- Nepal Army Criticized
- Iraq War: Twenty Years Later
- Sino-Russian Relations
Nepal Army Under Attack by Vested Interests
The Chief of the Army Staff (CoAS) of the Nepal Army (NA) General Prabhu Ram Sharma has expressed deep displeasure over suggestions by academics and so-called security experts that there is a need to “right-size” [i.e. down-size] the national security force (my Republica, March 24).
Addressing the Gandaki provincial conference of the NA ex-servicemen in Pokhara last week, CoAS Gen. Sharma also vented his ire against the misinformation being spread about the role, responsibility and size of the national army through various mainstream media and social media platforms.
Gen. Sharma’s indignation is understandable, given Nepal’s current delicate situation domestically and externally.
Before attacking the Army, the erstwhile critics should have studied its history and its extraordinary role in nation-building. After all, its establishment pre-dates the founding of the modern state of Nepal – with the extension of the Gorkha conquest to the Valley of Nepal, in which the restricted name “Nepal’ was extended to the entire conquered territory.
There is also an urgent need for the would be critics to brush-up on their analysis of what is actually going on in our country.
Before rushing in with their ‘learned’ analysis, the academics, armchair experts and self-proclaimed security pundits should also carefully weigh Nepal’s national security options in a world in turmoil and its delicate and exposed position between the two Asian behemoths, and also the two superpowers.
Thus, the validity of the adage: ‘Fools rush in, where angels fear to tread’!
After carefully weighing in the domestic parameters and the external environment, the government in close collaboration with the Army specialists determines the optimal size of the Army. After all, the Ministry of Defence and the National Security Council are not exactly twiddling their thumbs.
Gen. Sharma also righteously pointed to the outstanding contribution of the NA to the country’s economy and welfare work, particularly the physical infrastructure.
The NA has also been active in the health and education sectors — areas where the country has been languishing. It is moving forward to make a more meaningful contribution to the nation’s progress.
The virulent critics have also not been mindful of short- and long-term needs of the NA. The Army, after all, has to be ever watchful about possible natural and man-made disasters and be able to respond rapidly. If not enough personnel are available, these critics will be the first to point the finger at the NA!
Then there is the critical area which the fault-finding and judgemental analysts completely ignore. In the field of UN Peace-Keeping Operations, the NA has carved out an unique niche and is one of the largest contributers to date.
The NA has been particularly careful, sensitive and judicious in the distribution of funds from the accumulated and cumulative NA wefare fund [which certain politicians, bureaucrats and their ‘expert’ underlings would like to get their hands on].
What Gen. Sharma left unsaid was that the NA remains the single Nepali institution of honour, stability and integrity in an utterly corrupt quagmire that defines Nepali politics and administration today.
Iraq
Bush’s Culpability
Former US President George W. Bush – under who’s watch the second Iraq War was launched — has argued that history will render its own verdict on the Iraq war and that it may take generations.
Twenty years later, US veterans are reflecting on their service.
Iraqis are reflecting about how their country has changed and how it has not.
Former President Bush has no interest in being part of the debate anymore and does not engage in judgement in hindsight.
However, the following questions are still relevant:
- Was it worth going to war in Iraq?
- Does Bush regret his actions?
- What would he have done differently?
- How will history remember the whole episode?
(NYT, March 24).
Bush appears to believe that his decision to invade Iraq was correct.
However, he understands that the war went wrong.
In his memoir: “Decision Points”, he acknowledged two mistakes:
- The false intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD);
- The failure to respond more decisively when security began to deteriorate.
But Bush does not revisit the underlying decision or dwell on his responsibility.
However, critics of the war are still unforgiving. They argue that time has hardly erased the stain of the decision he made.
“He and his administration did not simply make a good-faith error in believing faulty intelligence but distorted the case to sell a war they were predisposed to wage” (NYT)
[It was a war of choice, not of necessity].
