Jaswant Singh: Crumbling BRICS / 分裂的金磚國家

NEW DELHI – In 2001, when Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs coined the acronym BRIC to refer to Brazil, Russia, India, and China, the world had high hopes for the four emerging economies, whose combined GDP was expected to reach $128.4 trillion by 2050, dwarfing America’s projected GDP of $38.5 trillion. When the four countries’ leaders gather on March 26 in South Africa – which joined their ranks in 2010 – for the fifth BRICS summit, their progress and potential will be reassessed.

The summit’s hosts have set ambitious goals, reflected in the summit’s theme: “BRICS and Africa – a partnership for development, integration, and industrialization.” They seek to advance national interests, further the African agenda, and realign the world’s financial, political, and trade architecture – an agenda that encompasses objectives from previous summits, while reflecting South Africa’s goal of harnessing its membership to benefit all of Africa.

But, while strengthening ties with African countries might seem like the kind of pragmatic development issue that should bring consensus, the seeds of doubt are already being sown. Lamido Sanusi, the governor of Nigeria’s central bank, has called for Africans to recognize that “their romance with China” has helped to bring about “a new form of imperialism.”
Moreover, the central item on the summit’s agenda, a proposed “BRICS development bank,” is one that has gone nowhere at previous summits. This time, armed with a “feasibility study” put together by the five BRICS finance ministers, some progress may at last be made. With trade, both among the BRICS countries and between the BRICS and the rest of Africa, expected to increase from roughly $340 billion in 2012 to more than $500 billion in 2015, there is also much to discuss on the commercial front.

So far, the goal of “global realignment” away from the advanced countries has catalyzed these five very disparate countries’ efforts to forge their own bloc. But the primacy given to “advancing national interests” has always precluded real concerted action, at least until now.

This is why the idea of establishing a BRICS development bank has taken on such importance. And the recently conducted feasibility study might spur long-awaited progress. But toward what end?

According to China’s official news agency, the development bank’s primary objective would be “to direct development in a manner that reflects the BRICS’ priorities and competencies.” Once the bank is established, a working group will be tasked with building the necessary technical and governance capacity. But this stock rhetoric fails to address the discrepancies between the BRICS’ interests, or to define the bank’s role in reconciling and advancing them.
The fact that China is already Africa’s top trading partner, for example, invites questions about the proposed bank’s potential contributions. And China’s answer – that the bank would foster the “development of more robust and inter-dependent ties between the BRICS” – provides little substance. Is the bank supposed to serve as a counterweight to global multilateral development banks like the World Bank, or to reduce American and European dominance over the Bretton Woods institutions?

Whatever the underlying objective, it must be identified, and its concomitant risks addressed, if the BRICS are to make genuine progress. For example, if the proposed bank is simply an additional funding institution aimed at supporting the BRICS’s development agenda, the participating countries’ leaders must establish how it will interact with national institutions, such as the Brazilian Development Bank, the China Development Bank, and the Export-Import Bank of India.

But the problem of aligning the BRICS’ interests is a much deeper one. Consider India’s need for massive investments in infrastructure, made evident in its just-proposed 2013-2014 budget. Some hopeful Indians see a BRICS bank as a way to channel China’s surplus funds – as well as its expertise and experience – to such investments (especially railways), as well as to strengthen Sino-Indian ties. But, given the two countries’ many serious bilateral problems, will either government really want to bind itself so closely to the other?
Likewise, it is unclear what South Africa has to gain from the BRICS. Over the last few decades, the country has used mining revenues to pave roads, strengthen law enforcement, advance education, and revitalize cities and towns. The country’s most serious remaining problems – poverty and social inequality – are unlikely to be ameliorated through cooperation with the other BRICS countries, all of which rank among the world’s most unequal societies.

Other shared problems – such as corruption, poverty, and social underdevelopment – would be similarly difficult to address together. And it seems that the BRICS may not even be willing to try. Although Wen Jiabao, in his final address as Prime Minister, highlighted the enduring obstacles to China’s economic development (many of which its fellow BRICS share), China’s new president, Xi Jinping, insists that his country will not sacrifice its “sovereignty, security, or development interests” for the sake of more trade.

Meanwhile, Russia’s impaired democracy and resource-driven economy are a poor example for its fellow BRICS – and, in fact, could serve as a warning to the others about the risks of excessive reliance on the state. And Brazil, like India a genuine democracy, also seems sui generis. Despite the commodities boom of the last decade, its industrial output relative to GDP is no higher than it was when the effort to create a BRICS bloc began.
The BRICS’ ambitions – and the world’s expectations for them – may yet be fulfilled. But shared potential does not translate into collaborative action. On the contrary, each of the BRICS will have to pursue its goals, and confront its challenges, individually.

Jaswant Singh is the only person to have served as India’s finance minister (1996, 2002-2004), foreign minister (1998-2004), and defense minister (2000-2001). While in office, he launched the first free-trade agreement (with Sri Lanka) in South Asia’s history, initiated India’s most daring diplomatic opening to Pakistan, revitalized relations with the US, and reoriented the Indian military, abandoning its Soviet-inspired doctrines and weaponry for close ties with the West. His most recent book is Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence.

