Waiting for a deluge

With the US-led international troops set to leave Afghanistanin 2014, the country is once again at the crossroads in its search for peace and stability. Even after the Taliban’s ouster from power and a decade-long war that followed, the spectre of the 1990s is staring at modern Afghanistan. The federal government is now weak, society is fragmented, different militia are rising, the Taliban is strong and international troops are leaving. Will Afghanistan fall back to post-Soviet days? http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/waiting-for-a-deluge-113010900066_1.html

Deconstructing The War On Terror

Five days after the September 11 attack, the then US President, George W. Bush promised to rid the world of "evil doers". Before two weeks had passed, he said, "our war begins with al-Qaeda but it doesn't end there". Instead, "it will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated". Those words marked the beginning of the 9/11 wars, which saw the United States fighting a protracted battle against "evil" regimes and extremist groups in the Muslim world. Jason Burke, The Guardian's foreign correspondent, writes in his latest book, The 9/11 Wars, that all the major figures in the Bush administration had repeatedly stressed against going for a war against terror on a global scale. They warned that "this new conflict would last a long time". It did, even outliving Bush's presidency. - See more at: http://www.businessworld.in/news/books/reviews/deconstructing-the-war-on-terror/389464/page-1.html#sthash.Wz2xPMT3.dpuf 

Winter of Arab discontent

Was it a coup? Some call it an "atypical" coup. Anti-Muslim Brotherhood protesters who backed Egyptian military's intervention to remove elected President Mohamed Morsi from power on July 3 term it a "recolution" (a mix of revolution and a coup). Ask John Kerry, the US secretary of state, and he will say the "military did not take over". Call it a coup or some other term, but what happened in Egypt is that it has slipped under another military regime, at least for now. But the roots of the present crisis go back to the Brotherhood's government days. When the Freedom and Justice Party - the political wing of the Brothers - mistook its electoral victories for a mandate for Islamising Egypt even as the economic worries of the country remained unaddressed, it set the stage for the second phase of mass uprisings in the country. http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/winter-of-arab-discontent-113083001089_1.html

The history and mystery of Pakistan

Pakistan is a nation of contradictions. It's a country created in the name of religion, where the father of the nation, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, wanted to build a liberal democratic state. It started as a democratic country, like India, but soon slipped into military dictatorship, which shaped Pakistan's ideology in the years that followed. It's both a victim and a promoter of religious terrorism. It's a country that proved many wrong in the past but remains the centre of global geopolitical risk assessments. It's not an easy country to understand. Apocalypse Pakistan: An Anatomy of 'the World's Most Dangerous Nation', written by two Italian journalists, Francesca Marino and Beniamino Natale, attempts to do the nearly impossible job of unravelling the mystery that is Pakistan.   http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/the-history-and-mystery-of-pakistan-113100101202_1.html

Heading due South

"The South Commission is convinced that the developed countries cannot play the role of the engine of Southern growth. The new locomotive forces have to be found within the South itself. South-South co-operation is therefore crucial." Manmohan Singh, then secretary general of the South Commission, said this to a symposium on development at Espoo, Finland, in May 1989.

Dr Singh's statement came at a time when the Atlantic powers, under the leadership of the Group of Seven (G7), were using the debt crisis of the 1980s to remake the global economic order in their favour. The "Third World project" was already in retreat. What was on offer was the structural adjustment programme of the Washington Consensus. "…Intellectuals like Manmohan Singh," writes Vijay Prashad in his latest book, The Poorer Nations, "began to trumpet a new siren: Neoliberalism with Southern Characteristics for domestic policy and South-South Cooperation for international policy. It was not a capitulation to the North, but the creation of a new approach." http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/heading-due-south-113061600611_1.html

The West's sanction for global war

The George Bush administration's inflexibility on Iran was "bombastic diplomacy" that "wasted energy and hardened the lines". Under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran had "a right to peaceful nuclear power and to enrichment in the purpose". If you thought these words came from some left-leaning critics of the Bush foreign policy, think again. Senator John Kerry, now US secretary of state, expressed these views in 2009 when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If these views were to become the US policy propounded by Secretary of State Kerry in 2013, write Peter Oborne and David Morrison in their book, A Dangerous Delusion: Why the West is Wrong About Nuclear Iran, "the prospects for a settlement with Iran on the nuclear issue would be excellent". If not, which is most likely, the authors have no doubt that "the outlook for the world is grim". http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/the-west-s-sanction-for-global-war-113071001007_1.html

