US-Centric New World Order and George Bush's India Visit

/L. MANU
US President George Bush has confirmed that he will pay a state visit to India and Pakistan in March 2006. This visit will be the latest in the Whitehouse roadmap to implement the agenda to create new international arrangements to serve US interests in the 21st century.

US Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice articulated America's contemporary foreign policy goals in a signed article in December 2005 as follows:

We live in an extraordinary time -- one in which the terrain of international politics is shifting beneath our feet and the pace of historical change outstrips even the most vivid imagination. …In times of unprecedented change, the traditional diplomacy of crisis management is insufficient. Instead, we must transcend the doctrines and debates of the past and transform volatile status quos that no longer serve our interests. What is needed is a realistic statecraft for a transformed world.

Our statecraft today recognizes that centuries of international practice and precedent have been overturned in the past 15 years. Consider one example: For the first time since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the prospect of violent conflict between great powers is becoming ever more unthinkable. Major states are increasingly competing in peace, not preparing for war. To advance this remarkable trend, the United States is transforming our partnerships with nations such as Japan and Russia, with the European Union, and especially with China and India. Together we are building a more lasting and durable form of global stability: a balance of power that favors freedom….

Our experience of this new world leads us to conclude that the fundamental character of regimes matters more today than the international distribution of power. Insisting otherwise is imprudent and impractical. The goal of our statecraft is to help create a world of democratic, well-governed states that can meet the needs of their citizens and conduct themselves responsibly in the international system. Attempting to draw neat, clean lines between our security interests and our democratic ideals does not reflect the reality of today's world.

In other words, the US is on a mission to create an alternative international arrangement of states outside the current United Nations system and the doctrine of collective security. Rice’s assertion that “Major states are increasingly competing in peace, not preparing for war” is not only false in the face of current realities of militarization worldwide but also lacks historical validity. History teaches us that ever since our world has been divided among big powers, any redivision among a new set of big powers leads to war. Any apparent peace in a world waiting to be redivided due to a change in the relative strength of big powers is a prelude to a full scale war between the big powers.

We are currently living in such a world. The US drive to create a new international order that “transcend(s) the doctrines and debates of the past and transform volatile status quos that no longer serve our interests” is not about averting future conflicts but to abandon the old arrangements of the old divided world and prepare for a US victory in future conflicts.

The interest of the people of India requires that India is not a factor for future conflicts in the first place. India can’t be the target of war nor a party to war for the redivision of the world. The Indo-US military collaboration is already organized to make India a party to future war on the side of the US. Indian statecraft today shows no striving to avert future conflicts amongst big powers for redivision of the world. India is not fighting to strengthen the institutions of collective security (i. e. the UN system) and democratize them so that big power domination of the current world gives way to equality of all nations and countries big and small. It is striving to secure a seat in the most undemocratic Security Council of the UN on the one hand and participate in the creation of a new arrangement in the international arena outside the UN system under the US on the other. There is little sign that the Indian diplomacy is even looking at the agenda of democratizing the UN system to avert future wars and stop big power machinations.

What is clear is that while the interests of the people of India and that of the US government are diametrically opposite, the interest of the Indian business houses and their representative government is converging with the interest of the US government. During Dr. Rice’s visit to India in March 2005, the US proposed to help India be recognized as a major power in the world if India sides with the US in its new international rearrangement.

During Manmohan Singh’s state visit to the White House in July 2005, Bush floated the idea of asking the US government and the world governments to acknowledge India as a nuclear weapons power. This is the first step towards India being recognized as a major power suitable for participating in future redivision of the world, and carried the proviso that India separate its domestic civilian and military nuclear programs, placing the former under international safeguards and opening the later for mutual monitoring as per the US non-proliferation agenda.

The crux of this proposal was blurted out in a diplomatic gaffe by the US Ambassador to India, David C Mulford, in January 2006 when he said:

We have made it known to them (India) that we would very much like India’s support (vote on the side of the US against Iran’s nuclear ambitions) because India has arrived on the world stage and is a very very important player in the world....If it (India) opposes Iran having nuclear weapons, we think they should record it in the vote. ..(A negative vote’s) effect on members of the US Congress with regard to (Indo-US) civil nuclear initiative will be devastating. I think the Congress will simply stop considering the matter. I think the initiative will die in the Congress not because the administration would want it.