分裂的金磚國家

新德裡—2001年，高盛的奧尼爾（Jim O’Neill）創造了“金磚四國”一詞用以指代巴西、俄羅斯、印度和中國這四個世界寄予厚望的新興經濟體，到2050年，四國GDP總量預計將達128.4萬億美元，遠遠高於美國的預計GDP38.5萬億美元。3月26日，四國領導人將在南非——該國於2010年加入金磚四國行列——舉行了第五屆金磚國家峰會，屆時，這些國家的進步和潛力將會得到重新評估。

峰會東道主設定了相當宏大的目標，這反映在峰會主題中：“金磚國家和非洲——面向發展、融合和工業化的合作伙伴關係”。它們尋求推進國家利益、深化非洲日程並重組世界金融、政治和貿易格局——這一日程包括了前幾次峰會的目標，同時也反映了南非引導這一集團為非洲謀利的目標。

但是，加強與非洲國家的聯繫固然看起來像是個應該形成一致的現實發展問題，但懷疑的種子已經生根了。尼日利亞央行行長薩努西（Lamido Sanusi）呼吁非洲認識到“和中國打得火熱”在助長“新形式的帝國主義”。

此外，峰會日程的核心議題，即成立“金磚國家開發銀行”在前幾次峰會中沒有形成任何結果。這一次，五國財政部長因“可行性研究”而走到了一起，或許最終能夠取得一些進展。金磚國家之間及它們與非洲其他國家之間的貿易額預計將從2012年的約3400億美元增至2015年的5000億美元，因此在商業領域也有很多內容有待討論。

目前，擺脫發達國家，實現“全球重組”的目標刺激著這五個截然不同的國家打造它們自己的集團。但將“推進國家利益”作為首要任務總是會妨礙真正的聯合行動，至少到目前為止是如此。

這就是成立金磚國家開發銀行的觀點如此重要的原因。最新完成的可行性研究或能刺激期待已久的進展。但是向哪個方向的進展？

據中國官方新聞社報道，這一開發銀行的主要目標是“用能夠反映金磚國家當務之急和自身能力的方式來指導其發展”。一旦該銀行成立，將任命一個工作組處理必要的技術和治理問題。但這一信息並沒有解決金磚國家之間的利益分歧問題，也沒有給出該銀行在協調和促進金磚國家方面的角色。

中國已然是非洲最大的貿易伙伴，這一事實讓人質疑金磚國家開發銀行的潛在作用。中國的回答——該銀行能夠促進“金磚國家間更穩健、更深入的關係的發展”——並沒有提供多少實質內容。新銀行將成為類似世界銀行的全球多邊發展開發銀行界的新平衡點，還是為了削弱美國和歐洲在布雷頓森林體系機構中的主導力？

不管基本目標是什麼，都必須對此有所認識，並處置好相應的風險，如果金磚國家意在推動真正的進步的話。比如，如果金磚國家開發銀行僅僅是一個新的旨在支持金磚國家發展日程的融資機構，那麼參與國領導人必須想好它將如何與國家層面的機構的互動，比如巴西開發銀行、中國國家開銀行、印度進出口銀行等。

但協調金磚國家的利益是一個層次遠遠更深的問題。就拿印度來說吧。它需要大規模基礎設施投資，這一點在最新公布的2013—2014年預算中顯露無疑。一些滿懷希望的印度人將金磚國家開發銀行視為引入中國富餘資金——及其專業和經驗——投向這些項目（特別是鐵路）並加強中印關係的辦法。但中印之間存在許多嚴重的雙邊問題，雙方政府真的願意與對方緊密相聯嗎？

類似地，沒有明確的跡象表明南非一定要從金磚國家中獲得什麼好處。過去幾十年來，南非用礦業收入鋪設道路、強化法律實施、改善教育並激活城鎮。南非最嚴重的待解決問題——貧困和社會不平等性——不可能通過與其他金磚國家合作解決，這五個國家名列世界最不平等社會行列。

其他共同問題——比如腐敗、貧困和社會欠發達——也難以一並糾正。且金磚國家可能根本不願意一試。盡管溫家寶在其作為總理的最後一次講話中強調了中國經濟發展所面臨的頑固障礙（其中許多也存在於其他金磚國家中），但中國新國家主席習近平堅持中國不會犧牲“主權、安全和發展利益”來追求更多的貿易。

與此同時，俄羅斯的不完善民主和資源驅動型經濟為其他金磚國家樹立了不好的榜樣——事實上，俄羅斯可以稱為一個警示信號，過度以來政府會產生風險。與印度同屬真正民主國家的巴西也是自成一格。盡管過去十年中經歷了商品繁榮，但其工業產出佔GDP的比重並沒有比金磚國家名詞誕生前高。

金磚國家的雄心——以及全世界寄予它們的厚望——或許能夠實現。但共同潛力並不會轉變為合作行動。相反，金磚國家中的每一個都必須追求自己的目標，直面自己的挑戰。

Jaswant Singh: India’s Outrage

NEW DELHI – Last year ended for India on a note of public outrage that has burdened the country with anger, frustration, and pessimism. The cause, as all the world knows, was the fatally brutal rape of a young woman on a moving bus, after which she and her male companion – himself beaten nearly to death – were thrown, naked, into the street on a freezing night.

The savagery and wanton cruelty of the attack shocked the country to its core. But there is more behind the spontaneous protests that have choked the great central vistas of Delhi (to such an extent that the government was forced to change the venue for meetings with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin).

The anger that has poured onto the streets of Delhi and many other Indian cities was fueled by a great accumulated discontent – at the bestial rape and murder of that still-unnamed woman, yes, but also at pervasive public and private corruption, the absence of governance and accountability, and much more. Years of pent-up rage are now flowing out.

Of course, the government deserves – and has received – no quarter. The government failed to prevent the crime, then failed again when its unresponsive, inefficient, and crooked police force was unable to respond appropriately. A wholly moribund and sclerotic administration simply did not know where its duty lay.

When protests erupted, the government, in a fit of blind idiocy, set the police upon peaceful protesters, men and women, with long batons, water cannon, and tear gas. This heavy-handedness of course resolved nothing. Citizens’ fury deepened into grim resolve; the government’s repressive impulse was challenged and defeated.

Since then, tokenism has replaced leadership. Not one government official had the courage, skill, or decency to rise to the occasion. The opposition, too, floundered, doing no more than simply faulting the ruling establishment. 

After an unconscionably long delay of seven days, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh finally broke his incomprehensible silence about the rape. But his public statement offered no answers and no balm – indeed, nothing but platitudes. Then, humiliatingly, Singh inquired, sotto voce, of those surrounding him: “Was it all right?”

