Past forward policy

Mar 26, 2014

S.K. Sinha
http://www.asianage.com/columnists/past-forward-policy-661

The threat from China in the Himalayas continues and has become even greater. Yet we have failed to sufficiently overcome our shortcomings of 1962.

Lately, the Henderson Brooks report on the Sino-Indian War of 1962 has been much in the news. Facts leading to the debacle need to be stated before going into the details of this report.

After the Communist Revolution, Mao Zedong became the supreme leader of China in 1948. In 1950, the Chinese intervened in Korea and moved into Tibet. Jawaharlal Nehru was one of our great stalwarts of the freedom movement and the architect of democracy in our county. An iconic leader loved by the masses, he was a visionary who believed in world peace and tried to play the role of a modern Ashok. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, being a realist, clearly saw the threat posed by the Chinese presence in Tibet. A month before he passed away, he wrote to Nehru — on November 7, 1950 — that China was “concentrating for an onslaught on Tibet. The final action of the Chinese, in my judgment, is little short of perfidy”. Nehru ignored this warning. He went out of his way to befriend China, advocating its membership of the United Nations and even declining the offer made to India of a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, saying that it should go to Communist China.

Paniker, our ambassador in China, functioned more as China’s ambassador to India than India’s to China. Defence minister Krishna Menon, whom many said had pronounced Communist leanings in his early days, was abrasive with Service Chiefs and played favourites within the Services undermining discipline. The defence industry was producing coffee makers instead of defence weapons and equipment. Bhola Nath Mullik, the legendary intelligence chief, was Nehru’s Man Friday. He went horribly wrong on two counts. First, the Chinese will not take any action against India’s Forward Policy. Second, the Chinese Air Force could bomb Indian cities from airfields in Tibet, when they did not then have this capability to do so. Thus, it was decided not to use our Air Force for offensive operations in support of the Army. As for military advice, reliance was put on B.M. Kaul, an officer from logistic branch, with no combat experience or background.

Ignoring the recommendation of Gen. K.S. Thimayya, the then Army Chief, Kaul was promoted lieutenant-general in 1960. In 1962, he was appointed to the key combat command for conduct of operations against the Chinese in the East. Nehru justified this appointment in Parliament, saying that Kaul was the most outstanding general of the Indian Army. Lt. Gen. Thorat, the Eastern Army Commander till 1961, had made out a realistic plan for defence in the Northeast based on the road head at Bomdi-la. This plan was ignored.

Published: March 28, 2014
Many realities, multiple platforms

Amit Baruah

The digital divide has gone out of favour, but millions of Indians not only remain illiterate, but are unable to access welfare schemes

Is there a clash between social media and social movements? Or, can social media be used to promote social movements?

As political parties intensify their use of social media and election fever heightens in a country where millions are illiterate and have little access to technology, these questions are inevitable.

Sitting in his home — that also doubles as his election office — in Maharashtra’s Amravati town, Rajendra Gavai of the Republican Party of India (Gavai) is one of the many politicians trying to work out the equation between the disempowered and empowered voter.

My question to him was simple: Do you use social media in an effort to reach out to voters? Dr. Gavai’s answer was interesting: “We rely mostly on our village network of voters but, yes, we do use SMS.” No reference to Facebook or Twitter, staple media platforms for an influential category of Indians.

“But many of our supporters are not happy about receiving SMS because they can’t read,” Dr. Gavai, a skin specialist by profession who earns a living in Mumbai and is the RPI (Gavai) candidate from Amravati again, said in the same breath.

As we drink a hot, sweet cup of tea in a room full of people, one of Dr. Gavai’s aides pipes up, “We believe in social movements, not social media.”

It’s a line that sticks in my head. The point Dr. Gavai was making is this — people who can’t read but have a mobile in Amravati’s villages would rather be contacted in person than through a message they can’t read.

Mostly, another aide said, Dr. Gavai’s campaign will be relaint on using justtheir political workers — all of whom work voluntarily for the party — to reach out to Amravati’s electorate.

Quiet, small, but influential political parties whose vote base consists of the poor and marginalised sections of society are a little embarrassed to use technology that goes over the heads of both their supporters and potential supporters.Behind the story of numbers

At the same time, it’s undeniable that outreach platforms for political parties have moved beyond the traditional mass meeting and direct candidate-to-voter contacts.

With 161 million television households, 94,067 newspapers (dailies alone number 12,511), 214 million Internet users (130 million use on mobile) and close to 2,000 multiplexes, the change is massive.

Higher learning rich in size, poor in quality

Source Link
Dinesh K. Gupta

A view of Khalsa College, Amritsar. The physical infrastructure of most colleges in India is used for around 200 days a year for six to eight hours a day. Teachers also focus only on teaching, devoting little time to research, extension and consultancy. A Tribune file photo

INDIA has been ranked 60th in “The Global Competitiveness Report 2013-2014”, released recently by the World Economic Forum, out of the 148 economies that were evaluated on a number of factors, primarily grouped as basic requirements, efficiency enhancers, and innovation and sophistication factors.

The evaluated economies have been further classified as factor driven, efficiency driven and innovation driven. India falls in the factor-driven economies group. China (Rank 29), Indonesia (38) and South Africa (53) are among the efficiency-driven economies, and Switzerland (1), Singapore (2), Finland (3), Germany (4), the USA (5) and Taiwan (12) under the innovation-driven economies. The Report stresses the importance of vitality and vibrancy of higher education and training if a nation intends to migrate from the cluster of ‘innovation poor’ nations to that of ‘innovation rich’ nations.

