It's been called Russia’s 9/11, but that’s an inadequate description of the horror. ‘‘It is etched on every face in the small town of Beslan’’, wrote The Guardian in Britain. ‘‘That helpless, gut-churning flash of panic that seizes every parent when they turn around and suddenly their child is not there. Why here? Why now? Why my child?’’Till the bloody siege of Middle School 1, Chechnya was the name for a conflict that was dreadful but mostly sporadic and generally remote for those outside Chechnya. This week, the world media gingerly picked its way through the mined terrain of an older battle. The centuries’ old hostilities that date back to tsarist Russia. Stalin’s deportation of a whole population to Central Asia. Boris Yeltsin’s invasion of a resentful republic to force it to remain within the Russian Federation. The decade-long military confrontation between Chechen rebels and Moscow’s armed forces.Commentators caught up with the changing resonance of a long-running conflict. Putin previously insisted that Chechnya was a purely domestic issue, recalled John Kampfner, political editor of Britain’s New Statesman. But now he talks of the ‘‘international nature’’ of the threat. And ‘‘Beslan is now officially listed as part of the same Islamist assault on ‘civilised’ values that led to the attacks on Twin Towers in New York and Atocha station in Madrid’’.But the siege of Middle School 1 in Beslan that ended in horror, doesn’t it prove that Putin’s iron fist has failed? Editorials in the world’s papers urged the necessity of a bold Russian gambit for peace. Most exhorted the Kremlin to reach beyond its puppet regime in Chechnya to independent Chechen opposition figures to negotiate a ceasefire.The Guardian marked the irony. ‘‘It is alas only in major armed crises that peaceful strategies for ending the Chechen conflict come to the fore.’’May we vote? PleaseThe world doesn’t have a vote in a world election. Political historian Timothy Garton Ash put the lament in words in The Guardian this week. He made no secret of who he would vote for. ‘‘Four more years of Bush can confirm millions of Muslims in a self-defeating phobia against the West, Europe in hostility to America, and the US on the path to fiscal ruin.’’It’s as if the whole world were actually voting in the American election, remarked The New York Times in the week Bush formally accepted the Republican nomination. Mostly, they root for Kerry. But with Bush inching ahead in opinion polls, commentators abroad were now ‘‘hedging’’, noted the NYT.In the American and British media, the week of the Republican convention was also the moment to cast a more encompassing glance—at the Republican Party and its big idea. Even without the transformative character of the Bush presidency—from ‘‘Mr Small Acts of Compassion’’ in 2000 to ‘‘Mr Epic War Against Evil’’ in 2004—the Republican Party is in the midst of great change, said the NYT. It is buffeted by not just the war on Islamic terrorism, but also by the more pervasive death of socialism.For most of the 20th century, the conservative movement and the Republican Party were gearing themselves to combat big government. Anti-government sentiment was the American right’s binding force. But with socialism no longer on the march, size-of-government is no longer the ‘‘organising conflict’’ of the 21st century. The Republican Party is only beginning to understand that it must search for a new conservative agenda and a new governing philosophy. The NYT argued the future lies in figuring out this paradox: ‘‘that if you don’t have a positive vision of government, you won’t be able to limit the growth of government’’.The Economist suggested that Bush had nearly figured it out already. It pointed out that the neo-conservative intelligentsia that cheered him on to the Iraq war also promotes ‘‘big-government conservatism’’. The influential Weekly Standard magazine, for instance, leads a crusade to replace ‘‘leave-us-alone conservatism’’ with ‘‘national-greatness conservatism’’.Two technocratsThe Economist looked at the technocrats in charge in India and Pakistan. It said the recent elevation of Shaukat Aziz brings a ‘‘curious’’ and ‘‘in many ways, pleasing symmetry’’ to governance in the subcontinent. The curiosity relished, the Economist hedged its bets. Yes, Manmohan Singh and Aziz may bring good economic management. Hopefully Indo-Pak relations will now be fashioned more by economics, less by ‘‘destructive politics’’. But how will Aziz’s appointment address Pakistan’s ‘‘large democratic deficit’’?It conceded the situation is ‘‘less dire’’ in India. The Indian system has ‘‘more than enough democracy’’ to compensate for Singh’s ‘‘unorthodox route to power’’. Even so, the Economist worries. About the Indian PM’s ‘‘political skills’’ and his ‘‘communicative ability’’. About his ‘‘frighteningly useless’’ coalition members, ‘‘uninspiring’’ first budget. It even hinted at a cure: ‘‘Mr Singh needs to get out more and sell his ideas to the country.’’
