Arab
revolt reworks the world order By M K Bhadrakumar
India, Brazil and
South Africa have put a spoke in the American
wheel, which seemed up until Tuesday inexorably
moving, turning and turning in the direction of
imposing a "no-fly" zone over Libya.
Arguably, the United States can still
impose a zone, but then President Barack Obama
will have to drink from the poisoned chalice and
resurrect his predecessor's controversial
post-Cold War doctrine of "unilateralism" and the
"coalition of the willing" to do that. If he does
so, Obama will have no place to hide and all he
has done in his presidency to neutralize America's
image as a "bully" will come unstuck.
New
Delhi hosted a foreign minister-level meeting with
Brazil and South Africa on Tuesday, which was to
have been an innocuous occasion for some
rhetorical "South-South" cooperation. On the
contrary, the event soared into the realm of the
troubled world
order and shaky contemporary
international system. The meeting took a clear-cut
position of nyet vis-a-vis the growing
Western design to impose a "no-fly" zone over
Libya.
All indications are that the US and
its allies who are assisting the Libyan rebels
politically, militarily and financially have been
hoping to extract a "request" from the Libyan
people within a day or two at the most as a
fig-leaf to approach the United Nations Security
Council for a mandate to impose sanctions under
the auspices of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO). The Libyan rebels are a
divided house: nationalist elements staunchly
oppose outside intervention and the Islamists
among them are against any form of Western
intervention.
'Unilateralism' only
option on table NATO defense ministers held
a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday to give practical
touches to a possible intervention by the alliance
in Libya. That the meeting was attended by US
Defense Secretary Robert Gates was indicative of
the importance attached to the run-up to the
alliance's proposed intervention in Libya. Gates
missed an earlier informal NATO defense ministers'
meeting on Libya held on the outskirts of Budapest
a fortnight ago.
United States-British
diplomacy was moving on a parallel track drumming
up a unified position by the Libyan rebels to seek
an international intervention in their country and
specifically in the form of a "no-fly" zone. The
Arab League and the African Union also maintain an
ambiguous stance on the issue of such a zone.
Obama's calculation is that if only a
Libyan "people's request" could be generated, that
would in historical terms absolve him and the West
of the blame of invading a sovereign member
country of the United Nations - from a moral and
political angle, at least - as well as push the
Arab League and African Union into the enterprise.
Being a famously cerebral intellectual
also, Obama is a politician with a difference and
can be trusted to have an acute sense of history.
His predecessor George W Bush would have acted in
similar circumstances with "audacity", an idiom
that is ironically associated with Obama.
Obama's tryst with history is indeed
bugging him in his decision-making over Libya.
Robert Fisk, the well-known chronicler of Middle
Eastern affairs for the Independent newspaper of
London, wrote a sensational dispatch on Monday
that the Obama administration had sought help from
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia for secretly
ferrying American weapons to the Libyan rebels in
Benghazi, for which Riyadh would pick up the tab
so that the White House would need no
accountability to the US Congress and leave no
traceable trail to Washington.
The moral
depravity of the move - chartering the services of
an autocrat to further the frontiers of democracy
- underscores Obama's obsessive desire to
camouflage any US unilateral intervention in Libya
with "deniability" at all costs.
Now comes
the body blow from the Delhi meeting. The three
foreign ministers belonging to the forum that is
known by the cute acronym IBSA (India-Brazil-South
Africa) thwarted Obama's best-laid plans by
issuing a joint communique on Tuesday in which
they "underscored that a 'no-fly' zone on the
Libyan air space or any coercive measures
additional to those foreseen in Resolution 1970
can only be legitimately contemplated in full
compliance with the UN Charter and within the
Security Council of the United Nations".
Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio de
Aguiar Patriota told the media in Delhi that the
IBSA statement was an "important measure" of what
the non-Western world was thinking". He said, "The
resort to a 'no-fly' zone is seen as expedient
when adopted by a country but it weakens the
system of collective security and provokes
indirect consequences prejudicial to the objective
we have been trying to achieve." Patriota added:
It is very problematic to intervene
militarily in a situation of internal turmoil,
Any decision to adopt military intervention
needs to be considered within the UN framework
and in close coordination with the African Union
and the Arab League. It is very important to
keep in touch with them and identify with their
perception of the situation.
He
explained that measures like a no-fly zone might
make a bad situation worse by giving fillip to
anti-US and anti-Western sentiments "that have not
been present so far".
Equally significant
was the fact that the trio of foreign ministers
also penned a joint statement on the overall
situation in the Middle East. Dubbed as the "IBSA
Declaration", it reiterated the three countries'
expectation that the changes sweeping across the
Middle East and North Africa should "follow a
peaceful course" and expressed their confidence in
a "positive outcome in harmony with the
aspirations of the people".
A highly
significant part of the statement was its
recognition right at the outset that the
Palestinian problem lay at the very core of the
great Middle Eastern alienation and the "recent
developments in the Region may offer a chance for
a comprehensive peace ... This process should
include the solution of the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict ... that will lead to a two-state
solution, with the creation of a sovereign,
independent, united and viable Palestinian State,
coexisting peacefully alongside Israel, with
secure, pre-1967 borders, and with East Jerusalem
as its capital."
'P-5' loses shine
Israel will be hopping mad over the
declaration. That apart, does it matter to Obama
and NATO if three countries from three faraway
continents stand up with a common stance on a
"no-fly" zone? Who are these countries anyway?
But, it does matter. Put simply, the three
countries also happen to be currently serving as
non-permanent members of the UN Security Council
and their stance happens to have high visibility
in the world's pecking order on Libya.
The
indications in Delhi are that at least one more
non-permanent member of the Security Council is
their "fellow-traveler" - Lebanon. Which means the
"Arab voice" in the Security Council. In short,
what we hear is an Afro-Asian, Arab and Latin
American collective voice and it cannot be easily
dismissed. More importantly, the IBSA stance puts
at least two permanent veto-wielding great powers
within the Security Council on the horns of an
acute dilemma.
Russia claims to have a
foreign policy that opposes the US's
"unilateralism" and which strictly abides by the
canons of international law and the UN charter.
China insists that it represents developing
countries. Now, the IBSA stance makes it virtually
impossible for them to enter into any Faustian
deal with the US and Western powers over Libya
within the sequestered caucus of the veto-holding
powers of the Security Council - commonly known as
the P-5.
Therefore, the IBSA joint
statement, much like the Turkish-Brazilian move on
the Iran nuclear problem, is virtually mocking at
the moral hypocrisy of the P-5 and their secretive
ways.
Ironically, Delhi adopted the IBSA
communique even as US Vice President Joseph Biden
was winging his way to Moscow for wide-ranging
discussions on the future trajectory of the
US-Russia reset. Any US-Russian tradeoff over
Libya within the ambit of the reset would now get
badly exposed as an act of unprincipled political
opportunism.
China's predicament will be
no less acute if it resorts to realpolitik. China
is hosting the summit meeting of the BRICS
(Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in
Beijing in April. Three "brics" out of BRICS come
from IBSA. Can the BRICS afford to water down the
IBSA joint communique on Libya? Can China go
against the stance of three prominent "developing
countries"?
On balance, however, China may
heave a sigh of relief. The IBSA position may let
the US pressure off China and delist the Libyan
"no-fly" zone issue from morphing into a bilateral
Sino-American issue. China cooperated with last
week's Security Council resolution on Libya. It
was an unusual move for China to vote for a
resolution that smacked of "intervention" in the
internal affairs of a sovereign country.
Western commentators were euphoric over
the shift in Chinese behavior at the high table of
world politics and were egging on the leadership
at Beijing to finally shape up as a responsible
world power that is willing to work with the West
as a "stakeholder" in the international system -
like Russia does.
