The growing disorder

Jonathan Power :
Is disorder the measure of our times? Can anyone see an end to the upheavals in the Middle East?
What could have been done as recently as 12 years ago? Not invade Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and bring the house tumbling down, ruining nearly everyone’s wellbeing, breeding the conditions under which sectarian war flourishes and which became fertile ground for Al Qaeda and now their successor, the Daesh. The militia covers great swathes of Iraq and Syria and could well undermine the governments of Lebanon, Jordan and even Saudi Arabia. The decision of former US president George W. Bush and prime minister Tony Blair to act on willfully distorted intelligence on Iraq’s supposed stock of weapons of mass destruction must be regarded as an unforgiveable crime against humanity.
The US and its Arab partners can’t bomb Daesh into submission any more than the US could the Vietcong. All outsiders can do is to sanction it (but avoiding the mistakes of the sanctions on Iraq when 30,000 children died as a result). It may take 10 years or more to win a favourable result.
The periphery of Europe will continue to be unstable until the big Western powers make a loud public promise not to expand Nato and to allow Ukraine to make a trade agreement with both Russia’s Eurasian Economic Community and the EU. It was the latter’s pushing for exclusivity that triggered the crisis in Kiev and it was the expansion of Nato that showed that the West cared little for magnanimity in the aftermath of its victory in the Cold War, as it did with Germany and Japan after the Second World War. As the conservative president of the US’s Council on Foreign relations, Richard Haas, recently wrote, “Russia could have been asked to join Nato”.
Without a revision of Western policies the eastern Ukraine will continue to be supported by President Vladimir Putin. Where else do the rebels get their tanks? The fighting can only work to reinforce Putin’s invincible position and push Russia to move from a seriously flawed democracy to quasi-dictatorship, ringing the bells of ultra nationalism as it goes. It will happen quicker than it otherwise would if Nato nations send arms to the central government of Ukraine.
China might well decide to muscle in on contested airspace, seas and territory. It is a risk – although perhaps a modest one. Deng Xiaoping, the founder of modern capitalist China, predicted that things would be all right when Sino-US relations eventually improve. China is beholden to its investments overseas, its vast savings held in US bonds and its dependence for the sophisticated parts of its economy on Western investment.
Meanwhile, its growth rate is falling, it has a fast ageing population and is rebuffing the urge of many Chinese to have a more open society. India, whose statistics are more honest than China’s, has a GNP that is moving ahead of China’s quite rapidly, plus a better record on human rights, the application of law, a free Press and regular elections with vast voter turnout capable of “throwing the rascals out”, as it has recently done.
We don’t have to worry about India. Nor do we have to worry too much about Pakistan. The present leadership of the country and the army have belatedly realised they have no alternative but to destroy the extremists and no longer face both ways – to the militants and to the West.
A Chinese expansionist policy would be counterproductive when the US has 450 land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and China has only 43. Moreover, its military force will never be able to get anywhere near America’s or Russia’s capabilities. Nevertheless, it is likely to be a bumpy ride for China’s neighbours, one that keeps tensions high.
President Barack Obama has said “the world has always been messy” and we in the West have to learn to find less provocative ways of dealing with it. Restraint, positive diplomacy, combined with carefully targeted non-violent sanctions is the way to go.
( Jonathan Power is a veteran foreign affairs analyst)