India slipping

Making a change

• A global ranking of top 500 universities has 149 from the US, 28 from China, six from Brazil, two from Russia and one from India (IISc, Bangalore).
• The US attracts 28.7% of its foreign students from China and 11.8% from India.
• The National Accreditation Assessment Council has found 62% of the Indian universities and 90% of the colleges have infrastructural deficiencies. Also, the physical infrastructure as well as teachers are grossly underutilised.
• Educators also have to be clear about the fast changing requirements of society and design relevant courses.
• Any top-ranking institution will have a qualitatively different culture that has been religiously nurtured over time by the top people.

It will be apt to closely study the global ranking of Indian universities. The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) of top 500 universities released by Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) is considered to be one the most trust worthy global university rankings as it follows a transparent methodology and uses reliable data. The ARWU 2013 ranking carries 149 universities from the US, 28 from China, six from Brazil, two from Russia and one from India. The sole institution of India figuring in this highly competitive ranking is the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

A comparison with ARWU 2009 reveals some disturbing facts. In 2009, the US had the distinction of having 160 universities, China two, Brazil six, Russia two, and India two (IISc, Bangalore, and IIT, Kharagpur). China has remarkably improved its higher education system over time and has substantially increased the number of institutions in the latest ranking.

Professor Shyam Sunder, James L Frank Professor of Accounting, Economics and Finance, at Yale School of Management, shared with me that US universities prefer Chinese students over Indian for highly specialised areas of research. As per the latest statistics released by the US Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the US has become number one destination for quality education as it has attracted the largest number of foreign students in higher education, numbering 8,19,644 in 2012-13, with 28.7 per cent originating from China and 11.8 per cent from India.

State of Indian Defence Industry – An Introspection

http://www.indiandefencereview.com/news/state-of-indian-defence-industry-an-introspection/

ByMaj Gen Rajesh Singh

IssueNet Edition| Date : 26 Mar , 2014

India’s lack of a strong and a robust defence industry is a matter of grave concern as it makes India dependent on imports from foreign countries for about 70% of her defence equipment requirements. The SIPRI Year Book 2013 lists India as the world’s largest arms importer accounting for 12% of the import share during the period 2008-12. Even prior to this period India had been listed as one of the world’s top three arms importers. The recent biennial Defexpo for exhibition of Land, Naval and Homeland Security Systems held from 06-09 February 2014 in New Delhi which saw participation of 567 arms companies from 32 countries is also indicative of India as a large arms market on account of the dismal state of the Indian Defence Industry and it calls for a serious introspection. The ramifications that such a high level of India’s import dependence for defence equipment will be having on the country’s national security are very obvious and thus need no reiteration.

…it is absolutely necessary in the national interest to be self reliant in defence equipment and for that it is an imperative that the Indian Defence Industry be developed at all costs.

The fact that India is a long way off in achieving its goal of being self reliant in defence equipment , does have a direct bearing on the operational preparedness, as also, on the operational efficacy of the Indian Armed Forces. The aspect of import dependency for defence equipment in the case of India becomes all the more worrisome and a matter of very serious concern because of the operational commitment of the Indian Armed Forces in manning the disputed borders with two of her adversaries, as also, employment in counter insurgency operations in the State of Jammu & Kashmir and the North East. Furthermore, it needs to be appreciated that having the third largest Armed Forces in the world with the Indian Army being the world’s second largest Army, it is absolutely necessary in the national interest to be self reliant in defence equipment and for that it is an imperative that the Indian Defence Industry be developed at all costs .

Current State of Indian Defence Industry

The Indian Defence Industry as late as 2000 basically consisted of the public sector entities of the Ministry of Defence (MoD), namely, 39 Ordnance Factories, nine Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). The defence industry got opened to the private sector only in 2001 and presently the major private players are the TATA Group, Mahindra Defence, L&T, Bharat Forge of Kalyani Group, Kirloskars and Ashok Leyland. The performance of the Ordnance Factories and the DPSUs in-spite of having a large manufacturing base and liberal govt funding has been extremely poor because of govt’s protective policies, having a captive clientele in the Armed Forces, not keeping pace with modernisation and overall inefficiency which is inherent in public sector enterprises.

Examining the Maoists' attacks in Jeeram Ghati

IDSA COMMENT

V K Ahluwalia

March 27, 2014

Once again, Naxalites of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) launched an audacious ambush, in broad day light, on a joint CRPF-police road opening party in south Chhattisgarh on March 11, 2014, that killed 15 security personnel. From initial reports, it is evident that the Maoists had mustered a sizeable combat strength from different areas into Jeeram Ghati, to deliver the deadly blow. According to the survivors, the strength of the Maoists ranged from 150 to 300. The security personnel were moving to provide security to the road construction work on National Highway (NH 30) that connects Jagdalpur to Sukma. The ambush took place barely 10-12 km south of the spot where the Maoists had attacked a Congress party's convoy on May 25, 2013 and killed 27 people.

The latest ambush is in line with the Maoist trend of launching attacks closer to the elections. The aim was to create fear among the local population, to deter people from participating in the forthcoming elections and to gain greater visibility at the national and international levels. 'Boycott elections' has been one of their stated war-cry. Pre-election period offers the best opportunity to achieve their multiple aims. This attack is, to some extent, similar to the deadliest and bloodiest ever attack on the column of CRPF at Chintalnar in south Chhattisgarh on April 6, 2010, in which 76 personnel were killed in one single incident.

The attack on the security forces near Jeeram Ghati area is part of the Maoist's annual Tactical Counter Offensive Campaign (TCOC), the timing of which coincides with the forth coming elections. The aim of "TCOC" is to exhibit and consolidate their (Maoists) strength, by carrying out violent operations during the summer months between March and June. Going by the past experience, the rebels have launched a number of deadly attacks during the TCOC period. In addition, 2014 is a significant year on two counts: one, it is the tenth year of formation of CPI (Maoist) that requires a show of its strength and lethal prowess, and two, that general elections, scheduled in April-May, need to be disrupted. It, therefore, does pose a serious challenge to the security forces in the immediate future.

