Brahma Chellaney

A Project Syndicate column internationally distributed

As it prepares to hold its latest annual summit in New Delhi on March 28-29, the BRICS grouping — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — remains a concept in search of a common identity and institutionalized cooperation. That is hardly surprising, given that these countries have very different political systems, economies, and national goals, and are located in very different parts of the world. Yet the five emerging economies pride themselves on forming the first important non-Western global initiative.

The lack of common ground among the BRICS has prompted cynics to call the grouping an acronym with no substance. To its protagonists, however, it is a product of today’s ongoing global power shifts, and has the potential to evolve into a major instrument in shaping the architecture of global governance — the midwife of a new international order.

After all, the BRICS economies are likely to be the most important source of future global growth. They represent more than a quarter of the Earth’s landmass, over 41% of its population, almost 25% of world GDP, and nearly half of all foreign-exchange and gold reserves. The BRICS, in fact, might also be dubbed the R-5, after its members’ currencies — the real, ruble, rupee, renminbi, and rand.

At the New Delhi summit, the BRICS leaders will discuss the creation of joint institutions, particularly a common development bank that can help to mobilize savings between the countries. Currently, the BRICS countries constitute a loose, informal bloc. If the group’s leaders fail to make progress on establishing an institutional structure, they will lend credence to the contention that it is merely a “talking shop” for countries so diverse that their shared interests, to the extent that there are any, cannot be translated into a common plan of action.

It was just last year that BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) became BRICS with the addition of South Africa. The BRIC concept, conceived in 2001 by Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs, was embraced by the four original countries only in 2008, when their foreign ministers met on the sidelines of a Russia-India-China (RIC) trilateral meeting. The addition of Brazil paved the way for the first BRIC summit in 2009, which, interestingly, piggybacked on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting in Yekaterinburg, Russia, that year.

That association helped the SCO — still largely a Sino-Russian enterprise — to receive more publicity, but it left the BRIC countries with little space to start formulating a unified action plan. The subsequent enlargement to include South Africa has made the BRICS a more global grouping, which threatens to render irrelevant yet another initiative, the IBSA (India, Brazil, and South Africa).

For Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa, the BRICS grouping serves as a forum to underscore their rising economic clout and showcase their emergence as global players. But, for China, which needs no recognition as a rising world power, the BRICS offers tangible — not just symbolic — benefits. As a result, China indeed has cast a lengthening shadow over the group, openly seeking, for example, to control the proposed common development bank — something that India and Russia, in particular, are loath to accept.

At a time when China is under pressure for manipulating the value of the renminbi to maintain export competitiveness, the BRICS framework offers it a platform to expand its currency’s international role. As part of its quest for a global currency that could rival the dollar or the euro, a cash-rich China plans to extend renminbi loans to the other BRICS members.

Lending and trading in renminbi is likely to boost China’s international standing and clout further. But its undervalued currency and hidden export subsidies have been systematically undermining manufacturing in other BRICS countries, especially India and Brazil.

Proponents of the BRICS concept nonetheless remain hopeful that the group can serve as a catalyst for global institutional reform. With existing international arrangements remaining virtually static since the mid-twentieth century (even as non-Western economic powers and nontraditional challenges have emerged), the world needs more than the halfhearted and desultory steps taken thus far. The formation of the G-20, for example, was an improvisation designed to defer genuine financial reform.

In fact, the modest measures implemented in response to the changing distribution of global power have been limited to the economic realm, with the hard core of international relations — peace and security — remaining the exclusive preserve of a handful of countries.

China is not on the same page as the other BRICS countries when it comes to global institutional reform. It is a revisionist power concerning the global financial architecture, seeking an overhaul of the Bretton Woods system. But it is a status quo power with respect to the United Nations system, and steadfastly opposes enlargement of the Security Council’s permanent membership. It wishes to remain Asia’s sole country with a permanent seat — a stance that places it at odds with India.

If the BRICS countries are to jell as a pressure group in international relations, they must agree on what they believe to be attainable political and economic objectives. For example, they are generally united in their frustration with — but not in their proposed response to — the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency. Indeed, the most important bilateral relationship each BRICS country has is with the United States.

