It’s in part 2 of Warraq’s article — The Two Faces of Feisal Rauf — that I am astonished to learn that the US constitution is sharia compliant. The imam in question is Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, now famous for being the champion of the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” formerly known as the “Cordoba House,” and now generally referred to as “Park51.”

Many devout Muslims are aware of the abysmal lack of scientific achievements of the Islamic world in the last thousand years — but they commonly have recourse to the ingenious notion that the Koran anticipated all the Western scientific discoveries of the last thousand years; thus one can find electricity, quantum mechanics, relativity, and embryology in it. Rauf does something similar with the Islamic world’s lack of American values, claiming that “America is substantively an ‘Islamic’ country, by which I mean a country whose systems remarkably embody the principles that Islamic law requires of a government.”

Wow! So I guess sharia is all about freedom of expression, the rights of individuals, the equality of sexes, the separation of church and state, and representative democracy. I guessed that maybe the framers of the US constitution were a lazy bunch and looked around for something to use as the basic template. Noting that the Islamic countries are the most successful, they must have figured that the answer lay in sharia. So they checked it out and found that it was perfect. Being practical men, and lazy on top of that, they figured that a cut-and-paste job was all that they needed to do. Change a word here, alter a line there, and voila — The Constitution of the United States of America. Basically the US Constitution (c. 1780CE) is Sharia 2.0 (c. 700CE). Who could blame them. Sharia 1.0 was in the public domain, considering that 1,000 years had passed since it’s publication. The US constitution is a derivative work created under the creative commons license, I figured.

On the next page of that article, I realized that I guessed wrong. Here’s how Warraq explains it:

Rauf’s claim is complete nonsense. Sharia is totally incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. Women are inferior under Islamic law — their testimony in a court of law is worth half that of a man; their movement is strictly restricted; they cannot marry non-Muslims. Non-Muslims living in Muslim countries also have inferior status under Islamic law; they may not testify against a Muslim. In Saudi Arabia, following a tradition of Muhammad, who said that “two religions cannot exist in the country of Arabia,” non-Muslims are forbidden to practice their religion, build houses of worship, possess religious texts, etc. Non-believers or atheists in Muslim countries do not have “the right to life”; all the major law schools, whether Sunni or Shia, agree that they are to be killed. (Muslim doctors of law generally divide sins into great sins and little sins. Of the 17 great sins, unbelief is the greatest, more heinous than murder, theft, adultery, etc.) Slavery is recognized as legitimate in the Koran. Muslim men are allowed to cohabit with any of their female slaves, and they are allowed to take possession even of married female slaves. One does not have the right to change one’s religion if one is born into a Muslim family; here is how the great commentator Baydawi sees the matter: “Whosoever turns back from his belief, openly or secretly, take him and kill him wheresoever you find him, like any other infidel. Separate yourself from him altogether. Do not accept intercession in his regard.” And here are the punishments in store for transgressors against the Holy Law: amputation, flogging, crucifixion, and stoning to death.

Here I will pause to note that non-Muslims are generally ignorant of what Islam is. Some have an idiotic fanciful notion that all religions are about love and goodwill, and live and let live, and every now and then will give a plaintive cry, “Oh why can’t we all just get along!” Never having bothered to read the Koran (Qur’an), they cannot imagine that a religious ideology can be viciously and murderously hateful of all non-Muslims. Jews and Christians, as “people of the book,” at least are allowed to live as “dhimmis” under their Muslim overlords. But Islam mandates its followers to outright kill people like me — an idolater.

Well, you’d say, it’s just the ideology. No true Muslim actually goes about killing idolaters. Tell that to the Kashimiri pundits languishing in the refugee camps in India for decades. Tell that to the Hindus of Deganga in West Bengal who have been the victims of on-going Muslim rioting. Refer to the injunction in the Koran (sura 9, ayah 5) “when the holy months are over, slay the idolaters wherever you may find them. Arrest them, besiege them and lie in ambush everywhere for them.” The holy month of ramadan got over.

Just by the way, when I read that I thought, “Shouldn’t the order be first ambush, then besiege, then arrest, and finally slay?” Anyway, god moves in mysterious ways, as the monotheists say, and who am I to question his word since I am a disbelieving atheist idolatrous kaffir?

Getting back to the matter at hand, here’s more from Warraq about some books by imam Rauf:

While, in his later work, Rauf gushes about “our common Abrahamic faith,” and about the U.S. Constitution’s being “Sharia compliant,” in the earlier work, he states (rather than argues) that Islam and sharia are far superior to Judaism and Christianity, and also to any man-made laws such as those in the U.S. Constitution. He accuses both Judaism and Christianity of having “eviscerated the spiritual dimension from Sacred Law.” Islam is, says Rauf, repeating Sura 3 verse 110, “the best religion on earth.”

You should read Ibn Warraq’s 2-part article. Go now and read part 1 (“One Imam, Multiple Messages“) and part 2 (“The Two Faces of Feisal Rauf“).

I hope you will take the time to listen to this video (there’s really nothing much to see), and if you would please help raise public consciousness about the topic. As Sam Harris says, “how we criticize, or fail to criticize, the religious beliefs of other human beings at this moment has an extraordinary significance for the maintenance of civilization. It could well be the most significant variable that is in our power to influence.” Please do take some time to listen to Harris.

India is likely to face some very major stress — centered most likely on resource scarcity such as water, food, or energy — in the not too distant future. When that happens, the split will be along religious lines. The government is etching even more deeply the religious divisions within society. It should keep us awake at night at the thought of the deaths of innocents by the millions that could easily be the result of the inevitable division caused by the cynically manipulative actions of the government. Then there’s another thought: didn’t these people themselves choose all these Congress governments which over the decades has been creating the conditions for the slaughter to come.

It’s all karma, neh?

Related Post: The Problem with Atheism. (Jan 2008)

. . . [the] conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The audio and the transcript of the speech is available at American Rhetoric.

U.S. weapons sales jumped nearly 50 percent in 2008 despite the global economic recession to $37.8 billion from $25.4 billion the year before.

The jump defied worldwide trends as global arms sales fell 7.6 percent to $55.2 billion in 2008, the report said. Global weapons agreements were at their lowest level since 2005.

Italy, the second ranked country, amassed only $3.7 billion in arms sales, while Russia ranked third with sales falling to $3.5 billion in 2008, down from $10.8 billion in 2007.

I am surprised to learn that Italy sold more arms than Russia did in 2008. But I am not surprised that developing countries were major customers of the US for weapons.

The United States also led in arms sales to the developing world, signing 70.1 percent of these weapons agreements at a value of $29.6 billion in 2008, the report said.

Such deals with the developing world included a $6.5 billion air defense system for the United Arab Emirates, a $2.1 billion jet fighter for Morocco and a $2 billion attack helicopter for Taiwan.

India, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Korea and Brazil also reached weapons deals with the United States, the Times said.

The report revealed the United Arab Emirates was the top buyer of arms in the developing world with $9.7 billion in arms purchases in 2008.

Saudi Arabia ranked second with $8.7 billion in weapons agreements, and Morocco was third with $5.4 billion in deals.

The US giveth with one hand (paying for oil) and with the other hand it taketh away (by selling them arms.) What a sweet deal!

The US is the biggest dealer of true weapons of mass destruction. The world is capable of producing sufficient stuff for all it 6+ billion inhabitants but too much of the production is shifted to making weapons and depriving around 2+ billion of a decent human existence. Thousands of children around the world die every day from malnutrition.

The US has blood on its hand, for sure. But they are not the only ones. The leaders of the developing nations are no less guilty — they are complicit in making possible the terrible misery that afflicts humans.

Related posts:

The War and the Circus (April 2009)

In effect, to a large extent the poor of the desperately poor third-world countries fund each round of successive advanced weapons development. Of course, the poor of the DPTWC (shortened now since I have repeated “desperately poor third-world countries” enough times to get the idea across) often cheer when their leaders buy these weapons. Their jubilance at what grinds them into further poverty arises out of the same attitude that dragged them into poverty in the first place: an astounding stupidity that is matched only by the immorality of the venal bastards in power.

I should note here that the venal bastards in power are not men of any specific skin or eye color. The VBiP occur in all nations — whether in DPTWCs like India and Pakistan or in AICs like the US and Russia. All these VBiP have their incentives aligned and act accordingly. They are the politicians, the generals, captains of the military-industrial complex, and weapons dealers. They are found in Washington, DC, New Delhi, Moscow, Islamabad, Beijing, and other such fine places that the poor of the DPTWC do not inhabit. The names of the politicians are all over the newspapers and their faces on TVs and magazines: Bush, Clinton, Putin, Manmohan Singh, Sharif, Mugabe, . . . The generals, CEOs of the military-industrial complex, and weapons dealers are not usually household names but they are there from all parts of the world, rich or poor.

Iraq now, Iran next, Saudi Arabia later (Jun 2008)

I think that it makes immense sense for the US government to go around spreading weapons of mass destruction technology. Every country that has, or attempted to have, WMD ultimately has to thank the US for the capability. Why does the US do it? Because, first, the US makes money from selling the technology. The US is not the greatest arms exporter in the world for nothing. Selling weapons and weapons technology is its bread and butter. Second, it gives the US the opportunity to later go in and invade countries that it disagrees with under the pretext that WMD should be destroyed. Just one example out of many: the US gave WMD technology to Iraq and then invaded Iraq when it thought that the time was ripe. Another example (which Markey cites) is how the US transferred nuclear technology to Iran before the Shah was overthrown.

The Dollar Auction Continues (Dec 2006)

It should come as no surprise that the US is selling arms to Pakistan.

“2,769 Radio Frequency TOW 2A missiles, 415 RF bunker buster missiles, fly-to-buy missiles in both these categories, 121 TOW launchers for wire-guided and wireless missiles, E-2C HAWKEYE 2000 Airborne Early Warning Systems, simulators and support equipment. Their total worth could be up to $1.04 Billion.”

According Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, “The latest geo-strategic rationale for many US (arms) sales is the so-called war on terror…. US officials claim that the recent sale to Pakistan of F-16 jets with air-to-air missiles will help in the fight against Al Qaeda. In reality, they are for fighting India and they create a market for selling similar US fighters to India.”

True Weapons of Mass Destruction (Oct 2004)

Can you imagine how much human suffering can be avoided by merely spending a few billion dollars in say bringing pure drinking water, schools for all children, food for the malnourished kids, contraceptive services for women, and so on …?

These are the weapons of mass destruction — these weapons destroy whether they are actually used in conflict or not. Merely buying them condemns hundreds of millions to lives of such misery that one wonders whether it would not be better for the weapons to be used so as to put an end to the misery.

The Military-Industrial Complex (Oct 2004). The following is an excerpt from the “Military-Industrial Complex Speech,” by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961. It was his farewell speech.

Throughout America’s adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology — global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle — with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Pakistan has long proved to be adept at diplomatically levering its weakness into strength. Now it is using the threat of its possible implosion to rake in record-level bilateral and multilateral aid.

Bountiful aid has been pouring in without any requirement that Pakistan address the root cause of its emergence as the epicentre of global terrorism — a state-instilled jihad culture and military-created terrorist outfits and militias. Even though the scourge of Pakistani terrorism emanates not so much from the Islamist mullahs as from generals who reared the forces of jihad, rewards are being showered on the procreators of terrorism.

The Pakistani-scripted Mumbai terrorist attacks, far from putting Islamabad in the international doghouse, have paradoxically helped open the floodgates of international aid, even if involuntarily. Between 1952 and 2008, Islamabad received over $73bn as foreign aid, according to Pakistan’s Economic Survey. But in the period since the Mumbai strikes, the amount of aid pledged or delivered to Pakistan has totalled a staggering $23.3bn. This figure excludes China’s unpublicised contributions but includes the IMF’s $7.6bn bailout package, released after the Mumbai attacks.

Just last week, Islamabad secured some $5.2bn in new aid at a donors conference — the first of its kind for Pakistan. At that conference, host Japan and America pledged $1bn each, while the EU promised $640 million, Saudi Arabia $700 million, and Iran and the UAE $300 million each. [Emphasis added.]

Chellaney says, “put simply, Islamabad is being allowed to reap a terrorist windfall.” I would make a stronger assertion: that Pakistan is being rewarded precisely because it promotes terrorism against India.

But the global jihadi terrorism of the type that Pakistan promotes is a more recent phenomenon than the pouring of aid into Pakistan. The explanation of why Pakistan gets enormous amounts of aid is clearly to keep India engaged in a bloody dollar auction game. Of course, Islamic terrorism against India is another arrow in Pakistan’s quiver and it makes Pakistan a lot more lethal to India. Which is why every act of Pakistani Islamic jihadi terrorism against India is rewarded by the US and its allies (which, in this context, included China).

