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Monday, 12 November 2012
Saturday, 10 November 2012
Detailed Timeline for Benghazi Response by DOD
Defense.gov News Article: DOD Releases Detailed Timeline for Benghazi Response
DOD Releases Detailed Timeline for Benghazi ResponseBy Karen ParrishAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Nov. 10, 2012 – The Defense Department released a detailed timeline yesterday of the Pentagon’s response to the September attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. A senior defense official, speaking on background with Pentagon reporters, emphasized the rapid consultation, planning and troop pre-deployment actions defense leaders undertook in the first hours following the attack. “With naval, Marine, special operations and air forces either employed or en route to Libya during the attacks, we responded,” the official said. “We mourn the loss of four American heroes in Benghazi.” The military’s initial response began within minutes of the first incident in Benghazi, the official said: the attack on the U.S. consulate began at 3:42 p.m. EDT [9:42 p.m. Benghazi time], and by 5:10 EDT an unarmed surveillance aircraft was on station over the Benghazi compound. By 5:30 p.m., all surviving Americans had left the consulate, the official noted, adding that defense officials didn’t have that information until later. The senior official noted that for people to understand the sequence of events in Benghazi, “it’s important to discuss the wider context of that tragic day.” In the months before the attack, the official said, hundreds of reports surfaced of possible threats to U.S. citizens and facilities across the globe. In the Middle East and North Africa on Sept. 11, the official added, U.S. facilities in more than 16 countries were operating on a heightened force-protection level, based on specific threats. “I would note … that there was no specific or credible threat that we knew of on the day that the attacks … occurred in Benghazi,” the official said. The official acknowledged that since Sept. 11, many people have speculated on whether increased military intervention, including the use of manned and unmanned aircraft, might have changed the course of events in Libya that night. “Unfortunately, no alternative or additional aircraft options were available within … [enough time] to be effective,” the official said. “Due to the incomplete intelligence picture on the ground, armed aircraft options were simply not feasible.” The DOD timeline records that in the first hours following the initial attack, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conferred first with the president, and shortly after with senior officials including Army Gen. Carter F. Ham, who leads U.S. Africa Command. Africom’s area of responsibility includes Libya. During those meetings, the official said, Panetta verbally ordered two fleet antiterrorism security team, or FAST, platoons to prepare to deploy from their base in Rota, Spain. The secretary also issued verbal prepare-to-deploy orders for a U.S. European Command special operations force then training in Central Europe and a second special operations force based in the United States. At 6:30 p.m. EDT, according to the timeline, a six-person security team, including two DOD members, left the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli for Benghazi. The official noted the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center staff, within hours of the attack, began planning support and contingency operations with transportation and special operations experts, as well as with representatives from the four services and Africa, Europe and Central commands. By 8:39 p.m., the official said, the command center had started issuing written orders for the forces the secretary had alerted. At 11 p.m. EDT, the official said, a second unmanned, unarmed surveillance aircraft relieved the first, and at 11:15 p.m. -- around 5 a.m. Sept. 12 in Benghazi -- the second U.S. facility there, an annex near the consulate, came under mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire. By 1:40 a.m. EDT Sept. 12, the first wave of Americans left Benghazi for Tripoli by airplane, with the second wave, including the bodies of the fallen, following at 4 a.m. A C-17 aircraft, under Africom direction, flew the evacuees from Tripoli to Germany later that day, the official said. As the timeline makes clear, the official said, the evacuation took place before the FAST platoons or special operations forces arrived, although all were converging on Libya -- noting repeatedly that DOD leaders lacked a clear picture of enemy, civilian and American positions in the area. “There are people out there who have suggested that an overhead surveillance aircraft could have perfect visibility into what was happening on the ground, and on that basis alone, you could send in a team,” the official said. “That is not necessarily how things work.” An overhead surveillance aircraft operating at night over a city can’t always help military members separate friend and foe on the ground, the official said. “You get a lot of good information from a surveillance aircraft, … but it doesn’t necessarily provide you a complete and instant picture of what is happening on the ground. … If you’re going to undertake military action, you’d better have solid information before you decide to take the kinds of steps that are required to effectively complete a military mission of this sort,” the official told reporters. Over the roughly 12 hours between the start of the attacks and the time the last Americans were evacuated from Benghazi, the official said, defense leaders postured forces to meet any contingencies that might develop, as there was no way to know in the early, “murky” stages whether the situation would be resolved within hours, days or longer. “We absolutely had our forces arrayed in a way that could potentially respond to events that might unfold,” the official said. “We are an excellent military -- the finest in the world. We’re always prepared. But we’re neither omniscient nor omnipresent.” |
| Related Articles: Little Describes Pentagon’s Benghazi Decision Process Secretary, Chairman Respond to Reporters on Benghazi Attack |
Military opposes plea to amend Army Act
Military opposes plea to amend Army Act
Military opposes plea to amend Army Act
ISLAMABAD:
Army authorities have opposed a dormant petition seeking amendments in certain provisions of the Pakistan Army Act 1952 relating to proceedings of military courts.
The army, in its written reply submitted before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court last week, stated that the Army Act was a special act and that any attempt to bring it in line with the general law was to defeat the very purpose of that law.
The apex court recently took up the dormant petition – filed by a retired colonel, Muhammad Akram, in 1999 – which termed some clauses of the Army Act against the Constitution and pleading that such discriminatory clauses should be amended.
Military authorities, however, have argued that the petition is not maintainable as it does not raise a question of “general public importance” to invoke the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court with regard to Article 184 (3) of the Constitution, nor does it seek to enforce any fundamental rights conferred by the Constitution.
Any law relating to the armed forces is outside the operation of the normal scheme of the Constitution, the reply stated.
“The petition is a virtual plea to bring a special law at par with the general law. The Pakistan Army Act is a special law applicable to a specific class and is a complete code by itself which inter-alia provides for appointment, enrollment, service discipline, inquiries and investigation, summary punishments and trial by courts martial,” read the statement of army authorities.
In his application, the petitioner maintained that to take a statement from an accused on oath during court martial and then use it against him as evidence is contradictory to the Qanoon-e-Shahadat Order, adding that the Constitution does not allow compelling an accused to give a statement on oath.
“Section 31 of the Army Act allows an accused to submit a petition against the findings or decision of a military court,” the petitioner maintained, adding that “the finding (s) and sentence of all military courts except the summaries are required to be confirmed.” He added that it is discriminatory and against the Constitution if the verdicts by military courts are not immediately announced to the accused.
The apex court issued a notice to military authorities in this regard, and will resume hearing of the case on Monday. Akram has sought a direction to the ministry of defence to amend or modify the Army Act to bring it in line with the Pakistan Navy and Air Force Acts.
Former Oil Mogul Justin Welby Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury - NYTimes.com
Justin Welby Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury - NYTimes.com
Anglican Church’s New Leader Vows to Seek Reconciliation
Dylan Martinez/Reuters
Justin Welby, the new archbishop of Canterbury, spoke at a news conference in London on Friday.
By ALAN COWELL
Published: November 9, 2012
LONDON — Bishop Justin Welby, the new archbishop of Canterbury and spiritual head of the world’s estimated 77 million Anglicans, pledged Friday to seek reconciliation in some of the most contentious issues of gender and sexuality that have split the Anglican Communion.
Related
Facundo Arrizabalaga/European Pressphoto Agency
Eleanor Welby, left, daughter of Bishop Justin Welby, new archbishop of Canterbury, sat next to May Easton, her aunt, listening to her father at a news conference at Lambeth Palace in London.
Soon after Prime Minister David Cameron announced his appointment, Bishop Welby, 56, a former oil company executive, made it clear that he endorsed earlier church statements criticizing government plans to legalize same-sex marriage.
“But I also need to listen very attentively to the L.G.B.T. communities and examine my own thinking carefully and prayerfully,” he added, referring to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups.
“I am always averse to the language of exclusion,” he said, apparently seeking a middle ground in the debates, which have split Anglicans from Africa to America. “Above all, in the church we need to create safe spaces for these issues to be discussed in honesty and in love.”
He said at a news conference, “We must have no truck with any form of homophobia in any part of the church.”
Drawing on a career that has taken him from the executive suites of French and British oil companies to hardscrabble parish churches in the British Midlands and to scenes of sectarian strife in Africa and the Middle East, Bishop Welby said he would bring a “passion for reconciliation” to his new position.
Bishop Welby will replace the Most Rev. Rowan Williams, who announced in March that he would step down at the end of the year. Within the Church of England, Bishop Welby faces dwindling congregations and the same divisions between conservatives and liberals as Anglicans elsewhere.
Bishop Welby emerged as the favorite to become the 105th archbishop of Canterbury only after tortuous negotiations within the Church of England that had led to frequent reports of deadlock and disagreement among members of the church commission that chose him.
His appointment is likely to be closely watched in the Vatican, where the Roman Catholic hierarchy has sought to lure Anglican priests who have become disaffected with what they see as a liberalizing trend in the Church of England.
