Clinton's Nuclear Sites

Few days ago we weren't sure what role Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, would have when it comes to future India-US relationship. We proposed it would be restricted to trade issues.

And with all generals from Pacific command and heads of CIA making their presence in Delhi, Hillary Clinton presumably cares only about trade and people-to-people issues.

It seems we made the right call. Now things are coming into more focus. With Gen. James Jones, US NSA, visit talking exclusively about terrorism and Afghan-Paki region with Bharatiya establishment, Hillary Clinton apparently will be talking about where the nuclear power plants will be built by US companies, meaning trade and commerce issues. Smt. Clinton seems to be scoring with the WTO deal few weeks ago, when Anand Sharma gave up what Kamal Nath fought for for years, and now this.

India is likely to announce locations for two nuclear power plants, which would be made available to the American companies, during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to New Delhi next month, a top Obama Administration has said.

Who in US establishment would Bharat engage to talk about China, when China is becoming openly aggresive, and about other areas of concern? Are those issues even on the menu?

Summery of Tussle

Jeff Smith of American Foreign Policy Council summarizes the ongoing tussle between India and China on China's apparent claim on Arunachal Pradesh in WSJ. He forgets to bring up the promise China made to PM Atal Vajpayee during his official to China on solving the border issue peacefully even as China was digging in with its troops and weapons systems on their side of Arunachal border.

He however posits what Washington's position should be.

What is Washington's role in this Asian rivalry? In the short term, a priority must be to tamp down friction over the border. In the longer term, Washington should leverage its friendly relations with both capitals to promote bilateral dialogue and act as an honest broker where invited. But it should also continue to build upon the strategic partnership with India initiated by former president George W. Bush, and support its ally, as it did at the Nuclear Suppliers group and the ADB, where necessary. Washington must also make clear that it considers the established, decades-old border between the two to be permanent.

Most importantly, though, the Sino-Indian border dispute should be viewed as a test for proponents of China's "peaceful rise" theory. If China becomes adventurous enough to challenge India's sovereignty or cross well-defined red lines, Washington must be willing to recognize the signal and respond appropriately.

Missing Word is Strategic

It's hard to know how much influence current US Secretary of State has on US president. Even if one ignores the election battle they went through, Sri Obama has an alternative point man for Afghan-Paki, and presumably for India, region for all security and terror related issues. And with all generals from Pacific command and heads of CIA making their presence in Delhi, Hillary Clinton presumably cares only about trade and people-to-people issues.

Bibek Debroy says one reason why Kamal Nath was not re-appointed commerce minister was because he gave US trade representative hell when negotiating the next round of WTO agreement - meaning, he was fighting for India's cause. Apparently the new commerce minister, Anand Sharma, already obliged his US counter part by making concessions. This implies Clinton apparently already influenced Indian PM decision making.

Hillary Clinton, it seems, has more influence in New Delhi than in Washington. So her speech at USIBC, the text of which I could not find on USIBC site, may not be a comprehensive take on relations between India and US.

However, putting the speech next to her take on the future path of US-China and US-Russian relationships makes us wonder where India falls in the scheme of things in Washington. References to 'Upgrade of Relationship' and 'Version 3.0' in her speech are fine but beyond commerce and trade, there is nothing substantive in her speech that indicates a new level of relationship. More than what was said, we find what was unsaid more interesting.

Ms. Clinton said while pursuing an "enhanced bilateral partnership" the two countries should recognise that their official ties "are past due for an upgrade" as compared to other metrics of cooperation. "We need bilateral cooperation between our governments to catch up with our people-to-people and economic ties".

If Bush administration's "strategic partnership" was version 2.0, we think "enhanced bilateral partnership" is a downgrade to the relationship that existed during the last the few years of Bush years. This may, quite possibly, be an indication of Clinton's influence in Obama's government. There will be more clarity when Obama himself has something significant to say about the relationship. For now, the trajectory of the relationship seems to be pointing downwards.

Humour: Should the Code be Transparent Too?

Martin Demello writes in IE:

The 2005 Right to Information Act was a significant milestone for India, a firm commitment to openness and transparency. The UPA’s promises of a public data project has only strengthened that commitment, promising to sweep away the nation’s dusty piles of secrecy and bureaucracy. But with increasing computerisation comes a related, but often overlooked imperative — that all government software be open source.

Just wondering if the open source code needs to be written in transparent font so one can see through it also. What's more baffling is this column was published at all!

Note: Have been away from blogging while dealing with family issues. Plenty of things happened in the past six months including BJP's failure to win general elections and return of the failed UPA back in power and the rise of left in the US. One nugget that can be taken away from the general and, especially, state elections in AP is people complain about corruption all the time, but they don't care about it. Corruption as a political issue is a non-issue for voters.

Fouad Ajami Remembers Samuel Huntington, Dead at Age 81

I had plenty of things say regarding Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations - a book I brought promptly as soon as I came across it and read it cover to cover (unlike few other books I buy or borrow). Suffice it say much of his thesis regarding the clash between Christian west and Islamic lands has borne out.

