Political Olympics in Beijing:The US is reaching out to China because of Russia

We are witnessing another twist in the kaleidoscope of the world order. Because of their convenient quadrennial occurrence, the Olympics are a good point to mark a shift in not just sports, but global affairs. Yesterday we carried an article noting that China could overtake the US as a “sporting power” by the time of the London Games in 2012. Today, I want to look at the issue through the prism of geopolitics.
From China’s point of view, the Beijing Olympics were meant to tell us what China has achieved and that it is now a top-ranking world power in every sense of the term. Remarkably, world powers, too, underscored that verdict. I say “remarkably” because just months ago, with the Tibetan protests at their height, it appeared that the world powers were determined to rain on China’s party. But on August 7th and 8th you only had to look at the love-fest that Hu Jintao, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin were involved in during the pre-inaugural banquet and the inaugural ceremony to understand that China’s Olympian moment had indeed arrived.


The presence of the world leaders was no accident; they were responding to the shifting plates of the international system. It was not entirely a coincidence that the day Putin was watching the Olympic inaugural ceremony, Russian forces were invading Georgia.

Russia

Despite somewhat difficult relations with China during his presidency, George W. Bush came to celebrate Hu Jintao’s party in response to the oil- fueled resurgence of Russia. Beijing, ever-wary of Moscow, played its role as the good host to the hilt ignoring Bush’s for-the-record references to human rights and freedom. The Chinese may have settled their border dispute with Russia, but memories are long in Beijing, especially about the way in which China lost vast tracts of land to Imperial Russia during its century of shame. The Chinese are bound to have noticed that Russian arms exports have shown a steady downward drift as Moscow acts to preserve its own military edge over China.
Bush’s performance, a balancing act of enjoying the Games, praising China and at the same time trying to nudge it along better human rights observances is part of the new US strategy. Gone is the neocon effort to depict China as the new Soviet Union. The aim now seems to have reverted to the idea of coopting China and encouraging it to be more democratic and to play by the international rules which the US still defines.

America

The US argument on China is summed up by US Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson in an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. He said that some in the US argued that China was a threat and must be countered, while others like him felt that its growth “is an opportunity for the U.S. economy.” The challenge for Washington was to manage China through engagement.”
That this is the new strategy was underscored in an uncharacteristically nuanced speech by President Bush at the dedication ceremony for the huge new US embassy building in Beijing on August 7. He pressed all the right buttons on Chinese history, culture and its recent economic achievements. Even his references to the need for a regime of open trade giving way to a political atmosphere of open ideas was done in a tone of talking to Beijing, rather than talking down to it. “Change in China,” he declared, “will arrive on its own terms and in keeping with its own history and its own traditions.” This was a clear message that the US no longer sees the Communist party run government there as somehow transient.
All this is not about the economic rise of China alone. We know that the Chinese are now set to overtake the US as the largest producer of manufactured goods in the world, four years ahead of time because of the weakened American economy. The US will lose its 100-year dominance in this sector, but looked at another way, the Chinese will merely resume a position they occupied for four centuries till the Opium war of 1840.
This is also about the rise of Russia. They may have been intervening in a local quarrel, in Georgia, but their larger message was to tell the west that the climate in Moscow had changed and that Russia would act decisively to protect its national interests. Georgia, you may recall, is the region through which a US-backed pipeline commissioned in 2006 broke the Russian monopoly of Caspian oil. Just the other day, Russia had threatened to deploy nuclear-capable bombers in Cuba in retaliation for what it saw was an American provocation in putting their missile-shield radars in Poland and Ukraine, its erstwhile “allies.”

India

So what we saw in Beijing on those two August days was a visible manifestation of the shifting tectonic plates of the world order. There were other leaders there as well — Yasuo Fukuda of Japan, Nicholas Sarkozy of France and our own Sonia Gandhi. But we are merely a supporting cast to the larger players. Ms Gandhi was received with due courtesy as the leader of India’s ruling party. The Chinese understand dyarchy where state and political power are shared, but India was not really in Beijing, either in the sporting events or in its politics.
China itself remains opaque. While its undoubted economic prowess is on display, there are unmistakable signs that its economy is slowing down. As it moves by design into the high-tech, high-innovation regime, its leaders need to also take care of the tens of millions who work in its low-tech, high volume sectors. Despite censorship, the internet has opened up China in an unprecedented way. Beijing may have been gratified by the nationalistic feelings that erupted in the wake of the Tibetan protests, but they know nationalism is a monster that cannot be easily controlled, by the party, or by anyone. Within China, the debate over whether China needs to integrate itself with the world system or go its own way, as it has done till now, has not been decided either way.
China has so far observed mercantilist principles in its dealings with the world — putting economics ahead of everything else. But the luxury of refusing to take positions on issues like Darfur may not last too long. If China wishes to be a world leader, it must display leadership, which also means taking the world community along with it on matters of international concern.
Nothing in these trends affects India in a negative way. We may not be growing as fast as China, but we are growing. “Rising India” can take advantage of China “risen” which has become an object of envy and fear in many world capitals. We are not competing with China for anything, most certainly not in the Olympics.
Our inner divisions and weak polity inhibit any aggressive Indian response to the rise of China. On the other hand, the Chinese ascendancy has pushed many countries to come closer to us as a way of hedging their bets on China. The problem is that there is no consensus on even the most obvious measures that would help India, such as the Indo-US nuclear deal which will remove India from a set of pariah regimes and provide it the wherewithal to make up its abysmal energy deficit.
In these circumstances, India will have to be a middle-of-the-pack runner till it can gather the wherewithal and the nerve to move to the front.
This article appeared first in Mail Today August 14, 2008

Burmese Days

The events in Burma(Myanmar) have led to the usual round of self flagellation in India. Liberals have denounced the attitude of the government and demanded that India take a tough stance against the military junta, others have hit out against Sonia Gandhi for speaking at the United Nations on World Non-Violence Day on Gandhiji's birthday and not referring to events in Myanmar. The events in the country have brought home to us the difficulties that a wannabe superpower confronts. New Delhi has to not just address its own needs, but live up to the expectations of our well-wishers and friends and the fears of our adversaries.

