WELCOME TO INDIA, OBAMA SAHIB

by Eric Margolis

Getting out of the Washington goldfish bowl is also good for American presidents, particularly after an electoral shellacking.

It must have been a relief for President Barack Obama to see smiling Indian officials on his visit to Delhi rather than snarling Republicans back home.

India is a hugely important nation by any measure, so it was right for the president to continue the Washington-Delhi dialogue begun by former President George W. Bush.

After six decades of hostility and distrust, the United States and India appear set on a course of warm relations and strategic cooperation.

One million talented Indians already live in the United States, with many more to come. They already play an important fundraising role in US politics.

The catalyst for US-Indian amity was the 9/11 attacks that shocked the US and India into an alliance of convenience against foes in the Muslim world. But the looming threat of China, and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal that worried Israel, also played a key role. To Republican strategists, the most obvious way to contain China’s growing power was to build up its great rival India as a counterweight.

India is now the latest international Klondike. Its $1,070 trillion economy, freed of oppressive government regulations know as the “license Raj,” is booming at over 8% annual growth while the US has a mostly negative image around the globe, it is wildly popular in India.

US arms makers and high-tech industries are salivating at the thought of entering India’s market. India’s rapidly expanding military forces need modern equipment and replacement for aging Soviet-supplied weapons systems. America’s military-industrial-financial complex pushed Bush hard to make nice to India and pry open its formerly sealed gates. The pressure continued on Obama who dutifully continued Bush’s Indian policies.

However, some perspective is in order. The GDP of 1.2-billion person India is still only half of that of Italy. Forty percent of India’s 1.2 billion people subsist below even that nation’s dire poverty level. Almost half have no indoor plumbing. Childhood malnutrition and child labor are rampant. India’s evil caste system remains entrenched in spite of government efforts to uproot it, a racist system that condemns darker skinned Indians to a life of penury and servitude.

While the western media fulminates against Taliban’s or Iran’s treatment of women, a leading British medical journal reports an estimated 40,000 Indian women are burned alive each year by their in-laws to grab their dowries. Infanticide of female children is endemic. But few in the west seem to care.

India is a giant with feet of clay. A senior western diplomat in unhealthy Delhi told me that at any given time, half his staff is ill with serious maladies. India is plagued by grave health and environmental problems.

India is really two nations: modern, dynamic, high-tech urban India of about 100 million, and antique, timeless rural Mother India of 1.1 billion souls. The two are often in conflict and uneasily coexist. Per capita income is about $1,050, up 10% in 2010. By contrast, per capita income in rival China is three times higher – provided we believe Beijing’s statistics.

To China’s annoyance, President Obama proclaimed in Delhi that India should have a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. India is becoming a great power and deserves a seat among the world’s big boys. But so do Germany, Japan, Turkey and Brazil.

India and its people, long disparaged by British racist jokes, are delighted to be called equals by the great powers. In fact, nuclear-armed India sees itself very much as regional hegemon of the entire Indian Ocean extending from East Africa to Australia.

The Bush administration’s deal with Delhi to sanctify and facilitate India’s nuclear weapons programs was thought at the time a clever move. But it dismayed the rest of the world, made a mockery of non-proliferation, and outraged the entire Muslim world, which has been blasting the US for hypocrisy by threatening war against Iran, which is under UN nuclear inspection, while playing nuclear footsie with India, which rejected all UN inspection.

India’s leaders are no fools and will not be easily pushed or bribed into a stronger anti-China and anti-Iran stance by Washington – unless doing so suits Delhi. India needs oil from the Gulf even more than the US and is expanding its naval power to assure its supply lines.

Delhi maintains cool but correct relations with Beijing, but behind the wintry, trans-Himalayan smiles lies growing rivalry over Chinese-occupied Tibet, Indian-ruled Ladakh and Kashmir, their long, poorly demarcated Himalayan border (another gift of the British Empire), strategic Burma, and their intensifying nuclear and naval rivalry.

