Now Ireland and Portugal wish they too had got tough with the markets
* Aditya Chakrabortty
o The Guardian, Tuesday 12 April 2011
Remember Iceland? In the autumn of 2008, it became the first national casualty of the financial meltdown; the first rich country in more than three decades to take an IMF bailout. Commentators declared it the Icarus economy, which had finally come crashing back down to earth. It became both parable and laughing stock. What's the difference between Iceland and Ireland, joked traders – one letter and a few months.
You don't hear much about the insolvent island any more – apart from occasions such as this weekend, when Icelandic voters were asked to repay the £3.5bn owing on collapsed bank Icesave, and replied with a firm "Nei".
Unnoticed it may be, but Reykjavik now serves as a very different kind of parable, of how to minimise the misery of financial collapse by ignoring economic orthodoxy. And in those other broke European economies – from Dublin to Athens to Lisbon – politicians and voters are starting to pay attention. After its three biggest banks – 85% of the country's financial system – failed in the same week, Iceland did two remarkable things. First, it let the banks go under: foreign financiers who had lent to Reykjavik institutions at their own risk didn't get a single krona back. Second, officials imposed capital controls, making it harder for hot-money merchants to pull their cash out of the country.
These policies were not just controversial; they represented a two-fingered salute to the polite society of academics and policy-makers who normally lay down the laws on economic disaster management.
Compare Iceland's policies with those followed by another tiny country in the North Atlantic, which also has a banking industry much bigger than its national economy. When the credit crunch came to Dublin, the government decided to underwrite the entire banking industry – including tens of billions of euros of loans made by foreign investors. That landed the country with a debt worth something like €80,000 for every household – a debt that effectively bankrupted the country.
"A reverse Robin Hood – taking money from the poor and giving to the rich," is how Anne Sibert, a member of the Central Bank of Iceland's monetary policy committee, describes the Irish policy. But Dublin was merely following the old free-market tradition that rules governments should never break faith with financiers.
Yet looking at the two countries now, it's hard to say that Ireland has prospered out of being orthodox, or that Iceland has suffered an especially terrible punishment for not sticking to the Way of the Markets.
Indeed, the evidence seems to point the opposite way: Iceland has come through in better condition than anyone in 2008 dared hope. The worst of its recession is over, even though it's still too early to talk about sustained growth, and the unemployment rate (7.5%) is just over half that of Ireland (13.6%). Remarkably, after the krona lost more than half its face value, inflation is also coming down quite sharply. And without having to pay back foreign creditors, the government's finances are also in better shape. In Ireland, on the other hand, the government has just injected more money into its banking sector – the fifth time it has had to do so.
Now, this is a picture that needs more qualifications than a brain surgeon. For a start, you wouldn't wish Iceland's fate on any economy. Huge spending cuts are still to kick in, and a lot more pain is in store. Thor Gylfason, an economist at the University of Iceland, reckons it will take another seven to 10 years before his country recovers from one of the worst economic disasters in recent history. This will be a long, slow haul.
But landed with an almost unbearable burden, Iceland has made the load easier on itself – and it has done so by getting tough with foreign speculators who lent money to the country at their own risk. In Dublin, on the other hand, as Irish MP Stephen Donnelly puts it, "the entire Irish people were made collateral for the banking system" – and its economic performance has not been remarkably better. More than that, there is a basic point about fairness: in Ireland, keeping the markets on side was deemed to be more important than keeping people in jobs – in Iceland, the priorities have been reversed.
Donnelly says that the Icelandic example is beginning to attract interest in the Dáil and in the media. An Icelandic politician was recently interviewed by Vincent Browne, the Irish equivalent of Jeremy Paxman. In the bust countries of southern Europe they're also starting to take notice. Last week, on the day that Portugal finally admitted it would need a bailout from Brussels, I was talking to Joana Gorjão Henriques, a journalist from Lisbon. She told me that her contacts were pasting stories about Iceland on Facebook, and that newspaper columnists were using Iceland's case as an example that Portugal, Greece and Ireland should follow – make an allegiance and say to the EU that they won't pay the debt.
There are echoes here of the Asian financial crisis of the late 90s. Then Malaysia's prime minister Mahathir Mohamad brought in capital controls to shore up a battered financial system – and he was pilloried from Washington to Wall Street. Nobel laureates in economics predicted imminent catastrophe for Malaysia; the International Monetary Fund effectively told Mohamad off. But the year after, Malaysia began a strong economic recovery, and now the IMF issues papers on the usefulness of capital controls.
Iceland was a country wrecked by implementing free-market dogma crudely and quickly; it may yet became another such lesson of how an economy can ignore free-market dogma – and come out far better than its critics predicted.
“Blessed is the nation that doesn’t need heroes" Goethe. “Hero-worship is strongest where there is least regard for human freedom.” Herbert Spencer
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Thursday 14 April 2011
Spin and the art of attack
Being an aggressive spinner is not about bowling flat and fast. Quite the opposite, and you only have to look at veteran bowlers operate in Twenty20 to see that
Aakash Chopra
April 14, 2011
Grounds are getting smaller, wickets flatter, bats thicker. And just to make it tougher for bowlers, the format of the game has got shorter. As if the rule book doesn't already favour batsmen, these "innovations" have stacked the odds against bowlers higher still. But while it has ostensibly become tougher for bowlers to succeed, good ones will always have their say.
Who are these "good bowlers", though? In the pre-Twenty20 era these were men who could simply bowl quick, for a batsman needed special skills to get on top of someone bowling at 145kph. It was widely believed that the shorter the format, the smaller the role of a spinner. In fact, the only way for a spinner to survive in Twenty20 was to bowl quick and flat, or so it was believed for the longest time.
But a look at the spinners in action in the current IPL is enough to tell you an entirely different story. Spinners who're bowling slower in the air are ruling the roost.
Is it only about bowling slow or it there more to it? Let's take a look at what's making these bowlers ever so successful.
A big heart
While fast bowlers are the stingy kind, who hate runs being scored off them, spinners are more often than not advised to be generous and to always be prepared to get hit. Bishan Bedi would tell his wards that a straight six is always hit off a good ball and one should never feel bad about it. Having a big heart doesn't mean that you should stop caring about getting hit; rather that you shouldn't chicken out and start bowling flatter.
Suraj Randiv could easily have bowled flatter when he was hit for two consecutive sixes by Manoj Tiwary in the first match, but he showed the heart to flight another delivery, and got the better of his opponent. You rarely see Daniel Vettori or Shane Warne take a step back whenever they come under the hammer. Instead of thinking of ways to restrict damage, they try to plot a dismissal.
Slow down the pace
Most young spinners don't realise that the quicker one bowls, the easier it gets for the batsman, who doesn't have to move his feet to get to the pitch of the ball and smother the spin. You can do fairly well while staying inside the crease, and small errors of judgement aren't fatal either, as long as you're playing straight.
The slower the delivery, the tougher it is to generate power to clear the fence, but there are no such issues if the bowler is sending down darts. In fact, even rotating the strike is a lot easier if the bowler is bowling quicker, for you need great hands to manoeuvre the slower delivery.
Yes, it is perhaps easier to find the blockhole if you're bowling quick, but you're not really going to get under the bat and bowl the batsman, since you don't have that sort of pace.
Also, if you bowl quick, the chances of getting turn off the surface (unless it is really abrasive) are minimal. You must flight the ball and bowl slow to allow the ball to grip the pitch and get purchase.
Attack the batsman
Mushtaq Ahmed tells young spinners that they need to have the attitude of fast bowlers to attack batsmen.
Attacking the batsman is often misinterpreted as bowling quick. That's what the fast men do; you hit them for a six and you're almost guaranteed a bouncer next ball. For a spinner, attacking has a different meaning - going slower and enticing the batsman.
