SPY EYES

The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines—particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin—is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.

There are notable exceptions, but a general pattern has developed. Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.

The history of this degradation is also clear. It began in the early 1990s, following the end of the Soviet Union, when the US media adopted Washington’s narrative that almost everything President Boris Yeltsin did was a “transition from communism to democracy” and thus in America’s best interests. This included his economic “shock therapy” and oligarchic looting of essential state assets, which destroyed tens of millions of Russian lives; armed destruction of a popularly elected Parliament and imposition of a “presidential” Constitution, which dealt a crippling blow to democratization and now empowers Putin; brutal war in tiny Chechnya, which gave rise to terrorists in Russia’s North Caucasus; rigging of his own re-election in 1996; and leaving behind, in 1999, his approval ratings in single digits, a disintegrating country laden with weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, most American journalists still give the impression that Yeltsin was an ideal Russian leader.

Since the early 2000s, the media have followed a different leader-centric narrative, also consistent with US policy, that devalues multifaceted analysis for a relentless demonization of Putin, with little regard for facts. (Was any Soviet Communist leader after Stalin ever so personally villainized?) If Russia under Yeltsin was presented as having legitimate politics and national interests, we are now made to believe that Putin’s Russia has none at all, at home or abroad—even on its own borders, as in Ukraine.

Russia today has serious problems and many repugnant Kremlin policies. But anyone relying on mainstream American media will not find there any of their origins or influences in Yeltsin’s Russia or in provocative US policies since the 1990s—only in the “autocrat” Putin who, however authoritarian, in reality lacks such power. Nor is he credited with stabilizing a disintegrating nuclear-armed country, assisting US security pursuits from Afghanistan and Syria to Iran or even with granting amnesty, in December, to more than 1,000 jailed prisoners, including mothers of young children.

Not surprisingly, in January The Wall Street Journal featured the widely discredited former president of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, branding Putin’s government as one of “deceit, violence and cynicism,” with the Kremlin a “nerve center of the troubles that bedevil the West.” But wanton Putin-bashing is also the dominant narrative in centrist, liberal and progressive media, from the Post, Times and The New Republic to CNN, MSNBC and HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher, where Howard Dean, not previously known for his Russia expertise, recently declared, to the panel’s approval, “Vladimir Putin is a thug.”

The media therefore eagerly await Putin’s downfall—due to his “failing economy” (some of its indicators are better than US ones), the valor of street protesters and other right-minded oppositionists (whose policies are rarely examined), the defection of his electorate (his approval ratings remain around 65 percent) or some welcomed “cataclysm.” Evidently believing, as does the Times, for example, that democrats and a “much better future” will succeed Putin (not zealous ultranationalists growing in the streets and corridors of power), US commentators remain indifferent to what the hoped-for “destabilization of his regime” might mean in the world’s largest nuclear country.

Certainly, The New Republic’s lead writer on Russia, Julia Ioffe, does not explore the question, or much else of real consequence, in her nearly 10,000-word February 17 cover story. Ioffe’s bannered theme is devoutly Putin-phobic: “He Crushed His Opposition and Has Nothing to Show for It But a Country That Is Falling Apart.” Neither sweeping assertion is spelled out or documented. A compilation of chats with Russian-born Ioffe’s disaffected (but seemingly not “crushed”) Moscow acquaintances and titillating personal gossip long circulating on the Internet, the article seems better suited (apart from some factual errors) for the Russian tabloids, as does Ioffe’s disdain for objectivity. Protest shouts of “Russia without Putin!” and “Putin is a thief!” were “one of the most exhilarating moments I’d ever experienced.” So was tweeting “Putin’s fucked, y’all.” Nor does she forget the hopeful mantra “cataclysm seems closer than ever now.”

* * *

For weeks, this toxic coverage has focused on the Sochi Olympics and the deepening crisis in Ukraine. Even before the Games began, the Times declared the newly built complex a “Soviet-style dystopia” and warned in a headline, Terrorism and Tension, Not Sports and Joy. On opening day, the paper found space for three anti-Putin articles and a lead editorial, a feat rivaled by thePost. Facts hardly mattered. Virtually every US report insisted that a record $51 billion “squandered” by Putin on the Sochi Games proved they were “corrupt.” But as Ben Aris ofBusiness New Europe pointed out, as much as $44 billion may have been spent “to develop the infrastructure of the entire region,” investment “the entire country needs.”

Overall pre-Sochi coverage was even worse, exploiting the threat of terrorism so licentiously it seemed pornographic. The Post, long known among critical-minded Russia-watchers asPravda on the Potomac, exemplified the media ethos. A sports columnist and an editorial page editor turned the Olympics into “a contest of wills” between the despised Putin’s “thugocracy” and terrorist “insurgents.” The “two warring parties” were so equated that readers might have wondered which to cheer for. If nothing else, American journalists gave terrorists an early victory, tainting “Putin’s Games” and frightening away many foreign spectators, including some relatives of the athletes.

The Sochi Games will soon pass, triumphantly or tragically, but the potentially fateful Ukrainian crisis will not. A new Cold War divide between West and East may now be unfolding, not in Berlin but in the heart of Russia’s historical civilization. The result could be a permanent confrontation fraught with instability and the threat of a hot war far worse than the one in Georgia in 2008. These dangers have been all but ignored in highly selective, partisan and inflammatory US media accounts, which portray the European Union’s “Partnership” proposal benignly as Ukraine’s chance for democracy, prosperity and escape from Russia, thwarted only by a “bullying” Putin and his “cronies” in Kiev.

