obama’s state of the union address
February 9, 2010
this appeared in the new indian express on jan 29th at http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/print.aspx?artid=MokmhqVUKlM=
under the headline “one can only hope obama 2.0 will be better”
Under pressure, Obama changes course
Rajeev Srinivasan
It is telling when Apple CEO Steve Jobs upstages the US President. That’s exactly what happened on January 27th, when the announcement of Apple’s new iPad got more attention than Barack Obama’s state-of-the-union address, which is a combination of self-report card and road-map for the future. Ironically, Obama talked mostly about jobs (the other kind), as unemployment persists.
Overhanging Obama’s speech was the electoral shock from Massachusetts: the late Edward Kennedy’s US Senate seat was captured by a center-right Republican. That too, in solidly Democratic Massachusetts, where left-liberal icon Kennedy had held the seat for 46 years.
Suddenly, Obama’s domestic agenda, and its kingpin, health care, are in trouble.
It is hard to believe, after the euphoria of 2008, that Obama’s place in history may well depend on a single vote in the US Senate. But it does: the 60-40 super-majority that allowed Obama to bulldoze legislation through is gone, and he needs detente with the opposition Republicans.
That in itself is a failure: Obama had promised change and a bipartisan consensus, and his party still dominates both houses of parliament; yet, he was unable to push Obamacare through, and is backpedaling furiously. The speech was mostly about the economy, banks, and jobs. “Jobs must be our No. 1 focus”, quoth he. Foreign policy – with two ongoing wars and a rampaging China – was ignored.
A Pew Research Center poll dated January 25th on the public’s priorities suggested that the economy, jobs and terrorism are top of mind; healthcare coming much lower. It appears that Obama erred in focusing too much on the worthy, but apparently not seen as urgent, matter of health insurance. Similarly, energy security and global warming have taken a back seat in people’s minds, which are occupied by economic fear. Not surprisingly, the poll accurately foreshadowed the tone of the state-of-the-union address.
To be fair, Obama has not done all that badly, but expectations were so inflated that there was bound to be a let-down, especially among those afflicted by a “Messiah Syndrome”. His all-important approval ratings fell below 50% in January, according to Gallup, a rapid decline in public support.
Obama did inherit large problems: two wars, and the global financial meltdown. It is true that another Great Depression was fended off (although the credit should go to the Federal Reserve), there has been movement towards containing health-care costs, and Iraq (but not Afghanistan) seems to be stabilizing. Obama has presented a kinder, gentler America, whose brand equity has improved.
Obama’s deliberate, Olympian style suggests – perhaps unfairly — paralysis by analysis. The dithering over Afghan policy for eight months, and the plan to “surge, bribe, declare victory and run like hell”, have hurt India’s interests. An Obama, desperate to pull out of Afghanistan, is leaning on India to cave in on Kashmir, in order to appease Pakistan.
It appears that Obama has allowed his agenda to be hijacked by several factors: an exaggerated internationalism, a certain hubris, a permanent campaign mode, and an unwillingness to rein in ideologues.
Internationalism is good in theory, but not at the expense of domestic agendas. Obama may have overdone the reaching-out bit. He spent more time abroad than any other US president. Unfortunately, Obama chose to alienate America’s friends and appease its foes. India was shown that it did not matter, but Obama was the picture of charm with China, militant West Asians, and Iran: predictably, he got little in return. He reached out to the Islamic faith in his Cairo and Ankara speeches, but this was construed as weakness, and Al Qaeda/Taliban are rampant. The Chinese disdain him: they humiliated him in Copenhagen.
Second, Obama seems to believe his own propaganda. Remember the Nobel peace prize, which, surely, Obama knows he doesn’t deserve, at least not yet? For him to accept it anyway came across as grasping and vain.
Obama also seems to have some trouble switching from campaigning – where he can make promises – to governing – where he has to deliver. Some of his actions seem predicated on PR: the time-table for the pullout of troops from Afghanistan is meant to give him a boost in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Finally, Obama is not reining in his more rabid supporters. Some of them believe that there was a permanent shift to the left in 2008. No; especially as a result of tough economic times, there has been a shift to the right.
If Obama is able to curb his vanity, his internationalism, and the more extreme of his supporters, and, the economy improves he may well rebound. As of now, he has been forced to reboot. We can only hope Obama 2.0 will fare better.
Rajeev Srinivasan is a management consultant.
800 words, 28th January 2010
obama agonistes: the wins and losses of year 1
February 8, 2010
a version of this appeared in DNA at http://www.dnaindia.com/opinion/comment_one-year-on-obama-magic-is-receding_1338909 on jan 25th
Obama Agonistes: totting up the wins and losses of year one
Rajeev Srinivasan considers what Obama has wrought
The irony was breathtaking: exactly a year to the day after US President Barack Obama’s triumphant, all-conquering inaugural in January 2009, the hotly-contested race for the late Edward Kennedy’s US Senate seat in Massachusetts went to the Republicans in a stunning upset. All at once, Obama’s domestic agenda seems in jeopardy, because its crown jewel, comprehensive health care, may well suffer an ignominious defeat.
As the poet Asan said, “sri bhu-vil asthira, a-samshayam” (glory is ephemeral on earth, surely). It is hard to believe, after the euphoria of 2008 when the Democratic Party swept into office in a landslide, that Obama’s place in history may well be dependent on a single vote in the US Senate. But it is: the 60-40 filibuster-proof majority is gone, and Obamacare may not survive in anything close to its current, left-leaning form, with government being insurer of last resort.
It is not the case that Obama has done all that badly, but the expectations about him were so inflated that there was bound to be a let-down and a backlash, especially among the ideologically extreme of his supporters who were caught in a “Messiah Syndrome” (alas, so familiar to those in India with its modern penchant for hero-worship). They expected Obama to deliver the humanly impossible.
Therefore, even if Obama were Superman, there would have been a sense of disappointment. On the other hand, his predecessor George W. Bush was so despised by large sections of the populace that one would have thought Obama would look good in comparison whatever he did, or didn’t. Apparently there are limits to that particular carte blanche: Americans are in no mood to forgive.
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal (“The Message of Massachusetts”, January 19th) says, “An anxious country was looking for leadership amid a recession, and Democrats had huge majorities… Twelve months later, Mr. Obama’s approval rating has fallen further and faster than any recent President’s, Congress is despised, the public mood has shifted sharply to the right on the role of government…” The ratings fell below 50% in January, according to Gallup.
In all fairness to Obama, there were also the gigantic problems he inherited: two wars, and the global financial meltdown. And it is true that under him, the Great Depression was fended off (although the credit – and the blame for earlier hamhandedness – should really go to the Federal Reserve), there has been positive movement towards containing rampant health-care costs, and the war in Iraq (though not the one in Afghanistan) seems to be stabilizing as well.
It is also true that Obama has presented a kindler, gentler America to the rest of the world, especially Europe, which resented the cowboy tactics of George W. Bush. There is an undercurrent of goodwill for him, although it is not entirely clear how much of this is from the novelty factor (he’s black!) and a sort of reverse racism based on self-flagellating guilt (as exhibited by Australians over the black cricketer Andrew Symmonds). In any case, the perception of America, and its brand image,have probably improved, in Europe and parts of Asia.
On the other hand, the American public – used to instant gratification – expected Obama to wave a magic wand and make their problems go away. That has not happened, as unemployment remains stubbornly high, and people have been forced to tighten their belts. Obama’s deliberate, Olympian style suggests – perhaps unfairly — paralysis by analysis (comparing this to India it was that cerebral practitioner of what seemed masterly inactivity, PV Narasimha Rao, who took the decisive and radical steps in 1991 to rejuvenate the economy).
It appears that Obama has allowed his agenda to be hijacked by several factors: an exaggerated internationalism, a certain hubris bordering on megalomania, a permanent campaign mode, and an unwillingness to rein in the ideologues in his own party.
Internationalism is good in theory, and so is attempting to build coalitions, but not at the expense of domestic agendas. This was the bitter lesson India learned from the experiences of the very internationalist Jawaharlal Nehru. Obama, appears to want to be president of the world. In fact, he may well be more popular in Europe than in America, given his plunging approval ratings at home.
While internationalism plays well to the liberal classes, it appears that Obama may have overdone the reaching-out bit. The Economist reports (”Around the world in 42 days”, January 19th) that “[Obama] has spent much more time overseas than his predecessors. Mr. Obama has been abroad twice as long as George Bush Jr. managed in his first 12 months as president”. He spent 42 days abroad and visited 22 countries, a far cry from Ronald Reagan (9, 2), George Bush Sr. (31, 15), John Kennedy (12, 6), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (0, 0).
Unfortunately, Obama also seemed to concentrate on alienating America’s friends and appeasing its foes (a familiar trap, as the NDA government demonstrated in India). Obama spent much effort in going more than half-way with China, militant West Asians, and Iran. But he got little in return for his pains. He reached out to those of the Islamic faith in his Cairo and Ankara speeches, but they seemed to view that as an admission of weakness, and Al Qaeda/Taliban have redoubled their efforts to hurt American interests.
