Nuclear Notebook: Worldwide deployments of nuclear weapons

An article by By Robert S. Norris & Hans M. Kristensen in Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in Nov 2009

As of the end of 2009, we estimate that there are approximately 23,360 nuclear weapons located at some 111 sites in 14 countries. Nearly one-half of these weapons are active or operationally deployed.

By far the largest concentrations of nuclear weapons reside in Russia and the United States, which possess 96 percent of the total global inventory (91 percent if you count only operational nuclear weapons). In addition to the seven other countries with nuclear weapon stockpiles (Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan), five non-nuclear NATO allies (Belgium, Germany,Italy, the Netherlands, and Turkey) host about 200 U.S. nuclear bombs at six air bases.



The United States.

At the end of the Cold War, the United States maintained thousands of nuclear weapons outside of its borders on land and on the high seas.2 Ever since, however, Washington has significantly consolidated its arsenal—a trend that is likely to continue. For example, the single remaining nuclear weapons storage facility in Germany is in stark contrast to the estimated 75 distinct nuclear weapons storage facilities that were located there in the mid-1980s. Today, U.S. weapons are stored at a total of 21 locations in 13 states and 5 European countries.

Russia.

We estimate that Russia stores nuclear weapons permanently at 48 domestic locations, a dramatic reduction compared to the roughly 500 storage facilities it used before the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Soviet Union’s collapse and the end
of the Cold War triggered a withdrawal of Soviet nuclear weapons from forward locations in Eastern Europe, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. In all, Moscow consolidated to less than 250 sites by the mid-1990s, fewer than 100 sites by 1997, and about 90 sites by 1998.

Since then, additional consolidation has taken place because of (1) the declared completion of the movement of all nonstrategic warheads to central storage locations by 2002; (2) consolidation of warhead production at two facilities; and (3) additional strategic force reductions under the Moscow Treaty.4 (Russia provides information about the location of deployed strategic nuclear weapons accountable
under the 1991 START treaty. The locations of other categories of nuclear weapons and their warheads, however, are not disclosed.)

Many sites that once stored weapons are still maintained because a nearby base—such as bases for Tu-22M Backfire and Su-24 Fencer bombers or Il-38 anti-submarine aircraft—continues to have a nuclear strike mission. The Russian Black Sea Fleet based in Ukraine also has a nuclear capability, but the weapons probably have been withdrawn to central storage in Russia. If the fleet relocates to Novorossiysk
when the lease of the Sevastopol area expires in 2017, a nuclear weapons storage facility might be built there as well.

Russian permanent nuclear weapon storage locations fall into three main categories: operational warheads at Strategic Rocket Force, air force, and navy bases; reserve/retired warheads at national-level storage sites; and warheads at assembly/disassembly factories.

One uncertainty when counting Russian nuclear weapons storage sites is whether the number includes overall sites or individual storage facilities co-located within a site. For example, the Defense Department’s Threat Reduction Program statement in 2000 indicated that Russia had 123 nuclear weapons storage locations where it has requested security assistance, apparently counting separately fenced
areas within large national storage facilities. As a result, a large storage site with eight separately fenced areas would have been counted as eight sites instead of one.6 Using similar counting methods, the National Nuclear Security Administration recently listed 73 Russian warhead sites, including 39 navy sites, 25 Strategic Rocket Force sites (on 11 bases), and nine 12th Main Directorate sites.7 Our best estimate is 48 permanent nuclear weapons storage sites, many of which include several individually fenced storage bunkers.

Britain and France.

London and Paris have reduced the size of their arsenals and limited where their weapons are deployed. Britain only has one type of nuclear weapon, the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), since nuclear-powered ballistic submarines located at two facilities in Scotland. Facilities that previously housed navy strike and depth bombs and air forcebombs have been closed. France has retained two types of nuclear weapons: SLBMs at a submarine base in Bretagne and air-to-surface missiles for aircraft located at three air force bases and one
naval base.

China, Pakistan, and India.

Beijing, Islamabad, and New Delhi are quantitatively and qualitatively increasing their arsenals and deploying weapons at more sites, yet the locations are difficult to pinpoint. For example, no reliable public information exists on where Pakistan or India produces its nuclear weapons. Thus, we have used commercial satellite images, expert studies, and local news reports and articles to make the assumption that nuclear weapons are likely to be at, or near, wherever nuclear-capable weapon systems are deployed.

Whereas many of the Chinese bases are known, this is not the case in Pakistan and India, where we have found no credible information that identifies permanent nuclear weapons storage locations. (Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are not believed to be fully operational under normal circumstances; India is thought to store its nuclear warheads and bombs in central storage locations rather than on bases with operational forces.) But, since all three countries are expanding their arsenals, new bases and storage sites probably are under construction.

Israel and North Korea.

Israel is a wild card because of the opacity of its nuclear weapons program. In other words, it’s difficult to know whether or not there are any changes in its nuclear arsenal. If so, they seem to be modest and probably rely on existing facilities. Either way, Israel’s nuclear weapons are not believed to be fully operational under normal circumstances. We are not aware of credible information on how North Korea
has weaponized its nuclear weapons capability, much less where those weapons are stored. We also take note that a recent U.S. Air Force intelligence report did not list any of North Korea’s ballistic missiles as nuclear-capable.
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Can Tiger attack Dragon?

There are scores of articles in every major newspaper and every major magazine comparing India with China on various economic progress indicators. There are even books written about Tiger of India pitted against Dragon of China. To those who base their opinions on such reports, articles and books, it looks as though India is posing a strong completion to China, when in fact every measurable economic indicator suggests that China is clearly leading India on all fronts. Moreover the gap between these two countries is only widening with each passing year. And yet, many Indian commentators continue to complacently believe that India has some edge somewhere when in fact none exists.




