IT WOULD appear that when President Teddy Roosevelt of the United States coined the maxim “Speak softly and carry a big stick” nearly a century ago, he had verbose Third World leaders in mind. Unfortunately, these are the very people prone to do the exact opposite. Take the late Idi Amin of Uganda as a classic example. This clownish dictator who promoted himself field marshal was fond of issuing challenges and threats to all and sundry. All this while, his relatively prosperous country slipped into chaos and anarchy under his whimsical and cruel rule.
And now we have Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, threatening to “wipe Israel off the face of the map”. For good measure, he has also consigned those Muslim countries that have normalised relations with the Jewish state to eternal hellfire. Here, he has presumably received divine guidance to make this threat. Paradoxically, Iran is located between two countries that have been devastated as a result of their leaders’ tendency to throw their weight around. Both Iraq and Afghanistan have been invaded by foreign powers because their rulers were out of touch with reality.
Rather than focusing on the needs of their own people, far too many Muslim rulers feel they have to right real or imagined wrongs taking place thousands of miles away. Thus, Libya’s Gaddafi bankrolled separatist and revolutionary movements around the world. Meanwhile, his country was subjected to sanctions, and his people reduced to relative poverty despite the country’s oil wealth. Syria is desperately trying to minimise the fallout from the results of a UN inquiry into Hariri’s assassination in Lebanon. It seems its decades of meddling in its neighbour’s affairs are finally coming home to roost.
Iran is under great pressure over its nuclear programme, and is increasingly isolated. In this charged atmosphere, for its elected president to make such a provocative threat is courting disaster. In fact, Iran should be trying to reduce the risk of a pre-emptive attack against its nuclear installations, not heighten the tension.
As Ahmedienjad is new to the job, there are some things he needs to learn about the way the world works. For one, people are very nervous about the spread of nuclear weapons, especially to countries with a track record of being violent and aggressive. True, Israel fits this description too, but Tel Aviv has been careful never to admit openly that it is a nuclear power. And as its arsenal dates back to the late Sixties, there is little anybody can do about it now.
Iran, on the other hand, is now trying to develop the technology and facilities to enrich uranium to weapons grade. This is a difficult and expensive process, even if you get a little help from friends like Dr AQ Khan. Although Teheran claims that it is developing this technology for power generation, this is a little hard to swallow as Iran is sitting on a sea of oil, and scarcely needs to invest billions in nuclear energy. The underlying theme here is that as there are other nuclear powers in the region, Iran needs a deterrent. But as it has no territorial disputes with either Russia or Pakistan, this is somewhat farfetched. In fact, if there is a nuclear threat to Iran, it comes from Israel and the US. Such a fear would only materialise if Teheran crosses a certain threshold on its path to uranium enrichment.
Indeed, if anything is certain in an uncertain world, it is that Washington and Tel Aviv will do everything in their power to prevent Teheran getting nuclear weapons as these would pose an existential threat to Israel. And as the world knows, the combined power of these two states is very considerable indeed. When Iraq took its first steps in this direction, its Osirak reactor, then under construction, was bombed into oblivion by Israel.
There has been much comment in our Press about the unfairness and hypocrisy of the West: if Israel can have nuclear weapons, why can’t Iran? But the world is not fair, and never has been. Many Iranians feel aggrieved at the pressure their country is being subjected to. However, they need to coolly consider if the money being diverted to nuclear weapons could not be better spent on other, more pressing priorities.
But if there is a consensus in Iran about the need to acquire nuclear weapons, all the more reason for it to keep its head down and avoid the spotlight. You can’t expect to sneak into the nuclear club, and shout threats at the same time. And yet, the ayatollahs hope to follow Pakistan’s example, especially as they are largely immune to the effects of sanctions, thanks to sky-high oil prices and revenues.
The key difference is that Islamabad’s warheads were never aimed at the West, and therefore not perceived as a threat to either Israel or American interests. In the worst-case scenario, mullahs would take control of our nuclear arsenal. In Iran, however, they are already in control, and are therefore seen as a clear and present danger. The perception of the threat from Iran has been strengthened by its president’s irresponsible anti-Semitic statements. But for years, Teheran has been supporting outfits like Hezbollah. And while we might see the group as a liberating force, they are viewed as extremists elsewhere.
