Bharat Rakshak

Prem wrote:X-Post
India-China confluence: Ushering in a new golden era
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/200 ... 390900.htm

Prem wrote:For thousands of years, the attempt at appeasement is a recurring factor in the fall of civilizations. When appeasement is attempted by a state that is confronted by an outside aggressor, the attempt is not only fruitless but it is a signal to the aggressor that the time to strike is now.

The Muslim demographic revolution and Western failure
Dr. Terry Lacey
In 1950 the population of the six BENPIT countries (Bangladesh, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Indonesia and Turkey) was 242 million, rising to 886 million by 2009 and an estimated 1,361 million by 2050. These and associated demographic trends render current Western strategy towards the Muslim world obsolete. Between 2010 and 2050 the population growth of the six BENPIT countries will be 475 million, while the population growth of the six most populated developed countries together will total 44 million. Worldwide 28 out of the 48 fastest growing countries in terms of population are majority Muslim, or with Muslim minorities comprising more than 33 per cent of the population. For example the population of Afghanistan is now 28 million, rising to 45 million by 2025 and 75 million by 2050. Professor Jack A Goldstone writing in the journal Foreign Affairs (February 2010) on “The New Population Bomb” concludes that the West has to improve its relations with the Muslim world, that Turkey with a population of 100 million by 2050 must join the EU, and that the Muslim population of major EU countries now varies from 3 to 10 per cent, and will double by 2050. These figures have major implications for the foreign and military policies of the West and for immigration into Western countries, with younger migrants needed to help sustain economies and social provision for aging populations. The populations of the EU, US, Canada, Japan, South Korea and China are aging at an unprecedented rate. By 2050, 30 per cent of all Americans, Europeans, Canadians and Chinese will be over 60

Ukraine's Revolution Stumbles Forward

February 10, 2010

By Brian J. Forest, Contributing Editor

Whether or not Yulia Tymoshenko decides to concede defeat this week, one thing seems certain: Viktor Yanukovych, villain of the Orange Revolution, is likely to become Ukraine’s next president.

It’s a remarkable reversal of fortunes for a man who was all but counted out after losing an unprecedented third round of voting to outgoing President Viktor Yushchenko in 2004.
In the West, analysts have thrown up their hands wondering how it all went so wrong. While the economy—which recently contracted by an astounding 15 percent—was certainly a factor, many in this nation of 46 million are simply tired of the endless arguing between Yulia Tymoshenko and her one-time revolutionary ally Yushchenko.

Ukraine has the well-deserved reputation of a messy democracy. The Orange Revolution unleashed a torrent of chaos that the young republic was not ready for, and ostensible allies Yushchenko and Tymoshenko spent the better part of the post-revolution years bickering and, at turns, making up with one another.

Chaos in the Offing?

prad wrote:^^^ regarding Muslim population explosion:

don't know if anybody's read George Friedman, but he believes that Turkey will once again gain leadership of the Islamic World and create a semi-empire from the Eastern edges of Europe all the way up to Pakistan. this will have huge implications for 3 regions: Europe, Russia, and India. the former 2 are decaying entities (exceptions include Poland) while the later is a vibrant economy that isn't constrained by any population problems.

but regardless of India's economic fundamentals, India will still have a 20% Muslim minority. the symbolism and pull of a "reforged" Islamic empire will be great and shouldn't be underestimated. one way or another, if there is an Islamic empire based in Turkey, India will have to face any such entity. the Gandhian and Nehruvian "peaceful" grand-standing will be useless.

just my thoughts...

French warships for Russia: storms ahead

prad wrote:^^^ regarding Muslim population explosion:

don't know if anybody's read George Friedman, but he believes that Turkey will once again gain leadership of the Islamic World and create a semi-empire from the Eastern edges of Europe all the way up to Pakistan. this will have huge implications for 3 regions: Europe, Russia, and India. the former 2 are decaying entities (exceptions include Poland) while the later is a vibrant economy that isn't constrained by any population problems.

but regardless of India's economic fundamentals, India will still have a 20% Muslim minority. the symbolism and pull of a "reforged" Islamic empire will be great and shouldn't be underestimated. one way or another, if there is an Islamic empire based in Turkey, India will have to face any such entity. the Gandhian and Nehruvian "peaceful" grand-standing will be useless.

just my thoughts...

