By Sanjay Upadhya
Reports of China having opened direct contacts with Nepal’s Maoist rebels, and possibly having offered arms, have added to the uncertainty gripping Nepal’s peace process. It is difficult to view Maoist chairman Prachanda’s note to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, strongly protesting the letter sent by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, outside this emerging dynamic.
Neither Beijing nor the Maoists have shed light on the nature, substance or even veracity of the reported contacts. Yet any such development would not amount to a “dramatic reversal” of Chinese policy, as sections of the Nepalese and Indian media have suggested.
True, China has refused to consider the Nepalese rebels as Maoists, arguing that their violent actions have denigrated the name and image of the Great Helmsman. Chinese officials, unlike their Indian and American counterparts, have studiously refused to call the rebels terrorists.
Beijing, moreover, defied much of the world by refusing to criticize King Gyanendra’s Feb. 1 2005 takeover of full executive powers. Whether that stemmed from China’s traditional confidence in the Nepalese monarchy or from its desire to see the three domestic players find a solution without external meddling – or perhaps even a careful mixture of both – will continue to be debated. While pragmatism remains the pivot of Chinese foreign policy, its nuances provide important pointers.
If China has opted for realpolitik, with the Maoists having joined the political process, it must be seen in the context of Nepalese developments since King Gyanendra was forced to cede direct control. Indications of a chill in bilateral relations emerged amid reports that Prime Minister Koirala’s government had moved toward reopening the Office of the Dalai Lama in Nepal.
During his meeting in Geneva with Deputy Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing protested the proposed resettlement in the United States of 5,000 Tibetan refugees in Nepal on the basis of official Nepalese travel documents.
Oli, for his part, underscored the gravity of the situation by telling a House of Representatives panel that the Chinese government has taken these matters seriously. So seriously indeed that Beijing expressed its inability to provide duty-free access to Nepalese exports from July 1 as agreed during the royal regime. Chinese Vice-Minister Wu Daewi is due in Kathmandu this week to discuss these and a host of other issues.
Internal And International Dynamics
Beijing’s pragmatism on the Nepalese Maoists is logical also from the standpoint of internal and international dynamics China faces. The rise in public disturbances within China amid a growing urban-rural economic divide has goaded Beijing toward preventing bolder and coordinated demonstrations across villages and provinces.
In March, the National People’s Congress approved a five-year plan implementing measures to address China's growing wealth gap. These measures aim, among other things, to transfer wealth through various means from the booming coastal regions to the less-developed countryside.
A hard-line Maoist government in Nepal spewing tirades against the leadership in Beijing for having abandoned the basic tenets of Maoism could revive nostalgia among sections of the marginalized for the certitudes of Mao’s times. By themselves, the Nepalese Maoists may not represent a serious source of destabilization. However, Beijing is aware of the clandestine support foreign powers could extend to fan the flames of discontent.
If moderating the Nepalese Maoists made good domestic sense for Beijing, it also held promise as a prudent element of its increasingly assertive South Asia policy. Beijing could hardly have been oblivious to the reality that New Delhi’s stepped up its effort to build a broader opposition front between the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) and the Maoists in November last year after King Gyanendra played a major role in including China as an observer in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).
This shift in the geopolitical locus of SAARC as well as a solid display in December of China’s preponderance in the emerging East Asian community served to sensitize India. Indian media have begun covering China as a beat that contains elements of cooperation, competition and confrontation. Even in entrepreneurial Mumbai, paeans to the synergies between China’s computer hardware capabilities and India’s software prowess have ceded space to the geopolitical implications of Golmud-Lhasa railroad and the reopening of the Nathu-La trade route.
A shared interest between China and the communist front in India to prevent a firmer American foothold in Nepal may have influenced the political changes of April. If the aftermath failed to thrill the Chinese, they were not alone. The Maoists’ resentment of the SPA government’s reluctance to share the glory of triumph must have opened up the prospect for a new realignment. For those within the country and abroad tempted to conclude that the Maoist political leadership, neck-deep in the peace process, had reached the point of no-return, the rebels’ northern option must have come as a stunning revelation.
