Date of Birth Row: Article in HT
This here is a very well researched (link given below) and logical article that appeared in HT on the Chief of Army Staff's Date of Birth controversy maliciously created by the "Establishment"- read Bureaucracy. It very well explains 'All that Needs to be known' of the way MOD and GOI function. All to make the COAS exit prematurely. All to make him look a villain, when he is the victim!!
If this is not high handedness, what is? Typical too of the way our Government has been functioning in recent times in many areas.
With Warm Regards,
Col RP Chaturvedi,
Date of birth row: ‘Line of succession trumps all logic.’
Defence Ministry forms panel to select next Army Chief
PTI | 09:01 PM,Jan 04,2012
New Delhi, Jan 4 (PTI) After rejecting army chief General V K Singh's plea on his age issue, Defence Ministry seems to have moved on from the controversy as it formed a panel of officers for appointment of his successor. The Defence Ministry has formed a panel of officers including senior-most Lieutenant Generals for selecting the next army chief, sources said here. The three senior-most officers are Eastern Army Commander Lt Gen Bikram Singh, Northern Army Commander Lt Gen K T Parnaik and present Vice Chief of Army Lt Gen Shri Krishna Singh. The sources said Western Army Commander Lt Gen Shankar Rajan Ghosh, who will retire on May 31 when the tenure of the current army chief ends, is not being considered for the appointment. Traditionally, the senior-most officer from the panel is appointed as the army chief. In this case, Lt Gen Bikram Singh is the senior-most and most-likely to be appointed for the top post. Of the remaining two officers, Lt Gen Parnaik is senior to Lt Gen Shri Krishna. The sources said there is a possibility that Defence Ministry may declare Singh's successor much in advance to meet "any eventuality". Under normal circumstances also, government announces names of successors of defence chiefs two to three months in advance. On December 30, Defence Minister A K Antony rejected Gen Singh's statutory complaint for accepting May 10, 1951 as his date of birth, which would have given him an extra ten months in office. If the plea had been accepted, Lt Gen Parnaik would have become the Army Chief after Gen Singh's retirement on March 31 next year.
Defence Ministry forms panel to select next Army Chief
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Reflections of an ex Pakistani Army Officer
I joined the Pakistan army as a junior cadet in 1981 and graduated as a second lieutenant in September 1985. The graduation followed ten years of service in infantry that involved tours of duty in Sindh, Balochistan, Punjab, the Siachin Glacier, deployment to the first Gulf War, and two tours of duty at the School of Infantry and Tactics. Until I resigned my commission in 1996, I was the most die-hard infantry officer: trained to be a leader of men, highly disdainful of all things civilian, and a strong believer in the absolute superiority of the Armed forces as compared to their civilian counterparts.
This brief article, thus, is based on my personal experiences of being an officer and also a reflective inquiry into the structuring of an army officer’s subjectivity. My account, however, is in no way exhaustive and cannot possibility be read as an all-encompassing explanation for the actions and beliefs of all Pakistan army officers.
The way we were trained had a crucial impact on our worldview and on our self-perception within the national space of Pakistan . I graduated at the height of Zia-ul-Haq’s regime. And though I took an oath to protect and safeguard the ideological and material borders of Pakistan , in my four years of training I was never trained to be a servant of my people. In fact, all formal and informal training was meant to solidify a sense of being above and superior to all Pakistanis who did not have the privilege of wearing a uniform. To be honest, this kind of mindset is not only germane to the army; it also permeates the civil services of Pakistan, but in case of the army the civilians are imperceptibly treated as suspect and not worthy of an officer’s trust.This distrust of the civilian populations was one of the strategies employed by the British to train their officers and men and seems to have been incorporated within the Pakistan army seamlessly. Thus, in a way, the old imperial attitude lives on in the rank and file of Pakistani sahibs, long after the empire has ceased to be.
