Future Strategic Scenario for the Indian Subcontinent -II

[Samudragupta]

Bangladesh for the first time has left Pakistan behind in exports as the former has surpassed an unprecedented mark of $24.3 billion during last fiscal year as compared to $23.6 billion figures registered on account of Pakistan's exports.

Exports of Dhaka, which remained historically lesser than the same of Pakistan, have now recorded the jump this year despite the challenges like inflation in the major importing market of Europe and other domestic issues. Though the total export figure of Bangladesh was still lesser than its fixed target of over $26 billion, it continued growth as compared to Pakistan's exports, which declined by 4.71 per cent, as compared to last year's figure of $24.8 billion. On the other hand, Dhaka succeeded to cross previous figure of $22.92 billion to $24.3 billion this year.

Both countries are largely based on textile exports and whenever there is a change in demand, supply and price of textile made ups in international market, total exports of the two countries accordingly.

According to experts, Bangladesh, comparatively relying more on textile garments, is enjoying the zero rated facility and tariff concession in global market specially EU because of its status as Least Developed Country (LDC).

On the other hand, Pakistani products are facing high duties in the said markets. However, despite having at least 40 per cent share of non-textile item, Pakistani exports could not maintain the increasing trend after July to June 2010-2011 when Islamabad had pushed its exports from $19.3 billion to $24.8 billion with the increase of over $5 billion.

During 2008-2009, 2009-2010, 2010-2011, Dhaka's exports were recorded as $15.54 billion, $16.17 billion and $22.982 billion respectively. On the other hand, Pakistani exports during the said financial years were $17.69 billion, $19.29 billion and $24.81 billion, respectively showing an increase of 2 to 3 billion over the exports recorded by formerly East Pakistan.

However, Bangladesh's exports rose 5.9 per cent in the year ended June despite demand for garments from key Western markets remained waned. But the fresh increase was still nearly 8.4 per cent short of a target of $26.5 billion originally set by Dhaka.

Pakistan, which had also fixed export target of $26 billion keeping in view last year's growth, remained much far away from the target. Bangladesh's economy and exports have been boosted recently by a dramatic shift in global garment orders from China to lower-cost Bangladesh. Ready made garment sales for the fiscal year rose 6.56 per cent from a year ago to $19 billion.

Bangladesh's low labour costs have helped it join the global supply chain for low-end clothing, manufacturing garments for international brands.

Sources at Ministry of Commerce, however presented the excuses of energy crisis, poor law and order situation and inflation in major importing markets for the declining trend in exports of the country. They are optimistic that Pakistani exports especially textile would enjoy a considerable growth after the approval of Unilateral Tariff Concession Package offered by EU.

Besides, the GSP and GSP Plus facility, Pakistan is likely to get in EU by January 2014, could also give a boost to over all exports.

With an entrenched Islamism in the social level and covert support of the state Bangladesh will be proved to be much sophisticated challenge to handle for India than Pakistan probably ever was....the inclusion of Americans/Chinese in the matter is making it much more complex....It will be disaster if Bangladesh is allowed to be the fulcrum of the socio-economic connectivity joining the NE and East Indian states....the mercurial relationship between Kolkata(MB) and Delhi is partly in response to this indifference of the GOI in pushing for this project

[brihaspati]

^^^I have been shouting about this for quite a while. There is a financier lobby, part of them Bengal-ee Calcutta-urbanite origin [perhaps in the glorious tradition of comprador dalaal-ships that flourished there in the Brit period] whose interests coincide with [or they realize that it will help biz/profits if they align with the political gamers in Delhi], that push for this.

The Islamist+BNP section for BD ruling circles/elite have long semi-openly advocated for the "connectivity" from BD to NE India, with the declared objective of making BD the centre of gravity for whole of NE India. They have openly suggested that BD should try its best to "integrate" more on the eastern side, while restricting the western-side flow, and eventually detach the NE into its own territorial expansion zone. This was their justification, which once slipped out from a BNP spokesperson on a TV interview - that more the separatist tendencies in NE the better for BD, and that it was in the strategic interests of BD to enocurage insurgencies like ULFA. He was lamenting the handing over of a section of ULFA leadership to India.

In this there is of course Chinese encouragement, and others would also be involved.

BD state machinery is not the mincority within AL or the Rabindrasangeet singing "culture"-minded intelligentsia of the Dhaka - that talks of balancing interests with "all" neighbours. The underlying state machinery, its coercive wings - the army or the paramilitary forces, and the imam-mullah institutional networks - and the majority sentiment against "Hindu" India, is what determines what the long term evolution of BD was and will be.

The core driving force of BD society - is Islamic separatism, aimed primarily at appropriating more land, preferably at the expense of non-Muslims. After the Paki experiment of UK+USA has run aground in controlling the subcontinent, BD provides a better ultimate option. It can be cast as almost-secular by highlighting its more liberal portions of BD elite, its anti-Pak struggles, and productivity potential more aligned to current technological trends at IT/higher education level [in which there are continuities with the neighbouring ethnicties of Indian Bengal].

This would be a more face-saving strategy and political investment in constructing a more apparently "moderate", yet Islamist at its core - and hence forever looking at the west through its love-hate dependence relations, as a natural ally against the non-Christian non-Muslim. Its part of the same reconstructions of Islamism that is going on throughout ME for a new generation of re-constructed Islamist control - all prompted by a new generation of western strategist thinking.

[devesh]

http://in.news.yahoo.com/thousands-flee ... 02922.html

Thousands flee violence in Assam, 19 killed

Thousands of people have fled their homes in Assam after fighting between indigenous tribes and Muslim settlers killed at least 19 people, wounded many more, and left villages in flames, police said on Monday.

Police were forced to fire warning shots to disperse armed groups that were moving between jungle hamlets on Monday, setting fire to bamboo houses, police and aid workers in the area told Reuters. Soldiers and central paramilitary forces were patrolling remote districts.

"We saw miscreants burning down village after village on Monday," said a senior police officer who asked not to be identified. "It's total madness going on here. People have lost their senses."
S.N. Singh, Assam's inspector general of police, told Reuters he had ordered his men to shoot at gangs on the streets on sight after a dawn-to-dusk curfew was imposed to stop the violence spreading.

Ringed by China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Bhutan, India's northeast is home to more than 200 ethnic and tribal groups and has been racked by separatist revolts since India's independence from Britain in 1947.
In recent years, Hindu and Christian tribes (?!?! so, the Hindu fight needs to be validated by == with Christians?!?! without that validation, I guess, it's called saffron terror) have begun to give vent to strong anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment against Bangladeshi settlers.

VIOLENCE TRIGGERED BY KILLINGS

The latest wave of violence was sparked on Friday night when unidentified men killed four youths in the state's Bodo tribe-dominated Kokrajhar district near the borders of Bangladesh and Bhutan, police and district officials said.
In retaliation, armed Bodos attacked Muslims, suspecting them to be behind the killings.
About 50,000 villagers have fled their homes and taken shelter in relief camps out of fear since then, said Donald Gilfellon, a senior civil servant in the Kokajhar dristrict, adding that 37 camps had been set up to help the refugees and that more would be opened if needed.
"Schools and government buildings are getting over-crowded. More and more people are coming, we have given up counting," said another district civil servant, who requested not to be named.

Police said unidentified groups had fired indiscriminately from automatic weapons in populated areas over the weekend. On Sunday, the body of a six-month-old child was found by villagers on a river bank along with the body of a woman, police said.
On Monday afternoon, hundreds of people carrying spears squatted on the railway line linking Assam's capital Guwahati to New Delhi. Singh said they had stopped an express train for several hours, demanding that the authorities release several men detained in connection with the killings of the four youths.
Businesses, offices and schools remained closed on Monday, and streets were deserted in Kokrajhar town as heavily armed security men patrolled on foot and in mine-proof vehicles.
"We can't think of going back home. Our village is vulnerable to attacks and the government failed to give us protection," resident Hiranya Musaharay said by phone from Kokrajhar town where he was staying with relatives.

Jai Ho! Welcome to the glorious future of Bharat! More such episodes to be aired in the coming years....yes, don't you feel it!!! we are firmly on the path to becoming a superpower with 10% growth rate.

[brihaspati]

Aligarh Muslim university's West Bengal-Murshidabad campus finally probably is set to get going - as far as initial/foundational/construction work is concerned. What should be most revealing is that INC local boss (people can enquire as to background) raised the stakes by shouting about the delay - and TMC boss played counter - but both have been forced to expedite the process. That says a lot about what the demographics of Murshidabad implies in terms of electoral, and hence wider socio-economic deominance over the district.

What Atulya Ghosh et al did a lot to thwart at the time of the Partition, preventing the district from being handed over to ML, has taken just 60 years to undo. Those who laugh at assessment of the strength of mullahcracy and its determination for territorial expansion and religious consolidation, and its persistence, should just remind themselves of the above sentence - once daily if possible.

[brihaspati]

The sarkari Afghan regime, the be-sarkari Afghan Taleb regime, Paki Talebjabis, Amir khans - all seem to be contributing to an intensification of conflict slowly and surely moving up back again in parallel to Swat Valley, into Kunar and Nurestan. The action in the north - seems to be getting closer in its reach to the Peshawar Pindi sector, and this is where Paki strategy for the 2012-14 phase is aimed at. Afghanistan is a smokescreen. Its J&K which is the real target.

[devesh]

There seems to be a coordinated mobilization on the Eastern front. Western media is also doing the needful.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2 ... e?page=0,1

Local Bloodshed, Global Headache

Let's face it: Not too many people outside of Southeast Asia have been paying attention to the sectarian conflict in Burma. For much of the world, Burma (also known as Myanmar) is a remote and somewhat mysterious country, and it's been prey to internecine squabbles for about as long as anyone can remember. (As a matter of fact, its people have been at war with themselves for even longer than the Afghans.)

