Dear Editor,
I hesitated for a long time to write this letter on American and Western foreign policy since all your letter publications on this subject have been of the so-called “liberal” and anti-Bush or anti-Blair genre. I would hope you now publish.
Centre of world power is changing. Until the last decade, the almost absolute centre of focus of the world’s wealth and power were in the West, chiefly in Europe and North America. We led in technology, in military power, in wealth and economic development. We became cocksure and were and are under the belief that we still have the pre-eminent power of pre-World War II.
This assumption of unchallengeable wealth and power has led to a number of debilitating things:-
(a) We have continued our civil wars and bickerings among the states of the West weakening ourselves. Examples of this were the American attack and expulsion of the Russians from Afghanistan. Had the Russians remained there, it would have been to the long term benefit of the West including the Russians. Or our acting at cross purposes in the Middle East or Turkey.
(b) Within the Western states a great deal of internal dissension is encouraged and tolerated under the mistaken idea that that is democracy. Such dissension is weakening the individual states and their foreign policy efforts. The USA is the prime example of this.
( c) With the illusion of wealth unlimited (credit), Western states have been living above their means and the reason they can do this is the general belief in the illusion of wealth.
The USA is the major example of a financially bankrupt state which is happily so far surviving on the loans from others, chiefly the Chinese.
This situation of credit could suddenly be a burst balloon leading to a crash. Oswald Spengler had forebodings of such a situation. We have to recapture some of the wisdom of the 19th century and take a leaf out of the book of how the Asians are running their societies to save our future.
(d) The defence of the West is left to the United States which is a world power but which does not understand its role.
The American political system is acting as if the country was a small 19th century republic isolated from the world, forgetting that it is a world power with world responsibilities and in particular, the defence of the West. This has led to a great power wobbling along often without direction. The American system and the conduct of their politicians are courting disaster for their country and the West.
The USA and the West have two great enemies who could have eliminated us 600 years ago. From Asia came the Huns, the Mongols and Turks and from the Middle East came the Arabs and Muslims. Today, they are in the guise of the vast multi-national empire of China and of the Arabs leading an Islamic resurgence.
The situation is shifting to what it was 600 years ago. Power, wealth and technology are fast moving to the Asiatic heartland. They have nuclear and space weapons and vast armies and as each year passes by, these areas of Asia are becoming closer and closer to overtaking the West.
The American government correctly went into Afghanistan and Iraq to defend themselves and the West. Had they not gone there, their enemies in those areas would have despised them and since North America and Europe are undefended internally, and since they are City Civilizations, the Muslims and other would have quickly destroyed or immobilized their cities and destroyed Western Civilization in a short time.
The American show of might was a deterrent and was closely studied by the Chinese. The enemies or potential enemies of the West would not attack the West by proxy or by suicide bombers once they know the West has teeth and will respond a thousand fold.
But the teeth of the West are being drawn by internal dissension in the USA. There are numbers of people in America who do not understand that the USA is a world power with special responsibilities. They imagine the USA is only a place to earn their living and have a nice material life, little understanding that that material life would be destroyed in a trice unless America defends itself.
The defeatist call for a retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East would be the beginning of the end of USA and western pre-eminence in the world. For as quickly as the West withdraws, the vacuum will be filled by the Asian giants or states like Iran.
It is terrible to see a great world civilization and a great world empire crumbling, being destroyed by forces from the inside. All is not lost, and even at this eleventh hour the day could be saved.
The following could be done to save the day:-
(i) The people of the USA and the West should be made to know and learn that the ethical standards of an individual cannot be applied to a state.
The USA “liberals” and other demonstrators are trying to apply individual ethical standards to war, to the state and to international relations and if this distorted ethics succeeds in dominating American and Western thinking, the USA and the West would be defeated internationally.
(ii) Discipline in Western armies has to be stricter, and the present “civilianizing” of Western armies would lead to inevitable defeat.
(iii) The West must now go seriously into Iraq and Afghanistan and defeat all enemies as they have the power to do. But they are not using their power because of all kinds of extraneous stymieings. The West, with unity and resolution, has enough power and force to completely pacify Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran in a month but governments have to be resolute and ignore the defeatists.
(iv) The West must stop misinforming and indoctrinating its people that non-Westerners have the same ethics and ethos as ourselves. This childishness must be extirpated and Western armies and young people must understand that some peoples believe in torture as a norm, or in killing prisoners of war, or plundering and stealing, etc.
If the West combines its power and acts with precision and resolution as it is capable of doing, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran would be solved in a month and the unfairness in trade and trade imbalances against the West would be solved. In this process, the West must be committed to use its military power and use it until victory. The world would be equilibrial and safe again and would be a happier place. Western power and civilization would continue to be pre-eminent for another century at least and during this time, the non-Westerns would have imbibed enough of the ethos of the West to continue along the same lines.
If American politicians move away from their short-sightedness and monkeying and the West acts with unity and resolution, the world would be saved from years of chaos. If proper action is not taken now, the quickening decline of the West and in particular the United States of America would have commenced.
Yours faithfully,
Mithra Bhushan