As one grows in the profession and gets promoted the sense of entitlement and privilege grows exponentially. It is this deeply seated sense of entitlement coupled with a normative suspicion of all things civilians that underwrites the excesses of the army elite. I am not suggesting here that all army officers are corrupt and morally deficient: No, in fact, majority of Pakistan army officers that I knew and befriended during my career were upright straight-shooting men, and our soldiers (Or ORs as our officers call them) are without a doubt the best soldiers a nation can hope for. But, as I have also written elsewhere, most of the corruptions of the army are normalized in such a way that they are accepted as rights and privileges rather than corruptions. And some of these corruptions are institutional and not personal at all and thus simply more palatable. For example, each battalion has something called a battalion fund. Meant to be used for the welfare of troops, this fund is generated by the battalion itself and does not draw on the national military budget directly. In utilitarian terms, this is perfectly fine as the fund IS meant for the welfare of troops. But since these funds are neither audited by an outside authority nor exist officially in a battalion’s public record, they form a sort of hidden economy at a micro level. The ways in which these funds are raised are also highly irregular but are never seen to be so. Some battalions run shops, own rental properties, or own agricultural lands. Those that do not have any such resources rely on other interesting means: coaxing money out of contractors, no not as bribes but as money in lieu of goods. Here is a hypothetical example: If you are deployed in the northern areas, your quartermaster usually deals with more than three contractors directly: the fuel or wood contractor, the fresh rations contractor, and the contractor who dumps rations on your posts. In order to raise money, you can do various things: you can ask the contactor to supply certain things only on paper and ask him to give you a certain percentage of the cost of other things in cash; for your fuel and wood contractor, you can ask him to supply only a prescribed amount of wood/fuel and get the rest in cash; you can do the same with your fresh rations contractors. As I said earlier, none of this money lines the pockets of the officers; it usually ends up in a battalion fund, but since these are black funds, they contribute nothing to the national economy but rather exist in the black hole of a parallel economy.
The case becomes even more interesting if you are in the services: the services deal with large contracts directly and it is there in those large contracts, civilian and military, that huge sums of money are exchanged again without any public record or accounting. Aisha Siddiqua covered this on a macro level; I am only providing some details at the micro level, because it is the moral elasticity of the functioning of the army at micro level that happens to be my concern.
As the officers move through the system of promotions, the degree of their sense of entitlement and their aversion to any kind of civilian oversight increases exponentially. This happens in pretty much all the cases: even for principled officers whom I had admired as a young officer. Obviously, a whole life being protected from the common vagaries of life and lifetime of indoctrination in self worth ought to produce such subjectivities.
What I found especially interesting in my career, as an officer was the unofficial dual layering of the military law. The Pakistan army is governed by two major books of law: The Army Regulations (ARR) and the Army Rules and Instructions (ARI). There is no distinction in the law about how it would be applied to junior or senior officers: all military personnel, in fact, are equal in the rules and regulations. But just as we were being told to avoid talking politics in the dining hall, as it was against the spirit of the army rules, General Zia, our then dictator, was canvassing the nation to gain support for his sham referendum. Of course, we did not have the right to question his authority, but it always made me wonder as to how is it possible for a serving general to act as a politician while his junior officers were not even permitted to speak on the subject of politics.
Similarly, this above-the-board attitude has so deeply permeated the Army elite, that in 1999 General Pervez Musharraf, the then COAS, was actually able to launch a border war—the Kargil debacle—without even informing his own government. It is rumored that when the Indian prime minister called Nawaz Sharif to ask about why Pakistan had started a border war, Mr. Sharif had to tell him that he would have to get back to him after he had talked to his generals. Upon hearing this, it is also rumored, the Indian prime minister had said: “That is the difference between you and us Mian sahib, our generals ask us what they are attempting to do and not otherwise.”
Obviously, there is something broken within the army’s system of subjectivization that creates figures like Ayub, Zia, and Musharraf: I mean how is it possible that all these jokers were able to muster the support of their entire officer corps while obviously violating the very constitution that the army was meant to protect?
Obviously, this subjectivity arises through the systems of training employed by the army: almost all officers are trained to be suspicious of their civilian counterparts and internalize a feeling of systemic superiority over what they consider the corrupt and inefficient civilian-run systems. Naturally, this attitude also plays a role in their view of the popularly elected governments and is further accentuated in case of senior officers who are only accountable to their superiors in uniform.
The myth-making industry—the media and the conservative newspapers—also play a major role in buttressing army’s reputation in opposition to the ineffectual civilian governments. That is why, when going gets rough, our media start imploring the army to takeover and when the take over occurs, the turncoat politicians, the bought judges, and compliant civil servants become a part of a hybrid military-civilian system of power that has nothing to offer to the people except empty slogans. One serious audit of the wealth amassed by all the loyal corps commanders of our former dictators will be sufficient to prove my point. A COAS who takes over the civilian government works through various channels of idealization and appeasement. The first group to be appeased is the corps commanders, who are rewarded heavily for their loyalty. The next group is the politicians who break away from their parties and then sell themselves to the dictators: The chaudries of Gujarat and Shaikh Rashid from my home district are some examples of this bunch.
On lower levels, steps are also taken to keep the lower ranks loyal by introducing various “welfare” schemes that involve cheaply available plots, salary and pension increases, foreign assignments, and civilian appointments of retired officers. This entire system of appeasements, corrupt to the core, enables a dictator to sustain power and where all else fails, the same army can also be deployed to crush any uprising and, interestingly, while the army is deployed to suppress civilian uprisings, they are also paid a daily allowance that comes out of the non-military budget.
