http://independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1486Three Strikes for Empire
March 28, 2005
Ivan Eland
Three seemingly unrelated recent events highlight the imperial nature of the Bush administration's foreign policy: U.S. F-16 sales to Pakistan, the creation of an office in the State Department to plan for future U.S military interventions in developing nations and the indefinite detention in Guantanamo prison of a German man held on the basis of secret evidence that even U.S. intelligence disputes.
Ever since his second inaugural address, President Bush and his surrogates have launched a grandiose campaign that claims to “democratize” the world. Of course, one of the glaring exceptions to the administration's rhetoric, demonstrating the cynical opportunism of the whole policy, is the U.S. coddling of the Pakistani dictator General Pervez Musharraf. During a period of increased post-9/11 U.S. support, Musharraf has actually made Pakistan less democratic. When Musharraf assumed the civilian presidency, he promised to abandon the post of chief of the Pakistani armed forces, but has failed to step down. Instead, he has tightened his grip on power in Pakistan, winked at and protected the world's worst nuclear smuggling ring emanating from his country, and conducted a half-hearted effort to round up Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda suspects, who are likely on Pakistani soil. The United States has decided to reward such unacceptable behavior with the sale of F-16 fighter jets.
Unfortunately, the end result in Pakistan could resemble that of the Shah's Iran in the late 1970s. Excessive weapons purchases from the United States, buttressing repressive policies by the Shah, caused sluggish economic growth and widespread anti-U.S. sentiment, leading to the overthrow of the Shah by radical Islamic forces. A similar outcome in Pakistan would be even worse, because the radical Islamists would control nuclear weapons.
But the U.S. sale of these sophisticated aircraft to a precarious third world autocrat may not be the worst of it. The nuclear-armed Pakistan is locked in a tense confrontation with India, another nuclear weapons state. In a post-Cold War world, if a nuclear war were to break out, it would most likely occur between these two states. Yet the Bush administration intends to sell aircraft that could improve Pakistan's ability to deliver its nuclear weapons. To soothe India's fears, the Bush administration has also pledged to sell aircraft and other military improvements to that nation. Selling arms to both sides in this tense and dangerous region is not only bad policy but a throwback to the empires of old, which played off regional rivals against each other.
continued
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