Bowling slow must not be confused with giving the ball more air. The trajectory can still remain flat while bowling slow. Some batsmen are quick to put on their dancing shoes the moment the ball goes above eye level while standing in the stance, so it's important to keep the ball below their eye level and yet not bowl quick. Vettori does it with consummate ease and reaps rewards. He rarely bowls quick; he relies on changing the pace and length to deceive the batsman. And if the batsman is rooted to the crease and is reluctant to use his feet, you can flight the ball.
Add variety
The best way to not just survive but thrive as a spinner is to keep evolving.
Anil Kumble not only slowed down his pace but also added a googly to his armoury in the latter half of his career. Muttiah Muralitharan added another dimension to his bowling when he started bowling the doosra. Suraj Randiv stands tall at the crease and extracts a bit of extra bounce. Ravi Ashwin has mastered the carrom ball.
Instead of learning to undercut the ball (which is obviously a lot easier to develop), it's worth developing a doosra, a carrom ball or some other variety.
Young kids must understand that when you bowl flatter-faster deliveries, the ball behaves somewhat like a hard ball does on a concrete surface, skidding off the pitch. Slower balls, on the other hand, act like tennis balls, with far more bounce.
Up and coming spinners need to set their priorities right. They can either bend the front knee to reduce height while taking the arm away from the ear to bowl darts, or learn from the likes of Warne, Vettori, Murali and the like to succeed in all formats, provided the basics are right.
Aakash Chopra
April 14, 2011
Grounds are getting smaller, wickets flatter, bats thicker. And just to make it tougher for bowlers, the format of the game has got shorter. As if the rule book doesn't already favour batsmen, these "innovations" have stacked the odds against bowlers higher still. But while it has ostensibly become tougher for bowlers to succeed, good ones will always have their say.
Who are these "good bowlers", though? In the pre-Twenty20 era these were men who could simply bowl quick, for a batsman needed special skills to get on top of someone bowling at 145kph. It was widely believed that the shorter the format, the smaller the role of a spinner. In fact, the only way for a spinner to survive in Twenty20 was to bowl quick and flat, or so it was believed for the longest time.
But a look at the spinners in action in the current IPL is enough to tell you an entirely different story. Spinners who're bowling slower in the air are ruling the roost.
Is it only about bowling slow or it there more to it? Let's take a look at what's making these bowlers ever so successful.
A big heart
While fast bowlers are the stingy kind, who hate runs being scored off them, spinners are more often than not advised to be generous and to always be prepared to get hit. Bishan Bedi would tell his wards that a straight six is always hit off a good ball and one should never feel bad about it. Having a big heart doesn't mean that you should stop caring about getting hit; rather that you shouldn't chicken out and start bowling flatter.
Suraj Randiv could easily have bowled flatter when he was hit for two consecutive sixes by Manoj Tiwary in the first match, but he showed the heart to flight another delivery, and got the better of his opponent. You rarely see Daniel Vettori or Shane Warne take a step back whenever they come under the hammer. Instead of thinking of ways to restrict damage, they try to plot a dismissal.
Slow down the pace
Most young spinners don't realise that the quicker one bowls, the easier it gets for the batsman, who doesn't have to move his feet to get to the pitch of the ball and smother the spin. You can do fairly well while staying inside the crease, and small errors of judgement aren't fatal either, as long as you're playing straight.
The slower the delivery, the tougher it is to generate power to clear the fence, but there are no such issues if the bowler is sending down darts. In fact, even rotating the strike is a lot easier if the bowler is bowling quicker, for you need great hands to manoeuvre the slower delivery.
Yes, it is perhaps easier to find the blockhole if you're bowling quick, but you're not really going to get under the bat and bowl the batsman, since you don't have that sort of pace.
Also, if you bowl quick, the chances of getting turn off the surface (unless it is really abrasive) are minimal. You must flight the ball and bowl slow to allow the ball to grip the pitch and get purchase.
Attack the batsman
Mushtaq Ahmed tells young spinners that they need to have the attitude of fast bowlers to attack batsmen.
Attacking the batsman is often misinterpreted as bowling quick. That's what the fast men do; you hit them for a six and you're almost guaranteed a bouncer next ball. For a spinner, attacking has a different meaning - going slower and enticing the batsman.
Bowling slow must not be confused with giving the ball more air. The trajectory can still remain flat while bowling slow. Some batsmen are quick to put on their dancing shoes the moment the ball goes above eye level while standing in the stance, so it's important to keep the ball below their eye level and yet not bowl quick. Vettori does it with consummate ease and reaps rewards. He rarely bowls quick; he relies on changing the pace and length to deceive the batsman. And if the batsman is rooted to the crease and is reluctant to use his feet, you can flight the ball.
Add variety
The best way to not just survive but thrive as a spinner is to keep evolving.
Anil Kumble not only slowed down his pace but also added a googly to his armoury in the latter half of his career. Muttiah Muralitharan added another dimension to his bowling when he started bowling the doosra. Suraj Randiv stands tall at the crease and extracts a bit of extra bounce. Ravi Ashwin has mastered the carrom ball.
Instead of learning to undercut the ball (which is obviously a lot easier to develop), it's worth developing a doosra, a carrom ball or some other variety.
Young kids must understand that when you bowl flatter-faster deliveries, the ball behaves somewhat like a hard ball does on a concrete surface, skidding off the pitch. Slower balls, on the other hand, act like tennis balls, with far more bounce.
Up and coming spinners need to set their priorities right. They can either bend the front knee to reduce height while taking the arm away from the ear to bowl darts, or learn from the likes of Warne, Vettori, Murali and the like to succeed in all formats, provided the basics are right.
Sunday 27 March 2011
Is the US ambassador the only confidant of Indian politicians and bureaucrats?
wikileaks
The Call Of The American Demarche
Does India really follow the US lead as blindly as the Wikileaks cables seem to suggest?
Pranay Sharma
A Few Views Through The Cablegate
Cable 162458 July 17, 2008: Claims Congress MP Satish Sharma's aide, Nachiketa Kapur, confided to an embassy official that RLD MPs had been bribed Rs 10 crore each and showed him two chests containing Rs 50-80 crore for bribing Opposition MPs before a no-confidence vote against UPA-I.
Cable 195165 March 4, 2009: Home Minister P. Chidambaram confides to FBI chief that the constitutional status of the National Investigation Agency is debatable.
Cable 220281 Aug 11, 2009: US ambassador Timothy Roemer is told by NSA M.K. Narayanan that he differs with PM Singh on his policy to engage Pakistan.
Cable 206814 May 13, 2009: BJP leader L.K. Advani says his party, if it were to come to power, would rethink its decision of opposing the nuclear deal.
Cable 243925 Jan 15, 2010: M.K. Narayanan tells US ambassador Roemer that Chidambaram needs someone “to check him and put a bit in his mouth”. Congress leader Digvijay Singh says Narayanan had to leave because of his turf war with the home minister.
Cable No 215357 July 7, 2009: Quotes India's PR to the UN Hardeep Puri saying his “clear” brief from New Delhi is to seek “a greater degree of convergence with the US” in the UN.
Cable No 205168 May 1, 2009: Cites joint secretary (Americas) Gaitri Kumar saying that the US should convey to the MEA any complaint about Puri's functioning in the UN.
Cable No 149884 April 15, 2008: An MEA official informs the US about the Iranian president's visit to India even before the information is made public or conveyed to other government agencies.
Cable No. 64794 May 19, 2006: Indian deputy PR Ajai Malhotra criticises his boss, Nirupam Sen, for opposing the US in UN, says his brief is to oppose him.
Cable 225053 Sept 14, 2009: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wants to know about finance minister Pranab Mukherjee's ideological orientation, and why Montek Singh Ahluwalia wasn't given that post.
Cable 40501 Sept 13, 2005: Ambassador David Mulford asks Condoleezza Rice to tell Manmohan Singh that India's decision to not vote on Iran in the IAEA could have an adverse impact on the nuclear deal.
Cable 51088 Jan 30, 2006: Mulford hails the sacking of Mani Shankar Aiyar from the petroleum ministry, and says the cabinet reshuffle has an "undeniable pro-America tilt".
