The Moon Doctrine: Colonials know best (Sunday Guardian)

By M. D. Nalapat

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon (L) and French President Nicolas Sarkozy arrive for a family photo at the Elysee Palace, after international talks on Libya, in Paris on 19 March. Reuters hen Mikhail Gorbachev embraced the non-violent principles of Mahatma Gandhi to surrender Moscow's control over East Europe, Germany in particular gloated at its reunification with the East. So deep was the Teutonic belief in race within the European Union that it was decided to speedily incorporate most of Eastern Europe within the federation. They were, after all, Europeans. Since the middle of the 1990s, huge financial flows have gone from west to east of the globe's smallest continent (if we exclude the unique country of Russia), in the process weakening the ability of the older EU members to compete with emerging powerhouses such as South Korea, China and these days, even India. The pell-mell expansion of the EU is proving to be a poison pill that threatens to derail the social compact between state and citizen that has created one of the best social security systems in the world, barring that of a few underpopulated countries such as Canada. So long as the "Rest" were content with doing coolie work for the West, ensuring a constant supply of cheap factors of production coupled with a market for goods and services originating within the EU and its alliance partners in North America and in Australasia, the road ahead was smooth. Problems surfaced when India became a better software and services provider than EU members, and China began to take over markets for manufactured items that since the 1800s been the monopoly of the West. However, there were still a few bright spots. Almost all the financial surplus of the "Rest" was invested in the West, while the former colonial subjects developed a voracious appetite for "wampum". Baubles such as branded shirts, shoes, handbags and even toilet paper, not to speak of expensive corporate and military aircraft and automobiles. Even while agencies such as Transparency International continued the fiction of declaring them "corruption-free", and international rating agencies lavished Triple A ratings even on institutions that were hollowed out by speculation gone wrong, the 2008 financial collapse occurred. In months,investors in just the Gulf Cooperation Council lost more than $1.3 trillion because of the incompetence and chicanery of the financial institutions located in London, Zurich, New York and Frankfurt. Others in South and East Asia, as well as Russia, lost hundreds of billions more. All of a sudden, it became clear that the most unsafe location to park one's cash assets was a Western bank. After having given away to NATO all his chemical, nuclear and biological weapons, as well as all his state secrets, Libya's Muammar Gaddafi drew the line at watching his and his country's money end up the same way. He began making noises about diversifying investments from the West to "China, Russia and India". All three paid him back by standing supinely by as NATO began pounding his country, a show of Chinese, Indian and Russian cowardice that continues long after it has become clear that the objective of the alliance is not to "protect civilians" but to protect their primacy not just in Libya, but over the region as an entirety. The European Union is inches away from disaster. Once Greece defaults (as seems certain), the next to go will be Ireland, followed by Spain, Portugal and Greece. Next could be France. Now that the European Union is being ruled by schoolboys (David Cameron), cowboys (Nicolas Sarkozy), playboys (Silvio Berlusconi) and a schoolmistress (Angela Merkel), there is no appetite for facing the truth, which is that the EU is facing a long period of austerity after decades of spendthrift behaviour. Hence the Ban Ki-Moon option, which is to play the colonial game once again. The UN Secretary-General has legitimised the primacy of "former colonial powers" over vast areas of the globe. Thus, he has cheered on France's military intervention in the Ivory Coast and nodded approval at Italy's hosting of European conferences on Libya, its former colony. Each NATO bomb is a signal to Arab leaders to beware the consequences of shifting their assets away from the West to countries further east. As Syria has no money, bombs need not be wasted on Bashar Al-Assad. And as Bahrain is a reliable dependency of NATO, its royal family can batter civilians without any fear of referral to the Western (sorry, "International") Court of Justice at The Hague. Someone needs to remind Uncle Moon that he is the Secretary-General of the UN, not of NATO, and that Mr Moon's favourite group of countries needs to rely on productivity rather than on missiles, ethics rather than on bombs, to tempt investors and customers for its products. http://www.sunday-guardian.com/analysis/the-moon-doctrine-colonials-know-best

The silence of the lambs (PO)

M. D. Nalapat

China, India, Russia and Brazil — now joined by South Africa — are fast-growing economies that have recently taken up a lot of newspaper space for the speed with which they have been developing. However, the fact remains that they are as yet marginal players on the world stage, which is still dominated by the former colonial powers of Europe and their ally, the US. 