The BRICS concept represents, above all, its members’ desire to make the global order more plural. But it is uncertain whether the group’s members will ever evolve into a coherent grouping with defined goals and institutional mechanisms. In the coming days, we might find out whether the BRICS will ever be more than a catchy acronym with an annual boondoggle attached.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author of Asian Juggernaut and Water: Asia’s New Battlefield.

(c) 1995-2012 Project Syndicate.

Brahma Chellaney, Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, is the author of Asian Juggernaut and Water: Asia’s New Battleground.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2012.
www.project-syndicate.org

More Project Syndicate columns by Brahma Chellaney.

By pressuring New Delhi to deny the Dalai Lama a public platform of "any form," Beijing is seeking to undercut the exiled Tibetan leader's value for India.

New moves of an encircler

Just as China is seeking to extend its annexation of Tibet to India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, it is seeking to extend its containment of India to the Dalai Lama. And to contain the Dalai Lama, it brazenly demands India’s cooperation.

Brahma Chellaney, The Times of India, December 4, 2011

As geopolitical rivals, India and China face each other over a highly disputed border. The inviolability of virtually the entire 4,057 km border — one of the longest in the world — has been called into question by China’s increasing cross-frontier military incursions and its calculated refusal to mutually draw a fully agreed line of control along the Himalayas.

The amount of Indian land China occupies or openly covets tops 135,000 square kilometres, or approximately the size of Costa Rica. China currently has unresolved land and sea border disputes with 11 other neighbours. But in comparison with China’s territorial disputes with other neighbours now or even in the past, its land disputes with India stand out for their sheer size and importance.

Beijing’s last-minute postponement of a scheduled round of border talks constitutes no real loss for New Delhi because China has used these 30-year-long negotiations to keep India engaged while blocking any real progress. Even as Beijing has since 2006 provocatively revived its claim to Arunachal Pradesh and concurrently stepped up cross-border forays in all sectors, New Delhi has stayed locked in these fruitless talks.

Let’s be clear: These talks, constituting the longest and the most-barren process between any two nations post-World War II, have only aided the Chinese strategy to mount more military pressure while working to hem in India behind the cover of engagement.

For example, by deploying several thousand troops in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and playing the Kashmir card against India in various ways, China has clearly signalled its intent to squeeze India on Jammu and Kashmir. The military pressure China has built up on Arunachal may just be tactical. The plain fact is that India’s vulnerability in J&K has been heightened by the new Chinese military encirclement.

To help undermine the Dalai Lama’s role, Beijing is now exerting pressure on India to deny the Tibetan leader any kind of public platform. The recent diplomatic spat, as the Chinese foreign ministry has acknowledged, was not just about the Dalai Lama’s address to a religious conference that overlapped with the now-scrapped talks. Rather, Beijing brashly insists that India not provide him a public platform of “any form.”

Beijing draws encouragement from its success in bringing India’s Tibet stance in full alignment with the Chinese line. In 2003, the aging and ailing Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee surrendered India’s last remaining leverage on Tibet when he formally recognized the cartographically dismembered Tibet that Beijing calls the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) as “part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China.” In recent years, even as Beijing has mocked India’s territorial integrity, New Delhi has not sought to subtly add some flexibility to its Tibet stance.

In fact, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s climbdown in first suspending bilateral defence exchanges and then meekly resuming them has only emboldened Beijing. India froze defence exchanges in response to Beijing’s stapled-visa policy on J&K and its refusal to allow the Northern Command chief to head an Indian military delegation to China. Yet Singh personally delivered a two-in-one concession to Beijing earlier this year, agreeing to resume defence talks by delinking them from the stapled-visa issue and dropping the Northern Command chief as the Indian military team’s leader.

Even in the latest dust-up, where was the need for the Indian President to first agree to inaugurate the international Buddhist conference and then chicken out even after the Chinese had cancelled the scheduled border talks? The Prime Minister too backed out from the conference, where he was to be the “guest of honour.”

Just as Beijing compelled New Delhi to climb down on the defence talks, it is likely to drive a hard bargain on the border talks, even though their indefinite suspension can only help bare the actions of the encircler, which wishes to expand its 1951 Tibet annexation to Arunachal.

