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 Diplomacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diplomacy. 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 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, 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 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 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 25, 2008
The re-Education of a businessman
What business schools need to do
From The Statesman
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
CYBER AGE - ND Batra
Business schools emphasise quantitative analysis and sophisticated computer modelling as if real life in the street could be enclosed in a Gaussian Bell Curve and events could be predicted within margins of error. But modern tools of business and economics cannot capture outliers, for example, the rare and extreme event such as the global financial crisis that is crushing us today.
While one cannot prevent a tsunami from hitting a country, one can certainly imagine such an extreme event occurring and build enough reserve resources to reorganise and restructure.Nor do business schools teach how to resurrect and rebuild the most invaluable human asset: trust and confidence. How do you restore people’s faith in a system that has failed them?
When the CEOs of Detroit’s big three automakers went to Congress for a $25-billion bailout to avoid bankruptcy, member after member asked them why they should trust them for doing the right thing for taxpayers and consumers. Show us your business plans before we give you the money, they said, after scolding them for flying in in their private jets. The best argument the trio could muster was that bankruptcy would put millions of people out of job, which was not only unpersuasive but also a dangerous half-truth.
The foreign automakers ~ Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, BMW and Mercedes ~ who run non-union auto plants in the South are after all doing not that badly in these bad times. No one wants Detroit to disappear as an important auto-manufacturing hub that radiates its energy through every walk of American life and directly and indirectly affects the lives of 2.5 million people.
But Detroit is an exemplar of failure in persuasion. It has failed to persuade the American consumer that its cars are better than those made by Germans, Japanese and South Koreans. It has failed to persuade Congress that it is capable of making better cars ~ fuel-efficient and green. Business schools claim that they create future business leaders but they don’t teach the fine art of how to become influential in a democratic society. They train technocrats who feel more comfortable with their BlackBerrys and talking into Bluetooths rather than sitting across a hostile group of people such as a congressional subcommittee and turning them into friends.
In the ultimate analysis doing business is about persuasion. Therefore, what business schools need to do is to develop a new concentration of courses that prepares MBA students for creating and exercising soft power. For want of a better term, some people call it lobbying, though I believe advocacy is a better word. Mr Richard Hall and Mr Alan Deardorff of the University of Michigan wrote in the American Political Science Review (2006) that, “Professional lobbyists are among the most experienced, knowledgeable, and strategic actors one can find in the everyday practice of politics.” But lobbyists are sometime reviled as unethical because most people think of lobbying as greasing, golfing, wining and dining ~ an unfortunately negative attitude about a socially useful activity.
Lobbying is a multimillion-dollar global service industry. China, India, Israel, the EU and Arab countries, for example, have hired some of the best lobbyists to look after their interests in the US. The US-India nuclear deal would have never been passed by Congress but for the excellent work done by some very talented groups of people who changed perceptions about India even though the country did not sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Chinese lobbyists want to ensure that Americans do not turn protectionist.
American lobbyists abroad (call them by whatever name you like) prowl and trawl throughout the world wherever decision-making power is concentrated. They know how to negotiate with the powers that be and use the news media and other resources to protect their national interest. Lobbying substitutes the power of the gun with the power of the tongue. In the US, lobbying is a legitimate activity protected by the First Amendment. In other democracies too, lobbying is considered a rightful and justifiable activity.
One of the most arduous tasks for anyone is to unravel and understand the labyrinthine activities of the US Congress ~ how it works and wields power through its committees, subcommittees and public hearings. How issues emerge in the public consciousness and how they are transformed into bills that become laws.
It is important for us to understand and appreciate the role of lobbyists in the halls of power and how they facilitate legislative processes both at Capitol Hill and in state capitals. If you take away lobbyists from Washington, Congress might turn into a permanent lame-duck institution. In fact, the failure to help the Detroit automakers is as much a reflection on Congress’s disarray as it is of the big three automaker CEOs’ inability to change the perception that they can do better.
Apart from being extremely knowledgeable and strategic thinkers, lobbyists put to use an indispensable tool of persuasion, which is negotiation. While it is said that most things in life are negotiable, the art of negotiation does not come easy whether one is dealing with friends or foes.Another important aspect of lobbying is to build and manage public campaigns, which include political (presidential), corporate (as the big three are doing now), and global (environmental, human rights) campaigns.
Besides teaching negotiation and campaigning skills, business schools should teach students how to work with the news media and use the Internet and social networking sites for grassroots community building.The learning focus could vary from the outstanding success of Mr Barack Obama’s presidential campaign to the ongoing international bailout efforts to save the international financial system. Advocacy, negotiation and campaigning should be central to every management programme.
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Behold US Diplomatic Might
NSG waiver: This day will live in glory for India
From The Statesman
ND Batra
If you had any doubt about the global power and reach of the US diplomacy, you should ponder the one-off waiver that the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) gave in connection with the India-US nuclear deal in Vienna on Friday. The NSG was established in 1974 after India’s first nuclear test to exclude the country from access to nuclear fuel.
Ironically, the same exclusive 45-nation club has now decided to allow India full access to nuclear fuel for civilian purposes, in spite of the fact that India never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The international group’s opposition to the deal came not only from China, as was expected, but also from a handful of smaller nations including Austria, Ireland and New Zealand, who wanted to give India conditional access, which of course India would not have accepted. A nick-of-time diplomatic iteration of India’s long-standing nuclear policy by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee that “India has a long-standing and steadfast commitment to universal, non-discriminatory and total elimination of nuclear weapons”, and that India would observe a voluntary nuclear test moratorium was enough to clinch the deal.
Commending the atomic club action, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “It marks the end of India’s decades-long isolation from the nuclear mainstream and of the technology denial regime.” The decision will be Dr Singh’s greatest political achievement apart from giving India the momentum of a dynamic 8-9 per cent sustainable annual economic growth. Few politicians have done so much for India as Dr Singh in spite of the fact that he is perceived so unglamorous, non-assertive and ordinary looking.
In some ways India’s nuclear deal with the US is not unusual. In early May, Russia and the US signed a civilian nuclear power deal under which companies in both countries would have access to nuclear technology through joint ventures. The agreement would open up Russia’s huge uranium reserves to US companies and give Russian companies access to the US’s multibillion-dollar nuclear energy industry. From being great nuclear rivals to becoming nuclear partners would be a giant step, if Russia’s recent missteps in Georgia do not dampen the deal.
As the head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, said at that time, “The signing of this agreement opens a gigantic field of opportunities for economic cooperation in the large and growing businesses linked to the civilian use of nuclear energy.” That’s what India should also expect from the nuclear deal with the US.
China too is going ahead forging nuclear deals to meet its increasing energy needs. China plans to build 32 nuclear power plants by 2020 at a cost of about $50 billion, an enormous undertaking which can be accomplished only by accessing nuclear technology and markets in the US, Europe, Japan and Russia. China has signed uranium deals with Russia, Australia and Niger. So will India, hopefully.
The nuclear deal will assure India’s growing economy reliable and uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel, when the last mile, the US Congress approval, is done. The civilian nuclear deal will open to India the world of sophisticated technology developed by the global nuclear powers, the US, Japan, Europe and Russia, with whom India has growing diplomatic and commercial relations.Access to high-end technology is imperative to keep India globally competitive.
The Indo-US deal is about having faith in India to develop as an alternative model of rapid economic growth without compromising fundamental freedoms. Rapid economic growth of the Indian economy will raise millions of Indians out of poverty. Without plentiful and reliable energy sources, however, poverty cannot be eliminated.
An economically dynamic India on a perpetual growth curve will lift its neighbours in South Asia and help make the world more economically dynamic.
Apart from removing hurdles in India’s search for alternative energy sources to fuel its growing economy, the deal will give India a strategic platform in the knowledge industry and encourage research and development in clean energy technology. As Mr Ratan Tata told Mr Karan Thapar of CNN-IBN a little over a year ago, “Over time this will give India a tremendously powerful position in the knowledge industry, in research and development, in high technology.”
From a humble agricultural power to a great knowledge power is every man’s dream in India. India must go beyond information technology outsourcing and capture the corporate global, as it has begun to do, for example, in automobiles and pharmaceuticals.
Clean coal technology, nuclear energy and solar power are practical alternatives for which the US and other advanced countries will open doors to India. France, for example, gets 80 per cent of its energy from civilian nuclear plants and is ready to collaborate with India in nuclear power development. India needs hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign direct investment in building power plants and world-class infrastructure to increase its manufacturing base in order to create employment opportunities for its growing young population.In the course of time a whole new world of sophisticated global technology will be opened to India, enabling it to spur its economic growth further. In return, India has agreed to do what other nuclear powers have been doing under the nonproliferation treaty, that is open some of its civilian nuclear power plants to inspection and continue to observe abstinence on nuclear testing. Its nuclear deterrent will remain off limits.
India’s sovereignty cannot be compromised, if the country continues to be economically and politically strong.
Poverty compromises national sovereignty. Poor, failed states have little sovereignty.
Regardless of who comes to power at the Centre next year, India should have one prime political goal: domestic harmony based on rapid economic growth in the range of 9-10 per cent that reaches the bottom of the pyramid, India’s not so silent masses that need more than the Nano and cell phones and slogans of azadi and freedom.