The latest proof of this has been the extraordinary silence of Beijing, Delhi, Moscow, Brasilia and Pretoria on events in Libya. After an initial show of disapproval once it became clear that UN Security Council Resolution 1973 was being used by NATO as an excuse for bombing Libya into submission, the five countries have watched the daily air raids on infrastructure and other assets largely in silence. Clearly, they are nervous at the possibility that they would annoy the NATO powers by coming out more forcefully against what in effect is a war of that military alliance against Colonel Kadhafi and his regime. Is it that countries that were regarded as tigers are in reality only lambs?

What lies behind the NATO attack on Libya? It is definitely not democracy, for if it were, there are far bigger states in the region that are far from democratic. It cannot be the protection of civilians, for NATO is doing nothing to stop the ongoing slaughter of pro-Kadhafi elements by those opposed to the Libyan strongman. In fact, it is tacitly assisting in such slaughter by its open backing for one side in what is a civil war. As for implementing the UN resolution, that has been left far behind by the scale and scope of NATO attacks, now being waged even on oilfields, according to the Libyan regime. 

The excuse of democracy has often been used by NATO powers as camouflage for their actual aims. However, if we take as an example the case of Hong Kong, the British colonial administration discovered the virtues of democracy only after it became clear that China would not allow the British to get a fresh lease of rulership over Hong Kong, and that they would have to pull out by 1997. 

The reality is that the so-called “post-colonial” world has been characterised by an alliance between local elites in several countries and the former colonial powers.

A new Sykes-Picot Agreement (PO)

M D Nalapat

Ninety-five years ago, Britain and France got together to divide the Arab world. The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement formalised the division of the region into spheres of influence controlled by London and Paris. Gone were the promises of freedom that had been given to the Arab peoples at the start of the campaign against Turkey.

Watching the London Conference on the future of Libya, it becomes clear that very little has changed in the Arab world. Most of the countries of the region are under the tutelage of either Britain or France, with of course the US as the senior partner of both these powers. Any visitor to the Gulf Cooperation Council region will be struck by the influence of US and European “advisors”. Apart from minor decisions, such as whether to have pasta or hummus for dinner, all decisions get taken only after they have been vetted and approved by the ubiquitous “advisors”. Small wonder that even after losing more than $1 trillion in the 2008 financial collapse caused by the greed of financial institutions in London, Zurich, Chicago and New York, Arab investors still place more than 95% of their financial assets in the very same entities that have fleeced them

A New Taliban in Libya? (Gateway)

BY M.D. Nalapat

Amidst the rejoicing over NATO’s fight for the ‘liberation’ of Libya from Col. Muammar Gaddafi’s four-decade-long rule, few have bothered to ask the dark question: who are these rebels, apparently without a face or organization? How did they ‘win’ the support of NATO’s military might, and find a way of closing in on Gaddafi and his supporters? How did Al Qaeda and fundamentalist involvement quietly surface amidst the mayhem? And what does this mean for the West and for the rest of the Middle East?

The answer lies in the events of 1994, when the US backed the Taliban to defeat the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan. Had the Clinton administration not backed them from 1994 to their takeover of Kabul in 1996 and beyond, the Taliban would never have taken over more than three-fourths of Afghanistan, Al Qaeda would never have become a global organization, and the history of the world in this 21st century would have been different.

The players in this grim game are well known. It is no secret that the elements that later coalesced into the Taliban, had their fairy godmother in the former US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Robin Raphel. She even demanded, as far back as 1997, that Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance resistance leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud (later assassinated by Al Qaeda operatives on September 9, 2001) surrender to the ISI's favoured militia.

Thus far there has been no negative blowback for her career.

US should not follow Europe in Libya (USINPAC)

M.D. Nalapat

The Truman administration ended the brief dalliance with Asian nationalism that had been begun by Franklin Roosevelt,who as President of the US prodded Winston Churchill (with zero success) to grant India the very freedoms that the Atlantic Charter was designed to promote.