China has upped the ante on the Dalai Lama because it recognizes that he remains a major strategic asset for India. By asking New Delhi to go beyond denying him a political platform to denying him even a religious platform, it is seeking to extend its containment of India to the Dalai Lama. And it wants India’s help in this endeavour.

Actually, China has embarked on a larger strategy to cement its rule on an increasingly restive Tibet by bringing Tibetan Buddhism under the tight control of an atheist state. From its capture of the Panchen Lama institution to its decree to control the traditional process of finding the reincarnation of any senior lama who passes away, Beijing is acting long term. It is also waiting to install its own marionette as the next Dalai Lama when the present incumbent dies. Only India can foil this broader strategy — and it must for the sake of its own interests.

The writer is a strategic analyst.

(c) The Times Of India, 2011.

BRAHMA CHELLANEY
The Economic Times, November 12, 2011

It is well known that Indian politicians are hard-headed while serving their personal interests but faint-hearted while dealing with national interests. India’s Pakistan policy, for example, remains based on hopes and gushy expectations, rather than any farsighted strategy. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh still dreams of open borders with terror-exporting Pakistan.

The Indian wishful thinking on Pakistan was on public display at the just-concluded SAARC summit in the Maldives, where Singh hyped his bilateral meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani as if Gilani were the top decision-maker in Pakistan.

More important, Gilani thanked India for its two recent favours: At the WTO not vetoing the European Union’s special trade concessions for Pakistan, and helping Pakistan to enter the UN Security Council. Singh, however, has secured no reciprocal concession from Pakistan, not even the actual grant of most-favoured-nation status to India.

Fifteen years after India gave Pakistan MFN status, the Pakistani Cabinet last week decided merely to open bilateral negotiations on a reciprocal MFN grant. Islamabad is seeking to leverage an action that it is obligated to undertake under WTO rules. The lack of MFN reciprocity has thus far blocked the opening of normal Indo-Pakistan trade and required most traded products to move via a third country like the UAE. Yet, even before normal trade has opened, India at the Maldives meeting promised a Preferential Trade Agreement with Pakistan.

The EU trade concessions to Pakistan are significant because they exempt as many as 75 Pakistani products from duties for three years. This will allow Pakistan to earn several hundred million euros annually through tariff-free exports to the large, 27-nation EU market while undercutting similar Indian exports.

At the WTO’s trade committee, India first objected to this EU move because it flouts the WTO rules for a level-playing field among trading partners. But last month — after receiving several demarches from EU states — India withdrew its objection, without having secured anything in return from Pakistan.

In a fundamentally competitive world marked by the aggressive pursuit of relative gains, Indian diplomacy has stood out for not learning from mistakes and continuing to operate on ingenuous premises. It is not uncommon for Indian leaders to feed to the nation dreams sold to them by others — or their own personal dreams.

In dealing with Pakistan, India has assumed that Islamabad will do what New Delhi does well — jettison beliefs, perceptions and policies overnight. Pakistan has no intention of discarding terrorism as an instrument of state policy. Even with the US, Pakistan still plays games, continuing to shield its own militant proxies despite coming under mounting American pressure. If the powerful US has been unable to rein in Pakistan’s actions in the Afghanistan theatre, can India realistically persuade Islamabad to go after the terrorist groups it has nurtured?

Whereas Pakistan’s India policy has remained consistent for long, India’s Pakistan policy continues to send out contradictory and confusing signals. Just three days after the Indian home secretary said there has been no change in Pakistan’s official support for terrorism against India, the aging and increasingly clueless external affairs minister declared this week that the trust deficit with Pakistan is “shrinking.” Singh, for his part, hailed Gilani — widely regarded as the Pakistani military’s man — as “a man of peace.”

No less disturbing is the timing of India’s new bonhomie with Pakistan just when the latter has come under increasing US pressure. The mood in America has changed to the extent that strategists are openly calling for the “containment” of Pakistan, with one author even suggesting that the U.S. should “start regarding it as an enemy — at least as far as the Afghan War is concerned.”

Instead of taking advantage of the new American spotlight on Pakistan’s roguish conduct, New Delhi has done exactly the opposite: It has come to the aid of Islamabad by singing the virtues of an “uninterrupted and uninterruptible” dialogue and seeking to “write a new chapter” of peace. In fact, the external affairs minister publicly advised the US and Pakistan, “two friendly powers,” to amicably settle all “outstanding” issues, as if terrorism is not an outstanding matter in the Indo-Pakistan relationship.

