Global Policy Forum

By E.D. Mathew

That democracies don't attack other countries unless attacked has been a comforting norm in international relations ever since Abraham Lincoln's famous definition of democracy took root in the modern world. That may change soon as the American juggernaut aimed at unseating Iraqi President Saddam Hussein looks unstoppable despite mounting international opinion against such a misadventure.

Democratic governments worth their salt pay heed to public opinion, especially when it comes to grave decisions such as a declaration of war which will cause unimaginable suffering to both combatants and civilians, including innocent children and women.

When the United States Government is itching to drop megatons of smart bombs thousands of miles away over Iraq which forms part of a volatile region already seething with anti-American sentiments, the public opinion it must take heed of should not be limited to the borders of the United States. Being the self-appointed globocop, the American Government should pay attention to what the rest of the world feels.

Let us start with former South African President Nelson Mandela whose moral stature few American presidents in history can match. Surely, the world, including America, should sit up and ponder when Mandela, who ranked third (after Einstein and Mahatma Gandhi) as Man of the Millennium in Time – that quintessentially American magazine – explicitly criticises America for its war-mongering and dictatorial tendencies.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate recently branded the United States "a threat to world peace" accusing it of acting unilaterally and undermining the United Nations as a forum for settling international disputes.

There is also the recently re-elected German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder whose anti-war stance is embraced by 80 per cent of his country-people. It is not much different in the rest of Europe. France does not support a unilateral attack on Iraq. In Britain too, barring Prime Minister Tony Blair and a few of his party cronies, most people do not favour war.

Russia, China and much of Asia balk at the American unilateralism. In other words, America is out of step with the world. The looming confrontation with Iraq is the latest and gravest example of this. America's stance against the International Criminal Court, its opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, and its support to Israeli Premier Ariel Sharon for pulverising Palestine, have only helped the world drift away from America.

But the horror of horrors is the fact that there is feeble public opinion around major international issues in the United States.

"The most striking feature of America's debate about Iraq is that there isn't one. While Europeans march and yell, America's momentum towards war gathers pace without serious political scrutiny," opined a famed British magazine recently. And the reason for this can possibly be – hold your breath – illiteracy.

Is there such a thing as American illiteracy? A staggering 44 million American men and women today are functionally illiterate. "In the richest country on earth, 23 per cent of adult Americans – 44 million men and women – are functionally illiterate", writes Shashi Tharoor, a senior UN diplomat in New York, in a recent issue of Newsweek.

If anything, the situation is worse than those statistics suggest, because 50 million more Americans cannot read or comprehend above an eighth-grade level. To appreciate what that means, you need ninth-grade comprehension to understand the instructions for an antidote on an ordinary can of cockroach poison in your kitchen, 10th-grade to follow a federal income-tax return, 12th-grade competence to read a life-insurance form. All told, a staggering percentage of America's adults are, in effect, unequipped for life in modern society", laments Tharoor.

Isn't this something to be dreaded? Here is an administration presiding over a substantially ill-informed public aching to send its young men and women to battle and willing to rain down all kinds weapons of mass destruction over a sovereign country largely due to a personal peeve of a president. Conservative estimates put the cost of the proposed adventure at well over $200 billion.

If discretion is not seen as the better part of valour, the whole face of the Middle East will change unrecognisably. Revolutions may depose existing governments. More anti-American Islamist fundamentalist regimes may crop up. The only ones smiling will be American oil and arms companies. For generations to come, America will remain a pariah nation, at least in the Muslim world.

Should this be allowed to happen in a world where some 2.3 million Africans would have died by 2008 due to lack of affordable medicines for Aids? Should it be allowed to happen in a world that watched indifferently when 800,000 innocent people were butchered over three months in Rwanda's "ground zero" in 1994?

I have two suggestions to make. Now that the United Nations seems to be recognised as the only legitimate entity that can deal with international issues of such magnitude with many countries favouring the "UN route", let the world body take one moral step forward and constitute a "Panel of Elders" to intervene in the impending conflict between America and Iraq.

Perhaps Mr Mandela, the sage of our age, can head this panel. Other members of this panel may include former President Bill Clinton (forgetMonica Lewinsky for a moment), and a few other personalities of international stature such as former UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, both with tremendous interest in Middle East affairs. This may sound an extraordinary suggestion but then, aren't we living in extraordinary times?

My second suggestion is to educate Americans. We should be wary of any country possessing an array of ultra-modern weapons, particularly so if its people are incapable of telling their government that it is out of sync. A more educated America will surely be less belligerent. And any reduction in unilateral belligerence will be a step closer to world peace which we, the global citizens, desperately need today. The UN should also take the lead in disarming the Iraqi madman.

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