I am not opposed to the troops welfare projects; I believe that it is necessary for a nation to provide care for all those who put their lives at risk for the welfare of their nation. But I am, of course, vehemently opposed to spending indiscriminately on the armed forces and its upper crust, while millions of our children go hungry, have no access to healthcare, or a good education.
I hope Pakistan army has probably changed for the better since I left it; but I am also certain that the ingrained sense of entitlement of army officers has also increased. And unless the way we train our officers is altered, this gulf between the army and people they are supposed to protect will continue to widen.
The recent debacle of Osama bin Laden’s long, comfortable tenancy in a house close to the Pakistan Military Academy and what followed after his death is a good example of the army’s holier-than-thou attitude even when their leadership has failed.
While the media, by and large, have done a good job of asking some really pertinent and hard questions of the army and ISI, the civilian government, it seems, has again buckled down and given in to the pressure employed by the military elite.
Looked at differently, this latest failure of Pakistan army and its intelligence agencies is very simple to understand. Here are the facts: The most powerful institution in Pakistan which claims the bulk of our national budget every year failed to notice that the world’s most wanted terrorists was living right next to the home of Amy Officers for FIVE years. What other proof of leadership incompetence do we need? There has to be some accountability for this. But as far as I know, no general has left the service or accepted responsibility. But then, our generals are known for losing half a country without feeling any remorse. And unless our officers are trained as the servants and not the masters of their people, we will continue producing these Muhammad Shah Rangeelas of modern times.
Author of Constructing Pakistan (Oxford UP, 2010) Masood Ashraf Raja is an Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Literature and Theory at the University of North Texas, United States and the editor of Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies. His critical essays have been published in journals including South Asian Review, Digest of Middle East Studies, Caribbean Studies, Muslim Public Affairs Journal, and Mosaic. He is currently working on his second book, entitled Secular Fundamentalism: Poetics of Incitement and the Muslim Sacred.
Reflections by an ex-army officer by Masood Raja
This brief article, thus, is based on my personal experiences of being an officer and also a reflective inquiry into the structuring of an army officer’s subjectivity. My account, however, is in no way exhaustive and cannot possibility be read as an all-encompassing explanation for the actions and beliefs of all Pakistan army officers.
The way we were trained had a crucial impact on our worldview and on our self-perception within the national space of Pakistan . I graduated at the height of Zia-ul-Haq’s regime. And though I took an oath to protect and safeguard the ideological and material borders of Pakistan , in my four years of training I was never trained to be a servant of my people. In fact, all formal and informal training was meant to solidify a sense of being above and superior to all Pakistanis who did not have the privilege of wearing a uniform. To be honest, this kind of mindset is not only germane to the army; it also permeates the civil services of Pakistan, but in case of the army the civilians are imperceptibly treated as suspect and not worthy of an officer’s trust.This distrust of the civilian populations was one of the strategies employed by the British to train their officers and men and seems to have been incorporated within the Pakistan army seamlessly. Thus, in a way, the old imperial attitude lives on in the rank and file of Pakistani sahibs, long after the empire has ceased to be.
As one grows in the profession and gets promoted the sense of entitlement and privilege grows exponentially. It is this deeply seated sense of entitlement coupled with a normative suspicion of all things civilians that underwrites the excesses of the army elite. I am not suggesting here that all army officers are corrupt and morally deficient: No, in fact, majority of Pakistan army officers that I knew and befriended during my career were upright straight-shooting men, and our soldiers (Or ORs as our officers call them) are without a doubt the best soldiers a nation can hope for. But, as I have also written elsewhere, most of the corruptions of the army are normalized in such a way that they are accepted as rights and privileges rather than corruptions. And some of these corruptions are institutional and not personal at all and thus simply more palatable. For example, each battalion has something called a battalion fund. Meant to be used for the welfare of troops, this fund is generated by the battalion itself and does not draw on the national military budget directly. In utilitarian terms, this is perfectly fine as the fund IS meant for the welfare of troops. But since these funds are neither audited by an outside authority nor exist officially in a battalion’s public record, they form a sort of hidden economy at a micro level. The ways in which these funds are raised are also highly irregular but are never seen to be so. Some battalions run shops, own rental properties, or own agricultural lands. Those that do not have any such resources rely on other interesting means: coaxing money out of contractors, no not as bribes but as money in lieu of goods. Here is a hypothetical example: If you are deployed in the northern areas, your quartermaster usually deals with more than three contractors directly: the fuel or wood contractor, the fresh rations contractor, and the contractor who dumps rations on your posts. In order to raise money, you can do various things: you can ask the contactor to supply certain things only on paper and ask him to give you a certain percentage of the cost of other things in cash; for your fuel and wood contractor, you can ask him to supply only a prescribed amount of wood/fuel and get the rest in cash; you can do the same with your fresh rations contractors. As I said earlier, none of this money lines the pockets of the officers; it usually ends up in a battalion fund, but since these are black funds, they contribute nothing to the national economy but rather exist in the black hole of a parallel economy.