India claims China is trying to surround it, using Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Burma. The two Asian superpowers have been locked in a strategic and conventional arms race for a decade. In 1999, this writer postulated that the two giants would one day clash over their contested borders.

India will follow its own strategic and diplomatic interests – which are not synonymous with those of the United States.

Delhi has a long record of clever diplomacy that has isolated Pakistan and kept the world and UN out of the burning Kashmir problem, where 40,000–80,000 Kashmiris have died in a long independence struggle against Indian rule.

But the United States is now slowly being drawn into the dangerous Kashmir dispute – which triggered the 2008 terror bombing in Mumbai. Just look for example at the embarrassing revelations that one of the men involved in the 2008 Mumbai massacre was working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency.

The more Washington backs and arms India, the more its relations with China will deteriorate. Japan is also quietly building up India against China, to Beijing’s mounting anger.

The US could even be drawn into an India-China regional conflict. So caution is advised to US diplomats as they charge into the murky, tangled, poorly understood geopolitics of South and East Asia.

We also wonder if President Obama was briefed on India’s growing strategic arsenal. India has been steadily developing a family of long-ranged intercontinental ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads behind the cover of space-launcher vehicles.

Delhi already has enough medium-ranged Agni-series missiles to cover potential foe China. Why then is Delhi spending billions to develop a reported 12,000 km ICBM whose only targets could be North America, Europe or Australia?

India is also developing nuclear submarines and subs armed with nuclear-armed cruise missiles capable of striking distant targets, as well as the powerful BrahMos anti-ship missile whose primary function is to attack aircraft carriers and large warships. Only the US Navy operates such large vessels in the Indian Ocean. India is also intent on building more aircraft carriers to project power.

The US and India appear destined to become rivals for Mideast and Central Asian oil and influence. There is no guarantee that today’s bonhomie between Delhi and Washington will be permanent. Great powers have their special interests – and no permanent friends or enemies.

Euphoria over the new US-Indian love-in should not cloud our judgment of South Asia’s realities, nor make us believe we can cajole India into becoming a regional policeman for US interests.

Meanwhile, Pakistan, Washington’s vital ally in the failing Afghan War, is seething with ill-concealed fury over Obama’s Delhi love-in and his claim that India has an important role to play in Afghanistan – which Pakistan sees as its strategic backyard.

South Asia is a minefield. Caution, and more caution, is advised.

(Eric S. Margolis is an award-winning, internationally syndicated columnist. His articles appear in the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, Times of London, the Gulf Times, the Khaleej Times and other news sites in Asia).

_______

Source: There are no sunglasses

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ‘Wonders of Pakistan’. The contents of this article too are the sole responsibility of the author(s). WoP will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this post.

YOUR COMMENT IS IMPORTANT

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF YOUR COMMENT

Wonders of Pakistan supports freedom of expression and this commitment extends to our readers as well. Constraints however, apply in case of a violation of WoP Comments Policy. We also moderate hate speech, libel and gratuitous insults.

BETTING AND BLUFFING IN THE NEW GREAT GAME...

http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers41/paper4092.html

[The realization of American/Israeli/British/French/German/Canada ulterior motivations for overlooking the opium culture of Afghanistan will compel Russia to set its own anti-narcotics agenda in Afghanistan and the region... The falling apart of the Obama/CIA/DIA strategy in Afghanistan will unravel many things, possibly even Russian cooperation in the Northern Distribution Network strategy.

The simultaneous collapse of the pipeline strategy (focused on the Nabucco and other pipelines....) and the project to dismantle Pakistan on the other end of "pipelineistan," will cause the outbreak of new wars, perhaps even major wars, as Russia uses its military might to reinforce its own positions throughout the former USSR...? The war calculus of Bush, Sharon, Blair and Cheney, now compounded by the logarithmic corrections made by Obushma..., were always pushing for wars all over Eurasia and the Middle East, but the plan was to keep their timing under American control. The failure of the war theories of Bush, Cheney and Obama, especially in Lebanon in 2006... has unleashed a cycle of new tensions and new wars that will be under no one's control.