(ND Batra is professor of communicationsat Norwich University)
From The Statesman
ND Batra
If you had any doubt about the global power and reach of the US diplomacy, you should ponder the one-off waiver that the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) gave in connection with the India-US nuclear deal in Vienna on Friday. The NSG was established in 1974 after India’s first nuclear test to exclude the country from access to nuclear fuel.
Ironically, the same exclusive 45-nation club has now decided to allow India full access to nuclear fuel for civilian purposes, in spite of the fact that India never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The international group’s opposition to the deal came not only from China, as was expected, but also from a handful of smaller nations including Austria, Ireland and New Zealand, who wanted to give India conditional access, which of course India would not have accepted. A nick-of-time diplomatic iteration of India’s long-standing nuclear policy by External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee that “India has a long-standing and steadfast commitment to universal, non-discriminatory and total elimination of nuclear weapons”, and that India would observe a voluntary nuclear test moratorium was enough to clinch the deal.
Commending the atomic club action, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “It marks the end of India’s decades-long isolation from the nuclear mainstream and of the technology denial regime.” The decision will be Dr Singh’s greatest political achievement apart from giving India the momentum of a dynamic 8-9 per cent sustainable annual economic growth. Few politicians have done so much for India as Dr Singh in spite of the fact that he is perceived so unglamorous, non-assertive and ordinary looking.
In some ways India’s nuclear deal with the US is not unusual. In early May, Russia and the US signed a civilian nuclear power deal under which companies in both countries would have access to nuclear technology through joint ventures. The agreement would open up Russia’s huge uranium reserves to US companies and give Russian companies access to the US’s multibillion-dollar nuclear energy industry. From being great nuclear rivals to becoming nuclear partners would be a giant step, if Russia’s recent missteps in Georgia do not dampen the deal.
As the head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, said at that time, “The signing of this agreement opens a gigantic field of opportunities for economic cooperation in the large and growing businesses linked to the civilian use of nuclear energy.” That’s what India should also expect from the nuclear deal with the US.
China too is going ahead forging nuclear deals to meet its increasing energy needs. China plans to build 32 nuclear power plants by 2020 at a cost of about $50 billion, an enormous undertaking which can be accomplished only by accessing nuclear technology and markets in the US, Europe, Japan and Russia. China has signed uranium deals with Russia, Australia and Niger. So will India, hopefully.
The nuclear deal will assure India’s growing economy reliable and uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel, when the last mile, the US Congress approval, is done. The civilian nuclear deal will open to India the world of sophisticated technology developed by the global nuclear powers, the US, Japan, Europe and Russia, with whom India has growing diplomatic and commercial relations.Access to high-end technology is imperative to keep India globally competitive.
The Indo-US deal is about having faith in India to develop as an alternative model of rapid economic growth without compromising fundamental freedoms. Rapid economic growth of the Indian economy will raise millions of Indians out of poverty. Without plentiful and reliable energy sources, however, poverty cannot be eliminated.
An economically dynamic India on a perpetual growth curve will lift its neighbours in South Asia and help make the world more economically dynamic.
Apart from removing hurdles in India’s search for alternative energy sources to fuel its growing economy, the deal will give India a strategic platform in the knowledge industry and encourage research and development in clean energy technology. As Mr Ratan Tata told Mr Karan Thapar of CNN-IBN a little over a year ago, “Over time this will give India a tremendously powerful position in the knowledge industry, in research and development, in high technology.”
From a humble agricultural power to a great knowledge power is every man’s dream in India. India must go beyond information technology outsourcing and capture the corporate global, as it has begun to do, for example, in automobiles and pharmaceuticals.
Clean coal technology, nuclear energy and solar power are practical alternatives for which the US and other advanced countries will open doors to India. France, for example, gets 80 per cent of its energy from civilian nuclear plants and is ready to collaborate with India in nuclear power development. India needs hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign direct investment in building power plants and world-class infrastructure to increase its manufacturing base in order to create employment opportunities for its growing young population.In the course of time a whole new world of sophisticated global technology will be opened to India, enabling it to spur its economic growth further. In return, India has agreed to do what other nuclear powers have been doing under the nonproliferation treaty, that is open some of its civilian nuclear power plants to inspection and continue to observe abstinence on nuclear testing. Its nuclear deterrent will remain off limits.
India’s sovereignty cannot be compromised, if the country continues to be economically and politically strong.
Poverty compromises national sovereignty. Poor, failed states have little sovereignty.
Regardless of who comes to power at the Centre next year, India should have one prime political goal: domestic harmony based on rapid economic growth in the range of 9-10 per cent that reaches the bottom of the pyramid, India’s not so silent masses that need more than the Nano and cell phones and slogans of azadi and freedom.
(ND Batra is professor of communicationsat Norwich University)
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Pakistan Today
If Musharraf couldn’t do it, who could?
From The Statesman
ND Batra
Pakistan and its humongous problems won’t go away. In fact they are spilling into neighbouring countries and beyond.
In its six decades of bloody history, one of the country’s prime ministers Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged like a thug and two others, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, were unceremoniously booted out from power and forced into exile. When under the pressure of “friendly persuasion” by outside powers, the two political rivals, with no love lost between them, were allowed to return to Pakistan, Mrs Bhutto, a darling of the West, was killed in an election melee and the other returnee, Mr Sharif, has been plotting revenge against the (ex)General who humiliated him in a 1999 putsch.
ince the 1980s when General Zia-ul-Haq seized power, Pakistan has been gradually turned into a nation with a fundamentalist mindset. In varying degrees, every institution, including the Pakistan armed forces and the ISI, has been infused with the fundamentalist virus that spread from Saudi-financed Wahabbi schools. Islamic fundamentalists and the US-financed Afghanistan armed resistance ultimately drove the Soviets out and also factored into the final collapse of the Soviet Union.
When the United States withdrew its presence from Afghanistan leaving well-armed guerrillas behind, the ISI in collusion with Al-Qaida and its financial resources raised the Taliban that overran the country, imposing brutal order on the war-ravaged nation. By any historical standard the ISI-Taliban control of Afghanistan was a remarkable achievement of the Pakistan armed forces. No less significant has been the development of nuclear weapons, which made Pakistan a nation that could not be ignored in the light of proliferation threats and Islamic militancy.
On Christmas Day in 2003 when suicide bombers hit Mr Musharraf’s motorcade ~ certainly not the last attempt to kill him~ many analysts wondered what good was the mighty General to the United States in its global mission of fighting terrorism if he could not protect himself. Against all odds, Mr Musharraf put up a face of being a steadfast ally of the United States in its fight against Al- Qaida terrorism. He cautiously responded to peace overtures from India. But many in the West began to be impatient with him. Some wondered whether Mr Musharraf was fully committed to fighting Al-Qaida; or had another agenda.
But the United States saw no alternative to the man who seemed to control both the military and civilian life.
In the beginning, Mr Musharraf had an aura of “exceptionalism” about him, as if he were a man of destiny. He led a bloodless coup in 1999, promising to end political corruption and take Pakistan into a new direction. He conjured the vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as to how he had liberated Turkey from Islamic orthodoxy and made it a modern country. But Mr Mushrraf’s dream died too soon.
When the events of 9/11 forced him to reluctantly break away from the Taliban (whose control over Afghanistan had created an illusion of strategic depth for Pakistan) and join the US war against Al-Qaida, Mr Musharraf invoked the Prophet Muhammad’s political alliances and strategies (even with the enemies) and the Prophet’s final triumph.
Unfortunately, Mr Musharraf’s opportunistic alliance with Islamic parties to build a political base to keep his secular rivals, Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), out of power backfired; he unwittingly allowed extremism to grow. In 2002, Mr Musharraf assumed wide-ranging powers, including the power to amend the Constitution and dismiss Parliament. Under the new deal, which Parliament approved with the help of the ruling coalition and the Islamic alliance, the Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Mr Musharraf’s seizure of power, including all orders and ordinances, could not be questioned “in any court or forum on any ground whatsoever.” Not even the US President has so much immunity for his actions.
The General who would become a civilian one day would continue to have the power to dissolve Parliament ~ though with the subsequent approval of the Supreme Court ~ until his term ended in 2007. The Supreme Court seemed the last best hope for democratic aspirations in Pakistan but he fired the Chief Justice and several judges who might have gone against him and overturned his election as President in 2007 for another five years. Out of fear, like Richard Nixon, he over-reached himself. The lame duck National Assembly passed the constitutional amendment in three days and the Senate rubber-stamped it. Transition to democracy seemed safe for Mr Musharraf’s continuation as a powerful head of the state. But the February parliamentary elections brought his political enemies, the slain Bhutto’s PPP and Mr Sharif’s PML-N, into power.
Initially, Mr Musharraf’s goal might have been to pursue his grand vision of making Pakistan a modern progressive Muslim nation. Apart from developing working relations with the secular parties whose leadership remained exiled and barred from political participation, Mr Musharraf kept up the momentum of building peaceful relations with India through dialogue, trade and cultural exchanges.
Even the Kashmir problem seemed solvable.
But Mr Musharraf failed to comprehend and control two contradictory forces in Pakistan, the militant Islamic extremism that is not only prevalent in the tribal belts of the Northwest but also in the main street as well as the barracks; and the so-called growing legal-eagle educated classes who benefited from the 6-7 per cent economic growth but who saw their last best hope for freedom and democracy in the judiciary not in his authoritarian rule.
