The changing world scenario and pakistan' Foreign policy
A the world stands on the precipice of a new century and a new millennium, the structures that provided world peace and order for the last fifty years have dissolved. The structure, the Cold War with two superpower alliances consuming all other bilateral and multi-lateral relationship under the simplicity of East-West dichotomy has disappeared. The Soviet Union has ceased to exist, the Warsaw Pact is no more and its most central nations — Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic — are today knocking on the doors of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The constraints of superpower politics have been swept away. Nations of the world have reached a political and economic consensus between democracy and free market economics. But rapid political change did not result in the social and economic revolution that many anticipated as the peace dividend that was to follow the end of the Cold War in 1990.
The World today is very different, but the world today is not yet much better. Heightened expectations in the emerging democracies of East and Central Europe, Asia, Africa and South America remain unfulfilled. A disequilibrium, a discontent and envy is sweeping across the world. Although democracy has triumphed, although the free world has triumphed, even developed nations today battle to balance their budgets. For too long, the world spent more than it earned to sustain the superpower confrontation and now that the Cold War is over, we confront the challenge within the nation states to balance our books, we faced this challenge in the East and we faced this challenge in the West. The information age, advertising, consumerism wets our appetites, raises our expectations and makes us want more than our resources can cater for and when we do not get the more, we become angry and frustrated.
We see this in the streets of Paris when the workers united to preserve a system to which they were accustomed but the system which the French economy could no longer sustain; we saw this in Washington, the world's superpower, where the federal government twice shut down in the last months over the question of deficits, balanced budgets and reduction in government's social programmes; in the countries of the former East block and just last year in Rushia the frustration of the masses expressed itself in the political rejection of reformere who just yesterday were called saints and liberators. A former communist has become the president of Poland defeating Lech Walesa, the hero of Gdansk. In Russia, President Yeltsin, who stood before tanks to defeat the coup of 1991 is under political siege. The communists have emerged as a large dominant party in the last parliamentary elections.
The end of Cold War, ladies and gentlemen, has seen the decline of ideology. Ideological differences no longer characterize different political parties. The lack of ideological clarity has led to confusion amongst people at large. This confusion has resulted in split mandates all over the world. It has led to split mandates or close election results in England, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Japan. I believe the world needs a few yardsticks to judge political parties and political leaders by. I believe political leaders and political parties should be judged on ( 1 ) Economics: Who reduces the budget deficit, who increases it; who reduces domestic borrowing, who increases it; who attracts more foreign investment to the country and who attracts less.
( 2 ) Social Sector: Who spends more on education, who spends less; who spends more on health and who spends less; who spends more on sewerage and water supply and who spends less. ( 3 ) Corruption: Who allows government ministers to take loans and who does not; who spends more on government buildings and who spends less; who has a more transparent form of privatization and who has a less transparent form of privatization; who indulges in politicized postings in the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) and Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) — both lucrative institutions and who does not. Unfortunately in the twilight period of transition this yardstick is not universally recognized. Instead politics has become more personalized.
Accusations and counter accusations are made. The media highlights scandals and public trials are conducted through the press, through allegations and counter allegations. The result is greater mass confusion and greater cynicism. The cynicism leads to disenchantment, the disenchantment provides a perfect backdrop for the rise of the right or the rise of the extremist. Against the background of urbanization, crimes, drugs, poverty, heightened expectations and cynicism of elected leaders and role of democracy, people yearn for order in what appears to be a world of disorder. The simplistic nostalgic yearning for a world order gives rise to fascist tendencies. Freedoms are threatened, so-called messiahs except righteous groups seek to undermine freedom of choice and force their own views on a confused and cynical public. This is the new danger we confront.
Fascism did not rise in Germany and in Italy in a vacuum. Fascism exploited the yearning for order, an exploitation that led to internal tyranny and a great war known as the Second World War. It led to a dark chapter of immense suffering. If there is a lesson of the twentieth century that lesson is that democracy is the best system. It may not be the perfect system, it may not cure all the problems but it is better than all the other systems, the world has known and the world has dismissed. The youth of today are special, the youth of today have more knowledge at their fingertips through the computer and information highway than the youth of any other generation. This places special responsibility on the youth of today on whose shoulders will fall the responsibility of charting a course in the new millennium. Youth is always full of idealism.
Idealism is the catalyst to pursue dreams and to turn dreams into reality. There is no horizon broad enough for sky high enough which the young with the spirit of adventure and endeavour do not seek to conquer. But in the greatness of men and women's ability to conquer new horizons a dark could always casts its shadow. You might recently have heard of an abortive coup attempt in Pakistan. Again, who were these people wanting to bring in a so-called Islamic revolution? Who were these people who wanted to call themselves Ameer-ul Momineen and declare Pakistan a sectarian state. Who were the people who reportedly wanted to murder the President, the Prime Minister, the Chief of the Army and the elite core of the Pakistan armed forces?
Who were these people prepared allegedly to break their solemn oath to God and to country? Who were these people who were going to send the judges of the superior judiciary packing home and establish their own agents in so-called Shariat Courts? They were a small group of power hungry adventurers who could have plunged Pakistan in a civil war, destroy the cream of our armed forces, military institutions and threatened the security of the unborn children of Pakistan. Their own personal and professional lives would make scandalous reading. All I would say is that they were immoral in more ways than one and they wanted to teach the nation about piety. These impious adventurers wanted to throw out the political representatives branded by them as feudal and Tajir Siyasatdans and bring in so-called clean people.