In particular, his internationalism and kow-towing have caused the Chinese to disdain him and believe their own rhetoric about the G2: they embarrassed him at Copenhagen, treating him like a minor feudatory at some Chinese imperial court. It is ironic that China has been the beneficiary of excessive coddling by both Nehru and Obama, when a little more iron in the velvet glove would have been just the ticket.
Unfortunately, Obama seems to have let his courtiers’ accolades go to his head. He acts as though he believes that just on his say-so, the lamb will lie down with the lion, or something like that. The worst example of this was the acceptance of the Nobel peace prize, which, surely, Obama knows in his heart of hearts that he doesn’t deserve, at least not yet? For him to accept anyway came across as grasping and vain – and surely, the message is that flattery will work with him.
Obama also seems to have some trouble making the switch from campaigning – where he can promise all sorts of goodies – to governing – where has to deliver. Some of his actions seem predicated on how they will play to the crowd: for instance, his time-table for the pullout of troops in Afghanistan appears to be intended to give him maximum positive coverage in the 2010 mid-term elections, and thereafter in his expected 2012 re-election campaign.
Finally, Obama has not been willing or able to rein in his more rabid supporters. Some of them bought the snake-oil that there had been a permanent shift to the left in 2008. Not so; especially as a result of tough economic times, there has been a shift to the right, and Republicans are feeling their oats. Now that they have Ted Kennedy’s seat, they are taking aim at other leftists: for instance, Barbara Boxer in California, up for re-election in 2010, is facing a strong challenge from Carly Fiorina, a former CEO of Hewlett-Packard.
If Obama is able to curb his vanity, his internationalism, and the more extreme of his supporters, and, big if – the economy does improve in the next few months – he may well rebound. As of now, Americans are hurting: they do not see in their wallets the value of the huge bailouts of banks and car companies, and they are getting increasingly worried about terrorism coming back to their homeland.
Overall, Obama’s first year in office rates only a B for effort, and a C- for results.
Comments welcome at http://rajeev2007.wordpress.com
1300 words, 21st Jan 2010
iPad may change the rules of the media game
February 8, 2010
this was published by DNA at http://www.dnaindia.com/money/comment_ipad-may-change-rules-of-the-media-game_1344723 on feb 8th
The iPad may change the rules of the media game
Rajeev Srinivasan
In the breathless commentary on Apple’s iPad – both for and against – there were several things that were not given due attention. Yes, it is a gorgeously large iPod Touch, that is, a big iPhone without the phone function. No, it is not clear which market segment will consider it a must-have gadget. But there is much more.
Apple clearly produces what Steve Jobs calls “insanely great” products, but the industry joke is that the uber-charismatic Jobs possesses a “reality-distortion field”, so that if you get within a few feet of him, you fall under his spell. Maybe the adoring media are suffering from that effect.
Intriguingly, Apple started succeeding only when it moved away from product innovation and into business model innovation. Despite cool and elegant products starting from the Apple I and the Macintosh, it kept losing ground to arch-foe Microsoft, which realized that the operating system was a distribution channel.
Since Windows runs on 2 billion computers, Microsoft pushed other products through the channel – Internet Explorer, the lucrative Office franchise, and hundreds of thousands of third-party products. Apple could not deliver this large audience – size matters – and software makers built products only for Windows. This became a vicious cycle, and Macs became niche products.
With the iPod, Apple turned this game on its head using iTunes. That was the real breakthrough, not the iPod itself: business model, not product innovation. With iTunes, Apple was distributing third-party products, including music, movies, and podcasts. The operating system, eg. Windows, became irrelevant.
ITunes is the third most ubiquitous software product around, after Windows and Adobe’s Acrobat. Result? Apple has become the world’s biggest music distributor. Incidentally, they sold a lot of iPods too, which of course was their goal. For the end-user, it suddenly became easy to pick up music that was legal and inexpensive, and so they did, abandoning illegal downloads.
Similarly, with the iPhone, it is not the touch-screen or other eye-candy that made the product successful, but the App Store: an easy-to-use distribution channel for third-party applications. It was not a new concept. In the smartphone/PDA space itself, there was a Palm Store as long ago as 2000, with a few thousand applications. However, Apple was the first to enjoy the network effects and has 140,000 applications now.
Apple wants to apply these lessons to the media market. Books alone count for $24 billion a year, three times as big as the music industry. Add to this struggling newspapers and magazines, savaged by classified ads and other ad spending migrating online. If Apple can help newspapers charge small amounts for content, it may revive big-name publishers now threatened with extinction.
On the other hand, Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader is directly threatened by the iPad. The other vulnerable product is the netbook family. Add a docking station with a keyboard, and the iPad is a web-surfing desktop, or a cheap Mac. Its display as large as a netbook’s – around 10 inches. Apple previously dismissed netbooks, saying it was impossible to build a decent one for $500.
Indeed, that is the first big surprise with the iPad – the $499 entry price point, unusual for Apple’s premium image. Surprise number two – the chip is Apple-owned, a result of its purchase of PA Semiconductor some time ago. Apple has for the first time become a vertically integrated manufacturer, making everything from chip to OS to browser to applications.
And surprise number three – there is no subsidy from the telecom carriers for the 3G models: there is no contract with AT&T (with those early termination penalties consumers detest), and you can just buy a monthly $30 unlimited data plan with no strings attached.
Thus Apple is trying out another first: a device that it controls fully in terms of major components, and even the demand chain, and which it is willing to subsidize until it reaches volume – surely at $499, it is losing money. This means the product is really important to Apple.
This is not to say that Apple has not placed some wrong bets in the past: an example was the Newton tablet, too early to market. But a successful bet was in Apple’s early days, when it subsidized Canon’s laser printers and created the whole industry of desktop publishing.
It would be poetic justice if Apple rides in like a white knight and rescues the publishing industry. The iPad may well be the calculated risk that allows Apple to disrupt one more industry, as it has done with music and telecom already. There are downsides – publishers may discover they don’t like ceding too much power to Apple. And as far as consumers are concerned, especially those in developing countries, they may find themselves priced out of a lot of currently free content.
Rajeev Srinivasan is a management consultant focusing on innovation
825 words, January 29th, 2010
Glaciergate or not, climate change is a reality
January 31, 2010
a shortened version of this appeared in mint at http://www.livemint.com/2010/01/27203228/There-is-still-climate-change.html this was written on 26 jan and submitted to rediff then, but it has not been published yet. the attacks on IPCC and pachauri continue. i am not necessarily a fan, but i think they are being unfairly targeted with malice aforethought.
(PS. for some odd reason, i am running into compatibility problems between openoffice 3.0 and wordpress — this ends up giving me either too few or too many spaces between paragraphs. sorry)
Glaciergate or not, there is still climate change
Rajeev Srinivasan cautions against throwing the baby out with the bathwater
In addition to Climategate – the accidental release of emails from a UK university that suggested some scientific data had been suppressed by global-warming zealots – there is now Glaciergate. The Nobel-Prize-winning IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and its chairman, Rajendra Pachauri of The Energy Research Institute (TERI) in Delhi, have committed a Himalayan blunder.
IPCC, it turns out, made a faux pas in asserting that “Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035”. There is some confusion about how they arrived at this conclusion, but it appears as though they depended solely on an interview given by Jawaharlal Nehru University glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hasnain to an Indian magazine, based on unpublished and non-peer reviewed research. Hasnain speculated about the Himalayan glaciers’ disappearance by 2035, although a report in the Economist (“Off-base camp”, January 21st) suggests that the research itself was focusing on the year 2350, not 2035. Some typo!
Because the IPCC is considered an impeccable scientific authority, this scandal goes to the very heart of the institution’s credibility. Their process may be flawed, thus imposing a question mark on many of the predictions it has made. This is on top of allegations of financial irregularity that have been dogging Pachauri and TERI, especially after the IPCC won the Nobel along with Al Gore. A report in the UK Telegraph (“Taxpayers’ millions paid to Indian institute run by UN climate chief”, January 16th), among others, suggests impropriety and conflict of interest.
There is probably a grain of truth in the allegation that grand proposals about cap-and-trade are designed to enrich the very people who have caused major bubbles: the friendly neighborhood investment bank. It is also possible that those involved in the transfer of massive sums – like the $100 billion bandied about in Copenhagen about money to be given to developing nations to induce them to do less destructive things in their search for energy security – have vested interests.
But let us consider one fraught possibility – that even if the messenger is dubious, the message has value. There is the chance that despite exaggerations from the climate-change-supporters, the climate *is* changing. What if the world is already hurtling towards certain disaster, and we have on the verge of moving from a stable equilibrium to catastrophic, irreversible ecosystem damage?
