The Indo-American relationship has been a subject of much discussion in the world. The Wall Street Journal on March 13th has written an article written by Sumit Ganguly acknowledges the low point in US-Indian relations, over exaggerates the importance of Putin’s sales call on Delhi, and warns the Obama Administration with an empty threat “If the United States doesn’t act quickly, much of the progress in U.S.-India relations over the past decade will be lost“. The Obama Administration for all its faults is pre-idocracy and has both the intelligence and foresight to know what is good for America.
Mr. Ganguly who lives and works in a nondescript institute in Singapore laments the fact that “Mr. Obama has spent far more time courting states like North Korea, China and Pakistan than he has India.” Neither Russia nor Portugal–nor any other has been power has the wherewithal to either challenge the US, nor the gumption to step into any breach anywhere. Prime Minister Putin is in Delhi for one purpose only–to get the Bharatis to pay up for equipment that Delhi has bought.
The US has evaluated the topography of international relations and chosen China over India. The US cannot afford to antagonize Beijing. This is a fact of life.
Condoleezza Rice’s loose talk of making India a superpower was not an edict of God–even though President Bush claimed to have direct discussions on foreign relations with the Holy Father.
Mr. Sumit accurately describes the foreign policy of Delhi when he narrates the history of the Cold war when Bharat deliberately allied itself with the Evil Empire for five decades. This was not an accident of history–this was well thought out policy to deny the US ascendance over the USSR. Bharat (aka India) voted against the US in the UN, denied it access to monitor Russia moves and forced America to find bases in Pakistan and Diego Garcia. Most importantly, Bharat supported the Russian occupation of Afghanistan and did everything in its power to destabilize Pakistan.
Evan A. Feignbaum has recently published an article about the need to have a strong and robust Indo-US relationship. He is a Senior Fellow for Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. Feignbaum served during the George W. Bush administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Central Asia.
Mr. Feignbaum uses forecasts made by Goldman Sachs to showcase the agenda of building a robust relationship between India and America.
This is the same firm that could not even predict its own bankruptcy and demise. Goldman woud not have been able to survive had it not been a timely bailout from the US Treasury. Glodman Sachs (GS) is based on 200 Wall Street the heart of the incompetence, and corruption that brought down the entire western system of finance. GS was unable to see the malaise the filth next door on Wall Street. In October 2008 GS received $10 billion preferred stock investment from the U.S. Treasury–as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). It is poignant to note that According to a 2009 Brand Asset Valuator survey taken of 17,000 people nationwide, the firm did not not have a positive reputation among investors–which forced the firm to become a regular bank. In September 23, 2008 Goldman Sacks had to sell $10 Billion of its stock to Berkshire Hathaway.
Can the predictions of Goldman Sachs be trusted? Should US policy be based on the Sachs vision, or will US policy based on the false notions bring profit to Americans?
Goldman Sachs has been trying to build up the profile of Delhi–to rake in profits. GS is a failed company–and has lost all credibility. It goes a bit beyond the failure of GS.
Goldman Sachs (GS) by Matt Taibii’s in his article, The Great American Bubble Machine, (July 9-23, 2009 in Rolling Stone) http://www.zerohedge.com/node/943. Taibii’s thesis is that in pursuit of its own profit, Goldman Sachs was involved in six major bubbles to the detriment of the nation. The six bubbles Taibii lists are:
- The Great Depression
- Tech Stocks
- The Housing Craze
- $4 A Gallon gasoline
- Rigging the Bailout, and
- Global Warming
Mr. Feignbaum hyperbole is typical of the Wall Street mindset which creates these bubbles:
The future of the U.S.-Indian relationship will depend on whether India chooses to align with the United States and whether it sustains its own economic and social changes — and on what policies Washington pursues in those areas that bear heavily on Indian interests.
Until the late 1990s, the United States often ignored India, treating it as a regional power in South Asia with little global weight. India’s weak and protected economy gave it little influence in global markets, and its nonaligned foreign policy caused periodic tension with Washington. When the United States did concentrate on India, it too often fixated on India’s military rivalry with Pakistan.
Mr. Feignbaum underestimated the propensity of the Bharatis to shoot themselves in the foot by being on the wrong side of history–time and again.
- Putin rebuffs Delhi: We need to support Pakistan’s anti-terror efforts
- Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan working in tandem
While eulogising Bharat, Mr. Feignbaum fails to comprehend the profound depth of penury in a country which houses most of the world poor and where 75% of the population lives below $2 per day. Sitting in America Mr. Feignbaum perhaps cannot see that Maoists who control 40% of the landmass of Bharat. Mr. Feignbaum also does not know about the plight of 450 million Dalits and Untouchables. He therefore purposefully narrates the Bollywood version of Bharat.
- Green Flag over mountain cauldron
- India’s budegetary priorities: A recepe for self-destruction
- Why was Karzai sent to Islamabad?
Today, however, India is dynamic and transforming. Starting in 1991, leaders in New Delhi — including Manmohan Singh, then India’s finance minister and now its prime minister — pursued policies of economic liberalization that opened the country to foreign investment and yielded rapid growth. India is now an important economic power, on track (according to Goldman Sachs and others) to become a top-five global economy by 2030. It is a player in global economic decisions as part of both the G-20 and the G-8 + 5 (the G-8 plus the five leading emerging economies) and may ultimately attain a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. India’s trajectory has diverged sharply from that of Pakistan.