On Pakistan’s Independence Day, Mr Musharraf, under the threat of impeachment, begged his political enemies for reconciliation. “If we want to put our economy on the right track and fight terrorism then we need political stability. Unless we bring political stability, I think we can’t fight them properly… Political stability, in my view, can only be brought through a reconciliation approach as opposed to confrontation,” Musharraf said.
During most of the nine years since he seized power, Mr Musharraf exercised absolute power; nevertheless, Pakistan saw little peace and stability. Now with the return of chaotic democracy, Pakistan is still “the most dangerous country in the world,” which the United States cannot ignore. Nor can India.
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
From The Statesman
ND Batra
Pakistan and its humongous problems won’t go away. In fact they are spilling into neighbouring countries and beyond.
In its six decades of bloody history, one of the country’s prime ministers Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was hanged like a thug and two others, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, were unceremoniously booted out from power and forced into exile. When under the pressure of “friendly persuasion” by outside powers, the two political rivals, with no love lost between them, were allowed to return to Pakistan, Mrs Bhutto, a darling of the West, was killed in an election melee and the other returnee, Mr Sharif, has been plotting revenge against the (ex)General who humiliated him in a 1999 putsch.
ince the 1980s when General Zia-ul-Haq seized power, Pakistan has been gradually turned into a nation with a fundamentalist mindset. In varying degrees, every institution, including the Pakistan armed forces and the ISI, has been infused with the fundamentalist virus that spread from Saudi-financed Wahabbi schools. Islamic fundamentalists and the US-financed Afghanistan armed resistance ultimately drove the Soviets out and also factored into the final collapse of the Soviet Union.
When the United States withdrew its presence from Afghanistan leaving well-armed guerrillas behind, the ISI in collusion with Al-Qaida and its financial resources raised the Taliban that overran the country, imposing brutal order on the war-ravaged nation. By any historical standard the ISI-Taliban control of Afghanistan was a remarkable achievement of the Pakistan armed forces. No less significant has been the development of nuclear weapons, which made Pakistan a nation that could not be ignored in the light of proliferation threats and Islamic militancy.
On Christmas Day in 2003 when suicide bombers hit Mr Musharraf’s motorcade ~ certainly not the last attempt to kill him~ many analysts wondered what good was the mighty General to the United States in its global mission of fighting terrorism if he could not protect himself. Against all odds, Mr Musharraf put up a face of being a steadfast ally of the United States in its fight against Al- Qaida terrorism. He cautiously responded to peace overtures from India. But many in the West began to be impatient with him. Some wondered whether Mr Musharraf was fully committed to fighting Al-Qaida; or had another agenda.
But the United States saw no alternative to the man who seemed to control both the military and civilian life.
In the beginning, Mr Musharraf had an aura of “exceptionalism” about him, as if he were a man of destiny. He led a bloodless coup in 1999, promising to end political corruption and take Pakistan into a new direction. He conjured the vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as to how he had liberated Turkey from Islamic orthodoxy and made it a modern country. But Mr Mushrraf’s dream died too soon.
When the events of 9/11 forced him to reluctantly break away from the Taliban (whose control over Afghanistan had created an illusion of strategic depth for Pakistan) and join the US war against Al-Qaida, Mr Musharraf invoked the Prophet Muhammad’s political alliances and strategies (even with the enemies) and the Prophet’s final triumph.
Unfortunately, Mr Musharraf’s opportunistic alliance with Islamic parties to build a political base to keep his secular rivals, Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and Mr Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N), out of power backfired; he unwittingly allowed extremism to grow. In 2002, Mr Musharraf assumed wide-ranging powers, including the power to amend the Constitution and dismiss Parliament. Under the new deal, which Parliament approved with the help of the ruling coalition and the Islamic alliance, the Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), Mr Musharraf’s seizure of power, including all orders and ordinances, could not be questioned “in any court or forum on any ground whatsoever.” Not even the US President has so much immunity for his actions.
The General who would become a civilian one day would continue to have the power to dissolve Parliament ~ though with the subsequent approval of the Supreme Court ~ until his term ended in 2007. The Supreme Court seemed the last best hope for democratic aspirations in Pakistan but he fired the Chief Justice and several judges who might have gone against him and overturned his election as President in 2007 for another five years. Out of fear, like Richard Nixon, he over-reached himself. The lame duck National Assembly passed the constitutional amendment in three days and the Senate rubber-stamped it. Transition to democracy seemed safe for Mr Musharraf’s continuation as a powerful head of the state. But the February parliamentary elections brought his political enemies, the slain Bhutto’s PPP and Mr Sharif’s PML-N, into power.
Initially, Mr Musharraf’s goal might have been to pursue his grand vision of making Pakistan a modern progressive Muslim nation. Apart from developing working relations with the secular parties whose leadership remained exiled and barred from political participation, Mr Musharraf kept up the momentum of building peaceful relations with India through dialogue, trade and cultural exchanges.
Even the Kashmir problem seemed solvable.
But Mr Musharraf failed to comprehend and control two contradictory forces in Pakistan, the militant Islamic extremism that is not only prevalent in the tribal belts of the Northwest but also in the main street as well as the barracks; and the so-called growing legal-eagle educated classes who benefited from the 6-7 per cent economic growth but who saw their last best hope for freedom and democracy in the judiciary not in his authoritarian rule.
On Pakistan’s Independence Day, Mr Musharraf, under the threat of impeachment, begged his political enemies for reconciliation. “If we want to put our economy on the right track and fight terrorism then we need political stability. Unless we bring political stability, I think we can’t fight them properly… Political stability, in my view, can only be brought through a reconciliation approach as opposed to confrontation,” Musharraf said.
During most of the nine years since he seized power, Mr Musharraf exercised absolute power; nevertheless, Pakistan saw little peace and stability. Now with the return of chaotic democracy, Pakistan is still “the most dangerous country in the world,” which the United States cannot ignore. Nor can India.
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Iran Matters
Iran sends a long-range message
From The Statesman
ND Batra
It was a spectacular display of missile firepower exceeded only by the Revolutionary Guard air force commander General Hossein Salami’s rhetoric. According to the official IRNA news agency, he said Shahab-3 and other missile tests should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind about Iran’s “resolve and might against enemies who in recent weeks have threatened Iran with harsh language...We warn the enemies who intend to threaten us with military exercises and empty psychological operations that our hand will always be on the trigger and our missiles will always be ready to launch.”
With a range of 1,240 miles (almost 2,000 km), Shahab-3 with a nuclear payload could cause massive death and destruction if it were to hit Israel; and hence the motivation for Israel to wipe out the nuclear enrichment facility before Iran is fully capable of developing weapons. Early June, Israel conducted an extensive military exercise over the eastern Mediterranean to prepare for a mission to pre-empt the nuclear threat and to send a message to Iran.
Not to be left behind, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent her own prompt message from Georgia, where she had gone to lay the groundwork for establishing an anti-ballistic missile system, asserting, “We will defend American interests and the interests of our allies...No one should be confused about that.” Israel is not expected to launch an attack on Iran without US approval, but with prevailing uncertainties occasioned by the impending presidential election, events might get out of hand. Both Iranian and US-British warships are conducting naval exercises at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 40 per cent of the world’s oil passes. If Iran blocks this strategic waterway, global economic consequences will be much more devastating than those triggered by the 1956 Suez War.
The only economic consequence of the firing of nine missiles has been the cancellation of the planned development of Iranian South Pars gas field by Total, a French oil company whose CEO, Mr Christophe de Margerie, was quoted in the Financial Times as saying, “Today we would be taking too much (of a) political risk to invest in Iran because people will say: ‘Total will do anything for money’.” If France retreats, however, China will surely spring forward. With oil prices hitting $145 a barrel, petrodollars are flooding Iran, the fourth largest oil producer.
Both Republican and Democratic presumptive presidential nominees, Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama, iterated their positions on Iran. Mr Obama said the missile tests show “the threat from Iran’s nuclear programme is real and it is grave”, which necessitates “direct, aggressive and sustained diplomacy”, including economic sanctions. Mr McCain on the other hand says working with “our European and regional allies is the best way to meet the threat posed by Iran”. He also supports President Bush’s anti-missile defence system. Neither candidate has ruled out force as an option if diplomacy fails and Iran persists in developing nuclear weapons.
Perhaps the situation is not as frightening as it seems to be. Undersecretary of State William J Burns told Congress that “while deeply troubling, Iran’s real nuclear progress has been less than the sum of its boasts”. Tough sanctions and incentives including technical and economic help might work, it is believed, in persuading Iran to suspend its nuclear activities. Two days after the missile tests Iran agreed to resume talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Geneva on 19 July.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) based on the findings of the 16 agencies of the US intelligence community concluded “with high level of confidence” in its report released in 2007 that Iran was not engaged in the development of nuclear weapons. In fact, Iran halted the nuclear weapons programme in 2003, though it continued pursuing nuclear energy development for civilian energy purposes. But Iran has the necessary scientific, technological and industrial base and knowledge to make nuclear bombs. Suspending the programme does not mean that Iran has altogether given up its intention to build a nuclear arsenal in the pursuit of its strategic interests in the region.
The report said, “Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.” Of course, the national interest calculations include both short- and long-term cost-benefit analyses. And Iran, taking into account the ruthless determination the Bush administration displayed in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, might have thought it unwise to continue with its nuclear weapons programme.