Worse still, India has effectively sidelined the issue regarding the involvement of Pakistani state actors in the 26/11 terrorist strikes. By agreeing to welcome a supposed judicial commission from Pakistan, India is only aiding the Pakistani game-plan to shield the key masterminds through dilatory and deflective tactics and to create an impression that a due process is under way.

One possible explanation for India’s coming to Pakistan’s succour at this hour — a course that actually mocks the memory of the 26/11 victims — is that Singh needs to divert attention away from corruption scandals that have undermined his credibility and brought him under a political siege. Because nothing seems to be going right for him domestically, he has stepped up foreign travels and hyped progress in diplomatic ties with Pakistan.

Singh’s fixation on quasi-failed Pakistan has been an enduring element of his stint in office — an obsession that has made him shy away from drawing the right lesson from his past blunder at Sharm el-Sheikh (where he included Baluchistan in the agenda) or at Havana (where he turned the terror sponsor into a fellow victim of terror and set up the infamous Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism).

If India’s Pakistan policy is adrift, it is not entirely due to Singh, however. It was Singh’s predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who laid the foundation of an ad hoc, personality-driven, meandering approach toward Pakistan that said goodbye to institutionalized policymaking.

The weak-in-the-knees Vajpayee took India on a jarring roller-coaster ride with an ever-shifting policy on Pakistan. It was under Vajpayee that personal rather than professional characteristics began to define India’s policy. And it was Vajpayee’s Agra invitation that helped Pervez Musharraf to come out of the international doghouse for staging a military coup. Singh is following in Vajpayee’s footsteps.

The author is a professor of strategic studies at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research.

(c) The Economic Times, 2011.

Mocking the memory of 26/11

Brahma Chellaney
The Economic Times, April 1, 2011

In a fundamentally competitive world marked by assertive advancement of national interest, India has stood out over the past six decades for not learning from mistakes and continuing to operate on ingenuous premises. Spanish-born US philosopher George Santayana’s saying is particularly applicable to India: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Ad hoc, personality-driven policymaking has long been India’s curse.

Pakistan, although widely perceived to be a failing state, is still able to outwit India diplomatically. It is India, not Pakistan, that has climbed down diplomatically and sought a cricket-inspired thaw in bilateral relations.

In fact, India has again demonstrated its inability to stick to its stated position. The new bonhomie with Pakistan in the form of cricket diplomacy actually mocks the memory of those killed in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist siege that was planned on Pakistani soil. Pakistan not only has done nothing to bring the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks to justice, but has also managed to get India to unconditionally resume dialogue at the highest level.

Singh was clearly motivated by a desire to divert attention away from a series of scandals that have destabilized his government and tarnished his reputation. So desperate was Singh to get a Pakistani leader to come to Mohali that he invited both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. Although Gilani effectively ranks No. 4 in the Pakistani power hierarchy after the Army chief, ISI chief and president, Singh and Sonia Gandhi leaned over backward to treat him as if he were Pakistan’s real power wielder.

Gushy expectations and wishful thinking have long blighted Indian foreign policy. In dealing with Pakistan, a succession of Indian leaders have assumed that the others do what they often do — jettison beliefs, perceptions and policies overnight. Singh’s initiative indeed serves as more evidence for Pakistan that Indian policy is inconsistent and confused and that there are no real costs to be paid for continuing to wage a “war of a thousand cuts” against India.

Few things stir greater public passions in India than cricket and politics. And yet Mohali represented the third occasion when an Indian prime minister blended cricket and politics to court Pakistan since it launched a proxy war against India. It was Rajiv Gandhi who first politicized cricket by playing host to Pakistani military dictator Zia ul-Haq at an India-Pakistan match in Jaipur in 1987. That example prompted Singh to similarly invite another Pakistani dictator, Pervez Musharraf, to a match in New Delhi in 2005. Tellingly, only India has practiced cricket diplomacy — that too to propitiate Pakistani rulers.

