Bush Chess

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=1431 ^ | June 26, 2K2 | Lowell Ponte

[rdb3]

The 21st century took a new direction last Monday in the bold chess move of President George W. Bush. In what was superficially reported only as a shift in U.S. policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian situation, we may have witnessed the turning point in a game whose outcome will decide and define the future shape of global governance.

Chess is not dominoes. But by urging the creation not only of a Palestinian state but also of a democratic, free market Palestinian state, Mr. Bush knows he is setting in motion forces that could soon topple many Muslim and other undemocratic governments around the world.

"If liberty can blossom in the rocky soil of the West Bank and Gaza," said President Bush on Monday, "it will inspire millions of men and women around the globe who are equally weary of poverty and oppression, equally entitled to the benefits of democratic government."

"It’s important to understand how radical this idea of democracy is for Palestine," said the Wall Street Journal in its Tuesday Editorial. "For years the U.S. and Israel both winked at the brutality of Arab leaders, in the Faustian hope that they would provide ‘stability’ and ‘peace.’…. Yesterday Mr. Bush said this day is over."

To understand the context of President Bush’s strategy, step back from the chess board of the Game of Nations and remember some of the past century’s major shifts and gambits.

¨ During World War I the British Empire, locked in struggle against Axis powers including Turkey’s decrepit Ottoman Empire, sets up today’s Mideast conflicts by simultaneously promising the same land to Jewish leaders and, through Lawrence of Arabia, to the Arabs in exchange for their help winning the war. Following the war, Britain (and ally France) largely renege on such promises and administer the region themselves.

¨ After World War I, Marxists overthrow the six-month-old democratic Kerensky government in Russia and proclaim the birth of an anti-capitalist, ideological Soviet Union bent on the overthrow of the West.

In the continuation of World War I that we call World War II, the socialist-fascist

regime of dictator Franklin Delano Roosevelt arms and allies the U.S. with the Soviet Union. The allies win, but FDR’s anti-colonial pressure and Britain’s weakened condition lead after the war to Britain’s loss of many colonies and mandates, including the 1948 independence of India and today’s Israel. The old European colonial order over decades falls apart, its echo remaining in cultural and economic affinities.

The Soviet Union, facing a U.S. that relies on relatively-inexpensive nuclear

weapons, wages global revolution via terrorist guerrilla tactics, the "war of the flea," against which nukes are too big and awkward to use. Communists take China, and many nations begin to wonder if Communism is the wave of the future.

The U.S. adopts the defensive policy of "Containment," expecting that Communist

nations will eventually fail because of their own internal contradictions. We give away a third of Europe to the Soviets, but bargain Marxists out of Greece and Austria and by airlift sustain West Berlin. We create NATO to shield Western Europe. We fight to save, and then partition, Korea. President John F. Kennedy blockades the new Soviet colony of Cuba, but then allows Soviet nuclear missile submarines to dock there; the CIA kills Castro’s guerrilla hero Che Guevara in South America. We partition, then fight via a "flexible response" anti-guerrilla doctrine to save Vietnam; America "loses," but leaves the winners so badly damaged that they inspire few imitators.

During this "Cold War," many nations, including France and Egypt, gamefully play

the U.S. off against the Soviets to get goodies from both Superpower sides of this "bi-polar world." The U.S. supports Muslim oil dictatorships allied with us against "Godless Communism," just as we once allied with the Soviets to defeat the Greater Satan, Hitler.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and transformation of Russia into a major oil-

supplier and ally to the West, along with the gradual Chinese re-orientation into a quasi-capitalist economy, has today largely created a global consensus around liberal capitalism - Francis Fukuyama’s "End of History."

The West today is challenged no longer by Marxism but by Islamists who see the

Koran not only as religion but as political ideology; their medieval rejection of the open-mindedness of early Islam, however, guarantees that they will quickly lose to the West in this last struggle on the eve of the New World Order. The fat lady is singing. The Game of Nations (like nationalism itself) is almost finished. Checkmate.

Turkey and Pakistan are already quasi-democratic, non-Arab Muslim nations, protected by their Western-oriented militaries from Muslim fundamentalist overthrow of democracy and women’s rights via the ballot box. Even these limited pro-Western examples are looked to longingly by millions of frustrated young Muslims as their hope for a better future.

"The Saudis will not be thrilled," noted the Wall Street Journal Editorial, "with the establishment of a democracy in another Arab land, especially one that would be an example to their own citizens."

President Bush’s speech, the Journal continued, "put him firmly on the side of a new and very different Middle East, one with democracy at its core. It’s a message we think will have surprising resonance in the Arab world, not least among the people of Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia." Apart from its gaff, offending ancient Persian Iran by calling it "Arab," the Journal is quite right.

The Palestinians, for all their violence, are not fundamentalist Muslims. Many of them, like Yasser Arafat’s wife before her Muslim conversion to wed him, are Christian. If emancipated from Arafat’s tyranny and empowered by genuine democracy, the Palestinians could set the ground shaking beneath already-fragile dictatorships in Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations.

Western dependence on the oil of such Muslim dictatorships is rapidly shrinking. As this happens, so too declines any incentive we have to help these strongmen, sheikhs and monarchs suppress their own people. They, like the Ayatollahs of Iran, have also used the United States as a bogyman to divert public anger and frustration away from the rulers responsible for their lack of freedom and fulfillment.

