July 15, 2011

INEPT RULE MAKES INDIA A SOFT TARGET

Posted by The Himalayan Voice:
[The secret to India's economic success, it is claimed, is that the economy grows mainly during the night, when the government is asleep. But the government has to be very much in charge in providing the public goods of law, order and security. Can the Indian government drum up the necessary courage to address grievances, modernise security services, and confront Pakistan?]
By Ramesh Thakur
The Guardian image. Watch video here
IN words made famous by Ronald Reagan during a presidential debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980, here we go again. Three serial blasts in 12 minutes tore through India's commercial capital, Mumbai, on Wednesday evening, leaving 21 dead and more than 140 injured.

Can any other major city match Mumbai's record as the terrorists' target of choice: in 1993, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2008 and 2011?

The Times of India listed 21 incidents of "major blasts" in India between October 2005 and December. Most were homegrown. But the most spectacular have had some Pakistan links, including those of November 26, 2008, in which 166 people were killed.

Five years ago, on July 11, 2006, seven bombs on Mumbai commuter trains killed more than 200 and injured another 700. The co-ordinated nature of Wednesday's attacks and the choice of Mumbai as the target suggest this too may have a foreign footprint.

The modus operandi points to the involvement of the banned Indian Mujaheddin, which works closely with the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist outfit.  The resilience displayed by Mumbaikars in previous incidents will come to the fore again, but with each fresh incident, anger at government incompetence, callousness and indifference grows.

The persistence of domestic and cross-border terrorism is an indictment of multiple dimensions of governance in India.  The Manmohan Singh government is proving to be among the weakest and most ineffectual in independent Indian history.

It seems to soak up the warm and fuzzy feelings of rhetorical pats on the back from foreign leaders about courage, resilience, patience and refusal to be provoked into any retaliatory action against countries from where the attacks originate. Instead of credible threats and effective action against terrorists, the Prime Minister urges calm on citizens.

Anyone can counsel caution. The real challenge is to offer practical suggestions on what to do, not what to avoid doing. The undying proof of India as a soft state earns the contempt of Islamists at a government that is all bark and no bite -- except that, frankly, even the barks are getting fewer and fainter -- and the cynical resignation of citizens.

The secret to India's economic success, it is claimed, is that the economy grows mainly during the night, when the government is asleep. But the government has to be very much in charge in providing the public goods of law, order and security. Can the Indian government drum up the necessary courage to address grievances, modernise security services, and confront Pakistan?

India's Muslims have many justified grievances. Most notoriously in the recent past, the perpetrators of massacres of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 are yet to be arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced. This stokes Muslim anger and thirst for vengeance.

Yet terrorists are rarely prosecuted through the creaky and leaking criminal justice system. Detaining suspects indefinitely without trial adds to anger in one community without bringing closure to victims' families and in turn inflames Hindu anger.

The quality of India's police and security personnel and their training, arming and conditions of service need to be upgraded substantially and urgently.

The elite commandos are siphoned off for VIP protection duty, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves.
Terrorists have attacked India repeatedly with planning, training and financing based in Pakistan. Pakistan's military-intelligence-jihadi complex has been lethally effective in outsourcing terrorism as an instrument of policy.

The lack of an effective response keeps India bleeding and keeps the policy cost-free for Pakistan. India must find a formula that raises the costs to Pakistan by recalibrating the balance between no action and limited but effective military response.

Pakistan's record of double-dealing, deceit and denial has been based on four degrees of separation between the government, army, intelligence and terrorists whose plausibility is rapidly fading; it is exploited as a convenient but increasingly implausible alibi to escape accountability.

Any action carries the risk of destabilising Pakistan still more. That is no longer an unacceptable risk. India would unquestionably be better off with a stable and prosperous neighbour.

But for more than a decade, even as Pakistan has teetered on the brink of collapse and disintegration and been reduced to a bit player, India has prospered and emerged as a major world player.

Ideally, Pakistan's military must be brought under civilian control and the two countries' governments can then co-operate in ridding the subcontinent of the scourge of terrorism.

If the establishment of civilian supremacy over Pakistan's military intelligence services proves impossible, India should adopt the policy of taking the fight to the neighbouring territory from where terror attacks originate through strikes and targeted killings of terrorists.

As India does not have such intelligence and military capacity today, it must invest all means necessary to acquire it.
Only thus will India reverse the structure of incentives and penalties.

