Realism

Michael Parkes- Magic Realism painting

Realism

                            

As “isms” and ideologies go, realism is often passed over. Is this because, like the girl next door, one does not generally look for panaceas, or love for that matter, quite so close at hand?

But at least amongst American thinkers, you’ve had two notable realists, namely Hans Joaquim “the national interest” Morgenthau, and later, the much discussed “clash of civilisations” Samuel Huntington. Both were vigorously criticised at first, before being acknowledged for their prescience as political scientists.

And currently, we have Chicago University Political Science Professor John “offensive realism” John Mearshimer, making postulates to offend large sections of the intelligentsia.  

There was a hue and cry when Professor Morgenthau first argued for the need to amorally pursue the “national interest”, and not value-base it on right and wrong. But soon enough, this idea came to permeate every facet of international relations, including the sovereign use of military force and diplomacy.

Huntington’s “clash” idea for many people encapsulated the rise of the militant Islamic “terrorist” who, in his place, often justified his bombings and mass murders as a jihad. Culturally too, the jihadist has no compunctions against demonising anyone who doesn’t agree with him. Enemies to target include rival Islamic sects, so-called apostate Muslims and Christians in all their variety. There are also issues of perceived “decadence”. As for polytheists, it must be impossible for the madrasa indoctrinated jihadist to regard such people as anything but the infidel.

The ironic point is that a born again Christian, like former President George W Bush, who saw his battle against militant Islamists in crusading terms, and his arch enemy, the Sunni warlord Osama Bin Laden, had something in common after all.

Bin Laden directed the violence against America, the West, Israel, India, and their friends, relentlessly framing his rhetoric and moral imperative in jihadist terms. The crusading former American president, backed solidly by America’s Christian Right, and holy-warring Osama Bin Laden, are both stark illustration of Huntington’s postulations. 

Morgenthau, who died in 1979 and Huntington who passed on recently in 2008, have made their mark as realists. So, it may well be time to listen very carefully to the most vilified realist of current times, 63 year-old Mr. John Mearshimer.

Professor Mearshimer thinks celebrated Metternich/Bismarck admiring former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is a magisterial waffler who misses the point of what makes international relations tick. This despite Kissinger’s famous tilt towards China in the Nixon years that many say was a masterstroke that eventually led to the demise of the Soviet Empire.

Mearshimer does not dwell on the tremendous leg-up the US gave to China by endlessly buying Chinese for over thirty years of a most-favoured-nation (MFN) relationship. Instead, he concentrates on the present day, and says it is all heading for an inevitable showdown between the US and China.

When it comes, implies Mearshimer, it won’t be the stand-offs, shadow-boxing and covert attrition of the Cold War, but a gun battle on main street, like the climax of an old Western. He thinks China is building its military muscle and its forward diplomacy because it is the world’s most active “offensive realist”, bent on hegemony.

We in India can feel China’s aggressive mood first hand, as it seeks to relentlessly encircle us via Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Nepal, The Maldives, Pakistan, and menaces us directly at several points of our long land border with it.

Mearshimer, focussed on the US “national interest”, says China wants to take over the Eastern hemisphere, probably above and below the equator, land and sea, and would like to see the US confined to its own backyard, meaning, probably its own territory, Canada, South America and Western/Eastern Europe and the seas around them.

Africa, though certainly west of China, is not to be given up easily by either rival or their proxies, because of its vast natural resources able to feed the engines of industry, as well as massive arable land to grow more food for the planet.

India, a potential rival from South Asia aspiring weakly to world power status, with its muted forays into Africa, The Middle East, Eastern Europe, its loose alliances with the West and a tighter one with Russia, is nevertheless very easily bullied.

But Mearshimer thinks the great powers attack non-nuclear countries to settle things militarily, but cannot afford to go after the nuclear ones, whatever the human rights, terrorist and other provocations may be.

India, ideologically, has never pursued the Morgenthauist “national interest” line particularly, nor subscribed to the Huntington “clash of civilisations” theory, and certainly can’t reconcile Mearshimer’s “offensive realism” with Gandhian notions of non-violence. We can therefore expect to be continually menaced into submissiveness but survive nevertheless because of our nuclear power status.

