change if it had had nuclear weapons?  These questions are uppermost in the minds of the Ayatollahs, who are cavalierly and regularly demonized in America’s press and academic journals.

The negotiations between the United States and Iran have to seriously address Iran’s security concerns.  Given the nature of hostile attitudes that have prevailed between the two actors, it is hard to imagine a scenario when the lone superpower can believably guarantee Iran’s security and foreswear all actions aimed at regime change.  Even some European countries’ attempts to give verbal security guarantees to Iran will not do.  Thus, the nuclear issue remains a very obdurate problem between the two.  The Obama administration must summon all its creativity to resolve this aspect of U.S.-Iran conflict before any semblance of “normalcy” is restored between the two.

If one were to believe North Korea, it is already a nuclear power.  It has had a legacy of confronting a number of U.S. presidents who have threatened it with the use of nuclear weapons.  About the only realistic possibility under which Pyongyang might unravel its nuclear weapons is if it is protected under the nuclear umbrella of the People’s Republic of China.  That angle has not been pursued either by the U.S., the Chinese, or the North Koreans, at least in their unclassified diplomatic meetings.  In the absence of a nuclear umbrella, it is well-nigh impossible to imagine a circumstance under which Kim Jong Il would give up his nuclear weapons.   It might not be a bad idea for the Obama administration to consider pursuing that angle in future negotiations with the North Koreans and the Chinese.

The Palestinian-Israeli issue is a hostage to the upcoming Israeli elections.  If Benjamin Netanyahu is elected, then all bets are off about any resolution that is acceptable to the Likud and Hamas.  These two parties are equally fundamentalist and bull-headed about pursuing their respective version of the solution.  George Mitchell is likely to forget how complicated the Irish conflict was while he will tries to find common ground between the inflexible positions of Hamas and Likud.  On this issue, the U.S. strategy is likely to face frequent impasses. 

Regarding Pakistan and Afghanistan, the challenge for the Obama administration is no less daunting than the preceding issues.  Those two countries are places where al-Qaida has emerged as a major force.  The question is how to deal with the rising tide of religious extremism and problems of failing and weak governments.  President Obama wrongly considers that the immediate solution is in increasing the number of troops, since that approach supposedly helped lower the spiral of violence in stabilizing Iraq.  The fact is that it is much more complicated than that.  It was the fortuitous confluence of the decision of the “Sons of Iraq” to cooperate with the U.S. military against al-Qaida, along with the U.S. military’s decision not only to strengthen its number, but also to implement the “clear, hold, and build” strategy that helped stabilize Iraq.  The question is whether the Obama administration has correctly understood what actually transpired in Iraq, or is it merely repeating the process of raising the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan as a panacea for stabilizing that country.  The burden of evidence thus far is that it has not understood the intricacies of Afghanistan and is about to commit itself with the wrong-minded approach of using the military tool of America’s national power to resolve an enormously complicated situation.

Pakistan is a larger challenge than Afghanistan, in the sense that it not only negatively affects the stability of Afghanistan but also similarly affects the internal stability of India.  The Mumbai terrorist attacks have proven that fact.  The most ignored—and an extremely important—fact of South Asia is that neither India nor Afghanistan will be stable or peaceful places as long as highly visible measures are taken to soothe the security-related concerns of Pakistan involving India.  An important aspect of that concern is the lowering of India’s presence in Afghanistan, which Pakistan (rightly or wrongly) perceives as foreboding to its own security.  The Bush administration ignored that fact; and the Obama administration will ignore it at the risk of damaging its own interests in South Asia.

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President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have emphasized America’s resolve to use pragmatism, cordiality, realism, and firmness in its foreign policy toward the troubled regions of the world and about soothing the security-related concerns of America’s friends and especially its competitors and adversaries.  The coming months will be crucial to test their authenticity of purpose.

All historical eras and events are associated with some slogan or idea.  Rightly or wrongly, they serve as a clarion call for nations either to accept or to reject them, and then use them as guideposts for their policies.  The First World War’s moniker was “a war to end all wars,” and that phrase became a cause célèbre for its supporters as a rationale for sacrifices.  The Second World War was depicted as “the last good war,” not because any war is good, but because it “was a war that had to be fought and won.”   The phrase “containment” [of communism] remained a major driving force for the Cold War in the United States as well as in the so-called “free world.”

