History News Network

http://chnm.gmu.edu/hnn/

6-3-02

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

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The Downside to the Bush Doctrine (On View in South Asia Now)



By Juan Cole



Mr. Cole is professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan



Does the current conflict between India and Pakistan show that President George W. Bush made an error in issuing his Bush Doctrine in the wake of September 11? The U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan was, in fact, authorized by NATO and by the Security Council of the United Nations. Instead of stressing the resulting legitimacy of his military campaign, however, Bush preferred unilateral pronouncements. He wanted the terrorists “Dead or Alive,” invoking the cowboy ethos of the old American West.



The Bush doctrine holds that harboring international terrorists makes a country a pariah and authorizes unilateral military action against it. The doctrine allows for none of the ambiguities that plague interpretations of terrorism in the real world. All world leaders facing any sort of insurgency have invoked the Bush doctrine in recent months, from Israel’s Ariel Sharon to India’s Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee.



Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in London last fall, "We have to go beyond al-Qaida in our war against terrorism and target all sponsors who finance, train, equip and harbor terrorists." His reference was to the help that India believes is given by Pakistan to guerilla groups fighting to detach Kashmir from India.



This most current of crises is deeply rooted in history. In 1947, the British colonial possessions in South Asia were partitioned into a Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. The major issue that partition left unresolved was the fate of the northern province of Kashmir. Its Hindu raja, Hari Singh, acceded to India even though most of his subjects were Muslims. His autocratic decision provoked popular uprisings.



As Sikh and Hindu volunteers flocked to the aid of the raja, and Muslim fighters came over from Pakistan, India flew troops to Kashmir and fought the Pakistani army to a standstill. The British negotiator of partition, Lord Mountbatten, stipulated that Kashmir’s accession to India was provisional and subject to a popular plebiscite. Later United Nations Council Resolutions concurred. The Indian government rejected the idea of a referendum and the notion of any outside interference, simply claiming Kashmir as its own.



India and Pakistan have fought three major wars, two of them largely over the Kashmir issue.



From the early 1990s, a local popular insurgency in Kashmir, which seeks independence rather than union with Pakistan, has roiled Indian politics. India responded with harsh military reprisals. In the past 11 years some 34,000 Kashmiris have died in the resulting violence, many of them innocent civilians.



Pakistani irregulars called jihadis have supported annexation of Kashmir by going over the border to hit Indian targets. They were given clandestine logistical aid, training and weaponry by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). In the 1990s, the ISI helped create the Taliban and supported terrorist training camps in Afghanistan largely in order to gain “strategic depth” in the struggle with India. Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a coup in 1999, is known as a hawk on the Kashmir issue. As head of the military, he had brought Pakistan and India to the brink of war earlier that year over the Kargil section of Kashmir.



Musharraf was forced to turn on the Taliban in the aftermath of September 11, and he cracked down on the Afghan-linked guerilla groups in Pakistan. He has played a key role as an ally of the U.S. in its war on terror. His ardor over Kashmir has, however, not cooled. Jihadis still make their way from Pakistan to Kashmir, hitting Indian targets, with or without government backing. Pakistani groups even attacked the Indian Parliament on December 13 of last year. It is unclear whether Musharraf simply cannot stop the terrorists, or whether his military government is still lukewarm about trying to do so.



India has massed 700,000 troops in Kashmir, and Pakistan has virtually its entire army of 400,000 at the front, as well. Both countries have nuclear weapons capabilities, and both Vajpayee and Musharraf seem naïve about the way in which conventional war could turn nuclear if either state felt sufficiently threatened.



If George W. Bush had appealed to the NATO and Security Council decisions on collective security in justifying his war in Afghanistan, he would have deprived others of a pretext for go-it-alone attacks. The invocation of the Bush Doctrine by the Vajpayee government is chilling in its threat of unilateral military action against a foe perceived to harbor terrorists. A world of nuclear powers cannot afford to have its leaders playing Wyatt Earp.