The 2007 intelligence report, which contradicted the previous alarmist findings about Iran’s intentions, has reinforced the arguments of those Americans, Republicans and Democrats, who believe that concerted international diplomacy will work. The report recommended that “some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressure, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might ~ if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible ~ prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.”
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has continued to operate 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear energy purposes, which could give it enough fissile material to produce nuclear weapons in less than a decade if its intentions change and it can avoid international scrutiny and pressure. With the long-range Shahab series, Iran already has a well-developed ballistic missile development programme. With its immense oil and natural gas resources and nuclear capabilities, Iran is a significant power in the region and should be acknowledged as such. Nonetheless, neither Iran nor any other power should be allowed to choke the Gulf region through which millions of barrels of oil flow everyday, which the growing economies of India and China and rest of the world need.
(ND Batra is professor of communication at Norwich University)
From The Statesman
ND Batra
It was a spectacular display of missile firepower exceeded only by the Revolutionary Guard air force commander General Hossein Salami’s rhetoric. According to the official IRNA news agency, he said Shahab-3 and other missile tests should leave no doubt in anyone’s mind about Iran’s “resolve and might against enemies who in recent weeks have threatened Iran with harsh language...We warn the enemies who intend to threaten us with military exercises and empty psychological operations that our hand will always be on the trigger and our missiles will always be ready to launch.”
With a range of 1,240 miles (almost 2,000 km), Shahab-3 with a nuclear payload could cause massive death and destruction if it were to hit Israel; and hence the motivation for Israel to wipe out the nuclear enrichment facility before Iran is fully capable of developing weapons. Early June, Israel conducted an extensive military exercise over the eastern Mediterranean to prepare for a mission to pre-empt the nuclear threat and to send a message to Iran.
Not to be left behind, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sent her own prompt message from Georgia, where she had gone to lay the groundwork for establishing an anti-ballistic missile system, asserting, “We will defend American interests and the interests of our allies...No one should be confused about that.” Israel is not expected to launch an attack on Iran without US approval, but with prevailing uncertainties occasioned by the impending presidential election, events might get out of hand. Both Iranian and US-British warships are conducting naval exercises at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 40 per cent of the world’s oil passes. If Iran blocks this strategic waterway, global economic consequences will be much more devastating than those triggered by the 1956 Suez War.
The only economic consequence of the firing of nine missiles has been the cancellation of the planned development of Iranian South Pars gas field by Total, a French oil company whose CEO, Mr Christophe de Margerie, was quoted in the Financial Times as saying, “Today we would be taking too much (of a) political risk to invest in Iran because people will say: ‘Total will do anything for money’.” If France retreats, however, China will surely spring forward. With oil prices hitting $145 a barrel, petrodollars are flooding Iran, the fourth largest oil producer.
Both Republican and Democratic presumptive presidential nominees, Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama, iterated their positions on Iran. Mr Obama said the missile tests show “the threat from Iran’s nuclear programme is real and it is grave”, which necessitates “direct, aggressive and sustained diplomacy”, including economic sanctions. Mr McCain on the other hand says working with “our European and regional allies is the best way to meet the threat posed by Iran”. He also supports President Bush’s anti-missile defence system. Neither candidate has ruled out force as an option if diplomacy fails and Iran persists in developing nuclear weapons.
Perhaps the situation is not as frightening as it seems to be. Undersecretary of State William J Burns told Congress that “while deeply troubling, Iran’s real nuclear progress has been less than the sum of its boasts”. Tough sanctions and incentives including technical and economic help might work, it is believed, in persuading Iran to suspend its nuclear activities. Two days after the missile tests Iran agreed to resume talks with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana in Geneva on 19 July.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) based on the findings of the 16 agencies of the US intelligence community concluded “with high level of confidence” in its report released in 2007 that Iran was not engaged in the development of nuclear weapons. In fact, Iran halted the nuclear weapons programme in 2003, though it continued pursuing nuclear energy development for civilian energy purposes. But Iran has the necessary scientific, technological and industrial base and knowledge to make nuclear bombs. Suspending the programme does not mean that Iran has altogether given up its intention to build a nuclear arsenal in the pursuit of its strategic interests in the region.
The report said, “Our assessment that Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Tehran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.” Of course, the national interest calculations include both short- and long-term cost-benefit analyses. And Iran, taking into account the ruthless determination the Bush administration displayed in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, might have thought it unwise to continue with its nuclear weapons programme.
The 2007 intelligence report, which contradicted the previous alarmist findings about Iran’s intentions, has reinforced the arguments of those Americans, Republicans and Democrats, who believe that concerted international diplomacy will work. The report recommended that “some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressure, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might ~ if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible ~ prompt Tehran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons program.”
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran has continued to operate 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear energy purposes, which could give it enough fissile material to produce nuclear weapons in less than a decade if its intentions change and it can avoid international scrutiny and pressure. With the long-range Shahab series, Iran already has a well-developed ballistic missile development programme. With its immense oil and natural gas resources and nuclear capabilities, Iran is a significant power in the region and should be acknowledged as such. Nonetheless, neither Iran nor any other power should be allowed to choke the Gulf region through which millions of barrels of oil flow everyday, which the growing economies of India and China and rest of the world need.
(ND Batra is professor of communication at Norwich University)
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Nuclear Energy: Why should India be left behind?
India must broaden nuclear freedom
From The Statesman
ND Batra
Last week Russia and the US signed an unprecedented civilian nuclear power deal under which companies in both countries would have access to nuclear technology through joint ventures. The pact opens Russia’s massive uranium reserves to US companies and gives Russian firms access to the multi-billion dollar US nuclear energy industry.
The agreement happened in spite of US app-rehensions about Iran’s growing nuclear ambitions, about which Russia does not seem to be overly concerned. “The US and Russia were once nuclear rivals; we are today nuclear partners. What this agreement allows us to do is to implement some very creative ideas that both Russia and the US have put forward to deal with the growing challenge of proliferation of nuclear weapons,” says Mr William Burns, US ambassador to Russia. The head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, who signed the agreement, was equally rosy in his outlook. “The signing of this agreement opens a gigantic field of opportunities for economic cooperation in the large and growing businesses linked to the civilian use of nuclear energy,” he says.
The US has a similar deal with China. To meet its increasing energy needs, China plans to build 32 nuclear power plants by 2020 at a cost of about $50 billion, Ariana Eunjung Cha of the Washington Post wrote last year. It’s an undertaking that can be accomplished only by acc-essing nuclear technology and markets in the US, Europe, Japan and Russia. China has signed uranium deals with Australia and the Niger.
India too must complete the nuclear deal with the US agreed upon by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George Bush in 2005. It would give the growing economy reliable and uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel, in spite of the fact that India is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nuclear freedom comes from collaboration, not isolation. The completion of the civilian nuclear deal will open to India the world of sophisticated technology developed by the glo-bal nuclear powers ~ the US, Japan, Europe and Russia, with whom India has growing commercial relations. Access to high-end technology is imperative to keep India globally competitive.
Indian diplomacy has succeeded in muting and overcoming strong anti-India prejudice and opposition in the US. By making India an exception to the rule it has created opportunities for the country. The agreement will let India grow and play its rightful role in global affairs ~ it is not about containing anyone, it is about having faith in India to develop rapidly without compromising fundamental freedoms.
Rapid economic growth of the Indian economy, 9-10 per cent a year for the next few decades, primarily through the efforts of its rising entrepreneurial class, will lift millions of Indians out of poverty. Without plentiful and reliable energy sources, however, poverty cannot be eliminated. Besides, an economically dynamic India on a perpetual growth curve will make Asia more economically dynamic.
Apart from removing hurdles in India’s search for an alternative energy source to fuel its growing economy, the deal will give India a strategic platform in the knowledge industry and en-courage research and development in clean-energy technology.
Becoming a great knowledge power is everyone’s dream in India. India must go beyond information technology outsourcing and capture other chances, as it has begun to do. After successful negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, India will be able to buy nuclear fuel for its nuclear power plants and shop for building scores of new ones.In the course of time when trust in the partnership increases and diplomatic relations deepen, a whole new world of sophisticated global technology will be opened to India, en-abling it to spur its economic growth further. In return, India has agreed to do what other nu-clear powers have been doing under the Non-proliferation Treaty ~ open some of its civilian nuclear power plants to inspection and continue to observe abstinence on nuclear testing. Its nuclear deterrent will remain off limits. India’s sovereignty can’t be compromised, if the country is economically and politically strong.
The Indian opposition to the nuclear deal, especially the Left, fears the deal will create subservient relations with the US. But it is im-portant to consider how China has benefited from strong economic relations with the US, without in any way compromising its sovereignty. Of course there is no such thing as ab-solute sovereignty in an interdependent world. China had greater sovereignty in the days of Mao Zedong when it fought the US in Korea than today when it has more than a trillion dollar in foreign exchange reserves. A country’s currency is a symbol of its sovereignty but China has tied up its currency to the dollar. Chi-na has no place to park its massive foreign exchange reserves except in US and European treasuries. Sovereignty is not isolation.Iran-Pakistan-India and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India oil pipelines will not be able to meet India’s gargantuan needs for energy. Clean-coal technology, nuclear energy and solar power are alternatives, for which the US has opened its doors to India. France, for example, gets 80 per cent of its energy from nuclear plants and is ready to collaborate with India in nuclear power development. Nuclear energy will cut excessive dependence on oil from West Asia, a most unstable region.
