It took me a few minutes to figure out how this works (via Tamizhan).

But why?
Where is the synergy?

Shanti has dug out this link which talks of US Aid to Afghanistan. Total US aid given: $840 million.
This puts things in perspective:
American officials like to point to their spending in Afghanistan: $840m since October 2001, with plans to spend at a similar rate this year. That might sound like a lot, but it is little more than Iran, an impoverished country, has promised to its neighbour. In one astonishing oversight, the Bush administration failed to request funds for humanitarian aid and reconstruction in Afghanistan in the latest budget, prompting Congress to step in and allocate $300m on February 13th.(Economist)

Given that the Americans are almost completely responsible for letting Afghanistan slide into the Taliban rule, I’d have expected them to spend a little more on the “nation-building” they say they aren’t interested in.

The case against Iraq is simple.
Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. The Kuwaiti Government and other Arab countries called for American help. The US being a private citizen, was not obliged to help, but once it decided to help, as a responsible private citizen its job required it to complete the task before getting out.

What does “completing the task” mean?

Gandhiji wanted us to separate a person’s evil from the person while punishing him. This makes no sense when dealing with individuals, but it makes a lot of sense when we are talking of countries.* The evil in case of Japan and Germany in WWII was their regimes. In case of Pakistan, it would be its army. In case of Iraq, it is Saddam Hussain. The humane course of action for the US to follow would have been to go in, remove Saddam Hussain, replace it by a decent regime, and get out.

Instead it chose to stop half-way through and impose sanctions on Iraq, in effect punishing Iraqis for the sins of their leader. They began a cat-and-mouse game with Saddam trying to get him to destroy his Weapons of Mass Destruction in exchange for removal of sanctions. Saddam did not co-operate. He surreptitiously continued his programme, evaded inspectors and made use of schisms within the Security Council to get away with it.

Quite clearly, the only way to stop him is to remove him from power.

What are the alternatives? Don’t fight and keep the inhumane sanctions? Remove the sanctions? Given that even a military defeat and the glare of inspections did not dissuade him from his attempts to get a nuclear warhead, is removal of sanctions an ?ption? And given that he has indulged in adventurism before, what are the chances that he will stay quiet once he does get a nuke?

This in a nutshell is the case for the war. I myself can think of many many objections to it, and I will be answering them in subsequent parts. But here are the first few ones.

“Sovereign Nation”
Yes, nations have a right to sovereignty, but a criminal loses his rights once he violates the rights of others.

“Preemption”
Preemption is not as outlandish a doctrine as it seems. Even in civilised society, there are preventive crimes (such as drunk driving ), actions that are illegal not because some harm has been done, but because performing them would be really irresponsible and risky. In an anarchy, pre-emptive action is justified, simply because there is no policeman to investigate suspicious behaviour.

(*Sorry about this gratuitous abuse of Gandhiji’s words to actually justify violence, but I am only following the tradition of the past 55 years)

The Economist has always been a China sceptic. An article on China. Makes some interesting points.

No one even attempted the question I asked a week back. The answer, and I should really have given this on February 14th, is Edwina Mountbatten, writing to Jawaharlal Nehru.
On the same note, here is a belated Valentine’s Day quiz from the Economist.

Um.. no Filtercoffee, I don’t agree with this bandying about of the word “racist” with gay (oops) abandon.

Humour, taste and sacrilege are culture-specific. We Indians make ethnic jokes at each other. We stereotype Surds as dumb, South Indians as dark-skinned, Bengalis as loudmouths, lazy bums and over-intellectualisers.

I think such jokes are okay.

Every culture holds some things sacred. I disagree with Gandhiji on most counts, but I still wouldn’t pass over the sort of jokes about him that were made by Maxim magazine recently. They were being insensitve not evil. For them, Gandhiji was just another pacifist to make fun of. They weren’t sensitive to the fact that Gandhiji was an icon to Indians.

Similarly, racist jokes are not intrinsically offensive . They cause offence in the US only because it has a painful history of slavery and later racial discrimination. But I don’t see why we should misuse American sensitivity to charges of racism and load them with guilt for making ethnic jokes that would be completely acceptable in India.

If you are feeling down today, here are some posters… to depress you further.
And here are some Valentine’s day cards

In this post, I will lay the groundwork to build the rest of my argument on. Since I will be judging US’ actions, this groundwork will form the basis to do so.

As our former president famously said, the world might be a global village, but the US cannot claim to be its headman.