Not long ago, committed readers could count on The New York Review of Books for factually trustworthy alternative perspectives on important historical and contemporary subjects. But when it comes to Russia and Ukraine, the NYRB has succumbed to the general media mania. In a January 21 blog post, Amy Knight, a regular contributor and inveterate Putin-basher, warned the US government against cooperating with the Kremlin on Sochi security, even suggesting that Putin’s secret services “might have had an interest in allowing or even facilitating such attacks” as killed or wounded dozens of Russians in Volgograd in December.

Knight’s innuendo prefigured a purported report on Ukraine by Yale professor Timothy Snyder in the February 20 issue. Omissions of facts, by journalists or scholars, are no less an untruth than misstatements of fact. Snyder’s article was full of both, which are widespread in the popular media, but these are in the esteemed NYRB and by an acclaimed academic. Consider a few of Snyder’s assertions:

§ ”On paper, Ukraine is now a dictatorship.” In fact, the “paper” legislation he’s referring to hardly constituted dictatorship, and in any event was soon repealed. Ukraine is in a state nearly the opposite of dictatorship—political chaos uncontrolled by President Viktor Yanukovych, the Parliament, the police or any other government institution.

§ ”The [parliamentary] deputies…have all but voted themselves out of existence.” Again, Snyder is alluding to the nullified “paper.” Moreover, serious discussions have been under way in Kiev about reverting to provisions in the 2004 Constitution that would return substantial presidential powers to the legislature, hardly “the end of parliamentary checks on presidential power,” as Snyder claims. (Does he dislike the prospect of a compromise outcome?)

§ ”Through remarkably large and peaceful public protests…Ukrainians have set a positive example for Europeans.” This astonishing statement may have been true in November, but it now raises questions about the “example” Snyder is advocating. The occupation of government buildings in Kiev and in Western Ukraine, the hurling of firebombs at police and other violent assaults on law enforcement officers and the proliferation of anti-Semitic slogans by a significant number of anti-Yanukovych protesters, all documented and even televised, are not an “example” most readers would recommend to Europeans or Americans. Nor are they tolerated, even if accompanied by episodes of police brutality, in any Western democracy.

§ ”Representatives of a minor group of the Ukrainian extreme right have taken credit for the violence.” This obfuscation implies that apart perhaps from a “minor group,” the “Ukrainian extreme right” is part of the positive “example” being set. (Many of its representatives have expressed hatred for Europe’s “anti-traditional” values, such as gay rights.) Still more, Snyder continues, “something is fishy,” strongly implying that the mob violence is actually being “done by russo-phone provocateurs” on behalf of “Yanukovych (or Putin).” As evidence, Snyder alludes to “reports” that the instigators “spoke Russian.” But millions of Ukrainians on both sides of their incipient civil war speak Russian.

§ Snyder reproduces yet another widespread media malpractice regarding Russia, the decline of editorial fact-checking. In a recent article in the International New York Times, he both inflates his assertions and tries to delete neofascist elements from his innocuous “Ukrainian extreme right.” Again without any verified evidence, he warns of a Putin-backed “armed intervention” in Ukraine after the Olympics and characterizes reliable reports of “Nazis and anti-Semites” among street protesters as “Russian propaganda.”

§ Perhaps the largest untruth promoted by Snyder and most US media is the claim that “Ukraine’s future integration into Europe” is “yearned for throughout the country.” But every informed observer knows—from Ukraine’s history, geography, languages, religions, culture, recent politics and opinion surveys—that the country is deeply divided as to whether it should join Europe or remain close politically and economically to Russia. There is not one Ukraine or one “Ukrainian people” but at least two, generally situated in its Western and Eastern regions.

Such factual distortions point to two flagrant omissions by Snyder and other US media accounts. The now exceedingly dangerous confrontation between the two Ukraines was not “ignited,” as the Times claims, by Yanukovych’s duplicitous negotiating—or by Putin—but by the EU’s reckless ultimatum, in November, that the democratically elected president of a profoundly divided country choose between Europe and Russia. Putin’s proposal for a tripartite arrangement, rarely if ever reported, was flatly rejected by US and EU officials.

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But the most crucial media omission is Moscow’s reasonable conviction that the struggle for Ukraine is yet another chapter in the West’s ongoing, US-led march toward post-Soviet Russia, which began in the 1990s with NATO’s eastward expansion and continued with US-funded NGO political activities inside Russia, a US-NATO military outpost in Georgia and missile-defense installations near Russia. Whether this longstanding Washington-Brussels policy is wise or reckless, it—not Putin’s December financial offer to save Ukraine’s collapsing economy—is deceitful. The EU’s “civilizational” proposal, for example, includes “security policy” provisions, almost never reported, that would apparently subordinate Ukraine to NATO.

Any doubts about the Obama administration’s real intentions in Ukraine should have been dispelled by the recently revealed taped conversation between a top State Department official, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador in Kiev. The media predictably focused on the source of the “leak” and on Nuland’s verbal “gaffe”—“Fuck the EU.” But the essential revelation was that high-level US officials were plotting to “midwife” a new, anti-Russian Ukrainian government by ousting or neutralizing its democratically elected president—that is, a coup.

Americans are left with a new edition of an old question. Has Washington’s twenty-year winner-take-all approach to post-Soviet Russia shaped this degraded news coverage, or is official policy shaped by the coverage? Did Senator John McCain stand in Kiev alongside the well-known leader of an extreme nationalist party because he was ill informed by the media, or have the media deleted this part of the story because of McCain’s folly?

And what of Barack Obama’s decision to send only a low-level delegation, including retired gay athletes, to Sochi? In August, Putin virtually saved Obama’s presidency by persuading Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to eliminate his chemical weapons. Putin then helped to facilitate Obama’s heralded opening to Iran. Should not Obama himself have gone to Sochi—either out of gratitude to Putin, or to stand with Russia’s leader against international terrorists who have struck both of our countries? Did he not go because he was ensnared by his unwise Russia policies, or because the US media misrepresented the varying reasons cited: the granting of asylum to Edward Snowden, differences on the Middle East, infringements on gay rights in Russia, and now Ukraine? Whatever the explanation, as Russian intellectuals say when faced with two bad alternatives, “Both are worst.”