Clearly, China is being
cajoled to go a step further and jettison its
other red line regarding a "no-fly" zone. There is
no indication that China is about to concede its
red line by succumbing to flattery. But, now, if
China indeed does, it will be in broad daylight
under the gaze of the developing countries. And it
will be very difficult for Beijing to cover up
such "pragmatism" with the veneer of principles.
In a way, therefore, pressure is off China on the
"no-fly" zone issue.
India regains
identity An interesting thought occurs: Is
India forcing China's hand? Delhi has certainly
taken note that the Libyan crisis provided China
with a great opportunity to work with the US in a
cooperative spirit that would have much positive
spin-offs for the overall Sino-American
relationship. The "no-fly" zone issue would have
been turf where China and the US could have
created an entirely new alchemy in their
relationship. Beijing knows that Obama's
presidency critically depends on how he acquits in
the Middle East crisis.
All the same,
Delhi's move cannot be dismissed as merely
"China-centric". In geopolitical terms, it
constitutes a highly visible slap on the American
face. And there will be a price to pay in terms of
Obama's wrath. That Delhi is willing to pay such a
price - when so much is at stake in its bid for a
permanent seat in the UN Security Council - makes
the IBSA move highly significant. Indeed, it is
after a very long time that Delhi will be refusing
to stand up and be counted on a major American
foreign policy front. It is much more than a
coincidence, too, that the declaration
vociferously supported the Palestinian cause.
India has taken the calculated risk of incurring
the displeasure of Israel and the Israel lobby in
the US. Besides, there are other signs, too, that
Delhi has embarked on a major overhaul of its
Middle East policies and the IBSA is only one
template of the policy rethink - and, possibly not
even the most far-reaching in the geopolitics of
the region.
Even as the IBSA adopted its
stance on Libya and the Middle East situation
staunchly favoring Arab nationalism, India's
National Security Adviser Shiv Shankar Menon, a
key policymaker of high reputation as a consummate
diplomat and who works directly under Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh, was engaged in an
engrossing and meaningful conversation elsewhere
in the Middle East - with Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad.
Away from the glare of
television cameras, Menon handed over a letter
from Manmohan to Ahmadinejad. According to the
statement issued by Ahmadinejad's office, the
Iranian leader told Menon:
Iran and India are both independent
countries and they will play significant roles
in shaping up the future of the international
developments ... The relations between Iran and
India are historic and sustainable. Iran and
India due to being [sic] benefited from
humanitarian viewpoints towards the
international relations, should try to shape up
the future world system in a way that justice
and friendship would rule.
The ruling
world is coming to its end and is on the verge
of collapse. Under the current conditions, it is
very important how the future world order will
take shape and care should be taken that those
who have imposed the oppressive world order
against the mankind would not succeed in
imposing it in a new frame anew ... Iran and
India will be playing significant roles in the
future developments in the world. Our two
nations' cultures and origins are what the world
needs today.
Menon reportedly told
Ahmadinejad:
New Delhi is for the establishment
of comprehensive relations with Iran, including
strategic ties ... many of the predictions you
[Ahmadinejad] had about the political and
economic developments in the world have come to
reality today and the world order is going under
basic alterations [sic], which has necessitated
ever-increasing relations between Iran and India
... The relations between the Islamic Republic
of Iran and the Republic of India are beyond the
current political relations, having their roots
in the cultures and the civilizations and the
two nations and both countries have great
potentials for improvement of bilateral,
regional and international relations.
Nothing needs to be added. Nothing
needs to be said further. In sum, this sort of
Iran-India high-level political exchange was
unthinkable until very recently and it highlights
how much the Middle East has changed and Iran's
role in it, and Delhi's perceptions and the Indian
thinking regarding both.
Most important,
Menon's arrival in Tehran at the present
tumultuous juncture on a major path-breaking
political and diplomatic mission to energize
India-Iran strategic understanding also
underscores the growing recognition in the region
that the era of Western dominance of the Middle
East is inexorably passing into history and the
world order is not going to be the same again.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a
career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His
assignments included the Soviet Union, South
Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan,
Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online
(Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
