Tickling a feinting dragon

Apologies for the outdated post you'll be reading... I'd planned to post it after the 2nd day of the NSG meet, but as things so often happen, I found myself looking at the train as it passed me by. Still, even though the deal is now done (Hurray??), I didn't feel like putting this piece to the trash, so here it is, a whole 3 days late.... Please give me your opinions.


The goings on in the NSG and out are laughable - and not in a good sense; more in the sort of laugh that movie characters end up giving when victory turns to impending doom, when there isn't any hope, and they're amazed at the unbelievable turn of events.

I'm talking of course about China's "U-turn" on the Nuke deal, after "expressing its support" for our Nuclear Ambitions earlier (goddam desi media can't read a thing right, can they?).

TimesNow called this stance "nuanced". Not so I say. CNN-IBN has termed it a "broadside". Not so again, Sir. I'm now expecting some half-assed TV opinionator to call it a betrayal.

Except that in the case of China's "turn-around" on the Nuke Deal issue, it really wasn't unexpected to close watchers of the game. Ajai Shukla has an excellent analysis of Chinese thought process on his blog (China's strategic thinking: A gold medal for mental gymnastics). That somewhat unrelated report has a lot of insights to apply to what our government is now facing.

Chinese thought, deeply influenced by Sun Zhe's classic on warfighting and strategic thinking, has a few principles that underline its actions. First, never fight a battle you aren't ready for - The "Hot Peace" is a common feature (a concept also elucidated by Chanakya). Second, don't do something (eg. lead a war) when someone is already doing it for you. And, if it does require, never hesitate to attack with all your might. And lastly, no promise can stand against an iron fist (as indicated by their repeated disregard for laws, treaties, and promises in their single-minded pursuit of national pride, strength and greatness).

Unfortunately, our own South Block Mandarins, hamstrung by their own personal problems, failed to read the Chinese, or if they did, weren't able to come up with a suitable battle plan. And all indicators say that they did anticipate such a move by the Chinese. Any reasonably regular reader of the diplomatic winds would have been able to see the storm coming.

The Battleground:

1. China is absolutely wary of any nation being able to challenge it in any respect. As the new leader of the third world, it is trying desperately to bring nations into its warm, tight embracing fold of renmenbi (yuan for common folk), guns, aircrafts and technology and secure its energy and mineral needs for the coming 50 years.
   
   The last thing they'd want is a challenger to any of these, and certainly not one with such a strong hold over the energy routes as India, and even worse, a neighbour and an old leader of the poor (although that nehruvian idealism was both flawed and useless, and is now, dead).



2. The US has already signaled its wariness of a powerful China in no uncertain terms. China already sees the US as an enemy (and an ideal of power that they look up to as well). Any tie up with India will (and already has) set alarm bells ringing in Zhongnanhai, PRC's corridor of power.
   
   Beijing's alarm of US doesn't extend to India, which it views with a more patronizing and condescending viewpoint (read any internet forum populated by Chinese posters, and you'll see the picture pretty soon, even among the civil and friendly ones too). That condescension only increases their eagerness to keep Indian interests far away from their (expanding) sphere of influence.
   



3. Pakistan is a friend China needs, and not just as an enemy's enemy - the land route afforded to Xinjiang and energy security gained by removing the need to traverse the US-infested Malaccas is attractive to China, as is the foothold that Pakistan affords due to its standing among Muslim nations. And anything that is bad for the Land of the Pure is of concern to its leige-lord.

Still, China cannot take on India head on - not because of what India could do (honestly, with such a weak system, Indian responses to provocations have only made for dinnerside humor at the tables in Beijing and Islamabad), but because of what a spat between two heavy-weights will do to an image-conscious China. Their aim right now, and for the next 10-15 years is to keep quiet, maintain good relations, grow, become powerful, and then roar to subjugate the world, and report with China and dispute on the same page is bad. Neither would they like to take on the US, whose markets are sustaining Chinese manufacturing growth for the time being, and whose opinion matters to a whole load of Chinese business clients.

Hence, their reticence to come out with an open opinion about the Nuke deal. Till now, that is. However, this wasn't unexpected. As their sabre-rattling in 2005 alarmed our government into appeasement (whitewashing of the incursions in Sikkim, a flurry of official visits by the high and mighty among the Indian leadership, ignoring China's strategic throttling of our bilateral relations with neighbouring countries, courtesy their "string of pearls" doctrine, and eyes shut to Chinese barks on various issues).

