The Constipated Faujiz

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AlephNull #312 So what you are basically saying is that even though you have my nick on top of your post, that post isnt addressed to me in particular. This is contrary to the general understanding one has on chowk where posters normally have the nick of the primary recipient (see the exchanges people have on chowk, if you need to see what I mean). However, I will assume you really mean it when you say this, and that you really are not expecting me to read or respond to posts you write with my name on top. I will therefore ignore the three posts you sent to me below as not being worth the trouble of reading - since if you wont bother to acknowledge my simple request to maintain a friendly and civilized tone and to avoid punctuating your posts with petty insults, then I dont need to waste my time further with you.

One other thing: personal insults from strangers on chowk dont bother me - if they did I would have left chowk a long time ago. And also rest assured that if I think an individual is deserving of it, I can do a pretty good job myself if exposing that individual for what he is. So, it is not that your snide remarks bother me one bit, and if I wanted to I could respond in kind, but wont bother.

bongdongs #307

{{ I remember hearing something (maybe in Perkovich`s book?) that there was a secret clause in the Indo-Canadian agreement for the CANDU that forbid certain forms of spent fuel reprocessing. Do you know something about the issue?}}

Hmm … I looked up Perkovich’s book. On p.27, regarding the CIRUS research reactor, it says:

“Ottawa attached no strict safeguards on how the plutonium produced by the reactor would be used, other than obtaining a commitment by India in a secret annex to the treaty that the reactor and resultant fissile materials would be used only for peaceful purposes.”

I must say these secret annexes are most convenient for pushing whatever line you wish to promote (and make no mistake, Perkovich is no friend of India.) In any case who is to say that the 1974 PNE was not peaceful? The unwieldy device was certainly not a weapon of war or even deterrence.

I’m sorry I can’t be of any further help on this.

Tahmed #304

I read your post and your proposed rules of engagement with some amusement. You seem to have forgotten the essential character of an open forum. You may be the badshah of Chowk, as well as self-appointed censor of Chowk manners, but a cat may look at a king without the least deference. Once a post has been made it is in the public domain and open to responses and criticism of all kinds; the participation of the originator is no longer essential except to clarify his true intent and to defend his notions to the best of his ability. In other words rules of engagement are set unilaterally by each Chowkie, as in war, within the parameters that Chowk Staff determine. A post is ‘addressed’ to you primarily in that it deals with material that you posted. This means that you are not required to respond to my comments on your posts, though by not doing so you are ceding the opportunity to defend your opinions. IMO those opinions are more often than not hopelessly ill-founded, so that may be just as well.

Your demand for ‘respect’ is also amusing to say the least. Respect for what? Respect for your right to hold and express whatever opinions you please, is something even the likes of hrrehman have automatically; it is not under threat. The contents of your posts have to be judged on their merits, not by your gray hairs. If I deem your discourse to be riddled with factual and logical errors, I’ll say so in no uncertain terms. If I find that you have not made any attempt to get your ground facts straight despite having been told multiple times that they’re wrong, I’ll be even more blunt. For the most part I judge the post; the person behind it is relevant to the extent that he or she has built up a track record one way or another.

You are welcome to feel flattered at all the attention you have gotten from me. It is essentially because your posts are a rich source of error. As for grown-up behaviour, you sahib could start by growing a thicker skin and learning to face criticism with equanimity. You could also work on your reading comprehension. Logic 001 might do some good as well.

To conclude, I will continue to comment on your opinions as I please in a manner you will no doubt regard as regard as inadequately reverential. You have several options. In order of increasing difficulty: you can complain to the Chowk Staff, as is your wont; you can use the arrow and page keys; you can reduce your participation on Chowk; or last and most difficult, you can try to get your facts straight, attempt to construct logical arguments, and in general clean up your act. The choice is yours.

