It is amazing how much of the crystal-gazing on post-war Iraq is confined to what kind of Iraq, or what kind of Middle East, or at best what sort of Islamic world will emerge as a consequence of the war. We might be better off thinking a bit more on the kind of America that will emerge from this war. To begin with, and whether you like it or not, and whatever genuine or self-serving qualifications you employ, it will be a militarily victorious America. Like all military victories, this will be heady for some time. Will this America then presume that if the Rumsfeld doctrine works in war it works in peace as well? So will this war — and the victory — produce an isolationist America or an internationalist one? Either way, will it be more hegemonistic, or less? Finally, how would the rest of the world, and India, relate to this America? What kind of a role will this post-war America have on the subcontinent? Writing in The New York Times, respected columnist Maureen Dowd gives us a peek into the future. “This war,” she says, “was designed to change the nature of American foreign policy, military policy and even the national character — flushing out ambivalence and embracing absolutism.” As evidence she quotes Bill Kristol and Lawrence Kaplan, widely believed to be among the team of neo-conservative authors of the Little Bush doctrine. They say, in their definitive piece, ‘The War over Iraq’: “Well, what is wrong with dominance, in the service of sound principles and high ideals?” Nothing can be wrong with such a principle per se unless, indeed, you are Mother Teresa. What is problematic is, who defines these principles and who decides what is sound and what is high. If all this is going to be done by Americans, particularly the kind of neo-conservative opinion industry that this Bush administration has produced, it’s a cause for concern for everybody, but most of all for the Europeans. If America chooses to go that way, the move will be strengthened by a very unusual knowledge and discovery. That they won a whole war so far away without any European help (except the Brits in Basra) and despite almost the entire world’s — particularly Europe’s — opposition. If they get away with it, as seems possible now, they would have destroyed two old beliefs: that America is a distant power and only relates to the rest of the world through Europe and that in this day and age, sheer military muscle has ceased to be an instrument of political power, totally overriding diplomatic persuasion, alliance-making and financial largesse. To that extent this Iraq campaign is entirely unique in post-Second World War history. Even the war against the Taliban was different in the sense that it had wider international and UN endorsement, was fought actively with the help of foreign allies and a sizeable domestic fifth column. It also involved large pay-outs to silent allies who became important mostly because of geographical location: Pakistan and some Central Asian states. The campaign in Iraq is unencumbered by any such obligations or quid pro quos. It is fascinating to see how the first people to figure out the significance of this are the Europeans whose sanctimonious outrage is now rapidly yielding to the pragmatism of the contractor. Even before the Americans had taken Baghdad airport, both Russia and Germany began the most cynical course correction. First Putin said he did not want to see America losing. Now he did not really mean that he wished that Saddam should not lose either or that a stalemate should go on forever? Then the Germans quickly swallowed their French-inspired pride by announcing that they wished the Saddam regime would collapse quickly to avoid innocent civilian casualties. The French had gone so far out on the front foot that they found it difficult to step back. But retreat comes naturally to a power that has militarily lost every single war it has fought in the past hundred years. So instead of demanding a ceasefire, intervention of the Security Council or a diplomatic settlement, all its foreign minister now talks of is the role for the UN in the “political and economic” reconstruction of post-war Iraq. The Europeans have a serious problem here and to believe their concern is primarily the post-war reconstruction contracts in Iraq is as short-sighted and intellectually lazy as believing that Bush attacked Iraq for its oil. Europe’s bigger fear is the rise of an America that realises how much bigger, more powerful and significant it is than its old European allies. While they may not need US money or muscle for NATO since their immediate security threat has vanished, the US doesn’t need them either to fulfill its vital national interests so far away from its territory that it can achieve these with its military forces leap-frogging over all of Europe if necessary. Powell’s diplomatic sallies into Europe in the wake of the victory of the Rumsfeld doctrine, therefore, is not so much a case of soothing old allies’ egos as of mopping up the remnants of resistance that still might remain. Yashwant Sinha may have been a little hasty in smirking and suggesting that the US had made a big mistake and that the Iraqis would fight like hell or that the war would go on for a long, long time. But he was right in saying that whatever happens, this war would have far-reaching consequences for the entire world. The anger of the Muslim world, the bitterness in the Arab street, the Americans would worry about, at least for now. But we, rather than go on and on about that, would be better off focusing on what this new America may mean for us in terms of our larger global positioning and our immediate interests in the neighbourhood. If this Bush administration tastes reasonable success in Iraq it will extend the doctrine, though not necessarily in the same way, to other parts of the world. If it believes so strongly in its own idea of “dominance” in the “service of sound principles and high ideals” and believes that it has the military, political, diplomatic, economic (and moral!) power to define these, it is safe to presume that it will be an interventionist America. That may not mean that the moment Centcom finishes the job in Iraq the armada of Cincpac will be headed for North Korea. But this America will not wait forever for diplomacy to bear fruit. It may be naive, but it will believe that it can restructure the world according to its own notions of “sound principles and high ideals” and while it may not be sending in the marines to implement its agenda everywhere, it will be ruder, more inflexible and less patient than the America we have ever seen in the past. Bush’s people are not weighed down by any burden of history, morality or, most notably, intellect. Their notions of the world, what is right and what is wrong, and how what is wrong should be fixed are direct, uncomplicated, even simplistic. If they taste success now, they will bring the doctrine to what they see as other trouble-spots in the world as they press on to “implement the lord’s agenda”. Are we prepared to deal with that America? Are we thinking of how it could bring its weight to bear on the Kashmir equation? How it could complicate our lives, or give us a historic opportunity to leverage the new equations in this post-Iraq war world? At this point, you can only say two things with certainty: That given the European turnaround already, this new America will now come with its agenda supported by a more obedient, if not obsequious, Europe. Two, you won’t be able to score by boycotting Coke, burning Bush’s effigies or by smirking — howsoever superciliously — on your television screens. E-mail the Author