A torrent of electronic wrath burst forth. Protest placards could be seen all over the country: “No! Prime Minister, it is not all right.” Clearly, Machiavelli was correct: for a political leader, the people’s contempt is worse than their hatred.

Then, in another mindless act, the victim, struggling for life, was flown to a hospital in Singapore. No one would or could say why. It was there that she died – some say that she arrived already brain-dead. Her body was then hurriedly flown back to India, where it was quietly, almost surreptitiously, cremated. If the government feared her alive, it was petrified of her dead. All of India was shamed by this callous and inhuman folly.

As a result, India’s Congress-led government has irretrievably lost the public’s confidence; the establishment’s authority has evaporated. A blunt question is now being asked frequently and openly: “Is this India’s Tahrir Square?” Even if it is not, how can an internally roiled India respond adequately to its many external tests, the severity of which was underscored recently by Pakistani troops’ killing of two Indian soldiers along the Line of Control in Kashmir.

Meanwhile, as India flounders, Northeast Asia has been astir choosing new leaders, who have now been installed in China, Japan, and North and South Korea. With an assertive China, ongoing regime change in Myanmar, a troubled Bangladesh, a constitutionally stymied Nepal, and continuing ethnic tensions in Sri Lanka, India’s eastern challenges are many and mighty.

But they are even more severe to India’s west, with Pakistan heading into elections (one hopes) in the spring of 2013, and NATO troops withdrawing from Afghanistan. Indian diplomacy faces a time of trial in both countries.

Farther west, too, India’s statecraft is in question. Where does India, which remains dependent on Middle Eastern energy, stand on that region’s many crises? How will it address the nuclear issue in Iran – a country with which it has close historical, cultural, and economic ties – or the civil war in Syria, the rise of Salafism in Egypt, and the Israel-Palestine standoff?
Moreover, India no longer appears to be the vigorous economic dynamo that was the darling of global investors only five years ago. Already some say that the “I” in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) should now stand for Indonesia. India is running high current-account and fiscal deficits; food-price inflation is in the double digits; and the rupee has weakened. As for trade with China, The Economist points out that “for every dollar’s worth of exports to China [principally raw materials], India imports three.”

Can outrage turn to catharsis? Clearly, the current government is unable to bring about any of the necessary changes. A possible answer lies in an early election: a new mandate for an India that is in desperate need of renewal.

Jaswant Singh is the only person to have served as India’s finance minister (1996, 2002-2004), foreign minister (1998-2004), and defense minister (2000-2001). While in office, he launched the first free-trade agreement (with Sri Lanka) in South Asia’s history, initiated India’s most daring diplomatic opening to Pakistan, revitalized relations with the US, and reoriented the Indian military, abandoning its Soviet-inspired doctrines and weaponry for close ties with the West. His most recent book is Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence.

Jaswant Singh: Exit Afghanistan?

NEW DELHI – In his victory speech to a rapturous crowd in Chicago following his reelection, President Barack Obama affirmed that America’s “decade-long conflict” in Afghanistan will now end. The line was greeted with prolonged applause – and understandably so. In fact, this ill-advised war – launched on the basis of a United Nations Security Council resolution – has been grinding on for 11 years, making it the longest in American history.

At the beginning, the war was aimed at eliminating Al Qaeda, vanquishing the Taliban, and transforming Afghanistan into something resembling a Western-style nation-state. With none of these goals fully achieved, America’s intervention – like every other intervention in Afghanistan’s history – is ending unsatisfactorily.

As the curtain drops, two developments will greatly influence the withdrawal process and the ultimate outcome. The first is the management of the transition to Afghan control, which depends on an orderly withdrawal of American and NATO forces by 2014. The second is the election, also to be held in 2014, of a new Afghan president – a process that needs to permit the United States and its NATO allies to claim plausibly that they are handing the country over to a legitimate government.

For Afghanistan, ravaged by war without respite since the “Saur Revolution” of 1978, the endgame will be even more nerve-wracking. As the US military leaves, it will enter another period of political and strategic uncertainty, after almost a half-century of disorder and civil war.

A previous period of such uncertainty was the spur to Pakistan’s creation of the Taliban, which proceeded to disrupt Afghanistan’s (and Pakistan’s) already-fragile social order. Today, almost three generations of Afghans have lived from birth to adulthood without having known stability and peace. And, as a visiting American scholar/diplomat recently told me in a confidential conversation: “In the US, too, at least a generation of our children, from birth till the age of 15, have seen their country almost continuously at war.”

That is an arresting thought. It is against this bitter backdrop that a new Afghan president will be elected and the withdrawal of forces carried out. Will these two developments bring about a stable peace, or will Afghanistan succumb to instability once more? And what consequences are in store for the US following this war without victory or defeat?

Last May, Obama declared that the US had “turned the tide of war” in Afghanistan, an eerie echo of Richard Nixon’s rhetoric as he withdrew US forces from Vietnam. And, like Vietnam, will the US – exhausted and nearly bankrupted by the effort – see all of its supposed gains evaporate soon after it leaves? After all, Al Qaeda, albeit weakened, remains capable of regenerating inside Afghanistan, where the Taliban remain dominant in the country’s east and south, as well as in neighboring North Waziristan in Pakistan.

Just how weakened America is in the region matters. As the US strategist Daniel Twining has observed: “Over the coming four years, US leadership…will be essential” for “the consolidation of a wide-ranging strategic partnership with India,” as well as for efforts “to prevent Pakistan’s many pathologies…from spilling over in ways that undermine fundamental US (and Indian) interests.”

So where does this leave Afghanistan’s neighbors? Deeply concerned. Our primary aim is the restoration of peace and, if not stability, an acceptable political equilibrium. Even if we did not incur the same costs as the US over the past decade – the hundreds of billions of dollars spent, and the many young people killed or injured – we have paid the price that regional uncertainty always imposes: lost trade, lost growth, refugees, and violence.

