Second nuclear age? Terror just part of it?

Somehow we expected it was coming. President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech was too strong, too emotional, too outraged, too combative and conflictual not to rock the intellectual and philosophical elite of America. Bush’s address was virtually a declaration of war against the enemies of America. Not only war on international terrorism but war on nations that would harbor terrorists, war on the timid and hesitant, the weak and vacillating, a Manichean war waged by the forces of virtue against the forces of evil.

This was too much for former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who commanded the heights of US diplomacy in the 90s at a time America soared to even more unprecedented power economically, militarily, diplomatically and politically. That was the period following the end of the Cold War in 1989-91 when Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao followed Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Tojo to the scrap heap of history. Ms. Albright, a familiar face to Filipinos, according to the AFP, slammed Bush for designating Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil." She dug the knife deeper by saying many in the international community believed the US had "lost our mind."

Has America really "lost" its mind? Are 660 American combat troops here because the US leadership has lost its way, raging like a wild bull to slay every terrorist — real or imagined — out to threaten the US or seek to bring it down? A tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye because Muslim terror destroyed the Trade World Center and the Pentagon September 11 last year? And slaughtered more than 3000 people?

William Pfaff, political analyst and a frequent byliner of the International Herald Tribune, takes almost the same tack. He writes: "Once again, the president has persisted in giving the Islamists what they presumably most want: admission of America’s vulnerability and recognition of themselves as America’s greatest challenge." Then Mr. Pfaff pours it on: "There is something fake, or faintly Orwellian, in Washington’s insistence that the threat is immense, that mobilization must be permanent, that the military budget be vastly increased, that civil liberties be restricted and that critics be chided as unpatriotic."

Then the knife goes to the bone: "There is something wrong here. The threat and the reaction don’t match. The greed and the corruption that went into the Enron affair is a bigger threat to the United States than Osama bin Laden will ever be, and I would think, most Americans, in their hearts, know it." Were the Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld involved in the Enron scandal, supposedly the worst in US history?

To seek a bigger canvas for what is happening, let us accept several truths.

First, the 9-11 destruction of Twin Towers and the Pentagon hurt America’s leadership and people where it hurt most — the nation’s ego, its hubris, its overpowering conviction the US was the supreme model for all the world to follow. How dare the infidels smite the Statue of Liberty, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? How dare they affront the world’s only superpower with more than 70,000 nuclear missiles that can destroy the world many times over? How dare they deride Pax Americana which saved and held the world together after two world wars? How dare they defame the citadel of Internet, High Tech, Silicon Valley, of Information Technology and globalization where the world dances to fame and fortune on that supreme American invention — the microprocessor?

Second, and this one hurts even more. Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, then Stalin and Khrushchev were perhaps worthy opponents in the art of war. They raised mighty armies and navies. Clashes, wars and battles in the main were open, set-piece military encounters following the manuals of martial combat. But who was this Osama bin Laden? He was a fanatic obsessed with the destruction of America. He was a vagabond, a roustabout, a sneak, a glorified bum with really nothing except a fugitive fire of Islam. With this fire he set up Al-Qaeda and its international conspiratorial band of terrorists, effective only because they plotted in the shadows and were ready to die because 62 vestal virgins awaited them in paradise.

The fact that Osama bin Laden eluded capture in Afghanistan despite all the fiery pledges of George W. Bush they would get him "dead or alive" has also poured fuel into this American push into Armaggedon. Nobody escapes American ire or vengeance. Nobody. Well so far, Osama bin Laden has. And to the extent that he escaped and nobody seems to know where he is strongly suggests America’s war on Afghanistan was only half-won. Bin Laden was to be the prize catch. And this Islamic fugitive, supposed to be a poor, helpless, wretched, easy prey to American justice, now snooks his third finger, left hand at the Americans. This is much more than George W. Bush can bear.

But these are the things we understand.

* * *

I am convinced there are deeper currents that undergird America’s martial offensive today. In a previous column, we endeavored to explain that the US government wanted the Philippines back into America’s geo-political loop in the Asia-Pacific region. The main reason was that the Philippines straddled or abutted on the South China Sea, and therefore our country should occupy a forward position in projecting America’s military might. Why? To make sure the South China Sea – the world’s most strategic waterway through which three-fifths of international commerce navigates – remains secured by the US Pacific Command.

America besides has tremendous economic and financial investments in the Asia-Pacific region and these should be protected at all costs.

Right now, China is both friend and enemy. But remember that China is the only nation that can challenge or threaten US supremacy in the Asia-Pacific region. When America seeks to "engage" China – meaning, seek peaceful collaboration – China is friend. When America seeks to "contain" China, stop, prevent or constrain China from projecting its growing military power into the South China Sea – for example, the Spratleys – China is enemy. In the case of Taiwan, America straddles the tight rope. Taiwan must be prevented by Washington from breaking away from the "One China" policy and seek independence and membership in the United Nations. At the same time, China must not be allowed to regain Taiwan by force of arms.

But we must go further. China is positioned as "the greatest player in history" — as some political analysts describe the Beijing regime — to eventually flex its economic and military muscles and challenge US dominion in Asia. This is the grim drama now on the geo-political chessboard and somewhat explains the presence of American combat troops in the Philippines. Engage China? Contain China? The US is moving its pawns very carefully. And so is China.

The US war against terrorism adds another dimension to the geo-political drama. The Asian dimension.

The countries mentioned in Mr. Bush’s "axis of evil" are all Asian countries. This is no coincidence. The fact is, Iran, Iraq and North Korea lie within America’s nuclear "arc of terror" – in Asia. They are Asian countries that possess the means to wreak either nuclear, chemical or bacteriological havoc on America. Once upon a time, during the First Nuclear Age, the Nuclear Club’s membership was limited to the US, USSR, Britain, France and eventually China which exploded the nuclear bomb in 1964. China as a major power just could not be kept out. It was the first Asian nation to join the Club. But China was expected to behave and it did.

But try as America and Western Europe with the Soviet Union did, several other Asian countries barged in. And as they barged in, America realized with great pain the West had no monopoly on the secret of the atom. As Albert Einstein said, "The atom is everywhere." America’s forward bases in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Diego Garcia, Guam, Japan and South Korea could not quarantine other Asian countries against possessing the atomic and nuclear bomb, regional and intercontinental missiles tipped with chemical, biological and bacteriological warheads.

Iran, Iraq and North Korea,yes. But what was more dramatic, India ushered in the Second Nuclear Age by exploding its bomb in 1974, and then Pakistan, its sworn enemy, followed. Two huge nuclear scorpions in the same battle threatening to blow each other, if not the world apart. Syria reportedly has the bomb too and so does Israel.

If we believe Paul Bracken (Fire in the East), "A new military-industrial complex is rising across Asia, built around missiles, weapons of mass destruction and other technologies." This has sundered America and the West’s Maginot Line against the emergence of a nuclear Asia. Much of Asia still rankles against the dark era of Western colonialism, where many Asian countries – whose cultures and civilizations were much more advanced than those of the West lay helpless at the feet of the marauding colonial armies. According to Bracken, "The great civilizations of China, India, and the Middle East know this and accordingly reject the idea that the European states are the only ones than can be trusted with the awesome responsibility of the A-bomb."

Is it possible that because Islam is in Asia, American wrath has to see to it that Asia is contained and with Asia the "evil" that is terror – all within Asia – exterminated once and for all? America uber alles?