In the aftermath of 9/11, American public intellectual Gore Vidal, a critic of US foreign policy, attracted a lot of flak for labelling the USA as the United States of Amnesia. For a country still playing hot and cold with the fire of regime change in Iran, forgetting all the lessons of its costly entanglements in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, nothing can be more fitting.
Indian MP Shashi Tharoor’s piercing comment and gentle reminder to American citizens on Osama Bin Laden, the face of the War on Terror and Public Enemy No.1 for decades, killed just a few kilometres away from the Pakistan Military Academy in Abbottabad, immediately brings to mind Vidal’s characterization.
Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir, the Hafeez General, being feted in DC by Trump suggests two things: First, the short-sightedness and mass public forgetfulness. Second, the geographic and strategic realities of a war with Iran, that will again make Islamabad a crucial node and frontline state, have hit America like a billiard ball.
Other converging interests, not to forget World Liberty international, and checking Beijing’s influence in Islamabad, must certainly be on the agenda as well.
Art of Disincentives
If there’s anything that exceeds this willful amnesia about the taproot of global terrorism Inc, and the home of world’s most notorious nuclear proliferator, it is sheer duplicity, indifference, and naked self-interest at play that couches itself in the lingo of diplomacy, value-based order, and liberal internationalism.
The ad hoc and haphazard nature of everything, where flip-flops and U turns can take place any moment, are just the superficial layers. The real problem is unimaginably deep.
It’s baffling that the collusion between Pakistan Army and Jihadist networks, which have claimed the lives of countless Indian as well American citizens, including the journalist Daniel Pearl, still rings on deaf ears in Washington.
This only highlights the amoral, cynical, and utterly transactional nature of politics and complete inability to think beyond short-term gains and immediate goals and gratification.
In the New Reality TV show mode of American politics, everything has an entertainment quotient. Politics is less the art of compromises, of building consensus, and delivering solutions, and more about huckstering. Everything is a means to an end that can be detonated like a pontoon bridge once it has served its utility.
America’s reckless narcissism has ensured that Pak would not abandon the use of Jihad as a policy instrument against India. Washington is an enabler and accomplice both .
Smart Nations
Carlo M Cippola, the Italian economic historian wrote a humourous short book in the 1930s titled ‘The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity’. He identified four types of humans: hapless, stupid, intelligent, and bandits.
Stupid is someone who will harm you, without accruing any benefit to himself. Intelligent is someone who believes in mutual gains and win-win outcomes. The hapless are trapped in a misery that never ends. Bandits don’t require any further elaboration.
Just like individuals, states are also defined by these traits. Meaningful and long-term alliances can only be built with the intelligent, while the glib and pompous stupids, along with all shades of useful idiots need to be avoided like plague. No prizes for guessing that a robust padlock has to be hammered to protect against bandits.
The most noxious combination is the alliance of the stupid and the bandit against the intelligent. Factor in a deal between a market speculator and a nihilistic jihadist, and the absurdity of it, as well its immense destructive potential, is crystal clear.
A flamboyant career realtor and showman, who just launched a T-Mobile smart phone, and the Field Marshal who won no war, also fall in this quadrant.
The lessons for India, in the style of Dale Carnegie, is to make friends and cultivate alliances only with the intelligent, and not with those who claim to be super intelligent but whose track record demonstrates nothing but the worst type of stupidity.
Some people, as well as nations, neither learn, change, nor adapt. Finding a way around it is realism, and expecting anything otherwise is futile hope. As Einstein said, stupidity is truly infinite.