The case becomes even more interesting if you are in the services: the services deal with large contracts directly and it is there in those large contracts, civilian and military, that huge sums of money are exchanged again without any public record or accounting. Aisha Siddiqua covered this on a macro level; I am only providing some details at the micro level, because it is the moral elasticity of the functioning of the army at micro level that happens to be my concern.
As the officers move through the system of promotions, the degree of their sense of entitlement and their aversion to any kind of civilian oversight increases exponentially. This happens in pretty much all the cases: even for principled officers whom I had admired as a young officer. Obviously, a whole life being protected from the common vagaries of life and lifetime of indoctrination in self worth ought to produce such subjectivities.
What I found especially interesting in my career, as an officer was the unofficial dual layering of the military law. The Pakistan army is governed by two major books of law: The Army Regulations (ARR) and the Army Rules and Instructions (ARI). There is no distinction in the law about how it would be applied to junior or senior officers: all military personnel, in fact, are equal in the rules and regulations. But just as we were being told to avoid talking politics in the dining hall, as it was against the spirit of the army rules, General Zia, our then dictator, was canvassing the nation to gain support for his sham referendum. Of course, we did not have the right to question his authority, but it always made me wonder as to how is it possible for a serving general to act as a politician while his junior officers were not even permitted to speak on the subject of politics.
Similarly, this above-the-board attitude has so deeply permeated the Army elite, that in 1999 General Pervez Musharraf, the then COAS, was actually able to launch a border war—the Kargil debacle—without even informing his own government. It is rumored that when the Indian prime minister called Nawaz Sharif to ask about why Pakistan had started a border war, Mr. Sharif had to tell him that he would have to get back to him after he had talked to his generals. Upon hearing this, it is also rumored, the Indian prime minister had said: “That is the difference between you and us Mian sahib, our generals ask us what they are attempting to do and not otherwise.”
Obviously, there is something broken within the army’s system of subjectivization that creates figures like Ayub, Zia, and Musharraf: I mean how is it possible that all these jokers were able to muster the support of their entire officer corps while obviously violating the very constitution that the army was meant to protect?
Obviously, this subjectivity arises through the systems of training employed by the army: almost all officers are trained to be suspicious of their civilian counterparts and internalize a feeling of systemic superiority over what they consider the corrupt and inefficient civilian-run systems. Naturally, this attitude also plays a role in their view of the popularly elected governments and is further accentuated in case of senior officers who are only accountable to their superiors in uniform.
The myth-making industry—the media and the conservative newspapers—also play a major role in buttressing army’s reputation in opposition to the ineffectual civilian governments. That is why, when going gets rough, our media start imploring the army to takeover and when the take over occurs, the turncoat politicians, the bought judges, and compliant civil servants become a part of a hybrid military-civilian system of power that has nothing to offer to the people except empty slogans. One serious audit of the wealth amassed by all the loyal corps commanders of our former dictators will be sufficient to prove my point. A COAS who takes over the civilian government works through various channels of idealization and appeasement. The first group to be appeased is the corps commanders, who are rewarded heavily for their loyalty. The next group is the politicians who break away from their parties and then sell themselves to the dictators: The chaudries of Gujarat and Shaikh Rashid from my home district are some examples of this bunch.
On lower levels, steps are also taken to keep the lower ranks loyal by introducing various “welfare” schemes that involve cheaply available plots, salary and pension increases, foreign assignments, and civilian appointments of retired officers. This entire system of appeasements, corrupt to the core, enables a dictator to sustain power and where all else fails, the same army can also be deployed to crush any uprising and, interestingly, while the army is deployed to suppress civilian uprisings, they are also paid a daily allowance that comes out of the non-military budget.
I am not opposed to the troops welfare projects; I believe that it is necessary for a nation to provide care for all those who put their lives at risk for the welfare of their nation. But I am, of course, vehemently opposed to spending indiscriminately on the armed forces and its upper crust, while millions of our children go hungry, have no access to healthcare, or a good education.
I hope Pakistan army has probably changed for the better since I left it; but I am also certain that the ingrained sense of entitlement of army officers has also increased. And unless the way we train our officers is altered, this gulf between the army and people they are supposed to protect will continue to widen.
The recent debacle of Osama bin Laden’s long, comfortable tenancy in a house close to the Pakistan Military Academy and what followed after his death is a good example of the army’s holier-than-thou attitude even when their leadership has failed.
