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US
doublespeak Power
struggle in Egypt |
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Yes,
minister
Political
crisis in Pakistan
What’s
in a name?
Defence
cooperation for strategic outreach
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Power struggle in Egypt
When
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urges the Egyptian military to respect the outcome of the presidential election in the politically most important Arab country, it cannot be without reason. She repeated this advice when she met Supreme Council of Armed Forces chief Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi in Cairo on Sunday, besides expressing the view that the military should “return to a purely national security role”. It is feared that the armed forces and other institutions like the judiciary dominated by former dictator Hosni Mubarak’s loyalists are trying to create hurdles in the drive for establishing democracy in Egypt. The military, which found an opportunity to control the levers of power after the fall of the previous regime in the wake of Tahrir Square demonstrations, is trying to ensure for itself a major role in the new power structure that is coming up. Before Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Mursi was elected President of Egypt the military dissolved the elected parliament, citing a ruling of the Supreme Constitutional Court. The court verdict came when somebody filed a case challenging the validity of the elections for one-third of the parliamentary seats. However, after taking over as President Mursi ignored the military decision and convened a session of the elected House of the people. Leftists and other liberal parties boycotted the session. The military defends its decision and wants the President to respect it. But Mursi and his camp followers have threatened to organise a march by a million people to highlight how unjustifiable efforts are being made to defeat the forces of democracy. They are of the view that parliament should be allowed to function till fresh elections are held under a new constitution. The tug of war goes on with both sides trying to uphold their viewpoints. The people of Egypt have made tremendous sacrifices for the emergence of a democratic set-up in their country. But the military, which has tasted power in the interim period, does not want to lose it. It appears to be least interested in being under civilian control. This is a major threat to the evolution of democracy in Egypt.
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Yes, minister
The
minister is angry, rightly so. He feels the babus, bureaucrats to the uninitiated, are letting him down and thus came the recent outburst against “corrupt and non-performing” civil servants, who, said the minister, deserve to be “shot dead in public.” Ever since Antony Jay’s and Jonathan Lynn’s brilliant and satirical TV series, “Yes Minister”, gained popularity, the world at large has been well aware of the tension that invariably builds up between civil servants and their political masters. The Indian Civil Service, which traces its descent to the British, may well be pardoned for sometimes not exactly being able to grasp their responsibilities, since during their tenure as public servants most of them are, well, masters of all that they come into contact with, except their seniors, of course. They are the doers, they keep everything in line with a keen sense of political propriety, and, of course, they never make mistakes. That particular act is reserved for the political class, even though, as the minister, The Rt Hon Jim Hacker MP, exclaims in the TV series: “In private industry if you screw things up you get the boot; in the civil service if you screw things up I get the boot!” It is not entirely certain that the minister who echoed the Queen of Hearts in “Alice in Wonderland” when he said, “Off with their heads,” has watched the TV series, much less read the book that followed, but there is no doubt that increasing public awareness about ineptitude, be it bureaucratic or political, can cause public anger, which the politicians face in greater measure than do public servants. However, the minister’s observation that “corrupt and non-performing” civil servants should be shot, does open a Pandora’s box, since it could be cited as a precedent and applied to his brethren too. The bloodshed that would follow would make “Gangs of Wasseypur” seem tame, and could be the end of the world as we know it. Now, if the service were to take the British example, it would not air grievances in public, certainly not. It would dispatch the equivalent of Sir Humphrey Appleby to the scene, smoothen out ruffled feathers, says “Yes Minister”, and restore the status quo ante. Now, that’s what babus excel at, even in post-colonial India.
