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Professor, strategic thinker, author and commentator

National-security costs of mega-corruption

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Perils of becoming a republic of scandals

 

Corruption, the No. 1 national-security threat, is eating into the vitals of the state, enfeebling internal security and crimping foreign policy

 

Brahma Chellaney

The Hindu newspaper, December 7, 2010

 

India confronts several pressing national-security challenges. But only one of them — political corruption — poses an existential threat to the Indian state, which in reality has degenerated into a republic of mega-scandals. The pervasive misuse of public office for private gain is an evil eating into the vitals of the state, sapping India’s strength. When important decisions, from arms procurement to policy changes, are often tainted by corrupt considerations, it is inevitable that national security will get compromised.  If India today is widely seen as a soft state, much of the blame must be pinned on the corrupt and the compromised that lead it. Such ‘softening’ of India has made the country a tempting target for those seeking to undermine its security.

 

India’s situation is best explained by an ancient proverb, “A fish rots from the head down.” When the head is putrid, the body politic cannot be healthy. And when those at the helm remain wedded to grand corruption, clerks or traffic police cannot be singled out for taking small bribes. In fact, it is the self-perpetuating cycle of corruption at all government levels — federal, state and local — that has turned internal security into India’s Achilles’ heel. As the then chief justice of India pointed out last year, the plastic explosives employed in the deadly 1993 Bombay bombings were smuggled into the country due to local corrupt practices.

 

But it is the institutionalized corruption in high office that is eviscerating the Indian republic. When domestic policy is seriously stained by corruption, foreign policy can hardly be dynamic and proactive.

 

Such is the weakening of the state that India did a better job warding off regional-security threats when it was economically weak — like during Indira Gandhi’s reign — than it is able to do today, despite nearly two decades of impressive GDP growth. Economic liberalization, paradoxically, has whetted personal greed and brought in an era of big-bucks corruption, even as a system of arbitrary environmental stoppages and clearances has taken the place of the old “license-permit raj.”

 

India now is witnessing not mere corruption but national plunder. The consequence is that India is getting feebler institutionally. Yet scandals remain so recurrent that public ire with any malfeasance is short-lived. Indeed, one strategy often employed to ease public anger over revelations of a new mega-scandal is to start targeting second-tier corruption selectively. The misuse of government agencies remains rampant.

 

Corruption scandals now actually resemble television soaps, with engrossing but diversionary plots. To deflect public attention, the focus in the immediate aftermath is always on government processes related to probing a scandal, not on opening judicial paths to identify the real beneficiaries and quickly recover the loot. The latest scandal over the government’s second-generation allotment of telecom spectrum in 2008 falls in the same category, although the putative loss to the national treasury has been estimated at $39 billion, or 14.3 percent of India’s total current external debt. The sheer scale of this kickback scandal indicates that multiple political interests must have had a hand in the till. If there is any good news, it is the belated appointment of a clean professional as the telecom minister.

 

Make no mistake: The spiriting away of billions of dollars to international financial safe havens constitutes more than criminal wrongdoing. When economic contracts are signed or policy decisions taken so as to net handsome kickbacks, it constitutes a flagrant assault on national interest. India ranks among the top countries whose stolen national wealth is stashed in Swiss bank accounts. Yet no Indian politician has ever been convicted and hanged for waging such war on the state.

 

Let’s be clear: Corruption stalls development, undermines social progress, undercuts the confidence of citizens in the fairness and impartiality of public administration, impedes good governance, erodes the rule of law, distorts competitive conditions in business transactions, discourages domestic and foreign investment, fosters a black-market economy, and raises new security threats. In sum, corruption obstructs a country from realizing its goals and undercuts national security.

 

The cancer of corruption in India has alarmingly spread to elements within the two institutions that are central to the country’s future — the judiciary and the armed forces. Recent revelations have highlighted the deep corporate penetration of the major political parties and the manner big business influences policymaking and media coverage. The rot in the media — the nation’s supposed watchdog — stands exposed.  Even the integrity of national awards has been badly vitiated, with a Padma award no longer a badge of honour to flaunt.

 

But nothing illustrates the corrosive effects of the culture of corruption better than the palpable decay of state capacity. India’s economic dynamism is rooted in its private sector-led growth. But in stark contrast to China, India does poorly wherever the state is involved. The deterioration of the state is the principal constraint on India’s ability to secure its interests. That underscores the national-security costs of widespread corruption.

 

Today, a self-advertised “incredible India” has no articulated national-security strategy, or a defined defence policy, or a declared counterterrorism doctrine, yet it is the world’s only large country dependent on other powers to meet basic defence needs. Instead of seeking to build a first-rate military with strategic reach and an independent deterrent, India has allowed itself to become a money-spinning dumping ground for weapons it can do without. As a result, India has emerged as the world’s top arms importer in the past decade, even as its capacity to decisively win a war erodes.

 

The defence of India indeed has turned into an unending scandal. Even indictments by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) have made little difference to the manner arms continue to be procured from overseas. Such imports, often clinched without transparency or open bidding, are a major source of political corruption.

 

India shows that the more corrupt a system, the greater is its corrupting power. A corrupt system quickly corrupts those who enter it, fixating them on the lure of kickbacks and on amassing pelf. Such metastasizing corruption cannot be controlled simply through public funding of political parties. After all, much of the big-bucks corruption is designed to line one’s own pockets, with no seeming limit to personal greed.  In fact, the series of scandals during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led government — from bribery-influenced arms imports and $1-billion urea contract with Oman to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars to the state in allowing private mobile telephone operators to switch from fixed license fees to revenue sharing — served as a reminder of the growing concentration of powers in a few hands and the consequent disdain for integrated, holistic policymaking.