It may be that our best hope right now is praying that these wars do not go nuclear. It is to this end that we concentrate our own efforts on the sub-continent...and the Middle East..., hoping to help Lebanon, and both Pakistan and India avoid the great war that has been planned for them....

Russian leaders see all of this unfolding before their own eyes. How can they avoid the great wars that America has planned for them....? We live in very interesting times, economics are devastated.... and international security is jeopardized by the usual Western suspects again..... to say the least....]

http://www.eurasianet.org/node/62150


GORDON DUFF: WHEN “STUPID” BECOMES DANGEROUS

The agenda is clear. Fear and hopelessness are meant to push the public to seeking “strong leaders.” However, the same controlled media also controls the message and defines which leaders are “strong” and which leaders are “weak.” Thus, “strong” is defined as favoring continual war, eliminating constitutional rights in the name of “national security” and supporting total deregulation of financial markets, creating a “pirate” class of “banksters, scamsters and manipulators” who systematically restructure the alignment of national assets. By assets, we mean your retirement funds, the value of your home and even your job.

http://centralasianewswire.com/Security/Russian-led-security-organization-may-be-ready-tonbspflex-its-muscle/viewstory.aspx?id=2113

The agenda is clear. Fear and hopelessness are meant to push the public to seeking “strong leaders.” However, the same controlled media also controls the message and defines which leaders are “strong” and which leaders are “weak.” Thus, “strong” is defined as favoring continual war, eliminating constitutional rights in the name of “national security” and supporting total deregulation of financial markets, creating a “pirate” class of “banksters, scamsters and manipulators” who systematically restructure the alignment of national assets. By assets, we mean your retirement funds, the value of your home and even your job.

http://centralasianewswire.com/Security/Russian-led-security-organization-may-be-ready-tonbspflex-its-muscle/viewstory.aspx?id=2113

WHEN “STUPID” BECOMES 

DANGEROUS

by Pepe Escobar

Future historians may well agree that the 21^st century Silk Road first opened for business on December 14, 2009. That was the day a crucial stretch of pipeline officially went into operation, linking the fabulously energy-rich state of Turkmenistan (via Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan) to Xinjiang province in China's far west. Hyperbole did not deter the spectacularly named Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Turkmenistan's president, from bragging: "This project has not only commercial or economic value. It is also political. China, through its wise and farsighted policy, has become one of the key guarantors of global security."

The bottom line is that, by 2013, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong will be cruising to ever more dizzying economic heights courtesy of natural gas supplied by the 1,833-kilometer Central Asian pipeline, then projected to be operating at full capacity. And to think that, in a few more years, China's big cities will undoubtedly also be getting a taste of Iraq's fabulous, barely tapped oil reserves: conservatively estimated at 115 billion barrels, but possibly closer to 143 billion barrels – which would put it ahead of Iran.

When the George W Bush administration's armchair generals launched their "war on terror", this was not exactly what they had in mind.....

China's economy is thirsty, and so it's drinking deeply and planning more deeply yet. It craves Iraq's oil and Turkmenistan's natural gas, as well as oil from Kazakhstan. Yet instead of spending more than a trillion dollars on an illegal war in Iraq or setting up military bases all over the greater Middle East and Central Asia, China used its state oil companies to get some of the energy it needed simply by bidding for it in a perfectly legal Iraqi oil auction.

Meanwhile, in the new Great Game in Eurasia, China had the good sense not to send a soldier anywhere or get bogged down in an infinite quagmire in Afghanistan. Instead, the Chinese simply made a direct commercial deal with Turkmenistan and, profiting from that country's disagreements with Moscow, built itself a pipeline that will provide much of the natural gas it needs.