Most Indians, speaking from their hearts, support the Burmese people’s aspirations for democracy, and want an end to the brutal military regime that has blighted their nation. But successive governments in India have had to deal with our secluded neighbor, ruled by a paranoid military regime, using their heads. In other words, New Delhi has had to calculate and calibrate its policies keeping in mind India’s national interests: First, to ensure that Indian actions do not result in an expansion of Chinese influence in the country; second, to ensure that Burma will not be used as a sanctuary by a slew of insurgent groups operating in Manipur and Nagaland.; and third, to access Burma’s considerable oil and gas resources.

While the frustration of those advocating action in Burma is understandable, its not clear as to what they would have had the government do. India’s leverage is strictly limited. Indian exports to Burma are of the order of $450-400 million, and imports around $80-100 million. (In contrast, Thailand is Burma's main trade partner accounting for some 49 per cent of its exports and providing for 22 per cent of its imports). Indeed, in relation to India, the levers are held by Burma because we are the ones that want Burmese resources and and security cooperation. So it is not surprising that the Indian reaction to the uprising last month was low key. New Delhi sought to steer clear from condemning the military junta, and instead pushed the generals to release Aung San Su Kyi.

Burma is already under a US and European embargo, so additional restrictions will hardly matter. In any case Burma’s economically most significant border—that with Thailand is virtually open. The Chinese who have far more leverage than India choose to term the events there as an internal matter and leave it at that. The ASEAN who gave membership to Yangon as an incentive to promote “national reconciliation” between the military and the people, have little to say about the current developments. The UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari toured the country and met Aung San Su Kyi twice, and obtained a commitment that the junta chief General Than Shwe will meet the jailed leader. During a briefing of the UN Security Council, he warned that there would be "serious international repercussions" if Burma did not move towards democracy.

If India is to be accused of cravenness, the attitude of Beijing is downright mendacious. At the UN Western countries circulated a draft to condemn the "violent repression" of democracy activists and called for a dialogue between the military and the opposition. The Chinese begged to differ. They said that the whole issue was an internal matter of the country and that pressure and sanctions would only encourage confrontation.

Earlier this year in January, China and Russia had vetoed a US-drafted Security Council resolution that demanded an end to political repression and human rights violations on grounds that the Burmese crisis was not a threat to international peace and security, the council's mandate.

Burma has been ruled by a military junta since 1962. The 1990 elections were swept by the National League for Democracy under Su Kyi, but they were annulled by the military led by the present leader General Than Shwe. After an initial effort to embargo the regime, the world began to come to terms with it. The Chinese were the quickest off the block. In 1989, they used their time-tested tactic for establishing themselves—providing arms transfers to a military regime. A deal in 1989 worth anywhere up to $1.5 billion not only signaled its strong support for a discredited military junta, but brought rewards in the form of access to the Hangyi Island on the Bay of Bengal which it developed as a deep-water port. Beijing also got access to the Grand Coco island, north of the Andamans, from where it could monitor Indian missile tests at Balasore in Orissa.

The Chinese actions were in keeping with its record of an amoral foreign policy that has made it the savior of unpleasant regimes around the world. China today is the major importer of Sudanese oil, it is, of course, North Korea’s main trade partner, and it has been Pakistan’s staunchest friend ever, supplying it with conventional and weapons of mass destruction. There is no regime that is outside the pale for China, and the standard pretext to oppose international action is to say that whatever is happening is an “internal matter” of the country. To an extent Chinese behavior is a function of self-interest. China is also an autocratic, ruthless regime which does not believe in democracy and has crushed the democratic aspirations of its people with force. So its stand should be no surprise.

Yet, countries like India have to contend with it, or be left with the option of pursuing a morally sound, but practically bankrupt policy that lacks the wherewithal to provide any meaningful result. Between 1988 military coup and 1994, India openly supported the restoration of democracy in Burma. India shares a 1,400-km long border with Burma that runs along a mountainous region from Arunachal Pradesh to Mizoram. Though militarily significant, the border is porous. In any case the tribal people are free to move up to 20kms on either side because of their interconnections. Though most of the Nagas live in India, a large section lives in Burma, as do Kukis and Mizos who claim a close relationship with the Chin peoples of Burma. There is a close relationship between the militancy in the Indian north-eastern states of Nagaland, Manipur and Assam and Burma. Naga and Kuki groups are able to use Burma as a sanctuary and training area, while the United Liberation Front of Assam and some Meiti insurgent groups of Manipur, use it to obtain arms. As it is, drugs from the golden triangle have led to serious addiction and HIV problems in some of the North-eastern states, especially Manipur.

In the early 1990s, Indian officials quizzed the Burmese about the Chinese activity, and were blandly told that the Chinese were helping their development efforts and India had the choice of doing the same. In 1997, the ASEAN admitted Yangon into the grouping as an alleged means of moderating its behavior So India followed suit, rather than be outflanked. It made diplomatic overtures to Yangon, offered it membership in the BIMSTEC grouping and offered aid. In recent years, New Delhi has provided some military aid, notably in the form of some old BN-2 Islander communications aircraft.

New Delhi’s primary concerns were driven by security—of the North-east, as well in a larger sense of the Bay of Bengal and its eastern shore and island territories of the Andamans and the Nicobar. The oil and the gas prospects are a bonus, though there are many in India who see the economic linkages as the means of developing the North-east, even while ridding it of the conditions that have given rise to the insurgencies. It must contest and counter Chinese gains, which is itself a tall order considering the enormous effort being put by Bejing which is also driven by the strategic need of finding ways of bypassing the choke point of the Malacca straits. According to analysts, China plans to construct a series of gas and oil pipelines and roads from Yunan to the coast of the Bay of Bengal in Burma not only to exploit Burma’s natural resources, but as potential trans-shipment points logistical lines leading into China.

As repression in Burma grows and the world community becomes restive over the situation there, the military junta has begun to dig in for the long haul. It suddenly shifted its capital to Naypidaw, some kms from Yangon, on the edge of a denuded forest. The intention is to prevent “regime change” by a military action on the more accessible Yangon.

The regime has also started re-jigging its relations with China to the detriment of other players. Early last month, an India-South Korea consortium that had the “preferential buyer” status for two blocks in the Shwe natural gas project were summarily told that they would have to defer to China. The gas field off the Arakan coast was discovered in 2003 and are expected to have one of the largest gas yields in South-east Asia. Clearly the military junta has calculated that it would be better to rely on Beijing’s hard-headed policies and UN Security Council veto than India’s woolly-headed approach. In any case, India’s options remain limited, especially because it continues to require the Burmese Army’s cooperation to check the north-eastern militancy.