The Nation

We need to get information on the possible targets and those responsible and tasked to carry out such acts. To achieve this we have to educate the people from different walks of life and empower the poor on the streets by giving them simple incentives

The issue of the state’s security concerns all individuals and hence it becomes a joint responsibility of both the state and citizens. While the state keeps its machinery well oiled with periodic reviews and upgrades, the capacity building of the common man remains a matter of neglect. It is only once the protectors of the people sensitise the public to combat a perceived or real threat that the security blanket will give the required insulation from violence. I am convinced that a proactive approach to educate the masses, especially those who are frequent contacts like car attendants, coolies, rickshaw pullers/drivers, vegetable and fruit vendors, shoeshine boys and so on are potential information warriors.

The suspicious movement of people has to be reported, suspicious objects identified have to be made known to people and professionals who will take appropriate action. It is only mass support that is going to count in the war against terrorism. People have to be sensitised to the problem and checks and balances have to be suggested and placed for greater security. Mobile technology, which has become rather gainful for economic transactions, has to be energised for usage as early warning systems, and people have to be encouraged and educated in the multiple usage of the facility. The people need to be informed of their responsibilities towards society.
Citizenship has to be regarded as the strength of a nation. It is therefore relevant to suggest that there is a need for detailed and deliberate coordination of all these activities and there is a need to educate the environment through professional intervention, while also through the mass media. There is the requirement of creating a structure for spreading the message to the people and making them aware that they are a part of the advance warning system. The role of NGOs will become more pronounced as they have to share the burden of educating the people on the intricacies of modern terrorism.

Besides the human resource being referred to above, it is equally important to provide adequate updating in terms of technology and equipment. A well-planned, close circuit television and sound sensors should be strategically placed at sensitive target locations. High security zones need to be appreciated well and positioning of early warning systems deliberated upon with professionalism. It is equally important to have a good communication network and reliable communication systems. Terrorism, extremism are mere semantics, trying to define the levels of credit the initiators enjoy — counters are planned in accordance with the definition. Unfortunately, we fail to realise that these variants are interwoven and it is extremely difficult to differentiate and to identify when a particular phase enters the next phase. The government requires enthusing and winning over the people with initiatives, which will make a difference to the citizens and hence a citizen-oriented plan has to be worked out to bring about a change in society. Society should become the focus of all future endeavours.

We need to get information on the possible targets and those responsible and tasked to carry out such acts. To achieve this we have to educate the people from different walks of life and empower the poor on the streets by giving them simple incentives and motivating them to become facilitators and providers. The NGOs should work towards this regard and educate those people who do not get formal education.
Along with such a measure, there is a need to introduce formal education in this area in schools and colleges. There is the requirement of a structured approach in tackling this menace and relevant guidelines need to be issued to all stakeholders who have an important hand in spreading the message and in impacting the minds of the people. It is time for our citizens to wake up and realise the gravity of the problem of not contributing towards identifying an impending disaster and not doing one’s duty of becoming a part of the country’s security apparatus.

The recent, intense waves of suicide attacks, bomb blasts and target killings in different parts of the country have really shattered the dreams of the young and the old. I often wonder if such dastardly acts could have been avoided if only the people in the targeted area had bothered to notice some uncanny device, a bag or a person planting the bomb in an innocuous place, surely catching someone’s eye. Why do we only reflect on the past and then try and assess what went wrong? Why can we not become more proactive? Why do our newsmakers not facilitate creating more awareness amongst the people on the essentials of citizenship? It is with the support of the citizens of the country that we can expect the security situation to improve. For it is only in awareness that we can feel more secure.

By Muhammad Zafar Khan Safdar
FOR PAKISTAN

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference begins on March 2 and will conclude with an address by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on March 4. The organisers boastthat the meeting of “America’s Pro-Israel Lobby” will attract “more than 14,000 pro-Israel Americans, more than two-thirds of Congress, [and] more than 2,200 students from 491 campuses”.

There will be speeches by Senator John McCain and by Secretary of State John Kerry.

As part of the group’s lobbying effort, the attendees will descend en masse on the Capitol Hill offices of Senators and Congressmen, delivering the message that AIPAC is alive and well in spite of some recent very public setbacks.

They will demand that the United States continue to pressure Iran with new sanctions even as the White House is searching for a way to avoid another potentially catastrophic war in the Middle East.

They will argue that Iran is a danger to the entire world and must be reduced to a level where it cannot even contemplate either offensive or retaliatory defensive action against Israel, to include the dismantling of its nuclear programme and destruction of its ballistic missiles with a range exceeding 500 km.

AIPAC will claim record levels of fundraising and grassroots support. Indeed, its endowment totals $100m, its annual budget is nearly $70m and it has more than 200 employees, making it the most powerful and best funded foreign policy lobby in the US. But largely invisible amid the self-congratulating and lobbying process will be any sense of what the actual US vital interests might be vis-a-vis Israel.

The powerful Israel lobby, of which AIPAC is a part, has long argued that the foreign policy and security interests of Washington and Tel Aviv are identical, or to use the currently fashionable expressions, there is no space between the two and the US will always “have Israel’s back”.

A tiny client state

Washington’s political class has wholeheartedly and uncritically adopted both the Israel-centric jargon and also Tel Aviv’s skewed perceptions of Middle Eastern realities, producing the unique spectacle of a great global power doing everything possible to placate a tiny client state. Pandering to Israel will be on full display at the AIPAC conference.