***
As Parliament stalled repeatedly over the sensational Wikileaks cables and the nation was left aghast at the seemingly unfettered access American officials have to the corridors of power in New Delhi, you’d have thought the Indian officialdom had been warned about the perils of rubbing shoulders with all those whose calling cards mention the Embassy of the United States of America. Yet, indifferent to the shock and awe The Hindu-Wikileaks cables generated, a government luminary had the chutzpah to accommodate in his breathless schedule a meeting with a middle-rung American official, to brief him, of all things, on the functioning of his department. It was a gross violation of protocol—the Indian official’s rank meant he met none other than the American ambassador.
Last week also saw a leader of a coalition partner of the UPA government desperately seek from the US embassy a special slot for a visa interview for his son, in the hope of helping him circumvent long queues. Imagine the scenario before the little Wikileaks bombs exploded so dramatically? Secretary-level officials of different ministries readily furnish their mobile numbers to US embassy officials and provide appointments to them without going through the Union ministry of external affairs (MEA). In fact, all those who matter in New Delhi—from politicians to industrialists to opinion-makers—vie with each other to have a one-to-one meeting with the Americans, sharing information and gossip, and unwittingly articulating, often highlighting, the American point of view on sensitive issues.
There are simply too many Indian tongues whispering into the American ear, spilling, as the Wikileaks cables (see infographic) bear out, sensitive aspects of Indian foreign policy, relations between top politicians, their ideological inclinations, even their machinations, and their propensity to strike strong anti-America poses only for public consumption. So then, are we America’s chamcha, a lackey willing to do its bidding? Is America’s penetration of the Indian system worrying?
Take the cable that quotes an American official saying he had been shown two chests of cash by Congress MP Satish Sharma’s aide, Nachiketa Kapur, who claimed the money would soon be utilised for bribing Opposition MPs to vote against the no-confidence motion against UPA-I. A school of thought argues that the money was perhaps America’s, supplied by an intelligence operative, and Kapur was only accounting for the cash to the official who had come calling on him. “What was the need for Kapur to otherwise show the cash to the official? It proves America has become a player in our system,” says one diplomatic source.
A tad exaggerated perhaps. Yet, Kapur’s candour illustrates vividly the confidence an aide of an important MP reposes in the Americans. Says former foreign minister and BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, “Since the US hasn’t spoken about the authenticity of the cables, these are therefore deemed genuine. It’s an invasion by the Americans into the Indian system.” Endorsing Sinha is former foreign minister K. Natwar Singh, who was miffed to discover that his parleys with Myanmarese leaders during his 2005 trip to Yangon had been relayed to the US, quite obvious from a Wikileaks cable. “How many moles do we have? The American penetration of the Indian establishment is alarming indeed,” he said, adding that the controversy shows the Manmohan government in “poor light”.
Waltzing to whose tune? A US embassy party in New Delhi. (Photograph by Sanjoy Ghosh)
A clutch of cables pertaining to the United Nations bolsters the theory about America penetrating the Indian system. One cable quotes India’s Permanent Representative in the UN, Hardeep Puri, as saying that his specific brief is to seek a “greater degree of convergence” with the US, in contrast to his predecessor, Nirupam Sen’s. Another cable has an Indian official criticise Sen’s ‘anti-US’ approach. But the former diplomat asks of his detractors: “Since I was perceived by at least some American diplomats in an adversarial light, how was I able to continue there for another two years after retiring on March 31, 2007?” Sen wasn’t willing to provide the answer, but MEA sources say he was given an extension at the behest of Sonia Gandhi, who wanted to correct UPA's pro-Washington tilt.
Yet, the pro-America lobby in the UPA-I regime felt emboldened enough to scuttle a fundamental change in the UN that Sen had initiated, only to please the Americans. This pertained to the choice of a candidate for the post of UN secretary-general. Under a 1946 resolution, described as 11/1, the US and other P-5 members of the Security Council (SC), along with the support of four non-permanent members, send only one name for the approval of General Assembly (GA). This practice had once led Sen to remark that the UN secretary-general acted more like a “secretary to the P-5” and a “general to the General Assembly”.
Sen and some members of the GA, therefore, proposed that it be made mandatory for the SC to shortlist at least three names for the post of secretary-general. South Block, sources say, initially tried to dissuade Sen from pursuing this course, but he remained steadfast saying he needed a written order before he could retract from his position. It was then that South Block turned wily, writing a new script that, sources insist, was truly Machiavellian—and aimed at pleasing the Americans.
What was that script? In 2006, Shashi Tharoor threw his hat in the ring, not as an official Indian candidate, but as an ‘independent’ who, straw polls indicated, enjoyed tremendous popularity in the UN and was supposed to give the SC (read the US) nominee a run for the money. Sources say a nervous US asked New Delhi to endorse Tharoor as its official candidate. The announcement sowed seeds of doubt among the GA members who perceived Sen’s attempt to alter 11/1 as a ruse to win for India the post of secretary-general. The GA became badly divided, provoking many of its members to abandon the plan of rewriting 11/1—and diluting the powers of P-5.
Yet another example of the craven behaviour of Indian officials towards America is borne out by the experience of Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, whose divestment of the petroleum ministry portfolio is celebrated in a Wikileaks cable. The Americans thought Aiyar was anti-America, a charge he dismisses outright. “I was disappointed (at the divestment),” says Aiyar, “but I don’t believe it was because of pressure from outside.”
But what rankled Aiyar was that then US ambassador David Mulford declared in a public speech that Murli Deora was better informed about the petroleum ministry than Aiyar. As he told Outlook, “While Mulford was perfectly within his rights to send secret cables to his government about us, to make a public statement comparing two ministers was an act of gross impropriety. I objected very strongly to it, and conveyed my protest to the foreign secretary. But instead of a public expression of deep displeasure, the foreign secretary preferred merely to whisper in the US ambassador’s ear. I thought it was inadequate.”
The love for America is a trait the BJP too shares with the Congress. One cable has the US embassy complaining to Washington that the NDA government gave them better access than the UPA. Again, BJP leader L.K. Advani was initially opposed to the idea of sending Indian troops to Iraq, but a 2003 trip to the US and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to his hotel room saw him accede to Washington. Ultimately, Indian troops weren’t sent because of prime minister A.B. Vajpayee’s opposition. Says Sinha, “There is no denying that there were elements even in the NDA who were very close to the US, but you should judge us by our actions.” He says it is well-documented that the BJP-led NDA warded off American pressure to sign the CTBT and the nuclear deal, believing these militated against India’s interest. (Analysts, however, say the NDA would have agreed to the nuclear deal had it been voted to power in 2004.)
The aggrieved Both Aiyar and Natwar Singh have bones to pick
What has enabled the Americans to make deep inroads into the Indian system? To begin with, the Indian middle class, to which the elite belong, has made an ideological shift to the US. Every middle-class family seems to have a member working in the US. It is the land where parents wish to send their children for education, and seasoned bureaucrats are keen on short-term courses in the American universities. Visas have granted the US embassy an unprecedented clout and reach. In addition, bureaucrats have seen three successive governments, beginning 1999, tilt away from Russia and inch closer to Washington. This shift has transmitted a message to the officialdom that America is the flavour of the season, engendering hopes in them of advancing their careers by taking a pro-US line in consonance with that of their political masters.
There’s no denying that America’s support to India has given it a considerable heft in the international arena. Says an Indian diplomat, “We have used the US as a stepladder.” Has the climb up the hierarchy of global powers compromised India’s sovereignty? And though a country’s interests keep shifting, and there’s always give-and-take in diplomacy, New Delhi can’t be seen to have bartered on possible gains of the future for America’s support, other than on Iran.
Iran remains a contentious issue among foreign policy wonks. Former foreign secretary Shyam Saran insists it was in India’s interest to have voted along with the US in the IAEA in 2005 (see interview). Again, Aiyar pursued the India-Pakistan-Iran (IPI) gas pipeline on the basis of a cabinet decision. Substantial progress was registered on the issue in the first two years of Aiyar’s departure from the petroleum ministry. But the pipeline subsequently got stalled because of the instability in Pakistan.
