Obama’s War
Milton Bearden writes in Foreign Affairs:
“Since the United States first dispatched troops to Afghanistan in October 2001, the war in Afghanistan has been an orphan of U.S. policy. But with the release last week of a revamped U.S. policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan, the conflict has, by default, become Barack Obama's war.”
Read the full article …
Showing posts with label America Today. Show all posts
Showing posts with label America Today. Show all posts
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Obama as global shepherd
President as global shepherd
ND Batra
From The Statesman
Reflecting on the G-20 meeting in London, it would appear that world leaders of the most powerful economies had succeeded in realising that concerted action was needed to halt the precipitous global economic slide and begin taking concrete steps to effect global recovery, regardless of the primary source of the trouble; which of course everyone knows started with the United States banking system’s disastrous financial innovations like sub-prime lending, credit default swaps, liar’s loans, et cetera.
Although the time for finger pointing and mutual recriminations, as some Asian and European leaders had been doing earlier, seemed to be over, the contentious issue was what would work the best to lift all boats, for example, whether to inject fiscal stimulus to let credit flow again and kick start the recovery or to erect regulatory frame work to control Wall Street’s rapacious capitalism. That was the great Atlantic divide the G-20 communiqué tried to bridge with rhetorical flourishes such as “The era of banking secrecy is over.” Much credit is being given to President Barack Obama for parlaying his well-honed campaign-style charm offensive into global diplomacy, which certainly is true.
Wherever Mr Obama and his graceful lovely wife Michelle Obama went, they won people’s hearts and minds. Through their grand symbolic gestures, eloquent speeches and transparent smiles, America seemed to be refurbishing its image sullied by the Iraq war and the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
But no less could be said of other leaders also including the powerful European duo, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Markel Angela of Germany, who asserted that the Anglo-Saxon form of unbridled marketplace capitalism is dangerous for the new world order, especially now when the global economy has become so integrated that a single Wall Street investment bank failure could cause worldwide financial tsunami. The world just cannot leave the United States to its own financial devices, however innovative they may be.
With Prime Minister Gordon Brown, like his predecessor Tony Blaire, being secure in the American safe haven of “special relationship,” the new Europe is essentially a Franco-German Europe. And in the ultimate analysis, French and German leaders prevailed in their views that mandatory stimulus spending by individual countries as the US and the UK have been insisting, would not work without a global regulatory structure.
Although China and Russia, prior to the Summit, made lot of noise about creating a new global currency under the tutelage of the IMF, they had no takers. As Nobel economist Paul Krugman said in his New York column, China is in a dollar trap. The IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) is a convertible mechanism based on a basket of currencies including the dollar, pound, euro and Japanese yen. Nothing should worry China more than the value of the dollar, whose collapse will wipe out China’s massive, rather frightening, foreign exchange reserves.
China and other developing countries have to determine the optimum level of foreign exchange reserves beyond which the accumulation becomes more of a liability than an asset. China’s excessive dependence upon exports and obscene accumulation of foreign exchange reserves is as much responsible for global financial crisis as the US fraudulent and criminal lending practices.
China and the United States have let down the world, but Mr Obama would not say so much so bluntly. Measured as he is always in his public utterances, Mr Obama said in his post-Summit radio-Internet address: “Ultimately, the only way out of a recession that is global in scope is with a response that is global in coordination.” In broad terms, there was an agreement that banks need to start lending again in order to stimulate growth and generate jobs, but Europeans were unsure about the wisdom of infusing their economies with massive multi-billion dollar stimulus packages, the kind of seemingly bold steps that the Obama administration has announced, for example, to buy toxic bank assets and shore up their finances so that they start lending again.
European leaders see the global crisis primarily as a consequence of lack of financial controls and most of the G-20 communiqué is about establishing the regulatory framework, including the closure of tax havens (Switzerland, Hong Kong, Macao, Mauritius, for example) and close supervision of hedge funds and private equity firms. But it was the eye-catching amount of $1.1 trillion through the IMF and World Bank in loans and guarantees to help developing countries, who have been badly affected by economic downturn, that answered the question, Where is the beef? “The whole world has been touched by this devastating downturn, and today, the world’s leaders have responded with an unprecedented set of comprehensive and coordinated actions,” said Mr Obama, calling the agreement “a turning point in our pursuit of global economic recovery.” The market responded to his optimism with a surge and the Dow closed over 8,000 in spite of the increasing US unemployment figures. Looking from a glass half-full half-empty perspective, the Obama stimulus package for the global economy through domestic spending, which was rejected by the Europeans, might be seen as being funneled though the International Monetary Fund ~ in spite of the IMF’s dubious reputation of being an organisation whose actions in the past, some believe, have caused more harm than good to the recipients of its loans. But beggars have no choice.
Although Mr Obama’s all embracing inclusive diplomacy shepherded the G-20 Summit superbly, it was essentially an European theatrical performance. The so-called BRIC countries were seen but not heard much.
(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University)
ND Batra
From The Statesman
Reflecting on the G-20 meeting in London, it would appear that world leaders of the most powerful economies had succeeded in realising that concerted action was needed to halt the precipitous global economic slide and begin taking concrete steps to effect global recovery, regardless of the primary source of the trouble; which of course everyone knows started with the United States banking system’s disastrous financial innovations like sub-prime lending, credit default swaps, liar’s loans, et cetera.
Although the time for finger pointing and mutual recriminations, as some Asian and European leaders had been doing earlier, seemed to be over, the contentious issue was what would work the best to lift all boats, for example, whether to inject fiscal stimulus to let credit flow again and kick start the recovery or to erect regulatory frame work to control Wall Street’s rapacious capitalism. That was the great Atlantic divide the G-20 communiqué tried to bridge with rhetorical flourishes such as “The era of banking secrecy is over.” Much credit is being given to President Barack Obama for parlaying his well-honed campaign-style charm offensive into global diplomacy, which certainly is true.
Wherever Mr Obama and his graceful lovely wife Michelle Obama went, they won people’s hearts and minds. Through their grand symbolic gestures, eloquent speeches and transparent smiles, America seemed to be refurbishing its image sullied by the Iraq war and the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
But no less could be said of other leaders also including the powerful European duo, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Markel Angela of Germany, who asserted that the Anglo-Saxon form of unbridled marketplace capitalism is dangerous for the new world order, especially now when the global economy has become so integrated that a single Wall Street investment bank failure could cause worldwide financial tsunami. The world just cannot leave the United States to its own financial devices, however innovative they may be.
With Prime Minister Gordon Brown, like his predecessor Tony Blaire, being secure in the American safe haven of “special relationship,” the new Europe is essentially a Franco-German Europe. And in the ultimate analysis, French and German leaders prevailed in their views that mandatory stimulus spending by individual countries as the US and the UK have been insisting, would not work without a global regulatory structure.
Although China and Russia, prior to the Summit, made lot of noise about creating a new global currency under the tutelage of the IMF, they had no takers. As Nobel economist Paul Krugman said in his New York column, China is in a dollar trap. The IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) is a convertible mechanism based on a basket of currencies including the dollar, pound, euro and Japanese yen. Nothing should worry China more than the value of the dollar, whose collapse will wipe out China’s massive, rather frightening, foreign exchange reserves.
China and other developing countries have to determine the optimum level of foreign exchange reserves beyond which the accumulation becomes more of a liability than an asset. China’s excessive dependence upon exports and obscene accumulation of foreign exchange reserves is as much responsible for global financial crisis as the US fraudulent and criminal lending practices.
China and the United States have let down the world, but Mr Obama would not say so much so bluntly. Measured as he is always in his public utterances, Mr Obama said in his post-Summit radio-Internet address: “Ultimately, the only way out of a recession that is global in scope is with a response that is global in coordination.” In broad terms, there was an agreement that banks need to start lending again in order to stimulate growth and generate jobs, but Europeans were unsure about the wisdom of infusing their economies with massive multi-billion dollar stimulus packages, the kind of seemingly bold steps that the Obama administration has announced, for example, to buy toxic bank assets and shore up their finances so that they start lending again.
European leaders see the global crisis primarily as a consequence of lack of financial controls and most of the G-20 communiqué is about establishing the regulatory framework, including the closure of tax havens (Switzerland, Hong Kong, Macao, Mauritius, for example) and close supervision of hedge funds and private equity firms. But it was the eye-catching amount of $1.1 trillion through the IMF and World Bank in loans and guarantees to help developing countries, who have been badly affected by economic downturn, that answered the question, Where is the beef? “The whole world has been touched by this devastating downturn, and today, the world’s leaders have responded with an unprecedented set of comprehensive and coordinated actions,” said Mr Obama, calling the agreement “a turning point in our pursuit of global economic recovery.” The market responded to his optimism with a surge and the Dow closed over 8,000 in spite of the increasing US unemployment figures. Looking from a glass half-full half-empty perspective, the Obama stimulus package for the global economy through domestic spending, which was rejected by the Europeans, might be seen as being funneled though the International Monetary Fund ~ in spite of the IMF’s dubious reputation of being an organisation whose actions in the past, some believe, have caused more harm than good to the recipients of its loans. But beggars have no choice.
Although Mr Obama’s all embracing inclusive diplomacy shepherded the G-20 Summit superbly, it was essentially an European theatrical performance. The so-called BRIC countries were seen but not heard much.
(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University)
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Advertisment can stimulate the economy
When the economy is down, call the adman
CYBER AGE ND Batra
From The Statesman
In spite of the fact that unemployment has been rising, more than 90 percent Americans still have their jobs. But people are not spending liberally as they used to do. In this season of recession here and depression there, the adman’s song and dance is becoming extremely loud and captivating.
In the United States, advertising since long has been a most important mode of social, political and economic discourse; it is partly so because the adman knows how to cut through the glut of information and hit the target audience with promises of fulfillment of needs and desires.
The adman knows who you are: your taste in wining and dining; your preferences for the car; whether you love kids or pets or both; what’s in your medicine cabinet; what’s in your refrigerator; whether you play golf or video games. He knows what you do each part of the day and how to reach you through your demographic-psychographic profile. The adman researches people not as individual human beings but clusters of interests, preferences and tastes; as communities of shared values, seeking similar pleasures. The adman is a cultural spy as well as promoter of culture.
You need to observe how the adman cleverly propels millions of children to toy stores in order to get to the parents’ pocket books. He does it through after-school television programmes and Saturday morning cartoons, programmes that alternate with commercials so rapidly that the kids can’t make sense whether they are watching programmes or commercials. And at the same time kids feel fascinated with imaginative characters from SpongeBob SquarePants to Power Rangers.
Few parents know how to withstand the pressure from their children, ranging from outright grumpiness to passive-aggressive non-communication. Even in these difficult days when household budgeting is a challenge for many families, children come first. Children and teenagers’ consumer market is huge. Adman turns everything into “cool,” and that is the buzzword.
But imagine how the adman is dealing with a most rational group in the United States, the physicians. Direct-to-the patient “Ask Your Doctor” ads about prescription drugs, which are mostly aimed at the elderly and women, have become so common that sometimes you wonder if Americans suffer from every global disease ranging from allergies and erectile dysfunction to sagging breasts in urgent need for uplifting.
A typical “Ask Your Doctor” advertisement, for example, Detrol, which is used for incontinence and overactive bladder, may show a happy middle-aged couple walking on the beach hand in hand, so happy because they have discovered Detrol through their doctor; or middle age buddies who can sit through an entire baseball game without rushing to the bathroom.
Through these direct-to-patient ads that seem to give vital and authoritative information, the adman uses persuasion to elbow people to take the initiative and ask their physician why this drug is right for them. Of course in a rapid-fire speed-reading mode, the narrator issues warnings for the drug’s side-effects.
In a behavioural advertisement, the adman appeals directly to people’s emotions and tickles the image they have of themselves especially when he sells a value product such as an expensive luxury car to uppity rising people trying to catch up with their neighbours. But by mixing both kinds of appeals, emotional and informative, many pharmaceutical companies make a direct pitch to patients from “If Viagra isn’t everything you hoped for, don’t give up” because there is Cialis for 36 hours and even for daily use to “Now I trust my heart to Lipitor”; and so on.
Many drug manufacturers are using television celebrities to push their prescription drugs, a strategy that might make a physician wonder if it’s worthwhile to resist the pressure and lose his or her patients to another healthcare provider.
The adman’s approach to these two large and almost captive markets, children and the elderly, is quite similar. To get to parents, the adman, like a magician, snares children by creating what is “cool”; to get to physicians, he goes to their patients by using a direct and immediate health benefit appeal. Both appeals use subtle emotional pressures, pushing on ethical boundaries.
But in spite of all his faults, the adman is indispensable to a free market society. The adman impacts society in multifarious ways by bringing buyers and sellers together in the marketplace of goods, services and ideas, and thereby helps distribute economic and intellectual resources of the society.
The social discourse today is all about stimulating the economy through buying and selling because in a consumer society like the United States if the trips to shopping malls diminish, so would the economy. Sooner or later, therefore, the adman would get us because he can take us everywhere we want to be. And he keeps the economy moving even in these times of recession when our lives have become rather fearful of tomorrows. The American adman may be President Obama’s best ally in fighting the economic downturn.
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
CYBER AGE ND Batra
From The Statesman
In spite of the fact that unemployment has been rising, more than 90 percent Americans still have their jobs. But people are not spending liberally as they used to do. In this season of recession here and depression there, the adman’s song and dance is becoming extremely loud and captivating.
In the United States, advertising since long has been a most important mode of social, political and economic discourse; it is partly so because the adman knows how to cut through the glut of information and hit the target audience with promises of fulfillment of needs and desires.
The adman knows who you are: your taste in wining and dining; your preferences for the car; whether you love kids or pets or both; what’s in your medicine cabinet; what’s in your refrigerator; whether you play golf or video games. He knows what you do each part of the day and how to reach you through your demographic-psychographic profile. The adman researches people not as individual human beings but clusters of interests, preferences and tastes; as communities of shared values, seeking similar pleasures. The adman is a cultural spy as well as promoter of culture.
You need to observe how the adman cleverly propels millions of children to toy stores in order to get to the parents’ pocket books. He does it through after-school television programmes and Saturday morning cartoons, programmes that alternate with commercials so rapidly that the kids can’t make sense whether they are watching programmes or commercials. And at the same time kids feel fascinated with imaginative characters from SpongeBob SquarePants to Power Rangers.
Few parents know how to withstand the pressure from their children, ranging from outright grumpiness to passive-aggressive non-communication. Even in these difficult days when household budgeting is a challenge for many families, children come first. Children and teenagers’ consumer market is huge. Adman turns everything into “cool,” and that is the buzzword.
But imagine how the adman is dealing with a most rational group in the United States, the physicians. Direct-to-the patient “Ask Your Doctor” ads about prescription drugs, which are mostly aimed at the elderly and women, have become so common that sometimes you wonder if Americans suffer from every global disease ranging from allergies and erectile dysfunction to sagging breasts in urgent need for uplifting.
A typical “Ask Your Doctor” advertisement, for example, Detrol, which is used for incontinence and overactive bladder, may show a happy middle-aged couple walking on the beach hand in hand, so happy because they have discovered Detrol through their doctor; or middle age buddies who can sit through an entire baseball game without rushing to the bathroom.
Through these direct-to-patient ads that seem to give vital and authoritative information, the adman uses persuasion to elbow people to take the initiative and ask their physician why this drug is right for them. Of course in a rapid-fire speed-reading mode, the narrator issues warnings for the drug’s side-effects.
In a behavioural advertisement, the adman appeals directly to people’s emotions and tickles the image they have of themselves especially when he sells a value product such as an expensive luxury car to uppity rising people trying to catch up with their neighbours. But by mixing both kinds of appeals, emotional and informative, many pharmaceutical companies make a direct pitch to patients from “If Viagra isn’t everything you hoped for, don’t give up” because there is Cialis for 36 hours and even for daily use to “Now I trust my heart to Lipitor”; and so on.
Many drug manufacturers are using television celebrities to push their prescription drugs, a strategy that might make a physician wonder if it’s worthwhile to resist the pressure and lose his or her patients to another healthcare provider.