But amid all the celebration AIPAC’s leadership knows that it can no longer produce a napkin and have thesignatures of 70 senators on it within a day. Nor does its steady flow of “information memos” sent to the legislature and the media command the same respect they once did.

AIPAC can no longer draft legislation favourable to Israel, send it over to Congress and expect a finished bill to emerge, passed with a unanimous vote. It has suffered major defeats through its open support for bombing Syria and for legislation increasing sanctions on Iran, the former opposed overwhelmingly by an aroused war-weary public and the latter stalled in a suddenly nervous Congress.

AIPAC also opposed the appointment of Chuck Hagel as Defence Secretary due to his alleged “anti-Israel record”, though it did not do so openly and only lobbied the issue quietly on Capitol Hill. It was, nevertheless, a defeat.

Even The New York Times is taking note that AIPAC is now very much on the defensive, forcing it to respond to the Times commentary with an op-edof its own defending its position on Iran, an uncharacteristic move for a group that is accustomed to operate in the shadows.

The rift has come about because reality and illusion have parted company. The reality is that the US cannot afford another war in the Middle East, either financially or in terms of the unintended consequences that wrecked the Iraqi and Afghan interventions.

It has only one compelling vital interest in the region and that is to keep energy resources flowing and a war with Iran would instead deliver a shock to a world economy that is still in recovery. Against that is the illusion that Israel is some kind of strategic asset or global partner for the US.

Apart from the pressure being exerted by groups like AIPAC, Americans are becoming increasingly aware that Washington has no compelling reason to sacrifice its own interests to sustain the freedom for Israel to behave as it wishes.

Nor does it have any justification to protect it from its neighbours, any more than it has a responsibility to do so for any other country in the Middle East. And there is a growing understanding that the lopsided relationship, not only hugely expensive in dollar terms, motivates terrorist groups like al-Qaeda to attack Americans.

This is not to say that the US cannot play a positive role and act in support of the best interests of all its friends in the Middle East, which it would accomplish by becoming genuinely an honest broker with a demonstrated interest in regional stability rather than in regime change.

AIPAC’s tunnel vision only permits it to see one “closest ally” and that must be Israel. Every other country is therefore reduced to a second rate player whose interests must coincide with those of Tel Aviv or be disregarded.

Wrong side of history

The persistence of the AIPAC argument, which also idealises Israel’s rather flawed and corrupt democracy to help make its case for a “special relationship”, has done grave damage to US interests throughout the Muslim world. As has sometimes been noted, Washington had no enemies in the post-colonial Middle East before Israel was founded in 1948. Now it has few friends.

Washington’s close embrace with Tel Aviv has been fostered by a mainstream media unwilling to be too critical of Israel’s actions. But this long established unanimity of viewpoint involving both media and its symbiotic punditry is beginning to erode as alternative sources of information continue to proliferate, which is why the leadership of AIPAC must seriously be concerned.

The shift in opinion is both permanent and growing in magnitude, including numerous younger Jews and Jewish liberals who have been speaking out to tell AIPAC that itdoes not speak for them, particularly given its record of uncritical support for increasingly hard line Israeli governments.

A better informed American public increasingly averse to foreign military adventures is becoming aware that issues formerly seen in Manichean terms are actually a good deal more complicated and then there is the experience factor. Recent US engagement in Iraq, Libya, and Egypt, all supported by Israel and its supporters for various reasons, are increasingly being regarded as in no way beneficial to the US, quite the contrary.

This explains the lack of fervour for a repeat performance in Syria or against Iran. It also means that AIPAC has found itself on the wrong side of history in terms of the desires of the American people, surely not a good place to be for a Washington lobby.

Aljazeera

Historian Daniel Headrick made the crucial connection between means and ends in the projection of global influence. For instance, Headrick argued that the Suez Canal, which opened in 1869, acted a tool of empire for the great powers of the nineteenth century. The building of a canal through the Sinai Peninsula not only  made trade and empire in Asia faster by avoiding the Cape of Good Hope, but more economical too. This was particularly the case for the world’s superpower, Great Britain. For Britain, the Suez was an important strategic consideration in its imperial outlook, making the transport of goods, officials and soldiers to Bombay and other key colonial hubs easier and affordable. At the same time, the canal aided the wider globalization process of the nineteenth century, which opened Asia up to the advent of Western adventure capitalists with exploitation and domination never far from the surface. The Suez Canal acted as a “tool of empire,” as Headrick put it, and in a small but important way, the world became that much more global—all to the benefit of those Western nations that could harness of the power of the sea.

Headrick’s argument turns on a profound if easily overlooked point: those with easy access to the sea-lanes of the world invariably have the tools for global power and trade. Even today, the laws of economic scale dictate that air and rail, while important in their own right, will always be poor cousins to the efficiency and capacity of container ships and waterborne trade.

Despite the fact that the free trade zone port of Gwadar in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan has been an unprofitable enterprise with operational control now in Chinese hands, its potential remains. If anything, the development of the deep ocean port and an associated international airport, as well as the creation of a transport corridor connecting Gwadar to China’s easternmost province of Xinjiang, is a game changer for the Central Asian region. In Beijing this February, President Mamnoon Hussain and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed a series of agreements designed to breathe life to the corridor project. In the coming years, the once sleepy fishing enclave of Gwadar will become a staging ground for the geopolitical reorganization of the region.

With the development of the corridor, Central Asia, traditionally an economically closed region owing to its geography and lack of infrastructure, will have greater access to the sea and to the global trade network. For Afghanistan and Tajikistan, both of which have signed transit agreements with Pakistan, it will provide a more economical means of transporting goods, making their export products more competitive globally. For China, meanwhile, the corridor will provide it with direct access to the Indian Ocean, enabling China to project itself strategically into the mineral and oil rich regions of Western Asia and Africa (and beyond). And for Pakistan, the project provides the country not only a third deep-sea port but also a better connected gateway into China’s backyard, giving Pakistan the potential to make good on its free trade agreement with the dragon economy.