Ramesh Thakur is professor of international relations at Australian National University and adjunct professor in the Institute of Ethics, Governance and Law at Griffith University
CLINTON'S ROUND-THE-WORLD TOUR IS LIKELY ONLY TO HIGHLIGHT HOW IMPOTENT THE UNITED STATES HAS BECOME

[For this reason Clinton cannot be expected to dwell, for example, on India's de facto support for the Burmese dictatorship, its unhelpful stance on Kashmir and its machinations in Afghanistan. Counter-terrorism will be high on the agenda following Wednesday's bombings in Mumbai. In this context, Clinton will do well to avoid David Cameron's mistake of indulging in gratuitous Pakistan-bashing on Indian soil.]
Hillary Clinton's 11-day round-the-world tour is remarkable even by the high-flying standards of US secretaries of state. It's certain to make headlines around the globe. But paradoxically, this diplomatic tour de force may unintentionally highlight the apparently inexorable decline of American power and influence. It will be notable as much for what is not said as what is.

Clinton's first stop is in Istanbul on Friday, where she will join European and other foreign ministers in the international contact group co-ordinating the Nato-led intervention in Libya. The official line, promulgated by France, is that pressure on Muammar Gaddafi's embattled regime in Tripoli is telling, and that the outlines of a negotiated settlement are beginning to emerge.

While that assessment will be publicly upheld in Istanbul, behind the scenes Clinton may hear well-rehearsed complaints that the US is not doing enough, militarily and in other ways, to back up its Nato partners. Despite claims that Gaddafi is close to throwing in the towel, there is as yet no concrete sign that he will stand down – amid widening differences in approach between the US and Britain, France, Italy and Russia. To confuse matters further, Turkey will propose yet another "roadmap" to end the conflict.
Clinton could give the interventionists a boost were she to announce US recognition of the rebel national council in Benghazi as Libya's government and release more than $30bn in regime funds frozen in US banks. But Washington, worried in part about encouraging Islamist extremists, has so far hedged its bets.

Clinton's Turkish leg will include bilateral talks on Syria, Iran and the Israel-Palestine conflict. All three issues speak to American impotence, not leadership. In Damascus, Bashar al-Assad continues to ignore ever more shrill American criticism of the nationwide security crackdown. Clinton said this week that the Syrian president hadforfeited the legitimacy to rule. But while China and Russia afford him diplomatic cover, and Barack Obama remains opposed to direct intervention, there is little more the US can do other than complain.

Iran's recent decision to dramatically accelerate its suspect uranium enrichment programme gives the lie to claims that the Tehran regime is retreating under the US-led sanctions campaign. And with the Obama administration's peace plan torpedoed by Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Clinton can have little to say on Palestine. The US is now reduced to the role of disgruntled spectator as a UN vote to recognise Palestinian statehood draws near.
Clinton's visit to financially stricken Athens on Sunday is unlikely to be of any practical assistance. The US is one of the few countries with a bigger national debt than Greece. Like the Greeks, Americans seem incapable of achieving a consensus on how to address it. And it is arguably US-patented transnational market capitalism that created the whole sorry mess in the first place.
The next stop on Clinton's grand tour – India – will take her into the sphere of superpower rivalries. The secretary of state will say a lot about strengthening ties through strategic dialogue and commercial collaboration. What will not be said is that the US increasingly views Delhi as a vital counterweight to a steadily more aggressive China.
For this reason Clinton cannot be expected to dwell, for example, on India's de facto support for the Burmese dictatorship, its unhelpful stance on Kashmir and its machinations in Afghanistan. Counter-terrorism will be high on the agenda following Wednesday's bombings in Mumbai. In this context, Clinton will do well to avoid David Cameron's mistake of indulging in gratuitous Pakistan-bashing on Indian soil.
Clinton's sojourn will be rounded off in south-east and east Asia, where the greatest challenges to American power are rising. A security conference in Bali is certain to touch on a host of territorial disputes between China and its neighbours, with another confrontation involving Vietnam reported only today. Clinton made waves last year when she warned China, in effect, to stop trying to fence off the South China Sea. Her words angered Beijing but did not alter its behaviour, which, if anything, has grown more belligerent. Much the same might be said of the effect of American strictures on North Korea.

Clinton will finish her global circumnavigation in Hong Kong, where she is due to make a speech decrying protectionism. Given America's own protectionist record, and its ever greater reliance on Chinese capital and Chinese imports, this piece of doorstep impudence is more likely to elicit smiles than snarls in Beijing. When you're winning, you can afford to laugh.