Daily Excelsior... Editorial

Dialogue with the deaf ?

By N. B. Menon
A former Foreign Secretary is reported to have urged at a seminar that we quickly get down to "unconditional" talks with ....more

India should call
us bluffon CTBT

By Avinash Shirodkar
There appears to be a communication gap between Washington and New Delhi over India signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), with ....more

Compulsory military
service

By Gurmeet Kanwal

A great deal of media attention has recently been focused on the shortage of ....more

EDITORIAL

VAJPAYEE CABINET

New cabinet members have been sworn in with Vajpayee as the Prime Minister. A total of seventy ministers for such a large country is a reasonable number and roughly corresponds to Sarkaria Commission recommendations which desired the size of the cabinet to be not more than 10% of the total MPs including Rajya Sabha MPs. This yet leaves a margin for induction of another 10. The size of the cabinet is thus not excessive although it is larger than the predecessor Vajpayee Government. The very fact that this time there are more MPs on the NDA side, some increase is inevitable. Further, this time round NDA is not bogged down in any teething problems due to favourable numbers that is bound to ensure full five year term. The new cabinet selected for governing the country can be viewed from various angles.

First, out of total 70 ministers, only 26 are of cabinet rank. The remaining 44 are Ministers of State out of which 7 hold independent charge. It is only a two-tier ministry which has eliminated Deputy Ministers as has been the pratice in vogue all these years. To that extent there is more compactness and cohesion.

Second, almost all States have got representation in the cabinet. Notable feature lies in Jammu & Kashmir State getting two slots, one each from Jammu and Kashmir regions. Both will be Minister of State. Prof. Chaman Lal Gupta who won from Udhampur constituency and Omar Farooq elected from Srinagar are expected to look after interests of not only the State and the country but also their respective regions. Although National Conference was not part of the NDA and it fought elections on its own manifesto which differs from the Agenda of National Governance of the NDA, NC supremo has been consistent in supporting the last Vajpayee Government. He is also on record of having stated that whosoever occupies Delhi power apparatus shall have full support of the NC because of the fact that State is totally dependent on central largesse and magnanimity. One expects that presence of two ministers from J&K shall ensure sufficient flow of financial succour for completing ongoing projects as also initiating new ones.

Third, the cabinet incidentally has only two Muslim Ministers, Syed Hussain and Omar Farooq. Such small representation is attributed to the fact that very few Muslims have been elected amongst NDA alliance partners. Most of them have thrown their lot behind Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj, Congress and Leftist Parties. But overall representation in Parliament for Muslims has increased in the 13th Lok Sabha when compared to the 12th Lok Sabha. Likewise, there is no Sikh Minister. This is attributed to massive drubbing given to the Akali Dal. AD Supremo Prakash Singh Badal has not been able to name anyone for inclusion in the cabinet although Vajpayee had asked for it. It is likely to be done shortly. As regards, Backward classes and SC/STs they have been accommodated adequately as Janata Dal (U) could fill the void even as other allies also have sufficient MPs from such categories.

Fourth, by any reckoning it is a cabinet of talent and experience and interests of all States and region are expected to be looked after well besides the national interests. As of now, there is no dissenting voice or feeling of resentment for being excluded from the cabinet. RK Hegde is out; so is Sikander Bakt. From Delhi, the only inclusion is that of Jagmohan who by reckoning has vast administrative capabilities to do service to the nation in any portfolio. Other heavy weights from Delhi shall have to either wait or their services could be utilised for party streamlining.

Fifth, women representation looks adequate with stalwarts like Menka Gandhi, Mamata Banerjee, Uma Bharti etc. All of them are not only competent but have consistent track record of public service. One would miss the eloquence of Sushma Swaraj.

By available indications all the coveted slots shall be retained by the previous ministers to have continuity in defence, foreign affairs, internal affairs and information. As DMK and Trinamool Congress have also joined NDA Government, some important slots naturally go to them.

With cohesive, experienced and talented cabinet team in place, Vajpayee Government is expected to move swiftly in filling up various void that came in the way of speedy development during the previous spell of governance due to lack of numbers and internecine squabbles that kept the Government on tanterhooks for all the 13 months. This time round there are no such bottlenecks and to that extent Vajpayee Government has no alibi to be short on delivery.