On a wing and a Predator

In Minority Report, the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie, the job of PreCrime, a specialised police department, is not to hunt down current criminals but to track down future criminals. The movie is set in the year 2054, apparently because the Spielberg crew might have thought such police operations were a distant reality. Perhaps the Academy Award-winning director could read journalist Jeremy Scahill's latest book,Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, which says the pre-crime hunt is already here, though in the name of the war on terror. http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/on-a-wing-and-a-predator-113072501169_1.html

Sri Lanka's unfinished war

Karu was a grocery shopkeeper in Puthukkudiyiruppu whenSri Lanka’s 26-year-long civil war was nearing its end. Like tens of thousands of Tamil civilians in the island nation’s north and northeast, Karu and his pregnant wife, Gowri, were caught up in the war in 2009. He was attacked and dumped in a hospital, where he was brutally tortured; his wife gave birth to a baby girl in a bunker in the heyday of the war. They finally managed to leave Sri Lanka for Tamil Nadu and then set out on a deadly 27-day-long boat journey to Australia. http://www.business-standard.com/article/beyond-business/sri-lanka-s-unfinished-war-113021900867_1.html

Single-Pointed Khomeinism

Ayatollah Khomeini was one of the most influential political personalities of the past century. His interpretation of political Islam had the revolutionary zeal to topple a regime which enjoyed unequivocal support of the American empire. After three decades of the revolution, Khomeini’s legacy still lives in Iran and beyond. Con Coughlin, the best selling author of “Saddam: His Secret Life”, is taking a detailed effort to understand this legacy in his latest book, “Khomeini’s Ghost”.

What legacy did Khomeini bequeath to his heirs? For an independent historian, this is a complicated question as the ayatollah still remains perplexing subject. He was a puritan, but an anti-imperialist to the core. At the same time, he stood for empowering his people, and built a comparatively stable political system and undertook radical income distribution. For Coughlin, however, Khomeini’s legacy is single pointed. “Following his death in 1989, Khomeini bequeathed a legacy to his heirs, a legacy of militant Islam that is the cause of so many of the challenges the world faces today, whether it is the potential threat posed by Iran’s nuclear programme or Iranian funded and trained Islamist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan, Lebanon and Gaza.” He says even Iran’s quest for atom bomb was the “central part of Khomeini’s legacy.”

Through this biographical work of Imam Khomeini, Coughlin is actually trying to understand ideological underpinnings of the Iranian regime and how it’s related with Khomeinism. The ayatollah “accomplished his lifelong ambition of creating an Islamic state based on the strict interpretation of Shariah law,” writes Coughlin in an apparent effort to portray Iran as a conservative, rigid religious state. Despite being a theocratic state, it should not be forgotten that the Iranian constitution provides for an elected legislature and declares that the country should be run on the basis of “public opinion”.

The book is divided into two parts – Origins and Legacy. In the first part, Coughlin discusses Khomeini’s early life, his rise as a major critic of the unpopular Shah regime, life in exile and the eventful return to Tehran in 1979 February. It’s in the second part, Coughlin tries to define Iran black-and-white terms, saying it’s a rogue sate still led by the fundamentalist ideas of Imam Khomeini.

For the author, Iran is a state which helped al-Qaeda, trained terrorists in Iraq and militants in Lebanon and Palestine. Coughlin writes that Tehran masterminded the escape of operatives fleeing from Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden’s son Saad, and provided them safe haven. “The presence of such prominent Al Qaeda militants in Iran . . . was yet another issue that would undermine Khatami’s attempts to improve relations with the West,” he says. But he forgets to write that Iran offered help to the US during the Afghan war and the Khatami government actually hunted down Taliban operatives escaped from Afghanistan.

Khomeini’s Ghosts is an easy read. It is rich with historical facts and discusses the nuances of the Islamic revolution in detail. But it looks a one-sided anaylysis of Imam Khomeini, one of the most influential personalities on the Islamic street. Coughlin’s key argument that Khomeini’s doctrine “has made to the radicalization of the Muslim world” is untenable. There are different streams of Islamic radicalism in the world. Well before the Islamic revolution, the Brotherhood had inspired millions of Muslim youth across the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) to organize on religious lines. Khomeini’s principles were based on the Shiite world view, while most of the Islamic radical groups of present era are Sunnis. So, Khomeini’s ghosts do not seem to be as dangerous as Coughlin says.

