Hiding under the umbrella
Paul Kennedy

UMBRELLA is one of those maddening words in the English language that neither translate correctly nor can be contained within the boundaries of the original meaning. In French, umbrella is “parapluie” (“against rain”), and in German “regenschirm” (“rain-protector”). In English, too, it means a stick instrument with a canvas cover at the top that pushes away the rains. It has rained virtually every day since I arrived in Cambridge a few weeks ago, so lots of them are about. Being tall, and with Cambridge’s sidewalks being narrow, I am frequently hit by them. But in English, the word umbrella has also been widely and usefully extended into the larger realms of everyday life, politics and even grand strategy. It has come to mean, generally, a form of protection, a means of shielding certain groups from what otherwise might have been the blows and buffets of a cruel world.
It means gathering different entities together, under the shelter of an overarching roof; an “umbrella insurance policy” brings into one contract and single payment the insurances for your house, your possessions, your automobile and so on (at least, we hope it does). But consider also how the word is employed in the realm of international politics. Students of the history of the Cold War will quickly learn that, to deter possible Soviet aggression, the United States placed a “strategic umbrella” over Nato Europe and Japan, declaring it would fight if their independence was threatened by the USSR. More specifically, if the Soviets indicated they would fire missiles at the West, then Washington warned it would retaliate by firing back at the Soviet Union. Most specifically of all, there was the technological push, encouraged by Ronald Reagan and some of his successors, to escape from the mutually assured destruction (MAD) of the Cold War balance and create instead an anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) shield over North America and then, by extension, over its allies.
The pros and cons of the MAD versus ABM debate are not for this column. Instead, our focus will be on the complex relationships between the “provider” of the strategic umbrella and the countries that shelter underneath it. For example, consider the complaints by American congressmen and media over the past few decades that the country’s European and Japanese allies have been taking economic advantage of the fact that the United States was providing for most of their own national security. Under Reagan, approximately six per cent of GDP was spent on defence, whereas the Europeans tended to spend only 2-3 per cent and the Japanese a miserly one per cent, although all faced a common enemy. Thus the American taxpayer bore a disproportionate burden for the overall defence spending, whereas those sheltering under its umbrella spent more on social or consumer goods, or saved while the US went further into debt. This “free riding” was not fair — a complaint that, at first sight, seems quite valid.
Still, hegemonic empires usually carry a heavier burden, and pay a larger cost, than those nations gathered under its strategic umbrella; thus, a well-to-do farmer in 2nd-century AD Andalusia or Oxfordshire would certainly have appreciated being part of the Pax Romana, and having security without much direct cost. For most of the time, the Royal Navy blocked any possible continental European intrusions into the Western Hemisphere, allowing the US to keep defence spending extremely low. Secondly, British investors poured millions of pounds into the development of American cities, railways, insurance companies and agriculture; for example, much of the cattle industry of the western prairies was funded by banks in Scotland. The Scottish bankers benefited, and the ranchers and cowboys even more.
Finally, and despite increasingly higher tariffs against their own exports, the British never abandoned free trade (at least not until 1932, when the Depression forced them to give preferences to their colonies over foreign goods). They provided the greatest open market for American foodstuffs, raw materials and manufactures. The fledgling United States thus grew big under the British umbrella, until it no longer needed that protection and could stand up on its own right. Now consider the present interesting state of international economic affairs. The United States, like Rome and Britain in their time, is today’s provider of international public goods. Who, after all, has deterred North Korea from driving south and plunging East Asia into war? And whose warships and aircraft deployed in the Gulf offer protection to oil tankers headed for Japanese and European ports? More soberly, whose citizens carry by far the largest weight in taxes per household in order to maintain this Pax Americana?
All this, however, is part of that unwritten bargain between the single Great Power that provides the strategic umbrella and the nations that shelter under it. In the best of circumstances, each partner, large or small, benefits. But what happens when the “free riders” secure too many of the public goods or, perhaps more importantly, are perceived by the citizens of the Number One power as taking too great an advantage of the pax provider? What if the consensus between the umbrella-holder and those hiding below breaks down?
This is a debate that will, in my view, be increasingly asked in the years to come. It is already being asked in a few circles, as we strive to understand the larger implications of the enormous surpluses of sovereign wealth funds, the soaring cost of raw materials (especially oil and gas), the weakening of Wall Street’s once-great banks, and the increasing purchase of American assets by dollar-rich Asian and Middle Eastern enterprises. The argument goes something like this: The United States has recently expended vast amounts of money, blood and energy in fighting two Iraq wars. On each occasion, the White House had its own secular reasons for going to war. But the chief beneficiaries were clearly our Arab allies like Saudia Arabia and the Gulf states, together with East Asia and Europe, which depend much more than the US does on the uninterrupted flow of Middle East oil.
Yet all the fighting by the US armed forces in those wars has not been able to prevent the great rise in the price of oil and gas, which hits petroleum-dependent Americans hard. As the United States takes its economic hits — and while the White House insists on record defence spending to maintain its hegemonic “umbrella strategy” — foreign financial interests are steadily acquiring American companies, especially banks. And Wall Street houses now paying the price for their reckless stoking of dubious subprime loans have little alternative but to sell. Those bankers, and the free-market economists who service them, will assure you that such asset sales are perfectly OK. But every sensible homeowner or farmer or small businessman knows that, once you take out a loan (mortgage) from another party, or sell a share of your property, a subtle or not-so-subtle power relationship has changed. To a greater or lesser degree, you have become dependent upon other players who can probably influence you more than you can influence them. And in this case, since hundreds of other companies and banks are doing the same, the collective result is that the United States is ceding influence.
Each individual sale of assets may make perfect sense to the company needing a cash insertion. The larger consequence implies a shift in the global economic balances and, in the longer term, the global political balances.
What, in sum, we may be witnessing a fraying of the US-directed international “strategic umbrella” system that has been in operation since 1945. The system was battered before (in the Gold Standard crisis of the early 1970s), but the global boom of the past 20 years allowed its recovery.
Now it is under strain again. Perhaps sensible fiscal and taxation policies by the next White House administration will keep things afloat, that is, keep the umbrella upright for the next few decades. Or perhaps not.
This is not just a matter that should concern American politicians alone. The larger point is that all of us, free riders included, depend upon the provision of international public goods. If the country guaranteeing those services is heading for trouble, so, probably, are the rest of us, wherever we live on this tight little planet. —Khaleej Times