The Middle East with its anachronistic forms of government and vast reserves of oil seems to be the arena where all three realists and their ideas can play out their potential in short order. The current hot button is Iran, though the instability in places such as Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan and Pakistan are quite worrisome too.

China seems to be against the UN backed unilateralism that helps the West. Ever the covert proliferator, it enabled first neighbouring North Korea to go semi-nuclear, and then via it and directly, Pakistan, to do so openly. China wants to use nuclear diplomacy to reduce the power of the West by promoting proliferation via proxies, and there is not much the West can do about it.

If Iran goes nuclear, Saudi Arabia is determined to follow suit. Israel is a covert nuclear power already. Many more will join the club if China has its way, making it more and more difficult to resort to the kind of militarism that proved recently possible in Libya, and yet could in Iran. This is Mearshimer’s point precisely.

Iran’s current belligerence might indeed be taking some strength from China’s open support. Pakistan, the only nuclear Islamic nation, it is seen, along with non-nuclear but resource rich Afganistan and Iran’s neighbour, is also standing together in solidarity with it. 

China, with its mature nuclear arsenal capable of targeting every major city in the US and its burgeoning conventional military machine, seems determined to change the current global power equation. But this will have to play itself out.

At a minimum, even if there are no fireworks, as Andrew Kapinevich, President of the Centre for Strategic &Budgetary Assessments in the US says, much of China’s environs and sphere of influence is being “Finlandized”,  meaning nominally sovereign states that are forced to toe the Chinese line.

(1,097 words)

18^th February 2012

Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Leader on Edit Page of The Pioneer on 23rd February 2012 as "It's time to get real about Iran". Also online at www.dailypioneer.com and in The Pioneer ePaper. Archived under Columnists at www.dailypioneer.com

The Masquerade in the Reformer's Habit

The Masquerade in the Reformer’s Habit

“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.” 
Christopher Hitchens

Staring down the barrel at a 6.9% GDP Growth annual forecast for the fiscal in February 2012, down from an erstwhile 9%, does not look like the handiwork of a cracker-jack economist-in-chief. Nor does it look like the report card of a reputedly reformist two consecutive terms in office prime minister.

Dr. Manmohan Singh’s turn at the top has been sadly undistinguished, weak, ineffectual, feeble and helplessly time-serving. This is not surprising, given his Faustian pact to “run” the Government without being, in electoral, organisational or power-broking terms, either the one who can bring in the votes or the money.

Dr. Singh, on his part, seems content with the form of being in-charge while being divested of most of the substance. But of course now he is having trouble staying above the fray too, as he is catching a good deal of the opprobrium from the most corrupt Government of India since 15^th August 1947.

Dr. Manmohan Singh’s longish tenure in office is marked, at best, by personal honesty though not blamelessness. Because like Dhritarashtra, the blind but covetous king from The Mahabharata, his enigmatic silences, and hurt, stage-managed though plausible denials, don’t quite wash.

He does come across as the whipping boy for other’s sins, but we are well aware he signed up for it, and is taking his knocks willingly enough. But presiding over a hugely corrupt Government, in drift, has quite eclipsed expectations of vision, clarity and a continuation of the new India Dr. Singh is credited with launching in 1991.

Dr. Singh, for a highly intelligent Oxford educated economist, has swallowed pride and ignominy through two consecutive terms of underachievement and belied hopes, and still has not lost his appetite for the remainder. But his track record is certainly not a good advertisement for “Manmohanomics”, whatever the silly coinage actually means. Because this box, supposedly containing wondrous gifts and boons for the Indian economy, seems to be empty, even of the expected jack-in-the-box on a spring and blowing a raspberry. And it is not empty because someone stole the contents either.  

But are we, in effect, criticising the mild-mannered erstwhile professor, flip-flopping between Socialism and the free market as the occasion and situation demands, for our own flawed perceptions? Has Prime Minister Singh been wrongly invested with the mantle and habit that properly belongs to his deliberately eclipsed predecessor in the job? Is the true author of Manmohanomics the Chanakya-like Telegu bidda Mr. PV Narasimha Rao, who pushed it all through while running a minority Government in just five years?