Con Coughlin, “Khomeini’s Ghosts”, Pan Books, 2009 (Reviewed for Purple Beret)

War and Peace in Asia

Doest the 21st century belong to Asia? Many economists, strategic experts and world leaders think so. The growing clout of Asian countries in the present international system, the strategic importance of Asia to the super powers and the relative escape of China and India from the global financial crisis have emboldened the view that Asia holds the key in an evolving multi-polar world in the new century. But at the same time, Asia faces several security challenges – both inter and intra-state challenges. “The Future of War and Peace in Asia”, a compilation of essays edited by N.S. Sisodia and S. Kalyanaraman, is looking into this strategic dimension of an emerging Asia.

As Sisodia, the director of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis (IDSA), India’s premier strategic research think tank, notes in the preface, the impact of the global slowdown on Asian economies has “accelerated the shift of economic power to Asia”. The coming decade will see Asia becoming a principal theatre of international politics and security. One of the major challenges Asia will face in its rise, according to the book, will be intra-state conflicts. “Asia is the main theatre of action for jihadist groups, which among others, include the al-Qaeda and its franchises, Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, Pakistani groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jamaat ul-Mujahideen and Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami in Bangladesh, Jemaah Islamiyah in the Southeast Asian countries, the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines, and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan,” writes Kalyanaraman, a research fellow at the IDSA, in the introduction.

But the “security problematique” is not limited to intra-state conflicts. There are multiple actors -- Asian and non-Asian – who have security and economic interests in the region. Apart from India and China, the two countries often dubbed as key Asian powers in the coming decades, the US, Russia and Japan also have interests in the continent. The roles these five major and emerging powers play in the continent are crucial for “ensuring and maintaining long-term peace, stable balance of power, economic growth and security in Asia”.

The 18 chapters of “The Future of War and Peace in Asia”, divided into five key parts, discuss the changing face of war in the region and its geopolitical implications. The first part, “The Changing Face of War”, addresses the issue of “irregular warfare”, its manifestations in the Af-Pak region and West Asia and the challenges it poses to modern states. The second part, “Preparing for War”, explores how militaries in the region are modernizing themselves and preparing to face the existing and forthcoming security challenges. Will the technological advancements change the nature of war in Asia? What changes the space technology and missile defence are going to bring in the military doctrines of major Asian powers? Part three of the book, “Star Wars in Asia”, addresses these issues. The last two parts, “Asian Geopolitics” and “The Emerging Asian Order”, are mainly focused on the geopolitical angle. It also discusses the interests and interventions of big powers like the US and Russia in the Asian continent.

It is now a widely accepted view that the East is rising. Its economic clout is fast increasing in a world shaken by the collapse of western capitalism. But this rise could not be sustained unless the East prepares itself to face up to the security challenges. “The Future of War and Peace in Asia” brilliantly analyses the security dilemma of Asia countries and the geopolitical implications of the emerging Asian order. The editors have cautiously selected chapters so that the book can give a comprehensive understanding of conflicts and tensions in Asia and also the dynamics of power shift.

N.S. Sisodia and S. Kalyanaraman (Eds) (2010), “The Future of War and Peace in Asia”, New Delhi: Magnum Books. (Reviewed for Purple Beret)

Taliban’s Chaos Theory

“You need three qualities today if you want to fight the terrorists. Number one, you must have the military with you… Number two, you shouldn’t be seen by the entire religious lobby to be alien. The third element: don’t be seen as an extension of the United States.” These words of Parvez Musharraf, uttered a few weeks after the death of Benazir Bhutto in January 2008, show the kind of politics he espoused during his tenure as Pakistan’s president. Musharraf was a man who knew the presence of jihadist outfits in his country could be used to enhance Pakistan’s “strategic importance in Western eyes”, writes Ahmed Rashid in “Descent into Chaos”. And the General did the same, like other allies of the US in the “region” (Pakistan, Afghanistan and the five Central Asian Republics). For Rashid, author of the best selling “Taliban”, the region is “vital for global stability”. But the misguided “war on terror” of the US and the inability of the Western powers to contribute to nation building in these countries, particularly in the post-9/11 Afghanistan has created nothing but chaos.