In purely realist terms, the project makes Pakistan a complicit satellite in China’s attempt to break the U.S. encirclement of Asia. Commentators link Gwadar to China’s numerous other port facilities and corridors developed in partnership with other nations. This “String of Pearls” looks much like a noose around Southeastern Asia as far as India and the United States are concerned. India in particular has looked on with continued unease at the Pakistan-China corridor and port in terms of its effect on the maritime balance of power in the Indian Ocean. Ideally, if regional relations were better, the corridor would be a circuit linking the three economic powerhouses of the region, China, Pakistan, and India (as well as Iran for that matter), integrating the economic systems of South Asia and Central Asia.

Nevertheless, the corridor will play a crucial role in advancing Pakistan’s economic power. Exporting, transiting, and transporting goods into and out of Central Asia and carrying them away on the current of the world’s sea lanes, the Pakistan-China corridor will be a vital factor in Pakistan’s economic future. The corridor is best thought of as a comprehensive infrastructure package encompassing a wide range of spinoffs, including gas and oil pipelines, railways, an expressway from Karachi to Lahore, fiber-optic cabling, metro bus and underground services for key Pakistani cities. One could even link China’s financial assistance in the development of nuclear power plants in Pakistan to the wider picture.

However, it is the same circular argument. The security situation must improve and reform, both economic and social, is required if the future economic prosperity of Pakistan is to be guaranteed. Whether Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) have the technocratic and entrepreneurial acumen to develop a bold economic strategy out of the corridor is unclear. For Sharif, the PML-N, and many of Pakistan’s ruling elites for that matter, there is a tendency to think purely in terms of developing heavy industries, of state owned enterprises, and of “guns over butter” (case in point: Pakistan has nuclear weapons but has still to achieve a reliable source of power). This populist approach to the political economy is based on a desire to maintain a military-industrial complex capable of competing against India, the chief rival in the region.

In reality, agriculture, chemicals, textiles, and various other manufactured items are the stuff of Pakistan’s true productivity—items that are tradable on the global market and capable of boosting national income. Pakistan has always been well placed to export given its access to the Indian Ocean and proximity to key markets in the West and East, to say nothing of its international reach through the Pakistani diaspora and the fact that it has the third largest English-speaking population in the world. Despite government absenteeism—that reoccurring failure within the political sphere to respond to the Taliban and to the reactionaries that routinely thwart Pakistan’s potential—as well as rampant inflation and a serious lack of currency reserves, Pakistan’s private sector has proven resilient, capable of going in for global trade with the right encouragement. The cue is now for the Pakistani government and the business community to formulate a more global economic policy.

As it stands, the failure to fully capitalize on the free trade agreement between China and Pakistan demonstrates the need for a major policy effort to make the most of the corridor. For one, the Pakistani government needs to place greater emphasis on trade relations in its overall foreign policy as well as foster the exporting aspirations of small and midsize companies. Expansive economic policy, continued liberal reform, and, above all, an improved security situation are the formula needed to make full use of the tools of globalization which Pakistan will soon have at its disposal.

The Diplomat

President says 12-year war was fought for the West and for US security as he expresses ‘extreme anger’ with Washington.

Expressing “extreme anger” towards the United States government, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has said in an interview that the war in Afghanistan was not fought with his country’s interests in mind.

“Afghans died in a war that’s not ours,” Karzai said in an interview with the Washington Post newspaper published late on Sunday, just a month before the election to pick his successor.

He was quoted as saying he was certain the 12-year-old war, the United States’ longest and launched after the attacks of September 11, 2001, was “for the US security and for the Western interest.”

Karzai’s refusal to sign a security deal with Washington that would permit foreign troops to stay in Afghanistan beyond this year has frustrated the White House, and President Barack Obama has told the Pentagon to prepare for the possibility that no US troops will be left in Afghanistan after 2014.

Obama told Karzai in a phone call on Tuesday he had given the order to the Pentagon. The phone call was the first substantive discussion between the two leaders since June.

But staking out a new position, the White House said in a statement it would leave open the possibility of concluding the bilateral security agreement later this year.

“It’s good for them to sign it with my successor,” Karzai told the Post.

He has insisted the US must jump-start peace talks with Taliban fighters, and end raids and strikes on Afghan homes before he signs the deal.

Feeling betrayed

In the interview, the Afghan leader said he was deeply troubled by the war’s casualties, including those in US military operations, and felt betrayed by what he described as an insufficient US focus on targeting Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan rather than in Afghan villages.

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan dissipated his country’s “common cause” with the US, Karzai told the newspaper.

Criticising his US allies was the only way to secure a response by Washington to his concerns, he added.

The Post said Karzai told his interviewers as he escorted them out of his office on Saturday night, “To the American people, give them my best wishes and my gratitude. To the US government, give them my anger, my extreme anger.”

Al Jazeera

On July 28th, 2014, the world will mark the centennial of First World War. In that war France and Britain were on one side while Germany and Turkey on the other. Russia in that war toggled between these two competing alliances. The war resulted in weakening of France and Britain as colonial powers as well as revolutions in Germany and Turkey that converted these monarchies into republics. Russia on the other hand transitioned from monarchy to an autocratic rule of a single party after the Bolshevik revolution in 1917. Middle East was divided into new nation states as an outcome of Sykes-Picot agreement between Britain and France. But that war did not settle the centuries old power struggle between European powers. That was achieved in the Second World War with complete demolition of German and Japanese military powers. It produced fading out of Britain and France as colonial powers. USA emerged as a new power that got engaged in a cold war with Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR).