No wonder the Barack Obama administration's Eurasian energy czar, Richard Morningstar, was forced to admit at a congressional hearing that the US simply cannot compete with China when it comes to Central Asia's energy wealth. If only he had delivered the same message to the Pentagon.

That Iranian equation

In Beijing, they take the matter of diversifying oil supplies very, very seriously. When oil reached US$150 a barrel in 2008 - before the US-unleashed global financial meltdown hit - Chinese state media had taken to calling foreign Big Oil "international petroleum crocodiles", with the implication that the West's hidden agenda was ultimately to stop China's relentless development dead in its tracks.

More than a quarter of what's left of the world's proven oil reserves are in the Arab world. China could easily gobble it all up. Few may know that China itself is actually the world's fifth-largest oil producer, at 3.7 million barrels per day (bpd), just below Iran and slightly above Mexico. In 1980, China consumed only 3% of the world's oil. Now, its take is around 10%, making it the planet's second largest consumer.

It has already surpassed Japan in that category, even if it's still way behind the US, which eats up 27% of global oil each year....But, NEW data suggests that China has already surpassed the USA in energy consumption....

According to the International Energy Agency, China will account for over 40% of the increase in global oil demand until 2030. And that's assuming China will grow at "only" a 6% annual rate which, based on present growth, seems unlikely.

Saudi Arabia controls 13% of world oil production. At the moment, it is the only swing producer - one, that is, that can move the amount of oil being pumped up or down at will - capable of substantially increasing output. It's no accident, then, that, pumping 10.9 million barrels per day (bpd), it has become one of Beijing's major oil suppliers.

The top three, according to China's Ministry of Commerce, are Saudi Arabia, Iran and Angola. By 2013-2014, if all goes well, the Chinese expect to add Iraq to that list in a big way, but first that troubled country's oil production needs to start cranking up. In the meantime, it's the Iranian part of the Eurasian energy equation that's really nerve-racking for China's leaders.

Chinese companies have invested a staggering $120 billion in Iran's energy sector over the past five years. Already, Iran is China's number two oil supplier, accounting for up to 14% of its imports, and the Chinese energy giant Sinopec has committed an additional $6.5 billion to building oil refineries there.

Due to harsh United Nations-imposed American sanctions and years of economic mismanagement, however, the country lacks the high-tech know-how to provide for itself, and its industrial structure is in a shambles. The head of the National Iranian Oil Company, Ahmad Ghalebani, has publicly admitted that machinery and parts used in Iran's oil production still have to be imported from China.

Sanctions can be a killer, slowing investment, increasing the cost of trade by over 20%, and severely constricting Tehran's ability to borrow in global markets. Nonetheless, trade between China and Iran grew by 35% in 2009 to $27 billion. So while the West has been slamming Iran with sanctions, embargoes, and blockades, Iran has been slowly evolving as a crucial trade corridor for China - as well as Russia and energy-poor India.

Unlike the West, they are all investing like crazy there because it's easy to get concessions from the government; it's easy and relatively cheap to build infrastructure; and being on the inside when it comes to Iranian energy reserves is a necessity for any country that wants to be a crucial player in Pipelineistan, that contested chessboard of crucial energy pipelines over which much of the new great game in Eurasia takes place. Undoubtedly, the leaders of all three countries are offering thanks to whatever gods they care to worship that Washington continues to make it so easy (and lucrative) for them.

Few in the US may know that last year Saudi Arabia - now (re)arming to the teeth, courtesy of Washington, and little short of paranoid about the Iranian nuclear program - offered to supply the Chinese with the same amount of oil the country currently imports from Iran at a much cheaper price. But Beijing, for whom Iran is a key, long-term strategic ally, scotched the deal.

As if Iran's structural problems weren't enough, the country has done little to diversify its economy beyond oil and natural-gas exports in the past 30 years: inflation's running at more than 20%; unemployment at more than 20%; and young, well-educated people are fleeing abroad, a major brain drain for that embattled land. And don't think that's the end of its litany of problems.