Bishop Welby was educated at Eton. He went on to study law and history at Cambridge University before working for 11 years in the treasury departments of the French Elf Aquitaine oil company and later a British exploration company, Enterprise Oil.
His rise through the church ranks has been widely described as meteoric. He began his training as a priest in 1987 and was made a deacon in 1992. He was made bishop of Durham — the fourth-ranking diocese in the hierarchy — only a year ago.
His admirers say he is a conciliator who will be able to hold the communion together. “He and I in fact differ on the question of the blessing of same-sex unions,” said Bishop Shannon Johnston of the Diocese of Virginia, “but that has enriched and deepened our relationship and our engagement with one another.
“He has a special gift for both personal and ecclesial diplomacy,” said Bishop Johnston, who says he knows the archbishop because Virginia and Liverpool are “companion dioceses.”
This year, as a member of the upper House of Lords, to which Anglican bishops are routinely appointed, Bishop Welby joined a parliamentary panel scrutinizing the behavior of British banks. He is known as an opponent of corporate excess.
Speaking at a conference in Zurich, according to a financial Web site, he described banks as “exponents of anarchy” before the financial crisis in 2008 because they pursued “activity without purpose.”
Bishop Welby said Friday that as archbishop of Canterbury, he would remain on the panel examining banking ethics.
A version of this article appeared in print on November 10, 2012, on page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Anglican Church’s New Leader Vows to Seek Reconciliation.
UK to end financial aid to India by 2015: BBC
BBC News - UK to end financial aid to India by 2015
Ms Greening said the move, which will be popular with Tory MPs, reflected India's economic progress and status.
Giving his reaction, India's foreign minister Salman Khurshid said: "Aid is the past and trade is the future."
But charities described the move as "premature" and warned it would be the poorest who suffered.
Until last year, when it was overtaken by Ethiopia, India was the biggest recipient of bilateral aid from the UK, receiving an average of £227m a year in direct financial support over the past three years.
But the UK's support for India, one of the world's fastest-growing economies, has been a cause of concern among Conservative MPs, many of whom believed that the UK should not be giving money to a country which has a multi-million pound space programme.
Ministers have defended the level of financial help in the past on the basis of the extreme poverty that remains in rural areas and historical colonial ties between the two countries.
Ms Greening has been conducting a review of all financial aid budgets since taking over the role in September and visited India earlier in the week to discuss existing arrangements.
'Changing place' She said the visit confirmed the "tremendous progress" that India was making and reinforced her view that the basis of the UK's support needed to shift from direct aid to technical assistance in future.
"It is time to recognise India's changing place in the world."
Although all existing financial grants will be honoured, the UK will not sign off any new programmes from now on.
Last year the UK gave India about £250m in bilateral aid as well as £29m in technical co-operation.
By focusing post-2015 support on trade, skills and assisting private sector anti-poverty projects which can generate a return on investment, the UK estimates its overall contribution will be one-tenth of the current figure.
In making the decision, the UK is citing the progress India has made in tackling poverty in recent years. It says 60 million people have been lifted out of poverty as a result of the doubling of spending on health and education since 2006.
India spends £70bn on its social welfare budget, compared with £2.2bn on defence and £780m on space exploration.
'Premature' From 2015, development experts will continue to work alongside the Foreign Office and UK Trade and Investment but focus on sharing advice on poverty reduction, private sector projects and global partnerships in food security, climate change and disease prevention.
Save the Children said it believed the decision to end financial aid was "premature".
"Despite India's impressive economic progress, 1.6 million children died in India last year - a quarter of all global child deaths," Kitty Arie, its director of advocacy, said.
"We agree that in the longer term, aid to India should be phased out as the country continues to develop, but we believe that the poorest children will need our ongoing help."
After 2015, the UK should also support Indian non-government organisations to tackle child mortality and improve health provision, it urged.
'Hitting the vulnerable' Labour MP Keith Vaz, a former chair of the Indian-British parliamentary group, said the government needed to reassure its Indian counterpart that their bilateral relationship was still a priority.
"Although undoubtedly India has progressed in the past 20 years, there are still an estimated 360 million people surviving on less than 35 pence per day," he said.
"In withdrawing our aid to India, which will clearly only affect the most vulnerable, we need to see the minister's plan for how she will work with other organisations to make sure the gaps we are creating will be filled."
War on Want, which campaigns to end global poverty, said aid should not just stop because India had become a middle-income country.
Financial support needed to be "smarter" and geared towards supporting "progressive movements" capable of bringing about political change and tackling growing inequality, the pressure group said.
The UK government is increasing the overall overseas development budget to meet a longstanding international commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on aid.
At the same time, it wants to re-align its expenditure to focus on the poorest countries and those scarred by recent conflict.
UK to end financial aid to India by 2015
International Development Secretary, Justine Greening: "India is very successfully developing as an economy"
The UK is to end financial aid to India by 2015, international development secretary Justine Greening has said.
Support worth about £200m ($319m) will be phased out between now and 2015 and the UK's focus will then shift to offering technical assistance.Ms Greening said the move, which will be popular with Tory MPs, reflected India's economic progress and status.
Giving his reaction, India's foreign minister Salman Khurshid said: "Aid is the past and trade is the future."
But charities described the move as "premature" and warned it would be the poorest who suffered.
Until last year, when it was overtaken by Ethiopia, India was the biggest recipient of bilateral aid from the UK, receiving an average of £227m a year in direct financial support over the past three years.
But the UK's support for India, one of the world's fastest-growing economies, has been a cause of concern among Conservative MPs, many of whom believed that the UK should not be giving money to a country which has a multi-million pound space programme.
Ministers have defended the level of financial help in the past on the basis of the extreme poverty that remains in rural areas and historical colonial ties between the two countries.
Ms Greening has been conducting a review of all financial aid budgets since taking over the role in September and visited India earlier in the week to discuss existing arrangements.
'Changing place' She said the visit confirmed the "tremendous progress" that India was making and reinforced her view that the basis of the UK's support needed to shift from direct aid to technical assistance in future.
Continue reading the main story 
The announcement that the UK is scrapping aid to India has been long expected and will not have come as a surprise to the Indian government.
UK International Development Secretary Justine Greening was in India early this week to meet senior Indian government officials who were briefed on the move.
India has long held the position that while it welcomes financial aid from overseas from those who choose to give it, it will never actively seek it.
The move is also a recognition of India's economic transformation.
It's now the third largest investor in the UK and the largest market for British goods outside the EU.
But much of the UK aid money was used to fund projects in some of India's poorest areas and some will worry that those at the receiving end could suffer.
Analysis
UK International Development Secretary Justine Greening was in India early this week to meet senior Indian government officials who were briefed on the move.
India has long held the position that while it welcomes financial aid from overseas from those who choose to give it, it will never actively seek it.
The move is also a recognition of India's economic transformation.
It's now the third largest investor in the UK and the largest market for British goods outside the EU.
But much of the UK aid money was used to fund projects in some of India's poorest areas and some will worry that those at the receiving end could suffer.
"After reviewing the programme and holding discussions with the government of India, we agreed that now is the time to move to a relationship focusing on skillsharing rather than aid," she said.
"India is successfully developing and our own bilateral relationship has to keep up with 21st Century India."It is time to recognise India's changing place in the world."
Although all existing financial grants will be honoured, the UK will not sign off any new programmes from now on.
Last year the UK gave India about £250m in bilateral aid as well as £29m in technical co-operation.
By focusing post-2015 support on trade, skills and assisting private sector anti-poverty projects which can generate a return on investment, the UK estimates its overall contribution will be one-tenth of the current figure.
In making the decision, the UK is citing the progress India has made in tackling poverty in recent years. It says 60 million people have been lifted out of poverty as a result of the doubling of spending on health and education since 2006.
India spends £70bn on its social welfare budget, compared with £2.2bn on defence and £780m on space exploration.
'Premature' From 2015, development experts will continue to work alongside the Foreign Office and UK Trade and Investment but focus on sharing advice on poverty reduction, private sector projects and global partnerships in food security, climate change and disease prevention.
Emma Seery, Oxfam: "A third of the world's poorest people live there [in India]"
"Despite India's impressive economic progress, 1.6 million children died in India last year - a quarter of all global child deaths," Kitty Arie, its director of advocacy, said.
"We agree that in the longer term, aid to India should be phased out as the country continues to develop, but we believe that the poorest children will need our ongoing help."
After 2015, the UK should also support Indian non-government organisations to tackle child mortality and improve health provision, it urged.
'Hitting the vulnerable' Labour MP Keith Vaz, a former chair of the Indian-British parliamentary group, said the government needed to reassure its Indian counterpart that their bilateral relationship was still a priority.
"Although undoubtedly India has progressed in the past 20 years, there are still an estimated 360 million people surviving on less than 35 pence per day," he said.
"In withdrawing our aid to India, which will clearly only affect the most vulnerable, we need to see the minister's plan for how she will work with other organisations to make sure the gaps we are creating will be filled."
