It is not clear what French President Nicolas Sarkozy had in mind when he invited a contingent of 400 Indian troops to march down the Champs-Élysées for the Bastille Day parade in 2009. But Paris might be on to something that Washington has missed, in spite of its more intensive military engagement with India in recent years. Although Paris does not have the power to engineer international structural changes in New Delhi’s favor, it has often been ahead of Washington in strategizing about India. In its effort to build a partnership with India, ongoing since the mid-1990s, France has helped India renegotiate its position in the global nuclear order: It provided diplomatic cover when India defied the world with nuclear tests in May 1998, promoted the idea of changing the global non-proliferation rules to facilitate civilian nuclear cooperation with India, and worked with the Bush Administration to get the international community to endorse India’s nuclear exceptionalism.

Of course, Sarkozy’s motives might have been merely tactical: a move to butter up Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who was among the honored guests at the parade, or to raise its share of India’s rapidly expanding market for advanced arms. But Paris is capable of more than tactics: It may sense the prospects of a fundamental change in India’s defense orientation and its potential to contribute significantly to international security politics in the 21st century. It may see that a rising India, which runs one of the world’s major economies and fields a large armed force, will eventually bear some of the military burdens of maintaining the global order. More:

The petit-bourgeois mind is superficial and fickle. It is awe struck by the accumulation and consumption that go on in the highest echelons of society, even if outside the borderlines of legality and good taste. But it is repulsed and outraged when forced to confront the tawdriness and venality on which the life it aspires to is built.

Framed by these two extremes, the long-shot and the close-up, the rise and fall of Shashi Tharoor is a cautionary tale about the dangers of entering public life through the constituency of the middle class. The ‘perils of political paratrooping’ is how a former colleague of the erstwhile junior minister pithily described Mr. Tharoor’s fate when asked for his assessment by The Hindu. What made his jump even more dangerous was that it was made without the safety net that grassroot experience or backroom goodwill provides. By the standards of Indian politics, his impropriety in the IPL affair was relatively minor; but unlike others whose warts catch the glare of the arclights from time to time, there was nobody willing to pad up for him when the media drew blood. Fatally injured, he stood his ground just a moment too long. Had he walked back to the pavilion unprompted, he might have survived to play a second innings. But he didn’t do that. Which is why his political career is today at an end. More:

Also read: Tharoor’s IPL googly is hat-trick for Manmohan: From Hua Hin to Riyadh to Washington and Brasilia, Shashi Tharoor has always brought bad luck to the Prime Minister on his foreign tours. By Siddharth Varadarajan

There are, it must be conceded, legitimate grounds on which Shashi Tharoor may be attacked. The hair, for instance. It isn’t the 1980s, dude: get it cut. The ultra-posh accent. And I’m talking here of his English accent. One shudders to think what his Malayalam must sound like. And we haven’t yet started on the most sensitive issue — the novels. Has anyone managed to finish Riot?

Since the man has so many soft spots, it’s puzzling that his ill-wishers are attacking him in the one place where he is invulnerable: his attitude towards Pandit Nehru’s foreign policy. Some years ago, Penguin India issued a series of small, handsomely-bound biographies that re-introduced us to the nation’s founding fathers. The best of this series was the one on Pandit Nehru, and it was written by Shashi Tharoor. This book, Nehru: The Invention of India, deserves to be quoted in the context of the present controversy, because it is probably the finest short book written on Nehru’s legacy. More:

But you have to now debate if it will be good for India that Pakistan continues to slide. Or, do we have the wherewithal to deal with whatever is left behind, if Pakistan does not survive? Can we deal with five anarchic, angry “stans” instead of one next door to us, with no central authority to share a hotline with? Would we prefer to live with a nuclear-armed anarchy that listens to nobody? What use will coercive diplomacy be then? Who will we bomb?