So it's possible to understand, if not to excuse, the world's relative ignorance of the bitter feud in Arakan state, where the Muslim Rohingya and the Buddhist Rakhine have been at each other's throats since a Buddhist woman was raped and killed there on May 28. The Rakhine blamed it on the Rohingya, triggering violence that subsequently prompted the government to declare martial law. Dozens of people have been killed, and some 90,000 have been transformed into refugees.

Outsiders didn't prompt this violence by meddling in Burma's internal affairs. As a matter of fact, lately other countries have been rewarding the government there for its efforts to allow a bit more democracy. The United States, for example, recently suspended financial sanctions it imposed on Burma's brutal military dictatorship years ago. By contrast, Western countries have had notably little to say on the bloodshed in Arakan.

They may not be able to afford the luxury of ignorance much longer. That's because the violence in Burma is already showing up on the radar screen of the world's Muslims. Indignant believers from Turkey to Indonesia have been taking to social media to denounce the treatment of the Rohingya. (The Pakistanis have been particularly zealous.) The reactions have ranged from mournful and relatively sober analysis to downright hysteria. (One astute Pakistani journalist, for example, has spotted photos from entirely different parts of the world being passed off as examples of "ethnic cleansing" in Burma.)

There is a big grain of truth to many of these stories, though. The Rohingyas have long suffered from their status as one of the most downtrodden groups in a benighted country. Many Burmese don't even acknowledge them as citizens; even members of the pro-democracy opposition have derided them as illegal immigrants (even though there's evidence that many of them have lived there for generations). In one of the ugliest recent manifestations of ethnic Burman chauvinism, Buddhist monks have called upon the population to shun association with the Rohingya. There have even been reports of monks blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid to Rohingya areas.

A United Nations report published last December noted that the Burmese authorities have long curtailed Rohingyas' civil rights, up to and including freedom of movement. A few weeks ago, President Thein Sein suggested that the best "solution" to the Rohingya issue would be to deport all 800,000 of them: "We will send them away if any third country would accept them."

Akbar Ahmed, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., says that such talk by members of Burma's government justifies accusations that anti-Rohingya pogroms constitute "slow-motion genocide." Even though the number of Rohingya killed in the latest violence remains relatively small (with the total number of dead estimated at around 80), he cites the original U.N. definition of genocide that encompasses cultural and economic destruction as well as wholesale physical annihilation. A few years ago, a Burmese diplomat in Hong Kong referred to the Rohingya as "uglier than ogres" -- evidence, Ahmed says, of a "classic relationship between a powerful dominant ethnic group and a minority that is the focus of ethnic hatred."

For many members of the global ummah, this latest story of the persecution of innocent Muslims slots neatly into earlier narratives about victimized Palestinians, Bosnians, Kashmiris, Iraqis, and Afghans. (Never mind, as Ahmed points out, that two of Burma's Muslim neighbors, Bangladesh and Malaysia, have also treated Rohingya boat people fleeing to their shores with casual viciousness.) The British-based Quilliam Foundation, a self-described counter-terrorism think tank, has already warned of the risk that "the Rohingya people and their cause could be exploited by extreme Islamists and nationalists to justify a violent response that would only escalate the crisis." All this, the group notes, is likely to fuel renewed talk of an alleged "global war on Islam."

Such warnings cannot be dismissed out of hand. On July 20, the Afghan Taliban issued a statement on the situation in Burma that began this way: "The Muslims of Burma have been facing such oppression and savagery for the past two months never previously witnessed in the history of mankind." On July 21, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blasted Western countries for ignoring the plight of the Rohingya: "The obvious manifestation of the false assertions of the West on ethics and human rights is its silence over killing of thousands of people in Myanmar." Hezbollah issued a statement defending the Rohingya two days later. The Tehrik-i-Taliban, one of Pakistan's leading jihadi groups, chimed in soon afterwards.

So far there are no serious indications that the Rohingya are connected with global extremist movements, and I, for one, find it highly unlikely that we can expect to see foreign terrorists flocking to Arakan anytime soon. But it's certainly true that the horrible treatment of this particular minority group gives Islamist radicals a perfect propaganda opportunity that they are already doing their best to exploit.

The countries of the West can hardly be expected to solve the Rohingya crisis from without. But it's time for the Americans, the Europeans, and the Australians to press the Burmese government much harder to behave according to international norms for the treatment of ethnic minorities. That goes for Burma's harsh treatment of other restive groups, such as the Kachin (many of whom are Christians). Yes, this is a human rights issue, not a religious one. And let's keep it that way.

the movement has begun to delegitimize any resistance to Islamic pressure tactics and brand such resistance as "fascist"/"xenophobic"/"human rights violation".

I see a broad "Dharmik" coalition as one of the possibilities in the future. the non-Abrahamics of SE Asia will face the same genocidal tactics that India has faced in the past and continues to face. perhaps, it is time to start exploring the Eastern front with more seriousness.

[brihaspati]

The Assam corridor is not quietening. Admin claiming that there are too many "arms" around - which has to be looked into "later". So there will be an attempt to disarm the Bodos - and hence a pressure on the Bodos to change religion into one that becomes untouchable. Given the demographic situation with one party to the conflict tagged with BD, this implies only one direction out of two remains open.

[devesh]

^^^
"only one direction" >> Islam?!

[prahaar]

No, only LOVE.

[Atri]

No, only LOVE.

+1

https://twitter.com/KiranKS/status/228863443426484224

[brihaspati]

It is important to keep a track on and research BD political and intelligentsia statements or hints as to why destablizing NE India is in BD interest. The reactions within some manifestations of Indian "Islamism" should be chacked against BD connections, as well as the pan Islamic confrontational surge taht i sgoing on all along the subcontinental arc. From Malaysia, southern Thailand, Myanmar into NE India. The pattern is significant.

The current so-called rumour based cleanisng of NE-erners from cities like Hyderabad is a pointer in this direction.

[ramana]

x-post...

FiveBooks Interviews :
Norman Davies on Europe’s Vanished States

Its worth reading in full and apply similar lessons learned to Indian sub-continent.


If any one is a subscriber please get full text in one piece.


Thanks, ramana

[ramana]

OK Here it is:

