Big Stick Strategy

Big Stick Strategy

It was the fiercely moustachioed President Theodore Roosevelt, ruler of the “free” world in 1901, who famously said: “Speak softly and carry a big stick and you will go far”. Theodore Roosevelt, once a sickly child with asthma, liked to hunt big game in Africa and the great American bear in Louisiana. It was also He who the “Teddy Bear” is named after. Roosevelt picked up the menacing phrase from West Africa and put it to doctrinaire use in his foreign policy.

Teddy Roosevelt used the “stick” analogy in support of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, to complete the Panama Canal in his time, and to send the American Naval “White Fleet” on a World Tour. The Monroe Doctrine said that the European powers could not attempt to ever again colonise any part of the North and South Americas.

The Monroe Doctrine, backed by US resolve, has lasted in place for nearly two centuries. It marked the start of a policy wherein America first began to assert its ascendancy overseas, not only in the Americas but across the Atlantic, thereby putting the “Old World” Europeans on notice and limiting their power.

The Monroe Doctrine globalised gradually and came to an undeniable apogee when another President Roosevelt, the brilliant, courageous, flirtatious if polio-stricken, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, practically won WWII for the Europeans. America came in late “Over There!” And consequently fresh; with seemingly bottomless resources in men, money and materials.

And then, there was the matter of the terrible revenge for Pearl Harbour in the form of the two droppings of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”; the only nuclear bombings in human history.

Those nuclear bombs were dropped from the modified B-29 bomber “Enola Gay”, and from another named “Bock’s Car”, first over Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, three days apart, in early August, 1945.

And this devastation, of course, went considerably beyond sticks and stones. Never again, has it been seen fit policy to flatten entire cities without sufficient pause to elicit surrender; killing indiscriminately any or all that might be in it.

And yet, here is this “stick” policy still ruling the world in 2012. Sometimes it is called a “forward policy”, meaning pre-emption as enunciated by a Republican  Teddy Roosevelt. It was espoused again recently by fellow Republican President George W Bush to justify attacking Iraq and Afghanistan. And has been carried over still by Democrat President Barak Obama with his commitment to root out the existential threat of Islamic terrorism, epitomised by the constant drone attacks in Pakistan and bringing Osama Bin Laden to decisive “justice”.

Sometimes, the doctrine seeks “regime change” as in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or in Bashar Assad’s Syria unfolding before us currently. Some of it happens, apparently locally and spontaneously, aided and abetted, both covertly and overtly by the West, as in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya or Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt.

But, the fact remains, it is still very much a unipolar world. Presently, because of the multiples, estimates put it as high as 17 times the nearest comparable, by which the US leads the rest of the world in armed technology and power. But the lesson to be learned here is the efficacy of that big stick inspired by a wise man from West Africa.

It has very positive uses, but never from the point of view of the victim. In our arena, Sri Lanka’s President Mahinda Rajapaksha, has courageously ignored a chorus of protest from Tamil Eelam sympathisers and Human Rights Activists, to wipe the slate clean of the LTTE. There were excesses. There were mistakes. But the key point is the long-standing civil war is over and Sri Lanka is still in one piece.

In India, we rarely acknowledge our debt of gratitude to the likes of Mr. Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Mr. KPS Gill and Mr.Julio Ribiero for the sterling work done to put down insurgency in Punjab. And in Ray’s case, in West Bengal, earlier. Mrs Indira Gandhi and “Operation Blue Star” was, of course, the coup de grace.

But where is such political spine now? Why are the Maoists running riot, and the Islamists, and the insurgents in some of the North Eastern States? Why is the Government of Jammu & Kashmir holding the rest of the country to continuous ransom? Why are women being raped in ever larger numbers and molested on camera in a macabre reality show while politicians merely murmur their disapproval? Why are workers killing managers a stone’s throw from the capital in a state run by the ruling party of the ruling coalition, both ensconced in their second consecutive terms?