DOHA, Qatar — Nine months after President Obama held out the promise of a “new beginning” for the United States and the Muslim world, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton came to this Persian Gulf emirate on Sunday to plead for patience, conceding that the Obama administration had not yet delivered on some of its signature foreign-policy goals.

From the stalled Middle East peace process to the still-open prison at Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba, to the diplomatic deadlock with Iran over its nuclear program, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged a list of unfinished projects, which she said had sowed suspicion that the American commitment was “insufficient or insincere.”

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But Mrs. Clinton threw some of the onus for improving the atmosphere back on the Arab nations, saying they needed to assume more responsibility for helping jump-start peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, and for standing up against Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

“President Obama’s vision was not one of a single country seeking to write a new chapter on its own,” Mrs. Clinton said of the president’s speech last June at Cairo University. “It was a call for all of us to take responsibility for retiring stereotypes and outdated views.”

Some of those stereotypes were plainly on view at this elite conference, an assembly of 300 Muslim and Western government officials, businesspeople, scholars and religious figures.

When Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian social scientist and human rights advocate who was imprisoned from 2001 to 2003, rose to challenge Mrs. Clinton to take a tougher line with the Egyptian government over its repressive tactics, it bought a nervous chuckle from Qatar’s prime minister, Sheik Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who was sharing the stage with the secretary.

“You know, I have enough problems with your government,” the prime minister said to Mr. Ibrahim. He made a tongue-in-cheek show of disavowing Mr. Ibrahim’s comments, saying “the Americans could handle” the backlash from an unhappy Egypt, but not a little neighbor like Qatar.

Smiling, Mrs. Clinton said, “We will take responsibility.”

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Mrs. Clinton said Mr. Obama had made extraordinary efforts, even sending messages to the Iranian leadership — an apparent confirmation of media reports last year that the president had written letters to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to which he did not reply.

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Mrs. Clinton also expressed guarded optimism that China, which has resisted tougher United Nations sanctions against Iran because of its extensive commercial ties, might be more amenable to sanctions.

“I think the weight is maybe beginning to move toward not wanting to either be isolated or inadvertently contributing to instability that would undermine their economic interests,” she said.

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In a meeting with Mrs. Clinton, Qatar’s emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, pushed the United States to do more to alleviate the suffering in Gaza. She, in turn, raised the issue of reopening Israel’s trade office here, which Qatar had closed after the military strikes on Gaza.

“The principle of shared responsibility extends to Israel’s Arab neighbors, as well as countries around the world,” she said.

THE HEROIN ROAD
February 14, 2010|By Sam Quinones, First Of Three Parts
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/feb/14 ... -2010feb14

Immigrants from an obscure corner of Mexico are changing heroin use in many parts of America.

Farm boys from a tiny county that once depended on sugar cane have perfected an ingenious business model for selling a semi-processed form of Mexican heroin known as black tar.

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Using convenient delivery by car and aggressive marketing, they have moved into cities and small towns across the United States, often creating demand for heroin where there was little or none. In many of those places, authorities report increases in overdoses and deaths.

Immigrants from Xalisco in the Pacific Coast state of Nayarit, Mexico, they have brought an audacious entrepreneurial spirit to the heroin trade. Their success stems from both their product, which is cheaper and more potent than Colombian heroin, and their business model, which places a premium on customer convenience and satisfaction.

Users need not venture into dangerous neighborhoods for their fix. Instead, they phone in their orders and drivers take the drug to them. Crew bosses sometimes call users after a delivery to check on the quality of service. They encourage users to bring in new customers, rewarding them with free heroin if they do.

In contrast to Mexico's big cartels -- violent, top-down organizations that mainly enrich a small group -- the Xalisco networks are small, decentralized businesses. Each is run by an entrepreneur whose workers may soon strike out on their own and become his competitors. They have no all-powerful leader and rarely use guns, according to narcotics investigators and imprisoned former dealers.