The Burmese developments, where India is locked in a direct contest with China, brings out the need for not just a sophisticated policy, but an effective policy mechanisms in India. Our biggest weakness is the lack of effective institutions to guide our policies. As of now, policies relating to Burma are handled by a slew of ministries—commerce, petroleum and natural gas, home affairs, external affairs, and defence. India does have a national security council, but the body is merely a deliberative body, which takes a long-term view of a particular subject. In any case, according to observers, the NSC system remains non-functional. Decision-making bodies like the Cabinet Committee on Security are hampered by the fact that the system is based on the sum of the parts rather than a single integrated institution.

One part of the real story is that India’s effort to overhaul its higher defence management system has stalled. Efforts to overhaul the system and create new instrumentalities like the Chief of Defence Staff, or the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) have not worked as they should have. The ruling United Progressive Alliance government seems unable or unwilling to press ahead. It is no secret that the UPA's Home and Defence Ministries are its worst-run.

In the meantime, India fumbles with issues where its short-term needs have to be calibrated with its longer term world view and national interest. In the short-term we have to deal with the dictators in Burma, Pakistan or the mullahs of Iran, but in the long term we would want the emergence of secular-minded and democratic polities in these countries. But short-term compromises have a way of becoming long term policies, as the US seems to be discovering in the case of military in Pakistan. India is not what it is because of politics or history, but its democratic and secular values. Lose them and you lose the essence of the country.

Indo-US nuclear deal: the opposing view

"It is a sobering read (the Indo-US 123 Nuclear Agreement) and tells us much about the administration's thinking. In summary, there isn't much of a deal here at all, India gets what it wants. The agreement not only fails to seek any constraints on India's nuclear weapons program, it goes out of its way to make clear that what goes on in the nuclear weapons program is off the table and not to affect at all the agreement's execution."

writes Ivan Oelrich, the Vice-President for Strategic Security Project at the Federation of American Scientists. Anyone who thinks that India got the short end of the stick in the Indo-US nuclear deal should read his comment in detail here.

American Pie

Many questions and some answers on the Indo-American engagement. This article appeared in Mint, July 5, 2007



The Fourth of July is a good day to meditate on the role of the US in the world, especially its relationship with India. In recent days and weeks, there has been a lot of chatter on this issue, first with Condoleezza Rice’s call for India to abandon non-alignment, and then with the visit of the USS Nimitz to Chennai. The protest in Chennai over the arrival of a nuclear-powered, and possibly nuclear-armed, ship is bizarre. India, too, has nuclear weapons, has operated a nuclear-powered submarine, and hopes to operate several more, DRDO (Defence Research & Development Organisation) and DAE (department of atomic energy) willing, in the next few decades.

As a matter of policy, India does not reveal the location of its nuclear weapons. But for all you know, one of the locations could be in Chennai, maybe near Poes Garden. Considering that the huge Kalpakkam nuclear complex is within Chernobyl-distance of Chennai, the anti-nuclear aspect of the protest is ludicrous. On the other hand, if the protest is merely anti-American, well that’s not a problem. We are a democracy, after all.

In a recent review-essay in Washington Post, professor Joseph Nye ( thanks to 3quarksdaily) has pointed out about the US that “the centrality of values in our national myths has long led to oscillation between realism and idealism in our foreign policies”. More than shared ethnicity or common descent, the US is a nation that has been created by ideology and its identity is shaped by a set of values that it seeks to universalize. We are all familiar with America’s desire to reform and indeed remake the world in its own image in the Wilsonian tradition. We also know that in practice, America has undermined democracy, cosseted dictators, tortured prisoners and so on.

Yet, while we rightly criticize the US for Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib or secret renditions, we would be wise to take a modest approach. Our own prisons contain hundreds and thousands of people who are yet to be tried. Where the inmates of Abu Ghraib were humiliated and psychologically tortured, hundreds of “anti-national elements” have faced brutal physical torture in our detention centres. There has been no accounting for thousands who have “disappeared”—many illegally executed by our security forces. Indeed, custodial torture is the norm, rather than exception in the Indian police system.

This is no excuse for American behaviour in their war on terrorism. But howsoever many the warts that have showed up on America’s face, the US has played a sterling role in putting human rights observance on the global agenda and pressured many brutal regimes to clean up their act. To paraphrase Nye, America’s self-image may have been based on a generous measure of self-deception, but its insistence that they are based on immutable values of liberty, equality, justice, tolerance have also pushed the world down the road to moral progress.

India, too, is a nation that is based on values rather than a common ethnicity, religion or culture. The original preamble that constituted India as a sovereign democratic republic spelled out these—justice, liberty, equality of status and opportunity and fraternity. Later, under the somewhat sordid circumstances of the Emergency, “secularism” and “socialism” were added. While the former was a prescient insertion, considering the direction that national polity was to take in the ensuing decades, the latter was a spurious genuflection to the poor electorate.

What kind of relations can these two, somewhat similar countries have? For most of the past 60 years, the US followed a policy of what Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph termed “off-shore balancing” of India by supporting Pakistan, and on one occasion China, to prevent India from assuming the regional role to which its size, population and capabilities entitled it.

Beginning with the second Clinton administration and coinciding with India’s economic rise, the US has sought to change course. The US offer to resume civil nuclear cooperation with India is only one manifestation of its desire to enlist India as an ally in the Asian region. In 2006, US officials openly spoke of the need to assist India to become a great power. Yet, the American blandishments come with a caveat. It’s clear from the perspectives emerging from the American strategic community that the US wants India to “bandwagon” with it, rather than become an autonomous strategic actor. The American perspective on non-alignment is one indicator of this. Another is its opposition to India’s dealings with Iran. Looked at anyway, India should be on friendly terms with the world’s second largest oil exporter and the holder of the world’s second largest reserves of natural gas. But what the US is saying is that India must tailor its policies to Washington’s global agenda and perspective, whatever be its own national interests. As for non-alignment, Condi’s comment was not inaccurate. Non-alignment will matter less and less in our current global trajectory. But till we get to that hightable—as an economic giant and permanent member of the UN Security Council—it’s not a bad idea to hang on to a property in which we have invested a lot. The somewhat incoherent 120-member body is both a lever and a hedge in our period of transition.