The adman’s approach to these two large and almost captive markets, children and the elderly, is quite similar. To get to parents, the adman, like a magician, snares children by creating what is “cool”; to get to physicians, he goes to their patients by using a direct and immediate health benefit appeal. Both appeals use subtle emotional pressures, pushing on ethical boundaries.
But in spite of all his faults, the adman is indispensable to a free market society. The adman impacts society in multifarious ways by bringing buyers and sellers together in the marketplace of goods, services and ideas, and thereby helps distribute economic and intellectual resources of the society.
The social discourse today is all about stimulating the economy through buying and selling because in a consumer society like the United States if the trips to shopping malls diminish, so would the economy. Sooner or later, therefore, the adman would get us because he can take us everywhere we want to be. And he keeps the economy moving even in these times of recession when our lives have become rather fearful of tomorrows. The American adman may be President Obama’s best ally in fighting the economic downturn.
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
China, US, India
Battle of ideas shall continue
CYBER AGE - ND BATRA
From The Statesman
Before the global financial meltdown began last September, the whole world watched with fascination the unstoppable rise of China as a model of economic progress. China as a global workshop ~ that exports, exports, and exports ~ became an exemplar of the energy born of nationalistic commercialism.
Except for those pesky Tibetans and their conniving agents abroad, it looked China had become a global brand with a single dominant story of harmony and peaceful rise. But now because these bankrupt Americans and Europeans are not buying much, many factory sites in China look like a vast wasteland. The euphoria of Asian values and uniqueness is no longer visible. China of course is not crumbling like a cookie but it is also not speeding like a shining silver bullet train.
China as an idea has to compete with others in the international marketplace of ideas. So you can never say that the battle of ideas has been finally won. For example, we did not realise that the end the Soviet Union was not the end of the battle of ideas but rather the beginning of new ones. Think of history as a dynamic landscape where the battle of ideas continues.
Some people, especially those trained in propaganda believe that all that a country needs is a new image and therefore it must re-brand itself. It is not that easy. Even a most authoritarian nation cannot control the message and its image even though it may be the sole source of information about itself. Of course you can never control the image of an open society because there are so many independent actors, institutions and corporations competing for attention.
For example, the Slumdog Millionaire image of India can never be done away. When some of my colleagues ask me as to how accurate is the portrayal of India in the movie, I say it’s a beautiful and accurate “misrepresentation” of India. But Mumbai slumgdogs are better than Mother Teresa’s hopeless downtrodden. Add to this tapestry, the millions of Indians who are using their mobile phones to become entrepreneurs; and the Tata Nano; and the rise of silicon whiz kids in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Kolkata, et al, and you have a throbbing compelling image of India.
Similarly, Hollywood, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Wal-Mart and all others contribute to the US image abroad. But now you add to this mélange the financial meltdown, increasing joblessness, and the bloody news from Afghanistan! The US image abroad is the materialisation of what the USA is doing at home and abroad.
Foreigners who see only Hollywood violent movies and video games are likely to have a distorted image of the USA. But if you bring them to university campuses, cultural centres, and workplaces, you would see the image of the USA in their minds change radically. Keeping the dynamic nature of the emergent image, it should not be difficult to understand why the public perception of the USA differs from one country to another. The image depends upon the quality and the extent of its presence and its usefulness to the host country.
Even the smartest public diplomacy campaign won’t change perceptions overnight especially when America is deeply engaged in multiple missions abroad. Events might occur beyond its control, which could further blur the image in some countries. China’s presence in the USA is huge but poor quality China-made toys, tainted pet foods and defective tyres have shattered its image of a reliable manufacturer. No amount of public relations or threat of going to WTO as it recently tried to do with India over toys would help China unless it realises that good products are manufactured by countries where the Press is free, where there is political and corporate transparency.
The always-on 24-hour global communication, blogs, instant messaging, and news cycles, make it impossible for practitioners of public relations to devise a central strategy to impose a message control, as it can be done in advertising campaigns for a product or a political candidate. In an environment of unbridled communication, you might still control the message, but you cannot control the meaning when instant alternative interpretations are available.
Each nation is different, so what works in Indonesia may not work in Pakistan. The challenge is to find the right vehicle to carry the message for a specific local audience. Public diplomats must use local leaders to champion and advance their cause and they should do so in such a manner that it makes the local people feel good while at the same time generating goodwill towards the country that is using information culture to foster goodwill. Hollywood is still the best cultural export, but US popular culture, due to proliferation of senseless violence and explicit sex, creates negative impressions in foreign audiences, in spite of the fact the world has been spending billions of dollars importing American entertainment.
The paradox is that in spite of negative feelings about American popular culture that it depicts profanity, nudity, mayhem and crime, the popularity of mass culture, even in the Islamic world, remains strong. In countries like India and the USA, corporations, educational institutions, and non-profits organisations represent most precious values such as individual initiative, innovativeness, entrepreneurship, freedom of speech, and competition. Google and Apple, for example, embody as much of what America stands for as does Hollywood.
India’s massive general election starting 16 April in which an electorate of 714 million would participate makes the idea of India very persuasive and appealing. I would rather have free and fair elections in India than a glamorous summer Olympics.
(ND Batra blogs at http://globaldiplomat.blogspot.com and teaches communications at Norwich University.)
CYBER AGE - ND BATRA
From The Statesman
Before the global financial meltdown began last September, the whole world watched with fascination the unstoppable rise of China as a model of economic progress. China as a global workshop ~ that exports, exports, and exports ~ became an exemplar of the energy born of nationalistic commercialism.
Except for those pesky Tibetans and their conniving agents abroad, it looked China had become a global brand with a single dominant story of harmony and peaceful rise. But now because these bankrupt Americans and Europeans are not buying much, many factory sites in China look like a vast wasteland. The euphoria of Asian values and uniqueness is no longer visible. China of course is not crumbling like a cookie but it is also not speeding like a shining silver bullet train.
China as an idea has to compete with others in the international marketplace of ideas. So you can never say that the battle of ideas has been finally won. For example, we did not realise that the end the Soviet Union was not the end of the battle of ideas but rather the beginning of new ones. Think of history as a dynamic landscape where the battle of ideas continues.
Some people, especially those trained in propaganda believe that all that a country needs is a new image and therefore it must re-brand itself. It is not that easy. Even a most authoritarian nation cannot control the message and its image even though it may be the sole source of information about itself. Of course you can never control the image of an open society because there are so many independent actors, institutions and corporations competing for attention.
For example, the Slumdog Millionaire image of India can never be done away. When some of my colleagues ask me as to how accurate is the portrayal of India in the movie, I say it’s a beautiful and accurate “misrepresentation” of India. But Mumbai slumgdogs are better than Mother Teresa’s hopeless downtrodden. Add to this tapestry, the millions of Indians who are using their mobile phones to become entrepreneurs; and the Tata Nano; and the rise of silicon whiz kids in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Kolkata, et al, and you have a throbbing compelling image of India.
Similarly, Hollywood, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Wal-Mart and all others contribute to the US image abroad. But now you add to this mélange the financial meltdown, increasing joblessness, and the bloody news from Afghanistan! The US image abroad is the materialisation of what the USA is doing at home and abroad.
Foreigners who see only Hollywood violent movies and video games are likely to have a distorted image of the USA. But if you bring them to university campuses, cultural centres, and workplaces, you would see the image of the USA in their minds change radically. Keeping the dynamic nature of the emergent image, it should not be difficult to understand why the public perception of the USA differs from one country to another. The image depends upon the quality and the extent of its presence and its usefulness to the host country.
Even the smartest public diplomacy campaign won’t change perceptions overnight especially when America is deeply engaged in multiple missions abroad. Events might occur beyond its control, which could further blur the image in some countries. China’s presence in the USA is huge but poor quality China-made toys, tainted pet foods and defective tyres have shattered its image of a reliable manufacturer. No amount of public relations or threat of going to WTO as it recently tried to do with India over toys would help China unless it realises that good products are manufactured by countries where the Press is free, where there is political and corporate transparency.
The always-on 24-hour global communication, blogs, instant messaging, and news cycles, make it impossible for practitioners of public relations to devise a central strategy to impose a message control, as it can be done in advertising campaigns for a product or a political candidate. In an environment of unbridled communication, you might still control the message, but you cannot control the meaning when instant alternative interpretations are available.
Each nation is different, so what works in Indonesia may not work in Pakistan. The challenge is to find the right vehicle to carry the message for a specific local audience. Public diplomats must use local leaders to champion and advance their cause and they should do so in such a manner that it makes the local people feel good while at the same time generating goodwill towards the country that is using information culture to foster goodwill. Hollywood is still the best cultural export, but US popular culture, due to proliferation of senseless violence and explicit sex, creates negative impressions in foreign audiences, in spite of the fact the world has been spending billions of dollars importing American entertainment.
The paradox is that in spite of negative feelings about American popular culture that it depicts profanity, nudity, mayhem and crime, the popularity of mass culture, even in the Islamic world, remains strong. In countries like India and the USA, corporations, educational institutions, and non-profits organisations represent most precious values such as individual initiative, innovativeness, entrepreneurship, freedom of speech, and competition. Google and Apple, for example, embody as much of what America stands for as does Hollywood.
India’s massive general election starting 16 April in which an electorate of 714 million would participate makes the idea of India very persuasive and appealing. I would rather have free and fair elections in India than a glamorous summer Olympics.
(ND Batra blogs at http://globaldiplomat.blogspot.com and teaches communications at Norwich University.)
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
US Global Pre-eminence
Obama and emerging American values
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesman
IN every country there is always some or the other cultural struggle going on. When the struggle becomes too fierce to be contained in civil discourse, it becomes a cultural war that is fought in the media, legislature, or even in the streets. Jihad is essentially a cultural struggle over the interpretation of what Islam means; and when some extremists believe in the absoluteness of their interpretation, they think it is righteous to use violence to impose their meaning on others. But this is not limited to Islam. Culture-driven sporadic violence occurred during Valentine’s Day in India, for example.
For a long time a cultural war has been going on in the USA over gay marriages, abortion rights and stem cell research. Americans are no less fierce in their views than are Islamists, except that they use the ballot box rather than the gun in prevailing over their opponents. Most Americans, for example, believe in the traditional concept of marriage, that it should be a union between a man and a woman; but at the same time they condemn discrimination against gay couples, according to several polls. Some states, such as my home state Vermont, have enacted civil union laws that give same sex couples the same rights as heterosexual married couples enjoy, for example, health insurance benefits.
Massachusetts has made gay marriages legal. The gay marriage battle is being fought in every state but in the course of time most states would recognise some form of civil union. The 14th Amendment’s equal protection and due process clause that was originally meant to give equal rights to blacks after the Civil War is being invoked by gay rights advocates.
Last November, Californians passed Preposition 8 that banned gay marriages, which is now being challenged in the California Supreme Court. President Barack Obama has an open mind on gay marriages, which means he will go with the flow. As a presidential candidate he promised to fight hard for equal rights for gay couples in civil unions but now, as the President, he is confronted with the 1996 Defence of Marriage Act that extends health insurance benefits only to heterosexual spouses of federal employees. And let’s recall: the invocation at the January 20 presidential inauguration for Mr Obama was delivered by the anti-gay evangelist Reverend Rick Warren. The Obama big-tent politics accommodates so many contradictions.
Though Mr Obama, like most Americans, seems to be conflicted over the equal rights protection, including the right to marry for the gay community, he is more certain about abortion rights and life-enhancing embryonic stem cell research. Deep divisions no doubt continue about when life begins and the rights of the unborn from the petri dish to the womb; nonetheless the abortion rights of American women (vide Roe v. Wade decision) are not only intact but Mr Obama has struck down the Bush Administration rule which prohibited US money from being used to fund international family planning clinics that promote and offer abortion, provide counselling or referrals about abortion services. The right to life movement nonetheless continues to be very strong in the USA but its proponents have to use some other methods of persuasion rather than depend upon the power of the White House.
Although the controversy over embryonic stem cell research, which necessitates the destruction of human embryos but holds great promises for fighting diseases, continues more or less, Mr Obama has reversed George W Bush’s policy and removed all restrictions on the use of federal money for research using embryonic stem cells. Of course, when the health care benefits arising from embryonic stem cell research are commercially exploited by the biotech and pharmaceutical industry, even the most social conservative diehard pro-lifers would pipe down their shrill criticism. Embryonic stem cell research would eventually revolutionise healthcare and disease management and has an immense potential for the pharmaceutical industry. To some extent, the marketplace drives American values, which is perhaps true of other societies also.
Americans are absolutely undivided over the value they treasure and esteem the most: the USA’s pre-eminence in the world. Nor have they lost faith in the value of free market capitalism, in spite of the crash of the financial markets. Americans want the whole world be open to them so that they could look at what is going on. Shut doors intimidate Americans. Just consider China-US relations. In spite of its high economic growth and global ambitions, much of China’s foreign exchange reserve ($727.4 billion) found its way into US treasuries. China has no choice but to keep its door ajar. Disputes over trade and Taiwan and Tibet human rights can be managed diplomatically. Last week, the US House of Representatives passed a non-binding resolution asking China to restore to Tibet its human rights. China huffed and puffed and lodged a protest but the USA will not give up its moral right to speak against human rights violation. China will not be able to shut the door on Tibet even if it agrees to buy a trillion dollars more of US treasuries.
Indo-US relations have been growing. The outsourcing of technology jobs has made India a breeding ground for knowledge workers, but at the same time it is a kind of co-dependent relationship that Americans have built up with China. India is now looking for development in biotechnology, auto outsourcing, civilian space programmes and nuclear energy, ambitious plans that would require transfer of advanced technology from the USA. India cannot opt out of this soft power mutually beneficial relationship with the USA. Nor can Mr Obama deviate much from the existing co-dependent relationship, whether it is India or China.
The USA is re-establishing its global pre-eminence through the principle of dominant co-dependency, which no other great power has ever done before. This is the new emerging value in American foreign policy.
(ND Batra teaches communication and diplomacy at Norwich University.)
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Iran-Afghanistan-Pakistan Conundrum
Obama’s diplomatic initiative on Iran
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesman
So far the USA’s focus has been shoring up unstable Pakistan with billions of dollars in direct aid as well as occasional bombing by drones the Taliban-controlled border region in order to stabilise Afghanistan.
The strategy is not working. Much more is needed. For example, it is being realised that ignoring Afghanistan’s historic neighbour, Iran, would not bring about lasting peace in the region.
In a new diplomatic initiative, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Iran would be invited to an international summit meeting on Afghanistan. Under the auspices of the United Nations, the Netherlands would host what Mrs Clinton called “a big-tent meeting” on 31 March. Iran’s response to the proposal has not been negative.
Unlike in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan against Al-Qaida and the Taliban is supposedly the NATO’s war, though the USA has a major commitment including 38,000 troops, while the rest of NATO has contributed 30,000 troops. President Barack Obama has decided to send another 17,000 troops by the summer, but the number would increase substantially as the US presence in Iraq decreases over the next eighteen months, according to the Obama withdrawal plan.
Since the 1979 revolution under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the toppling of the Shah and the holding of 52 American hostages for 444 days, Iran and the USA have treated each other, rhetorically at least, as mortal enemies. The diplomatic relations were broken off in 1980 after which the USA imposed trade embargo on Iran. Added to these cold war hostilities has been the Iranian support for the radical Islamic groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, which the USA regards as terrorist organisations. But what worries the USA most is Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme, though Iran claims that the nuclear programme is only for peaceful power generation purposes, which is hardly convincing.
At the same time, Iran cannot but realise that a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, with opium flowing freely in all directions, would not be in its best national interest. Bringing about reasonable governmental functionality and political stability to Afghanistan would make Iran’s backyard safe. Geopolitically Iran’s diplomatic face is turned towards West Asia where it would like to play its historic role and exercise its influence, though it has growing trade relations with India and China.