"For decades you’ve been treated as pawns in the Middle East conflict," President Bush on Monday told the Palestinian people. "I can understand [your] deep anger and despair…. You deserve democracy and the rule of law. You deserve an open society and a thriving economy. You deserve a life of hope for your children…. This moment is both an opportunity and a test for all [emphasis mine] parties in the Middle East."

If these pawns rise, the oil kings and Islam-exploiting tyrants will soon almost-certainly fall. Mr. Bush on Monday urged these pawns to rise, and said that the United States would support and reward such a rising.

And by so saying, President Bush signaled that our best analysts have looked many moves ahead in this chess match. We have calculated that democracy in Muslim lands will lead not to a takeover by medieval religious zealots but to a more peaceful, prosperous world for all of us. The young in Iran, for example, are eager to overthrow the rule of the mullahs and Ayatollahs and to import American-style freedoms.

What President Bush said, between the lines of Monday speech, is that after half a century of following the defensive strategy of "containment" in a bi-polar world now past, the United States is now going all-out on a preemptive offensive against both terrorism and the petty tyrannies that breed future terrorists.

We at this historic moment have the power to prevail and, if we use that power wisely, the unified world now emerging will be modeled on America’s free enterprise economics and democratic-republican politics. Freedom-loving peoples of the world, Unite, said President Bush’s empowering Monday message. You have only the remnants of your chains to lose. You have a world to win!

[rdb3]

Ponte's right. Chess ain't dominoes.

[rdb3]

I did search for this under its proper title "Bush Chess" and didn't find it. If it is a repost, nuke it.

Thanx.

[Bigg Red]

...the United States is now going all-out on a preemptive offensive against both terrorism and the petty tyrannies that breed future terrorists.

Let's Roll!

[CROSSHIGHWAYMAN]

After Bush's magnificent Sept. 20 speech to the nation, I told my wife that Bush would do for the middle east what Reagan did for Eastern Europe.

If he fulfills his destiny, Bush will bring democracy and the emergence of economic prosperity to the Muslim world. How he gets there depends on the indigenous peoples.

[Charles_Bingley]

KR to KR8 CHECK!

[Kermit]

Lowell Ponte is pretty hard-headed guy. I'm fascinated by his take on this. Has Bush's word got to the Middle East? Syria blanked out the comments dealing with Syria and I heard that Palie TV didn't even broadcast it.

Related to this, what is American world broadcasting doing? What is Voice of America doing? Do we even have a Radio Free Islam set up? If not, why not? It's already 8 months after 9/11 and it's still not up and running?

[rdb3]

What you are asking here goes above and beyond the scope of this article. Arab nations may have not shared this info with their people, but you can best believe that the leaders of these regimes are now on notice.

As for your other questions, I don't know.

[TexasRepublic]

"Democratic" and "Islamic government" are mutually exclusive concepts -- it isn't going to happen. Democratic secular Islamic societies, such as Turkey, perhaps.

[Kermit]

Maybe somebody knows.

[jwfiv]

A past, present and future history ping fer ya, Serb. Very interesting point of view the writer shares with us.

[rdb3]

This is a different approach. I wish I could say with certainly how it will play out.

[traditionalist]

Great analysis, except for the part where he claims the nation state is finished. What's the new state of Palestine going to be, except a nation-state?

[truth_session]

"The Palestinians, for all their violence, are not fundamentalist Muslims. Many of them, like Yasser Arafat’s wife before her Muslim conversion to wed him, are Christian."

Yes fine Christians over there.

[rdb3]

INCOMING!

[Howlin]

I love Ponte. Honestly. This is a very interesting article and I need to digest it before I comment!

[TADSLOS]

Chess is all about strategery and Bush is master strategerist with a whole lot of strong playing pieces and places to move them ;~)

[mafree]

Thanks for the flag.

[Nick Danger]

This is greatness. This is the kind of thing that people look back on after a hundred years and say, "That was a big deal. That move changed the world."

It is also breakthrough thinking. It ought to be obvious, after screwing around with this struggle for fifty years or so, that the solution does not lie in coming up with yet another finely-tuned nine-point plan for peace. We've had a dozen such plans, and the people who created them were not stupid. The problem isn't in the details, it's in the fundamental assumptions.

One reasonable fundamental assumption is that free people do not allocate huge fractions of their resources to building rockets and bioweapons when they don't even have enough food. Only in dictatorships does that happen. Eliminate the dicatorships, and the "peace process" will take care of itself.

This is serious long-term thinking here; comparing it to chess is apt. It's good chess, too; the kind that wins. If the Soviet Union could fall without a shot, so can the Ba'ath party in Iraq, or the mullahFuerhers in Iran. Or the family Saud.

If Bush can win a second term, such that this policy does not change in only three years, it will indeed transform the Middle East.

I suspect that this policy is not the brainchild of Colin Powell, or Condi Rice, or even Dick Cheney. This has the signature clarity of a Dubya move: a Reagan-like "return to first principles" that cuts through the fifty years of accumulated fog and asks one piercing question: What is the right thing to do here? The right thing is to bring the benefits of liberty and free markets to the Middle East. OK, now how do we do that?

This is how sea changes in policy happen, and we've just seen one. This is tantamount to calling on every one of those potentates over there to "tear down that palace." We all saw what happened the last time somebody tried that. It didn't look easy then, either.

[rdb3]

I think we are witnessing the eventual legacy of President G. W. Bush. It's a paradigm shifting legacy not unlike that of Ronaldus Magnus, a.k.a. President Ronald Reagan.

Sometimes we have to hold the line.

[rdb3]

Isn't that the goal?