A breakdown in trust

Forget the privileges that come with being a big power or a self-styled leader of the free world. Consider instead the pitfalls.
The United States recently got itself in trouble with its friends around the world, certainly those in the Middle East, Europe and South America. Saudi Arabia, the regional power in the Middle East, registered its pique — perhaps deep anger — at Washington last week by renouncing a much-coveted seat at the United Nations Security Council. Riyadh’s alienation from its ally stems from how the US has continued in recent years to drag its feet on securing a peace settlement in Palestine, and most particularly from how it has pursued a wishy-washy policy in Syria, by definition allowing the situation there to become disastrous.
And the situation in Syria, no one need to be reminded here, is unspeakable, as hunger and diseases have spread while the regime continues to block delivery of humanitarian aid to besieged towns like Homs, Aleppo and Moadamiya where there are reportedly 300,000 people are without food, potable water, utilities, medicine and fuel.
In Syria today, a country with 5 million displaced souls, there are at least 2.5 million beyond the reach of aid, people subjected to pervasive starvation and the spread of communicable diseases such as measles, hepatitis and polio. Consider this: The World Health Organization (WHO) has already deemed what is happening in Syria as “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis” and warned that polio, contracted by children on the move in mass refugee migrations, may spark a major outbreak in the surrounding countries. And polio can easily be transmitted in the wretchedly unsanitary conditions under which millions of displaced Syrians now live, where food and water supplies are contaminated.
Meanwhile, the Syrian regime continues its relentless bombing campaign against its civilian population across the country.
What has the US done in the face of these brutalities? Squat.
And America’s most ardent allies in Europe and South America are unhappy at Washington’s efforts to spy on them, which leads to a breakdown in trust. Countries in the EU are outraged at the bugging by the National Security Agency (NSA) of their seemingly secure communications. The brazenness of it all was revealed after it became known the NSA eavesdropped on conversations of more than 30 world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Predictably, there’s talk in Brussels about cutting off NSA’s access to vital electronic networks and of imposing strictures on private American technology firms that monitor EU Internet traffic. Look, this is the 21st century, and we live in what Marshall McLuhan used to call the global village. We lend and borrow from each other, and in a kind of butterfly effect, we affect and are affected by each other’s actions.
When a government such as the one in Syria puts hundreds of thousands of its people under siege, where many die of starvation and disease, or when the US causes a “breakdown in trust” between itself and its allies by snooping on them, then we are looking at a serious breach in the moral norms of international relations. Our global village has already entered, or is about to enter, a phase where we all share — at least at a seminal, if not national level — a communal sense of reference about what constitutes human values.
For the overwhelming majority of Arabs, the spectacle of a US remaining aloof from the brutal mauling of the Syrian people by their regime, or remaining blasé about the continued occupation in Palestine, represents an abdication of responsibility. And when a big power turns a blind eye to havoc, who else is left to defy the jeering totem of evil.