For China, political proximity with the Nepalese Maoists would fit into its wider global strategy. The post-9/11 warmth in Sino-American relations has given way to a more sobering analysis of each other’s motives and expectations. The U.S. Department of Defense's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) in February contained the fingerprints of neoconservative advocates of the containment of China.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry criticized Washington for attempting to play up a “non-existent Chinese military threat.” Chinese analysts, for their part, saw the QDR’s designation of their country as a “strategic threat,” along with the U.S. focus on enhancing its Pacific military assets and increasing its long-range strike capability, as clear preparations for a future conflict.
The contours of a containment strategy were also evident in the Bush administration’s reorganization of the State Department bureau responsible Central and South Asia. Of the 13 countries falling under the bureau, eight border China. Now the U.S. Congress appears set to vote in favor of the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, seeking to advance civilian nuclear cooperation despite New Delhi’s weapons program.
For the Maoists, the first group in Nepal to detect in our “ground realities” an imminent “encirclement” of China by its adversaries, bonhomie with Beijing always resided within the realm of possibility.
Monday, July 24, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Eyeball To Eyeball At Putin’s Party
By Sanjay Upadhya
July 13, 2006
In the run-up to the three-day Group of Eight (G8) summit he is hosting in his native St. Petersburg from July 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been sounding increasingly assured about his country’s place in one of the world’s most exclusive clubs.
Moscow has been invited to attend annual summits of the world’s industrialized democracies for some years now. But this is the first year the country has been accepted as a full member. Russia, moreover, was included in the organization without its having attained the economic or democratic development of the other members -- United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Germany, France and Italy.
Admittedly, this exception was made to promote the continuation of Russia’s free-market economic reforms and democratization. As the other G8 members in varying degrees bemoan Russia’s failure to keep its side of the bargain, Putin expects to exude his nation’s new-found confidence buttressed by, among other things, growing revenues from energy exports.
For US President George W. Bush, who famously looked Putin in the eye in Slovenia five years ago and concluded he could do business with the Russian leader, St. Petersburg will offer moments of reflection. The post-9/11 camaraderie between Washington and Moscow has been replaced by contours of a deepening adversarial relationship.
The turning point was Washington’s involvement in the color-coded revolutions in former Soviet republics like Ukraine and Georgia that put pro-western leaders in power. In response to America’s engagement in its ‘near abroad’, Moscow has assiduously built stronger military, political and economic relations with Iran, Syria, Venezuela and other regimes out of favor with Washington.
In February, Putin invited Hamas representatives to Moscow at a time when Washington was leading an international effort to isolate the newly elected leaders in the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, Moscow offered considerable financial aid to what the United States regards a terrorist organization.
In April, American efforts to impose United Nations-backed sanctions on Iran were blocked by Moscow’s support for Teheran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program. Lately, Putin has criticized the US and Japan for their hawkishness on the North Korean missile crisis, saying such a posture would worsen matters.
Russia has joined hands with China in an apparent initiative to resist American efforts to change regimes it dislikes. Moscow and Beijing have reinforced military and energy-trade relations in an effort to bolster their global leverage.
Putin has shaped the St. Petersburg agenda around energy, education, and the eradication of infectious diseases. European nations rely significantly on Russian natural gas supplies. Moscow, which exports oil around the world, recognizes competitively stable energy prices as the key to its long-term economic prosperity.
The other G8 members, too, have energy high on their minds – but in a less salutary sense. The Kremlin’s recent effort to tighten control over energy exports has raised concern in Europe. The Putin administration’s suspension of natural gas supplies to Ukraine several months ago – ostensibly for the former Soviet republic’s efforts to pull itself out of Moscow’s orbit -- left Europe with shortages. Europeans seeking assurances of reliable gas supplies from Russia confront a government setting most of the terms.
The G8 summit would provide Putin an opportunity to showcase the reality of Russia’s resurgence on his watch. When he took office in 2000, Russia was mired in chaos and corruption, where ultra-rich oligarchs were really in charge. The war in Chechnya was becoming increasingly brutal beyond the restive region. Moscow’s default and the ruble devaluation of 1998 left economic prospects uncertain.
Putin believes his firm hand in governance, not only high oil prices, is behind the rise in wages and living standards and Russia’s ability to make the last repayment of its foreign debt. The growth of a middle class in a nation struggling to break free from the Soviet-era worker-nomenklatura divide is as gripping a reality as the high approval ratings Putin has consistently enjoyed. Last week’s killing of Shamil Basayev, a Chechen rebel leader blamed for massive atrocities against civilians, handed Putin a major victory in his war on terror.