In the face of these costs, the overblown and sometimes clearly dishonest claims about the war are an obscenity. This strategically myopic and militarily ill-conceived war was unwinnable from the beginning. As a result, Afghanistan will remain what it was: a violent and ungovernable tribal melange. Indeed, across the region, apprehension is growing that when foreign troops leave, Afghanistan will again descend into civil war, ultimately bringing the Taliban back to power.

That is why “bringing the troops home early” has become the prime objective of Western politicians who are engaged in the region. The West needs to get out before the bloodletting starts again in earnest.

My fear is that we have not seen the last of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. As a neighboring country, India would face disturbing consequences if they returned to power in Afghanistan, as would Iran, which would not sit idly by if sectarian strife intensified and the Shia became targets of a resurgent Taliban.

Other neighbors would also pay a price should the Taliban’s seemingly invariable return turn bloody, however immune they believe they are. China, which has invested billions of dollars in developing Afghanistan’s natural resources –investments protected, ironically, by the US – would be certain to experience greater unrest in Xinjiang Province, home to millions of disaffected Muslims.

But the country that will be most affected is Pakistan, which faces challenges to its territorial and political integrity. The territorial challenge is, no doubt, a mushrooming anxiety; an innocuous remark by an American envoy about the Durand Line, which marks the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, drew sharp retorts from both countries.

Afghanistan’s history of occupation by foreign troops and their eventual withdrawal has been repeated so many times that one wearies of repeating the tale. Yet this history is the litmus test. With the US withdrawal, turmoil is bound to reemerge, and the entire region will again bear the consequences.


Jaswant Singh is the only person to have served as India’s finance minister (1996, 2002-2004), foreign minister (1998-2004), and defense minister (2000-2001). While in office, he launched the first free-trade agreement (with Sri Lanka) in South Asia’s history, initiated India’s most daring diplomatic opening to Pakistan, revitalized relations with the US, and reoriented the Indian military, abandoning its Soviet-inspired doctrines and weaponry for close ties with the West. His most recent book is Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence.

Jaswant Singh: Burma to Myanmar and Back?

NEW DELHI – In ways big and small, Asia is still living with the tainted legacy of imperialism. Consider the debate now underway in Myanmar – or Burma to some. Because the imperial tongue found it difficult to pronounce “Myanmar,” the country’s no-nonsense British masters renamed it Burma (redrawing its borders as well for good measure).

The new name stuck until the military regime that ruled the country for decades restored the original one in 1989. Ironically, however, the newly empowered democratic opposition would like to bring back the name Burma, viewing “Myanmar” as emblematic of the dictatorship that they wish to leave behind.

But the past can never be truly erased. Not even Mao Zedong, with the fury unleashed during China’s Cultural Revolution, could make the “Four Olds” (old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas) vanish. And whether one uses “Yangon” or “Rangoon” to identify Myanmar/Burma’s capital, the place still remains what the British travel writer Norman Lewis described as “imperial and rectilinear…built by a people who refused compromise with the East.”

The British-built Rangoon was, of course, the Victorian colonizer’s response to what Lewis called the “unsubstantial glories of Mandalay.” As he put it, “These massive columns now rise with shabby dignity from the tangle of scavenging dogs and sprawling, ragged bodies at their base.”

With Myanmar/Burma now the “in” destination for the world’s hot-money investors, the imperial decrepitude that Lewis described will doubtless soon be transformed, the archaic charm of a fading past demolished for the sake of modern commerce. This tranquil land of timeless faith, over which Buddha’s benign statues preside – a land of rivers, deep forests, and blood-red rubies – is now in play for international investors.

For the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who suffered two decades of incarceration and house arrest, the country must aspire to something beyond getting rich if it is truly to overcome the decades of military misrule: a transforming, revolutionary idea. That idea, of course, is democracy, which is something very new to Myanmar/Burma, for the British practiced little of it when they ruled, as George Orwell’s Burmese Days makes clear.

Since regaining her freedom, Suu Kyi has liberated her fellow citizens from fear through the power of this idea and her own example. “It is not power that corrupts” she memorably noted, “but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.” On the strength of that ennobling idea, Myanmar/Burma has embraced democratic reform and rid itself of diplomatic and economic isolation.

President Thein Sein’s government has, by its release of Suu Kyi and embrace of a democratic transition, transformed the country’s image. Rapprochement with the iconic Suu Kyi, like that of South Africa’s apartheid-era rulers with Nelson Mandela, was the core decision. But what has surprised many observers is the pace of change. For example, the recent ceasefire between the government and Karen rebels exemplifies progress that was simply unthinkable only one year ago.

If anything, the latest developments vindicate India’s long-held policy of engaging with Myanmar, a country of major strategic and economic importance to it in terms of trade, transport, energy, and security. Engagement is the way to establish vital links between Myanmar and South and East Asia. Indeed, the resumption of diplomatic relations with the United States, and the suspension of a US investment ban, indicate that transformation has already taken place.

It is now Japan, however, that is doing the heavy lifting of modernizing Myanmar’s economy. Japan is deploying vast government aid and private-sector engagement reminiscent of its investments in China at the height of Japanese global economic power in the 1980’s. Japan appears to be acting not only for commercial reasons, but also according to its strategic interests. The Japanese, like Sein, want to see Myanmar shift its diplomatic orientation away from China.

Many Japanese, whose forebears ravaged the country in World War II, now profess a romantic sentimentality toward Myanmar. Yohei Sasakawa of the Nippon Foundation remembers eating rice shipped from the country in the lean years after the war in Japan. “We are really late,” he says, “in repaying our obligation” for “the kindness of Myanmar.”
Here India has been slow to join the struggle for influence. Its prime minister has visited the country, but without a clear plan of engagement, even though developing western Myanmar would boost the economy of India’s border region.