The tone of these reports and analysis comparing India with China suggest that India is actually inching towards China. That is not the case. In reality China is leaving behind India by a bigger margin every year. It is becoming tougher and tougher for India to catch up. In the last few years, Chinese have built the biggest dam on the planet, built the longest bridges, built the fastest cities, built their own planes, submarines, ships, magnetic trains, and even the highest railways while India continued to lay another layer of asphalt on its decrepit roads after each rainfall.
India is not even showing a promise of catching up. None of its policies suggest this. None of its initiatives give a glimmer of hope. Even the Indian industry is not thinking big. It is still content to play a small game.



Is English really India’s edge?


Indian commentators continue to tell us that all this China-leading-India comments are based in myth, because Indians have English which Chinese don’t have.
Is English really India’s edge? Only when India looks at itself as servicing the West using its BPOs then yes, English gives India the edge. However, if the competitor is bent on actually creating its own technology product industry to take on the West, does English still matter?

When was the last time a Japanese car company could not sell its cars because the makers were not good at English? When was the last time someone in Europe balked at buying a Sony Walkman because its makers couldn’t speak English? When it comes to China, how come their lack of good English not stop Huawei from becoming world #2 in telecom equipment? How come it did not stop Lenovo, Haier and ZTE from becoming leading global brands? Just to give a perspective to Indian readers – 2 telecom equipment companies of China, Huawei and ZTE put together made USD 30 Billion in 2008 while the entire IT-ITES industry of India put together made USD 58 Billion in 2008-09.

China is changing the rules of the games. It is taking on the West where the West has dominated so far, bringing the fight closer to the technology leaders, while India has conveniently told itself that it will not even play this game.
Indians are in self-denial. They foolishly believe everything Thomas Friedman tells them, and they are happy serving their European and American masters setting up BPOs, KPOs, LPOs, software services, helping them do their things in a cheap and cost-effective way, while Chinese are poised to take on these European and American masters head on. It’s as though the Chinese have completely overthrown their colonial inferiority complex.

For many years now, Indians gloated over the characterization that India is good at software services while China is good at manufacturing. This was a convenient characterization that only Indians believed because the books were written in English which only Indians could understand. Chinese blissfully unaware of what Friedman said were not constrained by this characterization and hence clearly violated all hierarchies.

Indians limited themselves to serving the West. When they looked in the mirror, they said, “I am an Indian. I am good at services. I should just stick to it”. That India is only good at software services became a cultural phenomenon with every major industry bigwig repeating it on various forums. Even Indian government fell into this trap where all incentives and subsidies were geared only to promote the software services companies. Go to a hardware park in India and compare it with a software park in India, you will recognize the step-motherly treatment meted out to the hardware companies.

India made no attempts at taking on China in manufacturing. Nor did they attempt to take on the West to go up the value chain to actually deliver technology and products. The Flat World theories told them that they can just concentrate on what they were good at, that is Software Services, KPOs, BPOs and LPOs, giving up on manufacturing forever thereby handing over the race on a silver platter to China, and giving up on technology products thereby continuing to serve the West.

China not only won the race in manufacturing and consolidated its position, it is now entering the technology product space, the domain held closely by the European, American and Japanese technology leaders. What more, it has started to beat these leaders at their own game. Huawei has recently won the contract to supply 3G equipment in Norway, the bastion of Nokia. While India made feeble attempts with C-DOT and ITI who are not even able to sell into BSNL, China has launched not one but two major telecom companies – Huawei and ZTE, that not only sells within their countries, they sell to BSNL also.

CK Prahlad in his closing comments at Nasscom Summit of February 2009 advised that Indian companies should foster more startups because they are the ones which bring vibrancy to the economy. His advice comes late, and even when it comes, it falls on deaf ears.

Infosys, TCS and Wipro, the giants of Indian software services which Thomas Friedman lauds, did not do much to sponsor or promote startups in India (barring few exceptions).

Their presence in India did not help any startup, except that many ex-employees went out and started companies on their own without any support or encouragement from these parent companies.

Meanwhile, China has launched extensive nationwide program to promote entrepreneurship in China. I was told that even a district head, equivalent to Indian District Collector, could invest up to half a million US dollars to a company that sets up shop in his district. Writing about China, a report says:
An analysis of documenting the tremendous growth of the Chinese entrepreneurial and cultural initiatives since the demise of Communist leader Mao Zedong reveals that this accounts for the Chinese economy’s double digit growth in the last couple of decades. [1]

It is clear to some countries that startups are essential for the growth in economy. Not so, thinks India. Indian has never believed in startups. They don’t think they add up to anything. The government is obsessed with giants because they look at them as employment provider – therefore the bigger the employer the better it is. Not a single major initiative has been taken in the last few years to promote startups in India. While the government boasts of loans to SMEs, when startups actually approach the banks, they feign ignorance of any such initiative.

All initiatives and decision making bodies in India are headed by people who have been good software services and therefore there is not a single policy that actually aids home grown brands, products and technologies. STPI still thinks that software is exported only as floppy, ftp or a CD. If you put that software in telecom equipment, a mobile handset, or a DVD player, then it does not recognize it as software and hence are not given the incentives. If Apple existed in India, there is not category for recognizing it. The prevailing mood is clear – you serve a foreign master you get the incentives; you try to become a master you don’t get any incentives.

Also, there are not many places a startup can raise funds in India. That’s why most startups continue to be family-owned or family-backed. First generation entrepreneurs find it impossible to raise money. The number of VC firms in India is limited while the government funds are small. Most government funds are small and therefore their mandate does not allow them to fund big ideas, while the miniscule few bigger size funds do not fund loss-making companies – which completely rules out startups.