India needs hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investment in building power plants and infrastructure to increase its manufacturing base and create employment opportunities for its growing young population.
Today the Left might have a stranglehold on Indian politics, but it certainly cannot be the end of the civilian nuclear deal. The next government will have to pick up the threads and consummate the deal. Why should India be left behind?
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
From The Statesman
ND Batra
Last week Russia and the US signed an unprecedented civilian nuclear power deal under which companies in both countries would have access to nuclear technology through joint ventures. The pact opens Russia’s massive uranium reserves to US companies and gives Russian firms access to the multi-billion dollar US nuclear energy industry.
The agreement happened in spite of US app-rehensions about Iran’s growing nuclear ambitions, about which Russia does not seem to be overly concerned. “The US and Russia were once nuclear rivals; we are today nuclear partners. What this agreement allows us to do is to implement some very creative ideas that both Russia and the US have put forward to deal with the growing challenge of proliferation of nuclear weapons,” says Mr William Burns, US ambassador to Russia. The head of Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Mr Sergei Kiriyenko, who signed the agreement, was equally rosy in his outlook. “The signing of this agreement opens a gigantic field of opportunities for economic cooperation in the large and growing businesses linked to the civilian use of nuclear energy,” he says.
The US has a similar deal with China. To meet its increasing energy needs, China plans to build 32 nuclear power plants by 2020 at a cost of about $50 billion, Ariana Eunjung Cha of the Washington Post wrote last year. It’s an undertaking that can be accomplished only by acc-essing nuclear technology and markets in the US, Europe, Japan and Russia. China has signed uranium deals with Australia and the Niger.
India too must complete the nuclear deal with the US agreed upon by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George Bush in 2005. It would give the growing economy reliable and uninterrupted supply of nuclear fuel, in spite of the fact that India is not a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Nuclear freedom comes from collaboration, not isolation. The completion of the civilian nuclear deal will open to India the world of sophisticated technology developed by the glo-bal nuclear powers ~ the US, Japan, Europe and Russia, with whom India has growing commercial relations. Access to high-end technology is imperative to keep India globally competitive.
Indian diplomacy has succeeded in muting and overcoming strong anti-India prejudice and opposition in the US. By making India an exception to the rule it has created opportunities for the country. The agreement will let India grow and play its rightful role in global affairs ~ it is not about containing anyone, it is about having faith in India to develop rapidly without compromising fundamental freedoms.
Rapid economic growth of the Indian economy, 9-10 per cent a year for the next few decades, primarily through the efforts of its rising entrepreneurial class, will lift millions of Indians out of poverty. Without plentiful and reliable energy sources, however, poverty cannot be eliminated. Besides, an economically dynamic India on a perpetual growth curve will make Asia more economically dynamic.
Apart from removing hurdles in India’s search for an alternative energy source to fuel its growing economy, the deal will give India a strategic platform in the knowledge industry and en-courage research and development in clean-energy technology.
Becoming a great knowledge power is everyone’s dream in India. India must go beyond information technology outsourcing and capture other chances, as it has begun to do. After successful negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group, India will be able to buy nuclear fuel for its nuclear power plants and shop for building scores of new ones.In the course of time when trust in the partnership increases and diplomatic relations deepen, a whole new world of sophisticated global technology will be opened to India, en-abling it to spur its economic growth further. In return, India has agreed to do what other nu-clear powers have been doing under the Non-proliferation Treaty ~ open some of its civilian nuclear power plants to inspection and continue to observe abstinence on nuclear testing. Its nuclear deterrent will remain off limits. India’s sovereignty can’t be compromised, if the country is economically and politically strong.
The Indian opposition to the nuclear deal, especially the Left, fears the deal will create subservient relations with the US. But it is im-portant to consider how China has benefited from strong economic relations with the US, without in any way compromising its sovereignty. Of course there is no such thing as ab-solute sovereignty in an interdependent world. China had greater sovereignty in the days of Mao Zedong when it fought the US in Korea than today when it has more than a trillion dollar in foreign exchange reserves. A country’s currency is a symbol of its sovereignty but China has tied up its currency to the dollar. Chi-na has no place to park its massive foreign exchange reserves except in US and European treasuries. Sovereignty is not isolation.Iran-Pakistan-India and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India oil pipelines will not be able to meet India’s gargantuan needs for energy. Clean-coal technology, nuclear energy and solar power are alternatives, for which the US has opened its doors to India. France, for example, gets 80 per cent of its energy from nuclear plants and is ready to collaborate with India in nuclear power development. Nuclear energy will cut excessive dependence on oil from West Asia, a most unstable region.
India needs hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign investment in building power plants and infrastructure to increase its manufacturing base and create employment opportunities for its growing young population.
Today the Left might have a stranglehold on Indian politics, but it certainly cannot be the end of the civilian nuclear deal. The next government will have to pick up the threads and consummate the deal. Why should India be left behind?
(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University)
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Brand India
Becoming a global brand and keeping it
From The Statesman
ND Batra
It is doubtful if Ford Motor Company would have sold a high-profile brand portfolio like Jaguar and Land Rover to a Chinese auto company. Tata is embedded in a multicultural open society where workers’ rights cannot be easily trifled with. Besides, Tata knows how to communicate in a global environment.
Tata is good because India is good.
Mittal Steel adopted a global corporate diplomacy to persuade Europeans that the Mittals were no carpetbaggers; they’re coming as partners. Mittal Steel’s takeover of Arcelor might have made Tata acquisitions of global brands comparatively smooth.
As corporate India expands globally, it must communicate well. Excellent communication is the key to effective corporate public affairs and global diplomacy. Without a comprehensive communications strategy that embraces all important stakeholders, who interact with the company and form its business environment, global corporate diplomacy cannot be effective. In this age of global transparency enforced by the “always on news cycle”, the Internet, the YouTube, and reporting standards established by global watchdogs like Global Reporting Initiative, multinationals can neither run nor hide.
Companies just cannot afford not to communicate about an issue that concerns stakeholders in their business environment. And since they have to communicate, they must do it efficiently. Corporate communication is essentially persuasion, even when a company is just trying to inform stakeholders.
Power to persuade is the soft power that transnational companies apply to win the hearts and minds of not only consumers but public at large. But to do so in a multichannel-Webbed environment over which they don’t have much control, companies need to be diplomatically smart, especially when a company has to operate in a foreign environment.
There are many reasons for doing so. For example, companies have become de-localised (Tata, Mittal Steel, IBM, Wipro, for example). They are no longer woven into the fabric of local communities only as they used to be in the pre-Internet age. Company employees do their work in a virtual environment and their mobility makes them less concerned with what is happening in their neighbourhood. In an environment like this it would take extraordinary efforts for global companies to communicate and present their position in a persuasive manner.
That’s why Sovereign Wealth Funds are so threatening. They are faceless behemoths and who knows they may have hidden political agendas. Perception is reality and many people perceive global companies as more powerful than the government, which draws enhanced critical scrutiny from the media and NGOs. The image of power, which global companies project, raises expectations as well as fear in the minds of the people. Growing expectations of corporate responsibility create unusual challenges for corporate communications and diplomacy. Because of corporate mismanagement and scandals in the United States (the subprime crisis that has rocked global finance) and Europe (Siemens corruption is the latest), public watch groups expect greater openness and transparency from companies.
A corporation in India may get away with any kind of behaviour, but that may not be acceptable in the United States or Europe. Since expectation of corporate behaviour differs from country to country, corporate communications strategies must take such variables into account. It is necessary to point out that effective communication takes place in a cultural context.
Understanding the host country’s political culture is very important for corporate communication and diplomacy to be effective, a lesson corporate India must learn quickly. Political culture includes the legal system, and the rules and regulations, which must not be violated in the host country. Good corporate behaviour may not be rewarded; bad behaviour is not only punished but also sullies the reputation of the company.
Since each country has its own enduring cultural symbols and icons, doing effective global corporate communication is quite a challenge. What is culturally and politically correct in one country may not be so in another country. Not understanding national cultural differences can create a nightmare for companies doing business abroad. Moreover, global corporate communication in order to be effective must be aimed at specific groups or audiences especially relevant to the company. They are: customers, financial analysts, government authorities, and non-business stakeholders such as NGOs.
Customers are the most important constituency for a company. They are the reason for doing the business and a very important source of a company’s strength. In a competitive environment, where one product may not be qualitatively much different from the other, keeping the customer coming back to the company requires communication at multiple levels ~ product, price, image, trust and most of all reputation the company.
Trust and reputation are the basis of communication with customers. Communicating effectively with market analysts and financial journalists is very important because it is through them that a company manages its image of financial strength and growth.
Raising false expectations for short-term benefits can destroy a company’s reputation. And sometime when analysts and financial journalists instead of being impartial and objective reporters and critics become part of the vicious conveyer belt, they destroy public trust and provoke harsher regulations. Corporate behaviour is regulated by rules and regulations, which are framed in the public interest and in consultation with the industry. But once the rules are in place, not only authorities but also public interest groups, many of which have established global network to monitor compliance, closely watch companies’ errant behaviour.
Recent Microsoft ordeal in Europe for anti-trust violation is a case in point. The US transparency law (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) was enacted in the aftermath of Enron’s collapse and other scandals.