A failing and chaotic state like Afghanistan ruled by drug lords and the Taliban (supported by Pakistan’s ISI) would be a terrible threat for Iran. So if Iran and the USA could cooperate in Afghanistan in pursuit of their common interests, so goes the rationale, there might be some thaw in the long frozen diplomatic relations. Eventually some acceptable international solution to Iran’s so-called peaceful nuclear programme might be reached.
Iran-US relations have always been marked with complexity and opportunism since the British-US engineered coup d’état against Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953 brought Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power in Iran, who continued to rule the country authoritatively, albeit secularly, until he fled the country after the Khomeini revolution in 1979.
In 1986, the Reagan administration entered into a secret arms-for-hostage deal with Iran (through Israel) in order to get the release of American hostages held by pro-Iran militant organisation Hezbollah in Lebanon. At that time Iran was also fighting the long lingering war against Iraq under Saddam Hussein, who was ironically being supported by the USA.
During the brutal Taliban regime in Afghanistan (1996-2001), Iran supported the Northern Alliance, which after the 9/11 terrorist attacks became a US-NATO ally in the fight against the Taliban. Perhaps the US-Iran relations might have improved but in January 2002 President George W Bush in his messianic zeal clubbed Iran with other countries that formed “an axis of evil,” accusing it of clandestinely working on nuclear weapons.
The coming of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power as Iran’s president ~ with his rhetoric of Holocaust denial and a bizarre vision of a West Asia without Israel ~ further aggravated the relations. Nonetheless, Mr Obama in his new approach to global diplomacy expressed his willingness to talk with Iran, if it “unclenched its fist”.
The important point to keep in mind is that Americans are seldom shy of discarding dysfunctional political principle; rather they are eager to find new diplomatic ways to seek a workable solution to a difficult international problem. Consider this: Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 normalised relations between the two most ideologically extreme countries, which eventually hastened the end of the Vietnam war.
No principle is more sacred to Americans than their paramount national interests. Today the Obama administration is determined to stabilise Afghanistan by eliminating the Taliban and Al- Qaida regardless of the cost because Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, presents an existential threat to the USA.
So it may be necessary to develop working diplomatic relations with Iran whatever the carrot and stick strategy is needed. Although our attention is drawn to Afghanistan-Pakistan badlands that provide sanctuary to Islamic militants, Afghanistan’s trade relations with Iran have been flourishing since the overthrow of the Taliban. The new road network, one built by Iran that connects Herat to the Iranian border and the other built by India that gives Afghanistan access to the Iranian port of Chah Bahar and the Arabian Sea, has substantially enhanced trade between the two countries. This could be the beginning of the US-Iran cooperation for stabilising Afghanistan. Pakistan is the only problem for Afghanistan. “The whole question about Afghanistan and Pakistan is one that we’ve given a great deal of thought to,” Mrs Clinton said in Brussels after the NATO foreign ministers meeting, according Reuters. “It is clear that the border areas between the two countries are the real locus of a lot of the extremist activity. It’s becoming obvious that Pakistan faces very serious internal threats, and that Afghanistan faces continuing external threats that emanate out of Pakistan.”
So the biggest challenge for Mr Obama is to explore what would work in Pakistan, a country that gives the nightmarish impression that neither President Asif Ali Zardari nor the all-powerful Army (including ISI) is in complete control of the whole country, considering what happened in Swat.
Building bridges between Iran and the USA might be a challenging diplomatic role for India for which the rewards will be immense.
(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University)
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesman
So far the USA’s focus has been shoring up unstable Pakistan with billions of dollars in direct aid as well as occasional bombing by drones the Taliban-controlled border region in order to stabilise Afghanistan.
The strategy is not working. Much more is needed. For example, it is being realised that ignoring Afghanistan’s historic neighbour, Iran, would not bring about lasting peace in the region.
In a new diplomatic initiative, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Iran would be invited to an international summit meeting on Afghanistan. Under the auspices of the United Nations, the Netherlands would host what Mrs Clinton called “a big-tent meeting” on 31 March. Iran’s response to the proposal has not been negative.
Unlike in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan against Al-Qaida and the Taliban is supposedly the NATO’s war, though the USA has a major commitment including 38,000 troops, while the rest of NATO has contributed 30,000 troops. President Barack Obama has decided to send another 17,000 troops by the summer, but the number would increase substantially as the US presence in Iraq decreases over the next eighteen months, according to the Obama withdrawal plan.
Since the 1979 revolution under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the toppling of the Shah and the holding of 52 American hostages for 444 days, Iran and the USA have treated each other, rhetorically at least, as mortal enemies. The diplomatic relations were broken off in 1980 after which the USA imposed trade embargo on Iran. Added to these cold war hostilities has been the Iranian support for the radical Islamic groups, Hamas and Hezbollah, which the USA regards as terrorist organisations. But what worries the USA most is Iran’s clandestine nuclear weapons programme, though Iran claims that the nuclear programme is only for peaceful power generation purposes, which is hardly convincing.
At the same time, Iran cannot but realise that a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, with opium flowing freely in all directions, would not be in its best national interest. Bringing about reasonable governmental functionality and political stability to Afghanistan would make Iran’s backyard safe. Geopolitically Iran’s diplomatic face is turned towards West Asia where it would like to play its historic role and exercise its influence, though it has growing trade relations with India and China.
A failing and chaotic state like Afghanistan ruled by drug lords and the Taliban (supported by Pakistan’s ISI) would be a terrible threat for Iran. So if Iran and the USA could cooperate in Afghanistan in pursuit of their common interests, so goes the rationale, there might be some thaw in the long frozen diplomatic relations. Eventually some acceptable international solution to Iran’s so-called peaceful nuclear programme might be reached.
Iran-US relations have always been marked with complexity and opportunism since the British-US engineered coup d’état against Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq in 1953 brought Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power in Iran, who continued to rule the country authoritatively, albeit secularly, until he fled the country after the Khomeini revolution in 1979.
In 1986, the Reagan administration entered into a secret arms-for-hostage deal with Iran (through Israel) in order to get the release of American hostages held by pro-Iran militant organisation Hezbollah in Lebanon. At that time Iran was also fighting the long lingering war against Iraq under Saddam Hussein, who was ironically being supported by the USA.
During the brutal Taliban regime in Afghanistan (1996-2001), Iran supported the Northern Alliance, which after the 9/11 terrorist attacks became a US-NATO ally in the fight against the Taliban. Perhaps the US-Iran relations might have improved but in January 2002 President George W Bush in his messianic zeal clubbed Iran with other countries that formed “an axis of evil,” accusing it of clandestinely working on nuclear weapons.
The coming of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power as Iran’s president ~ with his rhetoric of Holocaust denial and a bizarre vision of a West Asia without Israel ~ further aggravated the relations. Nonetheless, Mr Obama in his new approach to global diplomacy expressed his willingness to talk with Iran, if it “unclenched its fist”.
The important point to keep in mind is that Americans are seldom shy of discarding dysfunctional political principle; rather they are eager to find new diplomatic ways to seek a workable solution to a difficult international problem. Consider this: Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972 normalised relations between the two most ideologically extreme countries, which eventually hastened the end of the Vietnam war.
No principle is more sacred to Americans than their paramount national interests. Today the Obama administration is determined to stabilise Afghanistan by eliminating the Taliban and Al- Qaida regardless of the cost because Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, presents an existential threat to the USA.
So it may be necessary to develop working diplomatic relations with Iran whatever the carrot and stick strategy is needed. Although our attention is drawn to Afghanistan-Pakistan badlands that provide sanctuary to Islamic militants, Afghanistan’s trade relations with Iran have been flourishing since the overthrow of the Taliban. The new road network, one built by Iran that connects Herat to the Iranian border and the other built by India that gives Afghanistan access to the Iranian port of Chah Bahar and the Arabian Sea, has substantially enhanced trade between the two countries. This could be the beginning of the US-Iran cooperation for stabilising Afghanistan. Pakistan is the only problem for Afghanistan. “The whole question about Afghanistan and Pakistan is one that we’ve given a great deal of thought to,” Mrs Clinton said in Brussels after the NATO foreign ministers meeting, according Reuters. “It is clear that the border areas between the two countries are the real locus of a lot of the extremist activity. It’s becoming obvious that Pakistan faces very serious internal threats, and that Afghanistan faces continuing external threats that emanate out of Pakistan.”
So the biggest challenge for Mr Obama is to explore what would work in Pakistan, a country that gives the nightmarish impression that neither President Asif Ali Zardari nor the all-powerful Army (including ISI) is in complete control of the whole country, considering what happened in Swat.
Building bridges between Iran and the USA might be a challenging diplomatic role for India for which the rewards will be immense.
(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University)
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Obama: Give Me A Lever Long Enough...
Only if the market would listen!
From The Statesman
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
President Barack Obama does not believe in taking small steps for mankind or the American people. He has been saying repeatedly that he will rebuild and renew America, whatever it takes.
“Now is the time to act boldly and wisely to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity,” he said addressing the joint session of Congress last Tuesday. Democrats cheered, as did most of the American people. Republicans were sullen. More energised today than he ever was during his long grueling presidential campaign, Mr Obama has seized the economic crisis as a God-sent opportunity to bring about fundamental changes in American society. His budget would usher in an era of universal healthcare covering the 47 million uninsured; make higher education accessible to every American through enhanced Pell Grants; and build cleaner energy by capping carbon levels and auctioning permits for greenhouse gases emissions that would raise billions of dollars. His tax plan would build an economy that lifts the bottom up rather than let wealth drip down from the rich to the poor ~ all this and much more for a handful of (trillion) dollars of governmental spending. Will it work? Where will the money come from?
Mr Obama reminds me of an optimistic and pragmatic international businessman from South Africa who said, “There is never enough money lying around to do a job… but money is never a problem. Money is a consequence of your activity.” So what is a few trillion dollars for a country whose minor hiccup causes a global earthquake? By pulling up the United States from the economic quagmire, the result of its profligate ways, Mr Obama might also save rest of the world from economic chaos and the consequent political instabilities. Weak states from Pakistan to Mexico threaten the peace; and breed terrorism, the jihadist and the narco.
Archimedes, mathematician and inventor of ancient Greece, said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Mr Obama wants to turn the hypothetical into a new economic reality. With his $ 3.6 trillion budget proposal Mr Obama not only plans to revive ~ pardon the change of metaphor ~ the etherealised patient lying motionless on the table but also wants to make him a global front runner once again. Embodying the spirit of American exceptionalism, he says he can do it and he will do it. Mr. Obama thinks boldly and walks tall and dwarfs all uppity comers. With Democratic majority in the House as well as the Senate, and his popularity stratospheric after the address to Congress, Mr Obama will most likely succeed in having his multi trillion dollar budget passed. But the global financial and economic system, albeit dominated and beaten by the United States, is not a mechanical system that could be moved by an American (Archimedean) lever-fulcrum. The global marketplace is a complex dynamic system always on the verge of disequilibrium, and chaos.
Before Mr Obama took office six weeks ago, the Bush administration had already infused $350 of the $700 billion Congress had sanctioned to strengthened the financial institutions; but the system did not move. The bail out money disappeared like sand through the hourglass. A couple of weeks ago Congress approved the Obama stimulus package for $787 billion but Wall Street fell into deeper depression. Nevertheless, Mr. Obama is not giving up. His rhetoric is awe inspiring. “Even in the most trying times, amid the most difficult circumstances, there is a generosity, a resilience, a decency and a determination that perseveres, a willingness to take responsibility for our future and for posterity,” he told Congress. His opinion polls looked up.
His budget proposal is more than an economic revival plan. Republicans say that it has a subversive agenda, and to the shocking dismay and puzzlement of most Americans, some Republican governors have decided not to partake in the Obama massive stimulus package. For Democrats, it is a break from the past, a great paradigm shift, a fundamental change in thinking about the role of the government in people’s lives, a profound ideological transformation of the United States that would impact the world. There is no substitute for a good government, Mr. Obama asserts. The budget blueprint is a warning to the American people that the present economic crisis is “neither the result of a normal turn of the business cycle nor an accident of history. We arrived at this point as a result of an era of profound irresponsibility that engulfed both private and public institutions from some of our largest companies’ executive suites to the seats of power in Washington, D.C.” He knew what he was getting into when he chanted from coast to coast, Yes We Can.
Mr Obama believes that the function of the government is to lead and become the solution to the people’s problems. This is a total reversal of what Ronald Reagan, a most admired Republican US president, said in his inaugural that the “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Like President Reagan, Mr. Obama is a great communicator and has the ability to touch people across all strata of society; nonetheless, his political philosophy of governance is totally different. By lifting people from bottom up, where most African-Americans are situated, Mr Obama believes that the whole country could rise again. Only if the marketplace with its own stubborn mind and incomprehensible logic would listen to Mr Obama’s messianic rhetoric!
(ND Batra blogs at http://globaldiplomat.blogspot.com and teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University)
From The Statesman
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
President Barack Obama does not believe in taking small steps for mankind or the American people. He has been saying repeatedly that he will rebuild and renew America, whatever it takes.
“Now is the time to act boldly and wisely to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity,” he said addressing the joint session of Congress last Tuesday. Democrats cheered, as did most of the American people. Republicans were sullen. More energised today than he ever was during his long grueling presidential campaign, Mr Obama has seized the economic crisis as a God-sent opportunity to bring about fundamental changes in American society. His budget would usher in an era of universal healthcare covering the 47 million uninsured; make higher education accessible to every American through enhanced Pell Grants; and build cleaner energy by capping carbon levels and auctioning permits for greenhouse gases emissions that would raise billions of dollars. His tax plan would build an economy that lifts the bottom up rather than let wealth drip down from the rich to the poor ~ all this and much more for a handful of (trillion) dollars of governmental spending. Will it work? Where will the money come from?
Mr Obama reminds me of an optimistic and pragmatic international businessman from South Africa who said, “There is never enough money lying around to do a job… but money is never a problem. Money is a consequence of your activity.” So what is a few trillion dollars for a country whose minor hiccup causes a global earthquake? By pulling up the United States from the economic quagmire, the result of its profligate ways, Mr Obama might also save rest of the world from economic chaos and the consequent political instabilities. Weak states from Pakistan to Mexico threaten the peace; and breed terrorism, the jihadist and the narco.
Archimedes, mathematician and inventor of ancient Greece, said, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Mr Obama wants to turn the hypothetical into a new economic reality. With his $ 3.6 trillion budget proposal Mr Obama not only plans to revive ~ pardon the change of metaphor ~ the etherealised patient lying motionless on the table but also wants to make him a global front runner once again. Embodying the spirit of American exceptionalism, he says he can do it and he will do it. Mr. Obama thinks boldly and walks tall and dwarfs all uppity comers. With Democratic majority in the House as well as the Senate, and his popularity stratospheric after the address to Congress, Mr Obama will most likely succeed in having his multi trillion dollar budget passed. But the global financial and economic system, albeit dominated and beaten by the United States, is not a mechanical system that could be moved by an American (Archimedean) lever-fulcrum. The global marketplace is a complex dynamic system always on the verge of disequilibrium, and chaos.
Before Mr Obama took office six weeks ago, the Bush administration had already infused $350 of the $700 billion Congress had sanctioned to strengthened the financial institutions; but the system did not move. The bail out money disappeared like sand through the hourglass. A couple of weeks ago Congress approved the Obama stimulus package for $787 billion but Wall Street fell into deeper depression. Nevertheless, Mr. Obama is not giving up. His rhetoric is awe inspiring. “Even in the most trying times, amid the most difficult circumstances, there is a generosity, a resilience, a decency and a determination that perseveres, a willingness to take responsibility for our future and for posterity,” he told Congress. His opinion polls looked up.
His budget proposal is more than an economic revival plan. Republicans say that it has a subversive agenda, and to the shocking dismay and puzzlement of most Americans, some Republican governors have decided not to partake in the Obama massive stimulus package. For Democrats, it is a break from the past, a great paradigm shift, a fundamental change in thinking about the role of the government in people’s lives, a profound ideological transformation of the United States that would impact the world. There is no substitute for a good government, Mr. Obama asserts. The budget blueprint is a warning to the American people that the present economic crisis is “neither the result of a normal turn of the business cycle nor an accident of history. We arrived at this point as a result of an era of profound irresponsibility that engulfed both private and public institutions from some of our largest companies’ executive suites to the seats of power in Washington, D.C.” He knew what he was getting into when he chanted from coast to coast, Yes We Can.