A lot of the climate skepticism is of the form “we’ve heard these stories before, by the way weren’t more or less the same ‘the sky is falling’ crowd saying just a few years ago that we were going to enter a new Ice Age?” Others suggest that the recent warming is merely part of the longer-term sunspot cycle, or that the total amount of carbon remains constant on earth, so that CO2 emissions should not be a big worry. But it does matter where the carbon is: sequestered in, say, forest or permafrost it’s fine, but it’s not fine when it’s free-floating in the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas.
Admittedly, climate is such a complex issue with so many variables that any computer models are necessarily imprecise and removed from the reality. The fact is that nobody knows, but there is still that nagging doubt: what if the climate Cassandras are right? Do we want to say a few years down the road, “Oops, they were right and now we are toast?” What if sea levels are indeed rising inexorably? Has one exceptionally cold winter made everybody forget the series of increasingly powerful hurricanes that have ravaged different parts of the world?
It is undeniable that changes in climate have a large impact on flora and fauna and certainly on human societies. We are familiar with what is believed to have been the effects of radical climate change (either due to asteroid hits or volcanic activity) that caused ‘nuclear winters’ and exterminated the dinosaurs. Then there is the giant explosion of super-volcano Mt. Toba in Sumatra that caused, according to geneticist Stephen Oppenheimer, the complete extinction of all human populations in India around 74,000 years ago. More recently , the once-fertile and well-watered regions of the Sahara in Africa and the Thar in India have turned into desert because of climate change.
Thus, the impact of climate change is nothing to be sneezed at. And there is enough circumstantial evidence that, indeed large changes are taking place. All of us may have noticed the change in local flora – in my native Kerala I have seen the kani konna (Indian laburnum) which traditionally flowers around VIshu, April 14th, has been flowering as early as January in the last few years. Old favorite thumba, with its humble and startlingly white flowers, once a metaphor for demure purity, is now not to be seen at all.
Pests and diseases are marching northwards, tree lines are going higher, and Arctic and Antarctic ice-packs and yes, glaciers are indeed retreating, all based on observations over the last few decades. Summer temperatures are soaring. Coral reefs are dying. It is hard to doubt that there is some level of global warming going on, and that increased acidity in the ocean is a result of more CO2 in the air.
And the culprit is not far to seek either. It is a very reasonable hypothesis that the increasing hydrocarbon usage is upsetting the carbon equilibrium: large amounts of the stuff that had been sequestered in forests, underground in coal mines and natural gas and oil deposits, have now been allowed to escape into the atmosphere.
In defense of hydrocarbons/fossil fuels, it is obvious that the current globalized civilization would not have been easy to create without convenient petroleum. On the other hand, the deleterious effects of oil are also visible: the vast amount of pollution and despoliation of nature for oil drilling, pipelines, and refining, not to mention emissions. Then there is also the other huge problem – that of non-biodegradable hydro-carbon-based plastics clogging the land and forming dead zones the size of France in the gyres of the oceans.
The point therefore is to get the world off its suicidal appetite for hydrocarbons. It also appears that the general public is not likely to change its fossil-fuel-guzzling ways just because they think the weather is going to warm up a little bit. Appeals to their good nature or to the legacy they are leaving their children does not seem to get results: the only thing that caused a reduction in consumption was the hike in oil prices; when prices fell, consumers went back to their bad old habits. The January 2010 Pew Center poll on American voters’ priorities puts the economy, jobs and terrorism at the top of the list, and global warming has slid to 21st place, just below trade policy! Therefore, a little exaggeration and invocation of catastrophe is probably not so bad to get the public to do what’s good for the planet.
But the worst outcome of the hue-and-cry from climate skeptics is complacency. It is not enough for the world to sit back and smugly say, “Ah, global warming is a myth. We can continue business as usual”. Not at all. The major emitters of greenhouse gases have had a free ride so far, and we all know of the Tragedy of the Commons. The industrialized nations, in particular the US, have refused to abide by the Kyoto Protocol. In Copenhagen, China, in a tactical maneuver appropriate to the world’s biggest polluter, managed to eviscerate any attempt at regulating or even monitoring its copious production of noxious emissions.
Thus, if the result of the fuss over Glaciergate and Climategate is a certain cavalierness about the issue of climate change, that would be disastrous. The baby – the environment – cannot be thrown out with the bathwater – the IPCC’s alleged malfeasance. There needs to a focused thrust to get away from fossil fuels and towards clean energy sources such as solar and wind. It is that sense of urgency that is being dissipated by the hoo-haa over Glaciergate.
In particular, for India with its minuscule stocks of hydrocarbons, it is practically a life-and-death matter that the thrust towards renewable sources of energy should not be diverted on what is essentially a political pissing content between two groups of affluent Westerners. India’s quest for energy security and its ability to provide a better life for its citizens will both be jeopardized by a quixotic crusade by those intent on scoring debating points. Climate change is real. Atmospheric pollution is real. We have no idea what we have done to complex natural systems: we cannot, like King Canute, order the waves to withdraw. Or the climate to stabilize.
Postscript: Is Pachauri being singled out as an Indian in a visible global position, and is this a hatchet job on him by the British? indeed, those howling the loudest for his head are British newspapers such as the London Times (“UN climate panel blunders again over Himalayan glaciers”, January 24th) and the UK Telegraph (“Pachauri must resign at once as head of official science panel”, January 24th). Given general British animosity towards Indians, this is not a far-out conclusion.
1500 words, 26th January 2010
CIA debacle in Khost: a tipping point?
January 22, 2010
versions of this were published by rediff (eleven days after i sent it to them!) at http://news.rediff.com/column/2010/jan/20/khost-deaths-a-point-of-inflexion-in-obamas-war.htm and by the pioneer at http://www.dailypioneer.com/229225/Close-to-tipping-point.html
The massacre of CIA officers in Khost: a point of inflexion in Obama’s war?
Rajeev Srinivasan on how the US has to step up or lose the initiative to the Taliban/al Qaeda
The Jordanian suicide-bomber, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who infiltrated the CIA’s Forward Base Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan and killed seven CIA operatives and his Jordanian handler on December 30th, 2009, carried out a picture-perfect strike. He devastated the operational capacity of the US Special Operations on the ground, and also dented the aura of invincibility that Hollywood and the popular imagination – think Bond, James Bond – have invested in western spooks.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal on January 7th (“The Meaning of al Qaeda’s double agent”), former CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht suggests that – eerily biblically – al Qaeda did unto the CIA what the CIA wished to do unto al Qaeda. Says Gerecht: “Indeed, al Qaeda did to us exactly what we intended to do to them: use a mole for a lethal strike against high-value targets. In the case of al-Balawi, it appears the target was Ayman al Zawahiri, Osama bin Ladin’s top deputy.”
It was a brilliant operation, and the Americans were sitting ducks. The question is: why? The fact that the CIA threw normal caution to the winds when the Jordanian double-agent dangled some confidence-building carrots – in the form of verifiable information about low-level terrorists – indicates American incompetence, or, chillingly, desperation. They are dying (no pun intended) to get some good intelligence. Ergo, the likelihood is that they fear they are losing the war.
Conversely, ever since President Obama unveiled his timetable for an American pull-out, the Taliban and the al Qaeda have gone from strength to strength – they are winning the psychological war. An indication of their new-found confidence comes from three recent, high-visibility incidents: the shooting of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood (although this did happen a few weeks before Obama’s actual speech, the contours of “surge, bribe, declare victory and run like hell” were already known then); the Christmas Day (talk of a significant day!) attempt to blow up Northwest flight 253 over Detroit; and then the Khost incident itself.
Aren’t all of these highly demoralizing for the Americans? Even the normally placid Obama is showing the strain – he is under pressure to do something. He is reincarnating himself as a war president, however reluctantly. 2012 and re-election loom large in the background.
Going back to the Khost attack, Gerecht also maintains that normal operating procedure was violated under the orders of the station chief in Khost – startlingly, a mother of three – and several regional CIA staff flew in to have a face-to-face meeting with the supposed informant; he apparently was also not subjected to the usual detailed security check including pat-downs. What had the informant done to earn such unquestioning trust?
One answer may lie in the critical dependency of the CIA on others – for reasons of lack of language skills and of length of tenure. Since they seldom speak Arabic or Pushto or Urdu, they are forced to depend on third parties – in this case on Jordanian intelligence, which apparently does have a good track record in West Asia.
The fact that the CIA underestimated the enemy’s resourcefulness and smarts also bodes ill for the future. They should have learned that their enemy is capable of surprisingly good tactical operations, and they should have taken due care. There have been at least two previous instances where the jihadis – whether they call themselves al Qaeda or Taliban or something else is a moot point – demonstrated a clear grasp of tactics.
The first was the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud in his Panjshir Valley redoubt. An unquestioned military genius, Massoud had held off the formidable Soviets with age-old tactics of perimeter defense, tactical withdrawals, and hit-and-run. He was assassinated in September 2001, just two days before 9/11 – and it is unlikely that it was a mere coincidence. Massoud had in a previous speech warned about a major attack planned against America: he might have had inklings about 9/11.