There are thousands of global NGOs who have made it their business to scrutinise the behaviour of local, regional and multinational companies to protect the public and environment from exploitation. With clear and well-defined demands, global NGOs with huge and broad-based financial and legal support system can swing into campaign mode against a corporation and even a country very quickly and very efficiently.
Think how NGOs are pressuring governments and global corporations to boycott the Beijing Summer Olympics unless China lifts its stranglehold on Tibet. China has yet to understand the power of the shopping cart, especially in Europe which values quality as well as human rights.
(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University)
From The Statesman
ND Batra
It is doubtful if Ford Motor Company would have sold a high-profile brand portfolio like Jaguar and Land Rover to a Chinese auto company. Tata is embedded in a multicultural open society where workers’ rights cannot be easily trifled with. Besides, Tata knows how to communicate in a global environment.
Tata is good because India is good.
Mittal Steel adopted a global corporate diplomacy to persuade Europeans that the Mittals were no carpetbaggers; they’re coming as partners. Mittal Steel’s takeover of Arcelor might have made Tata acquisitions of global brands comparatively smooth.
As corporate India expands globally, it must communicate well. Excellent communication is the key to effective corporate public affairs and global diplomacy. Without a comprehensive communications strategy that embraces all important stakeholders, who interact with the company and form its business environment, global corporate diplomacy cannot be effective. In this age of global transparency enforced by the “always on news cycle”, the Internet, the YouTube, and reporting standards established by global watchdogs like Global Reporting Initiative, multinationals can neither run nor hide.
Companies just cannot afford not to communicate about an issue that concerns stakeholders in their business environment. And since they have to communicate, they must do it efficiently. Corporate communication is essentially persuasion, even when a company is just trying to inform stakeholders.
Power to persuade is the soft power that transnational companies apply to win the hearts and minds of not only consumers but public at large. But to do so in a multichannel-Webbed environment over which they don’t have much control, companies need to be diplomatically smart, especially when a company has to operate in a foreign environment.
There are many reasons for doing so. For example, companies have become de-localised (Tata, Mittal Steel, IBM, Wipro, for example). They are no longer woven into the fabric of local communities only as they used to be in the pre-Internet age. Company employees do their work in a virtual environment and their mobility makes them less concerned with what is happening in their neighbourhood. In an environment like this it would take extraordinary efforts for global companies to communicate and present their position in a persuasive manner.
That’s why Sovereign Wealth Funds are so threatening. They are faceless behemoths and who knows they may have hidden political agendas. Perception is reality and many people perceive global companies as more powerful than the government, which draws enhanced critical scrutiny from the media and NGOs. The image of power, which global companies project, raises expectations as well as fear in the minds of the people. Growing expectations of corporate responsibility create unusual challenges for corporate communications and diplomacy. Because of corporate mismanagement and scandals in the United States (the subprime crisis that has rocked global finance) and Europe (Siemens corruption is the latest), public watch groups expect greater openness and transparency from companies.
A corporation in India may get away with any kind of behaviour, but that may not be acceptable in the United States or Europe. Since expectation of corporate behaviour differs from country to country, corporate communications strategies must take such variables into account. It is necessary to point out that effective communication takes place in a cultural context.
Understanding the host country’s political culture is very important for corporate communication and diplomacy to be effective, a lesson corporate India must learn quickly. Political culture includes the legal system, and the rules and regulations, which must not be violated in the host country. Good corporate behaviour may not be rewarded; bad behaviour is not only punished but also sullies the reputation of the company.
Since each country has its own enduring cultural symbols and icons, doing effective global corporate communication is quite a challenge. What is culturally and politically correct in one country may not be so in another country. Not understanding national cultural differences can create a nightmare for companies doing business abroad. Moreover, global corporate communication in order to be effective must be aimed at specific groups or audiences especially relevant to the company. They are: customers, financial analysts, government authorities, and non-business stakeholders such as NGOs.
Customers are the most important constituency for a company. They are the reason for doing the business and a very important source of a company’s strength. In a competitive environment, where one product may not be qualitatively much different from the other, keeping the customer coming back to the company requires communication at multiple levels ~ product, price, image, trust and most of all reputation the company.
Trust and reputation are the basis of communication with customers. Communicating effectively with market analysts and financial journalists is very important because it is through them that a company manages its image of financial strength and growth.
Raising false expectations for short-term benefits can destroy a company’s reputation. And sometime when analysts and financial journalists instead of being impartial and objective reporters and critics become part of the vicious conveyer belt, they destroy public trust and provoke harsher regulations. Corporate behaviour is regulated by rules and regulations, which are framed in the public interest and in consultation with the industry. But once the rules are in place, not only authorities but also public interest groups, many of which have established global network to monitor compliance, closely watch companies’ errant behaviour.
Recent Microsoft ordeal in Europe for anti-trust violation is a case in point. The US transparency law (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) was enacted in the aftermath of Enron’s collapse and other scandals.
There are thousands of global NGOs who have made it their business to scrutinise the behaviour of local, regional and multinational companies to protect the public and environment from exploitation. With clear and well-defined demands, global NGOs with huge and broad-based financial and legal support system can swing into campaign mode against a corporation and even a country very quickly and very efficiently.
Think how NGOs are pressuring governments and global corporations to boycott the Beijing Summer Olympics unless China lifts its stranglehold on Tibet. China has yet to understand the power of the shopping cart, especially in Europe which values quality as well as human rights.
(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University)
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Pakistan and America
Pakistan transformed, really?
From The Statesman
ND Batra
Looking at the election results of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province that hugs Waziristan and Afghanistan, a region notorious for the Taliban and Al-Qaida sanctuary and terrorists’ breeding ground, one might wonder if the earlier intelligence that the whole region has been permanently radicalised and is in the grip of Islamic diehards was nothing but a morbid exaggeration. Religious fanatics do not give up their extremist belief simply because of violence and economic hardship and seek change through the ballot box as the NWFP people have done along with the rest of Pakistan. Wherever there is a free election, people vote in their self-interest. Jihadis have more to fear the ballot box than missile attacks from the United States.
Only five years ago, the frontier people, a majority of them hardy Pathans-Pashtuns who straddle the Khyber Pass and have a shared ethnicity with most Afghans, voted into power an alliance of religious parties, MMQ, letting it form a government dominated by pro-Taliban clerics. With their significance presence in the national parliament, many analysts feared that the MMQ’s influence would spread to the rest of Pakistan. It seemed extremely worrisome that the Taliban and Al-Qaida had finally established a permanent base, a fortress of power from where they would rule the whole region and which would become the source of an endless global supply chain of terrorists.
Although Punjab dominates Pakistan in many ways, the self-governing autonomous region had increasingly become a vortex of chaotic power, a blend of extremism and tribalism, beyond the control of the central government.
The greatest worry has been that the extremist virus might infect the younger madrasa-going generation, about which one might say that the jury is still out. Perhaps because of the Musharraf government’s restrictions on political activities by two major political parties, Sharif’s Muslim League (ML-N) and Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, Pakistanis had limited political choices, which they exercised by voting for Islamic parties or Musharraf’s own political faction of the Muslim League (ML-Q).
It is argued that Musharraf’s thinking that the military must supple the country’s capable political leaders that could guide and control political processes, did not work out and might have encouraged the spread of extremism by weakening the moderating forces of the two major political parties.
Partly because of the Pakistan military’s ambivalent attitude towards the Taliban, and some delusional miscalculation that it could still be used to influence events in Afghanistan, large areas of the border region, especially in Waziristan, turned into a suicidal war zone, which has made the life of the people a living hell and tied down thousands of troops in a bloody and humiliating hit and run enterprise.
Last week’s ballot showed that voters were not enamoured of Islamic extremists’ ideology and preferred to choose secular parties, including the Awami National Party and Bhutto’s PPP, who are likely to form a provincial government. The challenge before the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, leader of Muslim League (N), and Asif Ali Zardari, PPP’s new leader, as they push and shove to form a coalition government, is twofold. First and foremost, how to cooperate wholeheartedly with the United States and NATO in the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaida, who are using the tribal region as their hideout and training camps for keeping Afghanistan in a state of perpetual turmoil and have been extending their tentacles into the rest of Pakistan. During the US presidential primaries, the three leading candidates, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barak Obama of the Democratic Party and Senator John McCain of the Republican Party have expressed their differences about the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but they have been firm in dealing with the Taliban and Al-Qaida in Pakistan. Sen. Obama even suggested bombing the tribal areas of Pakistan if it did not fully cooperate with the United States.
Benazir Bhutto was reported to have no objection if the US troops operated from Pakistan’s territory in hunting down the Taliban and Al-Qaida. The new leadership of Pakistan cannot afford to belittle the US interests in the region, including Afghanistan and Central Asia. The second major issue of course is the fate and the political role of President Musharraf, whose political party, Muslim League (Q), got a terrible beating at the poll, including the defeat of its 23 cabinet ministers. Benazir had agreed to a power-sharing arrangement with him, which allowed her to return to Pakistan, unfortunately, as it turned out, to meet her tragic end. Mr Sharif, who returned from his Saudi exile but was barred from fighting elections, is at present dead set against any accommodation with Mr Musharraf and wants him to be impeached. Bringing back the old judiciary hastily might aggravate the situation and trip the apple-cart.