These opportunities exist because Thein’s government has been deliberately distancing itself from China, long the military regime’s patron and protector. The sense among ordinary Burmese that the Chinese were looting the country’s resources has led to an anti-China backlash, including problems with a copper mine in Monywa and the cancellation last year of the Myitsone hydroelectric dam. John Pang, the Chief Executive of CARI, a research organization based in Malaysia, says that today’s transitional Myanmar/Burma is “a game the Chinese gave away.”

Their loss is Myanmar/Burma’s – and South Asia’s – gain, regardless of what Thein or his democratically chosen successors choose to call their country.


Jaswant Singh is the only person to have served as India’s finance minister (1996, 2002-2004), foreign minister (1998-2004), and defense minister (2000-2001). While in office, he launched the first free-trade agreement (with Sri Lanka) in South Asia’s history, initiated India’s most daring diplomatic opening to Pakistan, revitalized relations with the US, and reoriented the Indian military, abandoning its Soviet-inspired doctrines and weaponry for close ties with the West. His most recent book is Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence.

Jaswant Singh: What Syria Means

NEW DELHI – Syria’s agony has generated a variety of unproductive responses: verbal condemnation of the excesses of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime; disagreements about the wisdom of armed intervention; and all-around confusion about the possibility of finding a viable long-term solution. Worse, in this sorry state of affairs, the world may be getting a glimpse of a very ugly future.

First, let us try to disentangle some of the cat’s cradle of ironies and contradictions that are bedeviling efforts to end the violence in Syria. Whereas Syria denies political freedom to its citizens, it tolerates significantly more social freedom than many other Arab countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, which is leading the charge to oust Assad. Governed by minority Alawites (a Shia sect), Syria harbors a kaleidoscope of distinct groups: Arabs, Armenians, Christians, Kurds, Druze, Ismailis, and Bedouin. 

It is this tolerance of cultural and religious diversity that could be endangered if the Sunni-inspired revolt sweeps the country. And that is why Syria simultaneously generates revulsion at the regime’s atrocities and fear of what might follow if the regime is defeated.

In an ancient land such as Syria, there can be no examination of the problems of the present without reflecting upon the past. History, after all, is always the mother of the present, and geography the progenitor.

In his history of the Arab world in the aftermath of World War I, A Peace to End all Peace, David Fromkin suggests that the Middle East today reflects the failure of the European powers to consolidate the political systems that they imposed. Britain and its allies “destroyed the old order,” smashing Turkish rule of the Arabic-speaking Middle East. But then they “created countries, nominated rulers, delineated frontiers, [and introduced] a state system” that would not work.

But, in the wake of the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the intervention in Libya, is not the same experiment being repeated almost a century later? That is the question that realistic policymakers should be asking themselves as they ponder what to do in Syria.
In August 1919, British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour summarized the essence of the problem that is now confronting policymakers. “The unhappy truth,” he wrote, “is that France, England, and America have got themselves…so inextricably confused that no…satisfactory answer is now possible.”

Does that not sound familiar? And is not an updated version of Syrian (and then Iraqi) King Faisal’s exhortation to Arabs – “Choose to be either slaves or masters of your own destiny” – echoed in the political pronouncements of new leaders in Egypt and elsewhere.

And let us examine the actions of the West in 1919 and the years that followed. The French, as Fromkin reminds us, “shrank Syria, so that they could control it,” rewarding their “Christian allies by swelling the borders of Mount Lebanon with the Bekaa valley, the Mediterranean ports of Tyre, Sidon, Beirut and Tripoli, and…land…north of Palestine. Thousands of Muslims [suddenly] belonged to a state dominated by Christians.”

So, as the Oxford historian Margaret Macmillan argues in her book The Peacemakers, Syria’s leaders, remembering these events when Westerners probably did not, “took the opportunity” presented by the Black September crisis of 1970 to send troops to their country’s lost lands.
The combination of ethnic and sectarian fears and rivalries, historical memories, and willful blindness among outside powers seems almost predestined to destabilize the entire Middle East again. Turkey is resurgent yet troubled; Iraq has been invaded and abandoned; Iran is isolated and threatened; Israel is anxious and belligerent; and Afghanistan and Pakistan are internally imbalanced and politically fragile.

Indeed, the great arc stretching from Cairo to the Hindu Kush threatens to become the locus of global disorder. Little wonder that Iranian envoy Saeed Jalili, after meeting Assad in Damascus recently, announced that “Iran will absolutely not allow the axis of resistance, of which it considers Syria to be a main pillar, to be broken in any way.”

For Turkey, Syria’s plight is a strategic nightmare, because any breakup of Syria implies the possible rise of a greater Kurdistan, which would raise claims to a great swath of Turkish territory.

Is there a solution to this grim impasse? Certainly, one will not be found in more United Nations resolutions, which is why US President Barack Obama is now believed to favor a “managed transition” in Syria that would not fatally erode the existing instruments of the Syrian state.
As Michael Ignatieff has wisely observed, Syria’s crisis has revealed that this is “the moment in which the West should see that the world has truly broken into two. A loose alliance of struggling capitalist democracies” is faced by Russia and China. Western countries’ national interests will no longer determine the moral and political impulses of today’s global community. Indeed, whatever the outcome, Syria’s agony has underscored a further irreversible weakening of the West’s dominant global role.

Jaswant Singh is the only person to have served as India’s finance minister (1996, 2002-2004), foreign minister (1998-2004), and defense minister (2000-2001). While in office, he launched the first free-trade agreement (with Sri Lanka) in South Asia’s history, initiated India’s most daring diplomatic opening to Pakistan, revitalized relations with the US, and reoriented the Indian military, abandoning its Soviet-inspired doctrines and weaponry for close ties with the West. His most recent book is Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence.

