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Roadmaps to nowhere
By
Phar Kim Beng
KUALA LUMPUR - Words are
instruments of persuasion, but they can become
instruments of confusion if overly simplistic. While
they seek to focus the minds both of the policymakers
and the targeted audience on the salience of certain
issues, they can invoke images that are removed from the
reality on the ground.
When the US journalist
Walter Cronkite used the phrase "Cold War", it stuck -
this despite the fact that at the periphery of this
struggle between the superpowers were numerous "hot"
conflicts. In Vietnam, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Angola,
Mozambique and Afghanistan, this phrase invented in the
relative safety of urban America failed to reflect the
local dynamics.
The most current political
concept - invented in Washington, DC - to hit the world,
especially the Middle East and Asia, is the idea of a
"roadmap". The idea is that parties engaged in conflict,
if allowed to "travel" together with clear compliance to
mutual goals and mutual expectations, would be able to
reach their destination, no matter how tortuous the
journey.
Guiding them are, of course, the great
powers - in the case of Israel and Palestine, the United
States, the European Union, Russia and the United
Nations, known as the Quartet.
The "roadmap"
idea is guided by a geographical metaphor: that the
politics of what some political scientists called
"enduring rivalry" (conflicts that last for more than 50
years) is riven with dangerous contours that need to be
carefully maneuvered - indeed with much tenacity and
determination, not unlike making an assault on a
mountain range.
Hence the plotted journey (of
the roadmap) is not so much akin to walking hand in hand
on a flat, arid and barren surface, deprived of water
and physical sustenance, as it is to climb a treacherous
and jagged mountain together, even if both sides hate
each other for the duration of the expedition.
Indeed, the "roadmap" idea is not so much
focused on understanding what each side wants and
expects from the other as it is to perform a series of
steps toward well-defined goals. For instance, in the
Israeli-Palestinian roadmap, the appended phrase
"performance-based" serves as an adjunct to the concept
to allow the creation of two states at the end of the
process. The destination is a final and comprehensive
settlement of the Israel-Palestinian conflict by 2005,
as presented in US President George W Bush's speech of
June 24, and welcomed by the EU, Russia, and the UN in
the July 16 and September 17 Quartet Ministerial
statements.
In East Asia, latching on to the new
idiom, the governments of Thailand and now South Korea
have also spoken of the necessity of having "roadmaps"
to help Myanmar and North Korea, respectively, find
their way out of the morass they have gotten themselves
into over the past few decades.
To shield their
roadmaps from criticism, however, both Thailand and
South Korea have only vaguely testified to the existence
of any formulas, although they clearly exist in the
official thinking of both countries' policymakers.
Elites, both in academe and think-tanks, have
spoken of the need to shepherd the hermetic leaderships
of Myanmar and North Korea to the open, anarchical field
of global politics and market economy. Yet both Bangkok
and Seoul must exercise caution regarding "roadmaps"
that are unilinear in nature. Hard-nosed reality in
politics cannot easily be altered by formulas or
roadmaps, especially those imported from abroad.
The pitfalls that bedevil any political journey
of two antagonists are not merely proverbial, but
physical and psychological. Radical elements often try
to exploit these perils by terrorist or suicidal
attacks. Their goal is to derail the peace process by
creating a spiral of violence every time there is a
peaceful lull.
Israel and Palestine have
accepted the "roadmap" idea floated by the Bush
administration because both sides are desperate. Israel,
for one, realizes that its declining birthrate does not
allow it to hold occupied territories permanently in
Palestine, as Palestinian birthrates viz Israeli ones
are at the rate of 6:1. A solution, interim or
otherwise, is therefore needed to redress this anomalous
demography.
Conversely, neither the Myanmar nor
the North Korea regime, even when faced with the specter
of a collapsing economy or international sanction, is as
hard pressed to reach for a solution. North Korea in
particular has had a field day with its threats to build
a nuclear arsenal. Myanmar, even with the relatively
moderate Khin Nyunt as its new prime minister, is not
necessarily averse to reneging on any "performance-based
roadmap", as it can continue to count on the support of
China and India.
Performance-based roadmaps have
been used not merely as nifty formulas, but also as a
sequenced mechanism to guide the conflicting parties to
the desired destination. Yet such roadmaps, even granted
the necessary structure, timetable, phases and
great-power support already built into the policy, will
not necessarily succeed, as they often appear too late,
when conflicts have become far too endemic and
entrenched to allow the introduction of any neat
solution.
The politics of enduring inter- and
intra-rivalry, as seen in Israel, Palestine, North Korea
and Myanmar, is extremely complex. When external actors
intervene to redeem the situation, their solutions are
either too little, too late, or a combination of both.
Therein is the tragedy of enduring conflicts.
Roadmaps, formulas, and timetables can be laid down, but
conflicts will continue to play out until all sides are
too tired to go for each other's jugulars. This is
called the peace of exhaustion.
The leadership
in Myanmar and North Korea still feel virile. There is
no indication that they want to cave in to any external
pressure. So the idea of a roadmap, while sound on
paper, may fail in practice.
(Copyright 2003
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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