China, on the other hand, is actively promoting startups through various forums and incentives. Though it is a communist country it hosts millions of entrepreneurs and VC firms which is aiding its economy.

China currently has over 200 million entrepreneurs and it houses 200 venture capital firms. The country accounts for 24.6% of the total entrepreneurship activities across the world, far ahead of Indian at 13.9% and the US at 14%, according to a survey by Global Entrepreneurship Monitor.

About 116 Chinese companies are listed on NASDAQ, as against 2568 US firms, Israel’s 63, and a handful from India, says the study. [1]
China is even popularizing entrepreneurship as a cultural attitude with various initiatives including TV programs.

…a Chinese reality TV show “Win in China” has received applications for entrepreneurial ventures from over 1,20,000 aspirants. Of these, 108 were chosen for prize money and working capital of $5 Million. [1]
Indians don’t know what to do. They are confused. They don’t know if they are socialist or capitalist. The reality is that they are clueless – they are neither capitalist nor socialist. China is both socialist and capitalist playing these two cards really well. The only floating hope for Indians has been their mastery of English. And the following observation should submerge that hope as well.

To give competition to India and other cost-effective English speaking countries like the Philippines, millions of Chinese students are learning English systematically. “China will become the largest English speaking geography in the world by the end of this year”, Compton added. [1]
What’s your opinion?
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EU Presidency - Figurehead or Powerful Blair

In the end, Tony Blair’s great European adventure seems to have been a balancing act too far. As prime minister, Mr Blair built a career on political acrobatics. He was the Labour politician who left in place great chunks of Thatcherism. As prime minister, he swore he was a true European (the “most European of Englishmen”, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy once said) even as he defended opt-outs from such policies as ending internal European Union passport controls. More than any British leader, he backed closer European defence co-operation—and then he split Europe by joining America in Iraq.

But high-wire acts hurt when they fail. And, at an EU summit in Brussels on October 29th and 30th, Mr Blair fell, watching his bid to become the first permanent president of the European Council collapse. Mr Blair needed leaders to agree that he was a sincere European, and they could not. He needed his fellow socialists to admit he was one of them, and they declined (the centre-left Austrian chancellor, Werner Faymann, said Mr Blair represented “Bush and the war in Iraq”.)



The post at issue is not “president of Europe” but a narrower job, created by the Lisbon treaty, to chair meetings of the union’s 27 national leaders, and speak for them abroad, for up to five years. It replaces a rotating system under which countries set the agenda for, and chaired, EU summits for six months.

EU jobs were not on the agenda of this summit. Mr Blair was not even in Brussels. But he dominated the corridor talk. Officially, EU leaders were waiting for final treaty ratification, which came a few days later on November 3rd, after the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, ended a one-man campaign to resist Lisbon and signed it, paving the way for another summit to discuss top jobs. Yet even before Mr Klaus climbed down, leaders had found proxy means of debating Mr Blair.

At the October summit, socialists from Spain, Portugal, Austria and the European Parliament said their block should get the other big job created by Lisbon, that of high representative for foreign policy. Because the left controls a minority of EU governments and cannot claim both top jobs, that was code for ditching Mr Blair. Meeting socialist colleagues before the summit, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, testily urged them to “get real” and back Mr Blair. His browbeating failed. Euro-socialists say their top candidates for high representative are David Miliband, the British foreign secretary (who may prefer to stay in national politics), and Italy’s Massimo D’Alema, a wily ex-communist who was quite a successful foreign minister.

On the right, Mr Sarkozy declined to repeat his endorsement of Mr Blair. Sphinx-like, he would say only that EU jobs rarely went to early front-runners. In late-night briefings, the French murmured that Britain’s EU opt-outs were “not an advantage” for Mr Blair. In truth, Mr Sarkozy’s chief concern is to stick close to the German chancellor, Angela Merkel. He announced proudly that France and Germany would jointly support candidates for the top jobs. Ms Merkel, a Christian Democrat, is more tribal than Mr Sarkozy. She reportedly feels the centre-right should provide the first council president, as it controls most national governments. The president should also come from a “small country”, she briefed German reporters, at least this time.

That will have big consequences for the EU and its image. Whatever people think of Mr Blair, making him president would have signalled that the EU wanted a spokesman with direct access to world leaders. Mr Blair’s apparent demise as a candidate (British officials loyally insist he still has a chance, once EU leaders ponder the unpalatable alternatives) signals the opposite. So does the rise of such alternative frontrunners as the Dutch or Luxembourgeois prime ministers, or the current darling of the corridors, Herman Van Rompuy, a clever, Haiku-writing ascetic who is prime minister of Belgium. Mr Van Rompuy, a Christian Democrat, is an Atlanticist and (a bit) less of a Euro-fanatic than previous Belgian prime ministers. He is endearingly modest: indulging in his first foreign caravan holiday this summer, he declared that at his age “you are allowed to go a bit mad”. But as prime minister, his main experience of international disputes is a Belgo-Dutch spat over the dredging of the River Scheldt.

Turning inwards, not outwards
When speaking jointly as the European Council, it turns out, EU leaders do not want to talk to the world. They want to talk to themselves. Pointing out that the new high representative will have lots of money and staff, as people in Brussels do, cannot hide this essential lack of ambition: he or she will be a peer of the world’s foreign ministers, not of its leaders.

The Blair saga also casts alarming light on Britain’s Conservative Party. Their foreign affairs chief, William Hague, told EU ambassadors in London that making Mr Blair president would be a “hostile” act. David Cameron, the Tory leader, called for a modest “chairmanic” head of the European Council. The Tories offered two arguments: that voters were denied a referendum on Lisbon so Mr Blair had no right to the job, and that Mr Blair would make the post too big a deal.

