by A. K. Verma
Threats are a matter of perception. Their assessments take into account capacities, not so much intentions, of a potential adversary. For an accurate reading, the short term and long term objectives of all leading players in the world have to be judged. Applying this criterion will reveal that India is living in an environment of threat from many corners of the earth. Is there a threat from the United States? To answer the question one must first identify the basic interests of the US and then examine whether similar interests of India are supplementary or contradictory to those of the US. An objective study will lead to the conclusion whether the relation ship between the two countries is essentially benevolent or malignant. The broad national interests of the US can be summed as the following:1. Geopolitical containment of Russia and China. 2. Nonproliferation.3. Countering and eradicating Islamism or radical Islam. 4. Maintaining access to and dominating control of energy sources In each of these areas the US is seeking to co-opt India as a junior partner. Since Indian interests do not necessarily dovetail into those of the US, a potential collision lurks in the background. US possibly views China as the single most potent long term threat to its continued domination of the world. It is, therefore, presently engaged in building coalitions to hamstring it from all directions. The US wants to develop India as an ally in this effort. Although India has its own fundamental differences with China, these do not go to the extent that it should play any role in the US strategy. An implicit threat in the relationship thus emerges. Non proliferation has been an article of faith with all recent US administrations that have been deeply unhappy with the Indian nuclear weapons programme. They want this programme to be capped, rolled back and eliminated. There have been some studies, commissioned by neo cons in the US, which have even suggested that it could be bombed out. A war was launched against Iraq, under the guise of dismantling its non existent WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction). Today, the dominant view in the neo con circles in Washington DC favours aerial strikes against Iran to knock its nuclear facilities to eradicate a possible nuclear programme. How can one assume that the Indian programme, if it is resumed, will forever remain unthreatened? The US war on Islamism, fought in the name of terrorism, has brought NATO, one suspects, as a permanent presence in Afghanistan. For the US it also serves the collateral purpose of offering a checkmate to China. This war seems to be leading to a gradual polarization of the world into Islamic and non Islamic and could indeed set in a clash of civilizations. The impact of such a development on South Asia will be devastating. Afghanistan is already deeply radicalized. If anti American sentiment can be treated as an index to measure propensity towards radicalism, Pakistan is also affected. A radical fringe can now be identified in India also. The US policies on issues relating to Islam have, thus, a potential for destabilization of communal harmony in South Asia. A resurgent Russia has put paid to US energy related ambitions in the Central Asian Republics but in the energy belt in West Asia, the latter remains dominant. The American enterprise in Iraq was propelled actually by a desire to strengthen this domination. There is an American effort now to block the growth of Iranian gas and oil markets. Indian oil energy needs to the extent of 70% are met from foreign sources. This requirement is expected to rise to 90% at not too distant a date. The US frowns at possibilities of expansion of India Iran linkages in this sector. In today’s world energy security is needed to reach human developmental goals and economic prosperity. But US eyes it as a strategic weapon. A conflictual environment is, thus, already created. While all that stated above does not amount to a totality of adverse relations, it is necessary not to ignore these factors while determining policy in India. One should not forget the abiding security dictum: there are only permanent interests, no permanent friends. Further, the ‘transformational diplomacy’ of the Neocons aims at converting nation states into American clones. In the field of external relations two other countries stand out, meriting continuous scrutiny and caution, China and Pakistan. Unlike the US, there have been violent ups and downs in India’s relationship with them. One, therefore, must attempt to discover what the core problems are. Looking at China first, its core concern is maintaining its integrity, territorial or otherwise, while it moves dynamically forward to build up its economic, political and military strengths. It seems to it that its strongest challenges will emanate from the US, seen to be encircling it from all directions with the help of its allies, and wanting to force a democratic wave within China, also targeting for loosening of its hold over Tibet and Xinjiang. In the game of diplomatic chess that has emerged China wants to ensure that no lending hand is given to the US by India. It seeks to achieve this objective by keeping India off balance. It has developed Pakistan as its Israel against India, extending nuclear and missile technology, all directed 100% against India. More than collaboration with the US, China fears India over the possible roles it can play around Tibet. As long as fires of Tibetan nationalism burn in Tibet and a diaspora of over 100,000 Tibetans, mostly well educated and politically aware, with Dalai Lama providing a focus, shelter in India, China will view India with grave suspicions. There is no way by which India can succeed in removing such mistrust from the Chinese mind. While the resulting state of unease may not lead to a war as in 1962, it certainly blocks progress on the border settlement and withdrawal of territorial claims such as over Arunachal Pradesh and. Aksaichin. As of today, one may not be off the mark to state that China India relationship will remain a hostage to China’s crisis with Tibet. The threat from Pakistan is altogether of a different kind. It is not an exaggeration to say that this threat commenced from the day Pakistan came into existence. It was inherent in the two nation theory, propounded anywhere in the world for the first time, to divide a multi-religious and multi-cultural nation, on a religious basis. An impossible task had been attempted, considering the size of India and its population, religion wise. The attempt succeeded in carving out a religious majority area, already existing, as a new nation, but the rump India still remained a many layered multi-religious and multi-cultural society. The two nation theory encouraged Pakistan to lay a claim over J&K State. Beginning with tribal incursions of late 1947, Pakistan has fought several wars to wrest the state out of Indian control. A proxy war continues even today. This continued quest has completely reoriented the psyche of Pakistani people and re-aligned all instruments of governance and policy- making in Pakistan against India. The text books in schools and colleges, the entire military doctrine and the entire focus of its nuclear weapon development program is centered against India. The ruling establishment in Pakistan has had to rely more and more on Islam and ‘Islampasand’ parties to keep the nation under its control. Islam is now so deeply embedded in the corridors of power that none in Pakistan can ignore the Islamic perspective. From the Pakistani view point there is no solution to the Kashmir question other than its amalgamation into Pakistan, a position which India can never accept, since any such scenario can ignite a chain reaction of separation in India. The problems between India and Pakistan will thus, remain insoluble, until Pakistan modifies its commitment to two nation theory. The prospects for such a change are absolutely minimal, because demolition of two nation theory means that Pakistan looses its raison-de-etre. The Pakistani designs against India have created a vast range of threats. Almost all movements within the country, agitating against the centre for political reasons have received support by way of finances, training, arms, guidance and shelter from Pakistani intelligence, ISI. Within Pakistan itself Islamist groups have been created or supported by ISI for sabotage, subversion and terrorism in India. ISI with its surrogate Wahabi groups is now targeting Indian Muslims to get them involved in questionable activities. Whilst under US pressure Pakistan has somewhat relented on its support to Islamic radicals operating against the US, it has abstained from a similar downsizing of its activities against India. What may one expect from the new configuration in Pakistan after the recent elections? There is no evidence yet that key changes are in the offing. The President retains all his powers as of old. He derives his strength from the military which, while it seems to have moved backstage, has not shed any substantive power. A new era will not dawn in Pakistan until the military is truly confined to the barracks. Till that happens, perceptions of threats from Pakistan must remain as before. On India’s borders exist other failed or failing states which create deep security concerns. Recent (10.04.08) elections to the Constituent Assembly (CA) in Nepal have pitch forked the Maoists in the leadership position for the first time for government formation. Their immediate objectives in the foreseeable future can be expected to be consolidation and management of CA deliberations to facilitate their smooth assimilation with polity and power in Nepal. Externally, their objectives will to redefine Nepal’s relations with neighbours and other powers. Inevitablly it will mean loss of India’s pre-eminent position in Nepal, with scrapping of mutual privileges. Covert support to Indian Maoists had not been on their agenda in the past and is not likely to be there in future while the process of consolidation is on. But transformation is never without some turbulence and hiccups. As they arise, they will need to be settled with foresight and patience. Unease with Bangladesh is not likely to end as their response on two major Indian security concerns remain negative, illegal infiltration into India and promotion of cross border terrorism. Bangladesh’s asymmetry with India and its extreme sense of inferiority vis-à-vis India contribute in a big way to these problems. The demographic aggression is a direct result of the pathetic poverty of Bangladesh. Infiltration has significantly altered the population patterns in the border areas of India and constitutes a long-term risk. The Bangladesh situation calls for a holistic approach from India, combining a compassionate approach to help in its developmental objectives with firmness where security gets compromised. In Srilanka, India is caught between the devil and the deep sea. The best solution for the crisis there would have been autonomy to Tamils in the North East provinces in a federal setup with a guaranteed and substantive devolution of power between the provinces and the centre. The moment seems to have been missed and Srilanka appears to be seeking a military option. India is left painted in a corner, unable to take any initiative on behalf of either side. After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, public opinion in India is not very sympathetic towards the LTTE but if misfortune continuously chases Srilankan Tamils, there will be calls to come out with a response. The internal scene in India is also not free from anxiety on the threat front. Growth of Naxalism has been declared by the Prime minister to be the top internal security problem of the country. Roots of Naxalism, now known as Maoism, predate independence and now affect about 150 districts spread over 13 states. It has grown to this strength on account of cumulative wrongs, absence of social and eco reforms to ensure human dignity, justice and democratic rights to the rural and forest tribal populations of the country. The movement is seeking to establish a contiguous area from Karnataka to Nepal border to set up a compact revolutionary zone and is now well militarized. It will be a mistake to think that the movement can be countered by armed means alone. Ways have to be found to include the Maoists in the main stream and to fulfill the rising expectations of the rural and tribal people through better governance and a paradigm shift in administrative and development strategies, to ensure a better delivery. Subversion is another form of threat the Indian State is facing from several quarters . In J&K it takes the shape of a proxy war led by militant outfits operating from the safety of sanctuaries in Pakistan, at the behest of the Pakistani establishment. Despite the so called peace process between India and Pakistan, the thrust in this assault remains as sharp and purposeful as before. It is expanding and making inroads into the rest of the country. It wants to transmute itself into what has been dubbed as New Terrorism, mindless destruction of lives and property, merely for spectacular results. New Terrorism will employ WMDs if it can lay its hands on them. Its foreign promoters are eyeing the Indian Muslim community as a fertile field for recruitment of agents. The Pakistani masters try to distort faith by sowing concepts that such terrorism is ultimately a service to the wider community. This in turn promotes sectarian tensions. It is not clear whether the dangers inherent in this Pakistani strategy have been fully comprehended or conceptualized in India. The recent Deoband fatwa, outlawing terrorism, while laudable, does not go deep into the question, whether doctrinal injunctions create a mindset disfavouring growth of liberalism which will offset terrorism. The Muslim community in India needs to be encouraged to examine why it remains out of step with contemporaneous concepts and ideas that can ensure such virtues as gender equality, freedom of expression and keeping religion and state out of each other’s way. The turbulence in the North Eastern states of India is another form of subversion, orchestrated by foreign agencies, notably Pakistani. No doubt the militants in these states, principally Tripura, Assam, Manipur and Nagaland have long standing local grievances but there is an ongoing effort in most cases by the Central Government to deal with these through dialogue and counter insurgency. Cross border connections, guidance, financing and arming often put a spanner into such efforts. Maoism and foreign subversion pose strong challenges but the idea that is India remains strong. Nobody can say that India is not an admirably successful example of a multi ethnic, multi religious, multi lingual and pluralist entity in motion. However, interplay of politics and corruption and absence of good governance, a must for efficient security, remains a big blot on India’s record and add to the existentialist threats, facing India from various directions.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Copy-Cat Attack on Karzai
By B. Raman President John F. Kennedy of the US was assassinated on November 22, 1963, at Dallas, Texas, as he was being taken in a tightly-protected motorcade. In view of the strict access control, which might not have allowed access to his car, Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin, took up position in an unoccupied room on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Repository and fired at Kennedy. The incident highlighted the need for perimeter security, meaning the physical security of buildings in the vicinity of a VIP motorcade or a place of meeting of the VIP to prevent anyone taking shelter in a building and opening fire. 2.On October 6, 1981, the then President Anwar Sadat of Egypt was assassinated during the annual 6th October parade in Cairo marking the eighth anniversary of what the Egyptians view as their victory over Israel in the Yom Kippur war of 1973. As Sadat and his security staff were engrossed watching a spectacular fly-past in the sky, Khalid Islambouli of the Islamic Jihad, who was a member of the military formations participating in the parade, ran towards Sadat and shot him dead. Eleven others were also killed by other terriorists, who indiscriminately opened fire 3. The subsequent investigation brought out that a fatwa ordering the assassination had been issued by Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind cleric who is presently in jail in the US after having been convicted for his role in the New York World Centre explosion of February 1993. Over 300 members of the Islamic jihad were arrested and prosecuted by the Egyptian authorities. Prominent among them were Dy. Ayman al-Zawahiri, the present No.2 of Al Qaeda, who now operates from the tribal areas of Pakistan, Omar Abdel Rahman and Abd al-Hamid Kishk. Zawahiri and Omar were released by the Egyptian authorities in 1984. Both of them travelled, along with a brother of Islambouli, to Pakistan and offered their services to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in the jihad against the Soviet troops. The ISI recruited them and sent them to Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden joined them subsequently. They were later to constitute the initial hard core of Al Qaeda. 4. Some of the perpetrators of the attack, which killed Sadat, were allegedly members of the Egyptian Army. The investigation brought out that they participated in the parade carrying weapons loaded with live ammunition. The security precaution of a pre-parade inspection of all weapons carried by those participating in a parade to ensure that no weapon was loaded with ammunition was introduced by security agencies of the world thereafter. 5. The modus operandi (MO) used in the attempt to kill President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan during a national day parade at Kabul on April 27, 2008, partly resembles the MO used by Oswald for killing Kennedy and partly the MO used by the Islamic Jihad of Egypt for killing Sadat. The perpetrators decided to strike during the parade held to mark the 16th anniversary of the collapse of the Government of then President Najibullah, which led to the occupation of Kabul by the Mujahideen. During such spectacular parades, the attention of the security staff tends to get diverted by the spectacle, thereby providing the would-be assassin with an opportunity to strike. However, since the access control in the parade ground was apparently tight, the perpetrators took up position in a room of a low-class hotel normally used by migrant labour, which was located about 500 metres from the saluting base, and opened fire with machine guns and grenade launchers. 6. They opened fire at the moment when Mr.Karzai had returned to the base after inspecting the formations, which were to participate in the parade.His personal security guards managed to have him removed safely out of the parade ground without his being hurt. There was an exchange of fire between other security personnel posted in the parade ground and the perpetrators. The security personnel ultimately managed to stop the firing from the building, raid it and make a number of arrests. 7. A self-styled spokesman of the Neo Taliban has claimed responsibility for the terrorist strike and said that a team of six persons participated in the operation of whom three died and the other three managed to escape. A tribal elder on the stage was directly hit and killed by the terrorist fire. A member of parliament, who was injured, succumbed to his injuries later. A 10-year-old child, which was reportedly hit by a bullet fired by the security personnel, also died. 8. While Afghan security sources have projected the incident as an attempt to kill Mr. Karzai, the Neo Taliban has projected it as an operation to demonstrate its capability even in Kabul, despite all the security precautions taken by the Government. The incident has revealed serious deficiencies in route security and perimeter security. The deficiencies in route security enabled six terrorists heavily armed enter the city and reach the hotel without being detected and intercepted anywhere. The deficiencies in perimeter security enabled the perpetrators to take up position in a room of the hotel without being detected and fire from there. 9. Apart from these physical security deficiencies, was there also a complicity by any members of the security forces? That is a question, which should be worrying the Afghan authorities. In Iraq, many successful terrorist strikes have been made possible by internal complicity. In Afghanistan, till now, there have been few instances of such complicity. 10. It has to be stressed that while the Neo Taliban's capability to carry out terrorist strikes in different parts of the country, including Kabul, has remained unimpaired, its capability for large-scale conventional actions involving stand-and-fight battles with large numbers of its men deployed has not been much in evidence this year as compared to 2006-07. The death of Mulla Dadullah, a very competent conventional commander, in a clash in May, 2007, seems to have impaired the Neo Taliban's capability for conventional fighting. It has not yet been able to produce a commander with a similar capability.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com)
Indian Army Chief Fears Rise in Infiltration of Militants in Kashmir
The Indian army chief, General Deepak Kapoor has expressed the apprehensions that the infiltration of militants from across the border will rise in Kashmir.
The Indian army chief arrived here on a two-day visit. He was accompanied by his wife. After landing in Kashmir, he left for North Kashmir where he interacted with the soldiers deployed on frontiers with Pakistan.
He lauded the soldiers for their 'brave' efforts and credited them for the present improvement in the ground situation in Kashmir. He said that it was because of their efforts that the ground situation has witnessed an improvement.
He, however, expressed apprehensions that the infiltration of militants from the Pakistani side of Kashmir may increase during the coming days. "The snow in the peaks is melting and the militants may try to increase their attempts to cross into Kashmir to carry out violence related incidents there," he said.
He asked the soldiers on the frontiers with Pakistan to remain alert and vigilant to thwart any infiltration bid by militants. He asked the soldiers not to lower their guard.
The Indian army chief arrived here on a two-day visit. He was accompanied by his wife. After landing in Kashmir, he left for North Kashmir where he interacted with the soldiers deployed on frontiers with Pakistan.
He lauded the soldiers for their 'brave' efforts and credited them for the present improvement in the ground situation in Kashmir. He said that it was because of their efforts that the ground situation has witnessed an improvement.
He, however, expressed apprehensions that the infiltration of militants from the Pakistani side of Kashmir may increase during the coming days. "The snow in the peaks is melting and the militants may try to increase their attempts to cross into Kashmir to carry out violence related incidents there," he said.
He asked the soldiers on the frontiers with Pakistan to remain alert and vigilant to thwart any infiltration bid by militants. He asked the soldiers not to lower their guard.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Engaging India
Source : http://www.boloji.com/opinion/0539.htm
By Dr. Adityanjee
The need for a tectonic paradigm shift in the US foreign policy establishment in order to nurture the increasingly important Indo-US economic, scientific, cultural and strategic relationship can not be ignored anymore. The US needs to take unilateral, tangible, concrete and quantifiable confidence building measures (CBMs) in order to reverse the repetitive past sanctions and correct the past wrongs done to a fellow democracy. Meeting these benchmarks will remove the fundamental irritants in the bilateral relationship and enable India to perceive the US as an equal, dependable and reliable strategic partner. US rhetoric must match the action on the ground. Acceptance of genuine reciprocity in bilateral relations will serve as the guiding principle for future.
There has been increasing warmth in Indo-US relations. America’s strategic opportunity with India has been talked about in recent months. Karl Inderfurth and Bruce Reidel advocated open US support for India’s membership in the UN Security Council and India’s inclusion in G8 in the “National Interest” magazine. High hopes and expectations for future were expressed by the charismatic and hardworking diplomat R. Nicholas Burns in Foreign Affairs magazine. In the same issue of Foreign Affairs republican presidential hopeful John McCain, while advocating for cementing US’s growing partnership with India, writes :”We need to start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India”. Similarly warm sentiments about India were expressed by the democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton who writes” In Asia, India has a special significance both as an emerging power and as the world’s most populous democracy. As co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, I recognize the tremendous opportunity presented by India’s rise and the need to give the country an augmented voice in regional and international institutions, such as the UN. We must find additional ways for Australia, India, Japan, and the United States to cooperate on issues of mutual concern, including combating terrorism, cooperating on global climate control, protecting global energy supplies, and deepening global economic development”. Richard Holbrooke has advocated India’s membership of UN P5 while also lamenting the absence of India and China in the G8 meetings. These recent sentiments were not possible if the 14-rounds Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbott dialogue had not built an earlier foundation of mutual understanding. Policy Continuity plus (PC Plus) as proposed by Inderfurth & Reidel should be the cornerstone for the future US administrations.
Clearly, the mutual warmth in the bilateral Indo-US relations could not be better than any other time in the recent history. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had characterized the US and India as natural allies. Current Indian Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh has described the US President George W. Bush as the friendliest US President to India. Credit for this bonhomie also goes to the scholarly Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the strategic Guru of the current US president, who was chiefly instrumental in changing the rigid, inflexible, orthodox and historically anti-India mindset of the US Department of State and in steering the White House’s thinking towards India in a positive direction. Undersecretary R. Nicholas Burns himself has worked very hard and has made numerous trips to India. He has always been optimistic about the future of Indo-US relationship. He is indeed right when he talks about the lost bilateral opportunities in the past 60 years and a bright potential for the future along with the immense need to do it right this time. Henry Kissinger admitted that he and others in the US never envisaged that the two countries will be so close. Despite this upbeat mood of the top executive branch of the US Administration, Congressional minions and the Foggy Bottom mandarins have laid down an elaborate “prescriptive plan making extremely narcissistic demands” on the Government of India to harmonize her national laws, foreign policies and strategic interests according to the foreign policy objectives and strategic vision of the US as enshrined in the Henry L. Hyde Act and the 123 agreement.
