The Taiwan Effect On Sinic Civilisation

In 1997, when this analyst predicted that the Peoples Republic of China would emerge within two decades as the next economic superpower, the view was dismissed, not least in the PRC itself, whose scholars almost unitedly forecast a much longer period of less exalted status before their country "emerged" on the scale mentioned, if indeed it were to happen at all. Most PRC scholars said that oit would. However, presently several of these same analysts are themselves talking of their country in the very terms used by the aurthor in 1997,"emerging superpower", while observers elsewhere agree on the forecast that the PRC will become the second-largest world economy well before the first half of the present century, and the largest thereafter. In several indices, the PRC has overtaken or is overtaking the US, although it is still behind the most of (the combined totals of) the European Union states. However, these latter still have a considerable distance to go before they can claim to be a unified entity, and the possibility exists of economic turbulence that would lead once again to calls for a dilution in central authority and towards the traditional nation-state. The EU has worked well in good times, but the test of a system is its resilience in the face of substantial adversity, and such a situation has not yet arrived on the continent since the end of the 1939-45 war. Indeed,the entire structure of the EU is designed oin a way that assumes that the prosperity of Europe continues to be a given

Although some would claim that the primacy of Europe dates back to the Greeks and the Romans, the existence of China and India as contemporaneously wealthier civilisations makes such a view untenable. The rise to global primacy of what may be termed "European" ( or Euric) civilisation began during the 17th century AD , and reached its highest point in the 19th. A significant contributing factor was the more equitable social system within the primary powers of Europe as compared to the two giants of Asia, who remained tethered to a feudalism that treated the bulk of their own populations as subhuman. In contrast, many of the peoples of Europe were able to secure greater economic and other rights from their elites, beginning a millenium ago with the Magna Carta in Britain, and thereupon transposed the "subhuman" category onto other peoples. This overlordship of other peoples first became genocidal in South America a half-millennium ago and later spread to North America as well as to Africa and parts of Asia. Such colonialism was ended shortly after World War II, during with Germany imposed on other European states the same conditions of servitude that several European states had imposed on other continents. The frenzy of intra-European bloodlust unleashed by the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in the 1930s ,till their defeat in 1945 weakened both the will as well as the capacity of the major European powers to hold on to their colonies. The war of 1939-45 accelerated the transfer of power to local elites, in India in 1947 and to other lands thereafter

As the remarkable expansion of both knowledge and power within and out of Europe since the 17th century AD demonstrates, the strength and resilience of a society usually moves in the same direction as social justice. For example, the victory of the Greek armies over the more numerous and better-equipped Persian forces in the third century BC owed much to the fact that the Persian armies were composed of slaves with little to lose in the event of the defeat of King Darius, while most of the Alexandrine forces were freedmen, aware of both the rewards of conquest as well as the consequences of being enslaved by the Persian Empire in the event of a military disaster. Had there been an equitable social system in the territories ruled from Persepolis,the morale and motivation of the troops confronting the Greeks may have been as high as was the case within the "holy warriors" of Mahmud of Ghazni when he succeeded in defeating the Indian princes from AD 1001 onwards, despite the latter's considerable numerical superiority. The sense of mission and brotherhood within the Ghaznavid forces contrasted with the lower morale and motivation within the Indian armies, which were mostly composed of press-ganged individuals with near- absent civil rights, because of the caste-based society common within the country. Once caste in India became linked to birth rather than occupation and accomplishment,the fall of such societies became an inevitability. A similar enervation took place in China,where the court and the aristocracy mocked the tenets of Confucius by evolving into a closed and cloistered elite around six centuries ago,the very period when the country turned its back on the rest of the world,despite Zheng He having demonstrated its superiority and reach in his voyages

What this writer has elsewhere described as a "horizontal" rather than a "vertical" view of society, in a chapter on the subject in a volume brought out by the Bar-Ilan university in 2005, has been a key component of the success of the Euric peoples in establishing first their primacy and subseqently their dominance over the rest of the world. The extension of democratic traditions to other cultures and the decaying of feudalism and birth-based barriers to societal progress such as ethnic,religious or caste criteria, has resulted in an enhancement of enlightenment within the Sinic and the Indic cultures, which together represent two unbroken streams of civilisation, centred within China and India respectively. However, as yet this re-awakening of potential is in a nascent stage, as shown by the fact that as late as 2007, more than nine out of every ten scientific patents originated within those countries identified as Euric (ie those in North America, Australasia and within the European Union)

Still-powerful vestiges of feudalism continue to remain a constraint on the expansion of knowledge in India, while its authoritarian state structure results in a similar block in the PRC. The restrictive impact of such conditions can be judged from the much-better performance of Indian and Chinese-origin scientists and technologists in societies where such constraints do not operate. While a student studying in a university in India is unlikely to ever qualify for a Nobel Prize, the same is not the case with those pursuing their research in the more democratic societies of North America and to a lesser degree, Australasia and the European Union. In the latter, although invisible in public view, race is a much greater inhibiting factor to achievement and the pursuit of excellence than is the case in North America

In the case of the PRC, the authoritarian system in place in that country is a limiting factor in the economic and other progress of a society which will need to develop knowledge clusters substantially in order to grow beyond the stage of being a mere assembly-line for other economies

