India-US Strategic News and Discussion

[arjunm]

Diplomats in India just doing their job: US

I don't know any Indian diplomat meddle with American internal politics but thanks to WIKI we know how pro-active the Americans are in every level in influencing GOI Policies.

Tags: P J Crowley, India, United States, Barack Obama, State Department

Amid controversy generated by the release of secret cables by WikiLeaks, including those from United States embassy in New Delhi [ Images ], the Barack Obama [ Images ] administration has said that American diplomats in India [ Images ] are doing their job just like their counterparts in the US.

"Our diplomats do what diplomats do, and what we do in a country like India is no different than what Indian diplomats do in our country," State Department spokesman P J Crowley said at his daily news conference.

His comments came in response to a question about the latest revelation coming out in the news media after WikiLeaks released a fresh trench of cables issued by the US embassy in India.

"We are building a strategic partnership with India. We have significant engagement on a variety of issues with both the Indian government and the people," Crowley said.


http://www.rediff.com/news/report/diplo ... 101218.htm

[Virupaksha]

^^^What about Political Counsellor/Counsel and Political Officer/Office?

http://newdelhi.usembassy.gov/officers.html

there is only 1 "Counselor for Political Affairs" position in US embassy.

What will be the difference between them? Poloff is an abbreviation US uses often and across multiple embassies and wiki leak cables- so my guess was poloff is a standard US abbreviation for "counselor for Political Affairs". while polcoun in the whole internet is used only in the wikileaks cables of indian embassy.

Even my first guess was the same as you said, but checked it out in google. proved different.

[Prem]

http://gawker.com/5714658/muslim-radica ... can-agenda

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) is planning to hold hearings on the "radicalization" of American Muslims when he takes over the chair of the Homeland Security Committee next year, the New York Times reports.King told the Times he's concerned that Muslim-American leaders are increasingly reluctant to help out with the government's terror investigations."When I meet with law enforcement, they are constantly telling me how little cooperation they get from Muslim leaders," King said."It is controversial. But to me, it is something that has to be discussed," he said, adding that he had been "denounced" for the suggestion by the current Democratic leadership.
King, who denies being anti-Muslim, has nonetheless repeatedly cast suspicion on American Muslims as a whole since the 2001 terrorist attacks. He has helped mainstream the idea that 80 percent of mosques in America are led by radical clerics. The statistic has been cited over and over by those who believe American Muslims are raging a "stealth jihad." He has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to resign, saying Holder isn't sufficiently aware that "our enemy today is radical Islam." He's also, not surprisingly, opposed to the planned Islamic community center near Ground Zero and has called it "very offensive and wrong." (He did, however, say Newt Gingrich went too far when he called the center's developers akin to Nazis.)
But King told the Times that he plans to invite Muslim leaders and advocates so his inquiry will not be one-sided. The question is, will he listen?"They try to tell me that it is not as bad as it seems," he said.
Tensions between the Muslim community and law enforcement have reportedly heightened after a couple of undercover stings in which FBI agents gave young Muslims fake bombs. But Muslim-Americans have also time and again tipped off law enforcement to suspected extremists in their midst, including the would-be bomber caught in an Oregon sting and the FBI informant-posing-as-radicalist we wrote about last week.

[JE Menon]

In my understanding usually polcouns/poloff are natives or native origin... I think this is so in India.

[Lalmohan]

every embassy has political officers. Their job is to analyse, meet with and understand the political parties in their posting nation. this is routine diplomacy. it is crucial that every diplomatic service understands the main political players, including the opposition parties in a country. they are normally senior ranking diplomats with a strong intellectual background
GOI/MEA has them too - and they do a good job!

[Philip]

"It will also help protect the Congressional bipartisan consensus for India and preserve the unprecedented popularity of the United States among Indians, on which our growing bilateral relationship depends," he argues.

From which planet has this diplo-mutt arrived from? "Unprecented popularity" indeed! This ignoramus has not heard of the "street",whether it is the Iraqi street,Arab street,Afghan street,Paki street or the Indian street,the feeling is the same,that the US is a mischiveous interloper who speaks with a forked tongue and cannot be trusted.If he means popularity amongst our "rulers",it is a different matter,as the rulers know how to feather their nests and Uncle Sam is an expert on "feathering". It therefore underscores how deep is the malaise amongst the regime of the day in abdicating our hard-fought struggle for independence from colonial rule,only to see it return as neo-colonialism thanks to the our latter-day Mir Jaffar's!

[svenkat]

Philipji,
FWIW,I have high respect for you.You are a BRF senior, but Sir,you seem to be stuck in pre-prestorika age.The street can be roused by passions.Ultimately,the street is no homogenous entity nor should the intellectual classes be ignored.The history,present and future vision play pivotal roles in the perception of the street.

A street in Madras is different from a street in Mumbai which is different from a street in Delhi which is very different from the street in Srinagar..In pre-liberalisation India,the street could be 'managed'.While it is easy to criticise Con-gress what about the alternatives-BJP,TDP,DMK etc.Do they inspire anything except ...

[Rangudu]

Usually, US Foreign Service Officers need to go through the "political officer" career track to become Ambassadors. The other categories are Management officer (back office) , Economic officer (Commerce/business liaison), Consular officer (visa issual, citizenship etc.). The political officers are also most likely to be the ones that meet and greet local politicians, journalists etc. People like Holbrooke, Amritraj etc. were political career path guys.

BTW, spies can be in any career track because their official position is usually a cover for what they really do. Also, US missions have military attaches, who are usually serving military officers.

Interestingly, when someone I know used to write articles more prolifically than now, the "Political Minister" in the Indian Embassy in DC used to be in regular touch, trying to understand and shape views.

[Nihat]

"It will also help protect the Congressional bipartisan consensus for India and preserve the unprecedented popularity of the United States among Indians, on which our growing bilateral relationship depends," he argues.