Jaswant Singh: The Lynchpin of Asia

NEW DELHI – Isolated and impoverished by decades of international sanctions, Myanmar (Burma) has emerged in recent months as both a beacon of hope and a potential new Asian flashpoint. With Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi freed from two decades of house arrest to campaign vigorously for a seat in parliament in the special election to be held on April 1, Burma’s commitment to rejoining the international community appears to be genuine. But this opening has other consequences, most importantly setting the stage for a new “great game” of strategic competition.

No one should be surprised that Burma is a locus of interest for great powers. After all, it is larger than France and with a similar population size. In his recent book Monsoon, Robert Kaplan notes that in the Middle Ages three kingdoms lay between Thailand (then called Siam) and India. One was Myanmar, which means “that which is central.” Centuries later, Burma remains central, not only in matters of Asian security, but also for the country’s vast and still mostly untapped natural wealth.

Burma’s strategic importance reflects, first and foremost, its geographic location between India, China, Thailand, and Southeast Asia. Ringed in the north by the southern ridges of the Himalayas, to the east by foothills of dense teak forests, and to the west and south by the Bay of Bengal and Indian Ocean, Burma’s geography has always shaped the country’s history and politics.

In 1885, during an earlier era of great power competition in Asia, Lord Randolph Churchill, Winston Churchill’s father, impulsively annexed Burma to the British Raj in India following the Third Anglo-Burmese War. Thant Myint-U, a leading historian of contemporary Burma (and the son of former United Nations Secretary-General U Thant), likened Churchill’s move to “throwing Burma off a cliff.”

Only in 1937, by a decree of the British viceroy, was Burma finally separated from British India. But the Japanese invasion five years later subjugated Burma and its people to colonial rule once again, with the conquering sweep of the Imperial Japanese Army checked only at Imphal, in India’s Manipur state.

The end of the British Empire in 1947 gave Burma its freedom, but did not end its travails. The assassination of Aung San (Suu Kyi’s father and the leader of Burma’s independence movement) destabilized the country, paving the way for the army to take over. Under its long-serving military junta, Burma shut itself off from the world, internalized its problems, and stagnated as the rest of Asia boomed. The world reciprocated, isolating Burma economically and diplomatically.

It was to this Burma that I journeyed from Imphal some 10 years ago, the first Indian foreign minister to travel overland to its neighbor since independence. India’s Border Roads Organization had recently completed the first all-weather road connecting the two countries since WWII. Journeying on this “road to fabled Mandalay,” I recorded in my diary, was a highlight of “one of the most memorable, satisfying, and happy foreign visits in my experience as Foreign Minister.”

China, too, has endeavored for centuries to bind Burma to itself, mostly in search of a southern route to India and the Indian Ocean. In recent decades, China took advantage of the international community’s shunning of Burma to secure its own strategic interests, building highways, railways, ports, and pipelines that connect southern and western China to the Indian Ocean.

But trade has not been China’s only motivation for investing so heavily in Burma. China also views Burma as vital to its quest for security, as well as to the regional expansion of Chinese power.

Reflecting its fears about the potential for Chinese encirclement, democratic India, after early hiccups of doubt, set aside its scruples about Burma’s military regime. India’s cultural, economical, social, and sometimes military ties with Burma – indeed, with the entire region – are older than China’s. So, for reasons of Realpolitik, India expanded its activities and investments in Burma throughout the last two decades of the junta’s rule.

Sometimes the competition with China is direct. At the Shwe gas fields along the Burmese cost, estimated to be among the largest reserves in the world, two pipelines are to be constructed: one to China from the nearby port of Kyauk Phru, and the other to India from the port of Sittwe.

For Thant, this strategic competition is worrying. The “crossroads through Burma,” he argues, cannot “be a simple joining up of countries,” because the regions of “China and India that are being drawn together over Burma are among the most far-flung parts of the two giant states, regions of unparalleled ethnic and linguistic diversity….isolated upland societies that were, until recently, beyond the control of Delhi or Beijing.”

While China seeks strategic depth in Burma, India’s interests there are now reanimated by the international community’s opening to a country that appears to yearn for the same democratic freedoms that Indians possess. And, in Aung San Suu Kyi, who studied in New Delhi (as did her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, who was Ambassador to India and Nepal in 1960), Burma possesses a charismatic moral leader who reminds Indians of their country’s own founders.

As a result, Realpolitik and economic interest alone will no longer shape the great game playing out in Burma. Ideals and the quest for freedom will also play a critical role.

Jaswant Singh is the only person to have served as India’s finance minister (1996, 2002-2004), foreign minister (1998-2004), and defense minister (2000-2001). While in office, he launched the first free-trade agreement (with Sri Lanka) in South Asia’s history, initiated India’s most daring diplomatic opening to Pakistan, revitalized relations with the US, and reoriented the Indian military, abandoning its Soviet-inspired doctrines and weaponry for close ties with the West. His most recent book is Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence.

Jaswant Singh: Return to the Arc of Crisis

NEW DELHI – Thirty-three years ago, then-US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke of an “arc of crisis” coursing through the Middle East and into Central Asia. Today, events in Syria and Pakistan, as well as the recent bombings in Bangkok and New Delhi, which some are linking to Iran, suggest that Brzezinski’s arc is more salient than ever.

Among the many dangers lurking along it today, the most ominous concerns the response of Israel and the United States to the question of when Iran’s nuclear facilities will become impregnable, creating, in Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s phrase, a “zone of immunity.” Some think that this point has already been reached, with Iran placing its enriched uranium underground, near the holy city of Qom, beneath many layers of granite – and thus beyond the destructive power of anything short of a nuclear bomb.

Israeli hawks argue that the time to strike is now, before Iran is able to make a fully operational nuclear weapon. Not so fast, warns the US: sanctions may still achieve their aim. Such differences are real, with US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta expressing concern that Israel might launch an attack on Iran in the spring.