War on Want, which campaigns to end global poverty, said aid should not just stop because India had become a middle-income country.
Financial support needed to be "smarter" and geared towards supporting "progressive movements" capable of bringing about political change and tackling growing inequality, the pressure group said.
The UK government is increasing the overall overseas development budget to meet a longstanding international commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on aid.
At the same time, it wants to re-align its expenditure to focus on the poorest countries and those scarred by recent conflict.
The world in 2060: The OECD's forecasts: The Economist
:The world in 2060: The OECD's forecasts
IN RICH, debt-laden economies the policymaking horizon is short-term:
a recovery is the priority. Very long-range forecasts from the OECD, a
think-tank, may seem an exercise in irrelevance. But they are a useful
reminder of the economic and demographic factors that keep grinding away
in the background.
In particular, the OECD’s projections for 2060 (at constant purchasing-power parities) show the impact of fast catch-up growth in underdeveloped countries with big populations. Economic power will tilt even more decisively away from the rich world than many realise. In 2011 the current membership of the OECD made up 65% of global output, compared with a combined 24% for China and India. By 2060 the two Asian giants will have a 46% share of world GDP, the OECD members a shrunken 42%. India’s economy will be a bit bigger than America’s, China’s a lot.
Even so the Chinese and Indians will still be much less well-off than Americans (see chart). The same forecasts show GDP per person in China at 59% of that in America; in India it will be only 27%. And Americans will increase their lead over the citizens of some developed countries like France and Italy.
Nov 10th 2012 | from the print edition
In particular, the OECD’s projections for 2060 (at constant purchasing-power parities) show the impact of fast catch-up growth in underdeveloped countries with big populations. Economic power will tilt even more decisively away from the rich world than many realise. In 2011 the current membership of the OECD made up 65% of global output, compared with a combined 24% for China and India. By 2060 the two Asian giants will have a 46% share of world GDP, the OECD members a shrunken 42%. India’s economy will be a bit bigger than America’s, China’s a lot.
Even so the Chinese and Indians will still be much less well-off than Americans (see chart). The same forecasts show GDP per person in China at 59% of that in America; in India it will be only 27%. And Americans will increase their lead over the citizens of some developed countries like France and Italy.
U.S. Establishes Full-time Aviation Detachment in Poland
U.S. Establishes Full-time Aviation Detachment in Poland
11/09/2012 06:45 AM CST
U.S. Establishes Full-time Aviation Detachment in PolandBy Jim GaramoneAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2012 - U.S. officials praised the long-standing relationship with Poland as they celebrated the first full-time U.S. military presence in that nation yesterday. During a ceremony at Lask Air Base, located about 100 miles southwest of Warsaw, U.S. Air Force personnel flew the American flag, marking the establishment of a small unit dedicated to supporting multi-national aviation training and exercises. The ten personnel of the detachment will be joined by up to 200 visiting airmen conducting quarterly training rotations. U.S. Ambassador to Poland Stephen D. Mull and Navy Adm. James G. Stavridis, the commander of U.S. European Command and NATO's supreme allied commander, were joined at the ceremony by Poland's Defense Minister Tomasz Siemoniak, Chief of Staff Army Gen. Mieczyslaw Cieniuch and Air Force Commander Gen. Lech Majewski. The arrival of the 10-man team at the base represents "a new kind of U.S. 'boots on the ground' here in Poland," said Derek Chollet, the assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs. Chollet represented Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta at the ceremony. "The alliance between the United States and Poland is rooted in shared history, shared values and deep ties among our people, cemented through NATO and the ironclad commitment to Article 5," Chollet said. "The Polish people have been our partners for over two centuries, and since joining the NATO alliance in 1999, your troops have been shoulder-to-shoulder with ours in the Balkans, in Iraq and in Afghanistan." The personnel in Lask will provide continuity for U.S. personnel rotating in and out of Poland, defense officials said. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon and C-130 Hercules units will form the core of the U.S. presence. The personnel at the detachment will report to the 52nd Fighter Wing, based at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany. President Barack Obama and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk agreed to the U.S. presence in Lask during the president's visit to Poland last year. The detachment will make it easier for U.S. and Polish airmen to increase their interoperability and will enhance military-to-military ties at all levels, defense officials said. The presence will also facilitate bilateral and, officials hope, multinational joint training exercises. Poland has extensive ranges and its airspace is far more open than countries farther west. Officials also hope this will allow both militaries to deepen already strong partnerships. "I am truly proud of the way our defense cooperation has focused on looking to the future to ensure we are prepared for the threats and challenges our countries will face," Chollet said. "As we move together into the future, we expect more U.S. boots to follow as we establish a NATO ballistic missile interceptor site at Redzikowo in 2018." The U.S. aviation detachment "also sends a clear message to allies and partners that the U.S. remains committed to European defense and to the principle that we are indeed 'stronger together,'" Chollet said. |
| Related Sites: NATO Spangdahlem Air Base 52nd Fighter Wing |
Iran Confirms Drone Shooting Episode - NYTimes.com
Iran Confirms Drone Shooting Episode - NYTimes.com
The assertions by the defense minister, Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, were the first acknowledgment from Iran that the episode had happened. He spoke less than 24 hours after the Pentagon first disclosed the shooting, involving two Iranian jet fighters and the American aircraft, a Predator surveillance drone, during what American officials described as a routine surveillance mission on Nov. 1 in international airspace over the Persian Gulf.
Iran, Saying Aircraft Trespassed, Confirms Drone Shooting Episode
By THOMAS ERDBRINK and RICK GLADSTONE
Published: November 9, 2012
TEHRAN — Iran’s defense minister on Friday confirmed that Iranian warplanes had fired shots at an American drone last week but said they had taken the action after the unmanned aircraft had entered Iranian airspace.It was the first time that Iranian aircraft had been known to fire at an American drone, one of the many ways that the United States has sought to monitor developments in Iran over more than three decades of estrangement between the two countries. The United States said it had protested the shooting via the United States interests section at the Swiss Embassy in Tehran, and had warned the Iranians that the drone flights would continue.
The American officials said the Predator had been flying 16 nautical miles off the Iranian coast. General Vahidi did not specify where the episode took place, but his assertion that it was in Iranian airspace presented a possible new complication to diplomatic efforts by both countries to engage in direct talks following President Obama’s re-election.
General Vahidi’s version of events also differed with the Pentagon version in another way: He said the two Iranian planes, which the Pentagon had identified as Russian-made Su-25 jets known as Frogfoots, belonged to the Iranian Air Force. The Americans had said the two planes were under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose activities are routinely more aggressive than the conventional Air Force.
General Vahidi, whose account was reported by the Iranian Labor News Agency and other media outlets, said that last week an unidentified plane had entered Iranian airspace over its waters in the Persian Gulf. He said the intruder had been “forced to escape,” after action by Iran’s air force.
It is unclear why Iranian officials had kept the episode a secret. It also is unclear, from the Iranian account, whether the warplanes had sought to down the drone and missed, or had fired warning shots to chase it away.
A lawmaker, Mohammad Saleh Jokar, a member of the National Security and Foreign Policy Committee of Iran’s parliament, also said the American aircraft had trespassed.
“Early last week, a U.S. drone which had violated Iran’s airspace received a decisive response by the armed forces that were stationed in the region,” he said in a Friday interview with the Young Journalist Club, an Iranian semiofficial news agency.
Mr. Jokar said the drone had been on a spying mission. “The U.S. drone entered our country’s airspace with an aim to gather information because there is no other justification,” he said.
The Predator’s sensor technology is so sophisticated that it could have monitored activities in Iran from the distance cited by the Pentagon officials in their account.
The Iranian firing on the aircraft had been completely legal, Mr. Jokar said. “Any violation against Iran’s airspace, territorial waters and land will receive a strong response by the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he said.
Earlier on Friday, Iranian state television ran “breaking news” banners during regular programming saying that the country will confront any foreign aircraft violating its airspace. But there was no specific reference to the Predator drone.
“Iran pledges ‘firm response to any air, ground and sea aggression’ ” and “Iran says will confront any foreign aircraft violating its airspace,” one news item on a ticker read. A presenter for state television’s English language channel Press TV said that Iran was making this statement “in the face of threats of military action, from Israel mainly.”
Two commanders also gave interviews on Friday stressing Iran’s right to defend itself. “Defenders of the Islamic Republic of Iran will give a decisive response to any air, land and naval attacks,” the deputy commander of Iran’s armed forces, Massoud Jazayeri, told the Fars News Agency, which is headed by a former officer of the Revolutionary Guards.
“If any foreign flying objects enter our country’s airspace, the armed forces will confront them,” he said.
Another officer, the commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Air Defense Base, told the state Islamic Republic News Agency his forces are capable of countering “all threats.”
A possible confrontation in the heavily militarized Persian Gulf could present new obstacles in efforts to make progress on resolving the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, the most intractable issue in Iran’s difficult relations with the West. But in what appeared to be a sign of possible progress, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced on Friday that it was resuming negotiations with Iran regarding inspector access to sensitive Iranian sites, aimed at resolving questions about whether Iran had engaged in nuclear weapons development work.
