Vortex of Conflict – By Thomas G. Plate

VORTEX OF CONFLICT – THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING PAKISTAN

America exults over the ‘termination’ of Osama bin laden May 2, 2011 BY TOM PLATE

Los Angeles — Just when you begin to worry that maybe the United States cannot do anything right, this happens. And suddenly things seem just a little better – and the barometric pressure in American a little bit lighter.  This is to say that the loud noise you here coming from the 50 states of the United States is one big collective sigh of relief. The man is gone.

Make no mistake about it. The end of the life of Osama bin Laden is the beginning of a number of new things and questions for the rest of us. Like 9/11 itself, it marks a clear chapter in our history.

For an increasingly embattled President Barack Obama, this spectacular development should provide a measure of considerable assurance (if not an outright guarantee) that whoever runs against him next year won’t have the advantage of opposing an incumbent with a soft-on-terrorism image. A one-note Donald-Trump like assault that our president is weak-on-evil just won’t fly. That opportunity is now gone.

It was Obama, after all, who authorized the invasive military operation inside the borders of sovereign Pakistan … and let the diplomatic chips fall where they may. Say what we will about this often-indecisive politician.  On this one, he stuck to his guns on his directive to permit the American military to go wherever it needed and to do whatever it took to end the life of this mass murderer of Americans.

And that took some guts.

As for Pakistan, it is now a question of whether the government of President Asif Ali Zardari will be domestically strengthened by its apparently intimate cooperation with the extraordinary counter-terrorist military operation that assassinated Osama. The worry in Islamabad, of course, is that the streets will explode in anti-American rage. His government could rise or fall on this turn of events. What is certain is that it will not be unaffected. But for the moment at least, U.S.-Pakistan relations, for all appearances – and given all their troubles – seem repaired overnight.

The issue of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship remains central to America’s future role in Southeast Asia, the vital and eternal importance of giant India notwithstanding.  As the timely new book Vortex of Conflict: U.S. Policy Toward Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq by noted academic Dan Caldwell, of Pepperdine University, points out, a successful diplomatic and military effort by the U.S. in Pakistan is a prerequisite to any palpable success in Afghanistan.  The importance of Pakistan in the current global political equation almost cannot be overstated.

And for the U.S. itself, it is to be hoped that the end of the Osama chapter is the beginning of the end of the us-versus-them view of the world so popularized in the minds of small-thinking Americans.

Let us not forget that Osama was no more the typical Muslim than Hitler was the typical German. His worldview was vile, and his anti-humanitarianism flagrant. What’s more, his terrorist operations undoubtedly killed more Muslims than anyone or anything else.

On this point, our ultra-articulate U.S. President was good and precise Sunday night as he spoke to the nation and the world from the White House; so, in his own way — and aside from a few embarrassing flubs early-on – was his otherwise well-meaning predecessor from Texas.

Americans are not as international as we should be but are not quite as provincial as we are often made out to be.

People outside America who think all Americans hate all Muslims don’t have a clue about what makes this country tick. But we Americans do hate people who hate us – totally with out regard to religion, race, creed or color. And the resolve to settle accounts when we are wronged is deeply embedded in our national DNA. We take many things lightly

— but not foreign invasion, mass murder or national humiliation.

Those kinds of things get our back up.

But this desire for revenge is not always the part of us that shows us at our best. Rage can color one’s thinking and behavior like a wild fever that won’t go away.

But with the President’s announcement of the successful operation against Osama, suddenly the national temperature should begin to return to normal. One can only hope nothing so terrible as 9/11 happens again to push it skyward anew. Once was certainly enough. One Osama was enough.

But, if there are to be more, at least they now know what is waiting for them, however long it takes us.

Prof. Tom Plate, Distinguished Scholar of Asian and Pacific Affairs, is the author of the “Giants of Asia” book series and a syndicated columnist. © Pacific Perspectives Media Center, Beverly Hills, Ca.

