NATO stance on Afghan war

MAJORITY of the NATO member-states including France are averse to the Bush Administration’s demand for more troops from these countries to beef up the allied forces to combat resurgence of Taliban. NWFP Governor Orakzai, who retired as a three star General and who hails from the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, has already declared that the foreign troops can not win the war in Afghanistan. Given the fast growing resistance amongst the local militants to the presence of NATO troops, in the otherwise mountainous terrain, NATO commanders are learning the bitter lesson that Afghanistan can not remain under foreign occupation.
The Soviet Union committed a Himalayan blunder in military occupation of the country around three decades ago. The local fighters, armed by the anti-Communist powers, waged a long war of resistance against the Soviet occupiers and eventually the Soviet troops pulled out. The Soviet war in Afghanistan crippled their economy to an extent that the Soviet Empire finally disintegrated. A Super Power which served as a counter-balance to the United States in a bi-polar world disappeared leading to emergence of a new world order with a single super power. However, the sole super power did not act prudently in the post-Afghan war and in the wake of Nine Eleven episode, it decided to use its armed might to impose its will in various regions across the globe. Resultantly, the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan has been disastrous. The Americans are totally bogged down in the two countries where the violence continues to rage with increasing ferocity.
The French President has publicly warned that NATO should not take over the peacekeeping functions of the United Nations outside its operational area. He is right in asserting that NATO was a military alliance of European states and that the United States was not doing any service to the organization by forcing its military involvement in areas outside Europe. Interestingly, American troops already under tremendous pressure in violence-torn Iraq, want other NATO members to send additional troops to Afghanistan to help contain spreading anarchy.
US President should have the moral courage to admit his blunders. His closest ally British Prime Minister Tony Blair has since admitted that Iraq invasion was a disaster.
The Americans have already paid a huge cost for purposeless war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let Washington leave Afghans and Iraqis to sort out their problems. No doubt American and NATO pull out from Iraq and Afghanistan respectively will escalate bloodshed but eventually the two nations will sort out their problems. The US midterm elections which have further weakened George W. Bush should make Washington realize that its military involvement in the two countries was an insane act. The Americans shall have to pay for innumerable crimes against humanity which their soldiers have committed.
 

Give and take

When American farmers take delight in their recent bumper harvests of soybean and cotton, they perhaps do so without the knowledge that on the other side of the Pacific, Chinese farmers are suffering. They suffer because much of these excessive crops are finding their way into the Chinese market, driving down domestic produce prices, reducing Chinese farmers’ income and creating an imbalance in China’s agricultural sector.
While the U.S. Government complains that their manufacturing industry is losing jobs to China, more than 20 million Chinese farmers have been forced to leave their land to eke out a living elsewhere as a direct result of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. The 900 million farmers in China, the world’s largest agricultural nation, have been on the losing end ever since the country cut its average tariff on agricultural products from 23.2 percent before the WTO accession to the present 15.3 percent.
Foreign agricultural products have poured into China ever since 2001. If we take the U.S., China’s main import market in terms of agricultural products, as an example, we see that currently China is the largest buyer of cheap American soybean and cotton, which is backed by modern mass production and large government subsidies. The figures speak for themselves. In 2005, U.S. soybean exports to China totaled $2.3 billion, up 80 percent from that in 2001.
Used in the main to extract oil, domestic soybeans usually sell for 5-10 percent higher than imported soybeans. It’s difficult for local farmers to compete in this scenario. As for cotton, the price of imported product is 2,000 yuan (about $250) lower per ton than domestic produce, again putting pressure on domestic prices.
The statistics continue to bear out the industry’s concerns. Though China still generates a large overall trade surplus with the U.S., its agricultural trade account registers a deficit. According to Chinese Customs statistics, China’s agricultural trade deficit with the U.S. totaled $3.78 billion in 2005, and in the first half of this year, the figure stood at $2.8 billion.
The trade issue between the U.S. and China caused by ballooning deficits is a continuing source of friction and is likely to exist for the foreseeable future. Some politicians and interest groups in the U.S. waste no opportunities in calling for sanctions on Chinese manufactured products, yet it needs to take cognizance of the fact that China has made big concessions by opening its agricultural market to the international community.
On the positive side, China’s entry to the WTO, subsequent international cooperation in agriculture and the inflow of large quantity of foreign farm produce will force the local farmers to adopt new technology and strive to improve the quality of their crops so as to become more competitive.
China is fully aware that the traditional growth pattern of its agriculture no longer fits into an ever interchanging world economy and it is now speeding up efforts to modernize the farming sector and to reform rural structures, while seeking immediate solutions to alleviating its farmers’ huge losses caused by agricultural imports.
Such an approach certainly has a strong reference to politicians on the other side of the Pacific.

—Beijing Review