Perhaps the Wikileaks cables are a timely warning to India to draw certain lines in its relationship with the US. As Aiyar says, “My only suggestion to our ministries is to exercise greater discretion in their exchange with foreign diplomats. Do not retail gossip, be more disciplined.” Perhaps the furore over Wikileaks cables is a reminder to Indians to not be unduly enamoured of America, to not sacrifice their self-respect, to introduce a certain balance in its conduct of foreign policy.
The Call Of The American Demarche
Does India really follow the US lead as blindly as the Wikileaks cables seem to suggest?
Pranay Sharma
A Few Views Through The Cablegate
Cable 162458 July 17, 2008: Claims Congress MP Satish Sharma's aide, Nachiketa Kapur, confided to an embassy official that RLD MPs had been bribed Rs 10 crore each and showed him two chests containing Rs 50-80 crore for bribing Opposition MPs before a no-confidence vote against UPA-I.
Cable 195165 March 4, 2009: Home Minister P. Chidambaram confides to FBI chief that the constitutional status of the National Investigation Agency is debatable.
Cable 220281 Aug 11, 2009: US ambassador Timothy Roemer is told by NSA M.K. Narayanan that he differs with PM Singh on his policy to engage Pakistan.
Cable 206814 May 13, 2009: BJP leader L.K. Advani says his party, if it were to come to power, would rethink its decision of opposing the nuclear deal.
Cable 243925 Jan 15, 2010: M.K. Narayanan tells US ambassador Roemer that Chidambaram needs someone “to check him and put a bit in his mouth”. Congress leader Digvijay Singh says Narayanan had to leave because of his turf war with the home minister.
Cable No 215357 July 7, 2009: Quotes India's PR to the UN Hardeep Puri saying his “clear” brief from New Delhi is to seek “a greater degree of convergence with the US” in the UN.
Cable No 205168 May 1, 2009: Cites joint secretary (Americas) Gaitri Kumar saying that the US should convey to the MEA any complaint about Puri's functioning in the UN.
Cable No 149884 April 15, 2008: An MEA official informs the US about the Iranian president's visit to India even before the information is made public or conveyed to other government agencies.
Cable No. 64794 May 19, 2006: Indian deputy PR Ajai Malhotra criticises his boss, Nirupam Sen, for opposing the US in UN, says his brief is to oppose him.
Cable 225053 Sept 14, 2009: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wants to know about finance minister Pranab Mukherjee's ideological orientation, and why Montek Singh Ahluwalia wasn't given that post.
Cable 40501 Sept 13, 2005: Ambassador David Mulford asks Condoleezza Rice to tell Manmohan Singh that India's decision to not vote on Iran in the IAEA could have an adverse impact on the nuclear deal.
Cable 51088 Jan 30, 2006: Mulford hails the sacking of Mani Shankar Aiyar from the petroleum ministry, and says the cabinet reshuffle has an "undeniable pro-America tilt".
***
As Parliament stalled repeatedly over the sensational Wikileaks cables and the nation was left aghast at the seemingly unfettered access American officials have to the corridors of power in New Delhi, you’d have thought the Indian officialdom had been warned about the perils of rubbing shoulders with all those whose calling cards mention the Embassy of the United States of America. Yet, indifferent to the shock and awe The Hindu-Wikileaks cables generated, a government luminary had the chutzpah to accommodate in his breathless schedule a meeting with a middle-rung American official, to brief him, of all things, on the functioning of his department. It was a gross violation of protocol—the Indian official’s rank meant he met none other than the American ambassador.
Last week also saw a leader of a coalition partner of the UPA government desperately seek from the US embassy a special slot for a visa interview for his son, in the hope of helping him circumvent long queues. Imagine the scenario before the little Wikileaks bombs exploded so dramatically? Secretary-level officials of different ministries readily furnish their mobile numbers to US embassy officials and provide appointments to them without going through the Union ministry of external affairs (MEA). In fact, all those who matter in New Delhi—from politicians to industrialists to opinion-makers—vie with each other to have a one-to-one meeting with the Americans, sharing information and gossip, and unwittingly articulating, often highlighting, the American point of view on sensitive issues.
There are simply too many Indian tongues whispering into the American ear, spilling, as the Wikileaks cables (see infographic) bear out, sensitive aspects of Indian foreign policy, relations between top politicians, their ideological inclinations, even their machinations, and their propensity to strike strong anti-America poses only for public consumption. So then, are we America’s chamcha, a lackey willing to do its bidding? Is America’s penetration of the Indian system worrying?
Take the cable that quotes an American official saying he had been shown two chests of cash by Congress MP Satish Sharma’s aide, Nachiketa Kapur, who claimed the money would soon be utilised for bribing Opposition MPs to vote against the no-confidence motion against UPA-I. A school of thought argues that the money was perhaps America’s, supplied by an intelligence operative, and Kapur was only accounting for the cash to the official who had come calling on him. “What was the need for Kapur to otherwise show the cash to the official? It proves America has become a player in our system,” says one diplomatic source.
A tad exaggerated perhaps. Yet, Kapur’s candour illustrates vividly the confidence an aide of an important MP reposes in the Americans. Says former foreign minister and BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, “Since the US hasn’t spoken about the authenticity of the cables, these are therefore deemed genuine. It’s an invasion by the Americans into the Indian system.” Endorsing Sinha is former foreign minister K. Natwar Singh, who was miffed to discover that his parleys with Myanmarese leaders during his 2005 trip to Yangon had been relayed to the US, quite obvious from a Wikileaks cable. “How many moles do we have? The American penetration of the Indian establishment is alarming indeed,” he said, adding that the controversy shows the Manmohan government in “poor light”.
Waltzing to whose tune? A US embassy party in New Delhi. (Photograph by Sanjoy Ghosh)
A clutch of cables pertaining to the United Nations bolsters the theory about America penetrating the Indian system. One cable quotes India’s Permanent Representative in the UN, Hardeep Puri, as saying that his specific brief is to seek a “greater degree of convergence” with the US, in contrast to his predecessor, Nirupam Sen’s. Another cable has an Indian official criticise Sen’s ‘anti-US’ approach. But the former diplomat asks of his detractors: “Since I was perceived by at least some American diplomats in an adversarial light, how was I able to continue there for another two years after retiring on March 31, 2007?” Sen wasn’t willing to provide the answer, but MEA sources say he was given an extension at the behest of Sonia Gandhi, who wanted to correct UPA's pro-Washington tilt.
Yet, the pro-America lobby in the UPA-I regime felt emboldened enough to scuttle a fundamental change in the UN that Sen had initiated, only to please the Americans. This pertained to the choice of a candidate for the post of UN secretary-general. Under a 1946 resolution, described as 11/1, the US and other P-5 members of the Security Council (SC), along with the support of four non-permanent members, send only one name for the approval of General Assembly (GA). This practice had once led Sen to remark that the UN secretary-general acted more like a “secretary to the P-5” and a “general to the General Assembly”.
Sen and some members of the GA, therefore, proposed that it be made mandatory for the SC to shortlist at least three names for the post of secretary-general. South Block, sources say, initially tried to dissuade Sen from pursuing this course, but he remained steadfast saying he needed a written order before he could retract from his position. It was then that South Block turned wily, writing a new script that, sources insist, was truly Machiavellian—and aimed at pleasing the Americans.
What was that script? In 2006, Shashi Tharoor threw his hat in the ring, not as an official Indian candidate, but as an ‘independent’ who, straw polls indicated, enjoyed tremendous popularity in the UN and was supposed to give the SC (read the US) nominee a run for the money. Sources say a nervous US asked New Delhi to endorse Tharoor as its official candidate. The announcement sowed seeds of doubt among the GA members who perceived Sen’s attempt to alter 11/1 as a ruse to win for India the post of secretary-general. The GA became badly divided, provoking many of its members to abandon the plan of rewriting 11/1—and diluting the powers of P-5.