Moving eastward along the arc, Pakistan is descending ever deeper into domestic turmoil. Its government convened a tripartite meeting in Islamabad with Iran and Afghanistan this February to discuss “peace and security” in the region. But the country’s internal disarray precludes the government’s ability to influence events positively. For now, Pakistan seems consigned to the role of destructive spoiler, particularly in Afghanistan, where the Taliban and Haqqani network are free to launch attacks from Pakistani territory.

To the west, the situation in Syria deteriorates by the day. Foreign support for the Syrian rebels is not only based on horror at the Assad regime’s tactics, but also appears to be aimed at disabling the Assad regime’s patron, Iran. Efraim Halevy, a former director-general of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, put this goal succinctly: evicting Iran from its “regional hub in Damascus would cut off Iran’s access to its proxies” (Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza).

Across the arc, security risks are serious and interconnected. For example, the threat posed by Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, which many fear could fall into the hands of terrorists, dovetails with Iran’s quest – elevated to a national priority – to develop such weapons of its own. Indeed, Iran bought the centrifuge technology that it is using to develop its nuclear capacity from A.Q. Khan, the “father” of the Pakistani bomb and one-time head of Pakistan’s nuclear program.

To the nuclear danger must be added Islamist extremism and the terrorism that sometimes results from it, as well as ideological militias like the Taliban and Hezbollah. Each has contributed to transforming the region into the epicenter of global uncertainty. And it is this very complexity that calls to mind another of Brzezinski’s insights: “stability in Asia can no longer be imposed by….direct application of US military force.”

If the challenge is to stop Iran’s uranium enrichment program, “Why not also Israel?” ask others in the region. The answer, from the perspective of the US and the West, is that Iran simply cannot be trusted to use its enrichment program for “peaceful purposes.” But it is clear even to the US that no Iranian leader could accept the humiliation of surrendering the right to civilian nuclear power recognized by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran acceded when it was ruled by the Shah.

It requires little imagination to conclude that some existential imperative is driving Western policy on Iran. Of course, a nuclear-armed Iran would vastly complicate security across the entire region, potentially triggering an arms race with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt (once its government begins to look outward again). But the danger is that the stakes are being raised so high that the smallest misstep could escalate into a conflict of unforeseeable dimensions. Iran has already vowed that, if pushed, it will close the Strait of Hormuz (through which one-sixth of the world’s oil supply passes), and it is threatening to preempt oil-export sanctions by refusing to sell to selected European countries.

Iran also has direct security and social concerns in neighboring Afghanistan, where the Taliban, upon assuming power in 1996, carried out selective killings of Shia, including a massacre of more than 5,000 in Bamyan province. But Iran’s lack of diplomatic relations with the US means that it is not involved in trying to structure a viable peace accord to stabilize Afghanistan after the withdrawal of Western troops. It also has many grievances against Pakistan, which harbors anti-Iran militants and routinely abuses its Shia minority.

Instead of seeking means to defuse these complex crises, the US and other world powers are actually multiplying them. Pakistan is ridden with anxiety about post-withdrawal Afghanistan, and about the secret talks that the US has now begun with the Afghan Taliban in Qatar. Iran is shown a stick to dissuade it from acquiring nuclear weapons, but is offered no carrot in the form of increased trade and investment or the possibility of an end to the sanctions that have crippled its economy. Syria’s agony looks like it can end only in sectarian slaughter.

In a region of such complexity, hair-trigger sensitivities, and atavistic attitudes, just one inadvertent slip could spark a conflagration, turning the arc of crisis into a ring of fire.

Jaswant Singh, a former Indian finance minister, foreign minister, and defense minister, is the author of Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence and presently Member of Parliament, Lok Sabha.

Jaswant Singh: India’s Year of Living Stagnantly / 在蕭條之年的印度生活

NEW DELHI – Will 2012 prove to be a year of renewal for India, or another annus horribilis? No country progresses unerringly, but India cannot afford another politically and economically torpid year like 2011. For India, last year is a year best forgotten.

India has been so deeply mired in political paralysis that the Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen recently said that the country has “fallen from being the second best to the second worst” South Asian country, and that it is currently “no match for China” on social indicators. This is a damning comment on a country that held such promise just a short time ago.
In early January, the American social critic James Howard Kunstler described India as “a nation with one foot in the modern age and the other in a colorful hallucinatory dreamtime.” Kunstler’s view is harsh, but perhaps prophetic: India’s “climate-change-related problems are doing heavy damage to the food supply. Their groundwater is almost gone. The troubles of the wobbling global economy will take a lot of pep out of their burgeoning tech and manufacturing sectors.”

Indeed, suddenly, India’s economy has begun spinning out of control. Last year, the country’s GDP growth slowed, manufacturing plummeted, and inflation and corruption grew uncontrollably. Elected and unelected government officials alike, including cabinet ministers, members of parliament, and civil servants, were implicated in corruption scandals. The situation triggered recollections of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s fraudulent call for a state of emergency in 1975, when she ruled by decree for 21 months, suspending elections and civil liberties.

The population’s outraged response to these events was visceral, and previously unknown figures such as the anti-corruption activist Anna Hazare rallied thousands of Indians in meetings across the country to protest against government corruption. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government floundered, the opposition vainly sought to gain the upper hand.

But, to ordinary Indians, this political gamesmanship appeared to be merely a farce – the blind pretending to lead the unsighted. Perhaps for the first time ever, India’s government failed to enact even a single piece of legislation, much less undertake any economic reforms, restore price stability, or address widespread civil disorder.

As the Indian business analyst Virendra Parekh has observed:  “The second fastest-growing economy in the world now has the unenviable distinction of having the fastest falling financial markets in Asia.” Moreover, “the fortunes of the rupee are….tightly linked with the euro, which is in the throes of an existential crisis...” This has resulted in another, albeit unintended, consequence: “Unscrupulous politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen, who have stashed their illicit wealth abroad, are bringing some of it back,” passing off the money as export earnings. Where corruption has been absent, incompetence has replaced it.