It is these differences in perception between East and West that so often trigger conflicts. Thus, while Teheran thinks it to be its right to acquire nuclear weapons to defend itself in a dangerous neighbourhood, others view this as a threat. Unfortunately, language like that used by the Iranian president recently only adds to the tension. The people of his country would be better served by their leaders opening a dialogue, and using soothing words instead of launching into intemperate diatribes.
Muslim leaders are particularly prone to ignore their own limitations and take on the world. In reality, pressing problems at home are too difficult for them to resolve, and being unaccountable, they attempt to divert the attention of their people by embarking on foreign adventures. But all too often, they get carried away by their own rhetoric, or are swept away by their fanciful vision of their power. And just because they can bully their own people into submission, they start feeling invincible. They forget that in reality, they carry a very small stick while shouting at the top of their voice.

How Rajapakse lost people’s mandate but won election
Ameen Izzadeen

AFTER a closely-contested battle, we have a new president. What is significant in the election of Percy Mahinda Rajapakse as Sri Lanka’s fifth executive president is that a majority of the people did not want him. More than 49 per cent of the voters voted against him while about 4.5 per cent of the voters, who would have voted for his rival and United National Party candidate Ranil Wickremesinghe, were prevented from voting by the Tamil Tigers. If a government which does not have a majority in parliament is called a minority government, then a president who was not backed by a majority of the voters could be called a “minority” president. The irony is that he is a ‘minority’ president elected by a majority of the majority Sinhala community and rejected by a majority of the minority communities — the Tamils and the Muslims. The victory margin of Rajapakse was the narrowest in Sri Lanka’s 23-year presidential election history — about 180,000.
Wickremesinghe would have won if the 600,000 Tamil voters in the rebel-held areas of the north and east had the freedom to vote. They did not have the courage to defy a boycott rule imposed by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and go to the polling booths. Going by the results of the postal vote — which was held prior to the Tiger boycott call — and the results from Tamil-dominated polling divisions in the government-held areas, it was clear that an overwhelming majority of the Tamils living in the LTTE-held area, if they had the freedom to exercise their franchise, would have voted for Mr. Wickremesinghe, the peace candidate and market favourite, who offered a federal solution to the country’s ethnic problem. The LTTE said it was not interested in the polls but the Tamil people were free to take a decision. But on the poll day, the Tigers terrorised the Tamils, denied their freedom to vote and robbed Wickremesinghe of victory. Thus the moral victory belongs to Wickremesinghe, although in terms of the country’s election laws, Rajapakse was declared winner.
Theories abound as to why the LTTE wanted Rajapakse — whom the Tigers described as a cobra which stings with a hiss — to win and engineered the defeat of Wickremesinghe — whom the Tigers described as a viper which stings without a hiss. I would buy the theory which says the LTTE feared Wickremesinghe’s two-pronged peace-making strategy — winning the hearts of the war-weary Tamils whom the Tigers rule at gun point and luring the rebels into a peace trap with the help of the international community. The Tigers did not want the world to interpret the overwhelming Tamil support for Wickremesinghe as an acceptance of his federal solution. But that is the reality — a reality that was symbolised by the heroic act of an old Tamil woman who defied the Tiger boycott order and became the solitary voter at a booth set up for people living in rebel-held area. She voted for Wickremesinghe as though she was saying a big “thank-you” on behalf of the Tamil community for his contribution to peace. In the run-up to the elections, many feared that an LTTE bomb or bullet would get rid of one of the candidates, who addressed rallies standing inside a bulletproof glass cage. The Tigers had done it before. In 1994, they killed UNP presidential candidate Gamini Dissanayake and in 1999, they nearly succeeded in assassinating Chandrika Kumaratunga.