While the media, by and large, have done a good job of asking some really pertinent and hard questions of the army and ISI, the civilian government, it seems, has again buckled down and given in to the pressure employed by the military elite.
Looked at differently, this latest failure of Pakistan army and its intelligence agencies is very simple to understand. Here are the facts: The most powerful institution in Pakistan which claims the bulk of our national budget every year failed to notice that the world’s most wanted terrorists was living right next to the home of Amy Officers for FIVE years. What other proof of leadership incompetence do we need? There has to be some accountability for this. But as far as I know, no general has left the service or accepted responsibility. But then, our generals are known for losing half a country without feeling any remorse. And unless our officers are trained as the servants and not the masters of their people, we will continue producing these Muhammad Shah Rangeelas of modern times.
Author of Constructing Pakistan (Oxford UP, 2010) Masood Ashraf Raja is an Assistant Professor of Postcolonial Literature and Theory at the University of North Texas, United States and the editor of Pakistaniaat: A Journal of Pakistan Studies. His critical essays have been published in journals including South Asian Review, Digest of Middle East Studies, Caribbean Studies, Muslim Public Affairs Journal, and Mosaic. He is currently working on his second book, entitled Secular Fundamentalism: Poetics of Incitement and the Muslim Sacred.
Reflections by an ex-army officer by Masood Raja
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Can India and Pakistan make Peace?
The author Ex- Major Agha H Amin, Pakistan Army and is well reputed military historian from PAKISTAN who left the Army as a major and is settled in USA. He has done extensive research on ₹1857 Mutiny and his output is produced in Defence Journal-( Pakistan).
The article is an extreme view but not unrealistic. In nutshell, Pakistan will remain a thorn in our side for ever and ever.
Harbhajan Singh
Friday, November 25, 2011
Can India and Pakistan make Peace ! By Major (Retired)Agha .H. Amin, Pakistan Army.
Utopians in India are jubilant that Pakistan has made peace with India. Nothing in reality can be farther from the truth. The recent sudden angelic desire on part of the Pakistani establishment to make peace with India has nothing to do with any major shift in Pakistan's foreign policy written in the Pakistani military headquarters popularly known as the GHQ.
Click here to read more
The article is an extreme view but not unrealistic. In nutshell, Pakistan will remain a thorn in our side for ever and ever.
Harbhajan Singh
Friday, November 25, 2011
Can India and Pakistan make Peace ! By Major (Retired)Agha .H. Amin, Pakistan Army.
Utopians in India are jubilant that Pakistan has made peace with India. Nothing in reality can be farther from the truth. The recent sudden angelic desire on part of the Pakistani establishment to make peace with India has nothing to do with any major shift in Pakistan's foreign policy written in the Pakistani military headquarters popularly known as the GHQ.
Click here to read more
India China Relationship
Excellent article indeed. Well articulated except that not much has been said about economic relations/interests. Harbhajan Singh
CHINA –INDIA RELATIONS HEADING TOWARDS DEEP FREEZE
By Dr Subhash Kapila 28/11/2011
Introductory Observations
Concurrent with winter freeze setting in on the Himalayan heights separating India from China-Occupied Tibet, gathering trends over the last year or so strongly suggest that in end 2011 China-India relations are headed towards a deep freeze.
China-India relations were always in a freeze over the last six decades despite the veneer that both China and India gave by rhetorical flourishes that China and India were committed to peace and tranquility on the contested border between India and China-Occupied Tibet.
Regrettably, it was India and the Indian policy establishment only that gave credence to China’s peaceful protestations. China succeeded like in the run-up to 1962 to induce a sense of complacency in Indian war-preparedness against China’s not so benign intentions against India.
China craftily utilized these two decades - 1990s and 2000s under cover of this veneer for a massive militarization of China-Occupied Tibet including India-specific targeting of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons on the Tibetan Plateau.
China could achieve this being encouraged by two factors. First the complacency it succeeded in inducing in the Indian policy establishment which led to political de-emphasizing of the China Threat against India and as a consequence a tardy war preparedness against the China Threat not by the Indian Armed Forces but by the political leadership. Secondly, China correctly counted on the strategic timidity and feeble responses of the Indian political leadership to Chinese political and military coercion. The Indian military hierarchy as part of the ‘China Appeasement’ policy was made to mouth statements rationalizing Chinese armed intrusions into Indian Territory as arising from the undemarcated borders.
China thus stands encouraged to adopt haughty, strategically arrogant attitudes bordering on imperial condescension towards India as recent events indicate.
The above finds reflection in commentaries in China’s official and tightly controlled media. Sampling of such attitudes this month is briefly quoted below:
“India jitters at the sight of China gaining prestige in Asia, South Asia and South East Asia”
“In a nutshell to grow up to be a real power and stand up as a competitor, (against China) India needs to first and foremost break through its psychological fences.”