It would like to be a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) - the multi-layered economic/military cooperation union that is a sort of Asian response to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization - but is only an official SCO observer because the group does not admit any country under UN sanctions.

Tehran, in other words, would like some great-power protection against the possibility of an attack from the US or Israel. As much as Iran may be on the verge of becoming a far more influential player in the Central Asian energy game thanks to Russian and Chinese investment, it's extremely unlikely that either of those countries would actually risk war against the US to "save" the Iranian regime.

The great escape

From Beijing's point of view, the title of the movie version of the intractable US v Iran conflict and a simmering US v China strategic competition in Pipelineistan could be: "Escape from Hormuz and Malacca."

The Strait of Hormuz is the definition of a potential strategic bottleneck. It is, after all, the only entryway to the Persian Gulf and through it now flow roughly 20% of China's oil imports. At its narrowest, it is only 36 kilometers wide, with Iran to the north and Oman to the south. China's leaders fret about the constant presence of US aircraft-carrier battle groups on station and patrolling nearby.

With Singapore to the north and Indonesia to the south, the Strait of Malacca is another potential bottleneck if ever there was one - and through it flow as much as 80% of China's oil imports. At its narrowest, it is only 54 kilometers wide and like the Strait of Hormuz, its security is also of the made-in-USA variety. In a future face-off with Washington, both straits could quickly be closed or controlled by the US Navy.

Hence, China's increasing emphasis on developing a land-based Central Asian energy strategy could be summed up as: Bye-bye, Hormuz! Bye-bye, Malacca! And a hearty welcome to a pipeline-driven new Silk Road from the Caspian Sea to China's far west in Xinjiang.

Kazakhstan has 3% of the world's proven oil reserves, but its largest oil fields are not far from the Chinese border. China sees that country as a key alternative oil supplier via future pipelines that would link the Kazakh oil fields to Chinese oil refineries in its far west. In fact, China's first transnational Pipelineistan adventure is already in place: the 2005 China-Kazakhstan oil project, financed by Chinese energy giant CNPC.

Much more is to come, and Chinese leaders expect energy-rich Russia to play a significant part in China's escape-hatch planning as well. Strategically, this represents a crucial step in regional energy integration, tightening the Russia/China partnership inside the SCO as well as at the UN Security Council.

When it comes to oil, the name of the game is the immense Eastern Siberia-Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline. Last August, a 4,000-kilometer-long Russian section from Taishet in eastern Siberia to Nakhodka, still inside Russian territory, was begun. Russian Premier Vladimir Putin hailed ESPO as "a really comprehensive project that has strengthened our energy cooperation." And in late September, the Russians and the Chinese inaugurated a 999-kilometer pipeline from Skovorodino in Russia's Amur region to the petrochemical hub Daqing in northeast China.

Russia is currently delivering up to 130 million tons of Russian oil a year to Europe. Soon, no less than 50 million tons may be heading to China and the Pacific region as well.

There are, however, hidden tensions between the Russians and the Chinese when it comes to energy matters. The Russian leadership is understandably wary of China's startling strides in CentralAsia, the former Soviet Union's former "near abroad." After all – as the Chinese have been doing in Africa in their search for energy – in Central Asia the Chinese are building railways and introducing high-tech trains, among other modern wonders, in exchange for oil and gas concessions.

Despite the simmering tensions between China, Russia, and the US, it's too early to be sure just who is likely to emerge as the victor in the new Great Game in Central Asia, but one thing is clear enough. The Central Asian "stans" are becoming ever more powerful poker players in their own right as Russia tries not to lose its hegemony there, Washington places all its chips on pipelines meant to bypass Russia (including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline that pumps oil from Azerbaijan to Turkey via Georgia) and China antes up big time for its Central Asian future. Whoever loses, this is a game that the "stans" cannot but profit from.