In this context, one recalls the famous words of a former US President John F. Kennedy who once said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”! The same aphorism aptly applies for the US policy czars, mandarins, and visionaries current and future included. Rather than US policy planners asking what India can do for the US global strategic interests, the more appropriate question is what the future US administrations would do for India. This would be an important out-of-the-box next step by the US in the avante garde strategic partnership in order to engage India “constructively”. A state department document somewhat patronizingly asserted that the US will assist India achieve a global power status in the 21st century. Nobody makes anybody a global power. Nations achieve that status on their own strength. Of course, India shall do so on her own strength in the near future. From the Indian perspective, the US rhetoric does not match its action in harmonizing US’s actual behavior with the ostensibly stated intent or the verbiage. The fundamental irritant in the bilateral relationship between the two fellow democracies is the repetitive use of wide-ranging sanctions against India by successive US administrations. That regime of still-existing sanctions will have to be completely dismantled by the US unilaterally without seeking anything in return from India. Therefore, a major tectonic paradigm shift is required in the US foreign policy establishment.
The steps for the mating dance Undersecretary Nicholas Burns asked India to learn are strategically inappropriate and potentially self-injurious for India. India might break her femur while dancing to Uncle’s Sam’s seductive music; the tunes, the lyrics and the whole ensemble, of course! Indian civil society perceives duplicity & doublespeak if not outright deception in some of these friendly US overtures. A camouflaged or sugarcoated policy of “Congagement” of India under the garb of engagement certainly will not work. Future US administrations should ask themselves important and pertinent questions like how the US government can change its own behavior and policy framework to accommodate a rising India’s national and strategic interests and democratic aspirations in a global framework that has essentially been decided by the successive US administrations following the 2nd World war. International strategic space can not be occupied indefinitely by the victors of the 2nd World war. US policy wonks should seriously calculate the total long-term costs to the US of “losing India” once again by failing to genuinely engage India in the 3rd millennium.
So far, US attempts to engage India have been ambivalent and half-hearted. US diplomats fail to understand India’s genuine national interests, aspirations and foreign policy and strategic concerns globally. India is not just another banana republic. India does have a proud history of 5000 years’ old civilization whereas in historic terms US is only a recent geo-political entity. True, US is the global “hyper-power” at this juncture! India is rising fast as a serious economic, industrial, intellectual, cultural, civilisational and strategic power-house in the international arena despite numerous mis-steps in the past 60 years. Train India Express cannot be stopped any longer despite laying out railroad blocks; the only real alternatives are to board the train or be left behind on the platform! In the current scenario, the US needs India more than India needs US. Of course, India does need the US in this era of globalization and free trade. India may have been coy or confused in the past about articulating her strategic interests. That situation is no longer likely to be true for a newly resurgent India. The strategic implications of this changing global balance of power dynamics cannot be minimized any longer by the future US Administrations as the world transforms from its current uni-polar moments to a newly emerging multi-polar reality.
It is important to recapitulate the historical antecedents of Indo-US relationship since 1947. The US generally tends to disregard history for short-term policy gains. Without understanding the historical context, proper corrective actions are impossible.
Missed Opportunities & Recent Snafus:
After India’s independence, the US as the imperialistic inheritor of the world order following the end of World War II tended to hurt India’s strategic interests by cultivating Pakistan as a client state. Part of the blame does lie at the doorstep of India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru. Characterization of India’s non-alignment stance as “immoral” by John Foster Dulles epitomized the US mindset as essentially blocked with tunnel vision.
Besides the famous tilt to Pakistan, abusive language used by Nixon- Kissinger duo against a former female Indian Prime Minister and also “stereotyping” of Indians in private but taped conversations in the oval office betrays the contempt successive post WW II US administrations held India in. In the mid-eighties a young Indian Prime Minister visited the US. Bilateral agreements on scientific and technological collaboration were signed. The US under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan agreed to sell two Cray supercomputers to India for predicting Monsoon and other weather patterns. Only one Cray supercomputer was delivered; the US non-proliferation ayatollahs blocked the sale of second one forcing India to develop her own parallel processing PARAM supercomputer system.
The US Department of State has been particularly insensitive in the past about the need to engage India in a diplomatic, courteous and honorable manner. For example, Robin Raphael, the former Assistant Secretary of State in the first Clinton administration went on to deny the authenticity of the Instrument of Accession that was signed between the Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir and the Government of India in 1947. She also made the notoriously disparaging statement that it is very easy to start a storm in a teacup in New Delhi! The same Robin Raphael is now on the payroll of the Pakistani Government as a paid lobbyist of Pakistan. One wonders how long she had been on the payroll of Government of Pakistan! Immediate and ungrudging US acceptance of the India’s position on the state of Jammu & Kashmir is the need of the hour. Most recent example of such lost opportunities caused by the US arrogance and chutzpah was the undiplomatic behavior of General Colin Powell who as the US Secretary of State visited New Delhi in 2004 and announced the “NSSP: Next Steps in Strategic Partnership” initiative. He was in Islamabad 24 hours later declaring Pakistan as the “Major Non-Nato Ally” (MNNA). Indian sensitivities were not considered. No prior consultations were done. This caused dismay and hurt in the Indian establishment. General Powell gave a lame excuse that he “forgot” to discuss MNNA with his Indian interlocutors just 24 hours before. Elementary my dear Watson, perhaps, this was a severe case of amnesia induced while one General was trying to be the knight in shining armor to rescue his General in distress!
Failure of the US to acknowledge till 9/11 that India is a victim of cross-border Jihadist terrorism from Pakistan remains a sore point for India. In the 1980s, the US covertly supported Khalistani terrorists under the garb of “Human rights” who had committed heinous crimes against innocent Indian civilians. Labeling terrorists as freedom fighters, the US lost any credibility with the civil society in India despite a strong fascination for the US by the burgeoning Indian middle class. The Wlliam Jefferson Clinton administration chose to remain silent in March 1999 when the two Bamiaan Buddha statues were destroyed by the Taliban. The US was trying to negotiate an oil pipeline with the Taliban at that time! When Pakistani Jihadist terrorists hijacked an Indian civilian airliner to Kandahaar, Afghanistan in December 1999 the US did not sanction or even admonish Pakistan or Taliban. Perpetual US reluctance to genuinely condemn the terrorist crimes against India over last several decades was the greatest diplomatic folly. Though some former US officials have acknowledged their mistakes now, there is no corrective policy change as yet.
Successive US administrations (Bush-41, Clinton, Bush-43) have scuttled any serious attempts to reform and expand the Security Council of the UN that would have enabled India to be one of the permanent members of the SC. For the US, the sole objective is to maintain its hold on the world body and not allow anyone else to have a say in world affairs. Except for making some vague noises on the principles of reform, the US has not come out categorically in India’s favor as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Inderfurth and Reidel advocate that future US administration should openly support India for the Security Council membership. US could have graciously supported India’s candidate Shashi Tharoor for the UN Secretary General’s position. Reportedly, the US secretly vetoed his candidature enabling Ban Ki Moon to win. Shashi Tharoor would have certainly made a far better UN SG than Ban Ki Moon. Ban ki Moon has been wasting the UN budget on a massive increase in personnel and on staff salaries instead of developmental programs. He has been accused of packing the UN posts with his South Korean cronies who keep on having side-talks in Korean instead of using official UN languages! US lost a golden chance to reform the UN along with a democratic partner, India and Shashi Tharoor as the SG. But alas! Chutzpah, thy name is US Department of State! The Bush administration again in October 2007 voted for the Canadian candidate instead of India's Finance Minister, P Chidambaram to head the International Monetary Fund's Monetary and Financial Committee -- the IMF's influential policymaking body. It was the second time in less than two years that the US had let down India. The US vote for Canada instead of India attracted concerns about cronyism.
Morality, Pragmatism and the Us Foreign Policy:
Lack of harmonization and congruence between the US foreign policy objectives and India’s stated positions is owing to Machiavellian tendencies. Such practices have blinded the US diplomats to India’s moralistic stance whether in the arena of the non-alignment movement, in the interests of the third world countries, in the GATT, in the WTO, in the NPT and its various avatars. Americans are fond of rationalizing their blind and irrational tactical and strategic support for tin-pot dictators and coup plotters world-wide by stating; “Well, he may be a son of a bitch but he is our son of a bitch”! This crass characterization of US self-interests alone as supreme in selectively supporting military dictators worldwide while chiding India for not being democratic enough represents the “Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome” the whole US foreign policy establishment suffers from. The height of brazenness was reflected when a CIA inspired New York Times correspondent Barbara Crossett in the 1990s tried to sell her characterization of India as a “Rogue Democracy”. Being a democracy is not good enough! You have to be the “Right Democracy” on the right side of the US otherwise you would be labeled as a “Rogue Democracy”! A nation that cannot conduct its own presidential elections right and selects the presidents by judicial order has forfeited any rights to comment on India’s vibrant democracy!
Nuclear Spring:
It is unlikely that the US-India civil energy accord will be fully implemented in near future despite last minute efforts to revive it. The US Congress unfairly moved the goalposts. Undersecretary Burns has already submitted his resignation. Its slow death despite attempts to resuscitate is currently causing consternation in the US. The US establishment, including Ambassador David Mullford, is unable to fathom Indian concerns about this deal that is more about US non-proliferation objectives rather than tending to India’s growing energy needs. Something that was initially negotiated in good faith as civil energy accord can not be exploited to satisfy the unrealistic objectives of the US non-proliferation lobby. The alphabet soup (NPT, CTBT, FMCT, MTCR, PSI) that tends to drown India strategically has been cooked by the chef US in order to maintain the dated nature of the P5 club membership. The US tied itself into the knots by creating NSG as an instrument to contain India after the 1974 “Smiling Buddha” nuclear test. It is for the US to extricate itself by untying these knots. The world cannot be frozen into strategic status quo. When India under the leadership of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee conducted Pokhran II nuclear tests, the Clinton administration went on record to ask a fellow democracy India to CAP, ROLLBACK and eventually ELIMINATE her strategic nuclear assets. Let it be categorically stated that India shall not cap, rollback and eliminate her strategic nuclear program come what may! India values her strategic autonomy and independence. The only way out for the US and other members of the “nuclear club” is to realize and accept India’s exceptionalism; make amends to the NPT and welcome India as an advanced nuclear weapon state with full privileges and ‘rights” of the “club membership”. Any second class citizenship of the “club” would not be acceptable to future Governments of India. Unconditional and immediate acceptance of India as a de facto and de jure nuclear weapon state as defined by a revision of the NPT is called for. Short of that tectonic change in the US attitude, there is not going to be a nuclear spring. Any future Government of India that signs a bilateral or multilateral nuclear agreement restraining India’ strategic nuclear program will not survive the next elections. The only nuclear non-proliferation regime India will consider has to be time-bound totally non-discriminatory universal nuclear disarmament in accordance with the New Delhi Declaration of 1988 signed by the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and ex-Soviet leader Mikhael Gorbachev. Since both the Bush administration and the Man Mohan Singh government are lame ducks now, future elected officials will deal with the issue of nuclear rapprochement! It is an issue of very grave concern that Richard Boucher wants approval of the nuclear deal by stealth and by backdoor when he claims that a caretaker government of India or a minority government’s signing the nuclear accord would be “kosher” from the US perspective. This raises doubts about the indecent haste in trying to formalize and implement a bilateral accord by both governments on their last legs.
Securing Indian Subcontinent:
India is surrounded by countries that are either failed states or are on the path to become failed states. The inability of these failed states to sort out their internal problems generates neighbors’ envy and of course tendency to adopt a “victim” role and internationalize any minor problems. Overzealous US support for the now defunct Gujral Doctrine further emboldened some of these failed states to project their internal problems on to India. Some of these failed states have tried to play global power politics by inviting superpowers into the region to contain India’s economic, industrial and military rise. These failed states in the Indian subcontinent have historically played their China card or US card against India on numerous occasions. Rationalization of state sponsored cross-border terrorism directed against India by US diplomats in the pre 9/11 era is still fresh in the minds of Indian policy planners. Though India does not wish to become an authentic regional hegemon, she may have to bring order in this very chaotic region in her backyard owing to deep cultural, historical and civilizational ties along with the tyranny of geographic proximity. India cannot wish away these troubled neighbors even if she wished to do so. However, India cannot afford to have instability in her vicinity. From Indian perspective, these failed states need to undertake structural reforms, democratize genuinely and become prosperous so that terrorism can be eliminated from the region. India can and will help them.
A rising India would like both the US and China to stop trying to spread their influence country after country in the immediate vicinity of India. India would not condone alien superpowers if they invade India’s sacred strategic space. Near abroad region around India should remain free of the superpower rivalry between the US and China. Just like the US did not tolerate nuclear missiles in its backyard triggering the Cuban missiles crisis in the 1960s or the Russia currently having difficulty tolerating Poland and Czech territories as part of US’ Strategic Missile defense shield, India certainly would not wish to see a nuclear armed and unstable Bangladesh or a nuclear armed and unstable Myanmar joining the company of a nuclear armed and unstable Pakistan. India as an emergent global power would like to manage her own backyard and shall brook no interference from any quarters however benign. If the interference does not stop, a resurgent India may have to take appropriate pre-emptive, remedial steps so that Indian strategic interests in her neighborhood are not jeopardized. India certainly would not look for any one’s permission to do so and no one should be surprised if that happens in near future.
Historic Tilt towards Pakistan:
The soft underbelly of the US giant is the failed state of Pakistan and Jihadi Terrorism emanating from Pakistan. As we speak, the unraveling of recent events in Pakistan, murder of Benazir Bhutto and the continued US support to the failing dictatorship of General Musharraf reflects the intellectual bankruptcy of the Bush-43 foreign policy team. Robust support for serial military dictatorships in Pakistan has been the normative behavior of successive US administrations. The infamous tilt shown historically by US administrations towards Pakistan and directed against India’s strategic interests did affect the nature, quality and dimensions of Indo-US relations in the past 60 years. Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark in their recent book entitled “Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons” accuse the US Department of State of suffering from a severe case of “Clientitis” vis a vis Pakistan. Since 2001, the US has provided the terrorist state of Pakistan military aid worth 11 billion dollars without any results. You do not fight terrorism by providing Pakistani military machine with nuclear capable F16 fighter jets. The US policy on Pakistan can be summarized in one sentence:”Support the latest military dictator”! Nation states do make historical mistakes and reap the harvest of those mistakes. The now defunct Soviet Union did commit strategic mistakes and certainly paid for it. India also has committed strategic mistakes and has paid dearly for them. The same holds true for the only global “hyper-power”. George Santayana once said: “Those who fail to learn from the lessons of history are condemned to repeat the history”. If the US has to come out of the Terroristic & Talibani quagmire of Jihadistan (the geographically contiguous region of Afghanistan, Waziristan & Pakistan), there is no other alternative for the US but to do a course correction after a deep introspection of its past thinking, theories, behaviors and actions. Accepting the past mistakes will certainly help the US in preventing it from emulating the Soviet fate in this region. Myanmar versus Pakistan, US concern for democracy in the Indian subcontinent is highly selective.
In the post-Cold war era de-hyphenating the relationship with India and Pakistan alone is not enough for the US. There has to be an exercise of deep national introspection on failed foreign policies of successive US administrations in relation to Pakistan. There has to be a public contrition by the US for the past sins along with promises of future actual, measurable good behaviors. There is a dire strategic need for the US Administration to bring out an un-sanitized, un-redacted and complete white paper on its entire gamut of relationships with Pakistan in totality since the inception of that state in 1947. A formal declaration by the US characterizing Pakistan and its chief financial backer, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as rogue states sponsoring terrorism will definitely help. The past sins of previous US Administrations can certainly “forgiven” by a magnanimous and an indulgent India but they cannot be “forgotten” altogether. Future “good as well as bad” behaviors of the US administrations are likely to be scrutinized very closely by the future Governments of India.
India, Us and China:
Since 1970 the US cultivated communist China as an ally to the horror of the entire democratic world. During the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war, Nixon & Kissinger encouraged China to attack India. Later on, while India was targeted as an enemy nation by the 301 and the super 301 trade protection laws, China was granted most favored nation (MFN) status annually by the US Congress. China’s transfer of nuclear technology and bomb design to Pakistan in 1988-1989 did not evoke any US response from the George H. W. Bush administration. The horrors of the Tiananmen Square massacre did not cause outrage in the Bush-41 administration. The US missed an opportunity to leverage the international community in order to solve the problem of Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1989. Chinese transfer of Ballistic Missiles in the early 1990s to Pakistan did not elicit any sanctions from the William Jefferson Clinton Administration. Though the US honeymoon with China is now over, the US continues to allow communist China to buy nuclear reactors but sanctions a democratic India even now. Even now with China’s brutal repression in Tibet, the US has been waffling on any strong measures to censor China’s brazen conduct.
India does not wish to be used as a US proxy to contain China in the Asian theatre as India believes genuinely in the inevitability of a multi-polar world. A newly resurgent India will deal with China on her own steam. India does not need to ally with US against China as it certainly would not gang up against US in company of Russia and China in accordance with the Primakov Doctrine. Yes, Chinese behavior does cause for concern in India. China needs to understand that India will engage each and every nation and geo-political entity on the basis of her own strength, sovereignty and national aspirations without being bullied by anyone. India is a democracy and would definitely find it easier to work with other democracies in the international arena. A resurgent India will not feel apologetic about her bilateral and multilateral relationships with other democratic nations in Asia and elsewhere. If China needs to work “harmoniously” with India, it needs to speedily transform itself into a mature, pluralistic democracy as Indians know it. China should not whine about India’s relationship with the US or with any other democracy as it will not help China diplomatically. Similarly, the US should not expect India to become a subservient junior partner helping it contain or balance China in the Asian theatre. India is too proud a nation to do that and will never do that. Nor should US contemplate ganging with China and others to hamstring India’s strategic options whether in the SCP5, NPT or NSG. In the ultimate analysis, a resurgent India will always be pro-India, and not pro-US, pro-Soviet, pro-China or pro-Russia or pro-Whatever!
Natural Allies:
While the world’s oldest democracy and the largest democracy are natural allies, friends and natural allies certainly do not spy on each other. Such episodes are serious impediments to improvement in bilateral relationship. Perhaps, the future US administrations will have to relearn that honesty counts in friendly relationships between two nation states as it counts among individuals. Espionage activities directed towards India need to stop immediately. It is not something new; each decade has witnessed US attempts to infiltrate India’s politicians and bureaucrats. In the 1970s, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared that there was a CIA agent in her cabinet. Later on, Seymour Hirsch claimed that the CIA agent in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet was the former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. Former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh wrote in his book about a US Mole in the Prime Minister’s Office in the mid 1990s during Prime Minister Narsimha Rao’s time. Two recent episodes of espionage were described in depth by Major General VK Singh in his book entitled “India’s External Intelligence”. These episodes cast the US in a very poor light as a friendly nation to India. The first episode happened in May 2004 when CIA mole in the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) Rabinder Singh was spirited out of India to the US. More recently in 2006, Rosanne Minchew, a young female US embassy official was involved in breaching Indian security in the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS). She obtained sensitive data on USB drives copied from the computers of the NSCS from R&AW staff. She made several personal trips together with Commander Mukesh Saini who introduced her to his subordinate SS Paul, a computer analyst. This was a classic case of “honey trap” in which sex and money were used to spy on India. There were also CIA inspired plans to encourage secessionist activity in the North-east part of India specifically a blue-print for creation of “United States of Assam”. If the US is serious about cultivating strategic relationship with India, espionage activities targeted against a fellow democracy will have to cease completely.
The Long Journey Ahead, Indeed:
Since thinking as well as the behavior of recent US administrations is still conditioned by the past prism of cold war, it will be appropriate for the future US administrations to change the basic mindset while dealing with India. In the 1971 during the Bangladesh liberation war, the Nixon administration had sent the US Navy’s 7th fleet to the Bay of Bengal to covertly threaten India with “consequences”. A formal apology by the US for sending its 7th fleet in 1971 in the Bay of Bengal during the Indo-Pak war of 1971 is still awaited. More recently, the US troika of Henry Kissinger, Henry M. Paulson and David C. Mullford attempted to coerce India and lobby the leaders of opposition to kow-tow to the US strategic interests and approve the 123 agreement in the Indian parliament. There have been overt and covert threats from these distinguished worthies about linking permanent membership of the UN Security Council with smooth passage of the 123 agreement in the Indian parliament.
Credibility of the US as strategic partner of India shall depend upon changes in actual US behavior. The US rhetoric must match its action on the ground. Continuation of “prescriptive” approach and frequent demands on India to change her foreign policy in accordance with US strategic objectives by insignificant members of the US Congress or minor bureaucrats will not take future US administrations anywhere. Opportunistic shifting of goal-posts in civil nuclear energy deal and reneging on previously negotiated bilateral and multilateral agreements in the past do not inspire confidence. India’s sensitivities as the largest functioning democracy have to be understood clearly. In a democracy, all important decisions are taken by the people & the parliament of that country and not by demarches of foreign governments! India will continue to have multi-dimensional relationships with other nations including Russia and Iran despite having good relations with the US.