The other G8 members are more concerned about the political price Russians are being forced to pay for these successes. Although Russia is far from a return to Soviet-style repression, it is sliding back to a form of authoritarianism. Much of the political opposition to Putin has been bulldozed or bought off. The once-vibrant broadcast media have been forced off the air or taken over by Kremlin allies.
Putin has reversed much of the post-Soviet decentralization of political power by abolishing elected governorships in the provinces. Corruption may be less visible than under Boris Yeltsin, Putin’s ailing and bumbling predecessor, but it certainly has not been less pernicious.
Clearly, Putin expects to deflect criticism of his domestic and foreign policies by using the Iranian and North Korean crises to establish Russia’s credentials as a responsible international player. As he looks Putin in the eye this time, Bush might want to keep his gazed fixed a little longer.
July 13, 2006
In the run-up to the three-day Group of Eight (G8) summit he is hosting in his native St. Petersburg from July 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been sounding increasingly assured about his country’s place in one of the world’s most exclusive clubs.
Moscow has been invited to attend annual summits of the world’s industrialized democracies for some years now. But this is the first year the country has been accepted as a full member. Russia, moreover, was included in the organization without its having attained the economic or democratic development of the other members -- United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Germany, France and Italy.
Admittedly, this exception was made to promote the continuation of Russia’s free-market economic reforms and democratization. As the other G8 members in varying degrees bemoan Russia’s failure to keep its side of the bargain, Putin expects to exude his nation’s new-found confidence buttressed by, among other things, growing revenues from energy exports.
For US President George W. Bush, who famously looked Putin in the eye in Slovenia five years ago and concluded he could do business with the Russian leader, St. Petersburg will offer moments of reflection. The post-9/11 camaraderie between Washington and Moscow has been replaced by contours of a deepening adversarial relationship.
The turning point was Washington’s involvement in the color-coded revolutions in former Soviet republics like Ukraine and Georgia that put pro-western leaders in power. In response to America’s engagement in its ‘near abroad’, Moscow has assiduously built stronger military, political and economic relations with Iran, Syria, Venezuela and other regimes out of favor with Washington.
In February, Putin invited Hamas representatives to Moscow at a time when Washington was leading an international effort to isolate the newly elected leaders in the Palestinian Authority. Moreover, Moscow offered considerable financial aid to what the United States regards a terrorist organization.
In April, American efforts to impose United Nations-backed sanctions on Iran were blocked by Moscow’s support for Teheran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program. Lately, Putin has criticized the US and Japan for their hawkishness on the North Korean missile crisis, saying such a posture would worsen matters.
Russia has joined hands with China in an apparent initiative to resist American efforts to change regimes it dislikes. Moscow and Beijing have reinforced military and energy-trade relations in an effort to bolster their global leverage.
Putin has shaped the St. Petersburg agenda around energy, education, and the eradication of infectious diseases. European nations rely significantly on Russian natural gas supplies. Moscow, which exports oil around the world, recognizes competitively stable energy prices as the key to its long-term economic prosperity.
The other G8 members, too, have energy high on their minds – but in a less salutary sense. The Kremlin’s recent effort to tighten control over energy exports has raised concern in Europe. The Putin administration’s suspension of natural gas supplies to Ukraine several months ago – ostensibly for the former Soviet republic’s efforts to pull itself out of Moscow’s orbit -- left Europe with shortages. Europeans seeking assurances of reliable gas supplies from Russia confront a government setting most of the terms.
The G8 summit would provide Putin an opportunity to showcase the reality of Russia’s resurgence on his watch. When he took office in 2000, Russia was mired in chaos and corruption, where ultra-rich oligarchs were really in charge. The war in Chechnya was becoming increasingly brutal beyond the restive region. Moscow’s default and the ruble devaluation of 1998 left economic prospects uncertain.
Putin believes his firm hand in governance, not only high oil prices, is behind the rise in wages and living standards and Russia’s ability to make the last repayment of its foreign debt. The growth of a middle class in a nation struggling to break free from the Soviet-era worker-nomenklatura divide is as gripping a reality as the high approval ratings Putin has consistently enjoyed. Last week’s killing of Shamil Basayev, a Chechen rebel leader blamed for massive atrocities against civilians, handed Putin a major victory in his war on terror.
