South Asia Uh-Oh

I’ll leave it to pourme et al. to comment on “soft” power.
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Joe – there’s also this news about Israeli airstrikes today following Hamas rocket attacks. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html?_r=1&hp
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I’m wondering if any of these moves are happening in Bush’s last month because of his perceived weakness, or the recognition that the transition makes it difficult for either Bush or Obama to act over the next couple of months.

And yes, the wait for Obama seems endless. I’m hoping the reality of Bush being out of office unleashes some optimism that helps the economy. Obama does keep telling us things are going to get worse before they get better, and while he doesn’t want to pretend things are other than they are, I don’t want him creating self-fulfilling prophecies, either.
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The inaugural speech will be a challenge. I hope he gives a memorable philosophical address, and leaves specifics for the state of the union.

That “soft power” story from the WAPO has all the earmarks of complete BS. Cutesy/funny story with ZERO sources named.
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I’m not sure what, other than good old MAD, will stop what seems to be inevitable conflict between Pakistan and India.

By Arundhati Roy 9 Is Not 11
(And November Isn’t September)
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This is a good read for an understanding just how complicated the mess is in this region.
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This part struck me:
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It’s hard to understand why those who steer India’s ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan’s mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.
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http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175013/arundhati_roy_the_monster_in_the_mirror

Good link gunny, thanks.
She certainly wrote a comprehensive, if depressing, piece. The political and media parallels are striking.

Am I naive to think that in a world with sufficiently free and open trade, that the Tribal elders would be able to buy their OWN Viagra and the world would be a safer place?

I am wondering if we will get a post about the 155 dead and counting in the Gaza strip from Israeli airstrikes. I normally don’t even choose sides in that conflict especially since rockets still rain down from Gaza into Israel but these in discriminate air strikes to me are just as much of a terrorist attack as any suicide bomber if not more so. I wonder what the U.S. will have to say on the matter or if our official position will be one of silence. I can tell you this much, if Israel continues on this path they are going to create a lot more terrorist than they kill just like we did in Iraq.

May I suggest that we don’t see all problems as if the US is the only nation capable of rational action, and everyone else is on the path to MAD. Also, that any troop movements will adversely affect US troops and interest in Afghanistan. Until one gets accurate information the shift of forces from the west to the Indian border could represent some shuffling and replacement. Both the Indian and Pakistan governments knows the terrible price that will be exacted by their nuclear option. I note that Israel has never been accused of brandishing its nuclear capability. That may be one reason for the Iranian move.

I think the Indians have behaved with restraint after Mumbai.

MAD as a deterrent IS rational. Or did I mistake your meaning bitter?

Inelegantly expressed on my part, PNNTO,sorry. I am saying both the Indians and Pakistanis understand MAD, just as we do. Joe’s post suggests or hints at the dangers of irrational acts by the South Asian powers. I think they have a good idea of what is involved. The more general point is that we set ourselves up as the only responsible guys on any block. Iraq junked that.

I get you bitter thanks. As far as being the “only responsible guys on any block” that is truly gone. Doesn’t mean it can’t return to some degree or another. If you have the time gunny’s linked piece touches on that.

The more general point is that we set ourselves up as the only responsible guys on any block.
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That’s just JK’s personal prejudices coming through. The idea that we are naturally morally surperior infuses everything he writes.

“She certainly wrote a comprehensive, if depressing, piece.”
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Paul-what depresses me, is how little real knowledge the American public has of these two countries and the region in general and how little of us will be truly interested enough to learn before we try to judge.

PNNTO: have read Arundhati Roy over time; and followed Gunny’s post. Ta. Gunny’s No 13 post is so true. We should ask Bush and Karl Rove to read her books since they seem to be engaged in a pi..ing contest of sorts. I can dream, can’t I?

PD: Unfortunately Joe is not the only one: there’s a whole colony out there beavering away. The Think Tank syndrome?