Go read the chilling article by Chellaney. He concludes with

The reason Pakistan can harvest tens of billions of dollars by playing the failing-state card is no different from what endeared it to US policy since the 1950s or made it an “all-weather ally” of China. Pakistan remains too useful a pawn for external powers involved in this region. These powers thus are unlikely to let it fail, even as they play up the threat of implosion to bolster the Pakistani state. It’s no wonder Pakistan seems determined as ever to pursue its “war of a thousand cuts” to turn India — with its aging, toothless leadership — into a failed state.

If you have been following the story of aid to Pakistan from a set of nations called “The Friends of Pakistan”, you know the drill. In a Sept 2008 post, “Why Pakistan is Useful Just the Way it is“, we have a bit more:

The “Friends of Pakistan are “Britain, France, Germany, the United States, China, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Turkey, Australia and Italy plus the United Nations and the European Union.” Among these are nations — US, China, the Arab states, France, Britain — that give aid to Pakistan. The military component of the aid is what Pakistan uses to initiate and fight bloody wars with India. India, a desperately poor country, cannot afford these costly wars but it has to fight them because the Friends of Pakistan want that India bleeds. Pakistan is the instrument.

I can see the reason why the economic meltdown of Pakistan is certainly not in the interests of the Friends of Pakistan. The biggest dagger stuck in India’s rib would be pulled out and with it will disappear the prospects of selling arms to India, of keeping India engaged in 1,000-year jihads which Pakistan regularly declares against India. The Friends of Pakistan more certainly do not want Pakistan to fail. You too would get worried if the pit bull you have trained for years to attack suddenly is in danger of dropping dead.

The Friends of Pakistan have an interest in keeping the conflict between India and Pakistan alive. Why do I say that? I use the revealed preference argument. Basically it says that by freely choosing something, you reveal what you prefer. If you have the power to choose a “Pakistan Friendly to India” but instead choose a “Pakistan as a Sworn Moral Enemy of India”, you have revealed that you prefer that. I take it is obvious that the Friends of Pakistan could have easily enough told Pakistan that it should stop its belligerence towards India and concentrate on economic development. But they do not and that is why I believe that they have an interest in keeping Pakistan dependent on their money because Pakistan does their bidding.

Please take a look at that post. For your convenience, here’s a bit from it:

Absent the conflict, the Indian subcontinent will develop differently and could in fact become economically prosperous and consequently exert an independent influence on the world. That independent influence could potentially alter the current power structure. As it is, controlling China is out of the question. They have had to make space for China. But they will be damned if India also becomes powerful.

Here’s how I imagine the Friends of Pakistan reasoning:

“Sure, there is a lot of talk in India about India becoming a ’super power.’ (snigger, snigger.) We are fine with India deluding itself into thinking that it is an economic superpower just because it has a lot of software coolies and call center operators. Good for them. It keeps them distracted.

“But let’s not forget that without Pakistan as a mill around India’s neck, India could have a decent shot at actually developing. We cannot afford the disintegration of Pakistan. To keep Pakistan in business is not such a costly affair, in any case. We’re rich enough to chip in a few billion dollars and they will do what we want them to do. The generals are not very expensive anyway. If we had to keep the civilian population happy, it would have been more expensive. But this is much cleaner. We buy the generals and give them shiny new fighter planes and even help with getting them a few nukes to jerk off over. In turn, the generals have the politicians eating out of their hands, and rule the starving population with an iron fist.

“Now let’s just pull together, shall we? The last thing we need is Pakistan disintegrating. We are not always on the same side of the table. But on this one we are as one. Even China needs to be — has to be — on our side. China especially sees the need for containing India. For the greater good, we all, we the Friends of Pakistan, have to make sure that we give just enough to keep the pit bull alive. It should be kept hungry. That dependence on us keeps it obedient to us and savage against India. Remember, not too much though. It should be hungry and mean, not fat and lazy.

“We have plied Pakistan with lots of military hardware. The economic collapse of Pakistan would be disastrous because the same hardware in the hands of the factions within Pakistan would be totally useless against India. It bloody defeats the bloody purpose. That cannot be allowed to happen.”

To be fair, my modeling of a long-lasting global conflict as a dollar auction is just a hypothesis. The model makes predictions and unfortunately all the evidence is consistent with the model’s prediction. This adds confidence in the model’s accuracy.

For more, please see a September 2001 (right after 9/11) post titled “The Looking Glass War” for the beginning of this line of reasoning.

Related posts:

“The Dollar Auction Continues” — Dec 2006.

“Quo Vadis, Pakistan” — Nov 2007.

“The War and the Circus” — Apr 2009.

Every nation on earth is involved in this insanity, directly or indirectly. The desperately poor third-world nations starve their own people to buy ever more expensive weapons from the advanced industrialized countries. By keeping these nations fighting amongst themselves, the advanced industrialized countries achieve two goals. First, income.

The desperately poor third-world nations pay the advanced industrialized countries for weapons they cannot afford. If one side of a particular conflict involving two desperately poor third-world countries is unable to afford the weapons, the advanced industrialized countries give out “aid” to prop it up so that it does not lose and thereby end the conflict. The other side, to maintain balance, then has to become a paying customer and buy an equivalent set. This is a source of income for the advanced industrialized countries, and more damagingly, a transfer of wealth from the desperately poor to the amazingly prosperous.

The second goal of the advanced industrialized countries (AIC) is the disposal of obsolete weapons. Weapons age and become useless to the original developers. Instead of scrapping them, they are sold to the desperately poor third-world countries. (As the saying in Hindi goes, “आम के आम, गुत्लियो के दाम!”) This provides them the space and the funds required to develop the next round of more expensive weapons — which when the time comes, will similarly be sold to the desperately poor third-world nations.

In effect, to a large extent the poor of the desperately poor third-world countries fund each round of successive advanced weapons development. Of course, the poor of the DPTWC (shortened now since I have repeated “desperately poor third-world countries” enough times to get the idea across) often cheer when their leaders buy these weapons. Their jubilance at what grinds them into further poverty arises out of the same attitude that dragged them into poverty in the first place: an astounding stupidity that is matched only by the immorality of the venal bastards in power.

I should note here that the venal bastards in power are not men of any specific skin or eye color. The VBiP occur in all nations — whether in DPTWCs like India and Pakistan or in AICs like the US and Russia. All these VBiP have their incentives aligned and act accordingly. They are the politicians, the generals, captains of the military-industrial complex, and weapons dealers. They are found in Washington, DC, New Delhi, Moscow, Islamabad, Beijing, and other such fine places that the poor of the DPTWC do not inhabit. The names of the politicians are all over the newspapers and their faces on TVs and magazines: Bush, Clinton, Putin, Manmohan Singh, Sharif, Mugabe, . . . The generals, CEOs of the military-industrial complex, and weapons dealers are not usually household names but they are there from all parts of the world, rich or poor.

Talk of poverty, inequality, development, and such have been all the rage for the past so many years. There are those who are convinced that entrepreneurship and innovation will solve these pressing problems. Some lean heavily on hi-tech gizmos and declare that One Laptop Per Child is the obvious answer to poverty; some others flog the horse of micro-finance mercilessly convinced that it will pull the poor out of poverty; some high-mindedly declare that taxing the rich and re-distributing the proceeds to the poor will be best (whilst all the while handling the money with very sticky fingers); some others believe that the only way out of any problem is killing sufficient numbers of bystanders through suicide bombing in accordance with their religious beliefs; the nuttiest argue that globalization, capitalism, and the market are the real villains and the best way out of poverty is to prevent any sort of industrialization, and so on. The notion that perhaps the poverty of the poor in the DPTWCs is related to the weapons (that the AIC build, operate and sell, and which the powerful in the poor countries so eagerly buy) is not advanced frequently, if at all.

I am conflicted when I consider this issue. Is it the stupidity of the poor, or is it the greed of the rich and powerful that is the primary source of this state of affairs? Perhaps it is a tango and both have to be involved for the dance to happen. Whatever it is, though, it is all karma. Or as they say, you makes your bed, you perforce has to lie in it.

Anyhow, now that I am done with the preface, here are some items (in no particular order) which may be relevant in the context.

Item: The Acorn ponders “the absurdity of giving Predator drones to Pakistan.” Ostensible reason: for Pakistan to fight the Al-Qaeda and Taliban. Yeah right! Pakistan gave birth to them and nourishes them. Why would it want to kill its own babies? Real reason that the US continues to gift weapons to Pakistan has to do with what I wrote above.

I reproduce below the comment I made at The Acorn:

The absurdity of the situation is resolved if you consider that the military-industrial complex of the US is involved in a simple dollar auction.

Briefly, the US gives Pakistan drones under some pretext. Since Pakistan is broke, it cannot pay for them. So the US gives military assistance to Pakistan to buy the drones with. Which basically means that the US pays its weapons manufacturers for supplying the Pakistanis. That’s the first-order effect of military aid to Pakistan: US weapons manufacturers continue to be in business.

The second-order effect follows predictably. India now has to match Pakistan’s weapons. India pays the US to buy drones. This means more business for US weapons manufacturers.

The war on terror has to continue because that’s what allows the machinery of the military-industrial complex humming away. The US is a military superpower and any day of the week it actually wants to, it can totally wipe off global Islamic terrorism. That it chooses not to do so is simple: its weapons industry will hurt like hell. Sure the US exports a lot of stuff other than weapons. But the politicians who make the policies are in the pockets of the weapons manufacturers.

Allow me to quote from an essay I wrote many years ago, “Dollar Auctions and Deadly Games.”

In a recent op-ed piece, “Stopping America’s Most Lethal Export,” in the New York Times, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize Oscar Arias wrote: “While the arms industry profits, people throughout the world suffer… the true weapons of mass destruction are the jet fighters, tanks, machine guns and other military exports that the United States ships to non- democratic countries–a record $8.3 billion worth in the 1997 fiscal year, the last year for which figures are available.” Aside from anything else, the incontrovertible fact is that war is costly for all except for weapons manufacturers.

Moving on, let’s consider another example of DPTWCs buying useless junk from AICs.

Item: In January 2004, India signed a deal to buy the antique and obsolete 1980s-design Russian aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov. Originally the deal was for $1.5 billion but the Russians later said that the retrofitting will take an additional $2 billion. The heap of prettied-up scrap will be delivered to India sometime in 2012, and it will be accessorized with 16 matching MiG-29Ks. The deal was made by the Congress-led UPA government. Pranab Mukherjee and lots of other people got lots of foreign trips out of the deal. The Indian navy big bosses must be looking forward to having another floating deck to strut about on.

Meanwhile, however, aircraft carriers have become sitting ducks. Gary Brecher writes, “THIS IS HOW THE CARRIERS WILL DIE”

I’ve been saying for a long time that aircraft carriers are just history’s most expensive floating targets, and that they were doomed.

But now I can tell you exactly how they’re going to die. I’ve just read one of the most shocking stories in years. It comes from the US Naval Institute, not exactly an alarmist or anti-Navy source. And what it says is that the US carrier group is scrap metal.

The Chinese military has developed a ballistic missile, Dong Feng 21, specifically designed to kill US aircraft carriers: “Because the missile employs a complex guidance system, low radar signature and a maneuverability that makes its flight path unpredictable, the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased. It is estimated that the missile can travel at mach 10 and reach its maximum range of 2000km in less than 12 minutes.” That’s the US Naval Institute talking, remember. They’re understating the case when they say that, with speed, satellite guidance and maneuverability like that, “the odds that it can evade tracking systems to reach its target are increased.” [1]

I believe that a large part of the answer to the persistent and pervasive poverty of the DPTWCs lies in the insanity of modern war. And the answer is that until the people realize what is going on, they are unlikely to move a finger to change the system. But then that requires an understanding of what is going on, an understanding that in our case we don’t have given the dismal state of our educational system. Indeed, one could cynically argue that the educational system is deliberately not allowed to function because otherwise the people may become smart and stop feeding the machine. Cynical but perhaps closer to the truth than what those in power want you to believe.

Meanwhile, the poor will continue to be distracted from the real issues by the routinely staged three-ring circus called “democratic elections.” Let the circus begin. Because the least one can give them in exchange for their blood, sweat and tears is some entertainment.

NOTES:

[1]. You should go read that article for more but I cannot resist quoting a bit more from it because I like the way he puts it:

The lesson here is the same one all of you suckers should have learned from watching the financial news this year: the people at the top are just as dumb as you are, just meaner and greedier. And that goes for the ones running the US surface fleet as much as it does for the GM or Chrysler honchos. Hell, they even look the same. Take that Wagoner ass who just got the boot from GM and put him in a tailored uniform and he could walk on as an admiral in any officer’s club from Guam to Diego Garcia. You have to stop thinking somebody up there is looking out for you.