Who made things worse? Rashid says even the Clinton administration bears some responsibility for the present chaos. It was during the Clinton presidency, the Taliban mobilized resources, consolidated power in Afghanistan and grew in strength in the region. But the Clinton administration failed to foresee the lurking dangers and come up with a vision to fight Taliban. George Bush, who actually started a war against Taliban, eventually played it into the hands of the same Islamic fundamentalists, thanks to the strategies of Defence Secretary Ronald Rumsfeld. It was Rumsfeld who insisted the inclusion of tribal warlords in the Afghan cabinet, says Rashid. Moreover, Bush’s defence secretary was against the idea of expanding the western-backed security system beyond Kabul, a strategy which later proved to be a blunder.
President Bush, who opened another war front in Iraq before accomplishing his “mission” in Afghanistan, made things complicated. The mounting military challenge in Iraq diluted the US engagement in Afghanistan, which eventually helped the Taliban regroup with the help of ISI. Though Pakistan, which supported the Taliban when it was in power, had to change its position in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the country’s controversial spy agency, the Inter Service Intelligence, continued its dubious policies, writes Rashid. President Bush thought Musharraf was “indispensable” in his war on terror. This was a strategic limitation for the US. The Bush administration, finding itself in a catch-22 situation, completely gave up its efforts to push for political reforms in the military-ruled Pakistan and the Central Asian dictatorships and continued to pumping millions of dollars to support these regimes in the name of the alliance against terror.

What should have been down? “Afghanistan had to be rescued from itself. Autocratic regimes in Pakistan and Central Asia had to change their repressive ways sand listen to their alienated and poverty-stricken citizens…The West had to wake up to the realities and responsibilities of injustice, poverty, lack of education, which it ignored for too long,” writes Rashid. But nothing of these happened. The al-Qaueda and Taliban became more powerful, Afghanistan fell into deeper chaos, Pakistan, though the military rule came to an end, is now fighting itself and the Central Asian republics are as bloody as ever. Understanding the existing complexities and dangers, Rashid urges the international community to “face up to our collective future”.
“Descent into Chaos” is a well-written, detailed description of what happened to the War on Terror in the South-Central Asia. The analysis of Rashid, who has covered the region extensively as a reporter, looks stunningly authentic and his style of writing ensures an enjoyable reading. Still, it lacks the in-depth analysis of an academic. Rashid’s admiration for leaders like Hamid Karzai and Benazir Bhutto may not go down well with many readers. Blaming only Musharraf for Pakistan’s problems may not a proper diagnosis.

Ahmed Rashid (2008), “Descent into Chaos: How the war against Islamic extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia”, Penguin: London. (Reviewed for Purple Beret)

The Race in the East

China and India, according to many, are two major pillars of the global market economy and potential “trade super powers”. Once enemies, these Asian giants that house two-fifth of the world’s population turned to economic reforms almost at the same time, though the pace of its implementation was not same. However, these reforms, writes Jonathan Holslag in his recent book, ‘China and India: Prospects for Peace’, changed the contours of the bilateral relationship between the two countries. The transformation from closed socialist economies to liberal market economies also marked the transformation of India and China from enemy states to “trading states”, argues Holslag.

This change is a radical departure from the “zero-sum thinking that was predominant during the cold war” and led to “new opportunities for cooperation” between the two countries, which had fought a bloody war in 1962 and seen near-war scenarios at least five times ever since. In China, the post-Mao leadership was conscious not to repeat the “failures of the Great Leader”, while in India a reform-minded prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, laid the foundations for “constructive nationalism”, rejecting his mother’s and grand father’s “negative nationalism”. This shift is what set the stage for India and China to emerge as trading states and to enhance cooperation.

Since the opening up of the economies, there is a remarkable improvement in the bilateral cooperation between India and China – trade boomed over the last three decades, the number of top level visits rose, discussions on contentious border issues have been held frequently and cooperation at the global level, bet it WTO or climate talks, also strengthened. The talk of war has been “put to one side”. Euphoric Western liberals lost no time to praise free market economics, claiming more trade will spawn more interest groups, which will lobby for “broader and deeper relations” with other trading states. Did that really happen in Indo-China relations?

