Ah... the blame game and another reason to love Pakistan
The blame game has begun.When Enron fell, no one in the Bush Administration wanted to have anything to do with it. It was no one's fault, certainly not anyone in the Bush Administrations... for sure.
So it has come to pass with the Indo-US nuclear deal, with India clearly batting down for a long fight over the so called "sticking clauses", the Americans who went around selling the idea that India could somehow be coerced into accepting this deal are now trying to back away from and pretend like India never told them anything.
Blame India, that is the new mantra.
A thinly vieled fluff piece in the media here, a tut-tutting editorial err... I mean advertorial in the Indian newspaper of choice there, something that repeats the same message
"Government of India is a bunch of novices, they are naive, they should have known the US would never back down from its own laws.... its all the Indian Government's fault... they are incompetent, they didn't properly represented their interests" etc... etc...
If you want to see who are the US plants in the Indian media just keep an eye on who says that it was India's fault that the agreement failed.
Sit back and relax guys, the fun has just begun.
I note with some amusement, a letter from Hon. Rep. Ed Markey to the President asking him to call on India to cut ties to Iran, how convenient... err.. is Rep. Markey finally realising that the US just lost its leverage in the matter? or does he actually want the US to go to war with Iran?
Does the Hon. Rep. Markey realise that if this deal does not give India the energy it needs, it will take a much deeper interest in Iran. Does he realise what lies between India and Iran? What does Rep. Markey consider of India desire to open new energy routes to the middle east?
Our oblivious NPA friends will ensure that the US ends up going to Iran.
Others certainly do... that would explain why this suddenly appeared.
posted by maverick @ 3:58 PM
6 Comments:
hi maverick,
In your previous post on operation rakshak,agreed every bit of it. I can comment on the many things and
add some more masala to it but on public, one has to reserve one's comment. My concern is
not a bit about kashmir, but more and more about this nuclear deal
Back then in 2004 when Congress got elected, the situaion was like this
1)US had engaged all the energy producing nations or energy related institutions.As a result of
which we got suckered up when it came to dicovering new deposits or investing in exisiting
deposits. Any formward movement on securing oil deposits had to accomadate Washington's interests.
This nuclear deal ensured that the our access to energy deposits be as wide as possible.in
one of pulbic speeches shyam saran has himself noted this.Hope I could post a link to his speech.
2)Break down the technology barriers that stiffled our growth.We have achieved this
3)In "The Week"(do not remember which issue), Brajesh mishra has noted that in the first
half of 1990, US was just not interested in any kind of relationship with India. He also noted
how Indian diplomacy had to reorient itself post FSU. Of a sudden a giant hand on our back
was removed. All the indian diplomats who in the past have dealt with SU have acnowledged that
it is imperative that India improves it relationship with USA or allign with USA.This gives us an
idea of India tying USA at our end which will prove beneficial to us.
4)USA has supported china with huge amounts of money. In a way this nuclear deal is all about money.
If USA invests huge amount of money in India as what it has done with China, who knows where India will be?
5)There is some talk of USA-Russia hyphenation when it comes to India. Now USA and Russia both
have to compete with each other for gaining strategic footprint in India.
6) Allign with USA and take away the ground beneath Russia! As time passes each govt. will more
and more try to improve ties with USA
7)As in the past we had alligned with SU to counter pakistan, similarily we have to allign with
USA to counter china. But for this we will have to wait for time.This will prove economically
beneficial too.
8)Use this indo-nuclear deal to improve ties with many nations of the world.
My only concern GOI is moving ahead with the nuclear deal inspite of so many restrictions being placed
on us.
Anonymous,
I think it comes down to this.
We need the technology required to mass produce components for the civilian nuclear sector.
If we make this mass production related technology ourselves, then we don't need anything from anyone.
However if we have to develop everything from scratch then we will reach our energy production goals slower.
If we import, however we will have to give something in return and there will be a dependence on our suppliers.
From our point of view, import isn't necessarily bad, it is what we have to give up in return and to what extent can the dependence on our suppliers be tolerated. If we think the suppliers are going to act weirdly, then we have less reason to import.
The NPA claim they want to stop proliferation. It is complete BS. They simply want to emasculate the Indian political elite.
They think that if they emasculate the elite then somehow India as a whole will become more receptive to giving American companies preferential trading privileges or even perhaps give America direct or indirect control over India's fissile material resources, especially control over the mining of key minerals.
This is an utterly naive notion. Indians may be tolerant to a fault, but they aren't stupid.
In general US based energy groups want to keep India's efforts in the nuclear arena down. They want to do everything in their power to discourage investment in India's nuclear sector unless they are themselves allowed the juicest investment opportunities.
To this end a coordinated campaign of slander and utter lies is being orchestrated via various mouthpieces in the media.
As Indians we must avoid the Cold War trap. We must avoid developing a sense of hostility towards these American business groups because their concerns are understandable. Their actions however are unacceptable if they prejudice our national interests.
It is in our national interests to convey this fact to the people with short attention spans.
There is a sense of ambivalence about the blame game and some may even feel India should not stoop to America's level here after all the Americans who are playing this blame game are quite literally fighting for their personal political survival, whereas the people in India are more secure.
Still I wonder what we have to lose by shoving our oar in from time to time and hence I keep stirring the pot now and then.
somebodys got to take the blame
hi maverick,
I am unable to understand the policies of UPA govt w.r.t nuclear deal.have i read you correctly that UPA is merely talking until and unless the NPA guys back down.
hi m,
in addition to what you have written, i cannot understand why NPA look the other way when
a)Pakistan proliferates to other nations?
b)China proliferates to Pakistan
what is in NPA's interests so as the above two are allowed to take place?
Wheatgerm,
Yes that is one way of looking at it, but India is not going to take the blame. Everyone in the world knows who has the shortest attention span on the planet.
Anonymous,
We can talk all we want, no commitments unless the NPA rubbish is abandoned. This ofcourse is impossible to do in the current climate, so US industry will suffer economic costs and GoI will have to put up with unrelenting media warfare.
Anonymous,
To the NPA, Pakistan and China are known proliferators. Therefore they are a "manageable" threat, there is an established incentive and disincentive structure. There is nothing like this for India - and that is why some NPA grudgingly supported the deal.
Besides the NPA faith does not have a strong foundation in reason.
How else would the NPA be able to argue with conviction that it is okay for some to have disproportionate arsenals while others must have none.
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