Quotulatiousness

July 16, 2012

Aggressive target for India’s space program: Mars

Filed under: India, Space — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 07:53

In The Register, Phil Muncaster reports on what is rumoured to be the next stage of India’s space program:

Not to be outdone by China in the space race, India is set to flex its muscles on the world stage, planning a mission to Mars late next year.

K Radhakrishnan, Chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told reporters on Saturday that there will be a definitive announcement on the scientific research-based project by the government soon.

“A lot of studies have been done on the possible mission to Mars. We have come to the last phase of approvals,” he said, according to Times of India.

The proposed Mars mission will apparently be focussed on the Red Planet’s origins and evolution, its climate and geography and whether life can be sustained there.

May 6, 2012

Technology is not the panacea

Filed under: Education, Health, India, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:06

I’m generally very pro-technology, but the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) effort always struck me as putting the technology cart in front of the educational (and cultural) horse. A report at The Economist has examples of technological fixes that haven’t actually “fixed” the problems they were intended to solve:

The American charity has an ambitious mission — transform the quality of education in the developing world by giving every poor student a laptop. Targeting a $100 laptop, OLPC succeeded in creating a usable computer at a very low price point (the actual number was closer to $200). Unfortunately most of the attention in the project was focused on the technology and not enough on its efficacy. In the first rigorous evaluation of the programme, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) found little evidence that the laptops influenced educational outcomes. The study, conducted in Peru four years after the programme was launched, found no improvement in math or language. While the computers did lead to some gains in cognitive skills, the authors concluded that access to a laptop didn’t improve attendance. Neither did it motivate students to spend more time on their homework.

There is similarly disappointing news on cooking stoves. The World Health Organization estimates that indoor pollution from primitive cooking fires contributes to 2m deaths annually. One solution is to use clean cooking stoves. At a cost of $12.50, these stoves are an inexpensive way to reduce respiratory ailments and improve air quality. The Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves (GACC), a public-private initiative, is making a big push for 100m homes in the developing world to switch to clean stoves by 2020. But a new NBER paper by Rema Hanna from Harvard University and Esther Duflo and Michael Greenstone from MIT, questions the long-term health or environmental benefits from this programme. The authors evaluated a clean-stove programme in eastern India, covering 15,000 households over five years. Their study found that after the initial year, enthusiasm for the stoves waned and households didn’t make the necessary investments to maintain them. As a result, the programme had very little effect on respiratory health or air pollution.

Both these projects highlight some common misconceptions in using technology for development. For one, solving intractable social problems requires fundamental changes in the target population. It also needs a supportive institutional framework to reinforce the right behaviour. Technology can complement this process, but it is no substitute for the human element. In Peru, simply adding laptops to the classroom, without investing in teachers who were proficient in computer-aided education, meant that the academic impact was limited. The IDB paper rightly points out that in poor countries where wages are low, development money may be better spent on labor-intensive education interventions than on expensive tools.

May 3, 2012

Remembering the heroism and sacrifice of the defenders at Kohima’s Garrison Hill

Filed under: Britain, History, India, Japan, Military, WW2 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:53

A little-known battle had major consequences to the tides of Japanese expansion, and has been called “India’s Battle of the Somme“:

Nestled in the vast country’s north-eastern state of Nagaland, it is a place where two Victoria Crosses were won for outstanding bravery, where a 1,000-strong British and Indian force, outnumbered 10 to one, halted the Japanese army’s relentless march across Asia.

Blood-soaked battles in April 1944 saw the troops of the Royal West Kent Regiment, with their comrades from the Punjab Rifles and other Indian regiments, under siege on the top of Kohima’s Garrison Hill.

Troops fought hand to hand in torrential rain from rat-infested trenches dug on the then British deputy commissioner’s clay tennis court.

The two sides were so close that they could lob grenades into each other’s strongholds barely 50 feet away and, according to chroniclers of the battle, Allied troops sometimes woke in their monsoon mud trenches with Japanese troops sleeping alongside them.

When the siege of the hill was finally relieved some 45 days after it had begun, British officers were appalled at the conditions in which both Japanese and allied forces had fought and compared it to the Battle of the Somme. Some of the Japanese soldiers had died of starvation and disease. By then end, more than 4000 allied soldiers were dead, and 5764 Japanese troops had been killed.