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Lead, follow, or get out of the way. — Laurence J. Peter
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Political crisis in Pakistan
Pakistan
has a new Prime Minister, Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, chosen by President Zardari to lead the government. He would not have expected or even dreamt what he has got until last month. However, the problems he would be facing are the same old ones and challenging indeed. How will he face general elections, an assertive judiciary and a hostile public? In fact, the ultimatum from the Supreme Court has already been issued, asking the new Prime Minister to write to the Swiss authorities regarding Zardari. Will the ghosts of the past allow him to perform, or will he become another sacrificial lamb? There is also speculation about a political deal between the PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League (N) to replace him by appointing well-known lawyer and human rights activist Asma Jahangir. The new Prime Minister, in fact, has nothing much to worry about facing the challenges and old problems. He is only expected to sign on the dotted lines; Zardari will continue to yield the real power and would take care of the problems — both in terms of addressing the existing ones and creating new ones for the future. In fact, this would be the primary challenge of the new Prime Minister — having his own space in devising a domestic and foreign policy on crucial issues. Will he be able to act independently, or will he just remain a rubber stamp, remaining as a “yes” Prime Minister? If he was chosen to say yes and yield to the President, then he is likely to repeat what former Prime Minister Gilani did. Do nothing. The second challenge, in fact a daunting one, would be addressing the ongoing power crisis in Pakistan. The continuous load-shedding and unavailability of gas has brought people into the streets. For the last few months, there have been serpentine queues in front of gas stations and long power cuts. As a result, there is a visible anger among the public, resulting in regular rioting and violence in the streets due to power shortage. The Chief Minister of Pakistan’s Punjab is on the rampage. He has gone to the extent of equating loadshedding with a form of terrorism! Both industrial and consumer sectors are deeply hit by the power shortage. This energy crisis is now resulting in hartals, forced closure of markets in major towns and increasing public anger. Train services have been hit for the lack of diesel. There is too much of an expectation from the new Prime Minister in addressing the energy crisis. Normal life, transport and industries — all have taken a substantial hit, and the PML(N) is planning to convert this into an electoral issue. How will the new Prime Minister address this important crisis? On the other hand, to expect him to address the issue is ironic, for as the Minister for Power, before becoming the Prime Minister, he was accused of creating the problem in the first place by not addressing the root causes. The third major challenge, in fact the most important one, which is clear and present, for the new Prime Minister is an assertive judiciary. Many even within Pakistan believe that the Supreme Court has become a political institution. The argument has been that the judiciary went overboard in directly removing the previous Prime Minister on the contempt of court case, instead of referring the matter to the Election Commission. Legal issues apart, there are two other important issues that the new Prime Minister will have to face vis-a-vis the judiciary. The first and foremost — now that the judiciary has asked the new Prime Minister to write to the Swiss authorities regarding Zardari — question is: what would he do? The second important issue vis-a-vis the judiciary for the new Prime Minister will be its growing assertiveness. It appears the court is moving beyond activism and becoming more assertive vis-a-vis parliament and the President. The Contempt of Court Bill, which has now become an Act, will not only increase the friction between the judiciary and the executive but will also lead to the judiciary considering this Bill as unconstitutional and strike it. The only positive aspect of this friction between the two is that the President has not taken a totally antagonistic stand against the judiciary; he seems to be bending so far. The new Prime Minister will have to deal with a judiciary which also seems to have the backing of a section of people. In fact, this will be his next major challenge. Facing elections next year (or earlier?), the Prime Minister will be expected to devise strategies to win the hearts and minds of the people. Unfortunately for him, the popularity of the PPP government today should be the lowest since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. With no Benazir and no sympathy wave around, creating a momentum for the PPP and getting ready for the next elections will remain a Herculean task for the new Prime Minister. Neither he is a charismatic leader nor is he well known in all the four provinces. The new Prime Minister will not only have to become the public face of the PPP in preparing the party for the next elections, but also build a coalition. Zardari’s son Bilawal Bhutto is unlikely to get fielded this time. More than addressing the public, the new Prime Minister will have to walk a fine and ugly line in stitching a coalition to face the next elections. Unlike the last time, the PPP will have no powerful slogans, hence will have to depend on the strength of a coalition before and after the polls. The PML(N) will use anti-incumbency, power crisis and anti-US slogans against the PPP. Imran Khan, on the other side, is believed to have the blessings of the Establishment. So, who will work with the PPP? The much-disgraced PML(Q) and the regional satrap MQM? What pound of flesh will these two parties extract to work with the PPP? The fifth major challenge for the new Prime Minister, if he survives is this position, will be on a foreign policy issue — especially relating to the US and Afghanistan. Besides the PPP’s popularity, the US-Pakistan relationship is also at the lowest ebb. While there is an increased anti-American sentiment within Pakistan, the reopening of the NATO supply routes have brought radical forces and rightist elements together and they may launch a movement against the government. Unfortunately for the PPP government, the military is hiding behind the political leadership and letting the government face the public wrath. The PPP is clueless on how to manage the external pressure and address the popular anger within Pakistan against the
US. The writer is Director, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi.
