JK Alternative Viewpoint

The developments in Egypt over the past few days have thrown what had been a confused set of institutional arrangements into even greater disarray. The Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC) declared the parliamentary elections unconstitutional, and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) announced a supplementary constitutional declaration with no apparent public input. On top of that, the first presidential election since the fall of Mubarak was held.

To make things a bit more confusing, statements have been attributed to military leaders that are at variance with the text of their own declaration. For instance, in a news conference, SCAF members reportedly promised the incoming president that he would have the authority to appoint a defense minister, even though that authority was explicitly removed by the supplementary constitutional declaration.

 
Nathan Brown
Nonresident Senior Associate
Middle East Program
 
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SubscribeThe original constitutional declaration from March 2011 had all kinds of loopholes and ambiguities to begin with; the decision to tinker with its provisions this month has widened those loopholes considerably. Many of the gaps are likely to be filled in political practice—often unilaterally by the SCAF according to its needs of the moment. Indeed, the overriding effect of events of the past week has been to contain and sideline the role of elected institutions in Egypt’s transition.

Only the presidency remains (assuming the victor is allowed to take office) a democratic structure, and its authority has been clipped. The current Constituent Assembly was chosen by an elected parliament and thus also has some democratic legitimacy, but its existence is threatened, and, even if it survives, it will have to operate under the watchful eyes of other actors.

What follows is an attempt to clarify where matters stand today—and where gaps still remain.

The SCAF
The SCAF has strengthened its position in a number of ways. First, it has ensured that it will continue its political role after the inauguration of the president. There will be no return to the barracks at the end of this month, despite the promise of a symbolic ceremony in which the military leadership will hand power over to the president. Most important, the SCAF’s legislative role—in abeyance since the parliament began to meet in January—has been restored.

Second, it has declared itself completely autonomous from civilian oversight and given itself free rein in military affairs.

Third, it has granted itself a new, strong voice in the constitution-writing process.

And finally, the SCAF has augmented its positions through institutionalizing an internal security role as well as granting itself a veto over any declaration of war. The first step is likely to be far more important; the second is striking and unusual but also likely primarily of symbolic importance for now.

The military’s internal security role amounts to a standing authorization to the president and the SCAF to invoke martial law. And the SCAF has coupled its supplementary constitutional declaration with a provision for a defense council—a preexisting body—that, while headed by the president, will give the military the dominant voice.

The full extent of the SCAF’s authority is not always clear. Its executive authority is strong but not absolute under the emerging system, and it will turn over some significant authority to the president, especially in administrative and domestic affairs. It is likely that true clarity will come only in practice. If the past week is any indication, ambiguities will be resolved in accordance with the SCAF’s shifting preferences and political will. For instance, its budgetary role is ambiguous—while the non-military budget is not one of those areas of authority explicitly retained by the SCAF, the SCAF has asserted a legislative role, and the budget is, in fact, a law. This would seem to give the SCAF a platform to claim budgetary authority, but there are no preliminary indications yet of any inclination to use it.

The SCAF issued the supplementary constitutional declaration as a decree, not allowing the elected president or the Egyptian people to have a voice in the changes. That suggests the generals are not comfortable with the democratic process.

The Presidency
When the new president is sworn in, he will have considerable authority over domestic politics and administration on paper. But exercising authority in practice in most areas will likely require him to negotiate with the SCAF—especially since the SCAF has just granted the new president the gift of a general to oversee fiscal and administrative affairs for the presidency. Complicating his life still further, the president might also have to negotiate with other important actors, such as the security services.

The president will appoint the cabinet with the exception of the minister of defense. While the position of minister of defense is reserved for the current head of the SCAF, there are no apparent legal or constitutional restrictions on the new president’s choice for all other positions. In the absence of a parliament, the president will be able to make these appointments without any parliamentary oversight—giving him an even freer hand on paper.

But there will be significant political pressures connected with cabinet formation. For instance, in recent years the minister of justice has generally been a judge and the minister of interior has long come out of the security apparatus. It might be possible to violate the first tradition, though it might seem wiser for the new president to placate what has been a fairly active and somewhat aggrieved judiciary. It would be extremely daring and politically risky to violate the second tradition by appointing a civilian interior minister, a step many political reformers have insisted is necessary to begin the overhaul of the abusive and unaccountable state security apparatus.

More generally, with the SCAF always lurking in the background, the president is unlikely to feel free to select a cabinet of his own choosing. The cabinet and individual ministers have considerable authority to make policy as well as issue regulations and decisions. Without any parliamentary oversight or accountability, the only way to challenge any act by a minister or the cabinet may be to file a suit in the administrative courts (which act with varying speed) or to appeal to the SCAF to issue legislation reversing the action.

In the past, the president’s assent has been necessary for parliamentary legislation to become law. That requirement seems to carry over to the new system, but there is some tension in the various provisions on this issue. In one clause, the SCAF seems to have grabbed all legislative authority for itself, but another requires presidential assent for legislation and a third allows the cabinet to draft legislation (whether to forward to the SCAF or the president for further consideration is unclear). In comments to the press, SCAF members did suggest that the generals themselves would be forwarding legislation to the president for approval.

Egypt has been dominated by the presidency for so long that there are a whole myriad of structures, commissions, and procedures that run through the presidency and give the president a strong potential role. These are still part of the legal order.

The term of the presidency is fixed in the March 2011 constitutional declaration at four years (renewable once). Logically, if the president is taking office under a temporary constitution, it might be appropriate to hold new elections once a new constitution is in place. The SCAF has hinted that the new president will only be a transitional figure. But such an arrangement is hardly inevitable, and if that was what the SCAF intended last year, it is not clear why it allowed a four-year term limit in the text of the constitutional declaration.

The only plausible explanation is that the SCAF changed its mind—or is now reserving the right to change its mind depending on what it thinks of the president. There is no clear way of resolving the issue. The permanent constitution could address it, though the SCAF’s newfound assertiveness may lead it to insist on its own answer.

Constituent Assembly
Before the parliament was found unconstitutional, it had elected a Constituent Assembly as required by the constitutional declaration. Actually, it had done so twice—the first body was struck down in March by an administrative court and a new one was formed just days before the presidential election. The parliament had also passed a law governing formation of the body, but that law was never approved by the SCAF.

The second assembly has met once. In an environment in which judges have played an active role, the body took the astute step of electing the most senior judge in the country (one reputed to have some Islamist inclinations) as its president. Yet its days could well be numbered.

Previously, the assembly was expected to submit its work directly to the people with no other review or oversight stipulated. Now a variety of actors—the president, the head of the SCAF, the prime minister, the Supreme Council of Judicial Organizations, or one-fifth of the members of the Constituent Assembly itself—can ask for any provision of the assembly’s draft constitution to be reconsidered before submission to the people. If the Constituent Assembly does not change its mind, the objecting party can resort to the Supreme Constitutional Court for final and binding determination of whether the challenged provision is consistent with the goals of the revolution, the higher interests of the country, or the basic principles of past constitutions. In an earlier piece, I used the phrase “constitutional obscenity” to refer to the extreme vagueness of these standards, the absurdity of holding a new constitution accountable to older ones, and the assignment of final and absolute interpretive authority to an unelected judicial body formed under the old regime.

Now the SCAF has taken the audacious step of allowing itself to form a new Constituent Assembly. If the operations of the current assembly are obstructed and the body is unable to fulfill its duties, the SCAF will form a new assembly within one week—all on its own. In such a case, the new body will have only three months to complete its work, rather than the six months that the current assembly has. This is a period of time that would virtually bar serious public debate.

An obstacle in the path of the current assembly is possible and even likely to emerge. A lawsuit has been filed against the sitting assembly on grounds that members of the parliament voted some of their own members into the body. Although that might sound normal and innocuous, the first assembly was disbanded on the basis of a similar argument.

In all these ways, the constitutional process has been modified in order to make it more accountable to the institutions and principles of the old order than to the Egyptian people.

The Parliament
I have analyzed the argument over whether the parliament has been dissolved in an earlier piece. While those who claim the court has no right to dissolve the parliament do have plausible (if hardly overwhelming) arguments, they have virtually no political chance of success.

The justices of the Constitutional Court gave conflicting signals about how their ruling on the parliamentary election law applies to the upper house of the Egyptian parliament, and that body appears to still be viable. But a legal challenge has been entered against it, so its future is still uncertain.

The supplementary constitutional declaration states that the next set of parliamentary elections will take place one month after the new constitution is approved, effectively suspending parliament until after the transition is complete and oddly suggesting that the current temporary document rather than the final constitution defines when elections are to be held. The amended declaration also allows for a new law to be promulgated now (presumably by the SCAF with presidential assent) to govern those elections, again extending the legal effects of the SCAF’s authority into the operation of the new constitutional order.

The Supreme Constitutional Court
The Supreme Constitutional Court has been placed in a powerful position as guardian, final arbiter, and effective definer of the vaguely defined principles the new constitution must embody.

The justices of the SCC have been referred to in press accounts as “Mubarak appointees,” something that is accurate but sometimes misleading. There is no doubt that the current court was fully formed under the old regime, but its autonomy varied considerably over time and it was never a direct creature of the president. It is true that its reputation and record for independent action has declined over the past decade. I generally share Tamir Moustafa’s views that the court has become politically weaker in recent years.

The current composition of the court is a bit mixed. The SCC chief justice was a direct presidential appointee, although he actually recused himself from the case concerning the disputed candidacy of Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister appointed by Hosni Mubarak. He thus can hardly be held responsible for the ruling that allowed Shafiq to run for president despite former ties to the Mubarak regime. The other justices were generally nominated by the court itself and then approved by the president. That has made for some variety and independence in the past. My general impression is that the current court is actually a very diverse body.

The law governing the SCC was changed by the SCAF last summer to allow the court to select its own president from among the three most senior current members. The effect was to insulate the SCC from all other actors though also perhaps to inculcate however subtly a sense that the SCAF (and not the parliament) was the best protector of the judiciary. The new chief justice—a judge on the SCC since 1991—will take over next month.

What justices on the SCC tend to share, despite diverse orientations, is a strong sense of mission to the law and abstract constitutional principles. In a sense, their attitude is analogous to that of the SCAF, though the comparison might offend some of them: senior judges, like senior generals, see themselves as guardians of the public interest and the interests of the state, and therefore as above politics, democratic mechanisms, and accountability. The parliament that was seated in January had offended the SCC’s sensibilities quite deeply by criticizing the chief justice and by proposing legislation that would have deprived the court of some of its authority and autonomy.