 

As in other national-security challenges, the principal causes of rampant corruption are leadership deficit and governance deficit. The only way corruption can be contained is through integrity of leadership; improved governance; measures to ensure fiscal transparency; strengthened anti-bribery enforcement; government accountability; and active public involvement. The independence of investigative agencies is a prerequisite to developing an anti-corruption culture in politics and business. Yet in India, these agencies are controlled by those whom they are supposed to keep in check or investigate when a scandal unfolds.

 

With corruption, nepotism and cronyism now endemic, Indian politics has become the safe, fast track to wealth. India freed itself from British colonialism only to come in the grip of an indigenous political class ruling the country on colonial-style principles and still functioning from colonial-era structures. It may take a second war of independence for India to gain true freedom from exploitation and pillage.

 

Brahma Chellaney is the author, most recently, of “Asian Juggernaut” (HarperCollins USA, 2010).

Can terrorism really be confined to the Af-Pak belt?

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THE ASIAN CENTURY

NATO’s Dangerous Afghan Dream

Brahma Chellaney

2010-11-22
Project Syndicate

The agreement at the NATO summit meeting in Lisbon on a transition plan to help end the war in Afghanistan within the next four years raises troubling questions about regional security and the global fight against transnational terrorism. As the US and other coalition partners gradually wind down their combat role, Afghan security forces – to number 300,000 after crash training of new recruits – are to take their place. But these local forces are unlikely to be able to hold the country together.

The most likely post-war scenario is a partition of Afghanistan, with the Taliban calling the shots in the Pashtun-dominated south and east, and the non-Pashtun northern and western regions retaining their current de factoautonomy.

Regionally, there is likely to be greater turmoil. The withdrawal of NATO forces before the job is done will leave India on the front lines to face the brunt of greater terror from the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt. In fact, NATO’s retreat is expected to embolden jihadists in the region – and beyond it – to stage transnational attacks.

The 2014 withdrawal plan, however, comes as no surprise, given US President Barack Obama’s expressed desire to end combat operations in Afghanistan. Indeed, his defense secretary, Robert Gates, made clear last year that the US will now seek to contain terrorism regionally rather than defeat it. The transition plan cements that strategic shift.

The problem, however, is that the US war effort is already faltering, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai exploring the possibility of cutting his own deals with the Taliban and other warlords. And that is largely the result of Obama’s botched strategy, whose twin troop surges were designed not to rout the Taliban militarily, but to strike a political deal with them from a position of strength. But, as CIA director Leon Panetta admitted, “We have seen no evidence that [the Taliban] are truly interested in reconciliation.”

Why would the Taliban be interested in negotiating a deal with the Americans, given Obama’s public declaration, just weeks after coming to office, that he was interested in a military exit from Afghanistan? The Afghan Taliban and their sponsors, the Pakistan military, simply want to wait out the Americans.

Last year, with the stroke of his pen, Obama ended his predecessor’s “global war on terror.” But renaming it a “struggle” or a “strategic challenge” has not changed the grim realities on the ground.

The US has been lucky to escape further terrorist strikes since September 11, 2001, despite several attempts. By contrast, India’s location next to the Af-Pak has left it far more vulnerable, and the country has since suffered a series of major attacks – from the assault on its parliament in December 2001 to the terrorist siege of Mumbai in 2008.

Afghanistan and Pakistan, two artificially created states with no roots in history, have searched endlessly for a national identity. Today, they have emerged as the global epicenter of transnational terrorism and the heroin trade. Although Pakistan is now the largest recipient of US aid in the world, the Failed States Index 2010, created by Foreign Policy and the Fund for Peace, ranks the country 10th, between Guinea and Haiti. Unlike in other failed states, however, in Pakistan state-nurtured terrorism and state-supported nuclear smuggling uniquely intersect.

To compound the situation, the political border between Afghanistan and Pakistan has now ceased to exist in practice. The 2,640-kilometer Durand Line, a British-colonial invention that divided the large Pashtun community when it was established in 1893 as the border between British-led India and Afghanistan, has long been despised and rejected by Afghanistan.

Today, the Durand Line exists only on maps. On the ground, it has little political, ethnic, or economic relevance, even as the Af-Pak region has become a magnet for the world’s jihadists. A de facto Pashtunistan, long sought by Pashtuns, has now grown up on the ruins of an ongoing Islamist militancy, but without any political authority in charge. The disappearance of the Af-Pak political border seems irreversible, undermining Pakistan’s own territorial integrity.

Yet, as if the forces of terror could be neatly boxed in, the US has scaled back its objective to contain terrorism regionally – a strategy that promises to keep the Af-Pak problem a festering threat to global security. Indeed, NATO’s withdrawal plan is likely to lead to a realignment of ethnic forces, and thus to greater volatility.

Afghanistan is not Vietnam. A withdrawal of US and other NATO troops will not mean the end of the war, because the enemy will continue to target Western interests, wherever they may be. The hope that terrorism can be regionally contained is a dangerous exercise in self-delusion.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author, most recently, of Asian Juggernaut.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
http://www.project-syndicate.org

Dealing with Burma: It’s the economy, stupid

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The Japan Times, November 23, 2010

Let trade transform Burma

 
The election process in Burma has altered its political landscape, giving birth to new institutions and players, triggering a generational change in the armed forces, bringing to power the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), and facilitating the release of prodemocracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from seven years of isolation in her lakeside villa in Rangoon.
 

In addition to the emergence of a bicameral national Parliament, 14 regional parliaments, a president and a civilian federal government, the country has a new flag, a new national anthem, a new capital and a new official name, with the "Union of Myanmar" tag giving way to the "Republic of the Union of Myanmar."

While several ethnic-minority parties have done well, especially the Shan Nationalities Democratic Party and the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party, the election results have confirmed that the military will continue to rule through its proxy, USDP, led by Prime Minister U Thein Sein.