Because we live in an imperfect world, India and the US will continue to pursue policies shaped by their values, as well as narrow national interest. But, if, to use an old-fashioned imagery, history is a linear unfolding of the march to progress, then we can possibly think of a future where the two concepts will converge.

G8, Global Warming and our Nuclear Future

When the Group of Eight summit began in Heilingdamm, Germany, everyone agreed that the big issue there would be climate change. With President George W Bush, the world’s most famous skeptic also making noises about climate change, nearly everyone agreed that climate change is a man-made phenomenon and we need to do something about it.

But there is no unanimity on what to do. Some want to banish automobiles, others want cutbacks in lifestyles, Germany and Japan want deeper mandatory cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. Bush’s modest proposal is to send the issue to a committee where developed polluters like the US will sit with the developing polluters like India and China to work out ways of dealing with global warming. Read more about my views on the issue here

Martial Artist

Despite his failings, Pakistan's leader Pervez Musharraf remains part of the solution, not the problem. The article was first published in Hindustan Times March 21, 2007

Events seem to have unexpectedly shown up the growing faultlines in Pakistan’s polity.

In the last year, President Pervez Musharraf’s government has faced significant setbacks in Waziristan and Balochistan, but images of unrest and upheaval in Islamabad and Lahore last week have brought up long suppressed questions: just how fragile is the General’s hold on power? What is the best way of handling him, or a situation arising from his ‘unplanned’ removal?

Pakistan’s neighbours, and indeed the world community, have important stakes in its stability, security and prosperity. They are vitally interested in the ability, or otherwise, of its government to contain and eliminate powerful forces of Islamic radicalism that pose a global threat. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s reported confession reveals that the 9/11 conspiracy was masterminded from Pakistan and several of the July 2005 London bombers had Pakistani links. As for India, it says it has a mountain of evidence of Pakistani complicity, some of it official, in scores of acts of terrorism in the country.

Our short answer to the first question is that Musharraf’s regime is reasonably sound and will remain so as long as the Pakistan army, the self-appointed custodian of the Pakistani State, remains solidly behind him. It may, however, be compelled to change its shape and become more overtly military. The regime only appears fragile because we are witnessing the collapse of the democratic façade around an essentially military government. After ousting elected Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Musharraf used various political devices to construct this house of cards. Since countries of the West and India felt it was in their interest to deal with the General, he faced little international scrutiny or criticism.

But the true nature of the regime has always been evident and has notable landmarks — the sacking of Supreme Court Chief Justice Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui for not backing the coup in 1999, the unceremonious ouster in June 2001 of President Rafiq Tarrar so that the General could occupy that office, the over-the-top April 2002 referendum, where an alleged 97 per cent voters endorsed his rule, the dismissal of Supreme Court judges who voted against his usurpation and now, the rendering of another Chief Justice “non-functional”.

So far, the General has sailed close to the legal wind — he had the Supreme Court (after purges) endorse the coup, held a referendum to underline it and got the National Assembly to pass a constitutional amendment to legalise it. But in seeking another five-year term, without shedding his uniform, Musharraf is being impelled to move on a different path. He is not sure whether the National and Provincial Assemblies that will be thrown up by the elections later this year will again endorse his presidency, so he is seeking a mandate from the outgoing ones. Being elected twice by a single set of assemblies does appear to be gratuitously illegal, and anticipating a challenge, he acted against Chief Justice Chaudhry in advance.

None of this is much of a surprise, or occasion for shock, for the average Pakistani. But the outside world, which for its own reasons upheld the pretence that it was dealing with a democratic government, is now beginning to comprehend that the emperor indeed has no clothes. But this does not really bother the governments that Pakistan is dealing with, including those of India and the US. What concerns them is Pakistan’s failure to contain and eliminate the rising militancy along its western borders and to check fundamentalist groups operating within. Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto is on record this week saying, “If these forces are not stopped in 2007, they are going to try to take on the State of Pakistan itself.”

The problem is more complex than just the alleged military incapacity of the Pakistan army. Support for Islamic militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir has had, and continues to have, an important link with the army. After 9/11, Musharraf undertook a U-turn on supporting the Taliban and in January 2002 and 2004, he pledged to crack down on terrorist groups targeting India. Washington has repeatedly acknowledged the role Islamabad has played in hunting down al-Qaeda leaders. India cannot ignore that since November 2003, a very useful ceasefire is in place along the Line of Control and infiltration into Kashmir is markedly down.

Yet in both Washington and New Delhi, there remains a sense of frustration at the General’s zig-zag approach to combating radicalism. Alarm bells have begun ringing ever since it appeared that the Taliban, allegedly headquartered in Pakistan, are back in business. Facing the spectre of a civil war in Waziristan and Balochistan, Pakistan professes to be chary of pressing these regions harder for fear of a blowback. But the reasons for the Pakistani failure go beyond its alleged inability to militarily act against the Taliban, or crack down in Waziristan. It lies in the unchanged world view of significant sections of the Pakistani establishment who still see, what they call, ‘sub-conventional’ warfare as a means of checking India, and maintaining Afghanistan as a depth area towards this end. So the problem is that the Pakistan army has no real strategy to combat Islamic radicals and, as Sun Tzu has pointed out, “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”. This defeat will be in no one’s interests, least of all India.

So, how do we handle the Musharraf situation? Instead of focusing only on immediate deliverables like military aid or solutions to India-Pakistan disputes, there is need to maintain a longer view on projects such as the systematic dismantling of the Pakistani jehadi machine, its ISI connections, radical madrasas, fund-raising charities and so on. This action can be best accomplished by a Pakistani government, be it military or otherwise, rather than any outside force. But there is no reason why concerted international pressure cannot be maintained to keep Pakistan on the straight and narrow path.

A second goal must be the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. Last May, the two exiled leaders, Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, met in London and signed a ‘charter for democracy’ ahead of the 2007 elections. But it will take much more than a charter to set things right in Pakistan. Restoring democracy is not just a matter of getting Musharraf and the army to stand aside and restore the 1973 Constitution. The army, Bhutto and Sharif need to collectively work out ways to recapture the space that has been surrendered to the extremists because of their three-way quarrel. There are some straws in this wind in Bhutto’s refusal to commit her party to exploit the current anger against Chaudhry’s dismissal.