Leaving the wholesale business to the cartels, they have mined outsize profits from the retail trade, selling heroin a tenth of a gram at a time. Competition among the networks has reduced prices, further spreading heroin addiction.

"I call them the Xalisco boys," said Dennis Chavez, a Denver police narcotics officer who has arrested dozens of dealers from Xalisco (pronounced ha-LEES-ko) and has studied their connections to other cities. "They're nationwide."

Their acumen and energy are a major reason why Mexican heroin has become more pervasive in this country, gaining market share at a time when heroin use overall is stable or declining, according to government estimates.

Virtually all conversations with Obama administration foreign-policy officials, no matter where they begin, come to rest at "engagement" -- that vexing, mutable, all-purpose word. The U.S. president has "engaged" with rogue states, civil society, the United Nations, and citizens around the globe. Iran vindicates the policy of engagement -- or discredits it. China is a failure of engagement, Russia a success. Inside the Obama realm, engagement has come to mean "good diplomacy."

To critics on both the left and right, however, it has come to mean "bad diplomacy" -- cynical or naive, depending on which side you come from.

These days -- these shaky days -- the critics seem to be gaining the upper hand, making those Obama officials increasingly defensive about their policy toward autocratic states, whether in the Middle East or Eurasia, Iran or Sudan. Having spent years thinking hard thoughts in universities and think tanks, magazines and books, they cannot believe that they are losing the definitional war over their own policy. They are eager, and maybe a little desperate, to set things aright. And so it was, earlier this week, that when I asked to talk to one official about democracy promotion, I wound up having a 75-minute phone conversation with four White House figures, much of it about "engagement."

Barack Obama himself arguably encouraged this view during his 2008 presidential campaign by criticizing George W. Bush's moralistic bluster, by regularly expressing his high regard for archrealists like James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, and by stipulating his willingness to meet "without preconditions" with even the worst tyrants. And since becoming president he has muted criticism of the regimes in Sudan and Burma, and referred respectfully to "the Islamic Republic of Iran."

The allegation of realpolitik is still intolerable -- even baffling -- to these officials, who pledged themselves to Obama out of a deep faith in his redemptive promise. But if engagement rests upon the expectation that treating autocrats and theocrats with respect will significantly alter their behavior, then it suffers less from cynicism than from credulity -- which is the other article of baggage under which engagement now staggers. How can anyone believe that? Administration officials have been at pains to deny that they ever did, especially since Iran has trampled Obama's entreaties underfoot. The goal of engaging Iran, they now say, was not to change Iran's behavior but to change the behavior of more tractable states, like Russia and China, by showing that the United States was willing to go the last mile even with the Axis of Evil.

Sometimes, as in China or Egypt, engagement with the state seems to preclude engagement with the aspirations of citizens and you get, well, realism. Other times, folks like us just don't get it. Of course, we might feel less confused if the Obamans used some term other than "engagement" to cover virtually everything they do.

Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's coalition government collapsed this morning when the two largest parties failed to agree on whether to withdraw troops from Afghanistan this year as planned.

The fall of the government, just two days short of the coalition's third anniversary, all but guarantees that the 2,000 Dutch troops will be brought home this year and will eventually prompt new parliamentary elections.

The Dutch mission in Afghanistan, which started in 2006, is scheduled to end in August with the last of the troops leaving in December. Most are deployed in Uruzgan province.

"A withdrawal will damage the reputation of the Dutch as a reliable partner that is willing and able to contribute to important military missions," said Edwin Bakker, a senior research fellow at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague.

Twenty-one Dutch soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.

With China lost to Communism, the free world needed a new anchor in Asia. Whether India could play that role depended largely on the chance of much closer understanding and cooperation between India and the U.S., a land almost unknown to nine-tenths of Nehru's countrymen. Washington was taking careful account of the Prime Minister's longstanding prejudice and his people's instinctive suspicion of the "imperialist West."....