When the United States was attacked by a number of Middle Eastern terrorists on September 11, 2001, the phrase “post-9/11 era” was frequently used by the analysts all over the world, especially to describe its gruesome side.  It was more than a casual phrase.  It was the beginning of new but sinister way of thinking about how to deal with global terrorism and how the United States would go about determining which countries are on its side and which have a soft spot for terrorists.  The Bush administration declared a “war” against it, and the world had to become familiar with another phrase, the “global war on terrorism” or GWOT. 

That phrase itself became a lightning rod for controversy in Europe and the rest of the world.  The critics asked how the lone superpower could declare a war against an action and expect to become a winner.  Another group of critics asked how the United States could expect to win against “global terrorism” by applying only its military muscle. 

The United States, wittingly or unwittingly, treated “global terrorism” as a monolithic entity along the same flawed lines whereby “international communism” was depicted in the Cold War years as a “monolithic” force that could be tackled and defeated.  It was only in the late 1950s—during the second administration of President Dwight Eisenhower—and later on that the United States moved away from that silly notion of monolithism in portraying communism. 

The concept the “clash of civilizations” became divisive in the early 1990s when it was coined by Samuel Huntington.  In that decade, the debate on the utility of that concept largely involved only American, and a few Asian and European, intellectuals who labeled it contentious and partially correct in explaining the emerging conflict after the implosion of the Soviet Union in 1991.  American strategic thinkers, after getting so used to dealing with the mega-conflict of the Cold War years, thought that a conflict along the same magnitude would become the dominant basis of a division of nation-states in several camps.  So the concept “civilizational conflict”—which Huntington borrowed from the writings of Phillip Hitti and Bernard Lewis—appeared as a logical way of thinking “big” about the post-Cold war era.

Usama Bin Laden’s public musings between the late 1990s and 2001 about declaring a “Jihad” against the U.S. and the West became the basis for “legitimizing” and globalizing Huntington’s proposition related to Islam and Christianity.  However, once the United States was attacked by Muslim terrorists, who, as it was later known, were carrying out a plot that was personally blessed by Bin Laden himself, no doubts were left in the minds of American and Western strategic thinkers about how “prescient” Huntington really was all along. 

In Muslim countries, the clash of civilizations also caught on as an idea legitimizing the “fact” that the United States had declared a war against Islam.  President George W. Bush’s uninformed use of the phrase “crusade,” was treated as “evidence” of that “fact” in the world of Islam.

However, it was Bush’s decision to invade Iraq soon after he invaded Afghanistan that became the chief basis for the “credibility” to the proposition in the world of Islam that the leitmotif for the U.S. presence in Muslim countries was to enslave them and change the essence of Islam into something that is very much akin to Christianity. 

Needless to say, despite his one-time use of the unfortunate phrase “crusade,” Bush reiterated that America had no fight against Islam and that America respects Islam.  But that country’s continued presence in Afghanistan and Iraq was speaking louder than Bush’s words, and the lone superpower was envisioned as an “enemy” of Islam.  As the table from the Pew Research Center shows, a majority of people in a number of Muslim countries continued to envision the United States as a military threat.

President Obama’s overtures toward the world of Islam, indeed, are welcoming.  However, what is needed is substantive policy change.  His decision to create a distance between President Hamid Karzai’s government and the U.S. is a positive development.  However, one has to wait and see how that transformation is reflected in other policy measures that his administration intends to bring about in Afghanistan. 

President Obama’s overall approach to “PafAf” is also comprehensive and promising.  However, one has to wait and see how the “surge” of troops in Afghanistan affects that country’s stability.  America’s continued use of drones to carry out attacks in the Pak-Afghan border areas is weakening the support of the Zardari government.  But, given the fact that such attacks have also resulted in a few deaths of al-Qaida and Taliban groups, there is little doubt that such attacks will continue.  Despite having a comprehensive approach to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the United States appears confused about what other modalities it ought to develop in its policies to persuade its NATO allies that Afghanistan will be stabilized in the near future. 

In the absence of a clear-cut indication of America’s success in stabilization of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the notion of the clash of civilizations—even though it has lost a substantial aspect of its popularity in South Asia and in other Muslim countries—is likely to be revived.  Such a happenstance is likely to be one of the greatest challenges to President Obama’s well-meaning new approach to the world of Islam.  He has initiated his battle for slaying the beast of the clash of civilizations.  For now, at least, his administration appears to be waging an uphill battle.