Mr Obama believes that the function of the government is to lead and become the solution to the people’s problems. This is a total reversal of what Ronald Reagan, a most admired Republican US president, said in his inaugural that the “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Like President Reagan, Mr. Obama is a great communicator and has the ability to touch people across all strata of society; nonetheless, his political philosophy of governance is totally different. By lifting people from bottom up, where most African-Americans are situated, Mr Obama believes that the whole country could rise again. Only if the marketplace with its own stubborn mind and incomprehensible logic would listen to Mr Obama’s messianic rhetoric!
(ND Batra blogs at http://globaldiplomat.blogspot.com and teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University)
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Buy America, Lose the World
Can we go back to the future?
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesman
Creating hope for the hopeless, saving home for the homeless, that’s what President Barrack Obama has been doing during his first month in the White House. He is keeping America thinking and moving in a new direction, diplomatically, economically and culturally. Americans are economically down, but underneath the pall of gloom there is quiet confidence, especially among the die-hard optimists, that the country would get out of the slump, albeit gradually; but as it does, it would be a renewed and re-organised America, though no one knows what it will be like. Never has the future been so raw, so uncertain. To have his $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress, Mr Obama logged thousands of miles for face to face, town hall to town hall, meetings with the people who have been adversely affected by the recession and also reached millions of others through his blogs and social networking. It is his way of bypassing the gatekeepers and power-brokers and bringing the American people directly into what is happening in Washington DC.
His political style is closer to that of Ronald Reagan and Franklin D Roosevelt, which means reaching out to people for support for his political and economic programmes. No one can underestimate the political capital he built during his masterful presidential campaign using all forms of persuasion, rhetorical and technological. But what is its worth if it cannot be used?
After much haggling, Democratic majority Congress passed the package, however, without the bipartisan support Mr Obama had been asking for; which of course was a great disappointment. So the President has been trying to transcend the divided Congress by going directly to the constituents who could put pressure on their elected leaders.
No sensible politician or economist is against the need to stimulate the economy; but Republicans want to manipulate a different set of economic levers in order to first stop the downward spiral and secondly to pull up the economy. The Republican stimulus emphasis is upon major tax cuts so that American businesses and investors could re-invest to fuel the economy. They argue that the Obama stimulus plan will lead to wasteful pork-barrel spending rather than trigger long turn growth of the economy.
Economists don’t agree whether tax cuts or spending creates more jobs. But since the stimulus package includes both tax cuts and spending, the impact on the economy could be substantial unless there are other factors that we don’t understand. One of the provisions of the package is that a family earning up to $150,000 a year will get $800 tax credit. But if this amount is given to a family as a lump sum, the amount might go into its saving account with no impact upon the economy. That is what happened with the Bush stimulus packages. The Obama package gives Americans money back in their weekly, biweekly or monthly paychecks. If a family gets $16 extra in its weekly paycheck, the amount is more likely to be spent rather than go into a saving account. The increased consumer spending, little by little, week by week, will have tremendous multiplier effect upon the economy. That’s how some smart economists argue, but can you trust any economic theory today?
To my simple mind it seems that like stars in heaven, the marketplace is another universe and our learned economists with their computer-generated mathematical models are no different from our astrologers with their heavenly charts. No wonder Mr Obama has been careful in raising any excessive hope of a quick recovery. As he said, this is a step in the right direction to “set our economy on a firmer foundation.” Unfortunately the market, which seems like a parallel universe running on its inscrutable logic, has not been listening to his hum-ho rhetoric of hope and change. Dow plunged again and again, and one does not know where the bottom is. Another stimulus might be needed, depending upon the progress. “Nor does it constitute all of what we have to do to turn our economy around,” Mr Obama cautioned at the time of the signing ceremony, which took place in Denver, Colorado, far from the maddening crowd of Washington. “But today does mark the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the way of layoffs.”
Mr Obama’s plan aims to create 3.5 million jobs for the next two years, though the most urgent need today is stopping job losses that are occurring daily. Last month alone, 598,000 Americans lost their jobs. Since the beginning of the recession in December 2007, total job loss has been 3.6 millions. More painful is the fact that half of these jobs vanished during the last three months, according to the US Department of Labour. The package includes financial aid for first-time home-buyers and those who are struggling to pay their mortgages and facing foreclosures. But with the threat of unemployment looming over everyone’s head, incentives to buy homes or keep paying for homes whose value has plunged may not work to the extent they are supposed to work. It may be the beginning of the end of the recession as Mr Obama hopes, but how long will it take before we go back to where we were two years ago? Or with the prospects of bank nationalisation and creeping “Buy America” to keep jobs at home sentiments, will this be the end of free market capitalism and globalisation as we know it?
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesman
Creating hope for the hopeless, saving home for the homeless, that’s what President Barrack Obama has been doing during his first month in the White House. He is keeping America thinking and moving in a new direction, diplomatically, economically and culturally. Americans are economically down, but underneath the pall of gloom there is quiet confidence, especially among the die-hard optimists, that the country would get out of the slump, albeit gradually; but as it does, it would be a renewed and re-organised America, though no one knows what it will be like. Never has the future been so raw, so uncertain. To have his $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress, Mr Obama logged thousands of miles for face to face, town hall to town hall, meetings with the people who have been adversely affected by the recession and also reached millions of others through his blogs and social networking. It is his way of bypassing the gatekeepers and power-brokers and bringing the American people directly into what is happening in Washington DC.
His political style is closer to that of Ronald Reagan and Franklin D Roosevelt, which means reaching out to people for support for his political and economic programmes. No one can underestimate the political capital he built during his masterful presidential campaign using all forms of persuasion, rhetorical and technological. But what is its worth if it cannot be used?
After much haggling, Democratic majority Congress passed the package, however, without the bipartisan support Mr Obama had been asking for; which of course was a great disappointment. So the President has been trying to transcend the divided Congress by going directly to the constituents who could put pressure on their elected leaders.
No sensible politician or economist is against the need to stimulate the economy; but Republicans want to manipulate a different set of economic levers in order to first stop the downward spiral and secondly to pull up the economy. The Republican stimulus emphasis is upon major tax cuts so that American businesses and investors could re-invest to fuel the economy. They argue that the Obama stimulus plan will lead to wasteful pork-barrel spending rather than trigger long turn growth of the economy.
Economists don’t agree whether tax cuts or spending creates more jobs. But since the stimulus package includes both tax cuts and spending, the impact on the economy could be substantial unless there are other factors that we don’t understand. One of the provisions of the package is that a family earning up to $150,000 a year will get $800 tax credit. But if this amount is given to a family as a lump sum, the amount might go into its saving account with no impact upon the economy. That is what happened with the Bush stimulus packages. The Obama package gives Americans money back in their weekly, biweekly or monthly paychecks. If a family gets $16 extra in its weekly paycheck, the amount is more likely to be spent rather than go into a saving account. The increased consumer spending, little by little, week by week, will have tremendous multiplier effect upon the economy. That’s how some smart economists argue, but can you trust any economic theory today?
To my simple mind it seems that like stars in heaven, the marketplace is another universe and our learned economists with their computer-generated mathematical models are no different from our astrologers with their heavenly charts. No wonder Mr Obama has been careful in raising any excessive hope of a quick recovery. As he said, this is a step in the right direction to “set our economy on a firmer foundation.” Unfortunately the market, which seems like a parallel universe running on its inscrutable logic, has not been listening to his hum-ho rhetoric of hope and change. Dow plunged again and again, and one does not know where the bottom is. Another stimulus might be needed, depending upon the progress. “Nor does it constitute all of what we have to do to turn our economy around,” Mr Obama cautioned at the time of the signing ceremony, which took place in Denver, Colorado, far from the maddening crowd of Washington. “But today does mark the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the way of layoffs.”
Mr Obama’s plan aims to create 3.5 million jobs for the next two years, though the most urgent need today is stopping job losses that are occurring daily. Last month alone, 598,000 Americans lost their jobs. Since the beginning of the recession in December 2007, total job loss has been 3.6 millions. More painful is the fact that half of these jobs vanished during the last three months, according to the US Department of Labour. The package includes financial aid for first-time home-buyers and those who are struggling to pay their mortgages and facing foreclosures. But with the threat of unemployment looming over everyone’s head, incentives to buy homes or keep paying for homes whose value has plunged may not work to the extent they are supposed to work. It may be the beginning of the end of the recession as Mr Obama hopes, but how long will it take before we go back to where we were two years ago? Or with the prospects of bank nationalisation and creeping “Buy America” to keep jobs at home sentiments, will this be the end of free market capitalism and globalisation as we know it?
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Innovation as a rat race
Can America Innovate Out of Its Troubles?
Adam Segal writes in Foreign Affairs: “United States' global primacy depends in large part on its ability to develop new technologies and industries faster than anyone else.” Read more…
Adam Segal writes in Foreign Affairs: “United States' global primacy depends in large part on its ability to develop new technologies and industries faster than anyone else.” Read more…
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Smart Power: What is it?
Matrix of smart power
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesman
The Obama administration is orchestrating its foreign policy in a new key, one based not on any political ideology such as the mission of spreading of democracy as the Bush administration attempted halfheartedly, but one based on “principles and pragmatism”. Not a faith-based policy but one based “on facts and evidence, not emotion or prejudice”. Thus spoke Hillary Clinton at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee, promising to use a matrix of development, diplomacy and defence, and cultural tools to achieve foreign policy goals. “USA must mobilise international support for peace through the use of smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy,” Clinton said.
To protect the country from international terrorism, which continues to be a major foreign policy objective, America needs a strategy of deeper and multilevel engagement with the world. This can be done by providing international economic aid, helping build up democratic institutions and strengthening weaker states so that they don’t become safe havens for terrorists. The United States of America cannot depend only upon its overwhelming military power to contain violent, unruly people. “America cannot solve the most pressing problems on its own, and the world cannot solve them without America... I believe American leadership has been wanting, but is still wanted,” she said.
Obviously, the USA is not going to give up its global role regardless of the economic downturn. The best way for the USA to exercise its influence is through the use of the power of persuasion, mutual cooperation, and commonality of national interests such as economic growth, fighting terrorism and improving education. Diplomatic power arises from the attraction of a nation’s culture and values, apart from its economic and military might.
The culture of Hollywood including pop music, blockbuster movies and exciting television programs is universally enjoyed by audiences. But that’s only a part of the American story. American society embodies a culture of entrepreneurship, transparency and freedom, necessary for the development of open marketplace.
The rise of Barack Obama, a man from elsewhere, should leave no doubt that the USA is a culture of openness and optimism that holds the prospect of self-renewal and expanding human horizons. Openness is the essence of the USA. By opening itself to Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea in the Cold War era and later on to China, the USA exercised its cultural and diplomatic power and transformed the whole region. A once-upon-a-time hostile nation such as China has been turned into a friendly if competitive global power. But the rapid economic growth of China has created new problems for which a different kind of engagement is needed. “We want a positive and cooperative relationship with China, one where we deepen and strengthen our ties on a number of issues. But this is not a one-way effort ~ much of what we will do depends on the choices China makes about its future at home and abroad,” Clinton said.
On her visit to China in 1995, she told the Fourth World Conference on Women: “It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.” Now we have to see how far she can pursue her human rights agenda especially with regard to Tibet when the USA needs China’s cooperation in stemming the global financial crisis. Once again the issue of “currency manipulation” by China to boost its exports at the expense of other developing nations is being raised. But the immediate focus of the matrix of smart power ~ diplomacy, development and defence ~ are of course Afghanistan-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine. “As we focus on Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, we must also actively pursue a strategy of smart power in the Middle East that addresses the security needs of Israel and the legitimate political and economic aspirations of the Palestinians,” Clinton said during her confirmation hearing.
In pursuit of this objective, the Obama administration has appointed two seasoned international negotiators: Former senator George Mitchell as a special envoy for Israel-Palestine; and career diplomat Richard Holbrook for Pakistan-Afghanistan, who although not covering India, nonetheless, might pay “friendly visits” to the country.
Eliminating the Taliban, Al-Qaida and their training camps in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region will need enhanced US (and NATO) hard power, which of course must be accompanied by economic and educational development of the region. But the biggest challenge in Afghanistan is to free the country not only from the Taliban but also from the drug trade.
Incorporating the soft power of development into the matrix of new foreign policy is a challenge. Joseph Nye of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government was the first to develop the concept of soft power. According to him, a country can become attractive by “co-opting people rather than coercing them”. International influence “comes from an effective aid and information program abroad,” he said. “What is needed is increased investment in soft power, the complex machinery of interdependence, rather than in hard power ~ that is, expensive new weapons system.” Fighting terrorism certainly requires both hard and soft power. But soft power “is much cheaper than coercion, and an asset that needs to be nourished”.
Just as trade with China and rising prosperity has changed the Chinese people and has given them new hopes and new dreams, a similar policy might transform Iran too, it is argued. Global communication can play an important role in changing people’s perceptions, especially when outside information challenges their assumptions and makes them think afresh.
The USA should encourage corporate America, through economic incentives and other means, to invest in poor but aspiring countries to raise hopes and dreams of a prosperous future. That should be the ultimate goal of smart power.
(The author is Professor of Communications at Norwich University.)
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesman
The Obama administration is orchestrating its foreign policy in a new key, one based not on any political ideology such as the mission of spreading of democracy as the Bush administration attempted halfheartedly, but one based on “principles and pragmatism”. Not a faith-based policy but one based “on facts and evidence, not emotion or prejudice”. Thus spoke Hillary Clinton at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee, promising to use a matrix of development, diplomacy and defence, and cultural tools to achieve foreign policy goals. “USA must mobilise international support for peace through the use of smart power, the full range of tools at our disposal. With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy,” Clinton said.
To protect the country from international terrorism, which continues to be a major foreign policy objective, America needs a strategy of deeper and multilevel engagement with the world. This can be done by providing international economic aid, helping build up democratic institutions and strengthening weaker states so that they don’t become safe havens for terrorists. The United States of America cannot depend only upon its overwhelming military power to contain violent, unruly people. “America cannot solve the most pressing problems on its own, and the world cannot solve them without America... I believe American leadership has been wanting, but is still wanted,” she said.
Obviously, the USA is not going to give up its global role regardless of the economic downturn. The best way for the USA to exercise its influence is through the use of the power of persuasion, mutual cooperation, and commonality of national interests such as economic growth, fighting terrorism and improving education. Diplomatic power arises from the attraction of a nation’s culture and values, apart from its economic and military might.
The culture of Hollywood including pop music, blockbuster movies and exciting television programs is universally enjoyed by audiences. But that’s only a part of the American story. American society embodies a culture of entrepreneurship, transparency and freedom, necessary for the development of open marketplace.
The rise of Barack Obama, a man from elsewhere, should leave no doubt that the USA is a culture of openness and optimism that holds the prospect of self-renewal and expanding human horizons. Openness is the essence of the USA. By opening itself to Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea in the Cold War era and later on to China, the USA exercised its cultural and diplomatic power and transformed the whole region. A once-upon-a-time hostile nation such as China has been turned into a friendly if competitive global power. But the rapid economic growth of China has created new problems for which a different kind of engagement is needed. “We want a positive and cooperative relationship with China, one where we deepen and strengthen our ties on a number of issues. But this is not a one-way effort ~ much of what we will do depends on the choices China makes about its future at home and abroad,” Clinton said.
On her visit to China in 1995, she told the Fourth World Conference on Women: “It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.” Now we have to see how far she can pursue her human rights agenda especially with regard to Tibet when the USA needs China’s cooperation in stemming the global financial crisis. Once again the issue of “currency manipulation” by China to boost its exports at the expense of other developing nations is being raised. But the immediate focus of the matrix of smart power ~ diplomacy, development and defence ~ are of course Afghanistan-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine. “As we focus on Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, we must also actively pursue a strategy of smart power in the Middle East that addresses the security needs of Israel and the legitimate political and economic aspirations of the Palestinians,” Clinton said during her confirmation hearing.