From which planet has this diplo-mutt arrived from? "Unprecented popularity" indeed! This ignoramus has not heard of the "street",whether it is the Iraqi street,Arab street,Afghan street,Paki street or the Indian street,the feeling is the same,that the US is a mischiveous interloper who speaks with a forked tongue and cannot be trusted.If he means popularity amongst our "rulers",it is a different matter,as the rulers know how to feather their nests and Uncle Sam is an expert on "feathering". It therefore underscores how deep is the malaise amongst the regime of the day in abdicating our hard-fought struggle for independence from colonial rule,only to see it return as neo-colonialism thanks to the our latter-day Mir Jaffar's!

sure, I get it - but when you say that the US is a cunning manupilator then what advise would you have for MEA officials wrt their approach towards United states. Should we go back to our pre-1990 policy of engaging Russia and keeping US at arms leangth ?? and look at all things amrika with shifty eyes.

The world runs on economic today and having unstable relations with the worlds largest economy (by some distance) is foolish at best. Fortunatly or unfortunatly relations with the US is a 2 way street and come as a package deal of sorts, we just cannot embrace one aspect while shunning another.

One can say that purchasing US arms is a bad idea but surely the americans are smart enough to link economic relationships with other countries to their own national intrest.

[Sanku]

. Fortunatly or unfortunatly relations with the US is a 2 way street and come as a package deal of sorts, we just cannot embrace one aspect while shunning another.

You have hit the problem partially but not fully, yes we can not go back to 90s (nor we should) but we need Diplomats who can do the hyphenation trap that you talk of above.

Keep the good shun the bad.

What else is GoI for, any child can get into the "package deal as made by the bigger bully" arrangement.

Surely better is expected from leadership of India?

[Philip]

"Balance",that is what one should exercise in all human experience and actions.When the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and fate afflict us, we should at all times try and keep our balance and remain surefooted.It is the same with relations with other nations.We must not bend in the wind and sway like straws with every passing gale. Our independence of thought and action must be based upon our interests,which again are built upon the foundation of India's eternal ancient morals and virtues,and should remain as the Holy Grail of India diplomacy.One can only describe the attitude of our PM and our pro-US mandarins of the MEA as being exactly that of the servile scribes during the Emergency, who "when only asked to stoop,why did they choose to crawl?"

The cry of the Congress ,"Singh is King,King is Singh",not too long ago after the election,is as bad as those of "Indira is India,India is Indira".In actual fact,the latter claim by DK Barooah had far more truth in it (Indira was truly "Empress of India" as Time magazine called her)than the current claim of our latter-day monarch,whose kingdom is as vast as that of the Moghul emperor Shah Alam....."from Delhi to Palam".One worthy I know even disputes this and says it is more akin to the empire of the last Moghul-Bahadur Shah,whose imperial expanse was the distance he could relieve himself from the ramparts of the Red Fort!

[Nihat]

" Keep the good, shun the bad" and " blanace" are very good words in theory but their practicle implementation is a different kettle of fish altogether. IF MEA and GOI were to start things over with the US, how would it have taken place and what could be done differently (if anything). Contrary to popular perception, I don't see how India's national intrests have been subverted by the United States or how GoI has bent backwards to accmodate Unkil.

Should we never have gone in for a Indo-US nuke deal?? (which would diversify our energy sources and open doors to Russian, French and Japanese tech.), is weapons procurement diversification wrong?? (if so, why ??).

As I see it, we have hardly bent backwards wrt to Unkil, we have protected our economic intrests such as in the case of retail while getting names of our entities removed from sanctions list, different weapon procurement sources give us different technology and augments combat effectivness, political engagement atleast gives us some kind of diplomatic handle over TSP (albeit not much).

As for things like Unkil pressing us over Kashmir, global warming , market access etc. , these are things which can cause occasional discomfort but India is just as capale of telling GOTUS just where it can go wrt these issues. Emerging India has incredible value to the US and other important nations of the world and as a nation cannot be pushed around so easily by any world power as someone might think.

The weak and the strong can never be "friends", one can be a mentor and the other disciple and as long as this dependence remains the perception of friendship will also remain. A much more stronger India is nobody's "diciple" today and can talk to friends and enemies at it's own terms , especially when the world order is changing as it is today. It is in this light that Indo-Us relations should be seen.

[abhishek_sharma]

Imperial by Design

John J. Mearsheimer | December 16, 2010

http://nationalinterest.org/article/imp ... esign-4576

IN THE first years after the Cold War ended, many Americans had a profound sense of optimism about the future of international politics. President Bill Clinton captured that mood when he told the UN General Assembly in September 1993:

"It is clear that we live at a turning point in human history. Immense and promising changes seem to wash over us every day. The Cold War is over. The world is no longer divided into two armed and angry camps. Dozens of new democracies have been born. It is a moment of miracles."

The basis of all this good feeling was laid out at the time in two famous articles by prominent neoconservatives. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama argued in “The End of History?” that Western liberal democracy had won a decisive victory over communism and fascism and should be seen as the “final form of human government.” One consequence of this “ideological evolution,” he argued, was that large-scale conflict between the great powers was “passing from the scene,” although “the vast bulk of the Third World remains very much mired in history, and will be a terrain of conflict for many years to come.” Nevertheless, liberal democracy and peace would eventually come to the Third World as well, because the sands of time were pushing inexorably in that direction.


One year later, Charles Krauthammer emphasized in “The Unipolar Moment” that the United States had emerged from the Cold War as by far the most powerful country on the planet. He urged American leaders not to be reticent about using that power “to lead a unipolar world, unashamedly laying down the rules of world order and being prepared to enforce them.” Krauthammer’s advice fit neatly with Fukuyama’s vision of the future: the United States should take the lead in bringing democracy to less developed countries the world over. After all, that shouldn’t be an especially difficult task given that America had awesome power and the cunning of history on its side.

U.S. grand strategy has followed this basic prescription for the past twenty years, mainly because most policy makers inside the Beltway have agreed with the thrust of Fukuyama’s and Krauthammer’s early analyses.