It is not quite clear how the court will interpret the vague principles placed in its care for the constitution-drafting process. While many Egyptian judicial authorities work to hew closely to formalistic interpretations of legal texts, the SCC, given its mandate, has shown some comfort departing from narrow textualism and undertaking expansive readings of general constitutional principles. However, the task here is so novel that there is no sure indication of how it would use its authority if called upon.
 

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/2012/06/19/egyptian-political-system-in-disarray/c073

Subhas Chandra Bose’s visit to Germany and the dilemmas posed by his alliance with the Nazis came at a crucial period and cannot be ignored.
Studies on Subhas Chandra Bose’s flirtation with the Axis powers, first Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy and next Tojo’s Japan, vary a lot in their approach from the denunciatory to the apologetic and hagiographic, so typical of Indian nationalistic writings. Some have emphasised his activities in South-East Asia – with its Azad Hind government and the rest, which the brilliant advocate Bhulabhai Desai so ably described at the Indian National Army (INA) trial in the Red Fort in New Delhi – to the neglect of the crucial phase in Germany, which preceded it.

Romain Hayes’ work, based on massive research, deserves wide readership in India because it is scrupulously fair and richly nuanced. It covers the background to Bose’s adventure – his outlook on democracy and/differences with Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. All of which explain, but do not justify, why he sought and took help from the fascists. The author’s emphasis on Bose’s sturdy independence is writ all over the book. He was incapable of being anybody’s stooge; only an opportunistic, albeit fierce, nationalist. That said, the author is unsparing in his censures of Bose’s moral blindness to the crimes of his deliberately chosen allies.

There is a record of such opportunism and not in India alone. The Irish patriot, Sir Roger Casement, was tried for treason and hanged. The Italian scholar Marzia Casolari has revealed, on the basis of archival evidence, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh’s (RSS) links with and admiration for Mussolini’s fascist regime (“Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the 1930s”, Economic & Political Weekly, January 22, 2000. One wonders when her studies will emerge in book form). At one time, Churchill expressed his admiration for Mussolini.

So did Gandhi. Indeed Bose and Gandhi’s mistakes fed on each other. Were it not for Gandhi’s shabby treatment of Bose – forcing an elected Congress president to vacate his office and then treating him with scorn – Bose would not have left India in December 1940. “Bose left no doubt that the attitude of Gandhi had been central to his leaving India.” Maulana Azad noted with some astonishment that Gandhi’s “admiration for Subhas Bose unconsciously coloured his view about the whole war situation”, especially on Cripps’ proposals of March 30, 1942, for a settlement of India’s political impasse.

PICTURES: THE HINDU ARCHIVES
 
Subhas Chandra Bose at Badgastein in Austria.

As early as in 1941, “Sardar Patel felt convinced that the Allies were going to lose the war” (K.M. Munshi; Pilgrimage to Freedom, 1967; page 75). Singapore fell to Japanese arms on February 15 and Rangoon on March 7, 1942. However, on June 22, 1941, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and on December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour bringing the “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, the United States, into the war. Historians are agreed that by mid-June 1942 “the limit of Japanese power [was] reached”.

Nirad C. Chaudhuri had a poor opinion of Nehru’s and Bose’s understanding of international affairs. He analysed the 1942 episode in detail in an article in The Times of India of February 28, 1982, aptly titled, “They were ignorant of International Politics”. This was a reference to “the two Cambridge men” in the Congress, Nehru and Bose, “who were always talking about the international situation. They were also regarded by their political colleagues as expert authorities on international affairs… (but) their ideas on international politics were only a projection of their nationalism, which prevented their seeing any international situation for what it was.” This is true also of Indian writers on foreign affairs.

The failing persists, still. South Asia has produced world-class economists, historians, scientists and diplomats. It has not produced a single world-class scholar on international affairs. Nationalist self-absorption is no help in scholarly pursuits. The myopic outlook on world affairs was laid bare in all its unreality at a historic meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) in Allahabad from April 27 to May 1, 1942.

 
 
Gandhi with Bose at the Haripura Congress in 1938.

On the first day, Gandhi’s draft resolution declared: “Britain is incapable of defending India…. Japan’s quarrel is not with India. She is warring with the British Empire.… If India were freed her first step would probably be to negotiate with Japan.” Nehru disagreed. “Gandhiji’s draft is an approach which needs careful consideration. Independence means, among other things, the withdrawal of British troops. It is proper; but has it any meaning, our demanding withdrawal? Nor can they reasonably do it even if they recognise independence. Withdrawal of troops and the whole apparatus of civil administration will create a vacuum which cannot be filled up immediately.

“If we said to Japan that her fight was with British imperialism and not us she would say, ‘We are glad the British army is withdrawn; we recognise your independence. But we want certain facilities now. We shall defend you against aggression. We want aerodromes, freedom to pass our troops through your country. This is necessary in self-defence.’ They might seize strategic points and proceed to Iraq, etc. The masses won’t be touched if only the strategic points are captured. Japan is an imperialist country. Conquest of India is in their plan. If Bapu’s approach is accepted we become passive partners of the Axis powers. This approach is contrary to the Congress policy for the last two years and a half. The Allied countries will have a feeling that we are their enemies…. “The whole background of the draft is one which will inevitably make the world think that we are passively lining up with the Axis powers. The British are asked to withdraw. After the withdrawal we are to negotiate with Japan and possibly come to some terms with her. These terms may include a large measure of civil control by us, a certain measure of military control by them, passage of armies through India, etc…. Whether you will like it or not, the exigencies of the war situation will compel them to make India a battleground. In sheer self-defence they cannot afford to keep out. They will walk through the country. You can’t stop it by non-violent non-cooperation. Most of the population will not be affected by the march. Individuals may resist in a symbolic way. The Japanese armies will go to Iraq, Persia, etc., throttle China and make the Russian situation more difficult…. But the whole thought and background of the draft is one of favouring Japan. It may not be conscious. Three factors influence our decisions in the present emergency: (i) Indian freedom, (ii) sympathy for certain larger causes, (iii) probable outcome of the war; who is going to win? It is Gandhiji’s feeling that Japan and Germany will win. This feeling unconsciously governs his decision. The approach in the draft is different from mine” (emphasis added throughout). (Congress Responsibility for the Disturbances 1942-43, Government of India, 1943, page 43.)

To his lasting credit, not once did Nehru compromise with the fascists. But he and Azad were too weak to stand up to Gandhi and break with him on the “Quit India” resolution of August 8, 1942. In truth what Gandhi sought was parleys with the British at the point of his new pistol. Which is why he had sent Madeleine Slade (Mira Ben) to the Viceroy “to explain the purport of the Working Committee’s resolution. Linlithgow refused to meet her” (Munshi; page 82). Gandhi did not expect to be arrested. He told Mahadev Desai, “after my last night’s speech they will never arrest me” (Pyarelal; Mahatma; Volume 1; page 210).

In his adventure, Bose was as naive as Gandhi was in his. He sought to get excised from Mein Kampf Hitler’s contemptuous references to Indian nationalists as “Asian mountebanks” for whom he had no time. Hitler was never against the British Empire. He admired it; what he sought was a division of spheres of interest – “the land for us, the seas for England”. He wanted control of Europe, Britain could keep its colonies, India included .

Bose was woolly-headed. In September 1930, he said the “justice, equality, the love, which is the basis of socialism” should be combined with “the efficiency and the discipline of fascism as it stands in Europe today”. British repression in India was worse than in Nazi Germany, he asserted. Unlike Hitler, “Mussolini hailed Gandhi as a ‘genius and a saint’, admiring as he did his ability to challenge the British Empire. His praise contrasted markedly with Churchill’s response to the Mahatma; he had recently described Gandhi as a ‘half-naked’ fakir whose actions posed a danger to ‘white people’ and refused to meet him in London. Gandhi in turn was impressed by what he saw as Mussolini’s ‘care of the poor, his opposition to super-urbanisation, his efforts to bring about coordination between capital and labour’ and his ‘passionate love for his people’.”

 
 
Congress President Bose with Jawaharlal Nehru at Sodepur after they had a long conversation with Gandhi.

Bose concluded that the Mahatma had rendered India “great public service” by visiting fascist Italy. “Gandhi’s encounter with Mussolini nurtured Bose’s increasingly favourable impression of the fascist regime, such that when Gandhi returned to Bombay, on December 28, 1931, Bose was there to meet him in person.”

The author remarks: “What appealed to Bose in totalitarian ideology was the supremacy of the state, planned industrialisation, one-party rule and the suppression of opposition. He also harboured hopes that an ideological synthesis of fascism and Communism would occur first in India. ‘Nothing less than a dictator is needed to put our social customs right,’ Bose wrote privately to a friend.”

Bose on Gandhi

Bose also argued adamantly in The Indian Struggle that India’s “salvation” could not be achieved through Gandhi’s leadership, while nevertheless acknowledging his immense contribution to Indian nationalism. Bose referred to him as a “virtual dictator”, albeit one who was not as effective as “Dictator Stalin, or Il Duce Mussolini or Fuhrer Hitler” and who had already committed many “blunders”. The only concession Bose was willing to make was comparing Gandhi’s Salt March of 1930 with Mussolini’s March on Rome of 1922. Bose was also critical of Nehru, dismissing him as a “loyal follower of the Mahatma”.

The author notes: “When Germany invaded Holland and Belgium in preparation for the final and decisive push into France in 1940, Bose emphasised the need to ‘utilise the international crisis to India’s advantage’, claiming freedom was ‘almost within reach’. Not that Gandhi’s attitude was any more encouraging: he responded to the defeat of France by advising the British to ‘invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island with your many beautiful buildings. You give all these, but neither your souls, nor your minds.’ He had already written to the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, stating that Hitler was not ‘as bad as he is portrayed’ and that ‘if the British Cabinet desire it, I am prepared to go to Germany to plead for peace’.” Humility was not Gandhi’s strong point.

In February 1941, Bose shipped out of his family residence in Calcutta. “On the morning of April 3, 1941, ‘Orlando Mazzotta’, a man who had arrived from Moscow the previous afternoon posing as an Italian diplomat, walked up the steps of the German Foreign Office on the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. The Under-Secretary of State, Dr Ernst Woermann, immediately received him and listened carefully as he spoke of the need to establish a government-in-exile and launch a new military offensive.” These twin goals Bose pursued relentlessly, unmindful of whether they fitted into Germany’s policy or not. He asked his embattled hosts to raise an army of 100,000 to invade India. More, he asked for a treaty guaranteeing India’s independence “in return for ‘special privileges’ after the war”. They were not defined. But victory would have deprived him of the power to define them. It would then belong to the power which had invaded India.