As the Indian diplomats and politicians of this era, fearful of the breach of diplomatic protocol, may not speak so bluntly, may not articulate a pro-India view so cogently, may not enunciate India’s hopes and aspirations so clearly; someone, albeit a private individual, has the responsibility to call a spade a spade and convey the true feelings and sense of a resurgent India to the future US administrations that the diplomatese jargon can not express. Future efforts at containment and congagement of India and her strategic nuclear program will not work. Nor would work any attempts to lay a “honey trap” to contain India’s strategic options. The relationship has to be of genuine reciprocity between two equals or between two brothers rather being master-slave relationship. For lack of a better expression, it can be called Adityan Doctrine! The US policy and strategy establishment will have to seek a successful cure for the “Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome” it has historically suffered from. The US will have to learn to be humble and honest while dealing with a rising India. And India will have to be more assertive and articulate in expressing and delineating her strategic interests. It is true that India and the US will have to indulge in a complex and ritualized mating dance with very intricate footwork and steps for future engagement. Mere need for such a mating dance should not be usurped to foist the suicidal role of “Bhasmasura” upon India while the US seductively portrays herself as a coy “Mohini” on the dance floor in the disapproving presence of the international ayatollahs of non-proliferation theology!
Guiding Principles and Benchmarks for Future:
We certainly have the glorious opportunity to synergize the strengths and creative energies of two largest democracies. There are people to people relationships now. Pew research survey of world-wide attitudes suggests a lot of goodwill in India about the US. For the strategic relationship to move forward, the US will have to make unilateral concessions by making a clean break from its past. Since both the Bush administration and the Man Mohan Singh government are lame ducks now, new beginnings can be made by future US administrations in dealing with a resurgent India. Let the US policy establishment free itself from the shackles of the ayatollahs of non-proliferation theology. A new dawn in Indo-US relations can start with the US giving its immediate, unconditional, unqualified, un-hesitating, unequivocal and open support for India’s bid for the permanent membership of the UN Security Council without beating around any bush. Another significant unilateral CBM involves facilitating India’s reprocessing rights on the spent nuclear fuel for the Tarapore Atomic Power Station (TAPS) to help with India’s growing energy needs. A formal US apology for unilaterally abrogating bilateral agreements on supply of nuclear fuel for the TAPS and payment of monetary damages for the losses suffered thereby consequent upon US failure to supply the nuclear fuel is necessary in mitigating the past hurts. India would not like her bilateral relationship with US being constrained by her relationship with a resurgent Russia or with Iran with whom India has civilization links for more than five thousand years. There is no zero sum game in these multi-dimensional relationships India has with various countries and the US policy makers should refrain from putting conditionalities on India.
Following 5 Mantras and 10 Commandments have been enunciated for the future US Administrations so that they do not blunder yet again in making wrong and self-defeating strategic choices vis-à-vis India. Though not proposed as benchmarks, these will become de facto benchmarks to judge future US behavior towards India. If the US policy planners and government officials adopt and internalize the proposed 5 Mantras and 10 Commandments, the relationship between the two great democratic nations would be smooth. The future Indo-US relationship will be predicated on the following bench-marks:
Five Mantras:
India is a re-emerging superpower that cannot be stopped!
India is a pluralistic democracy.
India is an ancient civilization that is proud of her glorious past, aware of her current limitations and fully cognizant of her future potential, roles and responsibilities.
India cannot be contained as she shall not bow or bend.
India shall prevail over all the adversities with resilience.
Ten Commandments:
Thou shall not interfere in the internal affairs of India.
Thou shall not block India’s entry into the P5.
Thou shall not spy on India.
Thou shall not expect India to change her independent foreign policy.
Thou shall not place trade restrictions and visa obstructions in the path of Indian scientists and professionals who provide important services.
Thou shall not send Evangelist, Baptist, Christian missionaries to India under garb of tourists and CIA agents under the garb of journalists.
Thou shall express sincere apologies for “breach of a bilateral contract between two sovereign nations” on Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS) and make amends for the same.
Thou shall not prop up serial military dictatorships of Pakistan on one pretext or another.
Thou shall not play the China card against India.
Thou shall not act as the policeman of the Indian subcontinent.
Dr. Adityanjee is the President of Council for Strategic Affairs, New Delhi
By Dr. Adityanjee
The need for a tectonic paradigm shift in the US foreign policy establishment in order to nurture the increasingly important Indo-US economic, scientific, cultural and strategic relationship can not be ignored anymore. The US needs to take unilateral, tangible, concrete and quantifiable confidence building measures (CBMs) in order to reverse the repetitive past sanctions and correct the past wrongs done to a fellow democracy. Meeting these benchmarks will remove the fundamental irritants in the bilateral relationship and enable India to perceive the US as an equal, dependable and reliable strategic partner. US rhetoric must match the action on the ground. Acceptance of genuine reciprocity in bilateral relations will serve as the guiding principle for future.
There has been increasing warmth in Indo-US relations. America’s strategic opportunity with India has been talked about in recent months. Karl Inderfurth and Bruce Reidel advocated open US support for India’s membership in the UN Security Council and India’s inclusion in G8 in the “National Interest” magazine. High hopes and expectations for future were expressed by the charismatic and hardworking diplomat R. Nicholas Burns in Foreign Affairs magazine. In the same issue of Foreign Affairs republican presidential hopeful John McCain, while advocating for cementing US’s growing partnership with India, writes :”We need to start by ensuring that the G-8, the group of eight highly industrialized states, becomes again a club of leading market democracies: it should include Brazil and India”. Similarly warm sentiments about India were expressed by the democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton who writes” In Asia, India has a special significance both as an emerging power and as the world’s most populous democracy. As co-chair of the Senate India Caucus, I recognize the tremendous opportunity presented by India’s rise and the need to give the country an augmented voice in regional and international institutions, such as the UN. We must find additional ways for Australia, India, Japan, and the United States to cooperate on issues of mutual concern, including combating terrorism, cooperating on global climate control, protecting global energy supplies, and deepening global economic development”. Richard Holbrooke has advocated India’s membership of UN P5 while also lamenting the absence of India and China in the G8 meetings. These recent sentiments were not possible if the 14-rounds Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbott dialogue had not built an earlier foundation of mutual understanding. Policy Continuity plus (PC Plus) as proposed by Inderfurth & Reidel should be the cornerstone for the future US administrations.
Clearly, the mutual warmth in the bilateral Indo-US relations could not be better than any other time in the recent history. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had characterized the US and India as natural allies. Current Indian Prime Minister Man Mohan Singh has described the US President George W. Bush as the friendliest US President to India. Credit for this bonhomie also goes to the scholarly Secretary of State, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the strategic Guru of the current US president, who was chiefly instrumental in changing the rigid, inflexible, orthodox and historically anti-India mindset of the US Department of State and in steering the White House’s thinking towards India in a positive direction. Undersecretary R. Nicholas Burns himself has worked very hard and has made numerous trips to India. He has always been optimistic about the future of Indo-US relationship. He is indeed right when he talks about the lost bilateral opportunities in the past 60 years and a bright potential for the future along with the immense need to do it right this time. Henry Kissinger admitted that he and others in the US never envisaged that the two countries will be so close. Despite this upbeat mood of the top executive branch of the US Administration, Congressional minions and the Foggy Bottom mandarins have laid down an elaborate “prescriptive plan making extremely narcissistic demands” on the Government of India to harmonize her national laws, foreign policies and strategic interests according to the foreign policy objectives and strategic vision of the US as enshrined in the Henry L. Hyde Act and the 123 agreement.
In this context, one recalls the famous words of a former US President John F. Kennedy who once said: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”! The same aphorism aptly applies for the US policy czars, mandarins, and visionaries current and future included. Rather than US policy planners asking what India can do for the US global strategic interests, the more appropriate question is what the future US administrations would do for India. This would be an important out-of-the-box next step by the US in the avante garde strategic partnership in order to engage India “constructively”. A state department document somewhat patronizingly asserted that the US will assist India achieve a global power status in the 21st century. Nobody makes anybody a global power. Nations achieve that status on their own strength. Of course, India shall do so on her own strength in the near future. From the Indian perspective, the US rhetoric does not match its action in harmonizing US’s actual behavior with the ostensibly stated intent or the verbiage. The fundamental irritant in the bilateral relationship between the two fellow democracies is the repetitive use of wide-ranging sanctions against India by successive US administrations. That regime of still-existing sanctions will have to be completely dismantled by the US unilaterally without seeking anything in return from India. Therefore, a major tectonic paradigm shift is required in the US foreign policy establishment.
The steps for the mating dance Undersecretary Nicholas Burns asked India to learn are strategically inappropriate and potentially self-injurious for India. India might break her femur while dancing to Uncle’s Sam’s seductive music; the tunes, the lyrics and the whole ensemble, of course! Indian civil society perceives duplicity & doublespeak if not outright deception in some of these friendly US overtures. A camouflaged or sugarcoated policy of “Congagement” of India under the garb of engagement certainly will not work. Future US administrations should ask themselves important and pertinent questions like how the US government can change its own behavior and policy framework to accommodate a rising India’s national and strategic interests and democratic aspirations in a global framework that has essentially been decided by the successive US administrations following the 2nd World war. International strategic space can not be occupied indefinitely by the victors of the 2nd World war. US policy wonks should seriously calculate the total long-term costs to the US of “losing India” once again by failing to genuinely engage India in the 3rd millennium.
So far, US attempts to engage India have been ambivalent and half-hearted. US diplomats fail to understand India’s genuine national interests, aspirations and foreign policy and strategic concerns globally. India is not just another banana republic. India does have a proud history of 5000 years’ old civilization whereas in historic terms US is only a recent geo-political entity. True, US is the global “hyper-power” at this juncture! India is rising fast as a serious economic, industrial, intellectual, cultural, civilisational and strategic power-house in the international arena despite numerous mis-steps in the past 60 years. Train India Express cannot be stopped any longer despite laying out railroad blocks; the only real alternatives are to board the train or be left behind on the platform! In the current scenario, the US needs India more than India needs US. Of course, India does need the US in this era of globalization and free trade. India may have been coy or confused in the past about articulating her strategic interests. That situation is no longer likely to be true for a newly resurgent India. The strategic implications of this changing global balance of power dynamics cannot be minimized any longer by the future US Administrations as the world transforms from its current uni-polar moments to a newly emerging multi-polar reality.
It is important to recapitulate the historical antecedents of Indo-US relationship since 1947. The US generally tends to disregard history for short-term policy gains. Without understanding the historical context, proper corrective actions are impossible.
Missed Opportunities & Recent Snafus:
After India’s independence, the US as the imperialistic inheritor of the world order following the end of World War II tended to hurt India’s strategic interests by cultivating Pakistan as a client state. Part of the blame does lie at the doorstep of India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru. Characterization of India’s non-alignment stance as “immoral” by John Foster Dulles epitomized the US mindset as essentially blocked with tunnel vision.
Besides the famous tilt to Pakistan, abusive language used by Nixon- Kissinger duo against a former female Indian Prime Minister and also “stereotyping” of Indians in private but taped conversations in the oval office betrays the contempt successive post WW II US administrations held India in. In the mid-eighties a young Indian Prime Minister visited the US. Bilateral agreements on scientific and technological collaboration were signed. The US under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan agreed to sell two Cray supercomputers to India for predicting Monsoon and other weather patterns. Only one Cray supercomputer was delivered; the US non-proliferation ayatollahs blocked the sale of second one forcing India to develop her own parallel processing PARAM supercomputer system.
The US Department of State has been particularly insensitive in the past about the need to engage India in a diplomatic, courteous and honorable manner. For example, Robin Raphael, the former Assistant Secretary of State in the first Clinton administration went on to deny the authenticity of the Instrument of Accession that was signed between the Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir and the Government of India in 1947. She also made the notoriously disparaging statement that it is very easy to start a storm in a teacup in New Delhi! The same Robin Raphael is now on the payroll of the Pakistani Government as a paid lobbyist of Pakistan. One wonders how long she had been on the payroll of Government of Pakistan! Immediate and ungrudging US acceptance of the India’s position on the state of Jammu & Kashmir is the need of the hour. Most recent example of such lost opportunities caused by the US arrogance and chutzpah was the undiplomatic behavior of General Colin Powell who as the US Secretary of State visited New Delhi in 2004 and announced the “NSSP: Next Steps in Strategic Partnership” initiative. He was in Islamabad 24 hours later declaring Pakistan as the “Major Non-Nato Ally” (MNNA). Indian sensitivities were not considered. No prior consultations were done. This caused dismay and hurt in the Indian establishment. General Powell gave a lame excuse that he “forgot” to discuss MNNA with his Indian interlocutors just 24 hours before. Elementary my dear Watson, perhaps, this was a severe case of amnesia induced while one General was trying to be the knight in shining armor to rescue his General in distress!
Failure of the US to acknowledge till 9/11 that India is a victim of cross-border Jihadist terrorism from Pakistan remains a sore point for India. In the 1980s, the US covertly supported Khalistani terrorists under the garb of “Human rights” who had committed heinous crimes against innocent Indian civilians. Labeling terrorists as freedom fighters, the US lost any credibility with the civil society in India despite a strong fascination for the US by the burgeoning Indian middle class. The Wlliam Jefferson Clinton administration chose to remain silent in March 1999 when the two Bamiaan Buddha statues were destroyed by the Taliban. The US was trying to negotiate an oil pipeline with the Taliban at that time! When Pakistani Jihadist terrorists hijacked an Indian civilian airliner to Kandahaar, Afghanistan in December 1999 the US did not sanction or even admonish Pakistan or Taliban. Perpetual US reluctance to genuinely condemn the terrorist crimes against India over last several decades was the greatest diplomatic folly. Though some former US officials have acknowledged their mistakes now, there is no corrective policy change as yet.
Successive US administrations (Bush-41, Clinton, Bush-43) have scuttled any serious attempts to reform and expand the Security Council of the UN that would have enabled India to be one of the permanent members of the SC. For the US, the sole objective is to maintain its hold on the world body and not allow anyone else to have a say in world affairs. Except for making some vague noises on the principles of reform, the US has not come out categorically in India’s favor as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. Inderfurth and Reidel advocate that future US administration should openly support India for the Security Council membership. US could have graciously supported India’s candidate Shashi Tharoor for the UN Secretary General’s position. Reportedly, the US secretly vetoed his candidature enabling Ban Ki Moon to win. Shashi Tharoor would have certainly made a far better UN SG than Ban Ki Moon. Ban ki Moon has been wasting the UN budget on a massive increase in personnel and on staff salaries instead of developmental programs. He has been accused of packing the UN posts with his South Korean cronies who keep on having side-talks in Korean instead of using official UN languages! US lost a golden chance to reform the UN along with a democratic partner, India and Shashi Tharoor as the SG. But alas! Chutzpah, thy name is US Department of State! The Bush administration again in October 2007 voted for the Canadian candidate instead of India's Finance Minister, P Chidambaram to head the International Monetary Fund's Monetary and Financial Committee -- the IMF's influential policymaking body. It was the second time in less than two years that the US had let down India. The US vote for Canada instead of India attracted concerns about cronyism.
Morality, Pragmatism and the Us Foreign Policy:
Lack of harmonization and congruence between the US foreign policy objectives and India’s stated positions is owing to Machiavellian tendencies. Such practices have blinded the US diplomats to India’s moralistic stance whether in the arena of the non-alignment movement, in the interests of the third world countries, in the GATT, in the WTO, in the NPT and its various avatars. Americans are fond of rationalizing their blind and irrational tactical and strategic support for tin-pot dictators and coup plotters world-wide by stating; “Well, he may be a son of a bitch but he is our son of a bitch”! This crass characterization of US self-interests alone as supreme in selectively supporting military dictators worldwide while chiding India for not being democratic enough represents the “Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome” the whole US foreign policy establishment suffers from. The height of brazenness was reflected when a CIA inspired New York Times correspondent Barbara Crossett in the 1990s tried to sell her characterization of India as a “Rogue Democracy”. Being a democracy is not good enough! You have to be the “Right Democracy” on the right side of the US otherwise you would be labeled as a “Rogue Democracy”! A nation that cannot conduct its own presidential elections right and selects the presidents by judicial order has forfeited any rights to comment on India’s vibrant democracy!
Nuclear Spring:
It is unlikely that the US-India civil energy accord will be fully implemented in near future despite last minute efforts to revive it. The US Congress unfairly moved the goalposts. Undersecretary Burns has already submitted his resignation. Its slow death despite attempts to resuscitate is currently causing consternation in the US. The US establishment, including Ambassador David Mullford, is unable to fathom Indian concerns about this deal that is more about US non-proliferation objectives rather than tending to India’s growing energy needs. Something that was initially negotiated in good faith as civil energy accord can not be exploited to satisfy the unrealistic objectives of the US non-proliferation lobby. The alphabet soup (NPT, CTBT, FMCT, MTCR, PSI) that tends to drown India strategically has been cooked by the chef US in order to maintain the dated nature of the P5 club membership. The US tied itself into the knots by creating NSG as an instrument to contain India after the 1974 “Smiling Buddha” nuclear test. It is for the US to extricate itself by untying these knots. The world cannot be frozen into strategic status quo. When India under the leadership of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee conducted Pokhran II nuclear tests, the Clinton administration went on record to ask a fellow democracy India to CAP, ROLLBACK and eventually ELIMINATE her strategic nuclear assets. Let it be categorically stated that India shall not cap, rollback and eliminate her strategic nuclear program come what may! India values her strategic autonomy and independence. The only way out for the US and other members of the “nuclear club” is to realize and accept India’s exceptionalism; make amends to the NPT and welcome India as an advanced nuclear weapon state with full privileges and ‘rights” of the “club membership”. Any second class citizenship of the “club” would not be acceptable to future Governments of India. Unconditional and immediate acceptance of India as a de facto and de jure nuclear weapon state as defined by a revision of the NPT is called for. Short of that tectonic change in the US attitude, there is not going to be a nuclear spring. Any future Government of India that signs a bilateral or multilateral nuclear agreement restraining India’ strategic nuclear program will not survive the next elections. The only nuclear non-proliferation regime India will consider has to be time-bound totally non-discriminatory universal nuclear disarmament in accordance with the New Delhi Declaration of 1988 signed by the former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and ex-Soviet leader Mikhael Gorbachev. Since both the Bush administration and the Man Mohan Singh government are lame ducks now, future elected officials will deal with the issue of nuclear rapprochement! It is an issue of very grave concern that Richard Boucher wants approval of the nuclear deal by stealth and by backdoor when he claims that a caretaker government of India or a minority government’s signing the nuclear accord would be “kosher” from the US perspective. This raises doubts about the indecent haste in trying to formalize and implement a bilateral accord by both governments on their last legs.
Securing Indian Subcontinent:
India is surrounded by countries that are either failed states or are on the path to become failed states. The inability of these failed states to sort out their internal problems generates neighbors’ envy and of course tendency to adopt a “victim” role and internationalize any minor problems. Overzealous US support for the now defunct Gujral Doctrine further emboldened some of these failed states to project their internal problems on to India. Some of these failed states have tried to play global power politics by inviting superpowers into the region to contain India’s economic, industrial and military rise. These failed states in the Indian subcontinent have historically played their China card or US card against India on numerous occasions. Rationalization of state sponsored cross-border terrorism directed against India by US diplomats in the pre 9/11 era is still fresh in the minds of Indian policy planners. Though India does not wish to become an authentic regional hegemon, she may have to bring order in this very chaotic region in her backyard owing to deep cultural, historical and civilizational ties along with the tyranny of geographic proximity. India cannot wish away these troubled neighbors even if she wished to do so. However, India cannot afford to have instability in her vicinity. From Indian perspective, these failed states need to undertake structural reforms, democratize genuinely and become prosperous so that terrorism can be eliminated from the region. India can and will help them.
A rising India would like both the US and China to stop trying to spread their influence country after country in the immediate vicinity of India. India would not condone alien superpowers if they invade India’s sacred strategic space. Near abroad region around India should remain free of the superpower rivalry between the US and China. Just like the US did not tolerate nuclear missiles in its backyard triggering the Cuban missiles crisis in the 1960s or the Russia currently having difficulty tolerating Poland and Czech territories as part of US’ Strategic Missile defense shield, India certainly would not wish to see a nuclear armed and unstable Bangladesh or a nuclear armed and unstable Myanmar joining the company of a nuclear armed and unstable Pakistan. India as an emergent global power would like to manage her own backyard and shall brook no interference from any quarters however benign. If the interference does not stop, a resurgent India may have to take appropriate pre-emptive, remedial steps so that Indian strategic interests in her neighborhood are not jeopardized. India certainly would not look for any one’s permission to do so and no one should be surprised if that happens in near future.