Yet another example of the craven behaviour of Indian officials towards America is borne out by the experience of Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, whose divestment of the petroleum ministry portfolio is celebrated in a Wikileaks cable. The Americans thought Aiyar was anti-America, a charge he dismisses outright. “I was disappointed (at the divestment),” says Aiyar, “but I don’t believe it was because of pressure from outside.”
But what rankled Aiyar was that then US ambassador David Mulford declared in a public speech that Murli Deora was better informed about the petroleum ministry than Aiyar. As he told Outlook, “While Mulford was perfectly within his rights to send secret cables to his government about us, to make a public statement comparing two ministers was an act of gross impropriety. I objected very strongly to it, and conveyed my protest to the foreign secretary. But instead of a public expression of deep displeasure, the foreign secretary preferred merely to whisper in the US ambassador’s ear. I thought it was inadequate.”
The love for America is a trait the BJP too shares with the Congress. One cable has the US embassy complaining to Washington that the NDA government gave them better access than the UPA. Again, BJP leader L.K. Advani was initially opposed to the idea of sending Indian troops to Iraq, but a 2003 trip to the US and defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s visit to his hotel room saw him accede to Washington. Ultimately, Indian troops weren’t sent because of prime minister A.B. Vajpayee’s opposition. Says Sinha, “There is no denying that there were elements even in the NDA who were very close to the US, but you should judge us by our actions.” He says it is well-documented that the BJP-led NDA warded off American pressure to sign the CTBT and the nuclear deal, believing these militated against India’s interest. (Analysts, however, say the NDA would have agreed to the nuclear deal had it been voted to power in 2004.)
The aggrieved Both Aiyar and Natwar Singh have bones to pick
What has enabled the Americans to make deep inroads into the Indian system? To begin with, the Indian middle class, to which the elite belong, has made an ideological shift to the US. Every middle-class family seems to have a member working in the US. It is the land where parents wish to send their children for education, and seasoned bureaucrats are keen on short-term courses in the American universities. Visas have granted the US embassy an unprecedented clout and reach. In addition, bureaucrats have seen three successive governments, beginning 1999, tilt away from Russia and inch closer to Washington. This shift has transmitted a message to the officialdom that America is the flavour of the season, engendering hopes in them of advancing their careers by taking a pro-US line in consonance with that of their political masters.
There’s no denying that America’s support to India has given it a considerable heft in the international arena. Says an Indian diplomat, “We have used the US as a stepladder.” Has the climb up the hierarchy of global powers compromised India’s sovereignty? And though a country’s interests keep shifting, and there’s always give-and-take in diplomacy, New Delhi can’t be seen to have bartered on possible gains of the future for America’s support, other than on Iran.
Iran remains a contentious issue among foreign policy wonks. Former foreign secretary Shyam Saran insists it was in India’s interest to have voted along with the US in the IAEA in 2005 (see interview). Again, Aiyar pursued the India-Pakistan-Iran (IPI) gas pipeline on the basis of a cabinet decision. Substantial progress was registered on the issue in the first two years of Aiyar’s departure from the petroleum ministry. But the pipeline subsequently got stalled because of the instability in Pakistan.
Perhaps the Wikileaks cables are a timely warning to India to draw certain lines in its relationship with the US. As Aiyar says, “My only suggestion to our ministries is to exercise greater discretion in their exchange with foreign diplomats. Do not retail gossip, be more disciplined.” Perhaps the furore over Wikileaks cables is a reminder to Indians to not be unduly enamoured of America, to not sacrifice their self-respect, to introduce a certain balance in its conduct of foreign policy.
Saturday 26 March 2011
Teach history warts and all
By Christopher Caldwell
Published: March 25 2011 23:10 | Last updated: March 25 2011 23:10
“Time to head off!” wisecracks the hooded executioner on the cover of Even More Terrible Tudors, one of the popular titles in the Horrible Histories series. “I’ve got a mammoth brain!” grunts a caveman on the cover of The Savage Stone Age, holding up the dripping organ in question, while his family, sitting in the background, cooks the rest of the mammoth. History-minded schoolboys buy these books – written or co-written by the Englishman Terry Deary and aimed at presenting “history with the nasty bits left in” – by the dozens.
The idea that the history of one’s own country should be as exhilarating to young readers as, say, cars exploding or ladies in bathing suits is a peculiarly British one. When Michael Gove, education secretary, told Conservatives at their party conference last October that the narrative of children’s history courses could stand to be a bit snappier, he started an argument that has riled British historians ever since. If people are uninspired by the country’s past, Mr Gove says, “we will not properly value the liberties of the present”. Mr Gove is nationalistic to say so, but he is right. If defending one’s rights requires knowing where they came from, then learning one’s own history is indispensable.
The argument is over how best to breathe life into a mass of facts and dates. For Mr Gove, the missing element is a strong narrative, built of real protagonists facing big challenges. The government enlisted as its history adviser Simon Schama of Columbia University (and the Financial Times), who has found a way to make European and British history enthralling, both in books and on screen. Mr Gove and Mr Schama have their detractors, however. The University of California historian of Britain, James Vernon, believes teaching works best “not by turning schoolchildren into Britons but by enabling them to analyse the present and to think critically”. Richard Evans, the Cambridge historian of Germany, is not hostile to the narrative lines dear to Mr Gove and Mr Schama, but warns us against getting swept up in them. In a recent London Review of Books essay, he urges scepticism towards sources and warns students “not to accept passively every fact and argument they are presented with”.
This is the point on which Mr Schama and Mr Evans are most likely to agree. Mr Schama, too, has described history as a force for challenging orthodoxies, as the “greatest, least sentimental, least politically correct tutor of tolerance”. And yet, this may be the point on which classroom teachers have their deepest doubts. The intellectual independence that Messrs Schama and Evans extol characterises only a minority of published historians – why should we expect it from A-level students? Should we even want it? There are, after all, problems with teaching scepticism. The questioning of authority is indispensable and often heroic, but one needs a certain “feel” for a subject matter before one can carry it out. Until that point, scepticism is little more than a truculent contrarianism and a waste of other students’ time. It is most tellingly applied to the things one knows best. Where ignorance and scepticism meet, a course on British history becomes a course on running Britain down.
One wonders whether this is not Mr Gove and Mr Schama’s real gripe. Mr Evans accuses them of “confusing history with memory”. But maybe memory is what young people need to be taught before they can be taught actual history. An example of this memory/ history distinction comes from Black History Month, as it is taught in US grade schools. Children spend every February either learning or rehashing the achievements of African-Americans – always in a morale-boosting way. As history, such courses have little to recommend them. To treat the deeds of the 19th-century abolitionist Sojourner Truth in greater detail than those of George Washington, which is the inevitable end-result of a dedicated month, is to perpetrate a distortion.
But as memory, Black History Month has been a striking success. Children, and not just black children, quite like it. The reasons are paradoxical. Probably no pedagogical innovation was ever carried out for reasons more political, but Black History Month is the least politically correct corner of the grade-school history curriculum. You always know who the good guys are in Black History Month and their struggles are taught with an old-fashioned, un-nuanced moralism that makes Our Island Story look like Hamlet. The results are plain to see. In 2008, education professors from Stanford and the University of Maryland released a survey of 2,000 11th- and 12th-graders (high-school leavers) who had been asked to name the 10 most significant Americans, excepting presidents. Three mainstays of Black History Month – Martin Luther King, the anti-segregationist protester Rosa Parks and the escaped slave Harriet Tubman – ranked one, two and three, well ahead of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.
By about the age of eight or 10, children should have a simple, logical and non-cynical narrative of their country to carry around for the rest of their lives as a net to catch knowledge in. Non-cynical, because children cannot build such a net if teachers are running down the credibility of what they impart. That is the problem with teaching young people: there is a line on one side of which a teacher’s duty is to promote credulity and on the other side of which it is to promote scepticism. Errors are inevitable. But they will be self-correcting, to some extent. By age 16, students will have as much cynicism and “distance” as any educator could wish.