The Game Plan:

1. From the very beginning, it was China that had our guys worried. Early grumblings notwithstanding, the Chinese silence after that probably got a few hopes up, as did the improving bilateral relations (our perception as always). But a Chinese silence is no comfort, not to us anyway. Repeated attempts to get a clear opinion from them failed - coaxing, prodding, even wrong news reports (in the hope that Chinese reaction would shed light) couldn't move China to show its cards that early in the game (Patient waiting - another Chinese trait).
   
   It was here that we should have taken a slightly stronger line. Press China for a response. Heat up things a bit on the border issue as well as with our defense capabilities, while at the same time showing China what it had to gain by supporting us. Even better, get America to do that. Its a risky game - too little pressure and they wouldn't budge; too much and the opinion would only turn against us. Instead, we did the Indian thing and decided to leave things till they boiled - escape from the task at hand. And China was happy too. Wait and watch - strategy for battles, applied to statecraft.



2. China didn't really need to talk or be heard till now - after all, they were able to ride on their lapdogs, the Indian Left's antics to scuttle the deal, and before that, the certain political wranglings within the Indian system. What they probably hadn't counted on was the Congress' determination to get the deal pushed, even at risk of death. Then again, they achieved a one years delay. Then, there wasn't much to be gained by talking at the IAEA, where only a simple majority was needed. Why do that when a no vote at the NSG would be a veto.



3. The NSG was where China had planned to set up its ambush point. Classic military tactics here too - instead of meeting the enemy on level ground, attack and choke him where the road is narrow and chance of escape is slim; where you have a huge advantage.
   
   Again, if there were signs from the small nations that they would oppose the deal no matter what, perhaps China wouldn't have needed to open out. I guess Prez. Bush's decision to personally lobby for the deal with the dissenters and possible signs of easing off by them spurred the leaders to take control.



4. The People's Daily piece and the Chinese spokesperson's comments are not aimed at India... they're aimed at the nations which would take solace in the knowledge that they'll have a strong nation to support them if matters came to a head. It was also a way of reminding people about possible reasons they'd have to say nay to the deal - Non-proliferation (however flawed and hypocritical the concept may be), hatred of US's overbearing attitude, or simply a way for them to squeeze something. Notice the clever way in which the piece talks about the reason why the NPT was created in the first place (India's '74 tests).
   
   Mind you, the game isn't over yet - the Chinese have a lot of cards yet. They'd still take the backseat, and not oppose the deal any more than they already have, nor take leadership in the issue. Leave the barking and fighting and suggesting changes to the smaller countries, and wait for India to say enough is enough and draw the line. That way, they can paint us as the stubborn ones, the ones to blame.
   
   Alternatively, they can quietly support a whole range of overbearing conditions. And in case all other nations decide that its not a bad thing at all, they may CONSIDER vetoing the deal. Remember, NSG is not an organization - its a cartel, where every member can veto an agreement.
   
   But this option will be dangerous for China, and one they'd very carefully consider before implementing. Chinese torpedoeing of the deal will bring them the unmitigated animosity of India and the US (although that will depend upon how the next administration looks at it). It will not be easy for them to destroy whatever progress they've made with India. More importantly, such an action could cost them the goodwill and support of some nations, which they've painstakingly earned after the Olympics. But that seems like a relatively mild prospect.
   
   In all likelihood, China will not keep itself at the forefront of this. It may back the smaller pomeranian nations that are barking away at the NSG, and have secret meetings to support them. But if America does step up its backdoor negotiations and probably give a tough word or two to the Chinese, they should grumble, but will most likely back off and abstain... either way, there is no way we can expect a Chinese yes vote for the 123 Deal.
   

But certainly, if China plays an instrumental role in destroying almost 8 years of painstaking embroidary, it will only earn them the animosity of the Congress Party. I see that as a good thing - a bright sliver in a very very dark cloud; for it will give us, a eunuch nation, a chance to act and think decisively (much like the Chinese). Take the strong line and act on it, unlike our previous all-talk-and-no-action farces.

If the deal goes through, China will be a big loser - not only will it have lost all its good relations with India and a good deal of support in US, but it will lose the trust of the nations it has been supporting. Its a zero sum game - India's win is China's loss; China's gain will be an Indian disaster.

My only hope is that if the deal does go bust, we will not think of it as a small disappointment. And if it does go through, we'd better make the Chinese know exactly what we think of them - in diplomatic style, of course!

A translation of the latest Chinese re is available at:
http://svaradarajan.blogspot.com/2008/09/peoples-daily-commentary-on-indian.html

For those who think that this was unexpected, read this Chinese release from 2005:

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200510/27/print20051027_217234.html

Pokhran II Anniversary - no cause for celebration?