Had successive British governments been less Teutonic in their views, the UK may have gracefully conceded Dominion Status to India in the 1930s, thereby ensuring an alliance with the West that has since taken more than eight decades to move forward. After World War II, US policy was to march in sync with the European powers, for example in Vietnam, where France was backed in its occupation of the country.

While the world may have changed since the 1950s, US foreign policy seems to have remained stuck in a "Follow the Europeans" mode. The latest example of this is Libya, where US military assets are assisting France and the UK as they seek to carve out a zone of influence in eastern Libya, where more than 70% of the country's oil reserves are.

Outsourcing policymaking to the West (PO)

M D Nalapat

One of the country’s most prestigious newspapers, The Hindu,has been carrying a series based on the 5000 Wikileaks cables which relate to India. The first installment carried details about how Mani Shankar Aiyar lost the Petroleum Ministry in a Cabinet reshuffle,because he was regarded as too pro-Iran and therefore anti-US.He was replaced by Murli Deora, who is known to be close to the US from the time of Ronald Reagan.

Mani Shankar Aiyar is no stranger to Pakistan,having served in the country as a diplomat for many years. He is among the few politicians with the ability to understand complex issues,and to take a long-term view of policy. Certainly he feels uncomfortable with those who argue that Delhi should unquestioningly follow the “advice” given by the US,France and the UK, and makes no secret of such views. Interestingly, another former Indian Foreign Service officer-turned-politician was also sacrificed, most probabably because like Aiyar,he too opposed the uncritical acceptance of advice from Europe and the US that has been the hallmark of Sonia Gandhi’s policies. Like Aiyar, Kunwar (Prince) Natwar Singh too has a very high IQ and is far happier in the world of books and scholarship than he is with politics and polticians. In contrast to them,Murli Deora, who was in charge of the Union Petroleum Ministry till very recently has made no secret of his affinity for the US and for Europe, being among the many Indian politicians who spend a lot of time in both these continents. Murli Deora is a person of great charm,and it is this quality that enabled him to become one of the top fund-raisers for the Congress Party in the 1980s. Businesspersons know that he can be relied upon to help them,and hence have usually followed hos advice to donate generously to the Congress Party.

Will China & Russia agree to bomb Libya? (PO)

M.D. Nalapat


In 1982, Ariel Sharon decided to intervene on behalf of the Maronite Christians of Lebanon, against the Shia. He gave weapons, training and other requisites to the Gemayel brothers, individuals whose concept of democracy was to send a bullet through the heart of any individual who disagreed with them. Intervening in a civil conflict in any society is fraught with risk, but this is exactly what some powers have repeatedly done.

However, Israel is far more vulnerable than former colonial empires such as the UK and France, in that it is located in a region where the population regards it with distaste, if not hatred. Secondly, it is far smaller than the major NATO powers in both size as well as population. Hence, caution ought to have been exercised rather than a reflexive exercise of power. Sadly for the world’s only Jewish-majority state, neither Sharon nor other Israeli leaders stopped to consider the ill-effects of their bias towards the Maronite Christian leadership. The consequence of Israeli intervention was to deepen the Lebanese sectarian conflict (with Syria and later Iran coming on the side of the embattled Shia) and to make the country the only one in the world that is the target of Shia-based terror groups. The intervention in Lebanon has cost Israel dearly.

These days, after having incorrectly assumed that Muammer Kadhafi will go the way of Hosni Mubarak, both the UK as well as the US are threatening to enforce a No Fly Zone over Libya, thereby seeking to ensure that the particular tribes backed by them have a better chance of dividing Libya into two states, with the oil-rich eastern state coming within the control of groups that are ( at least for now) friendly to the NATO powers. Strangely, even some governments in the region who ought to know better are secretly encouraging both President Obama as well as Prime Minister Cameron to attack Libya. This is a shortsighted view, caused by personal hatred of Colonel Kadhafi and disquiet at the fact that he is a republican rather than a monarch. Indeed, Kadhafihas become as much a figure of hatred within high councils in many Arab countries as was Gamal Abdel Nasser in his time. The difference, of course, is that Nasser was a simple man whose family declined to join in money-making, whereas the Kadhaficlan have become billionaires, thereby provoking anger within their own country. As in the case of the ancient Indian king Dritarashtra, Colonel Kadhafi’s blind spot are his sons. These have masterminded a policy of succumbing to the commands of the NATO powers, only to be abandoned by them at the first sign of an internal threat to the rule of their father.

