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US-EU : An International Double StandardM D Nalapat____________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _________ _If Asia is rising once again,much of the credit goesto the body of knowledge that originated in Westernsocieties. This columnist is himself a beneficiary ofthe education provided in India by Christianmissionaries who set up schools and colleges acrossthe country more than 150 years ago, at a time whenalmost none within the many echelons of the Britishcolonial administration believed the subjectpopulation to be either deserving of such education orcompetent enough to absorb it. The foundation laid inIndia by Jesuit,Anglican and other Christianeducationists is what the present system rests on, andwhich turns out millions of brainworkers forindustries across the globe, especially in InformationTechnology, Medicine,Engineerin g and increasingly, inServices. A reasonable fluency in the English language( though fortunately not in the accent) has meant theexposure of almost 300 million people in India towestern modes of thought. Across other countries inAsia, Africa and South America as well, an influentialand and increasing middle class is internalizing andaccepting as axiomatic concepts learnt from westerntextbooks such as universal human rights and values,which place the giving and getting of freedom anddignity at the core of a civilised society. Evenwithin societies with an unbroken tradition ofauthoritarianism, the democratic spirit is gainingstrength against despots It is this very section oflocal society, one respectul of and familiar withwestern standards of societal behaviour, that isbewildered at the perceived international doublestandard practiced by the US and the EU, which positsan "Us and Them" division of the internationalcommunity into western ( now expanded to include theformer Soviet east bloc) and non-westerncomponents,with a handful of countries such as Japantreated ( as was the case in apatheid-era SouthAfrica) as "honorary westerners". In opposition to aproclaimed fidelity to universal human rights, thereappear to be very different markers for non-westerncountries than are applied to the favoured other.Unfortunately for those within the US and the EU whoseek to enforce such a division upon the globe, thesedays, non-western countries (principally India andChina) are moving up the value chain in both economicand technological development, and it is no longer asfeasible to to simply impose the will of the west onthe rest as it was during years past,before hugeswathes of non-western society gained access towestern thinkingIndia's caste system could continue for milleniabecause an individual from a lower caste was put todeath whenever she or he showed the temerity to accessinformation reserved for the upper castes. Eventually,the resulting social calcification led to the repeateddefeats of Hindu dynasties at the hands of moreegalitarian Muslim invaders. However, the firewallsbetween different Hindu groups continued,and in someplaces still do,more than a thousand years after thefirst defeats at Muslim hands,and sixty years afterindependence from British rule. Thanks to the Britishand to a lesser extent the French refusing to followthe example of Spanish,Portuguese, German and otherEuropean conquerors in denying education to all excepta few, the barriers to knowledge evaporated by thestart of the last century, creating the momentum thatled to successful independence movements in firstIndia and subsequently in other colonies. Today, theshrinking of the globe caused by cable television, theinternet and air travel has dissolved most of theobstacles towards the mingling of cultures and peoplesthat is a requirement not only of a modern lifestylebut of the global economy as well, where a trainedprofessional ought to be as much at home in Shanghaias in Stockholm. It is no accident that thosecountries that have welcomed such diversity areprecisely those at the forefront of progress,includingthe UK,the US,India and China, in each of which thereare growing pools of expatriates. Hong Kong is stillan international city, as are London and New York and- these days - Bangalore. The Germany-led effort ofthe EU to create a Euro-obsessive envirnoment throughcurbs on migration and even using ethnic criteria topurchase IT and other technologies in key programmessuch as at Airbus will result in a weakening ofcompetitive ability against more flexible rivals.Sadly for international cooperation, these are dayswhen Lou Dobbs ( the US equivalent of theEuropeans-only Germans) seems to be driving much ofmigration and trade policy in the US, hitherto a muchmore open country than those within the EU. Even theUK - normally less ethnocentric than the rest of thebloc - is lately placing curbs on immigration that areplainly ethnic in nature. While Europeans deride theArabs and the Communist Chinese for their "intoleranceand authoritarianism" and praise themselves for havingvirtue of tolerance and acceptance of the tenet thatall humanity is one, the reality is that it is fareasier for Europeans to get work in the "fanatical"Middle East or in "authoritarian" Hong Kong andShanghai than it is for Arabs or Chinese ( or othersfrom societies with an ethnic origin different