This is no surprise: After being in power for more than 48 years, the military has become too fat to return to the barracks. In fact, it won’t fit in the barracks. Still, the holding of the election has forced the armed forces to assume a civilian mask, a process that has witnessed the elevation of younger military officers to replace those who resigned to run for legislative seats.

At 65, Aung San Suu Kyi faces a difficult situation, with her party disbanded, the opposition splintered and the military’s grip on power as firm as ever. To compound matters, there are deep divisions among her followers over whether to confront the country’s rulers or emulate the example of Nelson Mandela who negotiated with South Africa’s then apartheid regime.

A breakaway faction of her party took part in the elections, but did not fare well. With no hope of a "color revolution" in Burma, demilitarization of the polity can at best be a step-by-step process. While the revived political process has created some space for the democracy movement, Suu Kyi cannot hope to bring about tangible democratic reforms without co-opting influential elements within the armed forces.

With Burma now in transition, the United States and its European partners must moderate their sanctions policy to influence developments within and create incentives for greater political openness. Indeed, there is no reason why a weak, impoverished Burma should continue to be held to a higher human rights standard than an increasingly assertive China.

Why deny Burma the international-trade opportunities that have allowed the world’s biggest executioner, China, to prosper?

The defining events that led to the crushing of prodemocracy forces in Burma and China actually occurred around the same time more than two decades ago, yet the West responded to the developments in the two countries in very different ways. China’s spectacular economic rise owes a lot to the Western decision not to sustain trade sanctions after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of prodemocracy protesters. That the choice made was wise can be seen from the baneful impact of the opposite decision in favor of sustained sanctions against Burma, which brutally suppressed prodemocracy demonstrators 10 months before Tiananmen Square and later refused to honor the outcome of a national election in 1990.

Had the Burma-type approach (centered on escalating sanctions) been applied against China internationally, the result would have been a less prosperous and a potentially destabilizing China today.

By contrast, the continuation of sanctions and their subsequent expansion against Burma snuffed out any prospect of that country emulating China’s example of blending economic openness with political authoritarianism. Indeed, the military’s exploratory efforts to open up the Burmese economy in the early 1990s fizzled out quickly in the face of Western penal actions.

The sanctions policy now needs to be recalibrated by drawing on the lessons of the past two decades. The first lesson is that the economic sanctions, even if justified, have produced the wrong political results. Years of sanctions have left Burma without an entrepreneurial class or civil society but saddled with an all-powerful military as the sole functioning institution.

A second lesson is that the expansion of sanctions has not only further isolated Burma, but also made that country overly dependent on China, to the concern of the nationalistic Burmese military.

At a time when the U.S. is courting Communist-ruled Vietnam as part of its "hedge" strategy against a resurgent China, it makes little sense to continue with an approach that is pushing a strategically located Burma into China’s lap.

Yet another lesson is that the sanctions have hurt not their intended target — the military. By cutting off investment and squeezing vital sectors of the Burmese economy — from tourism to textiles — the sanctions have lowered the living conditions of ordinary Burmese and shut out liberalizing influences.

Now is the time, with Burma in some flux, for the U.S. and its allies to get out of a self-perpetuating cycle of sanctions and help carve out greater international space in Burma in the hope of building a civilian institutional framework for a democratic transition. Each step toward greater political openness in Burma, including Suu Kyi’s release, ought to be suitably rewarded.

More broadly, democracy promotion should not become a geopolitical tool wielded only against the weak and the marginalized. Going after the small kids on the global block but courting the most-powerful autocrats is hardly the way to build international norms or ensure positive results.

As the Nobel Committee bluntly pointed out while awarding the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, "China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights."

U.S. President Barack Obama began on the right note by exploring the prospect of a gradual U.S. re-engagement with Burma, with his envoys meeting with the Burmese foreign minister and other officials. Yet on his recent India visit, Obama attacked Burma three times, reflecting his frustration with the painfully slow movement to create a real democratic opening in that nation.

U.S. and European policy must recognize that the seeds of democracy will not take root in a stunted economy. Trade is likely to prove more effective than sanctions.

Encouraging Western investment, trade and tourism will help undercut Chinese influence and aid civil-society development in a critically weak country.

Brahma Chellaney is the author, most recently, of "Asian Juggernaut" (HarperCollins USA).
 

The Japan Times: Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2010
(C) All rights reserved

A tactless Indian foreign minister

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The Undiplomatic Krishna
 
Brahma Chellaney
 

Krishna is continuing the tradition of Indians in high office messing up the country’s China policy.

Guest Column, India Today, December 6, 2010

 

At a time when there are a number of disturbing parallels between the situation leading up to the 1962 Chinese invasion of India and the conditions prevailing now, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna stands out for his diplomatic naïveté. Sidelining China’s aggressive resurrection of its long-dormant claim to Arunachal Pradesh and its continued occupation of one-fifth of the original princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, Krishna has made repeated pleas to Beijing to stop issuing visas on a separate sheet to residents of Indian Jammu and Kashmir. Predictably, Beijing has again rebuffed him by peremptorily declaring that its position remains unchanged. It ill behoves the minister to appear as a supplicant before the mythical “Middle Kingdom,” that too on a secondary issue. 

 

If New Delhi wants Beijing to give up its devious visa practice of portraying Jammu and Kashmir as distinct and independent from India, it must repay China in the same coin by issuing visas to Tibet residents on a separate sheet of paper. That includes all the Tibetans (who, in any event, have never accepted being part of China) and the Han who have settled across Tibet as it existed before the 1951 annexation. China has hived off about half of Tibet. With the annexation severing India’s civilizational relationship with Tibet and extinguishing its extra-territorial rights there, New Delhi has every right to treat Tibet as a distinct entity in its visa policy. Once such a visa policy has been implemented, you can bet that Beijing will approach New Delhi to work out a compromise.