Strategic Significance of Darbha-Jeeram Ghati

The successive attacks in general area Darbha-Jeeram Ghati do suggest that the Maoists are extremely sensitive to retaining their control on the National Highway running from Jagdalpur to Sukma , which runs almost parallel to Chhattisgarh's boundary with Odisha in the east. It may be recalled that in an earlier incident, on June 21, 2009, the Maoists had killed 12 personnel of the SF by blasting an IED in close proximity of Tongpal. What are the reasons for numerous attacks in this specific area? South Bastar is extremely rich in forests, minerals (iron ore, tin ore, corundum, granite, marble, silica etc) and medicinal plants. While the area between Darbha Ghati and Jeeram Ghati is thickly forested, the area further south towards Tongpal starts opening up into mild undulating ground with agricultural fields astride the road. The close proximity of Odisha border and the difficult forested terrain astride the highway facilitates east-west movement of rebels with impunity. It refers to movement between south Bastar and south Odisha, both of which are strong bastions of the Maoists. The areas of Koraput and Malkangiri in south Odisha provide safe sanctuaries to the rebels during such operations. Having lost their hold on the traditional support areas in Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warangal and Khammam in north Telengana, the Maoists desperately want to retain control over south Bastar and south Odisha region, in that order of priority. In addition, the highway (NH 30) - the life line of the region - is used extensively for mining and transportation of minerals and goods. The rebels apprehend that any improvement in the communication network in this region - both surface and cellular connectivity - would result in faster response by the SF. Therefore, induction of troops or construction activity in this area is resented by the Maoists due to fear of losing their control over south Bastar, in particular.

State Wise Trends- Left Wing Extremism

26/03/2014

Shailja Tandon

E-Mail- shailjatandon9@gmail.com

A state wise analysis of Naxal violence, post the 2004 merger of People’s War (PW) and Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) to form the CPI (Maoist) is instructive.Increase in violence levels from 2004 till 2010 saw a decline thereafter, which some have construed to be an indication of the state and its security forces winning the war on terror. A dispassionate analysis however indicates that this may not be wholly true. While both the Centre and state governments have shown renewed commitment to address the issue in a holistic manner, to encompass security, development and rights of the local population, much still remains to be done. Decline in violence levels is also a result of an apparent overreach by the Maoists in a bid to expand their base of operations that resulted in the loss of many cadres, especially those in senior leadership levels which the Maoists are finding difficult to replace. However, the armed component of the CPI (Maoist), its People Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA), has still not been dented and remains a potent threat.

The charts below give the casualty figures for the states affected by Naxal violence.

Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal

Andhra Pradesh has seen a distinct decline in violence levels since 2007, but violence remains in isolated pockets. The state is by no means free of the Naxal threat and will have to continue with its efforts in combatting the PLGA. West Bengal saw a surge in violence levels in the period 2008 – 2011. This could be attributed to the political situation prevalent in the state. However, violence levels have declined since then and the last two years have witnessed no casualties related to Naxal violence. If this trend continues, it will be indicative of successful political penetration leading to problem resolution.

Afghanistan: Hitting The Taliban Where It Hurts Most

March 27, 2014:

The Taliban have promised to disrupt the April 5 th presidential elections. For over a decade the Taliban have been promising to disrupt elections but have never succeeded and this makes it easier to understand why Afghans tend to ignore the election related Taliban terror attacks. These murderous bombings and shootings are meant for the foreign media because the Taliban has little popular support and no credibility within Afghanistan.

This sort of thing has been going on for thousands of years, including the use of religion by some groups to justify atrocious (even by Afghan standards) behavior. This sort of thing predates the arrival of Islam in the 7th century. It took the Arab conquerors and their successors more than two centuries of violence to convert most Afghans and some held out until the 19th century. Actually some Afghans still practice forms of Islam that are considered by mainline Sunnis as a bit too similar to the ancient religions Islam replaced (often forms of Hinduism, Iranian Zoroastrianism or Buddhism). Radical Islam, as practiced by the Taliban, is seen as a malignant foreign influence by many Afghans and closely associated with the hated drug trade. The latter has brought cheap narcotics to Afghanistan and created over two million addicts. This is considered worse than the Taliban because there are more victims and is harder to fight. While the Taliban is shut out of most of the country, the drugs are everywhere, especially in the south, where the Taliban concentrate. Another reason to not take the Taliban seriously is the Taliban obsession with how they are covered by the international media. Many suicidal Taliban attacks are carried out mainly to kill foreigners as that will always get some foreign media attention. This makes the Taliban appear more powerful, at least to foreigners, than they actually are. For Afghans this is just another reason to despise the Taliban. They, like the bandits, blood feuds, the drugs and the weather are just another problem you cope with. Afghans find it amusing when they discover that some foreigners really believe the Taliban could ever regain power. This is seen as another example of foreigner ignorance of how things work in Afghanistan. The reality there is that the Taliban never completed their conquest of Afghanistan in the 1990s and fell apart so quickly (in two months of U.S. supported fighting) because the Taliban were widely hated and still being resisted with force. Given that the foreigners have brought unprecedented peace and prosperity in the last decade, who in their right mind would want the Taliban back?

Most Afghans blame the Pakistanis for any successes the Taliban have. There is some truth to this as it is no secret that ISI (the Pakistani CIA) created the Taliban in the early 1990s and Pakistan has been supporting Islamic terrorism since the late 1970s. In the last few years more evidence of this Pakistani perfidy has come to light. Officially Pakistan still denies that they sheltered Osama bin Laden, but it’s no secret that Pakistan still allows part of their tribal territories (North Waziristan and Quetta) to be sanctuaries for all manner of Islamic terrorists who operate inside Afghanistan. One of the biggest complaints Afghans have against the Americans is that the Americans will not be more forceful in persuading Pakistan to shut down these sanctuaries.