Was Dr. Singh ever really the great liberaliser of 1991 in his own right, or the mere front man for the ever poker-faced PV? Could he have been flying independent kites as Finance Minister then, given his evident timidity of temperament and penchant for expedient survival?

Or were both PV and Dr. Singh taking instruction from abroad? Was Dr. Singh actually brought in from the World Bank to carry out America’s bidding, and under their dictation at the point of our national near bankruptcy?

Or was Dr. Singh a closet Socialist even then, merely doing his job at the behest of the prime minister, or the World Bank, but without conviction? After all,  even now, our Government representatives never fail to say market-friendly things at Davos, at Washington, London, Tokyo, Paris, Moscow and Singapore too, projecting India as a worthwhile investment destination. And this, while being extremely obstructionist back home, obsessed with voter-friendliness and massive welfare programmes to the exclusion of most other elements of governance, let alone development.

UPA I and II have so far seemed oblivious of foreign complaints of red tape and bureaucracy at every step and how difficult it is to do business in India. This has apparently not changed appreciably from the protectionist/socialist Indira Gandhi era. But this fact does not seem to bother anyone important in the Government. The pertinent question is why, and particularly with the same man in charge, who allegedly changed things irrevocably in 1991.

Perhaps the Government of India under the UPA, Dr. Singh included, don’t want double-digit growth after all, and has the collective psyche of the poor man who grows richer but is embarrassed by it. Besides, there are plenty, some would argue far too many, Leftist commentators, who talk endlessly of inclusive growth, the gap between the rich and the poor, how GDP growth is not enough, how “India Shining” is a joke etc.

A retrograde, nostalgic, robotic, loss-making HMT style watch and ward step, worn inwards to the wrist, and backwards in one’s soul, holds powerful appeal in a century plus old Congress Party built on Socialism. The poor are the purpose of the Congress Party Chief, plus the mysteriously not yet quite mature heir apparent, with his aam aadmi shibboleth, and the absurdly powerful and unaccountable cabal called the National Advisory Council (NAC).

There is nothing wrong with this emphasis on the poor in itself, but it becomes very difficult for any reformer, if the spending on the poor is divorced from the income side of the balance sheet. Perhaps it is this cavalier attitude that may have put paid to Manmohanomics the day he first became prime minister, let alone now, when the whole ball of twine - governance, corruption, terrorism, communalism, indiscipline, revolt in the coalition and so on, is beginning to unravel.

Or was it Mr. Rao all along, erudite in several languages, highly urbane, minister of everything for 30 years in precedent to the top job, who was the actual architect of the courageous decisions and the bold departure from our pathetically underperforming past?

And didn’t Mr. P. Chidambaram, in a happier incarnation as Finance Minister, sitting in the cavernous Raj era room in North Block he has occupied thrice so far, not also do his bit with his landmark “Dream Budget” of 1997?

Besides, some of the recent past in economic terms, that period when we were cranking out 9%, was part of the time and tide of momentum, caused by the global steeple chase between 2003 and 2008. Our stock and property markets also boomed between 2003 and 2008, but the pity is we were able to absorb barely a couple of percentage points of global investment capital because, in the end, our market and economy are too small in absolute terms at about USD 1 trillion each.

The growth statistics of UPA I, with its tantalising promise of breaching the double digit barrier, has been achieved only in Opposition ruled Gujarat so far, at 12% p.a. recently, under the stewardship of Mr. Narendra Modi.

And yes, Dr. Manmohan Singh did get the civil nuclear power deal through during UPA I, though it remains sadly unimplemented on the ground to date. Why he did it, with a certain verve never before displayed seems a bit of a puzzle. Perhaps, it is because it was one initiative he could call his own, along with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President George W Bush,  the latter starved of foreign policy successes too.

UPA II, by way of contrast, has been hit by the converse blight of international economic collapse, flight of FII capital from India, and ham-fisted local efforts at inflation control that nearly garrotted the economy altogether. It has also seen the antics of rebellious minor partners get in the way. It is as if the Left from UPA I has been replaced by others with the same thinking but another name. 