May 2, 2012

Demographics as destiny: China’s coming population bust

Filed under: China, Economics, India, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:00

Ramesh Ponnuru hits many of the same points that Mark Steyn has been making for the last several years, only he’s cut out all the jokes:

Today’s most important population trend is falling birthrates. The world’s total fertility rate — the number of children the average woman will bear over her lifetime — has dropped to 2.6 today from 4.9 in 1960. Half of the people in the world live in countries where the fertility rate is below what demographers reckon is the replacement level of 2.1, and are thus in shrinking societies.

[. . .]

As Eberstadt points out, we can make predictions about the next 20 years with reasonable accuracy. The U.S.’s traditional allies in western Europe and Japan will have less weight in the world. Already the median age in western Europe is higher than that of the U.S.’s oldest state: Florida. That median age is rising 1.5 days every week. Japan had only 40 percent as many births in 2007 as it had in 1947.

These countries will have smaller workforces, lower savings rates and higher government debt as a result of their aging. They will probably lose dynamism, as well.

[. . .]

The Census Bureau predicts that China’s population will peak in 2026, just 14 years from now. Its labor force will shrink, and its over-65 population will more than double over the next 20 years, from 115 million to 240 million. It will age very rapidly. Only Japan has aged faster — and Japan had the great advantage of growing rich before it grew old. By 2030, China will have a slightly higher proportion of the population that is elderly than western Europe does today — and western Europe, recall, has a higher median age than Florida.

H/T to Jon, my former virtual landlord, for the link.

April 16, 2012

India’s long, twisting path to nuclear submarine capabilities

Filed under: India, Military, Russia, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:51

India would like to run their own nuclear-powered submarines, but it’s taken longer for them to achieve that than they’d hoped:

On April 4th the new Russian Akula II SSN (nuclear attack submarine) Nerpa, that was supposed to be delivered to India (which is leasing it) two years ago, was finally turned over. It’s worse than it sounds. Three years ago, during sea trials there was an equipment failure on Nerpa that killed 20 sailors and shipyard workers. This delayed sea trials for many months and the Russians found more items that needed attention. These additional inspections and repairs continued until quite recently.

[. . .]

Indian money enabled Russia to complete construction on at least two Akulas that were less than half finished at the end of the Cold War. This was another aftereffect of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Several major shipbuilding projects were basically put on hold (which still cost a lot of money) in the hopes that something would turn up. In this case, it was Indians with lots of cash. But money could not overcome the construction problems and poor design decisions the Russians made. The single Akula II India was leasing was delayed again and again. The 8,100 ton Akula II has a crew of 73. The one leased by India has eight 533mm (21 inch) torpedo tubes and 40 torpedoes.

Meanwhile, in 2009, India launched its first nuclear submarine, the INS Arihant (Destroyer of Enemies). This came after over a decade of planning and construction. What was not revealed at the times was that the Arihant was launched without its nuclear reactor, which was not installed until 2011. Arihant is supposed to be ready for service later this year.

March 16, 2012

One symptom, but lots of different causes

Filed under: Britain, Economics, History, India — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:41

Tim Worstall responds to a simplistic definition of poverty:

What we then want to know is why do some individuals have a shortage of money? At which point we enter a forest of different explanations.

By far the largest cause of poverty is that people live in societies ruled by people variously ignorant, stupid or evil. N Korean poverty I would ascribe to that last. The early Soviets, I am sure along with Socialists of the time, really did think that planning would be more efficient, create more wealth. The evil came later, it was ignorance at first.

[. . .]

And, yes, really, there is also that culture of poverty that Ms. Ehrenreich wants to insist does not exist. Choices over drugs, booze, delayed gratification, marriage, children, education, all have their effects on poverty or not poverty.

Sure, poverty is indeed the lack of money. But there are different reasons for different people at different times about why they lack money. Given these different reasons therefore different solutions have to be applied. Our Down’s Syndrome lad does simply need a transfer of resources, of wealth, from others in the society to him.

But that is not to say that the cure for all poverty is such a transfer: poverty in India is going to be better alleviated by the continuing destruction of Nehru’s extentions of the Licence Raj, poverty among some others in the UK is going to be best addressed by a change in the behaviour of those individuals.