Historic Tilt towards Pakistan:
The soft underbelly of the US giant is the failed state of Pakistan and Jihadi Terrorism emanating from Pakistan. As we speak, the unraveling of recent events in Pakistan, murder of Benazir Bhutto and the continued US support to the failing dictatorship of General Musharraf reflects the intellectual bankruptcy of the Bush-43 foreign policy team. Robust support for serial military dictatorships in Pakistan has been the normative behavior of successive US administrations. The infamous tilt shown historically by US administrations towards Pakistan and directed against India’s strategic interests did affect the nature, quality and dimensions of Indo-US relations in the past 60 years. Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark in their recent book entitled “Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons” accuse the US Department of State of suffering from a severe case of “Clientitis” vis a vis Pakistan. Since 2001, the US has provided the terrorist state of Pakistan military aid worth 11 billion dollars without any results. You do not fight terrorism by providing Pakistani military machine with nuclear capable F16 fighter jets. The US policy on Pakistan can be summarized in one sentence:”Support the latest military dictator”! Nation states do make historical mistakes and reap the harvest of those mistakes. The now defunct Soviet Union did commit strategic mistakes and certainly paid for it. India also has committed strategic mistakes and has paid dearly for them. The same holds true for the only global “hyper-power”. George Santayana once said: “Those who fail to learn from the lessons of history are condemned to repeat the history”. If the US has to come out of the Terroristic & Talibani quagmire of Jihadistan (the geographically contiguous region of Afghanistan, Waziristan & Pakistan), there is no other alternative for the US but to do a course correction after a deep introspection of its past thinking, theories, behaviors and actions. Accepting the past mistakes will certainly help the US in preventing it from emulating the Soviet fate in this region. Myanmar versus Pakistan, US concern for democracy in the Indian subcontinent is highly selective.
In the post-Cold war era de-hyphenating the relationship with India and Pakistan alone is not enough for the US. There has to be an exercise of deep national introspection on failed foreign policies of successive US administrations in relation to Pakistan. There has to be a public contrition by the US for the past sins along with promises of future actual, measurable good behaviors. There is a dire strategic need for the US Administration to bring out an un-sanitized, un-redacted and complete white paper on its entire gamut of relationships with Pakistan in totality since the inception of that state in 1947. A formal declaration by the US characterizing Pakistan and its chief financial backer, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as rogue states sponsoring terrorism will definitely help. The past sins of previous US Administrations can certainly “forgiven” by a magnanimous and an indulgent India but they cannot be “forgotten” altogether. Future “good as well as bad” behaviors of the US administrations are likely to be scrutinized very closely by the future Governments of India.
India, Us and China:
Since 1970 the US cultivated communist China as an ally to the horror of the entire democratic world. During the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war, Nixon & Kissinger encouraged China to attack India. Later on, while India was targeted as an enemy nation by the 301 and the super 301 trade protection laws, China was granted most favored nation (MFN) status annually by the US Congress. China’s transfer of nuclear technology and bomb design to Pakistan in 1988-1989 did not evoke any US response from the George H. W. Bush administration. The horrors of the Tiananmen Square massacre did not cause outrage in the Bush-41 administration. The US missed an opportunity to leverage the international community in order to solve the problem of Chinese occupation of Tibet in 1989. Chinese transfer of Ballistic Missiles in the early 1990s to Pakistan did not elicit any sanctions from the William Jefferson Clinton Administration. Though the US honeymoon with China is now over, the US continues to allow communist China to buy nuclear reactors but sanctions a democratic India even now. Even now with China’s brutal repression in Tibet, the US has been waffling on any strong measures to censor China’s brazen conduct.
India does not wish to be used as a US proxy to contain China in the Asian theatre as India believes genuinely in the inevitability of a multi-polar world. A newly resurgent India will deal with China on her own steam. India does not need to ally with US against China as it certainly would not gang up against US in company of Russia and China in accordance with the Primakov Doctrine. Yes, Chinese behavior does cause for concern in India. China needs to understand that India will engage each and every nation and geo-political entity on the basis of her own strength, sovereignty and national aspirations without being bullied by anyone. India is a democracy and would definitely find it easier to work with other democracies in the international arena. A resurgent India will not feel apologetic about her bilateral and multilateral relationships with other democratic nations in Asia and elsewhere. If China needs to work “harmoniously” with India, it needs to speedily transform itself into a mature, pluralistic democracy as Indians know it. China should not whine about India’s relationship with the US or with any other democracy as it will not help China diplomatically. Similarly, the US should not expect India to become a subservient junior partner helping it contain or balance China in the Asian theatre. India is too proud a nation to do that and will never do that. Nor should US contemplate ganging with China and others to hamstring India’s strategic options whether in the SCP5, NPT or NSG. In the ultimate analysis, a resurgent India will always be pro-India, and not pro-US, pro-Soviet, pro-China or pro-Russia or pro-Whatever!
Natural Allies:
While the world’s oldest democracy and the largest democracy are natural allies, friends and natural allies certainly do not spy on each other. Such episodes are serious impediments to improvement in bilateral relationship. Perhaps, the future US administrations will have to relearn that honesty counts in friendly relationships between two nation states as it counts among individuals. Espionage activities directed towards India need to stop immediately. It is not something new; each decade has witnessed US attempts to infiltrate India’s politicians and bureaucrats. In the 1970s, former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared that there was a CIA agent in her cabinet. Later on, Seymour Hirsch claimed that the CIA agent in Indira Gandhi’s cabinet was the former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. Former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh wrote in his book about a US Mole in the Prime Minister’s Office in the mid 1990s during Prime Minister Narsimha Rao’s time. Two recent episodes of espionage were described in depth by Major General VK Singh in his book entitled “India’s External Intelligence”. These episodes cast the US in a very poor light as a friendly nation to India. The first episode happened in May 2004 when CIA mole in the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) Rabinder Singh was spirited out of India to the US. More recently in 2006, Rosanne Minchew, a young female US embassy official was involved in breaching Indian security in the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS). She obtained sensitive data on USB drives copied from the computers of the NSCS from R&AW staff. She made several personal trips together with Commander Mukesh Saini who introduced her to his subordinate SS Paul, a computer analyst. This was a classic case of “honey trap” in which sex and money were used to spy on India. There were also CIA inspired plans to encourage secessionist activity in the North-east part of India specifically a blue-print for creation of “United States of Assam”. If the US is serious about cultivating strategic relationship with India, espionage activities targeted against a fellow democracy will have to cease completely.
The Long Journey Ahead, Indeed:
Since thinking as well as the behavior of recent US administrations is still conditioned by the past prism of cold war, it will be appropriate for the future US administrations to change the basic mindset while dealing with India. In the 1971 during the Bangladesh liberation war, the Nixon administration had sent the US Navy’s 7th fleet to the Bay of Bengal to covertly threaten India with “consequences”. A formal apology by the US for sending its 7th fleet in 1971 in the Bay of Bengal during the Indo-Pak war of 1971 is still awaited. More recently, the US troika of Henry Kissinger, Henry M. Paulson and David C. Mullford attempted to coerce India and lobby the leaders of opposition to kow-tow to the US strategic interests and approve the 123 agreement in the Indian parliament. There have been overt and covert threats from these distinguished worthies about linking permanent membership of the UN Security Council with smooth passage of the 123 agreement in the Indian parliament.
Credibility of the US as strategic partner of India shall depend upon changes in actual US behavior. The US rhetoric must match its action on the ground. Continuation of “prescriptive” approach and frequent demands on India to change her foreign policy in accordance with US strategic objectives by insignificant members of the US Congress or minor bureaucrats will not take future US administrations anywhere. Opportunistic shifting of goal-posts in civil nuclear energy deal and reneging on previously negotiated bilateral and multilateral agreements in the past do not inspire confidence. India’s sensitivities as the largest functioning democracy have to be understood clearly. In a democracy, all important decisions are taken by the people & the parliament of that country and not by demarches of foreign governments! India will continue to have multi-dimensional relationships with other nations including Russia and Iran despite having good relations with the US.
As the Indian diplomats and politicians of this era, fearful of the breach of diplomatic protocol, may not speak so bluntly, may not articulate a pro-India view so cogently, may not enunciate India’s hopes and aspirations so clearly; someone, albeit a private individual, has the responsibility to call a spade a spade and convey the true feelings and sense of a resurgent India to the future US administrations that the diplomatese jargon can not express. Future efforts at containment and congagement of India and her strategic nuclear program will not work. Nor would work any attempts to lay a “honey trap” to contain India’s strategic options. The relationship has to be of genuine reciprocity between two equals or between two brothers rather being master-slave relationship. For lack of a better expression, it can be called Adityan Doctrine! The US policy and strategy establishment will have to seek a successful cure for the “Narcissistic Entitlement Syndrome” it has historically suffered from. The US will have to learn to be humble and honest while dealing with a rising India. And India will have to be more assertive and articulate in expressing and delineating her strategic interests. It is true that India and the US will have to indulge in a complex and ritualized mating dance with very intricate footwork and steps for future engagement. Mere need for such a mating dance should not be usurped to foist the suicidal role of “Bhasmasura” upon India while the US seductively portrays herself as a coy “Mohini” on the dance floor in the disapproving presence of the international ayatollahs of non-proliferation theology!
Guiding Principles and Benchmarks for Future:
We certainly have the glorious opportunity to synergize the strengths and creative energies of two largest democracies. There are people to people relationships now. Pew research survey of world-wide attitudes suggests a lot of goodwill in India about the US. For the strategic relationship to move forward, the US will have to make unilateral concessions by making a clean break from its past. Since both the Bush administration and the Man Mohan Singh government are lame ducks now, new beginnings can be made by future US administrations in dealing with a resurgent India. Let the US policy establishment free itself from the shackles of the ayatollahs of non-proliferation theology. A new dawn in Indo-US relations can start with the US giving its immediate, unconditional, unqualified, un-hesitating, unequivocal and open support for India’s bid for the permanent membership of the UN Security Council without beating around any bush. Another significant unilateral CBM involves facilitating India’s reprocessing rights on the spent nuclear fuel for the Tarapore Atomic Power Station (TAPS) to help with India’s growing energy needs. A formal US apology for unilaterally abrogating bilateral agreements on supply of nuclear fuel for the TAPS and payment of monetary damages for the losses suffered thereby consequent upon US failure to supply the nuclear fuel is necessary in mitigating the past hurts. India would not like her bilateral relationship with US being constrained by her relationship with a resurgent Russia or with Iran with whom India has civilization links for more than five thousand years. There is no zero sum game in these multi-dimensional relationships India has with various countries and the US policy makers should refrain from putting conditionalities on India.
Following 5 Mantras and 10 Commandments have been enunciated for the future US Administrations so that they do not blunder yet again in making wrong and self-defeating strategic choices vis-à-vis India. Though not proposed as benchmarks, these will become de facto benchmarks to judge future US behavior towards India. If the US policy planners and government officials adopt and internalize the proposed 5 Mantras and 10 Commandments, the relationship between the two great democratic nations would be smooth. The future Indo-US relationship will be predicated on the following bench-marks:
Five Mantras:
India is a re-emerging superpower that cannot be stopped!
India is a pluralistic democracy.
India is an ancient civilization that is proud of her glorious past, aware of her current limitations and fully cognizant of her future potential, roles and responsibilities.
India cannot be contained as she shall not bow or bend.
India shall prevail over all the adversities with resilience.
Ten Commandments:
Thou shall not interfere in the internal affairs of India.
Thou shall not block India’s entry into the P5.
Thou shall not spy on India.
Thou shall not expect India to change her independent foreign policy.
Thou shall not place trade restrictions and visa obstructions in the path of Indian scientists and professionals who provide important services.
Thou shall not send Evangelist, Baptist, Christian missionaries to India under garb of tourists and CIA agents under the garb of journalists.
Thou shall express sincere apologies for “breach of a bilateral contract between two sovereign nations” on Tarapur Atomic Power Station (TAPS) and make amends for the same.
Thou shall not prop up serial military dictatorships of Pakistan on one pretext or another.
Thou shall not play the China card against India.
Thou shall not act as the policeman of the Indian subcontinent.
Dr. Adityanjee is the President of Council for Strategic Affairs, New Delhi
India to invite bids for purchase of 312 helicopters
Close on the heels of floating multi-billion dollar global tenders for buying long-range artillery guns, India plans to invite international bids for purchase of 312 light helicopters. The tenders for these helicopters, 197 for the army aviati on and another 115 for the air force, are to be floated in the next few days and are estimated to be worth over $2 billion.
India plans to buy these helicopters to give its forces capability of rapid deployment and for logistics support on the icy heights of Siachen glacier.
"These choppers are being inducted to enhance the operational capability of the armed forces in the high Himalayan frontiers", according to the Defence Secretary Mr Vijay Singh.
Textron-based American helicopter major Bell, European arms major EADS, Russia's Kamov and Italian Augusta Westland are expected to be the main bidders for the Indian tenders.
The four helicopter manufacturers were also the bidders in the Indian army request for proposals for 197 helicopters, which was cancelled at the last moment after government said rules of procurement had been flouted by a bidder. At the time of cancellat ion of the deal, officials were engaged in price negotiation.
The combined army and IAF tenders were to be out in the first week of this month, but were delayed as the air force was late in firming up its requirements, according to officials.
India plans to buy these helicopters to give its forces capability of rapid deployment and for logistics support on the icy heights of Siachen glacier.
"These choppers are being inducted to enhance the operational capability of the armed forces in the high Himalayan frontiers", according to the Defence Secretary Mr Vijay Singh.
Textron-based American helicopter major Bell, European arms major EADS, Russia's Kamov and Italian Augusta Westland are expected to be the main bidders for the Indian tenders.
The four helicopter manufacturers were also the bidders in the Indian army request for proposals for 197 helicopters, which was cancelled at the last moment after government said rules of procurement had been flouted by a bidder. At the time of cancellat ion of the deal, officials were engaged in price negotiation.
The combined army and IAF tenders were to be out in the first week of this month, but were delayed as the air force was late in firming up its requirements, according to officials.
Check out this cockpit on the prototype IJT.
Notice use of the same HUD as LCA.This will make the transition process between aircrafts much shorter and easier for our pilots.
For 4 yrs, VIPs flying unsafe
While pointing out several infirmities in the acquisition process of aircraft for the Indian Air Force’s VIP squadron, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has revealed that the IAF has been ferrying the country’s leaders in aircraft that have been unsuitable for VIP flights for the past four years.Stating that the process deviated from laid down procedures and recognised norms of propriety, the CAG, in its latest report has brought out that supplies valuing 50 million dollars were contracted without the benefit of competition. Besides, the acquisition of aircraft and self-protection suites were inordinately delayed, leading to a total cost escalation of 20 million dollars.The Ministry of Defence had concluded a contract with Boeing in October 2005 for three business jets at a cost of 161 million dollars (Rs 734 crore) to replace the two existing Boeing 737 held by the IAF’s Communications Squadron. Another contract was concluded for self-protection suites for the aircraft at a cost of 45 million dollars (Rs 203 crore).The Delhi-based Communications Squadron, which operates a mix of Boeing 737, Embraer Legacy business jets and helicopters, is responsible for the air travel of the President, Vice-President, Prime Minister, Defence Minister, service chiefs and a few select people.The CAG report stated that the operational requirements pertaining to communication facilities, instrument landing system, cabin layout and interiors, put forward during the acquisition process, were incomplete and tentative.The technical evaluation of the aircraft was not comprehensive and no flight evaluation of the aircraft had been offered by the two vendors (Boeing and Airbus) in the fray. Further, several concessions were made to the selected bidder and several deviations from standard contract conditions were allowed.The CAG also revealed that the IAF’s approach towards the self-protection suite, a mandatory fitment for VIP aircraft, was uncertain and flawed. According to the CAG report, the IAF frequently changed its requirements and opted for a system that did not meet its own broad technical requirements. Finally a system that had not been evaluated by the IAF was accepted. This resulted in further problems as the system did not have provision for “in-country programming” which would now have to be done at extra cost.Despite spending Rs 937 crore, the new aircraft, which are scheduled to enter service this year, would not be used for international travel, necessitating continued lease of Air India aircraft with all its adverse consequences. Moreover, the CAG has held the procurement of the three jets to replace two aircraft as unjustified.
DRDO is not a lost cause, it can be revived
M P Anil Kumar
The defence secretary headed a delegation to Russia in February to salvage the capsized Admiral Gorshkov deal and to mend the recent Indo-Russian bad vibes. Media reports speculated that India has agreed to pay up much of the fresh demand of $1.2 billion for the aircraft carrier Gorshkov (now INS Vikramaditya), and the additional bill would be negotiated soon by the two parties.
The Gorshkov chronicle
Let's revisit the imbroglio. The original deal India signed in 2004 was for $1.5 billion ($974 million for refitting and upgrading the partly-gutted ship, and the rest $526 million for 16 MiG-29K fighter jets and six Kamov-31 helicopters). Last November, in typical Putinesque brinkmanship, the Russians whimsically jacked up the price of Gorshkov by $1.2 billion. This came in the backdrop of their soft-pedalling on the Shchuka-B class (NATO name Akula) nuclear submarine deal.
The calculating Russians escalated the issue being cocksure that India would cough up after the perfunctory huffing and puffing were done with. For at least five factors:
1. The INS Viraat, the aircraft carrier presently in service with the Indian Navy, has already outlived its life and is held together by some glue that can come apart any time;2. The Cochin Shipyard is into building an indigenous aircraft carrier -- the Air Defence Ship -- but an optimistic estimate is she will not be ready before 2015;3. The navy needs the Gorshkov to fill this critical gap. Operating an aircraft carrier is a culture, and the entire fleet imbues the culture of operating around the carrier. Any break, you will lose the culture, which will then take years to regain. The navy cannot risk that;4. India could have entertained ephemeral thoughts of buying the American carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk as a substitute for the Gorshkov, but we had already paid up for the MiG-29Ks and Ka-31s;5. Both the countries deposit 5 per cent of the deal amount in a neutral bank just in case there is a breach of contract. Having pocketed $1.5 billion, the Russians stood to lose just $75 million if India scrapped the deal.
So the Russians knew we were ripe for extortion.
The Gorshkov was originally scheduled for delivery in 2008. Realistically, the refit will take three years, another year for sea trials and she will join the Indian Navy by 2012 at the earliest. Heavens forbid, if the Viraat breaks down before that, it will be a bodyblow to the navy.
Why did Russia downgrade its military ties with India? To wring out more moolah is an obvious reason. Haughtiness is another (a barrel at $100, the copious oil revenues have gone to head, which must be making them feel a cut above). Besides, the recent Indo-American footsie has not impressed Moscow at all. All straightforward reasons, but these do not add up for the Russian churlishness could jeopardise the cheek-by-jowl defence ties and imperil future contracts. Russia had much to lose in the long run.
I suspect Moscow has put the spoke at the behest of Beijing. (If the Washington-New Delhi footsie trots into a tango, one can expect a Moscow-Beijing collaboration to trip it and the realignment and hardening of adversarial faultlines.)
The Soviet and Indian navies had enjoyed convivial relations, and the Indian Navy acquired armaments that were inducted into the Soviet Navy. After the fragmentation of the USSR, the General Engineering Department mandated to represent Moscow in negotiating defence deals was shut down. In 2000, two federal enterprises, Rosvoorouzhenie and Promexport, were merged into the single entity Rosboronexport State Corporation, populated mainly by bureaucrats, technocrats and I believe old KGB warhorses.
Now the Indian government signs contract with Rosboronexport, the sole Russian intermediary for export and import of defence products.
That the arms merchants try to palm off untested/dubious weapons, resorting to even foul means, is no secret. Commander Nawaz Ahmed, an upright officer, was bumped off on June 19, 2003 during his morning constitutional in New Delhi. That's how ruthless the arms mafia is. To evade the tyranny of the arms moguls, the navy needs to revert to the old practice of inducting systems operated by the Russian navy bypassing Rosboronexport.
Since the Indian forces use predominantly Russian hardware, we don't have a menu of options on the table right now. The multi-billion-dollar arms purchases in the pipeline must be used astutely to make the Russians see reason. One only hopes that the defence secretary engaged his interlocutors in plain-speaking, and reminded the Russians that the bilateral defence ties have always been symbiotic, and unilateral disruption will hurt both.
A potential blessing in disguise?
Smart nations pounce upon the subterranean opportunities beneath every crisis. We too must. The Gorshkov experience must impel us to refocus the spotlight on the Defence Research Development Organisation and how to resuscitate it, its abysmal past notwithstanding. The indispensability of home-grown defence research and development needs no emphasis. The only way out of this murky world of global arms bazaar is by shaping a prolific DRDO -- a reborn DRDO fitted with a new compass for the hard course correction.
DRDO, an unspectacular flashback
Now into the fiftieth year, DRDO was envisioned with self-reliance as its war cry, but it has been out of its depth hitherto and it is largely responsible for the ill/under-equipped armed forces and its tardy modernisation.
