{"id":126958,"date":"2020-11-28T19:31:48","date_gmt":"2020-11-28T14:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/?p=126958"},"modified":"2020-12-09T15:29:12","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T09:59:12","slug":"taking-back-the-america-we-knew","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/column-news\/taking-back-the-america-we-knew\/","title":{"rendered":"Taking Back The America We Knew"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Inderjit Badhwar<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

President-elect Joe Biden\u2019s promise to reverse the vanquished Donald Trump\u2019s destructive attempt to demolish the post-World War II world order based on America\u2019s support for the principles of cooperative internationalism, has come as music to the ears of all those who believe that the exercise of American \u201csoft power\u201d benefits global peace and prosperity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Donald Trump, in his maiden speech to the United Nations General Assembly, several years ago, had enunciated what appeared to be a dangerous new war doctrine in which the international rule of law would be subordinated to the interests of the \u201csovereignty\u201d of nation states. This was a sharp departure from the concept of nations coming together as stakeholders in the quest for collective security and avoidance of a Third World War that could extinguish civilised life as we know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had reiterated his tired campaign theme of \u201cAmerica First\u201d and actually urged all nations to adopt this principle in the pursuit of narrowly defined nationalist interests in a rant that The New Yorker<\/em> described as the dogma of identity politics on steroids. The US president, who used this hallowed international platform to announce that \u201cour military will be the strongest it\u2019s ever been\u201d, then actually proceeded to issue threats to use it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note some of his most remarkable jingo-linguistic flourishes which I hope Biden will consign to the garbage heap: \u201cMajor portions of the world are in conflict, and some, in fact, are going to hell.\u201d He called Iran \u201creckless\u201d and a supporter of forces (among them Al Qaeda) that \u201cspeak openly of mass murder, vowing death to America, destruction to Israel, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room\u201d. (That is tantamount to calling for a regime change.) He promised he would \u201ctotally destroy\u201d North Korea and its leader Kim, whom he described as the \u201cRocketman on a suicide mission\u201d, if they continued pursuing their nuclear and missiles programme. He described as an \u201cembarrassment\u201d the Security Council and NATO-backed nuclear deal with Iran initiated by his predecessor President Obama. He threatened military action in Venezuela \u201cto help them regain their freedom, recover their country, and restore their democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This champion of alt truth democracy, who continued to berate Iran and Cuba for repression and torture, saw nothing but benign tolerance in the regimes of Saudi Arabia and Turkey. And never mind the alt fact that Al Qaeda and ISIS, both Sunni outfits, revel in terrorist murder of Shias who are championed by Shia-majority Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s most drawn-out theme was, however, straight out of the ultra right-wing media organisation Breitbart News<\/em>, headed by his former advisor Steve Bannon. Trump harped on the need for greater sovereignty of all nations to do whatever they pleased within their own borders: \u201cThe nation-state remains the best vehicle for elevating the human condition,\u201d he said. (Read: The nation state solving its own problems as it sees fit is far better than the collective security concept of the UN). In other words, all nations are better off by building walls, and never mind that this completely contradicts Trump\u2019s justifying punishing Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Korea on the basis of human rights violations within their own walls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September 2017, I wrote in India Legal<\/em> that when you contradict history, you get trapped by it. \u201cThe world is not a safer place after Trump\u2019s speech. It is infinitely more dangerous. It will not rein in North Korea. Kim will be even more belligerent. It will further destabilise the Middle East by freeing Iran from its commitment to allow international inspection of its nuclear facilities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Richard Haass, the current president of the Council on Foreign Relations and the head of the State Department\u2019s policy-planning staff under the George HW Bush Administration, told American journalist Robin Wright: \u201cThe defining challenges of the twenty-first century are global in nature. That is what was missing\u2014whether proliferation or terror or climate change or hacking or democratic disruption. A pinched approach to sovereignty is inadequate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her analysis which appeared in The New Yorker<\/em>, she also quotes Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a risk-consulting firm, as saying that the long-term fallout from Trump\u2019s speech may be to accelerate identity politics and anti-globalisation sentiments that fuel so many of today\u2019s conflicts. The world, he said, has been headed toward a \u201cgeopolitical recession\u2026 weakened global institutions can\u2019t respond quickly or effectively to challenges {and} increase the prospects for more wars\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as it is today, even in the 1950s, North Korea had become the flashpoint for World War III after it invaded the South and American forces helped repel the invasion. Not many Indians will remember that the war came to an end when a newly independent India played a critical role in brokering a ceasefire through the United Nations. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru believed, as an article of faith, that the UN was the sonly venue for the resolution of international conflict. He said at the time: \u201cHowever difficult the path, it has to be pursued by repeated attempts at co-operation on the part of all nations. Once that attempt is given up, the consequence can only be a preparation for conflict on a world-wide scale and ultimately, the conflict itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reproduce here portions of my 2017 essay which I believe has as much relevance today as it did over three years ago:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