Recently, our man Gurbanguly, the Turkmen leader, chose China as his go-to country for an extra $4.18 billion loan for the development of South Yolotan, his country's largest gas field. (The Chinese had already shelled out $3 billion to help develop it.) Energy bureaucrats in Brussels were devastated. With estimated reserves of up to 14 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, the field has the potential to flood the energy-starved European Union with gas for more than 20 years. Goodbye to all that?

In 2009, Turkmenistan's proven gas reserves were estimated at a staggering 8.1 trillion cubic meters, fourth largest in the world after Russia, Iran, and Qatar. Not surprisingly, from the point of view of Ashgabat, the country's capital, it invariably seems to be raining gas. Nonetheless, experts doubt that the landlocked, idiosyncratic Central Asian republic actually has enough blue gold to supply Russia (which absorbed 70% of Turkmenistan's supply before the pipeline to China opened), China, Western Europe and Iran, all at the same time.

Currently, Turkmenistan sells its gas to: China via the world's largest gas pipeline, 7,000 kilometers long and designed for a capacity of 40 billion cubic meters per year; Russia (10 billion cubic meters per year, down from 30 billion per year until 2008); and Iran (14 billion cubic meters per year). Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad always gets a red-carpet welcome from Gurbanguly, and the Russian energy giant Gazprom, thanks to an improved pricing policy, is treated as a preferred customer.

At present, however, the Chinese are atop the heap, and more generally, whatever happens, there can be little question that Central Asia will be China's major foreign supplier of natural gas. On the other hand, the fact that Turkmenistan has, in practice, committed all of its future gas exports to China, Russia, and Iran means the virtual death of various trans-Caspian Sea pipeline plans long favored by Washington and the European Union.

DELHI SWEATS AS CHINA INCHES TOWARD NEPAL

China’s Golmud-Lhasa line has been hailed as a technological marvel as it cuts through some of the world's most difficult terrain.

India’s added concern is China Rail's steady approach towards Nepal, the country India regards as its own borders

by Sudha Ramachandran 

BANGALORE - China's construction of a rail link between Lhasa and Xigaze (Shigatse) in the Tibet Autonomous Region will bring its rail network closer to its Nepal border and to India. The rail link has potential to boost Sino-Nepal trade and tourism; it is also expected to enhance China's already substantial influence in Nepal and bring the Chinese rail system closer too to the contested Sino-Indian boundary. A worried India is looking on as the Chinese railway steams southwards. 

Construction now underway of the US$1.9 billion, 253-kilometer rail line between Lhasa, Tibet's capital, and the region's second-largest city, Xigaze, will, according to the official Xinhua news agency, be completed in four years. It is an extension of a line between Golmud in Qinghai province and Lhasa, inaugurated in 2006. 

Xigaze is the capital of prefecture of the same name, Tibet's largest prefecture and one that shares boundaries with India, Nepal and Bhutan. Xigaze city is also the home of the Panchen Lama, the second most important spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism. 

The Golmud-Lhasa line has been hailed as a technological marvel as it cuts through some of the world's most difficult terrain; over 80% of the route lies at an altitude of 4,000 meters above sea level and large stretches run through permafrost conditions and part traverses an earthquake-prone area.

Construction of the Lhasa-Xigaze link is expected to be no less challenging. It too will snake across terrain at an altitude of 3,500-4,000 meters. Nearly half the route will burrow through mountains - Mount Everest rises from Xigaze prefecture - or run across bridges. While construction across unstable permafrost soil confronted engineers building the Golmud-Lhasa line, the new route provides geothermal fields with hot springs to set them thinking. 

The Golmud-Lhasa railway came under sharp criticism from environmentalists, who argued that it would have disastrous consequences for the region's ecosystem. Human rights organizations and Tibetan activists said the train link into Tibet was aimed at Chinese consolidation of control over Tibet and would unleash a new wave of Han Chinese migration into the region.

Many of these concerns and criticisms will apply to the Lhasa-Xigaze.

An added concern for India is the rail's steady approach towards Nepal, a country it regards as lying in its sphere of influence, and its own borders.