The results, however, have been disastrous. The United States has been at war for a startling two out of every three years since 1989, and there is no end in sight.

...

To make matters worse, the United States is now engaged in protracted wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that have so far cost well over a trillion dollars and resulted in around forty-seven thousand American casualties. The pain and suffering inflicted on Iraq has been enormous. Since the war began in March 2003, more than one hundred thousand Iraqi civilians have been killed, ...

...

The United States has also been unable to solve three other major foreign-policy problems. ... Iran’s uranium-enrichment ... North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons .... Israeli-Palestinian conflict; ....

The unpleasant truth is that the United States is in a world of trouble today on the foreign-policy front, and this state of affairs is only likely to get worse in the next few years, ...

...

This regrettable situation raises the obvious questions of what went wrong? And can America right its course?

THE DOWNWARD spiral the United States has taken was anything but inevitable. Washington has always had a choice in how to approach grand strategy. One popular option among some libertarians is isolationism. This approach is based on the assumption that there is no region outside the Western Hemisphere that is strategically important enough to justify expending American blood and treasure. Isolationists believe that the United States is remarkably secure because it is separated from all of the world’s great powers by two giant moats—the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans—and on top of that it has had nuclear weapons—the ultimate deterrent—since 1945. But in truth, there is really no chance that Washington will adopt this policy, though the United States had strong isolationist tendencies until World War II. For since then, an internationalist activism, fostered by the likes of the Rockefeller Foundation, has thoroughly delegitimized this approach. American policy makers have come to believe the country should be militarily involved on the world stage. Yet though no mainstream politician would dare advocate isolationism at this point, the rationale for this grand strategy shows just how safe the United States is. This means, among other things, that it will always be a challenge to motivate the U.S. public to want to run the world and especially to fight wars of choice in distant places.

Offshore balancing, which was America’s traditional grand strategy for most of its history, is but another option. Predicated on the belief that there are three regions of the world that are strategically important to the United States—Europe, Northeast Asia and the Persian Gulf—it sees the United States’ principle goal as making sure no country dominates any of these areas as it dominates the Western Hemisphere. This is to ensure that dangerous rivals in other regions are forced to concentrate their attention on great powers in their own backyards rather than be free to interfere in America’s. The best way to achieve that end is to rely on local powers to counter aspiring regional hegemons and otherwise keep U.S. military forces over the horizon. But if that proves impossible, American troops come from offshore to help do the job, and then leave once the potential hegemon is checked.

...

The root cause of America’s troubles is that it adopted a flawed grand strategy after the Cold War. From the Clinton administration on, the United States rejected all these other avenues, instead pursuing global dominance, or what might alternatively be called global hegemony, which was not just doomed to fail, but likely to backfire in dangerous ways if it relied too heavily on military force to achieve its ambitious agenda.

Global dominance has two broad objectives: maintaining American primacy, which means making sure that the United States remains the most powerful state in the international system; and spreading democracy across the globe, in effect, making the world over in America’s image. The underlying belief is that new liberal democracies will be peacefully inclined and pro-American, so the more the better. Of course, this means that Washington must care a lot about every country’s politics. With global dominance, no serious attempt is made to prioritize U.S. interests, because they are virtually limitless.

This grand strategy is “imperial” at its core; its proponents believe that the United States has the right as well as the responsibility to interfere in the politics of other countries. One would think that such arrogance might alienate other states, but most American policy makers of the early nineties and beyond were confident that would not happen, instead believing that other countries—save for so-called rogue states like Iran and North Korea—would see the United States as a benign hegemon serving their own interests.

...

[Sanku]

" Keep the good, shun the bad" and " blanace" are very good words in theory but their practicle implementation is a different kettle of fish altogether..

Of course, but that is what GoI is for, otherwise why not just get Mountbatten back and be done with it.

And since you ask one thing I would have liked to see different (there are many but just raise one)

Indo-US nuclear deal should have been self contained (no references to external laws) and promised a perpetual promise only for perpetual guarantee + reproc & no tech denial promise.

And yes, I think if GoI spent more energy in working on US rather than working on the Indians on behalf of the US, it could have been done, and the Indians would have aligned automatically.

But as it comes out from Wiki leaks, the US Govt talks about the current GoI and other Indians as "We have been able to convince the Indians at large"

I mean if this is not "Writing on the wall" I dont know what else will be.

I can go on and on, but this should be enough to get the drift (I have about 5-6 other such examples)

[Philip]

The "weak and the strong".What is the most important issue that India has with the US and its greatest danger? Terrorism from Pak. What did the great and "strong" Indian HM do,plead with the US to sit in an adjoining room with Gilani/Headley,so that he could LIE to the Indian people that we had access to him! Is this also the way a 'friend" behaves when we were victims of such unholy terror which also claimed US lives? The US was scared that its duplicity would be found out if we had access to headley and that vital info about its relationship with the ISI had to be kept secret.

What other chicanery do we see from the US? Continuing arms supplies to Pak which can only be used against India.Our "strong" PM didn't even have the ghoulies to openly place this as a major issue for debate with Obama on his visit.For this insult,we choose to reward the US by buying arms from it,at inflated prices (AWST C-17 price for Canada less than that offered to India),with the profits going to Pak in ther form of US military aid worth billions!

We now even have the US "nod" to China to supply Pak with N-plants that are free of international safeguards-to the world's worst ever proliferator of N-technology and whose "Count Dracula" (AQK) of illegal nuclear trade has never been interrogated by the US or any other western agency! We have behaved like a servile lackey under the (non) leadership of MMS whose sole aim has been to please the US.See the report that he threatened Sonia G with his resignation if he did not get his way with the N-deal and she succumbed.In the spate of such massive scandals has he done anything similar with regard to corruption within his own party and coalition? No,because his job is not yet over and our latter-day Mir Jafar has even more tricks to perform for his imperial masters!