PAK SCENARIO

Army takeover of Pakistan dislodging Nawaz Sharif Government has just one surprise. It has come about rather too late. Otherwise, it is repeat of Pak history that has seen 25 year long rule by Army dictators since inception of Pakistan in 1947. The remaining period has also manifested army supremacy over the political Governments. Be it any popular Government, it cannot move an inch except with the tacit support of the Army Generals. Having tasted the power and compulsions of political parties, it is natural that another spell of Army rule is no different from what it has been in previous coups. Nawaz Sharif had been trying to contain ambitious Generals of Pakistan Army. Last year, General Karamat was removed as Chief of Army Staff because he had criticised functioning of political Government. He was replaced by General Parvez Musharaff who was considered Sharif's confident. The same General has put Sharif under arrest alongwith his brother and other cabinet ministers. During the address to the nation on Pak TV, General Musharaff has mentioned three aspects that compelled him to takeover the Government. First, Nawaz Government has made the Pak economy collapse. Second, every Pakistani felt humiliated due to wrong policies. Third, people of Pakistan wanted them to be rescued from self-aggrandised Nawaz Sharif who cared very little for the nation and its teeming millions.

In diplomatic terminology, it is strictly an internal matters of Pakistan. So India's policy is to wait and watch. Meanwhile, Indian armed forces have been put on full alert. As regards Washington, its comments are in favour of restoration of democratic rule but otherwise not critical of Pakistan Army. All the earlier coups by Army in Pakistan had the tacit American support. Even now Pak Army is tailor-made for subserving American interests. So, it is to be seen how Washington reacts in the next few days. Current reports speak of massive support of Pakistanis for the takeover. Other major nations are equally concerned about the happenings in Pakistan. India as also other countries do have several questions uppermost in mind. Will Pak Army curb terrorism and Talibanisation of Pakistan or give it massive boost? Are there more Generals in the Pak Army who would dislodge Parvez Musharaff? What is the role of Pak President Mr Tarar who is well known for his fundamentalist dispensation? Will the Army Government prove any better in improving shattered Pak economy with all aid from international agencies stopped? Could there be nuclear misadventure? All nations wait with baited breath for the picture to become clear over the next few days.

Dialogue with the deaf ?

By N. B. Menon

A former Foreign Secretary is reported to have urged at a seminar that we quickly get down to "unconditional" talks with Pakistan. This astonishingly silly suggestion could have been dismissed out of hand had it not come from where it did. As young diplomats on training at Whitehall, we were taught never to get into talks with another power unless one was absolutely clear in one's mind about what to get out of the talks and how. What are we to talk "unconditionally" about with Pakistan? Peace? Is peace with Pakistan possible? Or even feasible? Is it to be something like Chamberlain's "peace in our time "proclaimed after Munich? Those who do understand war cannot understand peace.

The Chief of Army Staff, General V. P. Malik, is on record saying that the Kargil war would end with us firing the last shot. In other words, complete victory (as this is being written the last shot has not yet been fired) is the military objective pursuant to the political decision taken by the Government. From Sun Tzu to Jomini and Clausewitz, every renowned military thinker has laid down that having decided on war as a matter of policy the "Prince" must abstain from interfering with the army's pursuit of victory: The present Government, wisely, has abstained unlike Nehru and Krishna Menon who moved around platoons and even sections in 1962. The "Prince" is concerned solely with the political aim he seeks to achieve through a military victory. Defeat does not achieve any aim, nor does a stalemate.

What then is the political aim we seek or ought to seek to attain through our decision militarily to crush Pakistani aggression on our territory? The only rational answer is that we have to bring about a state of affairs in which Pakistan can never again indulge in a military adventure against us whatever the pretext. War is the ultimate contention with arms between two sovereign wills. The one who emerges from the conflict as the dominant will determines the political outcome of the war.

The desired outcome can be stated simply, but behind that simplicity lies a complex of considerations. To convert military victory into consolidated long-term political gains is not easy. To realise the latter requires the greatest clarity of vision and foresight, the ultimate in realism, the most resolute will, single-minded pursuit of national interest, searching insight into the psyche and the character of the adversary, and profound understanding of history. Nations which fail on these counts are doomed to suffer again and again in war.

We committed a grievous error in accepting a ceasefire effective first January 1949; we committed another at Tashkent in 1966; we capitulated at Shimla in 1972; as a result, we now have another war on our hands with the same adversary. We must not repeat our past mistakes if we are to bequeath to our coming generations a reasonable hope of peace. To be magnanimous in victory is morally good, but to be so is the exclusive privilege of the one whose will totally dominates at the end of the war; for the weak-willed, it means capitulation to one's own infirmity. Pre-emptive capitulation implicit in the Gujral doctrine convinced Pakistan of the weakness of our will, and encouraged the Kargil adventure. All these historic efforts were sought to be justified in the name of peace. Instead of peace, we have had 50 years of broken pledges and betrayals. The latest is Kargil.

