‘China is a sleeping giant. When it wakes, it will shake the world,’ says Napoleon Bonaparte.
After more than half a millennium of Western global domination, it is thankfully ending largely due to the awakening of China after its “hundred years of humiliation.”
One must never underestimate Western civilization’s contributions to a wide range of science, philosophy, and culture. And yet it is just as important never to forget that European civilization, especially as it developed in the Western hemisphere, rested on three overwhelmingly evil foundations: genocide, slavery (including its colonial manifestation), and perpetual warfare.
Despite the seminal contributions of the United States to modern world civilization, these three foundations continue to define its contribution to the state of the world in the Anthropocene Age, in which capitalism’s ideologically driven irresponsible impulses are almost irretrievably determining the very foreseeable fate of human civilization. This is the global context in which contemporary global developments need to be assessed.
Ever since the Pahalgam incident, and India’s allegations followed by its assault against Pakistan, a lot has happened that does not bear repetition. Suffice it to say India rushed to judgment against Pakistan as a matter of policy rather than judgment since it had no interest in acknowledging the beyond-endurable human rights situation it has deliberately created over the past several decades in India-occupied Kashmir, which has elicited two Genocide Alerts from Genocide Watch.
The US initially said it did not have a dog in any India-Pakistan fight. This was a clear green signal to India to go ahead and hammer Pakistan into crying for a ceasefire, at which time the US would step in and impose completely pro-India terms for a “permanent solution” to the Kashmir dispute.
The US calculated that it would thereby (i) achieve the favour of its subcontinental ally, India, against its strategic rival China; (ii) expose the limits of China’s ability to secure its long term friend and partner, Pakistan, against the global and regional hegemonies of the US and India respectively; and (iii) sow the seeds of suspicion and resentment among the corrupt and US-dependent ruling elites of Pakistan, and hopefully even among the common people of Pakistan, against China for not saving them from humiliating defeat at the hands of India.
According to some unverifiable but not inconceivable reports there might actually have been some sort of “concerted war diplomacy” among the US, India and Pakistan whereby India would assert a “new normal” by disproportionately reacting to Pakistan’s alleged “provocation;” Pakistan would not retaliate disproportionately thereby avoiding any risk of uncontrolled escalation; and the US would intervene and finalize a pro-India territorial status quo in Jammu and Kashmir - with India pretending to be dissatisfied and Pakistan licking the wounds of another military misfire.
After all, senior Pakistani military personnel in recent years have made no secret in their interactions with the Pakistani media, especially in the aftermath of India’s revocation of the status of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019, that they no longer see any point in risking war with India over Kashmir. As a result, the only potential casus belli issue with India is no longer Kashmir; it is the Indus Waters Treaty. A jaded Pakistani public opinion is much more likely to accept the reasonable supposition that the denial of water is a far greater threat to life than the denial of territory, however cherished, that seems forever lost anyway.
Based in Islamabad, the writer is Pakistan’s former ambassador to the US, India, and China and head of UN missions in Iraq and Sudan. He can be reached at ashrafjqazi@gmail.com
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