Unfortunately Sri Huntington didn't know much about India, so he had little to say about the clash that was already underway between Islamists, and their apologist pseudo-secularists, and the reviving Hinduism nationalism, even if in fits and starts. At best he could come up with an interaction of civilizational clash in the lands of subcontinent. But Islamists and jihadists take him seriously because they know exactly what they are trying to revive - the pre-ideological battles that were routine in the world before Marxism, Communism, and Capitalism came along. And they know Islam (along with Christianity) was at the forefront of all those battles. It's unfinished business for the jihadists.

And the people, such as Amartya Sen, who deride Sri Huntington ignore the Islamic jihadists and are blinded by their own superiority of intellect, despite ample proof - the latest being Mumbai Islamic terror massacres. But the Islamic terror and jihad will not go away by intellectual arguments. The secularists will surely succumb, as they are wont to, as evident in Europe. Will other civilizations fight back?

Here is one thinker of Islamic lands and people who crossed over to Sri Huntington's side after being the first to stand against him. Fouad Ajami's obituary of Sri Huntington.

In an article first published in Foreign Affairs in 1993 (then expanded into a book), Huntington foresaw the shape of the post-Cold War world. The war of ideologies would yield to a civilizational struggle of soil and blood. It would be the West versus the eight civilizations dividing the rest -- Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic, Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist and Japanese.

In this civilizational struggle, Islam would emerge as the principal challenge to the West. "The relations between Islam and Christianity, both orthodox and Western, have often been stormy. Each has been the other's Other. The 20th-century conflict between liberal democracy and Marxist-Leninism is only a fleeting and superficial historical phenomenon compared to the continuing and deeply conflictual relation between Islam and Christianity."

If I may be permitted a personal narrative: In 1993, I had written the lead critique in Foreign Affairs of his thesis. I admired his work but was unconvinced. My faith was invested in the order of states that the West itself built. The ways of the West had become the ways of the world, I argued, and the modernist consensus would hold in key Third-World countries like Egypt, India and Turkey. Fifteen years later, I was given a chance in the pages of The New York Times Book Review to acknowledge that I had erred and that Huntington had been correct all along...

He had been a source of great wisdom, an exemplar, and it had been an honor to write of him, and to know him in the regrettably small way I did.

We don't have his likes in the academy today. Political science, the field he devoted his working life to, has been in the main commandeered by a new generation. They are "rational choice" people who work with models and numbers and write arid, impenetrable jargon.

More importantly, nowadays in the academy and beyond, the patriotism that marked Samuel Huntington's life and work is derided, and the American Creed he upheld is thought to be the ideology of rubes and simpletons, the affliction of people clinging to old ways. The Davos men have perhaps won. No wonder the sorrow and the concern that ran through the work of Huntington's final years.

Bhishmapitamaha is 85

Atal Bihari Vajpayee is 85 today

Purple Pig-Nose Frog

Nasikabatrachus sahyadrenis

Does batrachus stand for pig? At 8 cm and 142 gm, it's decent size. I wonder why it's so hard to find.

A purple frog with a pig-like snout, thought to be near-extinct, has been found alive in a field close to the Kerala Forest Research Institute at Peechi near Thrissur town in Kerala.

First reported in India eight years ago, the rare frog species is closely linked to a similar frog found only in the island group of the Seychelles — suggesting the affinity between the Western Ghats and the Indian Ocean archipelago. Just over 8 cm in length and weighing 142 gm, the frog, which lives mostly under soil was found by a farm worker planting tuber crops. The KFRI researchers brought the frog to their campus and identified it as the species Nasikabatrachus sahyadrenis, never before reported in the district.

Only Nine More to Go!

When Bush attacked Iraq, his main justifications was apparent Iraqi WMD and UN resolutions that Iraq had been flouting since 1991, when the first Gulf war was waged. There were a total of 17 resolutions that Iraq ignored or didn't act on before US decided to act. Even then the Europeans and everyone else who matter didn't go along with Bush. Now Americans themselves think the war is illegal!

Now we hear that Manmohan Singh is creating a dossier of UN resolutions that Pakistan ignored. Apparently are eight resolutions. So only nine more to go!

New Delhi: Not satisfied with Islamabad’s “token action” on the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), India has prepared a “detailed dossier” of Pakistan’s “violations” of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions. The violations, on at least eight counts, range from non-extradition of the Terror outfit’s leaders to non-prosecution of the group and its members.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said outside Parliament on Tuesday, “We would like an objective effort from Pakistan to dismantle the terror machine. The Government of Pakistan knows what it implies. We expect them, as a member of the United Nations, to comply with the resolutions passed over the years, not just ‘1267’. We want the international community to use its power of persuasion to persuade Pakistan to comply with these resolutions.”

