Farce

Smoking is one vice that people in Pakistan
can tolerate in a head of state. It is the other
problems with leaders (both in uniform or civilian) that are a problem.
So keep puffing away General but do not forget
that expectations from you are high!

Ras

The general may or may not deliver. But what is certain is that Nawaz did not deliver and there was no hope of his ever doing so.

(sorry.. this was supposed to be the ending of the previous posting):

you say

[The IMF and donor countries will only keep us on life support if He can convice them the evil you know (military takeover) is better than the evil you don`t (hyperinflation, chaos). ]

Actually, I rather think that the latter are the devils we have gotten to know only to well, whereas the former is the one we are banking being the `risen` devil.

regards,

PM (and that`s not Pervaiz Musharraf!)

Dear Mr. Alam,

you write:

`` Strike one against this thing we fight for: democracy, ``

hello? who`s ``we``? What was the voter turn-out last elections? More importantly, have you been around in Pakistan recently, mingled with the Common Man, to feel the pulse of what ``We, the People`` want?

[I can`t but disagree with the removal of the government. A system like democracy needs to work out it`s own checks and balances.]

Er.. how long do we need to wait until this thingy `works itself out`, presumably guided by some hidden hand? Eleven more years? In any case, what are the bases of your optimism in democracy? If it is merely it`s success (apparent or otherwise) in other nations, I`m afraid that is, Hutchinson and Toqueville aside, simply a case of erroeous superimpositon of an unsuitable paradigm. At least in temporal terms.

[I must state that his removal is ILLEGAL; and two wrongs cannot make a right. ]

Maybe it`s time you started questioning what makes a wrong a wrong an a right right.

[Our country has already suffered enough, both at the hands of generals... ]

May I remind you that two wrongs don`t make a third either.

[What is sad is that Pakistan`s state of affairs has run a course so low that we can with ease state that a military coup is for the good.]

With EASE!!!??? hello? we (who actually live on the motherland-- and not in First World pockets either!) have watched our savings disappear, violence within the country increase, the economy come to the brink of collapse (while NS and his cronies had debts amounting to billions written off), and the likes of Chief Justices and repected journalists attacked. So it is with true that it is ``with ease ease state that a military coup is [probably] for the good.``

You say `` I must strongly protest any allegations of being pro-Nawaz``, but in labeling his government merely ``incompetent``, you are surely being overly generous. Mr. Sharif displayed remarkable competence in attaining a postion of virtual monarch in this democratic state; in dismissing judges, testing expensive nukes, building lucrative motorways and usurping power of provincial goverments.

[At best we must treat this de-facto coup with some suspicion, and hope those in command have the strength and foresight to do what is necessary.]

Finally, some sound advice (albiet out of step with the rest of your assertions). Yes, Mr. Alam, hope is pretty much all we have to go with now, but that is still one more virtue than we had one month ago.

[In his hands rests the future of 126 million.]

At least we agree there`s a future for them now!

Dear Bina (re. reply #9),

Never mind the point of the essay; the InterAct is bound to stir up some of the liviliest debate on the issue of the applicability of western paradigms of democracy to third world (esp. Islamic third world) countries. We`ve already been edified in the space of eleven replies more than we have throught the article.

I`m also curious: whither the voices of all the self-appointed content quality-control editors and assocaitive editors now? Or is it acceptable to have clearly deliberately distorted, libellous accounts of events on this forum so long as it doesn`t offend the sensibilities?

best regards,

Patrick Masih

In response to Behram B. Atashban (Reply #: 8):

Dear Behram B. Atashband:

Thank you for your reply. I am reproducing the following book review on Huntington`s book by Richard Rosecrance of the University of California, Los Angeles. I think, the reviewer has done a nice job. I strongly recommend all Chowkwallas to carefully read the following review. Thanks to you Behram. Readers, please bear with me the review is a bit long.

Sincerely, Bilal Ahmad

American Political Science Review 92, 4 (1998) 978-80.

Huntington, Samuel P. (1996). The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. By Samuel P. Huntington. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996. 368p. $25.00.