The DRDO, called DODO in jest, is a behemoth with 50 labs, 5,000 scientists and 25,000 employees. Success stories have been few and far between despite having 440 projects under its belt. Though it has produced duds after duds, it manoeuvred to thrust them down the throats of the armed fForces through political pressure.
Here, it will be instructive to study the behaviour of two departments under the same government. In July 2006, the launches of DRDO's Agni III and ISRO's GSLV flopped. ISRO had notched up 11 successive, successful launches of PSLV and GSLV preceding this GSLV plunge. The ISRO chief came upfront, pledged to look within and bounce back.
The DRDO, predictably, waffled first and then tried to brazen it out by claiming Agni III was a partial success! Mind you, Agni is an official carrier of the Indian nuke. What's partial success? The missile with nuclear payload can nosedive, midcourse, into its home territory itself? This example testifies what's wrong with the DRDO and what's right with ISRO.
To sum up, the DRDO is not a lost cause and it can be revived if there is governmental will to reform and reshape it.
Though well-catalogued, an enumeration of DRDO's bombed products bears repeating. The Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, its flagship undertaking, was launched in July 1983. A whole generation of Indians grew up reading press releases claiming the 'successful' test-firing of such-and-such missile by the DRDO boffins. A quarter century on, the government has shelved the IGMDP!
And after 25 years of 'successful' test-firing, how many have entered service?Just one; the short-range surface-to-surface missile Prithvi inducted into the Indian Army. Ever since, the army has not ceased grumbling about its imperfection.
The multiform strategic surface-to-surface missile Agni, which has never been tested on a land target for validation, is still what it was in 1983 -- a wonderful idea, not a dread-arousing missile. The rest of the brood -- the anti-missile system Trishul, the medium-range amphibious surface-to-air missile Akash and the anti-tank guided missile Nag -- had become a national embarrassment.Good riddance.
The Tejas, the Light Combat Aircraft, is today ridiculed as the Last Century Aircraft! Its CV boasts of being an indigenous craft but it's nothing more than an Indian bodywork housing a cache of foreign systems! The tragedy is that the LCA is already outdated... and it has still years to go before it can enter squadron service!
The DRDO had embarked on developing a Weapon Locating Radar (modelled on the Cymbelline mortar locating radar) but came a cropper. All along, the DRDO kept scuttling the army's attempt to acquire foreign WLR. Once the DRDO admitted its inability after much dilly-dallying, the US reportedly showed an inclination to offer its AN/TPQ-37 Firefinder system but Pokharan II happened and they slapped sanctions instead.
Consequently, the army fought the 1999 Kargil conflict without WLR. This DRDO nonchalance cost us several soldiers. Being India, the DRDO was never called to account.
The so-called main battle tank Arjun continues to give the army sleepless nights. Then there is the misfiring multi-barrel rocket launcher Pinaka, the unmanned aerial vehicle Nishant...
In spite of the unmissable cachet of failure, a few spirited souls defied the tide to script triumphant quests. The Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory based at Kochi has given the navy undersea acoustic sensors (hull-mounted sonars APSOH, HUMSA, HUMVAD & USHUS) for both warships and submarines.
The Defence Avionics Research Establishment based at Bangalore has kitted the IAF Sukhoi-30 MKI, Jaguar, MiG-27 and Hawk-132 jet trainer with its avionics suites. Joint ventures with foreign countries have helped in the production of systems like the world-class BrahMos cruise missiles. With little or no budget and time overruns.
Audit and accountability, the first step to redemption
The DRDO chief wears three hats: Director general, DRDO, secretary, DRDO and scientific adviser to the defence minister. Whose job is it to enforce accountability?The government, the secretary to be precise, but the DRDO chief doubles up as the secretary!So no questions asked. If a project comes to the government for approval, the DRDO chief wears his secretary hat and sanctions what he himself recommended! No questions asked.
Thus, the DRDO has always been spoiled with funds and power. Here's more immunity. Even if a spoilsport rakes up inconvenient queries, the chief quickly wears the third hat -- scientific adviser -- and scotches the thorny poser by suitably 'advising' the defence minister. This DRDO magic thumbs its nose at every canon of accountability. Needless to add, different worthies must man these three posts for the sake of accountability.
Rigorous audit has been an anathema to DRDO. No wonder then that the Vijay Kelkar Committee report on reforming defence procurement has become fodder for termites. Regular 'internal audit' and periodic 'functional review' by an independent body are reportedly the two top recommendations of the Kelkar Committee.
Undo the 'Kalamity'
The venerable former President A P J Abdul Kalam headed the IGMDP and presided over DRDO and its ancillaries till 1999. He enjoyed carte blanche authority and nobody -- not even nosy auditors -- disturbed him. Considering the resources he had at his beck and call, like Midas the king of Phrygia, he could have turned everything into gold, maybe even gems.
It may sound graceless but the patriarch must bear the responsibility for the DRDO cult of overselling itself and vetoing the armed forces. The Kalam legacy needs to be jettisoned forthwith.
A charter for DRDO 2.0
Policy mavens have proposed numerous reforms/solutions like synergy with the end user, innovation, attract and retain talent, equitable remuneration, involvement of the private sector, downsizing, etc. These are but vanilla reforms. What the DRDO needs is drastic overhauling, and templates are readily available.
In July 2001, the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency -- the British equivalent of DRDO -- was carved up into a semi-private enterprise called QinetiQ and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. The ministry of defence is the majority shareholder in the profit-making QinetiQ. Since its flotation and listing on the London Stock Exchange, QinetiQ solves defence and security problems that involve science and technology. And makes money.
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is an arm of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. It is decentralised with eight offices, 240 employees and an annual budget of $3 billion. It doesn't own research infrastructure, usually outsources research and development through universities and private labs. DARPA is credited with contriving marvels like the Global Positioning System, the Internet and Unmanned Systems.
Band-Aid solutions will not suffice to create DRDO 2.0. It needs drastic systemic transformation, like:
The deadwood and paper tigers must be handed out VRS en masse, and restructure it into a lean set-up. It has to be converted into a company with strategic business units as its core and a business model to sustain both volumes and profits. And this company, like QinetiQ, must be listed on the stock exchange.
As for acquisition, the primary priority of the services should be the private sector. The DRDO must be approached as a solutions provider only when the private sector is unwilling or incapable.
Fundamental research is the domain of the universities, IITs and the various public and private laboratories, not the DRDO's. It must either hire researchers from the industry or outsource it to the universities and labs. It must undertake in-house research and production of only strategic and hush-hush systems, denied technologies or something that will provide substantial savings through indigenisation.
The trick is to make DRDO compete for orders. Once you make them sweat, results will ensue. The present practice of the government decreeing the forces to buy DRDO lemons has to be thrown overboard.
Cutting edge military technologies are difficult to master. So, the path ahead is paved with collaboration and outright purchase of systems and subsystems. The planned 'joint development' of a quick reaction missile system to blast low-flying fighters and missiles, and the beyond visual range air-to-air missile Astra is a case in point. As the cliche goes, it's pointless to reinvent the wheel. The crux is the defence forces must be armed with the best weapon systems -- Indian or foreign.
DRDO 2.0 must ideally come under the Integrated Defence Staff headquarters, and naturally be made answerable to the stakeholders.
The eight-member panel headed by P Rama Rao -- former secretary, science and technology -- submitted its take on DRDO reforms to the ministry of defence last month. Though the committee's report is still under wraps, given Rama Rao's grounding, one need not be a clairvoyant to second guess his counsel: Nothing revolutionary nor creative, make DRDO more bureaucratic and thereby more unresponsive.
But one hopes the big daddies of South Block and DRDO will realise why radical reforms are so crucial, for national security is at stake. Defence Minister A K Antony is undoubtedly seized of the crunch but does he have it in him to grasp the nettle and press ahead with resurrectional surgery?
M P Anil Kumar is a former fighter pilot.
The defence secretary headed a delegation to Russia in February to salvage the capsized Admiral Gorshkov deal and to mend the recent Indo-Russian bad vibes. Media reports speculated that India has agreed to pay up much of the fresh demand of $1.2 billion for the aircraft carrier Gorshkov (now INS Vikramaditya), and the additional bill would be negotiated soon by the two parties.
The Gorshkov chronicle
Let's revisit the imbroglio. The original deal India signed in 2004 was for $1.5 billion ($974 million for refitting and upgrading the partly-gutted ship, and the rest $526 million for 16 MiG-29K fighter jets and six Kamov-31 helicopters). Last November, in typical Putinesque brinkmanship, the Russians whimsically jacked up the price of Gorshkov by $1.2 billion. This came in the backdrop of their soft-pedalling on the Shchuka-B class (NATO name Akula) nuclear submarine deal.
The calculating Russians escalated the issue being cocksure that India would cough up after the perfunctory huffing and puffing were done with. For at least five factors:
1. The INS Viraat, the aircraft carrier presently in service with the Indian Navy, has already outlived its life and is held together by some glue that can come apart any time;2. The Cochin Shipyard is into building an indigenous aircraft carrier -- the Air Defence Ship -- but an optimistic estimate is she will not be ready before 2015;3. The navy needs the Gorshkov to fill this critical gap. Operating an aircraft carrier is a culture, and the entire fleet imbues the culture of operating around the carrier. Any break, you will lose the culture, which will then take years to regain. The navy cannot risk that;4. India could have entertained ephemeral thoughts of buying the American carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk as a substitute for the Gorshkov, but we had already paid up for the MiG-29Ks and Ka-31s;5. Both the countries deposit 5 per cent of the deal amount in a neutral bank just in case there is a breach of contract. Having pocketed $1.5 billion, the Russians stood to lose just $75 million if India scrapped the deal.
So the Russians knew we were ripe for extortion.
The Gorshkov was originally scheduled for delivery in 2008. Realistically, the refit will take three years, another year for sea trials and she will join the Indian Navy by 2012 at the earliest. Heavens forbid, if the Viraat breaks down before that, it will be a bodyblow to the navy.
Why did Russia downgrade its military ties with India? To wring out more moolah is an obvious reason. Haughtiness is another (a barrel at $100, the copious oil revenues have gone to head, which must be making them feel a cut above). Besides, the recent Indo-American footsie has not impressed Moscow at all. All straightforward reasons, but these do not add up for the Russian churlishness could jeopardise the cheek-by-jowl defence ties and imperil future contracts. Russia had much to lose in the long run.
I suspect Moscow has put the spoke at the behest of Beijing. (If the Washington-New Delhi footsie trots into a tango, one can expect a Moscow-Beijing collaboration to trip it and the realignment and hardening of adversarial faultlines.)
The Soviet and Indian navies had enjoyed convivial relations, and the Indian Navy acquired armaments that were inducted into the Soviet Navy. After the fragmentation of the USSR, the General Engineering Department mandated to represent Moscow in negotiating defence deals was shut down. In 2000, two federal enterprises, Rosvoorouzhenie and Promexport, were merged into the single entity Rosboronexport State Corporation, populated mainly by bureaucrats, technocrats and I believe old KGB warhorses.
Now the Indian government signs contract with Rosboronexport, the sole Russian intermediary for export and import of defence products.
That the arms merchants try to palm off untested/dubious weapons, resorting to even foul means, is no secret. Commander Nawaz Ahmed, an upright officer, was bumped off on June 19, 2003 during his morning constitutional in New Delhi. That's how ruthless the arms mafia is. To evade the tyranny of the arms moguls, the navy needs to revert to the old practice of inducting systems operated by the Russian navy bypassing Rosboronexport.
Since the Indian forces use predominantly Russian hardware, we don't have a menu of options on the table right now. The multi-billion-dollar arms purchases in the pipeline must be used astutely to make the Russians see reason. One only hopes that the defence secretary engaged his interlocutors in plain-speaking, and reminded the Russians that the bilateral defence ties have always been symbiotic, and unilateral disruption will hurt both.
A potential blessing in disguise?
Smart nations pounce upon the subterranean opportunities beneath every crisis. We too must. The Gorshkov experience must impel us to refocus the spotlight on the Defence Research Development Organisation and how to resuscitate it, its abysmal past notwithstanding. The indispensability of home-grown defence research and development needs no emphasis. The only way out of this murky world of global arms bazaar is by shaping a prolific DRDO -- a reborn DRDO fitted with a new compass for the hard course correction.
DRDO, an unspectacular flashback
Now into the fiftieth year, DRDO was envisioned with self-reliance as its war cry, but it has been out of its depth hitherto and it is largely responsible for the ill/under-equipped armed forces and its tardy modernisation.
The DRDO, called DODO in jest, is a behemoth with 50 labs, 5,000 scientists and 25,000 employees. Success stories have been few and far between despite having 440 projects under its belt. Though it has produced duds after duds, it manoeuvred to thrust them down the throats of the armed fForces through political pressure.
Here, it will be instructive to study the behaviour of two departments under the same government. In July 2006, the launches of DRDO's Agni III and ISRO's GSLV flopped. ISRO had notched up 11 successive, successful launches of PSLV and GSLV preceding this GSLV plunge. The ISRO chief came upfront, pledged to look within and bounce back.
The DRDO, predictably, waffled first and then tried to brazen it out by claiming Agni III was a partial success! Mind you, Agni is an official carrier of the Indian nuke. What's partial success? The missile with nuclear payload can nosedive, midcourse, into its home territory itself? This example testifies what's wrong with the DRDO and what's right with ISRO.
To sum up, the DRDO is not a lost cause and it can be revived if there is governmental will to reform and reshape it.
Though well-catalogued, an enumeration of DRDO's bombed products bears repeating. The Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme, its flagship undertaking, was launched in July 1983. A whole generation of Indians grew up reading press releases claiming the 'successful' test-firing of such-and-such missile by the DRDO boffins. A quarter century on, the government has shelved the IGMDP!
And after 25 years of 'successful' test-firing, how many have entered service?Just one; the short-range surface-to-surface missile Prithvi inducted into the Indian Army. Ever since, the army has not ceased grumbling about its imperfection.
The multiform strategic surface-to-surface missile Agni, which has never been tested on a land target for validation, is still what it was in 1983 -- a wonderful idea, not a dread-arousing missile. The rest of the brood -- the anti-missile system Trishul, the medium-range amphibious surface-to-air missile Akash and the anti-tank guided missile Nag -- had become a national embarrassment.Good riddance.
The Tejas, the Light Combat Aircraft, is today ridiculed as the Last Century Aircraft! Its CV boasts of being an indigenous craft but it's nothing more than an Indian bodywork housing a cache of foreign systems! The tragedy is that the LCA is already outdated... and it has still years to go before it can enter squadron service!
The DRDO had embarked on developing a Weapon Locating Radar (modelled on the Cymbelline mortar locating radar) but came a cropper. All along, the DRDO kept scuttling the army's attempt to acquire foreign WLR. Once the DRDO admitted its inability after much dilly-dallying, the US reportedly showed an inclination to offer its AN/TPQ-37 Firefinder system but Pokharan II happened and they slapped sanctions instead.
Consequently, the army fought the 1999 Kargil conflict without WLR. This DRDO nonchalance cost us several soldiers. Being India, the DRDO was never called to account.
The so-called main battle tank Arjun continues to give the army sleepless nights. Then there is the misfiring multi-barrel rocket launcher Pinaka, the unmanned aerial vehicle Nishant...
In spite of the unmissable cachet of failure, a few spirited souls defied the tide to script triumphant quests. The Naval Physical and Oceanographic Laboratory based at Kochi has given the navy undersea acoustic sensors (hull-mounted sonars APSOH, HUMSA, HUMVAD & USHUS) for both warships and submarines.
The Defence Avionics Research Establishment based at Bangalore has kitted the IAF Sukhoi-30 MKI, Jaguar, MiG-27 and Hawk-132 jet trainer with its avionics suites. Joint ventures with foreign countries have helped in the production of systems like the world-class BrahMos cruise missiles. With little or no budget and time overruns.
Audit and accountability, the first step to redemption
The DRDO chief wears three hats: Director general, DRDO, secretary, DRDO and scientific adviser to the defence minister. Whose job is it to enforce accountability?The government, the secretary to be precise, but the DRDO chief doubles up as the secretary!So no questions asked. If a project comes to the government for approval, the DRDO chief wears his secretary hat and sanctions what he himself recommended! No questions asked.
Thus, the DRDO has always been spoiled with funds and power. Here's more immunity. Even if a spoilsport rakes up inconvenient queries, the chief quickly wears the third hat -- scientific adviser -- and scotches the thorny poser by suitably 'advising' the defence minister. This DRDO magic thumbs its nose at every canon of accountability. Needless to add, different worthies must man these three posts for the sake of accountability.
Rigorous audit has been an anathema to DRDO. No wonder then that the Vijay Kelkar Committee report on reforming defence procurement has become fodder for termites. Regular 'internal audit' and periodic 'functional review' by an independent body are reportedly the two top recommendations of the Kelkar Committee.
Undo the 'Kalamity'
The venerable former President A P J Abdul Kalam headed the IGMDP and presided over DRDO and its ancillaries till 1999. He enjoyed carte blanche authority and nobody -- not even nosy auditors -- disturbed him. Considering the resources he had at his beck and call, like Midas the king of Phrygia, he could have turned everything into gold, maybe even gems.
It may sound graceless but the patriarch must bear the responsibility for the DRDO cult of overselling itself and vetoing the armed forces. The Kalam legacy needs to be jettisoned forthwith.
A charter for DRDO 2.0
Policy mavens have proposed numerous reforms/solutions like synergy with the end user, innovation, attract and retain talent, equitable remuneration, involvement of the private sector, downsizing, etc. These are but vanilla reforms. What the DRDO needs is drastic overhauling, and templates are readily available.
In July 2001, the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency -- the British equivalent of DRDO -- was carved up into a semi-private enterprise called QinetiQ and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory. The ministry of defence is the majority shareholder in the profit-making QinetiQ. Since its flotation and listing on the London Stock Exchange, QinetiQ solves defence and security problems that involve science and technology. And makes money.
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) is an arm of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technology for use by the military. It is decentralised with eight offices, 240 employees and an annual budget of $3 billion. It doesn't own research infrastructure, usually outsources research and development through universities and private labs. DARPA is credited with contriving marvels like the Global Positioning System, the Internet and Unmanned Systems.
Band-Aid solutions will not suffice to create DRDO 2.0. It needs drastic systemic transformation, like:
The deadwood and paper tigers must be handed out VRS en masse, and restructure it into a lean set-up. It has to be converted into a company with strategic business units as its core and a business model to sustain both volumes and profits. And this company, like QinetiQ, must be listed on the stock exchange.
As for acquisition, the primary priority of the services should be the private sector. The DRDO must be approached as a solutions provider only when the private sector is unwilling or incapable.
Fundamental research is the domain of the universities, IITs and the various public and private laboratories, not the DRDO's. It must either hire researchers from the industry or outsource it to the universities and labs. It must undertake in-house research and production of only strategic and hush-hush systems, denied technologies or something that will provide substantial savings through indigenisation.
The trick is to make DRDO compete for orders. Once you make them sweat, results will ensue. The present practice of the government decreeing the forces to buy DRDO lemons has to be thrown overboard.
Cutting edge military technologies are difficult to master. So, the path ahead is paved with collaboration and outright purchase of systems and subsystems. The planned 'joint development' of a quick reaction missile system to blast low-flying fighters and missiles, and the beyond visual range air-to-air missile Astra is a case in point. As the cliche goes, it's pointless to reinvent the wheel. The crux is the defence forces must be armed with the best weapon systems -- Indian or foreign.
DRDO 2.0 must ideally come under the Integrated Defence Staff headquarters, and naturally be made answerable to the stakeholders.
The eight-member panel headed by P Rama Rao -- former secretary, science and technology -- submitted its take on DRDO reforms to the ministry of defence last month. Though the committee's report is still under wraps, given Rama Rao's grounding, one need not be a clairvoyant to second guess his counsel: Nothing revolutionary nor creative, make DRDO more bureaucratic and thereby more unresponsive.
But one hopes the big daddies of South Block and DRDO will realise why radical reforms are so crucial, for national security is at stake. Defence Minister A K Antony is undoubtedly seized of the crunch but does he have it in him to grasp the nettle and press ahead with resurrectional surgery?
M P Anil Kumar is a former fighter pilot.