The rise of China means the study of its history is suddenly in vogue. But, says the historian, there’s as much to learn, if not more, from looking at states that have disappeared
Will you begin by telling us about your new book, and what these “vanished kingdoms” are?
The topic is Europe’s extinct states. Not just kingdoms but empires, republics – polities of any sort which have ceased to exist. Which is a normal phenomenon. States always collapse and disappear, sometimes very quickly, sometimes after centuries or millennia, but they have a finite term in any part of the world. It’s just a given of human institutions. Sooner or later they fall apart and are replaced by something else. The key quotation is from Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He says, “The body politic, like the body of a man, begins to die as soon as it is born. It contains the seeds of its own destruction.” Brilliant. Absolutely spot on.
People who have their eye on short-term, contemporary events and the world around us tend to forget this. I sometimes think they imagine the world politic to be a chessboard, where you play games, have a crisis, and then you put all the pieces back and have another game. Well it’s not like that. You can have a chessboard, you have players who are either pawns or kings or whatever, but the players themselves are always changing.
In the last 20 years, four or five European states have vanished, depending on how you deal with Yugoslavia. The German Democratic Republic was merged into Germany. The Soviet Union – the biggest state in the world, with the biggest nuclear arsenal – went up in smoke. Czechoslovakia dissolved by mutual consent – the two parties decided to have a velvet divorce. And then the Federation of Yugoslavia exploded in slow motion – bits flew off and continued to fly off until there was nothing left, apart from Serbia.
My book traces the phenomenon from fifth century Visigoths in Aquitaine to the Soviet Union. I didn’t go back to the Roman Empire, although it is obviously one of them. So there’s a big spread of time. I deliberately chose case studies from each end of Europe – north, south, west, centre – including smaller examples which tend to get left behind in general narratives.
Why do they get left behind? Why are they forgotten?
This is a crucial question. You’ve heard the saying that “history is written by the victors”. It is very true. My very first chapter is about the Visigoths in Gaul, an even bigger kingdom than the Franks. It looked, objectively, at the beginning of the sixth century, that the Visigoths would be the dominant power in post-Roman Gaul. But there was a battle, and Clovis the Frank killed Alaric the Visigoth. And the history of post-Roman Gaul has been written by post-Roman Franks, and most recently by the French, who identify with the Franks. Nobody identifies with the Visigoths. Clovis has a great mausoleum in Saint Denis, and nobody even knows where the tomb of Alaric the Visigoth may be. Apart from all sorts of legends and echoes which surface, of the Dan Brown variety, there’s very little to show for a century of the Visigoths being the very first barbarian kingdom in the Western Roman Empire.
If these kingdoms are swept under the rug of history, what can we learn by going back and remembering them, researching their history as you do?
The main thing is that mainstream history – the subjects which we concentrate on in schools, in television programmes and influential books – is driven by a number of factors, one of which is power politics. The powers of today wish to trace their rise and the origins of their influence. But also, historians are drawn to power. China, which was neglected for ages, becomes a major player on the world stage, and everybody now wants to learn about the history of China. When I was a student at Oxford – a long time ago – there was no course on Chinese history. It didn’t exist. And it’s not just powerful states, it’s powerful issues. It might be feminism or slavery – things which were missing but are now contemporary issues. They drive a lot of history writing.
Are you disparaging this tendency? Because that seems to suggest that if a polity has vanished it has less merit for the present day.
Well, I complain about the American style that nothing succeeds like success. That’s a very primitive way of looking at history, as between winners and losers. Sure, there are crackpot rickety states, but who’s interested in them? What they are really interested in is the successful cultures, the big civilisations, the mighty powers and so on. That gives a very false view of the panorama of the past. The past is full of everything. Great powers, obscure powers – which may have other achievements to their name. There are powers which last for centuries, but I found a republic which lasted for one day.
Goodness me. Which day?
March 15, 1939. The republic of Subcarpathian Ruthenia. It was the day that Hitler marched into Prague. The Germans swallowed Bohemia and Moravia, formed a protectorate and Slovakia became a client statelet of the Reich. And the third part of Czechoslovakia, this Subcarpathian Ruthenia, was left with nobody to tell it what to do. So it declared its independence at around 10 o’clock in the morning. And by the evening the Hungarian army arrived and swallowed it up. Fortunately there was a British travel writer – or someone posing as such – there at the time who described all this.
What do we learn from the losers, to simplify my original question?
Well, what do we mean by the losers? Even the mightiest of states eventually decline and die, like human beings. There are some states which are powerful, mighty and impressive for a time. Prussia was, of course, one of the biggest beasts. Or Poland-Lithuania is a key example – it was the biggest state in Europe for a period. And then it develops internal diseases and is swallowed up by its neighbours. The kingdom of Poland was certainly a loser by the end, but you can’t define it as a loser state.
So we should think of it in terms of ebb and flow, not winner and loser?
Precisely. Rise and fall. These are biographies, life stories, of states. There’s always a birth, a struggle for existence. Some candidates fall by the wayside before they really establish themselves, some flourish, some go on for millennia. But they all come to an end.
The classic book on all this, which isn’t on my list, is Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This was the guidebook, if you like, to long-term history – that there are these enormously powerful, extensive empires which exude an air of immortality and yet which all, sooner or later, come to an end. At the end of the Roman Empire, in the Byzantine period, the empire shrinks and shrinks until it consists of one city, Constantinople, and the Ottoman Turks can encircle it. There’s a final siege and the Turks go over the wall. The last emperor – number 156 or whatever – disappears in the fray, is killed, and that’s the end of the empire. This is, if you like, the guidebook to this story, to exactly what Rousseau is saying. No matter how powerful they may look, the time will come, as in the lives of men and women, when they die. It’s not a topic that people are eagerly looking at.
So let’s look at it deeper. Your first book is The Last King of Poland.
Well, I mentioned the Commonwealth of Lithuania and Poland. And because I have written about Poland so often, I decided in my new book to write about just one half of it, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, whose origins were separate from Poland and which, in the period before it joined with Poland, stretched all the way from the Black Sea, where Odessa now is, to the Baltic. This is in the 14th and 15th centuries. The Grand Dukes of Lithuania by marriage take over the kingdom of Poland. And because they’re kings, the story is usually told from the Polish angle. All the history books talk about the partitions of Poland in the 18th century. Well, it was the partition of the Commonwealth of Poland and Lithuania. And the monarchs – until it became elective – were Lithuanians who took over Poland. Jogaila became the King of Poland but he was a Lithuanian. I’m sure he couldn’t speak a word of Polish when he started. Vytautus the Great, who was his cousin, staged a great Lithuanian campaign to resist the merger with Poland, but it’s a long story and goes on until the end of the 18th century.
The Last King of Poland, Adam Zamoyski’s biography of Stanislaw-August Poniatowski, is the book I would recommend for people to get a feel for it. Everyone says he was King of Poland, but he came from Lithuania. He was born on a big estate in what is now Belarus. He was one of Catherine the Great’s many lovers, and he was raised to the throne through his many connections in Russia. The book is extremely well done, very well written. It shows the terrible dilemma he faced. He was a client of the Russian Empire who realised that his political masters, the Russians, wanted him to keep his country as a poor, unsuccessful, poorly educated, poorly organised shambles, because then they could exploit it. He was a big figure of the Enlightenment and a great educator. He attempted to reconstruct all the elements of a successful state in the teeth of opposition from his political masters and neighbours, namely the Russians.
What traces of Lithuanian identity remain in that part of the world today?
All the chapters in my book have three sections. One is a thumbnail portrait of somewhere in the present. In the case of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, it’s Lukashenko’s Belarus. Not many people know that Belarus was at the heart of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Tim Snyder wrote a wonderful book, which could easily be on this list, called The Reconstruction of Nations. It’s about how from the population of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, destroyed in 1795, there arose several modern nations: the Lithuanian national movement, based on the Lithuanian language; the Belarussian national movement; and, interestingly, the Polish national movement. [Józef] Pilsudski, Marshal of Poland and one of the biggest figures of Polish history in the 20th century, said he wasn’t a Pole. He came from Vilna – that is, Lithuania.
Is Lukashenko a Lithuanian too, then?
No, Lukashenko is not Lithuanian in the modern sense. He is, of course, a dictator, and he is trying to cobble together a view of Belarussian history which is separate from that of Russia. Their big danger is, of course, that they will be swallowed up by their dear friends across the border. So he’s doing very strange things with history, one of which is to emphasise that Belarus is the true heir of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, not Lithuania next door. Lithuania, of course, is appalled. They think the Grand Duchy was theirs, but Lukashenko’s people are saying no, it’s ours.
That’s very interesting. So these vanished kingdoms are being used by present-day states to affirm their identity in the face of possible assimilation. Do you think that Belarus will exist in 50 years?
I think it will. It’s an absolutely appalling story which I only touch on in the book, but Stalin killed virtually all the educated Belarussians. It was a small peasant country which had for 200 years been told that Belarussians are actually Russians, that their language was just a dialect of Russian, and that educated people spoke Russian. They were forcibly converted – by which I mean their priests were killed – to Russian orthodoxy. And then Stalin comes along. The first generation in the 1920s was allowed to learn the Belarussian language in school. There’s a brief generation of people – teachers, activists, professors – who promote Belarussian identity for the first time. Stalin shoots the lot of them.