In pursuit of this objective, the Obama administration has appointed two seasoned international negotiators: Former senator George Mitchell as a special envoy for Israel-Palestine; and career diplomat Richard Holbrook for Pakistan-Afghanistan, who although not covering India, nonetheless, might pay “friendly visits” to the country.
Eliminating the Taliban, Al-Qaida and their training camps in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region will need enhanced US (and NATO) hard power, which of course must be accompanied by economic and educational development of the region. But the biggest challenge in Afghanistan is to free the country not only from the Taliban but also from the drug trade.
Incorporating the soft power of development into the matrix of new foreign policy is a challenge. Joseph Nye of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government was the first to develop the concept of soft power. According to him, a country can become attractive by “co-opting people rather than coercing them”. International influence “comes from an effective aid and information program abroad,” he said. “What is needed is increased investment in soft power, the complex machinery of interdependence, rather than in hard power ~ that is, expensive new weapons system.” Fighting terrorism certainly requires both hard and soft power. But soft power “is much cheaper than coercion, and an asset that needs to be nourished”.
Just as trade with China and rising prosperity has changed the Chinese people and has given them new hopes and new dreams, a similar policy might transform Iran too, it is argued. Global communication can play an important role in changing people’s perceptions, especially when outside information challenges their assumptions and makes them think afresh.
The USA should encourage corporate America, through economic incentives and other means, to invest in poor but aspiring countries to raise hopes and dreams of a prosperous future. That should be the ultimate goal of smart power.
(The author is Professor of Communications at Norwich University.)
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
The Ascent of Barack Obama
View from the top
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesesman
This is how the United States of America or any civilised nation ought to be: A nation where its people will “not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”.
These words of Martin Luther King Jr., a leader who was in many ways Gandhian in his non-violent methods in leading the civil rights movement for seeking justice and equality, and whose birth anniversary preceded by a day the inauguration of the first black man to grace the White House, have characterized the emerging American dream. It is a dream of transcendence and self-renewal and it makes us wonder what President Barack Obama, this man of hope and transformation, will do now that his dream has come true. What America is going to be, what it does or does not do, under President Obama will have serious repercussions for the world. No metaphor can capture its immensity but one might say that the USA is not only a moral force for freedom and equality but it is also the hub and the driving engine of global the economy. And to a great extent the USA is the single most important determinant of peace in many parts of the world. America’s misfortunes do not necessarily mean blessings for other nations. Its decline and fall will not leverage others to rise. The whole world is watching whether Obama, having raised himself by his bootstraps and having transcended all the prejudices of race, religion and colour, can prevent the US and the world economy from sliding into the abyss of depression. This is the dream he might not have dreamt while aspiring for the White House.
The American people have been very generous with him and, suspending their disbelief, they have trusted him. They have listened to his promise of change though in the beginning of his political campaign, the meaning of the slogan “change” or “yes we can” had a different context and connotation. On the minds of the American people in the early days of his political ascent was the disastrous consequences of the Iraq War which in the beginning they had willy-nilly supported but later on ~ when casualties began to rise and troops began to return home, some in body bags and others mangled, limbless and traumatised, and they saw no end to the fighting ~ wanted to get out of at all cost. Billions of dollars could have been spent elsewhere, the American people argued with the wisdom of hindsight. They said, in poll after poll, this is not what America ought to be doing.
The American people responded heartily when Obama shared his new vision of building a city of hope on a shining hill. Mostly, it was the promise of change from the senseless brutality and stagnation of the endless war. But Iraq surprisingly began to stabilise and the possibility of a US withdrawal became closer to reality, perhaps because of the new strategy of surge that George W. Bush initiated. And the success of the surge further raised hopes that the same sort of strategy might work in Afghanistan also, though the problem is much more complicated because of the fact that Pakistan’s Islamic militants enjoy sanctuaries in the tribal frontier region bordering that country.
But late last year, when the financial market crashed and blue chip banks, brokerage firms, mortgage lenders and insurance companies started to sink, the American people began to wonder whether Obama will be able to pull them out of the black hole of economic despair.
Getting out of Iraq or bombing the Taliban and Al-Qaida in the Afghanistan-Pakistan non-state region with remote-controlled drones seemed much easier than restoring faith and trust in the economy. The despair ~ the enemy within ~ which resulted from the loss of trust in financial experts, rating agencies and the self-correcting mechanism of the marketplace has been gnawing and eating into the American spirit of optimism in spite of the massive bailout already in place.
The $350 billion out of $700 billion that Congress authorised for the bailout of collapsing financial institutions and for stabilising the marketplace had very little effect on the economy. The Senate would not have trusted the Bush administration with the remaining $350 billion but it released the amount when Obama asked for it, hoping that he could do it. But the lawmakers also know that the Obama administration will need much more than that amount and so Democrats in the House are working on a massive new economic recovery plan of $850 billion with the hope of stopping the economy from spinning into a downward spiral. This multi-pronged approach including salvaging key financial institutions to unfreeze credit, giving people tax credit so that they can start spending again, and finally investing in infrastructure to create jobs, will hopefully stabilise the economy, restore people’s faith in the system and eventually trigger economic growth.
When Americans work and consume, the economic wheels in Europe, China and India and rest of the world will begin to spin again. Will President Obama be up to the job of saving the United States of America from economic depression? Perhaps that is what Martin Luther King meant when he asserted the supremacy of one’s character rather than the circumstances of one’s birth.
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesesman
This is how the United States of America or any civilised nation ought to be: A nation where its people will “not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character”.
These words of Martin Luther King Jr., a leader who was in many ways Gandhian in his non-violent methods in leading the civil rights movement for seeking justice and equality, and whose birth anniversary preceded by a day the inauguration of the first black man to grace the White House, have characterized the emerging American dream. It is a dream of transcendence and self-renewal and it makes us wonder what President Barack Obama, this man of hope and transformation, will do now that his dream has come true. What America is going to be, what it does or does not do, under President Obama will have serious repercussions for the world. No metaphor can capture its immensity but one might say that the USA is not only a moral force for freedom and equality but it is also the hub and the driving engine of global the economy. And to a great extent the USA is the single most important determinant of peace in many parts of the world. America’s misfortunes do not necessarily mean blessings for other nations. Its decline and fall will not leverage others to rise. The whole world is watching whether Obama, having raised himself by his bootstraps and having transcended all the prejudices of race, religion and colour, can prevent the US and the world economy from sliding into the abyss of depression. This is the dream he might not have dreamt while aspiring for the White House.
The American people have been very generous with him and, suspending their disbelief, they have trusted him. They have listened to his promise of change though in the beginning of his political campaign, the meaning of the slogan “change” or “yes we can” had a different context and connotation. On the minds of the American people in the early days of his political ascent was the disastrous consequences of the Iraq War which in the beginning they had willy-nilly supported but later on ~ when casualties began to rise and troops began to return home, some in body bags and others mangled, limbless and traumatised, and they saw no end to the fighting ~ wanted to get out of at all cost. Billions of dollars could have been spent elsewhere, the American people argued with the wisdom of hindsight. They said, in poll after poll, this is not what America ought to be doing.
The American people responded heartily when Obama shared his new vision of building a city of hope on a shining hill. Mostly, it was the promise of change from the senseless brutality and stagnation of the endless war. But Iraq surprisingly began to stabilise and the possibility of a US withdrawal became closer to reality, perhaps because of the new strategy of surge that George W. Bush initiated. And the success of the surge further raised hopes that the same sort of strategy might work in Afghanistan also, though the problem is much more complicated because of the fact that Pakistan’s Islamic militants enjoy sanctuaries in the tribal frontier region bordering that country.
But late last year, when the financial market crashed and blue chip banks, brokerage firms, mortgage lenders and insurance companies started to sink, the American people began to wonder whether Obama will be able to pull them out of the black hole of economic despair.
Getting out of Iraq or bombing the Taliban and Al-Qaida in the Afghanistan-Pakistan non-state region with remote-controlled drones seemed much easier than restoring faith and trust in the economy. The despair ~ the enemy within ~ which resulted from the loss of trust in financial experts, rating agencies and the self-correcting mechanism of the marketplace has been gnawing and eating into the American spirit of optimism in spite of the massive bailout already in place.
The $350 billion out of $700 billion that Congress authorised for the bailout of collapsing financial institutions and for stabilising the marketplace had very little effect on the economy. The Senate would not have trusted the Bush administration with the remaining $350 billion but it released the amount when Obama asked for it, hoping that he could do it. But the lawmakers also know that the Obama administration will need much more than that amount and so Democrats in the House are working on a massive new economic recovery plan of $850 billion with the hope of stopping the economy from spinning into a downward spiral. This multi-pronged approach including salvaging key financial institutions to unfreeze credit, giving people tax credit so that they can start spending again, and finally investing in infrastructure to create jobs, will hopefully stabilise the economy, restore people’s faith in the system and eventually trigger economic growth.
When Americans work and consume, the economic wheels in Europe, China and India and rest of the world will begin to spin again. Will President Obama be up to the job of saving the United States of America from economic depression? Perhaps that is what Martin Luther King meant when he asserted the supremacy of one’s character rather than the circumstances of one’s birth.
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Afghanistan and the new military doctrine
Afghanistan and the new military doctrine
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesman
It is unthinkable that President-elect Barack Obama would give up on the historic legacy of the US as the most decisive and responsible global power in spite of the rise of others, for example, aspirant China and resurgent Russia. Just look at the people the man has brought into his cabinet. They are not here to chant the Requiem for Uncle Sam.
President Bush’s Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who will continue in the Obama administration, recently wrote in the Foreign Affairs that “to fail ~ or to be seen to fail ~ in either Iraq or Afghanistan would be a disastrous blow to US credibility, both among friends and allies and among potential adversaries”. Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton would hardly disagree with Mr Gates when he says that because of its poverty, bad neighbourhood, hostile geography, “Afghanistan in many ways poses an even more complex and difficult long-term challenge than Iraq ~ one that, despite a large international effort, will require a significant US military and economic commitment for some time”. And that could be for years to come.
Mr Gates’s national defence strategy is more comprehensive and goes far beyond what his predecessors had attempted. For example, one of the most serious problems a first-class power like the US military faces is how fast they can move forces from one trouble spot to another.
The answer: Swift and lethal forces, equipped with precision-guided weapons, with on the spot intelligence-gathering by a network of satellites, troops that can be air-dropped or parachuted to a battle zone bypassing traditional beachheads. Lighter and faster forces can finish wars in much less time with less collateral damages and fewer civilian casualties, especially when they are networked with computerised communication, Global Positioning System, unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles, and remotely controlled drones that can provide real-time battlefield pictures like a steady eye in the sky.
It worked in Iraq in the beginning when the war was conventional. Swiftness was achieved through optimum cooperation among Special Forces, Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force so that they acted as one blended and cohesive yet flexible force, a strategy which the Pentagon should institutionalise according to Mr Gates. But the military strategy of “shock and awe”, unfortunately, created the grand illusion of quick victory that in fact became a terrible strategic and political burden because American forces were not trained for the unconventional war unleashed by a decentralised networked enemy; nor were they ready for social reconstruction. The US forces could not find the brain of the enemy because its brain was dispersed throughout the network. Much more than a smart military doctrine was needed. The so-called Rumsfeld doctrine of “shock and awe” proved disastrous. The Powell doctrine, which is meant to avoid a Vietnam like imbroglio, is based upon a set of questions that include: Is a most vital US interest at stake that must be protected? Can we commit sufficient resources, an overwhelming force, for example, three-to-one, to win the war? Are our objectives well defined? Can we sustain the commitment, if it is a prolonged one? Will the public and Congress support?
Neither the Rumsfeld doctrine nor the Powell doctrine is applicable to the Afghanistan-Pakistan situation.Nor has it any universal applicability. Major-General Julian Thompson, a visiting professor at King’s College, London, writing in the Observer at the time of Iraq war wondered: “Would the Rumsfeld doctrine work against a first-class enemy?” Would the Rumsfeld or Powell doctrine work if Russia were to re-claim its former Soviet territories, for example?
The Al-Qaida doctrine of asynchronous warfare, the essence of terrorists’ strategy, which is still going on and is breeding in places like Pakistan, has made nonsense of every military doctrine.
The United States needs a new paradigm for dealing with the world.
As Mr Gates says: “Terrorist networks can find sanctuary within the borders of a weak nation and strength within the chaos of social breakdown. A nuclear-armed state could collapse into chaos and criminality. The most likely catastrophic threats to the US homeland ~ for example, that of a US city being poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack ~ are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states.”
The Mumbai terrorist attacks should leave no doubt that Pakistan as a failing state poses as much threat to the US as it does to India. Quoting defence scholars Frank Hoffman and Michael Evans, Mr Gates says that the new defence strategy must take into account “the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervour of irregular warfare,” and “wars... in which Microsoft coexists with machetes and stealth technology is met by suicide bombers”.
That has been India’s tragic experience. While Pakistan’s nuclear threat holds back India from taking defensive-offensive measures, its professionally trained terrorist groups under a cloak of charities and NGOs have been causing havoc.
The ISI-supported Taliban and Al-Qaida in Afghanistan-Pakistan cannot be cowed down to submission by traditional military strategies. The enemy has to be tracked down “hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block”, says Mr Gates, for which “the United States needs a military whose ability to kick down the door is matched by its ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward.”
While the Pentagon is “re-programmed” to become a force of creative destruction, Mr Gates has not forgotten the much larger threat on the horizon: China’s developing mastery of space and cyberspace, satellite warfare and cyber warfare. Nor should India.
(ND Batra teaches communications at Norwich University)
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
From The Statesman
It is unthinkable that President-elect Barack Obama would give up on the historic legacy of the US as the most decisive and responsible global power in spite of the rise of others, for example, aspirant China and resurgent Russia. Just look at the people the man has brought into his cabinet. They are not here to chant the Requiem for Uncle Sam.
President Bush’s Defence Secretary Robert Gates, who will continue in the Obama administration, recently wrote in the Foreign Affairs that “to fail ~ or to be seen to fail ~ in either Iraq or Afghanistan would be a disastrous blow to US credibility, both among friends and allies and among potential adversaries”. Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton would hardly disagree with Mr Gates when he says that because of its poverty, bad neighbourhood, hostile geography, “Afghanistan in many ways poses an even more complex and difficult long-term challenge than Iraq ~ one that, despite a large international effort, will require a significant US military and economic commitment for some time”. And that could be for years to come.
Mr Gates’s national defence strategy is more comprehensive and goes far beyond what his predecessors had attempted. For example, one of the most serious problems a first-class power like the US military faces is how fast they can move forces from one trouble spot to another.
The answer: Swift and lethal forces, equipped with precision-guided weapons, with on the spot intelligence-gathering by a network of satellites, troops that can be air-dropped or parachuted to a battle zone bypassing traditional beachheads. Lighter and faster forces can finish wars in much less time with less collateral damages and fewer civilian casualties, especially when they are networked with computerised communication, Global Positioning System, unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles, and remotely controlled drones that can provide real-time battlefield pictures like a steady eye in the sky.
It worked in Iraq in the beginning when the war was conventional. Swiftness was achieved through optimum cooperation among Special Forces, Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force so that they acted as one blended and cohesive yet flexible force, a strategy which the Pentagon should institutionalise according to Mr Gates. But the military strategy of “shock and awe”, unfortunately, created the grand illusion of quick victory that in fact became a terrible strategic and political burden because American forces were not trained for the unconventional war unleashed by a decentralised networked enemy; nor were they ready for social reconstruction. The US forces could not find the brain of the enemy because its brain was dispersed throughout the network. Much more than a smart military doctrine was needed. The so-called Rumsfeld doctrine of “shock and awe” proved disastrous. The Powell doctrine, which is meant to avoid a Vietnam like imbroglio, is based upon a set of questions that include: Is a most vital US interest at stake that must be protected? Can we commit sufficient resources, an overwhelming force, for example, three-to-one, to win the war? Are our objectives well defined? Can we sustain the commitment, if it is a prolonged one? Will the public and Congress support?
