Of Strategic Suckers...

This Review essay is published in Economic and Political Weekly

http://www.epw.in/book-reviews/cuckoo-strategy-china.html

In a vintage warship, the crow’s nest is the topmost spot on the ship’s mast from where a “lookout” scans the seas for incoming danger. In a modern warship this vantage point has been replaced by the radar. However, for students of strategy, the story of the cuckoo surreptitiously laying eggs in the crows’ nest continues to be relevant. The wise crow is lured out of his nest into a chase when provoked by the continuously jarring sounds produced by the male cuckoo. While the crow is busy in hot pursuit, the female cuckoo quietly moves into the crow’s nest, throws out some of the crow’s eggs, thereby making place to lay her eggs. Unknowingly, the crow warms all the eggs and nurtures the babies when the eggs hatch.

The crow is a perfect example of a strategic sucker. In the secular world too, there are nations who are suckered to provide their military manpower to fight someone else’s war. The first question to ask vis-à-vis China is whether the 1962 conflict was India’s own war? The lack of dispassionate analysis of the period has led Indian strategic thought to shy away from identifying and naming the cuckoo that clandestinely came and laid its egg in the Indian nest.

Foreign Strategy of India

According to K M Panikkar, America and Apa Pant were the twin factors responsible for a sudden deterioration in Sino-Indian relations in the mid-1950s (Gupta 1982: 14). A powerful American lobby having deep links with all political parties in India, barring the Communist Party of India, pushed the Indian establishment on an escalatory path vis-à-vis China that eventually resulted in a border war. Apa Pant, India’s political officer in Sikkim (1955-61), was instrumental in building a Tibet lobby within India. He convinced many “senior Indian political leaders like Jai Prakash Narain, G B Pant and the ex-president Rajendra Prasad to take up the Tibetan cause as their own” (Gupta 1982: 15). Purshottam Das Trikamdas, an old associate of Apa Pant, inspired the international commission of jurists to publish two reports on Tibet in 1959 and 1960 with an aim to establish that Tibet enjoyed de facto sovereignty between 1912 and 1951.

In 1959, India entered the game of brinkmanship vis-à-vis China and kept climbing up the escalation ladder. India was gullible enough to follow western instructions both on Tibet and its boundary with China and ended up fighting a frivolous war. By allowing asylum to Dalai Lama, India acted like a foolish crow that hatched American strategic eggs. The United States (US) actions in Tibet provoked the Sino-Indian war that fulfilled the American goal of preventing any possibility of Soviet Union, China and India forming a progressive joint front against western imperialism. The 1962 war was used to widen the wedge in the communist bloc and inch closer towards making Mao Zedong, a “Chinese Tito”, who could speak openly against the Soviets (Xiang 1992: 319). The conflict shook Jawaharlal Nehru’s belief in non-alignment, teaching him an unforgettable lesson on the relevance of empires in the postcolonial world.

Some argue that recent scientific studies have revealed that not all varieties of cuckoos are cunning. In some cases, the pungent juices secreted by the newlyhatched baby cuckoos protect the nest from being attacked by predators, thereby ensuring that the left-behind baby crows are also nurtured in a protected environment. According to this logic, America was not a cunning cuckoo since the war proved beneficial for some in India too. The US, by instigating India to take on China, helped the capitalist-driven Indian state to stem the growth of the left movement in India. The venom spewed against the communists during and in the wake of the 1962 war was enough to cause a three-way divide in the Communist Party of India and push the leftist forces on the defensive for times to come.

LOOKING AT KAUTILYA BEYOND THE REALM OF REALISM

The blurring of lines between the nationalist and Comprador Bourgeois 

Money is more powerful than the military. It is perhaps for this reason that Kautilya, one of India’s foremost philosophers on statecraft had said, “From the strength of the treasury the army is born.” Many scholars belonging to the ‘liberal realist’ school casually equate the strength of Kautilya’s treasury (as it existed in the 4th century BC) with the “comprehensive national power” of the 21st century Chinese state.[1] 

The assumption that the key to the treasury is always in the king’s (the one who exercises the monopoly over violence) pocket, leads one to see the state as an omnipotent power that acts in the geo-economic sphere, independent of the non-state actors or the class that controls the purse strings. In fact, what appear to be assumptions are, in “Gramscian terms, the ideological apparatuses”[2]  that are invoked by the ruling elite to hide the power that global finance capital exercises over domestic rule. 

The powerful thought leaders of the bourgeois brigade use various techniques to control dominant discourse and limit their analysis by merely quoting Kautilya’s “strength of treasury” logic, without actually going into the detail as to who controls the capital and therefore, war. For example, realist foreign policy often omits the impact of HNWIs who own assets equivalent to one-fourth of the Indian GDP and deliberately camouflage the parochial class concerns of the big bourgeois as national interests. This is done to obviate any probe into the comprador character of the national bourgeois. As Karl Marx says in The German Ideology (1845), “The ideas of the ruling class are, in every age, the ruling ideas: i.e. the class which is the dominant material force in society is at the same time the dominant intellectual force." 