Remember that one sentence, get it branded onto your arm: “Ships currently have no defense against a ballistic missile attack.” What does that tell you about the distinguished gentlemen with all the ribbons on their chest who’ve been standing up on carrier bridges looking like they know what they’re doing for the past 50 years? They’re either stupid or so sleazy they’re willing to make a career commanding ships they know, goddamn well know, are floating coffins for thousands of ranks and dozens of the most expensive goldplated airplanes in the history of the world. You call that patriotic? I’d hang them all.

[Return.]

Spencer warned that “the ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.” That observation holds with special force in the context of the misgovernment of India. If the policy makers (the bureaucrats and politicians) are shielded from the ill-effects of their policies, they have little incentive to act prudently. Eventually, as the stock of bad policies keep building up, the country ends up in ruin. We have to remember that in the main, the success or failure of an economy is solely determined by the quality of its public policies.

Allow me a couple of examples to illustrate what I mean.

First, the state of Indian roads. They are generally really shoddily constructed, very poorly maintained, and unimaginably congested. Corruption in the public works department ensures that it could not be otherwise. The residents of the cities suffer and have been doing so for so long that it is taken as normal. That’s just how it is, the person on the street says, and struggles on. The policymakers, in sharp contrast, don’t suffer bad roads and traffic congestion. The roads are cleared of traffic when the top politicians have to use them. Often times, entire stretches of roads are repaired and paved over urgently within a few days in anticipation of a visit by some politician. High level officials (such as judges) and bureaucrats travel around in cars with red flashing lights and traffic yields to them — as if they were imperial rulers riding rough shod over the plebs.

What if the politicians had to use the Indian roads regularly? What if they had to ride the local trains in Mumbai to get to work?

Second, electrical power. The chronic shortage of power is entirely man-made in the sense that is a direct consequence of bad policies. Those who made these bad policies don’t ever suffer a shortage of power, however. In the areas where they live, power is always available by decree. What if power to their residences and offices were turned off first? What if they had to suffer the summer heat without electrical fans and airconditioners?

Ubiquitous bad road and chronic electrical power shortages are just two examples of scores of other ills that arise from the bad policies that are made by people who are insulated from the consequences. One of the most disturbing aspects of current Indian reality is Islamic terrorism. In my view, Indians are suffering because the policymakers don’t suffer Islamic terrorism.

According to the Home Ministry figures, over 7,000 Indians have been killed, mostly but not exclusively by Islamic, terrorism. Average people going about their daily grind end up as terrorist targets, as do the ill-equipped cops and other professionals in charge of public safety. The politicians and high level bureaucrats never die. In fact, every terrorist attack only leads to increased security for them. Thousands of special commandos are deputed round the clock to protect them. So what incentive do they have in actually preventing terrorism?

I think that one of the first steps that needed to be taken is to bring the effects of terrorism on the policy makers. For every act of terrorism, the security of the politicians should be reduced. I do believe that if this were done, they would do their best to see that the police and other law enforcement people are successful in removing terrorism by its roots.

Related posts:

March 2006.Terrorism, the way out.

The people whose business it is to do their utmost to ensure security fail to do their job and the people suffer as a consequence of that ineptitude. All they do after a terrorist attack is to make a bunch of ineffectual and inane statements, and don’t feel motivated to prevent future attacks with any vigor nor make the terrorist pay. Why? Because they don’t feel the pain.

Pain matters. If due to some neurological injury, you were to stop feeling pain, you could be in dire danger. Pain signals that the body is injured and that steps need to be taken to mitigate the threat and to take appropriate action to heal the already damaged part.

Terrorism threatens the body of the society and damages it. It is when the pain of the terrorism inflicted wound does not reach what constitutes the “brain” of the society – the policy makers who control the mechanisms that can prevent terrorist acts and can respond appropriately when they do happen – that society is in danger. The solution is therefore simple: the brain has to know that it will feel the pain if and when injury occurs to the body. Only then will the brain be motivated to seek appropriate mechanisms for stopping terrorists, and be prepared to deal forcefully with terrorists if it does occur.

NOTES:

1. Spencer is one of the greatest of the dead white men that I admire. Why? Read his essay “The Right to Ignore the State” (1884) to know why. [Return]

In the ultimate analysis, ideas matter. Ideas are what distinguishes humans from all known forms of terrestial living beings. The differences one observes in the development of various societies ultimately boil down to the set of ideas that a society developes, borrows, adopts, adapts, and uses. Ideas as embodied in the institutions and mores of society ultimately dictate how prosperous it is. A set of ideas that persist and pervade the collective consciousness of a society can be called an ideology. After controlling for all other factors such as natural endowments and accidents of history, the state of development and prospects of growth of a society (and therefore its economy) are fundamentally and inextricably tied to the dominant ideology of that society.

Ideologies that deny humans freedom are not consistent with development. The world has seen many totalitarian ideologies and witnessed their eventual and inevitable passing. That is not surprising because totalitarian ideologies are weak in the evolutionary sense: they cannot compete against ideologies that admit the ultimate force in human societies — human freedom.

Islam is a totalitarian ideology. It literally means submission and that submission is to a man who lived in 7th century Arabia and who determined that all have to submit to the will of his god, Allah, and that he was the one who was entrusted with the task of conveying the wishes of his god for the rest of humanity for all times and all places. As an ideology, it is inimical to humanity’s primal drive: freedom from dictation from above. As far as it goes, Islam was a perfect instrument for winning in tribal conflicts of 7th century Arabia. But the world is temporally and spatially much bigger than 7th century Arabia. Islam’s ideology cannot win in a globalized world, a world where the fittest ideas survive in a battle of competiting ideas and ideologies. Any ideology that has to resort to violence to maintain itself merely demonstrates its weakness and its days are ultimately limited.

Empirical and analytical evidence abounds with regard to the developmentally harmful effects of Islam. As an explanatory factor for underdevelopment and retarded growth, Islam is significant. Most of the Islamic majority economies are far behind in most indicators of human development. Even those Islamic states that have immense natural endowments such as oil and natural gas — and they earn hundreds of billions of dollars annually in exporting them — even they lag behind other states that are not so fortunately endowed. This is not conjecture or mere prejudice. Even a cursory reading of the present state of Islamic states reveals that fact.

The Arab world, overwhelmingly Islamic, has not contributed in any significant way to the modern world in terms of discovery, invention, production of art, advances in the sciences and humanities. It surely must be remarkable that Jews — vanishingly small in number relative to Arabs — have contributed astonishingly to technology, sciences, arts and humanities. Evidence is everywhere but just look at the number of Nobel prizes won by the Jews. Why?

The prime minister of India, echoing the reports of many committees, has noted quite rightly that Muslims of India are on average poorer, less educated, less skilled and generally do poorly in many generally accepted indicators of social development compared to non-muslims in India. That is not a badge of honor even though it is apparently proudly worn by some to claim that they are discriminated against by non-muslims.

The claim is that they are victims and therefore they are entitled to not only income transfers but also get a free pass for any transgression against basic human values. Not given to critical self-examination, the fault is always of the other. Proudly wearing the cloak of the victim, they cannot do any wrong. Predictably, after every act of Islamic terrorism, the so-called “intellectuals” and opinion-makers emerge with a ready-made explanation: Islamic terrorism is a response to poverty.

That is an untenable explanation. India has a large number of poor Muslims. But then it also has a much larger non-muslim population which is in the same economically dire straits. Why aren’t these non-muslims using terrorism as an instrument of influencing public policy? Since Kashmir is a favorite example trotted out dutifully in the explanation of random Islamic violence in India, how does one explain the total lack of terrorism by non-muslims who were driven out of Kashmir and are huddled in pathetic refugee camps for decades? Why aren’t poor Biharis terrorising India in their attempt to secure economic justice from the rest? What about the dalits and the other downtrodden? Why?

Every act of Islamic terrorism currently undertaken in justified on two incidents: Godhra riots and Babri masjid. Anyone will grant that destroying a mosque is damnable; and so are the roits that killed innocent Muslims and Hindus following the Islamic terrorism of burning innocents on a train. But how long can every act of Islamic terrorism be justified on those two incidents?

Here’s a bit from the most recent act of Islamic terrorism as reported in The Wall Street Journal:

On the 20th floor, the gunmen shoved the group out of the stairwell. They lined up the 13 men and three women and lifted their weapons. “Why are you doing this to us?” a man called out. “We haven’t done anything to you.”

“Remember Babri Masjid?” one of the gunmen shouted, referring to a 16th-century mosque built by India’s first Mughal Muslim emperor and destroyed by Hindu radicals in 1992.

“Remember Godhra?” the second attacker asked, a reference to the town in the Indian state of Gujarat where religious rioting that evolved into an anti-Muslim pogrom began in 2002.

“We are Turkish. We are Muslim,” someone in the group screamed. One of the gunmen motioned for two Turks in the group to step aside.

Then they pointed their weapons at the rest and squeezed the triggers.

They left a pile of dead bodies. Like they always do. But then can Godhra and Babri masjid be used to justify the thousands of temples that were destroyed in India over the last thousand years? Can they be used to justify the killing by the millions that Islam unleased on non-muslims in India over the centuries? Are there any statutes of limitation on the revenge that will be extracted for these two acts? When will be non-muslims in India finally have paid fully in terms of innocent blood, sweat and tears for these two acts of wanton violence and destruction?

I am far from done on this line of enquiry. But before I close this post, two additional points. First, the concluding paragraphs from an opinion piece (Is Yoga Bad for You?) by a Pakistani commentator, Irfan Hussain, writing in The Dawn commenting on the outcome of the lastest spectacular episode of Islamic terrorism:

Whatever the reason, such desperate and ultimately futile measures only serve to further marginalise Muslims. Already viewed as a backward community by much of the world, Muslims risk withdrawing from the rest of mankind at a time when globalisation is breaking down barriers at a frenzied pace.

In India, Muslim ulema have won the right to dominate women as a religious right. This exemption was granted to them by a secular Congress Party. In Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Taliban and their supporters want to ban music, movies and even kite-flying. When the Taliban were in power, they had banned education for girls, and had denied women medical care from male doctors. Where will this madness end?

It will end if and when Muslims decide that enough is enough, and that they do not want to live in the sixth century. Unfortunately, there is much confusion in the Islamic world, with the result that uneducated mullahs issue half-baked edicts on everything under the sun, and ordinary people, unsure of themselves, pay lip service to these teachings.

Millions in the Islamic world have convinced themselves that their current weakness has been caused by the West. If they examine the causes for their backwardness more closely, they will discover that they lie much closer to home than they would like to admit.

Irfan Hussain leaves the reader to make up his or her own mind on the ultimate cause of the distress of Muslims in India and around the world. I am convinced that it is Islam. Muslims, in my opinion, are also victims of Islam as much as the rest of the world. That is the unvarnished truth and in all likelihood expressing that view publicly is not too good for my health. It is just an opinion but in today’s world, it is not safe to do so. This is significant. I can voice my opinion on what’s wrong with capitalism, or socialism, or communism, or nazism, or whathaveyou and people who disagree with me will call me all sorts of unkind names but only Islam will call for my beheading. Which brings me to the other point that I want to make before I conclude this piece.

Islam does not allow dissent — not just to its own adherents but also to non-muslims. Its supremacist and triumphalist doctrine essentially says that it has to subjugate the rest of humanity eventually, and if that means the total and complete annihilation of the non-muslims, so be it.

In the estimation of Islam, I am an idolator and therefore have to be killed merely because I refuse to bow my head in submission to Islam. I am guilty a priori. By my mere refusal to submist to Islam, I am the enemy. I, along with the rest of the non-muslim world, am guilty and therefore my destruction is ordained by the divine edict of the Islamic god Allah.

But as I said before, to me it appears that Muslims are as much the victims of Islam as the rest of the non-muslim world. (Some wit noted that Pakistan is a victim of Islamic terrorism; the first to die in a suicide bombing is a Pakistani.) I am not against Muslims for the simple reason that I have nothing againt random people I have never met. I can only like or dislike people for what they have done to me, not just because they subscribe to some ideas or ideology, however kooky and senseless it may be. Islam divides creation between two opposing and warring factions: the Muslims and non-muslims. I don’t. It is just unfortunate that I — an idolator — am categorized as an enemy of Muslims but I am not. As an average human being, I could not be bothered to go out seeking Muslims to kill.

And that is the point: non-muslims don’t wish any harm to Muslims merely because Muslims believe in Allah. But Islam does declare in no uncertain terms what Muslims are required to do to infidels. Hindus — such as yours truly — are not even classified as dhimmis — those who can buy protection from their Muslim overlords because they are the “people of the book.” I am to be killed outright if I refuse to submit to Islam.