Sadna #305

{{It appears that in the face of consistent information regarding proliferation in the last 20 years or so, assertions of good faith have been sufficient to satisfy the US government and nonproliferation community, whether by China, Pakistan or N. Korea.}}

Xerox Khan was on the radar for well over two decades. The price Pakistan extracted for cooperation in the anti-Soviet jihad included removal of US pressure on their N-weapons program. It is extremely unlikely though that US agencies were not watching Xerox’s activities closely during that period and after, while he was gallivanting around on two continents. They may lack people capable of translating from Berber (or even Urdu, perhaps), but their technical assets for collecting intelligence are second to none. The intelligence agencies of several other nations would have been on Xerox Khan’s case as well. That none of them had any inkling until a few months ago about of Xerox Khan’s comings and goings, the extent of his network, and the collusion of European countries, is as credible as the notion that Xerox’s proliferation was essentially a lone rogue operation without buy-in at the highest level of successive Pakistani regimes as well as Chinese enabling.

IMO a quite different explanation makes more sense. China has been a vital enabler in the WMD-related activities of Pakistan and North Korea. Pakistan would be nowhere without Chinese fissile material, Chinese weapon designs, Chinese ring magnets, Chinese missiles, Chinese reactor building, Chinese facilitation of illicit Pakistani trade with North Korea, etc. Those in the US who should know, do know all about this but can do nothing to arrest it. They are reduced to periodically pleading with the Chinese and accepting ‘verbal assurances’. Thus they have to push the far-fetched claim that what proliferation-related activities China has engaged in are the handiwork of various organizations and enterprises in China and not necessarily with the approval of the leadership. Never mind that these activities have the obvious effect of making the US position in East Asia more tenuous. Large portions of the US foreign policy establishment now have too close a personal association with a failed policy of appeasing China to be able to switch tack.

There may also have been a foolish belief that Pakistan acquiring WMDs could somehow be permanently sequestered as problem for India and India alone. [Note BTW that India has been endeavouring to make Pakistani weapons a threat to everybody, not just India.]

So given the US impotence in checking Chinese activities, together with the mistaken view that small-scale proliferation to and from Pakistan was comparatively benign from the standpoint of US interests, the US may have decided to make the best of a bad situation and instead try to achieve other long-standing goals. It is here that a large number of actors converged in a shared goal of limiting Indian power and India’s future growth. The most diehard among these are the Chinese, who are most directly affected by the rise of India as a competitor. However you can also count the Japanese, various camp-followers of the US including the British, the Australians and the Canadians, and last but not least major portions of the US Establishment. The Pakistani state has been a willing tool of this coalition. It is this confluence of interests more than any other that lead to the eternal repetition of the mantra of India-Pakistan equal-equal which to Indians appears utterly ludicrous.

A number of these interests saw the putative Pakistani nuclear weapons capability and Pakistan’s consequent ability to raise the stakes with India as a useful tool to keep India in check for a long period of time and stuck squabbling with its alleged peer, puny dysfunctional Pakistan. It was also being used as a lever to try to force India’s acquiescence to the CTBT and NPT as a non-NWS.

So a truer description of what happened may be of ‘selective proliferation’ under the guise of non-proliferation. From that point of view, the biggest blow that India struck by testing in ’98 was at the US State Department.

Sadna #305

{{It appears to be only India which has never intended or tried to share nukes with other countries, which is subjected to sanctions and pious moralizing.}}

That is no coincidence, if viewed in the proper perspective. Incidentally, in the same perspective, Pakistan is best considered not as an independent entity but as a willing proxy for various extra-regional nations and national interests in the Indian subcontinent, with the US and China heading the list.

And the same deeper insight which views the primary foreign targets of the ’98 Indian tests as being major powers outside the sub-continent, also recognizes that the primary target of putative Pakistani nuclear capability, after its neutralization by an Indian deterrent, is the Pakistani people (minus an elite, well-represented on Chowk, who use the pretext of perpetual conflict with India as an excuse to defer democracy indefinitely).

{{The word `betrayal` has been used by Americans after Pokharan.}}

As was the risible notion bruited about around the period of the CTBT conference that India would accede to the CTBT and NPT as a non-NWS “because they are a democracy”. A complete non-sequitur.