Will Wen’s India visit be a success? (PO)

M D Nalapat During the last quarter of 2010, the Heads of Government of all the P-5 (Permanent Five in UN Security Council) will have visited India. The first to land in Delhi was UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who made an excellent impression in India, in contrast to some of his predecessors. Next followed US President Barack Obama, who created history by setting in stone the foundations laid by George W Bush of a US-India alliance. Next has come President Sarkozy of France, a country that even during the dark days of the Clinton administration was friendly to India (in contrast to the UK, which followed the Clinton line as faithfully as a poodle). On December 15,Premier Wen Jiabao of China comes calling, followed a week later by Russian President Dimitry Medvedev.

Obama rejects high-tech cooperation with India (UPI Asia)

MD Nalapat


Manipal, India — Once in office, U.S. President Barack Obama apparently decided to abandon his own policy preferences in favor of those of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Given the reluctance of the former president and the current secretary of state to agree to an equal partnership with India, it is no surprise that the past year has seen the killing-off of the tiny shoots of U.S.-India high-tech cooperation promised by former President George W. Bush.This is despite the eagerness of NASA for joint projects with India. The U.S. space agency is aware that it will continue to be commercially outclassed by the European Union unless it ties up with India's Space Research Organization.

The Indians can undertake space launches that are 40 percent cheaper than the EU. Were NASA to outsource some of its hardware and software needs to India, the agency would outclass the Europeans in almost every segment of space research and exploration. This is why successive NASA administrators have – on record – pushed for closer cooperation with India.

However, the death-grip between Washington and Islamabad has thus far sabotaged all such efforts, even though NASA and ISRO have numerous complementarities, such as in hardware and software.

Only India can Challenge China's Primacy in Asia (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India — More than radical Islam, the threat to the primacy of the West will come from Sinic civilization, centered in the People’s Republic of China. Should China continue to grow at the pace of the last 20 years for the next two decades, by 2015 the backwash created by such progress will pull Japan and South Korea into its gravity field. This will later extend to Siberia and large swathes of Southeast and Central Asia.

As armed conflict would be a lose-lose proposition for all major players, the odds are that such an expansion of geopolitical space will take place peacefully. China’s strategy will be to make cooperation with it attractive while increasing the costs of conflict to Asian countries that may seek to present a challenge, principally India.

Obsessed as Germany is with ensuring the ethnic purity of Europe by blocking immigration even from established, English-speaking democracies outside the West, and France with the preservation of Franco-German primacy in Europe, the European Union is unlikely to adopt the only course that would enable it to retain its edge in the face of rising Sinic power. This is an alliance with India.

Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, with his obsessive focus on Europe and neglect of Asian Russia, has been all but begging France and Germany to admit Moscow into the European Union as an equal of these two states. This course is likely to go the way of Turkey’s application to join the club; in other words, it will end up in the refuse bin. This is likely to push Russia further toward being a partner in the Sinic alliance that will be stitched together by Beijing in a decade.

Rudd in Denial About Ozzie Racism (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India - At least 12 Indian students have been attacked in Australia in half that many weeks. This has put at risk not only the country’s multibillion-dollar education industry, but also Australia's image as a tolerant and inclusive country.

The Victorian police have deliberately refrained from releasing details of the attackers, but the odds are that most of the attacks were carried out by youths of Eastern European background. Given the post-war economic chaos and political stunting in these states, the only "distinction" that migrants from such countries have clung to has been their absence of tanned skin.

Many migrants from Eastern Europe to North America and Australia are horrified at the increasing number of immigrants with duskier complexions than theirs. This sentiment was personally witnessed by this columnist during a visit to the United States in 1992, when a group of Eastern European migrants expressed their shock at the number of non-whites admitted to a country they had been taught to regard as a white bastion. These individuals were clear that such migration ought to be banned forthwith.

The same sentiment was expressed this year by those who attacked Indians for being different from Australians. The attackers seemed to be unaware that Australia is almost entirely a country of migrants, albeit mostly from Europe until Fortress White Australia began to be dismantled during the 1980s – almost entirely by white liberals in that country

Will the USS Kitty Hawk cement U.S.-India military ties? (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Thanks largely to India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who shared with his leftwing British friends a dislike of the Yanks, the geopolitically senseless alienation between the United States and India continued for five decades after India's independence in 1947.