Singh’s shifting policy on Pakistan has actually drawn encouragement from the record of his sphinx-like predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, under whose leadership there was a troubling lack of both consistency and clarity on how to deal with Pakistan. India’s roller-coaster policy on Pakistan between 1998 and 2004 exacted a heavy toll.

In that period, personal rather than professional characteristics defined India’s shifting Pakistan stance, as the policy jarringly traversed through Lahore, Kargil, Kandahar, Agra, Parliament House, Srinagar and Islamabad. In a situation with no parallel in modern world history, much of the Indian military was kept in war-ready position for nearly 10 months by Vajpayee and then demobilized without any results to show.

Vajpayee’s swinging policy pendulum undermined professionalism and institutionalized policy-making, and exposed India’s glaring inadequacy to set and unwaveringly pursue clear, long-term goals. Instead of replacing the cynicism that has now crept into the Indian system with a clearheaded, goal-oriented policy, Singh has gladly chosen to follow in Vajpayee’s footsteps.

In fact, at a time when multiple scandals have engulfed his government, Singh was eager to shift the public spotlight to a big diplomatic initiative. So the entry of India and Pakistan into the World Cup semi-finals came as a godsend opportunity for him, although he is no great cricket fan.

Singh’s unexpected gambit caught everyone by surprise, although impulsive moves (as Sharm el-Sheikh and Havana showed) are usually counterproductive to national interest. In diplomacy, preparatory work is a must.

For example, the ping-pong diplomacy that jumpstarted US-China relations in the early 1970s was part of careful, two-year policy groundwork. Ping-pong with China, in fact, was just a cover for the US to quietly initiate an alliance with Beijing to contain the Soviet Union.

Mohali, by contrast, represented a meeting of beleaguered leaders, bringing together two prime ministers that are politically wounded at home. The Indian and Pakistani governments are both battered by allegations of corruption, mismanagement and poor administration. Indeed, there is little prospect of any kind of breakthrough in India-Pakistan relations, given that Pakistan’s real power broker — army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kayani — is considered one of the most anti-India generals in his country’s history.

Peace on the subcontinent thus remains as far off as ever. Dialogue between the two countries, in any case, is founded on conflicting expectations. India’s premise is that the process of dialogue will persuade Pakistan to cease sending armed terrorists into India and start building good-neighbourly ties. Pakistan, in contrast, has viewed the process as a means to nudge India to ‘make progress on Kashmir,’ a euphemism for Indian concessions.

Singh, for his part, has refused to learn from his past blunders at Sharm el-Sheikh (where he included Baluchistan) and Havana (where he turned the terror sponsor into a fellow victim of terror by setting up the infamous Joint Anti-Terror Mechanism). But if he thought he could use the Mohali hoopla to distract the Indian public from the swirling scandals, he is likely to be disappointed. No political stunt can help defuse the public anger in India over mega-corruption.

Brahma Chellaney; geoestratega, analista internacional experto en países emergentesVictor-M Amela, Ima Sanchís, Lluís Amiguet
“Los indios queremos ser europeos”
31/01/2011 – 00:14 | Actualizada a las

Dos predicciones
Chellaney es maestro en vislumbrar el futuro en las contradicciones del presente: los europeos tememos a los asiáticos, porque trabajan más que nosotros por mucho menos, pero ellos aspiran no sólo al sueldo; sino también a nuestro sistema de bienestar y libertades. Así que Chellaney predice que nosotros tendremos que esforzarnos más por menos, pero los asiáticos a su vez deberán invertir parte de su crecimiento en crear su Estado del bienestar. La democracia ‘con sus corruptelas’ es válvula de escape salvadora para los conflictos en India, pero es una dictadura la que saca a China de la pobreza. Así que China tendrá que democratizarse para canalizar sus conflictos en alza o estallará.

Aquí les tenemos mucho miedo a los asiáticos, porque trabajan por la mitad de sueldo…
Pues deberían tenerles menos miedo y alegrarse de que prosperen, porque ¿sabe por qué hay hoy menos guerras en el mundo que hace cien años?

¿…?
Porque hay mucha menos gente pobre. La creación de prosperidad es el primer factor para la disminución de las guerras. Porque si usted se está muriendo de hambre: ¿qué interés tiene en mantener la paz?