Very often, new governments refuse to accept or reverse policies instituted by the previous regime. But its probably an India-special that we turn everything 180 degrees. The UPA Government has had a special penchant for this... and where the policies worked, they commandeered them by doing the thing they do best- giving them a Gandhi name. Family first, Patriotism and national welfare comes later.

Now, as we approach a decade of one of the Nation's greatest achievements , the Pokhran-II Nuclear tests (May 11 and 13, 1998), the UPA policy seems to be disgustingly clear - reject it! The UPA government has decided not to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the tests. And to explain why, Minister of State for Defence, Pallam Raju had this to say in an interview with CNN-IBN's Rajdeep Sardesai:

CNN-IBN Report

'Pokhran brought sanctions, so why celebrate it'

The Atal Bihari Vajpayee government conducted five nuclear tests from May 11 to May 13, 1998, in Pokhran and in a few days it will be the 10th anniversary of the tests that announced India's entry into the nuclear weapons club. Many believe that those tests finally led to the Indo-US nuclear deal but the UPA government has decided not to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the tests.

Minister of State for Defence Pallam Raju defended the United Progressive Alliance government's decision of not celebrating the 10th anniversary of Pokhran II nuclear tests.

CNN-IBN: Why would you not do a public celebration or a commemoration of Pokhran II?

Pallam Raju: First of all thank you very much for having me on this programme. I think when we you are talking about India's nuclear programme we have every reason to be proud of what we have achieved. And I think being proud of the programme in itself is a reason for celebration. I don't see any further reason to celebrate a detonation.

CNN-IBN: Mr Raju, you may call it a detonation, but the truth is with the Shakti tests India declared itself a nuclear power. The day has great significance and there is much reason to be proud of Pokhran in India's strategic programme.

Pallam Raju: Let's look at what Pokhran has achieved for India. Of course it has demonstrated the capability India has had. But the detrimental effects - sanctions have affected most of our strategic program that were of importance to the nation. So I don't see any reason why it should be advertise loudly about.

CNN-IBN: Many would say you are speaking this way because of a clear nuclear deal shadow. Many of the clauses in the Indo-US nuclear deal are after all nothing but a result of Pokhran II. And that's why perhaps there is a slight discomfort celebrating it. What would the non-proliferation lobby would say?

Pallam Raju: Looking at policies that India has pursued in terms of being a non-first user, all that speaks about the deterrence policy we follow. And being a very responsible nuclear power and we have not proliferated and India's nuclear record peaks for it's responsible behaviour.

CNN-IBN: Final question, it's not just about Pokhran. It's about the 1971 victory that you celebrate and the Kargil victory, which you don't. The BJP today says they agree Indira Gandhi started it and the NDA took the next step with Pokhran II.

Pallam Raju: We had the bomb ready and the NDA blasted it in 1998. So what has happened after the blast you know the consequences the country had to face? You know the sanctions that were imposed. Every important programme of the country suffered as a consequence. Against this background, is this the reason for celebration? We know what we are, we are conscience of our capabilities, we know the strengths we posses. What is the need to advertise for it and make a celebration of it?

Unfortunately, Sardesai didn't ask the minister the question that he should have asked - Mr Minister, are you saying that the tests were a bad thing? That would have unravelled his dhoti and shown the government's treason.

It was nauseating to see the minister denigrate our scientists and spit on all the positives that the Shakti tests achieved, just so that the Congress wouldn't give away brownie points to the NDA. Why should we celebrate the 1974 tests then?? After all, those sanctions hit us much harder than those after Pokhran-II. Why should we celebrate the creation of Bangladesh - look at the problems we face from that runt nation today?

In fact, when we celebrate so many days for idiotic reasons only because some damn fool was born with the Gandhi surname, why can't we celebrate something of substance, instead of - Sadbhavana Divas (Rajiv Gandhi's Birthday), Children's Day (Nehru's Birthday), National Integration Day (Indira Gandhi's Birthday), National Oathtaking day (Indira Gandhi's Death Anniversary).

The UPA can close its eyes to the truth, but few sensible people will deny that Pokhran-II put us on the world map, brought us to the forefront of the foreign policies of the most powerful nations in the world. The sanctions had almost no effect on our economy, and if we're able to look the world's biggest technological powers in the eye and work with them as equals, it is all thanks to the gains we made by indigenizing our military technology during those years of denial. If the government's flagship Indo-US Nuke Deal is a reality, they have to thank Shakti for that; if India has become a major power today, it is singularly thanks to Pokhran-II ; and if we're talked about as a counter to China, and wooed by all nations as a superpower, it is because of the tests. Till then, we were strong, but no one really cared; but blast a bomb, and the whole world comes running for your good graces.