[SaiK]

NPR 9a news, reported only about 20,000 BJP volunteers protesting and blocking traffic in delhi against the gov on food price increase and corruptions. It took about a minute or more slot? 20K crowd is pretty easy and not a big news for India for NPR. Whatsup!?

[abhishek_sharma]

‘Extend US visa fee hike'

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Extend-US ... 41687.aspx

[Singha]

the japan-US alliance has taken steps to mitigate the rare earth blackmail by PRC - however in exchange for helping japanese industry we must also ensure they establish manufacturing plants here (incl for the magnets and stuff these rare earths are used for ) and generally step up invesment rather than just a deep bow and the minerals disappearing in "Maru ships" to the east ..... !!

http://www.fastcompany.com/1711410/hita ... arths-race
http://www.sify.com/news/toyota-to-esta ... bbeid.html
Toyota to establish rare earth plant in India
2010-12-09 07:00:00


Tokyo, Dec 9 (DPA) A Toyota Motor group company is to build a rare earth processing plant in India to secure supply sources outside China, the Japanese company has said.

Japanese trading house Toyota Tsusho Corp said in a statement Wednesday that it would start to export to Japan in 2012 about 3,000 to 4,000 tonnes of rare-earth minerals annually.

Rare-earth minerals are used to produce hybrid cars, mobile phones and other high-tech products.

The company is to start building the plant in India's Orissa state at the beginning of 2011 and to launch production by the end of the year, in collaboration with Japan's Shin-Etsu Chemical Co and Indian Rare Earths Ltd, a subsidiary of the state-controlled Nuclear Power Corp of India.

Shin-Etsu Chemical is expected to provide technical support and to engage in product trading with the rare earths plant.

Toyota Tsusho, which said the company had surveyed the rare earth resource potential throughout the world, is also developing the minerals in Vietnam.

With the two plants, the company will be able to supply around 10,000 tonnes of rare earths a year in 2013, roughly one-third of Japan's total demand, an unnamed company official was quoted by Kyodo News as saying.

China suspended shipments of rare-earth minerals to Japan in early September in an apparent protest at Japan's arrest of a Chinese captain whose fishing boat collided with Japanese Coast Guard vessels off a disputed set of islets in the East China Sea.

[Pratyush]

Lets no congratulate ourselves too soon. The proof of the pudding is in eating it.

You will soon have 100 NGO and peoples action groups agatiting against this plant. Remember Posco, Vedanta etc.

That is what is happening in those parts these days.

[Singha]

the rare earth corp of india who is supposed to be in on the deal probably has existing mines...

[Pratyush]

^^^ Indian Rare Earths

http://www.irel.gov.in/

The site seems to be down for the moment lest see what it will have when it comes up.

[joshvajohn]

2010 -- a watershed year in Indo-US ties
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/new ... 155269.cms


Merry Christmas to all in US and Indian friends!

[ashokpachori]

^^^ Indian Rare Earths

http://www.irel.gov.in/

The site seems to be down for the moment lest see what it will have when it comes up.

With rare earths, you need to make a distinction between the “light” and “heavy” elements, as the heavier ones are more valuable. China may have half the world’s rare earths, but it has more light rare-earth elements, while Australia and Canada have the heavier ones.

China has locked up 90% of the market for rare earths. The resource rich country flooded the market in the 1980s and 1990s and put a lot of non-Chinese small and mediumsized rare-earth companies out of business. Now, there is a real shortage and Beijing is starting to flex its muscle.

Clearly, its current hammerlock on rare earths gives China a huge and possibly unfair advantage in some of the newest cutting-edge technologies, like solar panels, hybrid cars, wind turbines, mobile phones, digital cameras, portable X-ray units, energy-efficient light bulbs and stadium lights, light-emitting diodes, catalytic converters, MRI machines, laser and fibre optics. Rare earths like super-magnet dysprosium and red-glowing europium are key components in harddisk drives, computer screens and ultra-thin TVs.

http://www.theedgesingapore.com/blog-he ... -game.html

[arunsrinivasan]

Botched calculations: K. Subrahmanyam
Read in full, very good info, some old news to us jingos, but enhanced thanks to newly declassified material.