It is time therefore to stop jubilating at the unfolding tragedy in Pakistan. India has to think of becoming a part of the solution. And that solution lies in not merely saving Pakistan — Pakistan will survive. It has evolved a strong nationalism that does bind its people even if that does not reflect in its current internal dissensions. It is slowly building a democratic system, howsoever imperfect. But it has a very robust media and a functional higher judiciary. Also, in its army, it has at least one national institution that provides stability and continuity. The question for us is, what kind of Pakistan do we want to see emerging from this bloodshed? What if fundamentalists of some kind, either religious or military or a combination of both, were to take control of Islamabad? The Americans will always have the option of cutting their losses and leaving. They have a long history of doing that successfully, from Vietnam to Iraq and maybe Afghanistan next. What will be our Plan-B then? More:

In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.

Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”

Clinton’s words sounded reassuring, and several current and former officials also said in interviews that the Pakistan Army was in full control of the nuclear arsenal. But the Taliban overrunning Islamabad is not the only, or even the greatest, concern. The principal fear is mutiny—that extremists inside the Pakistani military might stage a coup, take control of some nuclear assets, or even divert a warhead. More:

Ted Kennedy in Dhaka in 1972

Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy:

In 1971, the government of Pakistan, with the support of the Nixon administration, sent troops into what was then called East Pakistan, in order to contain a secessionist movement. This created a massive refugee crisis as millions streamed across the border to India.

Although the situation got little coverage in the United States, Kennedy, who had a lifelong interest in refugee issues and was eyeing a run against Nixon, traveled to inspect the situation:

“On his return, he issued a scathing report to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Refugees. The report, “Crisis in South Asia,” spoke of “one of the most appalling tides of human misery in modern times.”

“Nothing is more clear, or more easily documented, than the systematic campaign of terror — and its genocidal consequences — launched by the Pakistani army on the night of March 25th,” he wrote.

“All of this has been officially sanctioned, ordered and implemented under martial law from Islamabad. America’s heavy support of Islamabad is nothing short of complicity in the human and political tragedy of East Bengal.” More:

[Photo: Ted Kennedy in Dhaka in 1972. From Flickr user faria! via Foreign Policy]

In Bangladesh, Ted Kennedy revered

From CNN:

It may have started as a politically prudent move by a Democratic senator eyeing the White House during a Republican regime. But Kennedy stood up to the Nixon administration in 1971 and alerted the world to the bloodshed that was engulfing then-East Pakistan.

“In 1971, there were very few leaders from the so-called free world who were paying any attention to what was going on in Bangladesh. And for Ted Kennedy to come forward and to personally visit, the impact was huge,” said Akku Chowdhury, founder and director of Bangladesh’s Liberation War Museum.

“And that’s one thing Bangladeshis have always remembered.”

At the time, the U.S. policy — directed by President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger — was to resolutely support Pakistan, from which Bangladesh was trying to secede. More:

[Photo: www.kennedy.state.gov]

From the Hindu: Prior to becoming India’s woman in Beijing, she was High Commissioner to Sri Lanka. Her other diplomatic jobs included being Ambassador to Peru, deputy head of the Indian embassy in Moscow, and Minister (Press) at the Indian embassy in Washington, DC. At the headquarters, she ran the East Asia desk for several years but her most high-profile assignment was as spokesperson of the MEA, a job she performed with distinction and flair during a difficult period in the bilateral relationship with Pakistan: the Agra summit of 2001 and the military stand-off of 2001-02. More:

From Hindustan Times: Our foreign secretary designate’s many accomplishments don’t end with poetry. Trained in Carnatic music, she prefers Western classical. Mother of two sons, Nikhilesh (31) and Kartikeya (21), and wife of Sudhakar Rao, currently chief secretary in Karnataka, Rao appears to have found work, family, poetry and music an easy juggle. More:

I should like to focus on a letter written by then-candidate Obama to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, dated September 23, 2008, and published in India Abroad, the October 10 issue. I address these remarks to my former University of Chicago Law School colleague in the spirit of the type of respectful yet searching criticism that I know he will recognize as a hallmark of our faculty workshops and discussions.

The Obama letter has three slightly disturbing characteristics.

