Thursday, September 20, 2007
Monday, August 20, 2007
REJOINDER by Ghulam Muhammed,
TO:
LEADER ARTICLE: Let's Believe In Ourselves
[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lets_Believe_In_Ourselves/articleshow/2292828.cms]
Others talked of India having moved closes to the Soviet Union and having become largely dependent on Soviet arms supplies. They were worried about India joining Brezhnev’s Asian security plan against China. Nothing of that sort happened. India defied the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and conducted the first Pokhran test in 1974. It was prepared to accept the penalties imposed on it following that test. Again, India did not join the US and China and the majority of the non-aligned in supporting Pol Pot’s representation in the UN General Assembly. Nor did India join the western powers and majority of non-aligned community in the anti-Soviet campaign on Afghanistan. It disapproved of the Soviet action and conveyed that in private. Thereby India saved itself from the Al-Qaida contamination. India conducted the Shakti tests defying the non-proliferation community of whom over 100 were non-aligned members. The US and the international community in their own interests have now moved to lift the technology apartheid against India without requiring India to join the NPT or give up its nuclear weapons. The international framework is being modified to bring in India — and India alone — as a member of the bigger non-proliferation regime. There is no evidence of India having compromised on its independent foreign policy as a quid pro quo. New Delhi’s vote against Tehran in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board was perfectly justified as Iran has developed a clandestine nuclear weapons programme with the help of A Q Khan and hid it from IAEA for 16 years. India only voted against Iran on violation of IAEA regulations. But China and Russia have voted for sanctions to be imposed against Iran by the UN Security Council. Are we to assume they did so under pressure from US or was it because they were convinced about Iran’s unacceptable nuclear enrichment activity?
(GM: China and Russia voted for sanctions against Iran, mainly because they are the full members of the nuclear club and had to protect their exclusive interests. India had not found a place nor will probably ever find a place in future in that nuclear club.
India, when it came to its own defense compulsions, against a super-power proxy like Pakistan, defied the so-called international law and survived sanctions. It is a paradigm shift for it to now side with the hunters and leave the group of the hunted for opportunistic reasons, opening a Pandora’s box of jangled neighborhood equations that will take great time and effort to come to terms with, and that too not necessarily in a peaceful manner, if at all.)
To recall former US President Franklin D Roosevelt’s saying: What we have to fear is fear itself. India has no need to fear the dominance of any other power.
(The writer is a security affairs analyst)
#5412
REJOINDER by Ghulam Muhammed,
TO:
LEADER ARTICLE: Let's Believe In Ourselves
[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Lets_Believe_In_Ourselves/articleshow/2292828.cms]
20 Aug 2007, 0020 hrs IST , K Subrahmanyam
The Left Front leaders and a few others have expressed their concerns about India concluding the nuclear agreement and moving closer to the US. India has had 60 years of experience in conducting its foreign policy and that is a long enough period to assess the formulation of its policy.
(GM: India’s 60 year experience was gained through the medium of stalwarts like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who had nursed India, first to come out of a colonial stranglehold and second to keep it free from the global politics of cold-war raging, after the 2nd WW, between the West and the Soviet Block. Even though Nehru could be easily branded as autocratic as current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would like to be, he was not imposed on the nation, by outside powers --- the West or Soviet block as is the clear case of Manmohan Singh. Those who cannot figure out how Manmohan Singh came to occupy the most important post in the nation, are either naïve or very short-sighted.
Nehru, even though he leaned towards the Soviet Block for ideological an/ord pragmatic reasons, he was shrewd and brave enough to keep the Soviets at a distant and even was very businesslike with the local India’s own communist party.
In contrast, Manmohan Singh’s 15 year record is too fresh in front of us, not to make out that he has been carrying out n open US agenda, in economic, political and defence fields. Even in foreign policy field, he was clearly forced by the US, publicly, under open threat, in a crude blackmailing fashion, to have to vote against Iran in that infamous AIEA, against all conventional wisdom and against huge public outcry. He bowed down to the wishes of US administration in sacking Natwar Singh and shifting his oil minister Mani Shankar Aiyer, from his crucial post, as Aiyer was boldly pursuing oil policies and interacting independently with other countries to expand India’s choices of alternatives in securing oil though bilateral arrangements with friendly countries (friendly with India and not necessarily with the US), cutting out the US and its oil interests and threatening their planned ‘monopoly’ over India’s future needs . Prime Minister has handed over very crucial military and naval intelligence task to US and Israeli ‘experts’ without any public notification or discussion, brashly exploiting the legal loopholes where any public accountability is missing --- thanks of the one party rule of Congress, that completely distorted the healthy functioning of a full-blooded democracy, where each and every executive act should have been subject to public scrutiny.