Suicide bombing - Lesson needs to be learnt
Waqar Ahmed


PAKISTAN has seen a wave of bomb attacks in recent months, but the blast claiming the life of Benazir Bhutto and the one in GPO chowk Lahore has outlined the problem of terrorism in Pakistan in the starkest possible details. A number of questions perturb every one’s mind that who are these people, why do they cut short their lives and destroy themselves along with others, and what is the purpose, if any, of playing this deadly game? Why have they taken up arms against the state? These questions generally produce confused answers that don’t stand the test of any logic or reason. For instance, the Taliban and their supporters portray themselves as holy warriors fighting for the enforcement of Islamic law and defenders of Pakistan against foreign interference while they are actually attempting to de-legitimize the state by introducing self made concepts of nationalism, sovereignty and Islam.
Unfortunately, what is happening is not an isolated phenomenon but part of a larger objective of capturing the state by eliminating its authority, starting with regions where its presence is weak. Religious groups throughout the country extend support to the militants in many ways. If that is not the case, why have religious groups, religious political parties and their spokesmen who are vocal on every other issue not said a word against the insurgents and their brutalities against our security forces? Their silence is one way of supporting the religious insurgency. They often blame security forces and the government for the conflict situation more than the violent armed groups that have committed and continue to commit cruel acts against anyone they can capture and label as a state employee or sympathizer.
The silence of some of the mainstream political parties, intelligentsia and other opinion-making sectors is not understandable. They appear to be taking pleasure in watching the regime being challenged by religious extremists. If these parties were in power, their politics and their response to the Taliban insurgency would not have been different, and they would have adopted the same policies as the ones in force right now. It is not difficult to see how political opportunism affects their judgment on the issue of religious extremism. Their narrow mindedness does not allow them to see beyond their immediate political interests. These opposition parties want the incumbent government to face the music alone and do not realize that by this attitude, they are putting the very existence of Pakistan in danger.
Nothing can be more disturbing than the view that the war our security forces are fighting is not our war but one undertaken to safeguard American interests. This view is put forward only by elements whose interests are tied with the religious extremists and the Taliban. What they do not understand is that armed conflict against the state, no matter what the nature of grievances, is not justifiable under law, reason or even religion. The principle of the just cause does not apply against the nation-state. It would be unrealistic to assume that states do not commit wrongs against their own people; they do in many ways. But there are universally accepted, lawful and civilized means of registering protest against the governments or states.
Lessons need to be learnt from Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq. Destruction of the state in these countries has resulted in terrible conditions with millions slaughtered and even more driven out of their homes and jobs. Most Pakistanis are not aware of the dangers posed by ethnic and religious militancy, whatever the roots and causes. This is a sad state of affairs that speaks volumes about the complacency of Pakistani society. The general public and more responsible sectors of the Pakistani society do not understand the long-term, and even immediate, ramifications of the rise of Talibanisation for the state and society. If these groups carve out territories to enforce their religious vision or intimidate people to submit to their religious and political will, the state and its jurisdiction would diminish. The success of one religious group will create many more groups who would use the same tactics in undermining the state. The State must reassert its authority and regain its sovereign control through whatever means necessary, starting with political negotiations. But negotiations must be held with a clear purpose in mind i.e. the disarmament and disbanding of these groups and nothing else. If they were allowed to have their way and end up creating and running mini-states within the Pakistani state, the country could become a very dangerous place.