The Cold War in its old form disappeared when the Soviet Union imploded.  But the U.S.-Russian competition did not.  The United States continued a strange policy of expanding the NATO membership and bringing that Alliance all the way to the Russian borders, despite strong and continued protestations from Mosow.  It was highly irrational on the part of the United States to think that Russia should only listen to its rhetoric—which went along the lines that “we are no longer adversaries”—and totally ignore its near obsession with the NATO enlargement.

Russia responded in its own way, when that little megalomaniac president of Georgia, Mikheil Saaskashvili, sent troops into the Moscow-backed breakaway province of South Ossetia, hoping to teach them a lesson.  Russia let loose its fury.  That was, to be sure, a disproportionate response, but it underscored that Russia does not wish to be taken for granted.  Even to this day, there is no certainty that American military advisers were not involved in that Georgian action.

Moscow’s antagonism is continuing.  It appears that its current rulers have decided to challenge the incoming president, Barack Obama, by escalating ground-based intercontinental ballistic missile production.  The arsenal includes multiple-warhead ICBMs called the RS-24, which was first test-fired in 2007.  The then Deputy Prime Minister, Sergei Ivanov, made oblique references to the U.S. decision to deploy anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and Hungary by stating that those new missiles are “capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defence systems.”

President Obama’s dilemma will be how to respond to Russia.  His best option is to postpone the NATO expansion, not as a symbol of giving in to any Russian blackmail, but as a symbol of empathizing with Russia’s security concerns related to the seemingly endless enlargement of that Alliance.  If its raison detere is no longer to contian Russia, then why is it that NATO appears poised to take the entire Europe under its security umbrella?  Who is NATO’s “enemy” toward the end of the first decade of the 21^st Century?  If the motivation of rubbing Russia’s face into the dirt is no longer driving U.S. foreign policy, then what other objectives are?  If those objectives are as benign as Washington has claimed under the presidency of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, then why is the lone superpower relying on expanding a predominantly military alliance?

These are only some of the questions the Russian leaders are raising.  They deserve serious answers and a series of follow-up actions.  Otherwise, the totally illogical arms race appears set to get into full swing.

YOU HATE YOUR WAY; WE WILL HAVE A SHOE THROWING CONTEST

The Clinton and Bush administrations will be known for either underscoring or creating new hateful sobriquet for Iran.  In the 1990s, it was described as one of the so-called “rogue states.”  Then, in the post-9/11 era, it was referred to as a part of an imaginary “axis of evil.” 

On its part, Iran used a doozy of a characterization for the United States: “the Great Satan.”  A more benign version of that depiction was “tyrannical power,” a phrase that Iranian president Ahmadinejad recently used in his “alternative” Christmas message to the West.

In the aftermath of the shoe throwing incident at President George W.Bush in Iraq, Iran has started a new ‘mini-sport.’  On Christmas eve, a university in Teheran started a shoe-throwing contest at an effigy of Bush.  The news dispatch also contained the following observation: “No details on the prize, nor how the intensity of the shoe throwing will be judged.”

A GLOBAL FATWA CLEARINGHOUSE?

One of the chief differences between the Sunni and Shia sects of Islam is that the Sunnis have no hierarchy of Ayatollahs who issue Fatwas (religious decrees) to which their followers adhere.  In Sunni Islam, a qualified religious person (a Mufti) or other equally learned scholar might issue a fatwa; however it is up to individual Muslims to follow or ignore it.  That is one reason why some scholars call a person who indulges in suicide attacks a shaheed (martyr), while others condemn those acts as inherently contradictory to the essence of Islam.

What about the concept of Jihad?  A number of foreign insurgents who were arrested in Iraq reported that they were following Fatwas that depicted their participation against the U.S. occupation as a conduct of Jihad.  There is a similar absence of any agreement among Muslim scholars on this matter.

As one dispatch entitled, “Fatwa Chaos in Sunni Islam,” in Open Source states:  “Fatwa chaos may lead to confusion among Sunni followers over which fatwa, or prescribed course of action, to follow.”

One suggestion that often pops up in Western circles is that some sort of central religious authority is required for interpretations that are followed by Sunni Muslims all over the world.   However, wishing for such a clearinghouse is akin to wishing for a Sunni version of a Pope.  You know that is not going to happen.