It is evident that the Chinese rail system will not terminate at Xigaze. In 2008, for instance, Chinese and Nepalese officials announced plans for extension of the rail beyond Xigaze up to Khasa, a small market town on the Sino-Nepal border - and it might not stop even there. Cheng Xia Ling, the Chinese ambassador to Nepal, was quoted in 2008 by Nepal Weekly as saying: "We are even planning to link it to Kathmandu in not too distant future." 

Landlocked Nepal has been eyeing the southward advance of the Chinese rail system with anticipation. It will bring it more tourists from China and Chinese trains loaded with goods will reduce the Himalayan country's long-standing dependence on Indian imports. To Nepal, the Chinese rail link promises opportunity. 

For India, the southward advance of China's rail system is fraught with implications for its security and influence.

Nepal has played a traditional role as buffer between India and China. New Delhi has wielded considerable influence in Nepal for decades, half of Nepal's trade is with India and its currency is linked to the Indian rupee.

India's influence has been on the decline in recent years, especially with Nepali Maoists entering Nepal's political mainstream.

Indian officials believe that during their brief stint in power, the Maoists built strong ties with the Chinese government. Anti-India sentiment in Nepal is high, with many people and politicians blaming "Delhi's meddling" for an ongoing political impasse.

Indian officials fear that the arrival of trains bearing Chinese people and goods will further undermine their country's already weakening hold in Nepal.

Delhi also has worries over other proposed rail links that might be constructed up to the Sino-Indian boundary at Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh. China is contemplating a rail link from Xigaze to Yatung, a trading center a few kilometers from Nathu La, a mountain pass that connects Tibet with Sikkim. Another rail line will run eastwards from Lhasa to Nyingchi near Arunachal.

This southward expansion of China's rail lines is of concern to several Indian security analysts. Much of the Sino-Indian boundary is disputed and the two countries fought a war over it in 1962, which India lost. Incursions by both sides, especially along the eastern sector, are frequent given the fuzziness of the boundary.

It was believed that the Sino-Indian boundary at Sikkim was more or less settled, especially with China implicitly recognizing Indian claims over Sikkim through a 2003 agreement that provides for Sino-Indian border trade via Nathu La. However, Chinese incursions into the Finger Point area in Sikkim in the summer of 2008 and its statements at that time indicated that the boundary at Sikkim was far from settled in China's view. 

As for the boundary in the eastern sector, China continues to lay claim to around 90,000 square kilometers of territory that roughly approximates Arunachal. It has stepped up its rhetoric, especially with regard to its claims over Tawang.

It is in the context of these contested claims over the boundary that the extension of rail lines towards India is being seen. 

WHY NOT A NOBEL FOR WESTERN DISSIDENTS?

Liu Xiao Bo, received the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. An ethnic Chinese; whose primary merit to many is his pro-west stance against the state policies of the Chinese Peoples Republic.

 Photo: REUTERS

by danps

The Nobel Peace prize has been awarded for many different people and for many different reasons, but there appears to be one area the committee is reluctant to go

Where is the Nobel Prize for Western Dissidents? | Congress Matters

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Why not a Nobel for Western dissidents?

Note for WoP readers:Starting from dissident novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn, nuclear scientist Andrei Sakharov in the former USSR, to dissidents in Iran and other parts of the world, there is long array of individuals who receive the coveted Nobel Prize in different fields of intellectual excellence and for discoveries in the realm of physical science. But of late many recipients are now subject to objection for fitting into political requirements of the west; no more reaching the height of exclusive intellectual merit but only such dissidents who somehow oppose the regimes who are mostly not to the liking of Uncle Sam. The writer therefore raises a highly pertinent question, why not Nobel for western dissidents? [Nayyar]

In recent years the Nobel committee has been willing to wade into controversies.  A couple of years ago it awarded its economic prize to Paul Krugman, in what appeared to be a swipe at a sitting president and the still (inexplicably) dominant Chicago school of economics.  Their selection reverberated politically as well; witness the various freakouts among conservative observers and commentators.  

