World of Danger

Editorial from Morning Star online

As has frequently been observed in this newspaper, the world has become a much less safe place since the demise of the Soviet Union.

The gap left by the Soviet Union and the US strategy for being, and continuing to be, the dominant and only superpower on the globe have had terrible consequences.

And none have been more terrible than the school siege in Beslan. Hundreds of children and adults dead, an entire town traumatised beyond belief and a wedge driven deep between the region's peoples.

But the response of Russian President Vladimir Putin gives little cause for hope.

'We showed weakness and weak people are beaten,' he said on national television.

The desperate efforts made by the Russian authorities to link this bloody outrage to the US-invented 'war on terror' will produce little of benefit to anyone.

And, if Mr Putin's comment is anything to go by, any further acts of terrorism will spark a massive and bloody response.

Unsurprisingly, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon climbed quickly on the bandwagon, calling for an international anti-terrorist alliance, presumably to use as a smokescreen to cover his own war against the Palestinian people.

And equally unsurprising is the attempt by Israeli newspapers to connecting the Beslan siege, the March 11 bomb blasts on Madrid trains, last November's bombing campaign in Istanbul and last week's blasts in Beersheba.

But responses like these are of little use.

When George W Bush and Tony Blair declared their 'war on terrorism,' it was they who provided the unifying force which has driven Islamist extremists and small nationalist movements together.

It was they who dictated that, henceforth, the conflict was of a military nature and would be determined in that manner.

The US attack on Iraq was merely one of many military engagements which this rogue superpower will spawn if nothing is done to make sure that cooler and wiser heads prevail.

Just as in the treatment of the Beslan siege, military intervention does not provide any lasting answer, merely a bloody end to a short-term situation.

For a war that, in George W Bush's own words, 'cannot be won' is one that should not be fought.

Political problems must have political solutions. There is no other way to find a lasting peace than creating one and that cannot be done with the bullet, certainly not when the enemy is unprepared to march up waving its banner and be shot at.

For states to behave in a way that precludes political solutions is to invite terrorist attacks.

And for a world of large states to declare war on any aspirations other than their own is to invite attack from any who do not share those aspirations.

The nations of the world must not rush to the shelter of Bush's war, for that is no shelter, it's a dirty great big target.

Nations must find the courage to seek political solutions to these problems, not the cowardice of a huge and growing state terror as a response to violence.

That way lies destruction for us all.



--Morning Star is a socialist daily newspaper published in Great Britain.



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