Massoud was the Taliban’s principal foe as the military commander of the Northern Alliance, and the major obstacle in their overrunning all opposition in Afghanistan. Undoubtedly a cautious and careful man, Massoud was tricked into accepting an interview by two Tunisians bearing Belgian passports, who posed as journalists – they had hidden a bomb in the videocamera, using which they were able to kill him. Possibly the assassins were supplied to the Taliban by the al Qaeda.
Then there was the singular incident of the siege of Kunduz in November 2001. In this ‘Airlift of Evil’, the US allowed Pakistan to spirit away hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz. Most of the so-called Taliban who were evacuated were senior officers of the Pakistani Army or the ISI. At the time, I wrote (see my column “What happened in Kunduz?”) that this was an historic blunder.
Clearly, the CIA was bamboozled by the ISI and the Pakistani Army in allowing the airlift. Left to themselves, the Northern Alliance would have overrun the fort in Kunduz and captured the insurgents, thereby breaking the back of the Taliban. The Pakistanis had a big stake in preventing these strategic assets of theirs from being eliminated – and apparently they convinced the CIA that their potential capture, and subsequent interrogation, would reflect badly on the CIA too.
These chickens have now come home to roost. The CIA has a history of strategic blunders in Afghanistan, surely because they are misled continuously by the Pakistanis. For instance, as much as 20% of all the billions of CIA dollars funneled into fighting the Soviets went to the ISI’s then favorite, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is now an implacable foe of the Americans. Furthermore, some reports suggest that Ilyas Kashmiri, a HUJI jihadi, allegedly killed by a drone in September, resurfaced and planned the Khost operation in revenge. (Americans have consistently interfered in Kashmir on behalf of Pakistan and its jihadis.)
There is now great confusion about the motives of the double-agent al-Balawi. The most obvious hypothesis is that the Taliban/al Qaeda wished to disrupt Predator and Reaper drone flights that are inconveniencing them by pinpointing their cadre from the air. Since the Taliban are a strategic asset of the ISI, the intelligence and the planning for the operation almost certainly came from the ISI.
But there is a nice new twist – a videotape has surfaced in which al-Balawi appears with Hakimullah Mehsud and vows to avenge the killing of Baitullah Mehsud by a drone. There are a couple of ways of looking at this. One is that there are clearly tactical alliances between the al Qaeda and various Taliban factions. Despite the fine distinctions made between “good Taliban” (eg. the Haqqani tribe that the ISI refuses to move against) and the “bad Taliban”, there apparently is no such difference on the ground. The much-ballyhooed Pakistani Army surge in South Waziristan against the Mehsud tribe may be an eyewash, and the ISI may still be in cahoots with them.
A second possibility is that the tape is ISI-manufactured disinformation (digital doctoring of videotape is possible), because the Mehsud are now considered “bad Taliban” (translation: people who are not advancing the Pakistani agenda), and surely this is a good way of directing American ire at them.
That, indeed, is the $64,000 question: will there be any American ire? It is not going to be easy for President Obama to continue with his soft approach. His Cairo and Ankara speeches, his munificence to Pakistan, etc. have caused him to be perceived as a pushover. Maybe it is time for Obama to break out his trusty copy of the ‘Arthashastra’ and to realize that after sama (dialog), and dana (bribery) come other tactics – bheda (manufacturing dissent) and danda (force).
I hear from those in the know that American surveyors and geologists have discovered a veritable trove of minerals, including copper, iron, gems and hydrocarbons, in Afghanistan. Indeed, the Chinese have already started work on a giant copper mine there. Perhaps the Americans may stay in Afghanistan for the long term: the minerals would be tempting, and much more so than merely the prospect of the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) oil pipeline, which Amoco once salivated over. From India’s point of view, this is probably a bad thing, but then nobody is bothered about India’s interests.
The minerals may cause Obama to rethink the “declare victory and run like hell” part. In any case, that is a losing strategy against the jihadis in the long run because they are nothing if not triumphalist. Obama, the Nobel peace-prize winner, is perforce going to be a war president, glimpses of which he displayed in his reaction to the alleged systemic failure in regards to would-be bomber Abdulmuttab.
In any case, whether Obama stays on or not, he has to acknowledge that the Taliban/al Qaeda have demonstrated a surprisingly sophisticated grasp of both geo-politics and about which strings, when pulled, provide the greatest benefit. It is a mistake to underestimate them – they have the ISI, the kings of covert action, to help them plan their operations. In this context, I was amused to come across a story from The Economist of January 24, 2009, titled “The growing, and mysterious, irrelevance of al-Qaeda”. Famous last words. A year later, it is not the al Qaeda that seem irrelevant.
Comments welcome at http://rajeev2007.wordpress.com
1600 words, Jan 9th, 2010
2009: A year beset with problems for India
December 30, 2009
a version of this was published by rediff and india abroad at http://news.rediff.com/column/2009/dec/29/a-year-beset-by-problems-for-india.htm
india abroad requested i write this, and gave me a deadline of dec 17th; therefore i was not able to cover things that happened later (eg. copenhagen and the delicious nd tiwari story).
14th Intl Film Festival of Kerala
December 16, 2009
a version of this was published by rediff.com at http://movies.rediff.com/report/2009/dec/16/international-film-festival-of-kerala-2009-opens.htm
here is the website of the festival: http://iffk.in/index.php?page=movies
International Film Festival of Kerala 2009: Days 1, 2 and 3
Rajeev Srinivasan samples the fare at the IFFK’s 14th edition
It apparently has become a staple of the season in Trivandrum – a little winter fog, a much-hyped Grand Kerala Shopping Festival (as though the wall-to-wall, year-round ads on TV for gold and womens’ clothes were not enough), large numbers of black-clad Ayyappa pilgrims, and now armies of cineastes armed with the signature black bags of the International Film Festival. This year I too joined the quasi-pilgrimage to my own home-town, and so far I have been pleasantly surprised by the festival’s logistics and films.
Obama’s Af-Pak Plan 2.0: India loses, again
December 8, 2009
a version of this was published by rediff at http://news.rediff.com/column/2009/dec/08/column-rajeev-srinivasan-on-obamas-af-pak-plan.htm
Obama’s Af-Pak speech: America will declare victory and leave soon
Rajeev Srinivasan concludes the winners are China and Pakistan; India loses again
There is no doubt the US President Barack Obama had a difficult task to perform in making his long-awaited Afghanistan speech on Tuesday. There has been a clamor of different voices urging him to take every position from digging in for the long term all the way to an immediate withdrawal, and the only option Obama really had was to take a median position that would certainly disappoint large sections of his voters.
In a sense, the speech turned out to be a bit of a damp squib: it must be extremely unsatisfying to officer cadets at West Point to be told that their nation was effectively in a war it could not win. And that the only thing to do was to find a face-saving exit. Besides, it really didn’t say anything new other than the laying out of a time-frame for the exit. It was common knowledge all along that the Obama Af-Pak plan was simple: “surge, bribe, declare victory and run like hell”.
The bribery plan has taken more concrete steps now. Hillary Clinton announced that there were ‘non-violent Taliban’ (isn’t that a contradiction in terms?), and therefore one has to presume the Americans are busy figuring out which are the ‘good Taliban’ (hint: those not attacking the Pakistani Army). These are the ones to bribe before the part about declaring victory loudly and heading for the exit.
One has to sympathize with Obama, who is in a bit of a spot. Two unwinnable wars are draining his treasury. The financial meltdown and related fallout has hit his economy hard. His hard-core supporters are wondering when he will deliver on his campaign rhetoric of change and hope, because so far there has been little change and not much hope. The fence-sitters are beginning to desert him, as the results of mid-term elections and opinion polls suggest. For someone who is in permanent campaign mode, this is altogether disturbing. The timing of the pullout from Afghanistan, naturally, is intended to give Obama sound-bites for the elections in 2012.
Afghanistan is, alas, looking more and more like Vietnam; even the blame game, where suddenly the Americans seem to have discovered that their hand-picked man, Hamid Karzai, is the fount of all corruption, is like Vietnam. The generals in Afghanistan are not filing enthusiastic and breathless forecasts like Westmoreland did in Vietnam, however: they are, perhaps because of more widespread information, less optimistic and probably more realistic about what can be achieved.
The root cause of the problem in Afghanistan, unlike in Iraq, is simple: the Americans are laboring mightily to ignore the elephant in the living room, Pakistan’s agenda. It is as clear as daylight to the casual observer that Pakistan has no interest whatsoever in bringing stability to Afghanistan, in preventing the Taliban from coming back to power there, or in capturing Osama bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda operatives: and these are the alleged reasons why the Americans are in Afghanistan.
Pakistan has clearly articulated its pursuit of strategic depth which, for instance, involves having a Plan B even if its major cities such as Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, close to the Indian border, are obliterated in a possible Indian nuclear second strike (after Pakistan has wiped out Delhi and Mumbai in a first strike). They want to regroup from Afghanistan and continue their jihad against India from there.
