The North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO) is still printing the
invitation cards to its Chicago summit on Sunday.
A card was printed for Pakistan President Asif
Zardari on Wednesday. Pakistan became "eligible"
following indications it will get down from the
high horse and reopen the transit routes for
military convoys into Afghanistan - despite the
stubborn refusal by Washington to either apologize
for the massacre of Pakistani soldiers last
November in an air strike or terminate the deadly
drone strikes on Pakistani villages.
Pakistan will receive US$1 million per day
from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
as a transit fee. Is it a fair deal - an
invitation to the NATO banquet at Chicago in lieu
of the reopening of the transit routes? Pakistan's
main opposition parties do not
think so. But then, the
government in situ always knows better.
Moreover, the Pakistani military wants it that
way, too.
Zardari is raring to go, which
is only to be expected. To be seen at a dazzling
party is a matter of national prestige. Also, NATO
isn't inviting any Tom, Dick or Harry. For
instance, neither China's nor India's presidents
have been invited to the charmed circle in
Chicago. (Russia's was sounded out and said
nyet, but that is another complicated
story; and, NATO wanted to invite Israel, but
Turkey put its foot down and said hayir.)
NATO's guest list shows Western ingenuity
and, in turn, it is also a road map of the West's
global strategies in the 21st century. How does
the guest list look? What is most striking is that
somewhat like in Dante's Inferno, there are
rings.
The hardcore cluster comprises the
28 NATO member countries. The next layer is of 13
countries which are considered NATO's "global
partners" - Japan, South Korea, Australia, New
Zealand from Asia-Pacific; Qatar, the United Arab
Emirates and Morocco from the Middle East; Georgia
from the Eurasian region; and Austria,
Switzerland, Sweden and Finland from the good old
European backyard.
This is the creme le
creme of NATO's allies. The most glaring omissions
are Indonesia and the Philippines (the latter
despite being "frontline states" in the
Asia-Pacific and willing to needle the Chinese
dragon), Saudi Arabia (despite being the Western
economies' single-biggest gas station for well
over half a century), Egypt, South Africa, Mexico,
Brazil and Argentina (which are prima donnas in
their regions). On the whole, it seems NATO feels
rather uncomfortable with the Group of 20 club
that is straining to be formed.
Game of
'tough love' Moving further ahead, yet
another outer ring comprises countries that are
participants or collaborators of NATO's Afghan
war. These are the real "VIPs" (or "heroes",
depending on one's point of view regarding the
bloody Afghan war), because they put their necks
on the block and attracted the attention of
al-Qaeda to rescue NATO from the Afghan quagmire.
They are (in alphabetical order and not in terms
of their shedding of sweat and tears): Azerbaijan,
Armenia, Bahrain, El Salvador, Ireland,
Montenegro, Malaysia, Mongolia, Singapore, Ukraine
and Tonga.
It may come as a sensational
detail that if the Afghan war is ever won, it
could also be due to Tonga's contribution, but
facts are facts.
The list is incomplete.
This ring also has a sub-section that has
Afghanistan (which is the main topic of discussion
at the NATO summit) at the center surrounded by
its neighbors from the Central Asian region. It
seems Russia has been accommodated under this
sub-head. Most certainly, Zardari goes into this
niche.
Russia is deputing merely its head
of the Afghan desk at the Foreign Ministry in
Moscow, making its displeasure loud and clear that
it resents being excluded from NATO's key meetings
regarding the conduct of the Afghan war, which
regularly take place in Brussels, rain or
sunshine. But it is a "nuanced" displeasure, too.
Russia has no objection to NATO's Afghan war and
is even an ardent votary of it. But Russia resents
NATO's monopoly of the war; the war should be
"democratized".
The Central Asian states
are deputing their foreign ministers because
technically they are also members of the rival
alliance known as "NATO of the East" - the
Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).
CSTO is locked in a game of "tough love"
with NATO: it rivals NATO as the principal
military alliance in the post-Soviet space, but it
also wants NATO's recognition as an equal so that
it can convince itself of its existence (which,
unsurprisingly, NATO refuses to accord on
Washington's insistence, since the US would prefer
to deal with the former Soviet republics
individually rather than as Moscow's junior
partners).
