By opposing ‘unilateralism in international affairs’ and evincing a ‘common interest’ in the evolution of a multipolar world based on ‘cooperative security order’ while in Moscow this week, Prime Minister Vajpayee has addressed issues going beyond bilateral ties and regional politics in South Asia. To the extent, Vajpayee and India have been consistently focussing on multipolarism, particularly after the US war in Afghanistan, and on Iraq.
True, the US did not design the collapse of communist Soviet Union, leading to unipolarism in global affairs. If anything, it was 9/11 that took the world back to the days of politico-military dominance when competitive capitalism was already seeking to replace fallen communism as the ideological counter-poise to ensure global equilibrium. The US was there, ready and all – and, did not shy away. Yet, Iraq earlier, and now Syria, Iran and North Korea, and not necessarily in that order, are only evidence to its haste for ensuring ‘embedded unipolarism’ without giving time for the slow evolution of multipolarism.
In Russia now as earlier Vajpayee too did not shy away from referring to the religious component in global terrorism. He said both India and Russia are victims of the same, but even this observation seems to go beyond India’s immediate concern over Kashmir-centric, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism.
Though US President George Bush withdrew his early references to the ‘Crusades’ as hastily as he made them immediately after 9/11, in the absence of an ‘ideological component’ to the post-9/11 global scenario, such a course could not be avoided, either. It may be thus that some member-nations want the ‘Christian identity’ established in the new Constitution of the European Union.
Nations like Russia, India, China and even Pakistan, not to mention a host of others across the globe could be torn apart from within if the ‘culture-based civilisational clash’ theory is allowed practice. In this, despite their strong cultural and civilisational links from a common and distant past, India and Pakistan, for instance, could be forced to play mercenaries against each other, their nuclear arsenal making them both vulnerable, and their position, unenviable.
Iraq-related diplomatic differences exposed the inherent disquiet in the western model. In the absence of a militarily strong and ideologically threatening Soviet Union, 9/11 by itself may not explain away or power NATO from within for too long. Iraq could be an excuse, but the world today is in search of a monster that could justify the status quo. Whether it has the time for China to emerge as a super-power, or whether the US has the inherent strengths not to let ‘all-comers’ fill that vacuum until Beijing is ready, are questions that remain.
The events of the post-Cold War, in a way, exposed the US impatience in the matter. If in the early Nineties Saddam Hussein personified that ‘evil force’ but only as part of the yet-to-be-bandied-about ‘civilisational clash’, Osama bin-Laden may have hijacked it with 9/11, only years later. Yet when Osama went into hiding, Saddam needed resurrection as an American whipping boy. Or, so goes an argument.
The world now lacks the force of two Wars in quick succession for pushing it in the complex direction of bipolarism. Nor does it have the internal strife as it obtained in nations like Russia, China and India, or even a ‘Great Depression’ that haunted the West in the last century to give it an internal stimulant to individual nations. Cancun thus could also be a way, though the process could be as complicated and as slow as any other. But like EU and UN, it would again be board room-centric, where deals goals would be set, and deals made.
Be it the European Union’s suspicions of the US economic intentions – the Airbus Industrie Representative for India, for instance, said at the Bangalore air show that Boeing used American political pressure to scuttle New Delhi’s big order last year – or ‘Cancun communism’, a multipolar world still remains a possibility. It will also become a necessity if the world is not to slip back into the era of ‘civilisational clash’ from a distant past.
To that extent, India and Prime Minister Vajpayee would be seen as taking an inevitable initiative, starting also with an Indian air base in Tajikistan, and not necessarily ending with it.
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