Obama’s First Year: Compromised Domestic Policy, Militarized Foreign Policy

December 30, 2009 at 1:01 pm (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

With the passing of a disastrous decade and President Obama about to complete his first year in office, it is perhaps appropriate to look at the recent past and what may lie ahead. For the Obama presidency, it has been more of a downhill journey than a steep climb that many of his supporters and admirers in America and around the world had expected. President Obama will miss the January 22 deadline he set himself a year ago to close Guantanamo Bay prison camp. As the New York Times recently pointed out, difficulties in finding places abroad to resettle prisoners deemed innocent and Congressional resistance to approving money to transfer high-security terrorism suspects to a special prison in Illinois have made it impossible to meet the deadline. The Guantanamo prison might not be closed before 2011 at the earliest.

Obama’s health-care reform bill has had an arduous passage in the US Congress. After a long battle, the House of Representatives finally approved its version including a government-run health-care option the president wanted. It was a different matter in the Senate, where a filibuster-proof 60-vote majority could only be secured when Senate Democratic majority leader Harry Reid dropped the government insurance option to ensure support from conservative Democrats. Not one Republican senator backed the bill. And Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were forced to concede on other major issues, including restrictions on abortion coverage.

These concessions have infuriated liberals. One of the disappointed is Obama’s personal physician of 22 years, Dr David Scheiner, who does not believe the planned overhaul goes far enough to help the poor and uninsured, and will cost too much. Dr Scheiner, bitterly disappointed, said he was excluded from the list of invitees to the White House under pressure from the health lobby. Even so, President Obama congratulated the Senate, and by implication himself, on its historic vote, proclaiming “we are now finally poised to deliver on the promise of real, meaningful health insurance reform.”

Compare the content and tone of President Obama’s remarks at his inauguration, his Cairo address to the Muslim world in June and his Oslo speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in December 2009. Couched in the familiar rhetoric is increasing aggression and militarization of American foreign policy under the Obama presidency. The inauguration speech included remarks about the United State being a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers; a message to the Muslim world that America sought a new way forward, based on mutual interests and mutual respect; and a warning to those who cling to power through corruption and deceit.

In Cairo, Obama acknowledged tensions between the United States and Muslims around the world, not only rooted in historical forces, but also fed by colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims; and a cold war in which Muslim-majority countries were treated as proxies without regard for their aspirations. Reaction from the Muslim world and outside was generally positive. The speech was seen as a possible new beginning after the three-week Israeli war on Gaza that took the lives of 1400 Palestinians in comparison to 13 deaths on the Israeli side during the last days of the George W Bush’s presidency in December 2008/January 2009.

In a surprise but divisive move, the Nobel Committee announced the award of the 2009 Peace Prize to President Obama for his ‘extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples’. But soon the Nobel Committee’s announcement began to look like a triumph of hope over reality. In early December, after weeks of deliberations, he announced before a uniformed audience at the West Point military academy: “As commander-in-chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.” It reminded of speeches made by George W Bush throughout his eight years of war on terror.

Within days, Obama administration officials overturned the president’s July 2011 deadline for starting a withdrawal stipulated in his speech. Sitting with Secretary of State Clinton and Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mullen, Defense Secretary Gates said 3,000 more troops could be needed on top of that. Britain and other allies announced smaller increases – all taking the Afghan surge to 40,000 troops or over. The war vision of America’s military complex, projected in General McChrystal’s report, was being implemented.

For all his expressions of gratitude and humility, Obama’s acceptance speech at the Nobel award ceremony was an awkward one for the occasion. Once the almost obligatory references to figures like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela were out of the way, Obama quickly reminded the world that he was the commander-in-chief of the United States. He invoked the concept of a ‘just war’ which is waged as a last resort, and in which force is used in proportion and civilian lives are spared whenever possible. All of these are unbelievable, fanciful assertions.

In a convincingly argued, if provocative, article titled Obama’s Af-Pak War is Illegal, law professor Marjorie Cohn tackles Obama’s claims about America’s war in Afghanistan being a ‘just war’ and finds those claims wanting. Cohn points out that many Congressional Democrats are uncomfortable with Obama’s decision and calls on them to hold firm, even refusing to fund the war. A deep sense of disappointment and anger has spread among liberal and progressive supporters who had staked a lot in an Obama victory bringing a real change. But change is not the word much in use in the current Obama rhetoric.

The increase in US Predator drone attacks inside Pakistan’s territory and the resulting casualties including old people, women and children fuel anger and resentment among local tribal communities and the country’s intelligentsia. As CNN’s Peter Bergen said in his analysis at the end of October, a Gallup poll showed only 9 percent of Pakistanis supported the strikes against two-thirds who opposed. And, according to UN human rights investigator Philip Alston, drone strikes causing civilian deaths may well violate international law. Newsweek’s Mark Hosenball recently wrote that while some counterterrorism officials in the Obama administration wanted to expand drone operations to Pakistani cities, one person standing in the way of expanded strikes was President Obama.

Obama’s first year in office reveals limitations of his original thinking behind the formation of, in effect, a coalition administration; it includes President George W Bush’s defense secretary Robert Gates and Obama’s onetime rival for the Democratic nomination, secretary of state Hilary Clinton, who had threatened to obliterate Iran if it attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, which Iran did not have; and candidate Obama had accused her of echoing the ‘bluster’ of then president, George W Bush. On the military command side, two counterinsurgency hawks of the Bush presidency, General Petraeus and General McChrystal, remain in command of America’s war. The immediate future does not look bright.

The above article was published by CounterPunch on 29 December 2009.

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Blair’s Iraq Confession

December 13, 2009 at 10:42 am (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi, former BBC journalist and author of the book Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan (Potomac, January 2010), writes in guest op-ed for IC:

Since the launch of the Iraq Inquiry in London at the end of July 2009, covers have been coming off with increasing frequency to reveal the circumstances leading to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. And not always before the inquiry chairman, John Chilcot. The latest is the admission by Tony Blair, then British prime minister and President George W Bush’s closest ally. Blair now says that he ‘would still have thought it right to remove’ Saddam Hussein even without weapons of mass destruction; he would have had to ‘use and deploy different arguments’ to achieve the end.

The admission, made in a BBC program, amounts to a complete repudiation of Blair’s own position held since before the invasion: that British intelligence had evidence of there being weapons of mass destruction with Saddam Hussein; some of those weapons were ‘deployable within 45 minutes of an order to use them’; and that he had no doubt that the threat was ‘serious and current’. On this assessment of the British government, published in September 2002, Blair had sought the parliament’s approval, which he secured in March 2003 despite a rebellion by 139 of his own MPs. The approval was made possible due to the backing of the opposition Conservative Party for the invasion of Iraq. After the vote, two senior ministers resigned from Blair’s cabinet: Leader of the House, and foreign secretary earlier, Robin Cook and, some time later, International Development Secretary Clare Short.