Peace is possible only when both sides are of the same mind. Is this possible where India and Pakistan are the two sides? There cannot be a shred of doubt about our desire for a lasting peace, but can that be said about Pakistan? For an answer, one has to look into Pakistan's psyche. Whatever it was in 1947, it is now something new thanks to President Zia's Islamisation programme and the consequent rise of radical Islamism which now has a stranglehold on the Pakistani mind. When radical Islamism comes in through the door, reason and rationality fly out of the window.

Quite a few of us would remember the BBC recently interviewing a Pakistani Army officer just on the other side of the LoC in the battle zone. This middle level officer candidly stated that he considered himself engaged in a jehad, and thus, a mujahid, and so did every one of the officers and men. He added that because of the rewards promised in paradise (undoubtedly delectable ones), he and all those engaged in fighting were more than ready to die. By contrast, the Indian Army officer interviewed on our side of the LoC said that he was fighting because as a soldier it was his duty to defend his country. The difference between the two mentalities is so glaring that it needs no elaboration.

Therein lies the clue to the Pakistani psyche. Years of Islamisation of the civil population and the armed forces have produced a jehadist mentality. Radical Islamism postulates that Muslims are in a constant state of jehad against non-Muslims. Its professed aim is to bring the whole world under Islamist rule and to convert everyone to Islam; those who resist being consigned to the sword. Therefore, what the BBC interview revealed was not an isolated instance of individual zealotry, but the expression of a psychopathic state that has gripped Pakistan and will not let go. A secular, democratic, multi-religious India is a living refutation of the radical Islamist ideology. Hence India must be brought to its knees. Kashmir is merely an excuse, a symptom, not the disease that afflicts our neighbour.

In thinking about peace with Pakistan, we have to recognise certain ineluctable realities that militate against it. In orthodox Islam, religion and politics are inseparable. And, according to al-Bukhari's (or was it al-Ghazzah's) ruling only that person can become the ruler, to whom the armed forces have sworn allegiance. All this has to be legitimised by the ulema with the seal of divine predestination. Thus is created the triumvirate of the clerics, the civil authority and the armed forces, which exercises totalitarian control over society. In the end, it is the fiat of the cleric, which holds sway. It is the Pakistani Islamiat clerics who have propounded the thesis of jehad against us, and that must therefore remain the leitmotif of everything that Pakistan does or does not do with regard to us.

The fact then is that the Pakistani armed forces consider themselves mujahids engaged in a continuous jehad, against us until victory is achieved. Export of terrorism is a part of this jehad. This is legitimised by the radical Islamist clerics, and the civil authority naturally has to fall in line. Seen in this light, Kargil is not an isolated irruption across the LoC; it is a resort to arms within the overall plan of an anti-India jehad. Defeat it at one place, it will raise its head elsewhere. Jehad, once started, cannot stop, particularly because shahadat (martyrdom) is guaranteed to bring such marvellous rewards in the next world.

In Kargil we were not fighting just an invader: It was the first ever armed conflict between a secular, democratic and multi-religious order and the evil force of radical Islamist religious imperialism. It is a clash between two distinct and irreconcilable civilisations. We cannot and must not run away from this reality. Given this, is peace between us and Pakistan possible, or even feasible? It is not. At best, there can be only armed truce. The problem cannot be resolved through endless and bootless palaver when the two minds are totally at odds with each other and the ends sought are absolutely contrary. We have to see Kargil as a skirmish between radical Islamism and human civilisation, and let that perception shape our policy. Let us apply a local version of the Kissinger Doctrine, and see how long Pakistan can withstand it. INAV

India should call us bluffon CTBT

By Avinash Shirodkar

There appears to be a communication gap between Washington and New Delhi over India signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), with fundamental difference persisting between the two sides.

Democrat Clinton, who admitted that he did not have the two-thirds majority of the 67 votes needed to ratify the treaty in the republican-controlled senate, warned that "if the United States senate votes this treaty down, it would be a signal that the United States now wants to lead the world away from the cause of non-proliferation. We would be giving the green light to all these other people."

The senate, which has largely ignored the administration's pleas to ratify the treaty since it was submitted two years ago, last week suddenly changed course and said it would allow for a debate of the accord later this week, followed by a vote somewhere around October 12. But the administration and democrats have protested that just a couple of days' debate is insufficient to consider the merits or demerits of such an important treaty. They called on the senate foreign relations committee, chaired by Jesse Helms who strongly opposes the treaty, to hold a series of hearings, which Helms has still not acceded to.