The agency, the nuclear monitoring arm of the United Nations, said in an announcement that it was sending negotiators to Tehran on Dec. 13, the first such meeting since August. An agency spokeswoman, Gill Tudor, said in an e-mail to news agencies that the purpose of the talks was “to conclude the structured approach to resolving outstanding issues” related to Iran’s nuclear program.
Inspectors from the agency have been insisting on the right to an unrestricted visit to Parchin, an Iranian military site near Tehran where, the inspectors suspect, research work in nuclear weapons triggers may have been carried out.
Iran has repeatedly denied its nuclear work is aimed at producing a weapon but has rejected the agency’s requests to visit Parchin or other sites that the Iranians deem classified. Commercial satellite imagery earlier this year suggested the Iranians were seeking to clean up the Parchin site, which further raised suspicions among the nuclear agency officials.
Friday, 9 November 2012
The Wilson Quarterly: India’s Foreign-Policy Fog by Michael Kugelman
The Wilson Quarterly: India’s Foreign-Policy Fog by Michael Kugelman
It’s no easy task navigating through heavy fog in the dead of night. But on one memorable occasion in New Delhi, my driver wasn’t going to be stopped.
It was 3 a.m. as we careened out of Indira Gandhi International Airport and onto the highway leading to my downtown hotel. The fog was so thick that our headlights barely illuminated the vehicles in front of us. Yet my driver kept plowing ahead, even though he wasn’t very sure where he was going.
India’s foreign policy is on the same kind of path. The country is moving away from the nonalignment doctrine it followed during the Cold War, but it doesn’t know what should take its place. The contours of a new worldview are emerging, but remnants of the old one linger, reflecting an uncertainty about India’s proper role abroad that is tied to the country’s complicated situation at home.
In April 1955, the Indonesian city of Bandung hosted a one-week conference for leaders from India and other Asian and African states—described by African-American writer and activist Richard Wright, who attended the event, as “the despised, the insulted, the hurt, the dispossessed”—in which they condemned the Cold War and railed against the West. The conference inspired the launch of the Non-Aligned Movement, and India, led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was a founding member. The bloc opposed alliances between its members and the major powers, emphasizing the pursuit of neutral and independent paths. Over the next few decades, India’s relations with the West frayed, and its economy languished—a consequence of protectionism and other inward-looking economic policies it embraced after becoming independent in 1947.
By the summer of 1991, India had reached a point of economic desperation. Wasteful fiscal policies had nearly exhausted the country’s foreign exchange reserves, obliging New Delhi to dispatch nearly 50 tons of gold to the Bank of England to serve as collateral for a loan. The Economist later likened the transaction to “an indigent household pawning the family jewels.”
It was a humiliating moment that validated a view rapidly solidifying among top government officials, most notably an Oxford-educated finance minister named Manmohan Singh: The status quo was no longer tenable. So India changed course. Singh drew up historic reforms that liberalized the economy and opened India up to the world.
Economic growth, trade, and investment first inched up, then soared. By the turn of the millennium, the country’s successes had come into sharp focus: The economy was growing rapidly, civil society was flourishing, free media were expanding, and a surging information technology sector (filled with upstart firms of global reach such as Infosys, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy Services) was taking the world by storm. When most of the world’s major economies were devastated by the 2008–09 financial crisis, Indian policymakers proudly noted that India barely paused, and in 2010 its economy grew by more than nine percent, according to the World Bank.
These accomplishments sent New Delhi’s branding gurus into overdrive, spawning jaunty slogans such as “Incredible India” and “India Shining.” The achievements also reinforced the long-standing sense of exceptionalism embedded in many Indian minds: Blessed with economic growth, a vibrant democracy, relative stability, and a respected image abroad, India, they believe, is destined to occupy a unique moral position in the world and to play a large role in improving it.
History is one obvious source of Indian exceptionalism. The subcontinent is home to one of the world’s oldest and most accomplished civilizations. Another source is pride in India’s rich variety of traditions—nonviolent, democratic, tolerant, secular—and their coexistence within a large Hindu-majority state brimming with ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity. This exceptionalism shows itself in what Americans often see as Indians’ tendency to view foreign affairs in moral terms.
As early as the 1930s, a young Nehru—the Indian independence leader who once wrote to his father that “greatness is being thrust on me”—was imploring colonized India to look beyond its own plight and help “free the [world’s] people from the chains of imperialism and capitalism.” Decades later, when Finance Minister Singh was attempting to convince Parliament of the need for economic liberalization, he proclaimed that “no power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come,” intimating that the moment had arrived for India to become a global economic power.
India’s leaders today want a stronger global voice, and they want to help establish new rules and norms for the management of world affairs. “India should aim not just at being powerful,” according to NonAlignment 2.0, a much-discussed strategic blueprint published earlier this year. “It should set new standards for what the powerful must do.” This bold statement should not be taken lightly. NonAlignment 2.0 was written by eight highly influential Indians—including the head of a major New Delhi think tank, the editor in chief of The Hindu newspaper, a former foreign secretary, and a prominent entrepreneur previously with Infosys. New Delhi covets prime spots in international institutions and at negotiating tables, and always has its eyes on the ultimate prize: a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. This desire to join the world’s heavyweights represents a sea change from the Cold War era, when India identified with the downtrodden.
India’s approach to the major powers has also changed, at least in part. Alarmed by China’s economic successes, its close ties to Islamabad, and its growing presence in the Indian Ocean region—Chinese ports and facilities have sprung up in Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Burma, and Bangladesh—New Delhi sometimes give the impression of wanting to side against its eastern neighbor. It is modernizing its military and strengthening its armed presence in disputed frontier areas. (India and China fought a border war in 1962.) Some Indian hawks recommend that India seize Chinese territory if Beijing encroaches on disputed lands, and urge India to increase its maritime power to forestall China’s push into the Indian Ocean region.
India has a strong military. With about 1.3 million active personnel, it boasts the third-largest armed forces in the world. Land power has always been the chief source of Indian military strength—only Russia’s army has more land-based weaponry. The Indian air force is well equipped, and the government continues to strengthen it. Between 2007 and 2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, India was the world’s largest arms importer—and fighter aircraft constituted some of the main acquisitions. Naval power is a more complicated story. India has the world’s fifth-largest fleet, and it has demonstrated its effectiveness by staging tsunami relief operations in South Asia and humanitarian evacuations from Lebanon during the Hezbollah-Israel conflict of 2006. Though the navy is undermanned and lacks sufficient firepower and aircraft carriers to project power much beyond Indian waters, naval modernization is well under way.
Not long ago, a prominent Indian security analyst told me that India and China could one day go to war over natural resources in the Bay of Bengal, off India’s eastern coast (where major new reserves of natural gas were discovered in 2002). Other observers worry about hostilities over unresolved border disputes or water supplies. Yet it’s not just the prospect of war that, for many Indians, justifies a hard line on China—it’s also the broader fear that China’s rise threatens India’s own ascent.
For some in New Delhi, this anxiety is so acute that China is becoming a bigger source of concern than Pakistan, with which India has fought three wars. India certainly worries about Pakistan’s instability, nuclear policies, and sponsorship of extremist proxies in Afghanistan, as well as the virulently anti-India militant groups based on Pakistani soil. Indians often describe the 2008 attacks on Mumbai by one of these organizations, Lashkar-e-Taiba, as their 9/11. The terrorist shootings and bombings killed more than 160. Yet many Indian officials believe that Islamabad is too bogged down by internal crises to pose an existential threat. If Pakistan were to collapse, a scholar at an Indian government-funded research organization told me last year, almost nonchalantly, then “we just need to make sure it doesn’t bring us down with it.”
In other quarters, India is promoting the very alliance politics it once rejected. Last year, it signed a strategic agreement with Afghanistan. In 2007, it reached a similar understanding with Japan—the two powers drawn together by mutual concern about China. Even the U.S.-India relationship has warmed considerably, as evidenced by a robust arms trade, joint military exercises, and a controversial 2008 civil nuclear accord that gave India access to nuclear fuel and technology even though it hasn’t signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
During the Cold War, the U.S.-India relationship was so strained that New Delhi, unhappy about Washington’s support for Pakistan and fearful that the United States was a new incarnation of colonial Britain, once signed a treaty of friendship with Moscow. The change began with the 1991 economic reforms, which impressed the American business community and prompted it to push for better bilateral relations (with a strong assist from the growing Indian-American community). Another catalyst was the end of the Cold War, which enabled the two capitals to bond over the shared goal of promoting democracy and open markets abroad. And the 9/11 attacks gave the United States and India common cause in the vigorous pursuit of effective counterterrorism policies.
India has come a long way since that conference in 1955, when (in Wright’s words) “the underdogs of the human race” converged on Bandung to denounce the world order. Yet it hasn’t made a complete break with the past. In many global forums, India’s positions continue to track those of the developing world, conflicting with those of the West. In concert with the other four BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, China, and South Africa), India has resisted the U.S. and EU positions at the Doha global trade talks and pushed back against some Western countries during UN climate negotiations.