Britain was, indeed, denied a Lisbon referendum. But it is hard to see how Tory interests are advanced by helping a Belgian federalist into a top EU job. An even bigger Tory mistake is the belief that a modest president will mean a modest Europe. It will not. It means, rather, that the bit of the EU machine that directly represents national governments will have a weaker voice, to the advantage of the more federalist institutions: the European Commission and the European Parliament.

Europe is about balancing interests. Mr Blair knew that—just a little too well for his own, or Europe’s, good.
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DEFENDING THE NUKE ARSENAL

An article by Pulitzer Prize Winner Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker on 9th Nov 2009

"In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.


Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”

Clinton’s words sounded reassuring, and several current and former officials also said in interviews that the Pakistan Army was in full control of the nuclear arsenal. But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead.
On April 29th, President Obama was asked at a news conference whether he could reassure the American people that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal could be kept away from terrorists. Obama’s answer remains the clearest delineation of the Administration’s public posture. He was, he said, “gravely concerned” about the fragility of the civilian government of President Asif Ali Zardari. “Their biggest threat right now comes internally,” Obama said. “We have huge . . . national-security interests in making sure that Pakistan is stable and that you don’t end up having a nuclear-armed militant state.” The United States, he said, could “make sure that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is secure—primarily, initially, because the Pakistan Army, I think, recognizes the hazards of those weapons’ falling into the wrong hands.”
The questioner, Chuck Todd, of NBC, began asking whether the American military could, if necessary, move in and secure Pakistan’s bombs. Obama did not let Todd finish. “I’m not going to engage in hypotheticals of that sort,” he said. “I feel confident that the nuclear arsenal will remain out of militant hands. O.K.?”

Obama did not say so, but current and former officials said in interviews in Washington and Pakistan that his Administration has been negotiating highly sensitive understandings with the Pakistani military. These would allow specially trained American units to provide added security for the Pakistani arsenal in case of a crisis. At the same time, the Pakistani military would be given money to equip and train Pakistani soldiers and to improve their housing and facilities—goals that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the chief of the Pakistan Army, has long desired. In June, Congress approved a four-hundred-million-dollar request for what the Administration called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund, providing immediate assistance to the Pakistan Army for equipment, training, and “renovation and construction.”

The secrecy surrounding the understandings was important because there is growing antipathy toward America in Pakistan, as well as a history of distrust. Many Pakistanis believe that America’s true goal is not to keep their weapons safe but to diminish or destroy the Pakistani nuclear complex. The arsenal is a source of great pride among Pakistanis, who view the weapons as symbols of their nation’s status and as an essential deterrent against an attack by India. (India’s first nuclear test took place in 1974, Pakistan’s in 1998.)

A senior Pakistani official who has close ties to Zardari exploded with anger during an interview when the subject turned to the American demands for more information about the arsenal. After the September 11th attacks, he said, there had been an understanding between the Bush Administration and then President Pervez Musharraf “over what Pakistan had and did not have.” Today, he said, “you’d like control of our day-to-day deployment. But why should we give it to you? Even if there was a military coup d’état in Pakistan, no one is going to give up total control of our nuclear weapons. Never. Why are you not afraid of India’s nuclear weapons?” the official asked. “Because India is your friend, and the longtime policies of America and India converge. Between you and the Indians, you will fuck us in every way. The truth is that our weapons are less of a problem for the Obama Administration than finding a respectable way out of Afghanistan.”

The ongoing consultation on nuclear security between Washington and Islamabad intensified after the announcement in March of President Obama’s so-called Af-Pak policy, which called upon the Pakistan Army to take more aggressive action against Taliban enclaves inside Pakistan. I was told that the understandings on nuclear coöperation benefitted from the increasingly close relationship between Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Kayani, his counterpart, although the C.I.A. and the Departments of Defense, State, and Energy have also been involved."
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How US Can Prevent the Next Crisis?

Even as efforts to recover from the current crisis go forward, the United States should launch new policies to avoid large external deficits, balance the budget, and adapt to a global currency system less centered on the dollar. Although it will take a number of years to fully implement these measures, they should be initiated promptly both to bolster confidence in the recovery and to build the foundation for a sustainable U.S. economy over the long haul. This is not just an economic imperative but a foreign policy and national security one as well.



A first step is to recognize the dangers of standing pat. For example, the United States' trade and current account deficits have declined sharply over the last three years, but absent new policy action, they are likely to start climbing again, rising to record levels and far beyond. Or take the dollar. Its role as the dominant international currency has made it much easier for the United States to finance, and thus run up, large trade and current account deficits with the rest of the world over the past 30 years. These huge inflows of foreign capital, however, turned out to be an important cause of the current economic crisis, because they contributed to the low interest rates, excessive liquidity, and loose monetary policies that -- in combination with lax financial supervision -- brought on the overleveraging and underpricing of risk that produced the meltdown.

It has long been known that large external deficits pose substantial risks to the U.S. economy because foreign investors might at some point refuse to finance these deficits on terms compatible with U.S. prosperity. Any sudden stop in lending to the United States would drive the dollar down, push inflation and interest rates up, and perhaps bring on a hard landing for the United States -- and the world economy at large. But it is now evident that it can be equally or even more damaging if foreign investors do finance large U.S. deficits for prolonged periods.