Islam is a failed ideology, just like communism and nazism. The surest sign that it is failing is that it resorts to mindless violence against humanity, just as nazism and communism did. They have been consigned to the dustbin of history and so will Islam — soon.

{To be continued in Part 3.}

PS: And now I would like to very politely suggest that all those who believe that they have read in what I have ever written that I am calling for violence against Muslims, that they should get their effing heads out of their collective behinds and read what I actually wrote. I am against Islam — an ideology — not Muslims — a collection of humans. If you cannot distinguish betwen the two, you should get yourself some remedial reading courses at your local high school. Furthermore, if you are misconstruing what I wrote as a diatribe against Muslims, perhaps it reveals your subconcious hatred of Muslims. Take a deep breath and ask yourself if you harbor ill-will against people merely because they are different. If you do, perhaps you subscribe to the Islamic doctrine of labeling people without justification.

To the candle burners: there’s illumination required where the sun doesn’t shine. Stick them up there please.

All this goes to show that entertaining the idea of building a gas pipeline from Iran to India — via Pakistan, of all places — at the cost of a few billion dollars was silly beyond belief. The Iran-India Pipe Bomb is guaranteed to blow up in India’s face if India makes the mistake of making deals with nations led by lunatics like Ahmedinejad.

Money quote from Thug-in-chief Ahmedinejad:

“We must believe in the fact that Islam is not confined to geographical borders, ethnic groups and nations. It’s a universal ideology that leads the world to justice. We don’t shy away from declaring that Islam is ready to rule the world. We must prepare ourselves to rule the world.” [January, 2006]

Dream on, Mr Ahmedinejad, dream on. The Israelis will wake you up soon.

When a narrow, shrunken vision is preferred over a national outlook and national perspective, the Raj Thackerays emerge winners. What’s the difference between a Raj making Indians fight with other Indians and a UPA government sowing the seeds of distrust and hate among Indians on the basis of religious reservations for one community and assaulting the faith icons of the other? Or for that matter, ULFA in Assam killing Hindi-speaking Indians and outfits like Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammad murdering Hindu Indians in Jammu and Kashmir? Someone shoots from guns, another uses a microphone and the third does it by abusing constitutional authority. The result is identical – India is bruised and shrunk.

Here’s a bit more:

No politician has been ever held accountable for the national loss incurred because of his misdeeds, divisive politics and ill-governance. The more divisive and exploitative of pubic money and trust he becomes, the more votes he gets and he is hailed as a “seasoned” politician.

So why blame Raj Thackeray?

Those who get votes on the basis of dividing people and feel no remorse seeing youngsters burning themselves against their policies reap worse than the Raj Thackerays. It’s the failure of national parties and organisations that parochialism and narrow polity with a shrunken vision is allowed to play with national integration and peoples’ money. The game of de-listing, unlisting and enlisting on the basis of the colour of your thoughts divides more sharply than the buffoonery of the parochial players.

We have leaders of Yadavs, Gujjars, Jats, Brahmins, Dalits and tribals. We have champions of UP, Bihar, Bengal, Tamil Nadu and other states. If something happens to Tamils anywhere in the world, it’s the “sacred duty” of the Tamil Nadu leaders alone to feel their pain and speak up for them. When Malaysia’s Hindus of Tamil origin were persecuted, the only chief minister that spoke against it was Karunanidhi, not Lalu Yadav or Nitish Kumar. They were Tamil ‘nationals’, hence Tamils should support their cause, and similarly Hindi-speaking Indians get support from the ‘Hindi nation’ when persecuted in Assam or Maharashtra.

Raj Thackeray is not an aberration, he is the norm. The past masters of divisive politics have their names immortalized in the names of universities, railway stations, airports, national parks, industrial parks, roads, and towns. Raj merely wants his name to live on as well. In India, dividing people based on caste and religion appears to be the fast track to becoming a hero.

I recommend Tarun Vijay’s opinion piece.

One cannot escape the fact that the US is the world’s reigning hegemon. Nothing much of any significance happens around the world is not in some way affected by what the US does. No large nation or a confederation of nations is immune from US influence to some extent, whether it be India, China, or the EU. But when it comes to small impoverished dependent nations, the US is the ultimate dispenser of their destinies. Pakistan is what the US wants it to be, and Pakistan does what the US wants it to do.

For most of its existence as a nation, Pakistan has been a dictatorship. It could not be a democracy because India is a democracy (for whatever it is worth.) Here’s what I mean. India is a large country and for historical and cultural reasons, it took the path of being a democracy. Large democracies are hard for foreign powers to control — unless of course foreign powers are somehow able to install their own agents at the highest levels of political power. Although there have been reports of some Indian leaders being CIA agents, for the large part the Indian leaders are homegrown and are not traitors. Indian leaders may be misguided and ignorant but they are not traitors. Exhibit A in this context is Mr Jawahar Lal Nehru.

Nehru’s ignorance and misapprehension of the world actually plays a very significant role in the story that I am telling. At the time of India’s political independence from colonial rule, Nehru decided that India must be non-aligned. That was a silly idea to begin with but in an amazing display of doublethink aligned India with the USSR. The USSR was militarily powerful but was a socialist state doomed to fail as socialism eventually does. The US was clearly miffed that India was not going to be its client state and being a democracy could not be directly controlled. Pakistan provided the required indirect control that the US sought over India. Not just the US, but China also recognized the utility of Pakistan as an instrument for torturing India.

It is interesting to imagine how it would have turned out if Nehru had not being mesmerized by socialism and non-alignment, and had instead aligned India with the Western powers and market economics. Perhaps India could have been a developed economy. But let’s leave that counterfactual aside for the moment.

Even a small democratic country is hard to control — whether externally or internally — because the democratic political process is sluggish and sticky. Dictatorships, in contrast, are quick in their ability to implement dictates from up on high. Pakistan therefore had to be a dictatorship. As it happened, the military was clearly able and willing to step up to the plate and dictate. The circumstances were right. Culturally, Pakistan was (and still is) a feudal society. The top brass in the military have feudal backgrounds and took easily to the role of controlling the serfs. As long as the military was powerful, the country was under control. Now, it does not require a very powerful military to control a very poor population. Western control could still be imposed through a cooperative dictator with a military armed with rifles and bazookas. What was really needed though was a military powerful enough to pose a challenge to India’s military.

So here’s the story. The US could not have India as an allay because Nehru decided the USSR was the one to follow. The US therefore could not allow India to become developed and powerful. So it needed Pakistan to be the instrument to use against India. Therefore Pakistan had to be dictatorship. The Pakistani military obliged and for its rewards, not only does it rule the country, but it also gets to play with very powerful weapons that the US gives away as aid. Every time Pakistani army is at the brink of defeat in one of its declared 1000-year jihads against India, the US quickly intervenes and saves the Pakistani military butt. Since Sept 11, 2001, the US has given $10 billion or so as aid (all but one billion of which was for weapons.) All that military aid is clearly not meant for use against the Taliban (which are all Pakistan’s children raised through US aid in the first place.) India is the only logical target of the weapons that the Pakistani military acquires.

Based on that model, let me see what I believe is going to happen. Musharraf seems to be losing control. Will he leave? Yes, if the US can find a replacement for him; no, otherwise. The US is thinking. Here’s the NY Times (Nov 15th):

In meetings on Wednesday, officials at the White House, State Department and the Pentagon huddled to decide what message Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte would deliver to General Musharraf — and perhaps more important, to Pakistan’s generals — when he arrives in Islamabad on Friday.

Administration officials say they still hope that Mr. Negroponte can salvage the fractured arranged marriage between General Musharraf and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. But in Pakistan, foreign diplomats and aides to both leaders said the chances of a deal between the leaders were evaporating 11 days after General Musharraf declared de facto martial law.

If Negroponte finds a nice pliant military general to replace Musharraf, Musharraf is out. There are other combinations too. If Bhutto and Musharraf as a team are willing to take orders from the US (as Musharraf has done so far, and presumably Bhutto and Sharif did during their tenure), then Musharraf will continue as president till the sham elections in January. Currently he has signaled to his US bosses that he is willing to continue to dance to their tunes by claiming that he will step down as the military chief by December.

The problem is that Musharraf is no longer the one powerful person he was earlier. It is always good to have to deal with one dictator. It gets messy when you have to deal with a coalition of less powerful persons. Still, what is the US to do? It can club together a team consisting of Musharraf, a politician (Bhutto), and one general and see that they are all on the same page in their oath of allegiance to the US. To the common people of Pakistan, there are three A’s that matter: America, Army, and Allah. To the rulers of Pakistan, only one A matters.

America matters to Pakistan because the very existence of Pakistan has been entirely dependent on America. Without the billions in military aid, Pakistan would never have dared to go on its military misadventures against India. Its internal strife would have torn it into smaller states by now. Without the US’s tacit acquiescence, Pakistan would have never been able to acquire nuclear bomb-making technology. Pakistan is the dog that barks courageously at the shackled elephant. It cannot continue its proxy way against India in Kashmir without US support. If the US wanted, it could over a 3-minute call from Washington DC to Islamabad end Pakistan’s involvement in Kashmir. But that is not what the US wants. The US wants that India continue to spend obscene amounts on weapons. It ensure that by arming Pakistan for free. (See my piece “Dollar Auctions and Deadly Games.”)

I am a pacifist. I don’t like violence and dislike all ideologies that are violent and that promote their ideology through death and destruction. Power that flows out of the barrel of a gun is awesome to behold but it is contemptible and inhuman. The more military power the US projects around the world, the more reasonable people hold it in contempt. My love for the US is only second to my love for India. But I have intense dislike for its foreign policies and what that foreign policy does to the poor and the wretched of the world.

I have written before about what the world owes to the US. The US can really be the greatest force for good in the world. But it isn’t. I think it isn’t because it is controlled by the logic of war and the military-industrial complex that controls power in the US. It could invent great things that could make humanity prosper and live decent lives all across the world. But instead, it spends $2 trillion (a number beyond mortal conception) on a needless war in Iraq. Just see this graph — the Cost of War — for getting a perspective on how much that is and what it spends on other things.

In the end, what happens in Pakistan is of vital interest to India. It will never become so destabilized so as to entirely collapse as a state; but it will never actually be anything other than a dictatorship constantly being propped up by the US because that is what the US wants it to be. The names of the generals will change but not the tune to which they dance.

[See also: The Dollar Auction Continues.]

There is no need for education or creativity in an oil economy; no need for hard work or imagination or healthy competition. For an oil economy to work properly the country just needs a strongman ruler who lords it over his crew of tough guys who, in turn, arrange to haul the stuff out of the earth and haul the cash back into the country, thereby keeping things stable and efficient so everyone stays happy.

It’s a resource curse, this propensity for extraction economies to favor strongmen rulers. Like trust-fund babies who make a mess of their lives, an oil economy gives people the security of a trust fund along with the low expectations of a welfare program.

Who wouldn’t love a trust fund; but it’s humiliating and dispiriting to be on a culture-wide welfare program. As Warren Buffett once said, “A very rich person should leave his kids enough money to do anything, but not enough to do nothing.”

You are quick to point out issues (again) with the US. Yep, Iraq, but at the same time, we’ve done quite a bit for literally every nation since we became a nation. We can debate the merits of capitalism, democracy, etc or we can understand that India is still a young country that has needs – similar to many other countries.

I can appreciate Jack’s point of view. I stand entirely justifiably accused of pointing a finger at the US for much of the avoidable tragedies of the world. Only powerful nations are capable of great harm and one has to merely observe the world with a little bit of care to realize how much of the blame for the present state of the world rests at the feet of the mighty.

I am an equal opportunity offender. I do not discriminate. If I see something rotten in the state of Denmark, I say it. When I see something rotten in my motherland (India, and there is a heck of a lot of rotten stuff here), I say it. It may offend patriotic Indians but that is an occupational hazard of being a patriot. So also, despite all my love for many things that the US is responsible for, when I note the horrors that US foreign policy inflicts on the weak, I am offended. I am offended not as an Indian or as an American (having lived for over 20 years in the US, I am well aware of how much American is in me), but as a human. Living in a place far away (in every sense of the term) from one’s land of birth should cure anyone of the myopia common to most people which imprisons them within a parochial chauvinism. It is to that myopic viewpoint that I will address myself in this bit.

Why, some have asked me, do I always appear to criticize India and many things Indian? The reason is simple: I was born in India and I have very strong emotional attachments to the land of my ancestors. In some sense, you may even say that I love this place—however much I would like to say that this place is not very lovable. I care about what happens in here, I care about how the people of India live, I care about how India affects the world, I care about how India is perceived by others. I care about India in the same sense that I care about my friends and family. That immediately gives me the right to tell them where they screwed up and the responsibility to help them with their misfortunes. I will be fairly content to see a stranger screw up perhaps, but I will be damned if I will stand by and watch impassively my best friend behave like an idiot.