The Germans were more realistic than Bose. “First, there was concern that recognition of an Indian government presided by Bose would be perceived as German preference for the ‘leftist Forward Bloc’ faction within the Congress, which would antagonise Gandhi and Nehru. The Germans were not prepared to do this merely to gain Bose as an ally. Gandhi was rightly recognised as the key force in Indian politics, regardless of the contempt his pacifist ideology aroused in Berlin. As Woermann put it, ‘there would hardly be any direct political advantage for us in elevating Bose as chief of an Indian government’, even claiming that this would be met with an ‘unfavourable response in large parts of India’. The impression would be of Bose having been ‘brought’ by the Axis powers.” Bose was not accepted as India’s spokesman; only as a convenient ally.

 
 
Bose hoisting the national flag at Vithalnagar.

The book contains the full text of Bose’s “Plan for Cooperation between the Axis powers and India” dated April 9, 1941, the minutes of his meeting with Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentop on November 29, 1941, and the German-Italian-Japanese Declaration on India which was issued at Bose’s insistence, besides a couple of other documents.

It provides a carefully documented account of Bose’s exertions in Europe and South-East Asia. The government’s revelation on November 10, 1941, of his presence in Europe shook Bose very much as his first broadcast to India on February 28, 1941, stirred many in India. But Nehru was unmoved. On April 12, 1942, he criticised Bose. “It is a bad thing psychologically for the Indian masses to think in terms of being liberated by an outside agency.” Bose retaliated: “It is no less comical that the Indian saviours of British imperialism are the men who regard themselves as international democrats.” Nehru hit back with force. “Hitler and Japan must go to hell. I shall fight them to the end and this is my policy. I shall also fight Mr Subhas Chandra Bose and his party along with Japan if he comes to India. Mr Bose acted very wrongly…. Hitler and Japan represent the reactionary forces and their victory means the victory of the reactionary forces in the world.”

Ethical dilemmas

The ethical issues evaded hitherto, which the author raises, must be addressed in any honest discussion. “The most troubling aspect of Bose’s presence in Nazi Germany is not military or political but rather ethical. His alliance with the most genocidal regime in history poses serious dilemmas precisely because of his popularity and his having made a life-long career of fighting the ‘good cause’. How did a man who started his political career at the feet of Gandhi end up with Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo? Even in the case of Tojo and Mussolini, the gravity of the dilemma pales in comparison to that posed by his association with Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The most disturbing issue, all too often ignored, is that in the many articles, minutes, memorandums, telegrams, letters, plans and broadcasts Bose left behind in Germany, he did not express the slightest concern or sympathy for the millions who died in the concentration camps. Not one of his Berlin wartime associates or colleagues ever quotes him expressing any indignation. Not even when the horrors of Auschwitz and its satellite camps were exposed to the world upon being liberated by Soviet troops in early 1945, revealing publicly for the first time the genocidal nature of the Nazi regime, did Bose react….

“History will not ultimately absolve Bose so easily for his alliance with Nazi Germany. The question that inevitably arises is what was his attitude to the greatest act of large-scale industrial mass murder in history, one that was committed in his presence? That Bose chose to be silent is a testimony in itself. Would it have made any difference had he spoken out, if not to the Jews, then at least to his historical legacy? His biographer even implies that Bose wrote a partially anti-Semitic article for Goebbels’ newspaper Der Angriff. Interestingly, the article in question has never been found but it certainly did elicit a hostile reaction from The Jewish Chronicle, which denounced Bose as ‘India’s Anti-Jewish Quisling’. There seemed to be a precedent for this insensitivity towards the ‘Jewish question’. Already, before the war, Bose had not particularly welcomed attempts to grant Jewish refugees asylum in India. Typically, he got into an argument over this with Nehru who was more open to this at least….”

Bose was not exposed, however, to the darker side of the Nazi regime. He lived a protected existence in the luxury of his villa. Of course, nationalism is not, and never will be, an excuse for political apathy and blindness. But “in 1945, having placed all his cards on the Axis, Bose would have made a fool of himself by suddenly condemning Germany. It would have put into question his reasons for having gone there in the first place. Bose was a nationalist politician, not a Gandhian idealist. He had chosen to back the Axis and he was merely carrying out that policy to the bitter end….

“It is, of course, not for historians to pass moral judgments. Time will do so but it is undeniable that Bose’s years in Nazi Germany do not make for the most inspiring chapter of his life. Nevertheless, it was a crucial period which cannot be ignored.” As his admirers still do.

In retrospect, some of Nehru’s critics wished that Bose or Sardar Patel had led the country instead of Nehru. The record of all three establishes that Nehru was by far superior to them, despite his faults, and Patel or Bose were far inferior to him despite their qualities.

http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20120629291208100.htm

Ceftin

General Nikolai Makarov, Russia’s Chief of General Staff (Source: MDAA)
Sources in the Russian Defense Ministry told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that troops are being prepared for combat deployment “outside the borders of Russia, possibly in Syria.” The 76th Pskov airborne division, the 15th army brigade from Samara, as well as GRU special forces from the South Military District (SMD) manned by servicemen from Chechnya and the Black Sea marine brigade are all mentioned among the units preparing for expeditionary engagements outside Russia’s borders. The Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) Nikolai Bordyuzha also remarked on the possibility of a CSTO peacekeeping force being deployed in Syria. According to Bordyuzha, a CSTO military operation in Syria could involve “peace enforcement” and the use of heavy weapons to suppress the fighters of the Syrian opposition forces, “who are trying to solve political problems by force of arms, not in the frameworks of the Syrian constitution.” The newspaper further quotes a military expert who stresses that Russia must defend its interests in Syria and support the Syrian authorities “against the West and the Arab world” (http://www.ng.ru/nvo/2012-06-06/1_siria.html).

The CSTO is a military block comprising Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Any possible “CSTO peacekeeping force” deployed in the Middle East or anywhere outside the borders of the former USSR would be, in essence, Russian with a token allied presence, since the other CSTO members have limited capabilities and no obvious appetite for far off military adventures. Russia itself now lacks serious capabilities to project military power overseas. Russia does not have any air bases in the Middle East, nor significant regular naval presence. Last January, Russia’s only aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, briefly visited the Syrian port of Tartus, where Russia maintains a small naval supply base. The Kuznetsov and its small carrier group were warmly greeted by the Bashar al-Assad regime. Last February, the Kuznetsov returned to Russia and now resides in a shipyard for a major refitting lasting until at least 2017. The Kuznetsov air wing will be replaced with new MiG-29K jet fighters. During the visit to Syria, the Kuznetsov was carrying only eight old Su-33 jet fighters and two Ka-27S helicopters for search and rescue missions, severely limiting its projection of force capabilities (see EDM, January 12).

Without air cover, the Russian military under the CSTO flag cannot possibly act as a truly independent force in Syria. Russia may contribute a small infantry brigade-size force as part of a UN- or Western-led peacekeeping deployment or as an auxiliary attachment to al-Assad troops. But in either case, it would need to rely on NATO or al-Assad for air support and logistics. The Russian diplomats and press are distributing a great deal of fiery propaganda about “defending our interests in Syria.” This week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Russia of sending Syria Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov adamantly denied this claim and attacked Washington in turn, accusing it of destabilizing the region with its arms supplies (Interfax, June 13). But the bottom line is: Russia has the ability to ship weapons to the Middle East and wield its UN Security Council veto, which it more or less has already.

The Defense Ministry sources quoted by Nezavisimaya stated that troops are preparing for deployment outside of Russia’s borders, mentioning Syria as one – but not the only – possible destination. In fact, the mention of Syria may be a deliberate distraction. Since last December, a constant stream of reports by official spokesmen and carried by government news agencies describes the rapid deployment of newly procured weapons, including T-90A and T-72BM tanks, armored vehicles, the newest Su-34 bombers, Su-27SM3 and Su-30 fighters, attack helicopters, as well as the newest command and control equipment in the Southern Military District (SMD). Overall, the Russian military is equipped with 16 percent new weapons, but in the units of the SMD, it is over 70 percent. New Special Forces and sniper units are also being formed in the SMD, and troops are being supplied with improved body armor (see EDM, April 5, May 15).

During her visit this month to the South Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan) Clinton presided over the launch of a Georgian coast guard vessel, one of four recently upgraded with US assistance in the port city of Batumi. Clinton called for fair elections, praised Georgian achievements, and promised more economic aid and military assistance. Still, the Barack Obama administration in essence continues a de facto ban on equipping Georgia’s military with modern anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons (see EDM, June 11). Washington under the Obama administration has been deliberately keeping Georgia at arm’s length, apparently in an effort to appease Moscow; but the reaction of the Russian Foreign Ministry to Clinton’s visit, nonetheless, was extremely hostile. An official statement accused Washington of “not learning the lessons” of the short Russo-Georgian war in August 2008, of “advancing Georgian membership in NATO,” and “repeating verbatim the malicious lies of [President Mikheil] Saakashvili’s propaganda about the Russian occupation of Georgia.” Washington was accused of promoting “the revanchist desires of Tbilisi” and “not fully understanding the ensuing responsibility” (www.mid.ru, June 6).

Last week, the theme of Georgian “revanchist” intentions was simultaneously promoted by Russia’s Chief of General Staff and First Deputy Defense Minister, Army General Nikolai Makarov, speaking at an event organized by the Finnish National Defense Course Association at the University of Helsinki on June 5. Makarov stunned the Finnish audience by announcing that a possible Finnish entry into NATO “would constitute a military threat against Russia” and that “closer military cooperation between Finland and NATO” is also a “concern.” Makarov warned Finland to cease military exercises “in the East” (near Russia’s border). He also presented a PowerPoint slide with a map of NATO’s ballistic missile defense plans in Europe that the Finns interpreted as depicting their nation and the Baltic republics inside Russia’s sphere of influence. Makarov accused Helsinki of “supporting Georgian revanchism.” The amazed veteran Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja told journalists: “Makarov’s statements are his personal opinion” (http://yle.fi/novosti/novosti/article3428680.html).

Of course, Russian acting Chiefs of General Staff do not make personal political statements during preplanned official speeches abroad. Moscow considers any possible further expansion of NATO to countries bordering Russia as a major threat. Possible future Finnish NATO aspirations do not seem imminent, and Makarov’s statement was a verbal precautionary threat. Georgian NATO aspirations, officially once again acknowledged during the NATO summit in Chicago last month, may amount to a casus belli, as demonstrated by the rapid rearmament of the SMD and the emergence in Moscow of a presumed threat of “Georgian revanchism”.