The current crisis in Ukraine should be viewed in the context of Iraq and Afghan wars as well as centuries old European rivalries. The two contemporary wars produced an economically, diplomatically and militarily weaker USA. This means that America that is a leading power in NATO can no longer afford to engage in another prolonged military struggle with a major power in the world. It is even more difficult because European partners are struggling with economic recession; are exhausted from long wars in Middle East; and are too concerned with maintaining their own alliance in Eurozone as well as need time to convert it into a political entity. They may not be willing to revert to a power struggle with Russia that produced catastrophic wars in 18th, 19th and 20th century. American NSA and British GCHQ spying on European leaders have already resulted in trust deficit between these allies. Europe is also wary of rising tension between Japan, supported by USA, and China which could have ripple effect on their economies and inflate energy prices. Almost third of European gas needs are met through Russian supplies that go through Ukraine. Other than that lingering Syrian crisis can spread to South Europe which is another concern.

In my view a hot pursuit by America to protect Ukraine from falling into Russian sphere has the potential to finally tear apart the trans-Atlantic alliance. The options available to President Obama are limited to suspend Russian membership in G8 or WTO, freezing of Russian assets held abroad and economic sanctions. All of these actions will adversely affect EU countries as well not just Russia which could force them not to support it. What can work is stationing of NATO troops in Poland and acceptance of Ukraine as a neutral buffer state between Russia and EU. Russia has already indicated that insensitivity of NATO, especially USA, to its security concerns could force it to rethink implementing the START agreement that was meant to reduce the arms race. During his first term in office President Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously pressed the restart button. It seems there was a malfunction of the button as it did not work so it seems more appropriate that they press that restart button again.

Interestingly China has so far been quiet about its position on Ukraine. She may use this to her advantage by seeking American support to legitimise her claims in South China Sea. China may also seek USA’s assurances to reduce growing tension with Japan.

President Putin has a unique profile among the current cadre of world leaders. He has been a soldier, an intelligence officer, a chief of staff and a top politician. No other leader can match this profile in terms of depth of understanding of various dynamics involved in solving a crisis including political, military and diplomatic. In the Georgian crisis, President Putin has shown that he can take calculated extreme measures to protect the interests of Russia. In the Ukraine he seems to be willing to raise the stakes once again to check how others respond. In USA many foreign political analysts express that saber rattling works on Russia, China and other aspiring powers. But they forget that other states can do the same and when the opponent is as strong as Russia then it is better for them to back down or risk destruction of balance of power that could lead to a third world war.

The other offensive initiated by President Putin is ideological. Putin has formed an alliance with Russian Orthodox Church to offer a counter narrative to Catholic, Protestant and Secular ideologies promoted by Western Europe and USA. It is meant to create an ideological divide into three blocks i.e., Catholic states led by Brazil, Argentine, Venezuela, Italy, Spain; a protestant bloc led by Britain, USA and Germany; and a secular bloc led by France & Scandinavian countries. Putin is offering a counter narrative to extreme left liberal ideas pursued by US and EU especially gay rights, institution of marriage and broken family values. This ideological struggle could strain the social order in many of these countries. Success in Ukraine could embolden Russia to develop a full frontal attack on the values promoted by West. Russia has already started developing an infra-structure for this war of ideology by creating extensive social media knowledge base, international radio and television distribution; and including culture on diplomatic agenda.

How does the crisis in Ukraine affect Pakistan? This crisis will have a direct impact on the future political settlement of Afghan crisis. Russia has already stated that presence of NATO forces beyond 2014 should be sanctioned by a new resolution in the UN Security Council rather than a bilateral agreement as these forces entered Afghanistan through a UN resolution. Recent Chinese overtures to find a regional solution to Afghanistan and rising tension in South China Sea may bring the Russian and Chinese position closer to each other. They may decide to propose a regional alliance of countries to ensure security in Afghanistan rather than allow USA military presence for another ten years. It seems that President Karzai is working on two parallel tracks. One with Iran-Afghanistan-India that could get support from Russia and the other Afghanistan-Pakistan-Saudi Arabia-Turkey which may get support from China. In this latter arrangement Turkey could guarantee accommodation of Iranian security and trade concerns. EU, USA and UK may come through in support of this arrangement in terms of providing aid and building economy.

Since the demise of USSR, it seems UN has lost its relevance in solving international crisis. USA ignored UN when it launched war against Iraq using blatant lies to build its case for war. Soon after Russia followed suit and ignored UN when it attacked Georgia to militarily solve crisis in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. America, in violation of UN charter of respecting sovereignty of other countries, has repeatedly used drones to kill suspected terrorists in Middle East, Pakistan, and Africa. Iran nuclear talks were held outside the domain of UN and Syrian crisis has been discussed bilaterally by Russia-USA. In the Ukraine crisis also there is no mention of a UN resolution. It is about time that this wasteful international body is either reformed or disbanded to give way to regional associations that might prove more effective.

There is no certainty in foreign affairs as the variables and players are too many. But it is important to outline key trends so that policy planners can take them into account in their calculations. But there is no doubt that we are living in interesting times and the world is about to enter a new phase of balance of power struggles.

Pakistan Today

The Indian polity and its indifference to corruption and communalism

India may not be coming apart at the seams but the polity is. Union Ministers are quarrelling among themselves. Feuds of bureaucrats are coming out in the open. Even intelligence agencies, the Intelligence Bureau and the Central Bureau of Investigation, are at loggerheads. Understanding between bureaucracy and the rulers has been reduced to trivialities. So much so that Finance Minister P. Chidambaram tells a top official to improve his English and the official, in turn, complains to his minister.