Deterrence and the Bush Doctrine



Juan Cole



Whatever Ikle's (and Lowry's) point of view represents, it is some fringe

in the Republican Party but certainly not the stance of George W. Bush.

Bush has been meticulous since September 11 in addressing and wooing

Muslim audiences and emphasizing that Muslims are not the enemy, terrorism

is. All the major spokesmen of the Bush administration have pronounced

themselves very pleased with Saudi Arabia's help since September 11, and

there is no hint that Bush himself would ever think of the frankly insane

idea of menacing the holy cities.





Right from September 20, Bush told Congress, "The terrorists practice a

fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars

and the vast majority of Muslim clerics -- a fringe movement that perverts

the peaceful teachings of Islam." He has repeated this formula over and

over again, to the point where he has been criticized by anti-Muslim

zealots for engaging in Muslim theology.





The culprit seeking nuclear weaponry is Iraq and possibly al-Qaida itself,

not Saudia. Bush gets along with CP Abdullah just fine from all accounts,

with help from George H.W. Bush (senior).





It is not true that Bush no longer needs the Muslims since the Taliban

fell so easily. The war on terror is a global effort of

counter-insurgency, and it can no more be won without Muslim help than the

British could have defeated the Communists in Malaysia without the help of

Muslim villagers. Bush knows this very well.





Nor is it true that nothing positive links the US with Saudia in the wake

of oil nationalization. Refining operations are often still cooperative

in some ways; owning the oil isn't everything. And, the Saudis clearly

often employ their ability to virtually set the price of oil in ways that

benefit the U.S., as they did after September 11 when they refused to seek

new OPEC quotas in the face of falling oil prices. None of this is lost

on any American administration, regardless of what the spear bearers write

in op ed pieces.





What al-Qaida is hoping for is precisely that attacks like that of

September 11 will goad the United States into doing something extremely

foolish that will decisively alienate the entire Muslim world.

Al-Qaida's constituent parts have been trying assiduously for a decade or

two decades to overthrow the Algerian and Egyptian governments and to push

Israel back. They dream of uniting the entire Middle East, adding the

talents and population of Egypt to the oil money of the Gulf, creating a

new superpower under a revived caliphate. They got nowhere, and blame this

failure in large part on the United States' strong backing for these

states. September 11 was aimed at making it more costly for the U.S. to

support the status quo in the region, at pushing it out, and if that

failed, at making it lash out at Islam in a way that would, as the

marxists used to say, clarify the contradictions. This would create a

vast anti-American backlash throughout the Muslim world, crippling the

pro-American states and making them ripe for overthrow by the jihadis.





Ikle and Lowry in talking the way they did about nuking Mecca might as

well have just enlisted in al-Qaida and had done with it.





Sincerely,







Juan Cole

U of Michigan

More on Ikle and Nuking Mecca



To: gulf2000 list

Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2002 09:39:53 -0400

From: Juan Cole





There is a difference between believing in freedom of speech and believing

in giving prominent press platforms to hate speech. I believe Mr. Ikle

should be free to believe and to say anything he likes. I don't believe

the editors of the Wall Street Journal have a responsibility to print

anything he says. Indeed, I believe they have a responsibility not to

print hate speech.





It is quite ironic that universities are derided by the Right as lacking

in free speech rights. In fact, almost any opinion can be heard on U.S.

campuses. Rightwing populist Bill O'Reilly addressed an overflow crowd at

Harvard recently. It is true that some opinions get heckled, but that is

free speech too. In contrast to university settings, in the private

sector--from whence this critique comes--there is no freedom of speech

whatsoever. Employees of private companies can be summarily fired for

their political views, for trying to organize unions, etc. A friend of

mine lost her job at a bank because she attended a non-violent

demonstration. (The first amendment only protects you from reprisals by

the Federal government.) Persons are not expelled from universities for

attending non-violent demonstrations.





