Western Abandonment of Persecuted Christians a Grave 'Strategic Error'
(Le Figaro, France)
"America
should set as a strategic priority the defense of Christians across the world,
without even considering interfering in the internal affairs of Muslims. From
Pakistan to Iraq, from Nigeria to Egypt and from Algeria to Indonesia, there
are over 150 million Christians suffering persecution, state-sponsored and not.
By favoring the cult of democracy over religious freedom, the West has
committed a strategic error. Like it or not, all nations of the world associate
Christians with the West. The fact that it has not made defending them a
strategic priority has only earned it contempt from its rivals and enemies."
Strange as it may seem, our American friends still don't
seem to have learned the lessons of the strategic abyss they blindly plunged themselves
into after September 11, 2001. Taking the lucky terrorist strikes for a
military attack comparable to Pearl Harbor, they successively invaded two
Muslim countries whose populations had never shown any hostility toward
America. Bin Laden had only traveled to Afghanistan in 1996 after the Clinton Administration
refused
to accept extradition of the Saudi sheikh from Sudan, which had previously extradited
the terrorist Carlos the
Jackal to France. Let us also recall that Iraq under Saddam Hussein only embarked
on his ruinous war
against Iran (1980-1988) at the invitation of America, its allies and the
oil kingdoms of the Gulf. Despite the grand promises made by U.S. leaders, the
prolonged Western occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have not transformed
these countries into effective democracies. On the contrary, it has kindled a
vocation for thousands of little bin Ladens.
Through its size and population, by the force of its armed
forces, by the power of its economy, the excellence of its universities and the
influence of its industries of culture, America is quite naturally the leading
country of the West. Unfortunately, to the detriment of the whole of the West, that
leadership is today struck by strategic blindness. After given weapons to Syria's
ephemeral “moderate” opposition, the United States today wants to meddle again,
this time in the Ukraine civil war by supplying weapons to the nationalist
militias and armies of the government in Kiev. Ten years of American
interference in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates ended in failure. So
should the West today interfere further in the region between the Don and the
Dnieper? Do we have an interest in pouring fuel on the fire? What do we
actually have to gain? We aren't seeing clearly and no clear explanation has
been provided. America is quite naturally the leading country of the West. What
do we have to gain by sanctions against Russia? Should we not be more interested
in conferring with Moscow against what has become our principal enemy, Sunni
Islamic Jihadism?
Posted by Worldmeets.US
Economically, are we choosing well by throwing Russia into
the arms of the Chinese? Is it normal for European foreign policy to be
dominated by the paranoid reflexes of the Poles, the Lithuanians, the Latvians
and the Estonians, even if their views can be historically understood? Is it
legitimate to want to extend a so-called "Atlantic Alliance" to the
shores of the Black Sea? There are so many questions that remain unanswered for
us, French citizens. Yet America has not always been in a state of such
strategic confusion. In the 1950s she knew how to draw a clear line for the
West: containment of communist expansion, sponsorship of European
reconstruction and encouragement of colonial emancipation. America is engaged
in a counter-productive test of strength with the Russian world and is
neglecting otherwise more urgent strategic priorities. What are they? Four are
obvious.
·First, obtain by persuasion the re-integration
of the Sunnis into the power structure of Iraq. America has the moral duty to
extinguish the Sunni-Shiite religious war that it contributed so much to
setting alight.
·Second, encourage the oil monarchies of the Gulf
to stop exporting the dangerous ideology of Wahhabism to the Arab-Muslim world
and Europe.
·Third, impose a peace settlement on the Israelis
and Palestinians (on the basis of the three quite viable informal agreements of
Geneva in 2005) - even is it means brandishing the financial weapon in
front of a U.S. right and an extreme Israeli right that would remain recalcitrant. As long as it remains marked by double standards in Palestine, Western diplomacy will have greatest difficulty making itself heard in the Arab-Islamic world.
Last but not least, America should set as a strategic
priority the defense of Christians across the world,
without even considering interfering in the internal affairs of Muslims. From
Pakistan to Iraq, from Nigeria to Egypt and from Algeria to Indonesia, there
are over 150 million Christians suffering persecution, state-sponsored and not.
By favoring the cult of democracy over religious freedom, the West has
committed a strategic error. Like it or not, all nations of the world associate
Christians with the West. The fact that it has not made defending them a
strategic priority has only earned it contempt from its rivals and enemies. It
is now just a small step from contempt to insult, and another from insult to
war.
*Renaud Girard is Le
Figaro's senior international reporter. He has covered the major conflicts of
the last thirty years. as covered every major conflict
of the last 30 years. He is author of a work on the Iraq War: PourquoiIls
se battent (Why are They Fighting, Flammarion, 2006)
and his latest work: Le Monde en Marche (The World on the Move, published by ÉditionsCNRS, [the publishing
arm of the French government's National Centre for Scientific Research].