That no WMDs could be found after the invasion of Iraq has been known for several years, supporting the view of the Swedish diplomat Hans Blix, the United Nations chief weapons inspector at the time.

The timing of Blair’s admission is important. It can be explained by what recent witnesses have told the Iraq Inquiry and because Blair himself is due to go before the panel in the new year.

John Scarlett, formerly chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and in charge of the British intelligence assessment, made clear that the Foreword to the report was ‘something which was the prime minister’s and it was going out under his signature’. Scarlett acknowledged that the 45-minute claim was about battlefield munitions rather than long-range missiles – a distinction lost in translation. But he said that greater emphasis had been placed on the 45-minute claim in the Prime Minister’s Foreword, which was ‘overtly political’.

Suma Chakrabarti, ex-permanent secretary at the department of international development, said that evidence of the situation in Iraq before the invasion was ‘scanty’.

David Manning, former foreign policy adviser to prime minister Blair, had this to say: ‘George W Bush raised the issue of Iraq with Tony Blair just three days after the 9/11 attacks, telling him during a phone conversation that Saddam Hussein may have links with al Qaeda’.

And Christopher Meyer, British ambassador to Washington (1997–2003): ‘Tony Blair’s view on regime change “tightened” after a private meeting with President Bush [in April 2002] … no officials were present at the Bush family ranch talks [in Texas], but the next day Mr Blair mentioned regime change for the first time … officials were left “scrambling” for evidence of WMDs as US troops prepared for invasion’.

Here is a summary of an article headlined ‘Lord Goldsmith warned Tony Blair over legality of the Iraq war’ in The Times of London on November 30, 2009: Goldsmith, then attorney general, sent a previously undisclosed letter [in July 2002] to Blair that a war could not be justified purely on the grounds of regime change and that an invasion on the grounds of self-defense or to prevent humanitarian disaster did not apply. Blair was reported to have concealed the advice from his cabinet, fearing it would spark an anti-war revolt. Goldsmith later reaffirmed that any action had to be “proportionate” and that “regime change” could not be the objective of military action. Goldsmith was then summoned to the Prime Minister’s Office and pressured, says the Times, into issuing a public statement on March 17, 2003 – three days before the start of the war – that an invasion would be legal. His warning letter is said to have been submitted to the inquiry.

Blair’s admission now has caused a political storm. Hans Blix said that Tony Blair used WMDs as a ‘convenient justification’ for war; a Conservative MP and member of the British Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee, Richard Ottoway, called Blair’s comments a ‘cynical ploy to soften up public opinion’ before his appearance at the Iraq Inquiry; former leader of Britain’s Liberal Democratic Party and a distinguished barrister, Menzies Campbell, said: “I have no doubt whatsoever that if Mr Blair had told his cabinet what he is now saying, he’d have found it very difficult to keep all of them … But the one place he would have undoubtedly failed would have been in the House of Commons.”

Carol Turner of the Stop the War Coalition described it as ‘extraordinary’ that Blair had admitted he was prepared to tailor his arguments to fit the circumstances. And Reg Keys, the father of a British soldier killed in Iraq, said he was ‘absolutely flabbergasted’.

Note: Tony Blair interview for broadcast on the BBC1 Sunday program, Fern Britton Meets … Tony Blair, December 13, 2009.

The above op-ed appeared at Juan Cole’s Informed Comment, 13 December 2009.

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Afghanistan and Presidential Dilemmas

November 13, 2009 at 6:37 pm (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi

News that the US ambassador to Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, has sent classified messages to Washington in the last few days, advising President Obama not to send more troops to Afghanistan, is dramatic both in its timing and substance. It came just as Obama was to hold further deliberations with his advisers on a new strategy for what is now described in Washington as the AfPak front. The substance of Eikenberry’s advice went directly against the plan the military commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, has been pushing for in recent months. Eikenberry’s intervention is highly significant. A Harvard and Stanford-educated general, he had served in Afghanistan twice before retiring and was immediately appointed America’s envoy in that country in April 2009. He has strong military credentials and President Obama’s ear–an effective counter to the Pentagon lobbying for ever-increasing military commitment to the war.

The contrary advice from Eikenberry may have annoyed General McChrystal. But it represents an established pattern by now: well orchestrated media reports originating from advocates of greater American involvement before every new strategy session, apparently intended to bounce the president into sending more troops; and President Obama finding a way to resist that pressure. Whatever criticisms are leveled against Obama over his perceived hesitation or dithering, these maneuvers within the administration point to his dilemmas at this juncture. For unlike George W Bush, an instinctive demolisher, Obama is a man of intellect, averse to war and more in tune with history.

The last two decades of the twentieth century were a period of exceptional savagery in Afghanistan. First, it was committed during Soviet occupation and the US-Soviet proxy war in the 1980s. Then came the West’s neglect of Afghanistan and the outbreak of a ‘war of all against all’ following the collapse of Soviet and Afghan communism. The culture of violence to which powers great and small, and Afghan factions themselves, contributed got deeply ingrained in Afghan society. Violent human behavior was revealed in more frightening ways than before.

The opening decade of the new century brought the horror of 9/11 early. Its conclusion reminds us of the Soviet decade in Afghanistan and the American military era in Vietnam before the 1975 withdrawal. In 2009, the total strength of American and allied troops is more than 100,000, nearly as high as the number of Soviet troops in Afghanistan twenty years before. Already, it has become the bloodiest year for the US-led international forces, with numerous civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And General McChrystal wants 40,000 extra soldiers, warning his commander-in-chief that otherwise the mission would fail.

In his August 2009 report, General McChrystal presented to the Obama administration a list of ‘new objectives’ in Afghanistan. Among them are: ‘discredit and diminish insurgent and their extremist allies’ capability’; ‘promote the capability of, and confidence in, the Afghan National Security Forces’; and ‘maintain and increase international and public support for ISAF goal and policies’ in Afghanistan. Those keeping a keen eye on the conflict might ask what has the international occupation force been doing for eight years and what is new in McChrystal’s objectives? His assessment further says that the international force has not adequately been executing the basics of counterinsurgency warfare. So more military (with civilian) resources must be committed.

General McChrystal’s remedy bears a striking resemblance to a letter written by Colonel K Tsagolov of the Soviet military to his defense minister Dmitry Yazov in August 1987. At a time when Soviet leader Gorbachev had decided to withdraw from Afghanistan after a failed invasion and occupation, Colonel Tsagolov, using Marxist jargon, wrote: “A deep political crisis of the Afghan society is obvious…The coalition of social forces continues to change in favor of the counter-revolution. The state regime is not capable of stopping the counter-revolution on its own.”