Sri Lanka: Waffling India Faces Tough Decision

Whichever way it votes on an upcoming UNHRC resolution on Sri Lanka, India will offend key constituents. 

By Srini Sitaraman

March 25, 2014

A recent report by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights carried the strongest criticism yet of Sri Lanka’s Human Rights record. The report, Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka points out that the Sri Lankan government has “failed to ensure independent and credible investigations into past violations of international human rights and humanitarian law.” The report has explicitly called for the establishment of an “independent, international inquiry mechanism, which would contribute to establishing the truth where domestic inquiry mechanisms have failed.” The complaints about the independence of judges and lawyers, decline in freedom of expression, and widespread discrimination against women refer to the growing authoritarianism of the government of Mahinda Rajapaksa. Critically, the UN High Commissioner charges that little or no progress has been made on matters related to justice and accountability, “a core concern of the Human Rights Council.”

The UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is set to vote before the end of March on another resolution aimed at Sri Lanka in Geneva. The vote is creating enormous angst and political bickering in India. New Delhi has been trying to win Sri Lanka back, prying it away from the warm embrace of India’s geostrategic rival China. Any vote in the UHRC against Sri Lanka will only further alienate Colombo and move it ever closer to Beijing. At the same time, however, India has come under enormous pressure from the United States and from Tamil political parties in its own state of Tamil Nadu (India) to vote in favor of the resolution. Assorted NGOs, including Amnesty International, are lobbying New Delhi to side with the UNHRC and the U.S. Twice before, in 2012 and 2013, India succumbed to this pressure and voted against Sri Lanka, but only after significantly watering down the content of the resolutions, which had very little practical import. Both resolutions were staunchly opposed by the Sri Lankan government, which has refused to implement much of what they sought, especially in areas related to justice, reconciliation, and accountability.

Controversy over India’s rightful role in the Sri Lankan ethnic conflict has continued to roil domestic Indian politics. In March 2013 prior to India’s vote against Sri Lanka in the UNHRC, India’s ruling Congress Party’s alliance partner – the DMK from Tamil Nadu – broke off the alliance. Later, in November, Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh withdrew from the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) Summit held in Colombo, following intense political pressure from the Tamil political parties.

The Politics of China’s Urbanization

Large-scale urbanization is an economic necessity for China, but a political risk for the Chinese Communist Party.

By Zachary Keck

March 27, 2014

Earlier this month, China released what Xinhua hailed as a “landmark” urbanization plan for the years between 2014 and 2020.

The plan comes as no surprise as China’s top leadership—particularly Premier Li Keqiang—has spent its entire tenure touting greater urbanization as the key to solving China’s economic woes. In line with previous comments, the urbanization plan focuses on the supposed economic benefits of greater urbanization. “Domestic demand is the fundamental impetus for China’s development, and the greatest potential for expanding domestic demand lies in urbanization,” the new document reads, according to Xinhua. 

Whatever the economic benefits it might bring to China, urbanization carries a number of potent political risks for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which might explain why some of its central features, such as hukou reforms, haven’t been tried before.

The first political risk of urbanization is that it will strain central-local relations. As I’ve argued before, the importance of central and local government relations in China is vastly understated by foreign analysts. It will also be central to many of the challenges inherent in China’s economic rebalance.

Nowhere is this truer than with urbanization. If the CCP is to successfully implement its urbanization plan, it will have to fundamentally reorient central-local relations. In particular, it will have to allocate larger budgets to China’s local governments—or empower them to raise greater revenues on their own—to allow them to fund the expansion of social services to current and future rural migrant workers.

But larger budgets will mean greater power for local governments. And greater power carries the risk of creating local strongmen that challenge the “emperor[s]” that reside in Beijing. How the top leadership in the CCP can give local governments larger budgets without giving them enough power to challenge Beijing is a dilemma that Xi Jinping and the other members of the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) are certainly currently trying to figure out.

This challenge is further compounded by the envisioned design of urbanization. Instead of further enlarging already immense cities like Beijing, Chinese leaders have said they want to concentrate on building up second and third-tier cities, which are predominately located along the Yangtze River. This makes sound economic sense as it allows China to create regional economic belts that exploit comparative advantages and have local economies that are complementary. In some ways, it is not unlike the American system that U.S. politicians like Henry Clay promoted in the 19th Century.

Still, focusing on second and third-tier cities increases the political risks for the top leadership in Beijing. To begin with, expanding the size of more cities will just mean that there are more potential local strongmen that the PBSC will have to control. But it is more difficult to control these local strongmen as they multiply. For instance, the CCP won’t be able to have the heads of all these cities serve on the Politburo. Nor will all of them be rising stars slated for future positions on the PBSC if they continue to toe the Party line.

The Return of Great Power Politics: Re-Examining the Nixon Doctrine

THE RETURN OF GREAT POWER POLITICS: RE-EXAMINING THE NIXON DOCTRINE

Chad Pillai

March 27, 2014

The recent crisis between Russia and the West over Crimea, and the ongoing tensions between China and Japan, are ushering a return of Great Power Politics where U.S. power and influence is challenged. The U.S. is finding that it is no longer in the dominant position, but is still expected to lead. As a result, it is time to re-examine the Nixon Doctrine as a foundation of preserving U.S. global leadership in an increasingly multi-polar world. 