It is the contention here that the Sinic peoples are on course to re-emerge as the "Lead Civilisation" on the globe,displacing the Euric peoples after a gap of two centuries. However,for this to happen,the PRC will need to continue on the present trajectory of high growth combined with internal stability despite rapid changes in the social environment. The "Taiwan Effect" will be substantial in such a success. For although several within that island would dispute this, the reality remains that Taiwan is within the umbra of Sinic civilisation, in the way that - to a somewhat lesser degree - Singapore is. Taiwan, Singapore and the PRC may be termed as "Core Sinic" entities, while Mongolia, Korea, Viet Nam and Japan have within their cultures as substantial a dose of Sinic civilisation as Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia have of the Indic. Of course, all these countries have over time developed their own unique local civilisations, although remaining based on the Sinic and Indic foundations bequeathed to them by history. In the case of Malaysia, that country is following Pakistan and Bangladesh in seeking to alter the very foundations of its inherent cultural ethos, by replacing the Indic with the Arabic, in the process creating social confusion and the risk of extreme instability. The efforts of some sections of Taiwanese society and its polity to replace its Sinic roots with a mix of Polynesian and other strains is analogous to the state-sponsored efforts within Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia to seek to replace what is natural to the land with a graft from afar, and if taken to the extremes found in Pakistan and Malaysia, could lead to the same societal turmoil as these countries are experiencing. The chemistry of Pakistan,Bangla Desh and Malaysia is not the same as that unique amalgam present in the Middle East,and any uncritical transplantation of that culture from the into these lands would generate a misfit between the core and the superstructure of society,that would impede harmony. To regard Middle Eastern mores and culture as being at the roots of a particular faith is analogous to Christians worldwide regarding Aramaic (the language spoken by Jesus Christ) as the only acceptable language,and the customs of the inhabitants of Bethlehem as being the sole model for they themselves to follow,or for Buddhists in Japan,Thailand and elsewhere to seek to replicate the patterns of behaviour found in the birthplace of the Buddha,rather than continue on their own trajectories,the way the major Buddhist nations of the world ( or indeed those with Christian majorities) are doing

The acceptance of the "cultural core" of any civilisation is a pre-requisite for harmony,and this is equally the case within the Sinic civilisation,of which Taiwan forms a part,albeit as a state system separate from that of the PRC. It needs to be remembered that there was never a "Surrender Document" between the CCP and the KMT in 1949 or later,so that the authority structure in Taiwan can lay claim to equality with that in the PRC. As the author has said (in an article in "Taipei Times"), the PRC and Taiwan are "One Nation,Two States". It is the contention here that the path taken by Taiwan is likely to have a significant impact on the future path adopted in the PRC, and will controbute substantially towards that path embedding within itself the requirenents of tolerance,liberty and democracy that the Sinic peoples need in order to achieve their potential destiny of emerging as the primary civilisation of the globe

Knowledge is boundary less, and thrives best in an environment of democratic freedoms. Hence the reason why Information Technology is more successful in India than in Pakistan, a country where the minority communities are treated as second-class citizens, and where the testimony of women is given only half the evidentiary value of that of men. Equal treatment of all, irrespective of faith, is the keystone of a secular society, and any creation of differential standards based on faith would act as a negative force on the knowledge accretion and enhancement needed to accelerate economic and other forms of growth within human societies

In like manner, although much smaller in area, Taiwan has a much higher level of technological sophistication than the PRC, and does significantly more cutting-edge research than its neighbour. It is not accidental that Taiwan has become a democracy since the system was introduced by President Chiang Ching-kuo in 1987. Since then, especially with the election to office of the native-born Lee Teng-hui the next year, democracy has become a much more powerful weapon in the creation of international resonance for Taiwan than (for example) "pocketbook diplomacy". Moving to the present, the reality of the PRC remaining within an authoritarian straitjacket is substantially behind the international unease over conditions in Tibet, a landlocked territory with a unique culture. It is the view of this analyst that democracy would be a much more beneficial system to the people of the PRC than an authoritarian state structure that denies them rights enjoyed by citizens in countries across the world. It is an affront to the civilisational depths and excellence of the people of the PRC to say that they would not be able to "manage" a democratic state structure. This is the same assertion made by then British Prime Minister Winston S Churchill in 1944 to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, that the people of India lacked the maturity needed to exercise democratic freedoms, and that consequently, the indefinite extension of British colonial rule was inevitable and desirable. Contrary to Churchill's view,the example of India since 1947 shows that democracy is as natural to the human spirit in India as it is in Europe or, indeed, in Taiwan, and that the population of the PRC would benefit rather than suffer from a system where they had the right to choose their leaders

Although most historians attribute the breadth of modern Indian democracy to Jawaharlal Nehru,with Shashi Tharoor even terming Jawaharlal Nehru as the "inventor" of India, the reality is that the major chunk of credit for designing a Constitution of India that embodies universal rights goes to B R Ambedkar. The leader of India's most disadvantaged section was insistent that the people whose cause he championed be given the same rights as others,and he ensured that the foundation document of Indian democracy ensured universal adult suffrage. Indeed,it was during the premiership of Nehru ( 1947-64) that numerous restrictions on the freedom of action of India's citizens were either continued or put into effect,notably in the economic sphere. It is unfortunate for India that the country embarked on economic liberalisation only in 1992, as compared to 1978 in the PRC

The PRC has seen four major stages in its evolution,and is now in its fifth. The fist was in 1949,with the coming to power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The next was during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the 1960s.Next followed the Deng Xiaoping economic reforms that began in 1978,and finally the mainstreaming of Han nationalism during and after the Hong Kong handover of 1997. The fifth stage,of seeking to accelerate modernisation and succeed in the Knowledge Economy while preserving an authoritarian state structure, was begun by President Hu Jintao in 2005. Today,the PRC has more than 200 million internet users, and 220 million users of mobile telephones. In consequence,the spread of information has reached a level tht is severely testing efforts at restricting access to knowledge of events

That the "Hu Era" in the PRC is characterised by a vigorous adjustment to the effects of modern communications technology has become clear through the difference in approach of the CCP towards the 2008 earthquake, as compared to the 2005 SARS outbreak. Although the disease came on the public health radar internally in December 2005, it was only in April 2006 that accurate descriptions of its spread and virulence began to be aired in state media. This transparency was less the result of an embrace of glasnost than it was the realisation that the internet had rendered impossible any control of information about the epidemic. By 2008,the lessons from SARS had resulted in the much greater access given to media organisations during the earthquake. In order to keep ahead of this procress,daily briefings began to be given,as well as stage-managed events such as VIP visits, with a sophistication that would be the envy of politicians in the US