The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard
Published: March 25 2011 23:10 | Last updated: March 25 2011 23:10
“Time to head off!” wisecracks the hooded executioner on the cover of Even More Terrible Tudors, one of the popular titles in the Horrible Histories series. “I’ve got a mammoth brain!” grunts a caveman on the cover of The Savage Stone Age, holding up the dripping organ in question, while his family, sitting in the background, cooks the rest of the mammoth. History-minded schoolboys buy these books – written or co-written by the Englishman Terry Deary and aimed at presenting “history with the nasty bits left in” – by the dozens.
The idea that the history of one’s own country should be as exhilarating to young readers as, say, cars exploding or ladies in bathing suits is a peculiarly British one. When Michael Gove, education secretary, told Conservatives at their party conference last October that the narrative of children’s history courses could stand to be a bit snappier, he started an argument that has riled British historians ever since. If people are uninspired by the country’s past, Mr Gove says, “we will not properly value the liberties of the present”. Mr Gove is nationalistic to say so, but he is right. If defending one’s rights requires knowing where they came from, then learning one’s own history is indispensable.
The argument is over how best to breathe life into a mass of facts and dates. For Mr Gove, the missing element is a strong narrative, built of real protagonists facing big challenges. The government enlisted as its history adviser Simon Schama of Columbia University (and the Financial Times), who has found a way to make European and British history enthralling, both in books and on screen. Mr Gove and Mr Schama have their detractors, however. The University of California historian of Britain, James Vernon, believes teaching works best “not by turning schoolchildren into Britons but by enabling them to analyse the present and to think critically”. Richard Evans, the Cambridge historian of Germany, is not hostile to the narrative lines dear to Mr Gove and Mr Schama, but warns us against getting swept up in them. In a recent London Review of Books essay, he urges scepticism towards sources and warns students “not to accept passively every fact and argument they are presented with”.
This is the point on which Mr Schama and Mr Evans are most likely to agree. Mr Schama, too, has described history as a force for challenging orthodoxies, as the “greatest, least sentimental, least politically correct tutor of tolerance”. And yet, this may be the point on which classroom teachers have their deepest doubts. The intellectual independence that Messrs Schama and Evans extol characterises only a minority of published historians – why should we expect it from A-level students? Should we even want it? There are, after all, problems with teaching scepticism. The questioning of authority is indispensable and often heroic, but one needs a certain “feel” for a subject matter before one can carry it out. Until that point, scepticism is little more than a truculent contrarianism and a waste of other students’ time. It is most tellingly applied to the things one knows best. Where ignorance and scepticism meet, a course on British history becomes a course on running Britain down.
One wonders whether this is not Mr Gove and Mr Schama’s real gripe. Mr Evans accuses them of “confusing history with memory”. But maybe memory is what young people need to be taught before they can be taught actual history. An example of this memory/ history distinction comes from Black History Month, as it is taught in US grade schools. Children spend every February either learning or rehashing the achievements of African-Americans – always in a morale-boosting way. As history, such courses have little to recommend them. To treat the deeds of the 19th-century abolitionist Sojourner Truth in greater detail than those of George Washington, which is the inevitable end-result of a dedicated month, is to perpetrate a distortion.
But as memory, Black History Month has been a striking success. Children, and not just black children, quite like it. The reasons are paradoxical. Probably no pedagogical innovation was ever carried out for reasons more political, but Black History Month is the least politically correct corner of the grade-school history curriculum. You always know who the good guys are in Black History Month and their struggles are taught with an old-fashioned, un-nuanced moralism that makes Our Island Story look like Hamlet. The results are plain to see. In 2008, education professors from Stanford and the University of Maryland released a survey of 2,000 11th- and 12th-graders (high-school leavers) who had been asked to name the 10 most significant Americans, excepting presidents. Three mainstays of Black History Month – Martin Luther King, the anti-segregationist protester Rosa Parks and the escaped slave Harriet Tubman – ranked one, two and three, well ahead of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison and Henry Ford.
By about the age of eight or 10, children should have a simple, logical and non-cynical narrative of their country to carry around for the rest of their lives as a net to catch knowledge in. Non-cynical, because children cannot build such a net if teachers are running down the credibility of what they impart. That is the problem with teaching young people: there is a line on one side of which a teacher’s duty is to promote credulity and on the other side of which it is to promote scepticism. Errors are inevitable. But they will be self-correcting, to some extent. By age 16, students will have as much cynicism and “distance” as any educator could wish.
The writer is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard
Monday 14 March 2011
African Dissent on No-Fly Zone Counts
By M K Bhadrakumar
"Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For, from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition."
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech by Martin Luther King Jr, April 4, 1967, New York
At the height of the Egyptian uprising, well-known American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview with al-Jazeera that the United States had a "Plan B" in the event of Hosni Mubarak stepping down. According to Hersh, it was none other than Amr Moussa - "whether he knows or not". There is nothing so far to show Moussa doesn't know.
He's far too well connected not to know - career diplomat and foreign minister for over 45 years and secretary general of Arab League (AL) since 2001. He hopes to succeed Mubarak as Egypt's next president.
Moussa delivers ...
Moussa's bid got great fillip by the AL decision Saturday to recommend imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya. His star has risen far above Mohammed ElBaradei's. Two major Arab countries opposed the AL statement - Syria and Algeria - but Moussa rammed it through, thanks to the AL heavyweights clamoring for democracy to succeed and autocracy to end - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan.
What bizarre drama! The plain truth is that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) commanded AL to speak since they need a fig leaf to approach the United Nations Security Council.
The EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was in Cairo on Saturday by Moussa's side to ensure America's "Plan B" delivered. And he did. Promptly, the US, Britain, France and Canada "welcomed" the AL statement. NATO will meet on Tuesday to tone up its stance on Libya.
Britain and France, who spearhead the breathtaking campaign to mobilize Arab "support" for NATO intervention in Libya, have had a dream run. British Prime Minister David Cameron and newly-appointed French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe visited Cairo to explore how far the military junta could take charge of the oil-rich eastern Libyan province of Cyrenica.
... but Africa dissents
The Western powers had earlier mentioned the AL and African Union (AU) in the same breath as representing "regional opinion". Now it seems the AU isn't so important - it has become an embarrassment. African leaders are proving to be tough nuts to crack compared to Arab playboy-rulers.
Unsurprisingly, there is a virtual media blackout on the AU's activities on Libya. It is, therefore, useful to recapitulate. "The [AU] council reaffirms its firm commitment to the respect of the unity and territorial integrity of Libya, as well as its rejection of any form of foreign intervention in Libya," Ramtane Lamamra, AU commissioner for peace and security stated in Addis Abbaba. The AU's 15-member peace and security council decided to "put in lace a high-level ad-hoc committee" to monitor the Libyan crisis.
The leaders of South Africa, Uganda, Mauritania, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mali would form the ad-hoc committee. "The ad hoc committee was set up ... to engage with all parties in Libya, facilitate an inclusive dialogue among them, and engage the African Union partners ... for the speedy resolution of the crisis in Libya," the bloc said. Lamamra said events in Libya needed "urgent African action" to bring about an end to the hostilities.
Most important, the AU "took note of the readiness of the government of Libya to engage in the path of political reforms. The council expressed the solidarity of the AU with Libya, and stressed the legitimacy of the aspirations of the Libyan peoples for democracy, political reforms, justice, peace and security as well as economic and social development".
Specter of disintegration
The paradox is, if you accept the principle of ascertaining the "regional opinion", then the AU's opinion becomes, arguably, more important to know than the AL's. Libya is as much an African country as an Arab country - if not more. The narrative of Libyan developments as a template of "Arab awakening" overlooks that reverberations and after-shocks of what happens are going to be felt deep inside Africa. As prominent Russian scholar on the region Yevgeny Satanovsky recently said:
It [unrest] won't be limited to the Middle East and North Africa ... The region will go through what Europe experienced in 1914-18. These processes always take a long time ... In Europe, the shooting started in 1914 and didn't stop until 1945 ... We have not seen what would happen to the other Gulf monarchies. We have not yet seen the end of the unrest that has gripped North Africa and the Middle East.