But I couldn't have expected anything more from a party whose first priority seems to be their Prince Regent's performance in next year's polls. After all, these were the same guys who criticized the tests and spoke for China's interests rather than ours when we conducted them anyway. Shameful!! disgusting!!

Just so Stories- How Pakistan got its bomb

Here's a Guardian Report about how the US turned a blind eye to Pakistan's Nuclear activities, and even helped it along:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0%2C%2C2188777%2C00.html

The man who knew too much

He was the CIA's expert on Pakistan's nuclear secrets, but Rich Barlow was thrown out and disgraced when he blew the whistle on a US cover-up. Now he's to have his day in court. Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report

Saturday October 13, 2007
The Guardian

Rich Barlow idles outside his silver trailer on a remote campsite in Montana - itinerant and unemployed, with only his hunting dogs and a borrowed computer for company. He dips into a pouch of American Spirit tobacco to roll another cigarette. It is hard to imagine that he was once a covert operative at the CIA, the recognised, much lauded expert in the trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).

He prepared briefs for Dick Cheney, when Cheney was at the Pentagon, for the upper echelons of the CIA and even for the Oval Office. But when he uncovered a political scandal - a conspiracy to enable a rogue nation to get the nuclear bomb - he found himself a marked man.

Article continues

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In the late 80s, in the course of tracking down smugglers of WMD components, Barlow uncovered reams of material that related to Pakistan. It was known the Islamic Republic had been covertly striving to acquire nuclear weapons since India's explosion of a device in 1974 and the prospect terrified the west - especially given the instability of a nation that had had three military coups in less than 30 years . Straddling deep ethnic, religious and political fault-lines, it was also a country regularly rocked by inter-communal violence. "Pakistan was the kind of place where technology could slip out of control," Barlow says.

He soon discovered, however, that senior officials in government were taking quite the opposite view: they were breaking US and international non-proliferation protocols to shelter Pakistan's ambitions and even sell it banned WMD technology. In the closing years of the cold war, Pakistan was considered to have great strategic importance. It provided Washington with a springboard into neighbouring Afghanistan - a route for passing US weapons and cash to the mujahideen, who were battling to oust the Soviet army that had invaded in 1979. Barlow says, "We had to buddy-up to regimes we didn't see eye-to-eye with, but I could not believe we would actually give Pakistan the bomb.

How could any US administration set such short-term gains against the long-term safety of the world?" Next he discovered that the Pentagon was preparing to sell Pakistan jet fighters that could be used to drop a nuclear bomb.

Barlow was relentless in exposing what he saw as US complicity, and in the end he was sacked and smeared as disloyal, mad, a drunk and a philanderer. If he had been listened to, many believe Pakistan might never have got its nuclear bomb; south Asia might not have been pitched into three near-nuclear conflagrations; and the nuclear weapons programmes of Iran, Libya and North Korea - which British and American intelligence now acknowledge were all secretly enabled by Pakistan - would never have got off the ground. "None of this need have happened," Robert Gallucci, special adviser on WMD to both Clinton and George W Bush, told us. "The vanquishing of Barlow and the erasing of his case kicked off a chain of events that led to all the nuclear-tinged stand-offs we face today. Pakistan is the number one threat to the world, and if it all goes off - a nuclear bomb in a US or European city- I'm sure we will find ourselves looking in Pakistan's direction."

US aid to Pakistan tapered off when the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan. Dejected and impoverished, in 1987 Pakistan's ruling military responded by selling its nuclear hardware and know-how for cash, something that would have been obvious to all if the intelligence had been properly analysed. "But the George HW Bush administration was not looking at Pakistan," Barlow says. "It had new crises to deal with in the Persian Gulf where Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait."

As the first Gulf war came to an end with no regime change in Iraq, a group of neoconservatives led by Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Donald Rumsfeld were already lobbying to finish what that campaign had started and dislodge Saddam. Even as the CIA amassed evidence showing that Pakistan, a state that sponsored Islamist terrorism and made its money by selling proscribed WMD technology, was the number one threat, they earmarked Iraq as the chief target.

When these neocons came to power in 2001, under President George W Bush, Pakistan was indemnified again, this time in return for signing up to the "war on terror". Condoleezza Rice backed the line, as did Rumsfeld, too. Pakistan, although suspected by all of them to be at the epicentre of global instability, was hailed as a friend. All energies were devoted to building up the case against Iraq.

