Havana, 2006, will have a different flavour for another reason. The Cold War is still not back. It is still a very unipolar world, but one of the driving forces of the ‘non-aligned’ (or pro-Soviet) world of the Cold War era, anti-Americanism, is now back in vogue, thanks to Bush. During the Cold War America was not hated so unanimously even among its allies. So anti-Americanism now is an emotion that cuts across ideology, religion and geo-politics in today’s world. People of many NATO countries detest the Bush worldview, and so, of course, do those of Islamic states and those of the ideological/dynastic Left.

The fatal weakness or rather the most fascinating oddity in today’s NAM is that its two most important, powerful, populous —and its only nuclear-armed — members neither share that anti-Americanism, nor have any need for it. India and Pakistan, on the other hand, are both wooing the United States; the US considers both to be key allies in the war on terror. Both have sought, and readily accepted Washington’s good offices in helping bring them back from the brink of war, and to stabilise their relations. Both woo American investment and their left-liberal elites covet H1B visas for their children. The armed forces of both routinely carry out exercises jointly with those of the ‘Great Satan’.

There are other factors that make these two strangers in this motley grouping. One is the world’s largest democracy, and one of the very few genuine, total democracies in a gang whose leading lights wear uniforms, skin their political rivals, declare holy war on ‘secularism’, starve their populations, smuggle (both in and out) nuclear technologies, and do other cheap things, like smoke in public. The other — and I know this will bring me so much more hate mail from the usual suspects who can’t hear one good thing about Pakistan — is the fastest democratising Islamic nation in the world. It has the most free press, certainly freer than in Malaysia, and a civil society certainly more energetic than in Iran. Imagine Asma Jahangir in Teheran! It even has a constitution that gives —howsoever limited and qualified — representation to its Hindu, Sikh and Christian minorities in its parliament. Not perfect, but a far cry from the more old-fashioned dictators and despots Musharraf is going to be rubbing shoulders with in Havana.

... contd.