This is not quite what chacha Nehru did when Pakistan send jihadis to take over the Kingdom of Kashmir in 1947. Instead of evicting the jihadis and Pakistan regulars, Nehru went to UN to mediate the so-called "dispute" thanks to the British advisor Mountbatten. The British and Americans then ate Nehru naivete for lunch. Manmohan is getting there, it seems. But first a dossier is made. I am sure the world will be with Bharat if and when it wants to pursue action against Pakistan, just like it was with US and Bush in 2003 when he enforced UN resolutions in Iraq.

Nonsense About Terrorist State Stability

For years I have argued that stability of Pakistan and territorial integrity - the epicenter of global Islamic jihad and Islamic terrorism against Bharat - is not in our interest. Bharat Verma takes the same stand forcefully while talking of the danger of Pakiland Islamic jihad on Bharatiya democracy and secular majority.

Another falsehood perpetuated by the eternally helpless breed of Indians is that a stable Pakistan is in India's interest. It is not, stable or otherwise. Pakistan is a failed State. It is on the brink of disintegration. It simply needs to be helped to remove itself and the map redrawn. Otherwise, the cost to India will keep increasing disproportionately.

To take this war to the enemy, New Delhi needs a deliberate, graded and escalating response with a clear political and military objective to help Islamabad disintegrate:

Snap diplomatic relations immediately.

Declare Pakistan a terrorist State.

Discontinue all trains and bus services as well as trade and business transactions.

Announce renegotiations of the Indus Water Treaty as the terms unduly favour Pakistan.

Begin a process to regulate the water supplies and build new mechanisms to activate water flow controls.

Cancel permissions for over flights.

Seal the Nepal and Bangladesh borders on a priority basis.

Build a grand alliance of democracies by increasing their stakes in the burgeoning economic pie of India, to leverage their support against authoritarian regimes on our border including Pakistan.

Increase immediately FDI in the defence sector from 26 percent to 49 percent. This will help India to emerge as the most modern technology driven defence industry hub in Asia while making it profitable for Western companies to invest.

Five Years of Congress I Misrule - From an Insider

We already know how corrupt Congress I politicians have been and continue to be. Until now there were no major corruption scandals exposed because the ministers in Manmohan's cabinet scratch each others back while donating a small cut to Sonia/Rahul duo and the party coffers.

Here is an IAS officer disgusted with the corrupt and incompetent Manmohan's government laying it all out in an open letter to PM after the recent Mumbai Islamic terror massacres.

Economic reforms stopped long ago, for your allies didn’t want them; there are many ministers in your cabinet who have perfected Wal-Mart’s cash-and-carry model and you can’t do a damn about it. You have failed on all counts as a leader. So, at least now, when India is under attack on its own soil, please act. And if you can’t act, please get out of the way and allow someone more effective to run the country....

You have personally demonstrated integrity, but what use is that alone, when almost every key minister in your cabinet is treating every file as an opportunity for cash flows? Are you telling us you don’t know that your telecom, environment and shipping ministries are the home of organized mafias looting the exchequer?

We know from The Pioneer expose that the telecom minister, A. Raja, and his wife, M.A. Parameswari, made 755 crores in one year - that's an average of 2 crores per day! We are told Central Vigilance Commission (sic), TRAI, finance ministry, and others could not stop the corruption of the humble dalit from Tamil Nadu!! Of course, the apparently clean prime minister does not act.

Apparently there are no checks in the great Indian democracy.

We haven't heard anything about the environment ministry - but one can only guess, with the growing economy and expanding industrial sector, how the environment minister could wave the world class environment protection laws on the books, which are never implemented anyway, to stuff his pockets.

Also, I am curious about the former underworld dealer from Bombay, the current minority affairs minister, A. R. Antulay's recent dupliticity on Mumbai Islamic terror massacres and the murders of top ATS officials including chief Hemant Karkare.

Antulay, who was present in the Lok Sabha, was seen smiling at the opposition members, gesturing them to continue with their protest. At one point, he even displayed the 'thumbs up' sign.

Apparently the rest of the psec media and liberals/progressives didn't get his memo because they appear confused and wondering why Antulay is doing what he is doing.

But not the Congress I party. Why? Because they know who Antulay is before Sonia, the queen, made him minister in Manmohan's cabinet. He was part of Bombay underworld providing services to the likes of Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Menon and probably continues to be a conduit for Dawood's money funneling into Congress I party funds. So Antuley can provide cover for Dawood revenge killers, who ended up, I think by luck, killing Karkare and the rest of top ATS officials, with impunity. It took Antuley about three weeks to get in touch with his former mentors in Pakistan and come up with a story to create outrage and plausibility of alternative narrative and, of course, Hindu -Zionist conspiracy which for some reason plenty of, otherwise sane, desi Muslims seem to gobble up. He is doing his work well for terrorist supporters in Pakiland and India. Congress I is playing along with the probable top fund raiser and possibly to get political mileage from anti-Hindu vote bank politics.

So all the tough talk from Manmohan, Sonia, and Pranab Mukherjee is a show because they can't even fire a lowly minister who has contacts with terror supporters across the border. Of course more and more Muslims jumping on Antulay's band wagon makes their show easier.

It is classic Congress I party that Nehru built which is now even deeper in the sewer.