Hu Jintao's embrace of (non-political) openness has resulted last year in 40 million tourists visiting the PRC ( or ten times more than the number coming to India),and 60 million PRC citizens travelling beyond their shores. Sexual freedom as well as social mobility has expanded significantly since the "Hu Era" began in 2002, even as pride and confidence in the country has grown. Private property has been given legal protection in 2007,wile marriage is no longer dependent on the consent of parents or employers. Even religion has come out of the closet,especially the different strands of the Buddhist faith,that are seen as less loaded with political baggage than the religions emanating from the west. While Mao Zedong condemned Chinese traditions and even Confuciius as "rubbish",both have been revived under Hu

Will President Hu or his successor be able to continue the process of reform and modernisation into the political? Should they decide to do so,the experience of Taiwan would be a key element in conscientizing public opinion. For the election into office of President Ma Ying-jeou in 2008 has unlocked the possibilty that a Taiwanese leader may emerge as a change agent in the PRC,in a way that Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore was unable to do,despite the latter's erudition and accomplishments

The Presidential and Legislative Yuan elections in Taiwan of 2008 have demonstrated that the culture of representative democracy is as natural to the Sinic peoples as it is to the Indic or the Euric. Unless the CCP can create systems that encompass questions of faith, issues relating to non-material needs,in the effective way that it has crafted channels to deal with material wants,it will face severe turbulence as society within the PRC becomes more complex and therefore demanding. Hopefully,rather than seek to adopt a Brezhnevite rigidity in its response to change,the CCP will draw the correct conclusions from the example of Taiwan and launch the process of political transition with the verve and success that it embarked on economic reform in 1978

Indeed,a transition to democracy is necessary for the PRC to retain an international environment conducive to its continued expansion, as indeed the prospect of closer ties with Taiwan.An authoritarian PRC that has emerged as a major global foece would be seen as a threat by other major powers,in a way that a democratic China would not be. Indeed,if Taiwan enjoys a respect within the international community out of all proportion to its geographical size,the reason lies in the admiration of the world at the seamless transition of the island from authoritarianism to democracy under President Chiang Ching-kuo. In contrast,the UK never allowed the people of Hong Kong to enjoy the rights enjoyed by citizens in a democracy, up to the handover in 1997

If the people of Taiwan have shown a much lower propensity to accept authoritarian rule as a part of the PRC than the people of Hong Kong, it is because that former British colony never enjoyed the freedoms of a democracy. It was only after it became clear that Paramount Leader Deng Xiao-ping would not agree to anything short of complete accession of the whole of Hong Kong to the PRC in 1997 did Whitehall begin to see the "light of democracy" shining in its sights, sending Christopher Patten to the colony as its 28th (and last) Governor in 1992. Over the next five years, Patten oversaw a series of pseudo-reforms that essentially transferred some peripheral powers to local elites and away from London, where they had been concentrated till then. Had Whitehall the vision to implement democracy in Hong Kong after the takeover of power by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949 on the mainland, or even after Taiwan switched to a democratic system four decades later, by 1997, the population of Hong Kong may have been active enough to ensure a preservation of much greater freedoms than were agreed to between London and Beijing till the handover. The fact that Taiwan has evolved into a full democracy has been the major reason behind the unwillingness of the local population to agree to a union with the PRC, even though the majority are in favour of a pragmatic accommodation that both preserves the autonomy from external control of Taiwan and the business links between the PRC and Taiwan. As is usual in democracies, the Taiwanese electorate opted for the "Middle Way" ( as distinct from the Middle Kingdom) during the parliamentary and presidential elections held this year

Ever since democracy was introduced to Taiwan by Chinag Ching-kuo and broadened by his successor Lee Teng-hui, the CCP had claimed that it has worked in a manner less than optimal in improving living standards. Commentators in the PRC pointed to claimed societal tensions during the period in office of Lee Teng-hui as well as Chen Shui-bian to argue that the system of democracy practiced in Taiwan has been responsible. Now that voters have overwhelmingly voted in the KMT to power into the Legislative Yuan, as well as Ma Ying-jeou as the next President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), such commentators have been shown to be wrong,and have largely fallen silent. To the people of the PRC, the election of a leader proud of his ancestry and civilisational heritage to the highest office in Taiwan, in place of those presidents who claimed a separate ancestry and/or culture from the Han, is proof not simply that democracy is fully congrunent with the cultural fabric of Sinic civilisation, but that it works in ways that smooth over and thereby harmonize societal divisions in a non-violent manner

India is another example of the way in which democracy promotes peaceful change. That country has seen vast changes in social engineering brought about as a result of the ballot box. For example, in the province of Tamil Nadu since 1967,and in UP and Bihar as well, chief ministers have emerged from castes that were the subject of severe limits on forward development for centuries. Coming back to the 2008 presidential elections, the "Taiwan Effect" is likely to be substantial on Sinic society in general, as the results show to be false the assertion that the people of Chinese origin and culture are unsuited to the nuances and complexities of democracy, and therefore require arbitrary rule