Más bien poco.
En cambio, si usted se gana la vida y tiene un futuro, se convierte en accionista de la paz mundial y estará interesado en mantenerla en su país. Por eso, hoy hay menos guerras en el planeta que hace un siglo.

Ojalá tenga cada vez más razón.
Además, a esos españoles que tienen tanto miedo de que, para competir con los asiáticos, les obliguen a trabajar más por menos, también les diré otra cosa… ¡Que se animen!

Pues falta nos hace últimamente.
¡Si son ustedes ejemplo del mundo! Los asiáticos y los africanos quieren vivir como ustedes, los ciudadanos de la Unión Europea…

Yo creí que todos querían irse a EE.UU.
La Unión Europea es hoy –mucho más que Estados Unidos– el ejemplo al que les gustaría llegar a los ciudadanos de los países emergentes. Los indios queremos ser como europeos de la Unión Europea. Así que corrijan lo necesario, pero defiendan ustedes su modelo, porque no hay otro mejor.

En España estamos casi en recesión y con más del 20 por ciento de paro.
El desarrollo es mucho más que la cifra del crecimiento del PIB: es la igualdad social, la protección de los más débiles, una cobertura sanitaria universal de calidad, educación superior competitiva, protección del medio ambiente y una administración honesta.

Estamos de acuerdo.
Pues lo han hecho ustedes mejor en todo eso que nadie, incluido EE.UU., y en Asia lo sabemos. Los asiáticos quieren los estándares de bienestar y democracia de la Unión Europea: nadie quiere vivir como los chinos o como los emiratos árabes, por muy ricos que sean. Y si ustedes crecen menos hoy, es porque ya tienen cierto desarrollo…

¿Quién crece mejor: China o India?
China crece algo más, el 10 por ciento, e India, el 9, pero creo que, pese a la enorme corrupción y la triste inoperancia del Estado indio, la democracia hace más estable a India y eso acabará siendo una ventaja definitiva para India incluso a medio plazo.

¿No es más estable una dictadura?
¡Mire a Túnez y ahora Egipto! La democracia es mayor garantía de estabilidad que cualquier autoritarismo. Los indios lo sabemos bien, porque nuestra democracia no es un ideal, es ante todo una necesidad: es la válvula de escape de las inevitables tensiones étnicas, lingüísticas, clasistas y territoriales de un país inmenso. Sin la democracia estaríamos en permanente guerra civil.

Pues la dictadura comunista chinamantiene el orden en el suyo con eficacia.
¿Por cuánto tiempo? Su 10 por ciento de crecimiento económico tiene un inquietante correlato que no se difunde: ¡el número de manifestaciones callejeras también se ha disparado un 10 por ciento!

Pero el PC chino aún lo controla todo.
Al partido le gusta dar la impresión de que la población china es homogénea étnica y socialmente, pero eso es falso. Además de las crecientes desigualdades sociales, fruto del crecimiento, el 60 por ciento de los chinos son de etnias diversas. No podrán resolver esas diferencias sin democracia.

Tienen los tanques.
Los tanques pueden reprimir un día una revuelta, como en Tíbet o Tiananmen, pero no pueden reprimir cada día todas las revueltas. O el régimen encuentra el modo de hacer una transición suave hacia una democracia más o menos abierta, o llegará el día en que una de esas revueltas catalizará todos los malestares hasta otra guerra civil.

Esperemos que encuentren la fórmula.
Más nos vale a todos, porque si China acaba siendo la primera potencia mundial sin ser una democracia, todas las relaciones internacionales y el sentido de la historia cambiarán: la democracia y el respeto a la ley internacional dejarán de ser la aspiración y la norma de los países y serán sustituidos por el equilibrio del terror al poder militar.

¿Qué intuye?
De momento, los militares mandan cada día más en China.

Inquietante.
Tienen más desafíos abiertos: ¿logrará China pasar de una economía de la imitación a otra de la innovación? Si no, se estancará.

Japón lo consiguió a medias.
Japón imitaba en los 70 como imitan los chinos hoy y logró transformarse luego en un país más inventor, pero me temo que China no podrá convertirse en innovadora aún…

¿Por qué?
Porque el autoritarismo impide la innovación, que surge en el libre flujo horizontal de ideas en equipo. Así que sin democracia en una sociedad abierta nadie inventa nada.