Such words coming from people in the know (i.e. State Department types and non-proliferation ayatollahs, not the non-attentive US public) should never be taken at face value.

Sadna #305

{{Dunno who these people are}}

The CNS is one of the regular stations on the non-proliferation fundamentalist circuit, together with for example the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Brookings Institution.

{{It could be that only in India is overseas funding of local nonproliferation activism feasible.}}

India is in the unusual position of being a large developing country with a completely open democratic society and genuine freedom of thought and expression. On the other hand, the fact that most people are still fully occupied just getting by means that there is not the same fraction of people as in say the Western democracies with the time and energy and wherewithal to systematically think about where India’s real national interests lie.

There are not too many other large or giant developing countries with the same characteristics. The Chinese keep a tight rein on internal dissent and even curtail the future access of foreign journalists who dare write articles critical of China. One can imagine the constraints on foreign interests who wanted to fund the Chinese equivalent of Praful Bidwai. Pakistan, a combination of confessional and garrison state, similarly limits expression of opinions contrary to the Pakistan ideology. I am guessing that the situation in countries like Iran and Egypt would be somewhat similar.

That is why India has been hospitable not just to non-proliferation activists, to dubious ‘peace movements’ and ‘human rights’ organizations clearly furthering the interests of other nations, but also to ideologies like Communism, to the proselytizing activities of Wahabis of various religions, and now perhaps also to the latest fads imported from Western academia. Many of these interests not only operate without too much oversight or interference but even manage to get some traction by hoodwinking naive Indians. My guess is that only greater prosperity and national self-confidence will fix these ills once and for all.

On a slightly related note, you may notice that the CNS has at least one Indian (or PIO) on its staff – a certain Gaurav Kampani. This blighter was quite active in writing articles in Rediff before and after Pokharan-2 warning India against detonating nuclear devices and then excoriating the government for the action. Another person with a US institutional allegiance is M V Ramana. There has been at least one prominent Indian or PIO in the anti-nuclear circuit for an extended period – Arjun Makhijani, who headed an environmentalist think-thank in the DC area.

#297

``The CANDU reactors had no statutory safeguards when supplied. The Canadians did try in the mid 1960s to retroactively add safeguards to the reactors they supplied in the 1950?s, which India of course declined``

I remember hearing something (maybe in Perkovich`s book?) that there was a secret clause in the Indo-Canadian agreement for the CANDU that forbid certain forms of spent fuel reprocessing. Do you know something about the issue?

OK, India is not the only country to suffer sanctions. But the moralizing? The word `betrayal` has been used by Americans after Pokharan.

AlephNull #294
Dunno who these people are but a sort of succinct summary of US `concerns` with China-Pak nuclear cooperation:
http://cns.miis.edu/research/india/china/npakpos.htm

This link at the bottom has some references:
http://cns.miis.edu/research/india/china/npakchr.htm

It appears that in the face of consistent information regarding proliferation in the last 20 years or so, assertions of good faith have been sufficient to satisfy the US government and nonproliferation community, whether by China, Pakistan or N. Korea. I am not sure what is going to be different in 2004.

It appears to be only India which has never intended or tried to share nukes with other countries, which is subjected to sanctions and pious moralizing. It could be that only in India is overseas funding of local nonproliferation activism feasible.

AlephNull #303 I see you have written not one but three (!!) posts addressed to me. I am greatly flattered - and this after I had made it clear that I have no wish to engage in any kind of discussion with you.

Given your continued wish to engage in discussion, let me advise you as follows: If you wish to engage in discussion with me, you will write your posts like the grown up man that I am quite sure you are. That means, you will retain a friendly and respectful tone, and you will not punctuate your posts with petty insults and snide remarks. As I said earlier, a dialogue of the deaf is not my idea of a discussion. Therefore, you will take the trouble of understanding what I am saying before responding.

Also rest assured that I dont come to chowk to prove that Pakistanis are superior to Indians or any such nonesense. Believe it or not, India and Pakistan are both equally close to my heart, and I wish nothing better than to see the poverty stricken people in both countries improve their lives), and I dont come to chowk to impress strangers with my arguments (as I told you before).