Much has been said to control the damage caused by Mr. Mulford’s gaffe and much is being done to create momentum towards George Bush’s visit to India. The nuclear deal has come to the centre of the summit agenda because the Indian government needs a nuclear agreement not only for its strategic ambitions but also for its economic and business needs - more electrical power that simply cannot be met without access to nuclear fuel from abroad. The US has recognized India’s energy vulnerability and mobilized US corporations to become cheerleaders for India’s energy market and through it for the lucrative domestic market as a whole to be opened up for investment and profiteering. According to the US State department,

There's the hope and desire on both sides that the president's trip be a historic trip that really signifies a changed relationship between the US and India. We have over the course of the past several years worked very hard ... to forge a new strategic relationship with India across a number of different areas: in the economic sphere, in the trade sphere, in the technology-sharing sphere.

The US business community is keen to benefit from a relaxation of US nuclear export controls to India which will affect trade, technology sharing and economic interactions between Indian and American corporations in a broad way. The Indian corporate world is spearheading the Indian agenda for such collaboration. Pakistan is already looking for a similar recognition from the US and this has the potential to affect the weapons trade even more than what the growing defence cooperation has already created. In Ms. Rice’s words, the US wants to “transform volatile status quos that no longer serve our interests”, which directly translates to driving Indo-Pak relations to serve US economic and strategic interests in Asia for new market and new strategic alliance by changing the nuances of Indo-Pak war to a new basis.

India and Pakistan can provide much needed foot soldiers for the US misadventures in the region and engage China in a way that helps the US interests in Asia if the current volatility is transcended. George Bush’s visit to India and Pakistan has these items on the agenda and that is why the state department dubs the upcoming Presidential visit to be “historic”.

Indian people have to reject this initiative of the Indian government and the US government in its entirety and wage a struggle to reverse the defense and other regressive collaborations that have already been agreed to and implemented via social spending cutbacks, privatizations and outright handouts of collective wealth to private investors.

Through street actions and through resistance at all levels of government, people can derail the prospect of India joining the new security arrangement of the US. People can put the government on notice that its blueprint for hitching Indian market, Indian defense and Indian politics to the US is against their short-term and long term interests for independence, prosperity and security and people will fight against this blueprint and any government that embraces this blueprint until final victory. The upcoming Bush-Singh summit provides an opportune occasion to strengthen this movement.

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Workers' Action without Agenda and Leadership

/B.PAIN
News agencies report that members of CITU (trade union affiliated with the political party CPI(M)) and their families from all over Kerala laid siege to the administrative headquarters at the state, district and taluk levels on December 20, 2005 and shut down all government functions. Both in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital of Kerala, and in district headquarters, people formed a thick human chain before the start of the working day that lasted till late afternoon, preventing anyone going inside the offices. The protest was peaceful.

This mass action was to protest against anti-worker, anti-people policies of the current government. The call for the protest was given by the state CPI(M) leadership. News agencies report that the Leader of the Opposition in Kerala Assembly, Mr. V. S. Achuthanandan, "termed the day's action as a wake-up call to the working class to rise against the UDF and defeat it in the coming Assembly elections."

Like many other mass actions all over India, this mass action is a manifestation of the rising anger and activism of the workers against their deteriorating living and working conditions under the economic liberalization and privatization regime. However, the Kerala action is organized by the CPI(M) to improve its electoral ascendancy in the next assembly elections, due in six months. An objective movement of the workers is being consciously hijacked and channelized for narrow political gains by a party to come to power.

What would be the aim of any protest against "anti-worker anti-people policy" in India today? The CPI(M) wants people to believe that the aim should be to elect a "pro-worker pro-people" party to power. This is precisely the logic of parliamentary democracy where the ruling and opposition parties alternate places through elections to run the same economic and political superstructure but one being "anti-" and other as "pro-". The New Delhi government has changed hands between Congress, BJP and the United Front government five times since 1991, without ever abandoning the "anti-worker anti-people" economic policies or other policies even though all of them have presented themselves as for or against policies of the incumbent party. Experience suggests that the longer people are misled to believing that replacing the ruling party by the opposition party will solve their problems in today's India, the more acute will their problems get.