...... Nehru's dream of big projects—huge dams, vast hydroelectric stations, etc.—began to fade. Last April the Prime Minister redefined his government's attitude. He was much less doctrinaire. Foreign capital, he said, would get "national treatment," that is, equal consideration with Indian capital. A conference in an attempt to draft a U.S.-India commercial treaty is still dragging along.

This is how Nehru views specific areas of conflict in Asia:

China is lost to Communism. Delhi will follow London's lead in the matter of recognizing the Chinese Communist People's Republic.

Under British and American persuasion, Delhi is keeping mum about Indo-China.

Indonesia must have independence.

Burma has shown governmental weakness because its democratic leadership was liquidated. India has done all it can to strengthen Thakin Nu's government.

.............In Washington's view, the problem was to persuade Jawaharlal Nehru that there was only one aggressive power design in the world—the Communist—and everybody else was in the same non-Communist boat.

prad wrote:

their reasons might be different, but they were predicting huge downward spiral in equity and real estate prices in the second half of the decade. and the analysis on Pat Buchannan is interesting too.

Latin American and Caribbean nations have agreed to set up a new regional body without the US and Canada, Mexican President Felipe Calderon has said.

The new bloc would be an alternative to the Organisation of American States (OAS), the main forum for regional affairs in the past 50 years.
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Americas bloc excluding US and Canada is proposed

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ar-america

Republicans v secular America
With blatant disregard for the first amendment, Republicans' intolerance of US secularism means things are turning ugly
Dan Kennedy
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 23 February 2010 19.00 GMT

If you're part of secular America – that is, if you're an atheist, an agnostic, a religious liberal or even a mainstream believer who thinks religion should be kept out of politics and vice-versa – then you should be very afraid of what the Republican party has in store for you in 2012.

No news there, you might say. The Republicans, as we all know, have been in thrall to the Christian right since the Reagan era. But there's something new, something more intolerant, something truly ugly in the works. And if you don't believe me, let's start with Tim Pawlenty, unassuming governor of Minnesota in his day job, fire-breathing Christian warrior and aspiring presidential candidate in his spare time.

"I want to share with you four ideas that I think should carry us forward," Pawlenty said on Friday at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Committee, or CPAC. After invoking "basic constitutional principle and basic common sense," he continued:
"The first one is this: God's in charge. God is in charge ... In the Declaration of Independence it says we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. It doesn't say we're endowed by Washington, DC, or endowed by the bureaucrats or endowed by state government. It's by our creator that we are given these rights."

Never mind Pawlenty's fundamental and no doubt deliberate misreading of the founders' intent. (Thomas Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, is well-known for having cut up a Bible to remove all supernatural references to Jesus.) How, in practice, does Pawlenty envision "God's in charge" as a governing principle?

Gerard wrote:Twilight of the Arabs
The contest for leadership in the Muslim world.

What troubles me is what this tells us about America's place in the contemporary world, and the tensions between its global ambitions and its willingness to accept the consequences of them. On the one hand, the United States defines its own interests in global terms: there are no regions and few policy issues where we don't want to have a significant voice, and there are many places and issues where we insist on having the loudest one. But on the other hand, we don't think we should get our hair mussed while we tell the world what to do. It's tolerable for the United States to fire drones virtually anywhere (provided the states in question can't retaliate, of course), and Americans don't seem to have much of a problem with our running covert programs to destabilize other regimes that we've decided to dislike. We also aid, comfort and diplomatic support to assorted other states whose governments often act in deeply objectionable ways. But then we face the obvious problem that some people are going to object to these policies, hold us responsible, and try to do what they can to hit back.

Robert Gates is by all accounts a pretty smart guy (though he got a few things wrong near the end of the Cold War), and he's been a much better Secretary of Defense than his predecessor (admittedly a low bar to clear). But the intemperate remarks he directed at a NATO meeting two days ago mostly reveals a complete lack of understanding of the theory of collective goods. As we've understood since Olson and Zeckhauser's classic article, multilateral alliances where one state controls a disproportionate share of overall resources inevitably encourage free-riding. Why? Because a powerful state's allies know that it will provide the collective good (in this case, military spending and protection) out of its own self-interest, and the weaker members can therefore spend a smaller percentage of their own wealth and still feel safe.

