The US State Department's new drive towards invasive diplomacy only reveals the continuing arrogance and dangerous recklessness of the current American administration, writes Gamil Matar* Condoleezza Rice has had more to say in the past two months than she ever has before. I'm not just talking quantitatively. She's addressed university audiences, academic forums and press conferences and has appeared frequently on television, sometimes twice in a single day. And she has something interesting to say, which sets her apart from her predecessors in office. Rice will be credited for adding new and original terms and concepts in the field of diplomacy. I believe that some of these concepts are already being put into effect and that she has been priming the world for a new style of American foreign policy behaviour. The most part of this behaviour is intended to create the springboard from which Washington will be able to leap the gap between superpower and imperial capital. I was particularly struck by Rice's recent lecture at Georgetown University and her statements on the same subject before the Senate's Foreign Affairs Committee when inaugurating the notion of "transformational diplomacy". The last encounter we had with a Washington drive to revamp its image was with its choice of the so-called "public diplomacy" approach. Many political analysts at the time felt that in adopting this policy the US had overstepped that red line in international law that restricted the type of contacts that foreign diplomats could make with citizens in their host country. Suddenly, US Embassy officials began to tour the corridors of government buildings in the countries to which they were posted on grounds that they had to monitor the progress of irrigation, healthcare and other development projects sponsored and funded by US aid agencies. Soon we began to hear rumours of what were tantamount to American directives to local government agencies on purely sovereign concerns. Then, the next thing you know, Rice announces this month that "public diplomacy" was only one facet of America's new "transformational diplomacy". The new term is the State Department's rubric for a shift in emphasis to more cities and regions in emerging nations such as China, India, Indonesia, South Africa and Brazil. Without mentioning names, Rice also speaks of getting to countries verging on the brink of failure and extremism before terrorism does, as had occurred in Afghanistan. In other words, the State Department wants to intensify the presence of its diplomats in parts of the world commonly referred to as "hardship postings" due to the difficult material and, sometimes, security conditions in those countries. Rice, therefore, asked the Senate committee to approve higher compensations for diplomats who will be specialising in these areas and committing themselves to learning such languages as Arabic, Urdu, Persian and Chinese. Under this plan, too, some diplomats will be working "on assignment" outside the embassies to which they are posted. Much as that old-time favourite of Western fans, the Lone Ranger, these diplomats will be braving the streets, mingling with the people whose language they have now acquired and implementing Washington's instructions without the usual red tape to wade through. The mission of these diplomatic lone rangers will include training people in democracy building, helping them improve healthcare and educational services, and promoting American principles. It looks like the State Department plans to take on the functions of the Peace Corps and that it has expanded the concept of diplomacy to embrace all the activities undertaken by American citizens, NGOs and aid agencies abroad. This, in its own right, is a singular and fundamental conceptual shift in one of the oldest professions of the world. It also appears that the State Department intends to make itself responsible for a task that had long fallen under the umbrella of the Pentagon, but at which the Pentagon had dismally failed, certainly in Iraq. According to Rice, "post-conflict reconstruction and stability bureaus" will be established in countries that have just emerged from war or internal strife. The bureaus will be multi-functional. To be staffed by lawyers and judges, architects and engineers, bankers and economic experts, police and other security experts, they will be equipped with all the skills necessary for running an exhausted war-torn country, rebuilding the organisations and institutions that had been destroyed by war and overhauling those institutions or organisations whose dismantlement and reconstruction is regarded to be in the interests of the US or the "international community". One cannot help but observe that this transformational diplomacy has at least certain elements in common with an erstwhile Soviet custom. Now, apparently, US diplomats will be seconded as political advisors to US military units operating abroad, rather in the manner of the Communist Party's erstwhile commissars. It is not difficult to imagine the problems and confusion that will arise from this; especially in view of the heated rivalries and turf wars that are taking place today in Washington between the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department and the FBI. The "transformational diplomacy" scheme was not the only item on the secretary of state's agenda these past few weeks. She spoke emphatically on the "powers" that the Security Council had in order to "force" countries into cooperating. She said, equally emphatically and not without a touch of haughtiness, that the only way the Palestinian people would realise a better life was to stick to the peace process. In this regard, she urged Arab governments to cut off all forms of assistance to Hamas as long as it believed it had the right to combine violence with peace diplomacy. The US, she said in no uncertain terms, would not support a Palestinian government that did not accept Israel's right to exist and that did not demonstrate its commitment to this principle by condemning terrorism and disarming the Palestinian militias. At least, we should