Is Mishra’s
Suggestion of a US-India-Israel Axis Workable?
By
Surendra Mohan
PRIME
MINISTER Vajpayee’s special adviser Brajesh Mishra has advocated
the creation of an alliance of the US, Israel and India, all
of which, according to him, are democratic, civilized and pluralistic
countries. This description of the countries is correct, but the
rulers are hardly civilized or pluralistic, including our own,
unfortunately.
However, look at the timing of the
suggestion. Only a fortnight before it was made, our Parliament
unanimously deplored the aggression of the US against Iraq. The
US Government struck without the sanction of the Security Council
and in complete defiance of massive international public pinion.
Three out of five permanent members of the Security Council namely
Russia, France and China had opposed it. The gravity of the offence
was highlighted by the absence of any proof of the charge that
Iraq had been storing and manufacturing weapons of mass destruction
to use them against her enemies.
Israel is the major beneficiary of
the victory scored by the US and her allies, mainly the United
Kingdom. For, the struggle against the terrorism that her Government
has been indulging against the Palestinians will be eroded by
the ferocity of the US attack. Iraq was supporting them, but the
`regime change’ brought about by the US has changed the
situation.
Syria was warned and has reportedly
agreed that the Hezbollah, located in Lebanon, must not get her
support. Syria has also agreed to ensure that her troops vacate
Lebanon, even though they were there on the basis of an agreement
among herself, the US and Israel. Israel controls parts of the
territories of Syria, but the US is not asking her to vacate
them. She has continued to set up new settlements in the Palestinian
territories which were given to them under a U.N. agreement.
She has defied over a dozen resolutions,
adopted by the UN, asking her to give them up. The Palestinians,
with whatever support they can muster from other Arabs, have been
resisting the expansionism of Israel. They had to resort to human
bombs, for they lack a trained army as the Israelis have, which
has over 300 nuclear weapons. The US which destroyed Iraq on
the false pretext that her ruler Saddam Hussain had stockpiled
such weapons has never asked Israel to dismantle them. Israel’s
response is to call the Palestinian fighters terrorists and crush
even the common citizens as she did when bulldozing the refugee
camp at Jenin.
These
are the two allies, the US and Israel, whose Governments, civilized
and pluralistic, which Brajesh Mishra, wishes India to court.
The other aspect of the timing of his advocacy is that it was
made after the Prime Minister asked for a resumption of dialogue
with Pakistan, ruling out mediation by a third party, including,
obviously, the US. Public opinion in Pakistan is extremely hostile
to her. As for Israel, no one there can forget the utter hostility
between her and the Arabs. This suggestion can, therefore, weaken
the force of the Prime Minister’s welcome initiative.
Whether Mishra adopted this course
deliberately, one would not know. However, if he thought that
by his suggestion, he was winning over the US to India’s
side in her dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir, then, again, he
was repudiating the Prime Minister’s policy against allowing
mediation. However, he is the special adviser of the Prime Minister
and must know what he was doing. Possibly, he had the boss’s
blessing. If that were the case, then it would only expose our
duplicity.
On
the other hand, the US is quite keen to get involved in settling
the Kashmir stalemate. On April 30, Colin Powell, US Secretary
of State, had announced that after they were finished with Iraq,
they would turn attention to South Asia. Later, his deputy Armitage
was going about in Islamabad and New Delhi, carrying Musharraf’s
message to Vajpayee.
In
this context, our Deputy Prime Minister appropriately asked him
a straight question: why cannot Musharraf make the same suggestion
directly to Vajpayee? Advani himself is visiting Washington. President
George W. Bush has indicated that he too would like to visit New
Delhi. Yet another visitor might be the Israeli Prime Minister
Sharon who has also been invited by our Government.
If
the masses of the Arab people as also those Muslims who consider
the attacks of the US against Afghanistan and Iraq as part of
the crusade against Islam get alienated from India, it might make
a rapprochement between us and our estranged neighbor a little
more difficult.
Yet
another important consideration is: what attitude which all those
who opposed the US aggression against Iraq as inappropriate, will
adopt. They include our eastern and south eastern neighbors; the
big powers, Russia, Germany, France and China, north, south and
east Africa and Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, Chile and some others,
in the American continent. Why must we lose their goodwill? Why
need we to weaken our chances of joining the economic group of
south eastern countries? Why do we become junior, subsidiary partners
of the gendarme of the present uni polar world and sour our relations
with the European Economic Community and the above mentioned countries?
That
resistance against this unipolar scenario is bound to grow. It
will grow as the US multinational companies get to monopolize
all oil supplies and sell them dearly to other developed countries,
in particular, so as to weaken rival challenges to their dominance
over world markets. It will become deep rooted in the developing
world as the US makes another conspiratorial attempt to oust
Chaves, the President of Venezuela, or tries to unsettle the Brazilian
President Lula. It will, or might, snowball, as the US reshapes
west Asia as Bush has pledged to do, mainly to give over the charge
of ruling over that huge land mass to her trusted Arab cronies
like the Saudi monarch but more so to her all -time cohort, Israel,
hated by many.
Whether
it is Africa, South America, or Asia, the developing world everywhere
has witnessed with increasing concern their economic degeneration
as the WTO regime rules further ensnare them into dependencies
of the developed countries. Is it too late to recall our Commerce
Minister Murasoli Maran’s experience from the WTO ministerial
conference in Doha in November 2001 where India got utterly isolated,
had to accept what she did not want to and Maran returned to emphasize
the urgent need to build a `Development Coalition’ of the
developing countries?
Instead
of building that coalition, Mishra wants India to join those whom
that coalition was sought to contain. Moreover, if the resistance
against the unipolar world is going to blossom and such diverse
interests as the EEC, Russia and China and other developing countries
of the southern hemisphere are to make different kind of common
causes, why should we give up all our options in favour of the
one with those going to be progressively challenged?
The
entire world system is in transition after George W. Bush decided
the direction of the policies of the US. We should certainly
cooperate wherever our interests are served; but, closely watch
her general line economically; and as her real agenda for Kashmir
unfolds, politically as well. It is best to remain unaligned,
for the present in any case, and hope that the initiative of the
Prime Minister succeeds.