Samuel Huntington has made many important contributions to the fields of international relations and comparative politics. He has called to our attention the distinction between quantitative and qualitative arms races, advanced our understanding of modernization and institutionalization processes in the Third World, and contributed to our knowledge of ``transnationalism in world politics`` and of the effect of democratization. One important measure of creativity in the field is the number of new and important variables a scholar

introduces. Huntington`s previous work leaps this hurdle with room to spare. The Clash of Civilizations dramatically continues this process, uniting both comparative and international analyses in a forcefully argued analytic tract. Though admittedly not a work of social science, Huntington`s new essay offers powerful food for thought for scholars, governments, revolutionaries: Will differences between ``civilizations`` agitate world politics? What can be done to reduce conflict and allow Western civilization to survive?

Huntington`s broad subject follows in the path of Arnold J. Toynbee and Karl W. Deutsch, who understood that religious, linguistic, and ethnic differences could evoke and even determine social conflict, domestically and internationally. Toynbee observed the response of civilizations to challenge and graded their performances accordingly. Deutsch knew that as latent ethnic populations were mobilized to political activity, the very definition of the nation could undergo change. Toynbee observed that Sumerian, Egyptian, and Classical civilizations ultimately failed to respond to multiform challenges. In like manner, Deutsch witnessed the transformation of nation-states from one nationality to another. To take but one of his examples, Finland was initially dominated by its mobilized Swedish population, then ruled by Russians. The latent Finnish population became fully politically participant only in the twentieth century.

Unlike Toynbee and Deutsch, however, Huntington offers a theoretical approach to what has happened since the end of the Cold War and what will happen in the future. The division of the world into two blocs, which prevailed during the Cold War, no longer exists. But Huntington does not believe that the world has thereby degenerated into a realist anarchic system of nation-states in which the only protection is nuclear deterrence. The ``one-world`` theory of politics and economics, he thinks, is also false. The processes of ``globalization`` ultimately lead to cultural rejection and self-assertion. Instead, Huntington believes major fault lines are being drawn between civilizations: Orthodox vs. Western Christian; Orthodox vs. Moslem; Moslem vs. Hindu; Sinic vs. Hindu; Moslem vs. Western Christian. Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America remain on the sidelines of these oppositions. There is a link between Sinic and Moslem civilizations which may grow in strength. Western Christian civilization is becoming marginalized. Not only that, it may be weakening in face of the challenge of other cultures. Increasingly, Huntington believes, fault lines between civilizations breed wars, particularly between Muslims and nonMuslims. He contends: ``Fault line wars are intermittent; fault line conflicts are interminable`` (p. 291). Such conflicts can be briefly interrupted by papal intercession, the intervention of the World Council of Churches, the OSCE, or by Dayton-style accords. But such mediations will not endure.

Huntington distinguishes between civilizations that have major core states (or in which the civilization is a state) and civilizations which have no cores. Sinic civilization has the core of China. Japan has its own civilization. Western civilization has linked cores in the United States, France-Germany, and the United Kingdom. Russia is the core state of Orthodox Christianity. Unlike these cultures, Islam has no core states, only feuding rivals for influence.

Yet, Islam represents, he believes, the future challenge to the West. Its birthrate is higher than that of other civilizations, and Huntington contends that the ``Islamic Resurgence`` is as historically significant a phenomenon as the European Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Industrial Revolution. The United States and Western Europe are involved in a ``quasi-war`` with Islam, and not just with Islamic Fundamentalists. Moslems of all political and religious colorations reject Western civilization and American influence. Even though direct conventional war only occurs from time to time, Islamic terrorism carries weapons into the citadels of Western power. Thus, the vital reference point for the future is the hostility between Islam and the West.

Huntington also forecasts the emergence of an alliance between China and Islamic nations. China will sooner or later assert its dominance of East Asia. If the United States resists this pressure, Beijing will seek support from Islam. Indeed, it is already doing so. The outcome of the conflict between the West and the United States on the one side and China and Islam on the other therefore depends upon the policy of ``swing states``--Japan, Russia, and India. Japan will probably ``bandwagon`` with China unless the United States adopts an extremely strong line and builds up its military presence in East Asia. Russia will not adopt a pro-Chinese position. A long-term reapprochement between India and China, the world`s two most populous nations, is impossible. In one Huntington scenario, ``the United States, Europe, Russia and India... become engaged in a truly global struggle against China, Japan, and most of Islam`` (p. 315). That conflict occurs because one core state intervened in conflicts within another civilization. To avoid war in the future, core states will have to keep out of each other`s intra-civilizational quarrels. Will Great Powers heed such limitations? Huntington is pessimistic. As a result, conflict will likely increase between civilizations.