Furthermore, weaknesses in agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and governance have all contributed to India’s current crisis. For example, approximately a quarter-million Indian farmers have allegedly committed suicide over the last 16 years, despite unprecedented economic growth.

This statistic begs the question of why India continues to import foods and oils that could be produced domestically. Solutions offered by organizations such as the US-India Business Council or USAID do not address the problem’s roots, and the crisis will most likely continue in 2012. It is imperative that India invest in its agriculture, not only for economic reasons, but also because it is central to the country’s culture.

Another concern is nuclear power. In 2008, the United States and India agreed to a civil nuclear deal that would allow India to expand its nuclear-power capability. In 2010, India’s parliament passed the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, a precondition for activating that agreement. But, following Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, safety concerns surrounding nuclear power are large and mounting.

Local farmers, fishermen, and environmentalists have spent months protesting a planned six-reactor nuclear-power complex on the plains of Jaitapur, south of Mumbai. In April, the protests turned violent, leaving one man dead and dozens injured. India will certainly see more anti-nuclear clashes in 2012.

At the heart of India’s current malaise is a paradox: rapid growth in real income has not been matched by genuine advances in living standards. If the country’s fundamental problems are to be addressed, India needs a government with the determination, integrity, and intelligence to meet the complex demands of modern governance in the twenty-first century.

Jaswant Singh, a former Indian finance minister, foreign minister, and defense minister, is the author of Jinnah: India – Partition – Independence.

Jaswant Singh: 在蕭條之年的印度生活

新德裡—2012年將是印度的重生之年還是又一個可怕之年？沒有哪個國家可以在一帆風順之間一直進步，但對於印度來說，已經無法承受又一個如2011年般在政治和經濟上都如此不堪的年頭了。印度人恨不得徹底忘卻過去的一年。

在政治上，印度可謂泥足深陷，以至於諾貝爾經濟學獎獲得者阿馬提亞·森最近聲稱，這個國家在南亞“從第二墮落到了倒數第二”，在社會指標方面“無法與中國相提並論”。對於一個不久前才信誓旦旦的國家來說，這樣的評語不啻當頭一盆冷水。

1月初，美國社會批評家霍華德·昆斯勒（Howard Kunstler）將印度描述為“一隻腳踏進了現代世界，另一隻腳還在多彩的幻想世界中徜徉的國家”。昆斯勒的觀點可謂犀利，卻頗有些預言的意味：印度的“氣候變化相關問題正在嚴重影響食品供給。地下水幾乎已經消耗殆盡。步履蹣跚、麻煩纏身的全球降級將讓印度生機勃發的技術和制造部門大量失血。”

事實上，幾乎在一夜之間，印度經濟開始失控了。去年，印度GDP增長率出現了下降，制造業出現了暴跌，通脹和腐敗以不可控制之勢蔓延。當選政府官僚，非當選官僚也好，不關你是內閣部長、議會成員還是普通公務員，都擺脫不了腐敗丑聞的干系。去年的情況讓人想起了1975年總理英迪拉·甘地宣布進入緊急狀態的戲言。當時她得到了21個月的授權，中止了選舉和公民自由。

人民對這些事件爆發了發自肺腑的憤怒，先前默默無聞的反復活動家，如阿納·哈扎爾（Anna Hazare）發動了數以千計的印度人在全國開展機會運動，向政府腐敗示威。辛格政府對此不知所措，而反對派隻知道徒勞地乘機撈取政治地盤。

但對普通印度人來說，這樣的政治小把戲隻不過是鬧劇，好比是盲人在引導瞎子。或許這是印度政府在歷史上第一次沒能出台哪怕一項立法，更不用說實施任何經濟改革、重塑價格穩定以及解決廣泛蔓延的公共秩序問題了。

正如印度商業分析家維綸德拉·帕雷科（Virendra Parekh）所觀察到的：“世界上增長第二快的國家現在一點都不值得羨慕，因為他們的金融市場在亞洲是墮落最快的。”此外，“盧比緊緊地與歐元挂鉤，因此隻能任由當前危機宰割……”而這在無意間導致了另一個結果：“不知羞恥的政客、官僚和商人從前不法財富轉移到國外，現在又移回了一部分，”打著出口利潤的名號把錢輸回印度。如果哪個地方沒有腐敗，那麼替代它的一定是無能。

此外，農業、能源、基礎設施和治理方面的疲軟也是印度當前危機的引發原因。比如，過去16年間，據說大約有25萬印度農民自殺身亡，盡管在此期間印度取得了前所未有的經濟增長。

這個數字引出了一個問題：為何印度要繼續進口可以在國內生產的食品和原油。美印商業委員會（US-India Business Council）和美國國際開發署（USAID）等組織給出的解決方案不能根治問題，危機很可能會在2012年繼續發酵。印度需要投資於農業，這不僅是經濟上的需要，也是印度文化的核心問題。

另一個擔憂是核電。2008年，美國和印度簽署了一項民用核協議，印度得以擴展其核電產能。2010年，印度議會通過了《核傷害民事責任法案》，作為激活這一協議的先決條件。但是，2011年3月日本福島核災難爆發后，圍繞核電安全的擔憂再次崛起。

當地農民、漁民和環保主義者連續幾個月在孟買以南的杰普塔平原上集會示威，反對在那裡建造有六個反應堆的核電廠。4月，示威活動演變成暴力運動，造成一人喪身、多人受傷。顯然，2012年，印度還會有更多的反核沖突。

印度當前亂象和核心是一個悖論：真實收入的快速增長並沒有帶來生活水平的真實提高。如果印度想要解決基本問題，那麼政府就應該拿出決心、誠意和機智來滿足21世紀現代治理的復雜要求。

Jaswant Singh是前印度財政部長、外交部長和國防部長，著有《真納：印度—分裂—獨立》。