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,
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.
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.