The former millennium tried to glue the pieces of a disjointed world together. It did not become one--and why should it--but it looked for awhile almost able to pursue consensual goals. While ambitions were universal, the methodology was diverse. Since then even the vocabulary has changed. The "third world" or "the group of 77", were erased and a myriad of groups and sup-groupings appeared which could be mobilised against the "end of history", prematurely advanced by the likes of Francis Fukuyama. BRICS, G7, G20, and their off springs filled the void.
Recent events show us that the world has regressed, that enlightenment is no longer on the agenda and, quite to the contrary, is covered with ugly alternatives. Nowhere is the divide as deep as between Western and Muslim societies. The ideological tension which even reduces the 9/11 tragedy to a masquerade cooked up between Israel and the United States to feed anti-Muslim resentment might be the most absurd construction ever invented. True, the Iranian president denies the Holocaust. All those lies find an eager public ready to adhere to them with relish.
One has to abandon "friendly fire" rhetoric or ecumenical utopias finally, and face the fact that we have reached a neo-war echelon. Religious conflicts abound, economical propriety stealing is endemic and the new wave of techno/hacker sabotage is a fact of life. The Muslim nuke is in Allah's hands and we know what that means.
Meanwhile, individuals continue to be killed in numbers in the name of some faceless prophet, while the threat of Muslim rage approaches by the minute. The fighters against colonisation were, paradoxically, at the same time the interlocutors of the day, because they fought for values which we monopolised, while also wanting to be part of this same intellectual added value. The "third world" of yesterday fought a battle which we could not set aside because their grievances had been ours before. Nehru, Mao, Nasser,Tito, and Mandela were closer to us than to the masses they were supposed to lead. This paradoxical "complicity" between opposite camps was the result of a battle of wills waged on an even playing field. Today, the Muslim world fights for their own backwards inroads in secular societies, which have chosen scientific and economic progress, rather than being delayed by mules and suicide bombers. The few progressive elements in the Arab society will end up, like the "Satanic Verses," in hiding, exile or in body bags.
I suggested years ago that the only policy was one of containment, a form of isolation or ostracism from the progressive power narrative. If there is still some hope it has to come from secular Arabs themselves and not be imposed by the outside world, which has become too Cartesian to mingle with the bearded killers who choose the Koran over cyber power. The money we spend over there is misused. The dialogue which has been tried has fallen victim to tribal customs, and our own naivety. Secularism or pluralism do not fit in the "Mecca model", where stone-throwing at the "devil" and at individuals is alike.
There is no shame in a healthy selfishness. I prefer Stuart Mill to Muhammad's aberrations (the same goes for the Bible). Let's get our own house in order and let the Chinese deal with their neighbors. After all, we have no proven geo-political interest over there and there is enough conflict between tribes and strands of Islam to keep them busy where they should, and not plan where they should not. Our help should go to the ones who deserve it rather than to the ones that will usurp it. The United States, Europe and others should create a pole of innovative creativity, wealth unlike any. Resources should not be wasted, soldiers have better things to do than being surrogates for shooting exercises by the very same people who pose as allies. Shall we allow ourselves to be the "dupes' of Karzai and Co.? Many use the Vietnam War as an example, forgetting that it was an intervention based on wrong assumptions, inherited from French colonial megalomania in Indochina. Afghanistan and Pakistan are never going to be what Vietnam is today: a China-bis, secular, a capitalistic hybrid and a de facto ally, almost, against the China shark in the South China Sea.
Today we find ourselves indeed in a clash of civilisations, or better, in a frontal competition wherein the secular contemporary world can still dwarf the obscurantist devil incarnate who is unable to find the path to advancement and is totally unreliable. It is high time to transfer the burden of this hapless situation to takers, if they can be found. Otherwise it is advisable to go, to ignore and to close the windows because the scent of the rot to come will not be for the weak hearted. Believe me, aligned with others, this is a battle for progress to win. Oil, which was their raison d'etre, might end up being their curse.
The last editorial in the Economist left me flabbergasted. It argued that the United States should be the world's policeman. In the same vein it describes the Arab Spring as a great awakening. It advances that in the Arab world, America should do more rather than less. All these lapidary affirmations are a recipe for disaster, and are gratuitous, given the facts on the ground. They also sound out of place in a magazine which is more linked to reliability than to gratuitous soundbites.
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