The Taliban, of course, are Pakistani Army and ISI soldiers dressed in baggy pants and beards for the occasion. The fact that alleged seminary students (who the Taliban are supposed to be) suddenly started driving tanks and flying planes is indirect evidence that they were trained soldiers. Therefore, Taliban rule in Kabul means Pakistan has achieved it strategic depth. Clearly, they have no desire to fight or eliminate the Taliban, despite the fact that some factions (such as the one from the Mehsud tribe) have begun to inconvenience Pakistan through a campaign of suicide bombings. Dead Pakistani civilians are considered acceptable collateral damage by the ISI, but their attacks on the military apparatus is a big no-no. They are clearly ‘bad Taliban’, and will not get any share of the spoils.
The fact that the Americans condone Pakistani support for the Taliban was made most evident during the siege of Kunduz some years ago: see my old column: “What happened in Kunduz?” at http://www.rediff.com/news/2001/nov/30rajeev.htm It was evident to observers then that the massive airlift of besieged Taliban – allegedly hundreds of senior officers were rescued from the advancing Northern Alliance with the full knowledge of the CIA – was an effort to hide the evidence about ISI involvement with the Taliban. They allowed the alleged Taliban to escape to Islamabad and resume their day jobs as brigadiers and colonels in the Pakistani Army and the ISI. If the Northern Alliance, then in full cry, had been able to capture or liquidate these officers, it would have broken the backbone of the Taliban war effort.
A recent report from the US Senate accused the then-leaders of the war effort, Donald Rumsfeld and General Petraeus, of a signal failure in late 2001: apparently the Senate has found that it would have been entirely possible to capture Osama bin Laden in the Tora Bora mountains then, if only a large force of American troops had been deployed in search operations, instead of the few hundreds.
All this brings into sharp focus the nexus between the CIA and the ISI. (The more recent story of Daood Gilani alias David Chapman Headley, who may have done the reconnaissance in Mumbai for 11/26, also suggestions unholy connections between the two). There are some seriously opaque things going on between the Americans and the Pakistanis, and the billions paid by the Bush and Obama administration have vanished without a trace. (With their friend Robin Raphel now in charge of disbursing funds, the ISI must be breaking out the champagne – such incredible good luck!)
So long as the Americans are willing to subscribe to the fiction that Pakistanis are serious about fighting terrorism, there is no way that Pakistan can lose. As a result, the planned departure of the Americans in 2011 should be welcome news for Indians. Presumably, once they leave, as they did after the Soviet debacle in the 1980s, Americans will lose interest in Pakistan and cease to write them blank checks (which usually end up killing Indians).
However, as General McChrystal suggested recently, chances are that the US is going to lean on India to ‘make concessions on Kashmir’, to stop its humanitarian operations in Afghanistan and to close its consulates there. Pakistan has alleged that Indians are interfering in Baluchistan – which I hope they are, but it is unlikely: a former Prime Minister, in a burst of misplaced enthusiasm, gutted the RAW counter-intelligence operations there. The first sign of this pressure is already evident in the UPA government’s announcement of large troop withdrawals from J&K, leaving it to the local police, whose sympathies are not necessarily with the Indian nation.
The reality of American sentiment was demonstrated by Richard Holbrooke who held a cringing press conference to assure Pakistanis that there was no tilt towards India. Clearly in Afghan War 2.0, America is going to be ever more dependent on the tender mercies of the ISI. Obama concluded his speech with the mantra – regarding Pakistan – of “mutual interests, mutual respect, and mutual trust.” The cynic in me thinks Obama better lock up the family silver, as he is deluding himself regarding Pakistan’s fundamentalist kleptocrats.
Besides, the exit timeline – even though it does not mean all troops leave then, and there has been a lot of ‘clarifications’ that even the date is not cast in stone – implies that the Americans have no stomach to fight on any longer in Afghanistan beyond 2011. This, in effect, means they have been defeated. The essence of military strategy is to demoralize the enemy by all means possible, and from that perspective Taliban psy-ops have won. This will be a significant morale-booster to the jihadis: they can legitimately claim to have defeated both the Soviets and the Americans. This will embolden their triumphalist attacks on US targets, and on India.
The Americans have a difficult choice, caught as they are with no really attractive options. Add to this Obama’s personal preferences, wherein his tendency is to be an internationalist, and to jaw-jaw where Bush may have gone for war-war. It is not clear that these are bad things per se, but it remains to be seen whether they are the right things for this war, or for the colder war against China. There is an element of ‘paralysis by analysis’, and some have begun to call Obama the ‘Great Ditherer’.
There is a worst case scenario: the possibility that, given the deadline of 18 months that Obama has outlined for the beginning of the exit, there will be a headlong and ignominious retreat from Kabul. I remember the photographs from Saigon in 1975 with the last helicopters taking off from the American embassy with people desperately hanging on. Vietnam scarred America’s soul, but Communism did not win, and the Domino Theory turned out to be wrong: communists are susceptible to the charms of the market.
The Afghan game is altogether different: it may crush America’s soul. If the jihadis gain sustenance from the American defeat there, there will be no respite: they will keep on attacking, as they are not easily distracted from their goal of global dominance, which they believe is within their grasp. Indeed they may be right, because there is a short window of opportunity when vast petro-dollars are at their disposal. The near-default of sovereign debt in Dubai shows that the petro-dollars may well be ephemeral, and that they had better strike when the iron is hot.
America is clearly suffering from imperial overreach. Not that America is a ruined country, but compared to the can-do and supremely confident nation it was a few years ago – the sole hyperpower proclaiming the end of history – it is suffering from serious self-doubt, and it is beginning to see the shadows of decline everywhere, even in its crowning glory, the civil engineering marvels that span the nation.
American’s involvement in Afghanistan, if it had been a whole-hearted war against the forces of terrorism, would have been positive for India. But given that it merely enriched the Pakistanis while retaining intact the entire infrastructure – both the ISI and the radicalized Army – the Afghan war has not really helped India. Indeed, the Northern Alliance – assuming that its tactical genius Ahmed Shah Massoud had not been assassinated – may well have driven the Taliban out or at least fought them to a standstill. In hindsight, the American intercession in Afghanistan has been a net negative for India.
As things stand, it now appears that it is better from India’s perspective for the Americans to leave. As usual, India is left to fight its own battles. Unfortunately, the two parties that will benefit the most from the American debacle in Afghanistan are India’s sworn enemies: China and Pakistan. China, because the loss is likely to turn America inward, and in any case they have now been convinced by Chinese bluster that there has to be a G-2. Pakistan, of course, is richer by some $25 billion some of which is in numbered accounts somewhere, and the rest in nuclear and other weapons pointed at India.
For China, the Vietnam analogy is apt again. There, a Chinese proxy defeated the Americans; in Afghanistan, another Chinese proxy, Pakistan, may defeat America. In Korea, China fought America to a standstill. Score: China – 2.5, America – 0.5. No doubt this, along with Obama’s kowtowing in Beijing, will embolden further Chinese adventurism. India is already seeing the beginning of this, as Chinese are building 27 airstrips in occupied Tibet, and just ordered Indians to stop building a road in J&K, explaining that it was their territory.
Obama should learn from India’s experience: a vacillating, dithering and appeasing nation gets no respect from those who have a a clear long-term intent.
1720 words, Dec 2, 2009, updated Dec 4, 2009, 2050 words
India’s Energy Security
December 7, 2009
a version of this paper was published by ‘eternal india: the new perspectives monthly’ from the india first foundation in november 2009. another version was accepted by a conference at osmania university, hyderabad on india’s energy issues in march 2009.
energy security paper version 4
india’s mandarins sat on their behinds for decades; when they realized they had forsworn energy security, they made a mad scramble for nuclear fission, which is probably the worst solution for india, barring oil. the recent incident at the kaiga reactor where tritium was inserted into a water cooler was a graphic demonstration of the perils of terrorism and sabotage that loom large in india — chernobyl will be a cakewalk.
the omniscient mandarins like nuclear because there is opportunity for graft.
the best solution for india is likely to be solar; there should be a manhattan-project-like concentrated effort to induce innovation in this area. but there isn’t.
it is not clear what india is doing in copenhagen, but it is highly likely that the u-turns and volte-faces will end up in india accepting some position that is highly damaging to the country’s growth in return for vague promises of something or the other from others.
obama af-pak strategy 2.0
December 2, 2009
Remembering a war (from 2002)
December 1, 2009
(Published on rediff at http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/nov/23chin.htm)
If I were to take the long view of history, I would contend that 1962 was a relatively minor skirmish in the long-term civilizational competition between India and China for the domination of the Asian ethos.
The only significant difference now as compared to centuries ago is that for the first time in history, the buffer state of Tibet has disappeared and Chinese troops are on India’s borders, and this means China can threaten India because it controls the headwaters of the Indus and the Brahmaputra, which arise in Tibet.