Post Cold War, the elite consciousness has been shaped by a sense of triumphalism that has emboldened them to institutionalize the bourgeois relations to obliterate all possibilities of a revolution that may result from growing income gaps. We are currently living in a geo-economic environment, where, as Stephen Gill says, “the identification of a nation-state with the material interests of its own 'national capital' is more problematic. In economic terms, this system is increasingly instituted by a deepening interpenetration of capital, both functionally and geographically. At the political level, there is policy interdependence which is the counterpart to the economic internationalization processes, as well as more integral, and more organic alliance structures binding the major capitalist nations together under American leadership”[3]

Using Lenin’s phrase, the “treachery of (bourgeois intellectual) leadership” lies in manipulating discussion and halting analysis at a point beyond which the sources of their power would lie exposed. It is for this reason that the geo-economic narrative refuses “to look more closely at the global capitalist system and the transnational capitalist class, both locally and globally.”[4]

To understand the “treachery” of the comprador class, let us see what happened in 1757, at the Battle of Plassey, where Siraj-ud-Daulah, the independent governor of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa was defeated by the East India Company army, thus paving the way for colonization of the Indian sub continent. The popular primary reason for defeat was the betrayal by Siraj’s trusted force commanders, Mir Jaffar, Rai Durlabh and Yar Lutuf Khan, who were bought over by the British. 

Popular history ends with Mir Jaffar attaining the status of an iconic conspirator, thus diverting attention from the role of Siraj-ud-Daulah’s bankers, the chief conspirators, who invited the East India Company to establish their roots in East India. The conspiracy hatched by the money-lenders has largely remained hidden because the class to which they belonged controlled the “material force in society” that had the capacity to monopolize intellectual discourse. 

Aakar Patel writes a fairly detailed account of the role that Jain and Hindu baniyas played along with the British to cause a regime change in east and west India. Patel highlights Jagat Seth’s (Siraj-ud-Daulah’s banker) involvement in the Battle of Plassey. Seth lent money to the Nawab, who in turn provided security for business and also collected tax. Out of every four rupees of tax collected by Siraj-ud-Daulah, three rupees went as loan repayment to Jagat Seth. As usual, Siraj-ud-Daulah was facing a cash crunch and Jagat Seth the banker thought it was time for a regime change. History records that Seth paid Robert Clive to defeat Siraj-ud-Daulah and install Mir Jaffar. This marked the first coming together of the Indian capitalist class with transnational capital.

The class to which the likes of Jagat Seth belong continues to be as powerful as it was in the 18th century. Even in the 21st century, their descendants continue to guide the economic and strategic destinies of India. Of the top 60 Indian dollar billionaires, roughly half belong to the Jain and Hindu baniya community, which constitutes just about 1% of the Indian population.[5] Recently Forbes magazine carried a pictorial story on how Indian business elite are interconnected through marriages and business deals.[6]

A more extensive and similar case study is done by Zeitlin and Ratcliff on the dominant class of landlord capitalists in Chile that not only controls politics but also represents foreign capital and this class “has not been a threat to imperialism, but its bulwark”. The study brought out that “within a ‘central core’ of just 137 individuals linked by kinship and intermarriage were found 51 percent of corporate executives belonging to major capitalist families while 82 percent of executives with no capital in their families were outside of this central core.”[7]

This central core in the developing and the under developed world is linked and protected by the chief guardians of capital who occupy the center of gravity in the developed capitalist world. The core of the capitalist world that is as old as capitalism wonderfully combines the power of money and the military. Towards the fag end of the 19th century, the invention of the Maxim machine gun changed the course of African history and British imperial fortunes. Rothschild, the banker, was intelligent enough to understand the power of ‘Maxim’ and the need to monopolize its production capacities. In 1888, Lord Rothschild, the board member of Maximum Gun Company, funded €1.9 million for the merger of the Maxim with Nordenfelt Guns and Ammunition Company. The merger agreement precluded Nordenfelt from producing guns for next 25 years. The result was that in WWI, barring the US, all militaries fought each other with Maxim guns. [8]

Incidentally, when India was reeling under a backbreaking foreign exchange crisis, the Indian government approved the acquisition of one light aircraft carrier in 1955. The first carrier Hercules built by Vickers Armstrong, a Rothschild company for the Royal Navy during the Second World War was dumped on India by the comprador as well as national bourgeois elements both within and outside the government. And the same class sold to gullible Indians the idea of being a great Asian power; the desire to become a great power riding piggy back on American shoulders continues to resonate loud in Indian strategic circles.

Nehru was one of the advocates of India becoming the leader of the under developed world. He probably thought that the communist victory in China had opened the floodgates for India to play the leadership role in Asia that American had envisaged for Chiang-kai-shiek. Nehru was also aware that closeness to Soviet Union could also be used to further his appeal among the anti-colonial movements. Nehru believed that by adopting a non-aligned policy he could possibly be the “proverbial clever calf that could indulge in simultaneous suckling of two udders”[9] as popularized by Polish economist Kalecki. 

Nehru’s confidence flowed from the strength of his treasury, which at the time of independence was as strong as £1,134 million (Rs 1,512 crores). Even after payments to British and Pakistan, by 1949, India had £621 million (Rs 828 crores).[10] The nationalist bourgeois that was as aware of the brimming coffers as Nehru was, proposed through the ‘Bombay Plan’ that India rely on extensive imports for rapid industrialization.[11]

The Bombay Plan was compiled by the key members of the Indian industry (JRD Tata, GD Birla, Kasturbhai Lalbhai, Purshottamdas Thakurdas and Shri Ram) and their key directors like John Matthai, Ardeshir Dalal and AD Shroff. The plan inspired India’s first Industrial Policy Resolution of 1948 and subsequently continued to influence India’s five year economic plans till early 1960s. 