As I said in a previous post we have perhaps two days or maybe till New Years and then the path to war maybe set between these two countries. I am a pessimist, with the idiot still in the White House we have the potential for one last really stupid move or lack of a move to soften the issue between these two countries. This is the same President who brought us Katrina and the Iraq war, why wouldn’t he screw something major up just before leaving office?

And let’s not forget Iran, there is still a chance Bush gives Israel the green light on the Iran nuclear program. Maybe it happens in tandem with the Pakistan India war? We face a very scary 20 some days before the adults get back in change of our govenment.

The US and USSR moved troops around all the time. While things on a couple of occasions got hairy, mostly it amounted to nothing. Why get all atwitter over Pakistan and India? Because they’re wogs?

It is concerning to see that Pakistan and India could descend into an all-out war. Pakistan is theoretically our “friends”. They won’t be able to help us. I suppose the U.S. will be on Pakistan’s side? What a mess.

I do think Obama being sworn in will at least be a sigh of relief and optimism will be birthed from there. For better or worse, there is plenty of Bush fatigue and a new beginning will feel very refreshing.

Unfortunately I don’t see Hillary Clinton as the deft behind-the-scenes player that will let the various factions in any conflict keep their pride and not appear as school children on the knee of the Great American Teacher. She’s far too much a home-grown political animal. Political expediency will demand that she “make a statement” and “get results” on camera. “Stop you silly people in funny hats. Go home and watch the newest Bollywood movie. Leave the world driving to us and our banks”.
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For myself, I’ve always felt MAD saved far more lives in history than nuclear bombs ever took. A terrorist knows it will never be used on them unless they make the big score in a home-made WMD attack, but all world governments, including Iran, only have to know they’ll preside over a smoking hole if they draw a WMD first or sponsor someone who does.
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Far more people died in largely indiscriminant bombing in Europe and Japan in WWII than died in the two nuclear bombs. For that matter, Israel just produced a death toll in a large percentage of the Mumbai attacks. I think all we can hope for in 2009 is leadership in the world that takes hold of some true perspective and scale and acts on the Big Picture and Down the Road consequences. As mentioned in the article Gunny links, punching the brake and punching the accelerator while letting the collateral damage and terrorists shake out in the margins is no way to run a foreign policy.

We want Pakistan to hold the line with us in Afghanistan. Is there a line to hold? Let’s refrain from the old refrain: everyone one in Asia is on the brink of this or that and we are a moderating force. We show weakness because we can’t force Pakistan to be more aggressive against their internal Taliban. The Pakistanis take our cash. Recall the house arrest of A.Q.Khan ( The Nbomb) and the current house arrest of the Laksa chief accused of the Mumbai massacres. That is how Pakistani leadership, be it Musharaff (dictator) or Zardari (nomitated) treat us.

hellslittlestangel– As you point out, things got rough a couple times between the US and USSR. That was particularly true in the early days– ie, 1961. Understandings, and communications, eventually improved between the two.
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A few years ago, things flared up between the Pakistanis and Indians when India discovered that elements of the Pakistani military had been in Indian-claimed territory for weeks or months. That level of instability just was not a part of the US-Soviet rivalry. Think about what Soviet installations in Cuba led to…
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Yes, Indians and Pakistanis are as innately corruptible and as cagey as Americans and Soviets. But it is not simple racism to compare the risk there today to the risk in 1961. Add to that that India and Pakistan share a border, and do not share the comparatively congenial history that the US and USSR did. And that command and control was less a problem in the USSR and US than it is in Pakistan.
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All that said, I think that, because of MAD and because the two countries had both been pushing for reduced tensions to some degree in the past 5 or so years, we’re not going to see a flare-up into a war. But it sure isn’t impossible.

Yeah, Klein loves him some American exceptionalism. In fact, Klein is a believer in exceptionalism for his country, his profession and especially for his social class. Bedpans or free passes for his friends…prison for the rest of us.