India’s role in all this is perhaps most complex. Indians need to overcome their Schadenfreude because the radicalisation of Pakistan cannot but have the most negative fallout here. Recent terrorist attacks indicate that pockets of extremists, inspired and aided, by their Pakistani counterparts, have taken root in some Indian Muslim communities.

In these projects, the General can be an ally, without necessarily requiring pressure or appeasement. But most certainly, we need to perceive him being part of the solution, rather than as the problem. Sounds simple, but it is not.

The China Syndrome

Rising China may worry some people, but there is no need for panic. This article was published in Hindustan Times March 7, 2007

On Sunday, Beijing announced China’s military budget for the year: 350 billion yuan (approximately $ 45 billion), 17.8 per cent more than last year’s and the biggest increase in five years. Just a few days before, India announced that it would increase its defence spending by 7.8 per cent to Rs 96,000 crore (nearly $ 22 billion) in the coming fiscal. Where a surge of concern greeted the Chinese statement, there was not a ripple anywhere after the Indian declaration — except, not surprisingly, in Pakistan.

The Chinese figure was given as a one-line statement by Jiang Enzhu, a National People’s Congress spokesman. The Indian figure was detailed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in the budget papers, breaking down the figure for the precise expenditure of the three services and the capital expenditure for acquisitions. Subsequent documents will add even more detail in the coming months.

The lack of comparable documentation for China has led to charges that the figures do not take into account spending on military R&D, arms imports, Chinese strategic forces, the People’s Armed Police militia and PLA reserves, as well as State subsidies to the Chinese military-industrial complex. The US Defence Intelligence Agency claimed that while the declared 2006 budget was $ 35 billion, the real defence spending could be $ 70 to $ 105 billion for the year.

We refuse to see this as a sinister effort by the Chinese to fudge the figures, but simply as an instance of their accounting practices that are Byzantine even in non-military areas. As for the military, after all India does not include the figures for defence civil estimates of Rs 16,695 crore (which includes defence pensions) in its military budget figure. Nor is it possible to quantify the military component of the Departments of Space and Atomic Energy figures. The expenditure on seven different paramilitary forces, too, do not show up on the defence ledger. After Richard Bitzinger considered that the listed size of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is 2.2 million, a planned expenditure of $ 45 billion should not be seen as extraordinary, when India’s 1.1 million force takes up $ 22 billion.

The issue is not who hides what and why, but the larger issue of the military posture and planning of the PLA. Of the four modernisations that Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping exhorted the Chinese to undertake in the late 1970s, ‘national defence’ was the fourth and last — after agriculture, industry, and science and technology. Since 1997, the Chinese defence spending has seen double digit increases of around 13.7 per cent adjusted for inflation.

Modernisation has meant drastically reducing the size of the PLA, getting it to shed its vast business empire of factories, hotels and real estate holdings, as well as enhancing its military capacity through better training, equipment and doctrines. Since the self-stated Chinese goal is modernisation, the expenditure figures should not surprise us. Speaking of the meagre Indian Budget increase, Jasjit Singh, a leading Indian defence analyst has stated that “a minimum 15 per cent hike” would have been in order to meet the ends of the armed forces. The figures simply inform us of Beijing’s steadfastness in pursuing its goals, rather than point to some sinister plan for world domination.

In its 2006 report, ‘Military Power of the People’s Republic of China’, the US conceded that in the near term, Chinese military modernisation efforts were focused on “Taiwan Straits contingencies, including the possibility of US intervention [against China]”. Certainly, if you plan to militarily check a rebellious province and in the process confront the world’s sole superpower, the military expenditures do not appear unreasonable. India has expended a great deal of blood and treasure to bring its rebellious J&K province to heel. But all it has had to confront has been Pakistan. Taiwan’s history, its current politics and military capabilities present a much more complex challenge to Beijing.

And the real worry for China is the possibility of US intervention. Given that the sheer preponderance of US military strength, a military budget that is about ten times that proposed by China, the very idea of planning for a possible conflict with the US is daunting. But it is not courage or political will that the Chinese lack, but military hardware. In their limited way, they are trying to make up for it in somewhat difficult circumstances of an embargo on hi-tech military systems from the EU, Israel and the US.

But the Chinese have had some luck. The collapse of the Soviet Union gave them the opportunity to obtain a variety of Russian military equipment — Sukhoi fighters, Sovremennyy destroyers, Kilo-class submarines, S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, Yakhont anti-ship missiles. These are not particularly threatening. India has imported, and imports, similar, and in cases, more sophisticated systems from Russia.

But the key difference lies not in the near term, but in longer term Chinese efforts in defence R&D and industry. Where India dithered, they went and hired large teams of scientists and engineers who have given a much needed fillip to their defence R&D and industry, which was till then based on reverse-engineering systems the Soviets had supplied till the early 1960s.

While India’s puny R&D efforts reflect their small budgets and shoddy political and scientific management, the Chinese have systematically used every import to add muscle to their R&D infrastructure. This is not something new. India and China got the MiG-21 together from the USSR in the early 1960s. India, unlike China, even received a licence to manufacture the aircraft, but never managed to go beyond that phase. The Chinese reverse-engineered the aircraft, sold it to Third World clients and built up a vigorous aerospace industry that has fielded the country’s first indigenous fourth-generation fighter, the J-10.

The US perspective on China’s modernisation is shaped not just by its commitments to Taiwan, but also by its self-view as a superpower and its natural desire to remain so. This was summed up in the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review that noted that “China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional US military advantages”.

An Indian perspective must be much narrower. Does the Chinese military modernisation offer any special threat to India? The answer is no. We face no credible trans-Himalayan threat. From the naval point of view, things are actually lopsided in India’s favour. Eighty per cent of China’s oil is carried on ships that must pass by the Konkan coast, go around Sri Lanka and between the Andaman & Nicobar Islands to the Malacca Straits. The implications of this are obvious.