Neither the Rumsfeld doctrine nor the Powell doctrine is applicable to the Afghanistan-Pakistan situation.Nor has it any universal applicability. Major-General Julian Thompson, a visiting professor at King’s College, London, writing in the Observer at the time of Iraq war wondered: “Would the Rumsfeld doctrine work against a first-class enemy?” Would the Rumsfeld or Powell doctrine work if Russia were to re-claim its former Soviet territories, for example?
The Al-Qaida doctrine of asynchronous warfare, the essence of terrorists’ strategy, which is still going on and is breeding in places like Pakistan, has made nonsense of every military doctrine.
The United States needs a new paradigm for dealing with the world.
As Mr Gates says: “Terrorist networks can find sanctuary within the borders of a weak nation and strength within the chaos of social breakdown. A nuclear-armed state could collapse into chaos and criminality. The most likely catastrophic threats to the US homeland ~ for example, that of a US city being poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack ~ are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states.”
The Mumbai terrorist attacks should leave no doubt that Pakistan as a failing state poses as much threat to the US as it does to India. Quoting defence scholars Frank Hoffman and Michael Evans, Mr Gates says that the new defence strategy must take into account “the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervour of irregular warfare,” and “wars... in which Microsoft coexists with machetes and stealth technology is met by suicide bombers”.
That has been India’s tragic experience. While Pakistan’s nuclear threat holds back India from taking defensive-offensive measures, its professionally trained terrorist groups under a cloak of charities and NGOs have been causing havoc.
The ISI-supported Taliban and Al-Qaida in Afghanistan-Pakistan cannot be cowed down to submission by traditional military strategies. The enemy has to be tracked down “hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block”, says Mr Gates, for which “the United States needs a military whose ability to kick down the door is matched by its ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward.”
While the Pentagon is “re-programmed” to become a force of creative destruction, Mr Gates has not forgotten the much larger threat on the horizon: China’s developing mastery of space and cyberspace, satellite warfare and cyber warfare. Nor should India.
(ND Batra teaches communications at Norwich University)
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
China or the USA?
Will 2009 be the year of China or the USA?
ND Batra
From The Statesman
This may be a defining year for both China and the US. Both are in trouble. The US is in recession. China’s export-driven economy has slowed down significantly. How each one comes out of the trouble will determine its future. The US cannot keep borrowing money from China to buy its cheap goods or resume subprime lending to finance its housing and real estate market. If China cannot export what it manufactures, what will it do? Furthermore, if China has no place for investment or depository for its billions of annual trade surpluses, what will it do?
Consider for a moment the following facts. China has been growing at the rate of more than 9-10 per cent for the past two decades and rightfully expects to become a great economic and military power in the next decade or so. Since the one-party authoritarian rule has not hampered China from growing at an extraordinary rate, it is reasonable to ask: How could China accomplish so much in such a short time without political freedom?China is one of the US’s biggest foreign lenders but it earns no gratitude; instead it creates fear. Mr Gao Xiking, president of the China Investment Corporation, which manages an about $200-billion sovereign fund, told Mr James Fallows in a recent issue of the Atlantic, “Be nice to the countries that lend you money.” In other words, don’t talk about human rights, Tibet, piracy, currency manipulation, bad toys, or milk products that kill children. Many American politicians including Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been great critics of China’s violation of human rights and unfair trade practices. But their rhetoric of idealism is compromised by international realities of Chinese economic power. When China says it might diversify its foreign exchange holdings, the dollar shudders. China holds about $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves (a substantial portion in US Treasury notes) thanks to its export-driven economy and controlled currency value. Japan too has massive foreign currency reserves, more than $1 trillion, but the US has never felt threatened by it.
Between the US and pro-American Muslim-Arab countries human rights and freedom have seldom been an issue. As a global power, the US cannot give up dealing with authoritarian regimes regardless of its zeal to spread freedom universally. But China is different because it wants to be a superpower. The rhetoric of freedom and liberty is a tool of public diplomacy that China cannot match.Nonetheless, many Americans believe that the US will remain vulnerable to terrorism so long as authoritarianism and hate ideology prevail abroad; and to beat it there’s no other solution except to expand freedom and openness.
But again China is doing well without democratic freedom. Day and night China’s disciplined and hard working people make goods for the entire world without much thought about freedom. Many countries in the developing world look to China not only for aid and trade but also as a wonderful working model. The biggest challenge for US diplomacy today is to ask China to open up and loosen its authoritarian control over society. But look what loosened controls have done to the US and global financial markets!
Before the global financial crisis hit China, the country was full of great expectations about its future, while the rest of the world struggled to manage with bad debts, spiralling prices and random outbursts of terrorism. China’s peaceful transformation from communism to state-controlled, export-driven capitalism is in fact a great tribute to China’s pragmatism, creating the perception of China’s relentless and inevitable rise as a global superpower. China has been attracting foreign direct investment with its managed narratives of boundless opportunities; and more so with the power of its ruling party’s ruthless collective will that rules 1.3 billion hardworking, entrepreneurial and yet obedient masses.
Until recently China believed that since the world could not do without its inexpensive goods and talents, there’s not much to worry about intellectual property, currency manipulation to boost exports, massive trade surpluses, and rising foreign exchange reserves that end up as US Treasury notes. Rising prosperity did not encourage China’s rulers to loosen their control over power and become less authoritarian. China felt that it could compete with the best without facing problems that an open society like the US confronts.Beijing, with the help of US telecommunication companies, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Cisco, has expanded its control into cyberspace. Some social scientists say that large centralised political systems crumble due to internal pressures created by communications technology unless they have built-in shock absorbing capabilities. But it is not happening in China in spite of the Internet, satellites, cell phones and hosts of other wireless devices that are becoming available to masses.
Some US corporations think that by offering selective partnership to Chinese businesses they will be able to draft in China’s brainpower.In 2005, IBM alerted the public about the inevitability of China’s rise and the need to harness its strength for corporate America. “The future is a dragon. Do you hear it coming?” barked an IBM adman. IBM boasted of access to a global pool of thousands of scientists, engineers and technologists to solve complex problems. But that was a different time. The incoming Obama administration has already concluded that borrowing money and brainpower from China to sustain US global power is not an option any longer.
The Japanese too have been watching the dance of the dragon. In 2005, the Chinese claimed that their feelings had been hurt because some Japanese school textbooks showed no regrets about the atrocities the Japanese troops had committed against them during World War II. There were other grievances. Japan had begun to explore undersea oil and gas deposits in a disputed region of East China Sea. When Japan asked for an apology and compensation for vandalism and damage to its diplomatic and commercial property, China said there was nothing to apologise about. Before street protests, the Chinese government had allowed an online petition drive by millions of Chinese against Japan’s effort to seek permanent membership of the UN Security Council. The unprecedented online phenomenon showed how China could mobilise its masses.
A few years ago, China stunned the world when it destroyed one of its own ageing weather satellites by hitting it with a ballistic missile five hundred miles into space, thus, signalling its intentions to master space. The US cannot ignore such intentionality even though China has ceased to be an imminent threat since its economic growth has become increasingly tied up with search for energy and raw materials, foreign direct investment, and exports.
Through its growing trade surplus and currency reserves it seemed until recently that China had established an iron grip on the US.
But the financial crisis and recession, contrary to the general impression, have energised the US. The new kid on the block, President-elect Barack Obama, stands tiptoe, determined to rebuild the $15-trillion economy through innovative strategies for economic self-reliance (not protectionism).In 2009 as China scrambles to put its $3.25-trillion export-based economy in order, it will face a new United States of America ~ bolder, smarter, and more imaginative. The beat of the American drum will be heard around the globe for decades to come.
(ND Batra is professor of communicationsat Norwich University)
ND Batra
From The Statesman
This may be a defining year for both China and the US. Both are in trouble. The US is in recession. China’s export-driven economy has slowed down significantly. How each one comes out of the trouble will determine its future. The US cannot keep borrowing money from China to buy its cheap goods or resume subprime lending to finance its housing and real estate market. If China cannot export what it manufactures, what will it do? Furthermore, if China has no place for investment or depository for its billions of annual trade surpluses, what will it do?
Consider for a moment the following facts. China has been growing at the rate of more than 9-10 per cent for the past two decades and rightfully expects to become a great economic and military power in the next decade or so. Since the one-party authoritarian rule has not hampered China from growing at an extraordinary rate, it is reasonable to ask: How could China accomplish so much in such a short time without political freedom?China is one of the US’s biggest foreign lenders but it earns no gratitude; instead it creates fear. Mr Gao Xiking, president of the China Investment Corporation, which manages an about $200-billion sovereign fund, told Mr James Fallows in a recent issue of the Atlantic, “Be nice to the countries that lend you money.” In other words, don’t talk about human rights, Tibet, piracy, currency manipulation, bad toys, or milk products that kill children. Many American politicians including Speaker Nancy Pelosi have been great critics of China’s violation of human rights and unfair trade practices. But their rhetoric of idealism is compromised by international realities of Chinese economic power. When China says it might diversify its foreign exchange holdings, the dollar shudders. China holds about $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves (a substantial portion in US Treasury notes) thanks to its export-driven economy and controlled currency value. Japan too has massive foreign currency reserves, more than $1 trillion, but the US has never felt threatened by it.
Between the US and pro-American Muslim-Arab countries human rights and freedom have seldom been an issue. As a global power, the US cannot give up dealing with authoritarian regimes regardless of its zeal to spread freedom universally. But China is different because it wants to be a superpower. The rhetoric of freedom and liberty is a tool of public diplomacy that China cannot match.Nonetheless, many Americans believe that the US will remain vulnerable to terrorism so long as authoritarianism and hate ideology prevail abroad; and to beat it there’s no other solution except to expand freedom and openness.
But again China is doing well without democratic freedom. Day and night China’s disciplined and hard working people make goods for the entire world without much thought about freedom. Many countries in the developing world look to China not only for aid and trade but also as a wonderful working model. The biggest challenge for US diplomacy today is to ask China to open up and loosen its authoritarian control over society. But look what loosened controls have done to the US and global financial markets!
Before the global financial crisis hit China, the country was full of great expectations about its future, while the rest of the world struggled to manage with bad debts, spiralling prices and random outbursts of terrorism. China’s peaceful transformation from communism to state-controlled, export-driven capitalism is in fact a great tribute to China’s pragmatism, creating the perception of China’s relentless and inevitable rise as a global superpower. China has been attracting foreign direct investment with its managed narratives of boundless opportunities; and more so with the power of its ruling party’s ruthless collective will that rules 1.3 billion hardworking, entrepreneurial and yet obedient masses.
Until recently China believed that since the world could not do without its inexpensive goods and talents, there’s not much to worry about intellectual property, currency manipulation to boost exports, massive trade surpluses, and rising foreign exchange reserves that end up as US Treasury notes. Rising prosperity did not encourage China’s rulers to loosen their control over power and become less authoritarian. China felt that it could compete with the best without facing problems that an open society like the US confronts.Beijing, with the help of US telecommunication companies, Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Cisco, has expanded its control into cyberspace. Some social scientists say that large centralised political systems crumble due to internal pressures created by communications technology unless they have built-in shock absorbing capabilities. But it is not happening in China in spite of the Internet, satellites, cell phones and hosts of other wireless devices that are becoming available to masses.
Some US corporations think that by offering selective partnership to Chinese businesses they will be able to draft in China’s brainpower.In 2005, IBM alerted the public about the inevitability of China’s rise and the need to harness its strength for corporate America. “The future is a dragon. Do you hear it coming?” barked an IBM adman. IBM boasted of access to a global pool of thousands of scientists, engineers and technologists to solve complex problems. But that was a different time. The incoming Obama administration has already concluded that borrowing money and brainpower from China to sustain US global power is not an option any longer.
The Japanese too have been watching the dance of the dragon. In 2005, the Chinese claimed that their feelings had been hurt because some Japanese school textbooks showed no regrets about the atrocities the Japanese troops had committed against them during World War II. There were other grievances. Japan had begun to explore undersea oil and gas deposits in a disputed region of East China Sea. When Japan asked for an apology and compensation for vandalism and damage to its diplomatic and commercial property, China said there was nothing to apologise about. Before street protests, the Chinese government had allowed an online petition drive by millions of Chinese against Japan’s effort to seek permanent membership of the UN Security Council. The unprecedented online phenomenon showed how China could mobilise its masses.
A few years ago, China stunned the world when it destroyed one of its own ageing weather satellites by hitting it with a ballistic missile five hundred miles into space, thus, signalling its intentions to master space. The US cannot ignore such intentionality even though China has ceased to be an imminent threat since its economic growth has become increasingly tied up with search for energy and raw materials, foreign direct investment, and exports.
Through its growing trade surplus and currency reserves it seemed until recently that China had established an iron grip on the US.
But the financial crisis and recession, contrary to the general impression, have energised the US. The new kid on the block, President-elect Barack Obama, stands tiptoe, determined to rebuild the $15-trillion economy through innovative strategies for economic self-reliance (not protectionism).In 2009 as China scrambles to put its $3.25-trillion export-based economy in order, it will face a new United States of America ~ bolder, smarter, and more imaginative. The beat of the American drum will be heard around the globe for decades to come.
(ND Batra is professor of communicationsat Norwich University)
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Not for girlie-men
Fighting terror is not for wimps
From The Statesman
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
Mr KPS Gill, a most highly regarded former policeman, told the Ladies Study Group in Kolkata last Thursday (11 December): “If 10 terrorists can hold the entire city of Mumbai to ransom for three whole days, I must admit that whoever is training these boys, handpicking them and motivating them, is definitely doing a good job.”
Not only have the Pakistanis done an excellent job in turning out superb commando-style terrorists but also they have used some of the most modern means of communication including GPS surveillance, Google Earth, satellite phones and voice-over-Internet-Protocol phone services.
Imagine a virtual war-room somewhere in Pakistan where every movement of “these boys” are being monitored in real time, as if the Houston ground control was monitoring a space shuttle flight. In comparison Operation Blue Star ~ pardon me Mr Gill ~ must have been child’s play, however tragic.
Do not underestimate the Pakistanis. They have created the indestructible Taliban and a ruthless secret service, the ISI, which through lethal, self-multiplying cells and self-sustaining charities rules Pakistan and casts its deadly shadow beyond its borders ~ what UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown on his recent visit to Pakistan called “the chain of terror that links the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of the UK and other countries around the world”.
Sometimes I feel that Indians simply live in India but do not care much for India. For example, in 2007 when there was a terrorist attack in Hyderabad, an Indian minister said something unforgettable and unforgivable, “Do you want us to keep vigil on all the chaat-eating people? How many chaatwallahs can we guard?” If these girlie-men surrounded by 24/7 bodyguards had taken care of the rakeriwallahs, rikshawallahs and chaatwallahs, they would not have to fight this day to protect the poor rich people who throng the Taj Mahal Palace and the Oberoi Trident; and the unfortunate Jewish visitors who simply love India.
Only by protecting the lowly can you protect the mighty.
Terrorism has to be fought with anticipation, intelligence and persistence as the Europeans and Americans have been doing. Every now and then the US Homeland Security authorities revisit and update their plans to meet new contingencies. In 2006, for example, authorities had discovered a plot to blast and cripple the underground tunnel system that connects New Jersey with New York City. The discovery was not accidental. The security forces were on the lookout for terrorists in order to pre-empt any attack. Apart from the federal homeland security department, every state has contingency plans. The federal government and state governments work closely to fight crime and terrorism.
Do you remember what happened in India in 2006?
Indians forget and they pay for their forgetfulness. Americans don’t forget anything, whether it is Pearl Harbour or the 9/11. Americans commemorate and learn from history.
In the US and increasingly in Europe, there has been a big shift in thinking about terrorism. The policy has been to eliminate terrorism at the neonatal stage by establishing an early awareness system. The working principle is: what is anticipated can be prevented. Preventing terrorism at the inspirational and “aspirational” stages is the goal. Following the pre-emptive policy of dealing with terrorists, US Attorney David E Nahmias says, “We no longer wait until a bomb is built and ready to explode.” For example, the plot to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago was at a stage “more aspirational than operational”, according to the FBI, when the terrorists were nailed down in June 2007. Europeans are doing the same thing.