 

Now consider Krishna’s bigger gaffe: At the recent Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral meeting in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the minister told his Chinese counterpart that Jammu and Kashmir is a “core issue” for India just as Tibet and Taiwan are core national interests for Beijing. And, in that context, he urged China to show sensitivity to Indian concerns over Jammu and Kashmir — an entreaty that fell on deaf ears. In fact, as if to underline Beijing’s dismissive approach towards Indian concerns, it was announced that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao will combine his forthcoming India visit with a stop in Pakistan.

 

By placing Jammu and Kashmir on a par with Tibet, Krishna, in effect, was labelling his country an occupying power in Kashmir the way China is in Tibet. While China forcibly absorbed buffer Tibet, Jammu and Kashmir acceded on the same legal principles that governed the transition of other princely states from colonial rule to union with an independent India. Also, by drawing a parallel between Jammu and Kashmir and China’s claim to Taiwan, Krishna made a preposterous analogy between a state that is part of the Indian federation and an autonomous entity under a permanent threat of force from China.

 

Taiwan may be far from Indian shores but its political future matters to India. Just as Beijing lays claim to Arunachal, unmindful of the wishes of its 1.3 million people, China seeks to absorb Taiwan, irrespective of what the majority there want. In strategic terms, Taiwan can be to India what Pakistan is to China. Translated into policy that could entail close strategic collaboration between India and Taiwan, with the goal to aid each other’s security and build strategic equilibrium in Asia.

 

In fact, whether Taiwan — a vibrant democracy — continues to prosper under self-governance, or is beaten into submission by the world’s largest autocracy, will determine the future make-up of Asian security. Taiwan, sitting astride vital sea lanes, truly holds the key to whether China rises peacefully or becomes an arrogant power seeking unchallenged ascendancy in Asia. Yet through his ill-advised comparison, Krishna conceded that Taiwan is to China what the rump Jammu and Kashmir is to India.

 

Krishna actually is continuing an illustrious tradition since 1950 of Indians in high office messing up the country’s China policy. Even the 1962 “stab in the back” and the more-recent Chinese assertiveness have not helped discipline such waywardness.

 

The sphinx-like, weak-in-the-knees Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for example, built an unflattering linkage between peaceful Sikkim and troubled Tibet during a 2003 Beijing visit, remembered for his notorious kowtow on Tibet — recognizing it to “part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China.” Now another elderly gentleman is demonstrating an uncanny knack of playing into China’s hands.

 

Brahma Chellaney is the author, most recently, of Asian Juggernaut (HarperCollins).

 

(c) India Today, 2010.

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/site/Story/121323/Guest%20Column/the-undiplomatic-krishna.html

Changing power dynamics in Asia

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Asia After Obama

Brahma Chellaney

Project Syndicate  2010-11-19


US President Barack Obama’s 10-day Asian tour and the consecutive summit meetings of the East Asian Summit (EAS), the G-20, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) have helped shine a spotlight on Asia’s challenges at a time when tensions between an increasingly ambitious China and its neighbors permeate the region’s geopolitical landscape.

Significantly, Obama restricted his tour to Asia’s leading democracies – India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea – which surround China and are central to managing its rise. Yet he spent all of last year assiduously courting the government in Beijing in the hope that he could make China a global partner on issues ranging from climate change to trade and financial regulation. The catchphrase coined by US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg in relation to China, “strategic reassurance,” actually signaled America’s intent to be more accommodating toward China’s ambitions.

Now, with his China strategy falling apart, Obama is seeking to do exactly what his predecessor attempted – to line up partners as an insurance policy in case China’s rising power slides into arrogance. Other players on the grand chessboard of Asian geopolitics also are seeking to formulate new equations, as they concurrently pursue strategies of hedging, balancing, and bandwagoning.

A fast-rising Asia has, moreover, become the fulcrum of global geopolitical change. Asian policies and challenges now help shape the international economy and security environment.

But major power shifts within Asia are challenging the continent’s own peace and stability. With the specter of strategic disequilibrium looming large in Asia, investments to help build geopolitical stability have become imperative.

China’s lengthening shadow has prompted a number of Asian countries to start building security cooperation on a bilateral basis, thereby laying the groundwork for a potential web of interlocking strategic partnerships. Such cooperation reflects a quiet desire to influence China’s behavior positively, so that it does not cross well-defined red lines or go against the self-touted gospel of its “peaceful rise.”

But building genuine partnerships is a slow process, because it demands major accommodation and adjustment on both sides. The US, for example, has worked hard in recent years to co-opt India in a “soft alliance” shorn of treaty obligations. Yet, despite a rapidly warming bilateral rapport and Obama’s recent statement calling India the “cornerstone of America’s engagement in Asia,” conflicting expectations and interests often surface.

The US is now courting Vietnam as well, and the two countries are even negotiating a civilian nuclear deal. The Cold War legacy, however, continues to weigh down thinking in Hanoi and Washington to some extent.

Within Vietnam’s ruling Communist Party, there are deep divisions over the country’s relations with the US. Even as Vietnam moves closer to the US as a hedge against China’s muscular strategy, some Vietnamese leaders fear that the Americans remain committed to regime change.

After all, despite Burma’s strategic importance vis-à-vis China and Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house detention, the US continues to enforce stringent sanctions against that country, with the aim of toppling its government. In the process, Burma has become more dependent than ever on China.

The US-China relationship itself is likely to remain uneasy, but overt competition or confrontation suits neither side. For the US, China’s rising power actually helps validate American forward military deployments in the Asian theater. The China factor also helps the US to retain existing allies and attract new ones, thereby enlarging its strategic footprint in Asia.