If the coalition has a two-third majority in parliament, Mr Musharraf could be impeached but whether it will be politically wise to do so is a different matter. The greatest need of Pakistan today is to form a secular, progressive government with a strong economic agenda that can sustain the remarkable economic growth of more than six per cent achieved during the last several years of the Musharraf administration; and resume the dialogue with India to bring peace and stability to the entire subcontinent.
The continuation of Mr Musharraf as President albeit with diminished political role will allow the diplomatic, economic and political processes to continue, apart from assuring the United States that war against terrorism will not be adversely affected. There is no indication that the Bush administration has lost its confidence in Mr Musharraf (and the Pakistan military), and whoever occupies the White House next January will build upon the gains of the Bush administration and increase the US influence with the civilian government as well as the military establishment, where Mr Musharraf continues to have a loyal and powerful network.
(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University and is working on a new book, This is the American Way)
From The Statesman
ND Batra
Looking at the election results of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province that hugs Waziristan and Afghanistan, a region notorious for the Taliban and Al-Qaida sanctuary and terrorists’ breeding ground, one might wonder if the earlier intelligence that the whole region has been permanently radicalised and is in the grip of Islamic diehards was nothing but a morbid exaggeration. Religious fanatics do not give up their extremist belief simply because of violence and economic hardship and seek change through the ballot box as the NWFP people have done along with the rest of Pakistan. Wherever there is a free election, people vote in their self-interest. Jihadis have more to fear the ballot box than missile attacks from the United States.
Only five years ago, the frontier people, a majority of them hardy Pathans-Pashtuns who straddle the Khyber Pass and have a shared ethnicity with most Afghans, voted into power an alliance of religious parties, MMQ, letting it form a government dominated by pro-Taliban clerics. With their significance presence in the national parliament, many analysts feared that the MMQ’s influence would spread to the rest of Pakistan. It seemed extremely worrisome that the Taliban and Al-Qaida had finally established a permanent base, a fortress of power from where they would rule the whole region and which would become the source of an endless global supply chain of terrorists.
Although Punjab dominates Pakistan in many ways, the self-governing autonomous region had increasingly become a vortex of chaotic power, a blend of extremism and tribalism, beyond the control of the central government.
The greatest worry has been that the extremist virus might infect the younger madrasa-going generation, about which one might say that the jury is still out. Perhaps because of the Musharraf government’s restrictions on political activities by two major political parties, Sharif’s Muslim League (ML-N) and Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, Pakistanis had limited political choices, which they exercised by voting for Islamic parties or Musharraf’s own political faction of the Muslim League (ML-Q).
It is argued that Musharraf’s thinking that the military must supple the country’s capable political leaders that could guide and control political processes, did not work out and might have encouraged the spread of extremism by weakening the moderating forces of the two major political parties.
Partly because of the Pakistan military’s ambivalent attitude towards the Taliban, and some delusional miscalculation that it could still be used to influence events in Afghanistan, large areas of the border region, especially in Waziristan, turned into a suicidal war zone, which has made the life of the people a living hell and tied down thousands of troops in a bloody and humiliating hit and run enterprise.
Last week’s ballot showed that voters were not enamoured of Islamic extremists’ ideology and preferred to choose secular parties, including the Awami National Party and Bhutto’s PPP, who are likely to form a provincial government. The challenge before the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, leader of Muslim League (N), and Asif Ali Zardari, PPP’s new leader, as they push and shove to form a coalition government, is twofold. First and foremost, how to cooperate wholeheartedly with the United States and NATO in the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaida, who are using the tribal region as their hideout and training camps for keeping Afghanistan in a state of perpetual turmoil and have been extending their tentacles into the rest of Pakistan. During the US presidential primaries, the three leading candidates, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barak Obama of the Democratic Party and Senator John McCain of the Republican Party have expressed their differences about the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but they have been firm in dealing with the Taliban and Al-Qaida in Pakistan. Sen. Obama even suggested bombing the tribal areas of Pakistan if it did not fully cooperate with the United States.
Benazir Bhutto was reported to have no objection if the US troops operated from Pakistan’s territory in hunting down the Taliban and Al-Qaida. The new leadership of Pakistan cannot afford to belittle the US interests in the region, including Afghanistan and Central Asia. The second major issue of course is the fate and the political role of President Musharraf, whose political party, Muslim League (Q), got a terrible beating at the poll, including the defeat of its 23 cabinet ministers. Benazir had agreed to a power-sharing arrangement with him, which allowed her to return to Pakistan, unfortunately, as it turned out, to meet her tragic end. Mr Sharif, who returned from his Saudi exile but was barred from fighting elections, is at present dead set against any accommodation with Mr Musharraf and wants him to be impeached. Bringing back the old judiciary hastily might aggravate the situation and trip the apple-cart.
If the coalition has a two-third majority in parliament, Mr Musharraf could be impeached but whether it will be politically wise to do so is a different matter. The greatest need of Pakistan today is to form a secular, progressive government with a strong economic agenda that can sustain the remarkable economic growth of more than six per cent achieved during the last several years of the Musharraf administration; and resume the dialogue with India to bring peace and stability to the entire subcontinent.
The continuation of Mr Musharraf as President albeit with diminished political role will allow the diplomatic, economic and political processes to continue, apart from assuring the United States that war against terrorism will not be adversely affected. There is no indication that the Bush administration has lost its confidence in Mr Musharraf (and the Pakistan military), and whoever occupies the White House next January will build upon the gains of the Bush administration and increase the US influence with the civilian government as well as the military establishment, where Mr Musharraf continues to have a loyal and powerful network.
(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University and is working on a new book, This is the American Way)
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Bhutto's assassination and the US
Pakistan factors in US presidential race
From The Statesman
ND Batra
Benazir Bhutto’s assassination has hit the US presidential neck-to-neck race like a thunderbolt. Foreign policy credentials and experience have become suddenly very important as the Iowa caucuses begin on Thursday (3 January) and then a few days later the candidates head to the New Hampshire primaries.
In dealing with domestic and international issues, the candidates of both parties have been harping on change versus experience ~ political catchphrases that have assumed a new significance in the light of the fact that nuclear-armed Pakistan, now in the grip of Al-Qaida and Taliban militancy, might explode into an Iraq like insurgency. Strength and experience gained as the First Lady when she played an active role in Bill Clinton’s administration has been Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s strongest claim to the White House against her chief Democratic rival Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, whose fresh youthful face, poetic eloquence and rhetoric of change have lifted him up in public opinion polls as someone who could shake up things in Washington.
Suddenly Benazir Bhutto, after her assassination, has become the symbol of a future ~ a democratic Muslim country ~ that did not happen, and dealing with Pakistan has become the biggest challenge. During her campaign in Iowa, Senator Clinton said: “This is a terrible loss ~ certainly on a personal level ~ for those of us who knew her. It certainly raises the stakes high for what we expect from our next President. I know from a lifetime of working to make change.” And she added that President Pervez Musharraf has no credibility and an international independent inquiry be held to investigate the assassination of Benazir. The sentiment was echoed by many other Democrats scurrying for a position in the tight primary races. The unkindest cut against Senator Clinton came from Senator Obama’s camp.
Senator Obama’s campaign strategist David Axelrod said that because of Senator Clinton’s support of President Bush’s Iraq war, Al-Qaida has gotten emboldened and is hitting back in Pakistan with vengeance and destabilising the country. “She was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, which we would submit, was one of the reasons why we were diverted from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Al-Qaida, who may have been players in this event today, so that’s a judgment she’ll have to defend.” She was not the only Democrat Senator who supported the war based on information about weapons of mass destruction available at that time. But this is an election time and candidates are at each others’ throats with half-truths, distortion and attack ads.
Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain of Arizona has always been strong on the issue of national security and a steadfast supporter of President Bush’s Iraq war. He is one of the few American politicians who has unreservedly defended President Musharraf after the unexpected killing of Benazir.
Before Musharraf took over the reins of power, Senator McCain said: “Pakistan was a failed state. They had corrupt governments and they would rotate back and forth and there was corruption, and Musharraf basically restored order. So you’re going to hear a lot of criticism about Musharraf that he hasn’t done everything we wanted him to do, but he did agree to step down as head of the military and he did get the elections.”
The Senator’s top priority is to see a thorough failsafe security of the nuclear arsenal; and then of course to urge President Musharraf to hold the planned elections at the earliest convenience.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, another leading candidate among the Republicans, is running on the strength of his 11 September, 2001 credentials of braving the chaos and fighting terrorism. It was under his leadership that New York after the terrorists’ attacks began to recover and rebuild itself with alacrity and today it is one of the safest cities to live in the United States. Benazir’s assassination re-enforces his view that the world is a dangerous place and the United States needs a determined leader like him to fight terrorism. Arkansas former Governor Mike Huckabee, another Republican front-runner and a Christian conservative, gives the impression of having very little knowledge of what is happening in the world. In the wake of the assassination, he said that illegal Pakistani immigrants were pouring in from the Mexican border, an irresponsible remark from a presidential hopeful when most Americans are wondering how to prevent Pakistan from descending into a living hell.
While Republican and Democratic candidates are scrambling to strike postures of strength in dealing with the growing Al-Qaida and Taliban might in Pakistan, the Bush administration finds itself to be at its wits’ end as to how to help President Musharraf to quell street violence and re-establish a sense of security in the country. Holding fair and free elections, many in the administration still believe, would have created the possibility of forming a broad-based army-civilian participatory government, which would have been in a better position to fight the growing menace of Al-Qaida and the Taliban. That hope died with Benazir’s assassination; but the question is if the plan can be resurrected from the wreckage.