What seems finally to have convinced the British to leave India was the seepage of loyalty from the Indian component of the armed forces. More than 2 million Indians saw action on the Allied side during World War II. Yet during the war, their loyalty to the Crown was tested by the discriminatory treatment meted out to Indians in the services. British personnel dominated the higher reaches of the military and were given perquisites and privileges far beyond those enjoyed by Indians.

Several thousands of soldiers joined the pro-Axis Indian National Army during the war. Within the ranks of those who remained on the Allied side, there was visible sympathy for those Indian officers and men who switched sides and refused to fight for the British monarchy that denied them the privileges enjoyed by soldiers from the Australian, New Zealand, U.S. and Canadian complements. The possibility of widespread revolts within the armed forces concentrated minds in London and speeded up the withdrawal from India.

Treating India like Dirt (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

MANIPAL, India — U.S. diplomats have lorded it over the world's "Untermenschen," or inferior people, for so long that the latter have come to regard even the more obvious and offensive forms of condescension and patronizing behavior as a compliment.

Ever since the United States was informed on Oct. 21 by India that domestic political difficulties were hampering the implementation of the George Bush-Manmohan Singh nuclear deal, a battalion of U.S. officials and wannabe officials have been lecturing India almost daily on what they consider to be the core attributes of a "responsible" and "mature" power -- which is to fulfill the wishes of the United States in every detail. Any deviation from this would be evidence of an inability to be ranked worthy of the support of the "Big Boys" -- presumably Blairite Britain, Sarkozhian France and Merkellian Germany, who amble behind the United States on key issues.

After being informed a week ago that the next steps in finalizing the nuclear deal were negotiating a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Suppliers Group on transfer of civilian technology, France was the first of the Big Boys to kick in, warning that any agreement with it was conditional on the Bush-Singh agreement being signed first.

Next followed Germany, repeating its insistence that India sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty as a non-nuclear weapons power before Berlin would agree to join the bandwagon. Unusually -- and wisely -- Britain has kept silent, unlike the United States, which has been issuing a stream of statements, warning that placing the deal in cold storage would severely impact relations with Washington.

India's 'Caste' in the Global Nuclear Network (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India — A millennium ago, when Muslim armies began succeeding in defeating their Hindu rivals, such victories came despite the latter's greater opulence. A contributory factor was caste. Only certain "high-born" groups were permitted to bear arms in defense of the state. Their number did not exceed 9 percent of the total population. Had a more equitable social structure been in place, India's history may have been different.

It was only in the 1960s that democratic elections became the instrument through which the "backward castes" were able to claim equal rights with the rest. Ironically, since that time a new caste system has arisen, again one that denies upward mobility to those condemned to second-class, or worse, status. This is the international nuclear order implemented through the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, which permanently restricts the right to possess nuclear weapons to only five countries -- the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China.

Since then, Israel, India, Pakistan and now North Korea have emerged as de facto nuclear weapons states. Of these, Israel has not thus far tested a nuclear weapon, although it has clearly had access to the technology needed to build a stockpile of them. Of the other three, Pakistan and North Korea are both authoritarian states known to have proliferated both nuclear as well as missile technology, and to have secured the know-how for developing both from third countries.

Emasculating Nuclear India (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat

NEW DELHI, March 13 (UPI) -- There is zero doubt that India and the U.S. are natural partners. Steady migration to the U.S., the ever-denser interlinking of the hi-tech industry in both countries, and common threats from religious fundamentalism and political authoritarianism mandate that Washington and New Delhi forge an alliance that is as close as that between the U.S. and the UK.

However, the caveat to this is that such a partnership can only be on terms that are the same as what the U.S. accords to the U.K. In brief, the U.S. has first to accept India as a nuclear weapons state that deserves permanent membership in the U.N. Security Council. Unfortunately, almost all the formulae trotted out by the "South Asia" brigade in U.S. think tanks and other centers of influence such as the State Department implicitly or otherwise seek to "engage" India on terms that would, if accepted, result in an emasculation of the world's most populous democracy.