Desertions from the Army
The Army is facing one of the biggest peace time crisis, perhaps since its inception.Young officers have been deserting the Armed Forces, in particular, the Indian Army when their applications for premature exit from the services were rejected.TIMES NOW has confirmation from highly placed sources that since 1991, 52 officers on short service commission with the Army Medical Corps have been declared deserters. That is, about one officer is deserting the armed forces every four months. More shockingly, 35 of the 52 officers declared deserters abandoned the services within a year of joining.Though there have been cases of jawans deserting the armed forces reported earlier, the disturbing trend of young officers reported to be leaving the Army for more lucrative jobs in the private sector, is on the rise.There are atleast ten known cases of officers who have deserted their posts from other corps of the Army too.The Armed Forces, however have chosen to play down this shocking new henomenon. The Adjutant General's office refused to answer our queries for confirmation.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Tibet Question : Options for China and Implications for India
Dr. Adityanjee
INTRODUCTION:
The events in Tibet following the March 10th demonstrations on the 49th anniversary of Dalai Lama’s historic flight from Lhasa to India in 1959 will continue to have reverberations internationally for some time to come. Despite restoring public order and peace by using brute force, the Chinese government has failed miserably to quell the suppressed feelings of Tibetans. It is likely that Tibetan resistance will continue unabated albeit it may take more novel forms of protest. The Beijing Olympics will definitely fuel the fire of Tibetan cries for self-determination and independence as from a Tibetan perspective it would be now or never kind of strategic opportunity. Although the six million Tibetans are ill equipped militarily to take on the most powerful Communist Chinese empire, the timing of these protests is “historically correct” and has the potential to fundamentally alter the future geo-political events in whole of the Central Asia. The governor of TAR in China has already declared “peoples’ war” on the Tibetan protesters. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has declared these protests as life and death issue for China. He squarely blamed Dalai Lama for organizing these “premeditated, well-orchestrated and well-planned violent protests” to sour the Olympics. Wen Jiabao has expressed appreciation of the “correct” steps taken by the Indian Friends in New Delhi. Dalai Lama has lamented the Indian government’s tendency to genuflect to Chinese interests as supreme while offering to resign if violence spreads.
The situation on ground in Tibet is changing very fast. A critical and decisive moment has been reached in the six decades long Tibetan struggle for self-determination. The future roadmap for Tibetan independence will be predicated on the level of discontent in Tibet as well as on the response of the international community in further preventing cultural genocide. This paper will not serve as a factual news report or as an updated latest bulletin but will analyze the geo-political events in Tibet from a multi-dimensional strategic perspective. Some of the ground realities and facts may have changed by the time this paper goes into press since the pace of change is fast indeed.
BACKGROUND:
Since Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet in 1951, there has been ongoing repression sponsored by the PLA and the Chinese Communist party. According to a Chinese military document between March 1959 and September 1960, 87,000 Tibetan people were killed. Despite recent attempts to improve the physical infrastructure and economic conditions in Tibet and linking Lhasa with Beijing by railroad, Tibetans’ genuine grievances remain unresolved. There has been increase in the level of repression and arrests leading to recurrent demands for independence and self-determination among the Tibetan youth living in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Truly, the designation of any “autonomous region” in China is a sham because the Chinese Communist Party wants total control, uniformity and centralization of power.
The simmering tensions have been exacerbated further by the Chinese policy of demographic invasion of Tibet by the Han Chinese. Not the Han Chinese now out number the ethnic Tibetans in TAR and are in the positions of power in the TAR administrative setup. Han Chinese have a patronizing, paternalistic and racist view of the Tibetans. Racial discrimination against Tibetans has been alleged from time to time. China does have a history of colonialism that is not acknowledged by the Chinese Communist Party. Communist China has not formally repudiated the history of colonialism by the imperialistic predecessors. The problems in Tibet and in southwest China are linked to west-ward expansion of the Han Chinese nation into areas originally inhabited by other nationalities (ethnic minorities) that refuse to see themselves as Chinese. Like independent Tibet, province of Xinjiang (Sinkiang) was briefly independent as East Turkistan, or Uighurstan, in 1933. A part of it was under Soviet control from 1945 to 1949. Its population is still roughly 55 percent Uighurs and Kazakhs who are Turkic-speaking. Some Tibetan majority areas were also transferred to Han-majority provinces - Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu where the current Tibetan uprising has spread.
Last year, the Chinese Communist Party led government introduced a ridiculous law interfering with Buddhist religious practices on reincarnation of living Buddha. The PRC attempt was to pave the way for a Chinese Communist party “approved and sanctioned” kosher reincarnation of Dalai Lama when the current incumbent on Living Buddha seat dies. They have a time-tested strategy, which is to wait for the death of Dalai Lama and anointhis successor - like their earlier selection of the Panchen Lama.
The Chinese government was very poor in predicting the level of possible unrest related to PRC’s hosting of Olympics in Beijing from August 8-24th 2008. Hu Jintao who had lorded over Tibet during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre had firmly and brutely crushed down any semblance of rebellion in Tibet at that time earning him praise in the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party enabling his future ascension to the supreme party leadership. Hu Jintao’s theories of harmonious society, peaceful and scientific development were predicated upon increased economic prosperity to be shared not only amongst the Han Chinese but also with the ethnic minorities including Tibetans. Prosperity, however, does not inoculate against nationalist sentiments. Relative prosperity sometimes forces the masses to focus on other cultural, civilizational, nationalistic and socio-spiritual issues besides the mundane bread and butter issues. The ferocity of the spontaneous uprising was not appreciated and understood correctly by the PRC government leading to clumsy military police response with loss of more than 100 lives by unofficial accounts. Hu Jintao and his ruling clique felt supremely confidant that the economic prosperity will tone down any negative response on part of Tibetans and merely sealing the approach routes to Everest during the Olympic torch ceremony will prevent any ethnic Tibetan from raising the Tibetan flag during that ceremony.
BEIJING OLYMPICS AND THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT:
In the eyes of human rights observers China never had a legitimate right to host the Olympics in Beijing because of the poor human rights record of the Chinese government, particularly since the 1989 bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square. In July 2001, when Beijing was awarded the Games, many human rights campaigners expressed their utter surprise since Beijing is regularly credited with the worst human rights violations. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) authorities including the IOC President Jacques Rogge had hoped that hosting the Olympic Games would serve to improve the China’s human rights record. This was perhaps logical culmination of the “constructive engagement” policy of the West towards China since 1970s. French baron Pierre de Coubertin, who resurrected the ancient Olympic Games in 1896, firmly believed that sports and the Games could help create better human beings. For some Olympic watchers, the violent demonstrations in Tibet come as no surprise and are something the IOC can’t be expected to resolve.
For China, the opportunity to host the Olympics was a way of pronouncing to the world that China has arrived on scene as an economic giant. It was supposed to be the inaugural ball for the dame China to be presented and introduced to high and mighty in the international elite society. It was to be national honor, glory and splendor which supposedly would have blindsided the world that would be so mesmerized by the dazzling royal celebrations of the newest Chinese emperor of the Communist caucus. PRC should have realized that the Olympics are more than a commercial, industrial or mercantile venture. Recent actions of police brutality in Tibet only serve to undermine the reputation of both China and the IOC. China cannot be allowed to gamble with the life and liberty of the occupied people of Tibet so close to the Olympics although the Chinese government would very much like to silence any further dissent in Tibet.
TIBET REVOLT AND OLYMPIC BOYCOTT:
Prince Charles had announced his personal boycott of Beijing Olympics on grounds of principles long ago before the current wave of protests started. Film director Steven Spielberg also withdrew in February as an artistic adviser to the opening and closing ceremonies on grounds of China’s tacit support for Sudanese government’s bloodshed in Darfur. European calls for a boycott of the opening ceremony predate the current wave of protests in Tibet. The violent protests in Tibet are forcing governments and human rights campaigners to re-examine their approach to the Beijing Olympic Games. Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet have regained momentum with a novel suggestion for a mini-boycott of the grand opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Human Rights Watch, which has not advocated a total boycott, is likely to urge heads of state not to attend the opening ceremony. Such a novel protest by world leaders and dignitaries would be a huge slap in the face for the Chinese Communist Party.
French foreign minister and the founder of Medecine’ Sans Frontiere’ Bernard Kouchner is spearheading the possible opening ceremony boycott with other European Union foreign ministers. IOC President Jacques Rogge expects many heads of state — including President Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy — to attend the opening ceremony. China will desperately try to stop any boycott movement from gathering further steam. Premier Wen Jiabao openly accused the “Dalai clique” of orchestrating the violence against the Han Chinese and Hui Muslims in order to taint the Beijing Olympics. Tibetan protestors chanted a prayer and waved Tibetan flags at a protest near the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. The IOC is under pressure to clearly denounce the killings in Lhasa and force China to stop further repression.
TAIWAN REFERENDUM AND TIBET:
China has adroitly tied the twin issues of Tibet and Taiwan together. Owing to skillful Chinese diplomatic histrionics, all countries having diplomatic relations with China are supposed to ritually sing songs about their “One China Policy” and Tibet being an inalienable part of China. In the same vein, the Chinese communist government has refused to have an open and direct dialogue with Dalai Lama on the grounds that he should first renounce independence for Tibet and admit that Taiwan is a province of China as a precondition for talks on genuine autonomy.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao indirectly threatened the Taiwanese voters to reject ballot question on membership of United Nations as Republic of Taiwan, warning that cross-straits tensions would rise if the referendum succeeds, destabilizing the whole Asia-pacific region. It is likely that Taiwanese elections will be won by Pro-Beijing KMT candidate Ma who advocates fostering closer cross-straits relations between Beijing and Taipei and rejects the need for referendum. In the final days of campaigning before Taiwan’s presidential elections, both major political parties in Taiwan have condemned Beijing’s suppression of protests in Tibet. The uprising and the use of military police in Tibet will bring a wave of fear among Taiwanese voters and will definitely undermine China’s efforts to encourage self-governing Taiwan to move toward reunification with the mainland. Though the March 23rd referendum in Taiwan may not be successful in declaring de facto independence, strong results in the referendum will further hasten the demise of future possibility of communist authoritarian rule.
LIKELY TIBETAN GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS:
Like it happens in any liberation movement, the Tibetan polity is now divided owing to geographic reasons, lack of adequate communications, and continued repression. The rift among the leadership is very apparent from the statements released over the last few days. Though for very obvious reasons, there may be confusion about the actual goals, genuine aspirations and the ultimate demands of Tibetan people can not be trivialized anymore. Geo-political events generate mass expectations. These expectations and hopes alter the course of future events initiating a chain reaction that can not be stopped. That critical threshold has already been achieved in Tibet.
A) Response from India-based Tibetan Refugees:There is definitely a generational divide among the India-based Tibetan refugees. Tibetan Youth Congress is no longer satisfied with the talk of genuine autonomy and the “middle way”. Their goal is total independence from China. There are a large number of young passionate Tibetans who advocate complete independence as opposed to “meaningful autonomy” as suggested by the Dalai Lama. This younger generation is very restive and possibly can not be silenced anymore as they believe Dalai Lama’s non-violent struggle has led them nowhere and has increased Chinese repression and cultural subjugation of Tibet. For these young Tibetan activists, “non-violence” is not a sacred creed but independence from China is. China’s investment of $ 6 billion in Beijing-Lhasa railroad has increased the level of suspicion in this segment of Tibetan refugees in India.
B) Response from West-based Tibetans:Tibetan refugees based in West are unlikely to be satisfied with “autonomy- only solutions”. These people have witnessed liberation of former Warsaw pact countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania etc), Baltic Republics (Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania) and Balkan states (Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia) in Europe under their very eyes with very sympathetic treatment from the international community. West-based Tibetan diaspora is more educated, more economically resourceful and more connected with international events and community. These diaspora aspire the same levels of liberty, democracy and equality for their compatriots back home as they enjoy in their adoptive homes in Europe and the US. A second class citizenship status under the over-lordship of the Han Chinese under an authoritarian communist regime shall no longer be acceptable to Western based Tibetan diaspora who mingle with the likes of Richard Gere and Uma Therman and the other Hollywood glitterati.
C) Response from Dalai Lama:
For tactical and pragmatic reasons Dalai Lama and others in Dharamshala had scaled back their demands for total independence and were willing to accept genuine autonomy and a healthy respect for Tibetan culture. Advocating for a comprehensive approach to resolve this problem that takes into account the benefits to all parties involved, Dalai Lama has been firm in commitment to a mutually beneficial policy, the ‘Middle-Way’ approach. Since 2002, talks were going on between envoys of Dalai Lama and the Chinese government with no solution in sight owing to duplicitous attitude of the PRC. He has expressed his solidarity with those Tibetans presently undergoing repression and ill-treatment. The Dalai Lama has acknowledged his helplessness in the face of such widespread protests as does not and can not control the events on the ground in Tibet. He has also threatened to quit as the head of the government-in-exile if the violence continues. He understands that the attitude inside Tibet has hardened and there has been significant criticism of his “failed” non-violent approach. Dalai Lama has implicitly admitted that Tibetans are no longer willing to follow his “middle way” approach. He does reiterate that Tibetans have had to live in a state of constant fear, intimidation and suspicion under Chinese repression. However, in spite of current wave of killings of Tibetans, he is prepared to pursue the ‘Middle-Way’ policy and continue the dialogue with the Chinese Government. He, however, very pragmatically has not foreclosed the option of total independence if the Tibetan people wanted that.
D) Response from Dharamshala based Government of Tibet in exile:At this juncture, the leadership for the movement seems to be coming from inside the Tibet. The government-in-exile with or without Dalai Lama may be forced to react passively to the events happening in Tibet. Clearly, they did not initiate the demonstration by the Buddhist monks on March 10th in Lhasa. For sake of unity they will have to harmonize their future course of action in sync with the aspirations of resident Tibetans who are braving the Chinese repressive machinery. This may mean formally and openly accepting the demands for total independence of Tibet.
E) Future escalation of protests by Tibetans in ATR:Though temporarily, China will be able to suppress the uprising by use of brute force analogous to the situation in Myanmar, the Beijing Olympics have opened a strategic window for the so-far frozen issue of Tibetan independence. Recent reports suggest movement of PLA units with tanks and heavy armored divisions into Tibet. The Tibetan protests will neither stop nor cease. There will be more and more novel ways to attract attention to Chinese occupation of Tibet and the cultural genocide. PRC is fighting a losing battle of wits against the Tibetan freedom fighters as the world has transformed. Despite mounting loss of life of resident Tibetans, Chinese repressive machinery would not be able to quell the bug of Tibetan independence as it has under-estimated the Tibetan nationalistic sentiment.
WHAT WOULD CHINA DO?
China currently does not have very many options dealing with the Tibetan uprising. Either it can negotiate autonomy with Dalai Lama soon enough or it can continue with the repressive policies of total control on TAR. China has ruled out the first option. Tibet’s Communist Party secretary, Zhang Qingli, lashed out at the Dalai Lama warning “we are engaged in a fierce battle of blood and fire with the Dalai clique, a life-and-death struggle between the foe and us.” The same sentiments have been expressed by the Premier Wen Jiabao.
Demonization of Dalai Lama:
Pursuing the policy of total Sinification of TAR, the China will continue to demonize Dalai Lama at every given opportunity. Secretary Zhang Qingli recently commented that “the Dalai is a jackal in Buddhist monk’s robes, an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast.” Premier Wen Jiabao claims that Chinese government has evidence linking the “Dalai Clique” to the deadly unrest against Chinese rule in Tibet. Labeling Dalai Lama’s actions as “hypocritical” Wen accused him of trying to sabotage the Beijing Olympics by organizing these violent incidents in TAR in a premeditated and conspiratorial manner.
Positive Media Management and Counter-offensive:
The Chinese Government will try to “spin” the international media in three directions:
1. Chinese government will try to discourage any analogies between the suppression of the current Tibetan protests and the bloody crackdown on 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. The role of the PLA in restoring peace and order will be camouflaged. The Chinese officials will claim that the Tibetan police and the military police are dealing with the protests, not the PLA. The number of deaths will be minimized and the use of tanks and heavy armored vehicles will be denied.
2. The government authorities will make exhaustive efforts to ensure that as few people as possible, inside or outside China, hear anything but the official version. Independent international media will be discredited.
3. Efforts will be made to portray the Han Chinese and the Hui Muslims living in TAR as the innocent victims of brutalities by Tibetan hooligans. Media reports, videos and internet will be effectively utilized to put the Tibetan demonstrators in a negative light.
Total Information Control and Management:
The Chinese government will take steps further steps to control the outflow of information from Tibet using physical and virtual controls on international media.
1. The visas of foreign correspondents will be cancelled or restricted. Physical access to TAR will be limited and reporters will be kept confined to their hotels. Under the garb of providing security, government minders and translators will prevent foreign correspondents from interviewing Tibetans.
2. Access to electronic media support will be denied. Non-functional fax machines and slowed down internet will become access will become the means. The authorities will block all Internet sites relating to Tibet.
Domestic newspapers, TV programs, and Internet sites will carry only articles produced by the official Xinhua news agency. Chinese censors will block out international media.
Security Lockdown on Tibet:
The Chinese government forces including Tibetan police, military police and the PLA will blanket Tibet and the areas inhabited by Tibetans in provinces neighboring Tibet, such as Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan. The repressive state machinery including the PLA would be hyperactive and crush any signs of dissent over the next few months. The mounting civilian casualties will not deter the Government machinery from exercising lethal means for restoring “peace and order” in Tibet.
Continued Focus on Economic Prosperity:
The Chinese government will keep its focus on the need to keep the economy growing. The government will try to keep unemployment low and inflation low so as to prevent escalation of domestic unrest in other areas. Shortage of food has led to increased prices of pork. Consumer price index has shot up to more than 8%. The Chinese government will try to boost economy in Tibet as a means of pacifying the Tibetan masses while preventing spread of unrest in other provinces.
Contingency Plan for Olympics:
Though staging Olympics peacefully is an important goal for the Chinese government, if push comes to shove, China will choose its continued control and hegemony over Tibet in preference over hosting Olympics successfully. Since Chinese government considers control of Tibet as a life or death issue, it would not hesitate to sacrifice Olympics if things get too hot in Tibet leading to a total boycott of the Games.
WHAT SHOULD THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY DO?
Tibet had declared unilateral independence from the Chinese empire in 1911 following the fall of the Manchu dynasty. Tibet was de facto an independent nation from 1911 till 1951 when it was invaded by the expansionist and hegemonistic Communist regime under the leadership of Mao. There were failed opportunities in 1945-1951 when Tibet could have been offered membership of UN as an independent sovereign nation. Thereafter, the inter-national community including the UN, USA and USSR have a background of serial non-actions following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1951, in 1959, in 1962 and more recently in 1989.
Western nations are reluctant to take action against China’s crackdown on protests in Tibet, fearing Beijing’s growing economic and diplomatic clout and for their place in its huge consumer market. The main reaction, so far, in Europe and America has been to express concern over the reported deaths in the Himalayan region and call for restraint by China. The European Commission said it was worried about the violence. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged China to engage in a dialogue with the Dalai Lama. The West this as an internal affair of China having conceded Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. The lure of economic opportunities in China for Western nations will outweigh any concerns about human rights.
UN Response:
It is unlikely that the UN will do anything on Tibetan issue as China is one of the members of Security Council’s P5 and is robustly supported by an equally authoritarian Russia led by Putin and Medvedev. Secretary General Ban ki Moon dare not antagonize China as he is trying to use Chinese influence in Darfur crisis.
US Response:
US will officially take a middle road and will continue to exhort China to improve its human rights record while asking for restoration of peace in Tibet. There will be increased transmission from Radio Free Asia to Tibet. The CIA may increase its contact with Tibetan diaspora based in the US and Europe and may increase funding for resistance. The current lame duck US administration will not make Tibet a defining issue in the Sino-US relationship as China seems to be bankrolling the US government deficit that runs now into trillions of dollars. George W. Bush will go to attend the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony as planned earlier. The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi is currently on a five day tour of India and will be visiting Dharamshala. Nancy Pelosi was instrumentally in getting the Dalai Lama honored recently by the Congressional Medal of Freedom despite Chinese protests. However, the direction of a new US administration in 2009 can not be anticipated at this juncture.
US civil society will have a different perspective governed more by moralistic considerations contrasted with the mercantilist instincts of the US government. Already, Stephen Speilberg has resigned from his Beijing Olympics responsibilities. Richard Gere is spearheading American Buddhists solidarity with Tibetan cause. The US civil society will continue to extend its support for Tibetan independence as the Dalai Lama is a highly revered figure in the US and has many Americans followers who have converted to Buddhism. These US converts to Buddhism have economic clout and will continue to bankroll the Tibetan resistance based in the West.
IOC Response:
The IOC has been forced to lobby against boycott calls and the possibility of the games turning into a political demonstration. The IOC’s basic contention is that as a sporting organization it is unable to pressure China or any other country on political matters. The IOC believes that a total boycott would only hurt the athletes, as shown by the political boycotts of the 1976, 1980 and 1984 Olympics. The IOC will not link the issue of Tibetan independence or human rights record of China with successful completion of the Olympic Games under any scenario. Admitting that kind of linkage will be akin to IOC eating a crow because IOC should not have awarded the Olympic Games to Beijing in the first place when it did in July 2001 on human rights record of China.
Russian Response:
Concerned about its own separatist problems in Chechnya, Russia will denounce any movement for censor of Chinese government in the UN for its brutal handling of Tibetan uprisings. Furthermore, Russia has linked unrest in Tibet with unilateral declaration of independence in Kosovo. Russia will continue to support China in maintaining its control over TAR and will lend moral, diplomatic and logistic support to China on this issue as Russia feels encircled by the NATO in Eastern Europe and will not budge on this issue. Russia will actively work for further consolidation and enlargement of SCO in conjunction with China to keep US influence from spreading further in Central Asia.