With maturity comes the realization that one is not just an Indian, or an Indian with a bit of American thrown in, but that one is a member of the extended human family. For convenience and tradition, that great family has been fragmented into so many warring groups. But in the end, we all are pretty much members of one big unhappy family. Some of us have more money, or are more educated, or have different pigmentation. But seen from a sufficiently far remove, we are fairly indistinguishable. We have the same hopes and aspirations, fears and longings, desires and dreams. Our station in life is dictated by a random draw that was made by forces beyond our imagination even, leave alone our control.

Each of us is like the turtle on top of a ten-foot pole: it did not get there by itself. Someone else put it up there. Can we really take any justifiable pride in being where we are? Do we inherit some merit because someone who lived in the same geographic area centuries ago did something great? What does it mean to say that a certain discovery was made by Einstein and therefore the average Jew feels somehow privileged for being a Jew? Or that the Buddha was born in the Indian subcontinent and gained enlightened in Bodh Gaya and therefore all present day residents of that land have reason to be proud of that fact?

As I see it, fundamentally, I neither inherit merit nor blame for what others who I claim kinship with have done or not done. But if one must, for whatever reason, inherit stuff, I think that one must expand one’s kinship relationship to include the whole of humanity and become responsible for the entire bundle—the good and the bad. What I am objecting to is two-fold: first, the notion of defining one’s kinship restrictively. Saying that I am an American and I will take pride in only American stuff. Second, selectively defining what one would like to inherit. I am an American and I am proud of all the great stuff that Americans have done. I reject that sort of parochial myopic hubris.

Now back to the point that Jack raised. He wrote, “ … we’ve done quite a bit for literally every nation since we became a nation.” True. Let’s inquire into that, shall we? The US is a powerful nation. How did it become so powerful? By the ingenuity of a fairly hardworking people together with a good deal of natural resources. And let’s not forget a great deal of slave labor. And a lot of foreign capital from its European ancestors. Of course, during the great wars (and following the wars), the US did a fair bit for its European allies. The Marshall Plan comes to mind. The US helped Europe’s reconstruction and in doing so also helped itself immeasurably.

The US has been the epicenter of practically all major inventions and innovations spanning every known technology from telecommunications to modern electronic computers. Europe used to be the center of the universe but that center shifted to the US early last century. US was the birthplace of great modern institutions, from public libraries to national parks. The US constitution is one of the more enlightened documents ever penned by fallible human hands. One cannot talk of the modern world without reference to the US.

Moving on, the US is the nation which invented the true weapons of mass destruction, from the nuclear bombs to deadly chemical and biological weapons. The US is the greatest manufacturer and exporter of weapons the world has ever known. It has been the only nation to have used nuclear weapons, not once but twice on enemy civilians. It has also used its own citizens for experiments involving radiation and chemical weapons. The US has initiated more conflict in more foreign nations than any other single country. It routinely helps with instigating conflict and then supplying arms to both sides of the conflict. Where it is not directly involved in the start of the conflict, it profits handsomely from the continuance of the conflict. Case in point: the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan.

The British, on their way out, made sure that Indian independence will come at a cost to be paid for over many decades. Those worthies (sic) that took over the control of the country let the problem get out of hand. The birth of the Kashmir problem had a British midwife and Nehru nursed it with extreme care and raised it as a bastard child paradoxically claimed by two parents. Pakistan is the clear violator of international norms in this conflict. If it had been in the interest of the US for this costly conflict to end, it would have ended. But one of the primary reasons this conflict continues is that the US profits from it. Every so often the US rewards the terrorist state of Pakistan with billion-dollar free military aid so that Pakistan would continue to bleed India directly, and indirectly India would have to buy billion-dollar worth of sophisticated weapons from the US to balance the weapons that Pakistan gets for free from the US.

Around the world, the US destabilizes often legitimately elected governments, and props up heinous dictators, whilst all the while lecturing others very loudly about democracy. It bombs pharmaceutical factories to distract attention from the sexual shenanigans of its president. Or kills a hundred thousand uninvolved civilians out of a fit of rage arising from having three thousand killed on its soil by people who the US helped create. No country is safe from the doctrine of pre-emptive first strike that the US has enunciated lately.

Besides being the most powerful nation on the earth, it is also the most indebted nation on earth. The world lends the US two billion dollars every day through various means. Though slavery is abolished in the US since many years, the products of slave labor continue to enrich the lives of those who live in the US. Chinese products flood the market. So also the “slave labor” that is engaged in producing labor-intensive goods in underdeveloped third world countries which have to export primary goods partly to pay for the weapons that the US exports.

Practically anyone who has even a passing interest in world affairs realizes the double standards that the US employs. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans are ignorant of the effects of the US foreign policy. Proof: the Americans twice elected a bunch of war-mongering neo-conservatives and gave them practically unlimited powers to wreak havoc on the world.

Powerful and irresponsible, US foreign policy condemns the world to a state of perpetual war. The US spends more on weapons of mass destruction than the combined expenditure of the next seven war-mongering states. That needless waste of global resources diverts resources from the abjectly poor of the world and millions die every year in far off lands because of the greed for power of the few who direct the US policy. That is why I claim that natural disasters like the recent tsunami cannot hold a candle to the destructive power of humans.

No man is an island, as the poet meditated and said that we are all connected. Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. So also, we cannot but bear responsibility for the inhumanity we humans impose on others both human and non-human.

[This is a repost. I had originally posted it sometime before January 2005 but for some reason its status changed to "draft" from "published". One commentator took offense at my pointing fingers at the US in a recent post. So I searched for this article and could not find it. Even tried the "Way Back Machine." Finally I did a google desktop search (thanks Google!) and found it. So I am reposting it.]

“2,769 Radio Frequency TOW 2A missiles, 415 RF bunker buster missiles, fly-to-buy missiles in both these categories, 121 TOW launchers for wire-guided and wireless missiles, E-2C HAWKEYE 2000 Airborne Early Warning Systems, simulators and support equipment. Their total worth could be up to $1.04 Billion.”

According Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, “The latest geo-strategic rationale for many US (arms) sales is the so-called war on terror…. US officials claim that the recent sale to Pakistan of F-16 jets with air-to-air missiles will help in the fight against Al Qaeda. In reality, they are for fighting India and they create a market for selling similar US fighters to India.” [Emphasis mine.]

Of the many causes of third world poverty (and India accounts for a pretty large share of the third world), the buying of arms from the so-called first world must be a major cause. Yes, the US is the largest seller of weapons of mass destruction — it not only develops the weapons of mass destruction, but it also sells them around the world. The US has to keep selling these WMD so as to keeps its WMD factories humming.

But the US could not sell these weapons unless the leaders of the third world impoverished countries did not want to buy these for self aggrandizement. You need drug dealers and drug addicts. If there were no addicts, there wouldn’t be any profit in dealing. Or to put it another way, if there were no bidders, the auctioneer would be jobless. The dollar auction continues.

India’s development and the trade in WMD is clearly related, and I have pondered the issue on this blog before. From “Benefits of Weapons Trade“:

Take, for instance, trade in weapons of mass destruction. Is it welfare enhancing? The seller of these weapons clearly profits from the trade. What about the buyer? Does it really promote the security of the buyer? These questions bear investigation. While the answers may all be very trivially obvious for some, it is not at all clear to me. Though the perception may be widely shared that buying weapons is good use of scarce resources, it could also be wildly incorrect.

The reluctance of the US when it comes to selling arms to developing countries is like Sam’s reluctance to let his gullible friends paint the fence for him. When he finally relents, the friends are happy and suitably grateful to him for his magnanimity. Only in few trades are all the gains one-sided but trade such as these are exemplars of that set.

From the “Care and Feeding of the Permanent Arms Industry“:

The care and feeding of the monstrous permanent arms industry requires perpetual armed conflict. Like sheep to the slaughter, the third world countries eagerly line up for the treat of killing their neighbors while impoverishing themselves even further. A dispassionate observer could easily conclude that these poor over-populated third-rate countries deserve their demolition and wash his hands of the whole sorry mess.

And from “Part 2 of the Care and Feeding“:

Before I am taken to task by someone for stating the above, let me hasten to add that there is no law in the universe which prohibits a country from profiting from the stupidity of other countries. That India and Pakistan are abjectly poor overpopulated underdeveloped nations constantly at each others’ throat willing to further impoverish themselves by buying impossibly expensive weapons from abroad is not the US’s fault. The US merely supplies the arms, it does not directly go and starve millions of people of third world countries. The actual starving of untold millions of abjectly poor people in third rate world countries is because of the warmongering ignorant policy makers that populate these countries.

To round it all off, here are my views on the True Weapons of Mass Destruction:

The rich sell arms to the poor and the poor pay for it through the blood, sweat, and tears of its starving millions. To be sure, it is not the starving millions who are interested in fighting the poor of the neighboring countries. These millions of poor unfortunates are merely the slave labor that supply through their toil goods that the rich buy in exchange for the arms they ship to the armies of the poor nations.

It is interesting to ask who exactly wants war. Speaking personally, I am against aggression and don’t wish to be the victim nor the perpetrator of aggression. I also believe that the vast majority of people would happily live and let live. So how does it happen that nations arm themselves to the teeth and more often than not beggar their neighbors and themselves in doing so.

I believe it is so because nations are not monolithic entities. People have different stations in a country. The generals who wage wars and the politicians who direct the ship of state do not have to pay for the wars themselves. The poor have to die on the battle fields and those who are not paid to die, starve on the streets so that their meagre production can be shipped out to pay for the weapons of mass destruction that the leaders of the nation buy for their own amusement.

It is all karma, neh?

Today’s New York Times has a profile of Dr Wafa Sultan. The Washington Times editorial of March 4th began thus:

To judge by her appearances on al Jazeera, Los Angeles psychologist Wafa Sultan is the very definition of fearlessness. Face-to-face with radical Islamists before millions of potentially hostile viewers around the Arab world, Ms. Sultan — a secular Arab American fluent in Arabic — does not flinch when called a heretic and a blasphemer. For all we know, she is endangering her life.

She has received death threats, naturally.

I am of course unconditionally in favor of free speech and free beliefs. My most memorable line from her confrontation with her Egyptian interlocutor Mr. Al-Khouli (who had compared Christians to apes and pigs) after he had called her a heretic is, “Brother, you can believe in stones, as long as you don’t throw them at me.”

I could not have said it better. I don’t care what you believe in or what you hold sacred, just don’t go on a murderous spree if I refuse to share your beliefs or your views. All the good things that the world has to offer arose out of the enlightenment which is congruent with the freedom of humans to think thoughts that could be considered heretical and blasphemous. I have defended the freedom of speech, although I would have wished that it needed no defense. All development — including economic development — is predicated on the freedom of speech and expression. India needs to understand that. Otherwise India will continue to be part of that backward set that kills people for speaking their truth.

Dr Wafa Sultan’s days are numbered. So I bow deep in recognition of the courage that she displays in speaking because she is in effect signing her own death sentence.

Breaking news: Bombs recovered from local train station in Mumbai. I expect that Dr Manmohan Singh will ask people to stay calm and go about their business as usual. Ms Sonia Gandhi has saris already. Would anyone like to contribute to a fund for buying saris for her handmaidens who don’t have saris?

The full text of the statement follows.

After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new global totalitarian threat: Islamism.

We appeal to democrats and free spirits in every country that our century may be one of light and not dark.

The signatories:

Salman Rushdie – Indian-born British writer with fatwa issued ordering his execution for The Satanic Verses
Ayaan Hirsi Ali – Somali-born Dutch MP
Taslima Nasreen – exiled Bangladeshi writer, with fatwa issued ordering her execution
Bernard-Henri Levy – French philosopher
Chahla Chafiq – Iranian writer exiled in France
Caroline Fourest – French writer
Irshad Manji – Ugandan refugee and writer living in Canada
Mehdi Mozaffari – Iranian academic exiled in Denmark
Maryam Namazie – Iranian writer living in Britain
Antoine Sfeir – director of French review examining Middle East
Ibn Warraq – US academic of Indian/Pakistani origin
Philippe Val – director of Charlie Hebdo

I make this observation not from a moralistic standpoint but only as an interested observer. In their place, I would probably have reacted exactly the same way as they do. Caring more for one’s self is neither a crime nor immoral, in my estimation. What is unacceptable is the hypocrisy that consists in declaring that one is against terrorism anywhere in the world, while in practise only caring about one’s own skin and not giving a damn about how one’s actions actually increase the incidence of Islamic terrorism elsewhere.

