It’s Pax Americana

The statements of President Clinton and Prime Minister Blair articulated additional dimensions of the new identity. According to them, NATO assumes to itself the role of ensuring international peace and stability, affirms its right to intervene politically and militarily in any situation which, in its perception, endangers stability, peace andpatterns of economic and political relations.

NATO will function as an instrumentality to ensure human rights, good governance, arms control, free market eco-nomies and so on. It will also function as an entity monitoring and articulating international order and stability. It will assume these responsibilities and discharge them not necessarily under the umbrella of the United Nations or in tandem with the responsibilities entrusted to the UN in this regard. By implication, NATO shall not be inhibited by considerations of principles of the UN charter.

The decisions of the summit were, in a manner, a culmination of the process which started with the decline of the former Soviet Union as a super power.

The first step in the process was the political procedures and operational management of the Gulf war. The Security Council resolutions on the crisis were measured, emphasising the peacekeeping role of the UN but the entire implementation of the resolutions, the conduct of operations against Iraq and thepolitical management of the situation, after the Gulf war, was entirely done under the leadership of the US. Politically and materially, the role of even the Gulf countries was marginal.

Former British Prime Minister John Major at the Commonwealth Summit in Harare in October 1991 wanted the Co-mmonwealth to play a monitoring and interventionist role to ensure good governance and respect for human rights among its member countries. He desired to link econo-mic cooperation, flow of investments and technologies with member countries meeting the standards of democra-cy, good governance an-d human rights, stipulated under the Western paradigms. It was the prime ministers of India and Malaysia and heads of governments of Afri-can countries which tempered this interventionist enthusiasm, but only marginally.

The doctrine of politico-military intervention in the internal affairs of the sovereign states to uphold good governance and human rights and to prevent conflict was initiated in the discussions at the firstand the only Security Council summit held in New York on January 31, 1992. It was argued that the UN, specially the permanent members of the Security Council, should take unilateral notice of violation of human rights, good governance or potentialities of conflict and that the UN should initiate unilateral action to remedy the situation.

But what is ironical is that despite the guidelines embodied in former UN Secretary General Boutros Ghali’s `Age-nda for Peace,’ it is not the UN which reacts collectively to international crisis situations. It is the Western powers, which have continuously taken initiatives in this regard since 1993. The Security Council and the UN Secretary General have been continuously ignored on substantive matters when NATO intervention took place in Bosnia and now in Kosovo.

Even activities cosmetically carried out under the umbrella of the UN have been characterised by unilateral initiatives by the Western powers. Whether it is coercive action against Iraq from 1992 to 1998 or theUS peacekeeping operations in Somalia, Haiti and Rwanda. Ko-sovo is the latest example. No rational person holds the brief for the oppressive violence of the Yugoslav authorities against their own co-mpatriots in Kosovo.

But the point of concern is that instead of political and military remedial action being undertaken through the in- strumentality of the UN, initiative was entirely arrogated by NATO. There may be operational justifications for this but no political or institutional justification.

If one looks at the international re-gimes related to non-proliferation, defence technologies and related issues, which have been put in place during this decade, each one of them has been unilaterally initiated by the Western countries. Moreover, each of these regimes is discriminatory, providing a privileged position to the nuclear weapon countries and the G-7 countries.

The stipulations of the Australia Club, the London Nuclear Supplies Club, Suppliers Club, MTCR as well as CTBT, confirm the fact that theyhave not evolved on the basis of consensus of a majority of countries.

It is to be noted that advanced industrial countries have unilaterally stipulated three conditions for economic and technological cooperation, namely, adherence to the NPT regime and the other related agreements, reduction in the size of armed forces and defence expenditure, adherence to democracy, responsiveness to standards of human rights and adherence to a free market economy. These are generic preconditions which do not make allowances to the individual socio-economic, developmental and cultural pre-dicaments of various countries.

What the recent NATO summit has done is, first, to change its European geo-political role into a global role (partnership for peace, associate membership of NATO etc). Secondly, it seeks to legitimise intervention against the sovereign jurisdiction of states without deliberations at the UN and its organs. Third, NATO declares itself as the arbiter and judge of standards and values of governance withinsovereign states. NATO also assumes the authority to suggest compromises to resolve inter-state issues backed up by coercive forces where NATO considers it necessary.

All this raises disturbing questions about the future role of the UN. About the capacity of individual countries to sustain their sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. The ingredients of Pax Americana contain whiffs of hegemony which contradicts US professions of commitment to democracy. Countries like India, China, Russia, Argentina, Br-azil, perhaps even Japan and ASEAN collectively should be considering how to cope with this predicament in the coming decades.