February 28, 2012

More on those links between Pakistan’s ISI and army leaders and the Taliban

Filed under: Asia, India, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:09

Strategy Page has a useful summary of the state of play in Pakistan in their oft-denied support of terrorist activities in Afghanistan and in India:

Pakistan officially denies there is any direct connection between the Pakistani Army, ISI (Pakistani intelligence) and Islamic terrorists. The government has recently admitted that Islamic terrorists have had cooperation from unnamed prominent Pakistani civilians. But a growing number of former (mostly retired) military and intelligence admit that the terrorist connections did exist. Few of these men will openly admit these connections, lest they endure retaliation. The army and ISI are known to kidnap and murder critics. Pakistan is living a dream/nightmare of having created and sustained Islamic terror organizations for decades, yet never admitting the role of the government in this. The denials are wearing thin.

Pakistan remains a much more violent place than India. Each month, there are 5-10 times as many terrorism related deaths in Pakistan as in India (a country with six times as many people as Pakistan). Most of the violence is (and always has been) in the Pushtun and Baluchi tribal territories along the Afghan and Iranian borders. These lands have always been poor (except for the recently discovered natural gas in Baluchistan, and, centuries ago, some parts of the Chinese “silk road” that passed through Pushtun lands) and the local empires simply ignored the Pushtuns and Baluchis. For thousands of years, these were the “badlands” that civilized people avoided. The many Baluchi and Pushtun tribes were too isolated from each other, and in love with their own independence, to allow formation of Baluchi and Pushtun states. But the Baluchis are overcoming their differences, much to the discomfort of Pakistan. The Pushtuns are as divided as ever, united only in their hostility to outsiders (a category which sometimes includes other Pushtun tribes.) Worse for the Pushtuns, they form the majority of the Taliban, and are far more into Islamic terrorism than the Baluchis.

[. . .]

Pakistan’s army and intelligence services have been taking a lot of international heat for the years of state-approved terrorism against tribal separatists in Baluchistan (southwest Pakistan). The Baluchis want autonomy and a larger share of the revenues from natural gas operations in their lands. The ISI and army have ordered the media they control to come up with stories to explain all the kidnappings and murders of tribal activists. The general story line is that the violence (against the government, as well as the tribal activists) has been organized by Israel, the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies. Few Pakistanis will openly criticize these stories, as that could get you killed. But the true story does get out via the Internet, although you sometimes have to wade through a lot of noise (flame wars and Pakistani government efforts to bury critical posts with a flood of pro-government replies.)

February 21, 2012

Death on the railways

Filed under: Economics, Government, India, Railways — Tags: — Nicholas @ 11:37

I didn’t realize the extent of the problem in India, as reported in the Guardian:

About 15,000 people are killed each year while crossing the tracks on India’s mammoth railway network, according to a government safety panel that recommended more bridges and overpasses should be built as a matter of urgency.

Most of the deaths occur at unmanned railroad crossings, the panel said in a report. About 6,000 people die on Mumbai’s crowded suburban rail network alone, it said.

Another 1,000 people die when they fall from crowded coaches, when trains collide or coaches derail.

[. . .]

The committee blamed railway authorities for the “grim picture”, saying there were lax safety standards and poor management.

It said local managers were not given adequate power to make crucial decisions and that safety regulations were also breached because of severe manpower shortages.

It does seem odd that one of the world’s most populous countries — once known for chronic over-staffing of government and government-owned organizations — has “manpower shortages” in this critical area.

February 14, 2012

The surreal world of international aid

Filed under: Britain, India, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:16

Brendan O’Neill on the ludicrous display of a donor literally begging the intended recipient to continue accepting the offering:

The debate about whether Britain should continue giving aid to India will surely rank as one of 2012’s most ‘Alice in Wonderland’ political moments. An outsider to the world of international aid probably imagines that it is cash-strapped countries in the South who do the pleading, sometimes having to humiliate themselves by asking Western nations for financial assistance. Yet in the surreal affray over aid to India, it was the well-off giver — Britain — which was on its knees, begging, beseeching the Indians to continue accepting our largesse because if they didn’t, it would cause the Lib-Con government ‘great embarrassment’.

This unseemly spat sums up the problem with modern aid: it’s all about Us, not Them. The reason British ministers were prostrating themselves before India, effectively begging the Indians to remain as beggars, is because aid is now more about generating a moral rush in the big heads of politicians and activists over here than it is about filling the tummies of under-privileged people over there. It is designed to flatter and satisfy the giver rather than address the needs of the receiver, which means ‘aid to India’ is way more important to Britain than it is to India. And for that reason, because aid has been so thoroughly corrupted by the narrow needs of its distributors, it would indeed be a good thing to stop foisting it upon India and other nations.