For clean read corrupt, crooks, who would have sold their soul for political power without political legitimacy. The so-called new order was more or less the same as the old order of 1977 which lasted nearly seventeen years and bred intolerance, hatred, violence, self-righteousness and victimization. An unholy alliance between the clerics and the unscrupulous, unelectable individuals who are fortune seekers was the aim that they had in mind. Ladies and gentlemen! despite the idealism, despite the desire to do good and be good men and women have often turned technological advancements into monstrous machines of destruction.
The twentieth century has seen the greatest scientific and technological advances. Scientific discoveries in every field of inquiry fostered the view that there was no limit to human advancement. We expected the new sciences to banish disease, poverty and deprivation for ever. But man converted mastery bestowed by science into a massive technology of war, death and destruction. New technologies were harnessed to manipulate and to exert totalitarian control. But in each generation is to learn from the mistakes of the past; in each country is to avoid the pitfalls of the past; in each millennium is to improve upon the last; the youth of this generation and the youth of the new millennium have a special responsibility, a responsibility to learn from the lessons of history because those who do not learn from the lessons of history repeat the mistakes of history.
Human hubris comes from human excess; in modernisation lies the power of stability; in moderation lies the order that we seek and each generation has a link in the chain of human history. The future must connect to the past. Traditional values must not be thrown at the wayside in embracing an unknown future. The two must connect — the past and the future. The family unit had always been at the heart of social organizations. The disruption of the family unit threatens to disrupt our social organizations and civic life itself. The East has many values which the West can learn from. The importance of the family and respect to the elders lies at the heart of eastern traditions. Single families outside marriage, same sex units are not part of the eastern cultural identity.
In a world of great change, in a world of great movement, we all need an anchor. Time-tested traditional values are the anchor in an individual's life if one is not to be lost or left adrift in the sea of life and ladies and gentlemen, if the nineteenth century was the century of Europe and if the twentieth century was the American century, there is little doubt that the twenty-first century will be the Asian century. Long overlooked, often subjugated, Asia stands on the brink of leadership in the new economic and world reality of the twenty-first century. But ladies and gentlemen, I must touch upon some of the shadows that cast themselves on the Asian subcontinent. In 1974 India exploded a nuclear device which it called "the Smiling Buddha".
Reports now surfacing among intelligence circles based on surveillance satellite photography indicate that Indian is preparing still another nuclear test. Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao has said that India has not closed the nuclear option. Indians test experimented the Prithvi missile and a day earlier that was 26 January 1996. India fired rockets on Forward Kahuta in Azad Kashmir and on a mosque, martyred those who were offering prayers, martyred children. This sabre-rattlings and attempts to demonstrate use of force is directly tied to the Kashmir dispute.
Ladies and gentlemen! we are not intimidated by India's provocative acts, let the world know that it is India which is talking of a nuclear test, let the world know that it is India which is experimenting with missile. Missiles that can target not only Pakistani cities but missiles that can eventually target Tehran, Baghdad, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Cairo. In fact India seeks to inherit the mantle of the British Raj. Indian ambitions have no bounds. India has interfered in each of its neighbours from Bangladesh to the Farraka Barrage dispute to an action in the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal. These developments do put enormous pressure on Pakistan.
Three times Pakistan and India have fought war since 1947. India continues to illegally occupy the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir and denied self-determination to its largely Muslim inhabitants. Eight times since India exploded a nuclear device in the seventies. Pakistan has made specific proposals on the question of proliferation; a nuclear free South Asia in 1974; a joint renunciation of the acquisition of the nuclear weapons in 1978; mutual inspections of nuclear facilities in 1979; simultaneous agreement to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) proposed in 1979; a simultaneous acceptance of the full scope of IAEA safeguard in 1979: a bilateral or regional nuclear test ban treaty in 1987; a multilateral conference to stop nuclear proliferation in 1989 and a South Asia missile-free zone in 1994.
Eight times these proposals have been rejected by the government of India. At a time, when India is talking in terms of nuclear capable missiles and threatening proliferation in the South Asian region, intelligence reports are being leaked to damage Pakistan. These so-called intelligence reports claim that Pakistan has acquired atomic weapons technology from China. This story about nuclear magnets from China is baseless. The report is tendentious. The so-called sources on which the Washington Times based its report had actually ignored the threat to nonproliferation which emanates from India.
The one is the message that has been sent to the subcontinent that India is indulging in proliferation sabre-rattling and has managed to divert attention of its activities by spreading stories about China and Pakistan which are blatantly false; more sensibility needs to be showed to South Asian affairs. As conflicts are resolved in the Middle East, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in South Africa, world attention will increasingly focus on this Asian region which is bristling with arms. This is a region out of tune with the rest of the world, a region where the winds of the Cold War syndrome continue to blow.
For the first twenty-five years, we in the Asian subcontinent fought three wars, for the next twenty-five years, we in the Asian subcontinent had neither war nor peace. India now seems to be over-reaching itself by attempting to go beyond the subcontinent. India may force the world to wake up and take notice of what Pakistan has always stated — the threat to peace from a militaristic neighbour and when that happens, ladies and gentlemen, the rays of a real peace will rise in the subcontinent.
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