Colonel Tsagolov criticized the policy of national reconciliation being pursued by then president, Najibullah, at the Kremlin’s behest. Tsagolov observed that ‘our efforts over the last 8 years have not led to the expected results’; national reconciliation ‘has not led to a breakthrough in the military-political situation, and will not lead to one’. The ‘counter-revolution will not be satisfied with partial power today, knowing that tomorrow it can have it all’. Colonel Tsagolov’s recommended solution was to ‘help the progressive political forces’ to preserve the ‘democratic content’ of the country; and to ‘ensure future development of social processes’ in Afghanistan ‘in the direction of our long-term interests’.

How did the US/ NATO war in Afghanistan become so brutal, falsifying the first impressions in the wake of an ‘easy victory’ in overthrowing the Taliban regime? From the outset, one side in the new Afghan conflict has had overwhelming power and acquired impudence. But the underdog has had strength in numbers, prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. Fear has lost its deterrent quality. Death is no more an unwelcome prospect. Life has to be endured, not enjoyed. And the rationality in martyrdom has replaced the rationality in survival among those who fight the occupation forces. Human beings are at their most dangerous when they no longer fear death. It explains the conduct of the suicide bomber.

The Afghanistan crisis has deteriorated in the absence of a credible strategy. Eight years after the US-led invasion of 2001, the futility of counterinsurgency resulting in the loss of more innocent lives than those of ‘terrorists’ is plain to see. To succeed, a strategy must be not about killing, but about rebuilding. It should attract support rather than cause alienation. Its foundations must be based on a thorough understanding of the cultures and sensitivities of others and reasons of human pride.

There are choices other than McChrystal’s counterinsurgency plan to guide the international efforts: to persuade Pakistan’s military to relax its hold; to allow the democratic institutions and processes to develop; to fight corruption; and to encourage the rule of law. Above all, to save both Afghanistan and Pakistan from future generations of militants; to build effective systems of education that provide modern schools instead of religious madrasahs. The United States has a responsibility to play a vital role in all this. But it may only be possible if there is an acceptance in Washington that a coercive enterprise to remake a traditional society rarely succeeds.

The above comment appeared on Informed Comment, weblog of Juan Cole, Professor of History at the University of Michigan, on November 13, 2009.

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The Cost of Empire

November 2, 2009 at 6:18 pm (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi

President Barack Obama is having a bad time. The health reforms he so confidently promised have been bogged down in Congress for months; his Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, said the other day that the pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp by January 2010 would take longer to fulfill; Obama’s top general, Stanley McChrystal, appeared to break military discipline by openly demanding forty thousand extra US troop for the Afghan War, warning his commander-in-chief that otherwise the mission would fail; the award  of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama brought more scorn and disbelief than congratulations and encouragement; it generated an odd unity of purpose between the Left and the Right, his erstwhile supporters and bitter adversaries out to destroy his young presidency; and two decades after the United States defeated its superpower adversary, a resurgent Russia made plain that sanctions against Iran over its suspicious-looking nuclear program were not acceptable to Moscow.

History is full of contradictions between what American presidents offered and could deliver. Upon the ratification of the United States Constitution in 1789, President George Washington spoke of ‘the eternal rules of order and right’ and ‘the preservation of sacred fire of liberty’ in his inauguration address. In fact, American Indians and black slaves were to endure white oppression for a further two hundred years. Two and a half centuries ago, history recorded that Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in 1865. In truth, re-enslavement occurred quickly under different laws and slavery was to persist for another century.

In the early twenty-first century, many humans continue to live in extreme poverty and squalor in America and around the world, for which forces of globalization and free trade are responsible. Workers on meager wages and in unsafe conditions produce goods for the United States and other western societies. In contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these men, women and children are modern-day slaves.

There are many examples that illustrate the limits of power of the mightiest. John Tirman in his book 100 Ways America is Screwing Up the World says, “When Harry Truman and Joseph Stalin kicked off the Cold War, they probably did not realize what a long game it would be.” More than four decades and many ruinous conflicts later, the Soviet empire collapsed. American triumphalism did not last long either. By the end of the presidency of George W Bush, the most bellicose of the neoconservative generation had acknowledged the limits of American power and the talk of America’s ‘exceptionalism’ had become muted. The sense of vulnerability dwarfed claims of America’s status as the global hyperpower, with much of the insecurity emanating from the ruins of conflicts during and after the Cold War. It was a hollow victory.

John F Kennedy, in his inaugural address in 1961, pledged to “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Yet the Central Intelligence Agency was in close liaison with the South Vietnamese generals who staged a coup in November 1963 and executed the nationalist president, Ngo Dinh Diem, three weeks before President Kennedy was himself assassinated.

Over the next twelve years, the military rulers of South Vietnam ran a brutal, corrupt and incompetent regime. America bombed areas bordering the South, then throughout Cambodia, between 1969 and 1973. King Sihanouk of Cambodia was deposed in a pro-US coup by General Lon Nol, whose brutal regime fell to communists in 1975. America, a nuclear superpower, with the capacity to obliterate its adversaries in Indo-China withdrew its forces from the region, wounded. The region fell under communist rule.

Jimmy Carter ordered the CIA to channel secret American aid to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan to fight the pro-Soviet Marxist regime. America’s covert intervention in the Afghan War thus began well before the Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. The evidence gradually came to light several years after the Soviet Union had retreated from Afghanistan following a decade of brutal occupation and the Soviet state’s own demise. America’s proxy force of the Mujahideen left a trail of brutality of its own. It had been kept wrapped in CIA-inspired official misinformation campaign as long as the Soviet occupation army was there.

The cover was blown no sooner than the Soviets had gone home and the Afghan battlefield was engulfed in a new round of civil war. It gave birth to an even more extreme form of political Islam represented by the Taliban and al Qaeda, a phenomenon that directly led to the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Afghanistan showed how a historic conquest turned into a catastrophe.  

In the case of Afghanistan after 9/11, the Taliban were removed from power barely five weeks after the US-led coalition went to war in October 2001. The achievement of the narrow aim to oust the Taliban from the Afghan capital so quickly led to claims of a perfect war. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Michael O’Hanlon described Operation Enduring Freedom as “a masterpiece of military creativity and finesse.” It was assumed that al Qaeda had been deprived of its sanctuary, meeting sites, weapons production and storage facilities. The regret was that the Taliban and al Qaeda leaders got away. The folly of this Pentagon-nurtured view of Afghanistan, and later Iraq, came to haunt in subsequent years.