Apart from social instability, another by-product of democracy (as held by PRC scholars) is prresumed to be economic stagnation. The fact that India has lagged behind the PRC in economic growth since the 1980s has been taken as evidence of the correlation between slow growth and democracy. However, the country's recent emergence as a potential economic powerhouse has discredited such a hypothesis,and has in contrast shown that democracy is in no way incompatible with high growth rates. In fact, the reverse is the case. It is only the checks and balances of a democracy and the safety valves within that system that make viable the transition of a society from one plane of growth to another. In the PRC, there has been an expansion of liberty in the personal sphere, with social mores undergoing changes that have brought the behaviour of several young citizens of the PRC closely akin to patterns followed by counterparts in Europe and North America. Recently, with the acceptance of the Jiang Zemin Theory of Three Represents into CCP doctrine, there has been a like expansion of freedom in the economic sphere in China. Now what is left are issues of faith and the political process. The events in Tibet show the need for the PRC to evolve a system of governance that takes account of religious faith, and any significant economic slowdown may lead to an intensification on public unrest on a scale unprecedented since the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s

Sinic civilisation is one of the great streams of humanity, and the Sinic peoples are reclaiming the primacy that was theirs for millenia. However, for such a process top continue, it is essential that political and other civil rights march in step with economic advancement. The Taiwan Example has shown to the people of Chinese origin and culture across the world that democracy not only works, it works well. The wheels of democracy may grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine in the years ahead, the evolution of Taiwan into a stable and prospering democracy may prove to be a significant milestone in the evolution of a great civilisation.

(Keynote address delivered by Prof. Madhav Nalapat at the Bangalore University Conference on "Taiwan in the 21st Century on April 25th, 2008.)

Will 'Tibet Flu' Spread in China? (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India — Nine years after China's Peoples' Liberation Army occupied Tibet, the 14th Dalai Lama followed the example of his predecessor and escaped into India. While the 13th Dalai Lama's sojourn was brief, the present stay has extended over 49 years, with little chance of a return to Lhasa.

China's leaders are unlikely to heed the incessant calls of the United States and the European Union, now joined by India, to talk with the Dalai Lama till such time as His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso abandons the three core conditions that he has laid down for a reconciliation. These are: (1) only powers of defense and foreign affairs will be vested with Beijing, the other responsibilities of government remaining in the hands of the Tibetans; (2) the regions of Kham and Amdo will be added to Tibet, thus creating a state that would almost equal India in area; (3) Han settlers will leave this vast territory.

For the Chinese Communist Party -- whose core principles are a monopoly over temporal power and the claim that only the CCP can assure the Han people the pre-eminent position they enjoyed till the previous five centuries of European global dominance -- the conditions that the Dalai Lama has put forward for a dialogue to commence are a poison pill. If swallowed, it could lead to the extinction of the party's rule over the entire country.

Tibet's challenge to Bush-Cheney (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Just as any CEO would, George W. Bush and his CFO Dick Cheney have focused on ensuring as high a monetary return as possible to those who invested in their campaigns. Whether it is the oil companies based out of Houston, Texas, or corporations like Halliburton, those who put their dollars behind the Bush-Cheney ticket have been rewarded beyond their most optimistic calculations.

The downside has been a recession caused by the financial cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan combined with the higher oil prices generated by the geopolitical experiments of the current U.S. administration and the get-rich-anyhow outlook of financial institutions. Had the U.S. economy not been faced with these multiple shocks, stock and housing prices would most likely have continued to rise, thereby bailing out those institutions that advanced funds to subprime borrowers.

However, while individual corporations have benefitted exponentially from 2001 to 2008, the bulk of U.S. consumers have had to be content with modest or negative gains, thereby leading to the present loss of confidence in the future of what will, for another generation at least, be the primary economic engine of the globe.

After witnessing the colonial-style scramble for profits from the oil sector in Iraq -- which in its transparent rapacity most resembles Belgian policy in the Congo during much of the past century -- as well as the manner in which some corporate and other entities have leveraged their political connections to secure monopolies in Iraq and Afghanistan, savers in East and South Asia as well as Russia have steadily lost confidence in the integrity of the U.S. dollar and shifted to the euro. This has contributed to a slide in the greenback's value that may wipe away any gains in the anemic anti-inflation measures taken by the U.S. Federal Reserve thus far, and exacerbate the decline in both business as well as consumer confidence.

Malaysia's 'Endangered' Majority (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Malaysia's Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi made the worst call of his political career by calling a general election a full year before it was due, believing that international economic uncertainty was likely to send the economy southwards and ethnic tensions were at risk of escaping from the band-aid applied to them.

He therefore decided on a March 2008 poll, but Saturday's loss of 60 of the 199 parliamentary seats that his Barisan Nasional Party had won in 2004 has weakened not only his government but his leadership over a party unhappy with his "bureaucratic" style.

Sadly, the mild-mannered, moderate Badawi is less the culprit than he is the victim of the Malay supremacist policies followed by his party since 1957. These policies have implied that the multiracial, multifaith country's Malay majority of 60 percent was an endangered species in need of protection against the rest of the population, including the one-tenth that are ethnic Indians and one-fifth of Chinese descent.

The "bumiputra" policies followed by Malaysia's rulers since the 1950s have been sharpened over the decades, so that in effect today non-Muslims and non-Malays have a second-class status in the country. As occurred in the Indian mutiny of 1857, it was a question of faith that ignited the Hindu firestorm on Nov. 25, 2007, that led to the present electoral debacle for Badawi -- after Hindu temples were bulldozed to make way for roads, malls and housing sites.

Such contempt for the institutions of their faith sparked anger among the Hindus of Malaysia. Although Muslims of Indian origin kept away from the protests that followed, the 90 percent of the Malaysian Indian community that are Hindu was alienated from the ruling party by the brutal police repression let loose against peaceful protestors in scenes reminiscent of the days of the freedom struggle in India. Several of the protestors were jailed, and many are still in prison on the absurd charge of terrorism.

Zardari and Sharif: Uneasy 'partners' (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — After the Feb. 18 "peaceful" general elections in Pakistan, where "moderate" candidates overwhelmingly trounced their "extremist" rivals, most international commentators have agreed with the Pakistani analysts nesting in think tanks across the United States and elsewhere that the country's slide into chaos will decelerate and may even be reversed.

