On 20 April this year, as the United States military forces in Iraq changed gears from "war fighting" to "state building", two cartoons appeared in The Washington Post. The first has George W Bush asserting, "Syria isn't 'next on the list'. We don't even have 'a list'… It's more of a wheel". The adjoining caricature shows Bush next to a "wheel of fortune"; the arrow is pointing at Iraq, but Syria, Iran and North Korea are also on the wheel, wondering when it will turn against them.
The second cartoon in the Post was even more explicit. An official spokesman in an Uncle Sam hat stands at a lectern saying, "Iraq, then Syria, down through Jordan, then Saudi Arabia to Iran, Afghanistan again, for old times' sake, clean up Pakistan and India, through China to North Korea, back across Russia, straighten out Old Europe….". At this point someone in the audience asks, "What about the Mideast Peace Road Map?" Answers the official spokesman, "That's what I'm looking at". He holds in his hands a map of "the scenic route".
So is this what world politics has boiled down to in 2003? Are these cartoons accurate in their portrayal of the spirit and aspirations of Washington DC? What does it mean to live in an international system in which military capabilities are acutely concentrated in the hands of a single state? Are the rest of us truly at the mercy of the whims and fancies of the Americans? And what is the strategic significance of this state of affairs for South Asia and for its cardinal security dilemma, the India-Pakistan conflict? These questions, uppermost in many minds after the victory of the US (and UK) in Iraq, warrant an analysis of American power and policy, particularly as it relates to South Asia.
US on top
It is important to understand, right at the outset, the overwhelming superiority of American capabilities today. Both logically and causally, everything else flows out of this military dominance, which is both absolute and relative. In absolute terms, the US today has military capabilities that can reach any point on the planet accurately, lethally and in real time, thereby crippling the adversary while its own forces are sheltered to the maximum extent possible from the inherent dangers of war. The Iraq war demonstrated this absolute capability of the US beyond a shadow of doubt.