On being an empire

Humans by nature are expansionist. They want more. Plato’s Republic, written around 380 BC, has a dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon about civilized society. They discuss how societies develop from primitive to higher levels of civilization; trades and occupations multiply and populations grow. The next stage of the dialectic, according to Socrates, is an increase in wealth that results in war, because an enlarged society wants more for consumption. Plato’s explanation is fundamental to the understanding of the causes of war even today. This is how empires rise, military and economic power being essential to further their aims.

Nearly two and a half millenniums later, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri offered a Marxist vision of the twenty-first century in their book Empire. Their central argument in the book, first published in 2001, was that globalization did not mean erosion of sovereignty, but rather a set of new power relationships in the form of national and supranational institutions like the United Nations, the European Union and the World Trade Organization. According to Hardt and Negri, unlike European imperialism based on the notions of national sovereignty and territorial cohesion, empire is a concept in the garb of globalization of production, trade and communication, with no definitive political center and no territorial limits. The concept is all pervading, so the ‘enemy’ must now be someone who poses a threat to the entire system – a terrorist to be repressed by police force. Written in the mid-1990s, Empire got it right, as events a few years later would show. 

The United States occupied a privileged position in Empire depicted by Hardt and Negri. However, America’s privileges did not arise from its “similarities to the old European imperialist powers.” Its privileges derived from its differences, otherwise described as American exceptionalism. From the early days of its formal constitution, the founders of the United States had believed that they were creating “a new Empire with open, expanding frontiers,” where power would be distributed in networks. More than two centuries later, the idea emerged on a global scale. The presidency of George W Bush was a powerful militaristic, if crude and disastrous, attempt to impose America’s will on the rest of the world.

Like terrorism, the term ‘empire’ is often used disparagingly by those on the Left and the Right. The emergence of the United States and the Soviet Union as the two greatest powers after the Second World War offered contrasting examples. Advocates of each accused the other of being an empire, meaning a large population comprising many nationalities in distant territories living under subjugation or exploitation.

In fact, different concepts of empire have existed throughout history. For many centuries, the term referred to states that considered themselves successors to the Roman Empire, but later it came to be applied to non-European monarchies such as the Empire of China or the Mughal Empire. Most empires in history came into being as a result of a militarily strong state taking control of weaker ones. The result in each case was an enlarged, more powerful political union, before its eventual decline.

The dissolution of the Soviet bloc in the late 1980s and early 1990s was a blow against the idea of maintaining an empire by brute force. Suddenly, the floodgates opened for rapid globalization and expansion of the markets to places that had previously been in the Soviet domain. Capitalism could reach where it had not been before, from newly independent countries in eastern Europe to Soviet-style economies in Asia and Africa. Two decades on, the West was to hit the most serious crisis of its own since the Great Depression, due to a combination of impudence after its victory in the Cold War, false sense of moral superiority and belief in its power to destroy and recreate nations at will.

The Norwegian scholar, Johan Galtung, regarded as the father of conflict and peace studies, said in 2004 something that is a fitting definition of the term Empire. He described it as “a system of unequal exchanges between the center and the periphery.” An empire “legitimizes relationships between exploiters and exploited economically, killers and victims militarily, dominators and dominated politically and alienators and alienated culturally.” Galtung observed that the American empire “provides a complete configuration, articulated in a statement by a Pentagon planner.”

“The de facto role of the United States Armed Forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.”

This confession is as revealing as it is extraordinary. Economic interests and cultural domination are closely interwoven in imperial thinking, driven by its simplistic logic. Imperial powers are expansionist by nature, always inclined to enlarge territories they control. What lies behind their ambition is access to more and more resources – energy, minerals, raw materials and markets to trade. Imperial behavior dictates a great power to expand its domain of direct control or influence by military or other means to new territories that have resources and a certain cultural symmetry with the center. The greater this symmetry, the better.

Culture and consumption

To appreciate the relationship between economic interests and cultural symmetry, culture has to be understood as a broad concept. E B Taylor defined culture as “that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs and many other capabilities and habits acquired by … [members] of society.” Culture is the way of life which people follow in society without consciously thinking about how it came into being. Robert Murphy describes culture as “a set of mechanisms for survival, but it also provides us with a definition of reality.” It determines how people live, the tools they use for work, entertainment and luxuries of life. Culture is a function of homes people live in, appliances, tools and technologies they use and ambitions.

It is, therefore, possible to conclude that culture is about consumption in economic terms. Culture defines patterns of production and trade, demand and supply, as well as social design. In Moscow, the old Ladas and Wolgas of yesteryear began to be replaced by Audi, Mercedes and BMW cars in the late twentieth century. The number of McDonalds restaurants in Russia rose after the launch of the first restaurant in the capital in 1990. In Russia, China and India, luxury goods from cars to small electronic goods and jeans are fast becoming objects of passionate desire for the growing middle classes, despite grinding poverty affecting vast numbers of citizens. Following the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, sales of American brands in Kabul and Baghdad increased. These trends form an essential part of the theme that defines societal transformation and, at the same time, represents a powerful cause for opposition.  

The hegemon flaunts its power, but also reveals its limitations. It invades and occupies distant lands, but cannot end opposition from determined resistors. Economic interests of the hegemon and the way of life it advocates are fundamentally interlinked. The hegemon claims superiority of its own culture and civilization at the expense of the adversary’s. Its own economic success depends on the exploitation of natural and human assets of others. The hegemon allows political and economic freedoms and protections enshrined for the privileged at home. Indeed, the hegemon will frequently buy influence by enlisting rulers in foreign lands. Rewards for compliance are high, but human labor and life are cheap in Third World autocracies.

The costs of all this accumulate until their sum total surpasses the advantages. Military adventures require vast amounts of money. As well as hemorrhaging the economy, they drain the Empire’s collective morale as the human cost in terms of war deaths and injuries rise. Foreign military expeditions tend to attain a certain momentum. But a regal power is unlikely to pause to reflect on an important lesson of history – that adventure leads to exhaustion. Only when the weight of liabilities – economic, political and moral – moves the citizenry to abandon the cause does it mean that the day of debacle may be near.  

The above essay was published by the History News Network, George Mason University, Virginia, on November 2, 2009.

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The Axis of Evil and the Great Satan

September 9, 2009 at 11:52 am (Articles)

Deepak Tripathi

“America is the Great Satan, the wounded snake.”

– Ayatollah Khomeini, November 5, 1979

“States like [Iran, Iraq, North Korea] constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world.”

– President George W Bush, January 29, 2002  

Spoken two decades apart, these words sum up the troubled history of the relationship between Iran and the United States. The German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, once said, “There are no facts, only interpretations.” His observation holds true about the manner in which Tehran and Washington remain preoccupied with each other. No significant event in Iran can go without repercussions for relations with the West. Almost 30 years after the overthrow of Iran’s autocratic ruler and America’s policeman in the oil-rich Gulf, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, the legacy continues to haunt both countries. 