  

In the midst of this difficult global scenario, there has been an expansion of the welfare agenda such as the looming Food Security Bill which will need lakhs of crores to fund, in addition to the ongoing NREGS, the NREGA, the subsidies on diesel, cooking gas, fertilizer and so on.

Ironically, though some people have grown rich off such programmes, the poor, not surprisingly, have stayed “deserving” as ever. Do the Leftists who back these initiatives to the hilt have any answer for the leakages and corruption that rules such welfare programming? The answer is a resounding no. And never mind that this, the nation’s present and future income, is being handled with such utter profligacy leading to a runaway debt situation.

Socialism has after all been unable, even in its Welfarism avatar, in small, under-populated and rich countries like Norway and Kuwait, to square its circle. So, there is no point on dwelling on its inequities, including the tens of millions of people killed in its name in Stalinist Russia and Maoist China. Never has there been a lie so frequently repeated, nor one as seductive to the young and naïve, or old and venal alike.

But a country such as ours, in bold, zealous and relentlessly reformist mode, could literally catapult itself into prominence, even as the statist and Communist-in-name China has demonstrated.

On the ground however, the matter of our progress has always been tangled up in the swamp of our political will and perhaps the recalcitrance of our karma. It is as if the politicians will render themselves redundant if there is all round prosperity. So, in a keep them barefoot and pregnant kind of cynical ploy, the powers that be  may want the masses to stay fecund, poverty stricken, and dependent.

We have, of course, disappointed all those who were rooting for a resurgent BRIC of a country. But maybe the cheer leaders still have some relevance. What is evident is that the Manmohanamics of the 1990s, whether of the man’s own write or not, is alive and well and has indeed changed India forever.

The current and long-standing malaise is to do with the blockages and stoppages that we see in every aspect of governance today. But this also implies that one day, who knows, it could be soon, we will be unshackled from our dungeons afresh and let out into the sunlight, free to move away and ahead once more.

When we do so, as inevitably we must, because there is no congenital defect to prevent or thwart such outcome, we will meet that very destiny unveiled with the first deft moves after near bankruptcy in 1991.

The same man was manning the financial levers of the country then, and so he must be more than aware of what needs to be done now. The only problem is, does he have the power, the intention, or the will to get it going in the remaining two years of his current term? Otherwise, one can safely send Manmohanomics, such as it is, to the history books, and talk of it as a brilliant beginning and foundation that may have to be built upon by some one else in future.

(1,800 words)

9^th February 2012

Gautam Mukherjee

Published as Cover Story in AGENDA of The Sunday Pioneer on 19th February 2012 as "Manmohanomics shackled" and online at www.dailypioneer.com

Straws in the Wind

Straws in the Wind

In a “those were the days” kind of way, time passing can seduce us to think of a perfection encountered long ago. This is, of course what myth is made of, with every inconvenient inconsistency air-brushed out of memory.

But certain things are dug too deep to evaporate in the mists of time. The inequities and savage barbarisms of racism, for example, or the blood soaked wounds of religious feud. But even such fore-knowledge and genetic memory can be, and often is, suppressed on the altar of expediency. The question, in evolutionary terms however is, does an old trick work in perpetuity?

The covering up of elephant statues in Uttar Pradesh while turning a blind eye to the numerous schemes and themes named after Jawaharlal Nehru and his stick-to-power family of successors, is one such straw in the wind.

Income Tax raids on the UP Chief Minister’s crony capitalists, not in the routine course of a work-a-day week, but pretty much during state elections, is another. The barring of controversy’s child Salman Rushdie’s visit to a literary festival at the instance of a hard-line Deoband is yet another.

But not all our straws in the wind portend the pessimistic. The once unassailable bastions of Western prescription, the venerable Time magazine and Newsweek too, now routinely feature Indian, Asian, even Iranian lead-writers, even on their covers, using their non-Caucasian by-lines. No more are such people confined to the footnotes and acknowledged for “inputs”.

Newsweek’s international edition even boasts an Indian-American Muslim Editor, though nothing can apparently save it from going the way of all print in the West.