Is it that we can’t make up our minds about Gandhian ahimsa ? Do we suffer from an identity crisis even as the enemies of the state and polity bare their fangs and bite at will? Or are we truly lost in our decadence and sloth like the erstwhile Nawabs of Awadh?

We might well be scissored into pieces by a combined onslaught of Pakistan and China yet, determined as they are to sap us from the inside and roil us on the borders as well. These Maoists and North Eastern insurgents are well armed, funded and trained. Who is getting away with it all across the multiple states of North-East and Central India? Why is the media more bothered about so called villager massacres than the Maoists that nestle amongst them like the LTTE always did amongst the civilian Tamils? Why don’t we learn from President Rajapaksha who refused to worry about it.

The Islamists too are unrepentant and brazen. Pakistan mocks us and says that it is our own home grown Islamic insurgents that are on the attack and they have nothing to do with it. Their ISI can run circles around our RAW. Their diplomats are cocking a snook at the entire world and yet milking them for billions.

While here, we in the Indian state are in befuddled retreat, too busy navel-gazing to care. We may be more inclusive than we realise, and there is considerable consolation in hoping that all the malicious initiatives against us will come to nought because they can’t seem to raise a reaction from us!

But yet, if only we were to strengthen our military and police and stand guard over our threatened citizens, we would not be brazenly and cynically using a strategy of least resistance. This because, in the end, we probably think Indian blood is cheap. And Indian dignity is too abstract a concept to bother with, and our survival as a nation is not our responsibility, but is in the hands of the Gods.

(1,100 words)

22^nd July 2012

Gautam Mukherjee
Published as Leader on Edit Page of The Pioneer on 26th July 2012 as "Speak loudly and carry no stick:It's our policy". Also published online at www.dailypioneer.com & archived under "Columnists" on website.

High Command Politics

High Command Politics

When Mrs. Indira Gandhi was asked why her Cabinet and junior Ministers, State Chief Ministers, lesser apparatchiks, and otherwise weighty Party Men, all approached her crawling on their bellies, metaphorically speaking, she said: “Because I win elections for them”.  

Of course, she also appointed, fired and sent them to Kala Pani, allegorically speaking, with the aplomb of an Empress Victoria. However, the fact remains, Mrs. Indira Gandhi had it essentially right. She earned every bit of her pre-eminence and authority with consistent vote-catching nation-wide and tireless travelling out to all parts of the country. In massive rallies she projected her Party, her Government, her Policies. Many of the latter were strongly populist and decidedly Socialist.

In fact she even inserted the word “Socialist” into the Constitution, into the very name and description of the Indian Republic in 1976, along with “Secular” as it happens; thereby attempting to put her stamp on the vision for a modern India, even as she made the trains run on time during the Emergency.

In addition, she often resorted to sleight-of-hand and dodgy action to sack Chief Ministers and State Governments. She promulgated ordinances to cut through her version of red tape. She ruthlessly cut away the ground under any political threat elsewhere. All this was largely overlooked by a faithful electorate that kept her in power for nearly two decades.

This, despite vociferous protest from a largely emasculated and divided Opposition. The Left however, almost always allied with her, happy to have the Central Government carry out many of the policies their own electoral strength did not allow . This in turn allowed Mrs. Indira Gandhi the leeway to ride over the objections of the rest, and even make a populist virtue out of it.

Fact is, people believed Mrs. Indira Gandhi when she said she was passionately concerned about their welfare. And this even when she lost power after the excesses of the 21 month long  Emergency.  It was largely believed that it was her son Sanjay, rather than she herself who was in-charge during that period, and that she was swayed as any mother might be.

But after the unseemly fiasco of the Janata Government, the citizenry was desperate for her firm hand afresh and willing to forgive all. And to prove it, she, and her son Sanjay, worked their way back to power and the voter’s affections.