What’s next on your list?
The next one is Prussia, which is another huge topic. Prussia is not one of the forgotten countries. It’s one of the kingdoms which was so powerful in its final phase, in the late 18th century to 1918, that memory of Hohenzollern Prussia, Bismarck and the creation of the German Empire is so recent and powerful that the memory of the earlier Prussia has all but been obliterated.
The book I recommend, Chris Clark’s Iron Kingdom, a history of Prussia, is an extremely good book about modern Prussia. But it doesn’t give any indication of the many things that came before it. Namely, that the original Prussians were not Germans – they were Balts like the Lithuanians. The medieval history of Prussia that brings them into recorded history is when the German Teutonic knights lead a crusade to Christianise Prussia. And they are so successful that they eradicate the local people, the local language and culture. It did survive long enough to be recorded.
The Teutonic state is 1224 until 1525. Then in come the Poles. The last Grand Master of the Teutonic knights, Albert, accepts Lutheranism. He’s been the Grand Master of a Catholic crusading order, and he sets himself up as secular Duke of Prussia and recognises the King of Poland as his suzerain. You’ve got quite a long period of Prussia and Poland being closely involved. Albert, of the House of Hohenzollern, the great German hero – his mother was Polish! And because he had rejected Catholicism (the Hohenzollern relatives in Brandenburg and Berlin were Catholics at the time) he was a black sheep, and he was much closer to his Polish relatives than he was to his German relatives. But all this is, as it were, forgotten history.
Was there a catalyst to the fall of the Prussian state, or was it an inevitable decline? Why is there no Prussia today?
Well, the rise of Hohenzollern Prussia comes about through the decline of all its neighbours. Until that point, Prussia was not a premiership player – it was the Swedes or the Poles or the Holy Roman Empire. These were the big powers of the area. They all declined, and Prussia rose up. Then Prussia gets caught up in German history, and the kingdom of Prussia comes to an end in 1918, when the Kaiser – who was also King of Prussia – abdicated. But most of these stories have an afterlife. There is a state of Prussia which continues within the Weimar Republic and even in the Third Reich. Goering was prime minister of Prussia. People don’t know that because they don’t think of it that way. It’s only when you have a different entry point to history that you get all these different connections. Prussia was still alive in 1945. The last pre-Nazi prime minister of Prussia appeared in 1945 saying we Prussians are the victims of the Nazis, a bit like Austria, and Prussia must be restored by the Allied powers. But there was no way Stalin was going to allow the restoration of Prussia, and in 1947 the Allied powers arrived with their certificates and Prussia no longer existed.
Let’s move on to your third selection.
The third one is Aragon, and again is a very long story. The Iberian peninsula, for a long period, was dominated by three powers – Castile, Portugal and Aragon. Together, these Christian states drove out the Islamic, Moorish elements. Reconquista starts in the 11th century and goes on until the end of the 15th. Of these three, the winner in terms of power politics is Castile. Castile gets hold of the Americas. Although Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabelle of Castile, the Catholic monarchs, join together, the two kingdoms remain separate within Spain. The Castilians insist that no Aragonese will go to America, and that none of the gold of America will go to Aragon, it all goes to Castile. Gradually the Aragonese part of the Spanish complex declines, and its empire in the Mediterranean is taken over – Sicily, Naples, Corsica. The Aragonese even ruled Athens and Crete, in the late 14th century.
So why did they decline?
Well, it’s relative decline. The book that I’m going to recommend, The Mediterranean in History, isn’t directly about Aragon, but the author, David Abulafia, has written a great deal about Aragon. He used to be my pupil. The book is not just about Aragon, but Aragon is a big chunk of it – and it was a big chunk of the Western Mediterranean for 500 years. The Aragonese monarchy fell to the house of Trastámara in 1369 and the monarchy becomes Castilian. Gradually the Aragonese interests are neglected, and Castile centralises and takes over Aragon by a series of risings. It’s a bit like Poland and Russia – the big power taking over, with constant risings against the greater power which keep getting crushed.
Which book is up next?
The book I recommend is The Goths by a man called Peter Heather. It’s a general survey of all the different Goths. There is a chapter about the Visigoths in Aquitaine called “The First Successor State” – to the Roman Empire in the west, that is.
What went wrong for the Visigoths?
This was a straightforward example of defeat by a military power – by the Franks, another barbarian nation which had invaded Gaul. There was a great battle near Poitiers, at a little place called Vouillé. The Visigoths were defeated and they retired from Aquitaine over the Pyrenees. They took over Spain, and there were nearly three centuries of the Visigoths in Spain. One of the curious things is that the only monument to Alaric, the Visigoth king killed by Clovis the Frank, is in Madrid. These twisted, contorted memories is one of the themes I deal with in my own book.
Whether by military defeat or political decline, if a state vanishes that doesn’t necessarily mean that its identity vanishes with it. The people and culture remain, surely?
That’s a good question. When the Visigoths were defeated, how many stayed behind to serve the Franks? The identity of a state is very fluid, and a lot depends on the fate of the people – what happens to the people when one country is conquered by another. Anglo-Saxon England is a perfect example. Before the Anglo-Saxons came there was no England. They came into Roman Britannia and they took over the lands of Britain. They slaughtered and drove out British leaders. The story is that the British retreated and made the Western peninsula their home – what we now call Wales. And it now seems that the Welsh founded Glasgow.
I’ve heard about this. What is this story?
You see, the whole of our island used to be Celtic, British. There were no Anglo-Saxons until they came over the sea. The Scots came from Ireland and gradually took over the north of the island, which we now call Scotland. Scotland was formed in the ninth century. The Anglo-Saxons came over from the east and they created England.
But before Scotland or England existed, there were a number of false Roman native kingdoms of which the culture and civilisation was Celtic, or what the English called Welsh – which is a very nasty word, meaning alien. The Germanic peoples, who couldn’t talk with these Celts, called them Welsh – aliens. And the indigenous population of the region where Glasgow is – Strathclyde, as it’s called now – was Welsh. The chief hero of medieval Scotland was William Wallace. Wallace means Welsh. The Scots don’t tell you that. They had this theory that William Wallace’s family came from Shropshire, which is how they try to explain how a Welshman could be in what they thought of as Scotland. They didn’t know that these Welsh of the north were not intruders from Wales, they were there long before the Scots.
What’s last on your list?
The last one is Montenegro. The book is Realm of the Black Mountain by Elizabeth Roberts. Elizabeth Roberts was at Oxford, and was the wife of the master of Trinity College. I think he was the British ambassador in Belgrade, and when she was there she became interested in Montenegro and wrote this book. It was the first book that I read about the history of Montenegro. What I concentrate on in my own book is a short period, 1910 to 1918, when Montenegro was a kingdom. Montenegro was an Allied state in World War I and the only Allied state which wasn’t restored afterwards. It was swallowed up, by very devious means, by the Serbs – who were one of our other allies. It’s a bit like Poland after World War II. That is, one of our allies, the Poles, would be swallowed up by a bigger and more powerful ally, namely the Soviet Union. And we, the British and the Western Allies, who can’t do anything about it, tend not to notice. So it’s a bit of a pointer to the inequities or hypocrisies of Allied policy. Throughout World War I, one of the war aims was the restoration of occupied Allied countries like Belgium and Montenegro.
What’s the afterlife of historical Montenegro in modern-day Montenegro?
Well, the chapter goes on. Montenegro is swallowed by Serbia, and then of course Serbia becomes part of Yugoslavia, until 1992 when the Federation of Yugoslavia is reduced to Serbia and Montenegro, the last two parts that hold together. Then the Montenegrins begin to feel increasingly uncomfortable with Milosevic and Serbia, they split, and Montenegro is recognised as a sovereign state member of the United Nations in 2006. As soon as that happens, the ex-communist leader of Montenegro puts up a statue – to whom? The last king of Montenegro. So they begin to cultivate Montenegro’s independent history.
So again it’s using history as a prop to establish their modern identity. But what is actually lost when an old polity vanishes, if its people and cultural legacy often remain?
It’s all to do with identity, and identity has many roots. Language is one of them. The Montenegrins speak Serbian. In fact, they call themselves Serbs. So in Serbia the Montenegrins are just part of us. We weren’t taking over another country, they say, we were welcoming other Serbs back into the fold. The parallel is Austria. Are Austrians German? Well, they speak German. But they have very different traditions, and they don’t think of themselves as German. Hitler behaved like the Serbs, saying, “I am the chancellor of Germany and I’m Austrian. Of course we will take over Austria and we will be welcomed by the populace, because the Austrians, as everybody knows, are Germans like the rest.” Well they’re not. They have a different history. And the Montenegrins have a different religious history. The Montenegrin orthodox church had broken away from the Serbian orthodox church.
To what extent do former USSR countries share an identity with the old Soviet Union? Is it misleading to think of them as such?
Some of them do. In Belarus or parts of Ukraine there are still statues of Lenin. But this Soviet connection is cultivated by people who see the Soviet Union as not being Russian, but as being a multinational empire which is trying to develop a different Soviet identity – Homo Sovieticus – in which smaller nations like Belarus or Ukraine could be on an equal footing with the Russians. The same is true of Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav identity was cultivated by Croats who wanted to get away, as it were, from their own nationalists and create a new Yugoslav community in which Croats, Serbs, Bosnians and Macedonians could all live together in peace and harmony.
But neither experiment worked. Why?
Big question, small answer. The answer is force, violence. In Belarus, Stalin goes in and he shoots virtually the entire intelligentsia of this little country. Tito in Yugoslavia was extremely brutal and murderous against people who didn’t agree with him – Croat nationalists or whoever.
I’ve just been to the Cheltenham [literary] festival, and one of the questions was: Is Putin trying to revive the Soviet Union? Part of the afterlife of the Soviet Union is, of course, in Putin’s brain. Putin is ex-KGB, an organisation founded to preserve the Soviet state which failed completely. Putin must have a terrible sense of failure. In fact, he has said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest catastrophe of modern times. So sure, Putin, in the back of his mind, would like to reassemble if not the Soviet Union, then some sort of empire, a broader Russian-dominated grouping which would be a modern version of the Soviet Union. I don’t think he’s got a cat’s chance in hell.
My final question – a counterpoint of sorts – is about the European experiment today. Europe has been at war with itself for millennia. Now we have the EU. Do you think that the EU will put an end to this history of conflict, that there will be no more redrawn borders?
It’s an absolutely key question. I think that a crisis such as we see developing now makes it absolutely essential for Europe to refocus itself, to weigh up what its aims and perspectives are. The changes that happened in 1989 and afterwards were unprepared for. Nobody saw it coming, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and all these countries dying to join the union. Enlargement took place without any real change of governance. Systems which were designed to rule six countries of similar economic and political development simply don’t work with 27.
Enlargement took place, and the eurozone was created without any due recognition of basic facts. Basically, no enforcement. You set up a common currency, and you lay down rules that you’re not allowed to increase your debt to more than whatever it was. The first country to break them was Germany. Then the French broke it. And then along come the Greeks, who say, “Ah, well if the big boys can get away with it, who’s going to control us?” It’s got completely out of hand, because the eurozone was set up without enforceable rules, without the political mechanisms for governing this currency area. I think it’s obvious now that they either have to transform the eurozone quickly and make it workable – give it rules which can be observed and for which there are penalties – or it really is going to fall apart.
And behind that is the European Union. Is there a European identity strong enough to overcome the national identities of its member states? It’s touch and go. But I’m an optimist. I think there will be one hell of a crisis. I doubt if the EU will disappear, but it will be severely chastened. And it will have to put its house in order. Otherwise it will become one of the vanished kingdoms. It wouldn’t be unprecedented for that to happen.
Interview by
Alec Ash

[ramana]

Key relevant passages for India and Indian sub-continent

People who have their eye on short-term, contemporary events and the world around us tend to forget this. I sometimes think they imagine the world politic to be a chessboard, where you play games, have a crisis, and then you put all the pieces back and have another game. Well it’s not like that. You can have a chessboard, you have players who are either pawns or kings or whatever, but the players themselves are always changing.

Indian elite thinks that they can prevent the players from changing by rewriting history. That is what the syncretic history nonsense is supposed to do.

The main thing is that mainstream history – the subjects which we concentrate on in schools, in television programmes and influential books – is driven by a number of factors, one of which is power politics. The powers of today wish to trace their rise and the origins of their influence. But also, historians are drawn to power. ....... And it’s not just powerful states, it’s powerful issues. It might be feminism or slavery – things which were missing but are now contemporary issues. They drive a lot of history writing.

Are you disparaging this tendency? Because that seems to suggest that if a polity has vanished it has less merit for the present day.

Well, I complain about the American style that nothing succeeds like success. That’s a very primitive way of looking at history, as between winners and losers. Sure, there are crackpot rickety states, but who’s interested in them? What they are really interested in is the successful cultures, the big civilisations, the mighty powers and so on. That gives a very false view of the panorama of the past. The past is full of everything. Great powers, obscure powers – which may have other achievements to their name.

Again if one applies this tendency to narration of Indian history its very obvious. The INC claims succession from the Brits who claim from Mughals who in turn claim from Slave Sultans who defeated the Hindus. But this is only about dilli region.