I read the recently declassified account of former US Ambassador Robert F. Goheen’s interview with Morarji Desai on June 7, 1979, as a person then involved with the Indian side of decision-making (‘US ’79 memo: Let’s sell Pakistan F-16s and prevent n-proliferation,’ IE, December 24). I wonder whether this was an input sought by the US national security establishment before the issue of the infamous national security presidential directive of July 3, 1979, authorising joint US-Pakistan operations in Afghanistan, which, in due course, triggered the Soviet intervention in December 1979. In retrospect, it would appear that the presidential directive instigated by national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski led to the biggest-ever setback to American national security. First, it led to the rise of jihadism, as a result of the combined strategy adopted by the CIA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This has recently been admitted by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It also resulted in the proliferation of nuclear weapons to Pakistan, which enabled Islamabad to develop the nuclear deterrent derivative of terrorism as an instrument of state policy, to be used not only against India but the US as well. The link between the CIA and Dr A.Q. Khan, even before he arrived with all his purloined documentation in Pakistan, has been exposed by the disclosures of Ruud Lubbers, the former Dutch prime minister. The fact is that in spite of his known record, not only was he allowed to move freely between China, Pakistan and Europe, but he was also rescued for the second time from Dutch authorities in 1986 by CIA intervention. That would indicate that the CIA had an interest in Khan throughout the period. The issue that has not so far been explored by American as well as Indian scholars of proliferation was, firstly, the connection between the CIA and Khan and, secondly, the US interest in permitting nuclear proliferation to Pakistan. Brzezinski has since come out with the disclosures that permissiveness of nuclear proliferation was the price to be paid to obtain Pakistani support for the anti-Soviet campaign. In 1982, in discussions between Alexander Haig, the US secretary of state, and the Pakistani team led by Agha Shahi and General K. M. Arif (referred to in General Arif’s book, Serving with Zia), Haig agreed that the Pakistani nuclear programme would not come in the way of US-Pakistan collaboration. The extensive proliferation activity by China to Pakistan during this period has been disclosed in Khan’s letters to his wife, when he feared that he was going to be proceeded against, copies of which have been made available by the correspondent Simon Henderson. Most of the information on Khan being set up with a Manhattan Project-type exclusive military programme under an engineering general, and data on the imports, were all available even in India at that time. The Indian Joint Intelligence Committee chaired by me concluded in January 1979 that Pakistan was on its way to the acquisition of nuclear weapons. The intelligence-gathering effort at that time was ably headed by K. Santhanam as deputy director of R&AW. The JIC’s report was considered by the cabinet committee on political affairs in March 1979. During the course of the discussion, I was told by the then cabinet secretary, Nirmal Mukarji, that while Morarji Desai and Atal Bihari Vajpayee were against any immediate action, the other three cabinet members — H.M. Patel, Jagjivan Ram, and Charan Singh — were clearly in favour of initiating appropriate action. On the basis of the information given to me, I wrote out a manuscript minute, in my capacity as additional secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, that appropriate directions were issued to the chairman. Morarji Desai approved this minute and the cabinet secretary asked me to deliver it in person to Homi Sethna in Bombay, which I did. The meeting itself was attended by the five ministers, the cabinet secretary, the secretary to the prime minister, V. Shankar, and Sethna. All the other secretaries were kept out of the meeting. Therefore, there are unlikely to be any records on those events in the Cabinet Secretariat. Reflecting over those developments in hindsight, and with the wisdom and information of the last 30 years, I am left with a number of very puzzling questions on US policy and conduct. The enormous amount of material available on Chinese proliferation help to Pakistan has been referred to in the Santhanam’s deposition to the Kargil Review Committee. We have so far been speculating on Chinese proliferation to Pakistan. If we take into account the Cold War situation then, and the policies pursued by people like Carter and Reagan, it is today a legitimate issue to investigate whether A.Q. Khan and Pakistan were used by the US as a conduit to deliver centrifuge technology to China. Centrifuge technology was developed by Gernot Zippe, a German prisoner of war in Russian hands, in the 1950s. After his release, it was developed by the Germans and transmitted to Almelo where Khan was employed. Were the Americans interested in improvising and increasing the efficiency of the Chinese nuclear weapons programme as one of the countervailing elements in their Cold War against the Soviet Union? Just as they used Catholicism in Eastern Europe, Islam in Brzezinski’s “Arc of Crisis”, and the Star Wars programme to increase the burden on the Soviet Union, were they also trying to strengthen the Chinese nuclear programme vis-à-vis the Soviet Union by using Khan and Pakistan as conduits? It is to be recalled that there was–– major debate in the US establishment at that stage. Already by 1977, views emerged in sections of the CIA that the Soviet economy was declining and the Soviet Union was heading for a crisis. At that time, the deputy director of the CIA in charge of the Soviet Union was Robert Gates. This view was challenged by hardliners — including Brzezinski — who then set up a “Team B” which included people like Paul Wolfowitz, who came to a different conclusion: that the Soviet Union did constitute a very serious and major threat. The US has committed strategic blunders like mistaking Vietnamese nationalism as an extension of Chinese communism, not understanding the risks in the use of jihadism, and being permissive of Pakistani proliferation. Could there have been yet another major US blunder in trying to convey centrifuge technology to China using Pakistan and Khan? The US may have calculated that Pakistan and Khan would be under their effective control, just like these other previous miscalculations. This is an issue that needs to be pursued.

[krisna]

Speaking Ill of ‘the Best and the Brightest’- regarding Hole broke-RIP

One of “the best and the brightest” died last week, and in Richard Holbrooke we had a perfect example of the dark mischief to which David Halberstam referred when he authored that ironic label. Holbrooke’s life marks the propensity of our elite institutions to turn out alpha leaders with simplistic world-ordering ambitions unrestrained by moral conscience or intellectual humility.

While in Washington, Holbrooke came to write a chapter of the secret Pentagon Papers study that exposed the falsehoods justifying the war. Shades of the WikiLeaks disclosures—when Daniel Ellsberg, who also worked on that report, revealed it to the world, the lies stood exposed. As Defense Secretary Robert McNamara acknowledged decades after commissioning the study, 3.5 million Indochinese died in a war that had little if anything to do with our national security. He concluded that he could indeed be judged a “war criminal,” except that appellation is reserved for leaders of lesser states, like the Serbian and Iraqi leaders whose war crimes Holbrooke would later trumpet as excuses for other U.S. wars.

Holbrooke not only failed to learn from the U.S. mistakes in Vietnam; he repeated them in working for every Democratic president to follow. When Jimmy Carter was elected, there was Holbrooke as an assistant secretary of state supporting the Islamic mujahedeen in Afghanistan, a group fighting the Soviet-backed secular government in Kabul.

Indefatigable in his hubris, Holbrooke also got Carter to support a Cambodian exile coalition based in Thailand to attempt to overthrow the Vietnamese-backed government in Cambodia that had ousted the mass murderer Pol Pot. The fact that the coalition included this man who had killed millions of his own people did not perturb Holbrooke. I have written elsewhere of Holbrooke’s arrogance in defending the U.S. backing of the coalition at a dinner at the home of legendary television producer Norman Lear; on that evening Holbrooke went off about the critical importance that a regime change in tiny Cambodia would hold for the future of civilization.

After messing up Cambodia and Afghanistan during the Carter years, Holbrooke teamed up with another Democratic Party operative, James Johnson, to form the business consulting firm Public Strategies while at the same time serving as an adviser at Lehman Brothers. The two proved quite successful in the business world, selling their company to Lehman Brothers, where Holbrooke became a managing director. Johnson went on to head Fannie Mae, presiding over its reckless expansion into the subprime and Alt-A housing market.