Last week, military clashes between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces on the Karabakh ceasefire line left several soldiers of both sides dead and wounded, with some unofficial reports putting the number of casualties over 20 (RIA Novosti, June 6). The Karabakh war ended in 1994 with a ceasefire, but all attempts to resolve the conflict have since failed. A serious resumption of hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia could lead to Russia demanding a “corridor” through Georgia to its troops in Armenia, that at present are supplied only by air. Compared to Syria, Russian interests in the Caucasus are indeed considered vital, and military capabilities in the area are formidable. The South Caucasus seems a much more probable destination for any possible future military excursion.
http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=39494&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=7&cHash=d70d6880aa167cd3b5968876f85cb021

The Socialist left is using a slightly unexpected route to emerge from its decades-long post-Soviet seclusion from mainstream politics. No, not the emergence of new trade union activity – not yet at least. Nor a fresh connection to the environmental movement. Nor even the spectacular appearance of the Occupy Wall Street movement or its international counterparts in the Middle East and Europe. Instead, it has been the ballot box that has brought millions of people worldwide back into contact with left-wing parties previously viewed as remnants of the past. While Malcolm X once asked the provocative question of the “ballot or the bullet,” socialists these days are attempting to figure out how to convert success at the polls into real transformative power in the society.

A European Outburst

Recent elections in France and Greece demonstrate that Socialist politics are alive as a means to register a protest vote against the Capitalist drive to austerity. Jean-Luc Melenchon’s Left Front campaign registered a healthy 11% in the first-round of the Presdiential elections after the far-left had previously been confined to single digits. The Melenchon campaign raised issues and mobilized tens of thousands of people with an anti-austerity message that helped Socialist Party Candidate Francois Hollande defeat the incumbent Conservative Nicholas Sarkozy. The anti-austerity mandate delivered by the French people, may serve to handcuff the usual budget cutting instincts of the French Socialist Party for a time while the Left Front serves as a continued outlet for anti-austerity frustrations.

Much brighter is the outcome in Greece where the previously microspoic SYRIZA party ascended to 17% of the national vote and anticipates scoring even higher in upcoming elections. SYRIZA came out of a fracture in the Greek Communist Party (PKK), but had been limited by internal divisions prior to the current elections. Up until now, Greece had been something of a puzzle since mass street demonstrations seemed to lead to few changes at the polls. SYRIZA was able to capitalize on the public disgracing of the budget cutting Socialist Party (PASOK) and the sectarianism of the PKK. Today, SYRIZA has moved from the political edges of society into the center of mass sentiment against the vicious budget cutting imposed by the European Union. They are now close to possibly being at the lead of forming a new government in order to wage what its leader describes as a “war between people and capitalism.” SYRIZA has pledged to make the unwinding of the
European Union imposed austerity package the first act of the new government.

The Pink Tide

Latin American leftists have run far ahead of their European counterparts at the election booths. In both Bolivia and Venezuela left parties have ascended to state power. Here, there are some cautionary tales about the hazards of attempting to manage the state as leftists inside of a capitalist system. In Venezuela, the Presidential regime of Hugo Chavez was born out of sharp clashes between poor and working class communities and budget cutting neoliberal regimes. In this way, Latin American Left, unlike their European counterparts, have already gone through the process of pushing up against the international forces of austerity. Chavez navigated through this political waters skillfully – capitalizing at the polls by what is popularly referred to as “the process.” In addition to electoral change on the national level this process has combined the formation of locally governing communal councils with a flourishing, if still small –scale,
worker owned and run cooperative movement.

Yet, in both Bolivia and Venezuela, once popular left governments have been trapped within the paradigm of capitalist development. The government of Evo Morales and the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) party have faced particular setbacks as they have engaged in a series of policies that allied them with multinational capitalist corporations and against local indigenous and environmental groups. High profile struggles ensued as Morales tipped the scales toward development and away from the popular base that had ensured his ascendancy to office. Chavez has faced a different series of setbacks as his attempts to created a modern socialist party in Venezuela, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), have, as yet failed to galvanize popular support or produce a new leadership that moves beyond his own imposing shadow.

Managing the state has allowed the Pink Tide to mount serious challenges to what once seemed like the uncontrollable grasp of neoliberalism. In some very important ways Chavez and Morales need to be credited with initiating a counter-process that mounted the kind of anti-austerity struggles that European left parties are just now discovering. Yet, it has thus far failed to produce a significant shift towards a radically transformative socialist politics for the 21st century. Perhaps, as left movements also gain ground at the polls in Europe, a new internationalist consensus and urge to cooperate can be built to more fully shift the political terrain. An added impulse from North America would certainly be a welcome accompaniment.

The American Handcuffs

In the United States Left electoralism is, in many ways, in the same stalled position that it had been prior to the economic crisis of 2008. Highly restrictive ballot access laws have combined with a continued slavish illusion in the Democratic Party as a progressive force hamstring efforts at left regroupment at the polls. Not surprisingly, the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement has mostly organized outside of electoral politics, rendering conversations about mounting a left challenge at the polls verboten in OWS circles. So, while popular movements begin to awaken in the US, few signs are registered at the polls.

Despite the structural and ideological roadblocks, they are a few glimmers of hope. The campaign for US Senate in Ohio waged by Socialist Party USA candidate and veteran labor activist Dan LaBotz scored some impressive vote totals in 2012. More than 25,000 people cast their ballot for LaBotz, a total that easily eclipsed the national vote total for Socialist candidates in previous Presidential elections. And in the 2012 Presidential elections, Socialist candidates such as the SP-USA’s Stewart Alexander will appear in the dozen or so states whose ballot access laws reasonably allow participation by small parties including potential swing states such as Ohio and Florida.

New Turn – New Possibilities

Even the most elementary notion of good sense dictates that Venezuela in the 1990s and Greece today are radically different contexts. Equally so the prospects for Left electoralism in the United States and Europe where proportional representation and more open ballot access offer greater possibilities for maneuver. However, a few things about Left electorialism do seem to be universal. First, Left electoral forces need to build links into popular anti-austerity movements. Second, anti-austerity movements need a Left electoral face at the polls – this will broaden the base of the movements by reaching out to regular poor and working class people who tend to pay attention to politics at election time and it will hit the pro-capitalist Democratic and Republican parties where it hurts most . Finally, although electing a Socialist to office will not mean that the revolutionary transformation of capitalism is complete, it will signal that our movement is building the kind of popular power necessary to make such a transformation.

The moment the first Socialist Senator walks into the halls of Congress, she will not do so alone. The forces of the coming Democratic Revolution will have swept her into office and a victory at the polls will be only one part of making the political change our planet so desperately needs. For now though, American Socialists will have to be content to fight smaller underfunded electoral campaigns, to learn lessons from their Latin American and European counterparts and to, wherever possible, join them in a global solidarity effort to make a Democratic Revolution.

Billy Wharton is a writer, activist and co-chair of the Socialist Party USA. His articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the NYC Indypendent, Spectrezine and the Monthly Review Zine. He can be reached at whartonbilly[at]gmail[dot]com

 
http://www.countercurrents.org/wharton140612.htm

Subhas Chandra Bose’s visit to Germany and the dilemmas posed by his alliance with the Nazis came at a crucial period and cannot be ignored. 

Studies on Subhas Chandra Bose’s flirtation with the Axis powers, first Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy and next Tojo’s Japan, vary a lot in their approach from the denunciatory to the apologetic and hagiographic, so typical of Indian nationalistic writings. Some have emphasised his activities in South-East Asia – with its Azad Hind government and the rest, which the brilliant advocate Bhulabhai Desai so ably described at the Indian National Army (INA) trial in the Red Fort in New Delhi – to the neglect of the crucial phase in Germany, which preceded it.

Romain Hayes’ work, based on massive research, deserves wide readership in India because it is scrupulously fair and richly nuanced. It covers the background to Bose’s adventure – his outlook on democracy and/differences with Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. All of which explain, but do not justify, why he sought and took help from the fascists. The author’s emphasis on Bose’s sturdy independence is writ all over the book. He was incapable of being anybody’s stooge; only an opportunistic, albeit fierce, nationalist. That said, the author is unsparing in his censures of Bose’s moral blindness to the crimes of his deliberately chosen allies.

There is a record of such opportunism and not in India alone. The Irish patriot, Sir Roger Casement, was tried for treason and hanged. The Italian scholar Marzia Casolari has revealed, on the basis of archival evidence, the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh’s (RSS) links with and admiration for Mussolini’s fascist regime (“Hindutva’s foreign tie-up in the 1930s”, Economic & Political Weekly, January 22, 2000. One wonders when her studies will emerge in book form). At one time, Churchill expressed his admiration for Mussolini.

So did Gandhi. Indeed Bose and Gandhi’s mistakes fed on each other. Were it not for Gandhi’s shabby treatment of Bose – forcing an elected Congress president to vacate his office and then treating him with scorn – Bose would not have left India in December 1940. “Bose left no doubt that the attitude of Gandhi had been central to his leaving India.” Maulana Azad noted with some astonishment that Gandhi’s “admiration for Subhas Bose unconsciously coloured his view about the whole war situation”, especially on Cripps’ proposals of March 30, 1942, for a settlement of India’s political impasse.

PICTURES: THE HINDU ARCHIVES
 
Subhas Chandra Bose at Badgastein in Austria.

As early as in 1941, “Sardar Patel felt convinced that the Allies were going to lose the war” (K.M. Munshi; Pilgrimage to Freedom, 1967; page 75). Singapore fell to Japanese arms on February 15 and Rangoon on March 7, 1942. However, on June 22, 1941, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and on December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour bringing the “unsinkable aircraft carrier”, the United States, into the war. Historians are agreed that by mid-June 1942 “the limit of Japanese power [was] reached”.

Nirad C. Chaudhuri had a poor opinion of Nehru’s and Bose’s understanding of international affairs. He analysed the 1942 episode in detail in an article in The Times of India of February 28, 1982, aptly titled, “They were ignorant of International Politics”. This was a reference to “the two Cambridge men” in the Congress, Nehru and Bose, “who were always talking about the international situation. They were also regarded by their political colleagues as expert authorities on international affairs… (but) their ideas on international politics were only a projection of their nationalism, which prevented their seeing any international situation for what it was.” This is true also of Indian writers on foreign affairs.

The failing persists, still. South Asia has produced world-class economists, historians, scientists and diplomats. It has not produced a single world-class scholar on international affairs. Nationalist self-absorption is no help in scholarly pursuits. The myopic outlook on world affairs was laid bare in all its unreality at a historic meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC) in Allahabad from April 27 to May 1, 1942.