That is, in a Wagnerian denouement, till Sanjay was suddenly killed in a mysterious, and some senior intelligence sleuths are on record saying, contrived, aeroplane accident. And then, in 1984, she herself was brutally murdered, on a pathway, near a picket fence, within her own official residence.

Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s three consecutive terms, between 1966 and 1977, and then again from 1980 to 1984, saw many milestones in the development and strengthening of India. Much that has happened since, including food sufficiency and our crucial  nuclear power status, was built upon foundations laid by her. She was exceptionally brave and daring, like the Joan of Arc she admired in childhood. And she overcame adversity after adversity to move the country forward in many directions.

That she, like her father, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, was a committed Socialist, was perhaps, in retrospect, the biggest economic drawback that kept us poor and unable to grow at the pace she might have wanted.

Today, in the era of Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, her great admirer and senior daughter-in-law, we find the Socialist hangover from the Indira years of high double-digit inflation and a mere 2% rate of growth. And it’s tending back to haunt us.

The NAC of Mrs. Sonia Gandhi’s, like Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s infamous “kitchen cabinet”, is a considerable drag on the initiatives of Mr. Manmohan Singh’s Government and its reformist instincts, if not initiatives.

The recent dropping of three NAC members at the alleged behest of the Government is a case in point. Here is a Government called the UPA II, not only hamstrung by the compulsions of coalition politics, but also roundly criticised by the Ruling Party itself!

From its powerful but not accountable “advisory” perch, the National Advisory Council keeps issuing its nostrums that are difficult to ignore because it is headed by Party President Mrs. Sonia Gandhi herself. In addition, its ideas are sometimes lent support by Congress General Secretary Mr. Rahul Gandhi also.

Despite the composition of the NAC, with its profusion of  jholawallahs, somehow it hasn’t dawned on the NAC that the era of Socialism itself has largely passed. Today’s is a far more demanding, aspirational and globalised world.

And also, the disastrous formula of largesse politics ruling economics has tended to lead to sovereign bankruptcy; even in the guise of welfarism and debt-driven “growth”.

It is now clear that there is no substitute for real GDP growth, if we, as a country, are to lift millions out of poverty. China, after years of costly turmoil, suffering, and brutal social engineering during the Mao era, that saw over 30 million deaths, and Stalin’s pogroms in the USSR, with similar objectives, and even larger death counts, should have put paid to any Socialist’s unrealistic ambitions.

No amount of “social justice” and “beggar the rich” policies will lead us anywhere worthwhile. And yet, our NAC Socialists, and indeed several stalwarts in the Congress Party, continue to hanker after such failed strategies, even at the expense of paralysing its own Government.

How will the Prime Minister, now also the Finance Minister, propose to unleash “animal spirits”  to revive the economy. This with his every reformist impulse being stymied, either by an onslaught of powerful coalition partners, the Opposition, or indeed his own Congress Party.

No one seems to be holding out much hope of Mr. Manmohan Singh’s resolve to break the impasse in the remaining years of this Government’s tenure. Yet, there is little doubt that the man is sincere in his intent and tends to have powerful luck come to his rescue.

Ironically, the central point is probably not ideology at all, but the singular inability of either the Prime Minister or the Congress President/General Secretary, to actually garner the votes any which way they can.

Today’s Socialism is seen as a ploy and the public is duly unimpressed. Besides every Party, in the ruling coalition, and across the aisle, has endorsed the Socialism shibboleth in one form or the other, rendering it pedestrian and common place.

In Mrs. Indira Gandhi’s day, it was a heartfelt conviction that she was prepared to make sacrifices for. Her demonstrated resolve and integrity leaves no one in any doubt that she would have thrown it over at any point, if she thought it would help her beloved nation.

(1,120 words)

8^th July 2012

Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Leader on Edit Page of The Pioneer on Thursday 12th July 2012 as "No one is now in awe of Congress's socialism". Also online at www.dailypioneer.com