give her credit for not contradicting herself. She never once aimed a single word of criticism or censure against Israel. She saved all her venom for Hamas and the Palestinians, and all her tenderness for Israel, "whom Hamas wants to destroy". This is not exactly the type of impartiality conducive to the success of her diplomacy in the Middle East and Islamic world. Here's her outlook on the world today: "we are living in an unusual time, when centuries of experience have been turned head over heels. We are living in a time in which there are no wars or conflicts between international powers." This is also a time -- she adds -- in which the greatest threats come from conflicts within nations rather than between nations. The US has been driven to a state of war by this new phenomenon, a phenomenon whereby the domestic conditions within certain countries have come to threaten American peace and security. For this reason, it is in America's interest to work together with its partners, as well as "to use our diplomatic strength and our economic aid" to build well-governed countries, to help the people in those countries better their standards of living, secure their borders, cooperate with friendly nations towards building a better future and "hunt down scientist outlaws and WMD [weapons of mass destruction] black-marketeers." Rice leaves us in no doubt about what America's diplomatic restructuring is all about: America's forthcoming wars will not be against foreign governments but against what it regards as hostile forces inside foreign countries. Rice's plans and those of Rumsfeld in the Pentagon have much in common, to the extent that they can be seen as complimentary. Both are grounded in the exigencies brought into being by 11 September and that have ostensibly propelled the US into a state of war. They anticipate that this will be a protracted war, in which the US will have to rely on individuals or small military or diplomatic task teams, operating in various hotspots around the world covertly or overtly and with other governments' approval or not. Both agree that military action alone does not produce lasting victory; that post-conflict diplomatic and civilian efforts are required for reconstruction and the restoration of stability. It further appears that America's future wars will increasingly tend towards short-term, petty wars. "Little wars will prevent the proliferation of big wars," goes the theory, which is being put into practice at the moment in unpublicised military operations going on south of the Sahara. Rice and Rumsfeld also agree that although the US will not be able to create peace for generations to come, "it can create a more democratic world in which there are no more malfunctioning governments." There are two ways towards this end, they say. One is through calm and patient cooperation and the promotion, through persuasion or pressure -- whichever is quicker and more effective -- of various forms of alliance. The other is to create "proxies", as Rice put it, in countries and regions around the world and to enhance the power and influence of these proxies. It is not difficult to imagine the Pentagon and the State Department working together very closely on this score. I cannot interpret the substance of Rice's speech of 18 January 2006, later reiterated before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee on 15 February, in her meeting with Arab-American journalists on 17 February, in her interview with CBS's Bob Schafer on 12 February, in her interview with LBC's Marcel Ghanem on 14 February, in her remarks before the Senate Budget Committee on 16 February and in her joint press conference with the Israeli minister of foreign affairs on 8 February, as anything but an affirmation that the US is going to unleash a drive of "peaceful coercion" against the governments and peoples of the Islamic world in particular. The US is going to besiege these countries with the type of pressures that make them buckle, blockades that can't be breached, media campaigns that cannot be countered, and other types of "peaceful" means that can sometimes be more destructive than war. This is the type of "peace" that Israel and a large segment of US policy-makers believe will succeed with the Arabs where war has failed. Perhaps this is a sign of Rice's -- and other US think- tank members' -- cunning, What I cannot understand is why they and others (including Bush) are so determined to portray Islam as a religion of extremists and terrorists. Where is the US fighting now? Who is it pressuring? Against what countries is it pushing for economic sanctions? The answer to these questions is sufficient to identify "the other" against which Washington is mobilising all its diplomatic and military energies and hunkering down for a protracted war. It's in Afghanistan and Iraq and perhaps in the eastern and western coasts of Africa. It is campaigning furiously against Iran and Hamas, and it is threatening to inflame domestic problems in Arab and Islamic countries that refuse to lend a hand in isolating Hamas as well as yielding to Tel Aviv's other demands. I believe, along with Daniel Benjamin and Stephen Simon, co-authors of The Next Attack, that the Bush administration's failure in its war against terrorism is primarily due to the application of the philosophy, "we've got to fight them over there before we end up having to fight them over here." The US is still "fighting over there" with more than 130,000 forces in Iraq and thousands more in other countries. Indeed, Rice and Rumsfeld are still talking about expanding and intensifying the realm of US interventionism. Sadly, I can only agree with Francis Fukuyama who, in The New York Times Magazine of 19 February, predicted that the levels of both peaceful and military violence that will be brought to bear in the implementation of Washington's "transformational diplomacy" must inevitably climb. The reason is patently obvious: American violence will beget ever more destructive and widespread terrorism on the other side. * The writer is director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research.