U.S. policymakers, therefore, must recognize that large external deficits, the dominance of the dollar, and the large capital inflows that necessarily accompany deficits and currency dominance are no longer in the United States' national interest. Washington should welcome initiatives put forward over the past year by China and others to begin a serious discussion of reforming the international monetary system.
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Elephant vs Dragon

Myanmar/Burma was once a part of British India. Does that make it ours again? Tibet once extended dominion over parts of China. Does that make China a part of Tibet today? Tibet once controlled parts of Arunachal Pradesh, albeit tenaciously and China today rules Tibet by force. Does that make parts of Arunachal Pradesh a part of China? Well, China indeed does think so. Logical? Yes and No.

No for the simple reason that such extrapolations and corollaries would confuse an already confused world. Logical, yes, because China is pricking India. Not just in Arunachal Pradesh , but elsewhere too. It is known to be stoking Maoist uprisings in Nepal--our neighbor. It is known to have supplied nuclear technology to Pakistan--our neighbor. It is supportive of the military Junta in Myanmar - our neighbor. It has close defence ties with Bangladesh, our neighbor. It is encircling India with a new sphere of influence. Why? Simple, the world is like its people. Countries are like people--groups of people, masses of people. Alone, a person would rule the world. Bring in two, and egos would begin to clash. Have three and politics will begin with one allying with the other of the remaining two. This is how humans behave and countries do. No one knows the future, yet everyone tries to control it. China is trying to control a future it knows will be an intensely competitive one. It will be competing against India for almost everything that matters. And it is trying to find friends and allies. And it is also trying to find issues and foes.

I don't want to sound nightmarish, but this is a blog and so I can say it. I believe that within our lifetimes we will see immense disturbance in the world we live in. Immense turmoil and upheaval, and all of it human engineered.

India is a rising power, but so is China. India is a democracy, China is a communist command economy with broad sweeps of capitalism washing over it creating a measure of discord amongst its people. China is progressing fast, India is progressing just a wee bit slower. But India is a free nation for its citizens. It is a democracy. China apparently is, but really is not. It is not a democracy. China has its problems of disparate growth with wealth concentrated in its eastern sea board. India has 1.2 billion people. China has 1.4 billion. Both nations are consuming ever increasing food, meat, energy and information. Already, everywhere in the world, there is competition between India and China for resources as both find themselves bidding for the same items on the world's markets. As both become prosperous, the pressures and demands will only increase. Today the one that has more money calls the shots. Tomorrow when both have loads of it and when mere money will not seem to matter, the games will begin. What we are seeing today is a mere prelude to it all. The same oil fields, the same mines, the same corporates, the same banks and both India and China out with their wallets.

And I shudder to think, that we think we have evolved and become more civilized. It was but 65 years back when the Second World War was raging and millions were dying brutal deaths in war and concentration camps. 65 years is not too long back and too little a time span to have changed fundamental human nature. We want things. We are materialistic. When we don't get things we tend to fight and when stakes are high we tend to kill. We are like that. Dangerous animals. Don't misunderstand forks and knives on well laid out tables with black liveried waiters for civilization. Perhaps we also like to masquerade.
So what am I trying to say here? Just that behind a complex interplay of politics lie simple fights for resources. Power is tempting because it provides access to resources, whatever they may be.

When China fumes over Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh, it is simply flexing muscles and asserting claims over resources if not indicating that it is capable of being a nuisance. But perhaps this time China has overplayed its cards. Tired of being quiet and hoping China will glower, hiss and then go away, India has realized that China will never let up. How can it? It needs to gobble up more and more of the worlds resources to keep itself going and growing. And so does India. For the first time the Tibet card is turning out to be hugely important. There are 1.2 lakh Tibetans in India, and the younger generation wants freedom. It wants China out of Tibet. Totally and completely. Tibet is the biggest buffer India could hope for between China and itself. Today China stands on India's borders using the Tibetan plateau. But Tibet even today is restive. It is not China. And as Tenzin Tsundue, the Tibetan writer and activist in Dharamshala who climbs hotel walls and displays Tibetan flags to ruffle Chinese visitors says, India has nurtured many Tibetans like him who have not seen Tibet ever, yet are aggressive supporters of complete freedom and willing to fight and die for their homeland. The Dalai Lamas presence at Tawang in Arunachal will be the best symbolism for India's territorial integrity. China will look on impotently as the Dalai Lama prays at the monastery that had welcomed him when he trekked into India in 1959.

President Obama has designated a special envoy to interface with the Dalai Lama. Why? Because he is important. Why? Because he exerts influence over Tibetans. So? He can swing the direction in which the Tibetan protest winds blow for China. So? He can be an important influence in keeping China in check. So? China can be prevented from focusing on destabilizing other countries, because it will need to fear its own destabilization. So? Americans will find a balance of powers developing and keeping each other busy, in this case India and China. So? America continues to exert influence over both as they balance each other. And influence gets you money. And resources. See, we come back to the same thing...resources?

The Tibetan movement is focused and clear. The Muslim-dominated Uighur movement is still nebulous and disparate. China also wants to use the present situation to create an Indian bogey. When internal unrest threatens to loom, create the bogey of an external threat to unite its own people. Taiwan is too small a threat, Japan is farther away, with Russia there are no serious issues, India is the best bet to project as a threat. So claims over Arunachal, India's protests, China's counter protests, the Dalai Lama somewhere in between - part of the great game. After all we are humans. Lets not forget that.
So what will happen? Obviously, I don't know! But what I do know is--the games have begun. The world will compete and then fight. Again. I don't think we can wish it away. What do you think?
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The Fall of The Wall

Twenty years ago, the people of Berlin brought down the wall that had divided their city, not only ending the tragic chapter of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, but also closing the book on post-war American grand strategy. For forty years, the strategy of containment guided American elites of both parties; two decades later, U.S. policymakers are still searching in vain for containment's replacement.

