A big problem that global, regional or national leadership faces is not to be aware of the time for change and correct strategies that may be employed to set in motion the process of change. By change I mean something that the world, the region or the people of a country demand and something that would become the much-needed reform that those in power must introduce to ensure that the will of the people prevail and the fine balance between the ruler and the ruled is maintained.
Balance is a beautiful thing. Its best depiction is in scales, the symbol of justice. Depicted as pans suspended from a beam and supported on a base, scales depict how law and justice will be lopsided if they don’t hang in the balance. But in international relations balance is viewed as something different. Amazingly, we witnessed its unique form when the US as a global hegemon enjoyed a unipolar moment with minimum and negligible power resistance to its foreign policy. Termed also as absence of balance this period was viewed as a radical revolution in the world politics. It was a time that the US could have utilised to lead all the nations into a new era. Instead, the US embraced strategies of regime change and humanitarian interventions around the globe and tried to forcefully remove the violators of liberal values (western values) and replace them with democratic regimes. This unipolar moment in the 1990s and 2000s had provided an undisputed royal status to the US. Russia was a shattered country in the 1990s and struggling in the 2000s and China was in the words of Thomas J Wright, “in the bidding time phase of its rise”. No power had any viable strategy against the US and no power was balancing against it. But the US blew away the opportunity which most scholars think would most probably never come back again.
Why I am mentioning this is to emphasise how the US lost the best time to initiate a process of global reform. Almost two decades of unipolar moment was lost and ill-advised strategies were implemented that have brought the world to a point that the very idea of the world order based on liberal internationalism seems to be a farce. Israel’s Gaza genocidal military campaign and the UNSC’s toothless existence and inability to call for a ceasefire under the influence of the US veto have gutted all talk of liberty and freedom that this order of liberal internationalism stood for. Resuscitating regional orders should be the great global priority and Russia and China already realise the importance of bringing back to life these unhealthy and dying regional orders that are a result of US political interference and regime changes in the regions. The Middle East might just be the place to take that start.
Globally, if we look at the successive US administrations that emerged after the end of Cold War and observe the various global changes these administrations tried to introduce, we can come to some very relevant conclusions. Let me start in the reverse order and start with President Joe Biden. In the early years of WWII, President Roosevelt sought to help Britain in every way he could without actually fighting Germany. This US strategy was popularly known as “All Measures Short of War”. In a similar sense President Biden today is doing everything that he can to support Israel in its genocidal military campaign against Gaza. He also hopes not to fight a war with Arab nations and hopes to avoid it at all cost. But history tells us that Roosevelt failed to prevent the US from joining the war and the US had to eventually join WWII and fight against Germany.
Roosevelt and his administration had actually done well, having laid the foundation of the end of Japanese and German imperialism and provided the world with the basis of having an international order that would lead to mutual respect for sovereignty, peace and security. President Biden is doing the very opposite; he is violating two basic principles on which the credibility of the American-led liberal order rests — American power and the US President’s willingness to uphold the world order. Today, American power is being misused to inflict disproportionate punishment on the defenceless people of Gaza that include a vast majority of women and children. The US President, unlike any US President before him, seems unwilling to uphold the world order that stands up for human rights and guarantees liberty and freedom to people around the world. Countries from Asia, Africa and Latin America have in hordes given their verdict in the UN General Assembly against the Israel’s genocidal military campaign. Even countries like India, defence and strategic partner of both the US and Israel, has abstained to vote. The US under Biden has lost its credibility and its loss of influence is an indication of its declining power. The global disappointment from the US President’s actions is so much that the phrase sick-minded if replaced with Biden-minded will gain huge popularity.
Presidents Bill Clinton, GW Bush, Obama, Trump all struggled to cope with the different challenges that their administrations faced. But none of them seemed so indifferent and unwilling to undo an evil or a harm. The US since the end of Cold War has been using its political, economic and military power to interfere in the internal affairs of Middle Eastern countries to disastrous effect. What is happening in the Middle East today is the result of failed US Middle Eastern security and defence strategies. Four civil wars, a prolonged cold war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, creation and rise of ISIS and emergence of a populist and authoritarian regime in Turkey are all gifts of American interference in the Middle Eastern regional order and how it tried to exploit it towards its own benefit.
The Biden administration must realise that the immoral and unjust political position of the US on Israeli assault on Gaza will lead to further violence. There are greater chances that any Muslim with a radical and extremist mindset may plan and execute an attack in the US as a trade-off. FBI is already warning that given the circumstances such an attack may take place. The world has already witnessed the consequences of the actions of a radical US President, the advocate and pusher of great power approach — GW Bush. He tried to bring in a political change in the Middle East through use of force and the result is in front of us. President Biden’s strategy seems to be no different; and so if not similar the world may keep its fingers crossed for worst results.
Published in The Express Tribune, November 5th, 2023.
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