The Nixon Doctrine

In Henry Kissinger’s seminal work on foreign policy, Diplomacy, he summarizes the position President Richard Nixon inherited of “having to guide America through a transition from dominance to leadership.” When Nixon came to office, the United States was engaged in the Vietnam War, its longest war to date, and was undergoing domestic upheaval as a result of both the anti-war and the civil rights movements. He faced fiscally challenges as a result of the cost of the Vietnam War, President Johnson’s Great Society Initiatives, and the space program. Additionally, as the leader of the free world, the United States was still engaged in a global ideological power struggle with the Soviet Union. His understanding of the limits of American power led to the Nixon Doctrine. Underpinning this doctrine was the realization that the United States simply could not afford to solve every global problem and had to determine which issues it could solve within the limits of its diplomatic, military, and economic means. Key to Nixon’s doctrine was his effort to extricate the United States from Vietnam and to exploit the growing tensions between the Soviets and China by opening diplomatic relations with Mao’s China.

According to Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s perception of “peace and harmony were not the natural order of things, but temporary oases in a perilous world where stability could only be preserved by vigilant effort.” Nixon was a believer in the Balance of Power concept as a means for stability, and believed that equilibrium required a strong U.S. In the January 3, 1972Time magazine edition, President Nixon articulated his doctrine, focusing on the need for a balance of power where the U.S. had to lead, rather than merely dominate a collection of powerful states:

Beijing's Caribbean Logic

Published on The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org)

Source URL (retrieved on Mar 27, 2014): http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/beijings-caribbean-logic-10120

March 25, 2014

Robert D. Kaplan

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Robert Kaplan’s latest book Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific [3] (copyright 2014, Random House). Mr. Kaplan will be appearing at the Center for a New American Security [4] to discuss his work on March 25, 2014.

American policymakers bristle at China’s gunboat aggression against Japan in the East China Sea and against countries like Vietnam and the Philippines in the South China Sea. But to understand what China really wants, they need to understand their own history better: particularly America’s diplomatic and military history in the Caribbean. The Caribbean may now suggest a geopolitically obscure place useful only for winter vacations, but for generations of Washington foreign policy professionals in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the region of choice to advance careers – the equivalent of the Middle East today.

The Greater Caribbean (including the Gulf of Mexico) is roughly the size of the South China Sea - 1,500 miles in one direction and 1,000 miles in the other. Whereas the South China Sea can be dubbed the Asian Mediterranean because of its centrality to the Indo-Pacific world, the Greater Caribbean can be dubbed the American Mediterranean because of its centrality to the whole Western Hemisphere. For as the mid-20th century Dutch-American strategist, Nicholas J. Spykman, observed, the basic geographical truth of the Western Hemisphere is that the division within it is not between North America and South America, but between the area north of the Amazon jungle and the area south of it. Colombia and Venezuela, as well as the Guianas, although they are on the northern coast of South America, are functionally part of North America and the American Mediterranean. So once the United States came to dominate the American Mediterranean, that is, the Greater Caribbean, and separated as it is from the southern cone of South America by yawning distance and a wide belt of tropical forest, the United States had few challengers in its own hemisphere. The domination of the Greater Caribbean, by providing domination of the Western Hemisphere, left America with resources to spare for influencing the balance of power in the Eastern Hemisphere. First the Greater Caribbean, next the world, in other words: such was the history of the United States in the 20th century with its two world wars.

John H. Makin: America's interests lie with Abe's new Japan

March 24, 2014

JOHN H. MAKIN

The economic and geopolitical interests of the U.S. are far better aligned with Japan's goals than with China's. Now Japan is at an important turning point, and Washington needs to take notice.

World War II has been over for nearly 70 years, at least two full generations. A new, forward-looking generation of Japanese leadership has emerged, spearheaded by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Abenomics in 2013 brought a fresh set of policies -- the so-called "three arrows" aimed at ending deflation, rationalizing Japan's fiscal stance and deregulating industries and financial institutions.

Deflation has been halted. The attendant 20% weakening of an overvalued yen has been accompanied by world-beating stock performance. Japan's market soared 57% in 2013, surpassing not only all other industrial countries' markets but also China's Shanghai index, which fell 5.4% despite the accession of new leadership promising both reform and steady growth. 

Meanwhile, Northeast Asia -- a "dangerous neighborhood," to recall Herman Kahn's description -- has recently seen a sharp escalation of tension between Japan and China. The friction centers on the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, a group of islets strategically located close to large, underwater oil and natural gas reserves. China does not possess the naval strength to prevail in an open conflict over the islands, yet it is taking a provocative stance in the Pacific against Japan and the U.S. In November, China radically expanded its air defense identification zone to include the Senkakus. On Dec. 5, a Chinese naval vessel reportedly passed within 90 meters of a U.S. Navy cruiser in international waters, forcing it to alter course in order to avoid a collision.

The U.S. wavered on openly opposing China's cheeky ADIZ gambit while Japan outright refused to recognize the new zone. The American response to the near-collision was also somewhat passive, confined largely to a U.S. defense secretary's report on the incident and the potential dangers it entailed.

It has been suggested that China's rising "military adventurism" is due to a perception that the 2008 global financial crisis signaled a collapse of American power. China late that year unleashed massive fiscal stimulus amounting to 14% of gross domestic product, financed by easy money. The aim was to make China a bastion of growth in a world where financial crises had presumably weakened the leading capitalist economy.

That said, China continued to invest trillions of yuan in U.S. Treasury securities. The idea was to store excess savings in a safe place while simultaneously selling yuan for dollars, boosting net exports with an undervalued currency.

The Politics of China’s Urbanization

Large-scale urbanization is an economic necessity for China, but a political risk for the Chinese Communist Party. 

By Zachary Keck

March 27, 2014

Earlier this month, China released what Xinhua hailed as a “landmark” urbanization plan for the years between 2014 and 2020.