From 2001 to 2008 Holbrooke teamed up again with Johnson to head Perseus LLC, a private equity firm. During that same period, Holbrooke became a director of AIG, the insurance company whose credit default swaps almost brought down the economy and which required a $170 billion bailout from the taxpayers.

The Times did not mention that Holbrooke left AIG, where he had been paid $268,000 a year plus stock options, two months before the insurer imploded. Further evidence that “the best and the brightest” had the same success with our banking system as they did in foreign policy.

ouch! this broke hole's soul.

Good that India did not allow this man to have his way.

[krisna]

Indian-American Kamala Harris 'female Obama' in making: Report

Indian-American Kamala Harris, California's next Attorney General, is the "female Obama" in making and likely to be a national figure shortly, a media report said on Saturday. Daughter of an Indian mother and African-American father, Harris is being called the future of the Democratic Party, a rising political star in the mold of one of her big supporters — President Barack Obama, the 'Politico' said in a lead story.

At first glance, the President and Harris have much in common: Both are mixed-race children of immigrants raised by a single mother; both are eloquent, telegenic big-city lawyers with strong liberal credentials who catapulted from relative obscurity to the national stage.
"And like the first African-American President, Harris has broken a long-standing barrier — she's California's first African-American Attorney General and the first woman to hold the office," Politico said.

Born and raised in the East Bay, Kamala is the daughter of Dr Shyamala Gopalan, a Tamilian breast cancer specialist who traveled to the US from Chennai to pursue her graduate studies at UC Berkeley

[abhishek_sharma]

Rao PMO furious, said going after Anderson would hit FDI: Ex-CBI chief

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/Rao-P ... ief/729387

[abhishek_sharma]

US warning: Bilateral agri trade can be hit if India does not open market

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/us-wa ... et/729674/

[Pratyush]

^^^

If the MMS led GOI caves in to this threat then we cna be sure that the food security of India becomes a thing of the past.

[vera_k]

Suresh Kalmadi shipped out crucial documents to US

[arunsrinivasan]

Strategic climate change : K. Subrahmanyam
Read in full as usual great stuff from K Subrahmanyam

The United States’ joining of the two World Wars, the promotion of the United Nations, George Kennan’s containment strategy, the Marshall Plan, the defence of South Korea, and the formation of NATO were policies and strategies that served US interests and international interests in the second half of the 20th century. The indiscriminate pactomania exploited by dictators, the terrible blunder of not understanding the nationalist fervour of wartime ally Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh, the crass opportunism of the “best and the brightest” that killed millions of Vietnamese, the toleration of the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis, the compromises and alliance with Mao Zedong, connivance at the genocide of millions of Cambodians, the use of religious extremism to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan, and the use of nuclear proliferation to China and Pakistan as strategic policies, all arose out of the “arrogance of power” and led to the present situation where the US is vulnerable to terrorist attacks, its pre-eminence is challenged by China, and its core values are threatened in Asia.Unfortunately, there is not enough introspection in the US on past mistakes. The American debate is still in terms of a 20th century paradigm of nuclear confrontation, nuclear proliferation, and wars with conventional forces and increasing technological advancement. The arrogance of power still dominates the US strategic debate, and strategic communities in the rest of the world, including India, do not challenge the basic paradigms of the Americans, and tend to argue within that framework, mostly defensively and weakly. It cannot be a coincidence that A.Q. Khan was beginning to be used as an instrument of proliferation to China when George Bush Sr was director of the CIA. And it continued under the watch of National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, whose pro-Chinese proclivities were evident even recently, when he strongly supported a G-2 arrangement in financial governance. While the US establishment thought it could keep both proliferation to China and permissiveness for proliferation to Pakistan under control, it overlooked the risks of China and Pakistan having their own agenda. As The Nuclear Express, a book by Thomas Reed of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory and Danny Stillman of the Los Alamos Laboratory makes clear, the Chinese leadership under Deng Xiaoping appears to have decided to use proliferation to Pakistan to countervail India and proliferation to North Korea to countervail South Korea and Japan. The Americans were so permissive of Pakistani proliferation in the ’80s that they took to task their own CIA officer Richard Barlow for submitting an assessment on Pakistan reaching nuclear explosive capability by 1987. The sordid story of the harassment of Richard Barlow is set out in the book Nuclear Deception by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott Clark. What the Americans did not count on, presumably, was that the Chinese would conduct a nuclear weapon test for Pakistan in the Lop Nor test site, as they did on May 26, 1990. While the visit of Robert Gates, then deputy national security advisor, to Islamabad to dissuade President Ghulam Ishaq Khan and General Aslam Beg from going ahead with the test was projected to the world as an effort at avoiding a Pakistan-India nuclear confrontation, it is now quite clear their attempt at dissuading Pakistan failed. It is this crossing of the red line that led to the invocation of the Pressler Amendment and the breakdown in the military and aid relationship between the United States and Pakistan. One person who is now in a position to give a complete clarification of what happened in 1990 is Gates, now defence secretary. One wonders whether he would accept US responsibility for Pakistan going nuclear and developing the nuclear deterrent derivative of terrorism from it, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has done with respect to the development of jihadi terrorism. The main problem we face today is the inability of most of the US as well as Indian strategic communities to move out of the Cold War paradigm. Nuclear weapons are no longer a serious threat for international confrontation. This has been accepted by President Obama in his speech on the nuclear security summit of 13 April 2010. How to deal with states that use nuclear proliferation to illegitimate regimes to augment their influence and use terrorism as an instrument of state policy, is now the major common challenge India and the United States face. As has been emphasised in the joint statements issued in Washington on November 24, 2009 and in Delhi on November 8, 2010, the shaping of the future international order that will defend a pluralistic, secular and democratic world is the main task faced by both the US and India. This task cannot be addressed successfully unless the world order can be shaped by pluralistic, secular and democratic values and the challenges of religious extremism and oligarchic, one-party dictatorship can be successfully met. This task cannot be undertaken by the US alone, as it did the security and prosperity of the democratic order in the second half of the 20th century, because the challenge from China is not a military one, but the emergence of the foremost knowledge power in the world. The currency of power will be knowledge, and not missiles and nuclear warheads. Given China’s fourfold superiority in terms of population and its rapid expansion in knowledge infrastructure, the US can meet this challenge only if it has a partner which shares the common goal of a democratic pluralistic world order. India is that partner. This necessitates a broad-based strategic dialogue between the US and the Indian strategic communities. On the US side, there must be a clear realisation of the very serious blunders committed in the second half of the 20th century by their own strategic establishment. On the Indian side, there has to be an effort at formulating independent strategic thinking and not merely to argue within the framework set by the US strategic establishment. While there are no signs that such a process has begun in the US or in India, it is a curious fact that those who led a major paradigm shift in US policy by a radical amendment to the international nuclear regime to accommodate India and rectify a past strategic blunder, all come from a small group of those who did not contribute to the blunders of Bush Sr, Carter, Brzezinski, et al.

