Font size: 
The present system rests on the foundation laid in India by Jesuit, Anglican and other Christian educators; it turns out millions of brainworkers for industries across the globe, especially in information technology, medicine, engineering and increasingly, services. A reasonable fluency in the English language has meant the exposure of almost 300 million people in India to Western modes of thought.
Across other countries in Asia, Africa and South America as well, an influential and increasing middle class is internalizing and accepting as axiomatic concepts learned from Western textbooks -- such as universal human rights and values, which place freedom and dignity at the core of a civilized society. Even within societies with an unbroken tradition of authoritarianism, the democratic spirit is gaining strength.
It is this very section of local society, one respectful of and familiar with Western standards of societal behavior, that is bewildered at the perceived international double standard currently practiced by the United States and the European Union. This mindset posits an "us and them" division of the international community into Western (now expanded to include the former Soviet East bloc) and non-Western components, with a handful of countries such as Japan treated (as was apartheid-era South Africa) as "honorary Westerners."
Despite a proclaimed fidelity to universal human rights, there appear to be very different markers for non-Western countries than are applied to the favored others. Today, with non-Western countries -- principally India and China -- moving up the value chain in both economic and technological development, it is no longer feasible to simply impose the will of the West on the rest as it was in the past, before huge swathes of non-Western society gained access to Western thinking.
India's caste system continued for millennia because an individual from a lower caste was put to death whenever he or she showed the temerity to access information reserved for the upper castes. Eventually, the resulting social calcification led to repeated defeats of Hindu dynasties at the hands of more egalitarian Muslim invaders. However, the firewalls between different Hindu groups continued, and in some places still do, more than a thousand years after the first defeats at Muslim hands, and sixty years after independence from British rule.
Thanks to the British, and to a lesser extent the French, refusal to follow the example of Spanish, Portuguese, German and other European conquerors in denying education to all but a few, the barriers to knowledge evaporated by the start of the last century. This created the momentum that led to successful independence movements, first in India and subsequently in other colonies. Today, cable television, the Internet and air travel have dissolved most of the obstacles to the mingling of cultures and peoples that is necessary to a modern lifestyle and to the global economy as well.
It is no accident that countries that have welcomed diversity are at the forefront of progress, including Britain, the United States, India and China, each of which are home to growing pools of expatriates. Hong Kong is still an international city, as are London and New York and even Bangalore. The Germany-led EU effort to create a European environment through curbs on immigration and ethnic criteria for purchases of key technologies, such as at Airbus, will weaken competitive ability against more flexible rivals. Unfortunately, fear-mongers seem to be driving migration and trade policy even in the United States, hitherto much more open than the EU countries. Even Britain, normally less ethnocentric than the rest of the bloc, is lately placing ethnic curbs on immigration.
While Europeans deride the Arabs and the Communist Chinese for intolerance and authoritarianism, and praise themselves for a tolerant and inclusive view of humanity, in reality it is far easier for Europeans to work in the "fanatical" Middle East or in "authoritarian" Hong Kong and Shanghai than it is for Arabs or Chinese to find a job -- any job -- in "civilized" Europe. Obvious biases in immigration policy in Europe, and increasingly in North America and Australia, as well as the hostility faced by residents of non-European origin, belie the myth that the West has gone beyond its colonialist past. That may be the case between France and Germany, or Britain and Ireland, but it is not so in Africa, where Paris sends troops with casual abandon, or in South America, where local ethnic-based elites fighting to preserve their numerous privileges receive vociferous support from the "civilized' world. Such an obvious double standard is what is giving traction to the likes of Hugo Chavez in their efforts to replace one form of racism with another.
The self-described "civilized" world -- the United States, European Union, Australia and New Zealand -- is hyper-sensitive to the use of military force by other countries in the resolution of disputes, yet they themselves use the NATO sledgehammer to pound recalcitrant peoples into submission, as in Serbia. Today, U.S.-led NATO forces have become the most interventionist of any military, inserted into locations where local populations have yet to overcome the complexes created by earlier European occupations.
If the Chinese were to show a similar propensity to use military muscle in their own neighborhood, or if India were to do likewise against, for example, Bangladesh -- which is cheerfully hosting thousands of insurgents and terrorists that have New Delhi in their collective sights -- the reaction from Western chancelleries would be hostile. Yet this is what NATO itself is doing -- giving primacy to the stick rather than tucking it away.
The danger is that countries now moving up the development ladder will begin to adopt these European attitudes toward settling differences, plunging the world into greater turmoil. The cavalier use of NATO's military might is spawning hostility toward the West that could erupt in conflict within a generation, as the scales become more balanced between contenders. Rather than treating military action as a privilege reserved unto itself, the U.S.-EU alliance should set in stone a system of international dispute resolution that avoids the threat or use of force. This is best done by developing "soft" power and by engaging with those countries seen as potential risks, such as Iran.
Evidently, neither Washington nor London has learned a lesson in Iraq. The imposition of sanctions that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths each year -- even as the Saddamites continued to enjoy a billionaire lifestyle -- created the anger that is manifesting today as hostility toward NATO occupation of the country. Also, until at least a few policymakers from the interventionist countries are brought to trial for human rights violations, such as the killing of thousands of women and children by "civilized" fire in Iraq, the whole process will lack credibility.
Despite the obvious lessons of such a failed experiment, key policymakers in the "civilized" world are seeking to replicate the same model in Iran -- sealing off the country and choking economic interaction that provides oxygen to those who oppose the stagnation brought by the mullahcracy to a vibrant people.
It is the United States, with 83 percent of the world's offensive nuclear warhead capacity, that is leading the cry for Iran to surrender its nuclear technology. It is countries heavily reliant on nuclear energy, such as Sweden, that are foaming at the mouth when non-Western societies seek to emulate their example.
The European Union can curb ethnic migration; the United States and Britain can occupy a foreign country. Nuclear energy can remain the exclusive property of a few, courtesy of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership invented by George W. Bush, and even India, the world's largest democracy, can be prevented from developing its own technologies for this essential energy source.
Today, where once there was an Iron Curtain, there is now an International Double Standard that divides the Western world and its satellites from the rest of the globe. Within a generation, this new mental curtain could have a much more destabilizing effect on international security than Stalin's clumsy construct ever did.