CSTO's predicament is almost a
mirror image of Russia's - longing for a room and
a warm bed in the common European home but
insistently being kept out and ever looking in
while the US selectively keeps engaging it highly
selectively on areas of concern to American
strategies. (NATO, too, may well selectively
engage CSTO someday, for example, to nab drug
traffickers in Central Asia who subvert the Afghan
economy.) CSTO comprises Armenia, Belarus,
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and
Uzbekistan.
All said, however, Moscow is
unsure about NATO's invitation to the Central
Asian leaderships to attend the summit. It has
misgivings about NATO's intentions in Central
Asia, especially against the backdrop of the
impending establishment of US military bases in
Central Asia.
After all, one purpose of
the Chicago summit is to build on the alliance's
"smart strategy", which was adopted at the Lisbon
summit in 2010 to project NATO as the only truly
global security organization that could eventually
operate even without a UN mandate in the world's
"hot spots".
What will worry Moscow is
that NATO has already developed a taste for
forcing "regime change" in foreign lands, as the
Libyan war testifies - and if the current ominous
trends over Syria are any indication it could do
the same.
Besides, NATO is baiting Central
Asian states with offers that they are
increasingly finding to be irresistible. The hard
reality is that Central Asian regimes have
developed vested interests in the Afghan war with
NATO generously doling out lucrative contracts for
sourcing goods and services to local companies
that are front desks for the region's elites.
The US pays a handsome amount to
Kyrgyzstan as the rent for Manas air base. Now
there is talk that some of the weapons and
equipment in Afghanistan may be gifted to Central
Asian countries through the 2014 transition
withdrawal period of the war.
Clearly, a
gravy train under NATO stewardship is moving into
the Central Asian steppes, which would make Moscow
feel uneasy. Nonetheless, it is interesting that
the Central Asian states have taken a collective
decision that their heads of state will keep away
from the NATO summit in the gorgeous Windy City.
Arguably, it is an act of supreme self-denial by
the Central Asian leaderships in deference to
Moscow's sensitivity.
A question for
the chef Indeed, a key country neighboring
Afghanistan has been scrupulously kept out of the
NATO summit although its capacity to influence the
tide of the Afghan war is quite appreciable still
- Iran.
A great opportunity has been lost
in constructively engaging Iran. But then, US
President Barack Obama decided to play it safe.
President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is a
mercurial personality, utterly charismatic and he
might have ended up stealing the show that Obama
has carefully, painstakingly choreographed to
showcase his stature as a world leader. Too big a
risk to take for Obama, no doubt, in a tricky
presidential election year. Besides, Republican
challenger Mitt Romney and the Israel Lobby would
have given him a hard time explaining his
"softness" toward Iran.
Yet another ring
on the NATO invitation chart comprises the four
applicants who are waiting in the ante-room for
NATO membership - Bosnia-Herzegovina, Georgia,
Montenegro and Macedonia.
Georgia has the
unique distinction of figuring in three rings - as
NATO's global ally, its partner in the Afghan war
and as an eligible full member. The hidden message
behind this extravagant attention being paid to
Georgia wouldn't be lost on Moscow. Interestingly,
President Vladimir Putin's first official visitors
from "abroad" have been the leaders of the
breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia.
However, this is not to say that
Moscow is apprehensive of an imminent decision by
NATO to admit Georgia as a member. Putin can count
on major European partners like Germany, France
and Italy to ensure NATO doesn't get into a
confrontation with Russia. Putin has warmed up to
the exit of Nicolas Sarkozy and the emergence of
the socialist government in Paris.
At any
rate, Obama too would know that the priority in
his second term - if he gets it - in the Oval
Office ought to be to rework the US's "reset" with
Russia and make the Russian-American partnership
predictable and optimally useful for the US's
global strategies - especially with the problem of
China's rise looming as a complex challenge.
Admittedly, NATO's invitation list gives a
fair picture of what Marxist-Leninists would call
the "co-relation of forces" in international
politics today. The above is not the whole picture
of global politics, but it is more than half the
scenario on a highly fluid panorama.
Let
me end up uncharacteristically with a touch of
hubris to ask: What is a NATO summit when China
and India are minding their own business and
ploughing their independent furrows?
At a
minimum, Brussels should have included a category
of invitees labeled as "NATO + BRICS". Surely, the
BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South
Africa - is no less important than the European
Union in the making of the world of tomorrow.
Indeed, the main chef at the banquet at Chicago
should answer this question - Obama.
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.
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