اتنے مانوس صیاد سے ہوگئے اب رہائی ملے گی تو مر جائیں گے
I’m now so infatuated with my captor that if set free, I would rather be dead.
Raaz Allahbadi (an Indian Poet)
Indeed, even this benevolent soul who with the passage of time fell for his abductor, did not voluntarily stroll into the net. The hunters, like the commanders on the battlefield, go great lengths to persuade their game walk into the killing zone. It’s quite a feat, and some of us obviously like to claim credit – even if the prey got into trouble without our help.
When the former Soviet Union was stuck in the Afghan quagmire, the American deep state winked a hint that to settle the score for the ignominy in Vietnam, it had lured the bear in the Graveyard of Empires. The problem with that thesis was that the professed connivers had no faith in its success. It took two years before they were convinced that the Afghan resistance had a good chance to checkmate the invasion – and another few years to be assured that systems like the Stingers were safe in the Mujahedeen hands.
When it was America’s turn to get bogged down in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda gleefully claimed that the Twin Towers were brought down to draw the world’s sole superpower out of its fortress to fight an asymmetric war, in which its awesome arsenal could be trumped. To rub it in, OBL smirked that all that he now had to do was to show his flag in Iraq, Yemen, and Libya – and the US and its camp followers would exhaust themselves chasing shadows. Not easy to rebut this contention.
Closer home, after the Indian nuclear tests in 1998, Pakistan may have had its own logic to follow suit, but our detractors at home and abroad mocked us to have fallen into the Indian trap and must now face the ire of the global hegemons. I think we wrote a letter thanking Vajpayee for showing us the way to become a nuclear weapon state.
Temptation to gloat over my own alleged entrapment is irresistible. Some of the hecklers who accused me of biting an Indian bait to write a joint book with a former RAW chief, were found missing in action after its launch in Delhi. There the country’s strategic elite endorsed the main conclusion of The Spy Chronicles: India must cooperate with Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute. No wonder, my co-author became the most popular Indian in our media.
Though not much impressed by these mouse-trap stories, I still tend to agree with Professor Mearsheimer of the Chicago University that the American Establishment worked long and hard to provoke Putin to march into Ukraine. There is a long list of steps – most of them incidentally quite in line with the diktats of realpolitik – that must have paved the way.
The Maidan Uprising, a cog in the American inspired (and conspired) colour revolutions, installed a puppet regime in Kiev that rescinded the Minsk Agreement. A neo-Nazi militia was killing a large number of ethnic Russians in the eastern parts of the Country, and reportedly, Ukrainian forces had violated the Russian territory earlier in the year. If Putin was thus prodded to invade Ukraine or it provided him just the right excuse to stem the NATO’s creeping expansion, is difficult to judge. All the same, if contrary to its professed policy, Kiev were to announce it would join the Alliance, there was little that Moscow could do about it. You don’t attack a NATO member without igniting a world war.
A month after the invasion when Zelensky was willing to bring the war to a negotiated end, Boris, the incumbent successor of Blair the Poodle, went over to scuttle the process. It reminded me of another peace deal that was nipped in the bud by the US. Soon after they were toppled end of 2001, the Taliban offered to make up with the Karzai’s Regime in Kabul. Rumsfeld, the then American Viceroy in Afghanistan, vetoed the proposition. And then there is a long list of attempts we made to make peace with our alienated tribesmen, which were droned. That puts Clausewitz on his head. War is no longer an instrument of policy; but in fact, the policy that must be pursued by all other means. Niall Ferguson is one of the better-known contemporary historians. Only the other day he was wondering why Washington has made no effort to broker a cease-fire, much less peace. He suspects that The White House seems to want this war to keep going.
Michael Whitney, a renowned journalist, has described the war in Ukraine actually directed to disrupt the Nord Stream – and in due course prevent Russia and Germany from scuttling the unwritten aim of NATO (as stated by Lord Ismay, its first secretary general, and being a former big gun, could now only shoot from the mouth): “keep the Russians out; the Americans in; and the Germans down”. Makes sense, but still misses the big picture. Post the Cold War no conflict has ever been about the Jihadis, the Taliban, the WMDs, even about the Russians, Ukrainians, or the Germans – they were all about the US.
Put yourselves in the shoes of the world’s sole surviving superpower whose exclusive status at the top of the pyramid was at risk – not only from a rising China but also from its allies. Euro was threatening to compete, if not substitute, the almighty dollar as the top global currency. Many of the European countries, and not only the maverick Germans, were cosying up to the Russians to keep their houses warm, but also to revive the Spirit of Helsinki (OSCE was the first organisation to be made irrelevant during the Bosnian Crisis). And the successors of the Han and Ming Dynasties seemed all set to build their belts and roads. To counter these multiple threats, the only instrument that the US has is a mighty war machine. Subverting peace processes, at times even through rogue groups or states, is therefore the scarlet thread of the American policy to divide its friends and foes – and keep its arms industry in business.
The thesis is pretty old; first propounded by Eisenhower. What however has taken many of us by surprise is that when the US whistles how meekly the old and new Europe fall in line – even against their own judgment and interest. A number of my old Afghan hands from the old continent had a fairly good idea that the American Afghan Project had bombed, but also conceded that because of the Alliance Loyalty they had to hang-in. Some of them now criticise their governments for not trying to correct the course of the West’s policy on Ukraine – and are indeed envious of the brave Hungarians; in due course probably also of the new Italian prime minister who gave Macron a mouthful even before she was sworn in.
The real success of the US policies is that it has gotten most of the rest in a trap from which seemingly there is no escape – but the more serious problem is that Europe was now so deeply infatuated with its imprisoner that it’s scared to break free. Kissinger’s prediction about the fate that awaits the American allies is coming true.
Fixation with a slave-master is not merely the fantasy of an Indian poet now long dead. Many of us find more comfort in captivity than in liberty. Even amongst the fearlessly independent Afghans, for every individual who resisted the Soviet or the American occupation, there was a matching number of collaborators. Obviously, they were unhappy with Pakistan for first helping the Mujahedeen and then the Taliban. In former colonies, a good number proudly carry the titles bestowed upon them by their colonial rulers. What however has taken me by surprise is that even some rich and powerful countries suffer from this syndrome. Their plight in fact is more pathetic. Because unlike many of us who were caught in a honey trap, the mighty Europeans simply sleepwalked into servility.