Consider what happened in Brussels last Thursday, when, according to the International Herald Tribune (IHT), the Belgian police arrested 14 people on the mere suspicion of suspected terrorist links. Six of them were charged with being member of a Belgian branch of Al-Qaida. What prompted the pre-emptive measure was a two-day European Union meeting, which could have been the target. The IHT quoted the federal prosecutor in Brussels, Mr Johan Delmulle, as saying, “We don’t know where the suicide attack was to take place. It could have been an operation in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but it can’t be ruled out that Belgium or Europe could have been the target.”
Instead of waiting for an uncertain event becoming certain and then taking action, Europeans are now following the American strategy of preemption. On the contrary, Indians do not do anything even when they know terrorists are going to attack.
In a remarkable piece, replete with irrefutable evidence, published in IBN-Live, Mr Arun Shourie, a former editor-in-chief of the Indian Express and BJP Rajya Sabha MP, said the government knew about the threats and did nothing. Mr. Shourie understands that India need not be throttled by its enlightened doctrines when law-enforcement authorities try to locate and destroy terrorist cells functioning openly or clandestinely in their own backyards. Mr Shourie, I am sure, will make a terrific terrorism czar.
The security doctrine is simple: eliminate terrorism at the “aspirational” level, as the Belgian police did. The US security laws allow intelligence and law-enforcement authorities to monitor places of worship, activities of charities, communications of suspected militants, and even their shopping patterns.
Superb intelligence-gathering, preemptive and preventive measures and anticipatory disaster plans could go a long way in eliminating terrorism, if India wants to take terrorism as seriously as Europeans and Americans do.
The 2007 US National Strategy for Homeland Security emphasised that “we cannot simply rely on defensive approaches and well-planned response and recovery measures. We recognize that our efforts also must involve offense at home and abroad”. The US strategy “provides a common framework” through which not only do the federal, state and local governments work together, “the private and non-profit sectors, communities, and individual citizens” are also actively included in homeland security operations. Like the US, India should create a culture of preparedness that permeates all levels of society ~ from individual citizens, businesses, and non-profit organisations to federal, state, local and tribal government officials and authorities.
Post script. By saving the country from terrorism, India would lift millions of its Muslims from fear, which would let them give their best as some of them are doing in Bollywood, sports, and myriad other productive enterprises.
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
From The Statesman
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
Mr KPS Gill, a most highly regarded former policeman, told the Ladies Study Group in Kolkata last Thursday (11 December): “If 10 terrorists can hold the entire city of Mumbai to ransom for three whole days, I must admit that whoever is training these boys, handpicking them and motivating them, is definitely doing a good job.”
Not only have the Pakistanis done an excellent job in turning out superb commando-style terrorists but also they have used some of the most modern means of communication including GPS surveillance, Google Earth, satellite phones and voice-over-Internet-Protocol phone services.
Imagine a virtual war-room somewhere in Pakistan where every movement of “these boys” are being monitored in real time, as if the Houston ground control was monitoring a space shuttle flight. In comparison Operation Blue Star ~ pardon me Mr Gill ~ must have been child’s play, however tragic.
Do not underestimate the Pakistanis. They have created the indestructible Taliban and a ruthless secret service, the ISI, which through lethal, self-multiplying cells and self-sustaining charities rules Pakistan and casts its deadly shadow beyond its borders ~ what UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown on his recent visit to Pakistan called “the chain of terror that links the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan to the streets of the UK and other countries around the world”.
Sometimes I feel that Indians simply live in India but do not care much for India. For example, in 2007 when there was a terrorist attack in Hyderabad, an Indian minister said something unforgettable and unforgivable, “Do you want us to keep vigil on all the chaat-eating people? How many chaatwallahs can we guard?” If these girlie-men surrounded by 24/7 bodyguards had taken care of the rakeriwallahs, rikshawallahs and chaatwallahs, they would not have to fight this day to protect the poor rich people who throng the Taj Mahal Palace and the Oberoi Trident; and the unfortunate Jewish visitors who simply love India.
Only by protecting the lowly can you protect the mighty.
Terrorism has to be fought with anticipation, intelligence and persistence as the Europeans and Americans have been doing. Every now and then the US Homeland Security authorities revisit and update their plans to meet new contingencies. In 2006, for example, authorities had discovered a plot to blast and cripple the underground tunnel system that connects New Jersey with New York City. The discovery was not accidental. The security forces were on the lookout for terrorists in order to pre-empt any attack. Apart from the federal homeland security department, every state has contingency plans. The federal government and state governments work closely to fight crime and terrorism.
Do you remember what happened in India in 2006?
Indians forget and they pay for their forgetfulness. Americans don’t forget anything, whether it is Pearl Harbour or the 9/11. Americans commemorate and learn from history.
In the US and increasingly in Europe, there has been a big shift in thinking about terrorism. The policy has been to eliminate terrorism at the neonatal stage by establishing an early awareness system. The working principle is: what is anticipated can be prevented. Preventing terrorism at the inspirational and “aspirational” stages is the goal. Following the pre-emptive policy of dealing with terrorists, US Attorney David E Nahmias says, “We no longer wait until a bomb is built and ready to explode.” For example, the plot to bomb the Sears Tower in Chicago was at a stage “more aspirational than operational”, according to the FBI, when the terrorists were nailed down in June 2007. Europeans are doing the same thing.
Consider what happened in Brussels last Thursday, when, according to the International Herald Tribune (IHT), the Belgian police arrested 14 people on the mere suspicion of suspected terrorist links. Six of them were charged with being member of a Belgian branch of Al-Qaida. What prompted the pre-emptive measure was a two-day European Union meeting, which could have been the target. The IHT quoted the federal prosecutor in Brussels, Mr Johan Delmulle, as saying, “We don’t know where the suicide attack was to take place. It could have been an operation in Pakistan or Afghanistan, but it can’t be ruled out that Belgium or Europe could have been the target.”
Instead of waiting for an uncertain event becoming certain and then taking action, Europeans are now following the American strategy of preemption. On the contrary, Indians do not do anything even when they know terrorists are going to attack.
In a remarkable piece, replete with irrefutable evidence, published in IBN-Live, Mr Arun Shourie, a former editor-in-chief of the Indian Express and BJP Rajya Sabha MP, said the government knew about the threats and did nothing. Mr. Shourie understands that India need not be throttled by its enlightened doctrines when law-enforcement authorities try to locate and destroy terrorist cells functioning openly or clandestinely in their own backyards. Mr Shourie, I am sure, will make a terrific terrorism czar.
The security doctrine is simple: eliminate terrorism at the “aspirational” level, as the Belgian police did. The US security laws allow intelligence and law-enforcement authorities to monitor places of worship, activities of charities, communications of suspected militants, and even their shopping patterns.
Superb intelligence-gathering, preemptive and preventive measures and anticipatory disaster plans could go a long way in eliminating terrorism, if India wants to take terrorism as seriously as Europeans and Americans do.
The 2007 US National Strategy for Homeland Security emphasised that “we cannot simply rely on defensive approaches and well-planned response and recovery measures. We recognize that our efforts also must involve offense at home and abroad”. The US strategy “provides a common framework” through which not only do the federal, state and local governments work together, “the private and non-profit sectors, communities, and individual citizens” are also actively included in homeland security operations. Like the US, India should create a culture of preparedness that permeates all levels of society ~ from individual citizens, businesses, and non-profit organisations to federal, state, local and tribal government officials and authorities.
Post script. By saving the country from terrorism, India would lift millions of its Muslims from fear, which would let them give their best as some of them are doing in Bollywood, sports, and myriad other productive enterprises.
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Securing India day and night
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As soon as he assumed his new role as a terrorist czar, Mr Palaniappan Chidambaram, India’s new home minister, assured the people that “we will respond with determination and resolve to the grave threat posed to the Indian nation”. We have heard such bluster, such clenched-fist promises of dealing with the enemy myriad times before.
The painful truth is that India has no well-thought-out and planned strategy for apprehending terrorists and pre-empting them before they strike. Unlike the US and several European countries, which have learned from their own lapses and tragedies, India has failed to establish a dynamic national structure that responds not only to knowable threats but is also capable of anticipating the unknowable. For example, it was a lackadaisical attitude that prevented the authorities from apprehending the possibility that a terrorist attack could be launched from the Arabian Sea. Only a few days before the terrorists struck Mumbai, the Indian Navy had boasted of destroying a Somali pirate mother ship off the Gulf of Aden. Yet no one knew what was happening near India’s own coastal waters.
Where will the next attack come from? That is an unknowable at present but an early awareness system could show emerging possibilities before they become actualities. India has to establish a powerful central agency on the lines of US Homeland Security buttressed by a powerful tool such as Patriot Act and recruit and train a new kind of police force of well educated and intelligent people.It is shocking that the attacks on the famous Taj Mahal Palace, Oberoi-Trident and the Jewish centre that killed more than 190 people lasted so long ~ three days of running battles between India’s elite commandos and the gunmen before the sites were brought under control. Nothing of this kind has happened anywhere; in other places terrorists simply blow up their targets and themselves. In Mumbai they came to kill, kill, kill, as long as they could. Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani said his country “would itself take action against the miscreants if there is any evidence against a Pakistani national”, warning at the same time that a “blame game should be avoided at all costs”.
Because otherwise the growing relations between the two countries could be adversely affected.If pushed to a corner, Pakistan will divert troops from its frontier badlands to the India-Pak border, an apparent blackmailing tactic against the US.Pakistan has the backing of its all-weather friend China, after all.
Syed Irfan Raza wrote in Dawn: “China has also assured Pakistan of moral, financial and material support in tackling the Mumbai fallout. In a message, the Chinese government said that it would assist Pakistan in any situation to overcome problems and challenges...(the) Chinese leadership was in constant touch with Pakistan to know the nature of assistance the latter requires and ensure its immediate availability.”Unlike the US, China is not persuading Pakistan to cooperate with India. Pakistan won’t hand over Dawood Ibrahim, the boss of the Mumbai underworld reputed to have networked with Bollywood bigwigs to Islamic militants; and Maulana Masood Azhar, the leader of the banned Pakistani militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed, who was once jailed in India, and let out after the 2000 December hijacking of an Indian Airlines flight from Kathmandu.
How the relationship between India and Pakistan will change because of terrorist acts after a few years of positive development is difficult to say because at present there is tremendous anger in India and official denial in Pakistan. What the new US administration should be looking at is to see that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons do not fall into terrorists’ hands.
If rogue elements in the ISI and other state and non-state actors, who do not want India and Pakistan settling down as peaceful neighbours and solving their problems, including Kashmir, get access either to nuclear weapons or technology, there could be a serious problem.
Regarding any possible involvement of the Pakistani government, including its intelligence services, India should not depend upon mere intuition but on solid evidence. At present India has evidence of only one terrorist who disclosed that Lashkar-e-Toiba-trained terrorists were involved. But they could not have been done without the support of the ISI and the D-Company, the crime and smuggling syndicate run by Dawood Ibrahim from Karachi.
At the conclusion of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s visit, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said, “We are looking at this as an opportunity and I intend to do everything in my power.” But how much power does he have? Who listens to him?
The Pakistani Army is the most powerful institution, which controls the ISI, which in turn controls the shadow jihadi organisations that train terrorists. Most Pakistanis trust the army rather than politicians who have little credibility. The army is more or less an absolute syndicate with criminal and terrorist proxy organisations, and one might say, of which Mr Zardari is a nothing but an apologist. He knows who killed his wife Benazir Bhutto, doesn’t he?
Mr Michael Moran, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations has told Newsweek: “So what you have in Pakistan is, in relative terms, a strong and dominant national institution in the army and a relatively weaker civilian political leadership that is only in the very early stages of trying to balance out the influence and sort of come to any kind of command relationship over the military.” I am very sceptical that the army will ever relinquish its political and cultural dominance in Pakistan; nor its historical enmity against India, for which it will always need the ISI and its lethal proxies with variable names.
So what is India’s choice? India must strike a new balance between civil liberties and national security. Within the framework of optimum civil liberties and the rule of law, India should establish a total surveillance system, a vast and comprehensive human and technological intelligence system that is capable of capturing unheard sounds of unborn events. But intelligence without action is meaningless.You cannot save India unless you love India totally and absolutely with all your heart ~ India above all.
(ND Batra is professor of communicationsat Norwich University)
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Yes, India Can
Give India weapons of self-protection
India needs weapons of mass self-protection, not the false sense of security of regionalism as is being proposed in some quarters.
Mr Ahmed Rashid, the renowned Pakistani journalist and author, dumps the entire region extending from India through Pakistan and Afghanistan to the Central Asian states into one giant problematic region and laments that the US has failed in its duty of stopping the region from sliding into anarchy. In his latest book, Descent into Chaos, he reprimands the US for not doing enough, and advocates that saving the region is in the US national interest.
Mr Rashid is perhaps one of the very few Pakistanis who believe that the US invasion of Afghanistan “created enormous expectations of change and hope for a more sustained Western commitment to the region that would lift it out of poverty and underdevelopment”. After 9/11, the US wanted to get rid of Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaida and the Taliban. No nation can lift another nation or a whole region out of poverty and degradation caused by the blind hatred of others based on religious obscurantism. Instead of giving us an intelligent analysis of why Pakistan sank into progressive misery during six decades of independence, Mr Rashid blames the West for not waking up “to the realities and responsibilities of injustice, poverty, lack of education, and unresolved conflicts such as those in Kashmir and Afghanistan, which it had ignored for too long and which could no longer be allowed to fester”. Mr Rashid forgets that since the 1980s when Zia-ul-Haq seized power, Pakistan has been deliberating and turning into a nation with a fundamentalist mindset. In varying degrees, every institution, including the Pakistani armed forces and the ISI, has been infused with the fundamentalist virus, which spread from Saudi-financed Wahabi madrassas and abundant infusion of cash by Arab petrodollar charities.
There is no gainsaying the fact that Pakistan-backed Islamic fundamentalists and the US-financed Afghanistan armed resistance ultimately drove the Soviets out and might have played a significant role in the final collapse of the Soviet Union. When the US withdrew from Afghanistan leaving behind battle-scarred guerrillas, the ISI in collusion with Al-Qaida and helped by Arab money raised the Taliban, which in a short time overpowered the country, imposing a brutal fundamentalist order on the helpless, war-ravaged nation.
The ISI-Taliban control of Afghanistan seemed an unprecedented strategic achievement of the Pakistani armed forces, but it has become an endless nightmare. No less significant has been the role of China in helping Pakistan develop nuclear weapons, which turned a bankrupt country into the most dangerous place in the world, which could not be left alone.Instead of looking deep into the flawed foundation on which Pakistan was founded, Mr Rashid continues to blame the US for every ill of the region. He states the obvious that “Afghanistan is once again staring down the abyss of state collapse, despite billions of dollars in aid, forty-five thousand Western troops, and the deaths of thousands of people”.
This would not have happened if the Pakistan military and especially the ISI, which he calls “a state within a state”, had not collaborated with and sheltered Al-Qaida. Instead he says the resurgent Taliban have been “getting a boost from the explosion in heroin production that has helped fund their movement”. He also jumps to the facile conclusion, which sounds like propaganda, that, “At stake are the futures of the United Nations, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), the European Union, and of course America’s own power and prestige.”
He conveniently forgets to mention the role of China, Pakistan’s most reliable all-weather friend, in the country’s collapse. All we know is that when President Asif Ali Zardari went to Beijing to borrow a handful of dollars from China’s massive foreign exchange reserves, he returned with plenty of good wishes and re-affirmation of eternal friendship but nothing else.As expected, Mr Rashid indirectly places the responsibility of political disarray in Pakistan on India’s shoulders.