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What’s in a name? Nicknames
are normally an integral part of childhood. They can be called a necessary evil if one acquires a funny or unusual one, and if one has some diabolical friends. As we grow up, most of us leave this special part of childhood behind where it belongs. We get new friends in college and with new friends come new nicknames. They can be based on anything. They can be a shortened version of your full name — like Madhukar can be Madhu or Neelima can be Neelu. Or they can be based on some physical aspect like somebody with a short height can be Shorty or Chhotu to friends. In professional life, surnames usually become new nicknames, with a few close friends calling you anything from names to first names, to shortened versions. This had been my general impression about nicknames at various stages of life. But I was in for surprise. It was my first day at my first job. There were eight others with me. For most of us it was our first job, so apprehension was the byword for the whole lot. Everyone wanted to do whatever was right, and according to protocol. Whether it was work or interaction with colleagues and seniors, nobody wanted to be on a wrong footing. So, it was “Yes sir” or “Yes ma’am” all the way. The atmosphere in the office was quite casual, though none of us dared to join in, tagged as we were with the label of a “trainee”. For seniors, there was a name for everybody, but we were just “trainees”. We noticed that most of the seniors were addressing each other by nicknames. May be, that was the usual practice but still it was slightly difficult to swallow. There was one whose nickname had nothing to do with his nature, yet he had accepted it as if it was his real name. But there was one whose nickname and characteristics appeared to have some connection. He was the most dreaded senior, who would not tolerate any mistake in our work. A few days later, we trainees found an opportunity to learn from the senior-most person in the office. A veteran with all silvery hair, who had more years of experience than the number of springs any of us had seen. He was a totally old school-wala, courteous and gentle, hardly the type even to have a nickname. But oh boy! How thoroughly and completely wrong we were. Suddenly, there was a bellow across the room, “Oye Sexy”. There was pindrop silence among our batch of trainees, though the chatter in the office was hardly affected. We surreptitiously craned our necks to see who the recipient of this bellow was. To our shock, it was none other than the white-haired gentleman. With baited breath, we, at least, expected a blast, as we had slotted him a one belonging the “old school”. Eyes of the whole batch were glued on his face, in anticipation. A few seconds later, he rubbed his hands and said, “… arre, haan bhai”. In retrospect, I tend to agree with Shakespeare: What’s in a
name?
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Defence cooperation for strategic outreach
With
its growing economy and gradually increasing military power, India is looking increasingly outwards to safeguard wider national interests, particularly its sea lanes of communication. Since the 1998 nuclear tests at Pokhran, India has entered into strategic partnerships with most major powers, including the United States, and is becoming increasingly conscious that it must fulfil its responsibilities as an emerging Asian power. Unlike in the past when it remained steadfastly non-aligned, in today's rapidly globalising world India cannot afford to 'go it alone' any longer - even if it still shuns military alliances. The bilateral strategic partnerships that India is engaged in building with France, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US, among others, hinge around varying levels of defence cooperation. While small-scale tactical-level exercises have been held by the armies and the air forces, the navies have consistently raised the bar and have been conducting large-scale manoeuvres. Large naval exercises are not new to the Indian Ocean region and the Indian Navy has always participated in them with relish. From 1949 up to the 1965 war, the Indian Navy joined other Commonwealth navies, including Australia, Britain, and Pakistan, to participate regularly in exercises called Joint Exercises Trincomalee. Then the Royal Navy pulled out of the Indian Ocean and the US Sixth and Seventh Fleets sailed in to fill the vacuum. As Indo-US relations were estranged, especially after tough sanctions were imposed on India consequent to the Pokhran-I nuclear test in May 1974, the Indian Navy became isolated in the region. The first joint exercises with the US Navy, part of the Malabar series, were held in 1994 when Indo-US defence cooperation was revived. The knee-jerk reactions that followed the Pokhran-II nuclear explosions in May 1998 soon gave way to a more rational international appraisal of India's emergence as a Southern Asian military power and many navies began to call on India's ports. The Indian Navy soon began to exercise with the navies of Britain, France, Indonesia, Oman, Russia, Thailand, Singapore and the US. In addition to these bilateral exercises in the Indian Ocean, the Indian Navy availed the opportunity of port calls to Australia, China, Japan and New Zealand to carry out limited exercises in their waters. From bilateral exercises to multilateral ones, which reduce sailing time and costs and multiply operational benefits, was but a short step. Till then the largest ever multinational exercise in the Indian Ocean, Malabar 07 was conducted in the Bay of Bengal by the navies of Australia, Japan, India, Singapore and the US in the first week of September 2007. Over two dozen destroyers, corvettes, submarines and three aircraft carriers (USS Nimitz, USS Kitty Hawk and INS Viraat) and a large number of shore-based aircraft participated in the week-long exercise. Since then these exercises have been conducted regularly. New Great Game in Asia The Malabar exercises are conducted to understand and learn from each other's tactics, techniques and procedures, augment levels of interoperability and show presence for enhancing maritime security in the Indian Ocean region. The declared aims of these naval exercises are to practice joint patrolling of international sea