All these moves have and should have shaken the confidence of discerning Indian public in their Prime Minister and his ability to safeguard the sovereignty and integrity of India as an independent nation. The 60-year experience that Mr. Subrahmanyam has summarily awarded to the Prime Minister, is and has been shattered by the new team, as is clearly evidenced by their various acts of commission or/and omission.)
The Left Front leaders and a few others have expressed their concerns about India concluding the nuclear agreement and moving closer to the US. India has had 60 years of experience in conducting its foreign policy and that is a long enough period to assess the formulation of its policy.
(GM: India’s 60 year experience was gained through the medium of stalwarts like Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, who had nursed India, first to come out of a colonial stranglehold and second to keep it free from the global politics of cold-war raging, after the 2nd WW, between the West and the Soviet Block. Even though Nehru could be easily branded as autocratic as current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would like to be, he was not imposed on the nation, by outside powers --- the West or Soviet block as is the clear case of Manmohan Singh. Those who cannot figure out how Manmohan Singh came to occupy the most important post in the nation, are either naïve or very short-sighted.
Nehru, even though he leaned towards the Soviet Block for ideological an/ord pragmatic reasons, he was shrewd and brave enough to keep the Soviets at a distant and even was very businesslike with the local India’s own communist party.
In contrast, Manmohan Singh’s 15 year record is too fresh in front of us, not to make out that he has been carrying out n open US agenda, in economic, political and defence fields. Even in foreign policy field, he was clearly forced by the US, publicly, under open threat, in a crude blackmailing fashion, to have to vote against Iran in that infamous AIEA, against all conventional wisdom and against huge public outcry. He bowed down to the wishes of US administration in sacking Natwar Singh and shifting his oil minister Mani Shankar Aiyer, from his crucial post, as Aiyer was boldly pursuing oil policies and interacting independently with other countries to expand India’s choices of alternatives in securing oil though bilateral arrangements with friendly countries (friendly with India and not necessarily with the US), cutting out the US and its oil interests and threatening their planned ‘monopoly’ over India’s future needs . Prime Minister has handed over very crucial military and naval intelligence task to US and Israeli ‘experts’ without any public notification or discussion, brashly exploiting the legal loopholes where any public accountability is missing --- thanks of the one party rule of Congress, that completely distorted the healthy functioning of a full-blooded democracy, where each and every executive act should have been subject to public scrutiny.
All these moves have and should have shaken the confidence of discerning Indian public in their Prime Minister and his ability to safeguard the sovereignty and integrity of India as an independent nation. The 60-year experience that Mr. Subrahmanyam has summarily awarded to the Prime Minister, is and has been shattered by the new team, as is clearly evidenced by their various acts of commission or/and omission.)
During these 60 years, India has risen from a poor developing colony to become the fourth largest economy of the world. It is now a nuclear weapon state and a space and an information technology powerhouse with a $200 billion foreign exchange reserve.
(GM: There cannot be any doubt over the changes that have certainly benefited the nation, which under liberalization and globalization has risen from a doddering poor nation to a resurgent economic power. Nobody disputes that. However, it seems, while embarking on this progress, we have not figured out what will be attendant cost of this progress. The way 123is being surreptitiously smuggled into our statute books, citing constitutional and executive privileges, sends alarms around the nation, if this beginning of an innocent looking agreement that promises to opens door to unlimited hubris, will not forever bind us to a superpower, that has plans of a New World Order, about which the nation had never had the opportunity nor time to decide if India should be part and parcel of any such imperialist agenda to entangle its people in any world war situations.
While Kapil Sibal makes a legal point about Prime Minister’s constitutionally correct move, he should have taken note that never in sixty years of Indian History, India has signed any such far reaching and strategic agreement with any super power, be that the US or Soviet Union, that virtually robs India of its freedom to decide some very crucial international relationships. It is now time, that the constitution should be suitably amended to take in the future eventuality of our nation entering such crucial agreement with full consensus from the people and elected parliament. Any such treaty should not be allowed to be deemed to be signed by a ‘sovereign’ nation, till it is ratified by an overwhelming majority of its people, in whichever way that consensus is to be judged. In the event, PM and Congress has been taking the people of India on a ride, taking advantage of the loopholes and flaws in our laws, that have left out the scrutiny, sanction and consensus of the people to be the starting point of any such ‘sovereign’ commitment.)