My guess this time was it would be Wickremesinghe, the stronger candidate in my opinion. This time they did not want to waste a bullet or a suicide bomber. They did kill him, but politically, by stifling the democratic process. In the final analysis, it is the Tigers who elected Rajapakse, our new head of state — nay, the head of less than half a state because more than half the voters did not want him to be their head of state.” The mood in Colombo was one of shock and anger while in the Sinhala heartland, people welcomed the Rajapakse victory by playing the “raban”, a large traditional drum. An indignant Colombo voter asked why 4,887,152 Sri Lankans were so dumb to elect a candidate who is aligned with hawks, racists and market protectionists while an economist asked why Sri Lankans loved to mismanage their economy and remain poor.
Indignation apart, hope springs eternal in human heart. A majority of the people who did not elect their new president now hope he will be what he really is — the peace-loving and market-friendly Mahinda Rajapakse. Prior to his alignment with the ultra-nationalist parties for electoral gain, he was known to have espoused devolution of power as a solution to the ethnic conflict and had won the confidence of the private sector. He is also a great champion of the Palestinian cause. But the question is: will he be able to gain his true self back, given his dependence on ultranationalist forces for political survival?

No news is good news for Bush on this China trip
James P. Pinkerton

NOTHING much happened on George W. Bush’s trip to China, and that’s a good thing. Because when change comes to US-China relations, that will most likely be a bad thing — a very bad thing. Newspaper headlines tell the story. Both USA Today and The New York Times used “mixed” in their headline, as in “mixed results.” The Washington Post was nastier, “Bush’s Asia Trip Meets Low Expectations.” But is that just media bias? Well, the reliably conservative Washington Times spoke volumes. Its story from Beijing was headlined, “Bush hits call for pullout” — which is to say, that paper thought that the big news from China was...Iraq. Only deep in the story did the Times report, “Bush leaves China without any tangible result.”
Actually, there was one tangible result: The Chinese agreed to purchase 70 jetliners from beleaguered Boeing. But on every other issue that Bush raised — currency, intellectual property, de-nuclearizing North Korea — there were no breakthroughs, and maybe no progress. As for the issue of human and religious rights, which was supposed to be the signature of Bush’s second term, there was, if anything, backsliding. The Chinese openly detained dissidents during Bush’s visit. In the diplo-speak of Secretary of State Condi Rice, “We’ve certainly not seen the progress that we would expect.” Yet it’s uncertain how much the topic was even brought up in Beijing; a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry told reporters, “Honestly, human rights issues made up a tiny, tiny, tiny part of the meeting between the leaders of the two countries.”
What gives? Did we lose our oft-repeated status as “the world’s only superpower” somewhere in the Forbidden City? In a word, yes. As Bush explained, “China is a big, growing, strong country, and it’s very important for me to maintain a good working relationship with the leadership here.” Which is to say, if we push them, they can push back. So the Chinese will continue to nurse along North Korea, to steal our intellectual property, and to build their own Confucian-capitalist system, and there’s not much we can do about it. Welcome to the world of foreign policy realism.
And the next president, whoever he or she might be, will be forced into even more realism, as the cold reality of three issues becomes ice-clear: First, Taiwan. China wants its island back, but we want Taiwan to stay independent, albeit at less status than full sovereignty. Beijing declares it will “settle” this issue by 2020 — one way or another. Are the Chinese bluffing? We’ll find out one of these years. Second, Japan. The Japanese have decided to stop feeling guilty about World War II. Now, emboldened by their American patrons, they are back on a course of economic and military expansionism. Other Asian countries, including China, will react.
Third, oil. The Middle East, plus Central Asia, contains perhaps a third of the world’s oil and gas, and other high-consumption/low production countries, including the US and China, have long coveted those hydrocarbons. The US staked its claim to Iraqi oil when it invaded in 2003. Now that claim — and our credibility as a military hegemon — is being tested. The Chinese, who have long believed that America is a “paper tiger,” are watching to see if we can hold on in Baghdad.
For these reasons — plus, of course, an inevitable trans-Pacific application of Murphy’s Law — the US and China are headed for a collision. And ‘twas ever thus: Over the last three centuries, America has squared off against every other great power in the world — Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia — in either an outright war or a close-call cold war. We even fought China during the Korean War. They killed tens of thousands of ours, and we killed hundreds of thousands of theirs. And the fact that so few remember that conflict is yet another reminder of how easy it is to fall into another conflict.