One of the key members of the Bombay Plan drafting committee was John Matthai, he went on to become India’s first railways minster (incidentally, World Bank’s first loan of $34 million was meant for Indian railways) - and the second finance minister of independent India. Such was the influence of big bourgeois on India’s political economy that Mathai was chosen to head India’s first State Bank of India when it came up in 1955. When Nehru chose his first finance minister, it certainly was not from the socialist ranks, instead he chose, Shanmukham Chetty, an economist who had been awarded the Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire in 1933 and who had served as the Diwan of Cochin Kingdom till about 1941. 

Incidentally, in 1944, the Indian delegation that participated in the formation of the World Bank consisted of luminaries who were to play a crucial role in independent India’s economic and trade policy - Sir Jeremy Raisman, Finance Member of the Government of India led the team that had - “Sir C. D. Deshmukh (Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, later to become India's Finance Minister), Sir Theodore Gregory (the first Economic Advisor to the Government of India), Sir R.K. Shanmukhan Chetty (later independent India's first Finance Minister), Mr. A.D. Shroff (one of the architects of the Bombay Plan) and Mr B.K. Madan (later India's Executive Director in IMF).”[12]

These cross connections led EMS Namboodiripad to conclude that Kalecki’s categorization of intermediate regimes did not apply to India because here the classes were aligned differently at the time of dismantling of British empire - “the big business (was not) predominantly foreign controlled (and had) a rather small participation of native capitalists". EMS further goes on to say that power never passed on from the British into the hands of progressive forces. Instead, 

“It was the bourgeoisie, headed by big business and in alliance with the feudals, that got into the seats of power…The evolution of the economic and political thought of Indian nationalism from the early pioneers (Ranade, Naoro-ji, Dutt and so on), through the 'moderates' and 'extremists' to Gandhi and Nehru shows that a national (as opposed to comprador) bourgeoisie was emerging and rapidly growing. This bourgeoisie class was systematically forging a two-sided relation - there were conflicts and contradictions, but within the broad framework of friendship and co-operation - with imperialism and foreign capital externally, and princely rulers and feudal landlords internally.” [13]

If the dismantling of the British Empire had opened up opportunities for the big bourgeois in India, it had also exposed them to challenges. Having lived under imperial patronage for over a century, the Indian capitalists were apprehensive of the Congress Party’s ability to keep communism away from Indian shores. During the making of the Bombay Plan, Lala Shri Ram wrote to P. Thakurdas: 

“I am afraid that this sabotage may any day start of private property also. Once the Goondas know this trick, any Government … will find it difficult to control it. Today Mahatma Gandhi may be able to stop it, but later on it may go out of their hands too.” [14]

In the early years of independence, Indian business had skillfully cloaked its capitalist concerns and alignments with foreign capital by accepting the state to be in the driver’s seat of the economy. This was done to placate and prevent the looming specter of communism from descending on the subcontinent. Taking lessons from the bourgeois approach to tackling communism, Nehru, too befriended Soviet Union. This unnerved the Indian communists who abandoned B T Randive’s revolutionary approach and adopted a more accommodating tone towards Nehru. This was Nehru’s finest political stroke - he kept the US state secretary Dulles happy by causing confusion within the communist ranks - and also Khrushchev smiling by talking socialism and anti-imperialism. 

Contrary to the popular belief, immediately after independence, India followed a free market economy - import licenses were distributed freely- that led to foreign exchange crisis in 1957 - and then we liberalized more because we were forced to seek IMF and US Aid.[15] Since there are no free lunches, India had to pay a price – and the price probably was a war with China. In a December 7,1956 telegram from the US embassy in India to the State department, JS Cooper the then US ambassador to India explicitly stated, “Externally, India almost certainly faces readjustments of policies in which factors within its economy are compelling influences…Nehru, therefore, comes to Washington in a sensitive position of weakness. He and his advisers know that they have fumbled internationally, that UK no longer represents acceptable alternative leadership to US, and that they are in grave economic difficulties. (Latter point driven home during Nehru’s holding finance portfolio this year plus recent indoctrination by planning commission.)” To complete the co-relation between money and geo-strategy, Cooper concluded in his telegrams, “We feel strongly that “moment of history” has arrived which if seized and exploited, can give US much firmer anti-Communist and anti-Red China counterpoise in India.” That moment did arrive for the US when Nehru changed his stance on China and allowed Dalai Lama to reside in India – opening up the avenues of direct confrontation with China. 

In just a decade after independence, India had been reduced to a financial state where it was standing with a begging bowl in front of foreign capital. In the first decade after independence India had only got a total amount of $611 loan from World Bank. However from 1960-69, overall the Bank lent India $1.8 billion.[16] It may not be coincidental that India fought three wars with its neighbours during the decade of 1962-1972. 

That India followed a socialist track after independence is a myth that has been propagated by the media and intelligentsia. It was only for a brief period in the 1970s that Indira Gandhi tried to rein in capitalist tendencies, else India had always welcomed foreign capital since 1950s in accordance with World Bank’ President Eugene Black’s prescription: “India’s interests lies in giving private enterprise, both Indian and foreign, every encouragement to make maximum contribution to the development of the economy particularly in industrial field.” 