 
 
Gandhi with Bose at the Haripura Congress in 1938.

On the first day, Gandhi’s draft resolution declared: “Britain is incapable of defending India…. Japan’s quarrel is not with India. She is warring with the British Empire.… If India were freed her first step would probably be to negotiate with Japan.” Nehru disagreed. “Gandhiji’s draft is an approach which needs careful consideration. Independence means, among other things, the withdrawal of British troops. It is proper; but has it any meaning, our demanding withdrawal? Nor can they reasonably do it even if they recognise independence. Withdrawal of troops and the whole apparatus of civil administration will create a vacuum which cannot be filled up immediately.

“If we said to Japan that her fight was with British imperialism and not us she would say, ‘We are glad the British army is withdrawn; we recognise your independence. But we want certain facilities now. We shall defend you against aggression. We want aerodromes, freedom to pass our troops through your country. This is necessary in self-defence.’ They might seize strategic points and proceed to Iraq, etc. The masses won’t be touched if only the strategic points are captured. Japan is an imperialist country. Conquest of India is in their plan. If Bapu’s approach is accepted we become passive partners of the Axis powers. This approach is contrary to the Congress policy for the last two years and a half. The Allied countries will have a feeling that we are their enemies…. “The whole background of the draft is one which will inevitably make the world think that we are passively lining up with the Axis powers. The British are asked to withdraw. After the withdrawal we are to negotiate with Japan and possibly come to some terms with her. These terms may include a large measure of civil control by us, a certain measure of military control by them, passage of armies through India, etc…. Whether you will like it or not, the exigencies of the war situation will compel them to make India a battleground. In sheer self-defence they cannot afford to keep out. They will walk through the country. You can’t stop it by non-violent non-cooperation. Most of the population will not be affected by the march. Individuals may resist in a symbolic way. The Japanese armies will go to Iraq, Persia, etc., throttle China and make the Russian situation more difficult…. But the whole thought and background of the draft is one of favouring Japan. It may not be conscious. Three factors influence our decisions in the present emergency: (i) Indian freedom, (ii) sympathy for certain larger causes, (iii) probable outcome of the war; who is going to win? It is Gandhiji’s feeling that Japan and Germany will win. This feeling unconsciously governs his decision. The approach in the draft is different from mine” (emphasis added throughout). (Congress Responsibility for the Disturbances 1942-43, Government of India, 1943, page 43.)

To his lasting credit, not once did Nehru compromise with the fascists. But he and Azad were too weak to stand up to Gandhi and break with him on the “Quit India” resolution of August 8, 1942. In truth what Gandhi sought was parleys with the British at the point of his new pistol. Which is why he had sent Madeleine Slade (Mira Ben) to the Viceroy “to explain the purport of the Working Committee’s resolution. Linlithgow refused to meet her” (Munshi; page 82). Gandhi did not expect to be arrested. He told Mahadev Desai, “after my last night’s speech they will never arrest me” (Pyarelal; Mahatma; Volume 1; page 210).

In his adventure, Bose was as naive as Gandhi was in his. He sought to get excised from Mein Kampf Hitler’s contemptuous references to Indian nationalists as “Asian mountebanks” for whom he had no time. Hitler was never against the British Empire. He admired it; what he sought was a division of spheres of interest – “the land for us, the seas for England”. He wanted control of Europe, Britain could keep its colonies, India included .

Bose was woolly-headed. In September 1930, he said the “justice, equality, the love, which is the basis of socialism” should be combined with “the efficiency and the discipline of fascism as it stands in Europe today”. British repression in India was worse than in Nazi Germany, he asserted. Unlike Hitler, “Mussolini hailed Gandhi as a ‘genius and a saint’, admiring as he did his ability to challenge the British Empire. His praise contrasted markedly with Churchill’s response to the Mahatma; he had recently described Gandhi as a ‘half-naked’ fakir whose actions posed a danger to ‘white people’ and refused to meet him in London. Gandhi in turn was impressed by what he saw as Mussolini’s ‘care of the poor, his opposition to super-urbanisation, his efforts to bring about coordination between capital and labour’ and his ‘passionate love for his people’.”

 
 
Congress President Bose with Jawaharlal Nehru at Sodepur after they had a long conversation with Gandhi.

Bose concluded that the Mahatma had rendered India “great public service” by visiting fascist Italy. “Gandhi’s encounter with Mussolini nurtured Bose’s increasingly favourable impression of the fascist regime, such that when Gandhi returned to Bombay, on December 28, 1931, Bose was there to meet him in person.”

The author remarks: “What appealed to Bose in totalitarian ideology was the supremacy of the state, planned industrialisation, one-party rule and the suppression of opposition. He also harboured hopes that an ideological synthesis of fascism and Communism would occur first in India. ‘Nothing less than a dictator is needed to put our social customs right,’ Bose wrote privately to a friend.”

Bose on Gandhi

Bose also argued adamantly in The Indian Struggle that India’s “salvation” could not be achieved through Gandhi’s leadership, while nevertheless acknowledging his immense contribution to Indian nationalism. Bose referred to him as a “virtual dictator”, albeit one who was not as effective as “Dictator Stalin, or Il Duce Mussolini or Fuhrer Hitler” and who had already committed many “blunders”. The only concession Bose was willing to make was comparing Gandhi’s Salt March of 1930 with Mussolini’s March on Rome of 1922. Bose was also critical of Nehru, dismissing him as a “loyal follower of the Mahatma”.

The author notes: “When Germany invaded Holland and Belgium in preparation for the final and decisive push into France in 1940, Bose emphasised the need to ‘utilise the international crisis to India’s advantage’, claiming freedom was ‘almost within reach’. Not that Gandhi’s attitude was any more encouraging: he responded to the defeat of France by advising the British to ‘invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island with your many beautiful buildings. You give all these, but neither your souls, nor your minds.’ He had already written to the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, stating that Hitler was not ‘as bad as he is portrayed’ and that ‘if the British Cabinet desire it, I am prepared to go to Germany to plead for peace’.” Humility was not Gandhi’s strong point.

In February 1941, Bose shipped out of his family residence in Calcutta. “On the morning of April 3, 1941, ‘Orlando Mazzotta’, a man who had arrived from Moscow the previous afternoon posing as an Italian diplomat, walked up the steps of the German Foreign Office on the Wilhelmstrasse in Berlin. The Under-Secretary of State, Dr Ernst Woermann, immediately received him and listened carefully as he spoke of the need to establish a government-in-exile and launch a new military offensive.” These twin goals Bose pursued relentlessly, unmindful of whether they fitted into Germany’s policy or not. He asked his embattled hosts to raise an army of 100,000 to invade India. More, he asked for a treaty guaranteeing India’s independence “in return for ‘special privileges’ after the war”. They were not defined. But victory would have deprived him of the power to define them. It would then belong to the power which had invaded India.

The Germans were more realistic than Bose. “First, there was concern that recognition of an Indian government presided by Bose would be perceived as German preference for the ‘leftist Forward Bloc’ faction within the Congress, which would antagonise Gandhi and Nehru. The Germans were not prepared to do this merely to gain Bose as an ally. Gandhi was rightly recognised as the key force in Indian politics, regardless of the contempt his pacifist ideology aroused in Berlin. As Woermann put it, ‘there would hardly be any direct political advantage for us in elevating Bose as chief of an Indian government’, even claiming that this would be met with an ‘unfavourable response in large parts of India’. The impression would be of Bose having been ‘brought’ by the Axis powers.” Bose was not accepted as India’s spokesman; only as a convenient ally.

 
 
Bose hoisting the national flag at Vithalnagar.

The book contains the full text of Bose’s “Plan for Cooperation between the Axis powers and India” dated April 9, 1941, the minutes of his meeting with Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentop on November 29, 1941, and the German-Italian-Japanese Declaration on India which was issued at Bose’s insistence, besides a couple of other documents.

It provides a carefully documented account of Bose’s exertions in Europe and South-East Asia. The government’s revelation on November 10, 1941, of his presence in Europe shook Bose very much as his first broadcast to India on February 28, 1941, stirred many in India. But Nehru was unmoved. On April 12, 1942, he criticised Bose. “It is a bad thing psychologically for the Indian masses to think in terms of being liberated by an outside agency.” Bose retaliated: “It is no less comical that the Indian saviours of British imperialism are the men who regard themselves as international democrats.” Nehru hit back with force. “Hitler and Japan must go to hell. I shall fight them to the end and this is my policy. I shall also fight Mr Subhas Chandra Bose and his party along with Japan if he comes to India. Mr Bose acted very wrongly…. Hitler and Japan represent the reactionary forces and their victory means the victory of the reactionary forces in the world.”

Ethical dilemmas

The ethical issues evaded hitherto, which the author raises, must be addressed in any honest discussion. “The most troubling aspect of Bose’s presence in Nazi Germany is not military or political but rather ethical. His alliance with the most genocidal regime in history poses serious dilemmas precisely because of his popularity and his having made a life-long career of fighting the ‘good cause’. How did a man who started his political career at the feet of Gandhi end up with Hitler, Mussolini and Tojo? Even in the case of Tojo and Mussolini, the gravity of the dilemma pales in comparison to that posed by his association with Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The most disturbing issue, all too often ignored, is that in the many articles, minutes, memorandums, telegrams, letters, plans and broadcasts Bose left behind in Germany, he did not express the slightest concern or sympathy for the millions who died in the concentration camps. Not one of his Berlin wartime associates or colleagues ever quotes him expressing any indignation. Not even when the horrors of Auschwitz and its satellite camps were exposed to the world upon being liberated by Soviet troops in early 1945, revealing publicly for the first time the genocidal nature of the Nazi regime, did Bose react….

“History will not ultimately absolve Bose so easily for his alliance with Nazi Germany. The question that inevitably arises is what was his attitude to the greatest act of large-scale industrial mass murder in history, one that was committed in his presence? That Bose chose to be silent is a testimony in itself. Would it have made any difference had he spoken out, if not to the Jews, then at least to his historical legacy? His biographer even implies that Bose wrote a partially anti-Semitic article for Goebbels’ newspaper Der Angriff. Interestingly, the article in question has never been found but it certainly did elicit a hostile reaction from The Jewish Chronicle, which denounced Bose as ‘India’s Anti-Jewish Quisling’. There seemed to be a precedent for this insensitivity towards the ‘Jewish question’. Already, before the war, Bose had not particularly welcomed attempts to grant Jewish refugees asylum in India. Typically, he got into an argument over this with Nehru who was more open to this at least….”