The presidential election of June 2009 has been no exception. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative incumbent, was seeking reelection after four turbulent years. A range of internal and external peculiarities surrounded the campaign that was both exciting and unique. In a country of 72 million people, two-thirds are under 30 years of age and the rate of literacy exceeds 75 percent. Iran’s economy has suffered a steady decline. Oil revenues have failed to benefit the population. The downturn in the world economy has affected Iranian oil exports particularly hard and its balance of payments difficulties are acute due to low financial reserves.[1]

Inflation was over 30 percent during the summer of 2008, when the Central Bank intervened to limit lending to prevent the resulting expansion of the money supply. In 2009, inflation has come down but has still been around 24 percent. Unemployment is 17 percent, about a third higher than 2005, when Ahmadinejad first became president. The chorus of criticism of Ahmadinejad for economic mismanagement grew as the election drew near, not only from his political opponents but sometimes from his one-time supporters. The Islamic Revolution Devotees Society, a fundamentalist grouping of revolutionary veterans co-founded by the Iranian President himself, accused him for starting huge state-funded projects while Iran’s poor suffered and his stated goal of social justice was undermined.[2]

Ahmadinejad routinely dismisses such complaints. He says they are a product of intervention by hostile media. He blames ‘secret networks’ for rising house prices. He has a doctorate in engineering, but often makes light of complaints about the economy by telling jokes. For instance, he has told Iranian MPs to visit his grocer to find out the truth about the rising price of tomatoes. He suggests that he often takes advice about the economy from his local butcher, who knows about the economic problems of the people. And he says that he prays to God he never learned about economics.

The electoral system of Iran is by no means perfect, but not as bad as in some other countries in the region. In Saudi Arabia, small Gulf emirates and Egypt, elections are either nonexistent or held under extreme restrictions. Rigging is widespread. And these states are ruled by America’s allies. In the June 2009 presidential election, Ahmadinejad, the incumbent, faced three challengers. Mir-Hossein Mousavi was seen as the leading challenger. He was Iran’s last prime minister (1981-1989) before a presidential form of government was introduced.  Three others had been rejected by the Council of Guardians, which vets all candidates. Former President, Mohammad Khatami, a liberal in the context of Iran, announced his candidacy but later withdrew and declared his support for Mousavi. Another ex-President, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, often described as a centrist-pragmatic conservative, was also known to be unhappy with the state of affairs.

The high percentage of young voters, economic decline and restlessness among influential Iranians encouraged many inside and outside the country to believe that the time was ripe for political change. President Obama’s Cairo speech, seeking ‘a new beginning between the United States and Muslims’, came a few days before polling day in Iran. His words of reconciliation were a source of new hope for moderates and liberals in that country. They enlivened the prospect for improvement in US-Iran relations, perhaps for the first time since the 1979 revolution.

In the end, Ahmadinejad was declared reelected by a two-thirds majority, primarily because voters in the Iranian countryside did not abandon him. After an exciting campaign, sharp exchanges between candidates during television debates and overly optimistic reports in the foreign press, it was a bitter disappointment for Iran’s opposition. Its supporters came out in large numbers in cities in towns, but their protests did not grow to a popular revolution. The coercive instruments of the Iranian state, the military, the intelligence services and police, remained intact. A crackdown on opposition supporters followed. For a while, there were loud protests in America from the Republican right, the Israel lobby and human rights groups. They only played into the hands of the religious hardliners in Tehran. As a result, the liberal opposition of Iran finds itself isolated even more. It is a dangerous situation.

Relations between Washington and Tehran sank to a new low following the events of 9/11 and Bush’s description of Iran as part of the ‘axis of evil’. Two factors in particular came to the fore: Iran’s nuclear program, assisted by America and its allies when Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi used to be Washington’s regional policeman; and accusations of its support for international terrorism. In a leaked letter obtained by Associated Press in September 2006, the International Atomic Energy Agency described as ‘outrageous and dishonest’ claims made in a report by the US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee that Iran’s nuclear program was geared towards making weapons.[3]

The IAEA letter specifically said the report is ‘false in saying that Iran is making weapons-grade uranium at an experimental enrichment site’. In fact, the agency said, the material produced was only in small quantities far below that can be used in nuclear weapons. The clash between Washington and IAEA experts was reminiscent of the earlier disputes between them over whether President Saddam Hussein was involved in developing weapons of mass destruction. Those claims in Washington and London were given as the principal reason for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The claims were subsequently discredited when no traces of weapons of mass destruction were found. However, it did not prevent the Bush administration from using similar tactics against Iran, with both America and Israel issuing warnings that Iran’s nuclear research facilities might be bombed.

The failure of the US-led invasion forces to produce evidence was one factor that conspired against an attack on Iran. Another was the outbreak of full-scale war following the dissolution of the Iraqi state structure by Paul Bremer, the head of the American-led occupation authority. The conflict in Iraq defied the Bush administration’s calculations and prevented the Americans from using strong-arm tactics against other adversaries. However, diplomatic pressure and threats continue even after the Bush presidency.

On September 7, 2009, the IAEA Director General, Mohamed El-Baradei, delivered his last report to the Board of Governors two months before his retirement. He said that although Iran had ‘cooperated with the agency on some issues’, several critical areas remained ‘unaddressed’.[4] Iran had not suspended its enrichment-related activities or its heavy water-related project, as required by the UN Security Council. Choosing his words carefully, El-Baradei said that these issues needed to be clarified ‘in order to exclude the possibility of there being military dimensions’ to Iran’s nuclear program.

President Ahmadinejad has by now ruled out further concessions by Iran. He recently told journalists in Tehran, “From our point of view, Iran’s nuclear issue is over. We will never negotiate over the obvious rights of the Iranian nation.” Tehran has also accused Washington of faking intelligence reports suggesting that Iran has ‘studied ways to make atomic bombs’.  Press TV, Iran’s state-funded channel, quotes officials saying the United States has not ‘shared the original documents’ it claimed to have a year ago and there is no credible evidence of Iran pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

The outgoing IAEA Director General, Mohamed El-Baradei, is also highly critical of the West and its allies, France and Israel in particular. Both have accused El-Baradei of ‘suppressing damning evidence’ of Iranian attempts to build nuclear weapons. To them, the IAEA chief said, “I am dismayed by the allegations … which have been fed to the media that information has been withheld from the Board. These allegations are politically motivated and totally baseless.” He bitterly complained that such attempts to influence the work of the IAEA Secretariat and undermine its independence and objectivity are in violation … of the IAEA Statute and should cease forthwith.

As El-Baradei prepares to retire, accusations and counter-accusations continue to fly between all concerned parties. There exists a stalemate over the nuclear issue. And the United States with its allies and Iran remain engaged in a game of brinkmanship.

