Is U.S going the U.S.S.R way?
By:
Romeet K Watt
THE United States of
America has 37,000 troops, more than 90 installations
scattered across the length and the breadth, in South
Korea under a mutual defence treaty. Nevertheless,
the presence has long been a source of antagonism
for communities near the military bases.
On June 13, 2002, a
U.S. armoured vehicle hit and killed Shin Hyo-soon
and Shim Mi-seon, both 14, who were walking on the
shoulder of a road while on their way to a friend's
birthday party in the northern city of Uijeongbu in
South Korea. Since then there has been a growing sense
of anti-Americanism gaining momentum, not that the
phenomenon is new, but what has angered the Koreans
is that the two U.S. soldiers, Walker and Nino, have
been let go by a special American military court.
This incident has led
to a renewed call for the removal of all U.S. troops
from the Korean peninsula. Of the 500 or so crimes
committed by off-duty American soldiers, less than
1 percent of the cases have made it to Korean courts.
The rest have been handled by America's military courts,
with many of the soldiers receiving only warnings
or community service.
The nature and conduct
of Americans by way of its foreign policy over the
previous half-century, focussing particularly on the
decade after the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991
needs to be put in perspective to understand the current
trends that are emerging in the post-cold war, uni-polar
world-order. The scheme of things that will unfold
in the twenty-first century will no doubt be driven
by the retribution from the later half of the twentieth
century - consequences of the cold war, and crucial
American decisions forming the nucleus of this anger,
and reprisal.
In the present context,
the on the warpath approach adopted by the Bush-regime,
calling for a regime change in Iraq does in no way
come as a big surprise. What has rendered the task
difficult in the present state of affairs are the
repercussions, that the U.S -- down the line -- is
likely face from radical Muslim groups for invading
a Muslim country like Iraq.
Otherwise, if one assumes
a more pragmatic approach, the other member of what
America describes as 'evil axis' or 'rogue states',
North-Korea, is not alleged to possess chemical and
biological weapons (as in case of Iraq) but has a
full fledged nuclear programme going on, right under
the noses of the Americas; of course with the clandestine
support from an able ally of America in its global
war against terrorism - Pakistan!
Incidentally, Saddam
Hussein, the president of Iraq, was armed and backed
to the hilt by the Reagan administration so long as
he was at war with Khomeini's Iran, however, presently
it is ironical and amusing that all of these men who
were once listed as "assets" of America's
key covert services organization are at the receiving
end once their utility of serving American interests
has come to an end.
Since the Gulf War
the United States has steadily maintained around thirty-five
thousand troops in Saudi Arabia. Devoutly Muslim citizens
of that kingdom see their presence as a humiliation
to the country and an affront to their religion.
Dissident Saudis have
launched attacks against Americans and against the
Saudi regime itself. It is in this context that one
needs to examine the renewed attacks on the military
facilities in the country in which scores of American
soldiers have been killed.
Should the present
American and Saudi Arabian policies pursue its present
policies, it is most likely that the Saudi monarchy
will be overthrown and, a fundamental and anti-American
government would more likely assume power in Riyadh.
But the American foreign policy remains unchanged,
instead of withdrawing from a place where a U.S. presence
is only making a 'dangerous' situation 'worse', US
of A continues to overlook the obvious.
The United States,
even after the decade of the demise of its cold-war
foe U.S.S.R continues to deploy awesome military might
worldwide that for its adversaries only an "asymmetric
strategy," to borrow an expression from the Pentagon
dictionary, has any chance of success.
Osama bin Laden, the
leading suspect as mastermind behind the carnage of
September 11, was propped up by CIA like so many other
extreme fundamentalists among the Mujahideen in Afghanistan
from at least 1984, including building in 1986 the
training complex and weapons storage tunnels around
the Afghan city of Khost where bin Laden trained many
of the 35,000 Arabs.
Bin Laden's Khost complex
was the one that at President Bill Clinton's orders
was hit on August 20, 1998, with cruise missiles in
retaliation for bin Laden's attacks of August 7, 1998,
on the American Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. For
once the CIA knew where the targets were since it
had built them.
The retribution against
the U.S is a fall out of ill-conceived, short-term,
invariably illegitimate U.S. covert actions intended
at overthrowing foreign administrations or assisting
initiate state terrorist operations against target
populations. The people of American are unlikely to
know what was done in their name, but those on the
receiving end surely do - including the people of
Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1959-60), Congo
(1960), Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965), Vietnam (1961-73),
Laos (1961-73), Cambodia (1961-73), Chile (1973),
El Salvador and Nicaragua (1980s), Iraq (1991 to the
present), and very probably Greece (1967), to name
only the obvious cases.
The American bombing
operations of recent decades in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia,
Iraq, Serbia, and Kosovo will almost certainly produce
unintended negative consequences throughout the Islamic
and underdeveloped worlds.
Moderate Muslim governments,
especially in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan,
will almost certainly face growing internal dissent
and if the recent trends in the concluded elections
in some of these states are an indication, the task
of America becomes all the more difficult with the
emergence of radical anti-America bandwagon.
In the opinion of a
leading expert on the American foreign policy, U.S
is embarked on a path not so dissimilar to that of
the former Soviet Union a decade ago. He observes:
"It collapsed for three reasons-internal economic
contradictions, imperial overstretch, and an inability
to reform. In every sense, we were by far the wealthier
of the two Cold War superpowers, so it will certainly
take longer for similar afflictions to do their work.
But it is nowhere written that the United States,
in its guise as an empire dominating the world, must
go on forever." The calamitous proceedings of the
first year of the new millennium not only casts serious
doubts on United States's self-pronounced role as
'very important nation' and 'only remaining superpower'
but also raises serious reservations and new perils
for other establishments that were suddenly asked
by the American President, George W Bush whether they
were 'for' or 'against' the United States 'war on
terror.'
