Daily Times

The greatest principle in the world is self-interest and to think otherwise is to live in denial. Much is going on in the world and there is a lot of dust in the air. Why pen must be put to paper before it settles is in itself a reality founded in self-interest.

Meet Syria, just another 87 percent Muslim populated country in the Middle East in the midst of an uprising and surrounded by enemies, both within and without. Allegedly, 1,429 people were killed in an August 21 chemical weapon attack by the Syrian government and somehow that has caught the conscience of the world. Not the fact that these people are dead, only the manner in which they have died.

The US claims that the use of such aforementioned force is “a challenge to the world” that threatens the US’s “national security interests”. President Barack Obama was kind enough to elaborate, “This dangerous development impacts the national security interests of the United States and our closest allies, and if we continue to sit by passively while Assad continues to use chemical weapons against his own people, we only provide encouragement to other brutal governments in their use of harsh measures against their own people.” However, in this elaboration, they have failed to notice how just one country, a foreign aggressor if you will, has brutally changed the lives of millions in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

We must also note that the Gulf of Tonkin incident (North Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an “unprovoked attack” against a US destroyer on “routine patrol”), which justified the Vietnam War was a false flag raised by the US government to advance its national interests. Its existence extended no further than those of the pseudo ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ that were used to justify the Iraq War. As Moscow rightly points out, the Americans are regime changers; rich historical case studies of successful American military intervention include Yugoslavia (1999), Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011).

Today, Syria’s only friend is Mr Vladimir Putin of Russia who had rubbished the afore-mentioned allegations. According to him, Syria has no need to use extraneous force for a war that it is already winning. Yes, President Bashar al-Assad is winning and this is why the US wants to engage in a “limited air strike” and change the war in favour of the rebels it has backed for the last two years. The idea is to maintain US hegemony, nurture puppets states that can back its ‘national interests’, the greatest of which is the need for freedom, a principle founded in self-interest.

Flashback A: At the close of August, the British Parliament changed history after a 272-285 defeat of the motion to attack Syria, with knowledge that it would hurt its “special relations” with the White House. The Iraq War was an embarrassment and thirty of David Cameron’s own Tories voted against him.

Flashback B: In early August, Saudi Arabia jumped onboard and sent their head of intelligence to Vladimir Putin, to bribe him simultaneously with an OPEC alliance and threaten Chechnyen guerilla attacks on the February 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia. Russia, however, refused to back down from its Syrian stance and instead deployed its warships in the Mediterranean to counter western aggression. They will not betray Syria or keep silent in the UN Security Council; they have a foreign policy too.

Is this not their strongest stance since the fall of the Berlin Wall? China and Iran, in their limited trust of the Americans, have come down against the air strikes. It turns out that nerve gas is only as wrong as hidden motives and ulterior agendas. Combine the output of these three economies on a purchasing parity basis, and they will fall just short of the US by a small margin. Agreed that the US has a million-mile lead in technology, and that Iran and Russia have not exhibited substantial economic growth over the past year, but extrapolate the trends over 30 years and you will find that power is moving back to the East, especially when the European Union stands on the edge of a knife and speculations of its death are rife.

The Cold War will return with a new excuse and a new ideology and the US’s best hope of global dominance will be its European friends, Arab puppet regimes and our overly friendly neighbour, Mother India. Where will Pakistan stand? Like a Cuba in the capitalist Pacific?

Do meet Pakistan, the US’s logistics manager for war. The war in Afghanistan and Iraq couldn’t have been fought without the strategic routes that our country offers. With little sovereignty and no inkling of a long-term foreign policy, we sold our neighbours, got salary in cash in excess of $ 8 billion and in the guise of political accounting termed it as US aid. Like Syria, our friends are few and the Americans do not belong in that list. They are partners, who will vanish once the war in Afghanistan is over, just like they did in 1989, once the USSR withdrew.

The word on the street is that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is busy trying to find projects whilst Imran Khan is too busy running after his Holy Grail of a lost mandate. Is anyone thinking ahead? The hardliners in the Kremlin have not forgotten the agony of defeat that the Cold War brought. Russia will return with a stout shoulder, and it will return sooner if the European Union doesn’t survive the decade. Who will Pakistan choose?

We are crippled and cannot fight the fight for freedom or socialism or anyone for that matter. We are like children amongst old men who smoke cigars and talk about war. Our decisions should be no more based on Islam than those of modern day Saudi Arabia and its envoy to Russia. The greatest principle is that of self-interest, and that calls for political closure.

Tail piece: According to a news report in an English daily on August 30, Jamiat Ahle Hadith has strongly condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin for issuing an open threat to attack Saudi Arabia in retaliation for a US-led western attack on Syria, and announced to observe a countrywide protest day.

The writer is studying at the Lahore University of Management Sciences and can be reached at k.alizubair@hotmail.com