No less an expert on third world elections than U.S. Senator John Kerry has pronounced the Pakistan poll to have "credibility and legitimacy," a sentiment apparently shared by his colleague, Joe Biden. In fact, the election results indicate that the poll was less than fair, although conditions on the ground clearly made the manipulation less than completely effective.

While the Pakistan People's Party -- which was expected abroad to secure a majority on the basis of the "sympathy" vote following the killing of Benazir Bhutto -- got 87 of the 287 contested seats, Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League won just 66, a performance at variance with ground reality, which had indicated the party would register a much better performance.

Given the dodgy reputation of Bhutto's widower and newly anointed PPP leader, A.A. Zardari -- plus the fact that her visible eagerness to do the bidding of Washington had cost her much popularity in a society that is, after the Palestinian territories, one of the most anti-United States in the world -- the PPP ought to have come second to Sharif's PML(N), instead of emerging as the largest single party. Clearly, and contra-intuitively, the fact that the PPP has not-so-secretly been in parleys with Musharraf helped rather than hurt, despite the loathing with which most Pakistanis regard their head of state.

Killing Economic Reform in India (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Manmohan Singh, India's present prime minister, was brought back from Geneva to India as economic advisor to the government in 1990 by the commerce minister at the time, Subramanian Swamy. The long-time bureaucrat had been particular that a protege, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, be made the commerce secretary, a condition that was accepted by the minister.

A year later, Singh became finance minister in the first regular Congress government to be headed by an individual not from the Nehru family. P.V. Narasimha Rao was determined to accelerate the pace of economic reform, aware that the statist policies of the past had led India to bankruptcy, and in Manmohan Singh, found a willing instrument in the process.

Sadly for the country, by 1995, Rajiv Gandhi's widow Sonia began a political destabilization of Rao, afraid that his continuance would permanently block the Nehrus from reclaiming the Congress Party. From the beginning of that year till Rao's election defeat nearly two years later, the cautious finance minister obeyed the new signals and slowed down the reform process to a crawl.

Fortunately for Manmohan Singh, his numerous contacts in the Delhi media ensured that this phase was ignored, and that he -- rather than Rao -- got the credit for the 1992-96 reform package. It was therefore with substantial expectations that the 280-million strong Indian middle classes welcomed the takeover of formal power by Singh eight years after the 1996 election defeat of the Congress Party.

Nearly four years on, these hopes have died, together with the reforms.

No Thaw Across the Himalayas (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh returned Wednesday from a four-day visit to Beijing that even his spinmeisters could not categorize as a success. Having made the India-U.S. nuclear deal the foundation of his legacy, Singh had expected Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to follow through on the promise of "nuclear cooperation" that he had made during a 2005 visit to New Delhi.

While there was a reiteration of that pledge in the Vision Statement released during the visit, this was qualified by subsequent explicit references to any such partnership being within the boundaries set out in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. As the justification for the deal was that it opened the way for international civil nuclear cooperation with India outside the restrictions imposed by the NPT on powers other than the five recognized nuclear weapons states, this caveat reduced the Chinese offer to a meaningless pleasantry.

Neither in the International Atomic Energy Agency nor in the Nuclear Suppliers Group did the Chinese leadership give any indication during the Jan. 13-15 talks of softening their earlier position that India would have to sign on to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons power -- in other words, to denuclearize -- before securing international cooperation.

Then came another blow. The new Labor government in Australia reversed the decision by former Prime Minister John Howard to sell uranium to India once the India-U.S. deal becomes operational. Canberra said that India's signing the NPT would be a precondition for such transfers. This is a non-starter in the Indian context of the need for a nuclear and missile deterrent against possible attack.

Manmohan Singh had also hoped to persuade his hosts in Beijing to nudge the long-stalled border talks forward by accepting India's condition that areas with "settled populations" would be excluded from any exchange of territory. Although Wen Jiabao had accepted this condition in 2005, a year later Beijing returned to the earlier hard line that even populated zones were open to negotiation.

Why Benazir Bhutto Posed a Threat (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — On Nov. 7 this columnist wrote that Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto's election plans were likely to fail "if she survives." The skepticism over her longevity was because of the threat she represented to both the Punjabi component in the Pakistan army and to the continuation of the military's monopoly over state power.

While President Pervez Musharraf avoided challenging the latter, since 9/11 he has quietly but systematically sought to reduce the suffocating grip of the Punjabis over the army, giving better representation to Mohajirs, Balochis, Pashtuns and even a few Sindhis in the higher reaches of both the military as well as the civil administration. Had there been a teaming up between the wily Musharraf and the mercurial Bhutto, especially after he was made to quit as army chief, the two may have succeeded in leveraging anti-army sentiment in Pakistan enough to send the soldiers back to their barracks.

Since the 1950s, those in uniform have controlled Pakistan's civilian institutions, ensuring that these were melded with the military into a seamless system of preference and privilege to a military that has made jihad a lucrative industry. Especially since anti-U.S. passions rose after the Iraq war in 2003, but dating back to the earlier attempt by Musharraf to put the Taliban out to dry in Afghanistan , the Baloch and Pashtun components of the Pakistan army turned against their chief, to be joined by the Punjabi component shortly thereafter.

Racism in the Era of Globalization (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Throughout the European Union, and increasingly in the United States and Australia, immigration is being directed on racial grounds, with preference given to immigrants of European origin. This is despite the reality that an immigrant from Chennai or Hyderabad in India is far more likely to add immediate economic value to a society than migrants from Tirana, Bucharest or Sofia, to take just three examples.

Even Britain, till now a haven of race-neutral policies, has lately introduced measures directed against citizens of countries other than those with European-origin majorities. Clearly, to many Western policymakers, "globalization" is a one-way street, confined to improving Western access to other locations but hostile to a reverse flow. The blocking of a Dubai-based company from acquiring a port in the United States -- even though that city is largely run by executives from Western countries -- is just one of numerous examples of the phobic reaction to efforts by outside corporations to buy into Western companies.