Such has been the impact of the myth that even the mainstream communist parties of India have refrained from identifying the comprador tendencies of the Indian national bourgeois and at best called them "dependent" or "collaborationist”. However, the ongoing transatlantic economic meltdown and its impact on the world have exposed the inherent frailties and contradictions of the capitalist world order - bringing to fore the relationships between the global capitalist class. 

Take the example of Greece, where the common person is being told to tighten his belt for the country and on the other had you have 2000 odd tax evaders who have been abandoning their sinking nation with impunity-stashing away their wealth in Swiss banks. As Kostas Vaxevanis says, “The crisis in Greece wasn't caused by everyone. And not everyone is paying for the crisis. The exclusive, corrupt club of power tries to save itself by pretending to make efforts to save Greece. In reality, it is exacerbating Greece's contradictions, while Greece is teetering on the edge of a cliff.”[17] According to New York Times, “about 120 billion euros in Greek assets lie outside the country, representing an extraordinary 65 percent of the country’s overall economic output.”[18]

The so-called nationalist bourgeois turning comprador is not limited to Greece alone. This chameleon like behavior of the propertied classes is a worldwide phenomenon; even the Indian elite who top the global “tax dodgers’ corps” and have hidden their money in tax havens like Mauritius, Lichtenstein, Switzerland and British Virgin island could go to any extent, even plunging their nation into war to save their money. Paradoxically, the conservative analysts who denounce the Marxist term comprador bourgeois in relation to American imperialism, use it freely against growing Chinese capitalism; which has yet to turn imperialist by adding a military element to make its money trample over nations across the globe. 

Highlighting the new comprador class in Australia, Ashok Malik a, right wing analysts gives the example of Clive Palmers, an Australian businessman who got a $6-billion loan from a Chinese bank and then signed a US$ 60 billion, 20-year coal deal with China. In return Clive gave the Chinese, “US$8 billion EMC (engineering management and construction) contract for the project” and openly blamed the CIA for putting spokes in the contract with the Chinese.[19] The same people who see business transactions with China to be anti-national, justify the increased US military presence in Darwin, Northern Australia as a normal realist option against the Chinese threat. 

Economics and politics are about human welfare. “Just as war is too important an activity to be left to generals, the material welfare of peoples is also too important to be left to economists alone.[20] Military’s nexus with mercantilism and markets must be broken. The strategic analyses must not allow the “comprador-cum-financial oligarchy” concerns to be conflated with collective national concerns. It should become unnatural and inconsistent for every government to “allude to the importance of protecting commerce of the country, by means of a powerful navy.”[21] For wars to stop being a continuation of political economy by other means, the multitude would have to stop giving up their lives to establish trading monopolies and financial oligarchies. 

[1] Sanjay Baru, “India and the World: A Geo-economics Perspective”, National Maritime Foundation Lecture, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, October 26, 2012, http://maritimeindia.org/sites/all/files/pdf/NMF%20Lecture%20-%20Baru.pdf 

[2] Stephen Gill, “Intellectuals and Transnational Capital”, The Socialist Register, 1990, pp 290-310

[3] Stephen Gill, p.295

[4] Leslie Sklair & Peter T Robbins, Global capitalism and major corporations from the Third World, Third World Quarterly, Vol 23, No 1, 2002, p 83

[5] Aakar Patel, “The peculiar pedigree of the business class: The peculiar pedigree of the business class”, Mint, 14 April, 2011, http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/tDRJXCAEsoYMxdtSnZDoGJ/The-peculiar-pedigree-of-the-business-class.html

[6] Prince Mathews Thomas, How India's wealthiest are connected socially, Forbes India, 6 Nov, 2012, http://forbesindia.com//article/richest-indians-in-2012/how-indias-wealthiest-are-connected-socially/34077/1
[7] Jeffery M. Paige, “Coffee, Copper, and Class Conflict in Central America and Chile: A Critique of Zeitlin's Civil Wars in Chile and Zeitlin and Ratcliff’ s Landlords and Capitalists, The University of Michigan paper, presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Chicago, Illinois, August 20, 1987, http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51115/1/347.pdf 
[8] Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World 
[9] Sanjay Baru, “India and the World: A Geo-economics Perspective”, National Maritime Foundation Lecture, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, October 26, 2012, http://maritimeindia.org/sites/all/files/pdf/NMF%20Lecture%20-%20Baru.pdf 
[10] The Problems of Plenty, 1947-56,RBI History, Vol II, p.593, http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/PDFs/90037.pdf 

[11] Amal Sanyal, “The Bombay Plan: A Forgotten Document”, Contemporary Issues and ideas in Social Sciences, Vol 6, No 1, June 2010, pp1-31
[12] The World Bank In India, published by PRIG, (Public Interest Group) Delhi, http://www.ieo.org/world-c2-p1.html 
[13] E. M. S. Namboodiripad, On "Intermediate Regimes" Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 8, No. 48 (Dec. 1, 1973), p. 2134 

[14] As quoted by Amal Sanyal, from Shri Ram to Thakurdas, P. T. Papers,
[15] Dealing with Scarcity, 1957-63,RBI History, Vol II, pp.625-656 http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/content/PDFs/ 
[16] The World Bank In India, published by PRIG, (Public Interest Group) Delhi, http://www.ieo.org/world-c2-p1.html 

[17] Kostas Vaxevanis, “Greece gave birth to democracy. Now it has been cast out by a powerful elite”, The Guardian, 30, October 2012 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/30/greece-democracy-hot-doc-lagarde-list

[18] Landon Thomas Jr., “In Greece, Taking aim at wealthy tax dodgers”, The New York Times, 11 November 2012.