The rich are definitely different. Their demons are the most important demons that plague humanity. For example, ask anyone — even those who have little to do with the rich — who was the worst mass murderer in history, and the most likely answer will be “Hitler.” Was he really? Here is a different perspective on Hitler. No, it does not claim that he was not a bad guy, but rather that he was not all that remarkable.

I view the Islamic terrorist bombings of London with the same abhorrence and disgust as I do the peddling of weapons of mass destruction by the advanced industrialized countries. (See also the followup article.) Islamic terrorism has to be eradicated of course. But to really make the world safe, we must also eradicate the military industrial complex of the advanced industrialized countries.

{Related post: What the World Owes the US. Here are the true weapons of mass destruction which could not be found in Iraq.}

I grant you that Friedman writes bestsellers and some of my best friends are huge fans of his. And I think that globalization—the integration of the world’s markets—is not merely a good thing overall but is inevitable and monotonic. In any market integration, there are winners and losers, be it labor market integration or the market for lemons. Be that as it may, what I want to do someday is to write a book called The World is Mad.

“What!?” you would exclaim upon reading the title, “I thought the world was sane. Thanks Atanu, you are a bloody genius.” And then you would proceed to read the book and figure out that indeed the world is mad and that I do not fall into the hasty generalization trap unlike some others I could mention.

Madness suffuses the world around us. Why don’t we perceive it? Because physiologically we have evolved to tune out any background information. We stop taking notice of something that is all-pervasive. The madness I am talking about is so commonplace so as to be taken as normal.

The globalization of madness, like the globalization of trade and stuff, did not begin recently. It has been going on for a bit. I am talking about the 800-pound gorilla in the room which practically everyone is ignoring: the Weapons of Mass Destruction Industry.

The US leads in the globalization of madness just as it leads on practically all other bits of globalization. Check out Ben (of Ben and Jerry’s) on the US nuclear stockpile. It costs $17.6 billion every year to merely maintain it. Let me spell that out: $17,600,000,000. And that is just to keep the stock in readiness. The stockpile of 53,000 nuclear weapons costs much more to build.

Thousands of billions of dollars to build the whole military apparatus, all with the one single objective: kill people. What is worse, this military apparatus kills people whether these weapons are used or not. How? They export part of their obsolete weapons of mass destruction to Third World countries which pay billions of dollars to acquire them. These Third World countries starve their people in order to extract sufficient resources to pay for the weapons. And the madness is so acute that some people in the Third World countries actually rejoice that their governments are acquiring these weapons. I regularly keep getting emails congratulating me that the Indian government is almost surely going to finally get a huge batch of F-16s from the US! To me that is depressing beyond words. It is like someone happily reporting the thrilling news, “Congratulations! Your country will continue to see millions of deaths through starvation and disease over the next 10 years—guaranteed.”

Just because it is all-pervasive madness does not make it sanity. We continue to go about our daily business without paying much attention to this madness. We are in the business of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic even as the ship is sinking. I have to remind myself that we don’t necessarily have to be smart; we just have to stop being so stupid. There is one thing that India needs to do if it wants to develop and it has nothing to do with IT this or internet kiosk that: it has to stop spending money on weapons of mass destruction. And that goes with equal force on the other impoverished overpopulated illiterate countries around India.

PS: There is a followup to this post here.

No very deep knowledge of economics is usually needed for grasping the immediate effects of a measure; but the task of economics is to foretell the remoter effects, and so to allow us to avoid such acts as attempts to remedy a present ill by sowing the seeds of a much greater ill for the future. —- Ludwig von Mises

Indian policy makers’ optimism is matched only by their short-sightedness when it comes to dealing with matters of national security. To recount all the instances when they have been caught with their pants down would require a book-length treatment, not a short few paragraphs on a blog. But I cannot pass up the latest blunder in the making. I hope that I don’t have to say I told you so in a few years’ time. I hope I am wrong in my analysis but I am afraid that I will be proved right.

It appears that the 1,625 mile long pipeline project carrying liquefied natural gas from Iran to India is on track, as UPI reported on Aug 4th. Over a period of 25 years, India will import about 1.2 million metric tons of LNG each year, for a total of $40 billion.

India’s urgent energy needs are undeniable and much of it has to be met through importing hydrocarbon-based energy. India should really be investing heavily in developing renewable energy sources for it to achieve energy independence. Relying on foreign oil and gas is not a good idea in the first place. However, that is a matter which needs to be dealt with separately. For now, let’s focus on the pipeline. The really scary part of this US$4 billion pipeline is that about 475 miles of it will traverse through the terrorist state of Pakistan.

I do not share the optimism displayed by Reuben when he wrote:

As I see it, the pipeline could potentially be one of the biggest guarantors of peace on the sub-continent. Pakistan will earn substantial amounts of money from rights-of-way revenue from the pipeline. Therefore, they have strong incentive to keep the peace.

The operative word above is “potentially.” Potentially, one can imagine all sorts of great win-win outcomes in any strategic game. But more often than not, they are not what game theorists call “Nash equilibria”. As is well-recognized in literature and seen in actuality, the equilibrium obtained is sub-optimal. The incentives ex-ante differ from those ex-post with predictable results.

OK, let’s cut to the chase. Pakistan, the story goes, gains transit fees from allowing the gas pipeline to go through Pakistan and every year makes, say, a few hundred million dollars. So, it is argued, Pakistan will not sabotage the pipeline when push comes to shove because it will stand to lose the transit money. That is flawed thinking because it does not take into account the fact that Pakistan could “gain” in another way: by imposing heavy losses on India.

I take it for granted that someone will have to pay for the $4 billion pipeline and I am assuming that India pays for it to be built. The pipeline is planned to be operational in 2009. By 2011, India has started relying on the delivery of a couple billion dollars of LNG and about $10 billion dollars worth of industry is dependent on it. Assume that there is some conflict between Pakistan and India – say the Kashmir problem, or some river water dispute. Now Pakistan says very softly to their Indian counterparts at the negotiating table – off the records – “Guys, shape up or we will blow the f**king pipeline up tomorrow at 5 AM.” The stupid Indians will exclaim, “Naah, you wouldn’t do that. If you did that you will lose $100 million in transit fees.”

“Oh yeah?” the Pakistanis would taunt. “And how much would you lose, you morons? You will lose a $4 billion pipeline, and you will lose $10 billion of industrial output that you have built around the imported LNG. So stick that in your infidel pipes and smoke it, you losers.”

The Indians would respond, “No, you will not do that, will you? After all, haven’t we been friends with all those Samjhauta buses and all those nice things we do like play cricket with you guys and invite your lovely dictator to come and stay for free at our tax payers’ expense? Surely you cannot be saying that you will not play nice with us after all our attempts at being nice to you. Please say it ain’t so. Pretty please.”

“Listen up, kuffars,” the Pakistanis would reply, “and listen up real good. If you don’t toe the line as we say, some terrorists will blow the f**king pipe up. We will disclaim all responsibility, of course. The US – you know, our big-daddy who calls us the “frontline state against terrorism” – will realize how important a job we are doing against terrorism and will immediately announce the gift of a few dozen F-18s and military aid amounting to $2 billion. I hope you are getting the picture, you silly sons of bitches.”

Well, admittedly a crude rendition of what perhaps happens in diplomatic meetings but I think it is essentially what will happen if India is stupid enough to build a pipeline to deliver it essential energy through a state that has repeatedly demonstrated that it is willing to be a suicide bomber. A few years ago, they were on the verge of lobbing a few nukes at India. Were they concerned that they would be vaporised as well? Not really. After all, if they get nuked in retaliation, they will go straight to heaven but they would have destroyed the kuffar state in the end.

Indian taxpayers are paying for the security of a man who is personally responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Indian soldiers, and through his sponsorship of terrorism, for the deaths of thousands of Indian civilians. Far from showing any remorse, he is brazenly unapologetic about the whole thing.

[Source: The Acorn.

]

=========================

In other news, the US is close to selling F-16s to Pakistan. I presume that they are meant for Pakistan’s security. Against which threat, one may ask. India, I suspect. India because India will have F-16s from the US. And why would India want F-16s? I suspect that India has to guard against the threat posed by Pakistan’s purchase of F-16s from the US. It is nothing if not touching to see the concern that the US has for the security of both India and Pakistan. Both are strategic partners to the US.

During the Iran-Iraq war of some decades ago, the US was even-handed and sold arms to both sides. “On Mondays-Wednesdays-Fridays, the US supported Iran; on Tuesdays-Thursdays-Saturdays, it supported Iraq. One day they got the days mixed up – which nearly ended the bloody war. It scared the shit out of the US,” as Mark Russell commented.

Anyhow, in a world of constant change, one is grateful for whatever consistency one finds. The US consistently supports conflict around the globe, arming both sides and giving military aid to whichever side is unable to fork up the cash for the weapons of mass destruction.

=====================

I wish I did not have to refer to an old piece of mine called Dollar Auctions and Deadly Games. But the sad truth is that I could not have asked for a better example of that model. (See also, The Care and Feeding of the US arms industry.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here is something that should warm any war-monger’s heart: Deceit and dollars: U.S. foreign policy secrets from December 2004.

In his gripping tell-all book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, a guilt-ridden Perkins explains in amazing detail that EHMs are hired guns, employed by consulting companies under contract to the United States government, who loan shark billions of dollars to third world countries to develop their infrastructures.

. . . The money is then funneled back to U.S. companies, through massive engineering and construction projects. The EHM’s job is to saddle these countries with so much debt that they can’t possibly repay it. And there’s the rub. The U.S. dictates repayment terms – a military base here, a UN vote there or access to a debtor country’s natural resources.

. . . Perkins dramatically unveils many recent events where the U.S. called upon EHMs to lend a hand, such as after the 1973 oil embargo. Perkins says Washington began negotiating with Saudi Arabia, offering to take them into the 20th century with technical support, military hardware and training, in exchange for assurances that there would never again be another oil embargo.

. . . Perkins’ primary objective was to assure that a large amount of petrodollars went back to the U.S., and Saudi Arabia’s economy would become intertwined and dependent on the U.S. Presumably Saudi Arabia would then become more westernized and sympathetic towards the U.S. system. However, the modernization infuriated conservative Muslims and made its neighboring countries, especially Israel, feel threatened.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Wall Street Journal reports

Lockheed has been pushing Washington hard on both sales. Lockheed officials have told the U.S. that unless it receives new orders by October for the F-16, it will have to begin shutting down its production line late this year. It takes three years to build an F-16, so some work would continue at the facility through 2008.

We don’t want to have Lockheed go bankrupt, do we? Not if “we” refers to the politicians that are bought and paid for by the arms industry. And now to quote myself once again (from The True Weapons of Mass Destruction):

Look carefully at the military-industrial complex of a rich nation such as the US. General Dynamics GD (or some such company which makes, say, figher jets) invests a couple of billion dollars to build F15s (Note: all names are made up.) Let’s say that F15s are the last word in the world of fighter planes. So the US military buys 200 of these killing machines for $50 million a pop. So will GD now retire their assembly line and stop making a killing? No way in hell. They sell a few hundred of these to the allies of the US. Now will they stop? Not bloody likely.

Here is what they do. Now that they are done with selling to the US military and to the militaries of friendly countries, they tell the US government, “Look, everyone has F15s. We need F16s if we have to maintain air superiority.” So they start working on developing the next generation. So the US now has F16s, which are better than the F15s. What about selling the F15s to those third world countries that keep fighting amongst themselves? Sweet deal.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As I was saying, there must be a cheaper method of ensuring security for India and Pakistan. Talks, for example. But that would not be cheap for the arms dealers and their hired politicians. It would be a disaster for them of peace were to break up. The US imports stuff from all over the world, especially China. Then it outsources and offshores hundreds of thousands of jobs all over the world, especially India. The US has to sell something in exchange, doesn’t it? Sell the poor bastards some F-16s in exchange for all the BPO jobs and other labor intensive stuff we buy from them, goes the refrain.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before I am taken to task by someone for stating the above, let me hasten to add that there is no law in the universe which prohibits a country from profiting from the stupidity of other countries. That India and Pakistan are abjectly poor overpopulated underdeveloped nations constantly at each others’ throat willing to further impoverish themselves by buying impossibly expensive weapons from abroad is not the US’s fault. The US merely supplies the arms, it does not directly go and starve millions of people of third world countries. The actual starving of untold millions of abjectly poor people in third rate world countries is because of the warmongering ignorant policy makers that populate these countries.

I wonder who is to blame for this sad state of affairs. I know: us. We are stupid and we elect our stupid government and our policy makers. It is all karma, neh?

[Part 1 of the "Care and Feeding of the Permanent Arms Industry."]