“India must well bear in mind: to build up real power, neither self-satisfaction nor Self-inferiority is a mature and constructive mindset”
Original post: Click here to Read the full article
CHINA –INDIA RELATIONS HEADING TOWARDS DEEP FREEZE
By Dr Subhash Kapila 28/11/2011
Introductory Observations
Concurrent with winter freeze setting in on the Himalayan heights separating India from China-Occupied Tibet, gathering trends over the last year or so strongly suggest that in end 2011 China-India relations are headed towards a deep freeze.
China-India relations were always in a freeze over the last six decades despite the veneer that both China and India gave by rhetorical flourishes that China and India were committed to peace and tranquility on the contested border between India and China-Occupied Tibet.
Regrettably, it was India and the Indian policy establishment only that gave credence to China’s peaceful protestations. China succeeded like in the run-up to 1962 to induce a sense of complacency in Indian war-preparedness against China’s not so benign intentions against India.
China craftily utilized these two decades - 1990s and 2000s under cover of this veneer for a massive militarization of China-Occupied Tibet including India-specific targeting of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons on the Tibetan Plateau.
China could achieve this being encouraged by two factors. First the complacency it succeeded in inducing in the Indian policy establishment which led to political de-emphasizing of the China Threat against India and as a consequence a tardy war preparedness against the China Threat not by the Indian Armed Forces but by the political leadership. Secondly, China correctly counted on the strategic timidity and feeble responses of the Indian political leadership to Chinese political and military coercion. The Indian military hierarchy as part of the ‘China Appeasement’ policy was made to mouth statements rationalizing Chinese armed intrusions into Indian Territory as arising from the undemarcated borders.
China thus stands encouraged to adopt haughty, strategically arrogant attitudes bordering on imperial condescension towards India as recent events indicate.
The above finds reflection in commentaries in China’s official and tightly controlled media. Sampling of such attitudes this month is briefly quoted below:
Original post: Click here to Read the full article
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Will World War III be between the U.S. and China?
The Daily Mail Online UK By Max Hastings
Last updated at 1:11 AM on 26th November 2011
China's vast military machine grows by the day. America's sending troops to Australia in response. As tension between the two superpowers escalates, Max Hastings warns of a terrifying threat to world peace.
Mass hysteria: The armies of Mao Tse-tung stunned the world by intervening in the Korean War
On the evening of November 1, 1950, 22-year-old Private Carl Simon of the U.S. 8th Cavalry lay shivering with his comrades in the icy mountains of North Korea.
A patrol had just reported itself ‘under attack from unidentified troops’, which bemused and dismayed the Americans, because their campaign to occupy North Korea seemed all but complete.
Suddenly, through the darkness came sounds of bugle calls, gunfire, shouts in a language that the 8th Cavalry’s Korean interpreters could not understand. A few minutes later, waves of attackers charged into the American positions, screaming, firing and throwing grenades.
‘There was just mass hysteria,’ Simon told me long afterwards. ‘It was every man for himself. I didn’t know which way to go. In the end, I just ran with the crowd. We ran and ran until the bugles grew fainter.’
This was the moment, of course, when the armies of Mao Tse-tung stunned the world by intervening in the Korean War. It had begun in June, when Communist North Korean forces invaded the South.
U.S. and British forces repelled the communists, fighting in the name of the United Nations, then pushed deep into North Korea. Seeing their ally on the brink of defeat, the Chinese determined to take a hand.
In barren mountains just a few miles south of their own border, in the winter of 1950 their troops achieved a stunning surprise. The Chinese drove the American interlopers hundreds of miles south before they themselves were pushed back. Eventually a front was stabilised and the situation sank into stalemate.
Three years later, the United States was thankful to get out of its unwanted war with China by accepting a compromise peace, along the armistice line which still divides the two Koreas today.
For most of the succeeding 58 years the U.S., even while suffering defeat in Vietnam, has sustained strategic dominance of the Indo-Pacific region, home to half the world’s population.
Yet suddenly, everything is changing. China’s new economic power is being matched by a military build-up which deeply alarms its Asian neighbours, and Washington. The spectre of armed conflict between the superpowers, unknown since the Korean War ended in 1953, looms once more.
American strategy guru Paul Stares says: ‘If past experience is any guide, the United States and China will find themselves embroiled in a serious crisis at some point in the future.’
The Chinese navy is growing fast, acquiring aircraft-carriers and sophisticated missile systems. Beijing makes no secret of its determination to rule the oil-rich South China Sea, heedless of the claims of others such as Vietnam and the Philippines.
Read more:Will World War III be between the U.S. and China?