On top of it comes the manner in which the bill to bifurcate Andhra Pradesh was passed by the Lok Sabha. The Lok Sabha television channel, showing the proceedings, was stopped from telecasting live which negates the claim of transparency. MPs in favour of a united Andhra Pradesh were not allowed to participate in the debate because as many as 17 of them had been ousted from the house a couple of days earlier when they, including the Congress ministers, were making the passage of the bill impossible.

I am concerned over the precedent the Congress has set and the way the Speaker went along. Tomorrow if the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) comes to power and decides to have a legislation to put restrictions on the minorities, the party has only to point out that the then ruling Congress had suspended the basic norms of parliamentary democracy.

For nearly 50 days, there was the government of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) exposing the status quo governance which the two main parties, the Congress and the BJP, had perpetrated in the last three decades. In a way, the AAP too has become a regional party as supreme in Delhi as are Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress in West Bengal and Naveen Patnaik’s Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha. Indeed, politics of identity is the biggest danger to the democratic governance.

And this in no way is minimizing the harm the BJP is doing to the pluralistic ethos inherited from the days of freedom struggle. Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is getting large crowds by appealing to the Hindus to imbibe Hindu nationalism.

Muslims are justifiably feeling insecure because the soft kind of Hindutva is contaminating more and more people. To check this dangerous trend, the Congress is too weak and too clueless to show mirror to the nation. Regional parties feel that they can fill the space vacated by the Congress. Probably, they can but it will be at the expense of India’s unity. The constitution which binds all parts of the country together is being violated by some regional parties both in letter and spirit.

There is no option to the federal structure which the constituent assembly cherished and enshrined in the constitution. Odisha is a typical example of how the Indian polity works. The state is federal in character but dynastic in rule. It seldom defies the central government, however autocratic or arrogant in its posture at times.

But chief minister Naveen Patnaik’s rule is personal and he follows the footprints of his father, the late Biju Patnaik who governed in capricious and corrupt manner. He is still remembered because he gave identity to Oriyas who even today are fighting for a place under the sun. Naveen continues to remind people of his father’s legacy. I saw during my visit to Bhubaneswar hoardings all over the city with Biju Patnaik’s finger pointing towards Naveen as if he was reminding that his successor was his son. (There were also hoardings carrying only the photo of Rahul Gandhi without his mother, Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on either side of Naveen.)

Just as Sukhbir Singh Badal in Punjab, Akhilesh Yadav in UP or Farooq Abdullah in Jammu and Kashmir, Naveen Patnaik’s parentage is his asset. The polls in democracy are only up to elections. Subsequently, people cease to count during the five-year tenure of the state assembly. With a clutch of bureaucrats Naveen rules the state, much to the misery and helplessness of the voters. He is worse because he has eliminated leading politicians from his party methodically. He has thus become indispensible. In fact, Naveen’s strength is the absence of a leader in his own party and his adversary, the Congress. Former chief minister JB Patnaik preferred governorship of Assam to the ever increasing wrangles in the Congress.

What surprised me was that there was not even a hiss of AAP in the state. I thought that Odisha which has no opposition worth the name would be an ideal place for AAP. The party appears to have not gone beyond Delhi, western UP, Haryana and parts of Rajasthan. No doubt, its birth and success in Delhi evoked a tinge of idealism. But then Arvind Kejriwal became synonymous for the party. He did not allow anyone else to grow. In fact, some of his antics have doused the aspirations of the intelligentsia which saw in him an alternative.

Thank god, some other names who will contest the Lok Sabha elections have come out. They should underline the need for a collective leadership. Dozens of NGOs, with more enviable record than Kejriwal, are distant from the AAP. They should be persuaded to join the party which is, in fact, a platform for “thousands of mutinies” raging in the country. The AAP, however, needs to come out with its economic agenda because people have essentially voted against the Congress and the BJP.

The AAP has done well in exposing the central government on the price of natural gas. Even when the private company had signed a contract to purchase gas for $2.5 Btu till 2017, the price has been raised to $8 Btu. It is obvious that Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily, who has defended the increased price, must be mixed up with the scam, another in the Manmohan Singh regime, left with two months in tenure.

Corruption looks like becoming the poll issue. The Congress with numerous scams will be the target. Per force, the party has made communalism the main issue. Both corruption and communalism have to be confronted with a plank of cleanliness and pluralism. The AAP can plug these lines, provided it stays together.

Pakistan Today

Guantanamo, Cuba – a prison camps for terrorists? Not at the beginning. In the 1990s, it was set up as temporary camps for Cuban refugees who desperately wanted to flee the communist regime and live in the United States.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton decided that all those refugees would be held in Guantanamo, getting life skills and training before they would be allowed in to the US.

There were 13 camps run by a career American marine, Major General Michael Lehnert.

Then, when the US was attacked on September 11, 2001, and responded with military action in Afghanistan, the country needed a place for its prisoners of war. After considerable debate, the Bush administration found such a place in Guantanamo; and in Lehnert, they had found the man to run it.

“The theory, I think, in Washington was, well, if he knows how to do migrants he probably knows how to do enemy combatants who are detainees. In point of fact, there is a vast difference,” Lehnert tells Al Jazeera about his role at the facility.

The general charged ahead and in just days oversaw the construction of a centre for holding what, at the time, were believed to be terrorist suspects.

“There was a belief on the part of many people in the administration that these folks [who were sent to Guantanamo] were a gold mine of information, so there was a desire to take them somewhere where they could be interrogated,” he says.

But since then, his creation has become an international eyesore – not just for critics abroad but also for Lehnert himself, who raises concerns about the rule of law at Guantanamo.

“The argument being made in Washington was that since these were enemy combatants, but not necessarily a representative of any sovereign nation, that they didn’t fall under the strict definition of a prisoner of war. And that because we were in Cuba, in an extra-legal area, that the rules, the international agreements and the constitution, did not necessarily apply,” he says.

