Power

LONDON – The much-heralded council of war between President George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair begins at Bush’s Texas ranch on Friday. Whatever else is in the headlines on that day, the tight focus of the discussion will be on whether or not to go to war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. This must be the most complicated, multifaceted, decision that any Western political leader has made since Truman’s decision to go to war against North Korea. Yet, even if one concedes the ultimate right of any country to take preventive action against another, which might use nuclear weapons against it, the argument for a new war does not stand up. Despite America’s overwhelming military might, it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Until now the U.S, by its bold and resolute, if misconceived, war in Afghanistan has proved the doubters wrong on one important point. The...

LONDON – President George Bush has bequeathed the world a great sense of insecurity. Since he delivered his dose of inflated hyperbole at his State of the Union address we are left to wonder if the rest of his presidency is going to be a constant reminder of that state when “every road towards a better society is blocked, sooner or later, by war, threats of war, preparations for war,” as Aldous Huxley warned us it would be 70 years ago. “If you want peace, prepare for war” advised Clausewitz, and today’s inhabitants of the White House, convinced self righteously that the mailed fist will cow the infidel and the wicked, take Clausewitz all too literally, convinced that their bombs will persuade those underneath to bow to superior force. It can happen. Nazi Germany was blitzed into oblivion. Japan was nuclear bombed into capitulation. More recently, Iraq was dissuaded from...

LONDON – As Israeli tanks roam at will through Palestinian territory, it is apparent to all but the most blinded that the ability of Yasser Arafat and his people to regain the initiative has never been more circumscribed. No one doubts the power of the Palestinian militants to inflict enormous pain on Israeli civilians. No one should minimise the sheer fear that runs through everyday Israeli family life. Indeed, no one should be surprised if tens of thousands of young highly educated families pack up their bags and join other Israelis in the modern day diasporas of places like the San Francisco Bay area where some 30,000 of them have already built new – and safer – lives. And no one should feign surprise if, among battle hardened veterans of previous Israeli campaigns, the number of peaceniks begins to grow. But the truth is however large the peace movement or...

LONDON – No other main line, legitimate, business is as corrupt as the arms trade. That the obvious needs to be said again is only because of two more scandals that have surfaced, both involving murder, and still the countries that are responsible for 90% of the world’s arms sales continue to allow their arms companies to do their dirty business with only minimalist controls and interference. First, on March 19th came the suicide of a former Belgium government minister who for ten years had been awaiting trial for the murder of a one time deputy prime minister, André Cools. Cools, it has been suspected, was killed to prevent him denouncing the illegal same of documents to an arms manufacturer. It was an offshoot of the same long running scandal that brought down the Belgian secretary-general of Nato over alleged bribes paid to the Socialist Party by Agusta, the Italian helicopter...

LONDON – George W.Bush, the world now realizes, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. World events, everything from the political composition of the U.S. Supreme Court, from terrorism to the American economy seem to have a preordained way of working in his electoral favour. Again it is happening with Latin America. By rights the chickens should be coming home to roost as Bush girds up for his end of week visit to Mexico, Peru and Central America but, in fact, Argentina apart, the tides, both political and economic, appear to be working in his favour. Just the other day the International Monetary Fund issued a report saying that Latin America was “set for recovery”, likely to benefit from lower financing costs, higher commodities and an expected rebound in the U.S. economy, with a projected growth by the end of the year of 4% (excluding Argentina).  For the last...

LONDON – In his autobiography “A Soldier’s Way”, General Colin Powell recounts the build up to the 1991 Gulf War when he was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Dick Cheney was the Secretary of Defence. “Cheney kept assigning me last-minute tasks….He had a third question and I jotted it down in my notebook simply as “prefix 5”, my nuclear qualification code. “Let’s not even think about nukes”, I said, “You know we’re not going to let that genie loose”. “Of course not”, Cheney said. “But take a look to be thorough and just out of curiosity”. Colin L. Powell – A Soldier’s Way (UK Edition) Colin L. Powell – My American Journey (US Edition) Powell played the same role in the Administration of Bush father as he does in that of Bush son, the voice of reason, not the token black but the token liberal who is allowed to speak, in...