First, the letter gives lengthy praise to the nuclear deal, without acknowledging the widespread debate about the wisdom of that deal in both nations. Perhaps, however, this silence simply reflects politeness: Obama is surely aware that Singh has been an enthusiastic backer of the deal, risking much political capital in the process.

Second, the letter speaks of future cooperation that will “tap the creativity and dynamism of our entrepreneurs, engineers and scientists,” particularly in the area of alternative energy sources, but never mentions a future partnership in the effort to eradicate poverty and illiteracy. This silence, unlike the first, cannot be explained by politeness, since Singh has devoted a great deal of attention to issues of rural poverty, and it is plausible to think that he could have gotten a lot further had he had more help from abroad.

[Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at The University of Chicago, and the author of The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future.]

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In August 1964, three months after the death of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Australian scholar and diplomat Walter Crocker, who had spent several years of the Nehru era in India, sat down to distil his memories into a book that he called “a contemporary’s estimate” of the late prime minister. An assessment of the life and career of a man so recently departed, a man whose policies were still current and about whom history had not yet made up its mind, required an unusual degree of confidence on the part of the writer. But Crocker had seen Nehru from up close, both politically and in a personal capacity, and he was confident of the authority he claimed. “The historians of the future will know more of the documents,” he acknowledged, “but not Nehru himself nor the men who figure in the documents.”

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And in Hindustan Times,TV commentator Karan Thapar asked Minister of Panchayati Raj Mani Sha kar Aiyar, columnist Swapan Dasgupta, historian Ramachandra Guha and Business Standard editor TN Ninan how much India owes its first Prime Minister.

KT: Ram Guha, there is something that Crocker couldn’t have foreseen but which Indians are only too aware of today – the fact that for many Indians, the most enduring legacy that Nehru left behind is the Gandhi family. Would he have been proud of the fact that his daughter, his grandson, his grand-daughter-in-law and perhaps even his great-grandson have achieved the pinnacle of power? Or would he have been embarrassed and even disapproving?

Ramachandra Guha: I think he would have been deeply embarrassed. As the journalist Frank Moraes said in 1960, “The creation of a dynasty is wholly inconsistent with Nehru’s career and character. The dynasty was created by Indira Gandhi through an accident – the six Congress bosses who chose her as Prime Minister thought they could manipulate her. They were proved horrendously wrong. So it’s important in assessing Nehru to separate him from what followed later. One major difference between Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and so on, is that in Nehru’s time, and with Nehru’s encouragement, the Congress Party was a properly democratic organisation. Nehru could not impose Chief Ministers on states; Nehru could not impose presidents on the Congress. It was a thriving, decentralised, democratic organisation. So the answer to your question is clear: Nehru would have been deeply embarrassed by the fact that his party has become captive to the interests of a single family.

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And below, from Pakistan:

Obama presidency to pose challenges for Indian diplomacy

Siddharth Varadarajan in the Hindu:

Some fear the “re-hypenation” of India and Pakistan in American foreign policy and renewed activism on the question of Kashmir. Others worry about protectionism and curbs on outsourcing. The third set of concerns revolves around arms control issues. With Barack Obama reiterating his commitment to the early U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the early conclusion of a verifiable Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty (FMCT), there is a feeling that India will soon find itself under pressure to forswear nuclear testing and the production of weapons-grade nuclear material forever.

The fact that India has unhappy memories of some of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy advisers – Anthony Lake, Strobe Talbott, Robert Einhorn and Richard Holbrooke (the last two backed Hillary Clinton but later made their peace with the new President-elect) – is also contributing to a sense of unease on Raisina Hill. To be sure, there are more benign names and influences too – Vice-President-elect Joe Biden, for one, or the former State Department point man for South Asia, Karl Inderfurth. But with the unabashed lovefest which the George W. Bush administration produced for India, especially since 2004, this seems like pretty slim pickings.

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How an Indian Republican supporter was won over by Obama

Jaithirth “Jerry” Rao, currently in Boston as entrepreneur-in-residence at the Harvard Business School, in the Indian Express:

It has been a strange experience for me personally. I have been staying in the US watching live TV for all the three Obama-McCain debates and for the Palin-Biden debate. And now I am here on election day. I am again glued to the TV switching from one news channel to another as they “call” the results.