This year Nobel awarded the economics prize to Peter Diamond, thus making Richard Shelby look like a dumb hillbilly.  By highlighting reflexive Republican opposition (one might say America has been Gop-blocked) the selection puts conservatives on the defensive.  Considering the damage their royalist economic policies have wrought, this is a very good thing.

Their science awards have been political too.  The 2007 award was another direct challenge to the American right, which even now continues to pretend the issue does not even exist.  Considering the resolute ignorance of modern conservatives, awarding a science prize at all may be provocative.

That is what makes its Peace Prize awards somewhat curious.  I remember reading years ago (I don't remember the source) that it might be awarded to political leaders or activists just about anywhere, but only non-Western dissidents could win.  Looking at the list from the past thirty years or so that certainly seems to hold up.  Aung San Suu Kyi, the Dalai Lama and Oscar Arias Sánchez all have won for raising their voices against local governments, but no one in the West has.

In the same way some people were greatly agitated by calling those displaced by hurricane Katrina "refugees," there may be a reluctance to refer to dissidents in our backyard.  Such people only exist in other cultures, where foreign regimes use heavy handed tactics to suppress dissent.  But the fact is, we stifle those we don't want to hear, too.  We do it with more subtlety - nothing as gauche as house arrest or imprisonment, thank you - but we unquestionably find ways to ostracize those who tell us things we do not want to hear.

One example of a Western dissident is Scott Ritter.  Back when America's leaders were nearly trembling with excitement at the prospect of launching a war of aggression, Ritter was one of a handful of well-placed voices raising legitimate questions.  He consistently pointed out that Iraq most likely did not have WMD.  For his efforts he wasmercilessly attacked, made the target of a smear campaign and sneeringly mocked as suffering from Stockholm syndrome.  Washington political and media elites turned on him, launching all manner of character assassination but never taking on the substance of his arguments.

It worked.  He was (and remains) marginalized.  For all the static Paul Krugman has gotten in challenging Milton Friedman's acolytes, how much worse was it for Ritter?  How much higher were the stakes, more uniform the opposition and more coordinated the attacks?  By October 2002 Ritter had been making the argument for months that "we cannot go to war on guesswork, hypothesis and speculation."  How much would it have legitimized him to have won the Nobel Peace prize at that crucial moment?

Liu Xiaobo's recent win of the prize brought this back to mind, because it looks somewhat timid.  Right now America is engaged in a hot war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. People are getting killed there on a daily basis.  Is there anyone trying to bring that war to an end?  Someone being targeted by a smear campaign?  Whose critics are not engaging on the facts?  Who maybe could use the shot in the arm of good PR that a Nobel would bring?  Of course there is: Julian Assange.  His posting of video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007 gave the world an unvarnished look at what happens when America's war machine goes wrong.  Then he followed up with a massive document dump from Afghanistan.  By the end of summer there was a precipitous drop in support for the war.

WikiLeaks seems partially responsible for that.  Awarding the Nobel to Assange would certainly be controversial, but the committee has not shied from that elsewhere.  If not Assange then some other thorn in the side of America's war cheerleaders.  It would probably not be any more welcome than Xiaobo's win was to China, but isn't that kind of the point?  It seems that in this one area the committee has a blind spot, one that mitigates the good it can do.  It has the reputation to be able to withstand some hostility from presumed allies.  It would be nice to see them risk a little bit of that.

_______

Source: Pruning Shears 

Title Image: telegraph.co.uk 

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the ‘Wonders of Pakistan’. The contents of this article too are the sole responsibility of the author(s). WoP will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this post.

YOUR COMMENT IS IMPORTANT

DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF YOUR COMMENT

Wonders of Pakistan supports freedom of expression and this commitment extends to our readers as well. Constraints however, apply in case of a violation of WoP Comments Policy. We also moderate hate speech, libel and gratuitous insults.