Well, what do we mean by the losers? Even the mightiest of states eventually decline and die, like human beings. There are some states which are powerful, mighty and impressive for a time. Prussia was, of course, one of the biggest beasts. ..... And then it develops internal diseases and is swallowed up by its neighbours....

So we should think of it in terms of ebb and flow, not winner and loser?

Precisely. Rise and fall. These are biographies, life stories, of states. There’s always a birth, a struggle for existence. Some candidates fall by the wayside before they really establish themselves, some flourish, some go on for millennia. But they all come to an end.

The classic book on all this, ...., is Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This was the guidebook, if you like, to long-term history – that there are these enormously powerful, extensive empires which exude an air of immortality and yet which all, sooner or later, come to an end. At the end of the Roman Empire, in the Byzantine period, the empire shrinks and shrinks until it consists of one city, Constantinople, and the Ottoman Turks can encircle it. There’s a final siege and the Turks go over the wall. The last emperor – number 156 or whatever – disappears in the fray, is killed, and that’s the end of the empire. This is, if you like, the guidebook to this story, to exactly what Rousseau is saying. No matter how powerful they may look, the time will come, as in the lives of men and women, when they die. It’s not a topic that people are eagerly looking at.

Precisely that is how Dilli fell to the Slave Sultans and not due to any inherent defect of the Hindus. Yet the narrative forced down on us is that of a linear relentless decline of the Non Abrahamic India.

I submit the Freedom Struggle against the British was a resurgence of the people and not just of any one party or group.
...

Let’s move on to your third selection.
The third one is Aragon, and again is a very long story. The Iberian peninsula, for a long period, was dominated by three powers – Castile, Portugal and Aragon. Together, these Christian states drove out the Islamic, Moorish elements. Reconquista starts in the 11th century and goes on until the end of the 15th. Of these three, the winner in terms of power politics is Castile. Castile gets hold of the Americas. Although Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabelle of Castile, the Catholic monarchs, join together, the two kingdoms remain separate within Spain. The Castilians insist that no Aragonese will go to America, and that none of the gold of America will go to Aragon, it all goes to Castile. Gradually the Aragonese part of the Spanish complex declines, and its empire in the Mediterranean is taken over – Sicily, Naples, Corsica. The Aragonese even ruled Athens and Crete, in the late 14th century.

So why did they decline?

Well, it’s relative decline. ....Aragon is a big chunk of it – and it was a big chunk of the Western Mediterranean for 500 years. The Aragonese monarchy fell to the house of Trastámara in 1369 and the monarchy becomes Castilian. Gradually the Aragonese interests are neglected, and Castile centralises and takes over Aragon by a series of risings. It’s a bit like Poland and Russia – the big power taking over, with constant risings against the greater power which keep getting crushed.

The idea of relative decline we can see in TSP, Bangla Desh and the perihery of India.

Whether by military defeat or political decline, if a state vanishes that doesn’t necessarily mean that its identity vanishes with it. The people and culture remain, surely?
That’s a good question. When the Visigoths were defeated, how many stayed behind to serve the Franks? The identity of a state is very fluid, and a lot depends on the fate of the people{nation} – what happens to the people when one country is conquered by another.

A new identity was created by conversion in the Indian sub-continent. However this identity is a superficial one. Its like wearing a coat to get protection from the fierce winter of the invasion or governance. The Prussians got a Lutherna identity but that did not remove their Prussian indentity. It just covered it up for a long duration.

My final question – a counterpoint of sorts – is about the European experiment today. Europe has been at war with itself for millennia. Now we have the EU. Do you think that the EU will put an end to this history of conflict, that there will be no more redrawn borders?


It’s an absolutely key question. I think that a crisis such as we see developing now makes it absolutely essential for Europe to refocus itself, to weigh up what its aims and perspectives are. The changes that happened in 1989 and afterwards were unprepared for. Nobody saw it coming, the collapse of the Soviet bloc and all these countries dying to join the union. Enlargement took place without any real change of governance. Systems which were designed to rule six countries of similar economic and political development simply don’t work with 27.

Enlargement took place, and the Eurozone was created without any due recognition of basic facts. Basically, no enforcement. You set up a common currency, and you lay down rules that you’re not allowed to increase your debt to more than whatever it was. The first country to break them was Germany. Then the French broke it. And then along come the Greeks, who say, “Ah, well if the big boys can get away with it, who’s going to control us?” It’s got completely out of hand, because the Eurozone was set up without enforceable rules, without the political mechanisms for governing this currency area. I think it’s obvious now that they either have to transform the Eurozone quickly and make it workable – give it rules which can be observed and for which there are penalties – or it really is going to fall apart.

And behind that is the European Union. Is there a European identity strong enough to overcome the national identities of its member states?

It’s touch and go. But I’m an optimist. I think there will be one hell of a crisis. I doubt if the EU will disappear, but it will be severely chastened. And it will have to put its house in order. Otherwise it will become one of the vanished kingdoms. It wouldn’t be unprecedented for that to happen.

Two lessons for India from above passage:
The gradual decline in governance and enforcement of the laws especially to suit the power politics of the leading parties will lead to the shattering of the confidence in the Indian state.

The other lesson is the recent virtual pogrom on the citizens from North East India by lumpen elements in the main cities of India is blow at shattering the Indian identity.

India also needs to put the house in order and pronto.

BTW, Edward Luttwak's "Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" describes how they survived for so long while the Western Roman Empire was overcome by the Germanic tribes.

[brihaspati]

I find this highly interesting, but in a way Davis is not applying his own principles of analysis to what he is writing.

(1) Davis is focusing on rise and fall or vanishing or not vanishing of "states". Does it not show the European obsession with state formation and the focus of human civilization being the "state"? From classical Roman historians to modern reconstructionists - from adaptation of ME religions in Europe to "democracy", the obsession is always about the "state". In fact the European obsession had got to the point where "progress" and civilization became equated with state formation.

(2) By failing to realize this European conflation of civilization and humanity with increasingly structured networks of power a.k.a "state", Davis creates and tries to solve a false problem. Civilization is not about state formation - it is about philosophy of life and universe. State, on the other hand is about power, that is how to hoodwink the maximum number of people into doing what you want them to do to benefit you personally in your personal objectives.

Civilization continues under the radar of states. The deeper a civilizational philosophy is, the greater its understanding, the closer it is to certain universal trends in humanity - the more it remains underneath in layers between state imposed overt characteristics.

Thus the more one peels off layers from european pretensions, we see much in its institutions that have survived sequential impositions by the state. Under the Church, non-Christian pre-Christian "pagan" elements ahve always survived. Not only survived, they have probably shaped Christianity and the Church to an extent even the Church would be infuriated to acknowledge.

The pagan Saxons resisted Carolus of the Franks in his Christianity imposition bid, and their chiefs were deceptively massacred. But both the Saxons and the Franks [both again descended from non-Latin anti-Romang Celto-Germanic tribes north of the Alps] chose versions of Arrianic Christianity in deliberate contrast to the Latin-Italian version. I don't know whether Davies takes this into account. Thus to an extent the Alpine divide, and the traditional geo-political factors [environment+lifestyle] that separated the North-European demograhic flow from the southern Mediterranean flow - persisted even in the factionalism within so-called state formation.

I also don't know whether Davies brings up the role of the Byzantine church versus Italian church competition, the Italian+Byzantine Christinaity versus Arrianic-Gothic Christianity competition, and the peculiar historical trace that remains of the Visigothic kingdom being attacked simultaneously by the Byzantines and the Arab Muslim armies.

The Muslim attack on Visigothic Spain did not come from Franks to the north, but from the south - facilitated by the "sudden" switchover of key waterfront poistions by Byzantine "governors" from the southern points of Gibraltar while a Byzantine naval threat was being mounted on south eastern side from the Med.

The surviving Visigoths [the king was captured and beheaded while his queen immediately fell in love with the Muslim commander, and agreed to be converted and married on the battle field itself] retreated to the highlands to the north, and were given support and shelter by the Franks. The goths and the franks apparently collaborated from then on, and the famous/infamous later houses responsible for the reconquista is supposed to have originated at least partly fro these Visigothic survivors. We immediately have a motivation as tow hy these would turn to Italian chistianity in opposition to Byzantines later on. Moreover, Arrianic christianity lost part of its strength in the fall of the North African Roman hinterland - where it originated - to the Muslims. The corresponding theology would have been seen to have failed in preventing the Muslim onslaught.

(3) Indians have long developed a cultural context that is not dependent on the state. Rise and fall of the state does not necessarily wipe that civilizational nationhood unless the genocidic project is completely successful. The statist interlude of ME memes, from Islamic to European - created an interim deviation in India, that is not going to be a permanent one.

Statist formation always gives rise to power pyramids, with coteries around what eventually become dynasties of power. So states try to weaken cultural nationalism, or cultural aspects, so that people do not have an independent set of values to motivate their decisions. It is actually better for them to claim to promote diversity or even sharpen identity divides - so that people are forced to rely on the coteries of power as arbitrators.

Arbitration gives supreme power - becuase it raises the mediator to a status above the two disputing sides.

Conclusion, people should start thinking of applying cultural values independent of what rulers claim our criteria should be, in judging the actions of power pyramids, and strongly object to claims that there can be "no values" where "interests are concerned".

[ramana]

Please do blog the above analysis. Its very good way of looking at things.
ramana

[brihaspati]

ramana ji, will do. I have restarted looking at the communist movement and its links to western politics and neo-colonialism from both. Will expand this in that theme.

Meanwhile, shq pointed out an excellent public domain voice : the penname of Victor Suvorov.

Here is a sequence from an interview: http://www.jrnyquist.com/Suvorov_Part_1.html.