The above article appeared in CounterPunch on September 8, 2009.

 

 

[1] Djavad Salehi-Isfahani, ‘Tough Times Ahead for the Iranian Economy’ (Washington: Brookings Institute, April 6, 2009); also Mahtab Alam Rizvi, ‘An Assessment of Iran’s Presidential Elections 2009’ (New Delhi: The Institute for Defense Studies, June 19, 2009).

[2] Robert Tait, ‘It’s the economy, Mr Ahmadinejad’ (Guardian, September 19, 2007).

[3] Amy S Clark, ‘IAEA: Iran Nuclear Report Outrageous’, CBS News, September 14, 2006.

[4] ‘Director General’s Report to Board’ (IAEA, September 7, 2009).

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Book Review: Christopher Pyle’s Getting Away with Torture

August 12, 2009 at 11:57 am (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi

Only about 20 years ago, the United States was the preferred destination for dissidents tortured and incarcerated in secret prisons in the Soviet Union and satellite states in Eastern Europe. Pictures of the brief journey on foot by the Soviet dissident, Anatoly Scharansky, across the Glienicke bridge to West Berlin in February 1986 have acquired a permanent place in the annals of Cold War history. Scharansky, a Soviet Jew, settled in Israel, but Alexander Solzhenitsyn and many others made the United States their home upon escaping persecution.

As the Iron Curtain was blown, who could have imagined that barely a decade after, the United States would commit large-scale acts of kidnapping, torture and murder beyond its territory and send people, based on mere suspicion or hearsay, to secret prisons in ex-Soviet bloc countries for interrogation under torture, euphemistically called ‘extraordinary rendition’?

The unimaginable two decades before happened during the presidency of George W Bush. In the shadow of 9/11, innocent, vulnerable people, some as young as 13 and as old as 93 years of age, were kidnapped and handed over to American military and intelligence officers for bounties by local players in countries where the United States had no legal jurisdiction. Among them were Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco – allies of America.

To neoconservatives in the corridors of power in Washington, the fact that many of the detainees were condemned to extreme acts of torture and humiliation in friendly dictatorships was of no consequence. Laws had to be broken, justice denied, human dignity violated, individual liberties curtailed at home and abroad to ‘defend freedom’. That all this was perpetrated under a president who was previously governor of a US state (Texas) with the worst record of judicial executions is worth noting. The number of inmates on Death Row in Texas showed a steady increase during the governorship of George W Bush from 1995 to 2000.

The campaign of abductions and unlawful detention, torture, harassment and surveillance against people around the world, including many in the United States, under the Bush administration dwarfs what was done during the McCarthy era to Americans accused of being communists or communist sympathizers, without proper regard for evidence, in the 1950s. America was haunted by the McCarthyite witch-hunts for years thereafter. Painful self-examination had to follow. Despite pressure for a similar self-examination into what has occurred in the name of the ‘global war on terror’, President Obama wants to ‘look ahead’ for whatever reason, but introspection will come eventually.

From this dark perspective, Christopher Pyle’s book, Getting Away with Torture, is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on the subject. He joins the ranks of distinguished legal experts like Professor Philippe Sands, QC, and Clive Stafford Smith, who are known in the United States and Britain for their work on human rights. Pyle is certainly qualified to write this book. He is a professor of constitutional law and civil liberties at Mount Holyoke College. Once a captain in army intelligence, he disclosed, in 1970, the military’s surveillance of civilian politics and worked with Senator Sam Ervin’s Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights and Senator Frank Church’s Select Committee on Intelligence to end the practice.

As can be expected from an author of such distinction, Getting Away with Torture is an exceptionally well-sourced book. He follows the paper trail of torture memos leading to abuses at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in meticulous detail. He demonstrates that, despite attempts to blame a few ‘bad apples’, the chain of abuse of the US Constitution and international law started from the White House, President Bush and his Vice President, Dick Cheney.

Seven years after Bush declared his ‘global war on terror’, many despicable acts have come to light in spite of attempts to suppress them. But, as Pyle says, much remains to be learned about the mistreatment of suspected terrorists. He concludes that torture was intended from the start. That is why the President authorized the secret prisons and military commissions that could admit evidence based on torture. And that is also why he suspended the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

Pyle emphatically makes the point that the Bush administration did great harm at home and abroad. And, in the concluding chapter, he calls for the restoration of the rule of law, citing Martin Luther King, Jr, who said: “To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.” Pyle notes President Obama’s executive order soon after inauguration to close the Guantanamo detention center, but says this is easier said than done. US lawmakers, aware of strong opposition from sections of the electorate, are resistant to any idea of having Guantanamo detainees transferred to prisons in their own states. And the book laments the insistence of Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, in 2007 that there would be no effort to impeach Bush or Cheney for violating the American constitution.

Even if Guantanamo were to be closed as President Obama wants by January 2010, Pyle says in his book that US federal courts have yet to confront the question who should be detained and why. They have to address the issue of mistreatment of prisoners. “To restore the Geneva Conventions,” Pyle continues, “Congress should begin by repealing the Military Commissions Act of 2006.” In that law, Congress granted the president the exclusive authority to define what constitutes the war crime of ‘cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment’.

More than six months into the Obama presidency, we know that the military commissions will continue, albeit with some modifications. Curbing government secrecy will be a long, often frustrating, battle as suggested by the administration’s policy reversals on calls for greater openness about what happened under President Bush. And establishing a truth and reconciliation commission like in South Africa after the apartheid era, or congressional hearings, will require a degree of moral courage and foresight that is sadly lacking at least for now. These depressing trends make it imperative that Pyle’s book is read as widely as possible.

This review appeared in the History News Network (George Mason University, Virginia) Book Review Section on August 11, 2009.

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Obama’s policy on China and Iran

July 20, 2009 at 7:56 pm (Articles)
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Deepak Tripathi

Recent disturbances in Iran and China have drawn attention to not only the fragility of their socio-political systems but also to contradictions in how the United States and other Western powers react to such events. America’s response  to demonstrations in Iran after the presidential election of June 12, 2009 has grown from one of caution to aggression and confrontation. On the contrary, its reaction over the outbreak of violence between Uighurs and Han Chinese in the far-flung region of Xinjiang in south-east China three weeks later has been one of timidity and silence.

Elections in Iran are not perfect, but China is worse for its citizens, its minorities in particular. The most contentious aspect of elections in Iran is the process of approval of candidates by the Guardian Council, a body dominated by the conservative clergy. That process having been completed, campaigning in the run up to polling had been remarkable. The US-style television debates were notable for their sharp exchanges between candidates. All that changed after the authorities in Tehran announced the victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative incumbent, over his main rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, perceived as a relatively liberal figure in Iranian politics. The margin was overwhelming – 63 percent for Ahmadinejad to 33 percent for his nearest rival, Mousavi.

