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Ill-conceived foray

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband is a youngish man in a hurry. Son of a Marxist political theorist, Ralph Miliband, and reputed to be a big ideas intellectual, he made a political career for himself as a Blairite, becoming, in effect, Tony Blair’s head of policy at the age of 29. Mr. Miliband has been on the fast track since New Labour swept to power in 1997, was made Foreign Secretary in June 2007, and is regarded as a prime ministerial prospect. As Labour’s political stock plummeted during the last phase of Mr. Blair’s prime ministership, continued its decline under Gordon Brown, and then rallied unexpectedly in the thick of a financial crisis and recession, Mr. Miliband has adjusted his political posture, his world-view, and his appraisal of sensitive issues to suit changing times and enhance his prospects. He is used to playing hardball. He is not particularly bothered about consistency.

How else to explain his sudden conversion to the view that the United States-led post-9/11 ‘war on terror’ — in which the British government’s complicity was wholehearted and awful, in contrast to the wise and honourable course pursued by the French and German governments — is “misleading and mistaken”? His article, “‘War on terror’ was wrong,” published in The Guardian on January 15, is too little, too late. It is hardly profound. It rehashes some of the post-9/11 arguments heard round the world against the military invasion and occupation of, first, Afghanistan and, then, Iraq. Mr. Miliband’s change of mind seems to have little to do with the notion of right and wrong, just and unjust. It makes no reference to the enormous toll of death, devastation, and human suffering the Bush-Blair wars have inflicted on the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan. The British Foreign Secretary’s objection to the “misleading and mistaken” notion, to which he concedes some merit, is basically instrumentalist. All this might have remained at the level of general ideas had Mr. Miliband not deployed them in a clumsy and ill-conceived foray into the arena of India-Pakistan relations. There is absolutely nothing wrong in his suggestion that India must continue to pursue political and diplomatic efforts to ensure that Pakistan brings to justice the kingpins and conspirators behind the Mumbai terror, and eliminates the terror infrastructure on Pakistani soil. However, his arguments ruling extradition out of court, ostensibly for legal reasons, reek of double standards and casuistry. What is worse, importing the Kashmir dispute and the need to resolve it into a discussion of what Pakistan needs to do immediately about the Mumbai terror attacks is remarkably insensitive. Such ham-handedness plays into the hands of those who are in denial and rationalise violent extremism by finding ‘just’ causes for it.

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