[19] Ashok Malik, “The New Compradors” The Hindustan Times, 03 September, 2012
[20] Mahmood Mamdani, “State, Private Sector And Market Failures”, Pambazuka News, 29 July, 2012, http://www.countercurrents.org/mamdani290712.htm
[21] Edward P. Stringham, Commerce, Markets, and Peace: Richard Cobden’s Enduring Lessons, The Independent Review, Volume IX, Number 1, Summer 2004, pp. 105-116 

Why Save the American Empire?

The strategic culture in India is heavily dependent on realist paradigms that comprehend international relations only in terms of anarchy and self help. Many in the strategic community deftly ignore the salience of critical studies in understanding of the changing dynamics in the international political economy and also the relevance of empires in guiding the global security agenda. According to Joseph Nye, "Not since Rome has one nation loomed so large above the others. Indeed, the word ‘empire’ has come out of the closet." But the Indian intelligentsia feels apologetic about using the word empire to describe America. The hesitation results from the fact that critical examination of empire naturally leads to studying in detail the exploitative relations carved out by the international capitalist order and the role of the comprador class in the developing world in sustaining such an order. Therefore, to avoid complications, realist models are adopted – these models offer an expedient explanation for the elite in the developing world to perceive parity with the empire in the global arms markets. 

The net result of strategic myopia is that the understanding of India’s position in the changing world continues to be based on a belief that the structural realism straitjacket woven by Western scholars is the most apt fit for nations like India. Kautaliya, India’s Machiavelli is often invoked to justify purchase of arms. Kautaliya’s famous quote, ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’ is being increasingly used - to adopt a more confrontationist stance vis-à-vis China - and for getting cozy with the United States. It is mainly for these reasons that the current foreign policy discourse in India is predominated by the following wishful thinking, 

• America is too big to fall 

• China will not be able to sustain its growth rate and its internal political struggle will weaken it further 

• India must become a regional power and the only route to becoming one goes through Washington 

I consider it wishful thinking because there is hardly any empirical data that supports such assertions of the realist community in India. When you ask them why should India send its meager naval resources to South China sea –K M Pannikar’s 1945 book and his advocacy of naval bases is dug out to justify India’s quest to expand its maritime forces. The question that comes to mind is, why are many of the thinking Indians (if not the Indian government) behaving in a particular fashion vis-à-vis China? What is their motivation and what is it that they wish to achieve? 

The rise of anti-China cottage industry 

Inspired by American think-tanks, a cottage industry has sprung up in India that works overtime to locate reasons to confront China - ranging from perceived Chinese incursions into Indian territory to the general aggressiveness in Chinese demeanour. A big chunk of strategic community and armed forces think-tanks are engaged in commenting and also to a large extent shaping the Indian foreign policy directions - many of them constantly urge India to shed its cocoon and come out into the open to confront the Chinese. 

As the Indian version of John Mearsheimer, Bharat Karnad, says, "Over the years, the Indian armed services have become… cautious, defensive, incremental in thought and action, and risk-averse when it comes to China. The ultimate offensive realist, Karnad goes to the extent of saying it may be prudent to arm... Vietnam, with everything Hanoi desires, including the nuclearised Brahmos supersonic cruise missile." Similar sentiments are being openly expressed by others who want Indian ships to be almost permanently anchored in South China Sea. At another level the Indian National Security Advisor, Shiv Shankar Menon has initiated a debate revolving around the ‘use of force’ by India. In his address at the Cariappa Memorial Lecture, he brought out, "Today we are in a position to make a greater contribution to global public goods in areas such as maritime security. At the same time we are moving towards an Indian doctrine for the use of force." 

Kanard’s arguments intend to catapult India to becoming the regional power without wasting any time, Menon adopts a more nuanced approach hinting at sharing the global (or rather American) burden of providing ‘public goods’ (a euphemism for sharing the American burden of policing the world) in global security domain – a step by step approach – beginning with sending a more innocuous looking navy out - followed, perhaps, by unshackling the Indian army troops to operate under the command of an American general. 

Most of these talks about changing the ‘use of force’ doctrine and taking the Indian Navy to South China Sea are also being simultaneously debated in Japan and Australia. Japan, for the first time in post war history has started operating a naval base in Djibouti – it wants to become a ‘normal state’ fast. A normal state would mean a country that exercises total control over the means of violence at its disposal. However, many in Japan – much like many strategists in India - feel that being ‘normal’ means being towed by American ships to hostile regions to off-load ‘public goods’. 