While the Organization of Islamic Conference, Russia, China and India, among others, congratulated Ahmadinejad on his re-election, allegations of fraud were raised almost immediately in the United States, Britain and other European countries. President Obama appeared reluctant in the beginning to join in the chorus of protests from America’s right. He even said that he did not want to be seen as interfering in another country’s affairs.

America’s political right and Israel lobby, represented by Republicans and Democrats alike, saw an opportunity. The Republican right, in particular, is keen to portray Obama as weak just as it had done during the Clinton presidency. Obama’s statement about ‘unclenched fist and extended hand of friendship’, aimed precisely at countries like Iran, had triggered alarm bells among hawks on both sides. Senator John McCain, defeated by Obama a few months before, thundered on NBC’s Today show, demanding that “Obama declare this a corrupt, fraud, sham of an election. The Iranian people have been deprived of their rights.” After that intervention, voices against Iran became progressively shrill.

There are people close to the administration that believe Ahmadinejad actually won the election. The huge margin alone would make it difficult to fix the result in a country where the levels of education and political awareness are high. Time magazine on its website carried an article dated June 16, 2009; the headline was ‘Don’t Assume Ahmadinejad Really Lost’. The story, written by the magazine’s intelligence columnist and former CIA field officer Robert Baer, made the point that demonstrations against the election result were held in north Tehran and in public places like Azadi Square, where the educated and wealthy live. These middle class liberals are among supporters of Mousavi, who say the election was stolen from him. Baer pointed out, however, that protests in poor slums and rural areas of Iran were almost absent. It is in these areas that support for Ahmadinejad is concentrated. But such reports are inconvenient for anti-Iran hawks in Washington.

On July 5, Vice President Joe Biden sounded a strident note. In a long exchange on the ABC’s television show, This Week, Biden’s remarks were interpreted as showing the green-light to Israel’s war-mongering Netanyahu government to do what it wants in relation to Iran. Asked whether the Obama administration would stand in the way in case Netanyahu decided that Iran posed a threat and wanted to take out the nuclear program, Biden replied: “We cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can or cannot do.” The most one-sided logic if there was one. Clearly, the principle of sovereignty applies to Israel, but not to Iran. Barely 48 hours had passed when Obama was forced to deny there was any green-light from Washington to Israel to bomb Iran.

The Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was not going to be left behind in this game of aggressive posturing. On July 15, she warned Tehran that Washington’s offer of ‘engagement’ was not indefinite. Iran must respond now to overtures from Obama, or it could face more isolation. How can a US politician known for her closeness to the Israel lobby, and who spoke of ‘obliterating Iran’ during her failed presidential campaign in 2008, be trusted to want peace with Israel’s main adversary in the Middle East? And how can condemnations of ‘election fraud’ in Iran have any real effect from a country where, as many Iranians remember, Al Gore lost the presidency in the most bizarre circumstances to George W Bush in the November 2000 election?

The events in Xinjiang highlight a deep festering crisis in a forgotten corner of China, where some of the most brutal tactics of suppression have been used by Beijing against the ethnic Uighurs, the Turkic Muslim community. Just like Tibet, large numbers of Han Chinese have been moved to the region, reducing the Uighur population to less than half. Xinjiang has seen several rebellions in the past. The toll in the latest violence is high – almost 200 dead, more than 1700 injured and hundreds detained and tortured in one of the most remote parts of the world. The number of Uighurs leaving Xinjiang is in the thousands.  

Despite all this, the response of the Obama administration, in particular of his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, continues to be minimalist and weak. The White House spokesman called for ‘restraint’ by both sides – an odd attempt to strike a balance between China’s rulers, whose treatment of dissidents and ethnic minorities has long been brutish and nasty, and a minority at the receiving end of the full force of the Chinese state. This contrast between Washington’s attitudes to Iran and China underlines the vulnerability of the United States today. According to the US Census Bureau, bilateral trade between China and America in 2008 was in excess of $300 billion. America owes China the largest public and private debt of around $2 trillion. And China is still useful as a counter to Russia. In an era of war-weariness and economic vulnerability, the Obama administration continues to show prudence without principle on the one hand and diplomacy without knowledge on the other.

The above article was published by CounterPunch on July 20, 2009.

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Obama’s Cairo Speech: A Dialogue for Reconciliation

June 6, 2009 at 10:39 am (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi

The upheaval in America’s relations with the Muslim world after 9/11, as well as its content and language, make the eagerly-awaited address by President Obama in Cairo on June 4 an event of great significance. Speculation in recent weeks had focused on how different Obama’s message would be from that of his predecessor, George W Bush. That it would be different was not in doubt. Obama had spoken of the unclenched fist meeting the extended hand soon after his inauguration as president. Recent speculation had centered on the vision and its detail. Those expecting were not disappointed. The reaction fills the spectrum of opinion.

A revolutionary speech has several essential qualities. It must address major problems of the day and generate widespread interest. It must inspire hope and be a pointer to long-term solutions. A revolutionary speech touches the lives of ordinary people, effortlessly overcomes ethnic, racial, religious divides. Its call is for fairness and justice. It must be without extreme language. The time and the place have to be right. 

Obama’s address in Cairo addressed two of the biggest problems of our time. One, the Israeli-Arab dispute, at the heart of which is Israel’s festering conflict with the Palestinians. The other, the estrangement of Muslims that has grown to frightening proportions in recent years, no less due to the ‘clash of civilizations’ theory that had found abode in the Bush White House. These two problems, one caused by a historic injustice, the other of George W Bush’s own making, have affected the lives and thinking of Muslims round the world. Progress is unthinkable without addressing them.

Obama has a gift of rhetoric full of inspiration and sympathy for the underdog, as well as evenhandedness, that his predecessor never had. The right sentiment conveyed in an appropriate language matters. Armed with knowledge of history, he paid tribute to the Egyptian civilization, particularly the place Al-Azhar University has in Islamic learning. And he was careful to put Islam at the same par as Christianity and Judaism, the other two great religions that have co-existed in the region for more than two thousand years. Indeed, he gave the speech in the most significant Arab country and, without going to Israel, travelled to Germany to visit the Nazi camp at Buchenwald, where more than fifty thousand Jews, gypsies, resistance fighters and other prisoners were murdered.

To speak the word ‘occupation’ for conditions in which Palestinians live in Gaza and the West Bank is a remarkable departure for an American president. Obama further described the situation of Palestinians as ‘intolerable’. He spoke of tensions fed by colonialism that ‘denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims’. And a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated ‘as proxies without regard to their own aspirations’. He referred to the reinforcement of American troops in Afghanistan. But he also said America did not want to keep its troops in that country. These words are powerful enough to resonate, not only in the Middle East, but also in distant lands.