It is only now, amid the recriminations about the war in Iraq and reassessments of where the real danger lies, that Barlow - the despised bringer of bad news about Pakistan - is finally to get a hearing. More than 20 years after this saga began, his case, filed on Capitol Hill, is coming to court later this month. His lawyers are seeking millions of dollars in compensation for Barlow as well as the reinstatement of his $80,000 a year government pension. Evidence will highlight what happened when ideologues took control of intelligence in three separate US administrations - those of Reagan, and of the two Bushes - and how a CIA analyst who would not give up his pursuit for the truth became a fall guy.

At first Barlow thought he was helping safeguard the world. "I just loved it," he says. His focus from the start was Pakistan, at the time suspected of clandestinely seeking nuclear weapons in a programme initiated by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the father of Benazir. "Everywhere I looked I kept coming up against intelligence about Pakistan's WMD programme," Barlow says. "I thought I was telling them what they needed to hear, but the White House seemed oblivious." Immersed in the minutiae of his investigations, he didn't appreciate the bigger picture: that Pakistan had, within days of Reagan's inauguration in 1981, gone from being an outcast nation that had outraged the west by hanging Bhutto to a major US ally in the proxy war in Afghanistan.

Within months Barlow was out of a job. A small band of Republican hawks, including Paul Wolfowitz, had convinced the president that America needed a new strategy against potential nuclear threats, since long-term policies such as détente and containment were not working. Reagan was urged to remilitarise, launch his Star Wars programme and neutralise ACDA. When the agency's staff was cut by one third, Barlow found himself out of Washington and stacking shelves in a food store in Connecticut, where he married his girlfriend, Cindy. He was not on hand in 1984 when intelligence reached the ACDA and the CIA that Pakistan had joined the nuclear club (the declared nuclear powers were Britain, France, the US, China and Russia) after China detonated a device on Pakistan's behalf.

Soon after, Barlow was re-employed to work as an analyst, specialising in Pakistan, at the Office of Scientific and Weapons Research (OSWR). The CIA was pursuing the Pakistan programme vigorously even though Reagan was turning a blind eye - indeed, Reagan's secretary of state, George Schultz, claimed in 1985: "We have full faith in [Pakistan's] assurance that they will not make the bomb."

Back on a government salary, Barlow, aged 31, moved to Virginia with his wife Cindy, also a CIA agent. From day one, he was given access to the most highly classified material. He learned about the workings of the vast grey global market in dual-use components - the tools and equipment that could be put to use in a nuclear weapons programme but that could also be ascribed to other domestic purposes, making the trade in them hard to spot or regulate. "There was tonnes of it and most of it was ending up in Islamabad," he says. "Pakistan had a vast network of procurers, operating all over the world." A secret nuclear facility near Islamabad, known as the Khan Research Laboratories, was being fitted out with components imported from Europe and America "under the wire". But the CIA obtained photographs. Floor plans. Bomb designs. Sensors picked up evidence of high levels of enriched uranium in the air and in the dust clinging to the lorries plying the road to the laboratories. Barlow was in his element.

However, burrowing through cables and files, he began to realise that the State Department had intelligence it was not sharing - in particular the identities of key Pakistani procurement agents, who were active in the US. Without this information, the US Commerce Department (which approved export licences) and US Customs (which enforced them) were hamstrung.

Barlow came to the conclusion that a small group of senior officials was physically aiding the Pakistan programme. "They were issuing scores of approvals for the Pakistan embassy in Washington to export hi-tech equipment that was critical for their nuclear bomb programme and that the US Commerce Department had refused to license," he says. Dismayed, he approached his boss at the CIA, Richard Kerr, the deputy director for intelligence, who summoned senior State Department officials to a meeting at CIA headquarters in Langley. Barlow recalls: "Kerr tried to do it as nicely as he could. He said he understood the State Department had to keep Pakistan on side - the State Department guaranteed it would stop working against us."

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Indo-US Nuclear Deal- Full Text

Manoj Joshi, whose blog is both interesting and eloquent, has been kind enough to trawl through the MEA's website and find the full text document of the Indo-US 123 Deal (in pdf format).

If you're interested in reading and analyzing it, you can check out the download link at http://www.savefile.com/files/946023. The file will be up for a month (more, depending upon the number of downloads).

The full text can also be found on the US State Department Website at http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2007/aug/90050.htm

While you're at it, you can also download the July 18 2005 Agreement text (pdf document) from the MEA website (Bilateral Treaties and Documents section):

Implementation of the India-United States Joint Statement of July 18, 2005: India’s Separation Plan