There was something almost Pythonesque (and I never use that word) in the sight of British politicians saying ‘We must continue giving aid to India’ while Indian politicians were saying ‘We do not require the aid. It is a peanut in our total development spending.’ Those were the words of India’s finance minister, Pranab Mukherjee, who told his parliament that the nation should ‘voluntarily’ give up the £280million it receives from Britain each year. Cue outraged — and panicked — ministers and do-gooders in London kickstarting a PR campaign to show that the Indians are wrong — they do need British aid, because otherwise, according to Britain’s minister for international development Alan Duncan, in an article illustrated with a photograph of him accepting flowers from grateful little Indians, ‘millions could die’.

[. . .]

British historian William Hutton once said, ‘The charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds ceases to be charity, and is only pride and ostentation’. That is pretty much all that remains in the world of aid: pride and ostentation. Indeed, it is striking that, in 2010, when DFID announced cuts to spending on the publicity side of ‘fighting global poverty’, various NGOs went ballistic, slamming the focus on ‘output-based aid’ over important things such as ‘increas[ing] public understanding of the causes of global poverty’ — that is, who cares about providing on-the-ground stuff, when there’s so much awareness-raising about the wonderfulness of NGOs to be done? Britain’s aid budget should be slashed, not because it costs the taxpayer too much money, as Daily Mail moaners argue, but because it costs too much in terms of the self-respect of nations in the South. Britain should have an emergency aid budget, of course, so that, like all civilised nations, it can assist quickly and generously when people are immediately threatened by starvation or disease, such as after the Haiti earthquake or the Pakistani floods. But the rest of the time, even sometimes struggling peoples don’t need the massive side orders of moralism and fatalism that come with Britain’s ‘peanuts’.

January 27, 2012

Popehat‘s Censorious Asshat round-up

Filed under: Cancon, India, Law, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

If you’re not already following the adventures of Ken at Popehat, you’re really missing some entertainment. Here are a couple of items from this week’s round-up of the folks who want to shut you up when you say things they don’t like using the legal system as a large club:

First up, we have Dr. Randeep Dhillon! Dr. Dhillon is suing Jay Leno. Is he suing Jay Leno for being a trite, phone-it-in placeholder? NO! There’s no California cause of action for that! SAG would never allow it! No, Randeep Dhillon is suing Jay Leno for a lame joke about Mitt Romney suggesting that his vacation home was the Golden Temple of Amritsar, a holy site for Sikhs! [. . .]

Congrats, Dr. Dhillon! You win a date with California’s robust anti-SLAPP statute! You’re going to pay Jay Leno’s attorney fees in this case, which I will estimate to be $50,000! And because some people will generalize about Sikhs based on the act of one asshole — you — you’ve just done more to expose Sikhs to hatred, contempt, ridicule, and obloquy than that threadbare hack Leno ever could! Way to go!

And from closer to home (and, I note, the very first time I’ve needed to use the New Brunswick tag):

Next, ladies and gentlemen, we travel North, to Canada, and the Fredericton, New Brunswick Police Department! The Fredericton Police just staged a eight-officer raid of the apartment of Charles LeBlanc! Is Charles LeBlanc breaking bad with a meth lab? Does he have children in cages? Is he a gun-runner? No! He’s a blogger, and he’s being raided for criminal libel for criticizing the Fredericton Police! That’s right! The Fredericton Police Department not only thinks it is appropriate to serve search warrants on bloggers who say mean things to them, they think that they should execute the search warrants themselves, even though they are the alleged victims of the criminal libel! That’s the New Professionalism in action, ladies and gents! Stand and be amazed!

Update, 4 May, 2012: The charges against Charles LeBlanc have been dropped after the New Brunswick Attorney General determined that Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador have all found Section 301 to be unconstitutional and that no New Brunswick court would be likely to disagree with those decisions. More information at the CBC website.

January 20, 2012

The anti-Top Gear crowd: “In certain quarters, Clarkson-bashing has started to replace tennis as a favourite pastime”

Filed under: Britain, Humour, India, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:28

Patrick Hayes on the tut-tutting, disapproving folks who only watch Top Gear to generate more outrage at Jeremy Clarkson’s antics:

I wonder what proportion of the five million viewers of the Top Gear India Special over Christmas were desperate-to-be-offended members of the chattering classes? Skipping the second instalment of Great Expectations, they no doubt sat through the show solely to tweet about how awful Jeremy Clarkson and Co’s monkeying about on the road to the Indian Himalayas was.