Algeria could still follow Libya's suit and Morocco might do the same. In January we saw Sudan split peacefully, but separatist elements have not been extinguished there. Former colonies tied together in unnatural conglomerates in the past by the English or the French never became integrated states. If this is so, we may still see disintegration of Nigeria, Kenya and other African countries.
Therefore, the British Foreign Office is opportunistic when it says the AL statement "is very significant and provides important regional support" for the idea of a no-fly zone. Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain, Qaboos Bin Al Said of Oman, Abdullah II of Jordan - these autocrats cannot be hailed as stakeholders in Libya's march to democracy.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regimes are tottering on the abyss and themselves hoping NATO will salvage them. Their rulers keep their personal wealth of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars hoarded in Western banks and the umbilical cord cannot easily be broken.
Scarred memories
But, how is it that African states are different? First, when they hear Cameron or French President Nikolas Sarkozy or NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen speak of military intervention in North Africa, it rings a bell in their collective consciousness - of scarred memories of imperial domination, the horrendous crimes that the British, French or Dutch perpetrated on African people. They know how difficult it will be to get a NATO army to vacate its occupation of Africa. (Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday: "I would like to ask NATO and the US with honor and humbleness and not with arrogance to stop their operations in our land. We are a very tolerant people but now our tolerance has run out.")
Africans know NATO will eventually slither its way into the heart of their resource-rich continent from the North African beachhead. So, the AU faces an existential problem - unlike the GGC client states or Jordan, which have no conception of national liberation. The only "Arab revolt" Abdullah or Abdullah II ever knew is what British intelligence and Lawrence of Arabia financed in the debris of the Ottoman Empire a hundred years ago.
Besides, what dreads the AU countries is that Libya has a history of disunity. It was only in 1951 that King Idris unified the three autonomous provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenica. In the wake of the current strife, centrifugal tendencies have quickly resurfaced. Libya has dozens of tribes and Muammar Gaddafi knit together a tenuous alliance of some tribes but tribal feuds are common. The African countries share similar experience.
To be sure, Western intervention in Libya will necessitate at some stage involvement in "nation-building' - interference in the domestic affairs in the post-Gaddafi period. The native peoples will resent this involvement. And in the fullness of time, only the Islamist forces stand to gain. The stunning political reality of Libya is that Islam is the only unifying factor for the tribes and provinces of that fragile nation.
African leaders are genuinely nervous that the US is being myopic about the complexities involved. President Barack Obama should get to know them better, call them up from the Oval Office, reach out to them and consult them and ascertain whether they will accept NATO intervention in Libya. They are the real "stakeholders" - not the playboy kings, sheikhs or sultans from the bleached Arabian deserts. King would be pleased.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
rica,
"Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For, from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition."
- "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence" speech by Martin Luther King Jr, April 4, 1967, New York
At the height of the Egyptian uprising, well-known American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview with al-Jazeera that the United States had a "Plan B" in the event of Hosni Mubarak stepping down. According to Hersh, it was none other than Amr Moussa - "whether he knows or not". There is nothing so far to show Moussa doesn't know.
He's far too well connected not to know - career diplomat and foreign minister for over 45 years and secretary general of Arab League (AL) since 2001. He hopes to succeed Mubarak as Egypt's next president.
Moussa delivers ...
Moussa's bid got great fillip by the AL decision Saturday to recommend imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya. His star has risen far above Mohammed ElBaradei's. Two major Arab countries opposed the AL statement - Syria and Algeria - but Moussa rammed it through, thanks to the AL heavyweights clamoring for democracy to succeed and autocracy to end - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan.
What bizarre drama! The plain truth is that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) commanded AL to speak since they need a fig leaf to approach the United Nations Security Council.
The EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was in Cairo on Saturday by Moussa's side to ensure America's "Plan B" delivered. And he did. Promptly, the US, Britain, France and Canada "welcomed" the AL statement. NATO will meet on Tuesday to tone up its stance on Libya.
Britain and France, who spearhead the breathtaking campaign to mobilize Arab "support" for NATO intervention in Libya, have had a dream run. British Prime Minister David Cameron and newly-appointed French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe visited Cairo to explore how far the military junta could take charge of the oil-rich eastern Libyan province of Cyrenica.
... but Africa dissents
The Western powers had earlier mentioned the AL and African Union (AU) in the same breath as representing "regional opinion". Now it seems the AU isn't so important - it has become an embarrassment. African leaders are proving to be tough nuts to crack compared to Arab playboy-rulers.
Unsurprisingly, there is a virtual media blackout on the AU's activities on Libya. It is, therefore, useful to recapitulate. "The [AU] council reaffirms its firm commitment to the respect of the unity and territorial integrity of Libya, as well as its rejection of any form of foreign intervention in Libya," Ramtane Lamamra, AU commissioner for peace and security stated in Addis Abbaba. The AU's 15-member peace and security council decided to "put in lace a high-level ad-hoc committee" to monitor the Libyan crisis.
The leaders of South Africa, Uganda, Mauritania, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Mali would form the ad-hoc committee. "The ad hoc committee was set up ... to engage with all parties in Libya, facilitate an inclusive dialogue among them, and engage the African Union partners ... for the speedy resolution of the crisis in Libya," the bloc said. Lamamra said events in Libya needed "urgent African action" to bring about an end to the hostilities.
Most important, the AU "took note of the readiness of the government of Libya to engage in the path of political reforms. The council expressed the solidarity of the AU with Libya, and stressed the legitimacy of the aspirations of the Libyan peoples for democracy, political reforms, justice, peace and security as well as economic and social development".
Specter of disintegration
The paradox is, if you accept the principle of ascertaining the "regional opinion", then the AU's opinion becomes, arguably, more important to know than the AL's. Libya is as much an African country as an Arab country - if not more. The narrative of Libyan developments as a template of "Arab awakening" overlooks that reverberations and after-shocks of what happens are going to be felt deep inside Africa. As prominent Russian scholar on the region Yevgeny Satanovsky recently said:
It [unrest] won't be limited to the Middle East and North Africa ... The region will go through what Europe experienced in 1914-18. These processes always take a long time ... In Europe, the shooting started in 1914 and didn't stop until 1945 ... We have not seen what would happen to the other Gulf monarchies. We have not yet seen the end of the unrest that has gripped North Africa and the Middle East.
Algeria could still follow Libya's suit and Morocco might do the same. In January we saw Sudan split peacefully, but separatist elements have not been extinguished there. Former colonies tied together in unnatural conglomerates in the past by the English or the French never became integrated states. If this is so, we may still see disintegration of Nigeria, Kenya and other African countries.
Therefore, the British Foreign Office is opportunistic when it says the AL statement "is very significant and provides important regional support" for the idea of a no-fly zone. Abdullah bin Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia, Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifa of Bahrain, Qaboos Bin Al Said of Oman, Abdullah II of Jordan - these autocrats cannot be hailed as stakeholders in Libya's march to democracy.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) regimes are tottering on the abyss and themselves hoping NATO will salvage them. Their rulers keep their personal wealth of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars hoarded in Western banks and the umbilical cord cannot easily be broken.
Scarred memories
But, how is it that African states are different? First, when they hear Cameron or French President Nikolas Sarkozy or NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen speak of military intervention in North Africa, it rings a bell in their collective consciousness - of scarred memories of imperial domination, the horrendous crimes that the British, French or Dutch perpetrated on African people. They know how difficult it will be to get a NATO army to vacate its occupation of Africa. (Afghan President Hamid Karzai said on Saturday: "I would like to ask NATO and the US with honor and humbleness and not with arrogance to stop their operations in our land. We are a very tolerant people but now our tolerance has run out.")
