Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiUS Foreign Policy Failures Thrust Into Spotlight
This week brought two failures of American foreign policy into sharp focus - in Cuba and Pakistan.
The Cuban catastrophe is familiar. Isolating Fidel Castro only helped consolidate his iron grip. Political and trade sanctions hurt the Cuban people more than his regime.
Washington has been so trapped and so much of a hostage to right-wing Cuban exiles in the United States that it wouldn't even take advantage of the end of the Cold War to change course.
A contemporary parallel can be seen in the U.S. approach to Iran.
Still smarting from the 1979 anti-U.S. revolution, Washington has chosen confrontation over constructive engagement on nuclear and other issues, and been gunning for regime change in Tehran.
Washington has been subsidizing nostalgic Iranian exiles in the United States and pursuing bilateral political and economic sanctions on Iran that have only hurt ordinary Iranians but helped the Islamists consolidate their power.
Canada was well served by its independent stance of engaging Cuba. It has not been in the case of Iran because of its slavish adherence to Washington's dictates.
Developments in Pakistan don't come as a surprise either.
Voters have repudiated Busharraf, a.k.a Pervez Musharraf, for being a lapdog of George W. Bush.
Musharraf follows a long line of allies who paid the price for ignoring domestic public opinion to join the war on terror on American terms: Tony Blair, John Howard, Silvio Berlusconi, Jose Maria Aznar and the leaders of Hungary, Norway, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine.
Also, there's more militancy and terrorism in Pakistan, as elsewhere, than before the war on terrorism.
Those in the United States and Canada who argued that Musharraf had "not done enough" in attacking the Taliban may want to ponder the extent of the Pakistani people's rage had he, in fact, done "enough."
He survives, for now.
Elected president for a five-year term in October by the outgoing National Assembly and four provincial assemblies that he controlled, he says he's prepared to work with the newly elected government. It is difficult to see how.
His has been a one-man show.
He picked the cabinet and the prime minister, who obeyed him.
He ran the army, which he no longer does. The new chief, though his choice, has already distanced the army from politics and ensured that it did not rig the election.
The extraordinary powers that Musharraf does hold, such as the right to fire the prime minister, also portend trouble.
Asif Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto, and leader of her Pakistan Peoples Party, which has won the most seats, appears ready to work with Musharraf. Nawaz Sharif, leader of the second-largest party, isn't.
Both are discredited politicians, having been in jail on corruption charges and later exiled, from where they returned only recently.
Beyond personalities, the real battle would be over two issues: how to further democratize Pakistan and tamp down the insurgency. On the latter, Zardari has signalled a new approach: more dialogue, less war. It's in Canada's interest to encourage the process.
Belying his thuggish reputation, he made sense Tuesday saying that democracy being the best antidote to militancy, the elected government would have to build a domestic consensus that it is in Pakistan's own interest to tackle terrorism.
For his part, Sharif has been more focused on restoring judicial independence, starting with the release of the chief justice and his reinstatement, demands that the U.S. should have supported but hasn't.
Pakistan and Cuba are on the cusp of change. Canada should encourage the U.S. to do less dictating and more listening.
Haroon Siddiqui, the Star's editorial page editor emeritus, appears Thursday and Sunday. Email: hsiddiq@thestar.ca
© Copyright Toronto Star 1996-2008
8 Comments so far
Show AllWill somebody please give an award of some sort to Mr Haroon Siddiqui.....
I agree with most of the above posting, We saw the real face of America after Katrina etc. It was the haves placing the have nots in football stadiums etc. When others tried to leave to the next city they were greeted with a wall of people with guns saying turn around. I pitty the day if something ever realy happens to America and not just a couple office buildings getting knocked over or a act of nature. I feel it will be open war in the streets and not even the military could stop it.
PS, you are not welcome on my farm
The basic problem of any imperial center is that its elite has no need to listen to voices from the subordinated hinterlands.
Why learn their languages, cultures, viewpoints or why care about their perceived interests? If those hinterland elite want to stay in power, they must learn the language, culture, viewpoint and follow the interests of the imperial center.
The long-term problem of functioning as the imperial center is that its elite and non-elite become increasingly provincial: without its charms or folk-based cultural authenticity.
A commercial- and urban-based empirium is even worse; there is no agrarian bases for a vibrant folk culture and there is no agrarian alternative for the increasingly destitute urban population.
For example, during the 1990s and early 2000, many suddenly impoverished masses of urban Russians still possessed access to food because they had relatives living on the farm and cheap mass transportation.
However, the Russian Empire was not commercial and its center still contained a large number of farmers.
Unfortunately, the US Empire is commercial, almost completely urban/suburban and lacks a massive and cheap public transportation system.
In fact, the US has systematically destroyed its best farmlands and its farmers through malls, roads, housing developments, supporting rapidly rising real estate prices, unfriendly policies for small and medium-sized farmers (while subsidizing big agro-business), and Free Trade.
When food and gas prices skyrocket, most Americans won't have anything to fall back on.
They lost the personal craft and farming skills, farmers, land and mass transit system they will need.
If Harper is kept out of the Prime Ministers office next election Canada will be that much further ahead. Keeping as far away from the US is the best interest of the world.
Lord Trigo???? What US Prez is not lock step with Israel. Many feel they run the US and look at the mess it is in!!!!
Washington's asanine nostalgia for backing expats has always backfired.
What wasn't touched on was the reasons for those policy failures in the first place: the US American officials directly responsible came from priviledged backgrounds (blue bloods); attended the most prestigious institutions of higher learning; and never once did they seek to broaden their horizons or rub shoulders with "commoners."
Further, not one of those pampered fools had "street savvy smarts" or had survival instincts! In short, they were irresponsible apparatchiks who had long ago reached their level of incompetence
Had they possessed the above superior traits, they would've seen the warning signs, avoided the messy (sticky wickets) entanglements, blown off those moronic expats in favor of better qualified individuals.
We in America love our grudge diplomacy. We refused to recognize the Soviet Union until 1933. We refused to recognize "Red" China until the 1970s. We seem to think if we just turn our back on unwanted facts they will go away.
Canada was well served by its independent stance of engaging Cuba. It has not been in the case of Iran because of its slavish adherence to Washington's dictates.
Gee! I wonder what changed.
It's not easy to find a voting populace as naive as USans, but Canadians are, as ever, striving mightily to emulate their southern neighbors. Of course, the US political and 'cultural' establishments are never loathe to assist that assimilation trend in any way they can. In many cases, young Canadians can spout more US 'historical' propaganda than any knowledge of their own country's past struggles to resist it.
Three cheers for the new 'co-prosperity sphere'.
Is it any surprise that our foreign policy is a failure, given that its goal is to force other countries to do what's in the best interest of U.S.-based corporations, rather than the best interest of their own people? It makes no sense that a democratic people would elect a government that would serve a foreign master (imagine the outrage if any of the leading U.S. presidential candidates were discovered to have links to Chinese or Russian intelligence services). Yet pundits and politicians in this country scratch their heads in bewilderment when U.S. stooges like the Shah and Musharaff are rejected again and again. Will they never learn?