While the US is thus likely to remain a key factor in influencing Asia’s strategic landscape, the role of the major Asian powers will be no less important. If China, India, and Japan constitute a scalene strategic triangle in Asia, with China representing the longest side, side A, the sum of side B (India) and side C (Japan) will always be greater than A. Not surprisingly, the fastest-growing relationship in Asia today is probably between Japan and India.

If this triangle turned into a quadrangle with the addition of Russia, China would be boxed in from virtually all sides. Japan plus Russia plus India, with the US lending a helpful hand, would not only extinguish any prospect of a Sino-centric Asia, but would create the ultimate strategic nightmare for China. As recent developments show, however, a Russian-Japanese rapprochement remains far off.

Against this geopolitical background, Asia’s power dynamics are likely to remain fluid, with new or shifting alliances and strengthened military capabilities continuing to challenge the prevailing order.

That befits the year of the tiger in Chinese astrology – a year in which China roared by ratcheting up tensions with neighbors from Japan to India by escalating territorial feuds. In fact, 2010 will be remembered as the year that Chinese leaders undercut their country’s own interests by kindling fears of an expansionist China, thereby facilitating America’s return to center stage in Asia.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi,  is the author, most recently, of Asian Juggernaut: The Rise of China, India and Japan.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
http://www.project-syndicate.org

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Myanmar: Time to recalibrate Western sanctions policy

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Why Single Out Myanmar for Sanctions?

By BRAHMA CHELLANEY

International Herald Tribune, November 18, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/18/opinion/18iht-edchellaney.html?ref=global

 

NEW DELHI — With the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from prolonged house detention, it is time for the United States and its European partners to moderate their sanctions policy against Myanmar (Burma) so as to create incentives for greater political openness and to insulate its citizens from the rigors of the punitive actions.

There is no reason why a weak, impoverished Myanmar should continue to be held to a higher human-rights standard than an increasingly assertive China. Why deny Myanmar the international-trade opportunities that have allowed the world’s biggest executioner, China, to prosper?

The defining events that led to the crushing of pro-democracy forces in Myanmar and China actually occurred around the same time more than two decades ago, yet the West responded to the developments in the two countries in very different ways.

China’s spectacular economic rise owes a lot to the Western decision not to sustain trade sanctions after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of pro-democracy protestors. The Cold War’s end facilitated Washington’s pragmatic approach to shun trade sanctions and help integrate China with global institutions through the liberalizing influence of foreign investment and trade.

That the choice made was wise can be seen from the baneful impact of the opposite decision in favor of sustained sanctions against Myanmar, which brutally suppressed pro-democracy demonstrators 10 months before Tiananmen Square and subsequently refused to honor the outcome of a national election in 1990. Had the Myanmar-type approach of escalating sanctions been applied against China internationally, the result would have been a less prosperous and a potentially destabilizing China today.

By contrast, the continuation of sanctions and their subsequent expansion against Myanmar snuffed out any prospect of that country emulating China’s example of blending economic openness with political authoritarianism. Indeed, the military’s attempts to open up the Myanmar economy in the early 1990s fizzled out quickly in the face of Western penal actions.

Today, the release of Aung San Suu Kyi offers the U.S. and Europe an opportunity to recalibrate the sanctions policy by drawing on the lessons of the past two decades.

The first lesson is that the economic sanctions, even if justified, have produced the wrong political results. Years of sanctions have left Myanmar without an entrepreneurial class or civil society and saddled with an all-powerful military as the sole functioning institution.

A second lesson is that the expansion of sanctions has not only further isolated Myanmar, but also made that country overly dependent on China, to the concern of the nationalistic Myanmar military. At a time when the United States is courting Communist-ruled Vietnam as part of its “hedge” strategy against a resurgent China, it makes little sense to continue with an approach that is pushing a strategically located Myanmar into China’s strategic lap.

Yet another lesson is that the sanctions have hurt not their intended target — the military — but ordinary citizens. By cutting off investment and squeezing vital sectors of the Myanmar economy, from tourism to textiles, the sanctions have lowered the living conditions of the Burmese and shut out liberalizing influences.

The blunt fact is that after being in power for nearly half a century, the military has become too fat to return to the barracks. In fact, it won’t fit in the barracks.

With no hope of a “color revolution” in Myanmar, demilitarization of the polity can at best be a step-by-step process. In that context, the recent elections, although far from being free or fair, have helped revive a long-dormant political process, given birth to new political players and institutions (including a bicameral national Parliament, 14 regional parliaments and the impending appointment of a president and civilian federal government), and implicitly created a feeling of empowerment among the people.

With the military now in the throes of a generational change, the revived political process has created new space for the democracy movement, as symbolized by Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. But with the opposition badly splintered and the military’s grip on power firm as ever, Aung San Suu Kyi cannot bring about tangible democratic reforms without building bridges with the armed forces.

Now is the time, with Myanmar in transition, for the United States and its allies to get out of a self-perpetuating cycle of sanctions and help carve out greater international space in that nation. Each step toward greater political openness in Myanmar ought to be suitably rewarded.

More broadly, democracy promotion should not become a geopolitical tool wielded only against the weak and the marginalized.

Going after the small kids on the global block but courting the most-powerful autocrats is hardly the way to build international norms or ensure positive results.

An uncompromisingly penal approach against Myanmar has had the perverse effect of weakening America’s hand while strengthening China’s. This was best illustrated during the Bush administration, which, after slapping the harshest sanctions on Myanmar, turned to Beijing as a channel of communication with the Burmese junta.

President Barack Obama began on the right note by exploring the prospect of a gradual reengagement with Myanmar. Yet on his recent visit to India, Obama attacked Myanmar three times, reflecting his frustration with the painfully slow movement to create a democratic opening in that nation.

