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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 March 1999 Issue No. 419 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 4 - 10 March 1999 Issue No. 419
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Focus Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The rogue states
By Mohamed Sid-Ahmed
A new term has been added to the lexicon of diplomacy, namely, the rogue state, an American invention to describe states unwilling to play by the rules of a game imposed by the present US-led unipolar world order. According to the American administration, rogue states will become the main challenge to the stability of the world system as the new century unfolds. They are in possession of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear, biological and/or chemical, which they use as instruments of terror, and shelter well-known terrorists such as Carlos in the past and Osama bin Laden in the present. They are expected in the future to launch 'info-wars', taking advantage of the loopholes in computer networks to decipher the secrets of the defence systems of the great powers, including those of the Pentagon. In Washington's eyes, these states are responsible for the growing disarray and chaos besetting the world.
For US strategists, the rogue state has replaced the communist state as the incarnation of what Ronald Reagan denounced in the eighties as the Evil Empire. For a while following the collapse of communism, this dubious distinction belonged to Islam, which was portrayed as the challenge to a world system led by the US. But realisation soon set in that putting Islamic moderates and radicals in the same basket needlessly alienated the former and was counter-productive. Moreover, this characterisation of Islam excluded non-Islamic rogue states such as North Korea or Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia -- even China and Russia, both accused of selling weapons of mass destruction to states blacklisted as 'rogue'.
The list includes several Middle Eastern states, notably, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Algeria, even Syria, Washington's partner in the Middle East peace process. Even Egypt could find itself added to the list. A recent CIA report accuses Egypt of secretly trying to purchase weapons of mass destruction, an accusation that could justify branding it a rogue state. One Middle Eastern state in no danger of being put on the list is Israel which, despite its undeclared possession of a whole arsenal of nuclear weapons, has never been accused of violating global agreements on the matter. On the contrary, the West tacitly acknowledges Israel's right to possess such weapons and colludes with successive Israeli governments to keep its secret weapons cache outside all negotiations on nuclear proliferation.
Because the US administration regards the so-called rogue states as the main threat to the world order, Clinton has decided to allocate $10 billion to the creation of a new agency, headed by Richard Clark, to coordinate efforts in combatting terrorism. The new agency, which will be independent from the CIA and the FBI, should be ready to operate effectively in no more than six years.
In fact, what we are seeing today is an updated version of Reagan's 'Star Wars', even if the characteristics of the current confrontation are very different from those which marked the former global confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, which was of a geopolitical nature, a polarisation between two blocs of states, two military pacts, one personifying Good, the other Evil. In the context of the new globalism, the sovereign prerogatives of states are curtailed and the great powers have invested themselves with the right, not to say the duty, to intervene in the internal affairs of sovereign states, especially those they designate as rogue states.
Such an approach to conflict resolution has already been tested through Washington's unilateral decision to bomb a pharmaceutical facility in Khartoum, and a site in Afghanistan's deserts accused by the CIA of harbouring bin Laden's terrorist activities, in response to the two concomitant explosions that shattered the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam last August.
Although the ascendancy of globalism has deprived bipolarity of its geographical dimension, there is no denying that bipolarity still exists. Global confrontation remains bipolar in essence, even if it is now being played out between two new types of poles. One, headed by the United States, is the self-appointed guardian of the new world order, while the other, which is made up of a disparate assortment of states, forces and individuals that resort to violence as a means of protecting their interests, and which are denounced variously as terrorist, rogue or irresponsible, is cast as the very antithesis of order. The present global confrontation extends into fields that did not exist in the past, such as wars to decipher secrets sheltered in computer software, wars waged in the field of electronic espionage and counter-espionage, with weapons such as artificial intelligence and expert systems, wars that will still further promote the status of the most technologically advanced societies.
But voiding global confrontation of its geographical dimension creates much confusion in the structure of current conflict-situations. For example, the US finds itself having to square the circle when it comes to its policy towards Syria: on the one hand, denouncing it as a rogue state; on the other, establishing relations of partnership with it as a necessary condition to move forward with the peace process. What criteria should be used to determine whether a given political entity should enjoy full sovereignty, the right to self-determination or the right to secession? At the very time Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan was abducted by Turkey and accused of high treason for practicing all-out terrorism in the aim of dividing Turkey and creating an independent state in Turkish Kurdistan, Sudanese President Omar Bashir has been quoted as saying that he would not oppose the secession of southern Sudan on the grounds that such an undertaking would be less costly than the ongoing civil war. And when it comes to the conflict in Kosovo, radical groups within the Albanian majority (which constitutes 60 per cent of the population and not 90 per cent as has been reported) call for secession from Serbia, while Serbs perceive Kosovo as an integral part of their patrimony and history that cannot be sacrificed, whatever the present-day ratios between its various ethnic groups.
What is particularly critical is that, within the ongoing globalisation process, NATO, outside the UN, the Security Council and the rules of international legitimacy, is called upon to exert pressure on the various protagonists in these conflicts and, if necessary, to intervene militarily to ensure that they are settled along the lines determined by the great Western powers. How can the 'new world order' be sustainable when subjected to such practices?