Kalashnikov: Have your views on Russian history evolved over time?

Suvorov: Mostly no. Our history since 1917 until today was one big crime-spree, or one big mistake. There is only one shining day in that history - June 22, 1941, when we were not attacking anyone, though someone was attacking us. And the regime holds onto this day with a death-grip. That's why we need so many rockets, so many submarines, so many Sakharov bombs [super H-bombs]. They don't care about their people. They need the rockets, and to Hell with the people. If you can make a case that World War II was a Soviet plan, then everything falls apart [in Russia]. Then the official interpretation of history in the Soviet Union falls apart. Then we have no foundation. The idea that Hitler attacked the Soviet Union is the only pillar that their ideology rests upon. This is a justification for everything. Invasion of Afghanistan - Why? Because we were attacked by Hitler. Why is there no meat in the stores? - Because we were attacked by Hitler. We entered Czechoslovakia in 1968 - Why? Because we were attacked by Hitler. All is excused by Hitler's attack. My Icebreaker [book] put a wedge into this story. Imagine, I have 56 books on the subject of debunking my book Icebreaker. It's very important for them to stifle independent voices, independent historians, of which I am one. How do they stifle these voices? You strike at the author in some way, or you take an agent approach - by bribing, intimidating, knocking out his Web site. And they publish ridiculous dirt under my name.
[...]
Kalashnikov: Maybe it's not about money?

Suvorov: Exactly! We were attacked by the Germans 70 years ago. But until this day, the deployment of the Soviet troops at the moment of the attack is still a state secret in Russia. Those tanks were written off long, long ago. The veterans lost their lives. But the position of 3rd and 9th armies is still a secret. The maps of the airfields were never published, ever. It is still a state secret how many airfields we had, and how many aircraft were deployed. Why? Because if they publish all this, it will be clear to everybody that it was Stalin who contemplated the war, and that the Soviet Union started the Second World War, because Soviet Union policy required the war. If we admit that the Soviet Union helped Hitler come to power, if we admit the Soviet Union developed Hitler's robust economy, then there will be too many questions to answer. Not just military questions, but ideological and political and geographical, and many others. It is not just the Russian General Staff, but the KGB, SVR and the Russian president himself, and those who are behind the Russian president - all of them are attentively watching and formulating public discourse related to the war.

Kalashnikov: It is not so easy to prove that the Soviet leadership needed a big war.

Suvorov: Lenin was the first who openly said that we need a war. The first attempt to unleash the Second World War was launched on Nov. 13, 1918. The First World War ended on Nov. 11, and two days later the Red Army crossed the border and invaded Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to cut a path to revolutionary Germany, to support the proletariat of Germany, and spread the revolutionary flames throughout Europe; - but those attempts were stopped, and the Red Army beaten, because it was weak. There was a tremendous resistance by the Russian people, and other nations of the former Russian empire, against the Bolsheviks in 1918. So the next attempt to unleash the war was undertaken in 1920. In my books I quote from the orders issued to the Western Front, that demanded General Tukhachevsky to "pass over the corpse of White Poland towards the World Revolution," toward the walls of Berlin and Paris. What are the old Soviet songs about?

We are the Red Cavalry
We take Warsaw
We take Berlin
We crash through the Crimea!

This is a Budyonny marching song. But the valiant Polish Army repelled the Red Army, and the revolution was not accomplished. From that point on, there are two paths to a new world war: first was the path of Trotsky, that was followed by Khrushchev, Andropov and all the rest, to support revolutions wherever they are going on, to expend national resources to support any progressive regime.[...] What made Stalin different from Trotsky was that Stalin wanted, first, to industrialize the empire; and then, on this basis, to develop a colossal army. Stalin wanted to nurture a Fuhrer in Germany who will aggressively stomp Europe, and strangle it. And then, the when the Fuhrer finally invades Great Britain we will stab him in the back. It all went according to plan until Hitler realized what was awaiting him, and struck first. That's all.

Kalashnkov: What sources do you use for your research, except for open sources? Are you in possession of any special archives or documents?

Suvorov: I take the path of gathering intelligence. A spy should remember that no one is opening safes for him. But there are indirect signs by which we can figure anything. And I mean anything. It has been 25 years since my first book was published - it was 1985 in the newspaper "Russian Idea" and the magazine Kontinent, in which I published selected chapters from Icebreaker, and the fight for truth has been going on ever since. I suspect that if the Soviet secret archive would have anything to prove my concepts wrong, they would have published the proof a long time ago. But they have nothing. So instead of arguing against my concepts, they simply spread ridiculous wild stories about how bad I am.

I find him fascinating - because a lot of what he says in his Russian language articles, coincides with what I have accumulated over the years.

He is correct about Lenin's moves and plans in his books, and this assessment of Lenin's role is universally rejected not only in communist circles everywhere, but also in non-communist circles, where overall - Lenin's image is that of a misguided "saint", someone who undertook "evil" as a means to a supreme good "end". This includes apprreciative voices from even such minds I admire as Hoffer, or Solzhenytsin in Lenin in Zurich, or my dad - a staunch anticommunist. One of the issues I have always failed in convincing people, in and out of orgs, is that the roots of the communist power hunger and methodology of terror should be traced to the form it was given by Lenin - but based on a method and system already refined by the Church in alliance with European state formations in the medieval period.

But where I feel Suvorov is not writing about - is the connection that was maintained by the Soviet inner circles with the British ruling circles - and the virtual collaboration that developed, or has always been maintained between the two sides. One of the links was the then British communist movement and the other was big biz from Brit side - which is something Indians should research more, because in many ways, Russian communists at Kremlin had collaborated with the British regime on issues that concerned India's freedom movement and possibly also on independence. I am saying this in spite of the official role played by Churchill [he was in the political wilderness before 40's because he ranted against the soviets, and was also kicked out immediately after to return much later].

There is no reason to think that such a lucrative and mutually beneficial collaboration has been given up now.

I strongly urge people to read up available translations of Suvorov's books. Note that he has reasons to be bitter about USSR and communism. He may intensify or obsess about certain issues in a way that may seem biased. But the underlying perception is very very accurate.

[devesh]

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers ... r5036.html

BANGLADESH: AMERICA’S NEW STRATEGIC CYNOSURE IN SOUTH ASIA

“It has for one thing, moved the level of bilateral relationship to a higher degree and, for another, formally brought Bangladesh on the strategic radar of the United States. Clinton’s comments covered both the internal political situation as well as the strategic compulsions” ----The Daily Star, Bangladesh, Editorial of May 7 2012 on US Secretary of State visit to Dhaka on May 5, 2012
Bangladesh’s emergence on the United States strategic radar reflects the United States coming to grips with the changed geostrategic and geopolitical realities in South Asia. To some measure it also reflects the US strategic pivot to Asia Pacific in that America is in quest for new strategic partners in the region.

The new stronger American focus on Bangladesh can be gauged from American media and other documents. In one recent Wall Street Journal article it was written that “Bangladesh is the standard –bearer of South Asia”. In a Congressional Research Paper it was reflected that not surprisingly, Bangladesh is the ‘partner of choice for the United States in many of the foreign policy priorities of President Obama”

Bangladesh eminently qualifies as the United States new strategic partner in South Asia to replace its erstwhile focus on Pakistan with which the United States currently stands disillusioned. Bangladesh is a moderate Islamic country which under the current PM Sheikh Hasina has boldly demonstrated ‘zero tolerance’ for Islamist extremists by liquidating them and nor does it present any prospects of Talibanization like Pakistan.

In the overall geopolitics of South Asia any US strategic relationship or strategic partnership with Bangladesh does not create policy complexities for the United States in relation to India and the US-India Strategic Partnership. Unlike Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are not in an adversarial or confrontational ode even though some irritants exist especially on water-sharing.

Therefore, the ‘Joint Declaration of Bangladesh-United States Dialogue on Partnership’ signed by the two nations during US Secretary Of State Clinton’s visit to Dhaka on May 05 2012 needs to be viewed in this light and without any misgivings.

Bangladesh and the United States have for some time been engaged in security cooperation including joint exercises and the United States supplying surplus military equipment to Bangladesh. In mid-April both Bangladesh and the United States had undertaken a closed doors high-level security dialogue in Dhaka, possibly as a prelude and preparatory discussion for the signing of the Joint Declaration last week.

The main purpose of the Joint Declaration seems to be putting Bangladesh-United States security dialogues and strategic discussions on a regular higher level and in a structured mode.

The major questions that arise from the United States strategic cynosure on Bangladesh and the Joint Declaration will logically what it portends for India and China and how would a Bangladesh-United States Strategic Partnership once fully consummated impact on the security interests of India and China?

As far as India is concerned there are two opposing portents that come to the fore. The first being a positive one in hat India views this development as one of a logical extension of the US-India Strategic Partnership transplanted onto a wider strategic canvass carrying positive security advantages for all three nations. It carries the nucleus of a US-India-Bangladesh Strategic Trilateral emerging.

The opposite portent, a highly improbable one, is that a Bangladesh-United States Strategic Partnership as a bipartite security understanding at some later stage may emerge on the same pattern of United States security linkage with Pakistan and all the attendant negative security connotations in its wake for India.

However, what is definitely intriguing is the American emphasis on Bangladesh’s role in the maritime security of the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. One would have thought that the United States under its Strategic Partnership understandings with India would have acceded that role to India as the dominant naval power in the region. What maritime role for Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal is the United States envisaging?

The biggest impact of any evolutionary Bangladesh-United States strategic partnership would be on China with which Bangladesh has a Strategic Partnership Agreement. In Bangladesh policy circles, despite a lack of geographical contiguity, China was viewed as a countervailing power to India as the outsized and predominant power in the region.