How plausible is such a world? How dominant are the civilizational forces which Huntington describes? As many critics like Edward Said and Bernard Lewis have argued, cultural differences cannot simply be ignored. However, Huntington`s synthesis neglects three key points. The first is microanalytic in character. Civilizations have a tendency to break up into contending factions. Subunits emerge which dilute the integrity of the whole. Christianity was riven by the struggle between Protestant and Catholic camps and remains divided today. Buddhism scarcely remains a unified religious movement. In Islam, Sunni and Shi`ite wings vie for influence. There are in fact as many conflicts within cultures and civilizations as exist between them. Indeed, from Huntington`s point of view, the Cold War was a struggle between two wings of an essentially Western and Christian civilization. Huntington admits that ``the conflicts within Islam were also more numerous than those in any other civilization`` (p. 257) about 42% of the total in 1993. When the prominent Arabist, Malcolm Kerr, wrote The Arab Cold War in 1965, he observed that rivalries among Islamic nations were just as characteristic as their common hostility toward Israel. Nothing which has occurred since alters this judgment. Taiwan and China, North and South Korea, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan exist within the same civilization yet have signal differences.

And one might ask, if civilization is the true independent variable, why did it give way to power relationships during the Cold War? If civilizations bowed before military power then, aren`t they likely to be reshaped by analogous forces now? In the final scenarios of the book Huntington aligns a powerful China with Islam to oppose Western nations. Japan bandwagons in favor of Beijing, leaving India and Russia to join the West. These alignments explicitly cross civilizational boundaries and reflect the interests of powerful states, not overarching cultures. One might then be tempted to conclude that military power and bipolarity can dwarf the influence of cultural determinants.

But state power is not the only relevant factor. Today the ``clash of civilizations`` is overshadowed even more by global economic power (which is both more seductive and harder to resist) than military strength. Judged by their recent behavior, both China and Iran do not appear to overlook the economic benefits of a closer relationship with Western countries. Thus, macroanalytic forces provide a second basis of criticism. If divisive forces within civilizations are still powerful, so are forces that unite them, militarily and economically. In East Asia, the members of ASEAN are Buddhist, Christian, and Moslem. They include Vietnamese and Thai cultures that are distinct from China`s, APEC brings into this group Western nations, China, and Japan. The economic benefits of association appear to transcend civilizational limitations. OECD includes several cultures; G-8 and IMF still more.

In fact, the influence of the world economy is the one variable essentially excluded from Huntington`s analysis. Some claim that economic interdependence among states was never higher than in 1913, but this did not prevent the outbreak of World War I. In fact this claim is largely specious. Though foreign investment then was a larger proportion of GDP than it is today, it was overwhelmingly liquid portfolio investment which could be quickly disposed of in a crisis. To the extent that direct investment in physical facilities was involved, it was largely confined to a metropolitan power`s empire. European Great Powers did not have a significant stake in the economies of brother nations. This has dynamically changed today. In fact, most developed countries are decentralizing their manufacturing production to other nations and to each other. Most new German production, for example, will be lodged outside of Germany, in the United States, China, Eastern Europe, or East Asia. The United States and Japan are also sending much of their production overseas, with Japanese production dynamically increasing in the American economy, while U.S. production goes to Europe and Latin America as well as China. Largely excluded from this productive relationship is the contemporary Middle East. In that region, most Islamic nations continue to discharge their futile energies in regional rivalries and wasteful military spending, undermining their prospects of economic growth. Culturally, there may be an Islamic Resurgence, but there is no economic or military Islamic challenger to Western leadership and none is likely to arise.