Bose was not exposed, however, to the darker side of the Nazi regime. He lived a protected existence in the luxury of his villa. Of course, nationalism is not, and never will be, an excuse for political apathy and blindness. But “in 1945, having placed all his cards on the Axis, Bose would have made a fool of himself by suddenly condemning Germany. It would have put into question his reasons for having gone there in the first place. Bose was a nationalist politician, not a Gandhian idealist. He had chosen to back the Axis and he was merely carrying out that policy to the bitter end….

“It is, of course, not for historians to pass moral judgments. Time will do so but it is undeniable that Bose’s years in Nazi Germany do not make for the most inspiring chapter of his life. Nevertheless, it was a crucial period which cannot be ignored.” As his admirers still do.

In retrospect, some of Nehru’s critics wished that Bose or Sardar Patel had led the country instead of Nehru. The record of all three establishes that Nehru was by far superior to them, despite his faults, and Patel or Bose were far inferior to him despite their qualities.

 
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http://www.frontlineonnet.com/stories/20120629291208100.htm

A protester shouts from atop a barricade outside the Supreme Constitutional Court in Cairo on June 14, 2012

Confident that raw power and divisions among the opposition preclude any serious challenge, the junta turns the tables on a democratic transition
The coup d’état that began 18 months ago in Egypt with the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak initially camouflaged itself in the language of revolution and promises of democracy, even as it worked to prevent the collapse of the old order and divide and conquer its challengers. But Thursday’s rulings by the Supreme Constitutional Court have shed the disguise: Egypt will be effectively ruled by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) junta and its backers in the bureaucracy and judiciary until further notice.

The court, a holdover from the Mubarak era, not only slapped down a law passed by the democratically elected parliament to bar officials of the former regime from running for office but also effectively dissolved the legislature itself. The first ruling upholds the candidacy of the military’s preferred option, former Mubarak Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik, in Saturday’s presidential-election runoff against the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi. And given the events of recent weeks, the smart money wouldn’t bet against him coming out on top in the race for a position whose powers have not yet been defined, a process over which the military retains a prerogative. Dissolving the parliament on the grounds that one-third of its seats were allegedly elected in an unconstitutional manner (albeit under the supervision of the junta and judiciary) may have even more far-reaching consequences: the Constituent Assembly, a highly contested body appointed by the parliament to draft a new constitution, is unlikely to survive the dissolution of the legislature that created it.

“Today’s moves by the Constitutional Court on behalf of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces seem difficult to overcome and likely to push Egypt onto a dangerous new path,” warns George Washington University analyst Marc Lynch, who was an adviser to the Obama Administration during last year’s Arab rebellions. “With Egypt looking ahead to no parliament, no constitution and a deeply divisive new President, it’s fair to say the experiment in military-led transition has come to its disappointing end. Weeks before the SCAF’s scheduled handover of power, Egypt now finds itself with no parliament, no constitution (or even a process for drafting one) and a divisive presidential election with no hope of producing a legitimate, consensus-elected leadership. Its judiciary has become a bad joke, with any pretense of political independence from the military shattered beyond repair.”

The military has effectively closed the chapter of “revolution” and ended hope that the Mubarak regime would be followed by a democratic political order. Whereas some Muslim Brotherhood leaders had spoken of Egypt’s following the model of today’s prosperous and relatively democratic Turkey (governed by moderate Islamists), the generals and their allies followed a different Turkish model: the “deep state” Turkey of the past century, in which electoral politics were a sideshow intended to create a veneer of legitimacy for the authority of Kemalist generals and judges styling themselves as guardians of secularism. As if by way of exclamation point on their latest rulings, the judges on Wednesday reimposed de facto martial law, restoring the security forces’ blanket authority to make arbitrary arrests until such time as a new constitution is in force. Currently, there is no timetable for tabling a new constitution. And the only institution with any democratic legitimacy has now been dissolved, with no clarity on how and when it will be replaced.
The events that saw Mubarak unceremoniously wheeled off, stage left, in February 2011, and later imprisoned, were more of a palace coup than a revolution. A junta of generals responded to the crisis presented by the massive protests in Tahrir Square and elsewhere to ease out the helmsman in order to save the regime. They weren’t guided by a clear plan or even a coherent strategy; the generals and their allies simply improvised their way through the political turmoil to emerge in an improbably dominant position.

The Egyptian deep state’s efforts to reassert its dominance has been enabled in no small part by the rolling chaos that is Egypt’s increasingly ineffectual post-Mubarak politics: the protest in Tahrir Square was bereft of a coherent leadership or strategy, and it was increasingly marginalized as Islamist parties and primarily the Muslim Brotherhood used their extensive grassroots organizational reach to emerge as the dominant force in the new parliament. Although leftist candidate Hamdeen Sabahi finished in a strong third place, and his share of the vote combined with that of liberal Islamist Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh in fourth place amounted to some 40% of the ballots cast, the runoff race gives Egyptians a choice between the old regime, represented by Shafik, and the mainstream Muslim Brotherhood, represented by Morsi. That’s a choice many revolutionaries refuse to make, calling instead for a boycott of the poll. But that may simply be a sign that events have left them on the sidelines. And the failure of the Brotherhood and the secular opposition parties to agree on a common program to ensure democracy and civilian rule may yet prove to be the undoing of both camps.
Political gridlock may not be the generals’ ideal outcome: they’d prefer to see the reins of government in the hands of pliant politicians who accept the tacit mandate claimed by Egypt’s military, along lines familiar to those in Pakistan, that includes a substantial stake in the economy and a veto on national-security matters. The fact that the Islamists emerged as the leading political force appears to have panicked the deep state, which has responded by essentially short-circuiting the process of creating a new government based on representative democracy. That leaves in place a status quo in which authority remains in the hands of the junta.

One leading judge last weekend made clear the aggressive agenda of the deep state. Ahmed al-Zend, head of the influential Judges Club, representing 8,000 jurists, launched a scathing attack on the parliament democratically chosen in an election overseen by the very judges he represents, denouncing it as “a thorn in Egypt’s side” and threatening to block implementation of its legislation. Indeed, in a statement as comical as it was chilling, al-Zend declared that if the judges had known the outcome that the recent parliamentary elections would produce, they’d never have agreed to oversee them.

“From this day forward,” al-Zend warned, “judges will have a say in determining the future of this country and its fate. We will not leave it to you to do with what you want.”

The junta appears to be reading off the same script, although its actions may be less the outcome of a coherent strategy for restoring power than the result of clumsy improvisations driven by a desire to protects its core interests and demobilize the revolutionaries. Lynch believes the latest moves from the junta are based on “its belief that it had effectively neutered revolutionary movements and protesters” and that it was unlikely to face a renewed revolutionary upsurge as a result of its own repression as well as the divisions among its opponents and the growing weariness of the wider Egyptian public after 18 months of turmoil.”

“It doesn’t feel threatened by a few thousand isolated protesters in Tahrir, and probably is gambling that they won’t be joined by the masses that made the Jan. 25 revolution last year,” Lynch notes. ”They may also feel that the intense rifts of suspicion and rage dividing the Muslim Brotherhood from non-Islamist political trends are now so deep that they won’t be able to cooperate effectively to respond. Or they may feel that the Brotherhood would rather cut a deal, even now, than take it to the next level. They may be right, they may be wrong. But I wouldn’t bet on stability.”

 http://world.time.com/2012/06/14/egypts-judges-and-generals-dissolve-parliament-is-the-revolution-now-truly-over/?iid=gs-main-lede

Southeast Asia has had its fair share of ups and downs over the last fifteen years. First it went through the traumatic events of the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98. No sooner had it regained some economic momentum, than the region was hit by the global financial crisis. Now, Southeast Asia faces the European crisis and its impact threatens to dwarf the previous two.

Southeast Asia can’t be blamed if it is experiencing “adjustment fatigue.” But complacency would be unforgiveable. The region may have weathered the global financial crisis enviably well, but it may not be so lucky next time. In any event, even as Southeast Asian policymakers may hope for the best, they should be preparing for the worst.

European Scenarios
 
Vikram Nehru
Senior Associate
Asia Program
Bakrie Chair in Southeast Asian Studies
 
More from Nehru…
Thailand’s Rice Policy Gets Sticky
Economic Reform in Myanmar
Southeast Asia Fault Lines
SubscribeIt is difficult to predict how the European crisis will unfold, but there are three scenarios worth exploring. The first is if Europe “muddles through” while keeping Greece within the monetary union. The second is an orderly Greek exit, or the so-called Grexit. And the third is a disorderly Greek exit with contagion spreading to Spain, Portugal, and beyond.

There is some confidence that Southeast Asian economies can weather a “muddling through” scenario in which Greece remains in the eurozone and is supported by a combination of austerity measures, structural reforms, bank bailouts, and continued quantitative easing by the European Central Bank (ECB). That’s the most optimistic scenario out there, but it’s increasingly less probable.

The second scenario—an orderly Grexit—would add macroeconomic turbulence in the near term as European banks deal with the damage to their balance sheets, and seek to recapitalize and deleverage. Although Greece is a relatively small economy compared to the rest of the eurozone, the macroeconomic fallout from its euro exit could still be severe. And the ECB will likely need to pump in more liquidity to counterbalance shortages.

The third and worst-case scenario is that Greece not only exits the eurozone, but the firewalls of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the ECB prove ineffective in containing a contagion that spreads to other economies in and out of Europe. If this happens, all bets are off.

The global economy will be in a place it has likely never been before—certainly not in the last eight decades. The crisis will not only hit the stronger European economies hard, but spread to the United States where the current recovery is anemic and the banks are still in the process of repairing the damage to their balance sheets caused by the Great Recession.

Southeast Asian Economic Slowdown
Southeast Asian economies are particularly vulnerable to a global slowdown given their direct and indirect trade links with Europe and the United States. Not only will direct exports to Europe take a hit, but component and commodity exports immediately headed to China will also suffer if Chinese exports to the advanced economies are affected, as they almost certainly will be. And a slowing global economy will mean lower commodity prices, leading to still lower export revenues for Southeast Asia.

Indeed, most Southeast Asian economies are already showing signs of slowing export and GDP growth in the first quarter of 2012. Export earnings are not increasing at the same pace and the stimulus packages introduced in 2009 and 2010 have now run their course. Thailand and the Philippines are the notable exceptions to this as Thailand is still recovering from the devastating floods of late 2011 and the Philippines continues to be buoyed by strong remittance inflows.

The Grexit’s Impact on Southeast Asia
Greece’s exit from the eurozone will not only lead to a further deterioration in export and GDP growth for Southeast Asia, it will also have repercussions for financial flows.