Despite Aung San Suu Kyi’s release, the seeds of democracy will not take root in a stunted economy. External penal actions without constructive engagement and civil-society development in a critically weak country defeat their very purpose.

Brahma Chellaney, a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author, most recently, of “Asian Juggernaut.”

U.S. export-control liberalization: The reality

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Controlling technology flows

 

The U.S. has only committed to incremental easing of its export-control regime depending on Indian concessions

 

Brahma Chellaney

Mint, November 16, 2010

 

The nuclear deal was sold to the Indian public as a means to liberate the country from U.S.-imposed technology controls. In fact, once all the steps in the tortuous process of nuclear dealmaking were complete, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh triumphantly announced on September 6, 2008, that, “It marks the end of … the technology-denial regime.” Yet Dr. Singh came full circle by unilaterally declaring during his joint news conference with visiting President Barack Obama that, “We welcome the decision by the U.S. to lift controls on export of high-technology items and technologies to India.”

 

Obama, while silent on this issue during the news conference, earlier told business executives in Mumbai that he would make “fundamental reforms” to the U.S. export controls that constrict trade between the two countries. There is, however, a large gap between reforming and lifting export controls. So, did Dr. Singh jump the gun again? The answer, unfortunately, is yes.

 

The Americans have committed themselves only to a step-by-step easing commensurate with further Indian actions and concessions. The caveats and other riders introduced by the U.S. side — as on the issue of backing India’s candidacy for a UN Security Council permanent seat — have been lost in the euphoria over the Obama-visit announcements.

 

Hours after the joint news conference, Obama clarified the U.S. position in his address to the Indian Parliament. His key words — “we’ll work to reform our controls on exports” — merely echoed the 2005 assurance in the nuclear deal. In the joint statement released at the end of his visit, the U.S. also said it “intends to support India’s full membership” in four multilateral technology-control cartels “in a phased manner.”

 

The key point is that the U.S. has offered no commitment, let alone a timetable, to lift technology controls. It has only “committed to a strengthened and expanded dialogue on export-control issues through fora such as the U.S.-India High Technology Cooperation Group (HTCG).” Constituted in 2003, HTCG has sought to loosen U.S. export controls in four specific areas — information technology, including trade in advanced electronics and software, high-performance computers and encryption; biotechnology; nanotechnology, especially its commercial applications in public health, energy and water treatment; and defence and strategic trade.

 

The Obama administration actually has initiated a broader export-control review with the aim of spurring U.S. economic growth through stepped-up technology exports to all emerging economies, not just to India. The archaic technology-control system is widely considered a serious hindrance to such exports. Washington is particularly keen to use export-control liberalization to help increase U.S. share of the Chinese market and thereby reduce the yawning, $262-billion trade deficit with Beijing. The potential Indian market for U.S. high-tech exports is not only smaller than China’s, but the U.S.-erected barriers also have been higher because of India’s NPT-outlier status.

 

Given the range and extent of export controls currently in place against India in both civilian and military spheres, a significant lowering of such national and multilateral barriers — not their full dismantlement — can be New Delhi’s best hope. In that context, the Obama-visit announcements represent modest progress toward such lowering of controls.

 

India’s admission to the four cartels — Nuclear Suppliers Group, Missile Technology Control Regime, Australia Group and Wassenaar Arrangement — is expected to be a lengthy process, dependent on building consensus and the “evolution” of new “membership criteria.” More importantly, these cartels are aimed at controlling technologies, not at sharing technologies. Membership in any cartel will not automatically qualify "outlier" India to the free flow of technologies. India is already a “unilateral adherent” of the NSG and the MTCR, as part of the nuclear deal-related conditions imposed by America’s Hyde Act. In fact, President George W. Bush formally certified to Congress in 2008 that India had become NSG- and MTCR-compliant.

 

The other announcement during the Obama visit related to the removal of some more Indian enterprises from the U.S. blacklist, the “Entity List.” Inclusion of an entity on that list subjects it to a virtual U.S. export embargo. But removal of an entity does not consequentially make it eligible to import U.S. high technology freely because of the India-specific export licensing requirements that are in place.

 

The Obama-visit announcements hopefully will accelerate the process of lowering of technology-trade barriers that began with the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP). The growth in controlled dual-use trade, even if fairly small, attests to the ongoing export-control liberalization. A lot more liberalization, however, has to happen before India’s technology access begins to match that of America’s close allies.

 

The Obama visit actually signalled that the U.S. will continue with its incremental approach to export-control liberalization, calibrating its actions to Indian concessions extending beyond non-proliferation. America’s primary interest is to boost its technology exports while simultaneously gaining a foothold in India’s strategic sectors. At the same time, a major U.S. objective still is to curtail nuclear and missile proliferation in South Asia — a goal that runs counter to a more-open flow of technology to India. Thus far, India has kept its nuclear and missile capabilities at the substrategic level. The launch of an ICBM programme, for example, will surely bring it under renewed technology-control pressures.

 

(c) Mint, 2010.

How Obama Won Over India

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Stroking India’s Ego

For Obama, it was a strikingly successful visit to flaunt major US job-creation gains and cast a spell on India by pandering to its craving for international recognition and status, says Brahma Chellaney

The Economic Times, November 12, 2010

Barack Obama, the charmer, won over India. The US president enthralled Indians by declaring that “in the years ahead, I look forward to a reformed UN Security Council that includes India as a permanent member.” He comforted them by saying he will “continue to insist to Pakistan’s leaders that terrorist safe-havens within their borders are unacceptable, and that the terrorists behind the Mumbai attacks be brought to justice.” He flattered them by recalling India’s “treasured past,” its invention of the digit ‘zero’ and its civilization that “has been shaping the world for thousands of years.” And he delighted them by labelling the US-India relationship “the defining partnership of the 21st century.” Mahatma Gandhi found mention in almost all his speeches, to the extent that he linked his rise as president to “Gandhi and the message he shared with America and the world.”