POWER OF THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY MEETS PRACTICALITY OF THE UN SECRETARY GENERAL

Why Ban Ki-moon has ‘gone Hollywood’

BY TOM PLATE

LOS ANGELES — Issues of power are the reality of the United Nations, an institution that routinely has to traffic in the realities of war, pestilence, plague, ethnic cleaning, nation-building and nation-destruction. But it generally gets bad media.

By contrast Hollywood often swims in the world of unreality, shaped into gripping stories and unforgettable images that seek to engage us to the extent (frankly) they are commercial. It generally generates great publicity.

What a difference! So last year Ban Ki-moon, the workaholic Secretary General, came to Los Angeles in an effort to utilize some of that image-power on behalf of his image-battered UN. And next week he’ll be back here again to try to do more of the same.

Whether it’s the power of illusion or reality, power is power.  The UN, Ban feels, is one big treasure trove of untold stories – of individual heroism by field workers or collective competence by various and affiliated UN agencies. But only a massive screw-up is sure to attract the mainstream news media’s attention. That’s anything but the full true story of the UN.

The chosen venue for Ban’s mission for a more complete understanding of the far-flung world organization is the Global Creative Forum, a Hollywood nonprofit with credibility with the entertainment business’ marquee names. Run by “Chicken Soup for the Soul” entrepreneur William Rouhana, with Kate Moulene, a former magazine editor, Hollywood insider and self-described “Charity Chick,” its annual killer event revolves issue-panels at the Hammer Museum that star Ban – and other stars.

One particular moment last year hit everyone hard.  It was at the concluding GCF dinner, packed with Hollywood’s cause-committed stars, when the UNSG got up to speak  with unusual emotion. The difference between your reality and mine, Ban explained, could not be overstated. When the shooting stops on your sets, your “dead” and “wounded” jump up, wash off their bloody makeup and live to be “shot” another day. But UN tragedy is real: when some horrible happening takes him to a UN scene, he said, the bodies lying on the side of the road do not rise up and walk off the “set.” They do not live for another day. They are really dead.

The large and attentive patio crowd included everyone from Hilary Swank, Orlando Bloom and Kiefer Sutherland (to drop just a few names) to powerhouse directors such as Ron Howard, Ed Zwick and Jason Reitman, and they were visibly moved. For all the glitter, this crowd represented the more caring portion of Hollywood. This is the part of Hollywood that’s not continually in drug rehab, divorce court, or contract litigation – right, the part the media doesn’t usually cover … the productive part.

The media is invariably cynical about the effectiveness of charity celebs, as I used to be — at least until Moulene (and to some extent Ban, by his very presence at the annual event) wiped that cynical smirk off my face. I used to think that charity celebs had no idea about the complex issues they were fronting for, but in many instances I was wrong.  I also used to think they didn’t accomplish much – wrong again, as found out.

Star power adds money to causes and expands the audience for the worthy cause. Explains Moulene, the Charity Chick who’s also a mother of five and an environmentally-active outdoors-woman: “These are celebrities who don’t just ‘show up’ to be seen. Their issues tend to be lifelong passions for them. Richard Gere is totally genuine about his Buddhism and Tibet; sure, Jackie Chan is a virtuoso about making people laugh – but could he care if people laugh at his activism? No.”  To my lingering cynicism, the Charity Chick says: “None of these actors need to be more famous! They get all the attention they need. Even so, they are willing to step up and help in order to bring attention to other people and other issues. I think that is something that we as a global community need to really acknowledge and appreciate. It is because of the generosity of time and concern of so many of these key artists that people behind the scenes, like me, have been able to raise many millions of dollars to help pressing causes.”

Ban doesn’t need the publicity, either, but he has been gambling with a little of his time to forge some kind of working alliance with Hollywood’s sincerely concerned image-makers. Now into his fifth year at the helm, the Secretary General is convinced that more stories about UN humanitarian intervention and heroic life-saving need to reach the global audience. He is well aware that the regular news media, except in rare instances, are not interested. Can Hollywood help? Maybe all that’s needed is enough good directors, the right stars and appealing story lines. Ban would only further require that the stories be true. That’s not ordinarily necessary in Hollywood. But Ban fervently believes the UN does enough good stuff out there in the real world that there’s absolutely no need to make anything up

Pacific Perspective

‘LAWRENCE OF AMERICA’ GOES TO ARABIA

December 19, 2010

BY TOM PLATE

Dubai, United Arab Emirates — From the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia to the

Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East, it is the wise rulers who know two of the most basic rules of modern economic development.