Astonishingly, even the corporate sector has not freed itself of biases dragged over from an age in which European countries administered most of the world. Today, both India and China are witnessing growth rates that could in a generation recreate the period when India and China accounted for over half the world's output, an age that vanished only in the early 1880s. Especially since the 17th century, what has driven Western prosperity is the unprecedented expansion of knowledge within those societies, which even today account for nine out of ten scientific patents worldwide (a small but increasing proportion of which are being contributed by researchers of Asian origin).

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.

U.S. Tilt Cools India-Iran Ties (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Tehran, Iran — While Sonia Gandhi prefers the European Union, Manmohan Singh's favorite country is the United States. Both as India's finance minister from 1992-96 and from 2004 onwards as prime minister, Singh has been open in his belief that a Washington-set agenda is in his country's best interest.

Sadly for him, few share this view, with the result that his efforts at implementing the Bush team's prescriptions for India have stalled on opposition within Parliament, even though Sonia Gandhi has managed thus far to silence dissent within Singh's own Congress Party, and has backed the prime minister in his U.S.-centered policies.

Largely as a result of the perception that he is following Tony Blair in the role of White House poodle, several countries otherwise friendly to India have distanced themselves from the Sonia-led regime now precariously in office. Russia made Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee undergo the indignity of a body search at Moscow airport recently, while Vladimir Putin declined to find the time to meet with visiting Indian Defense Minister A. K. Antony.

Moscow's mood has not been improved by Manmohan Singh's second rebuff of Russia's efforts to sign a nuclear deal with India that would enable the country to import four more nuclear reactors from Moscow. The move would cut into the potential profits being factored in by U.S. corporations eager to enter the Indian nuclear energy sector on advantageous terms.

Punjabis Re-Assert Supremacy in Pakistan (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Since the 1980s, about six years after Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq took control from Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, the Pakistan army has been less a symbol of national unity than an instrument to ensure the supremacy of the Punjabi element in all reaches of Pakistan society.

Today, the army is replicating in the northwestern frontier what has always been the case in Baluchistan and Sindh -- frank control over local government through the use of bullets. Although the Pashtun and Baloch elements have been allowed some representation within the officer corps, ultimately it is the Punjabi element that decides policy.

Since2003, when they turned against Pervez Musharraf because of the Pakistan coup master's proclivity to cling to his post as Chief of Army Staff, the Punjabi element has moved closer to China, countering moves by Musharraf to align his country firmly with the United States in the ongoing War on Terror. From 2003 onwards, under cover of the need to confront Indian control in Kashmir, they have continued to give assistance to the jihadis. They have blocked U.S. moves to get the Pakistan army to mount an effective defense against the Taliban sheltering in almost every city in Pakistan, including Islamabad, where a cluster has set up base about five miles from the U.S. Embassy complex.

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.

hy India is silent on Myanmar (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Over the past weeks, there has been a rising drumbeat of criticism from both sides of the Atlantic about the generals in Myanmar. After considerable behind-the-scenes U.S.-EU pressure, there have been bleats from the two biggest neighbors of that country, India and China, about the need for the generals to rein themselves in. However, neither they nor ASEAN is likely to adopt the U.S.-EU policy of isolation and sanctions.

While China and ASEAN each have their own special reasons for restraint, they also share several in common with India, including the belief that the Gordon Brown style of moral declamation has more than a trace of hypocrisy in it.

For starters, Myanmar is hardly the only military dictatorship in the vicinity. Both Bangladesh and Pakistan are ruled by generals who have assumed total power through coups against elected governments. Why the people of Myanmar alone should have freedom from military rule and not those of Pakistan and Bangladesh remains a mystery.

Few would fault the oft-expressed wish of Western capitals that the people of Myanmar should be given the government of their choice. Yet why such a preference is not made with equal emphasis -- or indeed any visible emphasis -- in the case of, for example, the 1.3 billion people of China or the Myanmar-sized population of Saudi Arabia, remains obscure, except to foreign policy experts in the NATO capitals.

Once again his foes help Ahmedinejad (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad has this in common with U.S. President George W. Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair: he too speaks directly to God. Admirers consider him to be the pilot heralding the imminent return of the Mahdi, the expected Muslim Messiah.

Less undiscerning observers consider the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran to be a buffoon, without any substantive authority inside his own country -- where the key members of the government report directly to Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Khamenei -- and with a diminishing support base within his own people, caused by the extreme economic mismanagement of the mullahs.

A country that ought to have enjoyed a prosperous standard of living for its 78 million people has huge pools of extreme poverty, caused by a dysfunctional system reminiscent of India during the three decades from 1955-85 of comprehensive central planning. What passes for private industry in Iran is a collection of enterprises run like feudal fiefs by those close to the supreme leader, or regarded by him as potential troublemakers needing to be pampered out of opposition.

Ahmedinejad himself came to power Iran-style, where the counted ballots threw up -- not entirely coincidentally -- the very result favored by Khamenei, who saw the current Iranian president as a poodle who would not stray from total obedience the way Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani did during his term. Unfortunately for the wily supreme leader, Ahmedinejad began to get delusions of divine greatness within a year, even while proving inept in supervising the system in a manner that would give the people of Iran enough crumbs to remain quiescent.

President Hu Shows Who's Boss (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Four years before Chinese President Hu Jintao took over as both head of state and, more importantly in China, head of the Communist Party, this observer of his country had deduced that he was on a steady ascent to full power. Even in 1998 it was clear that the mild-mannered, ever-courteous lifelong Party member was a deadly player on the chessboard of power.