In certain quarters, Clarkson-bashing has started to replace tennis as a favourite pastime. He was chastised for offending blind people when he called former UK prime minister Gordon Brown a ‘one-eyed Scottish idiot’, censured for driving while sipping a gin and tonic en route to the North Pole, and generated fury when a couple of years ago he called for the Welsh language to be abolished. But never has he generated so much controversy as the Twitch-hunt that took place against him at the end of last year, after he made a quip that public sector strikers ‘should all be shot’.

This was so evidently a joke, although a crap one, that you had to wonder whether the tens of thousands of ‘offended’ people who took to their keyboards to campaign to get him sacked were for real. Is it humanly possible to be that po-faced? Evidently so. Irony-phobic Labour leader Ed Miliband led the way, calling the comments ‘absolutely disgraceful and disgusting’. A sour-mouthed trade union rep even compared his comments to the atrocities carried out by former Libyan tyrant Muammar Gaddafi.

[. . .]

For these petty censors, it’s not enough simply to change the channel. The danger, so the argument goes, is that Clarkson could become a red-blooded role model to millions of impressionable viewers who will mimic his expressions and share his juvenile, PC-averse passions. Attempts to tame Jezza are invariably attempts to try to reform the viewing public, too. If not stopped now, it would seem, Top Gear could generate an army of misogynistic, environment-despoiling racists-in-the-making.

The danger doesn’t come from Clarkson, however. It comes from these Clarkson-bashing killjoys who are intolerant of informal banter, suspicious of anything ‘fun’, taking every word said in jest literally and moaning to the authorities because Clarkson sets a bad example. These are the ones who, to steal a phrase from the man himself, ‘should be avoided like unprotected sex with an Ethiopian transvestite’.

January 12, 2012

This time it’s India that gets the Top Gear treatment

Filed under: Humour, India, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

I haven’t seen the Top Gear special in question, but from the complaints, it sounds like a pretty typical outing for the boys:

In the letter, published in the Daily Telegraph, the HCI criticised a lack of cultural sensitivity and called on the BBC to take action to pacify those offended.

One Indian diplomat told the BBC News website: “People are very upset because you cannot run down a whole society, history, culture and sensitivities.

“India is a developing country, we have very many issues to address, all that is fine but it is not fine to broadcast this toilet humour.”

He added: “There are many parts of the programme that people have complained about.

“It’s not only Indians, it’s also our British friends — it goes much beyond.”

The diplomat cited an “offensive” banner placed on the side of a train — reading “the United Kingdom promotes British IT for your company” — which read quite differently when the carriages were parted.

And he also criticised a scene in the programme which showed Clarkson taking off his trousers at a party to demonstrate how to use a trouser press.

Showing off the customised Jaguar, complete with toilet roll on its aerial, presenter Jeremy Clarkson said on the programme: “This is perfect for India because everyone who comes here gets the trots.”

Update: Jeremy Clarkson strikes again, this time agitating the folks on the Isle of Sheppey and recent immigrants:

Clarkson wrote: “Mostly, the Isle of Sheppey is a caravan site.

“There are thousands of thousands of mobile homes, all of which I suspect belong to former London cabbies, the only people on Earth with the knowledge to get there before it’s time to turn round and come home again.”

“And what of the locals? Well, they tend to be the sort of people who arrived in England in the back of a refrigerated truck or clinging to the underside of a Eurostar train.”

“And that reinforces my point rather well.

“Mboto has somehow evaded the gunmen and the army recruiters in his remote Nigerian village. He walked north, avoiding death and disease, and then somehow made it right across the Sahara desert to Algeria.

“Here, he managed to overwhelm the security men with their AK-47s and get on a boat to Italy, where he sneaked past the guards.”

The article in Top Gear mag adds: “He made it all the way across Europe to Sangatte, from which he escaped one night and swam to Kent.

“But that stumped him. Getting out of there was impossible, so he decided to make a new life in Maidstone.”

November 12, 2011

Still no charges in the Gibson Guitar case

Filed under: Bureaucracy, India, Law, Media, USA, Woodworking — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:00

An update in the Wall Street Journal just recaps the background to the case, and has an interview with Henry Juszkiewicz, the CEO.

On Aug. 24, federal agents descended on three factories and the Nashville corporate headquarters of the Gibson Guitar Corp. Accompanied by armored SWAT teams with automatic weapons, agents from the Fish and Wildlife Service swarmed the factories, threatening bewildered luthiers, or guitar craftsman, and other frightened employees. A smaller horde invaded the office of CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, pawing through it all day while an armed man stood in the door to block his way.

