T N Ninan: Winner's curse

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

We now know as a result of an official inquiry that the BBC was on the button when it reported that Tony Blair had "sexed up" intelligence reports in order to make the case for invading Iraq.

We also know, as a result of the Senate inquiry, that the CIA deliberately fed Colin Powell with suspect intelligence so that he could make a case for war to the UN General Assembly.

And we SHOULD know that when Prime Minister Blair and President Bush continue to insist that they were nevertheless right to go into Iraq, that the Iraqis are better off as a result, that this comes close to the old imperial argument and the re-birth of the white man's burden. The imperial project may go no further, given the setbacks in Iraq, but one cannot be sure.

The important issue, meanwhile, is what the "war on terror" is doing to Western liberal societies. For all their mutual hostility, the communist challenge to liberal capitalism resulted in the reform of capitalism that till then had been "red in tooth and claw", and the birth (in Europe at least) of welfare democracy, which took care of the losers.

Also, few people remember today that the two forces actually combined to defeat a common challenge to both, in the form of fascism. So it is possible to argue that the communist challenge reformed and perhaps even saved capitalism.

Can any such beneficial results be expected from the war on terror? In the US, we have the Patriot Act and the holding of suspects without trial, without access to lawyers and without being told the charges against them.

Out of the two grand theses that emerged at the end of the communist challenge "" Francis Fukuyama's End of History and Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilisations "" the operative paradigm seems to be the latter.

Fukuyama's thesis after the collapse of the Soviet system, that all societies would now converge around the liberal democratic ideal, seems particularly short-sighted as the US takes on some of the characteristics of the forces it is now pitted against and becomes a less liberal system with reduced tolerance of dissent. This has happened before, of course.

Stalin's show trials in the Soviet Union found a muffled echo in Senator Joseph McCarthy's Committee on Un-American Activities. If the terrorists strike in the US once more with anything like the impact they had three years ago, it is certain that Huntington's thesis will find fresh purchase in the ordinary American mind.

It is hard to think at this juncture of the beneficial side effects of the war on terror, of the kind that were produced by the battle against communism. If positive currents are to emerge from today's whirlpools, they would have to be in favour of multi-culturalism and the celebration of variety.

After all, if the economic consequence of globalisation is the birth of new centres of growth and economic power (China, India and Asia in general), is there any reason why this should not have a cultural parallel? The problem of course is that political Islam provides no answers to these questions, certainly none that can challenge Western perceptions and belief systems, as communism did. The principle underlying that earlier challenge was equality.

What is the principle underlying the Islamist challenge, other than a seeming rejection of modernism? And if the only form this challenge takes is through militant Islam, then Western democracies will seek to counter it through unwelcome responses that in some ways will boomerang on their own citizens.

To their credit, the much derided neo-conservatives in the US at least had a reformist vision within their imperial project, of wanting to convert nasty dictatorships that bred terrorists, into representative democracies. The problem of course is that the imperial impulse got in the way, even as the Anglo-American armies have over-reached militarily.

There remains the danger that the whole thing will unravel badly "" and Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of Great Powers comes to mind "" whenever the US starts having to deal with its twin deficits on trade and the budget.

These are large themes that cannot be encapsulated in a short column. Suffice it to say that as Bush and Blair try to free themselves from their own lies, and as we face the near-certainty of more episodes in the face-off against terrorism, it is not just the countries of West Asia who have to face questions about how their societies are run.