Why get all atwitter over Pakistan and India? Because they’re wogs?
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Because Bush upped the ante considerably, and Pakistan and India do not necessarily have the luxury of proxy wars unlike USSR and the States did.
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The real action anyway is 170 and counting indiscriminate dead in Gaza. Anyone still wondering where Bush’s foreign policy style takes its cue from: here you go.

OT-
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Joe,
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I’d be interested in commentary wrt Juan Cole’s top ten iraq myths:
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http://tinyurl.com/9otlve

…and just because I hate cops:
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/D.C._cops_caught_stealing_from_Toys_1227.html

Am I naive to think that in a world with sufficiently free and open trade,
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The US commitment to preserving monopolies for patent and copyright holders, well beyond the public interest, is a serious impediment to free and open trade.

The more general point is that we set ourselves up as the only responsible guys on any block. Iraq junked that.
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IMO, Iraq laid it bare. The idea that American intervention was for the good of those invaded or forced to accept an American puppet has no weight now. Unfortunately, it appears that the Serious People still think it does.

Sometimes you read a piece of analysis so revelatory, that it must be shared. This is one of those times:

“Ponzi scemes have been practiced by hundreds of scammers across the world. And they usually end badly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/opinion/27sat4.html

preserving monopolies for patent and copyright holders….

Indeed a fine example of how money can clearly and unambigously taint the democratic process. And to think that one of the worst villians in the story is Mickey Mouse! Who doesn’t love Mickey Mouse?!

Ah, memories…

They’re rioting in Africa. They’re starving in Spain. There’s hurricanes in Florida and Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls. The French hate the Germans. The Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs. South Africans hate the Dutch and I don’t like anybody very much!
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud for man’s been endowed with a mushroom shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away.

The Merry Minuet by the Kingston Trio.
They’re rioting in Africa. There’s strife in Iran. What nature doesn’t do to us will be done by our fellow man.

225 dead and counting in Gaza…

What bugs me is that the rocket attacks coming from Gaza nave not been resulting in casualties — they are more a nuisance than anything else. But Israel feels free to attack civilian targets (imho, police are civilians, not military)in response to what Hamas has been doing. Its overkill — literally.

pluk – the biblical injunction of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was not a suggestion that we should retaliate in kind, it was a demand that we not take more than was taken from us – i.e., “you must not take more than an eye for an eye, or a tooth for a tooth.” It’s too bad the peoples of the world can’t at least follow that…

We must be willing to sacrifice everything for our Israeli overlords.

Those that would seek their power niche in Hamas and those that would consolidate it in the Israeli government are taking their cues from a bunch of delinquents of anarchy firing some tactically useless rockets they found in their daddy’s underwear drawer. We’ve expected nothing more from our own government for eight years so why should we expect more from groups that only favor one political game that can only be played as long as everyone keeps losing.

Arundhati Roy represents the extreme rabid left in the Indian context. She has frequently supported terrorist and communist causes. It’s not a good idea to form opinions based on what she says.

Manu -
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Agreed, but she’s probably right on this one. The U.S. would misread and bungle the job completely, and then resent having to “babysit” the two countries.
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Plus, it would force China to do something everyone else would regret.

“and the possible nuclear exchange that might ensue”
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Typical, those brown people on the subcontinent will lightly consider the use of nukes, as MSM figures in our country will lightly throw around such rhetorical nukes. Somehow the white people in Russia and the US survived for a 1/2 century without feeling the need to bomb each other into obliviosity.
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Last vain attempt to scream into the void this morning in J-town. See KT’s post about the cost of our charming little war without end, see the cost of repairing our economy. See, I’m one of those naive pukes who thinks diplomacy should be the only role we have in these tinderboxes–in Palestine, in Kashmir, in Korea. Once you start divvying out aid to one party or the other, not to mention military aid and or booties on the ground, you are part of the problem and not the solution. You’re advancing your agenda, hegemon or nay, it becomes geopolitics and thus inherently tainted with objectives other than pure (that’s understatement BTW).