The proposed Nuclear Deal falls squarely in this category, and will, if sought to be implemented, push official U.S.-India relations back to the frost of the Cold War period.

Indians love flattery, and often surrender substance in exchange for a verbal pat on the head. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, by education as well as by his experience in international institutions, is predisposed to uncritical acceptance of the standard Western worldview, which implicitly sees India as a juvenile power needing mother-henning, and definitely not mature enough to be trusted with grown-up implements such as nuclear weapons and their associated delivery systems. This mistrust of the country's maturity -- despite New Delhi's impeccable non-proliferation record to date -- infuses the terms of the deal that has been agreed to by the Sonia Gandhi-led coalition government, hungry as always for formal acknowledgment of its improving status. Were the agreement to be implemented, India would almost immediately lose its chance to switch to the thorium cycle, and within 12 years would find its tiny arsenal of nuclear weapons depleted to irrelevance.

Emergent Eurasian Colossus (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat

MANIPUR, India, July 15 (UPI) -- "East is east, and west is west, and ne'er the twain shall meet." Rudyard Kipling's words appear to be the motto of the leaders of Europe, who are trying to insulate themselves from Asia.

The European Union is attempting to create a political community by uniting the different peoples of Europe. Rather than import human talent from wherever it is plentiful -- South India and East Asia, for example -- the core of the EU, France and Germany, are pouring lavish resources into attempting to make the people of former Soviet satellites leapfrog away from their statist past to the era of modern economies.

However, this "Look only at Europeans" policy may boomerang on the West, especially because Eastern Europe is demanding the same social infrastructure as the West has, a wish that would, if fulfilled drain even West European countries of their international competitiveness because of the huge financial costs involved. This will be especially harmful in a context where the "Made in Europe" label is losing its premium.

Genetically, even discounting the prevalent theory that the 6 billion human beings on the planet evolved from a handful of prehistoric human beings in Africa, the reality is that social conditioning and education can make productive the people of any part of the world. Rather than retard progress, an admixture of ethnicities has -- most visibly in the case of the United States -- resulted in an increase in productivity rather than the degeneration feared by Adolf Hitler, Jean-Marie Le Pen and Enoch Powell.

U.S. losing Mind War in Iraq

M.D. Nalapat 

MANIPAL, India, June 23 (UPI) -- After World War I, the consequences of the Versailles "peace" were the rise of the National Socialists and World War II. That conflict was followed by the Marshall Plan, the democratization of Germany, Italy and Japan and their bonding with the United States and Britain into both a security alliance as well as an economic partnership. Both British values and American culture permeated the three former Axis powers, vacuuming away the hostility in the minds of their populations to the victors. Today, some Germans (as indeed many Britons and more than a few French) may be anti-Enduring Freedom. Almost none is anti-American except in a narrow political sense.

Why did the peace imposed after World War II create a benign backlash while that which followed World War I create the Hitler-Tojo-Mussolini monster? The reason was that conquest was achieved in the 1914-1918 conflict only on the ground, over physical territory. In the second, it won over the mind of the "enemy" population pool as well. It can be argued the extremely liberal treatment given to the Germans after they had backed the most loathsome dictatorship in history, a policy of forgiveness that took within its fold more than 95 percent of those who had been active in the NSDAP, helped avoid a second Hitler. It is now clear the formal respect paid to the emperor of Japan and to the non-militaristic aspects of the culture of that civilization, together with ruthless MacArthurite democratization and integration into the modern economy, transformed a power that had been first suspicious of and then hostile to the West (at least for the previous two centuries) into a reliable ally, despite the horror of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Forget that Operation Enduring Freedom ought to have been conducted by giving equal billing to a "Free Iraq" leadership as was given to U.S. participants. A Free Iraqi general conducting news briefings jointly with the non-telegenic Tommy Franks would have had an effect similar to that created by projecting Charles De Gaulle as the heroic leader of a horde of "Free French" when the reality in German-occupied France was that the level of resistance was far lower than that found in the eastern theatres, while active collaboration was high. The "Free French" were, however, wonderful in cinema newsreels and on the British Broadcasting Corp. and Voice of America, which was enough to preserve French pride into the postwar period, avoiding the kind of backlash that made Paris craft the Versailles Treaty.