Even the Australian strategic community is talking only China. A recent paper produced by three think-tanks - Lowy Institute of Australia, India’s Observer Research Foundation and the conservative Heritage Foundation from the USA has recommended, "The United States should form a three-way security dialogue with India, in part to help counter any naval aggression from China." ASPEN Institute, an American think-tank based in India recently released its Joint Study Group Report that urged India to "continue to welcome the U.S. presence in the Asia-Pacific as an indispensable contribution to Asia’s stability, peace, and security." The report lures India into joining the "so-called Quad states (the United States, India, Japan, and Australia)’ by stating that, "The United States, as the preeminent global power, matters crucially to India’s rise as a great power. The United States and India have a shared vital national interest in preventing a unipolar Asia." Many other think-tanks in US, like the MacArthur Foundation, International Assessment and Strategic Centre (the title of one of the articles "Looking Forward: Call for war in the South China Sea"), Carnegie Endowment for International peace and many other are busy churning out monographs, papers and books to feed the Indian strategic community almost on a regular basis as to how to recognize the reasons for rivalry with China. According to Ashley Tellis "the world’s two most populous states are doomed to rivalry as their power and interests expand." 

In the month of August, Financial Times, London and a day later the Wall Street Journal published reported that a Chinese warship confronted an Indian navy vessel shortly after it left a Vietnamese port in late July in the first such encounter between the two countries’ navies in the South China Sea. This story was denied by both the Indian Navy as well the Ministry of External Affairs, but none of these denials by the Indian establishment have deterred the Indian media as well the analysts from using this incident to corroborate their theories relating to the Chinese aggressive behavior and therefore, a matching response from India. 

Towards 50 years of uninterrupted peace with China 

Almost 50 years have passed since the last Sino-India war in 1962. For all these years, India never had any problems with China related to any issue. In fact, even the differences related to the border were put on a backburner. However, of late, we see one issue or another being raked up almost on a daily basis to create mistrust between India and China. The way venom against China is spread in seminars and media; one feels that war with China will happen sooner rather than later. 

This brings us to question the real motives of making India more aggressive. Is it in the larger interest of India that Asia becomes a conflict zone? It is certainly in the American interests that its hegemony in Asia Pacific is maintained at all costs. The question that begs answer is why should the onus of saving the American empire fall on India’s head? Why should we feel morally obliged to make sure that China is not able to disturb the American hegemony? China is our biggest trading partner, what we will achieve by confronting them and keeping ourselves continuously engaged in finding faults with Beijing rather than diverting our energies in exploring areas of cooperation. We have the example of Pakistan in front of us – It has taken Pakistan almost 60 years - to grant India the most favoured trading partner status - realize that confronting India at the behest of America has not yielded any dividends to them. And here is India, almost dying to commit the same mistakes as Pakistan by following the US dictates. 

Understanding the Empire 

To a common man the road to great power status is simple –just as China has used America to become powerful - India too can become a great power by courting America. But the essential point is Sino–US relations developed in the Cold War times and Beijing understood the rhythms of American empire well. The hierarchies of layers that form the empire can be summarized as – money (US treasury, federal bank), military (Pentagon), MNCs (trade) – with money forming the center of gravity of the empire. 

In the late 1970s the reform process started in China - it began courting the American MNCs to open up its trade. During this period, China gave no leeway to the US to even glance at its military. Nor did the Chinese ever made any attempts to learn or purchase military hardware from their American friends. So, in effect the Chinese interacted with the MNCs - the bottom level of the empire. However, by the end of the 20th century, China had acquired considerable economic clout, yet it never targeted confronting or courting the US military. But it had understood that the US empire could be tamed only by penetrating its financial structures – the top layer of the empire. While America was engaged in militarily planning to deny China from crossing the ‘first island chain’, China was quietly buying the US bonds and by the end of first decade of 21st century, China has caught the bull by the horns – determining the US financial and economic health - something that the USSR could not achieve despite their 12000 nuclear weapons. The Soviets had committed the mistake of interacting with the American empire at the level of their military and remaining indifferent to the MNCs and the money power. The dreams woven by the dollar power intoxicated leaders like Gorbachev to give up communism and therefore, his empire in central Asia and east Europe. 

India, a big military manpower market for the empire 

The Indian strategic elite that feigns ignorance of the imperial games, is just keen to join the bandwagon at any level. After the end of Cold War, New Delhi tried to join the empire through the MNCs - becoming an ardent fan of the ‘Washington consensus’ – jumping around at the world economic forum with a list of Indian middle class. But all this hardly impressed the Americans. Therefore, trade with America did not grow as per the Indian dreams. The Americans had different designs on India – they were eyeing the huge military manpower market in India. They had learnt well from the Indian colonial history that it was the military manpower from India that helped the British expand its empire far and wide into Africa. Thus began the process of making India join with the empire at the level of military. Joint naval exercises, intelligence sharing, training the best Indian armed forces officers under the IMET programs and much more started. The Indian elite and specially the Indian military elite were happy to be associated with the mightiest military power on earth – hoping to learn the tricks of ruling the world. But what the Indian elite are forgetting in the process are the lessons from the current history of Pakistan, Egypt and even NATO countries that had joined the stepped up military ladder to be in the good books of the empire. Empires don’t allow others to penetrate their military structure so easily – the Americans never divulged their military secrets even to NATO members and ensured that the technological gap was always maintained. 

As far as the armed forces like Pakistan were concerned – they are at best given the status of a non-commissioned-officer (NCO) by the Pentagon. Such armies are treated by the empire as cannon fodder. It is for this reason that India’s eagerness to impress the empire by offering their military defies all logic. If Pakistan armed forces are NCOs, India cannot hope to be more than a junior commissioned officer (JCO) in the Pentagon’s scheme of things. 

