The great Florentine humanist, historian and statesman Nicolo Machiavelli in his The Prince argued that a statesman must instill fear: It is better to be feared than loved. Using an animal metaphor he said it was better to be a lion than a fox. His words of wisdom should ring a bell in the minds of all those who are following the tragic events in Nepal. Right now the Seven Party Alliance is beseiging the Singh Darbar where the royal palace ios located. The king Gyanedra has responded by order...
Napoleon famously observed that War is too important to be left to Generals. What he meant by that is simple:Soldiers fight and die on the battlefield nd the civil political leadership makes all the strategic decisions. Secretary of State Condi Rice seems to have forgotten this piece of Napoleonic wisdom when she observed in London that a thousand tactical blunders were made, thereby blaming the military for the failure to produce results. The US leadership set an impossible mission : War aga...
For the past three years or so I have been reading a weblog maintained by a young Iraqi woman whose name is posted as Riverbend. She writes about Iraq and the violence in that country unleashed first by the American troops and now increaingly by the Sunni militias backed by one or the other ethnic or political or sectrian leaders. She is writing from a city where even doing the daily chores of life such as going to get vegetables from the market can literally be life threatening. Yet with a ...
A powerful neoconservative voice has risen against the prophet of neoconservatism--George Bush. Francis Fukuyama, known all over the world for his provocative and yes, celebratory thesis about the end of history, has written a withering attack on Bush and the betrayal of the neoconservative agenda. The carapace of ideas such as preventive war,benevolent hegemony, war against terror are analysed and critiqued in great detail in thois booik. When the Iraq Qar was attacked on humanitarian and s...
The Chairman of the House International Relations Committee, a ranking member of the Republican Party has in a recent speech made the following observations: Our Power, then has the grave liability of rendering our theories about the world immune from failure. But by becoming deaf to easily discerned warning signs, we may ignore the long term costs that result from our actions and dismiss reve...
The loud and racaous protests against the proposed changes in the Immigrants Act lad led to a few questions being asked? President George Bush has stated that the US needs what he calls "guest workers" who do the sort of menial jobs that the Americans do not care to do. Translated into more understandable English he has only stated the obvious:Low skill low paying jobs are being done by migrants from Mexico and Central America. It is a law of society that labour will more to capital rich soci...
The situation in Iraq is nowhere near normal. Three years after the Bush Admionistration launched its invasion of Iraq the country has been reduced to shambles. Electricity is supplies for only 4 to 6 hoiurs, schools and hospitals are virtually closed down, essential suppl\ies are to be had at an exhorbitant price and a proud and civilised nation reduced to sectarian and civil strife. The US invasion is the sole cause for this unfolding trgedy. The regular readers of our blog would kno...
In his extremely perceptive bvook India's Nuclear Bomb, George Perkovitich has documented in telling detail the long and covert road to nuclearization in India. Right fro the start of her nuclear research in the early i950,s the civillian uses of nuclear technology has only been a fascade for carrying out a covert programme of weaponisation. The sanctimonious humbug that a developing country needs nuclear energy for meeting its ever increasing demands for electricity was first trotted out by ...
Even those of us who are extremely critical of the policies and programs of the current Administration in Washington DC have always belieded the there is conviction behing the arrogant and misplaced policies so relentlessly pursued by George W Bush. However we are sorel;y disappointed by the fact that George Bush has given the Nucleatr Non Proliferation Treaty, the corner stone of the non proliferation regime presently in place, a quiet and furtive burial during his visit to South Asia. The n...
The occupation of Iraq and the promotion of a very divicive variety of identity politics there by the American and Cpoalition forces has resulted in the civil society of Iraq falling apart at its seams. A vast majority of Iraqis feel that they were better off during the days of Saddam Hussein than today. For all his faults the fact remains that Saddam presided over a multi ethnic and multi cultural Iraq in which the basic frame of identification remained Arab nationalism. Shias, Sunnis, Chris...
The reaction of the State Department to the publication of the video footage taken of US marines brutalising Iraqi prisoners seems very tepid: instead of being contrite and apoegetic for the events caught on tape, the state department deplored the fact that the timing of this particular publication is inconvienient. When the cartoon denigrating the Propher were published it was seen as a sign of the freedom of the press. Now the State Deparment says that the footage should not be published....
The victory of the Hamas in the elections to the Palestinian Assembly has sent shock waves through the Western capitals. Of the Quartet only Russia has been pragmatic enough to invite the Hamas leadership. Since the government of Israel is unlikely to allow the leaders in Palestine to travel, the leadership currently based in Syria will meet Putin and the members of the Russian government. What does the victory of Hamas portend for the peace process envisaged by the two state solution firmed ...
A few weeks back a Danish newspaper published a picture of Prophet Momammad, peace be on his name. The cartoon showed the Prophet wearing a bomb in his turban. The Moslem world was just aghast at this irreverential portrayal of the Prophet. Since then the fires have been raging in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Western embedded media says that it is a clash between Freedom of Expression and an increasingly intolerant Islam. This view is wrong because there are laws in al...
George Bush is an impressive speaker. Unfortunately politcs and statecraft require more than eloquence. The ability of a politician to connect with his people is important. The American people have got sick and tired of the war in Iraq and more than 60% of them want the troops to return home. More than 2,340 young mebn and women have been killed in Iraq and there is no set up in the violence. Bush had nothing new to say. He does not have a plan to disengage from Iraq. The mush promised Iraqi ...
In the wake of the attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers on 9/11 the US Congress enacted the Patriot's Act. The curtailment of civil liberties and the assumption of the power of internal espionage by the Federal Government, now hotly contested, are the hallmarks of the Act. However this was not the first time that such draconian legislation has been enated in US history. Even before the sinking of USS Lusitania by German U- boats in 1915, the Administration of Woodrow Wilson had take...