 

Obama came as a salesman for his country, bagging multibillion-dollar deals and laying the ground for more big contracts, yet the visit will be remembered for his public diplomacy in seeking to elevate his host nation to “its rightful place in the world.” A year earlier, Obama had stroked India’s collective ego by inviting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his presidency’s first state dinner, leading to the joke that while China gets a deferential America and Pakistan secures billions of dollars in US aid periodically, India is easily won over with a sumptuous dinner and nice compliments.

India actually has exposed its main weakness for long — a craving for international recognition and status. While some states have been able to surmount their colonial legacies, India remains hobbled by a subaltern mindset. It attaches greater value to receiving external recognition and approbation than to the pursuit of resolute, goal-oriented statecraft. It is thus particularly vulnerable to seduction by praise. Other powers play to that weakness through pleasing but empty gestures or statements amounting to little more than ego massage.

In fact, Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, openly played to India’s ego and to Pakistan’s longing for security while unveiling his momentous decision to sell F-16s to Islamabad in March 2005. The same day his administration patronizingly offered to help make India a “major world power in the 21st century.” The Indian elation that greeted the offer helped obscure the larger implications of the F-16 decision.

That decision marked the beginning of a major US rearming of Pakistan with largely India-centric weapon systems. Such lethal supply to Islamabad has continued to date even as the US has emerged as the single largest arms seller to India since 2008. Indian diplomacy has not only failed to persuade Washington to stop arming a terror-exporting Pakistan, but also has put up with the US building parallel intelligence-sharing, defence-cooperation and strategic relationships with Islamabad and New Delhi.

US policy effectively has moved from hyphenation to parallelism. The new approach involves following separate parallel tracks with India and Pakistan, thereby allowing the US to push its interests better. That approach also permits the US to prop up the Pakistani state without causing a crisis with India, with Obama pledging more than $10 billion in aid to Islamabad since last year.

In New Delhi, Obama, “the great communicator,” not only pandered to India’s love of flattery, but also exploited its itch to join every club, including those that were formed to target it. He dangled the prospect of India’s admission — “in a phased manner” after the “evolution” of new membership criteria — to four US-led, technology-control cartels. The capstone of his outreach, however, came when he dangled another carrot — helping India “in the years ahead” to secure a permanent place on the UN Security Council.

That dangling proved the shortest and surest way to India’s heart. The loud applause in Parliament and the national euphoria that greeted that statement helped block out the caveats that Obama had slipped in. Like a schoolmaster lecturing a pupil, Obama told India that if it wanted to make the grade as a candidate for a UNSC permanent seat in the years ahead, it needed to do more, including sharing “increased responsibility” and helping strengthen international norms.

Merely acknowledging India’s claim to a permanent seat costs the US nothing, other than displeasing Pakistan. The US long ago acknowledged Japan’s right to UNSC permanent membership, but that hasn’t brought Tokyo closer to that goal. In truth, Washington has yet to endorse any proposal for UNSC enlargement that can be put to vote. In fact, no existing permanent member favours enlargement in reality (as opposed to rhetoric). And it is doubtful that new veto-holding permanent members will ever be added to an institution that emerged from the ruins of a world war. But that has not stopped India from chasing dreams.

Another area where Obama used beguiling words to thrill his hosts was on US technology controls, to the extent that Dr. Singh prematurely thanked him for his “decision” to “lift” those controls. Far from agreeing to free India from the rigours of such trade curbs, the US has merely committed itself to a continued step-by-step liberalization of its export controls, in sync with Indian actions and concessions. If any decision was announced, it was the US plan to remove some more Indian entities from its blacklist, the “Entity List.” While a welcome move, the removal does not automatically entitle those entities to import high technology because of the broader controls that remain in place against India.

 

Obama’s visit will undoubtedly strengthen an already-warming bilateral relationship whose geostrategic direction is clearly set — towards closer collaboration. While it is too much to expect a congruence of US and Indian national-security objectives in all spheres, the two countries are likely to deepen their cooperation in areas where their interests converge. Having been nonaligned, India is set to become multi-aligned, while tilting more towards Washington, even as it preserves the core element of nonalignment — strategic autonomy. Obama, for his part, will be remembered for using his power of oratory to recast himself as India’s friend in the same class as Bush. He came with very little to deliver and more to take, yet cast a spell on India.

 

(c) Economic Times, 2010.

 

A weakened Obama visits India

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Obama will take more than give

 

Brahma Chellaney

The Economic Times, November 4, 2010

 

U.S. President Barack Obama comes to India when his presidency has been considerably dented by the mid-term election drubbing, with the poll losses in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida likely to encumber his 2012 re-election bid. The president who harped on being transformational has been delivered a no-confidence in his own leadership by the voters.

 

It is remarkable that just a year ago, Obama was riding high, having unexpectedly won the Nobel prize for peace — a cause for which he has little to show up to now. A year, obviously, is a very long time in politics.

 

Obama’s Democratic Party lost the House of Representatives to the Republicans, while its razor-thin edge in the 100-seat Senate offers little consolation. It takes 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate. The Democrats’ continued control of the Senate thus is nominal. In effect, they stand kicked out of power.

 

Obama came to office with tremendous international goodwill. Yet, saddled with problems of historic proportion, he had little time to savour his epochal victory against rival John McCain. After all, he inherited national and global challenges more formidable than any faced by an American president at the beginning of the term. With the U.S. economic recession threatening to become a depression and two overseas wars raging, Obama had his work clearly cut out for him.