India’s inability to get its defence R&D off the ground and to mesh its civil and military industries for national defence needs is a major long-term infirmity. In the short run, New Delhi is able to make up for its poor R&D performance by being able to access Russian, European, Israeli and now US technologies. But this is at the cost of developing indigenous capabilities and reflects a level of geopolitical weakness. In contrast, China’s steadily growing prowess in these areas provides it with the potential of emerging as a superpower in its own right, sooner rather than later.

Terror's Twisted Turn

An attack on a train in the Indian heartland, killing mainly Pakistani passengers traveling to Lahore is a sign that terrorism is mutating into a more virulent form. This article was published in Hindustan Times February 19, 2007

On September 11, 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared that “Pakistan is also a victim of terrorism”, that terrorism was a threat to both nations and, thus, made it incumbent on them to work together to tackle the issue.

Immediately, a minor firestorm erupted in New Delhi. The BJP’s spokesman, Ravi Shankar Prasad, described the statement as “disturbing, worrisome and untimely”.

Whether or not the PM was conscious that he was speaking on the fifth anniversary of 9/11 is not clear. He was en route to Brazil and thereafter would go to Cuba and meet President Pervez Musharraf on the sidelines of the NAM summit.

Singh acknowledged that “As far as the past is concerned, Pakistan-sponsored terrorism has certainly been a fact of life.” But he pointed out that when former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President Musharraf signed the joint statement in 2004, “[it] was in a way tacit recognition of ground realities and their solemn agreement to move forward in the reverse direction”.

The significance of his remarks became apparent in Havana where the PM and the Pakistani President agreed to “put in place an India-Pakistan anti-terrorism institutional mechanism to identify and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations”. This formulation was seen as a major development. It represented the distance moved by the two sides since the joint statement of January 2004. At the time, the onus had been on Pakistan to ensure that no part of “territory under its control” would be used for terrorist acts against India.

The Havana decision was denounced even more strongly, with a clutch of former diplomats and intelligence officials joining the BJP in terming the move as tantamount to a sellout. Yet, five months later, the logic of this arrangement is tragically apparent. The Samjhauta Express may have been an Indian train, and Sunday’s attack on it took place on Indian soil. But those who carried it out knew that the bulk of the victims would be Pakistani nationals, and Muslims. This is as clear a declaration of war on both countries by the as-yet-unnamed groups of terrorists as any. This had better be understood.

The incident has brought out three points. First, terrorists will not hesitate to attack any target, be it Pakistani, Indian, Hindu or Muslim, to achieve their aim of preventing normalisation of India-Pakistan ties. The Samjhauta Express attack is a continuation of tactics witnessed in Malegaon,when on September 8, terrorists, including a Pakistani national, triggered bombs at a Muslim congregation on the occasion of Shab-e-Barat that killed 37 people.

Second, terrorists remain a step ahead of the authorities in planning and executing their horrendous acts. While in the cases of Malegaon and the Mumbai train blasts, the police have caught a number of suspects, they are yet to lay their hands on any significant masterminds.

Third, terrorists have now attained a great deal of sophistication in choosing their targets and weapons. At first sight, the difference between the Samjhauta attack, and that on Mumbai’s local trains was in the sophistication of the devices used in the latter strike. However, the attackers knew what they wanted, not so much a blast, but a fire which would spread in a speeding train and achieve the end of killing people. And they achieved it by placing bottles of an inflammable liquid with a simple pipe bomb linked to a timer.

Critics of the government’s strategy of working with Pakistani counterparts have not quite kept pace with the changing dynamics of terrorist violence in its epicentre, Pakistan, or the impact on the neighbouring regions of Afghanistan, Iran, India and Bangladesh. As Singh pointed out, Pakistan has certainly played a major role in lighting the fires of terrorism in the region. There is enough evidence in the writings of courageous Pakistani journalists, which suggest that elements of the Pakistani system continue to support some groups in the name of the freedom struggle in Kashmir. Yet, fact is that Pakistan is itself teetering on a slippery slope.

Of late, there have been a spate of suicide bomber attacks in and around Islamabad. On January 26, a terrorist killed himself and a security guard at a hotel where the Indian High Commissioner was to host a reception. On February 6, a suicide attacker blew himself up in the car park of Islamabad airport, injuring 10 people. Nine days later, on February 17, two suicide bombers blew themselves up in a Quetta court, killing 17 people and wounding 37.

Ever since 9/11, the draconian US-led counter-terrorist operations have led to the mutation of Pakistani terrorist groups. Older ones like the Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-e-jihad-e-Islami have gone underground and newer ones like the Jundullah have emerged with deep links to the al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Pakistan’s biggest failure has been its inability to control the Waziristan region. American officials now say that al-Qaeda and the Taliban have been able to re-establish significant control over their worldwide network and create a new infrastructure of training camps in this tribal region. Over the past year, insurgent tactics from Iraq have migrated to Afghanistan, where suicide bombings have increased five-fold and roadside bomb attacks have doubled. Last Sunday, Iran’s Foreign Ministry charged that on February 16 Sunni terrorists with Pakistani links had struck at the south-eastern city of Zahedan — through which logistical aid to Afghanistan is routed.

At first sight, the simplest thing would be to pressure Musharraf to attack the camps in Waziristan and elsewhere. Washington is afraid that strikes on camps, leading to civilian casualties would weaken not just his position, but also that of the Pakistan army, already battered by its de facto retreat from Waziristan last year. New Delhi is aware of the pressures on the General and would work with him rather than pillory him. The Iranians, too, have declared that they would seek to work with Pakistan to contain the problem.

In recent testimony to a Congressional committee, Ryan Crocker, US ambassador to Pakistan, acknowledged that Pakistan’s ability to address the terrorist challenge is limited. The Pakistan army has suffered substantial casualties in taking on the Taliban and Waziri tribals; Pakistani society has been battered by the continuing sectarian strife.

India’s calculation, as that of the US and other nations, has to be based on whether the situation will improve or deteriorate were Musharraf to leave. This has to be an entirely pragmatic calculation, devoid of any sentimentality, or for that matter ill-feelings about his role in Kargil, or past Pakistani support of terrorism. Yet, there are things Musharraf can and must do — get the democratic opposition in Pakistan on-board and resist the temptation to retain the ‘freedom fighter’ option in Kashmir.