The development of coherent strategies for using American power remains a vital goal in what has become an increasingly complex world. The U.S. military is overstretched thanks to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the U.S. economy remains fragile. Transnational threats are abundant. It's no wonder that a misplaced nostalgia exists for the supposed simplicity of the Cold War, when the United States faced one major enemy.



In 1946 in his famous "Long Telegram" and a year later in the "X article" in Foreign Affairs, George Kennan laid out a rationale for using the instruments of U.S. power--military, economic, and political--to keep that enemy, the USSR, from expanding the areas under its control. Kennan's main focus was on keeping core areas of the world, such as Western Europe and the Persian Gulf, out of Soviet hands and on putting pressure on the Soviet system itself. "The United States," he argued, "has it in its power to increase enormously the strains under which Soviet policy must operate, to force upon the Kremlin a far greater degree of moderation and circumspection than it has had to observe in recent years, and in this way to promote tendencies which must eventually find their outlet in either the breakup or the gradual mellowing of Soviet power. For no mystical, Messianic movement--and particularly not that of the Kremlin--can face frustration indefinitely without eventually adjusting itself in one way or another to the logic of that state of affairs." It was a brilliant statement, as the events of 1989 to 1991 magically demonstrated.

That isn't to say there weren't huge debates about how best to pursue a strategy of containment, and as Yale historian John Lewis Gaddis has suggested, it's more accurate to recognize that the United States pursued "strategies" of containment. Kennan himself decried what he viewed as the over-militarization of the policy. Huge splits emerged in the country over the appropriateness of containment policies as applied toward Vietnam in the Johnson and Nixon administrations and toward Central America in the Reagan years. But by and large, a bipartisan consensus held that containing America's Cold War enemy was the vital, central purpose of U.S. foreign policy.

Post-Cold War Policy Drift

When the Berlin Wall fell, the American foreign policy establishment was suddenly adrift. There were brilliant and widely read analyses of the world produced in the early post-Cold War period such as Francis Fukuyama's End of History and Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, but those were assessments not strategies.

The most developed strategy early on was articulated by Dick Cheney's Pentagon in the notorious 1992 Defense Planning Guidance, which was leaked to the New York Times. "Our first objective," an early draft read, "is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union." What made the document controversial was that it argued that the United States needed to prevent not only its adversaries from gaining greater power in core regions, but also major allies such as Germany and Japan.

The White House disavowed the Cheney document, and George H.W. Bush's national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, later described the Pentagon's approach at the time as "nutty."

What became clear by the time Bill Clinton became president was that formulating a simple and relevant new strategic purpose for the United States was no easy task. Clinton often harangued his aides for failing to come up with a Kennanesque vision, believing that he needed a replacement for containment to explain his foreign policy to the American people. His top State Department advisers even arranged a dinner in 1994 with Kennan, who was still going strong at age 90. The old master's response to their quest? Forget the bumper sticker, he said, the world was now too complex. Try, instead, he suggested, "for a thoughtful paragraph or two."

Kennan had hit upon a central truth of the post-Cold War world: with no single enemy and a range of diverse challenges--including proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, climate change, pandemics, terrorism, the rise of new great powers, and globalization--there would be no bumper sticker.

"War on Terror"

In case there was any doubt as to the wisdom of Kennan's suggestion to the Clinton team, consider the Bush administration's response to the attacks of 9/11: the "War on Terror," a simple and clear statement, just like containment. But even the president's top advisers were uncomfortable with the approach. "I don't think I would have called it a 'war on terror,'" Donald Rumsfeld admitted as he left the Pentagon in 2006. Colin Powell said later that the "war on terror" was a "bad phrase. It's a criminal problem. This is not the Soviets coming back." And even if it were the right way to combat the problem of Islamic extremism, it would not address all of the other challenges mentioned above.

Even without a bumper sticker, however, strategy is important. The process of developing one requires gauging what power the United States has to achieve its purposes, in other words, reconciling means with ends, something often missing in discussions of foreign policy. But when the Berlin Wall came down, so did the possibility of a single, simple strategy. What the United States needs today is a set of strategies.
Recognizing the world's complexity (as well as the limits of American power), President Obama has avoided talk of an "Obama Doctrine." He has clearly changed the country's approach to the world, emphasizing multilateralism and engagement. But, for the most part, he has yet to define in any detail the purposes to which this new approach is applied.

A Vision for Reducing Nuclear Threat

One area in which he has laid out a vision backed up by a set of policies is in his call for a nuclear weapons-free world. Even if such a world is improbable if not impossible (thus lessening its value as strategy), the steps he has outlined in the name of pursuing it are valuable and coherent. The president has called for reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy, lowering the numbers of strategic weapons in a new START treaty with Russia, achieving a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, completing a new agreement on ending the production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons use, strengthening the Nonproliferation Treaty, creating an international fuel bank to encourage the peaceful use of nuclear power without risking proliferation, and securing vulnerable materials to prevent terrorists from getting their hands on them.

Nonproliferation and disarmament were one of the four pillars that Obama cited in his September speech to the UN General Assembly, and he has clearly laid out a comprehensive policy approach to these issues that will provide the basis for a strategy. That is not true of the other three pillars (the promotion of peace and security, the preservation of our planet, and a global economy that advances opportunity for all people). As for democracy and human rights, which he argued underlie all four pillars, beyond saying that we are in favor and that others should be as well, the president has not articulated a proactive strategy for advancing values. Even on terrorism, the president's focus has understandably been on developing a strategy for Afghanistan, but not on developing a more comprehensive approach to combating the problem of Islamic extremism.

