Decline and fall

I know this is not the time to speak of decline and fall. Bush’s victory cannot have anything to do with decline having been recently voted in by an overwhelming vote by Americans. On the contrary, he is basking in the glory of acceptance of his policies and the path he has taken for the US whether these be domestic or international. So when I write on decline and fall, I make no direct allusion to the recent election results. I go farther and it has to do with a human truism that litters the history of nations that become would-be empires.

Funny that my husband and I should have picked up Edward Gibbons’ The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in a bookshop called the American Bookstore in Paris. It is a classic that so many historians turn to when asking whether empires must always self-destruct. It may be because the story of the collapse of Rome speaks to something fundamental within the Western imagination. Rome’s collapse is a morality tale of hubris and nemesis that speaks of the unrelenting cycle of history. No wonder there is a continuing interest in what happened to Rome. Its lesson is simple – what rose had to fall.

That is the backdrop in which I would cast America’s role as the lone superpower of the world from hereon whether it is Bush or even if Kerry had won. From the Roman tale we have glimpses of what the future might be for a world led by America. The question whether we are at the threshold of a millennial empire or on the precipice of a new Dark Age will surely come up. But more importantly, will we know which is which?

Maybe not. But if mythic America and its notions of moral absolutes take over and decide the world’s agenda, the consequences can be dire. The rest of the world will have to challenge its leadership if it fails to provide a language for discussion of what really matters. I am not optimistic given that the American myth of what it describes as ‘moral values’ predominates. It will only circumscribe debate, create opposition and fire up antagonism from the rest of the world,

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While there is profound thinking of the implications of Bush’s victory, our leaders are held down by parochial politics. I do not see the relevance of worrying whether relations between the Philippines and the United States remain good because Washington was displeased with President GMA for withdrawing the Filipino contingent from Iraq. Why are we shooting our own feet once again? If President GMA is convinced she has done the right thing in protecting the welfare of a Filipino worker so be it. Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel, Jr. saying that "Bush remains sore over the pullout of Filipino troops from Iraq" does not help. I hope President GMA will ignore such comments and at all times maintain the dignity of her decision. By all means she should meet and talk with President Bush during the APEC summit in Santiago, Chile about continuing cooperation between our two countries but there is nothing to be apologetic about. She should project herself not as an obsequious leader of a former colonizer but as the president of an independent country, that is only now finding its own voice in the international arena.

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There has been a lot of speculation on just why one of China’s foreign policy advisers, Qian Qichen, criticized US President George Bush just days before the American election. The former vice premier accused the US government of trying to "rule over the whole world". The "philosophy of the ‘Bush Doctrine’ is in essence the use of force", he said. At other times, China has been more reticent about stating its views. Why it departed from that reticence remains unclear.

Interestingly former President Fidel V. Ramos, of late, has been an active participant in group discussions with China. More recently he gave the keynote address in the China Economic Growth Forum 2004 which focused on China’s macro-economic policies and controls. He stressed that with political threats affecting the entire world- international terrorism, proliferation of nuclear weapons, the instability arising from the long standing Arab-Israel conflict, the protracted war in Iraq and the weakening of the UN System,, it may be time to concentrate on a Pax Asia-Pacifica instead of Pax Americana. "The major Asian countries and sub-regional blocks should contribute and share in the maintenance of Asia-Pacific security and stability", he said. He likened the Asia Pacific enterprise to the European Union which grew out of the cold war stalemate between the US and the USSR. The European Union took the opportunity to consolidate and expand as a regional force.

The Philippines can only reinforce its standing in the world when it is able to articulate its own policies. I hope Ramos, as honorary chairman of the Lakas-CMD, the President’s party, speaks for the entire party when articulating these policies.

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I was seated next to the Israeli ambassador in a recent luncheon so I took the opportunity to ask if there was any chance that Israelis and Palestinians can come together under one political structure. No, was his succinct answer. "We would not accept a Palestinian as our prime minister", he added.

I would have been annoyed at his intransigence if I had not been informed that such recalcitrance comes from a long history that led to the partition of Palestine. In Bernard Wasserstein’s book Israelis and Palestinians, the author claims the partition of Palestine began in the early 1920s. It did not start with President George W. Bush or the UN General Assembly resolution of 29 November 1947, nor out of the Palestine Royal Commission Report of 1937 which recommended it.

He says the origins of partition lay in the failure in the early 1920s to create a unified political community in Palestine that would embrace both Jews and Arabs. "The collapse of efforts to construct a constitutional government with joint Arab-Jewish political institutions, in particular a legislative council, paved the way for a process of institutional partition."

The Jewish Agency, an umbrella for the Zionist Organization and the Supreme Muslim Council headed by the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husayni were precursors of the partition. From the 1920s to early 1930s, these two bodies developed into quasi governments of the Jews and the Arabs in Palestine long before any question arose on territorial partitions.

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