So why the constant carping about India’s foreign policy and the days when it was dependent on PL-480 imports, US aid and British military equipment and training? In fact, India has charted an independent course since independence. New Delhi stood up to the UN Security Council pressure when the western powers tilted the UN resolution on Kashmir in Pakistan’s favour. At that time, India was alone. In 1971, India defied the UN resolution passed by 110 nations (most of them were our non-aligned friends), backed by the US and China, and went ahead and liberated Bangladesh. Many in those days talked of India becoming a Soviet satellite because of the Indo-Soviet peace and friendship treaty and of secret clauses in the treaty which compromised our non-alignment. When the same people came to power following the 1977 election, they could not find any secret clauses.
(GM: There cannot be any doubt over the changes that have certainly benefited the nation, which under liberalization and globalization has risen from a doddering poor nation to a resurgent economic power. Nobody disputes that. However, it seems, while embarking on this progress, we have not figured out what will be attendant cost of this progress. The way 123is being surreptitiously smuggled into our statute books, citing constitutional and executive privileges, sends alarms around the nation, if this beginning of an innocent looking agreement that promises to opens door to unlimited hubris, will not forever bind us to a superpower, that has plans of a New World Order, about which the nation had never had the opportunity nor time to decide if India should be part and parcel of any such imperialist agenda to entangle its people in any world war situations.
While Kapil Sibal makes a legal point about Prime Minister’s constitutionally correct move, he should have taken note that never in sixty years of Indian History, India has signed any such far reaching and strategic agreement with any super power, be that the US or Soviet Union, that virtually robs India of its freedom to decide some very crucial international relationships. It is now time, that the constitution should be suitably amended to take in the future eventuality of our nation entering such crucial agreement with full consensus from the people and elected parliament. Any such treaty should not be allowed to be deemed to be signed by a ‘sovereign’ nation, till it is ratified by an overwhelming majority of its people, in whichever way that consensus is to be judged. In the event, PM and Congress has been taking the people of India on a ride, taking advantage of the loopholes and flaws in our laws, that have left out the scrutiny, sanction and consensus of the people to be the starting point of any such ‘sovereign’ commitment.)
So why the constant carping about India’s foreign policy and the days when it was dependent on PL-480 imports, US aid and British military equipment and training? In fact, India has charted an independent course since independence. New Delhi stood up to the UN Security Council pressure when the western powers tilted the UN resolution on Kashmir in Pakistan’s favour. At that time, India was alone. In 1971, India defied the UN resolution passed by 110 nations (most of them were our non-aligned friends), backed by the US and China, and went ahead and liberated Bangladesh. Many in those days talked of India becoming a Soviet satellite because of the Indo-Soviet peace and friendship treaty and of secret clauses in the treaty which compromised our non-alignment. When the same people came to power following the 1977 election, they could not find any secret clauses.
Others talked of India having moved closes to the Soviet Union and having become largely dependent on Soviet arms supplies. They were worried about India joining Brezhnev’s Asian security plan against China. Nothing of that sort happened. India defied the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and conducted the first Pokhran test in 1974. It was prepared to accept the penalties imposed on it following that test. Again, India did not join the US and China and the majority of the non-aligned in supporting Pol Pot’s representation in the UN General Assembly. Nor did India join the western powers and majority of non-aligned community in the anti-Soviet campaign on Afghanistan. It disapproved of the Soviet action and conveyed that in private. Thereby India saved itself from the Al-Qaida contamination. India conducted the Shakti tests defying the non-proliferation community of whom over 100 were non-aligned members. The US and the international community in their own interests have now moved to lift the technology apartheid against India without requiring India to join the NPT or give up its nuclear weapons. The international framework is being modified to bring in India — and India alone — as a member of the bigger non-proliferation regime. There is no evidence of India having compromised on its independent foreign policy as a quid pro quo. New Delhi’s vote against Tehran in the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) board was perfectly justified as Iran has developed a clandestine nuclear weapons programme with the help of A Q Khan and hid it from IAEA for 16 years. India only voted against Iran on violation of IAEA regulations. But China and Russia have voted for sanctions to be imposed against Iran by the UN Security Council. Are we to assume they did so under pressure from US or was it because they were convinced about Iran’s unacceptable nuclear enrichment activity?
(GM: China and Russia voted for sanctions against Iran, mainly because they are the full members of the nuclear club and had to protect their exclusive interests. India had not found a place nor will probably ever find a place in future in that nuclear club.
India, when it came to its own defense compulsions, against a super-power proxy like Pakistan, defied the so-called international law and survived sanctions. It is a paradigm shift for it to now side with the hunters and leave the group of the hunted for opportunistic reasons, opening a Pandora’s box of jangled neighborhood equations that will take great time and effort to come to terms with, and that too not necessarily in a peaceful manner, if at all.)