The armed forces are not commodities that you put on the table as bargaining chips with the empire. Because once a country mortgages its military, it loses control over it. And this is exactly the situation in India- encouraged by their American friends, the armed forces are displaying increasing tendencies to identify their corporate interest and rock the civil-military boat. Small issues like the army chief’s age are being used to assert the independence of the armed forces. The fear is not that the civil-military relations will deteriorate to threaten the democracy in India, but the concerns are related to the fact that both the armed forces and the civilian establishment in the country should operate as one single entity and march in step. Currently, on some issues the two seem to be out of step. 

The US has always found it convenient to deal with any country directly through its military - our strategy should be to deny US this space. It is for this reason alone that the Indian civilian establishment must sit with the armed forces and strengthen bonds and develop a clear understanding of the direction in which America is moving and trying to tow India along. Such an understanding can only come if we begin by doing a dispassionate analysis of the way the American empire is headed and what is happening in the domain of global money supply chains. 

America, a falling empire 

Just two decades ago - after a fantastic victory in Cold War- the United States of America had its chest out and chin up. But the 21st century America looks different. It is not the America that - weathered the defeat in Vietnam War with grace - stood tall against the Soviet encroachments into its empire - and more recently that demolished the threat of Islamic terrorism with a vengeance. 

Yes, today, the US is an ‘emperor without clothes’. Despite its almost total dominance in the global military domain, its body language defies its status as the emperor of the world. It stands naked - its true monetary worth lies exposed. The Rothschild banking dynasty that strongly believed, "give me control of a nation’s money supply, and I care not who makes its laws," is being openly questioned. As Benjamin Fulford at truth11.com tells us – "In fact, the entire Rothschild banking monopoly is in deep trouble. The IMF and the World Bank existed to force the Rothschild banking system on the countries of the world. "Our goal is to reboot the system, to start over and set all the parameters in a fair way so that all countries benefit from the pooled assets of the people of the world and not just Europe and North America." 

The process of rebooting has started through the ‘occupy wall street" movement. Where people are not directing their rage against - political class or a particular legislation, they are standing up against the overarching power of money that singly handedly controls all human interactions and relations on planet earth. As Jhon Hollway in a wonderful piece written in the Guardian brings out, "We rage against the government. But we know there is no answer there. Representative democracy holds our rage entrapped: like a rat in a maze, we run from one party to another but there is no exit. Things do not and cannot get better because behind political power stands another, greater power – the power of capital; the power of money." Questioning the very validity of capitalist democracies, Robert Jensen (Aljazeera) opines, "For all the trappings of formal democracy in contemporary US, everyone understands that for the most part, the wealthy dictate the basic outlines of public policies. This is cogently explained by political scientist Thomas Ferguson’s "investment theory of political parties", which identifies powerful investors rather than unorganized voters as the dominant force in campaigns and elections." It is the growing political consciousness among the people that is unmasking the true face of liberal democracies. More than the declining military budgets, it is the unveiling of the mask over the myth of the ‘American dream’ that indicates the decline of the American empire. That this facade is being brought down by the American people and not by Chinese spies or Islamic terrorists gives credence to the fact that the days of the empire are numbered. 

However, the danger is that as the American empire gets into a free fall, its elite that control all its wealth is getting afflicted with a dangerous disease. As Simon Jenkins writing in the Guardian says, "A virus seems to be running through the upper echelons of Washington and London that of a moral duty to wage war against perceived evil wherever it offers a bombing target. Anyone watching last month’s Republican primary debate in Las Vegas will have been shocked at the belligerence shown by the six candidates towards the outside world. It was a display of what the historian Kaplan called "the warrior politics … of an imperial reality that dominates our foreign policy", a fidgety search for reasons to go brawling round the globe, at any cost in resulting anarchy. The spectacle was frightening and depressing." 

This brings us to the point where we must ask as to why the US military is planning to hop from one end of the globe to another? Why is their quest to wage wars not getting satisfied? This is happening because the Churchills’ in US, UK and even in India (as in most of the other countries) want to save the empire by hook or by crook. This school of thought firmly believes that colonial possessions are a must to maintain healthy prosperity levels in the developed world. The shock wave sent out by the great depression led most of the industrial world to adopt socialism (welfare economics) in their home countries, while advancing capitalism in other parts of the world. China did exactly the same in 1980s, when it adopted capitalism under a communist umbrella. The only difference is that unlike the West, China neither has friends nor the might to go around forcing its world view across the globe. The rising debt is preventing the developed world from giving its public the comfort that they have grown used to. There are two options- to change the system and ensure that wealth is evenly distributed- this entails tweaking capitalism to the extent of abandoning it. This is not acceptable to many in the politburo of capitalism (like the Bilderberg Group). Therefore, the second option is to use the military to garner economic resources. 

The military option can easily be executed using the American air power, but mere bombing a place does not yield economic benefits. You have to send foot soldiers to occupy. And as Afghanistan and Iraq have proved, occupying countries is a costly and difficult proposition. To obviate this difficulty, the US wants to broaden its military alliance base beyond the Atlantic. The game plan as enunciated by Thomas Barnet is “to define international stability in the 21st Century. We’re interested in enforcing minimum rule sets, not the maximal rule sets associated with imperialism. We want a level playing field not just in global trade, but in global security as well. We want to administer the global security system, not rule it. Like those "system administrators" that keep the Internet up and running, America needs to play system administrator to the global security network. We need to keep globalization up and running—to be, in effect, its bodyguard." The proposals like 1000 ship navy and rekindling the imperial desires of France, Japan and the Indian elite is part of the global security structure envisaged by Barnet. 