The Princeton scholar Gary J. Bass [ author of the revelatory and compelling: “The Blood Telegram. India’s Secret War in East Pakistan,” 2013] is scathing: “Bush will never wash the blood off his hands.”
Bush’s war did succeed in toppling Saddam Hussein, by all accounts one of the world’s most brutal dictators.
However, it started off a virulent insurgency and relentless sectarian civil war.
The Iraq war ultimately claimed the lives of 4,600 American troops and 3,6500 contractors, at least 45,000 members of the Iraqi military and police, at least 35,000 insurgents and an estimated 200,000 civilians.
The scars of the war remain deep and painful even after 20 years.
Iraq today is much freer today and a fledgling democracy. But it remains haunted by the indiscriminate devastation and under the notorious influence of neighbouring clerical Iran.
Sino-Russian Unequal Relations
Historical Opening Up of Modern China
After the ravages of the Mao era, in 1978 China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping set in motion two major policy shifts that would change China and the world order in the decades to come (Li Yuan/NYT, March 25-26).
First, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) declared that the country’s focus would now turn away from political struggle to economic development.
Second, within a matter of days, the United States and China established diplomatic relations.
These two remarkable events ended China’s secluded orientation in which one billion people lived in extreme poverty and started its unique journey to becoming a super-power a few decades later.
Deng guided both the domestic reorientation and the external opening up which went hand in hand.
As Deng declared succinctly: “China cannot develop in isolation from the world.”
However, China’s current paramount leader, Xi Jinping has thrown Deng’s dictum overboard.
He has reversed many of the progressive policies that propelled China’s rise domestically and internally.
Xi has also aligned the country more closely to Russia – now an international pariah in much of the world, and with it risking isolation.
Hu Wei, a scholar of politics in Shanghai, was openly critical of China’s position on Putin’s unprovoked war against Ukraine. His article was censored.
Other liberal-minded Chinese analysts privately concede that China’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion have made alliance building by the U.S. much easier and their own lives more difficult.
China is facing headwinds in both exports and foreign direct investment.
Chinese tech companies are also facing significant scrutiny.
Feng Yujun, a professor and leading Russia expert at Fudan
economically and politically, for its close relations with Russia (NYT).
Feng appeals to a more realistic and balanced approach in the triangular relationship.
“We not only need to maintain a long-term friendly cooperative relationship with Russia but also need to maintain a constructive partnership with the United States, because our relationship with the U.S. will determine China’s overall international environment in the future.”
Xi has in fact reversed the path laid out by Deng.
He has also turned China’s erstwhile cooperative diplomats into confrontational warriors on the international stage. The People’s Republic had the tradition of polished diplomacy starting with Zhou En-lai.
Hu, the scholar, also pointed out that it was not true that the United States had always tried to contain China.
Regarding the question as to who was responsible for US-China relations getting embittered, his answer was categorical: “I don’t think the responsibility lies with the U.S.”
He also underlined that China could not expect help from the U.S. if relations are no longer friendly: “Isn’t it foolish to help make your competitor stronger?”
Hu stressed that foreign policy decisions should be based on whether they help China achieve modernization and improve people’s lives, not whether a leader likes a certain foreign country and its leader or not.
He concluded wisely: “What is the most tragic is to witness a nation that does not remember its past mistakes.”
He was actually writing about Russia, but he was obliquely also referring to China!
Putin’s War Against Ukraine
Putin: Russia Will Station Tactical Nukes in Belarus
Facing severe conventional reversals in the Donbas and economic headwinds at home, Putin thinks he has upped the ante with his latest irrational step.
He announced a plan last Saturday to station tactical nuclear weapons in neighbouring Belarus, a sinister warning to the West as it steps up military support for Ukraine (AP/Associated Press, March 26).
Tactical nuclear weapons are intended for use on the battlefield and have a short-range and a low yield compared with much more powerful nuclear warheads fitted to long-range missiles.
Putin argued that by deploying its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russia was following the lead of the United States noting that the U.S. has nuclear weapons based in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey.