It is a sign of the times that the U.S. media still sets the agenda and the tone for different regions of the globe.  Since terrorism has been very high on the U.S. agenda of “hot button” issues, that topic gets enormous coverage, as if other issues matter very little.  Even those who are critical of the U.S. “obsession” with terrorism wait with baited breath to hear and read about the dynamics of activities of terrorist groups. 

I hope I am not exaggerating the description of this trend, but the coverage of terrorism is “sexier” than the arcane discussions of economic turbulence, especially when those downturns cannot be explained with any amount of cogency and coherence.  Neither can terrorism.  But that has not stopped the so-called experts to pontificate about it.  In any event, my thinking was colored by these thoughts when I arrived in Indonesia in October 2008.

What I saw was remarkably different.  Here is a country that is bustling with optimism, even when the daily rat race of getting ahead promises to get more intense than it currently is because of the prevalence of the global economic crisis.  Here is a country that is most relaxed about and is equally proud of its Islamic heritage as well as about its religious pluralism.  Here is a country whose educators are exceedingly preoccupied with the modalities of elevating the standard and capabilities of modern education of their institutions. 

Here is a country whose foreign policy—even though it is not yet driven by the desire to be seen and heard globally—is becoming progressively visible.  Here is a country where the desire to build its armed forces (TNI) is becoming a source of controversy and debate.  However, that debate has not yet caught the intensity that it deserves.  Strangely enough, Indonesians view the TNI as some sort of a rogue element, perhaps because of its highly controversial record in the independence of Timor Leste. 

Still, Indonesia signed a defense deal for the purchase of $1 billion worth of military equipment (including tanks, helicopters, and submarines) from Russia during the September 2007 visit of the then President Vladimir Putin.  The United States watched that development with a mixture of rapt attention and concern.  As much as Washington wants Indonesia on its side, it has shown little evidence of giving that Southeast Asian country the significance that it deserves.  Besides, American arms purchases are heavily embroiled in a political tug-and-pull from the U.S. Congress, which consistently demands that the purchasing countries toe the American line regarding major foreign policy issues.  This reality is not popular inside any Asian country that wishes to remain on the U.S. list of friends.

But the modalities of Indonesia’s foreign policy are not adequately covered in the global media.  At the same time, visiting that country, I felt that Indonesia’s foreign policy specialists whom I encountered are not driven by a sense of self importance that has emerged among the strategic thinkers of India in the past eight or ten years.  Of course, Indonesia, unlike India, is not a possessor of nuclear weapons.  It, unlike India, has yet to emerge as another “rising power” of Asia.  Consequently, it has not yet attracted the kind of attention that is currently showered on India by the world media.  However, a country like Indonesia does not have to acquire nuclear weapons to enhance its regional significance.  It is the largest member of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and a country with the largest Muslim population.  In those capacities, it is likely to enjoy considerable sway in global affairs in the coming years.

In the post-9/11 era—when the United States is having so much trouble in the realm of winning the hearts and minds of Muslims—Indonesia can deftly position itself as a friend of the U.S.  There have to be sizeable side benefits for such a role for that country, especially in the form of economic and military assistance.  However, for some reason, Indonesia has not yet decided to play that role.

From extensive contacts with its young community of strategic thinkers that a short visit can provide, I was not persuaded that Indonesians are paying much attention to have their country become an important actor in the regional politics of Southeast Asia.  Perhaps its newness to democracy is the reason why that country’s strategic thinkers are waiting for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to set an ambitious foreign policy agenda.  One option for them is to start that debate and let the foreign ministry of Indonesia catch up with them.  However, such is not yet the case.

I came away with a sense that Indonesia is at the cusp of making up its mind to assert its significance as a major nation-state of Southeast Asia.  It has already begun to make some strides in the world of Islam, including its offer to participate in the resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iran.  Considering the fact that Iran has attached ample significance to ties with Indonesia, it has the potential of serving as an intermediary between Washington and Tehran.  If it were to become such an intermediary, that will be a major development in Indonesia’s importance for the U.S. as well as in the world of Islam.

Obama had an interesting background and an interesting childhood.  Being the son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother, he represents the world of Islam and Christianity in terms of his heritage.  Even though he publicly disavows any link with Islam, Muslims of Asia envisage him with considerable warmth.

