Meaning of non-alignment
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Rice’s ignorance steams ahead

 The US Secretary of State was at her worst when she told India that non-alignment ‘had lost its meaning’. If anything, she had.

Addressing the 32nd Annual US-India Business Council meeting in Washington D C on June 27, 2007, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice posed a seemingly innocent question: "What is the meaning of non-alignment?" Then she herself went on to declare: "It has lost its meaning"!
The fact is, neither Rice's dismissal of the relevance of 'Non-Alignment' nor the memory lapse of many of those at the helm of affairs in the Indian government can make the concept of 'Non-Alignment' irrelevant. It is high time that the US administration moved "past old ways of thinking and old ways of acting"; the sooner the US abandoned militarism and eschewed belligerency, the better it would be for all humanity, Fortunately, an increasing number of nations—currently nearly two-thirds of the UN membership—are reposing their faith in 'Non-Alignment'. Unless the world remained "divided into rival camps" the super profit generating military industries would become obsolete and redundant. In this context it is evident that the Secretary of State's retort on June 27, 2007 that: "One is aligned not with the interests and power of one bloc or another, but with the values of a common humanity" is nothing but a mere tongue-in-cheek statement.

The very purpose of establishing military blocs and military bases was to keep the world "divided into rival camps". "Values of a common humanity" can be nurtured only when the world no longer remains divided into rival camps, a cherished goal for the attainment of which the eclipse of militarism— abandonment of military blocs, abolition of military bases and general and complete disarmament—is a prime necessity. The Non-Alignment Movement (NAM) was created in an attempt to end the division of the world into "friends" and "enemies". Since Rice cannot conceive of a world without enemies, she naturally finds the concept of 'Non-Alignment' irrelevant.

Indeed, if India were to join the United States on a global scale in support of "opportunity and prosperity”—on the lines that the United States is pursuing in Iraq—it would be an unwarranted prescription for India's own peril.

It is incredible that while the US has enormous resources to wage a bloody war to impose "freedom and democracy" in Iraq, it is unwilling to eradicate poverty within its own territory! According to a study titled The Economic Costs of the War in Iraq, which was carried out by Linda Bilmes of Harvard University and Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, "the total economic costs of the war, including direct costs and macroeconomic costs, lie between $1 and $2 trillion."

The promise to support social causes does not appear to be more than a carrot at the end of the stick to attract "friends" for waging war against all those who the US chooses to label as "enemies".

While the US establishment was forced to cow down to incessant domestic pressure from time to time and concede various democratic rights to their less privileged fellow citizens, the US establishment spared no efforts to suppress democratic movements elsewhere in the world. Since WW-II, the US has covertly or
militarily intervened and unlawfully overthrown democratically elected governments in Iran. The US establishment's avowed commitment to "freedom and democracy" is highly questionable. Rice's call to India to abandon 'Non-Alignment' and join the US bandwagon is a rather cynical proposition considering the historical role of
the Non-Alignment Movement (NAM).

  

India can trust nobody

If diplomacy is the art of the possible, non-alignment means that India has to go it alone, notwithstanding what Ms Rice pontificates.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is talking the language of John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower’s adviser and policymaker in the State Department, who once summoned India’s ambassador to Washington, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, to tell her that Non-Alignment was “immoral”. Rice has now gone a step further. In an un-called for statement she has advised India to “move past old ways of thinking”, even when conceding that Non-Alignment might have made sense “during the Cold War when the world was divided into rival camps”, but not any longer. Non-Alignment has been variously described as being equi-distant from both the US and the USSR.

India did not think it was invalidating Non-Alignment when it sought assistance from the US when it was treacherously invaded by China. Nor did India think it was selling its conscience when Indira Gandhi sought food assistance from the US, even when the then President Johnson tried his best to humiliate India and sanctioned assistance to Delhi for the country on a hand-to-mouth basis. Even now, on the nuclear issue, the US is trying to turn India into a beggar state, which explains why the Indo-US nuclear talks have been tottering. To Washington, Non-Alignment does not mean the right of a free country to pursue an independent policy.

External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has rightly—and one might say courageously—rubbished Rice’s remarks. Non-Alignment, he says, has not lost its relevance, especially considering the need for fostering cooperation among developing countries.
But Washington wants all developing nations to be subservient to it. American interests are paramount and no one will blame it for adopting that view. But then why should not every country adopt the same American model? The US talks big. Prior to the visits of two top American officials to Islamabad in June, word was quietly spread from Washington that it was time for President Musharraf to pack his bags. Subsequently it was reported: “Top Bush administrative officials, from the President downwards, have, in an increasingly strident tone begun to point to Pakistan as the Ground Zero of terrorism.” American media reports published that Musharraf has moved up the list of the world’s “worst dictators” from the 17th position to the 15th and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in early February criticised Musharraf, saying that under his seven-year rule “institutions have collapsed”.

On June 14, former prime minister Nawaz Sharief was quoted as being informed by former US president Bill Clinton that Pakistan had moved its nuclear arsenal out of the Sargodha Air Force Base to be used in the war against India. So what should India do? Give up Non-Alignment and listen to the wisdom of Madame Rice so that she can play India against Pakistan and vice versa with both countries firmly under her thumb? India has to remain non-aligned precisely because it can trust nobody. Nehru trusted Britain and took the Kashmir issue to the Security Council in 1948 only to be betrayed both by Britain and by the United States. Nehru trusted China, again, only to be betrayed by Beijing.

Diplomacy is the art of the possible. Rice is a novice in this business but one should be pleased that Pranab Mukherjee told her what she needed to be told. As the saying goes: Once bitten, twice shy. Has the US changed since the days of Nixon and Kissinger… when the former described Indians as“a slippery, treacherous people who are no goddam good?” Answer, Ms Rice.