Finally, Huntington`s analysis `contains methodological problems. Independent variables have to be correlated with dependent outcomes. Civilizational differences have not generally been correlated with the outbreak of strife, either domestically or internationally. If this had been true, multinational or multi-linguistic states could not exist. There are more than 8,000 separate cultural dialects spoken in the world today. If the cultural groups which each of these represent were to become a nation-state, the present world of 200 countries would be smashed to smithereens. In fact, most present states easily transcend or confine cultural conflicts within their borders.

Equally, if civilizational difference is not correlated with conflict, neither is war the product of such differences. The enormous numbers of wars within a single civilization (look at Western European history) makes it clear that the equation does not work whether one starts from the dependent or from the independent variable. And important power and economic dimensions are entirely left out of the equation, even though they centrally bear on issues of war and peace.

This does not mean that Huntington`s warning is not a useful corrective to ``end of history`` optimism that has characterized some recent thought. The rise and decline of civilizations sometimes lead to disturbances which cause conflict. It appears that Chinese though not Islamic civilization is rising. Huntington is right to suggest that Western states will have to find means of accommodating it within a more pluralistic society of nations.

And the point of this essay was.....?

Mr. Alam,

For heavens sake, if you`re going to pass off Owen Bennett-Jones as your friend, at least get the quote and situation right.. and do add the editorial that Bennett-Jones does!

In response to Behran B. Atashband (Reply #:3)

Dear Behram B. Atashband:

Huntington`s book is a must for every student of international relations. Thank you for your tip.

It would be interesting if you explain to your readers, how this book has influenced your thinking.

Sincerely, Bilal Ahmad

Atleast he knows whats good for him!

You are a very well informed individual.. Your journalist friend turns out to be Owen Bennett-Jones of the BBC.. Actually, your story is somewhat inaccurate (I hesitate to label the story as a ``farce``).. The real story, as related by Jones old fellow can be found at the following link:

http://news2.thls.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking_point/forum/newsid_474000/474660.stm

The story emerges from the following question by Gul Khan to Jones:

Gul Khan, USA: What do people know about Gen. Musharraf? Is he well known, and respected in the country?

Owen Bennett-Jones: He`s an interesting man, a very relaxed individual, he doesn`t get too worried. I was on the Siachen glacier with him at 20,000 feet where the Pakistani and Indian armies face each other off, and the general was smoking a cigarette as I was about to do a television interview with him. And he said to me, ``I`ve just taken over as army chief and I haven`t done many of these television interviews before, do you think it is a good idea if I smoke?`` And I said, ``Well on the whole sir, probably not, if you are going to appear on television you might be advised not to smoke, but of course it`s up to you.`` He said, ``You are probably right, I shouldn`t should I? Oh well never mind, I want to - so I`m going to`` and carried on smoking on air! So he takes his own decisions and is quite a relaxed individual.

I think I agree with Jones. I find the fag incident to be illustrative of the Chief`s independent personality rather than a toe-sucking chamcha.. You may perhaps be right; it may well be that this story gives us a look at a person who may yet inflict great damage on jolly old Pakistan.. But I`d rather take my chances with a ballsy general than a duppata clad BB or the namaz offering Aba/beta posse ..

cheers

a

I was told, by someone wiser than myself, not to enter the debate on one`s own article. However, I seem to have a desire to pen (type?) a few words in response to the replies I have recieved. Perhaps the fact that the article is off the Chowk main page - and hence not in general circulation - will get me around the advice I should be following: Our attention spans are short, and no-one is going to re-read this piece. However, dear reader, if you have ventured this far, then please continue.

First: The ``friend`` I refer to is Rishaad Salamat, anchor and editor at Bloomgurg Inc., a large news orinization. He told me about Musharraf`s high altiture inhalations, not Owen Bennett-Jones (mere mortals do not associate with the gods).

Second: I do like Musharraf. He seems like a nice guy. The type who you would remember as fun if you met him at a Shadi etc. I think the smoking scenario only best highlights his character: He is not one to take orders from anyone else. Given he is a somewhat balanced personality, this might be a good thing.

Third: Well, I thought I clear up some factual misconceptions. The other criticisms to this article are opinions, which I shall leave be, as they should be.....except the one that referred to me as a ``waste of band-width``. I have two words for you, and you should know what they are.

Sincerely,

Rafay Alam