Discourse on nuclear primacy

That after the end of the Cold War and the passing away of the US uni-polar moment, the US will remain the global hegemon for the foreseeable future has been generally accepted, albeit with a degree of disquiet in some parts of the world who are sometimes targeted by the Bush administration as recalcitrant.

Though the second Bush administration appears to have moved away from its unflinching conviction in the concept of the right to pre-emptive war and towards seeking consensus among major powers (as appears to be the case on Iran issue), it would be premature to conclude that George W Bush has decided to follow the advice proffered by James Madison on governance or Alexander Hamilton of seeking accommodation with dissenting opinions (admittedly both Founding Fathers were more engaged with the construction of the state than with post-modern foreign affairs) or to emulate Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman who could have become imperialists instead of founding the United Nations and the Bretton Woods Institutions.

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In his January State of the Union address, President Bush told the world that the US has been called "to leadership in a period of consequence (when the world has ) entered a great ideological conflict," he seems to echo Professor Bernard Lewis's belief that not only was the US too soft during the Vietnam war but that Middle East dictatorships must be overthrown by force if the Bush campaign for democratization of the countries fail.

"As with the Axis and with the Soviet Union," writes Bernard Lewis, "real peace will come only with their (Ayatollahs of Iran and other anti-American autocrats) defeat or, preferably collapse, and their replacement by governments that have been chosen and can be dismissed by the people."

What is worrying is that Bernard Lewis is not alone in his belief, but his misguided imperial aggression concept is supported by a number of academics of impeccable erudition. British historian Nial Ferguson argues that the US is and has always been an empire and fears that should the US refuse to heed the call of history then the world could suffer a power vacuum or "apolarity" which "could mean an anarchic Dark Age: an era of waning empires and religious fanaticism; of endemic plunder and pillage in the world's forgotten regions, of economic stagnation and civilization's retreat into a few fortified enclaves."

Faced with such doomsday scenario, Ferguson strongly advocates for an US empire which, like Britain, would be a liberal empire. (That an empire connotes colonialism in which liberal values of liberty, equality and fraternity are absent appears to escape the attention of Ferguson's thesis). He continues to theorize that such an empire should not only underwrite unhindered economic transactions among the different parts of the world but should also ensure "peace and order, the rule of law, non-corrupt administration as well as provide public goods."

In some ways Ferguson's Colossus resembles Kindelberger's Theory of Hegemonic Stability which asserts that an open world economy requires a dominant global power for its smooth functioning. The dominant power structure or hegemony, however, has to be a consensual order which can decline as a result of legitimacy deficit of the hegemon even when its coercive power may remain dominant.

As the events in Iraq amply demonstrate the world's hyperpower has been found inadequate to control the flow of events due to her disproportionate dependence on "hard power" i.e. military and economic power and also due to legitimacy deficit suffered by the US in the eyes of world public opinion caused by the US's unjust war on Iraq.

The initial propounder of "soft power" concept Professor Joseph Nye Jr would prefer that the US used it to regain its global influence it had acquired for its values and for the security it provided to the free world from the communist menace as seen by the western world. Professor Nye felt that the US could win the Cold War by using a combination of both hard and soft powers which he describes as "smart power," hard power to deter possible Soviet military aggression and soft power to erode faith in communism behind the Iron Curtain.

But many political analysts are doubtful whether retrenchment of hard power and consequent increase in the use of soft power would necessarily bring about a peaceful world order. It is generally accepted that economic growth in a peaceful environment would ensure global peace and security when national interest is seen through the prism of international connectivity and national development is believed to be inextricably connected with international cooperation.

If one of the preconditions of development is democracy, then certain other conditions have to be present in the society aspiring to be democrat. Francis Fukuyama forcefully argues that replacement of command economy by a democratic structure would not necessarily succeed unless, as Fukuyama suggests, four basic conditions necessary for democratic transition are already present.

These conditions are: (a) level of economic development: richer countries are more able to sustain democracy than poorer countries; (b) culture: existence of Anglo-Protestant culture in North America at the time of American independence contributed to the success of American democracy (cultural traits are not necessarily religion-specific); (c) neighbourhood effect: domino effect in Eastern Europe and more recently in Central Europe was possible due to demonstration effect from neighbouring democracies in people who were yet to be fully democratized; and (d) idea: no country can be democratized unless the people want it. Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan in this part of the world and democracy wave in the military dictated Latin America would not have been possible unless the people of these countries actually did not aspire for democracy. But then some believe that democracy wave can be a momentary phenomenon because the essential ingredient in the form of a sizeable property holding, tax paying and educated middle class has to exist for sustained democracy.

Quoting Alexis Tocquiville, Robert Kaplan holds the view that "despotism is more particularly to be feared in democratic ages" because it thrives on the obsession with self and one's own security which equally fosters despotic tendency. Kaplan argues that if society is not in good health, democracy cannot only be risky but disastrous, as evidenced during the last phases of post-First World War German and Italian democracies.

Kaplan further argues that since a middle class and civil institutions are required for successful democracies, neither of which were present at the fag end of the Soviet Union, democratic Russian Federation today remains violent, unstable and poor by western standard. He suggests that Western democracies succeeded because European society had acquired a degree of complexity and sophistication enabling a structural division of population into peacefully competing interest groups.

Therefore, the question which arises is that if Woodrow Wilsonian advocacy for democratic transition in greater Middle East by the Bush administration is to end in fiasco because primordial tribalistic allegiance supercedes modernity which denotes replacement of divine providence by rational behaviour effectively ending veneration of tradition, then how much power should the global hegemon have to avoid Nial Ferguson's "apolarity."

Professors Kier Lieber and Daryl Press have in a Foreign Affairs article written that today, for the first time, the US has gone beyond the stage of Mutually Assured Destruction, which during the Cold War period had maintained the balance of terror between the US and USSR and has attained nuclear primacy which neither Russia nor China can undo. They contend that Russia can no longer count on a survivable nuclear deterrent while China's nuclear arsenal is more vulnerable.

A US first strike, Lieber and Press add, could succeed whether it was launched as a surprise attack or in the midst of a crisis during a Chinese alert. This profound and dangerous shift in nuclear balance is now a fact of life which the international community has to live with despite President Kennedy's Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's description of the US nuclear policy as "immoral, illegal and militarily unnecessary."

In the ultimate analysis, the American nuclear primacy proves the age old theory that power, both hard and soft, determines the resolution of conflict or prevents conflict to come to bursting point. In our immediate neighbourhood, since nuclear free zone has now become an utopian concept, the regional hegemon would do well to achieve both conventional and nuclear primacy rendering any arms race irrelevant for the competing country/countries.

Pursuit of such a policy should be unrelenting and vigorous and there should be no deviation till the goal is achieved. This should not be considered as hawkish policy but as one which will make war impossible to be waged in South Asia. In the process, the regional hegemon, however, must meet the legitimate concerns of her neighbours fairly and equitably. Otherwise achievement of military primacy alone will give it neither the prestige nor the peace she requires to face the economic challenges of the future.

Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.