Fact: A permanent arms industry requires perpetual wars for its sustenance.

Fact: The most advanced industrialized economies have the most high-tech industries.

Fact: The arms industry is one of the most intensively high-tech industries.

Final fact: The US has the most sophisticated high-tech armaments industry.

How many people work in the high-tech arms industries? I estimate that globally around 10 million people work directly for them. How many people work for the the high-tech arms industry indirectly? I estimate about 6,000 million. We all work indirectly for the arms industry. Part of what I produce, I will consume myself; part will be taken away by the government and used for (among other things) buying high-tech arms. Irrespective of who you are and where you live, part of your production will be sucked up by the high-tech armaments industry. It is a monster with an insatiable appetite.

The arms merchants have to continue fueling the fires of war to keep their factories humming. They depend on a perpetual state of war between India and Pakistan in the Indian subcontinent. I had analysed that conflict as a deadly dollar auction game. If any side in the conflict is in imminent danger of losing, the arms seller will help it out so that the war continues.

A few weeks ago on Oct 16th, I had pointed out the true weapons of mass destruction and wrote:

Why is the US so hell-bent on supporting the terrorist nation of Pakistan? What is in it for the US? After all, Pakistan is also broke. Why, one could ask in puzzlement, would anyone want to sell military hardware to Pakistan? My answer is this: so that India would be forced to buy weapons from the US to keep up with the terrorist nation of Pakistan.

The story goes like this. The US gives away $1.5 billion worth of weapons to Pakistan. In effect, the US is paying its own producers of weapons, who in turn support the US policy makers by locating their factories of weapons of mass destruction in the policy makers’ constituency. Read more jobs for the merchants of death. Then India’s defense establishment looks over the border and says we now need $2.5 billion worth of stuff from the US. More jobs for the merchants of death. Total benefit to the merchants of death: $4.0 billion. Total cost to the impoverished populations of Pakistan and India: $4 billion.

Do they really arm both sides of a conflict and if needed give arms away for free to the weaker side so that the conflict does not end? Let’s see what the newspapers are reporting in the last few days. The Washington Times of Nov 23rd: U.S. amnesia on Pakistan

On Nov. 16, the Defense Security and Cooperation Agency sent notifications to Congress of a $1.3 billion arms package for Pakistan, a major non-NATO ally of America. The deal includes eight P-3C Orion naval reconnaissance planes possibly with anti-ship and anti-submarine missiles, 2,000 TOW-2A heavy anti-armor guided missiles and the deadly PHALANX Close-In Weapon Systems for ships. Ostensibly, these sales are to enable Pakistan to fight the war on terror. What’s even better for Pakistan is that the money for this sale is likely to come from the $1.5 billion over five years that the U.S has promised Pakistan in military aid, making it a veritable freebie.

OK, so the Terrorist State of Pakistan has been armed. Now what about India? OK, let’s sell some arms to those poor suckers. Here is what the Indian Express reported yesterday: US F-16s for Pak? Maybe, but they offer India Patriot anti-missile system and F-16s too.

…[Washington] offered top-of-the-line military hardware to India including the Patriot anti-missile system, C-130 stretched medium lift transport aircraft, P-3C Orion maritime surveillance planes—and even F-16 fighters.

The care and feeding of the monstrous permanent arms industry requires perpetual armed conflict. Like sheep to the slaughter, the third world countries eagerly line up for the treat of killing their neighbors while impoverishing themselves even further. A dispassionate observer could easily conclude that these poor over-populated third-rate countries deserve their demolition and wash his hands of the whole sorry mess.

It is all Karma, neh?

[Go to Part 2 of "The Care and Feeding of the Permanent Arms Industry."]

Someone promptly responded with effusive piety:

“Enemy”, in this context, doesn’t refer to those whom one has hurt; it refers to those who would hurt one. You have no enemy only if there is no one who would hurt you. Having defined what enemies are, Jesus’ admonition was to love enemies rather than, say, cultivate a desire to break their legs.

My follow-up to that was that if enemy is defined as above, and the injunction to ‘love’ them holds for them, then we have a bit of a problem. That strategy is not evolutionarily stable. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is immoral. Here is why.

Suppose you define the social good to be that the total amount of misery is minimized. Assume that society has two classes of people: “leg-breakers” (LB) and “enemy-lovers” (EL). A person can choose to be either a LB or an EL based on their preferences and the prevailing conditions. The probability of an EL getting his leg broken is proportional to the fraction of population who are LB. If there are no LBs in society, EL don’t have an incentive to change their class and it is an equilibrium.

However, if the LB fraction is non-zero, then because only ELs get their legs broken, and because being a LB does not expose you to any risk of broken legs (because ELs don’t go around breaking legs but love those who break legs), there is an incentive for the more sensitive ELs to switch to becoming LB. This switch raises the fraction of LBs in society and therefore the remaining ELs are at a greater risk of broken legs. This causes even more ELs to switch.

As you can imagine, all this raises the total misery in society till you reach the other equilibrium where the entire society comprises of LBs. Of course, if LBs don’t break the legs of their own kind, this equilibrium point puts an upper bound on the total misery of society. The situation becomes much worse if LBs finally turn on their own kind once the number of ELs have been driven to zero.

The above model suggests that the strategy of not imposing a cost of breaking legs on LBs actually encourages the growth of LBs in that society [1]. You end up with a socially undesirable number of LBs.

The ethical position, it seems to me, is that socially harmful behaviour must be discouraged. Leg-breaking imposes what is called a negative externality, namely pain. To properly internalize this externality, you have to credibly commit to break the legs of anyone who breaks another person’s legs [2]. Assuming that a LB is a rational being, he would find the benefit of breaking legs (joy of seeing another suffer, for example) not worth the cost of breaking legs (pain of having their own legs broken.) So it would deter that behaviour and therefore reduce the aggregate amount of leg-breaking going on in society. It would lead to a more civilized society.

The above analysis could explain the saying that in the conflict between the Greeks and the Barbarians, the Barbarians win. This situation could arise only if the Greeks are more ‘civilized’ and employ the love-thy-enemy (or some similarly brain-dead) strategy while the Barbarians are not bound by any such rules. A real instance of the ‘Greeks versus the Barbarians’ model is what happened to India over the millenia. The invading hordes repeatedly brutalized the peaceful people of India [3].

Finally, the model also explains why an intolerant and cruel religion would spread in a population. If the population initially followed a peaceful and tolerant religion, the invading religion would have an advantage and the final equilibrium would be that the entire population would switch to the invading religion. A natural experiment which is finally coming to its inevitable conclusion is what you see in Pakistan and Bangladesh. The non-Muslim population is being absorbed by the Muslim population, as the LB-EL model would predict.

NOTES:

1. A related bit of folk wisdom is contained in the statement that shielding a fool from the effects of his folly has the ultimate result of filling the world up with fools.
2. The old eye-for-an-eye thing of the Bible. Gandhi noted that that strategy would make the whole world blind. My analysis suggests that it would have the opposite effect. If you can guarantee that anyone who pokes anyone elses eyes will have both his eyes poked out, everyone would think a million times before they give in to the temptation of poking anyone’s eyes out. In a Gandhian world, people who enjoy poking people’s eyes would have a terrific old time and a good number of people will have to go through life blind or at least semi-blind. In the non-Gandhian world, no rational person will find it beneficial to poke anyone’s eyes out.
3. Not just peaceful, but evidently unspeakably stupid as well. One fellow called Prithviraj Chauhan defeated the same barbarian 16 times in battle and let the barbarian go. The 17th time the barbarian defeated Chauhan and promptly beheaded the silly bastard.

India lives in a dangerous neighborhood. At the drop of a hat, the Terrorist State of Pakistan threatens “thousand-year wars” against the kuffar state of India. The dictator of the terrorist state of Pakistan, General Musharraf, threatens to vaporize major Indian cities if India were to go in hot-pursuit of the terrorists that Pakistan sends across the border.

A reader, Zenil, recently wrote that labeling Pakistan a terrorist state is a serious charge. Indeed it is, for terrorism is a serious matter. Pardon me for calling a spade a spade. Pakistan is a terrorist state. Pointing that out at every possible occassion is a duty of anyone who does not hold a brief for terrorists. It would be wonderful if by denying reality we could change it, but it ain’t so. I could proclaim how “India is Shining” till the cows come home. But that would not alter the fact that India is an abjectly poor overpopulated misgoverned third world country. And I make it a point to say it is so because I want others to realize that it is so with the hope that they will wake up and do something to change that unfortunate reality. I am as patriotic as the next guy but I am not blind.

So I suggest to Pakistanis that don’t like their motherland labeled as a terrorist state to please do something about it rather than object to someone calling Pakistan a terrorist state.

Let me be clear about one thing: it does not give me any particular pleasure that Pakistan is a terrorist state that is hell-bent on the destruction of India merely because India is largely Hindu and the Islamic god has decreed that Hindus cannot be allowed to exist in peace. Killing “non-believers” is a deep religious obligation in Islam. Nearly an infinite set of references can be given to support that but I will confine myself to just one source from the land sacred to Islam — Saudi Arabia.

It is our opinion that whoever claims the acceptability of any existing religion today — other than Islam — such as Judaism, Christianity and so forth, is a non-believer. He should be asked to repent; if he does not, he must be killed as an apostate [sic] because he is rejecting the Quran.

That is from a booklet in English circulated by the Jeddah D’awah Center in Saudi Arabia.

Zenil writes, “calling Pakistan a failed state … makes us feel good,but that doesnt solve the problem…”. It does not make me feel good that Pakistan is a failed state. In fact it puts the fear of god in me (to use an expression) because it endangers India. One has much to fear from a suicidal person who has nothing left to lose. So also, the Islamic maniacs with their fingers on the nuclear trigger and their hearts set on the pleasures of paradise would be a greater threat to India than the Chinese would be.

I don’t know how India can shift resources away from defense spending to development spending given that the terrorist state of Pakistan is propped up by the US at every turn. Over the next five years, the US has promised the TSP $3,000,000,000 (three billion dollars), half of which will be for military hardware. There goes the neighborhood.

I have a theory — a real huge conspiracy theory — that explains why the US supports Pakistan, only part of which I have explored in my piece on Dollar Auctions and Deadly Games. I will go into that in the next few days.

Here’s a short excerpt from it.

… On the pipeline are more than $1.5 billion worth of military supplies over five years. Plus, numerous futuristic deals.

The arms supply is now in full flow and icing on the cake is the F-16 fighters that Pakistan Air Force has been dreaming of for long. The Navy can look forward to a new generation of torpedoes to maritime aircraft.

But the biggest gainer would be the Army: a generational upgrade in almost its entire armoury including top of the line attack helicopters, radars.

Richard Armitage in a recent interview to a Pakistani TV channel said there are “more helicopters in the queue. We have gotten now a steady stream of dependable funding to help the Pakistani armed forces… We realise they need the proper equipment, so we have embarked on a five-year programme of support.”

Armitage was referring to the $1.5 billion military aid that Pakistan is receiving over the next five years.

While Americans justify them in the name of terrorism, the supply is adding teeth to Pakistan’s offensive capabilities that are almost completely focused on India.

Why is the US so hell-bent on supporting the terrorist nation of Pakistan? What is in it for the US? After all, Pakistan is also broke. Why, one could ask in puzzlement, would anyone want to sell military hardware to Pakistan? My answer is this: so that India would be forced to buy weapons from the US to keep up with the terrorist nation of Pakistan.

The story goes like this. The US gives away $1.5 billion worth of weapons to Pakistan. In effect, the US is paying its own producers of weapons, who in turn support the US policy makers by locating their factories of weapons of mass destruction in the policy makers’ constituency. Read more jobs for the merchants of death. Then India’s defense establishment looks over the border and says we now need $2.5 billion worth of stuff from the US. More jobs for the merchants of death. Total benefit to the merchants of death: $4.0 billion. Total cost to the impoverished populations of Pakistan and India: $4 billion.

At the risk of appearing unsophisticated, I am going to quote myself in full from a post titled, Why don’t they feel the pain? (Jan 2004):

Ever wonder why poor nations are poor and rich nations are rich? I don’t. I believe I know why the poor stay poor and the rich get rich. Consider this from The Wall Street Journal of Jan 19th. The report is titled India and US to Improve Ties. Here is an excerpt:

Washington also sees India becoming a big buyer of U.S.-made arms. In the past two years, India has purchased roughly $200 million of American arms and is in negotiations to purchase P3 Orion maritime-patrol aircraft from the U.S. The deal, valued at about $1 billion, could be the biggest arms deal ever between the two nations.

There you have it. The rich sell arms to the poor and the poor pay for it through the blood, sweat, and tears of its starving millions. To be sure, it is not the starving millions who are interested in fighting the poor of the neighboring countries. These millions of poor unfortunates are merely the slave labor that supply through their toil goods that the rich buy in exchange for the arms they ship to the armies of the poor nations.