In Chinese strategic perceptions, the coupling of the United States-India Strategic Partnership with increasing security cooperation between Bangladesh and the United States is going to be perceived as hostile.

Bangladesh would have to indulge in some very tight balancing between its China policy and the new directions unfolding in its increasing strategic engagement with the United States. Concurrently, both the United and India would have to be wary as to how China responds.

Bangladesh did not indulge in any hype on the signing of its Joint Declaration with the United States, and this may be due to avoid generating any negative responses from China. However, the underlying strategic messages from this Joint Declaration between Bangladesh and the United States do carry some strategic rings for the region and China.

In terms of domestic politics, this is a big triumph for PM Sheikh Hasina and her policies of moderation and zero tolerance for Islamist terrorism. Also in terms of domestic dynamics the linkage to the United States may rob the India- baiters of some of their rationale for berating India and thereby distorting Bangladeshi foreign policies.

Concluding, what needs to be said is that this is a positive gain for the South Asian security environment even if in the process India may have to marginally subordinate its role in Bangladesh. The better way of looking at it would be that the United States may have elected for India and the United States to bat together in complementary roles for security and stability on South Asia’s eastern flank.

so, Bangladesh will be the new Pakistan. the role will be to be a thorn in India's side constantly and prevent any kind of "outward looking" tendencies. the author reaches the wrong conclusion. it is about have a lever of control on India, not "electing" India as the supreme power in the region.

[svinayak]

It is a combination of China threat in the north east and American interest in the junction of
Myanmar, North East India and Bangladesh which is converging.


Unless Indian elite and leadership has good vision we will see lot of problems.

American interest is expanding more dangeroulsy in these area. Some of the scenarios are

1. Interfernce of foreign powers in NE
2. More capability to BD
3. Internal upheaval in Myanmar. - foriegn control or foriegn inspired

[ramana]

Dilli Billi gang does it utmost to alienate the neighborhood and whines when far away powers step into the gap. Most likely they might have signalled to US to step up inside BD, as BD might resent an Indian role there.

[devesh]

^^^
in that case they are bigger fools than we give them credit for. not only are they power hungry but also colossally stupid. inviting US when it has a murky track record in Pak is a blunder. they are ensuring their own destruction. one side is already hostile, now they want to get surrounded by another hostile entity on the opposite side?! their brains have to be the size of peanuts.

[ramana]

In D-B mindset, if you can't control then sell them to someone else.

Anyway look at TSP after kahn and dragon fiendship.

[devesh]

^^^
The Brits were always in favor of leaving behind any and all traces of distinct Islamic political centers that they could find in India. both Pak and BD are a result of that. so, we can assume that US colluding with China in Pak also had the blessings of Brits b/c it helped keep "hindu" India under leash. similarly, we can also assume that China, US, and Brits will collude on BD also for similar objectives. what about the Russians? in case of Pak, perhaps the Russians were inclined to believe that a large state like India should not have a direct access to Central Asia. but with BD, how will Russians react? if BD also becomes the next Pakistan ( in terms of destabilizing the Subcontinent), is Russia in support of this? IMO, BD's geographical location makes it a much greater threat to India, IVHO.

[brihaspati]

Russians are more concerned about stabilizing their Caspian-Black-Sea front. They have strengthened their control on Ukraine and Georgian zones. Poland has softened its stand on Rus. Both Germany and Norway have been building "confidence" with rus. Within middle and lower German bureaucracy there is immense racial prejudice against Russians, but at the upper levels - just as historically when Lenin and his colleagues were transported through germany and with money, or when Hitler and Stalin collaborated, there has perhaps always been understandings.

I would expect Germany to play a different underhand role in Syria, and a role that in the long term goes in favour of Iran. Naive minds would jump at the hinted reports of German intel working against Assad from Cyprus or the eastern med floating listening posts. They could be doing a double game here in reality.

For overall gameplan of Russia therefore, the south-south-east sector is currently of lesser importance, except increasing and regaining its control over CAR. To a large extent it has been steadily doing so under the radar. Where BD is concerned, it will let India take the lead.

For D-B gang, overall - its the Brit connection which seems to be the most significant one always - right from 1937. There has always been a very strong correlation with medium term Brit perceptions/objectives and D-B steps. Perhaps the D-B gang uses the Brit connection to manage the pressures from both further west as well as Russia. The big-biz network also mediates this. Its not simply a matter of US interest in BD.

Its also the sustained political and Brit biz interests in preserving the financial+material-flow networks from China into the ME and the west. One way of managing capital flows in the current crisis is tapping into the underground flow from China. Hence all the countries that are facing instability and periodic activation of extremism - Islamist or communist - from Nepal to BD through to Myanmar and Thailand, are actually the buffer of the flow between China and the west.

Each of these countries have had connections to the Brits from the empire days, and each has a peculiarity - they are either majority Hindu/buddhist or surrounded by such societies. Each has an extremist ideological nucleus that is better understood by the Brits because they are related or derived from ME memes used by the British empire. Thus in Hindu majority Nepal, it had to be communism - closely studied and nurtured in UK, and in Eastern India, it had to be Islamism or Naga christian extremism, and both again in Myanmar and Thailand (more islamism than the other). The greatest protector and nourisher of islamism and Marxism has been - yes, UK again.

Uk has a significant handle in BD. The closest connections exist with Sylhet, through expats and otherwise - and exactly in the zone thats used as a base to launch ops inside India, in Assam valley and contoguous areas.

[RamaY]

That BD-US partnership must be presented as No-No by our foreign policy makers. This is the same morons (I would call them so based on their nonsense since 1947) who made India a second rung power to begin with by saying India cannot hit above its weight, what weight others have I wonder.

We hear the same pattern wherever we go. Our politicians says the same, our media says the same, our intellectuals say the same, our army says the same and our foreign policy makers do the same.

If India was able to absorb 20million and counting immigrants from BD, how can they say BD cannot be controlled by India on its own. Same goes with Burma also. If china can create large enough MIC, then India too can do the same.

Yes I know the economics. If the politicians in india can cream out ~1L crore per year, not including the large scams, then India can indeed support an MIC that can protect its interests in BD and Myanmar.

To the apologists who immediately talk about two-front war and nuke threats, well my answer is when things cross the nuclear threshold then we better have enough plutonium powder to spread all across Asia and beyond.

This is not even funny anymore. Now we allow US to prop up BD, after we allowed China to enter Sri Lanka? Are we weaker than Russia (economically and socially - for WKK reference) which showed middle finger to western alliances when they tried to enter its influence area.

More than politicians, all these babus should be tried for treason.

[RamaY]

This brings us to the strategic question.

If Pakistan (and later Bangladesh) were allowed by our forefathers, because they are against separate electorate or similar arrangement then how is it a better solution?

I will explain my case with few examples. i also hope this answers the questions raised by INC apologists who say it is better to kick them out.

Observe the state of JK which is part of Indian union. It is a Muslim majority state with A370 coverage, making it very close to having a separate electorate. On the plus side this arrangement ensured that the state of JK doesn't get to have its own army, make its own foreign policy and develop its own C4.

On the other hand we have Pakistan, with it's own electorate, Army, laws, foreign polic and C4.
What this also brought is nuke dimension.

It doesn't mean JK is free of external intervention and prodding. But we are able to avoid the nuclear dimension and many other things which we couldn't do in Pakistans case.

Have to stop here... Will write in detail later...

[member_23692]

I am posting this here because I had originally posted this in the TSP thread and the moderator thought that was not the right thread. I cant imagine any post more relevent to the TSP post, but since moderators wanted me to post this in another thread that they would imagine more appropriate, I hope this would fit the bill.

RamaY wrote:

^
The dialogue between the sub-continental Hindus (~800 million) and Muslims (~600 million) has been hijacked by Christian........

The Hindus of the sub-continent are either Dhimmified (self-styled liberals) or self-UNaware (so-called busy with lives) or branded as Hindu fanatics (branded == with Talibannis).

Ramay, excellent observations.

Most people dont realize what you just pointed out up here. There are 800 million Hindus and 600 Million Muslims in the subcontinent. I suspect, that the actual number of muslims is actually greater, closer to 700 million, if you include Nepal, Sri Lanka and the large uncounted Islamic populations (I am not sure that all Bangladeshi muslim illegal migrants to India have been counted in this figure, even if they have been, census doesnt do a good job of counting muslims living in their own enclaves in UP, Kerela, now Andhra, Bihar, etc).

This means that Hindus only form a small majority in the Indian subcontinent, ranging from Afghanistan to Sri Lanka, from Balochistan to Tripura. If you add Muslims and Christians of the subcontinent on one side and the native religious born Indians on the other, the native religionists' majority gets even slimmer. This is a huge victory for the Islamists, who have been relentlessly attacking India since they first invaded Sindh around 900 AD, solely for the purpose of totally Islamizing the Hindus, just like they did all of Arabia, Central Asia, Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia and several other parts of the world. What is also not understood by many is that we are living in the midst of the same continuam, same process of relentless Islamic political, military, social - a comprehensive and wholistic attack on the hindus to Islamize them completely. Lots of people will protest here that, that is not so, that everyone understands that and I am insulting people here by saying that it is not fully understood. But if it were fully understood, we would not have had a thread called the Terrorist Islamic Republic of Pakistan. We would have had, instead a thread called "Subcultured and the psychopathic State of Global Islam", of which Terrorist Islamic Republic of Pakistan is only one of the more lethal front brigade, a forward base for Islamizing the entire world. India is merely the unfinished business of this Subcultured state of subhumans at this time. And make no mistake. This Subcultured State of Global Islam which is not orgnized into one contiguous geographical entity and which is not organized under one political umbrella either, in which sense it is very different from empires of the past, is winning and winning big, using the most brutal and subhuman methods of all kinds ever known to man. This global Islamic force, while using medeival methods of cruelty and subjugation, has masterfully organized itself in the most modern and the most advanced political dispensation known to man so far......a geographically and polticially disbursed organization, working as independent cells, albeit large cells, all relentlessly working towards the same goal of "devolution" of the human race to blood thirsty demonic type creatures. It is extremely difficult to kill creatures who organize themselves in this disbursed manner, each constantly changing colors and stripes, while internally remaining the same. This kind of "disbursed cell" type organization is a perfect foil for the so called military giants of today, including the West and China, certainly the Russians, and perhaps even a perfect foil if all three of them join hands. These entities still are stuck in the old fashioned mindset of fighting wars, kinda like the Indian Rajputs were against the Islamists, who are using far more advanced organizational and war methods to counter these behemoths with one tenth of the resources of these large elephants and sometimes even less.