One implication is that it makes no sense for the stronger power to complain about this situation or expect it to change very much, especially when it keeps insisting on doing the lion's share in places like Afghanistan. The only way to get our European allies to bear a significantly larger share of the collective defense burden would be to reduce our own contribution significantly; nagging them as Gates did hasn't worked in the past and won't work now.

...

Which is precisely what we should have expected. Again, the only reliable way to get Europe to take national security seriously is to stop subsidizing its defense, and a good case can be made that the United States no longer needs to do much of anything to help defend Europe itself.

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Just don't expect them to start matching America's bloated defense effort.

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So it's not clear why they would want a military akin to ours, even if we were no longer protecting them. (Nor is it entirely clear that Washington would like that better, but that's another story.

The real source of Gates' frustration is his desire for our European partners to relieve some of America's current burdens. In other words, he just wants Europe to do what we tell them to I can understand why he thinks that would be desirable, but not why he thinks it will happen.

The New Rules: America's Place in the World
THOMAS P.M. BARNETT | BIO | 22 FEB 2010
WORLD POLITICS REVIEW
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/Article.aspx?id=5160

prad wrote:Acharya, there is no doubt that America wanted to control the Order which it created.

the same is with America. every nation looks out for itself. since America is a Great Power, its doings are amplified further. that doesn't mean that other Great Powers haven't done it. nor does it mean that future Great Powers (India, for example) won't do it.

prad wrote:^^^ Dark Forces??? please do elaborate. are you talking about political and social concepts that the West introduced?

prad wrote:
so Jihadism was solely created by the West? no other contributing factors? so the entire notion of violent fundamentalist Islam is a bi-product of Western dominance? most of the US support for Jihadis was against Soviet regimes in the Islamic World. at the time it was perfectly acceptable to do whatever you could to fight USSR.

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Now that NATO is fighting a real war against assorted insurgents far from home in Afghanistan, getting the Europeans to pony up resources is proving to be an even tougher sell - and threatening NATO's very survival.


Even as NATO nations have won plaudits for sending more troops to Afghanistan, cracks are beginning to show in the alliance's commitment and long-term health. "Right now, the alliance faces very serious, long-term, systemic problems," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last week. Budget shortfalls - only five of the 28 members are meeting the alliance's goal of spending 2% of their GDP on defense - are hurting the war effort. The resulting dearth of helicopters, cargo planes and spy aircraft is "directly impacting operations in Afghanistan," Gates said.

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While the U.S., Britain, Canada, Denmark, Estonia and the Netherlands have done the most fighting and dying on a per capita basis, others such as France and Germany have used caveats for what their forces can do to maximize their safety. Some troops are deployed only in the less violent areas of Afghanistan, while others are restricted to less dangerous peacekeeping or training missions.
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Last fall, the New York Times told Manmohan Singh to resist calls for more nuclear tests which "would be a huge setback -- for India's relations with Washington, for the battle against terrorists, and for global efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons." It advised India to focus on economic growth, not more nuclear weapons, and urged Washington to "leave no doubt about how much India would have to lose if New Delhi makes the wrong choice."

The editorial drew a swarm of angry responses from online commentators.

India's government is answerable to the people of India, not to Washington. The Times should have tendered the same unsolicited advice to China, like India a poor country. On nuclear arms, inspections and threats to cut off aid for non-compliance, the U.S. should apply the same policy and standards towards Israel, a "close buddy." Why should India, which lives in a tough neighbourhood with unstable, undemocratic nuclear powers and state sponsors of terrorism, bear the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) cross for the rest of the world? If the roles were reversed and the U.S. had to deal with an unstable nuclear neighbour launching terrorist attacks with the support of the military, would the Times still write the same piece? It should examine America's own repeated violations of nuclear disarmament obligations under the NPT. Moreover, Washington had knowingly winked at Chinese transfers of nuclear materials and design to Pakistan since the 1980s.

Westerners must change lifestyles and support international redistribution. Developing countries must reorient growth in cleaner and greener directions.