Obama said he was in Cairo to seek ‘a new beginning between the United States and Muslims’ around the world, one based ‘on mutual interest and mutual respect’. While expressing Washington’s traditional support for Israel, calling the bond unbreakable, he said, “It is also undeniable that the Palestinian people, Christians and Muslims, have suffered in pursuit of a homeland.” Their daily humiliations are real. And then perhaps the most significant part of his address: “America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own.”

The power of the Israel lobby in Washington, especially its dominance in Congress, remains strong. But outside Capitol Hill, the political landscape across the United States has changed. Depending on the perspective from which it is viewed, Barack Hussein Obama both leads and follows the extraordinary momentum of today. Obama’s speech in Cairo has caused shockwaves in Israel’s ruling establishment. In a muted response, the Israeli government said that national security will always be paramount for it. We are heading for extraordinary diplomatic turbulence. And many are eager and waiting to find out what will be beyond this turbulence. 

The above comment appeared in the Palestine Chronicle on 5 June 2009.

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The Significance of India’s Election

May 25, 2009 at 9:33 am (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi

The results of the month-long general election in India are noteworthy in several respects. The political shift they represent and their possible effects for the domestic and foreign policies of one of the leading emerging powers in the world will be analyzed over the coming days and months. Here, it is worth looking at some notable aspects to emerge and what they mean. For they will be indicators of the likely conduct of India and what to expect from the country in the next few years. 

The United Progressive Alliance, led by the Congress Party, has retained power. Its performance has defied many predictions. With over two-hundred seats won by Congress alone, the alliance finished up just short of an absolute majority in the 543 contested seats for the lower house of parliament. Such a performance is enough to attract support from smaller parties. The governing alliance should have a safe passage through the next five years.

The Congress leadership will be relieved for two other reasons. First, the governing coalition will not have to depend on the Marxists as had been the case in the last parliament. Second, the Marxists themselves have suffered heavy reverses this time and their strength is much diminished. To a considerable degree, this outcome is of their own making. They turned on themselves as the 2009 election approached. Their gamble to confront the governing alliance over India’s relations with the West and over economic policy failed. 

The revival of Congress in northern India, once the citadel that gave it control over power, after years of decay is another remarkable feature of this election. Muslims and groups at the bottom rung of India’s Hindu caste system that once formed its core support have returned to Congress in significant numbers. In state after state, including Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, Congress won more seats than the most optimistic forecasts before the vote. Even in Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh, strongholds of the Hindu nationalist BJP, the Congress-led alliance did far better than had been expected.

Only Bihar and Orissa, where regional leaders were in power, bucked the trend, depriving Congress of any chance of making significant inroads. 

The victory of the United Progressive Alliance, led by Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister, Man Mohan Singh, has come despite widespread anger and criticism of the government following the Mumbai massacre in November 2008. As evidence mounted that a Pakistan-based group was behind the attack, there were calls for military reprisal by India, similar to the American response after 9/11. The BJP accused the government and the prime minister in particular of weakness.

Despite the rhetoric that mirrored the nation’s anger, the decision to refrain from acting impulsively against a nuclear-armed rival was judicious. A war with Pakistan was avoided. Polling went off peacefully throughout India over an extended period. The governing alliance benefited as Muslims and other minorities drew towards Congress. Those leaning towards extreme and caste-based politics have paid the price.

These are comforting developments for much of the international community, especially the United States and Europe. They know who they will be dealing with over the next five years. Man Mohan Singh remains India’s prime minister, with Sonia Gandhi the power holding it all together. The emergence of a new tier of young, educated leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, promises a generation ready to take over the Congress leadership when the time comes. This, too, will be viewed in western capitals with satisfaction. A clear political course generates confidence in the country’s future.

Such a young generation of leaders is necessary as India takes on an increasingly higher profile globally. There is a new administration in the United States and a different government is likely in Britain after polls due within a year. In the present global economic meltdown, emerging powers like India and China must readjust with the new realities. The challenges require continuity, as well as correction.

People like the former Under-Secretary general of the United Nations, Shashi Tharoor, just elected to parliament, and Rahul Gandhi are the new faces of India on the international stage. In a turbulent region at a time of multiple crises confronting the world, India has emerged after the 2009 election prepared to face both challenges and opportunities awaiting the country.

The above commentary was published by ZNet on 23 May 2009.

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Moral Crisis

May 13, 2009 at 9:35 pm (Comments)
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Deepak Tripathi

“The roots of violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, politics without principles.”

– Mahatma Gandhi

Rather like the state of the world today. We see violence in many forms, of which the latest is the scandal revealed of the ‘expenses bonanza’ of British MPs using public money to maintain their own lifestyle. This at a time when millions of their fellow citizens struggle to cope with the economic meltdown.

Ordinary people lose jobs, their homes, their possessions; children go to bed hungry, their education suffers. After a long period of posturing by the rulers and their clamor to punish ‘benefit cheats’, the day of reckoning has arrived. Britain’s political parties are on the defensive not seen in living memory.

Recent disclosures in the Daily Telegraph newspaper make clear that the ‘benefit regime’ for British MPs, under the rules which they themselves made, had been evolving for almost thirty years. Under the regime, large amounts of state money were claimed for gardening and for food; private homes were frequently bought and sold, in one case three times in a single year, pocketing the money gained and avoiding the capital gains tax; lavish furniture, clothes, pet food, bought at taxpayers’ expense.

In one of the most outspoken attacks, former Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey, condemns ‘the culture of abuse’ and warns that respect for parliament in Britain has reached a new low.

Of course, the crisis is more serious and widespread. ‘The culture of abuse’ in governance is both self-serving and self-perpetuating. It shows malignant disregard for people outside the political bubble.

The attention of those outside the political bubble is often kept engaged with endless talk of external threats like terrorism, evil dictators and illegal immigrants trying to flood into ‘our country’. Rulers may assume the right to launch ‘pre-emptive attacks’ that cause floods of refugees in other parts of the world. But the refugees may not have the right to asylum in the countries that cause the crises.

Today, warfare has become a business and an instrument to make enormous amounts of money. For private firms like Blackwater in the United States, combat in the battlefield, military training, consulting and personal security for high-ranking officials – the list of what they would do for inflated prices is long. In recent years, it has been official practice to award contracts to firms of choice, without any real competition. Vested interests prosper as a result.

Poverty is a form of violence. When an abusive culture has set in and people in power have become comfortable in their own self-serving environment, their interests fly against the needs of the wider society. The consequence is more acute poverty, disruption and chaos. The cause is rich feeding off poor. The effect a state of failure, as we see today.

The above comment appeared in ZNet and CounterPunch on May 13, 2009.

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