There have always been sections in India who have lacked self-confidence and expected us to cave in to the demands of external powers. However, Indian foreign policy has proved that even when the country was much weaker than it is today, it withstood such pressures. The tough negotiations that preceded the nuclear deal are enough proof of India’s ability to bargain hard. The US is not used to dealing with strategic partners but only with allies who accepted its leadership. India will not be an ally of the US though former Prime Minister A B Vajpayee used the term, ‘natural ally’. India has no experience in dealing with either an ally or a strategic partner. Therefore, sustaining a strategic partnership is going to be a new experience for both countries. The US is looking for a strategic partner, which would help it to sustain its economic and technological pre-eminence and to maintain the balance of power in Asia and the world.
(GM: Subrahmanyam is right, when he clarifies that neither the US nor India has any experience of dealing with a strategic partner. The US has always acted as a bully with even its allies. The case of Bush-Blair interaction is a clear proof. India as a proud and independent nation is not used to the kind of threats and orders that is coming out constantly from every level of the US polity. The way US Ambassador meddles in India’s internal affairs, it is not only humiliating but not always conducive to the achievement of national goals, which is not some kind of private domain of the oligarchs.)
(GM: Subrahmanyam is right, when he clarifies that neither the US nor India has any experience of dealing with a strategic partner. The US has always acted as a bully with even its allies. The case of Bush-Blair interaction is a clear proof. India as a proud and independent nation is not used to the kind of threats and orders that is coming out constantly from every level of the US polity. The way US Ambassador meddles in India’s internal affairs, it is not only humiliating but not always conducive to the achievement of national goals, which is not some kind of private domain of the oligarchs.)
Washington is of the view that a rising, democratic India with a youthful population and a reservoir of talent will help in its objectives. There are people who object to the US benefiting out of its partnership with India. But the question is whether the partnership would help India, how much and if there are better alternatives. Those who talk about the costs of this partnership have not taken into account India’s history, its current place in the international system, and the opportunity cost of letting China increase its trade relations with the US by leaps and bounds.
(GM: Analysts like Subrahmanyam, while speaking about mutual benefits in any such strategic partnership, should be clear as to what benefit will accrue to each side. India and Indian people have a right to be openly and categorically warn the US and its another strategic ally, the Israelis, not to expect India and Indian people to fight a war on the basis of any short term or long tern conspiracies that the US and Israelis are famous for.
Let us declare Asia a no war zone so that no innocent blood is shed on our soil or of our people. If Indian progress takes us to become a part of the US hegemonical war designs, India’s peace-loving people, in the best Gandhian traditions, should be able to rule out all such possibility, from the very outset.)
(GM: Analysts like Subrahmanyam, while speaking about mutual benefits in any such strategic partnership, should be clear as to what benefit will accrue to each side. India and Indian people have a right to be openly and categorically warn the US and its another strategic ally, the Israelis, not to expect India and Indian people to fight a war on the basis of any short term or long tern conspiracies that the US and Israelis are famous for.
Let us declare Asia a no war zone so that no innocent blood is shed on our soil or of our people. If Indian progress takes us to become a part of the US hegemonical war designs, India’s peace-loving people, in the best Gandhian traditions, should be able to rule out all such possibility, from the very outset.)
Once India realizes that its partnership is of value to the US then it is a question of hard mutual bargain.
New Delhi must remember that the US is no longer the leader of the majority alliance in a bipolar world.
(GM: Subrahmanyam’s caveat is most important. Till now there is no indication from the Prime Minister or his advisors or his party, to stress that points that India can and will chart its own course in world affairs.
Besides, as things are developing, there is a danger that India will be presented with a fait accompli for which it has never prepared for or received any clearance from its own people.
India is not lead at his point of time, by leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Patel who can successfully withstand foreign pressures of damaging kind. In fact, there is reason to believe that even they had been presented with fait accompli by the British colonialists and they had to sign on dotted line. )
New Delhi must remember that the US is no longer the leader of the majority alliance in a bipolar world.
(GM: Subrahmanyam’s caveat is most important. Till now there is no indication from the Prime Minister or his advisors or his party, to stress that points that India can and will chart its own course in world affairs.
Besides, as things are developing, there is a danger that India will be presented with a fait accompli for which it has never prepared for or received any clearance from its own people.
India is not lead at his point of time, by leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Patel who can successfully withstand foreign pressures of damaging kind. In fact, there is reason to believe that even they had been presented with fait accompli by the British colonialists and they had to sign on dotted line. )
To recall former US President Franklin D Roosevelt’s saying: What we have to fear is fear itself. India has no need to fear the dominance of any other power.
(The writer is a security affairs analyst)
#5412