lanes; anti-piracy measures; procedures for disaster relief; and, casualty evacuation. There is clearly an underlying message in these annual exercises that has not gone unnoticed in the intended quarters. Much like the Great Game played out in Central Asia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the major Asian powers and the US are jostling for advantage to maintain the balance of power in Asia. India is a reluctant newcomer to this new Great Game. Several pointers mark the power play in force. China, Russia and the Central Asian Republics have come together to form the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) to guard their own interests and balance ASEAN and APEC. China is assiduously engaged in pursuing a "string of pearls" doctrine that is clearly aimed at the strategic encirclement of India and has been flexing its military muscle in the South China Sea. China has created client states around India that are dependent on China for their major arms purchases (Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and Pakistan). By making inroads into Nepal and building ports at Gwadar (Pakistan), Hambantota (Sri Lanka) and in Myanmar, China is not only jockeying to safeguard the sea lanes over which its oil and gas flow but also attempting to confine India to the backwaters of the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had suggested a "quadrilateral" meeting between Australia, Japan, India and the US some months ago. This move raised China's suspicions and the recent multilateral exercise have fuelled these further. China formally queried the Japanese about the underlying motives as it became apprehensive that the four democracies were likely to gang up against it. Chinese scholars and analysts dubbed this loose group of democracies as an Asian NATO in the making. The quadrilateral is unlikely to become a cooperative military venture as India does not join military alliances and prefers to maintain its strategic autonomy. Also, the Chinese, Indian and Russian foreign ministers have met four times in the last three years though both China and India gave a lukewarm response to a former Russian PM Yevgeny Primakov's proposal for a strategic triangle between the three of them. Strategic Outreach In keeping with its growing power and responsibilities, India has been steadily enhancing its expeditionary and military intervention capabilities. These growing capabilities have been amply demonstrated in recent times. During the 1991 Gulf War, India had airlifted 150,000 civilian workers who had been forced to leave Iraq, from the airfield at Amman, Jordan, over a period of 30 days. This was the largest airlift since the Berlin airlift at the end of World War II. During the South East Asian tsunami in 2004, the Indian armed forces were in the forefront of rescue and relief operations. Over 70 Indian Navy ships had set sail with rescue teams and relief material in less than 72 hours of the disaster even though the Indian people on the eastern seaboard had themselves suffered horrendously. Indian naval ships on a goodwill visit to European countries during the Lebanon war in 2006 lifted and brought back 5,000 Indian civilian refugees. India is set to join the world's major powers in terms of its ability to undertake out of area contingency operations. With the arrival of INS Jalashwa, the erstwhile USS Trenton, India's strategic sea-lift capability has been upgraded to lifting one infantry battalion at a time. India is considering the acquisition of more such ships. The SU-30 MKI long-range fighter-bombers with air-to-air refuelling capability that India acquired from Russia, the C-130J Special Forces transport aircraft from the US and the AWACS and maritime surveillance capabilities that India intends to build over the next five to 10 years, will give India considerable strategic outreach. However, India has consistently favoured military interventions only under a UN umbrella. Though that position is unlikely to change quickly, India may join future coalitions of the willing when its vital national interests are threatened and need to be defended. As a key player in Asia and a large democracy with which India has commonality of interests, the US is emerging as India's leading strategic partner. Though there is a broad national consensus on the contours of the emerging relationship with the US, particularly enhanced defence cooperation and civil nuclear energy cooperation, some of the opposition parties are not convinced that the government has adopted the right approach. India's communist parties, which were supporting the government till the 2009 elections to Parliament, are steadfastly opposed to deeper relations with the US. Their position is guided by apprehensions that India will become a subaltern power and will be forced to compromise its strategic autonomy. The opposition of the Left Parties flows mainly from a pathological hatred of the US as an "imperial" power rather than from genuine national security concerns and they are completely outnumbered. The right wing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), initiated the ongoing defence and security relationship with the US but is now ambivalent about supporting it. India hedges its bets As it faces complex strategic scenarios and is located in an increasingly unstable neighbourhood, it is in India's interest to encourage a cooperative model of regional security and to work with all friendly countries towards that end. At the same time, India finds it pragmatic to hedge its bets just in case "worst case" scenarios begin to unfold and threaten its economic development or territorial integrity. The Malabar series of naval exercises are part of an initiative to engage with the littoral navies to enhance maritime cooperation for security and stability in the Indian Ocean region. The increasing emphasis on maritime cooperation is part of India's continuing efforts to discharge its growing obligations and responsibilities as a regional power. There is a clear attempt on India's part to cooperate with all the major Asian powers to maintain peace and stability in the southern Asian and northern Indian Ocean regions, but without unduly favouring any one of them. The writer is a Delhi-based defence analyst
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