No doubt all these things are hard, and that is the central feature of our post-containment world. Kennan's advice that we need to develop a thoughtful paragraph or two remains sound. Doing so won't make anyone as famous as Kennan, and it won't solve the political problem of needing to provide a clear explanation for the U.S. role in the world, but even that thoughtful paragraph or two is a challenge given the complex world unleashed by the collapse of communism twenty years ago.

Written By:James M. Goldgeier, Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow for Transatlantic Relations - for Council of Foreign Relations - Nov 2009

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Kabul - the new Kashmir

Across Afghanistan, hundreds of Indian workers and engineers are repairing disintegrated roads and constructing highways. India is building the country's new parliament building. It is running medical missions and training Afghan police officers, diplomats and civil servants, part of a hearts-and-minds offensive to strengthen old ties in a rough neighborhood.

Like archrival Pakistan, India sees Afghanistan as a strategic prize, but its efforts to establish a big footprint there have been set back twice in 15 months by suicide bombings aimed at its widening presence.

In some ways, India and Pakistan have been waging a quiet battle inside Afghanistan, and experts say the latest attack, on Thursday outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul, is bound to intensify that rivalry.

Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, has long had deep ties with elements inside Afghanistan, but large numbers of Indian intelligence operatives are also in Afghanistan to counter Pakistan's influence and to act as a check on Taliban militants.



Intelligence agencies blame the Inter-Services Intelligence, better known as the ISI, for a 2008 blast at the Indian Embassy that killed 58 people, including the defense attache. Pakistan denied the assertions.

India's active opposition to the Taliban in Afghanistan dates to the 1990s, when the New Delhi government joined Iran and Russia in supporting the Northern Alliance against the Islamist movement. Now, India is spending $1.2 billion in health-care, food and infrastructure aid to Afghanistan, its largest foreign assistance program.

The bombing comes as hostilities between India and Pakistan have intensified after a November terrorist attack in Mumbai, which killed more than 170 people and brought India's financial capital to a three-day standstill. Indian authorities said all 10 attackers were from Pakistan. The Mumbai siege rolled back at least five years of diplomatic progress between the two countries.

The Kabul embassy blast, which left 17 dead, came a day after Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi announced that relations between India and Pakistan were thawing and that they could be getting ready to resume peace talks. A Taliban spokesman asserted responsibility for the attack, saying the embassy was the intended target. India has not yet assigned blame.

Experts say there is a growing rift between Pakistan's civilian government and its military, and between the military and the ISI. Those apparent rifts are not lost on Indian diplomats, who realize the limits of Pakistan's government to see through diplomatic promises.

Many in India note that Pakistan's government has been seeking some cooperation with New Delhi, leaving Pakistan's military services and the ISI outside of that diplomacy.

India and Afghanistan appear to be deepening their ties. More than 4,000 Indians work in Afghanistan. There are six Indian consulates there. The main immigration office in New Delhi has a special section for Afghans seeking residency or asylum in India. By helping rebuild Afghanistan, India sees itself as promoting regional stability as well as balancing Pakistan's influence in Kabul.

In recent years, Pakistan's government has been increasingly wary of India's influence in Afghanistan, including New Delhi's close ties to the government of President Hamid Karzai, who studied in India, as did most of Afghanistan's leadership.

An Indian air base in Tajikistan, the first one outside the country, also has increased Pakistan's worries about India's growing strategic reach in the region. The air base is a transit point for security forces and material to Afghanistan.

In the past few years, India has sent mountain-trained paramilitary forces to protect its workers in Afghanistan from kidnappings and attacks. About 500 Indian police officers are deployed there.

India has opened consulates in Herat and Mazar-e Sharif; it also reopened two in Jalalabad and Kandahar that had been shut since 1979. In January, India completed the Zaranj-Delaram highway near the Iranian border. In May, an Indian-made power transmission line brought 24-hour electricity to Kabul, the capital.

The bombings against the Indian Embassy in Kabul will be logged in the Indian mind beside the Mumbai attacks. All this is accumulating in the Indian mind and could lead to some kind of eventual retaliation.
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Way out from Af-Pak Strategy

THE KEY to getting out of Afghanistan without turning Kabul over to the Taliban lies in replacing the failed US “Af-Pak’’ strategy with a new regional approach in which India, Iran, Russia, and China - all opposed to a Taliban takeover - join with the United States and NATO in stabilizing the country.

The “Af-Pak’’ strategy is based on the false premise that Pakistan and the United States are both opposed to Islamist influence in Afghanistan. In reality, Pakistan has long supported the Taliban insurgents there for what it considers a compelling strategic reason: to counter the influence of India in Kabul.

Despite this, the United States continues to give military aid and $800 million in annual cash subsidies to the Pakistan Army, supposedly for the express purpose of fighting the Taliban.



Until this pretense is ended, the United States will remain mired in a stalemate with Pakistan-supplied Taliban fighters. Equally important, Islamabad will be increasingly emboldened to demand the exclusion of Indian influence from Afghanistan as the price for cooperation there. Given India’s strong opposition to Islamist forces, this would directly conflict with US interests and goals.

Defenders of aid to Pakistan argue that its Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the ISI, has given the CIA valuable information about Al Qaeda. Another compelling reason for US reluctance to threaten a cutoff of subsidies and aid is that Islamabad could counter by denying transit through Pakistan to supply US forces in Afghanistan.

“With one hand, they threaten to prevent you from prosecuting the war unless you pay them off,’’ Said Jawad, the Afghan ambassador to the United States, said. “With the other, they help the Taliban to make sure that the war keeps going on and the aid keeps flowing.’’