The other G8 members are more concerned about the political price Russians are being forced to pay for these successes. Although Russia is far from a return to Soviet-style repression, it is sliding back to a form of authoritarianism. Much of the political opposition to Putin has been bulldozed or bought off. The once-vibrant broadcast media have been forced off the air or taken over by Kremlin allies.
Putin has reversed much of the post-Soviet decentralization of political power by abolishing elected governorships in the provinces. Corruption may be less visible than under Boris Yeltsin, Putin’s ailing and bumbling predecessor, but it certainly has not been less pernicious.
Clearly, Putin expects to deflect criticism of his domestic and foreign policies by using the Iranian and North Korean crises to establish Russia’s credentials as a responsible international player. As he looks Putin in the eye this time, Bush might want to keep his gazed fixed a little longer.
Monday, July 10, 2006
Nepal: Perilous Koirala-Kerensky Parallels
By Sanjay Upadhya
July 10, 2006
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s visceral faith in the Maoists’ full commitment to a nebulous concept of “total democracy” amid a sustained pattern of rebel defiance has invited comparisons with Alexander Kerensky, Russia’s short-lived democratic president in 1917.
Maoist supremo Prachanda’s threat to launch an October Revolution if the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) failed to move in consonance with the rebels’ interpretation of the spirit of the April Uprising prompted American Ambassador James F. Moriarty to inject some sobering history into Nepal’s befuddled political discourse.
Has Koirala become Nepal’s Kerensky? The contrasts between the two men and their times could not be starker. Kerensky, at 36, was in the prime of his life when he embodied Russia’s democratic quest. His opposition to the absolute rule of the Romanovs blossomed during his university days in St. Petersburg. Kerensky, moreover, was an intellectual interested in all aspects of Russian history, culture and literature in addition to politics.
To be sure, Koirala’s plunge into politics at an early age came at the cost of academic life. But that tradeoff put him at the forefront of Nepal’s democracy movement. Koirala, moreover, did not have to work his way up the leadership hierarchy like Kerensky – at least in the context of his undisputed leadership of the SPA. And Koirala has been ready to ally himself with the palace on his terms.
In a country devastated by a decade-long insurgency with its heavy human and development costs, Kerensky’s Russia carries much relevance. The First World War, in which Russia had been involved in for three years, diverted massive amounts of manpower and caused serious food and fiber shortages. The Czarist regime was exposed to increasingly strident charges of gross mismanagement. Yet the collapse of the monarchy was as unexpected as that of the Soviet Union would be 74 years later.
Kerensky was a moderate socialist whose passionate, lifelong goal was to see a Western-style constitutional democracy in Russia. In his ardor to fight off his adversaries on the right, Kerensky simply refused to believe that the Bolsheviks could represent the greater threat.
Koirala, who started out as an implacable anticommunist and thrived on that record, is today bending over backwards to appease the Maoists. His own Nepali Congress is outraged by the government’s apparent capitulation to the rebels.
Dedicated to his country and to democratic principles, Kerensky was a courageous, energetic man with great oratorical skills. It was his willingness to assume command in a time of crisis that allowed Russians to enjoy their brief but unprecedented freedoms. The bitter political infighting that followed Czar Nicholas II’s fall may have allowed Kerensky to establish his indispensability. His lack of vision to tackle the root causes of popular discontent came in handy for the Bolsheviks.
Indeed, it would have required a miracle for Russia to become a vibrant democracy amid the mixture of a disastrous war, massive economic hardships and political factionalism. Yet the Bolsheviks’ triumph was not inevitable. Lenin and Trotsky plotted their course in the chaos conceived in Kerensky’s misplaced confidence. The reality that the world’s first experiment with a “worker state” occurred in a country that was 98 percent agrarian more than debunks the myth of communism’s inevitability.
The most ominous parallel between today’s Nepal and Kerensky’s Russia is that Koirala finds himself straddling between those who see the triumph of total democracy in the sidelining – and perhaps an eventual abolition -- of the monarchy and those demanding more radical social and economic restructuring.