Over the preceding years he had avoided much entanglement with the reigning hierarchies in the only parts of China that President Jiang Zemin was interested in, the high-growth centers along the coast and Beijing. Instead, he used the anti-corruption machinery of the state and Party to prise away those who were less than completely loyal to Deng Xiaoping's personal choice to replace Jiang in 2002.

Barring a handful of provinces, by 1999 Hu had put into position individuals that he could relate to and that were far removed from the glitzy and immensely wealthy Jiang cohort. Over the next couple of years, he interacted extensively with senior military and civilian cadres, almost always leaving the impression of a thoughtful individual whose objective was to ensure the continuation of China's ascent begun under Mao and Deng.

Unloosing the Shiite Genie (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat 

Manipal, India — If protecting the homeland is among the primary responsibilities of a government, attempting to change the distribution of power within another country may not always be congruent with such an objective.

Given the state of conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1982, there was a compelling case for the Israel Defense Forces to enter Lebanon and take out Palestinian assets that were being deployed against the stability and survival of the state of Israel. However, there was none for attempting to bolster the position of the Maronite Christians vis-à-vis their Shiite opponents. In particular, the leading Maronite Gemayel family was known for the use of methods that could have been developed in a concentration camp.

Since 1982, the flow of covert and other support to the Gemayels from Israel grew to a level that infuriated the Shiites as well as the family's many Maronite critics. By 1987, an isolated -- indeed hated -- PLO was able to secure the backing of key elements among the Shiite factions in Lebanon, despite being overwhelmingly Sunni.

From that time to the present, Israel has enjoyed the distinction of being the only non-Muslim country targeted by militant Shiites -- a group far more virulent and effective, albeit as yet limited in strength and scope, than even Wahabbi extremists such as members of al-Qaida. Over the past two decades, Israel has concentrated its attention and resources on tackling a foe that went into action as a result of its own intervention policy in Lebanon.

Pakistan Army Versus the State (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — In 1971, following the Indian army's defeat of Pakistan in Bangladesh and the capture of 93,000 prisoners of war, an opportunity was given to the Pakistani politicians to roll back the army's control over civilian life by curbing its powers and making it a professional force. President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto squandered that chance by his cupidity and hunger for absolute power.

Bhutto, who like Pakistan's founder M.A. Jinnah was an alcohol-loving, pork-eating ersatz Muslim, pandered to the religious extremists by imposing the will of the "ulema," or religious establishment, over not only the rest of the "ummah," or Muslims, but of all Pakistani society. During his six years in power, Bhutto crushed modern private industry through extensive nationalization and converted the Pakistan Peoples' Party into a family enterprise, a character the PPP retains to this day.

After Bhutto's hand-picked army chief, Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq, took over power and hanged Bhutto in 1977 for one of the numerous murders of his enemies during the previous six years, he completed the jihadisation of the Pakistan army that had begun in 1948 with the extensive intermingling of troops and religious fanatics during the 1947-1949 Kashmir war.

Zia sensibly secured the patronage of the al-Sauds by training the Saudi Arabian army and providing Pakistani guards to secure the safety of the Saudi ruling house during the tumultuous days in 1979 when Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini took over power in Iran. The al-Sauds have ever since been faithful to the ancient Bedouin custom of gratitude to those that help in times of adversity, giving the Pakistan army massive financial and other backing.

Will Musharraf survive? (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Although it would be a tad unfair to compare him to a confidence trickster, Pakistan's army-appointed President Pervez Musharraf has survived by convincing a series of patrons to back him, only to let them down later.

After the dour but straightforward Jehangir Karamat was sacked as the army's chief of staff by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for publicly asserting that the military had the decisive say in matters of national security, Musharraf' convinced Sharif that he would be a pliant replacement for the sacked general. This was an important consideration at a time when both Sharif and his brother Shahbaz were reported to be examining the military's links to the immensely lucrative narcotics trade.

For decades, ever since the Afghan jihad began in 1980, opium and its derivatives have been leveraged by elements in uniform in Pakistan to generate cash, not just to send their children abroad to study, but also to fund such "black" operations as the jihad against Indian rule in Kashmir. Politicians in Pakistan, not known for abstemious behavior, watched with envy the flow of profits from the illegal trade -- the primary reason the military wanted to retain control of Afghanistan through the Taliban -- and looked for an opportunity to muscle in.

With the assumption of office by the "spineless" Musharraf, that moment appeared to have arrived. It vanished in a cloud of dust, however, when U.S.-supplied tanks buttressed a coup in 1999 that once again put the military in the driver's seat. Less than a year later, the four army generals who had launched the coup that placed Musharraf in power were themselves edged out by a "chief executive" (later president) of Pakistan eager to show who was boss.

Since then, Musharraf has placed no fewer than 37 presumed loyalists into top command positions within the military. He has given their men -- being a Wahabbi state, the women of Pakistan are not considered good enough to command -- hundreds of well-paying (in both salary and bribes) jobs in the Pakistan state sector.

Why India Rejected the Nuclear Deal (UPIASIA)

Manipal, India — If we take away the near-automatic, and usually fallacious, identification of a country with its government, and use the views within an elected Parliament as a better guide to opinion, then there is a majority against the George W. Bush-Manmohan Singh nuclear deal that crosses 70 percent.

Regrettably for India's ruling Congress party, Sonia Gandhi gave up her struggles with formal education very early, and since her marriage to a scion of the Nehrus has lived a life as cocooned as any royalty. She chose as prime minister an individual as unschooled in the actual rough-and-tumble of politics as herself. Manmohan Singh was pitchforked into politics by former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao in 1992, and after a disastrous showing in the "safe" and urbanized New Delhi constituency in 1996, has refused to enter an electoral contest.