Other Asians view him as a carrier of new ideas, which are unencumbered by the baggage of the Cold War or even the post-9/11 era.  He talks about having a dialogue with the heads of the so-called rogue regimes.  He sounds like he will be comfortable with multilateralism, which might be the way of conducting the business of “high politics” among nations in the coming years.  Regarding domestic policy, Obama remains open to new approaches for dealing with the economic maladies of America.  He will have no problem going to the G-8 conference or the World Economic Forum meetings and listening to new ideas of managing global economy for the next decade of this new century.

John McCain, on the contrary, exudes conventional thinking less because of his age, and more because he projects an archaic frame of mind.  He is too busy being seen as a “hero” of a war that America lost, but he also carries a lot of bitterness related to that defeat. 

McCain might have been a “maverick” candidate when he ran against George W. Bush in 2001.  However, in 2008, he represents conventional Cold-War-oriented thinking in the realm of foreign policy.  He will have no problem if the Cold War returns.  He has no sense of dealing with a globalized world where the United States’ prestige appears to be dwindling steadily.  He has no plans to cope with that reality.  In the realm of domestic policy, McCain is still living with the Reaganite approach of deregulating the economy.  He did not even understand how irrelevant that approach has become toward the end of the first decade of the Twenty-First Century.

Asians, more than Europeans, have a strong sense that this century belongs to them.  Two Asian countries—China and India—are emerging as rising powers, thereby signaling other Asian nations that they, too, can emulate their shining example.  If there is an “Asian way” of political and economic development, those two countries certainly epitomize that.  

The Chinese and Indian way of development took a path which contained something Western and something Eastern and combined the two and tinkered with that framework until sui generis frameworks of sustainable growth emerged.  One can identify a number of variables that are common to both the Chinese and the Indian models.  They both emphasize evolution of a capitalistic economy (that may sound strange regarding the PRC, which is still a declared Communist state).  They both underscore the significance of developing world class educational institutions to prepare their new generations for excelling in an increasingly complicated globalized world.  They both emphasize getting connected with the multi-directional global trade and becoming traders of finished goods as well as high-tech products.  They both are struggling to rebuild superb civilian infrastructures that would make them look as inviting places for global entrepreneurs. 

Countries like Indonesia ought to be studying those models and thinking about how to indigenize them, for Indonesia, too, can become the next rising power of Asia.  It has the size, the population base, and the strategic location.   What it seriously needs is an Indonesian framework, which could resemble the Indian and Chinese frameworks of development, yet it should be fully focused on addressing problems uniquely Indonesian.

For the challenge of economic development in Asia, Obama is likely to be open to new ideas of integrating the American economy with Asian economies.  McCain would need a lot of reeducation and persuasion to accept the new realignment of powers, even in Asia.

Asian see the youth of their continent reflected in the youth of Obama.  His call for change, while short on specifics, still sounds promising because it has enormous potential for growth and specificities that would include the cosmopolitanism and pluralism of Asia.  McCain looks more like Europe: mature, sedate, and not too comfortable about the potentials of new global alignments in which the primacy of the United States is no longer guaranteed.  Thus, to Asians, Obama is more like them, someone with a bright future, while McCain is more like Europe, with a grand past but an uncertain future.  

That tragedy thrust Zardari into the limelight.  As the interim Co-Chair of Pakistan’s Peoples Party (the other co-Chair is their 19-year-old son Bilawal), he handled himself with ample adroitness and class.  But Zardari also has a clouded (some say shady) past, which includes an accusation that he might have been behind the murder of one of Bhutto’s brothers. 

As a politician, he is a totally unknown quantity, aside from serving as a minister of environment in Bhutto’s government (1993-1996), when he earned the moniker “Mr. Ten Percent.”  In his new position as President, which is not a powerful office in Pakistan, he is expected to indulge in a balancing act with the Prime Minister, parliament, and, above all, the Army, which remains the most powerful entity in Pakistan.  How sophisticated is he likely to be is one source of concern.  The other is whether he will become just another tool in the hands of the Army, or whether he will push Pakistan toward another crisis, if he is not to get his way in the power game with the Army.

From its very creation, democracy has been in a constant power struggle with the Army in Pakistan.  In that struggle, the Army has always won.  However, Pakistan’s current volatility stems from the fact that, since the 1970s, the phenomenon of “Islamization” has emerged as the chief challenger of both democracy and the Army. 