Yet, as far back as I can think, the two civilizations have been rivals in the grand scheme of events. There are distinct archetypes that drive the two. India has always been the realm of the abstract; and China that of the concrete. India is individualistic; China is collective. India is open and inclusive. China is closed and exclusive.
Mr. Singh went to Washington, and all I got was this lousy biriyani
November 30, 2009
A version of this was published by the Daily Pioneer on Dec 1. Here is the URL:
http://www.dailypioneer.com/219496/A-non-event-foretold.html
Mr Singh went to Washington, and all I got was this lousy biriyani
Rajeev Srinivasan
It is not clear why some are disappointed by the non-event of the Manmohan Singh visit to Washington. On the contrary, a sigh of relief is in order, as there was no major faux pas, which is customary when the PM and his Sancho Panzas sally forth abroad. No, the soporific, meaningless joint statement was better than the abject surrender of some major national interest, as in Havana 2006 and Sharm-al-Sheikh 2009.
It is mystifying exactly what was expected, anyway, from the First State Visit to Obama’s Camelot (Obamelot?). The First State Visit is just a diplomatic air-kiss. The best metaphor for it was the fact that the dinner was gate-crashed by a couple named Michelle and Tareq Salehi, a blonde in a bright-red, diaphanous sari-like concoction, and a tuxedo-clad (one assumes) Arab. That these people waltzed right past the massive security, and even got photo-ops with the Obamas and the Veep, would be appalling, if it weren’t comical. So it has come to this – the Federal Bureau of Investigation reincarnated as the Keystone Cops. Or maybe it just shows the level of attention and due diligence the Obamistas paid to the Manmohan First State Visit.
Mr. Singh goes to Washington
November 24, 2009
a version of this appeared on rediff at http://news.rediff.com/column/2009/nov/24/rajeev-srinivasan-on-prime-minister-singhs-visit.htm
Mr. Singh goes to Washington
Rajeev Srinivasan on why he fears the ’state visit’ may be disastrous
In the old black-and-white Frank Capra film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” an idealistic small-town man played by James Stewart is elected to the US Congress, where he is appalled by corrupt politics; but in the end his innocence wins over the blasé denizens of the capital. In a sense, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s trip to the US in the near future is being portrayed in the same way, but the Indian is neither as idealistic nor as naïve as the Jimmy Stuart character, nor is there likely to be a happy ending.
Roses in November: in search of Dharma
November 12, 2009
This was published at http://news.rediff.com/column/2009/nov/11/rajeev-srinivasan-on-the-struggle-for-dharma.htm
Can EVMs subvert elections? full post
July 3, 2009
Reposting on wanderlust’s suggestion. The full text is appended below, and here is a link to where the pdf can be downloaded from: http://rajeev.posterous.com/can-electronic-voting-machines-subvert-electi
This was a survey as of Jun 20th, and subsequent revelations have been explosive: someone actually has demonstrated a Trojan Horse as described here, on Jul 3rd. There is virtually no doubt that EVMs can be mucked with. Whether they were mucked with is the subject of further research.
Happy American Independence Day, indeed 
Can Electronic Voting Machines subvert elections?
By Rajeev Srinivasan[1]
“The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery.” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795
“Those who cast the votes decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything”
“The first stage of fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merge of State and corporate power” – Benito Mussolini
- Abstract
Are India’s election results an accurate reflection of the will of the people? Or is it possible that the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) that are deployed in large numbers in India’s elections can be manipulated to subvert the voters’ intent? If that is the case, it would be a serious matter, because that would reduce India’s democracy, of which most Indians are so proud, to a charade. In this essay, we consider the ways in which EVMs could have been used to defraud the Indian voter in 2009. We emphasize that this essay is only about the possibility of fraud; it is beyond the scope of this note and will take further analysis and research to demonstrate actual fraud, if such existed.
Can EVMs subvert democracy?
June 25, 2009
To appear in ‘Eternal India: A New Perspectives Monthly’. Will post the full article when it is published.
Can Electronic Voting Machines subvert elections?
By Rajeev Srinivasan
“The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery.” – Thomas Paine, Dissertation on First Principles of Government, 1795
“Those who cast the votes decide nothing, those who count the votes decide everything” – Joseph Stalin
“The first stage of fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merge of State and corporate power” – Benito Mussolini
- Abstract
Are India’s election results an accurate reflection of the will of the people? Or is it possible that the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) that are deployed in large numbers in India’s elections can be manipulated to subvert the voters’ intent? If that is the case, it would be a serious matter, because that would reduce India’s democracy, of which most Indians are so proud, to a charade. In this essay, we consider the ways in which EVMs could have been used to defraud the Indian voter in 2009. We emphasize that this essay is only about the possibility of fraud; it is beyond the scope of this note and will take further analysis and research to demonstrate actual fraud, if such existed.
- Introduction
A number of elections around the world have been condemned for various levels of fraud, misdemeanor and felony over the years. Undoubtedly, some of the criticism is well-deserved (for instance, the routine instances of 100% voter turnout in certain totalitarian countries). In some cases, it appears elections were “stolen” though manipulation of the vote tally, thus, in effect, perverting the “will of the people”, that cornerstone of a genuine democratic, republican regime.
… deleted
The center cannot hold
June 25, 2009
To appear on rediff.com. When it is published i will provide the full text:
The center cannot hold
The incidents in Lalgarh, West Bengal, have clarified that the writ of the Government of India does not hold sway in certain parts of the country. There is the dismissive story of how the last Mughal Emperor was sovereign of only a few square miles in Delhi by 1803, while the rest of the country was ruled by others. In all fairness, the Central Government today does control more territory than did Bahadur Shah.
… deleted
Beware of another oil shock
June 25, 2009
This was published in mint.com on Jun 26th:
http://www.livemint.com/2009/06/25215141/Beware-of-another-oil-shock.html
After hitting a low around $32 last December, the price of a barrel of oil has risen to the $70+ range. While the net effect of this will lead to renewed inflation and hit our wallets, what is the medium-term outlook for oil? All predictions are risky, but it is likely that prices will go right back up into the $100 range, resulting in many attendant problems for the world economy.
If you look at the really big picture, global energy futures are complex. On the one hand, the world probably will not run out of oil (and oil-like substances, including shale, tar sands, liquefied natural gas, liquefied coal, etc.) in the immediate future. Besides, according to the fundamental laws of physics, there is plenty of energy available in the current known reserves of various sources.
Research by Harvard University suggests, for instance, that the world’s conventional oil and gas alone contains 1,000 terawatt-years worth of energy; coal has another 5,000; the amount of solar energy falling on the earth every year is another 30,000; and our total current use worldwide is only 15 terawatt-years per year. The trick, of course, is in converting this potential into actual available energy.
On the other hand, there is increasing concern about greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.
As a result of conservation and greater efficiency, it is possible that energy demand growth may decline. Nevertheless, conventional energy sources will continue to predominate and renewables will not be a major factor even in twenty years’ time.
For instance, the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) International Energy Agency, in its World Energy Outlook 2008, sees “more of the same: a vision of a laisser-faire fossil-energy future.” It considers a reference scenario, which suggests that world energy usage will grow from 11,730 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe) to 17,010 mtoe in 2030, an increase of 45%.
An immediate implication of this reference scenario is that oil prices will rise again. The recent volatility of oil prices was unexpected (from $147 last July to $32). Oil prices plunged as the result of a recession-induced collapse in worldwide demand for goods, and thus for trade and shipping. But with oil plumbing new lows, many people went back to their profligate use of energy. The lessons of the last oil shock were not internalized, demand simply rose again.
Furthermore, it is quite clear that the producing countries have great incentives to ensure a much higher “normal” or “base” price, because they have become addicted to the windfall transfer of trillions of dollars to them, courtesy high prices. The breakeven prices required by members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), according to the Wall Street Journal Asia, are as follows: Iran $90, Bahrain $75, Oman $77, Saudi Arabia $49, Kuwait $33, Qatar $24, UAE $23.
While the actual cost at the well-head of oil may be lower (some experts say that it costs Saudi Arabia $1-$2 a barrel to dig oil out of the ground), the budgetary price that OPEC countries live by is much higher, and they will not be able to sustain their spending below a certain minimum price. Thus OPEC will observe production quotas until the desired pricing level is reached.
Observers such as the IEA suggest that the “natural” price of oil is around $85-$100 (in 2009 dollar terms), and that prices will reach this equilibrium level in the near future. The extreme volatility in prices, according to them, is acting as an inhibitor to investment in OPEC countries, and therefore most likely will lead to supply reductions in the long-run, as existing oil wells get exhausted.
They argue that the era of peak-oil has not arrived, contrary to Cassandra-like predictions (called “Hubbard’s Peak”). OPEC dismisses these concerns by saying “Resources are plentiful”. Oil company officials suggest that new oil supplies will continue to come online. Therefore, they do not see a fundamental constraint to oil availability from the supply side, although actual future capacity to deliver may be affected in future by failure to make investments today.