Just last week, it was announced that the first meeting of the new Indo-Pakistani anti-terror mechanism will take place in Islamabad on March 6. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said that the mandate of the mechanism would be to consider counter-terrorism measures and regular and timely sharing of information.

Whatever this may mean, it’s clear that we need more cooperation rather than less. Till now the terrorists have been one step ahead of those who are seeking to check them. The countries of the region need to dramatically reduce their trust deficit in each other and enhance their efforts of tackling a phenomena which constitutes nothing less than an existential threat to them.

American Graffiti: Or why US is still (very) important for the world

Published in Hindustan Times January 10, 2007

Last month, at a seminar at the Indian Council for World Affairs in New Delhi, discussion centred around the United States and its role as the global hegemon. In a paper on ‘Great Powers’ read out by Varun Sahni, professor at the School of International Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University, there was a reference to the system-shaping capabilities of such powers. In response, Siddharth Varadarajan of The Hindu observed that in recent years, one such power had actually been playing a system-destructive role. To use a cliché, the truth lies somewhere in between. While we may point to the US disdain for the United Nations, climate change treaties and the like today, it is undeniable that it played a great role in shaping the global institutions and rules that define the world we live in today.

Just what the US means to the international system is evident from European Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson’s comment on Monday that global trade talks could only be saved by the intervention of President Bush. You could ditto that on the climate change agenda, energy security, non-proliferation, or combating HIV/Aids. The US remains the key power that determines the success or failure of global efforts and agreements.

In the wake of World War II, the US helped create the UN, whose key emphasis was on banning war, the world monetary system, an international bank for reconstruction and development and virtually every significant global agreement thereafter. The US did not intend to become the sole hegemon of the international system that it has become today. That is why it put up four other powers, who were so only in name in 1945, as pillars of the world order — France, Britain, Russia and China. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, and notwithstanding the rise of China, the military distance between the US and any other power has widened to the point that the US capabilities are greater than that of any combination of the other Great Powers of the world.

The US has played, and continues to play, the role of a system shaper, but given its huge power, it is also capable of destroying what it has itself helped create. Like any Great Power in history, it has relied on realpolitik to protect and further its interests, even if the process undermined the very institutions it helped create, and the principles it articulated.

The long trail that realpolitik tends to leave behind is evident from the relations between the US and Iran. In 1953, the Central Intelligence Agency helped overthrow the democratically-elected government of Mohammed Mossadegh and reinforce the rule of the Shah of Iran. Thereafter, with the view of controlling the oil-rich Persian Gulf, the US underwrote the Shah’s tyranny as well as his progressive megalomania. By the Seventies, the latter had proclaimed himself Shahenshah (King of Kings) and the former had begun transferring to him advanced weapons systems, sometimes even before they had reached the US arsenal.

The Shah’s downfall had a spectacular fallout, but the US didn’t give up. In the Eighties, it backed another wannabe local hegemon — Saddam Hussein — to take out Iran and we know what the consequences of that action have been. Today, the US and Iran remain locked at a new and higher stage of confrontation.

The US cannot be blamed for everything that went wrong in that relationship, and it also cannot be attacked for all the wrongs of the international system. The rise of the Soviet Union and its self-proclaimed rivalry towards the US played a great system-destructive role in the international system. The Non-Aligned Movement, which often bemoans the US role, too, on occasion, played a negative role. The near-blind support that it gave the erstwhile Soviet Union was a fact used by Republican Party ideologues in the US to attack all policies aimed at helping the poorer countries of the world to get on their feet. The ‘Zionism-as-racism’ resolution in the UN General Assembly only served to reinforce the US tilt in favour of Israel.

There were expectations that the Soviet collapse would act as a corrective and re-establish the primacy of international organisations and law. The UN-US duet in Somalia, Bosnia and Kuwait in the Nineties provided some promise of the re-establishment of a rule-based international system. Yet, they also provided a reminder that minus the US, the UN would be ineffective and incapable of action against flagrant violations of international law. The challenge of the Nineties was to institutionalise the experience of this period by strengthening the UN and getting the International Criminal Court going. But this did not happen for two reasons, both linked to the US.

Trends in US politics, rooted in an ideological conflict that goes back decades, succeeded in skewing the American consensus on foreign and security policy issues. The root of the problem lay in ideological wars fought by the Republican Right-wing against the moderate segments of their own party and the Democrats. Led by religious revivalists, its domestic agenda was social — opposition to abortion, feminism and gays, rejection of the separation of the Church and State. In other words, all aspects of liberal democracy. Its foreign policy manifestation was an unrelenting hatred for communism and unflinching support for Israel. George H.W. Bush’s presidency and his efforts to shape a new world order foundered on his inability to get the support of this segment of his party. The Clinton presidency, too, was hobbled by the intense dislike of the Republican Party, dominated by its Right-wing, for the Democratic President, who was seen as being the exemplar of everything they opposed.

The second reason was the George W. Bush presidency and 9/11. Ideologically, Bush Jr saw himself as heir to Reagan and went out of his way to cultivate the Republican Right. Even before he came to power, he had made clear his intention of ignoring the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that stood in the way of that Reagan favourite — the Ballistic Missile Defence Programme. He disdained the agenda of the environmentalists and rejected the Kyoto protocol on global warming. But then came 9/11 and the global war against terror that helped Bush rally the US, invade Afghanistan and Iraq and win the 2004 elections with a huge majority.

Since 2000, the US has gone on a system-destruction drive, such as one never seen before. Bush’s declaration that the US would pursue ‘preemptive war’ against its enemies is a doctrine that violates the basic principles of the UN Charter. Later, the UN was bypassed and Iraq was invaded for reasons that we now know were spurious. Instead of upholding the developing trend of trying international war crimes through the ICC, the US threw out all the laws, even some in its own books, to indefinitely detain and torture suspects from anywhere in the world.

There is every indication that the US will continue to be the globally hegemonic power for the foreseeable future, despite its profligate economic and military policies. It remains in the interest of the world community to get the US back on the system-shaping track. The agenda here is already getting crowded. Climate change and energy security are no longer a theoretical proposition. Nuclear proliferation remains a major headache, as do problems like Darfur and Somalia. UN reform is stuck and the world trade system desperately needs another boost. In each of these areas, the world needs US cooperation and perhaps even leadership, and it needs it fast.