I agree. But then long back I talked of a basic inconsistency. Those who point out that the US is not the headman are also those who are loudest in pointing out cases where the US does not act like the headman. If the US is not the global headman, surely it no longer makes sense to accuse it of showing double standards on terrorism? Surely you cannot claim that the US did not bother about terrorism when it was hurting India and is only concerned when it hurts Americans?

Surely you cannot accuse it of showing “double standards” in its dealings with Iraq vis-a-vis North Korea? To accuse it of “double standards” implies that the US is obliged to follow the standard of impartiality in its dealings with various countries. Iraq and North Korea are not subjects of the US. There is no golden rule which says that because the US is going to attack Iraq, it must attack North Korea for the same offence, because, – I am repeating this – the US is not the world’s policeman.

If the US is not the headman of the global village, it is a private citizen of the world. A private citizen acts in his own interests. He may act selfishly or he may act altruistically, but it makes no sense to accuse him of partiality in either case.

A surprising number of accusations against the US falls apart when you accept that it is a private citizen. You can no longer sneer that it is concerned about Arab c?untries and ignoring sub-Saharan Africa, only because the Arab countries have oil and not Africa. The response to that can only be “Of course!”.

Even a private citizen acting in self-interest has to follow some ethics, and I will be asking the question whether the US is acting ethically in later parts. But the basic point remains. The US is a private citizen, and I will be evaluating its actions on that basis.

The issue is complicated by the fact that the world is an anarchy, in the literal sense (An-archy i.e., no government). The UN is not the government of the world.

On the balance, I support the war on Iraq. Four months back I didn’t. Now I do. No I haven’t changed my mind.

I am ambivalent about whether it was a good idea to start the whole thing. The reason I was ambivalent was that I wasn’t sure whether the Americans have the will to complete the job required of them. But now that they have started, it would be disastrous to back off.

I haven’t yet explained why I think the war is justified. I have sniped at those who oppose the war, which is not quite the same thing as actually giving reasons why the war is justifed.

The first problem with giving a justification is that the answer crucially depends on the question being asked. “Is it morally right to depose Saddam Hussain?” will not necessarily give the same answer as “Is it a good idea to do so?”. Similarly the answer to “Is it good for India in the short term?” will be different from “Is it good for India in the long term?” Even if the answer to the previous two questions is “yes”, it still does not mean that the answer will be “yes” for “Should India actually support the war?”

The second problem is that the justification involves a rather detailed reasoning, which is difficult to do so in a blog format.

So I’ve decided to make a multi-part blogathon on the whole Iraq war question.
Watch out for Part II

Now Swaminathan Aiyar thinks that the Iraq war could induce an oil-led recession. This will happen if Saddam sets fire to Kuwaiti and Iraqi oilfields as he goes down.The scenario he is describing looks plausible.

So what do I think of this article in the Frontline, asks Ramnath.

I think the article is mostly a fair one.
The points it makes are:

1. Most IITians go abroad after graduation, wasting the money spent on them and generally defeating the purpose for which IITs were set up.
2. Most IITians, regardless of whether they are in India or abroad, don’t work in their field of specialisation.
3. IITs have not been able to “attract” women and SCs?and STs.

To which I can only say:

1. True, but that is not the IITs’ fault. They have done their job quite well. The rest of the Indian economy hasn’t bothered to pick them up.
2. True, but this would be inevitable even in a perfect world. Technologies change, demands of the economy change, old skills become irrelevant and new ones have to be learnt.
3. It is not the job of IITs to “attract” any one. Giving such social goals to IITs will make their other goals unattainable. Most of the 22.5% reserved category seats go unfilled in the IITs, because most of the SCs and STs could not make even the lowered cut-offs. If cut-offs were lowered even further, most people who joined would simply flunk out, or the profs would have to lower standards to such an extent that the reputation of the IITs would no longer have any meaning.

However, I do think that there is one change that the IITs should go through. The management and funding of the IITs should be gradually turned over to a consortium of Alumni and Industry. IITs should actively seek research projects, endowments and scholarships from them.

Yes, this will mean that they’d be effectively privatized, but there will be advantages. The government won’t have to spend tax-payers funds anymore. IITs will enjoy closer interaction with the industry. Industry will be involved in research, which means that there will be accountability without too much pressure.
( I’m not opposed to the profit motive as such, but I realise that research may not give results sufficiently quickly to justify Return-On-Investment analyses, or the results of the research may not be encashable ever. How to enforce accountability when there is no way to measure results in terms of cash is always a tricky problem)