“I was pretty upset,” Mr. Juszkiewicz says now, sitting outside that same office. “But you can only do so much when there’s a gun in your face and it’s the federal government.” When the chaos subsided, the feds (with a warrant issued under a conservation law called the Lacey Act) had stripped Gibson of almost all of its imported Indian rosewood and some other materials crucial to guitar making.

The incident attracted national attention and outrage. Like Boeing — whose plans to locate new production in South Carolina are opposed by the National Labor Relations Board — here was an iconic American brand under seemingly senseless federal fire.

October 21, 2011

Pakistan’s conspiracy theories inhibit real world action

Filed under: Asia, Government, India, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:34

Strategy Page looks at one of the big problems in getting Pakistan’s co-operation on security issues:

American leaders are dismayed as they keep encountering Pakistani politicians and military officials who believe all their troubles are caused by Indian, American and Israeli conspiracies. Pakistan is full of this stuff, and those who believe it are not eager to consider alternatives. While the Pakistani fears are largely based on fiction, the growing number of Indians killed by Pakistani sponsored (and based) terrorism is very real. There are Pakistanis who understand the reality of all this and some of them are diplomats. But as long as most Pakistani leaders, and most of the Pakistani media, embrace the conspiracy theories, real peace is not likely. But at least the diplomats from each nation can discuss possibilities.

The U.S. constantly points to the continuing presence of Islamic terror groups in Pakistani sanctuaries. That is difficult for the Pakistanis to deny. The major danger here is that if a big attack is made in the United States, and tracked back to a Pakistani sanctuary, this could trigger a public call for war with Pakistan. Even many senior Pakistanis recognize this danger and try to control the terrorists they host. This precarious situation won’t go away as long as the terrorist sanctuaries (mainly North Waziristan and Quetta) are openly protected by Pakistani leaders. But without admitting anything to the Americans, Pakistan has apparently ordered some Haqqani personnel and bases out of North Waziristan. This might just be Haqqani fleeing an area that American intelligence knew too well, and that might have been under the advice of Pakistani intelligence. The movement of Haqqani personnel, to Afghanistan or elsewhere in the tribal territories, is making life difficult for the many foreign terrorists who find sanctuary (and work) with Haqqani. The desire to impose greater security on the new Haqqani bases means foreign recruits will take a lot longer to be led in.

October 5, 2011

The tight spot Pakistan finds itself in

Filed under: Asia, India, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:41

More on the Pakistani situation from Strategy Page:

In Pakistan, decades of anti-American and anti-Indian propaganda, and support for Islamic radicalism, has brought the country to the brink of disaster. The U.S. has stopped being discreet and secretive about Pakistani military and intelligence (ISI) attacks on Americans during the last decade. These attacks were played down in the hope that Pakistan could be persuaded to eliminate the pro-terrorist people in the army and ISI. This didn’t happen. The army and the ISI needed the Islamic radicals, to keep tensions with India high (via Pakistani-backed terror attacks in Kashmir and elsewhere in India.) The army/ISI leaders fear loss of their large share of the national economy if the Indian “threat” is viewed more realistically. The political parties, which are corrupt, and often allies of the military, have backed the generals in their opposition to American demands to crack down on Islamic terrorism. Most Pakistanis believe that the United States cannot possibly operate in Afghanistan without the support of Pakistan. This despite vigorous NATO efforts to shift their supply lines from Pakistan to Central Asia. Pakistan believes that possession of nuclear weapons will keep the United States from doing anything drastic, like more raids into Pakistan to destroy terrorists. The May raid to kill Osama bin Laden shows that the U.S. could, and would, do this. Now Pakistan has said it will not shut down Islamic terrorist sanctuaries in North Waziristan (in the northeast) and Quetta (in the southwest). The U.S. says that if the Pakistanis won’t the U.S. will. Pakistan says that if America tries that, it will mean war. It’s no secret that the U.S. has made plans to seize Pakistani nuclear weapons, and India has just signed a cooperation treaty with Afghanistan. Pakistanis like to believe that they have America in a corner, but it’s becoming more likely that it is Pakistan that has painted itself into a corner. Pakistan has long complained of being surrounded by conspiracies and enemies. Now, because of Pakistani support for Islamic terrorism, those fears are about to become true. Pakistan denies any responsibility for this, insisting that it is the victim. That will make no difference in the end, other than to provide some incredulous footnotes in the histories of the late, great, Pakistan.

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