[Pranav]

Strategic climate change : K. Subrahmanyam
Read in full as usual great stuff from K Subrahmanyam

On the US side, there must be a clear realisation of the very serious blunders committed in the second half of the 20th century by their own strategic establishment.

While they continue propping up TSP, one cannot say that any realization has dawned.

[abhischekcc]

Strategic climate change : K. Subrahmanyam
Read in full as usual great stuff from K Subrahmanyam

On the US side, there must be a clear realisation of the very serious blunders committed in the second half of the 20th century by their own strategic establishment.

While they continue propping up TSP, one cannot say that any realization has dawned.

I have a point of contention in KS's statement. He automatically assumes that the US has made 'very serious blunders'.

Could the US really stay stay as a super power, win the cold war, and impose its view of the market on the whole planet if it made these 'very serious blunders'?

No, these acts do not constitute 'very serious blunders' but are part of coordinated policy of balancing power in Asia.

1. The indiscriminate pactomania exploited by dictators
Haha, the 'indiscriminate pactomania' was not exploited by dictators - it was forced down the throats of countries by an imperial power to exploit the natural resources of those countries. The US thinking was that since democratically elected governments will have to listen to their people and allocate these resources for thier benefit, it will leave less for the rapacious NY based elite. Hence, the US felt that 'local strongmen' would be better for the 'market'. Pinochet is a prime example of this thinking.

2. The terrible blunder of not understanding the nationalist fervour of wartime ally Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh
The threat of communism was exagerated whenever US wanted to commit aggression. No, US was not threatened by communism, but by a different economic model that Vietnam was pursuing at that time. There was some chance of this model being successful, and the US was paranoid that this model would then be replicated across the region. They did not care whether this model was nationalistic or communist, just that it was not capitalist.

2. The crass opportunism of the “best and the brightest” that killed millions of Vietnamese
US is run by a sociopathic elite that feels it has the right to manpulate the masses - their own and outsiders both. There is no 'crass opportunism' in them - this is their mentality.

3. The toleration of the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis
Again, KS shows his tendency to wash away the crimes of the US by assuming innocence on the part of the US. The massacre of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis (many of them Hindus) was designed to create a mass influx into India (20 million came), which was designed to destabilize India and Indira Gandhi. Of course, Indira Gandhi put paid their plans by destroying pakistan itself. It is then that the internal destabilization started by the UK and US alliance. But that is another story.

4. The compromises and alliance with Mao Zedong
What compromises? US wanted a counter weight to USSR, China asked for a price to be paid for its support for US policy and they got it. It was a deal, not a compromise.

5. Connivance at the genocide of millions of Cambodians
6. The use of religious extremism to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan
7. The use of nuclear proliferation to China and Pakistan as strategic policies
Note the sanitized language used in these three statements - in which the US is painted as a party which did not initiate these acts, although it surely benefited from them.

[KLNMurthy]

I have a point of contention in KS's statement. He automatically assumes that the US has made 'very serious blunders'.

Could the US really stay stay as a super power, win the cold war, and impose its view of the market on the whole planet if it made these 'very serious blunders'?

No, these acts do not constitute 'very serious blunders' but are part of coordinated policy of balancing power in Asia.

1. The indiscriminate pactomania exploited by dictators
Haha, the 'indiscriminate pactomania' was not exploited by dictators - it was forced down the throats of countries by an imperial power to exploit the natural resources of those countries. The US thinking was that since democratically elected governments will have to listen to their people and allocate these resources for thier benefit, it will leave less for the rapacious NY based elite. Hence, the US felt that 'local strongmen' would be better for the 'market'. Pinochet is a prime example of this thinking.

2. The terrible blunder of not understanding the nationalist fervour of wartime ally Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh
The threat of communism was exagerated whenever US wanted to commit aggression. No, US was not threatened by communism, but by a different economic model that Vietnam was pursuing at that time. There was some chance of this model being successful, and the US was paranoid that this model would then be replicated across the region. They did not care whether this model was nationalistic or communist, just that it was not capitalist.

2. The crass opportunism of the “best and the brightest” that killed millions of Vietnamese
US is run by a sociopathic elite that feels it has the right to manpulate the masses - their own and outsiders both. There is no 'crass opportunism' in them - this is their mentality.

3. The toleration of the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis
Again, KS shows his tendency to wash away the crimes of the US by assuming innocence on the part of the US. The massacre of hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis (many of them Hindus) was designed to create a mass influx into India (20 million came), which was designed to destabilize India and Indira Gandhi. Of course, Indira Gandhi put paid their plans by destroying pakistan itself. It is then that the internal destabilization started by the UK and US alliance. But that is another story.

4. The compromises and alliance with Mao Zedong
What compromises? US wanted a counter weight to USSR, China asked for a price to be paid for its support for US policy and they got it. It was a deal, not a compromise.