The United States, in its own self-interest, cannot stand aside helplessly and let the country slide into chaos and anarchy and let Al-Qaida and the Taliban take control of Pakistan and eventually Afghanistan. Nor can India afford to keep aloof by simply sealing its borders. The enemies of Pakistan are India’s enemies too.
(ND Batra is professor of communications and diplomacy at Norwich University, Vermont. He is the author of Digital Freedom.)
From The Statesman
ND Batra
Benazir Bhutto’s assassination has hit the US presidential neck-to-neck race like a thunderbolt. Foreign policy credentials and experience have become suddenly very important as the Iowa caucuses begin on Thursday (3 January) and then a few days later the candidates head to the New Hampshire primaries.
In dealing with domestic and international issues, the candidates of both parties have been harping on change versus experience ~ political catchphrases that have assumed a new significance in the light of the fact that nuclear-armed Pakistan, now in the grip of Al-Qaida and Taliban militancy, might explode into an Iraq like insurgency. Strength and experience gained as the First Lady when she played an active role in Bill Clinton’s administration has been Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s strongest claim to the White House against her chief Democratic rival Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, whose fresh youthful face, poetic eloquence and rhetoric of change have lifted him up in public opinion polls as someone who could shake up things in Washington.
Suddenly Benazir Bhutto, after her assassination, has become the symbol of a future ~ a democratic Muslim country ~ that did not happen, and dealing with Pakistan has become the biggest challenge. During her campaign in Iowa, Senator Clinton said: “This is a terrible loss ~ certainly on a personal level ~ for those of us who knew her. It certainly raises the stakes high for what we expect from our next President. I know from a lifetime of working to make change.” And she added that President Pervez Musharraf has no credibility and an international independent inquiry be held to investigate the assassination of Benazir. The sentiment was echoed by many other Democrats scurrying for a position in the tight primary races. The unkindest cut against Senator Clinton came from Senator Obama’s camp.
Senator Obama’s campaign strategist David Axelrod said that because of Senator Clinton’s support of President Bush’s Iraq war, Al-Qaida has gotten emboldened and is hitting back in Pakistan with vengeance and destabilising the country. “She was a strong supporter of the war in Iraq, which we would submit, was one of the reasons why we were diverted from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Al-Qaida, who may have been players in this event today, so that’s a judgment she’ll have to defend.” She was not the only Democrat Senator who supported the war based on information about weapons of mass destruction available at that time. But this is an election time and candidates are at each others’ throats with half-truths, distortion and attack ads.
Republican presidential hopeful Senator John McCain of Arizona has always been strong on the issue of national security and a steadfast supporter of President Bush’s Iraq war. He is one of the few American politicians who has unreservedly defended President Musharraf after the unexpected killing of Benazir.
Before Musharraf took over the reins of power, Senator McCain said: “Pakistan was a failed state. They had corrupt governments and they would rotate back and forth and there was corruption, and Musharraf basically restored order. So you’re going to hear a lot of criticism about Musharraf that he hasn’t done everything we wanted him to do, but he did agree to step down as head of the military and he did get the elections.”
The Senator’s top priority is to see a thorough failsafe security of the nuclear arsenal; and then of course to urge President Musharraf to hold the planned elections at the earliest convenience.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, another leading candidate among the Republicans, is running on the strength of his 11 September, 2001 credentials of braving the chaos and fighting terrorism. It was under his leadership that New York after the terrorists’ attacks began to recover and rebuild itself with alacrity and today it is one of the safest cities to live in the United States. Benazir’s assassination re-enforces his view that the world is a dangerous place and the United States needs a determined leader like him to fight terrorism. Arkansas former Governor Mike Huckabee, another Republican front-runner and a Christian conservative, gives the impression of having very little knowledge of what is happening in the world. In the wake of the assassination, he said that illegal Pakistani immigrants were pouring in from the Mexican border, an irresponsible remark from a presidential hopeful when most Americans are wondering how to prevent Pakistan from descending into a living hell.
While Republican and Democratic candidates are scrambling to strike postures of strength in dealing with the growing Al-Qaida and Taliban might in Pakistan, the Bush administration finds itself to be at its wits’ end as to how to help President Musharraf to quell street violence and re-establish a sense of security in the country. Holding fair and free elections, many in the administration still believe, would have created the possibility of forming a broad-based army-civilian participatory government, which would have been in a better position to fight the growing menace of Al-Qaida and the Taliban. That hope died with Benazir’s assassination; but the question is if the plan can be resurrected from the wreckage.
The United States, in its own self-interest, cannot stand aside helplessly and let the country slide into chaos and anarchy and let Al-Qaida and the Taliban take control of Pakistan and eventually Afghanistan. Nor can India afford to keep aloof by simply sealing its borders. The enemies of Pakistan are India’s enemies too.
(ND Batra is professor of communications and diplomacy at Norwich University, Vermont. He is the author of Digital Freedom.)
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Peaceful Iran?
Iran War a non-starter?
Frrom The statesman
ND Batra
The rhetoric of war against Iran has become muted. The hawks are in disarray. US Vice-President Mr Dick Cheney has been boxed and shoved into a corner for now.
Democrat and Republican presidential candidates are scrambling to come up with new policy postures toward Iran, whom they continue to regard as an unfriendly country, albeit not an evil one, that could provoke World War III, as President George W Bush warned in October.Europeans who have been reluctantly cooperating with the USA are baffled by the revelations. Russia and China are hastening to go back to their cozy commercial relations with Iran. India says its stand that the Iran nuclear issue should be handled by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and not by the UN Security Council has been vindicated.
This is a rare example of how information put together as a well-constructed report free from political bias can change overnight the mindset of almost an entire nation. What happened to the Intelligence community’s earlier conclusions that Iran was in the advanced stages of highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons? Perhaps, Intelligence became smarter and developed new insights.
The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), a report based on the findings of the 16 agencies of the US Intelligence community, has concluded “with a high level of confidence” in its report released last week that Iran is not engaged in the development of nuclear weapons today. Teheran halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003, though it continues pursuing nuclear energy development for civilian energy purposes. What a relief! But what happened? Several factors such as the US invasion of Iraq and the subsequent chaos and destruction of the country, Libya’s giving up of its nuclear weapons development programme under US and UK pressures, the dismantling of Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear bazaar operated by AQ Khan from which Iran had benefited, and the rising drumbeat of the Axis of Evil might have persuaded Iran to reconsider its options and so it decided to freeze its programme.
There is no doubt that Iran has the necessary scientific, technological and industrial base and knowledge to make nuclear bombs. Suspending the programme does not mean, however, that Iran has altogether given up its intention to build a nuclear arsenal in the pursuit of its strategic interests in the region. At least for the time being, it is not doing it.
The report says, “Our assessment that Iran halted the programme in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure indicates Teheran’s decisions are guided by a cost-benefit approach, rather than a rush to a weapon irrespective of the political, economic, and military costs.” Of course, the national interest calculus includes both short and long term cost-benefit analyses. And Iran taking into account the ruthless determination of the Bush administration that it displayed in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq might have thought it to be unwise to continue with its nuclear weapons programme.
But the US Intelligence community did not know about Iran’s suspension of its nuclear programme; nor was it convinced about the regime’s protestations that it is pursuing nuclear development only for civilian uses.
That explains perhaps why the 2005 Intelligence estimate said: “Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure.” The 2005 report gave the Bush administration the rationale for persuading its European allies as well as Russia and China to impose effective sanctions on Iran. The latest Intelligence report, which was commissioned by the Democrat-controlled Congress, is said to have used more rigorous methods of Intelligence gathering and analysis so that the previous Intelligence fiasco regarding Iraq’s development of weapons of mass destruction should not be repeated. Faulty Intelligence in the hands of a frightened nation, as the USA had become after 9/11, can have terrible global consequences.
In 2002, accurate and reliable Intelligence about Iraq might have persuaded the USA to adopt some other method of dealing with Saddam Hussein. The new Intelligence report, which contradicts the previous alarming findings about Iran’s intentions, buttresses the arguments of non-hawkish Americans, Republicans and Democrats, who believe that concerted international diplomacy would work.The report recommends that “some combination of threats of intensified international scrutiny and pressure, along with opportunities for Iran to achieve its security, prestige, and goals for regional influence in other ways, might ~ if perceived by Iran’s leaders as credible ~ prompt Teheran to extend the current halt to its nuclear weapons programme”.
According to the IAEA, Iran continues to operate 3,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium for civilian nuclear energy purposes, which could give it enough fissile material to produce nuclear weapons in less than a decade if its intentions change and it can get away with international scrutiny and pressure. With the long-range Ashoura and Shahab series, Iran has a well developed ballistic missile development programme.With its immense oil and natural gas resources and nuclear capabilities, Iran is a significant power in the region. But no single power should be allowed to dominate the Gulf region through which millions of barrels of oil flow every day.
Now that war is off the table, dealing with Iran’s geopolitical ambitions becomes a great diplomatic challenge not only for the next US administration but also for the international community. As French President Mr Nicolas Sarkozy said after the NIE report was released, “The threat exists”.
Engaging Iran at multiple levels will open up this ancient civilisation. The next US President should take the first step in this direction.
(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University, USA)
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