LONDON – Only this weekend’s election can save Zimbabwe- once the star of black Africa- from total ruin. And even that is uncertain. A country so mismanaged requires more than a new leader and governing party. It requires ten years of political calm and incorruptible government to get back on its feet. And Zimbabwe for all the intimidatatory tactics of President Robert Mugabe remains a democracy and thus Mugabe, even if he loses the poll, will live to fight another day, able to mobilize the bitterness and resentment of the poor and unemployed to undermine a new government, as he has worked to undermine the opposition the last few years. The trouble with Robert Mugabe is that his single-minded, Marxist militancy that was a useful tool in driving to defeat the white, racist, government of Rhodesia (as it then was) and its British supporters in the Conservative party is the same...

LONDON – Jonas Savimbi was like the war in Angola itself: he went on and on, seemingly forever. Whatever peace deal was negotiated he was sure to break it, sure to find another sponsor who’d trade diamonds for guns. He outlasted most of his principal rivals and he certainly outlasted his godfather, the Cold War, and the earnest need of the superpowers to woo friends who were prepared to engage in a proxy war against the friends of the rival superpower. In the end, such was his tenacity and his masterly improvisation, he showed that he could survive and live to fight another day without a superpower behind him. When America finally but belatedly turned against him he wooed the malevolent and rich dictator of neighbouring Zaire, and when that ended with Mobutu’s death he befriended the presidents of Togo, Rwanda and Burkina Faso. Anyone who’d sell him a gun or...

LONDON – “Sunshine is dead. Long live the darkness.” Is this what President George Bush would have liked to have said this week during his visit to Seoul? Even he, so soon after his “axis of evil” speech, might think that would be over the top. Nevertheless, President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea is clearly fighting tooth and nail to save what remains of what he calls his “sunshine policy”, his ambition to forge reconciliation with communist North Korea. The opposition at home has been buoyed by the sounds of jihad from Washington. The fact that the political pros in the European Union and the awarders of the Nobel Peace Prize, who in these matters tend to reflect sophisticated liberal opinion, have supported “sunshine” all along cuts no ice in the Bush entourage. Bush’s tactic when he feels he has upset his interlocutor is to turn on the charm and stress...

LONDON – The trial of Slobodan Milosevic, the former strong man of Yugoslavia, set to open in The Hague next week at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, may raise as many questions as it answers. It is not just the double standards of the United States in being the prime instigator of this trial while it refuses to put itself under the writ of the soon-to-be International Criminal Court established to try all crimes against humanity, but also the many underhand and compromised methods used by the Western powers in an attempt to placate the demons of Belgrade during the civil wars of the 1990s. Yet the trial is a major marker in the development of international jurisprudence. After the success of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials that convicted Nazi and Japanese war leaders, and were conducted despite Churchill’s initial hostility who wanted them just to be taken...

LONDON – Chris Patten, the European commissioner for foreign affairs, said the other day that America had to be careful that after winning the war it didn’t lose the peace. But who can say that America has won the war? It hasn’t “smoked out” Osama bin Laden, the supposed objective. As for losing the peace, yes, the indications are indeed worrying. No one in Washington with their hand over their heart could say that world opinion is now behind America. It may have been momentarily in the immediate aftermath of September 11th but over the months that support has been whittled away. The treatment of the prisoners in Guantanamo has brought it all to a head. Indeed, the very fact that this issue has become so hot, particularly in Europe, is an indication of the deep doubts and reservations in the chancelleries of Western Europe about America’s on-going call to arms....

the need for a massive aid program for Africa LONDON – Surely a massive infusion of aid into Africa would be to pour money down a rat hole? Isn’t this the mistake that was made in the past – enormous generosity by the rich countries only to see it wasted on misconceived projects, bad economic management and, at its worst, siphoned away into war and corruption, as is so evident in say Zimbabwe right now? But a call for more aid is the essence of a remarkable interview given to the Financial Times on Tuesday by South Africa’s president, Thabo Mbeki. The rat hole is one way to look at it. But another, equally plausible, is to say enough African countries have turned off the low, downward, road and are walking a more straight and narrow path of fiscal responsibility. They have good macro economic management and low inflation rates and...