To escape from this trap, the United States should make three policy changes:

First, the administration should make clear that it recognizes the right of India, as the preeminent South Asian power, to be a major player in Kabul. The spokesman of the Pakistan armed forces, Major General Athar Abbas, criticizing the “overinvolvement of Indians in Afghanistan’’ in a July CNN interview, specifically warned against any Indian role in training the Afghan Army. But such a role could be a valuable supplement to the current faltering US-NATO training efforts. Indian aid to Kabul has so far been limited to $1.2 billion in economic aid.

Second, the Obama administration should seek Pakistan’s help in negotiating peace agreements with local Taliban factions, following up earlier Saudi Arabian initiatives. To get Taliban participation, such agreements would have to include a timetable for phased withdrawal of most US forces from all but the major cities and highways of Afghanistan.

Third, local peace agreements should be linked to a larger peace process negotiated at regional conferences attended by India, Iran, Russia, and China, in addition to the United States, NATO, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.

India feels encircled by ISI-supported Islamist forces operating out of Bangladesh and Nepal as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Shi’ite-majority Iran opposes the Sunni Taliban, and China, facing an Islamist uprising in Sinkiang, is increasingly wary of Taliban rule in Kabul. Bringing these nations into Afghan affairs would offset Pakistani support for the Taliban so that its influence remains confined to its strongholds in the ethnically Pashtun south and east and it does not become dominant in Kabul.

A peace process that leads to a phased withdrawal of most US forces would end the dependence of the United States on Pakistani supply lines. It would then be possible, at last, for the United States to use its enormous aid leverage in Islamabad effectively.

If the Al Qaeda leadership is still in Pakistan, and if ISI provides actionable intelligence that facilitates its destruction, then the existing US payoffs to the army should continue. But if Al Qaeda is no longer centered in Pakistan, as some suspect, or if ISI is unable to provide actionable intelligence, then the United States should restrict its aid to Islamabad to large-scale economic assistance focused on development and education. Maintaining friendly ties with Pakistan as a major Third World country and a nuclear weapons state should continue to be a US priority. But the tail should no longer wag the dog.

Source: Boston - Selig S. Harrison, author of “Out of Afghanistan’’ and “In Afghanistan’s Shadow,’’ is director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy

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The Baltic Blues

The patient emerges from intensive care, hurls the medicine at the doctors and bites his blood donor. That may be an unfair characterisation of the recent news from crisis-stricken Latvia, but it is pretty much how outsiders see it. The prime minister, Valdis Dombrovskis, is refusing to make the spending cuts mandated by international lenders and has floated a new law that would partially expropriate foreign banks’ loan books.

It would be worrying enough if the European Union’s weakest economy defaults, devalues or implodes. But what scares outsiders more is the effect of Latvia’s latest wobble on other ex-communist economies, which until this week seemed to be surviving the financial crisis with less trouble than some had feared.


In recent weeks, the news from Latvia had seemed mildly encouraging, after a year during which the country has been kept afloat thanks to an $11.1 billion international bail-out. The breakneck decline has slowed: the economy is expected to contract by 17.5% this year, but by only 3% in 2010 and to return to growth in 2011, according to a forecast by SEB, a Swedish bank (and big lender to Latvia). The current account, which showed a yawning deficit of 1.42 billion lats ($3 billion) in the first seven months of last year has been transformed to show a 581m lats surplus in the same period of 2009.

The main outstanding issue is next year’s budget deficit. International lenders had softened the target to a mere 8.5% of GDP; the government still had to push through spending cuts of 500m lats to meet this.

But this week Mr Dombrovskis startled outsiders by saying that cuts of only 225m lats would be necessary. He has pencilled in a further 100m lats in better tax revenues—counting, apparently, on a faster economic recovery than anyone expects. The hesitation has brought stern warnings. Sweden’s finance minister, Anders Borg, said outsiders’ patience was “limited”—his country is due to provide SKr10 billion ($1.45 billion) in a loan tranche in early 2010. The EU’s monetary affairs commissioner, Joaquín Almunia, has publicly rebuked the government too. Mr Dombrovskis has now backtracked, saying that if the cuts are necessary, they will be made.

But doubts remain. Mr Dombrovskis lacks the authority to push tough measures through parliament and his public wobble could be seen as an attempt to summon up another burst of international pressure on the government to do the right thing. If so, it is risky.

The same could be said about another of Mr Dombrovskis’s moves—calling for a draft law that would restructure domestic liabilities of foreign banks. Lenders would be liable only for the collateral value of their loan (eg, a house bought with a mortgage) rather than the whole amount. Banks would also be unable to evict defaulters from their homes without rehousing them. A fall in property prices of over 50% has sent Latvia’s private-sector debts to foreigners ballooning. They will need restructuring eventually. But this proposal looks unworkable, clumsy and damaging. Shares in Nordic banks, which have been the biggest private-sector lenders to Latvia, dipped on the news.

If Latvia fails, with a strike by international lenders prompting a debt crisis or a bank run, the spotlight then turns to the neighbouring Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania. They are not in the same political mess, but both have also pegged their currencies to the euro and are facing huge and painful adjustments. Some wonder if the EU might accelerate its recognition of Estonia’s impressive progress in sorting out public finances by giving it early approval of its plans to join the euro in 2011. But where would that leave Lithuania, which is nowhere near balancing its books and borrowing expensively from private lenders instead of turning to the IMF?

An even bigger question involves the future co-operation between the IMF and EU. They worked together closely during the emergency rescue of Latvia in December. Now ties are strained: the IMF thinks Latvia should devalue its currency. EU officials are determined that it should not, for fear of the wider effect on ex-communist countries that are trying to join the euro zone. That has led the EU to squeeze the IMF into accepting softer conditions on Latvia than it would have wished for. For all those involved, in Brussels, Washington, DC, and Riga, patience is running out.
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