The world is not running short of oil or gas just yet, they say, and there is no oil bust. Incidentally, experts concur that OPEC members will dominate supply, and that non-OPEC (such as Russian) oil will have limited impact.
There is still a significant amount of recoverable oil, including extra-heavy oil, oil sands and oil shale, although the cost of recovery and of downstream products may be high. However, field-by-field declines in oil production are accelerating and barriers to upstream investment could constrain global supply. This is one of the arguments made about the ultimately harmful effects of oil prices being “too low”: major projects are being cancelled or put on hold.
Thus, barring some extraordinary breakthroughs in renewables, oil prices will go right back up to the $100 range soon as soon as demand recovers. We had better be prepared for more sticker-shock.
Swine flu: Policies behind pandemics
May 26, 2009
Published on mint on 5/26/09:
http://www.livemint.com/2009/05/26210249/Policies-behind-pandemics.html
It appears that the swine flu pandemic has been averted for the moment due to some quick thinking and action. The tenor of news reports has changed from panic to the smug feeling that it is under control. The World Health Organization and the American Centers for Disease Control probably deserve kudos for helping contain the problem. But as with previous episodes of disease, it may well recur: the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and avian flu have appeared more than once, as have Ebola and Legionnaire’s disease.
After the counting and other stories
May 21, 2009
Published on Rediff on May 17th
http://election.rediff.com/column/2009/may/17/loksabhapoll-after-the-counting-and-other-stories.htm
The great fabulist O V Vijayan had a collection of short stories – and some of the best were based on the Emergency — titled “After the hanging and other stories”. I could stretch the point and suggest that democracy was hanged in India, but perhaps that is too dramatic. Democracy was already a walking wounded in India. It had been a zombie for years, with paraphernalia such as elaborate elections, but it is merely form, not substance. What passes for a democracy in India is make-believe. It is, to paraphrase that old racist Churchill, about as real as the equator.
Nevertheless, it is a little sad to see a people committing collective suicide. For, this year’s election is a point of inflexion, coming as it does at a point when the unipolar world of the recent past is clearly unraveling. There is a power vacuum, as the dominant power of the previous century, the United States, is clearly suffering from imperial over-reach. Much as other imperial powers have done in the past, America is also realizing that there are limits to its power to compel others.
Since nature abhors a vacuum, a new power is stepping into it: China. They have amassed, as is well known, a war chest of $2 trillion. They are making noises about replacing the US dollar as the reserve currency, and economist Nouriel Roubini (known as ‘Dr. Doom’ for his Cassandra-like warnings about the economic crisis) wrote in the New York Times about the ‘almighty renminbi’ possibly replacing the almighty dollar.
This was India’s chance to also make it to the top, but of course it won’t with the UPA at the helm. The UPA and its coterie of leftists have a congenital inferiority complex, and they simply cannot imagine that India in fact has the potential to be one of the poles in a multi-polar world. Their imaginations have been stunted by all the dogma of non-alignment they have mouthed for decades – and they can only imagine being a pawn and a supplicant to some superior power.
The fact is that an unfettered India which defends its interests had a very good chance of being not only one among the top ten global powers in its economic, military and innovation capability. India, if it played its cards right, would have had a non-trivial chance of being Number One, the biggest power in the world. If the intrusive Indian government did not interfere, the native genius of Indians would naturally enable the nation to flourish, as was demonstrated in sector after sector after 1991. Indians have thrived despite the government, not because of it.
The problem the Americans face is that, despite their vast continental resources, they are a waning power, as they reached the zenith of their empire in the 1950s and 1960s, and it has been downhill ever since, except for a brief moment when they became the sole hyperpower. The Chinese, on their part, have tremendous problems because, despite the acknowledged entrepreneurial capacities of its citizens, Chinese history shows that it can only do well when there is a strong imperial government. Eventually, the Communist dictatorship will collapse.
India would have had a chance, but not with the UPA in power. An old gentleman, whom I have no reason to disbelieve, once told me of an incident with a Communist leader in Kerala, who opposed prohibition. In a private conversation, this person questioned the minister about the obvious fact that the consumption of liquor by men was impoverishing their families and preventing them from rising up to the middle class. Whereupon the leader told him, in effect: “We don’t want to end poverty. If there is no poverty, who needs us?” This accurately reflects the UPA’s beliefs as well. Their slogans will have no takers unless there is a large, hopeless underclass.
The UPA has demonstrated that it can only think of India as a vassal state throughout the last five years of craven behavior towards the US (“India loves you, Mr. Bush”, said the PM). The opaque manner in which the nuclear deal was rammed through was preposterous. India will pay tens of billions of dollars for nuclear fission reactors from the US and its allies, and will go into ‘cap, rollback and eliminate’ mode as it is blackmailed into the NPT, CTBT and FMCT. In the meantime, the Americans are giving billions to the Pakistanis, in effect supporting their new plutonium reactors, as reported by MSNBC on May 15th (“Pakistan expanding its nuclear capability”) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30648446/
It would be ironic if the Americans are taking the very same billions coming from India and giving those to the Pakistanis. That would be, as Karl Marx said, history repeating itself as tragedy: British imperialists, it may be remembered, coerced money from Indians to build the infrastructure to oppress Indians.
The energy issue is just one of many in which the UPA has not looked after India’s interests. Consider China – now that energy prices have fallen, the Chinese have locked up long-term contracts for oil and gas by waving their bankroll around, in places like Venezuela, Russia, and Angola. The UPA has done nothing, apparently complacent that Uncle Sam will ride to the rescue with uranium. The UPA couldn’t even get Bangladeshi or Myanmarese gas, which the Chinese snatched up. That is nothing short of criminal.
In fact there are several reasons why the last five years of UPA rule have been disastrous. I am reminded of Ronald Reagan’s famous jibe: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Absolutely not, in area after area:
- Economy: because of disastrous populist policies, the budget deficit is around 13-15%, one of the highest in the world. Inflation of up to 12% has permanently pushed up the prices of most essential goods by a factor of 1.5 to 3x, and it will return with a vengeance because of the high deficit
- Foreign Policy: India’s ‘near-abroad’ is a disaster, as India’s sphere of influence has shrunk, and China’s has grown. Nepal is now controlled by friends of China; Sri Lanka is massacring Tamils, and has leased the Hambantota naval base to China; terrorist infiltration via Bangladesh and Nepal continues apace; the Pakistani Taliban are only some 200 kilometers from Delhi
- Security: Terrorists attack Indian cities at will; the invasion of Mumbai has already been forgotten by the UPA, which only has a long memory when certain privileged people are killed
- Corruption and Money-laundering: Gigantic amounts of money appear to be stashed away in numbered Swiss accounts – enough to pay off the national debt; the ill-gotten gains of the Italian Quattrochi have tacitly been given to him. This makes the already corrupt Indian system even worse
- Opaqueness: The UPA lied continuously to the Indian people and Parliament about the details of the nuclear accord, which turns out to be far less attractive than was advertized; the libel, perjury and defamation by certain NGOs about Gujarat have gone completely unpunished; and the huge bags-of-cash-for-votes scandal has been swept under the carpet.
The Indian voter is not stupid, and is exquisitely sensitive to things that affect his wallet. Therefore it is a little surprising that the average voter drank the UPA’s Kool-Aid.
There is, of course, the possibility that the average voter did not in fact fall for the UPA’s charms, and that this election was subject to massive fraud. I am talking about Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). Having spent many years in the high-tech world, I do not trust computers, especially embedded systems. Researchers in the US have shown how easy it is to break into EVMs, which is why they have not adopted them. They have realized how important it is to have a paper audit trail, hanging chads and all.
It would not be extraordinarily difficult to install a program with a Trojan Horse in it. To outward appearances and to ordinary testing, the program would appear normal. However, when it is fed a sequence of keystrokes by the agent of the party committing the fraud, the Trojan Horse wakes up, and then, regardless of what buttons the voter actually presses, it can assign a certain (non-suspicious-looking) percentage (i.e. not 90% but, say 45%) to the preferred party. The Trojan Horse can even be programmed to quietly delete itself when the voting is over. Nobody would know any better, as there is no paper trail.
Let me emphasize that I do not have any evidence that this happened in 2009, but it is worth investigating. There were too many surprising – almost miraculous – victories by certain candidates whom the casual observer would have written off. By Occam’s razor, the simplest explanation is fraud. I would like to note in passing that in 2004, expecting the NDA to commit fraud, an Indian Communist in the US had prepared a suit alleging EVM fraud. Therefore it is clear that the thought has occurred to various people that there could be EVM fraud.
In any case, the 2009 elections, I repeat, were an inflexion point or a tipping point, which will mark the rapid decline of India. Looking back, historians will identify this election as the precise moment that India as a nation and a civilization began unraveling. It is fairly likely that India would have become a dismembered state by 2025, thus fulfilling a long-felt need in certain hostile quarters – one in which both the Communists and the West see eye to eye – to break up India.