Until we are both agreed on the above ``rules of engagement``, there is no point in wasting your time and mine by addressing your posts to me.

Tahmed #271

{{My point is that the entire nuclear program of India (which can be traced to the 1960`s) was a gigantic blunder. … My point is that the Indian nuclear program was NOT DRIVEN BY ANY CLEAR OBJECTIVE.}}

Interesting claim. Let us see how our sage plans to substantiate it.

{{Contrast this with the US program in wwii, which was to avoid large casualties in taking Japan;}}

No sahib, that was not the primary driver for the US program. The Manhattan Project was not initiated with Japan in mind. The Allies greatest fear – brought home very clearly by the many European émigré scientists who staffed the Manhattan Project - was that Hitler would get the bomb first. After all the discoverers of atomic fission, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman, worked at Berlin University. The implications of their discovery were realized essentially immediately, even in the popular press. The Allies spared no effort to cripple the German bomb effort, with commando raids on heavy water plants and destruction of the German stores of heavy water. The bomb wasn’t ready in time for the European theater, where its timely use by late 1944 could certainly have shortened the war in Europe and saved lives. By the time the first two bombs were ready, the Japanese were negotiating terms of surrender. The claim of large casualties in taking Japan is not well-backed by the historical record of deliberations at the time. There were other less defensible reasons. Of course you never look beyond superficial propaganda, so this is no surprise.

{{and after wwii, which was to neutralize overwhelmning Soviet advantage in in conventional weapons in europe. This is the point which has annoyed a lot of Indian posters on this board, but none of them has been able to provide a convincing objective for the Indian program.}}

Sahib, people cannot answer questions that you don’t enunciate. Perhaps the fact never occurred to you.

{{Of course the same can be said for the French and possibly the British programs too}}

Sahib, I note that you have avoided any discussion of the Chinese program. What was their objective? After all, they had massive conventional superiority on their borders over every conceivable opponent, similar to the Soviets in Europe. Yet they saw fit to develop a full spectrum of nuclear weapons to go with their outsize if outdated conventional forces. Clearly they perceived some utility to the weapons to deal with the world as they see it. What could it possibly have been?

What was the reason for your omitting a discussion of the Chinese? Was it a belief that the ingrained benevolent pacifist nature of Chinese culture and civilization made such a discussion irrelevant? Was it perhaps simple intellectual dishonesty on your part?

Tahmed #271

The learned professor moves on to a discussion of China’s motives:

{{Lok at it this way then: Can anyone seriously imagine China trying to overrun India? What would they gain as a result?}}

What a myopically limited view of the competition between two nations. Typical of Sahib.

India and China are the two most populous nations in Asia. Because of their somewhat similar demographics and comparable states of development they are occupants of the same economic niche. They compete for a common raw material base, a common pool of investment funds; they will compete for the same markets. Most of the cost factors which favour China ought also to favour India, and vice versa. A great deal of their economic interaction could be zero-sum rather than win-win.

They are also the two biggest civilizational poles in Asia. They are therefore competitors for influence – soft power – as well.

All of these factors – access to raw materials, access to markets, cultural influence – have an obvious impact on the well-being and prosperity of a nation’s citizens.

{{I mention the himalayas because historically they effectively kept the two civilizations apart.}}

Not so sahib. China and India should not even share a common boundary. They were historically kept apart by Tibet. For the longest time Tibet was at best a suzerain of China (or arguably even the other way around). It did not have to put up with direct rule from China. Tibet used to assert its complete independence every time Chinese central power weakened. The last such period was in the four decades preceding 1950.

The reason China can now colonise Tibet, assert direct control over it and flood it with Han immigrants has to do with technological developments, facilitating instant long-distance communication and rapid travel and transport of material in industrial quantities – i.e. by the radio and the telephone, the railroad, metalled roads, the internal combustion engine, the jet engine, the automobile, the airplane.

The lesson to be learned is that technology can radically alter historical patterns that stayed constant for millenia. There is at least one similar radical shift in India’s historical experience. The lessons are clear for anyone responsible for India’s security.