fromEurope) to find a job - any job - in "civilised"Europe. The obvious biases in immigration policy inthe EU and now increasingly in North America andAustralia as well as the hostility faced bynon-European origin residends there are at variancewith the stated image of the west as having put thecolonialist past behind it. That may be the casebetween France and Germany, or with Britain andIreland, but it is not so in Africa,where Paris sendstroops with casual abandon, or in South America, wherelocal ethno-based elites fighting to preserve theirnumerous privileges get vociferous support from the"civilised' world. Such an obvious double standard iswhat is giving traction to the Hugo Chavezes in theirefforts at replacing one form of racism with anotherThe self-described "civilised" world ( the US, the EU,Australia and New Zealand) is hyper-sensitive to theuse of military force by other countries in theresolution of disputes, yet they themselves use theNATO sledgehammer to pound recalcitrants intosubmission, including in Serbia. Today, NATO forcesled by the US have become the most interventionist ofany military, inserting themselves into locationswhere local populations have yet to overcome thecomplexes created by earlier occupations by Europeanstates. If the Chinese were to show a similarpropensity to use military muscle in their ownneighbourhood, or if India were to do likewise against- for example - Bangla desh,a country that ischeerfully hosting thousands of insurgents andterrorists that have New Delhi in their collectivesights, the reaction from western chancelleries wouldbe hostile. Yet this would be only a mirror image ofwhat NATO itself is doing, which is to give primacy tothe stick rather than tuck it away. The danger is thatcountries now moving up the development ladder will intime begin to adopt these Europeanist attitudes to thesettling of differences, and plunge the world into evengreater turmoil than the present. A case can be madethat rather than preserve the security of its members,the cavalier way in which the military might of NATOis being either flaunted or used can result inhostility towards the west that could erupt inconflict in a generation, when the scales will becomemore even between the contenders. Rather than behavein a manner that suggests that the use of militaryaction is a privilege reserved for itself, the US-EUalliance needs to set in stone a system ofinternational dispute resolution that avoids thethreat or use of force.This can only be by working ondeveloping "soft" power and by engagement with thosecountries seen as potential risks, such as Iran.Evidently, no lesson has been learnt by eitherWashington or London ( the principal actors,for thepresent) in Iraq. The imposition of a basket ofsanctions that resulted in the deaths of hundreds ofthousands each year (even as the Saddamites continuedto enjoy a billionaire lifestyle ) created much of theanger towards the west that is today expressing itselfin hostility towards the NATO occupation of thecountry. Despite the obvious lessons of such a failedexperiment, these days, key policymakers in the"civilised" world are seeking to replicate the sameIraq model in Iran, sealing off the country and itspeople and choking economic and other interaction thatcould give oxygen to those opposed to the stagnationthat the mullahcracy has brought upon a vibrantpeople. The fact that it is the US - a country thathas 83% of the offensive capacity of nuclear warheadsworldwide - which is leading the cry for Iran tocompletely surrender its nuclear technology,and thatit is countries heavily reliant on nuclear energy suchas Sweden that are foaming at the mouth whennon-western societies seek to emulate their example,contains a double standard that once again divides theworld into "civilised" and by implication,less-civilised or uncivilised components. It isnot,however, the latter that are flattening housesacross Iraq and Afghanistan, that are preventing anyform of organised life in the West Bank and Gaza, andwhich is intervening energetically to protect theprivileges of local elites across the world. Until atleast a few policymakers from the interventionistcountries are made to stand trial for human rightsviolations such as the killing of thousands of womenand children by " civilised" fire in Iraq, the entireprocess will lack credibility, and generate resentmentsthat can once again tip the globe towards ageneralised conflict. The EU can give effect toethno-based curbs on migration and the US and the UKoccupy a foreign country. Nuclear energy can getconverted into the exclusive property of a fewcourtesy the Global Nuclear Energy Partnershipinvented by George W Bush,and even India be sought tobe denied the right to develop its own technologiesfor this essential energy source,despite being theworld's largest democracy. Today, where once there wasan Iron Curtain, there exists an International DoubleStandard that divides the western world and itssatellites from the rest of the globe,and within ageneration, this new mental curtain can have a muchmore destabilizing effect on international securitythan Stalin's clumsy construct ever didSukhia Sab Sansar Khaye Aur SoyeDukhia Das Kabir Jagey Aur RoyeThe world is 'happy', eating and sleepingThe forlorn Kabir Das is awake and weeping