Others:
There will be stray calls for boycott of Olympics coming from former East European countries that were under Soviet domination during the cold war era.
The Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch should intervene and asked the Chinese authorities to allow an independent investigation into the situation in Tibet. The response from the international community will be, largely, determined by the events unfolding on the ground. If the Tibetan revolt is successfully contained by China, the international community will keep quiet and continue to do business as usual with China. If the events on ground turn tectonic, international community will adopt “holier than thou” attitude and sing paeans in the praise of cause of human rights violations and the valiant struggle of Tibetans.
The international community has a responsibility to prevent any further physical and cultural genocide of Tibet under Chinese occupation. International community should leave aside short-term economic, mercantile interests and focus on the nationalistic aspirations of six million Tibetans who have been subjugated and dispossessed since 1951 having attained their freedom from the imperialistic power in 1911. If a tiny Kosovo or Macedonia can achieve independence why not six million Tibetans?
WHAT SHOULD INDIA DO?
India’s response to the current revolt in Tibet against Chinese occupation would depend upon the kind of perspective one takes. What should be deemed as the optimal response shall be determined by a complex array of competing interests within the pluralistic, corrupt and chaotic Indian society that is somewhat fractured currently. The overall Indian response needs to be distinguished from the response of the party in power (Congress) or the current lame duck UPA government of India that is on its last legs and is unable to come out with a coherent response. The overall response has to be multi-dimensional, finely tuned and pro-active instead of being reactive, taking into consideration our historical people to people relations with both Tibetan people and Chinese people. Indian response should also consider the historical facts including the Chinese Aggression against India in 1962 and subsequent Chinese hostility towards India’s interests in South Asia and in international fora. China’s transfer of nuclear technology and ballistic missile technology to Pakistan and China’s “Pearl of Strings” strategy to contain India should be factored into any decision making process. Any Indian response must take into account previous Indian attempts to appease Chinese under Jawahar Lal Nehru’s failed policies in 1950s and 1960s and perpetual Chinese recourse to ultimate “victim-hood” role. Indian response needs to take into account the vigorous but unnecessary jubilation expressed by India in 1971 at the time of Communist China getting its permanent seat in the Security Council of the United Nation and India under Jawahar Lal Nehru forgoing the American offer of permanent seat in Security Council in the 1950s in favor of communist Chinese claim.
A) Response from Indian civilizational and spiritual leadership:
India had been the civilizational guru of China as Buddhism spread to China from India. Chinese pilgrims came to India during ancient times, attended universities and monasteries and took back wealth of spiritual knowledge from India. The spiritual leaders from India should exert their moral pressure on Chinese government expressing concern for the welfare of our Buddhist brethren. The Indian spiritual leaders should express their solidarity with the Dalai Lama for early resolution of the Tibetan grievances be it autonomy or complete independence. A memorandum to the Chinese embassy in New Delhi or a press release from various spiritual leaders expressing their regret at the loss of life under repressive crackdown by the Chinese government would be useful for the Tibetan cause. The spiritual leaders should exhort the Chinese government to engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama directly and through his representatives so that long-standing issues with regard to Tibet may be resolved. The spiritual leaders of Indic religions should send a strong message to the Chinese Government that what is happening inside Tibet and what the Chinese government is doing to the Tibetans is not justified ethically, morally and spiritually.
B) Response from Indian Civil society institutions:India has large array of civil society institutions and a historic tradition to help the needy and the down-trodden that dates back from ancient times. Jawahar Lal Nehru sent the Dr. Dwarka Nath Kotnis medical mission to China to help the Chinese civil society during the time of their need. There are a number of Non-governmental organizations that can channelize Indian peoples’ help to their Buddhist Tibetan brothers during the time of their need. This may include humanitarian help, e.g. sending medical missions to Lhasa, sending care-packages, life-saving medications and of course money to the families of the Tibetan’s killed in the PLA atrocities. Such help should be sent privately by Indian citizens, residents or non-resident irrespective of the Government of India’s official and diplomatic response. These helpful altruistic gestures towards fellow Buddhists will gain us respect and trust from fellow civilizational allies. The NGOs have significant role in mobilizing public opinion, issuing press statements, sending emails to IOC, Chinese government officials, UN secretary general etc. The NGOs can also arrange seminars and discussion groups in conjunction with other Human rights organizations on the plight of oppressed Tibetan people living under occupation.
C) Response from Indian media:The print and electronic media in India is free of government control as the Indian constitution allows freedom of speech. This sets a stage where the media’s response to this crisis is divorced from the government response. The Indian media does have the rights and luxury of not toeing to the government response and should continue to adopt an independent viewpoint without getting bullied by Chinese government pronouncements threatening dire consequences for Indo-Chinese relations in future. The Indian media should also disregard the calls for non-interference in China’s internal affairs notably by Indian communist lackeys. The Indian media can rise to the occasion and document the atrocities on the Tibetan population without the fear of strained relations with China.
D) Response from Indian Communists Parties:The leaders of Indian left, especially the CPM have so far refused to condemn the violence in Tibet, described by the Dalai Lama as “ by the Chinese government. Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Sitaram Yechury said the clashes were an internal affair of China. SR Yechury rhetorically asked how the Indian nation would react if any other nation were to raise the issue of what is happening in Kashmir. Indian left especially the CPM will refuse to acknowledge Chinese repression in Tibet. Indian Communists will continue to justify Chinese atrocities despite mounting evidence.
E) Response from non-communist political parties:There will be hardly any worthwhile response from the Congress party organization. The right wing Bharatiya Janata Party will denounce Chinese actions and will exhort Government to take stronger measures, adopt a strict policy and join hands with other nations and raise the matter at international fora. They will continue to highlight the communist betrayal in 1962; when China attacked India, the united CPI did not condemn the Chinese aggression. The socialists will predictably take a stronger line against China.
Response from current Government of India
Tactical response:The Government of India has come out with a two-pronged response. On one hand, the government of India has arrested Tibetan Youth and demonstrators from staging a March from Dharashala to Lhasa and has prevented any damage to Chinese embassy. The government has also issued a cautious appeal to initiate a dialogue so as to resolve the grievance without indulging in violence. This is a politically and diplomatically correct initial tactical response. However, this Tibetan issue is not going to disappear and as events are unfolding the response needs to be carefully calibrated taking Indian interests into consideration. Unfortunately, successive governments have not enunciated a long-term Tibet policy.
Long-term Strategic Response and Tibet Policy:
It is not, it was not, and it will be not in the long-term strategic interests of India that Tibet was occupied by expansionist and hegemonistic China in 1951. It remains our long-term strategic interest for a free and independent Tibet to remain as a buffer state between China and India. The strategic blunders of Himalayan proportions committed by Jawahar Lal Nehru despite ample written warnings by Sardar Patel need to be corrected eventually albeit after a thoughtful consideration leveraging on the events and ground realities.
Whether the current communist, dictatorial regime in China will last long is debatable. Despite economic growth and prosperity in China, there are thousands of instances of social unrest. With an inflation of 8% currently, shortage of food, rampant corruption, popular revolt against communist rule can not be excluded at a future date. Any policy planning needs to take into consideration a scenario where popular events akin to 1989 Tianaman Square events may take over the Chinese regime leading to break-up of the communist empire with secession by the Inner Mongolia, Tibet, East Turkistan and unilateral declaration of Independence by Taiwan. If the mighty British, French, Spanish and Soviet communist empires could be broken down under the might of popular uprisings, so could be the Communist Chinese Empire. International community failed to take strategic advantage of 1989 Tiananmen Square uprisings. India also failed to do the same. In future, in order to have some leverage to settle the border dispute with China, India will have to play hard with China as there is no other option. We have to remember that China considers entire Arunachal Pradesh as “Outer Tibet” and has reasserted its claim on the whole province. Furthermore, besides Tibet, the greater China concept incorporates Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal and Myanmar to be the five fingers of the Chinese sphere of strategic influence and hegemony.
China unfortunately is not a cute, cuddly poodle that has to be hugged unconditionally all the time. Rather it is a complex, Communist, and Confuscian Chimera that could come to gnaw into your body flesh. China has refused to resolve the border issue and continues to strike at India’s interests world-wide in a skillful manner. Bottom-line is that India will have to adopt a tough long-term China policy predicated upon re-emergence of Tibet as an independent and free buffer state between the two Asian giants. It may sound as pipe dream but any geo-political scenario is possible. India should be ready with any plan B that is contrary to the popular notions of strategic thinking on Tibet.
Undue genuflection to China on Tibet issue has proved counterproductive since 1951 onwards. Perhaps, the time has come when India should grant Tibetan refugees the right to organize and indulge in political activities under close watch. We have to acknowledge that Dalai Lama is not only a spiritual leader but also the political head of the Tibetan government-in-exile and needs to be accorded treatment and protocol reserved for heads of states. India should consider negotiating a treaty with any future government in free Tibet or with the Tibetan government-in-exile about return to Indian sovereignty of Hindu sacred sites of Mount Kailash and Mansarover lakes. From ancient times and certainly prior to 1951 Hindus from India have made pilgrimages to these Hindu Holy-lands without needing any visa or other formalities as there was not issue of Chinese or Tibetan sovereignty over these holy sites.
WHAT WOULD INDIA DO?
Indian government is notorious for dragging its feet in a re-active manner without ever planning for contingencies that are unforeseen. After waiting for whole week, the Indian government that survives on support from the CPM expressed vague noises and distress about use of force out of proportion in “Tibet that is autonomous region of China”. India, under current UPA dispension may not be able to boldly articulate its Tibet policy advantage or play its Tibet card boldly during the Beijing Olympics.
LONG-TERM IMPLICATIONS FOR INDIA:
The window of opportunity for India is great till August 24th 2008 for using her Tibet card skillfully in the international power games. Besides the moral, civilizational, religious and spiritual dimensions, there are important strategic and security implications for India. Tibetan issue will no longer die down. Free and independent Tibet’s is not necessarily a dream from past. The future political and administrative dispensions in Tibet may not be under the control of Communist China. India should not put all her eggs into the Chinese basket. Previous Indian policies on Tibet have failed and have proved counterproductive strategically. Considering the persistent and ongoing Chinese congagement activities of India, India needs to develop her spine and have a bold, changed strategic perspective on Tibet and on China.
INTRODUCTION:
The events in Tibet following the March 10th demonstrations on the 49th anniversary of Dalai Lama’s historic flight from Lhasa to India in 1959 will continue to have reverberations internationally for some time to come. Despite restoring public order and peace by using brute force, the Chinese government has failed miserably to quell the suppressed feelings of Tibetans. It is likely that Tibetan resistance will continue unabated albeit it may take more novel forms of protest. The Beijing Olympics will definitely fuel the fire of Tibetan cries for self-determination and independence as from a Tibetan perspective it would be now or never kind of strategic opportunity. Although the six million Tibetans are ill equipped militarily to take on the most powerful Communist Chinese empire, the timing of these protests is “historically correct” and has the potential to fundamentally alter the future geo-political events in whole of the Central Asia. The governor of TAR in China has already declared “peoples’ war” on the Tibetan protesters. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao has declared these protests as life and death issue for China. He squarely blamed Dalai Lama for organizing these “premeditated, well-orchestrated and well-planned violent protests” to sour the Olympics. Wen Jiabao has expressed appreciation of the “correct” steps taken by the Indian Friends in New Delhi. Dalai Lama has lamented the Indian government’s tendency to genuflect to Chinese interests as supreme while offering to resign if violence spreads.
The situation on ground in Tibet is changing very fast. A critical and decisive moment has been reached in the six decades long Tibetan struggle for self-determination. The future roadmap for Tibetan independence will be predicated on the level of discontent in Tibet as well as on the response of the international community in further preventing cultural genocide. This paper will not serve as a factual news report or as an updated latest bulletin but will analyze the geo-political events in Tibet from a multi-dimensional strategic perspective. Some of the ground realities and facts may have changed by the time this paper goes into press since the pace of change is fast indeed.
BACKGROUND:
Since Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet in 1951, there has been ongoing repression sponsored by the PLA and the Chinese Communist party. According to a Chinese military document between March 1959 and September 1960, 87,000 Tibetan people were killed. Despite recent attempts to improve the physical infrastructure and economic conditions in Tibet and linking Lhasa with Beijing by railroad, Tibetans’ genuine grievances remain unresolved. There has been increase in the level of repression and arrests leading to recurrent demands for independence and self-determination among the Tibetan youth living in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Truly, the designation of any “autonomous region” in China is a sham because the Chinese Communist Party wants total control, uniformity and centralization of power.
The simmering tensions have been exacerbated further by the Chinese policy of demographic invasion of Tibet by the Han Chinese. Not the Han Chinese now out number the ethnic Tibetans in TAR and are in the positions of power in the TAR administrative setup. Han Chinese have a patronizing, paternalistic and racist view of the Tibetans. Racial discrimination against Tibetans has been alleged from time to time. China does have a history of colonialism that is not acknowledged by the Chinese Communist Party. Communist China has not formally repudiated the history of colonialism by the imperialistic predecessors. The problems in Tibet and in southwest China are linked to west-ward expansion of the Han Chinese nation into areas originally inhabited by other nationalities (ethnic minorities) that refuse to see themselves as Chinese. Like independent Tibet, province of Xinjiang (Sinkiang) was briefly independent as East Turkistan, or Uighurstan, in 1933. A part of it was under Soviet control from 1945 to 1949. Its population is still roughly 55 percent Uighurs and Kazakhs who are Turkic-speaking. Some Tibetan majority areas were also transferred to Han-majority provinces - Qinghai, Sichuan and Gansu where the current Tibetan uprising has spread.
Last year, the Chinese Communist Party led government introduced a ridiculous law interfering with Buddhist religious practices on reincarnation of living Buddha. The PRC attempt was to pave the way for a Chinese Communist party “approved and sanctioned” kosher reincarnation of Dalai Lama when the current incumbent on Living Buddha seat dies. They have a time-tested strategy, which is to wait for the death of Dalai Lama and anointhis successor - like their earlier selection of the Panchen Lama.
The Chinese government was very poor in predicting the level of possible unrest related to PRC’s hosting of Olympics in Beijing from August 8-24th 2008. Hu Jintao who had lorded over Tibet during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre had firmly and brutely crushed down any semblance of rebellion in Tibet at that time earning him praise in the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party enabling his future ascension to the supreme party leadership. Hu Jintao’s theories of harmonious society, peaceful and scientific development were predicated upon increased economic prosperity to be shared not only amongst the Han Chinese but also with the ethnic minorities including Tibetans. Prosperity, however, does not inoculate against nationalist sentiments. Relative prosperity sometimes forces the masses to focus on other cultural, civilizational, nationalistic and socio-spiritual issues besides the mundane bread and butter issues. The ferocity of the spontaneous uprising was not appreciated and understood correctly by the PRC government leading to clumsy military police response with loss of more than 100 lives by unofficial accounts. Hu Jintao and his ruling clique felt supremely confidant that the economic prosperity will tone down any negative response on part of Tibetans and merely sealing the approach routes to Everest during the Olympic torch ceremony will prevent any ethnic Tibetan from raising the Tibetan flag during that ceremony.
BEIJING OLYMPICS AND THE ORIGINAL SCRIPT:
In the eyes of human rights observers China never had a legitimate right to host the Olympics in Beijing because of the poor human rights record of the Chinese government, particularly since the 1989 bloody crackdown on Tiananmen Square. In July 2001, when Beijing was awarded the Games, many human rights campaigners expressed their utter surprise since Beijing is regularly credited with the worst human rights violations. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) authorities including the IOC President Jacques Rogge had hoped that hosting the Olympic Games would serve to improve the China’s human rights record. This was perhaps logical culmination of the “constructive engagement” policy of the West towards China since 1970s. French baron Pierre de Coubertin, who resurrected the ancient Olympic Games in 1896, firmly believed that sports and the Games could help create better human beings. For some Olympic watchers, the violent demonstrations in Tibet come as no surprise and are something the IOC can’t be expected to resolve.
For China, the opportunity to host the Olympics was a way of pronouncing to the world that China has arrived on scene as an economic giant. It was supposed to be the inaugural ball for the dame China to be presented and introduced to high and mighty in the international elite society. It was to be national honor, glory and splendor which supposedly would have blindsided the world that would be so mesmerized by the dazzling royal celebrations of the newest Chinese emperor of the Communist caucus. PRC should have realized that the Olympics are more than a commercial, industrial or mercantile venture. Recent actions of police brutality in Tibet only serve to undermine the reputation of both China and the IOC. China cannot be allowed to gamble with the life and liberty of the occupied people of Tibet so close to the Olympics although the Chinese government would very much like to silence any further dissent in Tibet.
TIBET REVOLT AND OLYMPIC BOYCOTT:
Prince Charles had announced his personal boycott of Beijing Olympics on grounds of principles long ago before the current wave of protests started. Film director Steven Spielberg also withdrew in February as an artistic adviser to the opening and closing ceremonies on grounds of China’s tacit support for Sudanese government’s bloodshed in Darfur. European calls for a boycott of the opening ceremony predate the current wave of protests in Tibet. The violent protests in Tibet are forcing governments and human rights campaigners to re-examine their approach to the Beijing Olympic Games. Moves to punish China over its handling of violence in Tibet have regained momentum with a novel suggestion for a mini-boycott of the grand opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Human Rights Watch, which has not advocated a total boycott, is likely to urge heads of state not to attend the opening ceremony. Such a novel protest by world leaders and dignitaries would be a huge slap in the face for the Chinese Communist Party.
French foreign minister and the founder of Medecine’ Sans Frontiere’ Bernard Kouchner is spearheading the possible opening ceremony boycott with other European Union foreign ministers. IOC President Jacques Rogge expects many heads of state — including President Bush, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy — to attend the opening ceremony. China will desperately try to stop any boycott movement from gathering further steam. Premier Wen Jiabao openly accused the “Dalai clique” of orchestrating the violence against the Han Chinese and Hui Muslims in order to taint the Beijing Olympics. Tibetan protestors chanted a prayer and waved Tibetan flags at a protest near the IOC headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. The IOC is under pressure to clearly denounce the killings in Lhasa and force China to stop further repression.
TAIWAN REFERENDUM AND TIBET:
China has adroitly tied the twin issues of Tibet and Taiwan together. Owing to skillful Chinese diplomatic histrionics, all countries having diplomatic relations with China are supposed to ritually sing songs about their “One China Policy” and Tibet being an inalienable part of China. In the same vein, the Chinese communist government has refused to have an open and direct dialogue with Dalai Lama on the grounds that he should first renounce independence for Tibet and admit that Taiwan is a province of China as a precondition for talks on genuine autonomy.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao indirectly threatened the Taiwanese voters to reject ballot question on membership of United Nations as Republic of Taiwan, warning that cross-straits tensions would rise if the referendum succeeds, destabilizing the whole Asia-pacific region. It is likely that Taiwanese elections will be won by Pro-Beijing KMT candidate Ma who advocates fostering closer cross-straits relations between Beijing and Taipei and rejects the need for referendum. In the final days of campaigning before Taiwan’s presidential elections, both major political parties in Taiwan have condemned Beijing’s suppression of protests in Tibet. The uprising and the use of military police in Tibet will bring a wave of fear among Taiwanese voters and will definitely undermine China’s efforts to encourage self-governing Taiwan to move toward reunification with the mainland. Though the March 23rd referendum in Taiwan may not be successful in declaring de facto independence, strong results in the referendum will further hasten the demise of future possibility of communist authoritarian rule.
LIKELY TIBETAN GOALS AND EXPECTATIONS:
Like it happens in any liberation movement, the Tibetan polity is now divided owing to geographic reasons, lack of adequate communications, and continued repression. The rift among the leadership is very apparent from the statements released over the last few days. Though for very obvious reasons, there may be confusion about the actual goals, genuine aspirations and the ultimate demands of Tibetan people can not be trivialized anymore. Geo-political events generate mass expectations. These expectations and hopes alter the course of future events initiating a chain reaction that can not be stopped. That critical threshold has already been achieved in Tibet.
A) Response from India-based Tibetan Refugees:There is definitely a generational divide among the India-based Tibetan refugees. Tibetan Youth Congress is no longer satisfied with the talk of genuine autonomy and the “middle way”. Their goal is total independence from China. There are a large number of young passionate Tibetans who advocate complete independence as opposed to “meaningful autonomy” as suggested by the Dalai Lama. This younger generation is very restive and possibly can not be silenced anymore as they believe Dalai Lama’s non-violent struggle has led them nowhere and has increased Chinese repression and cultural subjugation of Tibet. For these young Tibetan activists, “non-violence” is not a sacred creed but independence from China is. China’s investment of $ 6 billion in Beijing-Lhasa railroad has increased the level of suspicion in this segment of Tibetan refugees in India.