It’s also wrong to conclude that India is on a collision course with Beijing. Many Indian diplomats view China as relatively harmless. They believe that its activities in India’s neighborhood are driven more by economic and energy interests than by hegemonic impulses, and can be parried with deft diplomacy. Prime Minister Singh and others call for more trade, people-to-people exchanges, and general rapprochement with China, a stance that has prevailed in official India since Nehru’s time.
As for the United States, relations have improved, but that hardly means that India will align itself with U.S. policy. New Delhi accuses Washington of underemphasizing the bilateral relationship and failing to appreciate India’s rising power. Many Indians believe that the Obama administration cares more about improving ties with Islamabad than about taking the U.S.-India partnership to a new level. The government is also unhappy about an American law that raises U.S. visa fees for skilled foreign workers (including Indian citizens) and legislation that would punish American firms for using Indian call centers.
Even the cornerstone of today’s warmer U.S.-India relationship, the civil nuclear deal, sparks hostility. The accord nearly wasn’t ratified by India’s government, thanks to opposition from anti-American leftists in the ruling coalition who were opposed to a measure that would tie their country more closely to the United States. Indian parliamentarians still have not passed the enabling legislation that U.S. energy firms believe is required if the agreement is to be put into full effect.
New Delhi’s foreign policy is especially fuzzy in regard to the Middle East. In some ways, India’s diplomacy is in tune with the West’s. Relations with Israel, which before the 1990s were nonexistent, are now strong. New Delhi has declared its opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran and supported a UN resolution calling for sanctions against Syria’s brutal government. Because it fears losing access to Iranian oil as a result of U.S. sanctions, it has strengthened ties with Saudi Arabia—Singh made a rare state visit there in 2010. Yet India also refused to support the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi and abstained from a General Assembly resolution demanding that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad step down.
Elite views of Indian foreign policy are as fragmented as the policy is inchoate. Understanding this requires taking stock of India’s situation at home, where, for all the achievements, major problems remain. At least 250 million Indians live on less than a dollar a day. There are more desperately poor people in just eight of India’s 28 states than in all of sub-Saharan Africa. Four hundred million people live without electricity. Corruption and communal violence are rife, and the country is beset by dozens of insurgencies—including a low-grade Maoist rebellion extending across more than two-thirds of India’s states.
Some on the left, citing these domestic problems, contend that pursuing a more prominent role abroad—and allocating the necessary resources to support this goal—is foolish and hypocritical. If we can’t tame an insurgency, they ask, how can we dominate the Indian Ocean? How can we be a credible voice for new global norms when our own traditions of secularism and tolerance are undercut by religious and ethnic violence? “India,” the noted historian Ramachandra Guha flatly declared earlier this year, “should not even attempt to become a superpower.”
Some of those with doubts about a more internationalist stance question whether India even has the credentials to become a superpower. Annual economic growth slowed to just under seven percent last year—a strong rate, but still too slow for a poor country. Inflation is rising. Whispers abound that the “growth miracle” is ending. Military modernization is imperiled by a plodding, state-owned defense industry. And India frequently finds itself in the global spotlight for the wrong reasons. The 2010 Commonwealth Games, held in New Delhi, were marred by inefficiency and graft. This summer’s mammoth power outages, which affected more than 600 million people, prompted many to wonder how a nation that can’t provide basic services can ever hope to be a global power.
Superpower skepticism attracts not only left-leaning academics such as Guha, but also the political Left itself—including the influential communist parties that served in the last governing coalition and, until 2011, ruled the state of West Bengal for 34 consecutive years.
However, a second group of Indians—best described as foreign-policy “realists”—says that global engagement can fuel domestic progress. “The success of India’s own internal development will depend decisively on how effectively we manage our global opportunities,” state the authors of NonAlignment 2.0. A new book by Shashi Tharoor, a prominent member of the ruling Congress Party and a former UN diplomat, calls for a “multialignment” policy in which India takes an opportunistic approach to alliances abroad, with a preference for those that help promote development back home.
Predictably, some Indian elites seek a middle ground. For instance, NonAlignment 2.0 calls for continued neutrality. “Both India and the U.S. may be better served by being friends rather than allies,” its authors write. But they also underscore the imperative of global engagement and an open economic order. The eminent journalist Prem Shankar Jha took a different type of hybrid approach this summer, imploring India to “stand by” the UN’s national sovereignty principle and reject resolutions critical of the Syrian government—in effect, calling on India to leverage its newly acquired global stature to uphold the old ideals of nonalignment.
Such balancing acts appeal to many Indians, but they are tough to maintain. Earlier this year, an Israeli diplomat in New Delhi was targeted in a terrorist attack likely carried out by Iran. Not wanting to upset its good relations with Tehran by acknowledging Iranian complicity, but also not wanting to imperil improved ties with Israel by denying Iranian guilt, New Delhi chose to say nothing publicly. This past summer, the Times of India revealed that a New Delhi police investigation had concluded that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was responsible. Yet India’s government has largely kept quiet.
Indian officials will not always have that luxury. Imagine if India needs to cast a vote in the UN on a U.S. punitive strike on Iran. An abstention or vote against would anger the United States and other members of the clique of powerful nations that India aspires to join. Yet a vote in favor would repudiate the noninterventionism and other principles embraced by India and ingrained in the association of nonaligned states that it helped launch.
Back on that foggy New Delhi night, my intrepid driver somehow managed to find his way to my hotel. India needs to hope that its quest for a foreign-policy strategy has a similarly happy resolution, and soon. Washington has announced a “pivot” toward Asia, the Indian Ocean is fast becoming one of the world’s most important geostrategic areas, and two of the biggest story lines in world politics are unfolding in India’s neighborhood—the withdrawal of coalition forces from Afghanistan and China’s continued rise.
The world is coming to India, and it will need to know where New Delhi stands.
Photo: An Indian military delegation meets its Chinese counterpart on the Indo-Chinese border. No major border clashes have occurred between the two countries in more than 20 years, but their relationship remains strained. MUSTAFA QURAISHI / AP IMAGES
Full text PDF available here.
India’s Foreign-Policy Fog
Propelled by economic success and a sense of its own exceptionalism, India stands poised to create a new role for itself on the world stage. But Indians do not agree on what that role should be.
It’s no easy task navigating through heavy fog in the dead of night. But on one memorable occasion in New Delhi, my driver wasn’t going to be stopped.It was 3 a.m. as we careened out of Indira Gandhi International Airport and onto the highway leading to my downtown hotel. The fog was so thick that our headlights barely illuminated the vehicles in front of us. Yet my driver kept plowing ahead, even though he wasn’t very sure where he was going.
India’s foreign policy is on the same kind of path. The country is moving away from the nonalignment doctrine it followed during the Cold War, but it doesn’t know what should take its place. The contours of a new worldview are emerging, but remnants of the old one linger, reflecting an uncertainty about India’s proper role abroad that is tied to the country’s complicated situation at home.
In April 1955, the Indonesian city of Bandung hosted a one-week conference for leaders from India and other Asian and African states—described by African-American writer and activist Richard Wright, who attended the event, as “the despised, the insulted, the hurt, the dispossessed”—in which they condemned the Cold War and railed against the West. The conference inspired the launch of the Non-Aligned Movement, and India, led by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was a founding member. The bloc opposed alliances between its members and the major powers, emphasizing the pursuit of neutral and independent paths. Over the next few decades, India’s relations with the West frayed, and its economy languished—a consequence of protectionism and other inward-looking economic policies it embraced after becoming independent in 1947.
By the summer of 1991, India had reached a point of economic desperation. Wasteful fiscal policies had nearly exhausted the country’s foreign exchange reserves, obliging New Delhi to dispatch nearly 50 tons of gold to the Bank of England to serve as collateral for a loan. The Economist later likened the transaction to “an indigent household pawning the family jewels.”
It was a humiliating moment that validated a view rapidly solidifying among top government officials, most notably an Oxford-educated finance minister named Manmohan Singh: The status quo was no longer tenable. So India changed course. Singh drew up historic reforms that liberalized the economy and opened India up to the world.
Economic growth, trade, and investment first inched up, then soared. By the turn of the millennium, the country’s successes had come into sharp focus: The economy was growing rapidly, civil society was flourishing, free media were expanding, and a surging information technology sector (filled with upstart firms of global reach such as Infosys, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy Services) was taking the world by storm. When most of the world’s major economies were devastated by the 2008–09 financial crisis, Indian policymakers proudly noted that India barely paused, and in 2010 its economy grew by more than nine percent, according to the World Bank.
These accomplishments sent New Delhi’s branding gurus into overdrive, spawning jaunty slogans such as “Incredible India” and “India Shining.” The achievements also reinforced the long-standing sense of exceptionalism embedded in many Indian minds: Blessed with economic growth, a vibrant democracy, relative stability, and a respected image abroad, India, they believe, is destined to occupy a unique moral position in the world and to play a large role in improving it.