It is interesting to ask who exactly wants war. Speaking personally, I am against aggression and don’t wish to be the victim nor the perpetrator of aggression. I also believe that the vast majority of people would happily live and let live. So how does it happen that nations arm themselves to the teeth and more often than not beggar their neighbors and themselves in doing so.

I believe it is so because nations are not monolithic entities. People have different stations in a country. The generals who wage wars and the politicians who direct the ship of state do not have to pay for the wars themselves. The poor have to die on the battle fields and those who are not paid to die, starve on the streets so that their meagre production can be shipped out to pay for the weapons of mass destruction that the leaders of the nation buy for their own amusement.

The leaders who make the decisions do not feel the pain that the ordinary citizen feels. The leaders are shielded from the effects of their own folly. And so it goes. Now in the Indian subcontinent we have two desperately poor heavily armed hugely overpopulated countries. In time to come it would be hard for people to imagine what was the reason behind this sort of stockpiling of nuclear weapons by such impoverished people. I think that it ceases to be a puzzle when one considers that those who do the stockpiling of nuclear weapons and those who are poor constitute entirely disjoint sets.

The unfortunate thing is that as weapons become more sophisticated and hence more expensive, the poorer the poor of the poor countries become. And at the same time, and understandably so, the rich of the rich nations and the rich of the poor nations become wealthier.

Look carefully at the military-industrial complex of a rich nation such as the US. General Dynamics GD (or some such company which makes, say, figher jets) invests a couple of billion dollars to build F15s (Note: all names are made up.) Let’s say that F15s are the last word in the world of fighter planes. So the US military buys 200 of these killing machines for $50 million a pop. So will GD now retire their assembly line and stop making a killing? No way in hell. They sell a few hundred of these to the allies of the US. Now will they stop? Not bloody likely.

Here is what they do. Now that they are done with selling to the US military and to the militaries of friendly countries, they tell the US government, “Look, everyone has F15s. We need F16s if we have to maintain air superiority.” So they start working on developing the next generation. So the US now has F16s, which are better than the F15s. What about selling the F15s to those third world countries that keep fighting amongst themselves? Sweet deal.

Enter India and Pakistan. India buys F15s from the US or its equivalent from say the French; Pakistan goes for the other. So now both India and Pakistan are forced to keep up with the expensive sophisticated weapons that the US and other weapon manufacturing states create, only one generation behind. The weapons manufacturers in the rich countries systematically upgrade their technology and create even more lethal weapons which cost unimaginable amounts. Poor third world overpopulated impoverished nations around the world — who cannot afford to feed their starving millions — buy weapons of mass destruction from rich nations who can afford to replace their weapon systems as frequently as a rich man replaces his cars.

The poor overpopulated misgoverned third rate countries follow the simple policy of beggar-thy-neighbor and end up achieving destitution all round. India and Pakistan are prime example of this. Within India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, nearly a billion highly impoverished malnourished illiterate people scratch out a Hobbesian existence. Yet, these countries spend billions in acquiring ever more sophisticated arms from abroad. The sheer insanity of this is so incomprehensible that it is surreal. Consider this report from The Times of India of Jan 21st, 2004: Gorshkov is launch pad for nuke deal

… while India’s $1.5 billion purchase of the Gorshkov [an aircraft carrier] from Russia may seem like a big deal, the fact is it’s just a sweetener for the main course. On the anvil: a major beefing up of India’s nuclear delivery capability, with Russia likely to lease at least two nuclear submarines and several N-capable bombers to India.

I will spare you the rest of this front-page article. It is dismal reading for anyone who is even remotely aware of the hunger and deprivation of the people of this region of the world.

Can you imagine how much human suffering can be avoided by merely spending a few billion dollars in say bringing pure drinking water, schools for all children, food for the malnourished kids, contraceptive services for women, and so on …?

These are the weapons of mass destruction — these weapons destroy whether they are actually used in conflict or not. Merely buying them condemns hundreds of millions to lives of such misery that one wonders whether it would not be better for the weapons to be used so as to put an end to the misery.

Is there a way out? I think that the leaders of impoverished countries should be required to feel the pain that the poor routinely feel. I think that anyone who wishes to be a leader has to spend a month every year living the life of an average person in the bottom decile of the population. For instance, they should have no access to clean drinking water for that month, have no heating or airconditioning, no toilets, inadequate food, have to live in filth, and no medical services. Clearly these worthies lack imagination and so they should have to live the life for just one month every year that they wish to be leaders of poor overpopulated impoverished countries.

Perhaps then, maybe then, they would be not so gung-ho about buying nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines.

{end of quoted stuff} It is a deadly game that the US plays with Pakistan and India as the pawns. I analysed it some years ago in a piece titled Dollar Auctions and Deadly Games which it worth a look.

Thank you, goodbye, and may your god go with you.

Washington also sees India becoming a big buyer of U.S.-made arms. In the past two years, India has purchased roughly $200 million of American arms and is in negotiations to purchase P3 Orion maritime-patrol aircraft from the U.S. The deal, valued at about $1 billion, could be the biggest arms deal ever between the two nations.

There you have it. The rich sell arms to the poor and the poor pay for it through the blood, sweat, and tears of its starving millions. To be sure, it is not the starving millions who are interested in fighting the poor of the neighboring countries. These millions of poor unfortunates are merely the slave labor that supply through their toil goods that the rich buy in exchange for the arms they ship to the armies of the poor nations.

It is interesting to ask who exactly wants war. Speaking personally, I am against aggression and don’t wish to be the victim nor the perpetrator of aggression. I also believe that the vast majority of people would happily live and let live. So how does it happen that nations arm themselves to the teeth and more often than not beggar their neighbors and themselves in doing so.

I believe it is so because nations are not monolithic entities. People have different stations in a country. The generals who wage wars and the politicians who direct the ship of state do not have to pay for the wars themselves. The poor have to die on the battle fields and those who are not paid to die, starve on the streets so that their meager production can be shipped out to pay for the weapons of mass destruction that the leaders of the nation buy for their own amusement.

The leaders who make the decisions do not feel the pain that the ordinary citizen feels. The leaders are shielded from the effects of their own folly. And so it goes. Now in the Indian subcontinent we have two desperately poor heavily armed hugely overpopulated countries. In time to come it would be hard for people to imagine what was the reason behind this sort of stockpiling of nuclear weapons by such impoverished people. I think that it ceases to be a puzzle when one considers that those who do the stockpiling of nuclear weapons and those who are poor constitute entirely disjoint sets.

The unfortunate thing is that as weapons become more sophisticated and hence more expensive, the poorer the poor of the poor countries become. And at the same time, and understandably so, the rich of the rich nations and the rich of the poor nations become wealthier.

Look carefully at the military-industrial complex of a rich nation such as the US. General Dynamics GD (or some such company which makes, say, figher jets) invests a couple of billion dollars to build F15s (Note: all names are made up.) Let’s say that F15s are the last word in the world of fighter planes. So the US military buys 200 of these killing machines for $50 million a pop. So will GD now have to retire their assembly line and stop making a killing? Not really likely. so they sell a few hundred of these to the allies of the US. Now will they stop? Not bloody likely.

Here is what they do. Now that they are done with selling to the US military and to the militaries of friendly countries, they tell the US government, “Look, everyone has F15s. We need F16s if we have to maintain air superiority.” So they start working on developing the next generation. So the US now has F16s, which are better than the F15s. What about selling the F15s to those third world countries that keep fighting amongst themselves? Sweet deal.

Enter India and Pakistan. India buys F15s from the US or its equivalent from say the French; Pakistan goes for the other. So now both India and Pakistan are forced to keep up with the expensive sophisticated weapons that the US and other weapon manufacturing states create, only one generation behind. The weapons manufacturers in the rich countries systematically upgrade their technology and create even more lethal weapons which cost unimaginable amounts. Poor third world overpopulated impoverished nations around the world — who cannot afford to feed their starving millions — buy weapons of mass destruction from rich nations who can afford to replace their weapon systems as frequently as a rich man replaces his cars.

The poor overpopulated misgoverned third rate countries follow the simple policy of beggar-thy-neighbor and end up achieving destitution all round. India and Pakistan are prime example of this. Within India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, nearly a billion highly impoverished malnourished illiterate people scratch out a Hobbesian existence. Yet, these countries spend billions in acquiring ever more sophisticated arms from abroad. The sheer insanity of this is so incomprehensible that it is surreal. Consider this report from The Times of India of Jan 21st, 2004: Gorshkov is launch pad for nuke deal

… while India’s $1.5 billion purchase of the Gorshkov [an aircraft carrier] from Russia may seem like a big deal, the fact is it’s just a sweetener for the main course. On the anvil: a major beefing up of India’s nuclear delivery capability, with Russia likely to lease at least two nuclear submarines and several N-capable bombers to India.

I will spare you the rest of this front-page article. It is dismal reading for anyone who is even remotely aware of the hunger and deprivation of the people of this region of the world.

Can you imagine how much human suffering can be avoided by merely spending a few billion dollars in say bringing pure drinking water, schools for all children, food for the malnourished kids, contraceptive services for women, and so on …?

These are the weapons of mass destruction — these weapons destroy whether they are actually used in conflict or not. Merely buying them condemns hundreds of millions to lives of such misery that one wonders whether it would not be better for the weapons to be used so as to put an end to the misery.

Is there a way out? I think that the leaders of impoverished countries should be required to feel the pain that the poor routinely feel. I think that anyone who wishes to be a leader has to spend a month every year living the life of an average person in the bottom decile of the population. For instance, they should have no access to clean drinking water for that month, have no heating or airconditioning, no toilets, inadequate food, have to live in filth, and no medical services. Clearly these worthies lack imagination and so they should have to live the life for just one month every year that they wish to be leaders of poor overpopulated impoverished countries.

Perhaps then, maybe then, they would be not so gung-ho about buying nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines.

Imagine a commercial satellite blasting off from the Sriharikota Space Centre with NASA-ISRO painted on the launch vehicle. Or building modern weapons using Indian software and US technology. It is the kind of vision Indian and US strategists dine on.

While the Indian and US strategists dine on the mouth-watering prospect of building modern weapons, the poor in India get to dine on nothing. To a large extent, chronic hunger is a consequence of the strategic dining that takes place all over the world. To quote from my article Dollar Auctions and Deadly Games:

Nations are not monolithic entities. They are comprised of groups with different incentives and interests. Even in the so-called developing world there are groups whose interests align more closely with corresponding groups in the advanced industrialized countries (AIC). Politicians and arms dealers in poor countries stand to gain as much from conflict escalation as do the owners of the military-industrial complex of the advanced industrialized countries. The crowds that stand at the sidelines and cheer on the combatants are the leaders, the commanders, and the arms manufacturers of all the countries that are in the conflict as well as those that just supply the arms. The average citizens in both the countries stand to lose not just in terms of human lives but also in terms of a lower standard of living necessitated by the hardships imposed on them to pay for the military hardware bought from the AICs.

In a recent op-ed piece titled “Stopping America’s Most Lethal Export” in the New York Times, winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize Oscar Arias wrote: “While the arms industry profits, people throughout the world suffer… the true weapons of mass destruction are the jet fighters, tanks, machine guns and other military exports that the United States ships to non-democratic countries –a record $8.3 billion worth in the 1997 fiscal year, the last year for which figures are available.” Aside from anything else, the incontrovertible fact is that war is costly for all except for weapons manufacturers.

Why is India poor is the question that I continue to ask. There has to be a complex set of reasons, some more fundamental than others. Some are systemic and structural; some may be idiosyncratic and some universal. I think that one of the fundamental reasons for persistent poverty of developing countries is the arms export industries of the advanced industrialized countries, with the US leading the whole immoral pack. India’s poverty is partly attributable to India’s arms purchases.

Can India opt out of buying weapons from the US? Perhaps yes if the US stops giving military aid to Pakistan. But the game that the US plays is simple: give away military hardware to Pakistan and sell India military hardware to keep a step ahead of Pakistan. The leaders of Pakistan and India are either too stupid or too immoral (or both) to stop the game. In the meanwhile, the people of all developing countries suffer.

The Buddha said, First do no harm; then try to do good.

I think he should have also said, First stop being stupid; then try to be clever.

Using ICT and other fancy tools for development is very clever. But it would be better if policy makers were to stop being stupid and not spend so much money trying to build more deadly weapons and to channel those resources into human development. Only when we have stopped being stupid, should we then ask what clever thing can we do to improve our lot. Otherwise all this futzing around with questions such as can ICT promote development is a silly and senseless exercise in futility.