Holslag agrees that there are visible changes. But did the enhanced economic cooperation helped India and China put aside the historic rivalry and become ideal trading states? Like many other rational India-China watchers Holslag retains his apprehensions about the claims of “neofunctionalist liberalism”. He discusses in detail why these steps toward a comprehensive partnership between India and China “will not succeed”. According to him, the existing “complementarity between India and China will disappear once they achieve their economic ambitions”. The traditional rivalry will likely spread to the economic sphere as well, challenging the concept of “Chindia”. The still unresolved border issues, the military security dilemma and the suspicion in public perceptions about the “other” power are the other major impediments India-China ties face with. The economic drivers are too weak to reverse these challenges. “In the short-term, we will therefore observe a continuation of the great power contest,” writes Holslag.

The 234-page book is rich with historical facts, economic data and diverse perceptions of experts from India and China. The 13-page bibliography underlines the authenticity and seriousness of the research Holslag undertook to write this comparatively small book. His key argument that strategic rivalry would continue to dominate Indo-China relations irrespective of the improvement in economic cooperation looks rational given the complex history of bilateral ties between the two countries. Holslag could have placed this hypothesis in the larger geopolitical context. The race for influence in Asia is going to be the race for world domination in a changing world. How the love-hate diplomacy of India and China is going to influence international politics? Unfortunately, Holslag leaves this untouched.

Jonathan Holslag (2010), “China + India: Prospects for Peace, Columbia University Press: New York (Reviewed for Business World)

Consistent Inconsistency

The Suez crisis of 1957 marked the beginning of a new era in the US’ Middle East policy. The British debacle in the Suez and President Dwight Eisenhower’s decision to have deeper engagement with the Middle East seemed to bring in changes in the political landscape of the region. However, that did never happen. Despite being the largest power in the post-war world, the US has never shown strong will to bring in peace into the region even as the policy makers in Washington seemed to have obsessed with the security fears of Israel, the most reliable Middle Eastern ally of the US, writes Patrick Tyler in his book, “A World of Trouble: America in the Middle East”. Tyler, an experienced journalist, who has covered the Middle East politics for years for the New York Times and Washington Post, writes in rich details in the over 600-page book how the “inconsistent” US policy in the Middle East was caught between Washington’s aspirations for a higher position in the Muslim World and its ideological commitment towards the Zionist state.

The book covers the US involvement in the Middle East during 10 presidents – from Eisenhower to George W Bush. According to Tyler, Washington’s policy towards the Middle East, a strategically important region for the superpower, was “consistently inconsistent”. President Eisenhower had pragmatic vision about the region. He wanted peace between the Arabs and the Israelis and more prosperity and development in the region. But he could not make any effective move towards those goals after an intelligent intervention during the Suez crisis. But the successive presidents did not share this vision. President Lyndon Johnson did not do anything when Israeli’s occupied Palestinian land during the Six-Day war and Henry Kissinger’s pro-Israeli policies did harm in the long term to the US interests in the region. During the Yom Kippur war, President Nixon sent Kissinger to Soviet leader Brezhnev with a message, calling for a joint super power action to end the war and find a “just” settlement for the Palestinian issue. However, Kissinger, in pursuit of an entirely different outcome to the Middle East conflict, dumped his president’s message. A joint super powers’ intervention, writes Tyler , would have left Israel with a less powerful position, making it easier for world powers to seek peace in the region. However, Kissinger tactfully undermined this move and even encouraged the Israeli leadership to violate the ceasefire terms to better its military position. Nixon’s statesmanship was further battered by the Watergate scandal.

Jimmy Carter’s Middle East policy was more peace-oriented than his predecessors. He even secured peace between Israel and Egypt. But the Iranian revolution and the subsequent US embassy siege destroyed the Middle East policy of the Carter administration. In a radically changing Middle East, Washington had to make policy priorities to secure its own interests. Iran, one of its trusted allies in the region till the other day, turned out to be the worst enemy. When Iran-Iraq war broke out, Reagan supported Iraq, a country against which his successor George Bush launched a major offensive. President Clinton tried for peace in the Middle East, but he lost focus after the Levinsky incident and did not use his firm hand to make the Israelis compromise. And George W Bush made everything worse.

