Where is Mikhail Gorbachev, the man that ended the Cold War and supervised the liquidation of communism and communist empire? He may by now begin to rue his reform programmes – glasnost and perestroika – that played a major role in the disintegration of the Soviet Union. No thanks to the United States’ veiled aggression against the former super power.
Last week’s signing of an agreement in Warsaw by Condoleezza Rice, the United States Secretary of State and Radoslaw Sikorsk, the Polish Foreign Minister, on location of US missile defence system on Polish soil is symbolic, in a way: NATO stands on the ruins of Warsaw Pact!
The deal to install 10 US interceptor missiles just ‘115 miles from Russia’s westernmost frontier’ has, of course, alarmed the former super power. Rice says “it is an agreement which will help us to respond to the threats of the 21st century and protect the US and much of Europe against missile attacks from ‘rogue elements’ in the Middle East, such as Iran.”
If only tanks could substitute for food, perhaps the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) would still be alive today. But, of course, Gorbachev had the option of sustaining the authoritarian policy of communism even in the midst of hunger. He saw the evils of communism (as practiced by his predecessors and Warsaw Pact members) and adroitly began to systematically dismantle the system from 1987, two years after he became the General Secretary of the Communist Party. The 1990 Nobel Peace Prize was, therefore, well-earned. And if Gorbachev rues his actions in those days, it is not because he was wrong. It is the United States that has acted and continued to act in bad faith.
Some notes on communism. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ laws on social formations – communism in particular – are, in my view, missiles thrown against gravity – the law of nature – which, whatever altitude they might attain, return to ground zero. The dictatorship of the proletariat might have succeeded in the USSR but they did not succeed in building a new society of equity and equality as Marx theorized because the notion of a classless society, free of exploitation of man by man, is itself against the nature of man and the law of nature.
Marx condemns the acquisitive and expansionist war of the bourgeoisie but the proletariat today, upon acquisition of power, becomes the bourgeoisie tomorrow – accumulating capital through the state machinery at the expense of the working majority. At least, this is what experiences in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, (Asia and USSR) taught the world before the curtain finally fell on communism in the 90s. An ideology that makes robot of men and deny them the fundamental right of free speech is evil and deserves nothing short of death.
However, Marx must be accorded eternal credit for arousing humanity to the realization that economic liberty for the toiling masses does not depend on invisible forces outside our control – the state can and indeed must reduce to the barest minimum the exploitation of man by man.
The United States is today not just a threat to Russia – the potent relic of Soviet Union – but the world in general. The notion of ‘balance of power’ is anathema to the US establishment. America craves a unipolar world that sleeps or wakes at her behest. The planned deployment of interceptor missiles so close to Russia is to test the waters, to provoke Kremlin into some madness so the CIA, Pentagon and military-industrial complex back home may know whether to return to the drawing board in the whole gamut of US long-term strategy of containment of the former foe.
The United States, of course, is not in a hurry. She treads cautiously but steadily. She knows she has China, another world power, to contend with. Today, Iran – several countries away from Poland – is an alibi for missile shield in Poland. Tomorrow, threats from North Korea will become another pretext for a defence pact with Russia’s neighbour, Georgia. Gradually, Russia state will find itself surrounded by ‘enemy’ weapons.
But the Kremlin is not sleeping. Its recent military campaigns in Georgia and eventual recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia – the two break-away regions of Georgia – as independent states must be viewed in the context of an effective riposte to the US manouvres in some countries close to the borders of Russia, including the recent recognition of Kosovo – a breakaway region of Serbia – by the west.
The next few years will be interesting. If the Republican candidate, John Mc Cain – another warmonger – gets elected to the White House for ‘four more years of the last eight years’ (Hilary Clinton’s), then the United States and Russia will likely test strength indirectly or covertly on a ‘neutral’ soil. But the election of Democratic candidate, Barak Obama, will most likely delay the inevitable, for you have just little – though sometimes significant – to choose between the foreign policy of republicans and democrats. Heads or tails, Europe risks being turned into a battle-ground on the long run and the US might have not much to lose, being thousands of kilometers away from Russia or Europe.
George Bush will be leaving the world more polarized than he met it eight years ago. With his likes in Washington, North Korea will continue nuclear arms disarmament talks for ever. Watching the bellicose nature of US all over the world, I wonder why a recluse nation like North Korea will willingly give up her only source of strength. The threats posed by US will continue to galvanise Russia and China to a common strategy of response and polarize the Security Council the more. They will most probably become ambivalent on sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programme. Budget for arms will go up, including surreptitious aids/arms to US-named ‘rogue states’ and potential ones. Cuba’s mothballed missile sites of the 60s could still be put to use, if it comes to that. We are on the road to the Cold War era.
I urge the United States once more to abandon her expansionist drive and dream of a unipolar world. The newly inaugurated ‘Warsaw Pact’ between US and Poland should be abolished. The United States and Russia must lead the campaign to rid the world completely of nuclear arms, starting with the two powers. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) must be dissolved forthwith – European member nations should be in a hurry to do this. In this age of globalization, that opens unprecedented door for economic integration and prosperity for peoples of the world, military alliances have become anachronistic.
…First published on 12 September, 2008