{{Links have been through the silk route, and mostly involved trade.}}

Links have been through the sea as well. But more than trade, there was substantial Indian cultural influence on China. Mao commented that India conquered China without firing a shot.

{{There are no major historical ``wrongs`` (as seen by either side) to be righted (as has been the case of kashmir, e.g., in case of India and Pakistan).}}

That is a superficial way of looking at things. The conflict between India and Pakistan is fundamentally civilizational. Pakistanis’ sense of being wronged is eventually based on their notion of what their relation to India, the civilization, should be. The Kashmir imbroglio is simply one result of those civilizational attitudes playing out. It is by no means the only one – the same incubus of civilizational hostility towards India and parity seeking with India affects all of Pakistan’s interaction with India and with the rest of the world.

How India and China deal with one another is going to be determined by how they see each other as civilizations. IMO the stage is set for conflict.

Tahmed #271

As to nuclear umbrellas and the ‘wisdom’ of countries deciding to forswear nuclear weapons, the facts are rather different from what Sahib would have us believe.

There are perhaps a score of European countries, large, and medium-sized, on both sides of the erstwhile Iron Curtain, with a full fuel cycle. A majority of them would have enough industrial and intellectual resources to build a bomb from scratch. Most may not have done so, however with very few exceptions they all hosted nuclear weapons on their territory, willingly or willy-nilly, during the Cold War; they explicitly relied on these weapons for the defense of their territory.

There is a cold economic rationale behind the behaviour of the crypto-nuclear Westen European nations. By riding the American bandwagon, they managed to save some resources for productive pursuits and let the US assume both the primary risk and the reward for being the guy with the big stick.

The same is true of Japan and Korea. They relied on nuclear-armed US forces for their protection. Part of the US bargain with them might well have included easy access to US markets which eased their postwar reconstruction. The same is also true for Australia, which even allowed the British to carry out nuclear tests on their soil. An interesting exception is New Zealand, which was basically getting a free ride from the Australians and the US.

There was a very real possibility of a dozen or more countries going nuclear in the 1960s, most importantly West Germany and Japan. In order to dissuade the Germans from building their own bomb, NATO at one point was discussing the notion of a Multi-Lateral Force, which would have given the Germans a finger on the button along with the Americans. The actual ‘solution’ adopted in the wake of the shock caused by China going nuclear was the NPT. Industrial countries with a full fuel-cycle, preeminently Japan, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, etc, drove a hard bargain to protect their interests in access to the technology.

The same was not available to India, for instance; nor was any umbrella. A significant difference, which will of course elude the usual suspects.

Hossp #298

There is no spitting match with you. I tried to interact with you seriously in the first place because you came across as intelligent and genuinely free of delusion (I really do not mean to condescend to you in any way, that was my honest motive). You’ll notice that my first few posts to you were very low key and entirely fact-based – I was not trying to put one over you. I was disappointed about how the interaction turned out - I’ve been following your posts on the ‘Separate Destinies’ board with interest.

In any case, thanks for that exposition on press freedom in Pakistan. I suspected most of what you said (e.g. more open dissent from the party line allowed in the English press, which has minuscule readership) but you have confirmed it. I did know about Maleeha Lodhi’s brother the arms dealer Amer Lodhi and his connection with the aborted Mirage deal; I am just as familiar with the term ‘lifafa journalism’ as I am with ‘lota.’ I’ve actually been following the Pakistani English-language press since 1998. Incidentally India Abroad used to carry selections from the Pakistani press, some translated from Urdu – the selections from Nawaiwaqt in particular were so over the top that at first I had a hard time believing they were accurate. Najam Sethi’s biases are only too obvious. His Ittefaq Nama vendetta against Sharif just goes on and on. Without being in a position to know for sure, I think there are some class issues here in the way Sharif is portrayed.

I know of at least one other Pakistani scribe living in exile – Abidullah Jan, who is based in Canada. He comes across as a raving Islamist. I wonder why he had to leave Pakistan.

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