I think we should loudly condemn bigotry no matter from where it issues.

More especially when that bigotry is expressed by a prominent former

official of the U.S. government in among the leading newspapers in the

United States. The issue as to whether the expression of bigotry should

be allowed is quite a different one. In my view it should--as long as it

does not constitute an immediate incitement to violence or

law-breaking--but those espousing it should be obliged to buy an orange

crate to stand on in the park, not given an internationally respected

press platform for their views.





Before the rise of the neocons in the 1970s, it was well understood by

minority communities in the United States that they had to work against

bigotry in general. Because if an atmosphere was created or allowed to

persist that allowed one minority group to be targeted, it had the

potential to boomerang on the others, as well. Racialist hatred is no

respecter of persons. Now I perceive a cockiness among some minorities in

the U.S., such that they--former victims of discrimination--advocate

racial profiling and discrimination, even demonization, for some. I

solemnly predict that if they continue on this path, they will eventually

come deeply to regret it, as shall we all.





Sincerely,





Juan Cole

U of Michigan



www.juancole.com

Ikle on Nuking Mecca: Or, Racism Lives



Date: Sun, 02 Jun 2002 14:17:39 -0400

From: Juan Cole





Re: Fred Ikle, Stopping the Next Sept. 11

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110001790



Where Ikle writes: "Those who out of cowardice use their wealth to pay danegeld to the

preachers of hate and destruction must be taught that this aggression will

boomerang. A nuclear war stirred up against the "infidels" might end up

displacing Mecca and Medina with two large radioactive craters."



Cole replies:



My problem with the racist invocation of nuking Mecca and Medina on the

Right (first Lowry [see below] and now Ikle) is that it is ignorant,

counterproductive, and monstrous.



It is ignorant because if the point is to menace the Saudis into ceasing

their export of Wahhabism throughout the Muslim world, the center of

Wahhabism is Riyadh and Najd, not the Hijaz where Mecca and Medina are

located. Indeed, the Hijaz has been, along with Shi`ite al-Hasa, a major

center of Muslim opposition to Wahhabism ever since the Saudi conquest of

1924-26, and a hotbed of Sufism, non-Hanbali law, and Muslim

cosmopolitanism (because of the pilgrimage and the desire of Muslims from

all over the world to study and live near these sacred centers). So, it

seems a hard thing that Mecca and Medina should be obliterated for the

(alleged) sins of the Wahhabis.



It is counterproductive because Mecca and Medina are very dear to the

hearts of all Muslims, even secular ones. The very mention of "nuking

Mecca" stings their eyes to tears and enrages them. There are over a

billion Muslims in the world and there are going to be 2 billion before

very long. The task of the United States is to get them on its side, not

to alienate or enrage them. This is something George W. Bush, himself a

man of faith, understood instinctively, and got perfectly correct after

September 11. The Wall Street Journal should be ashamed of itself for

printing this kind of drivel, and Mr. Ikle should be ashamed of himself

for writing it.



It is monstrous because it is morally bankrupt to threaten nuclear

holocaust against millions of innocent persons and against the center of a

world religion. Lowry and Ikle no doubt deeply disliked the Latin

American liberation theologians who melded Catholic theology with leftist

ideas. Did they therefore advocate nuking the Vatican? What is the

difference between talking about nuking Mecca for political purposes and

Mulla Omar's destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, which was rightly

denounced as barbaric? (The difference is that no human beings were

vaporized at Bamiyan).



I have asked it before, and ask it now again. What would happen to the

editor of an op-ed page who allowed a columnist to call for nuking the

Vatican or the Wailing Wall? Would we consider such an organ part of the

civilized world? Isn't the real reason this sort of thing is allowed is

that anti-Arab racism is still considered acceptable at the cocktail

parties of the American wealthy? Why aren't Paul Gigot and James Taranto

forced to resign over this monstrosity?





Sincerely,





Juan Cole

U of Michigan