The plan comes as no surprise as China’s top leadership—particularly Premier Li Keqiang—has spent its entire tenure touting greater urbanization as the key to solving China’s economic woes. In line with previous comments, the urbanization plan focuses on the supposed economic benefits of greater urbanization. “Domestic demand is the fundamental impetus for China’s development, and the greatest potential for expanding domestic demand lies in urbanization,” the new document reads, according to Xinhua. 

Whatever the economic benefits it might bring to China, urbanization carries a number of potent political risks for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which might explain why some of its central features, such as hukou reforms, haven’t been tried before.

The first political risk of urbanization is that it will strain central-local relations. As I’ve argued before, the importance of central and local government relations in China is vastly understated by foreign analysts. It will also be central to many of the challenges inherent in China’s economic rebalance.

Nowhere is this truer than with urbanization. If the CCP is to successfully implement its urbanization plan, it will have to fundamentally reorient central-local relations. In particular, it will have to allocate larger budgets to China’s local governments—or empower them to raise greater revenues on their own—to allow them to fund the expansion of social services to current and future rural migrant workers.

But larger budgets will mean greater power for local governments. And greater power carries the risk of creating local strongmen that challenge the “emperor[s]” that reside in Beijing. How the top leadership in the CCP can give local governments larger budgets without giving them enough power to challenge Beijing is a dilemma that Xi Jinping and the other members of the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC) are certainly currently trying to figure out.

This challenge is further compounded by the envisioned design of urbanization. Instead of further enlarging already immense cities like Beijing, Chinese leaders have said they want to concentrate on building up second and third-tier cities, which are predominately located along the Yangtze River. This makes sound economic sense as it allows China to create regional economic belts that exploit comparative advantages and have local economies that are complementary. In some ways, it is not unlike the American system that U.S. politicians like Henry Clay promoted in the 19th Century.

Still, focusing on second and third-tier cities increases the political risks for the top leadership in Beijing. To begin with, expanding the size of more cities will just mean that there are more potential local strongmen that the PBSC will have to control. But it is more difficult to control these local strongmen as they multiply. For instance, the CCP won’t be able to have the heads of all these cities serve on the Politburo. Nor will all of them be rising stars slated for future positions on the PBSC if they continue to toe the Party line.

Equally important is the geography of these second and third-tier cities. Currently, many of the largest localities in China are located in easily accessible areas along China’s coastal region. This makes them fairly easy to control from Beijing. By contrast, the cities that the CCP intends to build up will be farther inland and therefore more impervious to being controlled by the PBSC in Beijing. It’s no accident that Bo Xilai—the most obvious local strongman in recent memory—plotted his power grab from Chongqing.

CHINA WAGING ‘THREE WARS’ AGAINST U.S. IN ASIA, PENTAGON SAYS

Warfare Three Ways

China waging ‘Three Warfares’ against United States in Asia, Pentagon says

Delegates from Chinese People’s Liberation Army / AP

BY: Bill Gertz

March 26, 2014 

China is waging political warfare against the United States as part of a strategy to drive the U.S. military out of Asia and control seas near its coasts, according to a Pentagon-sponsored study.

A defense contractor report produced for the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon’s think tank on future warfare, describes in detail China’s “Three Warfares” as psychological, media, and legal operations. They represent an asymmetric “military technology” that is a surrogate for conflict involving nuclear and conventional weapons.

The unclassified 566-page report warns that the U.S. government and the military lack effective tools for countering the non-kinetic warfare methods, and notes that U.S. military academies do not teach future military leaders about the Chinese use of unconventional warfare. It urges greater efforts to understand the threat and adopt steps to counter it.

The report highlights China’s use of the Three Warfares in various disputes, including dangerous encounters between U.S. and Chinese warships; the crisis over the 2001 mid-air collision between a U.S. EP-3E surveillance plane and a Chinese jet; and China’s growing aggressiveness in various maritime disputes in the South China and East China Seas.

“The Three Warfares is a dynamic three dimensional war-fighting process that constitutes war by other means,” said Cambridge University professor Stefan Halper, who directed the study. “It is China’s weapon of choice in the South China Sea.”

Seven other China specialists, including former Reagan Pentagon policymaker Michael Pillsbury, contributed to the study. A copy of the assessment was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. Disclosure of the report is unusual as most studies produced for the Office of Net Assessment are withheld from public release.

The May 2013 report was written before the dangerous near collision in the South China Sea last December between the guided missile cruiser USS Cowpens and a Chinese naval vessel. Senior defense officials said the incident could have led to a larger military “miscalculation” between the two nations.

Chinese state media falsely blamed the United States for the incident and falsely asserted that it had declared a no-sail zone prior to the Dec. 5 encounter. The zone was imposed after that date.

According to the final Pentagon report, China’s use of Three Warfares is based on the notion that the modern information age has rendered nuclear weapons unusable and conventional conflict too problematic for achieving political goals. China’s goals are to acquire resources, influence, and territory and to project national will.

“China’s Three Warfares [are] designed to counter U.S. power projection,” the report says. “The United States is one of four key audiences targeted by the campaign, as part of China’s broader military strategy of ‘anti-access/area denial’ in the South China Sea.”

The Pentagon regards China’s high-technology arms, such as anti-satellite missiles and cyber warfare capabilities, as arms designed to prevent the U.S. military from entering the region or operating freely there.

A Lesson From Ukraine: Balance Threats Internally

Source Link

Russia’s invasion of Crimea and Ukraine’s lack of preparedness holds some important lessons for other states.

By Ankit Panda

March 27, 2014

One of the shocking lessons of the Ukraine crisis is just how weak the Ukrainian military was internally and how ill-allocated its resources were, considering Russia’s lasting interests in Crimea. Considering its neighborhood, Ukraine had very good reasons to remain perpetually mistrustful of its larger neighbor to the east, but it never quite got there. Viktor Yanukovych’s close ties to the Kremlin proved to keep Russia at bay temporarily; we now see that Ukraine – outside of Crimea – was ill-equipped to resist a Russian invasion.