History is one obvious source of Indian exceptionalism. The subcontinent is home to one of the world’s oldest and most accomplished civilizations. Another source is pride in India’s rich variety of traditions—nonviolent, democratic, tolerant, secular—and their coexistence within a large Hindu-majority state brimming with ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity. This exceptionalism shows itself in what Americans often see as Indians’ tendency to view foreign affairs in moral terms.
As early as the 1930s, a young Nehru—the Indian independence leader who once wrote to his father that “greatness is being thrust on me”—was imploring colonized India to look beyond its own plight and help “free the [world’s] people from the chains of imperialism and capitalism.” Decades later, when Finance Minister Singh was attempting to convince Parliament of the need for economic liberalization, he proclaimed that “no power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come,” intimating that the moment had arrived for India to become a global economic power.
India’s leaders today want a stronger global voice, and they want to help establish new rules and norms for the management of world affairs. “India should aim not just at being powerful,” according to NonAlignment 2.0, a much-discussed strategic blueprint published earlier this year. “It should set new standards for what the powerful must do.” This bold statement should not be taken lightly. NonAlignment 2.0 was written by eight highly influential Indians—including the head of a major New Delhi think tank, the editor in chief of The Hindu newspaper, a former foreign secretary, and a prominent entrepreneur previously with Infosys. New Delhi covets prime spots in international institutions and at negotiating tables, and always has its eyes on the ultimate prize: a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council. This desire to join the world’s heavyweights represents a sea change from the Cold War era, when India identified with the downtrodden.
India’s approach to the major powers has also changed, at least in part. Alarmed by China’s economic successes, its close ties to Islamabad, and its growing presence in the Indian Ocean region—Chinese ports and facilities have sprung up in Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Burma, and Bangladesh—New Delhi sometimes give the impression of wanting to side against its eastern neighbor. It is modernizing its military and strengthening its armed presence in disputed frontier areas. (India and China fought a border war in 1962.) Some Indian hawks recommend that India seize Chinese territory if Beijing encroaches on disputed lands, and urge India to increase its maritime power to forestall China’s push into the Indian Ocean region.
India has a strong military. With about 1.3 million active personnel, it boasts the third-largest armed forces in the world. Land power has always been the chief source of Indian military strength—only Russia’s army has more land-based weaponry. The Indian air force is well equipped, and the government continues to strengthen it. Between 2007 and 2011, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, India was the world’s largest arms importer—and fighter aircraft constituted some of the main acquisitions. Naval power is a more complicated story. India has the world’s fifth-largest fleet, and it has demonstrated its effectiveness by staging tsunami relief operations in South Asia and humanitarian evacuations from Lebanon during the Hezbollah-Israel conflict of 2006. Though the navy is undermanned and lacks sufficient firepower and aircraft carriers to project power much beyond Indian waters, naval modernization is well under way.
Not long ago, a prominent Indian security analyst told me that India and China could one day go to war over natural resources in the Bay of Bengal, off India’s eastern coast (where major new reserves of natural gas were discovered in 2002). Other observers worry about hostilities over unresolved border disputes or water supplies. Yet it’s not just the prospect of war that, for many Indians, justifies a hard line on China—it’s also the broader fear that China’s rise threatens India’s own ascent.
For some in New Delhi, this anxiety is so acute that China is becoming a bigger source of concern than Pakistan, with which India has fought three wars. India certainly worries about Pakistan’s instability, nuclear policies, and sponsorship of extremist proxies in Afghanistan, as well as the virulently anti-India militant groups based on Pakistani soil. Indians often describe the 2008 attacks on Mumbai by one of these organizations, Lashkar-e-Taiba, as their 9/11. The terrorist shootings and bombings killed more than 160. Yet many Indian officials believe that Islamabad is too bogged down by internal crises to pose an existential threat. If Pakistan were to collapse, a scholar at an Indian government-funded research organization told me last year, almost nonchalantly, then “we just need to make sure it doesn’t bring us down with it.”
In other quarters, India is promoting the very alliance politics it once rejected. Last year, it signed a strategic agreement with Afghanistan. In 2007, it reached a similar understanding with Japan—the two powers drawn together by mutual concern about China. Even the U.S.-India relationship has warmed considerably, as evidenced by a robust arms trade, joint military exercises, and a controversial 2008 civil nuclear accord that gave India access to nuclear fuel and technology even though it hasn’t signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
During the Cold War, the U.S.-India relationship was so strained that New Delhi, unhappy about Washington’s support for Pakistan and fearful that the United States was a new incarnation of colonial Britain, once signed a treaty of friendship with Moscow. The change began with the 1991 economic reforms, which impressed the American business community and prompted it to push for better bilateral relations (with a strong assist from the growing Indian-American community). Another catalyst was the end of the Cold War, which enabled the two capitals to bond over the shared goal of promoting democracy and open markets abroad. And the 9/11 attacks gave the United States and India common cause in the vigorous pursuit of effective counterterrorism policies.
India has come a long way since that conference in 1955, when (in Wright’s words) “the underdogs of the human race” converged on Bandung to denounce the world order. Yet it hasn’t made a complete break with the past. In many global forums, India’s positions continue to track those of the developing world, conflicting with those of the West. In concert with the other four BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, China, and South Africa), India has resisted the U.S. and EU positions at the Doha global trade talks and pushed back against some Western countries during UN climate negotiations.
It’s also wrong to conclude that India is on a collision course with Beijing. Many Indian diplomats view China as relatively harmless. They believe that its activities in India’s neighborhood are driven more by economic and energy interests than by hegemonic impulses, and can be parried with deft diplomacy. Prime Minister Singh and others call for more trade, people-to-people exchanges, and general rapprochement with China, a stance that has prevailed in official India since Nehru’s time.
As for the United States, relations have improved, but that hardly means that India will align itself with U.S. policy. New Delhi accuses Washington of underemphasizing the bilateral relationship and failing to appreciate India’s rising power. Many Indians believe that the Obama administration cares more about improving ties with Islamabad than about taking the U.S.-India partnership to a new level. The government is also unhappy about an American law that raises U.S. visa fees for skilled foreign workers (including Indian citizens) and legislation that would punish American firms for using Indian call centers.
Even the cornerstone of today’s warmer U.S.-India relationship, the civil nuclear deal, sparks hostility. The accord nearly wasn’t ratified by India’s government, thanks to opposition from anti-American leftists in the ruling coalition who were opposed to a measure that would tie their country more closely to the United States. Indian parliamentarians still have not passed the enabling legislation that U.S. energy firms believe is required if the agreement is to be put into full effect.
New Delhi’s foreign policy is especially fuzzy in regard to the Middle East. In some ways, India’s diplomacy is in tune with the West’s. Relations with Israel, which before the 1990s were nonexistent, are now strong. New Delhi has declared its opposition to a nuclear-armed Iran and supported a UN resolution calling for sanctions against Syria’s brutal government. Because it fears losing access to Iranian oil as a result of U.S. sanctions, it has strengthened ties with Saudi Arabia—Singh made a rare state visit there in 2010. Yet India also refused to support the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force against Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi and abstained from a General Assembly resolution demanding that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad step down.
Elite views of Indian foreign policy are as fragmented as the policy is inchoate. Understanding this requires taking stock of India’s situation at home, where, for all the achievements, major problems remain. At least 250 million Indians live on less than a dollar a day. There are more desperately poor people in just eight of India’s 28 states than in all of sub-Saharan Africa. Four hundred million people live without electricity. Corruption and communal violence are rife, and the country is beset by dozens of insurgencies—including a low-grade Maoist rebellion extending across more than two-thirds of India’s states.
Some on the left, citing these domestic problems, contend that pursuing a more prominent role abroad—and allocating the necessary resources to support this goal—is foolish and hypocritical. If we can’t tame an insurgency, they ask, how can we dominate the Indian Ocean? How can we be a credible voice for new global norms when our own traditions of secularism and tolerance are undercut by religious and ethnic violence? “India,” the noted historian Ramachandra Guha flatly declared earlier this year, “should not even attempt to become a superpower.”
Some of those with doubts about a more internationalist stance question whether India even has the credentials to become a superpower. Annual economic growth slowed to just under seven percent last year—a strong rate, but still too slow for a poor country. Inflation is rising. Whispers abound that the “growth miracle” is ending. Military modernization is imperiled by a plodding, state-owned defense industry. And India frequently finds itself in the global spotlight for the wrong reasons. The 2010 Commonwealth Games, held in New Delhi, were marred by inefficiency and graft. This summer’s mammoth power outages, which affected more than 600 million people, prompted many to wonder how a nation that can’t provide basic services can ever hope to be a global power.
Superpower skepticism attracts not only left-leaning academics such as Guha, but also the political Left itself—including the influential communist parties that served in the last governing coalition and, until 2011, ruled the state of West Bengal for 34 consecutive years.
