Sun Tzu penned the world's oldest surviving military treatise. It contains wisdom applicable now more than ever, writes Anouar Abdel-Malek There is light at the end of the tunnel. The ideas, sentiments, and interests of the Arabs and China have come together at last, under the auspices of the Arab League. Sino-Arab cooperation can release the potential of two of the world's greatest civilisations. The visit to Cairo by Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing has opened the way for a great partnership, one that may influence the course of our progress, one that may save us from the buffeting winds of this increasingly perilous world. But what do the Arabs and Chinese have in common? Why is it that we need to forge close ties with Asia, and particularly the Chinese? And do the ancient countries of the Silk Road have much in common? It has become fashionable for people to urge us, in Egypt and the Arab world, to look eastward, to start exploring the potential of cooperation with Asian countries, particularly China. Our decision makers are harking back to the high point of Asian-African convergence, to the Bandung Conference of 1955. The conference brought together representatives from 29 African and Asian nations and led to the creation of the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. But let us look further back. Five thousand years ago Egypt, China, and Persia were the world's greatest empires. Then Egypt lost its bearings, followed by Persia up to the spread of Islam. China, however, managed to keep its old ways. To this day it retains much of its ancient wisdom. In our region the rise of Islam led to dramatic scientific discoveries, some of which involved significant advances in maritime technology. It was through these discoveries that Europe pulled itself out from the Dark Ages and set out on a bloody and determined quest to discover and colonise the world. From the 11th century onwards Europe began sending expeditions to the Islamic world. By the 15th century the Europeans had begun colonising the New World and suppressing its indigenous culture. The quest to dominate Africa and Asia followed. We know how the West managed to plunder the colonies. Its sense of mission, its assumptions of racial supremacy linger to this day, as well as its head-start in the industrial revolution. But what we must not forget is that the East was not completely slumberous. Islamic influence extended from Turkey to the West of China, and even Japan, to the East. Egyptian armies under Ibrahim Pasha made their influence felt across the Eastern Mediterranean, until forced into submission by a Western counter- offensive in 1840. In China the revival came in fits and starts. China rose up against the intrusion of European more than once -- best remembered are the Opium Wars in 1840 and the Boxer Uprising in 1899. Since national independence movements swept the East in the 19th century the nations of Africa and Asia have grappled not just with political revival but with their own identity, with their acknowledged need for cultural renaissance. The East knows what it wants. It wants a world that is diverse in culture and balanced in politics, one that is multi-polar and multi-cultural. Nationalists in the Arab world, like communists in Asia, sought their own pathways to salvation. Both had an ambitious plan for the future as well as a sense of affinity with the past. The goals that bind the countries of the old Silk Road are fairly similar. The East needs to catch up with the technological revolution but it has to do so in a way that involves greater participation by the people. The East needs to achieve an even distribution of the fruits of human achievement, of social and cultural development. With the Zionist-American aggression besieging, and haemorrhaging, our nations, one is tempted to think of where we have gone wrong with strategy. At a time when aggression follows aggression, when our independence and unity are at stake, one is tempted to acknowledge the message China has for Egypt and the Arab world. The message is best conveyed in the words of Sun Tzu, China's leading political and strategic writer of the fifth century BC. In The Art of War, the world's oldest military treatise, Sun Tzu has this to say: "To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy." This is the message we have to keep in mind. It is a message that is inherent to our freedom, to our quest to resist the waves of turmoil and bloodshed coming our way, to our inherent revulsion at an international order controlled by a single power. The Zionist- American quest is wreaking havoc on the Arab world, from Iraq to Palestine and beyond. And it is not armies alone that we have to worry about. It is the thinking that sent the armies, and the strategy that lies behind that thinking. We have to remember the word of Sun Tzu, and "attack the enemy's strategy". This is what the Arabs and Chinese have in common: the need for a strategy of their own. There is great potential here and in Asia, and this potential does not have to remain unexplored. If we want to survive the Zionist-American quest we have to reformulate our own.