5. Connivance at the genocide of millions of Cambodians
6. The use of religious extremism to fight Soviet forces in Afghanistan
7. The use of nuclear proliferation to China and Pakistan as strategic policies
Note the sanitized language used in these three statements - in which the US is painted as a party which did not initiate these acts, although it surely benefited from them.

KS is being kind and diplomatic; his articles would be read by Americans also, it is better to tell them they made mistakes (which gives them a way to 'correct' the error, and remain friends with India ) rather than say that they did something evil (in which case there is no room for change and US and India have to be enemies).

The name of the game is to keep the door of friendship open and to (hopefully) cause a split between those in the US admin who followed the old policy and those who think it was a mistake and want to fight for a change.

[vera_k]

American citizens can get Washington's help for visa delays to India

The U.S. State Department on Monday came out in support of American citizens of Indian origin who are facing considerable delays with recent visa applications for India.

“The Indian officials are so corrupt that they need to be patted down twice.”

[Vikas]

^^ Aha! Now the shoe is in other foot, so it pinches. Poor Indians have to beg and crawl to get US visa and are treated like dirt in US consulates in India.
The joker who made the comment about "Indian officials are so corrupt" should get a pat down by best of Haryana Police.

BTW, my experience with SF consulate has been pretty pleasant.

[JE Menon]

>>The joker who made the comment about "Indian officials are so corrupt" should get a pat down by best of Haryana Police.

I object... first priority should be given to "God's Own Police" down in Mallustan - unloved and ungloved

[arun]

The US tries to muscle India on the Indian insistence that no dairy products exported to India can originate from sources that have been fed feeds produced from internal organs, blood meal and tissues of ruminant origin.

Seems the Congress led UPA is sensitive to Hindu religious sentiment as IIRC Cows are ruminants while Pigs are not

Not clear though what the political sensitivities of the Congress led UPA on the matter are:

US warning: Bilateral agri trade can be hit if India does not open market

Posted: Mon Dec 27 2010, 02:25 hrs

New Delhi: The issue of market access for US agricultural products in India seems to have taken an ugly turn with US Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack sending a strongly-worded letter to his Indian counterpart Sharad Pawar, stating that the bilateral agricultural relationship will be “jeopardised” if India does not change its approach.

Coming weeks after US President Barack Obama’s visit, the tone of Vilsack’s letter is learnt to have taken New Delhi by surprise. It is said to be particularly harsh on India’s stance against market access for US dairy products. In fact, sources described the tone of the letter as “threatening” to Indo-US agricultural trade.

India has raised the red flag on US dairy products, saying it may hurt Indian religious sentiments because the animal feed given to the cattle contains fortified meat products.

When contacted, US Ambassador to India Timothy Roemer struck a more conciliatory tone but did underline the need to make trade a “two-way street” that can be resolved to the satisfaction of Indian sentiments. “The US and India enjoy a healthy and robust economic relationship. As President Obama noted during his recent visit, the growth of our economic partnership over the past decade is nothing short of historic. We look forward to continued cooperation and expansion of trade in all sectors, especially agriculture. Trade is a two-way street — with mutual benefits and opportunities for both the consumers of America and India. We strongly believe that when India provides fair and open trade on agricultural issues, it can significantly help lower rising food prices and put more money into the pockets of the aam aadmi. At the same time, we will seek a resolution of this issue that fully respects the cultural and religious concerns and sensitivities of India citizens,” said Roemer.

Notwithstanding US optimism, the tone of Vilsack’s letter to Pawar has not gone down well with the Indian establishment. He is learnt to have made the point that if India does not show flexibility then it could “jeopardise” the bilateral agricultural relationship. He is also believed to have linked the access of Indian grapes, pomegranate and litchi to the US market to the access granted by India to US dairy products. The letter evoked much anger and Indian officials have taken up the matter with the US.

Access to American dairy products, particularly cheese, in India is learnt to be at the core of issue. Currently, Indian regulations stipulate that any country exporting dairy produce here must certify that the source was “never fed feeds produced from internal organs, blood meal and tissues of ruminant origin”. Indian authorities believe that access to US dairy products might backfire in the backdrop of India’s religious and political sensitivities over this issue. ………………….

Indian Express

[CRamS]

X-posting from psy-ops thread

TFTA DDM Writer has spoken-


http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.co ... ient-truth

To me, the GSLV fiasco was a greater loss than all the allegations of scammed telecom licences, and projected revenue losses. Bad politics can delay our journey to prosperity. Bad science hits at the very roots of our survival.

Has the cause for the fiasco been determined? One thing I raised after the last failure was the possibility of sabotage. Now, without descending into TSP style conspiracy theories, is it fair to even ask this question? I mean, all kinds of errors, screw-ups, failures etc are possible in such a complex system, but I am not prepared to rule out the sabotage. We all know that Uncle will not be too happy to see us SDREs succeed, except as his side-kick. Uncle loves it when us SDRE types adopt his culture, drink his coke, eat his pizza, put $s into his pocket, be useful mind-numbing vassals to him; then of course you become his MUNNA. And this cryogenic stuff has been a sore point on both sides. With the level of spying sophistication at his disposal, with the level of resources he brings to the table in terms of $s, promise of lucrative green cards, postings etc (not to mention, India's own caste, linguistic, religious fissures in every walk of life that can be exploited), how difficult would it be to find one disgruntled ISRO employee (even granting that most of them are patriotic scientists & engineers doing their job), to do their bidding? Once again, I am just exploring this possibility. No conspiracy. Can one of the gurus lay this to rest, i.e, while every possibility has a non-zero probability of occurance, but the probability of Uncle pulling off this kind of sabotage is so low that it can be discounted?

[vera_k]

The GSLV+Russian cryo engine has flown successfully before this latest failure. And the previous failure with the Indian cryo engine has been diagnosed with an updated design going through tests now. So, while sabotage is possible, it would impact only this one flight since the rest of the design has had successful launches. What would be so valuable about this particular payload to merit sabotage now?