The poignancy in such “establishment” publications turning fair-handed and liberal at the point of death may not be lost on all. What are they expecting now--Asian White Knights or perhaps resurrection in Hindi and Mandarin? Why not, after all, it is happening all over in business and industry. Not only are Indians and Chinese snapping up Western businesses but even the once Western glamour-struck Arabs are beginning to invest in India, having lost billions down the plughole in Europe and the US.

But, all in all, the belated fairness does rankle, and makes for hard-hearted negotiations. One should pause before blaming the Chinese for this, and perhaps take a cue from them instead. Or have we already begun to do so?

The new “make-nice” is a departure from arch imperialist Rudyard Kipling’s back-handed compliment to Gunga Din, the selfless water-bearer of his famous poem. Gunga Din’s day is decidedly done. He is seen to be as anachronistic as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom. Sweet as the tales may have seemed once, they are slurs and swear-words now.

American Actor Will Smith says he is a Star because of the success of the Civil Rights Movement. President Barack Obama acknowledges as much too. There were, of course, early White sympathisers, but history shows us that morality turns into reality when economic compulsions force the conversion. The American Civil War and the abolition of slavery is a case in point.  

This was also the reality during Mahatma Gandhi’s struggles too, both here and in South Africa before that. And how women got the vote in the West, and later, man-size jobs, battered and depleted as men-folk were by the ravages of two world wars.

 Interestingly, even though as a nation we hesitate to overtly express hard power, having been born in the crucible of non-violence which encompasses, at least in concept, thought word and deed; we sometimes do manage to make our intentions plain.

Acquiring a nuclear sub at last on lease from Russia, albeit for the second time, but this one in the context of our own nuclear weapons carrying indigenously built nuclear submarine Arihant about to be inducted, some say, before 2015, is a clear message to China which has six such subs in its navy already.

Our buying some USD 20 billion worth of the French Dassault Rafale state-of-the-art Fighters is a departure from our default position of buying Russian. Though we will continue to hang on to that line of military supply for other items, including Sukhoi -35 aircraft and that much delayed and awaited aircraft carrier.  

We can’t, and won’t, win an all-out war with China today or any time soon, but we are not going to be a pushover as we were in 1962. And that is why we are raising another mountain regiment for Arunachal Pradesh and getting on with roads, bridges, helipads and air strips there. Also, why we are talking to others in the Pacific maritime region which China wants to convert to a Pax of the Dragon pond.

The British and the Americans might be sorry to lose to the French, but we may have done something, for ourselves, based on merit, of both the aircraft and the accompanying commercial deals. We may be giving shape and fuel to our long-term ambition to actually make our own Fighters, not by just bolting them together, but inclusive of the technology development.

France needed us to buy its Rafale aircraft, unable as they have been to find international buyers so far. We needed a good aircraft to see us through today’s challenges and twenty years ahead and the possibility of developing indigenous fifth generation Fighters one day. China is already doing all this, but this decision says, after five pondering years, that we are not giving up the ghost either.

There are other hopeful straws in the wind. The FII gush of funds into India in January 2012 may portend the revival of the Indian stock markets after all. Our markets do represent viability and long term potential in a world that has largely let itself down.

The FIIs can apparently see their way beyond the current softening in growth rates and seem encouraged by the successful curbing of food inflation. The RBI and Ministry of Finance too have started injecting financial liquidity into the system and this is definitely good news.

Politically, we continue to appear chaotic, but a consolidation of public opinion in favour of good governance and the candidacy of Mr. Narendra Modi for Prime Minister per a recent opinion poll is a good sign for the next general elections.

Mr. Anna Hazare may have been eclipsed for the moment, but his anti-corruption crusade has certainly touched a chord with the public. Besides China, the West and the Arabs may decide to curry favour with a deceptively mild-mannered India now, instead of perennially trying to show us our place. And Pakistan too won’t be in a position to exploit the difference.

(1,098 words)

February 2^nd, 2012

Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Leader Edit on the Edit page of The Pioneer as "Hopeful straws in the wind" on 8th February 2012. Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com and in The Pioneer ePaper and archived at www.dailypioneer.com under Columnists.