Benazir’s father, former Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, initiated this phenomenon, and it was brought to a point of no return by General Zia ul-Huq.  Both Bhutto and Zia used Islamization purely to achieve objectives of solidifying their political power and sabotaging democracy.  Bhutto was fearful of the Army, whose chief—Zia—eventually hanged him on a trumped-up charge in 1979.  Zia was fearful of democracy and went through all sorts of shenanigans to postpone its return.  He planned to stay in power indefinitely, only to be assassinated in 1988.  In the interim, Pakistan emerged as a place where democracy faces a grim future.      

In the domestic politics of Pakistan, Islamic parties emerged as major players as a direct outcome of Islamization.  The educational institutions—which were never given primacy in the government’s expenditure priorities, suffered even more in the sense that religious education emerged as a major requirement in the curricula.  Scientific education was given a secondary role, while the Mullahs became increasingly vocal about the primacy of religious education.

Islamization came in handy as a tool for the United States, when it entered Pakistan for the purpose of defeating and expelling the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, starting in 1979-1980.  America militarized the doctrine of Jihad to the hilt to fight and win that war.  Ultimately, it was the fighting zeal of the Mujahideen, the doctrine of militant Jihad, and American weaponry and money that defeated the Soviet Union.  Pakistan was the chief facilitator and a major player in that bloody war.

After the Soviet ouster from Afghanistan, America left the battlefields of Pakistan-Afghanistan, but Islamization of both countries became a permanent phenomenon.

After the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the lone superpower realized that Islamization had to be curtailed in Pakistan by, inter alia, introducing curricular reforms.  However, the top priority was given, once again, to fighting and defeating the Taliban-al-Qaida nexus. 

General Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in 1999 by ousting democracy, agreed to fight the Taliban-al-Qaida alongside the U.S.  But he took no earnest and sweeping measures to eradicate Islamization from his country.  In fact, he followed a duplicitous policy of forming a political alliance with the Islamists in the Northwestern Frontier Province and Waziristan regions domestically, while maintaining the façade of fighting them, for external consumption.

Indeed, in the post-9/11 era, Pakistan has continued its march toward becoming “Talibanistan.”  That is a phenomenon that made that country a battleground between Islamic radicals of the Taliban and their ilk, and the Army.  The decision of the Pakistani Army to fight the Taliban—taken under Musharraf—is the chief reason why it is envisaged by the Islamists as the “enemy” of Islam.  The Taliban forces of Pakistan have been accused of carrying out two assassination attempts on Musharraf.  They could very well have been responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007.  

The worsening political climate, American schizophrenic demands of fighting the Islamists, and bringing democracy back to Pakistan forced General Musharraf to retire as the Army chief.  On that very same day, he also signed the death certificate of his political career as the strongman of Pakistan.  He clung to power a little longer and maintained the bravado of fighting the growing demand of impeachment, only to succumb to the reality that his rule has been formally put to rest.

Now the baton of American demands to fight the Islamists has been passed to a civilian government, with Zardari as the new President, and the Army.  Under Musharraf, the Bush administration had a target to heap on rewards and anger whenever the circumstances deemed necessary.  Musharraf received billions of dollars in aid and assistance and was also blamed often for “not doing enough to fight al-Qaida.”  Now, Washington will be hard-pressed to place that blame on any one actor in Pakistan. 

The current Army chief, Ashfaq Kayani, though portrayed as a pro-American General, will be well advised to remember the fate of Musharraf.  Anyone—civilian or military official of Pakistan—who sticks his neck out for the United States, will sign the death certificate of his career, a la Musharraf.  Zardari, even though he is also described as pro-American, will be forced to rethink his own course of action in dealing with the Islamists.

The good news about Pakistan is that it has just started a new phase of democracy.  The bad news is that U.S. officials will find it hard to deal with the democratic Pakistan, as they have been finding out in democratic Iraq.  Anti-Americanism in Pakistan is also on the rise.  Zardari will have to keep that fact in mind while he sets the course of his country’s policy toward the lone superpower.  In this interaction, the Army will also remain an important but very cautious player.  A democratic Pakistan may someday emerge as a stable and serene place.  Sadly, that day seems to be in its distant future.