Endgame and tragedy in Sri Lanka
May 21, 2009
Published by the Pioneer on May 4:
http://www.dailypioneer.com/173668/Triumph-and-tragedy-in-Sri-Lanka.html
The news and the images coming out of Sri Lanka are horrendous: 100,000 Tamil civilians trapped on a tiny beach, where cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are making their last stand . The LTTE are using the civilians as shields (according to the Sri Lankan government); and government troops have shelled hospitals and killed thousands of non-combatants this year (according to The Economist quoting human-rights groups and the UNHCR).
The photographs of long-suffering Tamil refugees fleeing the war with nothing more than the clothes on their backs remind us of the curse of the Indian subcontinent: religion- and ethnicity-based conflict, generally leading to the genocide of Hindus. We saw this in 1947 and 1971. Millions of Hindus were ethnically cleansed from Pakistan and Bangladesh then, and the handful remaining are now fleeing newly-Talibanized territories; now they are being driven out of Sri Lanka’s Jaffna and the Eastern Provinces at the fag-end of a brutal civil war.
The LTTE certainly did not expect to fade into oblivion, their leader Velupillai Prabhakaran a fugitive. Only a couple of years ago, the Tigers were rampant, scoring victories on land and sea, and terrorizing Colombo with their makeshift air force. What turned things around? Probably much covert aid from governments, including India’s, wary of the Tigers’ penchant for redrawing boundaries by force (and China’s, fishing in troubled waters).
That, and internal dissension. The turning point was the defection in 2004 of ‘Colonel’ Karuna Amman, formerly LTTE commander in the Eastern Province. The LTTE ran a tight ship, and defectors generally were liquidated, but Karuna – as reported by the Wall Street Journal last year — thrived, and has become a minister, although he is at loggerheads with his erstwhile protégé and now-Chief Minister of the Eastern Province, Pillaiyan.
After sama (negotiations) and dana (give-aways) failed, bheda (creating dissent) worked, and now the Sri Lankans are applying the last of the four tactics of classical Indian stagecraft, danda (punishment). This is an object lesson for India’s pusillanimous politicians who advocate sweet-talk and appeasement of terrorists; and for Obamistas, advocating land-for-peace (India’s land, that is, to be given to Pakistan, so that the ISI would leave the Americans in peace). Pandering does not work, the iron fist does. Crush the terrorists first, then talk to real people.
There is a startling silence in India about the plight of the Sri Lankan Tamils. This has to do with two factors: one is that most of the shrieking banshees in the human-misery cottage-industry do not care about the human rights of Hindus, and Sri Lankan Tamils are about 85% Hindu. Second is that the killing of Rajiv Gandhi by the LTTE, and the incessant noise by the DMK in their favor has genuinely turned off many people. The LTTE’s idea of its Tamil Eelam (they have taken down the maps on their website showing this) consists of north and eastern Lanka, all of Tamil Nadu and Kerala and parts of Karnataka and Andhra: in other words, most of South India. This is comparable to the jihadi wet-dream of a ‘Mughalistan’ consisting of most of North India.
It further appears that this ‘Eelam’ was meant to be a Christian-stan, in fearsome symmetry with ‘Mughalistan’. Let us note in passing that at Partition, missionaries had demanded a Christian-stan consisting of the Northeast, tribal areas of the Central Provinces (Chota Nagpur), and Travancore. Clearly, they have not given up the idea of territorial gains through any means.
The church has a well-known modus operandi. In Rwanda, the church fomented genocide by dividing Hutus and Tutsis – who, to the casual observer, and to the geneticist, appear identical – through claiming that the former were short and dark, and the latter were tall and fair, and that Tutsis were oppressing Hutus. Several Christian godmen and godwomen have been convicted of crimes against humanity for their direct role in massacres of Tutsis.
In India too, the church has fabricated a divide between the alleged ‘Aryans’ and ‘Dravidians’ – tall and fair vs. short and dark, oppressor, oppressed, sound familiar? – which was initially the handiwork of a white padre named Caldwell. It remains an interesting but little-known fact that churchman Max Mueller who invented the entire ‘Aryan’ fiction recanted in later years, admitting he was wrong.
The church has had a dubious role in Sri Lanka too. It is surely curious that most of the famous cadres of the LTTE are Christians (examples include Prabhakaran himself who is a Methodist, Anton Balasingham, the suicide-bomber Dhanu who killed Gandhi). Senior non-Christians in the LTTE, remarkably, have been captured, have died in battle, or been liquidated.
And the LTTE has wiped out all other groups representing the Tamil cause. The very ruthlessness of the LTTE is an indicator of its Semitic thought-process. Buddhists and Hindus have always co-existed peacefully all over Asia – in India, Indonesia, Afghanistan, etc. – until West Asian ideologies appeared. The church, and the LTTE, had no use for moderates or for negotiation.
There is another party with ill-intent in all this: China. As part of their ‘string of pearls’ strategy, they previously supported violent Communist insurgents, but these were wiped out by the Sri Lankan government. Now the Chinese are supplying heavy equipment, including planes and artillery to the army. Their likely objective: the prized deep-water port of Trincomalee, which would help them control shipping in the Indian Ocean, not to mention be a serious problem for India in its own backyard.
But with the apparent demise of the LTTE, the Sri Lankan government should be able to negotiate from a position of strength. Tamils can see that militancy and terrorism has achieved nothing but catastrophe for them. The Sinhalese, if they are wise, will deal magnanimously with their Tamil fellow-countrymen and reconcile with them. They must recognize that Tamils have genuine grievances arising from bumiputra-style discrimination against them for decades. They need to appreciate that the LTTE are not synonymous with Tamils. Then Sri Lanka can become the success story of the subcontinent with its superior health and education record.
My dilemma with Shashi Tharoor
May 21, 2009
Posted on rediff on Apr 13th (jallianwallah day):
http://election.rediff.com/column/2009/apr/13/my-dilemma-with-shashi-tharoor.htm
Triage as winning strategy for the BJP
May 21, 2009
Published on rediff on April 8th
http://election.rediff.com/column/2009/apr/08/-a-winning-strategy-for-the-bjp.htm
The concept of triage first arose in field hospitals, where doctors had to decide what to do with large numbers of war wounded and very limited resources. Over time, they developed an empirical method of optimization, by dividing up incoming patients into three groups: those who were hopeless, those who could wait for attention, and those who could only be saved if they got immediate care.
The medical staff would pursue appropriate methods with each of these groups. The hopeless cases they would give painkillers to, make them comfort, and let them die in peace. Those who were lightly wounded they would give first aid to and prepare them for further care, not immediately, but as soon as feasible. The last group, for whom emergency surgery could mean the difference between life and death, they would prioritize and operate on immediately.
This rough-and-ready method has been proved to be rational, in a utilitarian way – it provides the maximum benefit to the maximum number of people. Many companies have also adapted this principle, because it turns out that there is a natural ordering in rough triads – one third of the people agree with an arguable decision, a third oppose it, and another third can be convinced either way.
UPA’s report card on the economy: D-
May 21, 2009
http://business.rediff.com/column/2009/mar/25/upa-will-cost-india-economic-superstardom.htm
The current global crisis is potentially an inflection point that marks the transition from an Anglo-American dominance to an Asian dominance in world economic affairs. Certainly, there is a startling turnaround in the fact that China holds $2 trillion in US Treasury securities and therefore lectures the Americans about running their economy – it feels like only yesterday when the shoe was on the other foot. Another indicator is China’s aggressive fire-sale purchases of commodities, including oil, copper, iron ore etc. from all over the world. “Have money, will buy” is their mantra.
But where is India in this “Asian century”? Alas, India has once again fumbled a golden opportunity to rise to economic superstardom. Given the profligate spending of the UPA and its self-proclaimed galaxy of economic geniuses, India now sports perhaps the highest deficit of any country: about 13%, a far cry from the 5% that the UPA has been promising us all along. Yet again, the Congress has successfully brought India back to the verge of the “Nehruvian Rate of Growth” of 2-3%, which is an economic crime against humanity, imposing abject poverty on 250 million people. After sixty years of Congress misrule, India has most of the world’s poor people, and some of the worst health and nutrition indicators, even worse than much poorer sub-Saharan Africa (see the NYTImes “As Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/world/asia/13malnutrition.html?_r=2&ref=world ). This is truly a crime and a national shame.
On diplomatic theater and strategic depth
May 21, 2009
Published by rediff at http://news.rediff.com/column/2009/mar/10/guest-not-cricket-just-the-isi-gaining-strategic-depth.htm
Not cricket, just the ISI gaining strategic depth
Rajeev Srinivasan
Sri Lankan cricketers were shot at, and injured, by a group of young men in Lahore. Meanwhile, the Pakistani state signed a treaty with a fundamentalist group in the Swat region to impose sharia on the area. The real ruling power in Pakistan, the spy agency ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), is putting on a bit of a show in the first instance, and erasing the Durand Line (which anyway expired in 1993 according to the 100-year-old Afghan-British treaty) in the second instance.