However, a second group of Indians—best described as foreign-policy “realists”—says that global engagement can fuel domestic progress. “The success of India’s own internal development will depend decisively on how effectively we manage our global opportunities,” state the authors of NonAlignment 2.0. A new book by Shashi Tharoor, a prominent member of the ruling Congress Party and a former UN diplomat, calls for a “multialignment” policy in which India takes an opportunistic approach to alliances abroad, with a preference for those that help promote development back home.
Predictably, some Indian elites seek a middle ground. For instance, NonAlignment 2.0 calls for continued neutrality. “Both India and the U.S. may be better served by being friends rather than allies,” its authors write. But they also underscore the imperative of global engagement and an open economic order. The eminent journalist Prem Shankar Jha took a different type of hybrid approach this summer, imploring India to “stand by” the UN’s national sovereignty principle and reject resolutions critical of the Syrian government—in effect, calling on India to leverage its newly acquired global stature to uphold the old ideals of nonalignment.
Such balancing acts appeal to many Indians, but they are tough to maintain. Earlier this year, an Israeli diplomat in New Delhi was targeted in a terrorist attack likely carried out by Iran. Not wanting to upset its good relations with Tehran by acknowledging Iranian complicity, but also not wanting to imperil improved ties with Israel by denying Iranian guilt, New Delhi chose to say nothing publicly. This past summer, the Times of India revealed that a New Delhi police investigation had concluded that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was responsible. Yet India’s government has largely kept quiet.
Indian officials will not always have that luxury. Imagine if India needs to cast a vote in the UN on a U.S. punitive strike on Iran. An abstention or vote against would anger the United States and other members of the clique of powerful nations that India aspires to join. Yet a vote in favor would repudiate the noninterventionism and other principles embraced by India and ingrained in the association of nonaligned states that it helped launch.
Back on that foggy New Delhi night, my intrepid driver somehow managed to find his way to my hotel. India needs to hope that its quest for a foreign-policy strategy has a similarly happy resolution, and soon. Washington has announced a “pivot” toward Asia, the Indian Ocean is fast becoming one of the world’s most important geostrategic areas, and two of the biggest story lines in world politics are unfolding in India’s neighborhood—the withdrawal of coalition forces from Afghanistan and China’s continued rise.
The world is coming to India, and it will need to know where New Delhi stands.
Photo: An Indian military delegation meets its Chinese counterpart on the Indo-Chinese border. No major border clashes have occurred between the two countries in more than 20 years, but their relationship remains strained. MUSTAFA QURAISHI / AP IMAGES
Full text PDF available here.
China's Assertive Behavior Makes Neighbors Wary : NPR
China's Assertive Behavior Makes Neighbors Wary : NPR
As China's global stature grows, Beijing appears to be flexing its muscles more frequently on the international stage. As part of NPR's series on China this week, correspondents Louisa Lim and Frank Langfitt are looking at this evolving foreign policy. From Beijing, Louisa examines the forces driving China's policy, while Frank reports on why China's neighbors are feeling increasingly edgy.
By Louisa Lim
In the past two months, China has brought its first aircraft carrier into the navy, escalated territorial disputes over rocky uninhabited islets far from its shores and permitted tens of thousands of citizens to hold anti-Japanese protests in 180 Chinese cities.
Such assertive behavior seems to signal Beijing's departure from the long-held foreign policy maxim attributed to former leader Deng Xiaoping: "Bide your time and hide your intentions."
"Some people argue that given growing territorial disputes and mounting strategic pressure from the U.S., then China had better change the posture and get some sort of new foreign policy approach," says Zhu Feng at Peking University's Center for International and Strategic Studies.
Zhu himself is still an advocate of Deng's low-profile approach. But he admits that, given China's increasing international involvement in missions such as anti-piracy patrols off Somalia, this is becoming challenging.
"China now is the 800-pound gorilla. When it walks through the forest, it's totally impossible not to make a big noise," he says.
A Coherent Policy?
Others argue that China is suffering from a lack of coherent foreign policy.
"The basic reason for this foreign policy vacuum is that China is rising very quickly," says Wang Zheng, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. "It's not really ready for playing a role as a global power. That's totally different from being a regional power. You must have a strong foreign policy, and Beijing needs more time to prepare itself."
The upcoming leadership transition in China has also contributed to foreign policy stasis, with political horse trading and domestic issues preoccupying the country's leaders.
Foreign policy traditionally ranks low in the power structure, with Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi not even ranked as a member of the 24-strong Politburo. This has implications for policy coordination, allowing local bureaucratic interests to shape the foreign policy agenda on occasion.
"To us it looks like China is a unified actor," says Susan Shirk, a former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Clinton administration, and now at the University of California, San Diego.
But she decries the idea that China is "an authoritarian country, a few guys on top calling the shots, they have this grand strategy of taking over the world, competing with the U.S. to be a global superpower. I really don't think this is the case."
Tensions Over Islands
Over the summer, tensions escalated in the South China Sea, where China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia all have overlapping territorial claims.
Shirk argues that in such disputes, China's position has been determined not by central decision-making but by "puny bureaucratic actors" able to push their own agenda because of a lack of internal coordination.
Speaking of tensions in the South China Sea over a small group of islets known as the Scarborough Shoal by the Philippines and Huangyan Island by China, she says, "This was manufactured, stirred up by agencies like the fishing agency, the marine surveillance people, who wanted to use nationalism to get more power and influence for themselves. China's leaders are not managing their collective leadership particularly well, so they're not able to exercise effective restraint over these bureaucratic interests."
Whether it's anti-Japanese crowds in the street or the unveiling of a new aircraft carrier, China's external shows of force may look like a sign of strength. But they mask a lack of internal coordination, combined with tensions about the direction of its foreign policy. China's long-term use of nationalism is also hemming its leaders in.
"Any international dispute — even a minor confrontation — can become a test of government, because the government's basic legitimacy is based on being a guardian of Chinese national face," says Wang Zheng, the author of Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations. "So backing down can be seen as weakness or even a new humiliation."
In the eyes of China's neighbors, the recent run-ins over disputed islands point to a more aggressive, rising power willing to flex its muscles and impose costs on those who defy it.
Japanese companies have certainly paid a price for the decision by the Japanese government to buy several disputed islands in the East China Sea in September.
Chinese rioters reacted to the purchase by overturning Japanese cars and even beating a fellow Chinese citizen senseless for driving one.
They also boycotted Japanese products, causing big losses for Japan's famed auto companies, which rely on the China market. This week, Honda reduced its full-year, net profit forecast by 20 percent because of a drop in China sales.
The backlash also hit Japan directly as more than 4,000 Chinese canceled vacations to Japan's southern island of Okinawa following warnings from the government in Beijing.
"The Chinese government said it is not very safe to go to Japan now," recalled Sen Tamaki, who heads overseas marketing for the Okinawa Convention and Visitors Bureau.
He says that warning was totally false, but it took a toll. Tamaki is also worried about long-term damage to Okinawa's economy if relations remain rocky.
"If you want to talk about the future, it's going to be a serious problem," said Tamaki during a chat in Naha, the capital of Okinawa prefecture.
Currently, Okinawa's tourist-dependent economy relies on domestic visitors from other parts of Japan.
"But in Japan, the population is decreasing," says Tamaki, "so the tourism market kind of shrinks in the future. So, China is probably one of the biggest markets to Japan."
Dispute With Philippines
China is also a big market for products from other neighbors, including bananas from the Philippines. When the countries faced off last spring over another set of islands in the South China Sea, China imposed stringent health restrictions on Philippine bananas.
Stephen Antig, who heads the Philippine Banana Growers and Exporters Association, says exports to China plummeted.
"We used to export about 800,000 boxes of bananas to China" per week, says Antig. "Now, we're lucky if we can export 100,000 to 200,000 boxes per week."
Antig says many small growers are now running out of money, while big farmers are traveling to Europe and beyond to find new buyers.
"The lesson is: You should continue to identify new markets, because you never know what can happen," Antig says.
As the biggest economy in Asia, China has lots of leverage with its neighbors, but using purchasing power as a club has limits.
Boycotting Japanese cars in China also hurts the Chinese workers who build them. For instance, Honda has cut daily shifts at its two biggest Chinese plants from two to one until at least mid-November.
"That economic weapon is not actually such a smart tool of power as they would like it to be," says Euan Graham, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. "Particularly if we start seeing the economic fallout as China's own economy starts to slow down from slowing investment from Japan and other outside countries."
Huang Jing, who teaches political science at the National University of Singapore, says China's growing assertiveness in the waters off its shores has a sense of inevitability.
"People have to face reality," said Huang in an interview in his office in Singapore. "They know the Chinese are coming. On the other hand, they worry about it."
Huang says as China's economy and military continue to grow, China will demand a bigger say in the region. The U.S. recently pledged to beef up its military profile in Asia, where it has huge economic interests. China sees this as an attempt to contain its rise.
Countries across the region are now hedging their bets and hoping they won't be forced to choose sides.