Small wonder that both misread the chemistry of the country and went ahead with a nuclear deal that does India the "favor" of being accepted as low caste rather than an outcaste, as the country has been treated under the leadership of the United States, China and the European Union since its first nuclear test in 1974. "Low caste" in the context of the nuclear sector can be held to refer to countries that have been given the privilege of supervised and limited access to nuclear technology, a category that includes most countries in the world.

The Arranged Marriage Between India and the United States (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — Unlike in the West, where couples meet, mate and then decide on marriage, in India it is parents, family and friends that substitute for Cupid. Not accidentally, few such pairings are driven by romantic considerations. Instead, an assessment is made of how the two families can benefit from the match, rather than simply the individuals on whose behalf a decision on pairing is being taken.

Unsurprisingly, the choice of Mom, Dad, Uncle and Family Friend is seldom that which either the groom or the bride would have selected, had they the right to do so. Interestingly, most such marriages work, usually much better than in societies where personal choice is given precedence over family needs.

Over the past five years the United States and Indian militaries have been discovering each other, much like a couple brought together under family pressure. Fresh from their interaction with counterparts in Pakistan -- whose military goes ape at the prospect of a U.S.-India alliance -- and loaded with tales originating from the time of the Indian-phobic Winston Churchill about the " unreliable" Indians, those within the U.S. military that began dealing with the Indian army, navy and air force came prepared to dislike their new contacts.

If the Americans were distant, the Indians were paranoid, and several promising careers within the three services were blighted on the charge of "fraternization" with a U.S. officer, usually female. Not merely more private actions, but even an exchange of "inappropriate" emails was cause for retribution. Only very recently has the Indian establishment come to accept that a consensual relationship between two adults, each of whom may wear the uniform of what is today an allied country, need not be treated as a security disaster.

Nepal Needs Free Elections (UPI)

M.D. Nalapat 

MANIPAL, India, June 26 (UPI) -- A year ago, when the government of India invited all major political groups in Nepal to a conference in New Delhi, a sympathetic New Delhi forced through an alliance of eight parties that would take over effective power from King Gyanendra, seen widely as leaning too close to China.

By then, the king had destroyed what little support he had within India's ruling United Progressive Alliance government by sponsoring a resolution at the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation summit in Dacca calling for China's entry into SAARC as an "observer." Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka backed the move enthusiastically.

Had the previous National Democratic Alliance regime not lost power in the 2004 general elections, India at this stage would have exercised a quiet veto, thus returning the suggestion to cold storage. However, the Congress-led UPA depends for its parliamentary majority on the Communist parties and hence could not oppose a move backed by the majority of SAARC countries.

After the summit, however, steps were taken to neuter the king of Nepal's powers by installing a supposed democracy in place of the Gyanendra-led autocracy. Yet reality was that the very Nepali Parliament that had been dissolved by the king in 2002 was brought back to life, in the opinion of constitutional experts, illegally. The members of this "elected" Legislature last faced an election in 1999.

Only Free Elections Can Save Nepal (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — A year ago, when the government of India invited all major political formations in Nepal to an "offer you can't refuse" conference in New Delhi, a sympathetic New Delhi forced through a "democratic" alliance of eight parties that would take over effective power from King Gyanendra, widely regarded as leaning too close to China.

A short while back, the king had destroyed what little support he had within India's ruling United Progressive Alliance government by sponsoring a resolution at the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation summit in Dacca, calling for China's entry into SAARC as an "observer." Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka backed the move enthusiastically.

Had the previous National Democratic Alliance regime not lost power in the 2004 general elections, India at this stage would have exercised a quiet veto, thus returning the suggestion to cold storage. However, the Congress-led UPA depends for its parliamentary majority on the communist parties, and hence could not oppose a move backed by the majority of SAARC countries.

After the summit, however, immediate steps were taken to neuter the king of Nepal's powers by installing a "democratic" government in place of the Gyanendra-led "autocracy." Such was the headline. The reality was that the very Nepali Parliament that had been dissolved by the king in 2002 was brought back to life, in the opinion of constitutional experts, illegally. The members of this "elected" legislature last faced an election in 1999.

Once revived, the Parliament expanded its strength by a third, nominating the additional members mostly from the ranks of the Maoists. It had been this armed group that had stymied repeated efforts to hold elections since former Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba dissolved Parliament in 2002 to head off certain defeat in a no-confidence motion brought against him. Since then, Nepal had seen a succession of nominated prime ministers, each chosen by King Gyandendra after the previous incumbent finally admitted defeat in his efforts at holding elections in a country where the Maoists killed any candidate not sympathetic to them.

The United States should be Quadricultural, not Unipolar (UPIASIA)

M.D. Nalapat

Manipal, India — By granting itself a patent on individual freedom combined with democratic elections, the West has persuaded itself that it is seen as a benign entity in the rest of the world -- almost all of which decades ago was occupied and governed by European countries intent on using native resources to promote their own interests.

However, the return of Western soldiery to Afghanistan and Iraq has caused formerly colonized countries to fear that once again they are at risk of occupation. Both Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki have zero control over the militaries swarming across their respective countries, or over many of the functions normally associated with sovereignty. "Advisors" in both Kabul and Baghdad have the final say, a fact that is not hidden from the local populations.

Today, NATO forces in Afghanistan and Coalition troops in Iraq are ensuring a steady increase in the insurgency. George W. Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard, Angela Merkel and other Western leaders have together performed a miracle -- they have made the Saddamites popular in Iraq and the Taliban recover its resonance in Afghanistan.

Because of the melding of the identities of the United States and the European Union into a single "Western" entity, Bush rarely ventures beyond Europe -- and countries with European-origin majorities -- in securing military allies for his numerous military sallies into distant lands. Within the United States, only the west coast has succeeded, to a limited extent, in freeing itself of the delusion that the United States is a European country transplanted across the Atlantic. The South and East are in thrall to a concept of nationhood with a European identity at its core -- a concept expressed in the many writings of Samuel Huntington.