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.

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.

NATO ditches Moamer Kadhafi (PO)

M D Nalapat
 

Clients of banks based in the capitals of countries that are NATO members say that service is excellent, so long as times are good. There are smiles and parties, in all of which alcohol and charming company is present in profusion. However, as soon as times turn bad, these Fair Weather Friends change, and begin demanding the observance of conditions that are designed to further push the enterprise into catastrophe. Unlike banking institutions that have an Asian ethos, which step forward to the rescue whenever business turns sour, and shows the patience and understanding needed to conquer the crisis, the NATO-based financial institutions look only at their own (narrow and short-term) interests, and frequently convert a manageable crisis into a disaster by their unsympathetic policies. Sadly, despite knowing this, several business persons get lured by the superficial charm and seeming efficiency of such organisations, and flock there in preference to Asian entities, just as so many millions of consumers in Asia waste huge amounts of savings in buying super-luxury brands from Europe (even those where only the name is European, with even the label made in Asia. The reason for this is the continuing inferiority complex of several High Net Worth individuals who are secretly ashamed of being Asian, and compensate by using only European brands, whether these be shoes, clothes, cars or any other requirement of modern life.