China's Assertive Behavior Makes Neighbors Wary
AP China is currently involved in several disputes with its neighbors over small islands, many of them uninhabited. Here, Chinese fishing boats sail off the island province of Hainan in the South China Sea in July.
By Louisa Lim
In the past two months, China has brought its first aircraft carrier into the navy, escalated territorial disputes over rocky uninhabited islets far from its shores and permitted tens of thousands of citizens to hold anti-Japanese protests in 180 Chinese cities.
Such assertive behavior seems to signal Beijing's departure from the long-held foreign policy maxim attributed to former leader Deng Xiaoping: "Bide your time and hide your intentions."
"Some people argue that given growing territorial disputes and mounting strategic pressure from the U.S., then China had better change the posture and get some sort of new foreign policy approach," says Zhu Feng at Peking University's Center for International and Strategic Studies.
Zhu himself is still an advocate of Deng's low-profile approach. But he admits that, given China's increasing international involvement in missions such as anti-piracy patrols off Somalia, this is becoming challenging.
"China now is the 800-pound gorilla. When it walks through the forest, it's totally impossible not to make a big noise," he says.
Enlarge Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images Chinese demonstrators carry their nation's flag during an anti-Japanese protest outside the Japanese Embassy in Beijing on Sept. 15. The countries are involved in a dispute over the Diaoyu Islands, known as the Senkaku Islands in Japanese.
Others argue that China is suffering from a lack of coherent foreign policy.
"The basic reason for this foreign policy vacuum is that China is rising very quickly," says Wang Zheng, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. "It's not really ready for playing a role as a global power. That's totally different from being a regional power. You must have a strong foreign policy, and Beijing needs more time to prepare itself."
The upcoming leadership transition in China has also contributed to foreign policy stasis, with political horse trading and domestic issues preoccupying the country's leaders.
Foreign policy traditionally ranks low in the power structure, with Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi not even ranked as a member of the 24-strong Politburo. This has implications for policy coordination, allowing local bureaucratic interests to shape the foreign policy agenda on occasion.
"To us it looks like China is a unified actor," says Susan Shirk, a former deputy assistant secretary of state during the Clinton administration, and now at the University of California, San Diego.
But she decries the idea that China is "an authoritarian country, a few guys on top calling the shots, they have this grand strategy of taking over the world, competing with the U.S. to be a global superpower. I really don't think this is the case."
Tensions Over Islands
Over the summer, tensions escalated in the South China Sea, where China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia all have overlapping territorial claims.
Shirk argues that in such disputes, China's position has been determined not by central decision-making but by "puny bureaucratic actors" able to push their own agenda because of a lack of internal coordination.
Speaking of tensions in the South China Sea over a small group of islets known as the Scarborough Shoal by the Philippines and Huangyan Island by China, she says, "This was manufactured, stirred up by agencies like the fishing agency, the marine surveillance people, who wanted to use nationalism to get more power and influence for themselves. China's leaders are not managing their collective leadership particularly well, so they're not able to exercise effective restraint over these bureaucratic interests."
Whether it's anti-Japanese crowds in the street or the unveiling of a new aircraft carrier, China's external shows of force may look like a sign of strength. But they mask a lack of internal coordination, combined with tensions about the direction of its foreign policy. China's long-term use of nationalism is also hemming its leaders in.
"Any international dispute — even a minor confrontation — can become a test of government, because the government's basic legitimacy is based on being a guardian of Chinese national face," says Wang Zheng, the author of Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations. "So backing down can be seen as weakness or even a new humiliation."
Asia's Island Disputes
The View From Outside China
By Frank LangfittIn the eyes of China's neighbors, the recent run-ins over disputed islands point to a more aggressive, rising power willing to flex its muscles and impose costs on those who defy it.
Japanese companies have certainly paid a price for the decision by the Japanese government to buy several disputed islands in the East China Sea in September.
Chinese rioters reacted to the purchase by overturning Japanese cars and even beating a fellow Chinese citizen senseless for driving one.
They also boycotted Japanese products, causing big losses for Japan's famed auto companies, which rely on the China market. This week, Honda reduced its full-year, net profit forecast by 20 percent because of a drop in China sales.
The backlash also hit Japan directly as more than 4,000 Chinese canceled vacations to Japan's southern island of Okinawa following warnings from the government in Beijing.
Enlarge STR/Reuters /Landov As part of a demonstration against Japan, a Chinese protester destroys a Japanese-model police car in Shenzhen in southern China on Aug. 19.
He says that warning was totally false, but it took a toll. Tamaki is also worried about long-term damage to Okinawa's economy if relations remain rocky.
"If you want to talk about the future, it's going to be a serious problem," said Tamaki during a chat in Naha, the capital of Okinawa prefecture.
Currently, Okinawa's tourist-dependent economy relies on domestic visitors from other parts of Japan.
"But in Japan, the population is decreasing," says Tamaki, "so the tourism market kind of shrinks in the future. So, China is probably one of the biggest markets to Japan."
Dispute With Philippines
China is also a big market for products from other neighbors, including bananas from the Philippines. When the countries faced off last spring over another set of islands in the South China Sea, China imposed stringent health restrictions on Philippine bananas.
Stephen Antig, who heads the Philippine Banana Growers and Exporters Association, says exports to China plummeted.
"We used to export about 800,000 boxes of bananas to China" per week, says Antig. "Now, we're lucky if we can export 100,000 to 200,000 boxes per week."
Antig says many small growers are now running out of money, while big farmers are traveling to Europe and beyond to find new buyers.
"The lesson is: You should continue to identify new markets, because you never know what can happen," Antig says.
Enlarge STR/AFP/Getty Images China's first aircraft carrier, shown here in the northeastern port of Dalian, was officially put into service on Sept. 25. The carrier is seen as a symbol of China's growing military might.
Boycotting Japanese cars in China also hurts the Chinese workers who build them. For instance, Honda has cut daily shifts at its two biggest Chinese plants from two to one until at least mid-November.
"That economic weapon is not actually such a smart tool of power as they would like it to be," says Euan Graham, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. "Particularly if we start seeing the economic fallout as China's own economy starts to slow down from slowing investment from Japan and other outside countries."
Huang Jing, who teaches political science at the National University of Singapore, says China's growing assertiveness in the waters off its shores has a sense of inevitability.
"People have to face reality," said Huang in an interview in his office in Singapore. "They know the Chinese are coming. On the other hand, they worry about it."
Huang says as China's economy and military continue to grow, China will demand a bigger say in the region. The U.S. recently pledged to beef up its military profile in Asia, where it has huge economic interests. China sees this as an attempt to contain its rise.
Countries across the region are now hedging their bets and hoping they won't be forced to choose sides.
Related NPR Stories
Tokyo's Governor Stokes The Island Feud With China Sept. 26, 2012
Little Islands Are Big Trouble In The South China Sea Sept. 7, 2012
Indians Uneasy As China Builds Ports Nearby June 20, 2011
A Dispute At Sea Escalates China, Vietnam Tensions June 14, 2011
As China Invests, Many Kazakhs Say: Not Too Fast June 7, 2011
India: Ethnic Clashes in Assam Need Humanitarian Intervention
Hundreds of thousands of people sheltering in overcrowded camps in Assam in northeast India desperately need humanitarian assistance after fleeing ethnic violence, DanChurchAid’s staff in New Delhi reports. An assessment of the situation has been carried out by DanChurchAid’s local partners to identify key humanitarian needs of the dis...
08.08.2012
© DCA
A mother with her newborn child in the relief camp.
The conflict that ripped through parts of Assam erupted from an incidence of killing during 20th July. The violence escalated between Bodo and Bengali Muslim community in Kokrajhar district and then spread to three other districts- Chirang, Dhubri and Bongaigaon -killing and displacing many people.
“People from both the communities are running to a safer place for shelter. The state government has set up 278 relief camps where around 400,000 inmates have taken shelter. Government reports 58 deaths, but there are many unreported causalities as informed by local people,” says DanChurchAid’s Humanitarian Response Officer in South Asia, Aditi Ghosh.
All sensitive areas are heavily patrolled by deployment of Police Battalions and Army personnel and curfew has been imposed in these areas.
Poor living conditions in the camps
© DCA
Snapshot from the camp.
People have taken shelter in the government school buildings. The living condition in the camps is poor and unhygienic due to overcrowding reports DanChurchAid’s partners CASA, IGSSS and LWSIT.
“Most of the internally displaced people have lost their home, property, cattle and belongings. There is lack of adequate food and clothes for the inmates of the camps, and children in particular are lacking nutritious food,” says Aditi Ghosh.
There is also a crisis of fire wood to cook food. In some camps, food is being provided by the government.
Critical need for humanitarian assistance
“There is critical need to provide humanitarian assistance to the displaced population living in the camps. In addition, efforts will have to be made to rehabilitate the population permanently in the long run,” states Aditi Ghosh, Humanitarian Response Officer in South Asia.
DanChurchAid and its local partners in India will closely follow the situation in Assam.
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