Saeed Minhas writes from Islamabad:
Diplomacy, development and defense (3-Ds) will remain the main pillars of the foreign policy under the new Obama administration, as narrated by the new US secretary of state Hilary Clinton during her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate’s foreign relation committee. Was there anything new which Mrs. Clinton or for that matter Mr. Obama is bringing to the table or is it just a re-order of the Bush policies which she has tried to sell to the committee and to the rest of the world population who are looking in awe towards President-elect Barack Obama to bring the change not only to Americas but to the rest of the world?
The answer is not simple because these three Ds have been misused so randomly by the repeated US administrations in the past that instead of leading the uni-polar world to prosperity, they have been stimulating the miseries. By showing her sympathies for the Israel and going all out to criticize Hamas for provoking Israel to use brutal force and chemical weapons against the unarmed innocent Palestinians, Mrs. Clinton has just endorsed what Bush administration has been saying and doing all along.
The strategic partnership between US and Israel understandably makes every US administration play the same tunes, but then should we expect the change from this administration or not? As for the diplomacy is concerned, one can agree with Hilary Clinton that several failed attempts like Oslo, many in Camp David, Shitul Arab and Quartet envoy have failed but we should not loose hope for bringing peace to this region which holds the key to world’s energy and terrorism.
But the question is will ‘sharp’ or ‘soft’ diplomacy ever work when we see that US veto almost every resolutions against Israel at UN Security Council and abstains or opposes 90 per cent of the resolutions tabled against Israeli atrocities in the UN General Assembly?
At the best we have seen US asking Israel to show restraint and for allowing the humanitarian aid to the besieged, bullet-ridden and bombarded areas and creatures. Let’s see what magnet Israel holds for getting such a puppy status. US became interested in the state of Israel not at its inception in 1948 but only after the famous Yom Kippur War of 1973. Under the 1949 tripartite agreement on weapons, US made billions by selling arms to all Arab states throughout 50s and 60s but none to Israel. First US-Israel military transaction took place in 1962 with the sale of anti-aircraft missile system HAWK.
But it was the 1973 war which opened all the doors for Israel, as Egypt refused to accept the ceasefire and a Soviet military airlift to Arab states rang bells in Washington and then US under “Operation Nickel Grass” flew in plane-loads of weaponry and systems and quadrupled its foreign aid to Israel and in the process took over the supply of arms contracts from France.
It was after the war that US administration found out that how important it would be for its foreign policy goals and especially to curtail the soviet expansion in the region to develop a nexus with the state of Israel and harbor them as a formidable well-equipped force amongst the hostile Arabs. Since then billions were bundled out to Israel in the name of economic and military assistance while other billions were spent on developing oil reserves to avert any future oil-embargo by the Arabs.
Development, the second D of Obama administration, seems to have different meaning for successive US administrations as we can see that an annual grant of over three billion dollars in military and economic assistance for Israel as against a mere one million dollars per annum for impoverished Palestinian Authority in West Bank/Gaza show where the US commitment lies.
Looking at the green book figures of the state department one comes across more startling disparities. Israel received over US $ 96 billion in military and economic aid from Washington while the West Bank/Gaza received a total of US $ 1.74 billion (more than half of it for refugees care through donor agencies) between 1962 and 2006.
How Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton will address this disproportion will be something to watch for in the coming days. As for the defense portion of 3-Ds is concerned, Hilary Clinton was not hesitant to back her “smart-power” policy with the typical American iron fist by telling the foreign relations committee that new administration would keep all options open while negotiating with Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq or any other rouge state in the world.
This muscular part of the foreign policy is something which new administration has to really soften if it really wants to bring any meaningful change to the world stage. By putting diplomacy first and development second, new administration might create some hopes amongst the distressed but peace-loving and liberal people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Arab states, African continent and some Far East areas but without developing the ground for development no amount of dollars or diplomacy is going to bring relief to all these areas.
Double standards have to be curbed because if naked aggression is condemned in one part of the world, it need to be dealt the same way in Israel-Arab context, or for that matter in Indo-Pak-Kashmir context. New US administration also has to keep in mind the state of its own economy which is suffering over one trillion dollar budgetary deficit and with auto, housing and banking sectors in troubled waters, it just cannot keep experimenting with the post-cold-war world.
All we can hope that if these three Ds are followed with clean intent and with less of fist, Obama might bring the change he has become symbol for, otherwise his one-off chance will end not only many hopes but souls also.
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