Can it be said that the content of the workers’ movement against the “anti-people anti-worker” policies is to fight for an alternate brand of liberalization-privatization program? Far from it. In the very least, the aim of the workers' movement has to be a complete REPUDIATION of the "anti-people anti-worker" policies, and not just this or that version of the liberalization-privatization program. Similarly, a roll-back to pre-1991 days is a non-starter, because the space for the liberalization-privatization was created in the first place because of the failure of the "socialistic pattern of society" and the "social-welfare state".

What was needed in 1991 in India was to stop the big business houses from monopolizing the surplus wealth being generated in the private and public sectors through a complex licensing and quota raj. Instead the privatization and liberalization program launched in 1991 enhanced the profitability of big business houses of India even further. All political parties funded by different business interests in India signed on to the 1991 policy very quickly. Since then they have been falling over each other to convince the business houses that they can run the economy and politics better than their competitors if supported to come to power through elections. CPI(M) seems to have totally accepted this approach to coming to power by using communist label to secure votes from the workers and the oppressed just as BJP and Congress who employ hindutva and secular labels respectively to line up votes from the depoliticized urban and rural vote banks.

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People of Orissa Make a Political Statement

/M.ALOK
Government and commercial activities throughout Orissa were brought to a halt by a state-wide hartal for twelve hours on Jan 7, 2006 to protest the killing of 12 of people by the police during a political action in Kalinga Nagar a few days earlier. Some 30 million people responded to the call of the Kalinga Nagar Surakshya Samiti (Defense Committee) to stage the shutdown, staying away from commercial and government activity, shutting down factories and shops, paralyzing rail and road transportation and closing down schools and colleges.

Tribal residents of the Kalinga Nagar area had organized political actions to protest the acquisition of their land by authorities without due compensation. The state government, instead of first settling the land acquisition question, permitted Tata Steel to proceed with construction work under police escort to erect a plant. Police fired on a large gathering of men, women and children when the demonstrators refused to move out from the disputed land to make way for bulldozers.

Organizations all over the state, far and near from the Kalinga Nagar killing site, mobilized people in large numbers to press for justice and call for a political settlement of grievances without the use of force. According to news paper accounts,

At Kalinga Nagar, the centre of attention, the tribal agitators took out a rally from Madhuban, where mass cremation of the 12 victims was conducted, till Duburi. A cycle rally was also taken out to the cremation ground. The Express Highway, as usual, was deserted. Three protestors were injured in a clash in Sukinda during the bandh. Police deployment was massive at Kalinga Nagar even as thousands of tribals were transported into the region. More than 32 platoon police were pressed into service.

The shutdown was thus a political response of the entire people of Orissa condemning the state authorities for settling political questions by force. The reaction of the political parties of Orissa state was most pathetic. The ruling party and its leader Mr. Naveen Pattnaik – the Chief Minister of Orissa - “thanked the people for their peaceful protest”, willfully ignoring the fact that the police force under his command was the one that committed violence and was standing ready for more violence in defense of his government’s policy to use force to settle a civil conflict on land ownership and compensation question.

The leader of the opposition Mr. Janaki Pattanik, an ex-Chief Minister of Orissa, characterized the protest as a reflection of the “growing demand of the people for the government to quit”, reflecting his partisan opportunism to return to power by hijacking the protest of the people against the use of force by authorities that he is a part of. These responses and the responses of other smaller legislative parties were in line with their common desire to transform the street demonstrations to serve their narrow parliamentary maneuvering for power.

The mass action in Orissa was a spontaneous manifestation of unity in action for common political aims. The fountainhead of that political action was the consciousness that the killing of 12 members of the Oriya polity was an attack on the entire polity of Orissa. It also reflected the realization that people could not rely on the political parties to provide solutions to the compensation issue and deliver justice without direct political intervention through street action. The partisan response of the political parties in fact pointed to the fact that people have to prepare for more such mass action in defense of their rights.

People’s forces must draw the conclusion that unity in action is the need of the time and with proper organization, spontaneous struggles can give way to an organized movement for conscious political aims.

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