Tyler says Washington was not singlemindedly supporting the Israeli lobby always. There were clashes of interests and hard maneuvers within administrations. It was this contradiction that made the Middle East policy of the US inconsistent. If the occupants of the White House could think beyond Israel while taking key policy decisions, the US’ position in the Muslim world would have been better.

Tyler version of history is largely based on personal interviews and declassified documents. While Tyler keeps the sharpness of a journalist in narrating incidents that shaped the US Middle East policy in the post-war world, the in depth analyses of an academic is missing. Though the security of Israel is one of the key driving factors of the US foreign policy, from the US’ point of view, the strategic importance of the Middle East is beyond Israel. All presidents except Bush Junior gave utmost importance for America’s relationship with the friendly countries like the Gulf monarchies and there was a continuity in this “friendship”. Above all, the civilisational angle plays a key role in the estranged relationship between the Middle East and the US. This was evident during the George Bush II presidency.

The book ends abruptly. The last chapter deals with the policies of Bush II, whose unwise and unimaginative moves made the US-Middle East relationship complicated than ever. The fact that President Obama had to start his Middle East venture with a confidence building speech in Cairo underscores Tyler’s analysis that Washington has to seek a new paradigm and build trust to deal with a changing Middle East. More errors will make things more complicated. Good luck, President Obama.

Patrick Tyler (2009), “A World of Trouble: America in the Middle East”, London: Portobello Books, Pages: 638 (Reviewed for Purple Beret)

Eastern Dominance

Economic freedom creates habits of liberty. And habits of liberty create expectations of democracy… Trade freely with China and the time is on our side," said George W. Bush in November 1999, a year before he was elected the 43rd president of the United States. Economic relations with between China and the United States zoomed to new highs during the Bush presidency as the Asian giant accelerated its market reforms. Thanks to those reform initiatives, China emerged as the third largest economy in the world and, according to Goldman Sachs, is set to overtake the biggest economy, the United States, in 2027. Will this economic transformation bring in changes in China's Communist Party-ruled system as many Western liberals predicted? Most unlikely, says Martin Jacques, a well-known journalist and once the editor of Marxism Today, in his new book, "When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World".

China's economic liberalisation was hailed by many in the West. The disciples of liberal political scientist Francis Fukuyama strongly believed that the world has been converging on Western liberal democracy ever since the collapse of the Soviet bloc. The neoliberal economic development would accelerate this transformation, they argued for decades. So, China would either end up opening up its polity for a more participative system or collapse due to its internal contradictions like what happened to the Soviet Union. But Jacques challenges both these claims in his book. "Economic change, fundamental as it may be, can only be part of the picture," he writes.

The post-1978 reforms, initiated by President Deng Xiaoping, helped China modernise itself at a greater pace than many western countries did in the 18th and 19th centuries. But China's modernisation, according to Jacques, is not western. It is distinctive and "rooted and shaped by its own history and culture". Therefore, expecting China to follow the western political and cultural values would be erroneous. China is not a conventional nation-state, an ideal unit in the post-Westphalia international order. Rather, it is a "civilisation state" that kept the "essence" of Chineseness unbroken over millennia despite undergoing several political and economic transformations. "It is this civilisation dimension that gives China its special unique character." When it was down, a pragmatic China was ready to get integrated into the international system and reconcile itself to being a nation state. "It was a compromise borne of expediency and necessity," writes Jacques. "But as China arrives at modernity, and emerges as the most powerful country in the world, it will no longer be bound by such constraints and will in time be in a position to set its own terms and conditions."

When that time will come? Jacques believes the West is in the decline. The credit crunch that started in the United States in 2007 followed by the collapse of the Wall Street investment firms including the Lehman Brothers in September 2008, marks the beginning of the end of the deregulated neoliberal capitalism. The distinctive Chinese economy, in which state plays a major role and controls the flow of capital, which is an antithesis to the very concept of neoliberalism, weathered the crisis. China's relative power is rising post-meltdown at a time when the United States and other western economic power houses are struggling to manage their respective economies.

Such a rise would bring in a politico-cultural shift in international politics. For over five centuries, western values were global values. When the United States became the super power after the Second World War, only the power centre shifted from Europe to across the Atlantic. The values, ideas and culture remained the same. But the rise of China does not provide any such opportunity to the West, according to Jacques. "China will act as an alternative model to the West, embodying a very different kind of political tradition - a post colonial developing country, a Communist regime, a highly sophisticated statecraft and an authoritarian, Confucian rather than democratic polity".