Part of Ukraine’s military preparedness problems emerge from the fact it was and is financially destitute. Following the Crimean invasion, the new Ukrainian government resorted to crowd-sourcing funding for its armed forces via text message. Ultimately, only 6,000 combat-ready troops were available to mount the defense of some 600,000 square kilometers of Ukrainian land.

However, the bigger problem was that Ukraine in effect had all of its eggs in one basket in Crimea – a heavily militarized peninsula. When Russia invaded and Crimea-stationed Ukrainian forces did not respond, pending the referendum, it effectively guaranteed that what remained of Ukraine’s military strength would be immediately incapacitated. IHS Jane’s reports that the Ukrainian navy, for example, was effectively decimated by the Russian invasion – losing 12 of its 17 major warships to Russia. Additionally, 12,000 of its 15,450 naval personnel and 2,000 air force personnel were based in Crimea as well. According to IHS Jane’s, the last holdout Ukrainian battalion requested passage across the “border” with all their equipment and vehicles but was instead arrested by the Russians on March 24.

The heavy militarization of Crimea amounted to a forward position for the Ukrainian armed forces. Holding such a position during a time of peace only makes sense if one resists during a potential invasion. Obviously Ukrainian forces did not do this against the Russian invasion for a variety of reasons, but the political reasoning underlining the Ukrainian allocation of troops was unsound. Ukraine’s leaders – regardless of how close or far their personal relationships were with Vladimir Putin – should have remained permanently cognizant of Crimea’s vulnerability and Russia’s immense interest in preserving its foothold on the Black Sea.

Putin and the Laws of Gravity

MARCH 25, 2014 

Thomas L. Friedman

Source Link

One thing I learned covering the Middle East for many years is that there is “the morning after” and there is “the morning after the morning after.” Never confuse the two.

The morning after a big event is when fools rush in and declare that someone’s victory or defeat in a single battle has “changed everything forever.” The morning after the morning after, the laws of gravity start to apply themselves; things often don’t look as good or as bad as you thought. And that brings me to Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea.

The morning after, he was the hero of Russia. Some moronic commentators here even expressed the wish that we had such a “decisive” leader. Well, let’s see what Putin looks like the morning after the morning after, say, in six months. I make no predictions, but I will point out this. Putin is challenging three of the most powerful forces on the planet all at once: human nature, Mother Nature and Moore’s Law. Good luck with that.

Putin’s seizure of Crimea certainly underscores the enduring power of geography in geopolitics. Russia is a continental country, stretching across a huge landmass, with few natural barriers to protect it. Every Kremlin leader — from the czars to the commissars to the crooks — has been obsessed about protecting Russia’s periphery from would-be invaders. Russia has legitimate security interests, but this episode is not about them.

This recent Ukraine drama did not start with geography — with an outside power trying to get into Russia, as much as Putin wants to pretend that it did. This story started with people inside Russia’s orbit trying to get out. A large number of Ukrainians wanted to hitch their economic future to the European Union not to Putin’s Potemkin Eurasian Union. This story, at its core, was ignited and propelled by human nature — the enduring quest by people to realize a better future for themselves and their kids — not by geopolitics, or even that much nationalism. This is not an “invasion” story. This is an “Exodus” story.

And no wonder. A recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek noted that, in 2012, G.D.P. per person in Ukraine was $6,394 — some 25 percent below its level of nearly a quarter-century earlier. But if you compare Ukraine with four of its former Communist neighbors to the west who joined the European Union — Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania — “the average G.D.P. per person in those nations is around $17,000.” Can you blame Ukrainians for wanting to join a different club?

But Putin is also counting on the world doing nothing about Mother Nature, and Mother Nature taking that in stride. Some 70 percent of Russia’s exports are oil and gas, and they make up half of all state revenue. (When was the last time you bought something that was labeled “Made in Russia”?) Putin has basically bet his country’s economic present and future on hydrocarbons at a time when the chief economist of the International Energy Agency has declared that “about two-thirds of all proven reserves of oil, gas and coal will have to be left undeveloped if the world is to achieve the goal of limiting global warming at two degrees Celsius” since the Industrial Revolution. Crossing that two-degrees line, say climate scientists, will dramatically increase the likelihood of melting the Arctic, dangerous sea level rises, more disruptive superstorms and unmanageable climate change.

Whatever happened to MH370?

Vikram Sood

20 March 2014

It will be quite a while before all fuzziness and wild speculations about what actually happened to the ill-fated MH370 subsides. Informed conjectures vary from pilot error, suicide, mid-air explosion, technical fault, or assault in the aircraft leading to hijacking, none of which can be established so early into the investigations. Speculation abounds and even the normally restrained Strobe Talbot was a bit over the top when he compared this to the WTC attack on September 11, 2001 saying that the aircraft might have been heading towards the Indian coast. It is true though that India has faced land-based and sea-borne terrorist attacks. An airborne attack would be high on the list of possibilities in the assessment of Indian intelligence. 

It could be several months or years before any truth is established. When the EgyptAir Flight 990 from New York to Cairo went down in the Atlantic in October 1999 the conclusion of the American investigators in 2002 was that the pilot had committed suicide while the Egyptians insisted it was a mechanical failure. After the Air France Flight 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris crashed in the Atlantic in 2009, the black boxes were found two years later at a depth of 4,000 metres. The Malaysians searching for the jet want to to cover an area spread from Kazakhstan to southern Indian Ocean which makes it a daunting task in this age of global connectivity, surveillance and communications. 

