battle scarred; The war against terror: Bali, Moscow, Mombasa ...

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Dec 29, 2002 | by Trevor Royle Diplomatic Editor

EAST is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. Rudyard Kipling's well-known lines have been frequently quoted but they are not always understood: read in isolation, they suggest that there can be no worthwhile contact between the races. The insinuation is that the English poet was a racist, pure and simple; but Kipling's confident assertion is qualified by the lines that follow and they have a peculiar resonance to the year which is passing and to the year which lies ahead: "But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed nor Birth/When two strong men stand face to face, tho' they come from the ends of the earth."

Taken in that context Kipling's thoughts have a terrible symmetry. We now occupy a world in which not only is there a collision between East and West, at its most painful in the war against terrorism following the September 11 atrocities, but there is also an impending clash between two strong men. Step forward George W Bush, President of the United States of America, and Saddam Hussein, de facto leader and "Great Uncle" of the Iraqi people.

The story of their animosity provided 2002 with its great leitmotiv, a continuing theme which was played out against the distant sound of war drums. And because history does not allow itself to be restricted by the neat imposition of measured time, the drum beat will continue into the coming year, a reminder that war is still considered by politicians to be the most effective way of dealing with humankind's manifold ills.

On one level that clash has a simple exegesis. Seen through the unforgiving eyes of a Texan sheriff, Saddam is the guy in the black hat, an outlaw who possesses the means and the will to use weapons of mass destruction which can harm the innocent. Bush underscored his role when he addressed officer cadets at the West Point military academy in June. Gone were the certainties of the cold war, with their doctrine of deterrence and containment, he told them. In their place was a new policy, the Pax Americana, which would require US soldiers "to be ready for pre-emptive action" against any country which threatened world peace.

Unfortunately it was not just the cadets who were listening to their commander-in-chief. Leaders and generals around the world were taking notes as well and they began asking if what was good enough for the US might not also be good enough for them. In Israel the troubled prime minister Ariel Sharon lost no opportunity to ape Bush's rhetoric whenever he condoned his security forces' heavy- handed approach to Palestinian terrorism. As tanks rolled into Jenin or helicopter gunships fired unsparingly at civilian targets in Gaza and the West Bank, he explained that Israelis had every right to stake action against those who would kill innocent citizens and threaten the existence of the state itself.

As summer temperatures were raised along the line of control in Kashmir, threatening to drag India and Pakistan into a long-mooted war, India's foreign minister, Jaswat Singh, claimed that "pre- emption is the right of every nation to prevent injury to itself". The spat ended when the Pakistani leader, Pervez Musharraf, promised to order his forces to tighten their grip on their side of the border and prevent the infiltration of mujahidin terrorists into Indian Kashmir. War was put on hold as June passed into July, but as it has been on the agenda ever since the cross-border problem first flared in 1948 the new doctrine of pre-emption means that it is still only a heartbeat away.

Russia's Vladimir Putin got in on the act too - not that he had been far from centre-stage before Bush's address. For the past three years he has been locked in an unwinnable war against the Chechens and has opposed their demands for autonomy by deploying large numbers of troops against them. The conflict has caused numberless casualties - due to local restrictions it is difficult to report - and neither side has been prepared to offer any quarter. Before September 11, Russia was widely condemned for its over-zealous approach to containing the situation. After Bush's West Point address, Putin feels that he has been given the green light to hit the Chechens as hard as possible and whenever he chooses.

At the top of his wish-list is international toleration if he decides to order attacks against alleged Chechen targets in neighbouring Georgia and some idea of his reasoning emerged during October's hostage-taking in a Moscow theatre. Faced with the Chechen terrorists' impossible demands, Putin ordered his security forces to storm the building and eliminate the problem. That they did, but with such a heavy hand that the narcotic gas used to subdue the terrorists also accounted for over 100 hostages. Throughout the episode, which only a few years ago would have attracted international outrage and the opprobrium of Washington, Putin used language which would have been understood by Bush and his hawkish colleagues vice-president Dick and Cheney and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.