Last updated at 1:11 AM on 26th November 2011
China's vast military machine grows by the day. America's sending troops to Australia in response. As tension between the two superpowers escalates, Max Hastings warns of a terrifying threat to world peace.
Mass hysteria: The armies of Mao Tse-tung stunned the world by intervening in the Korean War
On the evening of November 1, 1950, 22-year-old Private Carl Simon of the U.S. 8th Cavalry lay shivering with his comrades in the icy mountains of North Korea.
A patrol had just reported itself ‘under attack from unidentified troops’, which bemused and dismayed the Americans, because their campaign to occupy North Korea seemed all but complete.
Suddenly, through the darkness came sounds of bugle calls, gunfire, shouts in a language that the 8th Cavalry’s Korean interpreters could not understand. A few minutes later, waves of attackers charged into the American positions, screaming, firing and throwing grenades.
‘There was just mass hysteria,’ Simon told me long afterwards. ‘It was every man for himself. I didn’t know which way to go. In the end, I just ran with the crowd. We ran and ran until the bugles grew fainter.’
This was the moment, of course, when the armies of Mao Tse-tung stunned the world by intervening in the Korean War. It had begun in June, when Communist North Korean forces invaded the South.
U.S. and British forces repelled the communists, fighting in the name of the United Nations, then pushed deep into North Korea. Seeing their ally on the brink of defeat, the Chinese determined to take a hand.
In barren mountains just a few miles south of their own border, in the winter of 1950 their troops achieved a stunning surprise. The Chinese drove the American interlopers hundreds of miles south before they themselves were pushed back. Eventually a front was stabilised and the situation sank into stalemate.
Three years later, the United States was thankful to get out of its unwanted war with China by accepting a compromise peace, along the armistice line which still divides the two Koreas today.
For most of the succeeding 58 years the U.S., even while suffering defeat in Vietnam, has sustained strategic dominance of the Indo-Pacific region, home to half the world’s population.
Yet suddenly, everything is changing. China’s new economic power is being matched by a military build-up which deeply alarms its Asian neighbours, and Washington. The spectre of armed conflict between the superpowers, unknown since the Korean War ended in 1953, looms once more.
American strategy guru Paul Stares says: ‘If past experience is any guide, the United States and China will find themselves embroiled in a serious crisis at some point in the future.’
The Chinese navy is growing fast, acquiring aircraft-carriers and sophisticated missile systems. Beijing makes no secret of its determination to rule the oil-rich South China Sea, heedless of the claims of others such as Vietnam and the Philippines.
Read more:Will World War III be between the U.S. and China?
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Where India overlaps with China
China has become too powerful economically and militarily and quite fast. Under such circumstances, any nation would become arrogant turning to a bully and China is and will NOT be an exception. They are like a python and whose appetite is insatiable. When they feel like striking and against whom will be decided by them as per their thinking.
As for India, it has to speed up its economic growth and building military strength and modernisation otherwise the gap between China and India will keep increasing to our disadvantage. Sadly our politicians are busy in petty politics and the bureaucracy does not have nation building as prime agenda and focus. Therefore one does not see a bright light on the horizon.
Lt Gen Harbhajan Singh (Retd)
Where India overlaps with China
Mon Nov 21 2011
“Building Bridges”, the theme of the recently concluded 17th SAARC summit in the Maldives, is an evocative one. There is no denying its relevance, both for enhanced physical connectivity as well as for the prospects for improved political dialogue in the South Asian region. But the infrastructure metaphor is perhaps most apt for China, and in more ways than one. In the coming months, the regional organisation, with eight members and nine observers, is set to seriously undertake a comprehensive review of all matters relating to its engagement with observers. As China seeks to upgrade its engagement with South Asia, what will be worth watching is if it can play a role in bridging differences in the region.
This will depend on how China’s public diplomacy tackles three critical challenges. The primary challenge will be to see the kind of normative choices it is likely to make in the region. As a rising power, the ideas, norms and values it will come to represent will be key to China’s self-image. For some time now, China has been advocating the “new security concept”, structured around the values of accommodation and cooperative security. For instance, will China find it in its national interest to play a divisive or an integrative role in the South Asian region? Will it be tempted to tap the politics of resentment and allow South Asian states to play the China card to counter India’s influence? Or alternately, will it forsake such behaviour, raising the chances of regional peace, and in the process shoring up its own acceptability as a responsible and mature power? The interplay of ideas, interests and institutions will be a compelling one, and its trade-offs as yet complex and uncertain.
Where India overlaps with China
Article of Interest: Arms sale
November 20, 2011 Juggernaut Arabia By David Ignatius
As for India, it has to speed up its economic growth and building military strength and modernisation otherwise the gap between China and India will keep increasing to our disadvantage. Sadly our politicians are busy in petty politics and the bureaucracy does not have nation building as prime agenda and focus. Therefore one does not see a bright light on the horizon.
