International Politics on the World Stage - Report Example

International Politics on the World Stage Middle Eastern s pose no threat in my perception silencing those who see the use of military force as the only option to satisfy their goals. In my view diplomacy is the best cure this time then war as we see already an ever growing insurgency in Iraq. Rather then that the ever growing resentment over the west policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and over the Palestinian territories has given impedes to a rise in extremism or fundamentalism in the middle east and other parts of the world also leading to a rise in popularity amongst their ranks with organizations such as Ham as who has done service to its people through various projects winning the elections and coming into power in a landslide silencing those who in the west who viewed democracy as the only viable option for the middle East. The Iranian President’s victory also a hardliner seems to reflect on my theory that what US seems to do is rather being counter productive and is winning more supporters for these hardliners. The Muslim brotherhoods popularity and victory is another example of the growing challenges. As theory in governance for the Middle East clearly shows that not one of the Middle Eastern states except Turkey and Israel is democratically ruled. The mode of extremism started right after the soviets invaded Afghanistan and the Americans led by the CIA in collaboration with states such as Pakistan and various warlords labeled the conflict as jihad calling on the Muslims who wished to fight for the new world a fight against the evil they said was communism. As the soviets were defeated and retreated in 1988 and as the Americans left these people who were religiously fervent began to settle in these areas branding their own version of Islam by enforcing the Shariah law. These people with weapons began to settle in their respective countries countering threats from their various governments, with no democracy in these middle eastern states new recruits seemed to fill in to these camps as unemployment and poverty was on the rise while as they saw the Americans as the enemy who had occupied the holy land of Mecca led by a Saudi billionaire fugitive who fought alongside the CIA before launched a whole scale war against the Americans in general leading to first the blowing up of US embassies to USS Cole disaster to the September 11 terror attacks on new York and Washington. What we see is a world where various circles claim it to be a clash of civilization where the ever growing insurgent activities in Iraq and other parts of the create an unholy environment for the Muslims in general. The Palestinian conflict remains the bone of contention between the west and not only amongst the Islamic Middle Eastern nations but the whole Islamic world to. The inhabitance of Israel of evacuating the land it occupied in 1967 war and to a two state solution where the Palestinians and Israelis can live peacefully side by side is a distant dream away as Israelis refuse to give up control over Jerusalem which is sacred to both parties. While under patronage of UN a solution can be formed which can be acceptable to both parties where the Israelis have to leave the settlements in the west bank, while having the joint custody of Jerusalem under a UN peacekeeping umbrella guarding the new frontier laid between the leaning wall and the Al-Aqsa mosque. UNs incapability in solving the international conflicts fuelling in Palestine, Kashmir and Chechnya seems to give a rise in extremist activity as they see no hope from this world body to make a decision for their regard. Except for passing resolutions accustomed on a piece of paper this body hasn’t taken any constructive decision in solving any of the conflicts regard. While the importance will be restored once as UN takes proactive measures in countering these tactics by ensuring that no innocent person is harmed especially by state form of terrorism which in return gives rise to a struggle with the force of the gun labeled as terrorism in the west as the person affected by this feels that his voice isn’t being heard and his rights and freedom is being jeopardized with the state’s unholy attitude towards the people like the struggle in Kashmir where the people don’t accept India’s right over its sovereignty while 1000s are raped and killed by Indian security forces every year. To counter such brutalities its people have resorted to picking up arms in this regard. So UN should do more as a body by changing its rules where in the UN everyone should be equally held accountable for its deeds and made punishable to its regard. If you are a super power then you aren’t vested with the veto power status. This has to go if UN wishes to play role and show can help in solving conflicts on the world stage.   While the main obstacle to this effort is the reluctance of states to accept global directives that might constrain the market or further reduce their sovereignty. Thus the UN’s powers remain limited and sometimes only purely theoretical. Terrorism is the poisoned fruit of several forces. It can be the weapon of the weak in a classic conflict among states or within a state, as in Kashmir or the Palestinian territories. It is also fueled by a resistance to “unjust” economic globalization and to a Western culture deemed threatening to local religions and cultures also. Antiterrorist measures restrict mobility and financial flows. Global terrorism is not the simple extension of war among states to no states. It is the subversion of traditional ways of war because it does not care about the sovereignty of either its enemies or the allies who shelter them. It provokes its victims to take measures that, in the name of legitimate defense, violate knowingly the sovereignty of those states accused of encouraging terror. (After all, it was not the Taliban’s infamous domestic violations of human rights that led the United States into Afghanistan; it was the Taliban’s support of Osama bin Laden.) But all those trespasses against the sacred principles of sovereignty do not constitute progress toward global society, which has yet to agree on a common definition of terrorism or on a common policy against it. Indeed, the beneficiaries of the antiterrorist “war” have been the illiberal, poorer states that have lost so much of their sovereignty of late. Now the crackdown on terror allows them to tighten their controls on their own people, products, and money. They can give themselves new reasons to violate individual rights in the name of common defense against insecurity—and thus stop the slow, hesitant march