Posted on 1-6-2002

Nation al Ism

The US-lead propagandisation of terrorism as a global threat - since the
USA finally experienced it on its own soil - has served as an excuse to
move economic globalisation and the break-down of borders of inconvenience
(and rabid defence of those borders that are useful) into political
globalisation, i.e., sovereignty has been re-defined: If a State cannot
stop terrorists from its territory, governments have been legitimised by
past US actions in South America, Africa, Iraq and most immediate and
powerfully, Afghanistan, to conduct military action across borders. 21st
Century sovereignty, like every action, has its consequences, that's
Nature's First Law, and the consequences are terribly apparent in Palestine
and now in Kashmir. Now India is the first of a coming list of other States
that will copy `The American Way' to justify military-political action.

Former Secretary of State George Shultz told an audience of diplomats this
week "we reserve, within the framework of our right to self-defense, the
right to pre-empt terrorist threats within a state's borders — not just
'hot pursuit,' but hot pre-emption." This is the first open admission of
what has been long-standing US military policy. The first example of the
Bush administration's use of the strategy of hot pre-emption was the U.S.
strike against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime was
actively sponsoring terror. It was not declared as a formal war against a
state, but pre-emption of further attacks based in that state. The second
recent example is Israel's attacks on and incursions into the Palestinian
West Bank.

Now India is exercising the new `right of self-defense' by threatening to
employ hot pre-emption against terrorists in the Pakistan-controlled part
of divided Kashmir. Three times, well-organized terrorists — with ties to,
or directed by, Al Qaeda — have struck deep into India, even to a bloody
assault on the Parliament in New Delhi. However, unlike the Taliban regime
or the starved and imprisoned Palestinian Authority, Pakistan is a favoured
nation by the West ... with nuclear missiles, capable of responding
massively to any hot pre-emption. Yet again the policy of `arm the enemy of
your enemy for he is your ally' turns into a nightmare of retribution.

The so-called war on terrorism and the break-down of sovereign control has
rapidly become the most worrisome issue on a still heavily nuclear-missiled
planet (see PTV programme next week). India has 700,000 troops massed on
its border, Pakistan has 300,000, and both talk daily of their nuclear
missiles. The Indians point to the new global antiterrorist principle
enunciated by George W. Bush and practiced by both him and Ariel Sharon,
and say, with unassailable logic, they have been patient enough. More to
the point, the political futures of both the Indian and Pakistan leaders
hinge on war, either war within or war without. Needless to say war without
is the politicians preferred option, and this raises the profile of that
inverted guardian angel that has never actually left the world stage - the
mushroom cloud.

US President G W Bush cuts the air with demands that the two Asian states
stop fighting and sends of the inevitable envoy. Is this reassuring? Not at
all. The U.S. needs Musharraf to help root out Al Qaeda, which has gone
underground in Muslim Pakistan and is trying to provoke nuclear war with
Hindu India. And too many Pakistanis fail to realize that the terrorists
railing about the "occupation" of Kashmir by India hope to call down
millions of casualties on both countries.

Hot pre-emption is a bit of a misnomer when one considers that all those
who are to be pre-empted have been pre-armed by the pre-emptors. Such is
the `logos' of the globalisers.