When Pauline Hanson, leader of the now defunct One Nation Party, went on a tirade against Asian immigrants and Aborigines some five years ago, Australian Prime Minister John Howard kept mum for fear of alienating his own supporters.

He personally abhorred racism, he said. But he chose to remain silent because Hanson was exercising her freedom of speech. But surely, if Howard was truly opposed to racism, he should have exercised his own freedom of speech to knock the wheels off Hanson's racist bandwagon.

According to Hanson's homespun philosophy, the country's social and economic problems stem from Asians inundating Australia and from Aborigines sponging off welfare.

Now, throw in the threat of terrorism and Howard who has since hijacked much of One Nation's racist agenda knows he has a winning formula for re-election.

Clearly, he couldn't go wrong. After all, Howard won the last elections on the back of his staunch stand against allowing Norwegian freighter Tampa which had on-board 430 rescued Afghan 'boat people' to dock in Australia.

Like Hanson, Howard has the knack of tapping into the insecurities and xenophobia of white Australia. Indeed, the death of One Nation was partly due to Howard's Liberals adopting much of its policies.

Which brings us to what Howard had said earlier this month that he would not hesitate to order a pre-emptive strike on any neighbouring country found to house terrorists planning an attack against Australia.

Further, international law will need to 'catch up with the new reality of international terrorism' and consider such first strikes as legitimate actions.

Feudal politics

No doubt, Howard, in making this comment, has an eye set for the next polls due in 2004 but likely to be held earlier. Indeed, opinion polls showed that his popularity has soared.

The rest of us who are neighbours of Australia however cannot brush this off as something tailored for domestic consumption. Howard's first strike has grave consequences for the Third World.

While we have made great strides in advancing democracy at the local front, feudal politics continues to rule the day at the global level where warlords jostle for global domination.

Indeed, the United Nations where the Big Five have veto powers is far from being a democratic institution. Still, it has a set of international rules which help restrain these warlords from threading on other peoples' toes, and this include the tenet of national sovereignty.

In the era of the borderless world, the concept of national sovereignty seems a tad outdated. But in the absence of global democracy, national sovereignty must be respected.

Clearly, powerful countries don't need national sovereignty they can protect themselves. More so, it hampers their imperialistic designs, which is why US has endorsed Howard's statement.

The rest of the world, however, needs it badly. To deny the validity of national sovereignty is to effectively give the West carte blanche to intervene when and where it pleases.

The only other protective shield for Third World nations is to acquire nuclear weapons. But this is no real option: the world is already awash with nuclear bombs, and nuclear powers don't take kindly to new members seeking entry into their exclusive club.

Isolate the terrorists

Few people are opposed to waging a war against terrorism. But this war is not only about smoking out the terrorists but also winning the hearts and minds of the people.

Southeast Asia, the home of the world's largest Muslim community, cannot be expected to fight this war with great conviction when major grievances such as the Palestinian issue remain unresolved, worse still ignored, by the West.

Perhaps it's time for Howard and his big boss, President George W Bush, to work with the rest of the world to resolve these vexing problems.

Dr Carmen Lawrence, a leader of the opposition Labour Party, said the Australian PM has a superiority complex.

"Part of Howard's make-up is that the white Anglo-Saxon culture is inherently superior to others and that the gifts we have are not accidents of history, they are by dint of our own hard work and diligence and anyone who doesn't have those things, whether it be individuals or countries, hasreally no one else but themselves to blame."

But Lawrence dared not call Howard a racist. We, however, don't have such compunction.