toward international criminal justice. Another main beneficiary will be the United States, the only actor capable of carrying the war against terrorism into all corners of the world. Despite its power, however, America cannot fully protect itself against future terrorist acts, nor can it fully overcome its ambivalence toward forms of interstate cooperation that might restrict U.S. freedom of action. Thus terrorism is a global phenomenon that ultimately reinforces the enemy—the state—at the same time as it tries to destroy it. The states that are its targets have no interest in applying the laws of war to their fight against terrorists; they have every interest in treating terrorists as outlaws and pariahs. In the realm of global society, much will depend on whether the United States will overcome its frequent indifference to the costs that globalization imposes on poorer countries. For now, Washington is too reluctant to make resources available for economic development, and it remains hostile to agencies that monitor and regulate the global market. All too often, the right-leaning tendencies of the American political system push U.S. diplomacy toward an excessive reliance on America’s greatest asset—military strength—as well as an excessive reliance on market capitalism and a “sovereignties” that offends and alienates. That the mighty United States is so afraid of the world’s imposing its “inferior” values on Americans is often a source of ridicule and indignation abroad.   On 11 September 2001 19 young men, mostly Saudi Arabian nationals, commandeered four passenger airplanes and rammed three of them into critical US targets, the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The resulting social and economic impact—some 3,000 lives lost and billions of dollars in economic damage—catapulted terrorism onto an entirely new level of strategic importance. Catastrophic terrorism, once a theory, had now become a reality. But the larger issue revolved around the nature of terrorism itself and its emerging modus operandi. Whether the 11 September attacks in the United States it is clear that terrorism—and particularly that form of terrorism practiced by al Qaeda—has fundamentally changed. The United States emerged as a central enemy to al Qaeda almost from the beginning of the organization’s existence for a variety of reasons al Qaeda’s unhappiness with US has centered on its continued military presence in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Arabian Peninsula. With its elite tactic of suicide bombing this organization wishes to show what it can do to spark fear amongst inhabitants of this world. The difference between a brave combat soldier and a suicide bomber is that the former confronts his fears of death, hoping to avoid its clutches. The suicide bomber, on the other hand, intends to die. If somehow the suicide attacker survived the attack, yet successfully conducted the terrorist operation, he would most likely consider himself a failure. As concerning the role of military success in the war against terror some nations have taken an illegal measure of targeted assassinations in this regard. In October 2001, Abdel Rahman Hamad was killed by an Israeli sharp shooter. Hamad was a high-ranking leader of Ham as and was the chief suspect behind the June 2001 suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv disco that had killed 21 people only four months earlier. The assassination, coming just a few weeks after the 11 September attacks in the United States, elicited an awkward response from Washington. On one hand, the United States, which had publicly discussed its own desire to kill Osama bin Laden, attempted to present a neutral position, cautioning the Israeli government against the employment of its “targeted killing” program. The United States, after all, was in the midst of a debate over its own self-imposed ban against overseas assassinations. A state policy of preemptive assassinations, which most likely would be couched in such euphemistic phrases as “permissive termination” or “calculated elimination,” may be deemed necessary and politically expedient, and yet would remain anathema to the traditional and honorable soldiering ideal that has bonded military forces, particularly in Western states, for multiple generations. This contradiction will have to be managed head-on; otherwise it may result in diminished morale and civilian misunderstanding. As one analyst has said that Western countries have been disinclined to prepare for military action that was considered uncivilized. Civilized or not, states may be required to engage in such actions if the threat of transnational terrorism—with its current predisposition for mass casualties—is to be contained or averted. Another morally complicated issue involves state use of torture during interrogation. Al Qaeda’s attack on the United States on 11 September 2001 was a major turning point in the evolution of international terrorism. In this case, the United States was attacked not by a fellow state, but a non-state terrorist organization. NOTES: 1. Regarding warnings about the rise of “catastrophic terrorism,” see Ashton Carter et al., “Catastrophic Terrorism: Tacking the New Danger,” Foreign Affairs, 77 (November/December 1998), 80. 2. Investigations conducted in Southeast Asia after the 11 September attacks in the United States provide linkages between a man captured in the Philippines and the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. Jemaah Islamiah, reported links to both plots. See Richard C. Paddock, “Southeast Asian Terror Exhibits Al Qaeda Traits,” Los Angeles Times, 3 March 2002, p. A1. 3. This specific phrase was uttered by US Senator Richard Shelby on the CBS News Show Face the Nation on 16 September 2001 (file accessed through Lexis-Nexis). 4. Ed Blanche, “Al-Qaeda Recruitment,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, 14 (January 2002), 27-28. 5. Peter L. Bergen, Holy War: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden (New York: Free Press, 2001), p. 79. 6. Dan Bilefsky, “Belgian Terrorist Cell Cited in Massoud Killing—Murder of Guerrilla Leader Linked to bin Laden,” The Wall Street Journal, 10 December 2001. 7. Rohan Gunaratna, “Suicide Terrorism: a Global Threat,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, 8. David Eshel, “Israel Reviews Profile of Suicide Bombers,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, 9. Arieh O’Sullivan et al., “Israel Kills Ham as Planner of Tel Aviv Disco Bombing,” The Jerusalem Post, 15 October 2001; James Bennet, “Israel Kills a Ham as Leader, and Eases West Bank Restrictions,” The New York Times, 15 October 2001, p. A8. Read More