“I didn’t share that view … Because every military officer takes an oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. It’s an oath that we take … our first allegiance is to the constitution.”

Now, the man who built the US prison in Guantanamo says it is time for it to close.

“Guantanamo has become a poster child and a recruiting post for al-Qaeda. It has become an example – a bad example – to the rest of the world that America does not support and follow the rule of law,” he says.

“With the opportunity to see the end of combat operations in Afghanistan, there is a natural inflection point where we ought to be putting all our efforts into closing Guantanamo.”

This week, retired Major General Michael Lehnert joins Rosiland Jordan to talk to Al Jazeera about the future of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Then, when the US was attacked on September 11, 2001, and responded with military action in Afghanistan, the country needed a place for its prisoners of war. After considerable debate, the Bush administration found such a place in Guantanamo; and in Lehnert, they had found the man to run it.

“The theory, I think, in Washington was, well, if he knows how to do migrants he probably knows how to do enemy combatants who are detainees. In point of fact, there is a vast difference,” Lehnert tells Al Jazeera about his role at the facility.

The general charged ahead and in just days oversaw the construction of a centre for holding what, at the time, were believed to be terrorist suspects.

“There was a belief on the part of many people in the administration that these folks [who were sent to Guantanamo] were a gold mine of information, so there was a desire to take them somewhere where they could be interrogated,” he says.

But since then, his creation has become an international eyesore – not just for critics abroad but also for Lehnert himself, who raises concerns about the rule of law at Guantanamo.

“The argument being made in Washington was that since these were enemy combatants, but not necessarily a representative of any sovereign nation, that they didn’t fall under the strict definition of a prisoner of war. And that because we were in Cuba, in an extra-legal area, that the rules, the international agreements and the constitution, did not necessarily apply,” he says.

“I didn’t share that view … Because every military officer takes an oath to support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic. It’s an oath that we take … our first allegiance is to the constitution.”

Now, the man who built the US prison in Guantanamo says it is time for it to close.

“Guantanamo has become a poster child and a recruiting post for al-Qaeda. It has become an example – a bad example – to the rest of the world that America does not support and follow the rule of law,” he says.

“With the opportunity to see the end of combat operations in Afghanistan, there is a natural inflection point where we ought to be putting all our efforts into closing Guantanamo.”

This week, retired Major General Michael Lehnert joins Rosiland Jordan to talk to Al Jazeera about the future of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Aljazeera

Armies are like newspapers. They have become 21st-century anachronisms. To survive, they must adapt. For the press, that means accommodating the demands of the Internet. For the United States Army, it means adjusting to a changing security environment. Nostalgia about a hallowed past is a luxury that neither armies nor newspapers can afford to indulge.

So the hand-wringing triggered by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s plan to reduce the Army’s size, while predictable, is beside the point. Yes, those cuts would leave the United States with its fewest active-duty soldiers since the eve of World War II.

So what?

This isn’t 1940. Moreover, as an instrument of coercion, that smaller army would be more lethal than the much larger one that helped defeat Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. Given a choice between a few hundred of today’s Abrams tanks and a few thousand vintage Shermans, Gen. George Patton would not hesitate to choose the former.

More relevant questions are: Do we need even a few hundred tanks? And for what? In its 2012 report to Congress , the Army’s senior leadership described the service as “The Nation’s Force of Decisive Action.” In the 2013 version, they “guarantee the agility, versatility and depth to Prevent, Shape and Win.“

Yet to judge by outcomes, the Army is not a force for decisive action. It cannot be counted on to achieve definitive results in a timely manner. In Afghanistan and Iraq, actions that momentarily appeared to be decisive served as preludes to protracted and inconclusive wars. As for preventing, shaping and winning, this surely qualifies as bluster — the equivalent of a newspaper promising advertisers that it will quadruple its print circulation.

Washington’s preoccupation with budgets provides Army leaders — and the entire national security establishment — an excuse to dodge core questions. The most pressing: What should the nation expect of its armed forces?

After the Cold War and especially after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, expectations of what the U.S. military should be able to accomplish expanded considerably. Defense per se figured as an afterthought, eclipsed by the conviction that projecting power held the key to transforming the world from what it is into what Washington would like it to be: orderly, predictable, respectful of American values and deferential to U.S. prerogatives.

The “Global War on Terror” put that proposition to the test, with disappointing results. Putting boots on the ground produced casualties and complications, but little by way of peace and harmony. It did nothing to enhance the standing and reputation of the United States. And as a means to engineer positive political change, America’s Army proved sadly wanting. That’s not a knock against our soldiers. They performed admirably, even if the same cannot be said for those who conceived and mismanaged the wars our soldiers were sent to fight.

Americans today are not inclined to indulge this experiment further. With his widely noted preference for drones and Special Operations forces, President Barack Obama has tacitly endorsed the public’s view — even if his improvised way of war is devoid of any serious strategic rationale.

The principal military lesson of the Global War on Terror affirms what ought to have been the principal military lesson of the Cold War: Force held in readiness has far greater political utility than force expended. Armies are well suited to defending and containing. But invading and occupying countries are fraught with risk.

It’s the Bush Doctrine, just inverted: Rather than engaging in preventive war, commit troops only after exhausting every other alternative. As long as that approach pertains — may it do so for many decades — the projection of U.S. military might will come in the form of bombs and missiles, falling under the purview of naval and air forces.

What role, then, remains for the United States Army? The honorable and necessary one of defending this country. For that task, absent the emergence of a major Mexican or Canadian threat, a smaller Army should serve just fine.

Bacevich is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His most recent book is “Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country.“

Magic Valley