In fact, Southeast Asia should expect a replay of late 2008 and early 2009. This will include an initial withdrawal of liquidity as banks in advanced countries seek to deleverage, recapitalize, and reduce lending, followed by significant injections of liquidity by the ECB and the U.S. Federal Reserve that will push capital flows into emerging markets, including Southeast Asian economies, in search of high returns a few quarters later.

Most Southeast Asian economies are fairly resilient to volatility in capital flows. Thanks to prudent policies over the past decade, the majority of banks in the region are well capitalized, the corporate sector holds relatively low debts, and the debt burden of sovereigns remains within prudent limits. But there is little doubt that volatile capital flows will complicate macroeconomic management, lead to pressures on exchange rates, interest rates, and inflation rates, and require deft handling by central banks to ensure that stability is maintained.

Financial flows are likely to be most volatile in Indonesia, because a relatively large proportion of the country’s traded stocks and short-term domestic debt instruments are owned by non-residents who can sell their holdings at the slightest sign of trouble. As a result, the exchange rate for the rupiah tends to be the most unstable in Southeast Asia, and domestic liquidity management during crises is always a challenge. Indeed, the rupiah has predictably weakened in the last few weeks and the government now needs to consider an appropriate monetary policy response.

Policy Implications
Although the Southeast Asian economies are in reasonably good shape heading into the impending European crisis, they are not as well positioned today as they were three years ago when the global financial crisis first erupted. Their sovereign debt burdens are heavier, budget deficits larger, inflation rates higher, and growth rates slower. What is more, this time around China is less likely to respond with the same oversized economic stimulus package that it used in 2009 amid a global slowdown.

So what should the Southeast Asian economies do in the short term? The answer, interestingly enough, is the same irrespective of which scenario ultimately unfolds in Europe. Southeast Asia must build shock absorbers while it increases international competitiveness, and put contingency mechanisms in place that can be drawn upon if, and when, the crisis breaks.

Economies can absorb the shock of a sudden slowdown with countercyclical fiscal policies, but freedom to do so depends on existing sovereign debt burdens and fiscal deficits. Indonesia, for example, has the most room among Southeast Asian economies to run countercyclical fiscal policies thanks to its low sovereign debt burden, small primary deficit, and large external reserves.

Malaysia, on the other hand, has arguably the least room to maneuver. Indeed, while other Southeast Asian economies were reigning in their fiscal spending this year, Malaysia introduced an expansionary budget with populist measures in anticipation of an upcoming general election. As a result, from a macroeconomic perspective, Malaysia is somewhat more vulnerable than its neighbors to a sudden deterioration in Europe.

Much can also be done to improve competitiveness through an adjustment in the composition of government spending. With this in mind, Malaysia and Indonesia should reduce their fuel subsidies and apply the savings either toward deficit reduction or infrastructure and education development. In a similar vein, Thailand needs to stem the hemorrhaging of public funds through its new rice policy and apply the savings toward higher priority programs to boost international competitiveness.

The economies of Southeast Asia should also be testing the efficacy of contingency mechanisms in the event of a European debacle. Most important among these is the multilateral Chiang Mai Initiative that would activate swap arrangements among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China, Japan, and South Korea. This mechanism has never been used—not even when South Korea was in dire straits in late 2008—so it remains an open question whether it will respond as expected in the heat of a crisis.

Southeast Asian economies also need to put in place other bilateral swap arrangements, such as with the U.S. Federal Reserve. This is a mechanism that proved effective during the Asian financial crisis and during the global financial crisis. And yes, Southeast Asia should put aside its aversion to the International Monetary Fund and employ precautionary credit lines that can act as a final insurance against liquidity shortages if all other arrangements fail.

Southeast Asian economies can see the storm approaching even if its severity is difficult to predict. There is no excuse for inaction. Now is the time to check the ballast, clear the decks, and make ready for the heavy weather that lies ahead. Even if the storm doesn’t materialize, a trimmer economy will be more competitive. But if the storm does strike, the economy will be better positioned to withstand the shocks that are likely to come its way.

http://www.carnegieendowment.org/2012/06/06/grexit-s-threat-to-southeast-asia/b69m

WASHINGTON: Despite a strategic engagement that has brought the two countries into closer convergence, the US does not always expect India to toe its line and recognises New Delhi’s strategic autonomy, a top official has said.

Assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia, Robert Blake, said in his address to a Washington-based prestigious thinktank that the US and India can together will influence the course of the 21st century.

Blake said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that the third round of Indo-US strategic dialogue scheduled to be held on June 13, which would be co-chaired by secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and minister of external affairs S M Krishna.

Under the strategic dialogue, the two governments will have substantive exchanges in more than 20 distinct policy areas this year.

The strategic dialogue, he said, has resulted in greater convergence between the two countries and improved trade and business relationship.

Blake, however, acknowledged that America’s strategic dialogue with India is different from others and conceded that the United States does not expect India to toe the American line all the time.

“Our strategic engagement with India has brought us into much closer strategic convergence on a range of important issues. We will not always agree and India will maintain its strategic autonomy.

“But our broadening consultations, our common values, and the bipartisan support for expanding our relations suggest that we are likely to work ever more closely in the years to come,” Blake said.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/article-53249-India-enjoys-strategic-autonomy-in-ties

The tension between Washington and Islamabad over the former’s drone assaults on targets in Pakistan is rising. But a prospective geopolitical rivalry involving both countries has even wider ramifications.

About the authorPaul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies↑  at Bradford University. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 28 September 2001, and writes an international-security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group↑ . His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror↑  (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century↑  (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogersThe reported death of Abu Yahya al-Libi in a drone attack on 4 June 2012 is seen in Washington as a serious blow to what remains of the al-Qaida movement in north-west Pakistan. His status is open to question and may be less↑  than Barack Obama’s administration would want the public to believe. But the incident↑  is further proof of the central role of armed drones in United States operations in the region (see “Drone warfare: cost and challenge” [23 June 2011]; “The drone-war blowback” [29 September 2011]; and “America’s new wars, and militarised diplomacy” [31 May 2012].

Drone attacks in Pakistan increased substantially after Obama became president in January 2009. There had been five in 2007 and thirty-five in 2008; the number↑  went up to fifty-three in 2009 and 117 in 2010. There was a drop in 2011, partly due to public opposition in Pakistan, and a pause earlier in 2012 after the killing↑  of twenty-four Pakistani soldiers in a cross-border attack in November 2011, but this was followed by another surge in activity.

Washington sees the use↑  of drones as a successful policy, whereas for Islamabad it represents an infringement of its national sovereignty. The Pakistan government’s criticism↑  owes much to the strength of public opinion, which in turn is fuelled by direct experience↑  of the drones – not least the fact that they are frequently audible and visible, thus making their affront obvious.

The Obama administration is most unlikely to curb its drone operations↑  in the context of a difficult re-election campaign in which Mitt Romney will constantly play on the idea of a weak and defeatist president. Indeed, reports of Obama’s direct↑  involvement in drone-attack decisions reflect a conscious decision to attempt to counter this portrayal (see Jo Becker & Scott Shane, “Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will↑ “, New York Times, 29 May 2012). The effect will be to worsen relations↑  between Pakistan and the United States still further.

This, in turn, is likely to be greatly exacerbated by two other factors that have little or nothing to do with the drones and have attracted far less attention than they deserve. Both concern the relationship↑  between India and the United States, and are likely to have a substantial and persistent impact in the coming years, whoever is voted into the White House in November 2012.

An emerging axis

The first factor is pressure from the Pentagon to get India greatly to expand its military aid to Afghanistan (see Rahul Bedi, “US asks India to increase Afghan military assistance↑ “, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 30 May 2012). A substantial team of US government officials had meetings in Delhi on 17-18 May; the officials sought multi-layered assistance from the Indian government that would go far beyond India’s current limited role in military training, its training of the Afghan judiciary, and involvement in numerous engineering projects.

The US’s wish-list includes direct Indian financial aid↑  for Afghanistan’s national-security forces (ANSF); the provision of training to 25,000 ANSF personnel (including up to 500 officers) at bases in India; and the supply of tanks, field-artillery, rocket-launchers, mortars, communications equipment and other materials.

The effect of all of this would be a deep and lasting relationship between India and the Afghan military. Such an outcome would be intensely opposed by Pakistan, though with little effect once Washington fulfils its intention to pull most of its forces from Afghanistan (after which it has little expectation of Pakistani cooperation).

This close linking of India with Afghanistan at the behest of the United States, is – taken on its own – as welcome in New Delhi as it is hated in Islamabad (see Kanchan Lakshman, “India in Afghanistan: a presence under pressure”, 11 July 2008). But it is only part↑  of an evolving story, and here the second factor is of much wider geopolitical significance. This is the growing evidence of a deepening military relationship between the United States and India that relates to both countries’ concern↑  over the rise of China.

This week, the United States defence secretary Leon Panetta made a high-level visit to New Delhi that included scheduled meetings with the Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh, defence minister AK Antony, and national-security adviser Shivshankar Menon (see “U.S.-India to Talk Defense Tech Transfer, Co-production↑ “, Defense News, 5 June 2012).

Panetta, speaking↑  at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis↑  on 6 June, said that New Delhi “was a ‘lynchpin’ in a new military strategy focused on Asia”; that “military ties had dramatically improved over the past decade”; but that “more work [is] needed to ensure the two countries could safeguard the ‘crossroads’ of the global economy spanning the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific” (see “Leon Panetta in Delhi says India ‘lynchpin’ for American strategy in India↑ “, AFP/Times of India, 6 June 2012).

Such talk of a close relationship might seem presumptuous, given India’s penchant for independence in foreign↑  policy. But in reality the Indian armed forces are in desperate need↑  of modernisation, and look to the United States to accelerate the whole process↑ .

The problem of military obsolescence affecting↑  India reflects its past reliance on Soviet weaponry, which is now very unreliable; for example, the MiG aircraft fleet has suffered 482 accidents over the past three decades, leading to the deaths of 171 pilots and thirty-nine civilians (see “New damning figures for India’s ‘flying coffin’ MiGs↑ “, AFP, 2 May 2012). India’s major internal defence problems include interminable delays in developing its indigenous light-combat aircraft.

European countries will look to potential arms markets↑  in India, but the United States is at the forefront, offering a wide range of cooperative programmes, much of it involving advanced technologies. This is very good news for the US arms industry; but at the heart of the administration’s concern is that India plays a key role in the containment of an anticipated Chinese military expansion, whether or not Beijing even↑  has that in mind (see “China’s military: threat or twist”, 28 January 2011).