The US dichotomy on the issue is important since Indo-US relations are of paramount importance and both sides have much to gain from constructive engagement with each other. It is imperative that there should be in New Delhi a clear understanding of America's grand strategy, policy objectives and negotiating style. Unfortunately, that is not always the case.

What happened at the time of Kargil took the cake as an embarrassing indicator of naivete and woolly thinking here. The firm and unrelenting US support to our position that the Pakistani invaders who had violated the sanctity of the Line of Control in the Kargil sector must withdraw unconditionally was instantly interpreted as a 'paradigm change' (L. K. Advani's words).

Curiously, this notion persisted even after responsible Americans, apparently taken aback by the wrong conclusions drawn in this country, made it clear that 'no paradigm' was involved, that the American position was 'Kargil-specific' and did not mean a change in the policy on the wider Kashmir issue, and that the US position on Kargil was determined as much by the self-evident merits of the case as by America's self-interest.

The blinkers dropped only when an unjustifiably critical statement was issued by the US state department on the shooting down of the Pakistani spy plane that had intruded into Kutch, a criticism aggravated by a wholly unacceptable American description of the nature of the India-Pakistan differences over Sir Creek. This was nothing, however, compared with what was to follow.

No sooner was the draft nuclear doctrine of India released than a fusillade of objectionable, indeed offensive, statements by James Rubin, the official spokesman of the state department was directed at New Delhi which naturally expressed its dismay. After a decent interval, the US tried to mitigate privately the annoyance that had been caused so publicly.

Somewhat similar, though admittedly in a lower key, is the story of India-America exchanges over the familiar issue of the CTBT that has been the centrepiece of eight rounds of the dialogue between foreign minister Jaswant Singh and the US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott. The issue was discussed by Jaswant also during his recent visit to New York with Talbott's boss, Madeleine Albright.

After this meeting, the first message to India was that Bill Clinton will visit this country (and Pakistan) in early 2000, that India was indeed the 'missing part' in his life as both a person and the President and that the prior signing of the CTBT by New Delhi was no longer a 'condition' for the presidential sojourn.

Once again, sadly, some, though by no means all, of the makers of policy and opinion were taken in. The CTBT, they convinced themselves, would go to the 'back burner'. When told that this was not so and the primacy of the nonproliferation question in the Delhi-Washington dialogue remained intact, they were dismissive. Mercifully, the American side was quick to shatter their illusions about the 'positive' development relating to the test ban treaty.

On 2 October, Rubin and the head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) who is soon to be under-secretary of state for disarmament, told the wide world that the US was about to 'increase the pressure' on India (and Pakistan) to sign the CTBT. Both expressed the hope that political conference on CTBT, due to begin in Vienna on 6 October, would pass a 'strong resolution' to tell New Delhi and Islamabad what to do.

For the first time, those officially speaking for America admitted publicly that US attempts to persuade India to sign on the dotted line would be more effective if the US senate, which sat on the treaty for two years, ratified it without further delay. And thereby hangs a tale.

The Republican majority in the senate, bitterly hostile to the CTBT, for it believes it to be injurious to American security and supreme interests, has suddenly agreed to discuss the treaty next week and vote on it on October 12. This is so because the Republican leadership is convinced that Clinton cannot muster the necessary two-thirds senate votes for ratification. Driven to the wall, Clinton and his pro-CTBT advisers have no alternative but to drum up support for ratification as best they can.

Apart from whatever persuasion, hidden and unhidden, they can bring to bear on the senators domestically, they are now telling the legislature that ratification by the US is essential if India and Pakistan are to be brought within the CTBT's purview.

This, interestingly, is a 180-degree change from the earlier American stance. All these months, US interlocutors have been telling their Indian opposite numbers that New Delhi should sign the CTBT immediately so that Pakistan can follow suit, and armed with these signatures, the Clinton administration can secure ratification from a reluctant senate. It is a measure of American resilience that the earlier argument has been turned on its head. From our point of view what rankles is that the US position vis-a-vis the CTBT is entirely bizarre. And yet, instead of exposing it, we allowed the American side, if not to push us, at least lecture as like a stern headmaster.

This country could have called the American bluff by declaring that it would sign the treaty as soon as the US had ratified it, and so had China and Russia which are also waiting for the verdict of the senate on the Capitol Hill. Or, we could have signed the treaty and made it clear that ratification would follow only after all the five permanent members of the security council had completed the necessary ratification processes. INAV