The Sum of All Their Fears

India's national security bureaucracy doesn't really have an inspired record. It seems to lack the grit to fight the country's battles abroad and wants to stay holed up in fortress India. This article was published in Hindustan Times November 29, 2006

As 2006 draws to a close, there is some satisfaction in knowing that despite turbulence — some of it caused by our own instrumentalities — India’s most important foreign relations, that with Pakistan and China, are on track. The year began with expectations of rapid movement on the Pakistan front, only to be belied by the Varanasi blasts, the blockade on Siachen, the recriminations of the Mumbai blasts, followed by postponement of the foreign secretary-level dialogue. Towards the year’s end, a throwaway remark on Arunachal Pradesh led to another kind of turmoil, one often caused by the circulation of a lot of hot air.

As is our national wont, we have been convinced that all the problems were caused by our adversaries, real and potential. Our own actions and motives are, and have always been, as pure as driven snow. However, more than anytime in the past, there were disturbing signs of a kind of dissonance being introduced into the system by what is politely called the ‘national security bureaucracy’. This comprises members from the armed forces, the intelligence agencies, police forces and the civilian babus who believe that they have the exclusive franchise on deciding what constitutes the national interest, and the best way of preserving it.

The best (worst?) example of this was the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) paper warning against investment by China into certain important sectors. This was sent out to various ministries reportedly by the principal secretary to the Prime Minister and has done a great deal to needlessly roil Sino-Indian relations. Just why this was done is a bit of a mystery.

The NSCS, comprising relatively junior officials, is meant to merely service the National Security Council. The latter body comprising the Prime Minister himself and his ministers for defence, finance, home and external affairs, take the actual decisions. To advise the NSC, two additional deliberative bodies have been provided — the National Security Advisory Board, comprising experts in various fields and a clutch of retired officials, and the Strategic Policy Group. While the former is meant to be the source of external advice to the NSC, the latter, comprising all the top secretaries to the government, the chiefs of the three services and the intelligence agencies, is the top advisory and deliberative body to the NSC. Its additional value is that it is supposed to undertake what the Americans call an ‘inter-agency process’, where the views of various important departments and ministries are put forward and reconciled before becoming official policy. A parallel system servicing the Cabinet is the committee of secretaries. In the case of the Chinese investment policy, it is well-known that the finance, surface transport and external affairs ministries disagreed with the NSCS’s view. But since a senior PMO official has fired the guns from the shoulders of the NSC secretariat, what we have is an ill-considered, hawkish policy, rather than a balanced and considered opinion of the government.

The aim no doubt was to upset the government’s China policy. As indeed was the needless furore on the Chinese envoy Sun Yuxi’s remarks. While Sun could have had a better sense of timing to reiterate Beijing’s known views on the subject, it was not particularly edifying to hear the whining and sloganeering over what is a well-known Chinese position. A country aspiring to be a global player, must have the maturity to accept that if it has a point of view, so do others.

No doubt there are similar forces at work within Pakistan and China as well. But in India, we have the benefit of living in an all-too-transparent system where manoeuvres of mendacious officialdom are easily visible. Such openness is not available in Pakistan or China. The actions of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in using jehadis as a cat’s paw are not easy to prove, even though we must cope with their impact. The Chinese system is even more opaque. But its policy is to use Pakistan as a foil against India, rather than do anything negative frontally.

Fortunately, on both Pakistan and China, the political leadership of the country has shown a strong and steady hand. They have ensured that the momentum of efforts to normalise ties with these countries have not been derailed. At every stage of improving relations with difficult neighbours, the political class has had to lead. Rajiv Gandhi had to overrule officials before his pathbreaking visit to Beijing in 1988. Manmohan Singh, who does not have Rajiv’s clout, has had to fight every step of the way against bureaucrats and ministers who claim they are the repository of Rajiv’s legacy. It was on his insistence that the Hurriyat was permitted to travel to Pakistan without visas. He has also expended personal political capital on pushing the Indo-US nuclear deal.

The PM and his team have pushed through the anti-terror mechanism with Pakistan and the result has been a distinct improvement in India-Pakistan relations. Despite uncalled for pressure by the army, they have set the resolution of the Siachen and Sir Creek issues as a benchmark for the coming months. They are keeping their eyes firmly on the capstone of the peace process — the final settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. This process is further down the road than publicly acknowledged.

Likewise, despite Chinese procrastination, the government has steadily pushed for a final settlement of the Sino-Indian border dispute. The recent visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao gives a feel of the texture of New Delhi’s global policies. The latest Sino-Indian joint communiqué talks of the “global and strategic” significance of the relations between the two countries — a factual description of the current reality. It says that the two countries do not see themselves as “rivals or competitors but [are] partners for mutual benefit”. This sounds somewhat rhetorical, but is again true in that the unmoderated rivalry and competition between two nuclear armed States in a globalised economy is tantamount to mutually assured destruction. So the statement adds that “they agree that there is enough space for them to grow together”, a practical and forward-looking formulation. While the opacity we have referred to does cloud a better understanding of Chinese policies towards India, the facts are that Beijing is shifting towards a neutral position on the India-Pakistan issues, especially on Kashmir.

The broader Indian strategy, as probably that of China, is to enhance relations with a cross-section of important countries — the US, the EU, Japan, Russia, the Asean, South Africa, Brazil, etc. Based on the values that shape our nation and its foreign policies — secularism and democracy — it is inevitable that our ties with some countries will have a flavour quite different from those of others. But this does not mean that one set of relations will be benevolent, and the other conflict-ridden.

As long as human relationships are about power, the only way to promote restraint is to maintain a balance of power. But where in the past this was seen as a zero-sum game, in today’s inter-dependent world, it requires an appreciation of the balance of interests of various nations.

In this new vision of the world, too much is at stake to allow the national security bureaucracies to decide the direction of policies. While we must heed their views with all the seriousness they deserve, because it is their task to keep track of the family silver, we cannot allow them to run away with the agenda. They have the right to be suspicious of our real and potential adversaries. But suspicion unrelieved by any effort towards amelioration usually becomes paranoia. It breeds a ‘fortress mentality’ that takes comfort in hiding behind the high walls of national security. But the threats outside will inevitably breach the walls if not countered, through flexible and innovative strategies, at some remove from the walls of our fort.