Why is it important to change this thread from TSP to The Subcultured and Psychopathic State of Global Islam ? Because then we will clearly be identifying who the enemy is. We will broaden our vision. Our enemy is not merely one brigade or one outpost of Global Islam, as lethal as it might be, but the entire body of the snake, including the poisonous head, which is somewhere in the area where Asia meets Africa. Some of us tend to underestimate Paki, because, we dont understand its true strategic depth, or the fact that it is an extension of a larger body. In fact most Indians do. It makes the Hindus more than just dhimmified and/or self unaware. It makes them complacent, which is even more dangerous, a false sense of complacency or an undeserved state of complacency. This undeserved state of complacency then prevents us from organizing on a war footing and in a way which will be effective against this more advanced form of organization that we are facing, even though it is an organization of creatures that are subhuman in all ways, except in methods of warfare and domination, in which they are better than none at the moment. The undeserved state of complacency also makes us act in self defeating and self murderous ways, by indulging in all forms of corruption known to man, which further hollows out from within, our already depleted strength.

And if I am wrong that most Hindus are unaware, then it follows that most Hindus know all that I have written in this post above. If that is the case, then there is only one conclusion to be drawn. That most of us Hindus then have at best, lukewarm interest in staying Hindus. It is not as if we Hindus, in that case, are actively seeking to convert to Islam, but avoiding such conversion is like, 197th on our priority list and only if we can do it while still lying, cheating and treating our fellow Hindus shabbily. It may be, just maybe that I am wrong, and such desire to stay Hindus doesnt exist. Why else will people vote for the likes of the Gandhi family, the Yadavs, the Karunas, The Mamatas, and just about every other politician- all complete scums of the earth (actually the Hindus really must have to go to great lengths to find such scum, or great depths to find such worms) with exceptions that you can count on your fingers ?

[ramana]

X-post.....

So now you more or less get the picture of how the Islamists could actually make inroads in the 7th-12th century in the first place. While Ghori retreated from Gujarat, Prithviraj was advised by his "brahmin" minister not to join in the molesting of the retreating forces from the flank. The two forces of eastern Punjab and Gujarat failed to join up and make an example out of Ghori. He should have been caught on the field and treated to all of the classic Islamic niceties Islamics always practice on captives - like slow flailing with liberal application of salt, or hammering in large nails, or slow impalement etc. Well, how can Indic stoop so low! While Ghori had been doing all that stuff, or his successors did even worse in on the plains of north India - Siddharaja Jayasimha was especially keen in showing his secular credentials, by specially protecting Muslim merchant interests - with the merchants now showing epigraphical evidence of having been spies and advance recon for their Muslim masters in the Gulf. Guj fell to Ulugh right after this secularism.

But on the positive side - history shows that such phases of secularism, is almost always connected to Hindu ruling interests who are suspicious and distasteful of their own "lower class/chotalog" Hindu birathers, who are most interested in carrying on their own little dynastic powers in their own mini-nations at the cost of other neighbouring distant "Hindu lands"- like Jayasimha or Jayachand, and who see in the viciously deceptive Islamism a tool to ally with to destroy their supposed Hindu rivals.

What happens though is, as per classic Islamist teachings attributed to the founder - the Kaffir are always divided in their opinion about Muslims, and Muslims should always deceptively use this division to earn sympathy and trust one faction of kaffir against the other. This is the favourite-of-Mao tactic of isolating one small portion of the "target enemy" and use the remainder of the enemy to crush this small bit. At the moment - the tactic is focused at getting official and intellecual sympathy to crush "saffron" nuclei. Once this is seen to be successful, then the Islamists will turn against the very secularists to eliminate them. It happened with Jayasimha's successors, it happened with Jayachand's descendants. Islamists never spared those kaffir who collaborated with them in the elimination of other kaffir - because they realize the betrayal potential of these wonderful mentalities.

Without the Islamist interlude by which the north and central [and even portions of the south] sikularists were wiped off between the 9th and 14th centuries, no Hindu revival from sections hitherto sidelined by the sikularist dynasties - like Hukka-Bukka or Shivaji would have been possible.

The culling is nothing to be scared of or lamented. Its as much a necessary process for eventual realization of the true path as it appears frightening. Through the death of an old order the way is cleared for a new one.

[nvishal]

Don't know if this was posted before

Indian Ocean: the new Great Game

Ajai Shukla showing blue water strength of india-china navies now and future projection.

China outnumbers india with more than 500 war ships while india has an odd 134. So while india(with its geographical advantage) can choke supply in the indian ocean but not for long.

“Looking just at numbers conveys an over-gloomy picture,” a highly placed MoD source tells Business Standard. “Replacing a single-role frigate built in the 1960s or 1970s with a multi-role, stealth frigate that we build today is hardly a one-for-one transaction. It represents a significant accretion of capability. And so, we are looking at capabilities, not just at numbers.”

[ramana]

^^^^ Recall Abhimanyu's story. He had capability yet he was killed by the numerous Kauravas.

You need capability and numbers to prevail.

[brihaspati]

People are constantly giving us lessons in unemotional-non-ideological real-politik supposed driver of national and international policy. Well such cold realpolitik calculations say - then don't have hangovers about morality and ethics of not wanting to impose hegemony. If you dont, others will impose their hegemony over you. If the national leadership lacks a clear vision of how and where to expand hegemony, there will be unclear goals in armaments, and force building. What the above sounds like [from MoD] is a kind of hedging statement - somewhat the argument that the Brits currently give over their "naval reforms".

[kuldipchager]

Indian Ocean: the new Great Game

Ajai Shukla showing blue water strength of india-china navies now and future projection.

China outnumbers india with more than 500 war ships while india has an odd 134. So while india(with its geographical advantage) can choke supply in the indian ocean but not for long.


Comments:
If china have that many war ships then how many they can put against India.I think they will be lucky if they can spare 100 war ships.But I india can spare atleast 100 war ships.

[RamaY]

^ that is a wishful thinking. If and when China wants to go to war with India, no power will stand on the side of India and will put stress on china.

It is a different matter how many assets each side deploy to protect their interests.

[nakul]

We don't need to worry. While China aims to rule the world, we are quite happy with our immediate neighborhood. This principle guides the range of our planes, size of missiles, no of ships & war reserves of our Army.

[Pratyush]

^^^

If you wish to rule the world you need to control your neighborhood. That being the case India, ought to be the first country the PRC should subdue.

[nakul]

They can't. Not till they have a clear superiority in our backyard. They know that it is probably easier to bully Vietnam, Phillipines & other weaker states. To subdue us, they need a force many times greater. We only need to add a single ship for 3-4 Chinese ships. We are baniyas onlee.

[member_20292]

^ that is a wishful thinking. If and when China wants to go to war with India, no power will stand on the side of India and will put stress on china.

It is a different matter how many assets each side deploy to protect their interests.

The first thing that China thinks about and defends is the Taiwan straits. Then their mind is on Japan,then Korea, Vietnam, Philippines.

Interestingly, that's where the US Navy has thousands of men, their air force has aircraft, their army has men.

China is surrounded in a vice grip of steel. A real vice grip.

This string of pearls non sense , listening posts in coco islands, one construction project here, one there is nothing compared to the chain that is around the Chinese neck in the Western Pacific ocean.

Hell even North Korea tends to make trouble for them with their nukes.

The Chinese warships that India will ever have to contend with are going to be the ones that the Pakistan navy possesses.

Also, if we fight the Chinese, because of the above considerations that they will have to keep in mind, we will be evenly matched, not to say the training and the technology that we deploy.

However, evenly matched apart, they do have more of a stomach to see their sons blood spilt on the ground.

India, strategically, behaves like Europe does.

China behaves like the Americans.

[abhischekcc]

In D-B mindset, if you can't control then sell them to someone else.

Anyway look at TSP after kahn and dragon fiendship.

Was that a Freudian slip or what?

[svinayak]

But New Delhi does not intend this ocean to be a hotly contested strategic prize. Instead, oil and merchandise must flow smoothly, crucial for its growing economy. But the Indian Navy’s level statements and its rapid growth also indicate that India plans to retain local superiority over its Chinese counterpart, the People’s Liberation Army (Navy), which would allow it to counter any Chinese aggression on the Himalayan frontier with a blockade of Chinese shipping in the Indian Ocean.

Can china be blackmailed like this.

We need a fool proof system that China wil never try to attack in the border ever. It has to see heavy cost in any aggressive behavior against India.

[nakul]

Can we fight a long war? With the short wars that are common in today's world (especially in the Indian context), blocking Malacca straits or stopping Chinese shipments would not deter them. They would already stock up and nullify this advantage of ours.