A new year and, already, a lot to show for it.
Polaris is back after a lengthy hiatus, reeling from an overflowing e-mail inbox and plenty of news in what has proved a busy off-season. To make up for lost time, a few short takes on certain developments in the interim.
Discussing the End State
This end-of-year report in the Washington Post by Karin Brulliard and Karen DeYoung shows the continuing frustrations Washington is having with the Pakistan Army and its chief, General Ashfaq Kayani. Part of the problem, in their reading, relates to time frames. “Kayani wants to talk about the end state in South Asia,” Brulliard and DeYoung quote an unnamed U.S. official as saying, while U.S. generals “want to talk about the next drone attacks.” But isn’t an appropriate end state exactly what the United States should be after? And it should help if that is what the general wants too. After all, it is only once both end states are compared that the massive gulf in means and objectives between Washington and Rawalpindi becomes apparent.
Nuclear Bazaar…or is it a Silk Route?
There has been a lot of welcome commentary on Pakistan as a source of proliferation to China, possibly with the United States’ tacit acquiescence. K. Subrahmanyam’s piece on the subject is here. The United States’ knowledge of A.Q. Khan’s activities and unwillingness to stop it has been documented, as has Pakistani proliferation to China, with Simon Henderson writing two years ago in the Times:
[A.Q. Khan's] team was … the recipient of a gift from China of a design for an atomic bomb and enough highly enriched uranium for two devices, after Beijing decided to back Khan to jump-start Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. I remember being told about China’s nuclear generosity by an outraged British official in the 1980s. I later asked what Beijing had received in return. It was an enrichment plant. The plant is at Hanzhong in central China. C-130 Hercules transports of the Pakistan air force made more than 100 flights to China carrying centrifuge equipment. Beijing needed the plant, not for bombs but to fuel its nuclear power plants. Centrifuge technology is good for both levels of enrichment, hence the current concern that Iran’s nascent plant at Natanz has a military purpose. China could not make the Pakistan-supplied centrifuges work properly, so replaced them with Russian centrifuges. What happened to the Pakistani centrifuges? A good question. They were not returned to Pakistan.
China’s Long Military March
As U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates visits China several developments in China’s military modernisation have increased in salience. First, much has been made of the DF-21 anti-ship ballistic missile, or “carrier buster” as it is sometimes referred to in the popular press. Second, China has confirmed the flight testing of its J-20 stealth fighter, much sooner than U.S. intelligence had predicted. On at least the first score, some of the hysteria may be overhyped. The U.S.S. George Washington – the aircraft carrier deployed in the Pacific – travels at over 30 knots, and covers a relatively small space, which makes it easier to defend against incoming ballistic missiles, particularly in the terminal/reentry phase. As such, in the long-run, China’s development of stealth fighters may, in fact, be the more worrisome for regional security and stability. As a frame of reference, India, for its part, is here, which is pretty pitiful given the fact that it has been subject to far less stringent military technological restrictions than China.
On a Lighter Note…
Having just returned from India, I found that the dominant policy debate raging in New Delhi was not between realism and idealism, between liberalisation and autarchy, or even on whether Binayak Sen committed a crime or not. It’s between Munni and Sheila. No surprise, as much is at stake. Best practices (“Shilpa sa phigar, Bebo si adaa”) or exceptionalism (“My name is Sheila…main tere haath na aani.”)? Demands (“Paisa, gaadi mehnga, ghar. I need a man who can give me all that.”) or deliverables (“Cinema Hall hui…tere liye.”)? Market access (“Kaise anaari se paala pada…bina rupaiye aake khada“) or building brand value (“I know you want it, but you never gonna get it. Tere haath kabhi na aani.”) Clearly—as our friends at the Economist would say—India is at a crossroads.