Africans know NATO will eventually slither its way into the heart of their resource-rich continent from the North African beachhead. So, the AU faces an existential problem - unlike the GGC client states or Jordan, which have no conception of national liberation. The only "Arab revolt" Abdullah or Abdullah II ever knew is what British intelligence and Lawrence of Arabia financed in the debris of the Ottoman Empire a hundred years ago.
Besides, what dreads the AU countries is that Libya has a history of disunity. It was only in 1951 that King Idris unified the three autonomous provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenica. In the wake of the current strife, centrifugal tendencies have quickly resurfaced. Libya has dozens of tribes and Muammar Gaddafi knit together a tenuous alliance of some tribes but tribal feuds are common. The African countries share similar experience.
To be sure, Western intervention in Libya will necessitate at some stage involvement in "nation-building' - interference in the domestic affairs in the post-Gaddafi period. The native peoples will resent this involvement. And in the fullness of time, only the Islamist forces stand to gain. The stunning political reality of Libya is that Islam is the only unifying factor for the tribes and provinces of that fragile nation.
African leaders are genuinely nervous that the US is being myopic about the complexities involved. President Barack Obama should get to know them better, call them up from the Oval Office, reach out to them and consult them and ascertain whether they will accept NATO intervention in Libya. They are the real "stakeholders" - not the playboy kings, sheikhs or sultans from the bleached Arabian deserts. King would be pleased.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
rica,
Thursday 10 March 2011
What Will You Do, If Libya Repeats Itself In USA?
By Frank Scott
09 March, 2011
Countercurrents.org
Imagine This:
Armed Tea Party militias attack government facilities in several American cities, threaten to deport the president and abolish congress, and claim a new day for democracy. What would be the reaction from our corporate government and media? Great praise for the second amendment and the right of the people to bear arms and overthrow the government? Organized passive and non-violent resistance by the military involving prayer, meditation and chanting to disarm the rebels? Yes, if we believe in the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and a free market. Yet, the reaction of mind management here has been that the Libyan government response to armed assaults on its power is somehow unthinkable to civilized people, subject to revulsion by all citizens of nuclear weapons armed nations, and an excuse to add to the death tolls by having America and its servant NATO powers get involved. In the cause of humanitarian justice achieved by murdering, of course.
Unconfirmed reports mostly from the rebellious Libyan groups claim air attacks and threats of genocide – the “g” word comes up almost every time anyone dies violently, anywhere – are repeated and embellished with charges of war crimes and threats to civilization. These near hysterical charges approach those hurled at Iran, regularly said to be planning to wipe out Israel, Jews, America, McDonalds, Christianity, puppies, kittens and all our shopping malls.
And this while our states and municipalities continue cutting public budgets on behalf of private wealth and corporate finance, and military expenditures and warfare increase even as surreality TV news reports tell us of alleged budget cuts, to take place at some future date.
And we are supposed to believe the leadership of Libya is insane?
Khadaffi may well have lost contact with reality in the often-quoted way that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But his alleged mental illness, commonly addressed by government officials here whose own sanity should be seriously questioned and whose ravings a public under continuous mental assault accepts, contrasts with the material status of the Libyan people. That not only compares favorably with most of the developed world but also is actually better than that of a majority of the world’s nations. There clearly are people, groups and elements in Libya tired of his rule and desirous of significant change, but exactly who are they and what is their economic and political base? Are there any foreigners involved, as in many of the color-coded “revolutions” assisted if not organized by outside infiltration to bring about governments more acceptable to “the international community”, a collection of national lap dogs and corporate financed NGOs controlled by the USA and Israel?
Such questions need to be asked before we rush into even more stupid, if not totally insane actions that support a global system which may be in process of breaking down naturally, if unnatural acts by perverse rulers can be controlled by democratic action of the people. While steps in that direction have begun speeding up in the Arab world, Europe and even in the USA, this present threat of backsliding could become a menacing blowback to what began as a very positive program for humanity, and not just the Arab world.
The urge for democratic rule of the people, even if still at a primitive level of organization, is an unmistakable emotional, spiritual and physical force in the world. Given the rapid changes taking place, many of them possibly beyond the understanding of the groups undertaking them, the rule that has brought us to this point is desperate and approaching a madness that makes Khadaffi look benign, progressive and harmless by comparison. Those nuclear-powered world “leaders” are near desperation and cannot be counted on to act rationally, as evidence clearly indicates. What are people to do when the information they rely on comes from the very sources striving to maintain the crippled, failing system?
Be very careful, wary and suspicious of all authority and what it tells us, remembering that its main duty is to maintain the status quo in substance even while changing the style in which it operates – see Obama and company - and be very critical of what alleged opposition to that authority tells us, too.
Frank Scott writes political commentary and satire which appears in print in The Independent Monitor and online at the blog Legalienate
09 March, 2011
Countercurrents.org
Imagine This:
Armed Tea Party militias attack government facilities in several American cities, threaten to deport the president and abolish congress, and claim a new day for democracy. What would be the reaction from our corporate government and media? Great praise for the second amendment and the right of the people to bear arms and overthrow the government? Organized passive and non-violent resistance by the military involving prayer, meditation and chanting to disarm the rebels? Yes, if we believe in the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and a free market. Yet, the reaction of mind management here has been that the Libyan government response to armed assaults on its power is somehow unthinkable to civilized people, subject to revulsion by all citizens of nuclear weapons armed nations, and an excuse to add to the death tolls by having America and its servant NATO powers get involved. In the cause of humanitarian justice achieved by murdering, of course.
Unconfirmed reports mostly from the rebellious Libyan groups claim air attacks and threats of genocide – the “g” word comes up almost every time anyone dies violently, anywhere – are repeated and embellished with charges of war crimes and threats to civilization. These near hysterical charges approach those hurled at Iran, regularly said to be planning to wipe out Israel, Jews, America, McDonalds, Christianity, puppies, kittens and all our shopping malls.
And this while our states and municipalities continue cutting public budgets on behalf of private wealth and corporate finance, and military expenditures and warfare increase even as surreality TV news reports tell us of alleged budget cuts, to take place at some future date.
And we are supposed to believe the leadership of Libya is insane?
Khadaffi may well have lost contact with reality in the often-quoted way that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. But his alleged mental illness, commonly addressed by government officials here whose own sanity should be seriously questioned and whose ravings a public under continuous mental assault accepts, contrasts with the material status of the Libyan people. That not only compares favorably with most of the developed world but also is actually better than that of a majority of the world’s nations. There clearly are people, groups and elements in Libya tired of his rule and desirous of significant change, but exactly who are they and what is their economic and political base? Are there any foreigners involved, as in many of the color-coded “revolutions” assisted if not organized by outside infiltration to bring about governments more acceptable to “the international community”, a collection of national lap dogs and corporate financed NGOs controlled by the USA and Israel?
Such questions need to be asked before we rush into even more stupid, if not totally insane actions that support a global system which may be in process of breaking down naturally, if unnatural acts by perverse rulers can be controlled by democratic action of the people. While steps in that direction have begun speeding up in the Arab world, Europe and even in the USA, this present threat of backsliding could become a menacing blowback to what began as a very positive program for humanity, and not just the Arab world.
The urge for democratic rule of the people, even if still at a primitive level of organization, is an unmistakable emotional, spiritual and physical force in the world. Given the rapid changes taking place, many of them possibly beyond the understanding of the groups undertaking them, the rule that has brought us to this point is desperate and approaching a madness that makes Khadaffi look benign, progressive and harmless by comparison. Those nuclear-powered world “leaders” are near desperation and cannot be counted on to act rationally, as evidence clearly indicates. What are people to do when the information they rely on comes from the very sources striving to maintain the crippled, failing system?
Be very careful, wary and suspicious of all authority and what it tells us, remembering that its main duty is to maintain the status quo in substance even while changing the style in which it operates – see Obama and company - and be very critical of what alleged opposition to that authority tells us, too.
Frank Scott writes political commentary and satire which appears in print in The Independent Monitor and online at the blog Legalienate
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