Indian Strategic Studies: 06/09/16

9 June 2016

Consequences Of Dancing With Uncle Sam

http://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/consequences-of-dancing-with-uncle-sam/296956

The Modi government’s ambition to transform Indo-US relations could be constrained by the geopolitical realities of a changing world order
ZORAWAR DAULET SINGH
An Indian Prime Minister paying homage to America’s fallen soldiers at the Arlington National Cemetery is probably the most iconic image of Modi’s latest visit to the US. Since the 1920s, Indian leaders have espoused their antipathy to military interventions and imperial adventures. “Slaves ourselves”, Nehru wrote in 1927, “it has been our degrading function to help in the enslavement of others for the benefit of a third party.” This wasn’t just an emotional belief. Indian sepoys had formed the sinews of British power projection across Asia and Africa for decades until London’s sudden departure from the subcontinent in 1947.
In his Discovery of India, Nehru had noted how “Indian troops had been used as mercenaries” for “imperialist purposes” in “Burma, China, Iran…Middle East, and…Africa”, making them “symbols of British imperialism” across Asia. The conviction that India would never again play such an enabling frontline role to fuel and sustain the ambitions of another great power became engrained in our post-colonial belief system. This core belief persisted even beyond the post-Cold War era. It was first challenged quite dramatically in 2003 when the Vajpayee government came within a whisker of replaying the traditional sepoy role, this time to America’s invasion of Iraq. Ultimately, Delhi chose to adhere to its core beliefs: India would not deploy its boots to fight another country’s war. The symbolism of Modi laying a wreath at Arlington appears to reflect a turning point where past shibboleths are no longer deemed appropriate for India’s position in the world.

Modi’s ambitious quest to transform the Indo-US relationship will reverberate across the international system. It will also change India and its role – both in her own region and in Asia. The rhetoric of the joint statement leaves little doubt about Indian preferences: “The leaders affirmed the increasing convergence in their strategic perspectives and emphasized the need to remain closely invested in each other’s security and prosperity.” Both leaders also “resolved that the United States and India should look to each other as priority partners in the Asia-Pacific and the Indian Ocean region.” While it is perhaps premature to predict how this shared vision will actually play out, the critical question is, what are the possible geopolitical consequences of this dramatic shift in India’s foreign policy?

** How to Understand ISIS

Malise Ruthven
June 23, 2016 Issue
The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East

by Marc Lynch
PublicAffairs, 284 pp., $26.99
ISIS: A History

by Fawaz A. Gerges
Princeton University Press, 368 pp., $27.95

Mohammed al-Shaikh/AFP/Getty ImagesBahraini police dispersing protesters at an unauthorized demonstration by the February 14 Youth Coalition, Manama, January 2013. The coalition is named for the day that Bahrain’s uprising began during the Arab Spring of 2011.

In his best-selling History of the Arab Peoples, published two years before his death in 1993, the Anglo-Lebanese scholar Albert Hourani remarked on the surprising levels of political stability prevailing in the Arab world at that time. Despite the rapid growth of its cities, and many disparities of wealth between the governing elites and newly urbanized masses who were calling for social justice, calm seemed to rule, at least on the surface. Since the military coups of the 1950s and 1960s in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere there had been remarkably little change in the general nature of most Arab regimes or the direction of their policies. Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states, Jordan, Tunisia, and Morocco had seen no dynastic changes for more than two generations; in Libya and Syria the regimes that came to power around 1970 were still in place. In 2000 in Syria, nearly a decade after Hourani’s book was published, leadership passed smoothly from father to son, while in Egypt and Libya the issue of dynastic succession was being widely discussed.

Like many other observers of Middle Eastern and North African history, Hourani interpreted this picture of calm with an eye to the writings of Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), the Arab historian and polymath whose theories of dynastic change and cyclical renewal and especially his concept of ‘asabiyya, variously translated as “clannism,” “group feeling,” or—in Hourani’s definition—“a corporate spirit oriented towards obtaining and keeping power,” provided a prism through which contemporary systems of governance could be viewed. According to the United Nations Development Programme’s 2004 Arab Human Development Report, for example:

*** Swami Vivekananda Through The Lens Of Economics

Bibek Debroy

June 5, 2016

http://swarajyamag.com/culture/swami-vivekananda-through-the-lens-of-economics

Swami Vivekananda’s economic thoughts are not that obvious or direct. However, there are more than a few reflections of his where he engages with societal problems as an economist would. Here, Dr Bibek Debroy brings forth those.

There are many facets to Swami Vivekananda – religious, philosophical, political, nationalistic. Swami Vivekananda’s economic thoughts are not that obvious or direct. But apparent appearances can be deceptive. In Frank Rhodehamel’s notes from a Bhagavad Gita lecture delivered in May 1900, we find, “Always remember this, that whenever a religious system gains ground with the people at large, it has a strong economic side to it. It is the economic side of a religion that finds lodgement with the people at large, and never its spiritual, or philosophic, side. If you should preach the grandest philosophy in the streets for a year, you would not have a handful of followers. But you could preach the most arrant nonsense, and if it had an economic element, you would have the whole people with you.” In similar vein, “Whenever any religion succeeds, it must have economic value. Thousands of similar sects will be struggling for power, but only those who meet the real economic problem will have it. Man is guided by the stomach. He walks and the stomach goes first and the head afterwards. Have you not seen that? It will take ages for the head to go first.”

In the 9 volumes of Swami Vivekananda’s collected works, Volume 9, since it is in the nature of a residual, is a priori the least likely to have economic elements. Consider the following quote from Volume 9. India is a poor country today, and it was a poor country in Swami Vivekananda’s time. Per capita income is accepted as a standard measure of a country’s average standard of living, notwithstanding criticisms about GDP (gross domestic product) as a sole measure of welfare. To make cross-country comparisons possible, per capita income is expressed in a common numeraire, usually the US dollar. India’s per capita income was thus 1,527 US dollars in 2011, with Luxembourg the richest country in the world at 122,272 US dollars. But this is in official exchange rates. And today, economists acknowledge that such comparisons can be misleading, because non-tradables like services are relatively cheaper in developing countries and relatively more expensive in developed countries. Consequently, corrections are made for purchasing power parity (PPP). PPP conversions relatively increase per capita income in developing countries and lower them in developed countries. In 2011,India’s PPP per capita income thus becomes 3,703 US dollars. While the official exchange rate is around 50 US dollars to a rupee, most economists I know think that the PPP exchange rate is around 12 rupees to a 1 US dollar*. The quote is from “Detroit Journal”, dated 23rd February 1894:

** A Case Against America

by Noam Chomsky

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9 June 2016