“We are doing what they have been doing for decades, stationing them in certain allied countries, preparing the launch platforms and training their crews,” Putin said (AP).
Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine had Soviet nuclear weapons stationed on their territory but handed them back to Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Ukraine Reacts
Ukraine’s government has called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to ‘counter the Kremlin’s nuclear blackmail’.
[Since Russia is a permanent member of the UNSC with veto power, this initiative will not go anywhere].
Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said that Russia ‘took Belarus as a nuclear hostage’ (AP, March 26).
Furthermore, Putin’s announcement was “a step towards internal destabilization” of Belarus that maximized “the level of negative perception and public rejection” of Russia and Putin in Belarusian society, Danilov added.
Belarus shares borders with three NATO members – Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. To the east lies Russia, and to the south Ukraine.
Russia used Belarusian terriyory as a staging ground to send troops into neighbouring Ukraine last year.
Russian Constraints on Arms Delivery to India
India has started to bitterly complain that:
- Russia has not fulfilled its weapons delivery contract.
- The Ukraine war meant Russia was unable to fulfil its obligations.
- Russia has long been a major arms exporter, but is now struggling to supply its own army in Ukraine.
(Business Insider, March 25)
Russia has long been India’s largest arms supplier, with the latest report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) saying that Russia supplies around 45 % percent of its weapons and military equipment.
India is now in a terrible quandary as to how to project a credible deterrence in its northern border confrontation with China, but also how to engage with its main adversary [ now no longer Pakistan ] with its strategic presence in the Indian Ocean.
India has practically been left defenceless – a result of PM Narendra Modi’s misguided domestic and foreign policies.
Unnecessary Western Concerns
Many military analysts – including General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO – are of the opinion that right from the moment the first bullets were fired in Putin’s Ukraine war, Western support for Kyiv has unnecessarily been constrained by needless concerns about the impact it might have on Russia (The Telegraph, March 24).
Rather than doing everything in their power to ensure a Ukrainian victory, there has been a marked reluctance in Western capitals to provide the necessary equipment the Ukrainian army needs to achieve supremacy on the battlefield.
From tanks to warplanes, long-range missiles to replenishing basic ammunition stocks, Western countries have all-too-often found lazy excuses for not acting resolutely.
At the end of last year, when Ukrainian forces were on the cusp of achieving a major breakthrough, Kyiv was even warned not to be over-ambitious in its war aims, especially in terms of its ultimate objective of liberating Crimea from brutal Russian occupation.
In fact, according to Gen. Clark, Crimea is key to bringing Putin to his knees!
By launching his unprovoked invasion last year, Vladimir Putin deliberately challenged the international system established at the end of the Second World War, which upholds the territorial integrity and sovereignty of individual nation-states.
Putin and Russia are directly challenging the basic principles of International Law and the tenets of The United Nations, of which Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council.
It has carried out aggression against a fellow UN-member [in fact a founding member].
In addition, Putin and his ultra-nationalist acolytes have committed war crimes on an unprecedented scale, a fact now recognized by the independent International Criminal Court (ICC) which recently issued an arrest warrant for the Russian president.
Due to the irrational equivocation of Kyiv’s Western supporters, Ukraine is being held back from a resounding victory.
Many foreign policy pundits agree that if – God forbid – Putin somehow prevails, this will be a great encouragement to other hostile and aggrandizing powers – China, Iran and North Korea.
Most countries of the Global South are now openly questioning whether they are witnessing the collapse of Western hegemony and whether the West has the appetite or strength to protect its own interests.
It is time that the West recognized that a defeated and demoralized Russia would help to reassert the rules-based world order.
If Russia could rebuild itself after experiencing the trauma of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, and the implosion of the Soviet Union, it can definitely do so after suffering defeat in Ukraine.
With the right leadership, it could be a rejuvenation and like the phoenix rise from the ashes!
The writer can be reached at: shashipbmalla@hotmail.com
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