A new rivalry

The combination of these two factors induces something approaching political paranoia in Islamabad. Pakistan has long seen Afghanistan as providing it with defence in depth against its much more powerful neighbour: hence the need to maintain as much influence as possible, not least through support for the Taliban. Now it faces the prospect↑  of India “invading” the Afghan space it considers↑  vital to its security – and at the very time when India’s military cooperation with↑  the world’s sole remaining superpower is increasing.

Two responses are likely. The first is a greater determination to ensure that Pakistan’s allies in Afghanistan, especially the Taliban, have as big a role as possible in the future governance of the country. That alone will create many problems as the United States seeks to withdraw. The second is that Pakistan is almost certain to embark on a determined effort to intensify its existing ties with Beijing (see “Afghanistan: the regional complex”, 6 October 2011).

It can thus be expected that Islamabad will attempt systematically to counter the United States-India axis in a way that provides China with a welcome opportunity to increase its own influence, not just in Pakistan but also in Afghanistan. This, the new “great game” now unfolding across Asia, promises interesting times.
About the authorPaul Rogers is professor in the department of peace studies↑  at Bradford University. He has been writing a weekly column on global security on openDemocracy since 28 September 2001, and writes an international-security monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group↑ . His books include Why We’re Losing the War on Terror↑  (Polity, 2007), and Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century↑  (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on twitter at: @ProfPRogers
http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-rogers/america-india-pakistan-china-next-game

There is no end in sight to the murdering in Syria and the world can do nothing but watch. The US has lost the authority to restore peace after the turmoil of Iraq. Russia alone has the power to topple the regime and avert a civil war, but is refusing to do so because it wants to protect its interests in the region. The West must persuade Vladimir Putin to change his mind.

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 Officially, the killing in Syria should have ended more than six weeks ago. Bashar Assad, the president of an ancient country that has been half-destroyed within 15 months, was supposed to order the withdrawal of his troops on April 10 and, 48 hours later, begin a cease-fire with the rebels. He was required to do so under the six-point plan of United Nations special envoy Kofi Annan, who had given Assad an additional two-week grace period on March 27. The plan envisioned the immediate end of all hostilities and the pursuit of peace. It was still in effect when, on May 25, death squads committed a massacre in Houla, a town near the western Syrian city of Homs, that conjured up images of a hell on earth.
Hardly anyone at UN headquarters in New York had any doubt that Assad and his Shabiha militias were to blame for this massacre, and hardly any government in the world believes the Syrian regime’s tall tale that “foreign forces” — terrorists, al-Qaida — were at work in Houla. It is now clear that Assad’s clan does not want to give up power in the country, even if it entails killing its own people.

This raises many questions, which are easier to ask than to answer. Why isn’t the world doing anything to stop the Syrian regime’s rampage? Why are there no NATO fighter jets flying over Syria, as they did over Libya? Why aren’t outside powers at least arming the rebels, so that they can defend themselves? And what good are the efforts of the United Nations Security Council if it always becomes hamstringed whenever it’s time for the major powers to get down to business?

History is derived from stories, and whenever there is talk of old nations, everything is coated with a thick layer of legends and experiences. Syria looks back on more than 10,000 years of history. Entire books would have to be written to do justice to its history, but even then, a separate chapter would have to be devoted to a momentous, collective event that happened 30 years ago.

In February 1982, the regime of Hafez Assad, the father of current President Bashar Assad, was defending itself against the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in the old city of Hama. Foreign observers were expelled from the country, starting with journalists, and then, on Feb. 2, the army advanced on Hama.

Air strikes and artillery fire destroyed large parts of the old city. People were carried off, tortured and murdered. Up to 30,000 people were reportedly killed in the government’s effort to quash any hint of a rebellion, and to send the message to everyone that resistance was futile in Syria.

The exact circumstances of the Hama massacre are unclear to this day, but it is certainly not incorrect to say that it served as a brutal precedent to what is now happening in Syria. The Assad clan became more established in the ensuing years, and the Hama massacre became a model for the Syrian elite on how to treat its enemies.

Such clear models do not exist, however, on how to deal with ruthless regimes. The impression that the world has not tried to do anything to stop the violence in Syria is false. Even before last week’s spectacular action in which Syrian ambassadors were expelled from a dozen major world capitals, the Arab League, the European Union, the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, UN Special Envoy Annan and, last but not least, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon were feverishly trying to stop the killing.

Russia Could Stop the Murderers

For months, there have been repeated attempts to introduce sharp resolutions and sanctions against Syria. Governments around the world, including the Arab world, have been united in their condemnation of the Assad regime’s actions, but given the lack of success, some would argue that all of this was nothing but empty gesturing. Nevertheless, this is the only way that global politics can be pursued in a civilian and diplomatic manner, complete with declarations, draft statements and debates, because otherwise there would be nothing but war as the method of choice, and the rule of force would again prevail.

But Syria, unfortunately, is a case in point that the rule of force lives on, that it always returns and never disappears, and is simply deferred and used as needed by despotic regimes that care nothing about human rights and civility. Syria also teaches us that the people of the world, even in the 21st century, remain highly divided over questions relating to the rule of force, and that these questions could even give rise to a new East-West conflict. Even as Assad and his henchmen continue their current killing spree, much of the blame lies squarely with the governments of Russia and China.

Particularly the regime in Moscow (and referring to it as the Putin regime would not be incorrect) would have the power to stop the murderers in Damascus. Former ambassadors to the region are certain that Assad would fall immediately if Russia withdrew its support for him. Assad’s victims are being killed with Russian weapons, Russian military equipment and Russian ammunition. And the freighters that bring the material to Syria are still sailing, and continued to sail after the Houla massacre, carrying Russia’s disgrace on board.

Opinion pieces often point out that there are long-standing relations between Moscow and Damascus, but these relations are also based on very real interests today. Russia maintains its only naval base in the Mediterranean at the Syrian port of Tartus. The talk of the importance of an “ice-free” port for Russia may sound like a murmur from the distant days of the Cold War, but this interest, strategically pursued for decades in the Soviet era, remains extremely important for modern-day Russia.

It was no accident that the Russian navy conducted exercises in Syrian territorial waters this winter, nor was it an accident that the Admiral Kuznezov, an aircraft carrier, was cruising off the coast near Tartus. It was a classic show of military force, almost as if someone in the Kremlin had opened a series of secret drawers from the 1950s.

Moscow ‘Fighting for Its Last Anchorage ‘ in the Middle East

For Russia, there is more at stake than this Mediterranean port. There is also more at stake than protecting a very good customer for Moscow’s weapons or jointly developing a Syrian oil field. In the wake of the Arab spring, which led to the Russians losing a great deal of influence in the region, Moscow is “literally fighting for its last anchorage in the heart of the Middle East,” says a UN ambassador from one of the member states on the Security Council.

A look at the map helps to illustrate Russia’s concerns. Syria’s neighbors are Israel, Jordan and Lebanon to the south, Iraq to the east and Turkey to the north. Syria is closely allied or at least deeply involved with all of these countries, whereas Russia cannot claim to be closely allied with any of them. Moreover, the region is, in a manner of speaking, the Balkans of the 21st century. If a fuse catches fire in the Middle East, no one knows what could end up exploding as a result. This circumstance, in addition to Russia’s and China’s special roles, explains the second obstacle to a “robust” intervention in Syria.

Conservative US politicians like former presidential candidate and Vietnam veteran John McCain are demanding “no-fly zones” in Syria. Last week, current Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, in a move designed to appeal to voters, said that the Syrian opposition should be armed. But both McCain and Romney, with their simplistic talk, seem as out of touch as the Russians who are behaving like their Soviet predecessors.

It is as if these two Americans had failed to notice that Syria’s neighbor, Iraq, was the scene of a war that destroyed the reputation of the United States. In fact, the Iraq war did so much damage to Washington’s standing in the region that it is no longer in a position to propose any solutions in the Middle East, and in fact has become part of the problem. Iran, Israel, Syria and Iraq are all countries where the United States has failed to get reasonable agreements off the ground, which used to be part of its role as the leading superpower. But this is just another dramatic insight stemming from events in Syria: Part of the legacy of the Iraq invasion, which was founded on lies, is that the United States no longer possesses the authority to act as a peacekeeping power in the Middle East.

US No Longer Has the Necessary Authority

This is why there will be no military intervention led by the UN, NATO or the West against the Syrian regime. And in this case, which differs markedly from the situation in Libya, it’s a good thing. As understandable as the desire to bring murderers to justice is, and as distressing the images and reports and as upsetting the calls from help from Syria are, it’s an insane idea to think that peace could be achieved in this bloody chaos by introducing even more weapons.

Those who believe that the rebels should be armed risk triggering an even greater calamity, a war of retribution waged by the Sunni majority against the military machine and the elites of the Alawite ruling circle. The Christians in the country would have to get involved, as would the Druze minority, and soon the Lebanese scenario of the 1980s would become a reality once again, complete with the horrors of Beirut and the eye-for-an-eye mentality that fueled the feuds between brutal militias in Lebanon. It would also be unlikely that this civil war would stop at the Syrian border. Lebanon would be sucked in to the violence, Jordan could quickly be affected, and NATO member Turkey would be forced to take action, if only to underscore its claim to the status of regional power.

Unfortunately, it is likely that this scenario will come to pass in any case, no matter what the rest of the world does about Syria. In fact, Assad seems to be giving his country the choice between only two options: deadly calm or civil war. There are already growing reports that Iran is sending armed troops to Syria, and that Saudi Arabia either aims to supply or has already supplied the opposition with weapons. It seems as if preparations were underway for a proxy war on Syrian soil. That would be the grimmest scenario for the civilian population, and a serious setback for the entire world.
The diplomatic efforts must continue, despite everything. Because of Russian and Chinese resistance, it hasn’t even been possible to impose a comprehensive arms embargo against Syria. None of the many possible sanctions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter has been introduced, which is intolerable, given the repeated outbreaks of violence.

The key to a solution lies with Russia. It sounds like a statement from days gone by, and yet it is very applicable today. The government in Moscow has the power to stop Assad and possibly even prevent a civil war, and it must be forced, with all civilian means available, to exercise this power. It is intolerable that women and children are being massacred in the 21st century because of geopolitical thought patterns from the 19th century.

Last week Vladimir Putin traveled to Berlin and then Paris. It would have been a good starting point, and it would have sent a strong message, if his counterparts there had forced him to talk about Syria and nothing else, about the killings there and about ways to stop the violence. They didn’t, of course. Syria was only one topic of many. Taking any other approach would have been
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/commentary-on-failure-of-international-community-to-stop-the-killing-in-syria-a-836881.html