As always, the class war is on at a global scale. On which side of the divide does India intend to be is the question that our strategists must address. At the end of Cold War, we decided to join the globalization bandwagon by following the liberalization and privatization route. While moving on the path of globalization, we treaded cautiously- retaining hold over our banking and insurance sector - thereby, partially, insulating ourselves from the vagaries of the global market place. Despite our measured approach, we could not prevent ourselves from being sucked into the hubris associated with privatization of state assets - the malice of big ticket corruption that we are trying to fight is a part of the same system that we adopted in the 1990s. Now, when the basic tenets and the inherent inadequacies of the same globalization are being questioned in its birth place, we do not understand as to where we should look. 

Now, the global leaders of capitalism want to globalize security- a ruse to appropriate the military strengths of medium powers to sustain the longevity of the empire. Before, entering this security infrastructure, let us ponder and ask some searching questions as what this entire game entails for our nation. What are the pros and cons of joining a globalized security network? How is it going to impact our civil-military ties? Entering such security arrangements will also involve sending our troops to fight imperial wars. Are we ready to sacrifice our men? Will our nation allow the use its sons to be used in wars that help a few elite to maintain their membership of the club run by 1% wealthy Americans? These and many more hard questions need to be debated extensively. 

The issue is not China. China has avoided wars for many years. It probably is not interested in a war at this juncture in its history, when it does not have adequate friends. Nor does China have an idea that can help it rule the world. India too does not have much energy to waste on fighting stupid wars. Even if we were to fight a war with China and win it - it will not help us beyond satisfying the egos of the elite. We need peace to develop. Just as America has not let war come near its shores, we must also prevent war into the Asian theatre. In fact, Asian nations must realize - America is on the decline, China is not strong enough - this is the most opportune moment to carve the continent’s security paradigm as equals minus a hegemon 

Don't Expect Rafale to Fly the Indian Elite to 'Global High Table'

In the 1950s, two schools of thought emerged in the US strategic landscape - The ‘deterrent’ school and the ‘war-fighting school. The disagreement lay in their divergent approaches. The war-fighting or ‘massive retaliation’ school represented by General Curtis LeMay and the US Air Force advocated maximum use of nuclear weapons sans restraint. The ‘deterrence’ school led by a small group of civilians - Bernard Brodie, Thomas Schelling, Albert Wohlstetter, and a handful of others from Rand corporation saw nuclear bombs not just as military weapons but as a political tool too. While the American civilian strategists saw nuclear weapons as political tools - many in the Indian strategic community see even conventional weaponry as a political weapon. 

The bizarre argument, currently floating in the Indian strategic circles wonders how India could buy its future fighter aircraft based exclusively on technical grounds, completely overlooking the strategy needs. Reacting to the Indian Air Force’s decision to award Dassault Aviation the MMRCA contract, an Indian analyst posits, “Ideally, the Indian decision should have been guided by a strategy that balances reducing danger and broadening opportunity. Accordingly, the question for New Delhi should have been how to use this lucrative deal to beef up India’s strategic options. Thus, it is probably a strategic blunder to narrowly focus on technical specifications and capabilities alone, as many proponents of the IAF’s choice have done.” 

The problem with many of the Anglo-Saxon Chanakyas’ is that they were desperately hoping that this ‘mother of all’ arms deal would catapult Indo-US ties to an unprecedented level – making India a much better ally of the US than even the UK. When the F-16 was rejected, they were palpably dejected. Then in the next phase, when the U.K.-led consortium selling Eurofighter Typhoon too failed to make the mark, it became hard to digest. After all, how could the men in uniform decide the course of Indian foreign policy? 

Unfortunately, it is the same set of ideologues who had earlier opposed India buying armaments from the erstwhile Soviet Union. Their opposition then was based on the argument that it was political and not technical consideration that led Indians closer to the communist block.

India is the biggest importer of arms in the world. India holds the purse strings - why should New Delhi be the sucker - overlook its own needs to save some dwindling economies of the West. Much to the chagrin of sympathizers of Indo-US strategic ties, the IAF aircraft evaluation sheet had no column indicating the number of jobs a particular fighter would create in its home nation nor did the form contain the names of politicians whose fortunes were directly linked to the aircraft sale. 

The IAF’s agenda was simple - select the aircraft that is best suited to Indian needs -  is commercially viable for the exchequer over a prolonged period – would help India hone its aircraft manufacturing skills. To evaluate the products put up by six aerospace corporations, the IAF trained six dedicated teams consisting of pilots and maintainers that assessed each aircraft through 660 different angles. For the first time, the Indian pilots flew each aircraft that was under consideration, twisting and turning them to the specified parameters. The stringent evaluation procedure was evolved by the air force that is the best in the world and could easily be patented.  

We are living in the 21st century and not in the 50s when India was almost forced and fooled to buy British equipment rendered redundant at the end of WWII. India is the buyer - it is our prerogative to choose the aircraft that we deem fit and that choice ultimately rests with the armed forces -  the end-user of the product. The imported warplanes are meant to help the air warriors defend India’s security and act as a deterrent to keep India’s policy options open. They are certainly not meant to fly certain sections of the Indian elite to the ‘global high table’.