One is that you won’t get much done over time unless you greatly invest in education. The other is that you won’t go very far if you only invest in the education of boys.

This is now the consensual Asian regional view. Consider that, just decades ago, when the calculating rulers of Singapore opened the floodgates of higher education to women, they were able to double the size of their educated workforce, to powerful economic benefit. Malaysia, to the north, moved in a similar direction: It now has more women enrolled in universities than men – by far.

The above I have known for years. But what I did not know until my visit to the booming Arab nation of seven emirates is that, in modernizing parts of Arabia, women are surging forward, while retaining Arab traditions, of course.

Consider a recent class in mass communications, guest-conducted by a very Western professor from Los Angeles who shall go nameless, on the women’s (yes, they have their own) campus at the University of the United Arab Emirates. It featured female Arab students traditionally dressed to the collarbone, with little showing (indeed, by contemporary Western exhibitionist standards, almost nothing was showing) other than the intellect on their faces and the avidity for learning in their eyes. It was inspiring.

United Arab Emirates University is the leading university of this mainly pro-Western country of about seven million that sports the world’s seventh-largest reserves of oil. But that is not good enough for one of the Arab world’s more enlightened leaders. He is Sheikh Nahayan, the unofficial successor to the legendary late Nayed, the modernizing Bedouin sheik who was in effect the nation’s Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore.

Nahayan is determined to elevate UAE University into a truly Arabian peninsula research university – and, someday, into one of the world’s great universities, recapturing past Islamic educational glory. To this ambitious end, the modernizing Sheikh wisely determined not to go it alone but plucked from the West a kind of ‘Lawrence of America’ to bring new unity and purpose to U.A.E. University.

The high-profile American educator and educational administrator brought in from America was Wyatt (“Rory”) Hume. The Sheikh made the former University of California high official the U.A.E. university provost, put an abundance of oil money on top of the university’s table and asked Hume to transform the school into something very special.

Hume — formerly the number-two over the entire University of California system, and before that, a top official at UCLA, the famous American research institution where your columnist once taught — is himself something of a secular sheikh in U.S. higher education. His career has been associated with rapidly improving educational institutions. It took Sheikh Nahayan only one intense interview with Hume to realize that this was the American he required to move the university upward without yanking it precipitously out of its Arab soil.

Modernizing rapidly while not eviscerating traditional values is no easy trick. But the emirs in this part of the planet are prepared to globalize, but not bowdlerize. This meant that Hume has had to regard the deeply cultured sands on which the university sat not as annoying impediments but as a proper home for the roots that would help shoot the university to global secular prominence – without alienating every single powerful traditionalist in Arabia.

Women, obviously, were both part of the problem and the answer. Ignoring their higher education would keep UAE low on the developmental totem pole. But the mixed coed style of university school common in America was a complete no-go here. The answer: the university offers a separate women’s residential campus and women’s college, led by another distinguished American educator, a former President of famed Oberlin College.

Let me offer one telling sign of change.  When our “Lawrence of America” arrived about three years ago to consider whether to accept the sheikh’s offer, he was jarred by the hideous barbed wire and bars around the windows of the women’s dorms. Upset, he politely told the Sheikh he could not work comfortably at a place that looked like a concentration camp, no matter how culturally rooted the need to separate the sexes. But, understanding the deep sensitivity, Hume promised that under his administration the women would be kept separate and secure by other means. With that, the Sheikh broke with the past and ordered the barbed wire cut and the bars removed.

It’s hard to imagine a better metaphor for where this university and this surging and important country appear to be headed. And it’s heartening to see a leading educator from America so dramatically at the head of the charge.