Thursday, May 24, 2012

pioneer: [middle east revolutions] Change for the WORSE by G Parthasarthy

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From: sanjeev nayyar
Very good article on changes in the Middle East, takes u thru from 1991 to 2012. The West are following the old British policy of Divide and Rule. If only the West looks back it shall realize that what you throw at others (Soviet Union in Afghanistan) comes back to you with interest (9/11/). Ask the Pakis they shall vouch by the Law of Karma.
New regimes that have replaced or are replacing the old in the Arab world are dominated by hardline Islamists. India should be worried by the changes.
The Government has faced criticism in Western capitals and even from its own ‘liberal intelligentsia’ for not supporting Western attempts for ‘regime change’ in those countries labelled as ‘rogue states,’ or are said to be acquiring ‘weapons of mass destruction’. This Western propensity for ‘regime change’ was justified ideologically, as the Soviet Union was falling apart and finally collapsed on December 25, 1991. In his thesis entitled, The End of History, American scholar Francis Fukuyama then proclaimed,“What we are witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, but the end of history as such; that is the end of Man’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of western liberal democracy as the final form of human Government.” Even as American aircraft commenced bombing Iraq in August 1990, President George W Bush announced that he was set to “forge for ourselves and for future generations a New World Order.”
While Mr Fukuyama and Mr Bush did not spell out what the fault lines would be in the post-Cold War world, American Academic Samuel Huntington was more explicit. In his thesis, Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of the World Order, Mr Huntington held the ideological conflicts of the Cold War would be replaced by civilisational conflicts “prevalent between Muslims and non-Muslims”. Huntington held that the clash would be between Islamic resurgence, coupled with the demographic explosion of Islam, and the values that Western civilisation believed are universal and should be accepted by all civilisations. Interestingly, Huntington drew attention to differences between what he called as “Western Civilisations” comprising the US, Western and Central Europe and Australia on the one hand and the “Orthodox Christian World” comprising Russia, its western and Caucasian neighbours, Serbia, Greece and Cyprus, on the other.
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