India\u2019s first prime minister was not the only great statesman who clung to this belief. In November 2001, another tall Indian leader, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in his address to the 56th UN General Assembly: \u201cThis fundamental and seamless linkage between peace, security and development can be recalled in the sage words of the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore: From now onward, any nation that takes an isolated view of its own interests will run contrary to the spirit of the New Age, and will know no peace. From now onward, the anxiety that each country has for its own safety must embrace the welfare of the whole world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Possibly the best known Secretary General of the organisation, Dag Hammarskjold, once stated that the UN was not just a product of do-gooders but a harsh reality. \u201cThe day will come when men will see the UN and what it means clearly. Everything will be all right\u2014you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction, and see it as a drawing they made themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Past presidents who had used and proved America\u2019s might in war after war, still attested to the superiority of the international covenants of law and their instruments in avoiding future human conflict and eliminating human suffering. Harry S Truman said the UN was designed \u201cto make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And former Vice President Hubert Humphrey could very well be answering Trump today when he said many decades ago: \u201cThe heroes of the world community are not those who withdraw when difficulties ensue, not those who can envision neither the prospect of success nor the consequence of failure\u2014but those who stand the heat of battle, the fight for world peace through the United Nations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hearing Trump speak, many people across the globe wistfully recalled one of the greatest speeches delivered before the UN General Assembly on September 25, 1961 following the death of Hammarskjold. The speaker was President John F Kennedy: \u201cA noble servant of peace is gone,\u201d he said, \u201cbut the quest for peace lies before us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe problem is not the death of one man\u2014the problem is the life of this organisation. It will either grow to meet the challenges of our age, or it will be gone with the wind, without influence, without force, without respect. Were we to let it die, to enfeeble its vigor, to cripple its powers, we would condemn our future.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

JFK\u2019s stirring peroration is worth quoting at length. Delivered at the height of the Cold War and nuclear brinkmanship, it is probably more relevant today than it was then. In the development of the UN, he said, \u201crests the only true alternative to war\u2014and war appeals no longer as a rational alternative. Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer concern the great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war\u2014or war will put an end to mankind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo let us here resolve that Dag Hammarskjold did not live, or die, in vain. Let us call a truce to terror. Let us invoke the blessings of peace. And, as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis will require new strength and new roles for the United Nations. For disarmament without checks is but a shadow and a community without law is but a shell. Already the United Nations has become both the measure and the vehicle of man\u2019s most generous impulses. Already it has provided\u2014in the Middle East, in Asia, in Africa this year in the Congo\u2014a means of holding man\u2019s violence within bounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut the great question which confronted this body in 1945 is still before us: whether man\u2019s cherished hopes for progress and peace are to be destroyed by terror and disruption, whether the \u2018foul winds of war\u2019 can be tamed in time to free the cooling winds of reason, and whether the pledges of our Charter are to be fulfilled or defied\u2014pledges to secure peace, progress, human rights and world law.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He concluded: \u201c\u2026But I come here today to look across this world of threats to a world of peace. In that search we cannot expect any final triumph\u2014for new problems will always arise. We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems\u2014for conformity is the jailer of freedom, and the enemy of growth. Nor can we expect to reach our goal by contrivance, by fiat or even by the wishes of all. But however close we sometimes seem to that dark and final abyss, let no man of peace and freedom despair. For he does not stand alone. If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLadies and gentlemen of this Assembly, the decision is ours. Never have the nations of the world had so much to lose, or so much to gain. Together we shall save our planet, or together we shall perish in its flames. Save it we can\u2014and save it we must\u2014and then shall we earn the eternal thanks of mankind and, as peacemakers, the eternal blessing of God.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Earlier in the speech, JFK made a frank observation: \u201cIn this Hall, there are not three forces, but two. One is composed of those who are trying to build the kind of world described in Articles I and II of the Charter. The other, seeking a far different world, would undermine this organization in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kennedy\u2019s speech was the articulation of America\u2019s forward-looking soft power at its best, an America at its noblest, its most humble self, a country with which any nation would want to live in peace and to emulate. Trump\u2019s speech reflected victimhood, selfish aggrandisement, Rambo-hood, a backward-looking bully-nation whom any nation would shun. Small wonder that China\u2019s Xi, Russia\u2019s Putin and Germany\u2019s Merkel did not attend the debut performance of an American president thumping his chest on the world\u2019s largest international stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are still not in a post-Trump world. Trump may have been defeated but Trumpism has clawed itself into the bosom of millions of mainstream Americans. Biden and his supporters will have to coax, cajole and persuade them to open their hearts once again to the America that they once knew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read Also: Filling vacancies in tribunals: Supreme Court orders setting up of National Tribunals Commission [Read Judgment]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President-elect Joe Biden\u2019s promise to reverse the vanquished Donald Trump\u2019s destructive attempt to demolish the post-World War II world order based on America\u2019s support for the principles of cooperative internationalism, has come as music to the ears of Amricans<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":126961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[272],"tags":[5855,1422,24360,3955,3930,97812,2587,77250,24359,3993,97811,97813,3973,3674],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/d2r2ijn7njrktv.cloudfront.net\/IL\/uploads\/2020\/11\/28191740\/Edit-3-3.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126958"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indialegallive.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}