 

Now, midway through his term, these election losses ensure his hands will be full for the rest of his term. First, the high unemployment, growing U.S. debt and other economic problems that contributed to the poll reverses will preoccupy his presidency, especially if he hopes to be re-elected. That means he will shift to a more domestically focused agenda than before, with his international diplomacy geared towards trade deals to boost job and wealth creation at home. Second, he is likely to get tied down by the legislative actions and investigations of a Republican-influenced Congress, with a resurgent Tea party movement likely to target him increasingly.

 

That, plus an American public weary of the war, makes certain that Obama will start pulling U.S. forces out of Afghanistan before the job is done, leaving India on the front lines to face the brunt of greater terrorism from the Af-Pak belt. In fact, the recent unveiling of a new $2.3-billion U.S. aid package for the Pakistani military, along with the continued sale of offensive weapon systems, can only embolden an institution that is at the root of Pakistan’s problems and regional instability.

 

The good news on the U.S.-India front is that a weakened Obama presidency will do little to change the dynamics of a relationship whose direction is clearly set — towards closer engagement. The not-so-good news is that having given short shrift to some of India’s concerns in the first 22 months of his presidency on the pressing issues of counterterrorism and the scofflaw roles of the Pakistani army and ISI, Obama will have lesser leeway to accommodate India’s interests in his regional strategy, pivoted on extricating the U.S. from Afghanistan with the aid of the Pakistani military.

 

The president, pushed by the election setbacks, is likely to focus his India visit on promoting U.S. commercial interests, including job creation back home. That means he will crave for more contracts, especially high-visibility multibillion-dollar arms deals.

 

From Washington’s perspective, the billions of dollars worth of arms the Obama administration already has contracted to sell India since last year symbolize the new Indo-U.S. partnership. Closer military-to-military ties and defence transactions are part of the vaunted strategic partnership. Yet, India ought to be concerned about its growing reliance on the U.S. for weapons and their replacement parts, given that Washington is selling arms on both sides of the subcontinental divide.

 

During the second half of the Cold War, India relied on the Soviet Union for weapons. Now, New Delhi has begun to switch its dependency to the U.S., which has quietly emerged in recent years through government-to-government deals as the single largest seller of arms to India. Embarrassingly, India today stands out in the world as the only large nation dependent on imports to meet even basic defence needs.

 

Overall, the U.S. and India have never been closer than they are now, with their relationship set to deepen in spite of the policy differences on regional issues. Still, one should realistically expect more “take” than “give” from this presidential visit.

 

(c) The Economic Times.

Obama visit to India

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A strategically significant visit that will benefit both countries

 
Brahma Chellaney
GUEST COLUMN: The Economic Times, October 31, 2010

THE US-India relationship has picked up momentum that is independent of the two governments. US President Barack Obama’s impending visit will do little more than symbolically strengthen an already warming relationship with India. His predecessor had declared in his valedictory speech that, “We opened a new historic and strategic partnership with India.” Since then, despite a growing congruence of US and Indian interests on larger geostrategic issues, significant strategic content has yet to be added to a relationship that is largely being driven by the business community, which is spurred on by the expanding commercial opportunities in the Indian civilian and defence sectors. 


    The very fact that Obama is visiting India as part of a tour of Asia’s four leading democracies—the others being Japan, Indonesia and South Korea—is significant. Although Obama has already been to China once, the symbolism of a tour restricted to Asia’s major democracies cannot be lost on Beijing at a time when Chinese assertiveness on exchange rates, trade and security issues has upset US calculations. 


    In fact, the Obama administration spent last year assiduously courting China. The catchphrase coined by Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg in relation to China, “strategic reassurance,” signalled an American intent to be more accommodative of China’s ambitions — a message reinforced earlier by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she went out of her way to downgrade human rights in America’s China policy during a visit to Beijing. Obama, for his part, declared that America’s “most important bilateral relationship in the world” is with China. 


    Today, with his China strategy falling apart, Obama is seeking to do exactly what his predecessor attempted — to line up partners. Still, for several reasons, that is unlikely to significantly elevate India’s importance in his foreign policy. 


    First, he is coming to India when his presidency is likely to be weakened by reverses in congressional elections. With his approval ratings plummeting, Obama could end up as a one-term president.
 
    Second, on key regional issues, especially Afghanistan-Pakistan, Iran and Myanmar, his administration sees Indian policy as not in sync with US strategy. That is particularly conspicuous on Pakistan. 


    The Obama administration, not content with

turning Pakistan into the largest recipient of US aid in the world, has just unveiled fresh military assistance of $2.3 billion to that country. Such aid will further fatten the Pakistani military and intelligence—the very institutions controlling the country’s foreign policy and nurturing terror groups. 


    With Obama determined to end the US-led war in Afghanistan, the US needs the Pakistani military and intelligence for its exit strategy in much the same way it relied on them to start and sustain the war. 


    Third, despite the more-recent erosion in trust and confidence between the US and China, Washington is unlikely to try and contain a country with which its economic and political linkages are likely to remain deeper than with India. 


    Indeed, since Obama came to office, the US has sought to abjure elements in its ties with New Delhi that could rile China, including a joint military drill of any type in Arunachal Pradesh or a 2007-style naval exercise involving the US, India, Australia, Japan and Singapore. Even trilateral US naval manoeuvres with India and Japan now are out so as not to raise China’s hackles. Washington has actually chartered a course of tacit neutrality on the Arunachal issue. 


    On the two key issues— China and counter-terrorism—that were supposed to help shape the US-India strategic partnership, the reality has turned out to be different. The David Headley case, for example, has belied expectations of close counter-terrorism cooperation. Moreover, despite the nuclear deal, the US has yet to ease export controls against India. 


    Still, the US and India have never been closer than they are now. Their multifaceted cooperation will continue to grow, irrespective of policy differences on some regional issues. The billions of dollars worth of arms the Obama administration has contracted to sell India symbolise the new partnership.

 

(c) The Economic Times.