¿Tiene pruebas?
Los laboratorios americanos tienen dos grandes grupos de becarios: chinos e indios. Los chinos son mejores en dar escala a innovaciones existentes, pero no inventan nada nuevo; en cambio, los indios son innovadores, porque conviven con la diversidad y sus exigencias desde que nacen.

ENTREVISTA: BRAHMA CHELLANEY Consejero del Gobierno indio
“La revuelta de la calle se extenderá hasta Pakistán”
GEORGINA HIGUERAS – Madrid – 02/02/2011
Profesor de Estudios Estratégicos en el Centro de Investigación Política de India y colaborador de distintas universidades de EE UU, Brahma Chellanay es consejero del Gobierno indio en cuestiones de seguridad internacional, terrorismo y control de armas.

Profesor de Estudios Estratégicos en el Centro de Investigación Política de India y colaborador de distintas universidades de EE UU, Brahma Chellanay es consejero del Gobierno indio en cuestiones de seguridad internacional, terrorismo y control de armas. En una entrevista realizada durante su reciente estancia en Madrid, Chellanay sostiene que la falta de futuro de los jóvenes árabes “ha llenado las calles de ira” en una protesta que no hay quien pare. Y afirma: “En 10 años, la revuelta de la calle habrá cambiado la faz de los regímenes despóticos contra los que se han levantado”.

Pregunta. ¿Cómo ve lo que está sucediendo en Egipto?

Respuesta. Es una crisis muy fuerte para el mundo árabe y para Estados Unidos. Es la revuelta de la calle -en la que los jóvenes han volcado su frustración y odio- contra los palacios -donde se refugian los tiranos que les gobiernan-. La calle es antiamericana y los palacios los sostiene EE UU. De ahí, las consecuencias que también puede tener en EE UU.

P. ¿Es otro episodio del llamado choque de civilizaciones?

R. No, no es una cuestión de musulmanes contra Occidente. El mundo árabe vive un levantamiento político movido por la ira contra los dirigentes corruptos y por el abismo creado entre esos gobernantes y una juventud sin futuro. Es una protesta legítima nacida en la rabia por creciente hundimiento de la clase media y de sus esperanzas de una vida digna.

P. ¿Cree que la revuelta se extenderá más allá de Egipto?

R. El enfrentamiento entre la calle y los palacios se esparcirá por el norte de África y Oriente Próximo hasta llegar a Pakistán. En 10 años, la revuelta habrá cambiado la faz de los regímenes despóticos contra los que se ha levantado. Acabará con la mayoría de estos, incluida la monarquía saudí.

P. ¿Considera que el efecto dominó barrerá las dinastías del Golfo?

R. Esos países son incluso más frágiles que el norte de África por la enorme cantidad de extranjeros que viven en ellos y porque son naciones que encierran contradicciones étnicas o sociales. Por ejemplo, la monarquía de Bahrein y sus principales autoridades son suníes cuando la mayoría de la población es chií.

P. ¿Ve como uno de los detonantes de la revuelta la decisión de Mubarak de entronizar a su hijo Gamal para dirigir Egipto?

R. Las dinastías tienen pocas posibilidades de supervivencia en esta situación volcánica. El despotismo es una olla a presión sin válvula de seguridad, cuando su interior comienza a hervir estalla sin control. No hay escape. La democracia, por el contrario, sí que tiene válvula de seguridad por la que se puede canalizar la rabia.

P. La gente no grita contra EE UU ¿Por qué le va a afectar?

R. Hay un sentimiento de que los dictadores son corruptos y déspotas porque tienen el apoyo de EE UU. Su actuación se seguirá muy de cerca.

P. ¿Será positiva la retirada de las tropas de Afganistán?

R. La retirada será positiva para EE UU que ha librado dos guerras sin sentido, aunque si abandonan Afganistán no se librarán del terror en sus ciudades. Sin embargo, desde el punto de vista de la estabilidad regional es negativa, porque los talibanes no podrán controlar todo Afganistán y el país se romperá en base a la división étnica. Con ello, se expandirá la inestabilidad a toda Asia Central cuyas fronteras se han trazado precisamente dividiendo las etnias.