Fresh ideas for Australia
Yan Wei

Australia’s prime minister-elect Kevin Rudd has caught the attention of the Chinese with his modest appearance, fluent Mandarin and personal bonds with China. Rudd, 50, graduated from the Australian National University in Canberra, where he majored in Chinese language and history. He is the first Mandarin-speaking leader from an English-speaking country and is known in China by the elegant name Lu Kewen. As a diplomat, he worked in the Australian Embassy in Beijing in the 1980s. “If I become Australia’s prime minister, I believe our bilateral relations will be raised to a new height,” Rudd said in Chinese in an interview with China Central Television (CCTV) before the November 24 elections. “The relations are now very good, and they will be even better in the future.” While introducing many changes to Australia’s domestic and foreign policies, the new Australian leader will continue to attach great importance to his country’s relations with China, foreign affairs experts said. ‘Old China hand’
Rudd will be Australia’s 26th prime minister and will succeed John Howard, who has been in office for the past 11 and a half years. Rudd claimed victory for the Australian Labor Party, the country’s oldest and biggest political party, when it gained a majority of 76 seats in the House of Representatives, or the lower house. In this year’s federal elections, about 13.6 million voters chose from 1,421 candidates for all the 150 seats in the House of Representatives and 40 seats in the 76-member Senate. Under Australia’s voting system, the political party that has the most members in the House of Representatives becomes the governing party. Its leader becomes prime minister, and other ministers are appointed from the party’s members in the House of Representatives and Senate. China-Australia relations have enjoyed a sound development since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1972, said Sun Huiming, a South Pacific studies expert at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. As a major resource producer, Australia has much to offer China, which needs more and more energy and resources to fuel its rapid development. For its part, China offers Australia labor-intensive products, such as textiles, which the large, scarcely populated country needs. The flourishing trade relations have benefited both countries, and that’s why both Howard’s Liberal-National Party coalition and Rudd’s Labor Party value Australia’s relations with China, Sun said.
“We have good economic complementarities and great new areas for cooperation in the future—financial services, clean energy, biotechnology and education,” Rudd told CCTV. “I believe, therefore, we can extend prosperity to our both countries.” The Asia-Pacific region will be the center of economic activity in the 21st century, and China will be a core part of that together with other regional economies, Rudd said. Australia is looking forward to partnering with China in the future to extend free trade across the Asia-Pacific, he added. With his good command of the Chinese language, Rudd is able to have a deeper, wiser understanding of China, said Wang Zhenyu, an assistant research fellow at the China National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation. However, as Australia’s prime minister, Rudd will have to put his country’s interests first when dealing with China, he added. China-Australia relations will be further strengthened under Rudd’s premiership but will not be problem-free, Wang said. A number of issues are on Wang’s list of concerns. For example, as the Labor Party underlines multilateral trade, the ongoing negotiations on the China-Australia free trade agreement will face greater uncertainties, he said. China’s human rights record is likely to become another point of contention in bilateral relations. The Labor government may also exert heavy pressure on China’s environmental protection activities.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)