B) Response from West-based Tibetans:Tibetan refugees based in West are unlikely to be satisfied with “autonomy- only solutions”. These people have witnessed liberation of former Warsaw pact countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania etc), Baltic Republics (Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania) and Balkan states (Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia) in Europe under their very eyes with very sympathetic treatment from the international community. West-based Tibetan diaspora is more educated, more economically resourceful and more connected with international events and community. These diaspora aspire the same levels of liberty, democracy and equality for their compatriots back home as they enjoy in their adoptive homes in Europe and the US. A second class citizenship status under the over-lordship of the Han Chinese under an authoritarian communist regime shall no longer be acceptable to Western based Tibetan diaspora who mingle with the likes of Richard Gere and Uma Therman and the other Hollywood glitterati.
C) Response from Dalai Lama:
For tactical and pragmatic reasons Dalai Lama and others in Dharamshala had scaled back their demands for total independence and were willing to accept genuine autonomy and a healthy respect for Tibetan culture. Advocating for a comprehensive approach to resolve this problem that takes into account the benefits to all parties involved, Dalai Lama has been firm in commitment to a mutually beneficial policy, the ‘Middle-Way’ approach. Since 2002, talks were going on between envoys of Dalai Lama and the Chinese government with no solution in sight owing to duplicitous attitude of the PRC. He has expressed his solidarity with those Tibetans presently undergoing repression and ill-treatment. The Dalai Lama has acknowledged his helplessness in the face of such widespread protests as does not and can not control the events on the ground in Tibet. He has also threatened to quit as the head of the government-in-exile if the violence continues. He understands that the attitude inside Tibet has hardened and there has been significant criticism of his “failed” non-violent approach. Dalai Lama has implicitly admitted that Tibetans are no longer willing to follow his “middle way” approach. He does reiterate that Tibetans have had to live in a state of constant fear, intimidation and suspicion under Chinese repression. However, in spite of current wave of killings of Tibetans, he is prepared to pursue the ‘Middle-Way’ policy and continue the dialogue with the Chinese Government. He, however, very pragmatically has not foreclosed the option of total independence if the Tibetan people wanted that.
D) Response from Dharamshala based Government of Tibet in exile:At this juncture, the leadership for the movement seems to be coming from inside the Tibet. The government-in-exile with or without Dalai Lama may be forced to react passively to the events happening in Tibet. Clearly, they did not initiate the demonstration by the Buddhist monks on March 10th in Lhasa. For sake of unity they will have to harmonize their future course of action in sync with the aspirations of resident Tibetans who are braving the Chinese repressive machinery. This may mean formally and openly accepting the demands for total independence of Tibet.
E) Future escalation of protests by Tibetans in ATR:Though temporarily, China will be able to suppress the uprising by use of brute force analogous to the situation in Myanmar, the Beijing Olympics have opened a strategic window for the so-far frozen issue of Tibetan independence. Recent reports suggest movement of PLA units with tanks and heavy armored divisions into Tibet. The Tibetan protests will neither stop nor cease. There will be more and more novel ways to attract attention to Chinese occupation of Tibet and the cultural genocide. PRC is fighting a losing battle of wits against the Tibetan freedom fighters as the world has transformed. Despite mounting loss of life of resident Tibetans, Chinese repressive machinery would not be able to quell the bug of Tibetan independence as it has under-estimated the Tibetan nationalistic sentiment.
WHAT WOULD CHINA DO?
China currently does not have very many options dealing with the Tibetan uprising. Either it can negotiate autonomy with Dalai Lama soon enough or it can continue with the repressive policies of total control on TAR. China has ruled out the first option. Tibet’s Communist Party secretary, Zhang Qingli, lashed out at the Dalai Lama warning “we are engaged in a fierce battle of blood and fire with the Dalai clique, a life-and-death struggle between the foe and us.” The same sentiments have been expressed by the Premier Wen Jiabao.
Demonization of Dalai Lama:
Pursuing the policy of total Sinification of TAR, the China will continue to demonize Dalai Lama at every given opportunity. Secretary Zhang Qingli recently commented that “the Dalai is a jackal in Buddhist monk’s robes, an evil spirit with a human face and the heart of a beast.” Premier Wen Jiabao claims that Chinese government has evidence linking the “Dalai Clique” to the deadly unrest against Chinese rule in Tibet. Labeling Dalai Lama’s actions as “hypocritical” Wen accused him of trying to sabotage the Beijing Olympics by organizing these violent incidents in TAR in a premeditated and conspiratorial manner.
Positive Media Management and Counter-offensive:
The Chinese Government will try to “spin” the international media in three directions:
1. Chinese government will try to discourage any analogies between the suppression of the current Tibetan protests and the bloody crackdown on 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square. The role of the PLA in restoring peace and order will be camouflaged. The Chinese officials will claim that the Tibetan police and the military police are dealing with the protests, not the PLA. The number of deaths will be minimized and the use of tanks and heavy armored vehicles will be denied.
2. The government authorities will make exhaustive efforts to ensure that as few people as possible, inside or outside China, hear anything but the official version. Independent international media will be discredited.
3. Efforts will be made to portray the Han Chinese and the Hui Muslims living in TAR as the innocent victims of brutalities by Tibetan hooligans. Media reports, videos and internet will be effectively utilized to put the Tibetan demonstrators in a negative light.
Total Information Control and Management:
The Chinese government will take steps further steps to control the outflow of information from Tibet using physical and virtual controls on international media.
1. The visas of foreign correspondents will be cancelled or restricted. Physical access to TAR will be limited and reporters will be kept confined to their hotels. Under the garb of providing security, government minders and translators will prevent foreign correspondents from interviewing Tibetans.
2. Access to electronic media support will be denied. Non-functional fax machines and slowed down internet will become access will become the means. The authorities will block all Internet sites relating to Tibet.
Domestic newspapers, TV programs, and Internet sites will carry only articles produced by the official Xinhua news agency. Chinese censors will block out international media.
Security Lockdown on Tibet:
The Chinese government forces including Tibetan police, military police and the PLA will blanket Tibet and the areas inhabited by Tibetans in provinces neighboring Tibet, such as Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan. The repressive state machinery including the PLA would be hyperactive and crush any signs of dissent over the next few months. The mounting civilian casualties will not deter the Government machinery from exercising lethal means for restoring “peace and order” in Tibet.
Continued Focus on Economic Prosperity:
The Chinese government will keep its focus on the need to keep the economy growing. The government will try to keep unemployment low and inflation low so as to prevent escalation of domestic unrest in other areas. Shortage of food has led to increased prices of pork. Consumer price index has shot up to more than 8%. The Chinese government will try to boost economy in Tibet as a means of pacifying the Tibetan masses while preventing spread of unrest in other provinces.
Contingency Plan for Olympics:
Though staging Olympics peacefully is an important goal for the Chinese government, if push comes to shove, China will choose its continued control and hegemony over Tibet in preference over hosting Olympics successfully. Since Chinese government considers control of Tibet as a life or death issue, it would not hesitate to sacrifice Olympics if things get too hot in Tibet leading to a total boycott of the Games.
WHAT SHOULD THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY DO?
Tibet had declared unilateral independence from the Chinese empire in 1911 following the fall of the Manchu dynasty. Tibet was de facto an independent nation from 1911 till 1951 when it was invaded by the expansionist and hegemonistic Communist regime under the leadership of Mao. There were failed opportunities in 1945-1951 when Tibet could have been offered membership of UN as an independent sovereign nation. Thereafter, the inter-national community including the UN, USA and USSR have a background of serial non-actions following the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1951, in 1959, in 1962 and more recently in 1989.
Western nations are reluctant to take action against China’s crackdown on protests in Tibet, fearing Beijing’s growing economic and diplomatic clout and for their place in its huge consumer market. The main reaction, so far, in Europe and America has been to express concern over the reported deaths in the Himalayan region and call for restraint by China. The European Commission said it was worried about the violence. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urged China to engage in a dialogue with the Dalai Lama. The West this as an internal affair of China having conceded Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. The lure of economic opportunities in China for Western nations will outweigh any concerns about human rights.
UN Response:
It is unlikely that the UN will do anything on Tibetan issue as China is one of the members of Security Council’s P5 and is robustly supported by an equally authoritarian Russia led by Putin and Medvedev. Secretary General Ban ki Moon dare not antagonize China as he is trying to use Chinese influence in Darfur crisis.
US Response:
US will officially take a middle road and will continue to exhort China to improve its human rights record while asking for restoration of peace in Tibet. There will be increased transmission from Radio Free Asia to Tibet. The CIA may increase its contact with Tibetan diaspora based in the US and Europe and may increase funding for resistance. The current lame duck US administration will not make Tibet a defining issue in the Sino-US relationship as China seems to be bankrolling the US government deficit that runs now into trillions of dollars. George W. Bush will go to attend the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony as planned earlier. The speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi is currently on a five day tour of India and will be visiting Dharamshala. Nancy Pelosi was instrumentally in getting the Dalai Lama honored recently by the Congressional Medal of Freedom despite Chinese protests. However, the direction of a new US administration in 2009 can not be anticipated at this juncture.
US civil society will have a different perspective governed more by moralistic considerations contrasted with the mercantilist instincts of the US government. Already, Stephen Speilberg has resigned from his Beijing Olympics responsibilities. Richard Gere is spearheading American Buddhists solidarity with Tibetan cause. The US civil society will continue to extend its support for Tibetan independence as the Dalai Lama is a highly revered figure in the US and has many Americans followers who have converted to Buddhism. These US converts to Buddhism have economic clout and will continue to bankroll the Tibetan resistance based in the West.
IOC Response:
The IOC has been forced to lobby against boycott calls and the possibility of the games turning into a political demonstration. The IOC’s basic contention is that as a sporting organization it is unable to pressure China or any other country on political matters. The IOC believes that a total boycott would only hurt the athletes, as shown by the political boycotts of the 1976, 1980 and 1984 Olympics. The IOC will not link the issue of Tibetan independence or human rights record of China with successful completion of the Olympic Games under any scenario. Admitting that kind of linkage will be akin to IOC eating a crow because IOC should not have awarded the Olympic Games to Beijing in the first place when it did in July 2001 on human rights record of China.
Russian Response:
Concerned about its own separatist problems in Chechnya, Russia will denounce any movement for censor of Chinese government in the UN for its brutal handling of Tibetan uprisings. Furthermore, Russia has linked unrest in Tibet with unilateral declaration of independence in Kosovo. Russia will continue to support China in maintaining its control over TAR and will lend moral, diplomatic and logistic support to China on this issue as Russia feels encircled by the NATO in Eastern Europe and will not budge on this issue. Russia will actively work for further consolidation and enlargement of SCO in conjunction with China to keep US influence from spreading further in Central Asia.
Others:
There will be stray calls for boycott of Olympics coming from former East European countries that were under Soviet domination during the cold war era.
The Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch should intervene and asked the Chinese authorities to allow an independent investigation into the situation in Tibet. The response from the international community will be, largely, determined by the events unfolding on the ground. If the Tibetan revolt is successfully contained by China, the international community will keep quiet and continue to do business as usual with China. If the events on ground turn tectonic, international community will adopt “holier than thou” attitude and sing paeans in the praise of cause of human rights violations and the valiant struggle of Tibetans.
The international community has a responsibility to prevent any further physical and cultural genocide of Tibet under Chinese occupation. International community should leave aside short-term economic, mercantile interests and focus on the nationalistic aspirations of six million Tibetans who have been subjugated and dispossessed since 1951 having attained their freedom from the imperialistic power in 1911. If a tiny Kosovo or Macedonia can achieve independence why not six million Tibetans?
WHAT SHOULD INDIA DO?
India’s response to the current revolt in Tibet against Chinese occupation would depend upon the kind of perspective one takes. What should be deemed as the optimal response shall be determined by a complex array of competing interests within the pluralistic, corrupt and chaotic Indian society that is somewhat fractured currently. The overall Indian response needs to be distinguished from the response of the party in power (Congress) or the current lame duck UPA government of India that is on its last legs and is unable to come out with a coherent response. The overall response has to be multi-dimensional, finely tuned and pro-active instead of being reactive, taking into consideration our historical people to people relations with both Tibetan people and Chinese people. Indian response should also consider the historical facts including the Chinese Aggression against India in 1962 and subsequent Chinese hostility towards India’s interests in South Asia and in international fora. China’s transfer of nuclear technology and ballistic missile technology to Pakistan and China’s “Pearl of Strings” strategy to contain India should be factored into any decision making process. Any Indian response must take into account previous Indian attempts to appease Chinese under Jawahar Lal Nehru’s failed policies in 1950s and 1960s and perpetual Chinese recourse to ultimate “victim-hood” role. Indian response needs to take into account the vigorous but unnecessary jubilation expressed by India in 1971 at the time of Communist China getting its permanent seat in the Security Council of the United Nation and India under Jawahar Lal Nehru forgoing the American offer of permanent seat in Security Council in the 1950s in favor of communist Chinese claim.
A) Response from Indian civilizational and spiritual leadership:
India had been the civilizational guru of China as Buddhism spread to China from India. Chinese pilgrims came to India during ancient times, attended universities and monasteries and took back wealth of spiritual knowledge from India. The spiritual leaders from India should exert their moral pressure on Chinese government expressing concern for the welfare of our Buddhist brethren. The Indian spiritual leaders should express their solidarity with the Dalai Lama for early resolution of the Tibetan grievances be it autonomy or complete independence. A memorandum to the Chinese embassy in New Delhi or a press release from various spiritual leaders expressing their regret at the loss of life under repressive crackdown by the Chinese government would be useful for the Tibetan cause. The spiritual leaders should exhort the Chinese government to engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama directly and through his representatives so that long-standing issues with regard to Tibet may be resolved. The spiritual leaders of Indic religions should send a strong message to the Chinese Government that what is happening inside Tibet and what the Chinese government is doing to the Tibetans is not justified ethically, morally and spiritually.
B) Response from Indian Civil society institutions:India has large array of civil society institutions and a historic tradition to help the needy and the down-trodden that dates back from ancient times. Jawahar Lal Nehru sent the Dr. Dwarka Nath Kotnis medical mission to China to help the Chinese civil society during the time of their need. There are a number of Non-governmental organizations that can channelize Indian peoples’ help to their Buddhist Tibetan brothers during the time of their need. This may include humanitarian help, e.g. sending medical missions to Lhasa, sending care-packages, life-saving medications and of course money to the families of the Tibetan’s killed in the PLA atrocities. Such help should be sent privately by Indian citizens, residents or non-resident irrespective of the Government of India’s official and diplomatic response. These helpful altruistic gestures towards fellow Buddhists will gain us respect and trust from fellow civilizational allies. The NGOs have significant role in mobilizing public opinion, issuing press statements, sending emails to IOC, Chinese government officials, UN secretary general etc. The NGOs can also arrange seminars and discussion groups in conjunction with other Human rights organizations on the plight of oppressed Tibetan people living under occupation.
C) Response from Indian media:The print and electronic media in India is free of government control as the Indian constitution allows freedom of speech. This sets a stage where the media’s response to this crisis is divorced from the government response. The Indian media does have the rights and luxury of not toeing to the government response and should continue to adopt an independent viewpoint without getting bullied by Chinese government pronouncements threatening dire consequences for Indo-Chinese relations in future. The Indian media should also disregard the calls for non-interference in China’s internal affairs notably by Indian communist lackeys. The Indian media can rise to the occasion and document the atrocities on the Tibetan population without the fear of strained relations with China.
D) Response from Indian Communists Parties:The leaders of Indian left, especially the CPM have so far refused to condemn the violence in Tibet, described by the Dalai Lama as “ by the Chinese government. Addressing a press conference in New Delhi, Sitaram Yechury said the clashes were an internal affair of China. SR Yechury rhetorically asked how the Indian nation would react if any other nation were to raise the issue of what is happening in Kashmir. Indian left especially the CPM will refuse to acknowledge Chinese repression in Tibet. Indian Communists will continue to justify Chinese atrocities despite mounting evidence.
E) Response from non-communist political parties:There will be hardly any worthwhile response from the Congress party organization. The right wing Bharatiya Janata Party will denounce Chinese actions and will exhort Government to take stronger measures, adopt a strict policy and join hands with other nations and raise the matter at international fora. They will continue to highlight the communist betrayal in 1962; when China attacked India, the united CPI did not condemn the Chinese aggression. The socialists will predictably take a stronger line against China.
Response from current Government of India
Tactical response:The Government of India has come out with a two-pronged response. On one hand, the government of India has arrested Tibetan Youth and demonstrators from staging a March from Dharashala to Lhasa and has prevented any damage to Chinese embassy. The government has also issued a cautious appeal to initiate a dialogue so as to resolve the grievance without indulging in violence. This is a politically and diplomatically correct initial tactical response. However, this Tibetan issue is not going to disappear and as events are unfolding the response needs to be carefully calibrated taking Indian interests into consideration. Unfortunately, successive governments have not enunciated a long-term Tibet policy.
Long-term Strategic Response and Tibet Policy:
It is not, it was not, and it will be not in the long-term strategic interests of India that Tibet was occupied by expansionist and hegemonistic China in 1951. It remains our long-term strategic interest for a free and independent Tibet to remain as a buffer state between China and India. The strategic blunders of Himalayan proportions committed by Jawahar Lal Nehru despite ample written warnings by Sardar Patel need to be corrected eventually albeit after a thoughtful consideration leveraging on the events and ground realities.
Whether the current communist, dictatorial regime in China will last long is debatable. Despite economic growth and prosperity in China, there are thousands of instances of social unrest. With an inflation of 8% currently, shortage of food, rampant corruption, popular revolt against communist rule can not be excluded at a future date. Any policy planning needs to take into consideration a scenario where popular events akin to 1989 Tianaman Square events may take over the Chinese regime leading to break-up of the communist empire with secession by the Inner Mongolia, Tibet, East Turkistan and unilateral declaration of Independence by Taiwan. If the mighty British, French, Spanish and Soviet communist empires could be broken down under the might of popular uprisings, so could be the Communist Chinese Empire. International community failed to take strategic advantage of 1989 Tiananmen Square uprisings. India also failed to do the same. In future, in order to have some leverage to settle the border dispute with China, India will have to play hard with China as there is no other option. We have to remember that China considers entire Arunachal Pradesh as “Outer Tibet” and has reasserted its claim on the whole province. Furthermore, besides Tibet, the greater China concept incorporates Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal and Myanmar to be the five fingers of the Chinese sphere of strategic influence and hegemony.
China unfortunately is not a cute, cuddly poodle that has to be hugged unconditionally all the time. Rather it is a complex, Communist, and Confuscian Chimera that could come to gnaw into your body flesh. China has refused to resolve the border issue and continues to strike at India’s interests world-wide in a skillful manner. Bottom-line is that India will have to adopt a tough long-term China policy predicated upon re-emergence of Tibet as an independent and free buffer state between the two Asian giants. It may sound as pipe dream but any geo-political scenario is possible. India should be ready with any plan B that is contrary to the popular notions of strategic thinking on Tibet.
Undue genuflection to China on Tibet issue has proved counterproductive since 1951 onwards. Perhaps, the time has come when India should grant Tibetan refugees the right to organize and indulge in political activities under close watch. We have to acknowledge that Dalai Lama is not only a spiritual leader but also the political head of the Tibetan government-in-exile and needs to be accorded treatment and protocol reserved for heads of states. India should consider negotiating a treaty with any future government in free Tibet or with the Tibetan government-in-exile about return to Indian sovereignty of Hindu sacred sites of Mount Kailash and Mansarover lakes. From ancient times and certainly prior to 1951 Hindus from India have made pilgrimages to these Hindu Holy-lands without needing any visa or other formalities as there was not issue of Chinese or Tibetan sovereignty over these holy sites.
WHAT WOULD INDIA DO?
Indian government is notorious for dragging its feet in a re-active manner without ever planning for contingencies that are unforeseen. After waiting for whole week, the Indian government that survives on support from the CPM expressed vague noises and distress about use of force out of proportion in “Tibet that is autonomous region of China”. India, under current UPA dispension may not be able to boldly articulate its Tibet policy advantage or play its Tibet card boldly during the Beijing Olympics.
LONG-TERM IMPLICATIONS FOR INDIA:
The window of opportunity for India is great till August 24th 2008 for using her Tibet card skillfully in the international power games. Besides the moral, civilizational, religious and spiritual dimensions, there are important strategic and security implications for India. Tibetan issue will no longer die down. Free and independent Tibet’s is not necessarily a dream from past. The future political and administrative dispensions in Tibet may not be under the control of Communist China. India should not put all her eggs into the Chinese basket. Previous Indian policies on Tibet have failed and have proved counterproductive strategically. Considering the persistent and ongoing Chinese congagement activities of India, India needs to develop her spine and have a bold, changed strategic perspective on Tibet and on China.
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