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Premen Addy

THERE is something truly rotten in the state of Denmark. The Hamletian ghost, rising in Washington, would have said the same of the goings on in the US.

The Texan energy giant, Enron, is a giant no longer. Once a power in the land — its tentacles reaching up and into the White House and other key branches of the Bush administration — it has been razed to ground zero without even a poisoned dart from Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network. Enron succumbed to over-reach, to the vaulting ambition of the crazed gambler seduced by the heights but with no thought of the cavernous depths that await the collapsed star. It is a scam by which every other scam, past and present, is destined to be measured.

The deceit here is so intricate in conception, design and execution that to unravel it, will require the labours of an army of Hercules. Congress and the Department of Justice between them can be relied upon to provide the bolts of lightning and rumbles of thunder as the investigation unfolds in the weeks and months to come.

Numerous vaults will open and a multitude of disturbed spirits are certain to testify, their voices breaking through the sound barrier of the constitutional Fifth Amendment to reach every corner of the US and echo thence to each inhabited continent. The reallife saga of Enron is guaranteed a hugely higher audience rating than the contrived television soap opera, Dallas.

The US and the world will bear witness to JR made flesh as Mr Kenneth Lay, the former president of Enron, the genie who once bestrode the world and is now reduced to a hobgoblin gasping for air in a bursting bubble.

It was not so long ago that Mr Lay imperiously informed the Financial Times of London, that if the Government of India failed to see reason on Enron's multi-million dollar compensation claim over the aborted electric power supply from the Dabhol plant in Maharashtra, he would speak to his friend, Mr George W. Bush and have US aid to India scrapped.

Before that can come to pass, Mr Lay and his close associates, one of whom fell on his sword and escaped to Hades, will have to answer to thousands of Enron pension-holders who have seen their life savings vanish into a black hole of corruption. They will expect many beams of light to penetrate the dark and reveal the whole truth. They will hold their rulers to account in the search for answers.

Even as the dust settles, some of these will relate to the vexed question of American governance. The links between big business and the two main political parties are affecting the texture politics and national life, often for the worse. US presidents are being elected on disturbingly small percentage of the popular vote. There is clearly widespread cynicism and weariness among Americans about their country's politics and the quality of leadership on offer and the apparent absence of real choice at the ballot box. An indifferent public and the hideous Orwellian state of 1984 are mutually supportive. Big Brother watches over those who view life devoid of hope.

Is militarism the engine of American capitalism? Rosa Luxemburg, arguably the greatest Marxist thinker after Marx, suggested that an over-ripe, declining capitalism would turn to the armament industries for reinvigoration. The destruction of the Twin Towers in New York had a devastating impact on the share market generally, but a few companies bucked the trend by showing increased value. They were the giant military contractors, Alliant Tech Systems, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin which, as the US military's biggest supplier, saw its share value rise by a staggering 30 per cent. Within six weeks of September 11, Lockheed Martin had secured the largest military order in history: A $230-billion development contract for a new fighter aircraft. The company's main plant is located in Texas, President Bush's home state.

MrBush's decision to raise the US defence budget by $48 billion, which exceeds the GNP of Australia, begs many critical questions, the answers to which should become clearer as events unfold in Washington and the perceived theatre of crisis in Central Asia and East Asia. Iraq and Iran (together with North Korea) are described as the "axis of evil", but the US has supped with many a Latin American devil and despots from other corners of the world, and done so without the proverbial long spoon. Friends and enemies engage in never ending games of musical chairs. A few years ago, the Wall Street Journal declared: "The Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace. However, they were crucial to secure the country (Afghanistan) as a prime transshipment route for the export of Central Asia's vast oil, gas and other natural resources."

Oh, for the best laid plans of mice and men! Uncle Sam turned on the Taliban and the Wall Street Journal correspondent in Pakistan, Daniel Pearl, is held hostage by Taliban supporters deemed to be "moderate" Islamic.

Fact and fiction are as interchangeable as mass and energy, and can also be dangerously combustible in their chemical reactions.

Ahmed Rashid, the Pakistan author whose two books on the present great game in Central Asia involving oil and strategic prizes of a military and political nature, and also the evolving regional and international dimension, have earned him a well deserved world reputation, warned recently on British television that US policy was sowing the seeds of future rivalries and conflict.

The seemingly permanent US presence in states bordering Afghanistan, such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, was already troubling Russia and causing visible disquiet in Beijing.

Democracy and economic reform had made little headway in these Central Asian politics.

The youth there were dissatisfied and without the desired change, they could very well turn to militant Islam for succour. Mr Rashid drew a parallel with Iran in 1979, when the Americans, having put all their eggs in the Shah's despotic basket, were at a loss on how to deal with the regime of the ayatollahs.

The mood in the US is gung-ho. It always was when the country embarked on one of its historic misadventures.

The quantum leap in US defence expenditure is certain to create doubt and misgiving among its great power rivals and fracture the delicate understanding between them. But this appears to be of little concern to some of the most influential voices in the American capital.

Among the most hawkish of these is Richard Perle who, bit between his teeth, said: "This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies.

There are lots of them out there...If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now". Stirring stuff as self-delusive lunacy usually is. Mr Perle's "great songs" could turn out to be mournful dirges sung by orphaned children.

America seeks iron-clad security through its $2 trillion defence budget. This is designed to finance a formidable array of futuristic hi-tech weaponry. To guard against whom?

The al-Qaeda terrorists and their progeny of the next generation? The search for total security is as alluring as was the drive of the ancients to discover the elusive philosopher's stone.

It is a draining experience best avoided. An America at war with the world will be at war with itself. It will emerge diminished by this unnecessary exercise.

Prof Michael Howard, the eminent British historian, in a recent lecture delivered in London, apologised for having doubted the efficacy of bombing as an instrument in the war against terrorism in Afghanistan. He conceded that the American campaign there was brilliantly conducted and "perhaps, marks a turning point in the history of war".

The range and sophistication of the operation directed from a single command centre in the US was unique and its "armed forces deserve high praise".

But, he warned, "however complete the victory, the war in Afghanistan is only the beginning of a long and complicated process of destroying their (al-Qaeda) network.

Unless that is conducted with skill, patience and restraint, the victory in Afghanistan could, in retrospect, be remembered much as are the spectacular victories the German armies won at the beginning of the two World Wars: Military triumphs that were later to be squandered through rashness and the insensitivity of their governments...

"For whatever reason, the US has many enemies in the world, some for good reason, and some ludicrously trivial. By appropriating this conflict to itself, the US unnecessarily alienates many potential supporters from what should be a truly global alliance (which) will only come about if the US abandons its unilateral approach to the handling of terrorism and recognises that it can only effectively be dealt with by the international community that it has done so much to create, but which still needs American leadership if it is to function effectively".

History has not ended, as one American Blimp would have us believe. It simply rolls on, fertilising some minds and destroying others, as it leaves its indelible imprints.

Even the world's sole superpower would do well to take pause and reflect. Empires do rise and fall as Hubris is followed surely by Nemesis.

(The author, a visiting tutor in Modern Asian History at Kellog College, Oxford, is editor of the London-based India Weekly.)

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