Bharat has grown at the rate of 3% per annum for the best pasrt of the century (last decade not withstanding). Bharat rose the bubble–all boats rise with a rising tide. There is no guarantee that Bharat can maintain the growth rate of the past decade. Mr. Feignbaum is right, Bharat has always supported the enemies of America. It sided with the USSR, not for a day or a month, but for six decades–and today continues its relationship with Russia. Can Delhi be trusted?
- India cannot count on Karzai as before
- What India did not get in Saudi Arabia
- Solution to Afghanistan
- Afghanistan is plagued by 40% unemployment
This is what Kanwal Sibal says in the Hindustan Times.
Western overtures to the Taliban constitute a significant diplomatic success for Pakistan. Its grit in resisting US pressure to act against the Afghan Taliban has been rewarded. With US Central Command Chief, General David Petraeus, now averse to Pakistan stirring up any more ‘hornets nests’ in the border areas, a self-confident Pakistani Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani is offering to mediate between the US-Nato and the Taliban. His only condition being that Pakistan’s need for a soft strategic depth in Afghanistan is recognised as an insurance against the Indian threat and limits are put on India’s presence in Afghanistan. Kayani’s stature in Pakistan has risen and Pakistan’s attitude towards India has hardened, as was evident during the recent foreign secretary-level talks in New Delhi last week.
India would need to rethink its options in Afghanistan. We cannot count on President Karzai as before. Our local popularity is a fragile base for retaining our long-term influence, unless we can affect power equations within the country. Anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan need stronger backing by Russia, the Central Asian countries, Iran and India. The US is disregarding India’s long-term strategic interests in the region; it is yielding to Pakistan’s disruptive ambitions in Afghanistan.
There is a hurricane of multimedia commentary on the failure of Bharati diplomacy in Afghanistan. Not only was Bharat excluded from the tripartite conference on Afghanistan in Tehran, Delhi was not invited on the regional conference in Istanbul, and sidelined (Times of India called it “given a 2nd row seat) in London.
Mr. Feignbaum however continues to spell out his own agenda.
With economic growth, India acquired the capacity to act on issues of primary strategic and economic concern to the United States. The United States, in turn, has developed a growing stake in continued Indian reform and success — especially as they contribute to global growth, promote market-based economic policies, help secure the global commons, and maintain a mutually favorable balance of power in Asia. For its part, New Delhi seeks a United States that will help facilitate India’s rise as a major power.
After the destruction of the USSR, cornered and isolated, Delhi pursued a policy of false appeasement towards the US. It then tried to drive a wedge between the US and China and tried to build itself as China’s rival. The Obama Administration is not interested in making enemies with China. After all Beijing is the new banker–thanks to the GS scandals.
Two successive Indian governments have pursued a strategic partnership with the United States that would have been unthinkable in the era of the Cold War and nonalignment. This turnaround in relations culminated in 2008, when the two countries signed a civil nuclear agreement. That deal helped end India’s nuclear isolation by permitting the conduct of civil nuclear trade with New Delhi, even though India is not a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Important as the agreement was, however, the U.S.-Indian relationship remains constrained. For example, although U.S. officials hold standing dialogues about nearly every region of the world with their counterparts from Beijing, Brussels, and Tokyo, no such arrangements exist with New Delhi.
Let us scrutinize GS a bit more and look Tablisi’s list. According to Taibii:
Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap…with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selIing themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They’ve been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s-and now they’re preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet. (Pg. 54)
How can this happen in a democracy? He argues that “…organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.” (pg. 53) Taibii alleges that the government is penetrated-&-gamed by Goldman:
“…Paulson elected to let Lehman Brothers – one of Goldman’s last real competitors – collapse without intervention…The very next day, Paulson greenlighted a massive, $85 billion bailout of AIG, which promptly turned around and repaid $13 billion it owed to Goldman…Immediately after the AIG bailout, Paulson…put a heretofore unknown 35-year-old Goldman banker named Neel Kashkari in charge of administering the [TARP] funds.” (pg. 98-99)
The average person and the nation suffer…because as Taibii states:
“And here’s the real punch line. After playing an intimate role in four historic bubble catastrophes, after helping $5 trillion in wealth disappear from the NASDAQ, after pawning off thousands of toxic mortgages on pensioners and cities, after helping to drive the price of gas up to $4 a gallon…after securing tens of billions of taxpayer dollars through a series of bailouts overseen by its former CEO, what did Goldman Sachs give back to the people of the United States in 2008? Fourteen million dollars. That is what the firm paid in taxes in 2008…The bank paid out $10 billion in compensation and benefits that same year…Thanks to our completely fucked corporate tax system, companies like Goldman can ship their revenues offshore and defer taxes on those revenues indefinitely, even while they claim deductions upfront on the same untaxed income.” (pg. 100)
Before Delhi begins sprinting, it needs to walk. Before it can walk, it needs to have the ability to crawl. Before Bharat sets its goals on Superpower status, it needs to become a regional power. In order to become a regional power, it has to extirpate penury on its shores and earn the respect of its neighbors. Bharat has neither the friendship, nor the admiration of any of its neighbors. Enemies run near and abroad. The Bharati mentality has even made Australians leery of Indians. The temple indoctrination has to be replaced with modern education–and Pornywood is not the reality of Slumdog Hindustan–Earth, Wind, and Fire is.
India’s limited choices. It is companies like GS that have been building the resume of Delhi and pushing companies to outsource their business operations to Bharat. The GS type of predictions are not worth the paper they are written on. Bharat’s deep cavities, its internal chaos, its communal strife, its horrid productivity and its communal schisms are huge impediments to its growth. India should reinvent itself
Themes: “Goldman Sachs”, Scandal, ponzi, “Matt Taibii”, Stanford, Madoff,trading Stocks: GS