I have been a traditional Republican supporter. My first mood change happened while watching the debates. McCain was simply not very convincing. He certainly did himself a considerable degree of disservice by not keeping his cool. Obama did not have all the answers, but he appeared more thoughtful. On balance, he came across as a more reasonable leader. Unlike many of my friends, I did not react negatively to Palin. I thought that she held her own pretty well. And despite the hyper-aggressiveness of her critics, I was left with the distinct impression that Palin is a leader who we are going to see a great deal more of in the years to come. I think of the impressive women leaders in India: Jayalalithaa, Mamata and Mayawati – who are looked down upon by self-styled fashionable intellectuals, but all of whom in my opinion are quite impressive.

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Maya to Obama, signs of the new millennium

Gail Omvedt, an America-born sociologist whose essential work has centred on Dalit empowerment movements in India, in The Telegraph, Calcutta:

I was in the US in May 2007, when Mayavati became chief minister of UP, and Obama was coming forward in the US primary. With my daughter’s friends, mostly young and radical South Asian Americans, and all Obama supporters we celebrated Mayavati’s achievement. After years of depressing Republican presidencies, war and neoliberalism, something new was happening in the world.

An African American was aiming for the presidency, while a Dalit (and a woman!) was heading India’s largest state and promising to become Prime Minister in 10 years. Old barriers of caste and race were being not only challenged, but surmounted. Obama has made history: will Mayavati?

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In a front-page announcement headlined “Behind Mint’s endorsement,” the newspaper’s editor Raju Narisetti says:

“On the face of it, some of you might think it is unusual -and maybe gimmicky- for a newspaper whose readers live 11,977km away from the White House to issue an endorsement.

“We are weighing in because we believe that what happens in this election has a critical bearing on India and the rest of the world- for good or bad-in light of the ongoing financial turmoil that started in America.” More:

In its leader endorsing Obama, Mint says:

“We believe the world’s largest economy-and its political, cultural and intellectual capital- still make America the essential nation. The current economic and stock markets crises, we hope, end up being seen as a transformational crisis because what failed us wasn’t necessarily free markets, something Mint has proudly stood for since its own birth, but greed abetted by a failure of transparency. The danger, as some of our columnists have pointed out in recent weeks, is that the very US-led global financial bailout will make some push for a permanent role for governments and bureaucrats in running all aspects of many economies. When those voices become as loud and irrational as those bullish voices that created the crisis, America, we think, will again have to play a vital role in shaping that global debate, just as the US government acted quickly and decisively-while many governments, including that of India, just talked-once the magnitude of the current problem was clear. This is vital because the past few weeks have clearly shown how interlinked we all are, no matter where one lives.”

And it concludes:

“On the day of his party nomination, Obama also said, “It’s time for us to change America.” We believe President Obama has the potential to do just that.” Click here for more:

Asian Window fully supports Mint‘s endorsement and choice of candidate.

Both Pakistan and Bangladesh registered a fall from last year’s status, with Bangladesh featuring the worst fall of all Failed States, set off by postponed elections, deadlocked government and the continuance of emergency rule that has dragged on for 18 months (not to mention November’s devastating cyclone which left 1.5 million people homeless). Nearby Pakistan didn’t do much better with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

For the complete list and the whole story in Foreign Policy click here.

Foreign Policy: What does the average Tibetan want? Is it independence, or a greater share of Tibet’s modernization and economic growth, which has been dominated by Han Chinese?

Robert Barnett: Not really either of those things. We have to be very careful not to confuse exile politics, which is a demand for anti-China this and anti-China that, with internal politics, which is much more pragmatic, complex, and sophisticated.

A very important sector of Tibetans have become very wealthy because China has poured money into creating a middle class in Tibetan towns, though there hasn’t really been a dividend for the countryside and the underclass. So, we can’t explain this as just economic modernization. We could explain the violence against the [Han] Chinese in that way. It could have to do with that. But the violence is present in just one demonstration out of 50 in the past two weeks.

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