Jacques presents his arguments after a detailed analysis of Chinese history and civilisation and connects them to the present-day developments in international politics. China's triumph as a non-capitalist market economy and its rising cultural "smart power" persuade us to believe Jacques' claims. But the author, seems obsessed with the rise-of-civilisation idea, fails discuss the strategic angle in detail. The hard power had played a crucial role in the ascendancy of both Britain and the United States. But how strong is China vis-a-vis the present-day hegemony the United States? How the hard power is going to help China in its quest to transform the world? That link is missing in Jacques' otherwise brilliantly written book.

Author Profile: Martin Jacques is a journalist and academic. He is currently a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre and at the National University of Singapore. Jacques previously edited Marxism Today and co-founded the think-tank Demos in 1993. He also writes columns for the New Statesman and Guardian. (Reviewed for Business World)

In praise of the Americentric world

At the beginning of the century, everything looked fine for the United States. Its economy was booming, the American style finance capitalism was tightening its grip over world economies, its military operation in Yugoslavia, co-sponsored by the Nato, was a success and the world had more or less come to terms with the new political order emerged after the collapse of the Soviet Union. If somebody predicted that the 21st century would be an Americentric period, it would have been hailed by many.

But the world has changed dramatically over the past 10 years. And when the US is facing one of its worst crises – both militarily and economically – George Freidman, the best selling author of “America’s Secret War”, forecasts that the US would remain the world’s “pre-eminent” power for the next 100 years. Friedman, the founder and chief executive of the US-based private intelligence agency Stratfor, makes some brilliant but strange predictions in his new book, “The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century”. If somebody thought, the US Empire is on the decline, or the Communist China is on the rise to become the next super power, or the present century will belong to the emerging nations like India, Brazil and South Africa, he or she could be wrong, according to Friedman. He says Turkey, Poland and Japan would emerge as great powers of the century. Stunned by the prognosis? Well, “the most practical way to imagine future is to question the unexpected”, says Freidman. He argues his predictions are simple efforts to read history geopolitically. “It’s Geography which defines power”. The geopolitical locations of Japan, Turkey and Poland and the changing contours of global politics would help these countries emerge as great powers.

So what about China, an emerging power billed by many analysts as the next super power? Freidman believes China would be fragmented by 2020 due to internal contradictions. When its coastal regions will get richer and richer, the interior parts will plunge into acute poverty. On the global scene, China would fail to extend its influence as it’s not a major geopolitical force. The US will continue its technological, economical and military dominance and will be challenged by an ambitious Japan and its ally Turkey in 2050. Turkey, the largest Islamic economy, would emerge as the greatest power in the region as Russia would weaken by middle of the century. Poland, on the other side, will align with the US like what Israel and South Korea did in the post-war world. “In the emerging competition between the US and Russia, Poland represents the geographical frontier between Europe and Russia and the geographical foundation of any attempts to defend the Baltics,” writes Friedman.

Unlike the previous world wars, the war between the US and Japan would not be fought as the first two were. It will begin with attacks on American military space stations and the US and its Polish ally will eventually emerge victorious.

The victory will further strengthen the US power and it will start another major technological surge similar to that of its post-war policy. BY the end of the century, America’s neighbour Mexico will emerge another great power and a potential threat to the US influence on the earth. That conflict will be one of the defining developments of the 22nd century.

Reading Freidman’s book is an enjoyable exercise, though it’s biter to swallow most of his arguments. The US as a whole -- its capitalism, its military power and its unipolar world – is undergoing the worst crises in decades. It’s president himself has hinted the changing role of the US in an unfolding multilateral world order in which both China and India are set to have higher stakes. China, the fastest growing economy in the world, is likely to overtake Japan as the second largest economy in 2010. Friedman seems to be sidestepping these facts, while most of his forecasts looked based on certain fixed notions like the “immunity” of the US and the role of naval power and global trade in defining the greatness of countries. However, it remains to be seen how much the Stratfor founder is correct in imagining the world ahead.

The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century”, George Friedman, Doubleday: 2009 (Reviewed for Purple Beret)