Pakistan’s obsession with Afghanistan is due to the fear generated by the increasing influence of India in the country, he says. It is true that India has poured massive development funds, as much as $1.2 billion, into the rebuilding of Afghanistan’s educational system and social-political institutions as well as infrastructure projects including the building of the Zaranj-Delaram highway that connects Afghanistan’s highway system to the Iranian port of Chabahar, which will eventually become India’s port of entry to central Asia. The purpose is not to surround Pakistan but find an alternative route to Central Asia to share its natural resources as China is doing.
When General Pervez Musharraf seized power in 2002, he had the opportunity to pursue his grand vision of making Pakistan a modern progressive Muslim nation. But like others before him, he got more interested in holding on to power than rebuilding Pakistan in spite of the billions of dollars in aid from the US. Mr Musharraf left the country bankrupt and in a worse shape than before. But he initiated some fresh thinking on India-Pakistan relations especially in regard to Kashmir and the confidence-building measures that he started have been taken up by Mr Zardari, whose recent pronouncements have raised great interest.
In an October interview with Wall Street Journal, Mr Zardari said India had never been a threat to Pakistan and he called Kashmir militants terrorists. In a recent leadership videoconference he suggested a no-first strike nuclear deal with India and envisaged the possibility of a South Asian economic union.
But the difficulty is that whenever India begins to believe that there is a genuine change in Pakistan, an ugly reality strikes brutally into India’s heart as it did last week in Mumbai when terrorists brazenly emerged out of the darkness of Arabian Sea to destroy everything India values and seeks: building peace with the rest of the world through economic growth, trade and commerce.India cannot stop Pakistan’s descent into chaos. But India can certainly protect itself by erecting a dynamic system of total homeland security as the US has done.
The US is safer today because of the US Patriot Act, which was renewed by the US Congress in 2006. Consider the acronym: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.
The US Patriot Act is a weapon of mass protection that has worked. That is what India needs. By protecting itself, India will protect the region and contribute to world peace.
The US Patriot Act is a weapon of mass protection that has worked. That is what India needs. By protecting itself, India will protect the region and contribute to world peace.
(ND Batra is professor of communicationsat Norwich University)
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Thanksgiving in downtown America
Downtown America is downturning
Fraom The Statesman
ND Batra
We are heading toward a long weekend of vacation when millions of Americans will travel by trains, planes and automobiles to share with family and friends the joys of a Thanksgiving meal of roasted turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce, apple cider and wine, and much more.
The day after Thanksgiving, stores will open for early bird door-buster sales, the traditional beginning of the holiday shopping season that lasts through Christmas and beyond, and is a firm indicator of how the economy is doing. But this Thanksgiving Day, as Americans mumble their prayers before the big meal and dig into their grandma pies and exchange neighbourhood gossip, the most pressing concern on their minds will be their jobs, some lost, and others threatened. Some have already lost their homes to foreclosures.
You have heard the cliché that in a market economy like the US’s, the consumer is king with a credit card, but unfortunately during the last two years the ground has been collapsing underneath him. The king feels like a pauper now. In spite of the fact that stores are offering huge discounts, even up to 75 per cent on some goods, it is uncertain whether the consumer will bring his credit card out of his wallet ~ so much is the fear of tomorrow. When your neighbour loses his job, you don’t know what might happen to you.
In some respects, it is the worst of times since 11 September 2001, when the US was attacked by terrorists. The downturn is becoming a recession and it is hitting the entire country. Nest eggs are dwindling and disappearing.
Last week the US Labor Department reported that jobless claims have risen to 516,000, which means more than a half million families, including some with children, won’t be heading to the stores with a smile on their faces. The total unemployment rate of 6.5 per cent is the highest in 14 years, according to the Labor Department. You might say that since the rest of the 93.5 per cent of people do have jobs, why worry? But that’s not how you measure misery. Unemployment of course can never be zero per cent but when it is below 5 per cent it is deemed tolerable, albeit grudgingly.
You might regard national unemployment as a revolving door through which people come and go. While some people get jobs, others lose and file for jobless claims; nonetheless, according to some economists when jobless claims, which provide a few weeks’ financial relief, touch 500,000, the situation is considered a recession. Eventually we will bottom out of the recession, though it is difficult to say when that will happen. Will it get worse? Some fear the coming of a depression. During the 1929-1930 Great Depression, 20 per cent Americans were out of jobs. We are far from that.
So the question is how the massive stimulus package of $700 billion, which was originally meant to buy out bad assets of banks and financial institutions so that they regain health and confidence and start lending again, will help Joe Sixpack who might be on the verge of getting a pink slip. In an about turn from the original plan, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently announced that he would now use a part of the stimulus package to encourage consumer spending via student loans, credit cards and automobile loans so that the wheels of the economy don’t grind to a halt. But the Big Three Detroit automakers ~ Ford, General Motors and Chrysler ~ say they need a cash infusion of $25 billion or more to stay afloat.
If Detroit shuts down, millions of jobs including the entire supply chain from automobile dealers to auto part manufactures will be lost, leading to a deeper recession. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is asking the government to spend $24 billion to back up mortgages so that 1.5 million threatened homeowners can stay in their homes rather than losing them to foreclosures. Many states, towns and cities are clamouring for their share of the pie. University and college endowments have slumped.A few weeks ago, I wrote “recession is worse than terrorism”.
Terrorism is man-made and can be limited and controlled. It can even be eliminated as has been done in Indonesia. But global recession ~ though its genesis indubitably lies in criminally negligent US bank lending practices in the housing market that let Joe Sixpack buy a house when he could not afford to pay the mortgage ~ is out of control and dragging every country down. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was heard saying at the G-20 meeting, “Emerging market countries were not the cause of this crisis, but they are amongst its most affected victims.”
It might sound rather flippant, nonetheless, let me ask a question. If Pakistan goes bankrupt, who would you blame: Taliban or Joe Sixpack? Consider this. When terrorists’ attacks hit the US seven years ago, there was no gathering of the G-20 nations (developed and emerging economies that today account for 85per cent of the world economy) to save the world. The Saturday gathering of the G-20 in Washington DC aimed to erect a dynamic global financial system that would reflect the new emerging world order by restructuring the creaky post-war Breton Woods (the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) system.
But on close reading you find that it was primarily meant to unfreeze the global credit pipeline through various national stimulus packages so that Joe Sixpack can go on his buying spree again; and Joe Chan in Guangdong and Joe Slumdog in Bangalore can get back their jobs in the factory and the outsourcing cubicle.And thereby hangs the global tale of miners in Africa, shoe and toy manufacturers in China, chicken feeders in Australia, outsourcers across India, oil sheikhs in the Arab world and diamond merchants in Amsterdam, all in the same boat, the Titanic, with Joe Sixpack. Do you see the iceberg?
(ND Batra is professor of communicationsat Norwich University)
Fraom The Statesman
ND Batra
We are heading toward a long weekend of vacation when millions of Americans will travel by trains, planes and automobiles to share with family and friends the joys of a Thanksgiving meal of roasted turkey with stuffing and cranberry sauce, apple cider and wine, and much more.
The day after Thanksgiving, stores will open for early bird door-buster sales, the traditional beginning of the holiday shopping season that lasts through Christmas and beyond, and is a firm indicator of how the economy is doing. But this Thanksgiving Day, as Americans mumble their prayers before the big meal and dig into their grandma pies and exchange neighbourhood gossip, the most pressing concern on their minds will be their jobs, some lost, and others threatened. Some have already lost their homes to foreclosures.
You have heard the cliché that in a market economy like the US’s, the consumer is king with a credit card, but unfortunately during the last two years the ground has been collapsing underneath him. The king feels like a pauper now. In spite of the fact that stores are offering huge discounts, even up to 75 per cent on some goods, it is uncertain whether the consumer will bring his credit card out of his wallet ~ so much is the fear of tomorrow. When your neighbour loses his job, you don’t know what might happen to you.
In some respects, it is the worst of times since 11 September 2001, when the US was attacked by terrorists. The downturn is becoming a recession and it is hitting the entire country. Nest eggs are dwindling and disappearing.
Last week the US Labor Department reported that jobless claims have risen to 516,000, which means more than a half million families, including some with children, won’t be heading to the stores with a smile on their faces. The total unemployment rate of 6.5 per cent is the highest in 14 years, according to the Labor Department. You might say that since the rest of the 93.5 per cent of people do have jobs, why worry? But that’s not how you measure misery. Unemployment of course can never be zero per cent but when it is below 5 per cent it is deemed tolerable, albeit grudgingly.
You might regard national unemployment as a revolving door through which people come and go. While some people get jobs, others lose and file for jobless claims; nonetheless, according to some economists when jobless claims, which provide a few weeks’ financial relief, touch 500,000, the situation is considered a recession. Eventually we will bottom out of the recession, though it is difficult to say when that will happen. Will it get worse? Some fear the coming of a depression. During the 1929-1930 Great Depression, 20 per cent Americans were out of jobs. We are far from that.
So the question is how the massive stimulus package of $700 billion, which was originally meant to buy out bad assets of banks and financial institutions so that they regain health and confidence and start lending again, will help Joe Sixpack who might be on the verge of getting a pink slip. In an about turn from the original plan, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently announced that he would now use a part of the stimulus package to encourage consumer spending via student loans, credit cards and automobile loans so that the wheels of the economy don’t grind to a halt. But the Big Three Detroit automakers ~ Ford, General Motors and Chrysler ~ say they need a cash infusion of $25 billion or more to stay afloat.
If Detroit shuts down, millions of jobs including the entire supply chain from automobile dealers to auto part manufactures will be lost, leading to a deeper recession. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is asking the government to spend $24 billion to back up mortgages so that 1.5 million threatened homeowners can stay in their homes rather than losing them to foreclosures. Many states, towns and cities are clamouring for their share of the pie. University and college endowments have slumped.A few weeks ago, I wrote “recession is worse than terrorism”.
Terrorism is man-made and can be limited and controlled. It can even be eliminated as has been done in Indonesia. But global recession ~ though its genesis indubitably lies in criminally negligent US bank lending practices in the housing market that let Joe Sixpack buy a house when he could not afford to pay the mortgage ~ is out of control and dragging every country down. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was heard saying at the G-20 meeting, “Emerging market countries were not the cause of this crisis, but they are amongst its most affected victims.”
It might sound rather flippant, nonetheless, let me ask a question. If Pakistan goes bankrupt, who would you blame: Taliban or Joe Sixpack? Consider this. When terrorists’ attacks hit the US seven years ago, there was no gathering of the G-20 nations (developed and emerging economies that today account for 85per cent of the world economy) to save the world. The Saturday gathering of the G-20 in Washington DC aimed to erect a dynamic global financial system that would reflect the new emerging world order by restructuring the creaky post-war Breton Woods (the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) system.
But on close reading you find that it was primarily meant to unfreeze the global credit pipeline through various national stimulus packages so that Joe Sixpack can go on his buying spree again; and Joe Chan in Guangdong and Joe Slumdog in Bangalore can get back their jobs in the factory and the outsourcing cubicle.And thereby hangs the global tale of miners in Africa, shoe and toy manufacturers in China, chicken feeders in Australia, outsourcers across India, oil sheikhs in the Arab world and diamond merchants in Amsterdam, all in the same boat, the Titanic, with Joe Sixpack. Do you see the iceberg?
(ND Batra is professor of communicationsat Norwich University)
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
THE FLIGHT OF THE BLACK SWAN
The flight of the black swan
From The Statesman
ND Batra
The whole world is waiting for President-elect Barack Obama, one of the most inspiring orators of modern times, to hear what he will say to the American people, now in deep economic distress, as he enters the White House on 20 January 2009. Perhaps no one could have been more gracious than President George W Bush, who said, “It will be a stirring sight to watch President Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their beautiful girls step through the doors of the White House.”
ND Batra
The whole world is waiting for President-elect Barack Obama, one of the most inspiring orators of modern times, to hear what he will say to the American people, now in deep economic distress, as he enters the White House on 20 January 2009. Perhaps no one could have been more gracious than President George W Bush, who said, “It will be a stirring sight to watch President Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their beautiful girls step through the doors of the White House.”
I see him hugging and folding his wife and children in his huge embrace with a broad smile, waving to the milling, swaying crowd, as if to say, “Thanks for the company, we have arrived, at last.”
A generation ago, it would have been unthinkable that the American-born son of an African immigrant married to a White woman would have the courage, “the audacity of hope”, to dream of sitting in the Oval Office. By winning the presidency, Mr Obama has elevated the White House and uplifted the American people. He might transform the US into a moral force, once again a great power for good.From the White House the Obama family will survey the past, from the coming of Kunta Kinte (Arthur Haley’s fictional-historical character from Roots) to the US in a slave ship to work in the cotton fields of the South to his liberation after the Civil War, which soon mutated into the utter degradation of segregation through the Jim Crow laws; his slow march through judicial and legislative processes, for example, the1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown versus Board of Education declaring segregation as inherently wrong and the 1964 Civil Rights Act outlawing racial segregation; and his final assertion as a human being and the dreaming about a new US where one’s character and merit, as the non-violent civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King, Jr. prophesied, would matter more than the pigment of one’s skin.
In a manner of speaking, the history of the US is the history of the Black man rising and being accepted as a fellow American by the White man. Now that Kunta Kinte is entering the White House, it’s the end of history. And a new dawn of possibilities, as Mr Obama said.It is the beginning of new possibilities at home for regenerating the US through innovation, invention and entrepreneurship, of establishing a new system of universal healthcare and financial security, of re-democratising and re-dedicating the American dream so that there will always be a second chance and failure is no stigma, and yes, you can do it.
Mr Obama built a remarkable grassroots Internet-based meta-party political machine to win the hearts and minds of the young and the old, of the entire racial and ideological spectrum, and almost got a mandate to bring about transformation in American society. But as the ravaging global financial crisis shows, Americans are so densely interconnected with the rest of the world that no meaningful change can occur unless the rest of the world is willing to cooperate, a lesson the US should have learned after the 9/11 terrorists attacks. The US cannot go it alone even in its attempt to set its own house in order without help from others, whether it is the Chinese moneylender or the Pakistani badlander.
So the question is how Mr Obama will transform his campaign slogan, “Yes, we can”, into reality.On Friday, Mr Obama, surrounded by some of the best and the brightest economists and financial experts, gave his first post-election press conference. He was cool and measured in his remarks about the state of economy and sounded much less exuberant about the prospects of turning things around than when he was stumping for the election. “I do not underestimate the enormity of the task that lies ahead,” he said. “Some of the choices that we make are going to be difficult. And I have said before and I will repeat again: it is not going to be quick and it is not going to be easy for us to dig ourselves out of the hole that we are in.”
He urged Congress and the Bush administration to pass a stimulus package, which, apart from the $700 bailout already approved for reviving financial markets, would cost anything between $150 billion to $300 billion and would help families with tax-relief, extended unemployment insurance benefits and food stamps. It would also bolster the crumbling budgets of cities and states, without which some of the essential services would be adversely affected.
A similar stimulus package of $107 billion was given in the beginning of the year to mostly lower- and middle-class families but it worked more like a small drink of brandy for a depressed man than an energiser of economic activity.The most sobering lesson a US President has to learn is that he can’t do much about global markets. Being the leader of the free world can create a dangerous delusion. Whether there will be an opportunity for finding a new leadership role for the US in an interdependent world of rapidly emerging economic powers ~ China, Japan, the EU, Russia, and, perhaps, India ~ no one knows.
But when a reporter asked how Mr Obama would respond to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamdinejad’s letter of congratulations, he said with a determined finality that Iran’s nuclear ambitions were absolutely “unacceptable”. I hope Mr Obama will also have the courage to say, “The decline and fall of the US is utterly ‘unacceptable’.”
But look! What a cornucopia lies in wait for Kunta Kinte in the White House: a global financial meltdown; the Israel-Palestine decades-long deadly dance; Iran’s “peaceful” nuclear ambitions; the Afghanistan-Pakistan implosion; and let’s not forget the dessert: China’s mountain of a $2-trillion foreign exchange reserve. All served up by your favourite waiter, Joe the Plumber.
(ND Batra is professor of communicationat Norwich University)
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