It is implausible that China would allow an unidentified aircraft to fly through Tibet to an unknown destination. The Russians had brought down a South Korean flight KAL 007 over Siberia in 1983, as it had strayed from its authorised path. It is also implausible that the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 would have landed without night-landing facilities having flown westward from its last known location for four hours in the middle of the night as it would still be dark in Pakistan, Afghanistan and beyond. Moreover, it is just not possible that an aircraft can possibly fly overland for seven hours and not get detected. 

There are many other questions too — about those persons with stolen passports, the inaction by the Malaysian Air Force to as the unscheduled flight went over three radars and the F-18s and F-5s did not take off to intercept. If there was an assault inside the aircraft then how was it carried out? There are also new theories that the pilot brought down the aircraft to fly at 1,500 metres to beat the radar but the accuracy and source of this claim is not known. 

Many initially considered terrorism as the motive for this disappearance. However, there has been no credit taken up to now for this incident, if indeed it was a terrorist plot. No one or group claimed credit for this. This may not have been a terrorist act and more likely an accident of some kind. 

There have been some discussions on the net, like a page out of a Tom Clancy novel, that MH370 after it turned around 40 minutes following take-off, might have been following the flight path of the Barcelona-bound SQ68, also a Boeing 777, at a distance of 30 nautical miles. This would have camouflaged MH370 on the radar screens so that it appeared as one blip en route from the Malacca Straits over the southern tip of India on its way across the Arabian Sea and the Arabian Peninsula. 

WORLD NEWS

03.26.14

The West Can Ally Against Russia But It Needs Global Cooperation

The U.S. has convinced its Western allies to Boot Russia out of the G8, but it needs the cooperation of emerging nations to avoid a new cold-war stalemate.

The shadow of history hung heavily yesterday as the geopolitical ramifications of the Ukraine crisis widened.

War between the great powers was the dominant fear of the Cold War, but that fear recessed with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of bloc versus bloc rivalry. But did The Hague just witness the emergence of a new bloc to bloc rivalry, triggered by events in the Ukraine?

Taking center stage in The Hague was the recreation of the G7 as a unified western bloc. Since 1998, the G7 had been widened to include Russia—part of a broader effort to embed Russia in a stable international order. For a time, this seemed a wise approach: give Russia a seat at the table in exchange for constructive behavior in the international system—and to a degree, it worked. Yesterday, as part of the West’s reaction to the Crimea, Russia was expelled. “It’s no great tragedy” shrugged Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Perhaps, but Russia had worked hard to be seen as a credible actor within the G8. Other Russian officials were more defensive, arguing that the G8 had no mechanism to expel a member, and that they would continue preparations for the G8 summit. It would be a lonely summit if so, for the G7 heads of state have agreed to meet on their own, without Russia, in June.

If the West was reconsolidating in the form of the G7, Russia tried a different tack to shore up its international defenses. From the earliest days of the Crimea crisis, Russia has talked up its relationship with China and with India, and looked to them to support its position on the Crimea. The Hague provided another opportunity. The presence of world leaders from all regions meant that there was an opportunity for a summit meeting of the BRICS, that is, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—a grouping of rising powers that has sometimes sought to position itself as a rival, or an alternative, to the West.

Backgrounder: The Russian-Ukrainian Military Balance

March 25, 2014

Ukraine: The military balance of power

Jonathan Marcus

BBC News

On paper, at least, the Ukrainian military looks credible, though it is numerically inferior to the Russian armed forces - Moscow having about four times as many active troops and twice as many tanks as Kiev.

On the face of things, if Russia were to move into eastern Ukraine, then the Ukrainian forces should be able to put up a better performance than tiny Georgia’s armed forces did when the Russians moved onto the offensive in 2008.

But in reality, Ukraine’s military is dispersed; it lacks readiness, and much of its equipment is in storage.

Given the divisions inside the country, there must also be question marks about the loyalty of elements of the Ukrainian military to the new interim political authorities in Kiev.

Elite forces

Russia, in contrast, has been exercising some 150,000 troops in military districts bordering eastern Ukraine.

It can also draw upon specialised, capable units like the 7th Guards Airborne Division based at Novorossisk; a variety of special forces formations; and potentially it could deploy elite Interior Ministry forces whose training and equipment might be ideally suited to this kind of mission.

The Ukrainian military inherited a significant quantity of former Soviet equipment at independence.

It is thus in many ways a smaller mirror image of the Russian forces, similarly equipped but having had very little money to modernise over the course of subsequent decades.

It has had some limited, small-scale experience in Nato operations. Its force structure has been modernised to a certain extent. But it is far from cutting edge, with much of its equipment moth-balled or poorly maintained.

Ukraine is also on its own. It is certainly a partner country of Nato but it has none of the security guarantees that membership of the Atlantic Alliance would bring. There is simply no question of Nato becoming militarily involved in this crisis.

Russia was from the outset in the driving seat in the Crimea. Its deployments there dwarf Ukraine’s limited forces in the region.

Russian reinforcements

While the Black Sea Fleet itself is now rather out-dated and in any case one of Russia’s smaller naval forces, its military bases there gave it more than sufficient manpower to take over key installations and blockade Ukrainian units inside their bases.

Over the past few days, Russian reinforcements have been arriving but Moscow retains the option of sending in many more units if any actual fighting breaks out.

So far, Russia’s military operation has been largely bloodless. Its forces have met with only some passive resistance from Ukrainian units, who can do very little.

Perhaps the initial military phase of this crisis is largely at an end. However, if Russian troops were to move into eastern Ukraine it could take this drama to a whole new level.

It is not so much that there would be full-scale mechanised warfare - though clearly some Ukrainian units might fight.

The greater danger is that such a move could prompt a bitter civil struggle with pro- and anti-Russian groups mobilising against each other