Lt Gen Harbhajan Singh (Retd)
Where India overlaps with China
Mon Nov 21 2011
“Building Bridges”, the theme of the recently concluded 17th SAARC summit in the Maldives, is an evocative one. There is no denying its relevance, both for enhanced physical connectivity as well as for the prospects for improved political dialogue in the South Asian region. But the infrastructure metaphor is perhaps most apt for China, and in more ways than one. In the coming months, the regional organisation, with eight members and nine observers, is set to seriously undertake a comprehensive review of all matters relating to its engagement with observers. As China seeks to upgrade its engagement with South Asia, what will be worth watching is if it can play a role in bridging differences in the region.
This will depend on how China’s public diplomacy tackles three critical challenges. The primary challenge will be to see the kind of normative choices it is likely to make in the region. As a rising power, the ideas, norms and values it will come to represent will be key to China’s self-image. For some time now, China has been advocating the “new security concept”, structured around the values of accommodation and cooperative security. For instance, will China find it in its national interest to play a divisive or an integrative role in the South Asian region? Will it be tempted to tap the politics of resentment and allow South Asian states to play the China card to counter India’s influence? Or alternately, will it forsake such behaviour, raising the chances of regional peace, and in the process shoring up its own acceptability as a responsible and mature power? The interplay of ideas, interests and institutions will be a compelling one, and its trade-offs as yet complex and uncertain.
Where India overlaps with China
Article of Interest: Arms sale
November 20, 2011 Juggernaut Arabia By David Ignatius
Saturday, November 12, 2011
If Iran Gets the Bomb
The International Atomic Energy Agency this week released its most detailed assessment to date about Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, and if "Paranormal Activity 3" wasn't enough to keep you awake at night, the report's 14-page annex detailing the state of Iran's weapons work should do the trick. It lays to rest the fantasies that an Iranian bomb is many years off, or that the intelligence is riddled with holes and doubts, or that the regime's intentions can't be guessed by their activities.
So much, then, for the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which asserted "with high confidence" that Iran had abandoned its nuclear-weapons work in 2003 and ended any chance that the Bush Administration would take action against Iran. So much, too, for the Obama Administration's attempts to move Iran away from its nuclear course, first with diplomatic offers and then with sanctions and covert operations.
Matt Kaminski on the International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's nuclear development and Mitt Romney's plan on dealing with Iran.
.The serious choice now before the Administration is between military strikes and more of the same. As the IAEA report makes painfully clear, more of the same means a nuclear Iran, possibly within a year.
It's time, then, to consider carefully what that choice means for the United States. In the run-up to the war in Iraq, we wrote that "the law of unintended consequences hasn't been repealed," and that "no war ever goes precisely as planned." That was obviously true of a boots-on-the-ground invasion, but it would also be true of an aerial campaign to demolish or substantially degrade Iran's nuclear facilities.
Planes could be shot down and airmen taken prisoner. Iran could close the Straits of Hormuz, sending energy prices upward. It could conduct a campaign of terror throughout the world, or attack shipping in the Persian Gulf, or fire missiles against U.S. military installations in the region, or spark a war with Israel or another insurgency in Iraq. These are among the contingencies that military planners would have to anticipate, though Iranian leaders would also have to think twice before responding to a strike with attacks that could mean further escalation.
Click here to read the full article
So much, then, for the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which asserted "with high confidence" that Iran had abandoned its nuclear-weapons work in 2003 and ended any chance that the Bush Administration would take action against Iran. So much, too, for the Obama Administration's attempts to move Iran away from its nuclear course, first with diplomatic offers and then with sanctions and covert operations.
Matt Kaminski on the International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's nuclear development and Mitt Romney's plan on dealing with Iran.
.The serious choice now before the Administration is between military strikes and more of the same. As the IAEA report makes painfully clear, more of the same means a nuclear Iran, possibly within a year.
It's time, then, to consider carefully what that choice means for the United States. In the run-up to the war in Iraq, we wrote that "the law of unintended consequences hasn't been repealed," and that "no war ever goes precisely as planned." That was obviously true of a boots-on-the-ground invasion, but it would also be true of an aerial campaign to demolish or substantially degrade Iran's nuclear facilities.
Planes could be shot down and airmen taken prisoner. Iran could close the Straits of Hormuz, sending energy prices upward. It could conduct a campaign of terror throughout the world, or attack shipping in the Persian Gulf, or fire missiles against U.S. military installations in the region, or spark a war with Israel or another insurgency in Iraq. These are among the contingencies that military planners would have to anticipate, though Iranian leaders would also have to think twice before responding to a strike with attacks that could mean further escalation.
Click here to read the full article
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