Here Prachanda has taken the most insidious page from Lenin’s playbook. Through his fiery and often contradictory rhetoric, buttressed by an almost insatiable appetite for concessions from the state, Prachanda hopes to exert complete authority. By portraying the government’s failure to meet his impossible demands as a sign of utter ineptitude, the Maoist supremo seeks to evade responsibility. Clearly, the Maoists are banking on the same anarchy the Bolsheviks capitalized on.
In exile, Kerensky believed the Bolshevik regime would crumble imminently and contemplated his triumphant return to power. Koirala and his cohorts, at least, can rely on history to shed any such illusions.
July 10, 2006
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala’s visceral faith in the Maoists’ full commitment to a nebulous concept of “total democracy” amid a sustained pattern of rebel defiance has invited comparisons with Alexander Kerensky, Russia’s short-lived democratic president in 1917.
Maoist supremo Prachanda’s threat to launch an October Revolution if the Seven Party Alliance (SPA) failed to move in consonance with the rebels’ interpretation of the spirit of the April Uprising prompted American Ambassador James F. Moriarty to inject some sobering history into Nepal’s befuddled political discourse.
Has Koirala become Nepal’s Kerensky? The contrasts between the two men and their times could not be starker. Kerensky, at 36, was in the prime of his life when he embodied Russia’s democratic quest. His opposition to the absolute rule of the Romanovs blossomed during his university days in St. Petersburg. Kerensky, moreover, was an intellectual interested in all aspects of Russian history, culture and literature in addition to politics.
To be sure, Koirala’s plunge into politics at an early age came at the cost of academic life. But that tradeoff put him at the forefront of Nepal’s democracy movement. Koirala, moreover, did not have to work his way up the leadership hierarchy like Kerensky – at least in the context of his undisputed leadership of the SPA. And Koirala has been ready to ally himself with the palace on his terms.
In a country devastated by a decade-long insurgency with its heavy human and development costs, Kerensky’s Russia carries much relevance. The First World War, in which Russia had been involved in for three years, diverted massive amounts of manpower and caused serious food and fiber shortages. The Czarist regime was exposed to increasingly strident charges of gross mismanagement. Yet the collapse of the monarchy was as unexpected as that of the Soviet Union would be 74 years later.
Kerensky was a moderate socialist whose passionate, lifelong goal was to see a Western-style constitutional democracy in Russia. In his ardor to fight off his adversaries on the right, Kerensky simply refused to believe that the Bolsheviks could represent the greater threat.
Koirala, who started out as an implacable anticommunist and thrived on that record, is today bending over backwards to appease the Maoists. His own Nepali Congress is outraged by the government’s apparent capitulation to the rebels.
Dedicated to his country and to democratic principles, Kerensky was a courageous, energetic man with great oratorical skills. It was his willingness to assume command in a time of crisis that allowed Russians to enjoy their brief but unprecedented freedoms. The bitter political infighting that followed Czar Nicholas II’s fall may have allowed Kerensky to establish his indispensability. His lack of vision to tackle the root causes of popular discontent came in handy for the Bolsheviks.
Indeed, it would have required a miracle for Russia to become a vibrant democracy amid the mixture of a disastrous war, massive economic hardships and political factionalism. Yet the Bolsheviks’ triumph was not inevitable. Lenin and Trotsky plotted their course in the chaos conceived in Kerensky’s misplaced confidence. The reality that the world’s first experiment with a “worker state” occurred in a country that was 98 percent agrarian more than debunks the myth of communism’s inevitability.
The most ominous parallel between today’s Nepal and Kerensky’s Russia is that Koirala finds himself straddling between those who see the triumph of total democracy in the sidelining – and perhaps an eventual abolition -- of the monarchy and those demanding more radical social and economic restructuring.
Here Prachanda has taken the most insidious page from Lenin’s playbook. Through his fiery and often contradictory rhetoric, buttressed by an almost insatiable appetite for concessions from the state, Prachanda hopes to exert complete authority. By portraying the government’s failure to meet his impossible demands as a sign of utter ineptitude, the Maoist supremo seeks to evade responsibility. Clearly, the Maoists are banking on the same anarchy the Bolsheviks capitalized on.
In exile, Kerensky believed the Bolshevik regime would crumble imminently and contemplated his triumphant return to power. Koirala and his cohorts, at least, can rely on history to shed any such illusions.
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