WhirledView

Secretary Kerry. . . . Please Fix It . . . Now

2013-06-17T01:00:00-06:00

By Patricia H. Kushlis

How many more embarrassing reports revealing the underside of the State Department need to leak to the media before the new Secretary does something about cleaning up the administrative swamp into which this once venerable institution has sunk.

Among the most recent: Tales of an unidentified Ambassador cavorting with prostitutes and minors in an unnamed city park in an unspecified capital but still allowed to stay on the job. Reports of the former Secretary’s own security detail frequently habituating prostitutes on trips abroad. Unnamed higher ups accused of squelching the results of internal investigations of suspected wrong doing – pretending that the findings did not exist. The dubious distinction of being the department with the longest vacant independently appointed Inspector General, a position responsible to both Congress and the Secretary and created years ago to introduce a modicum of independent accountability into the activities of the bureaucracy.

Then there’s State’s Human Resources Bureau which has been routinely assigned to investigate itself in response to a grievance or a law suit. Reconstituted promotion panel results announced before the panels meet and worse. Promotion panels corrupted by departmental leadership playing favorites with what should be – but are not – outcomes arrived at through independent panels composed of professionals that include in their deliberations a “watchdog” member from outside.

Even rumors of money floating from one account to another at the dead of night popping up and disappearing like prairie dogs on the desert floor. A highly visible investigation of an Ambassador’s untimely death that scapegoated underlings – even one assigned unrelated responsibilities – charging them with dereliction of duty – while silently whitewashing those at higher levels who should have been held accountable – but were not.

State’s caste system: Brahmins versus everyone else - doesn’t work

An all-but caste system of Brahmins who stay on until death-do-them-part – while most other members of the very selective foreign service are forced out in their early fifties because, somehow, they didn’t make the cut into the senior ranks where jobs are made even scarcer because of the endemic sclerosis at the top. In the 1990s this situation was so bad it was called a “stealth riff” but the problem remains. It did not disappear after government downsizing had been reversed following the Bill Clinton years.

A department more politicized by the day regardless of party in the White House as a way to reward the faithful thereby making a travesty of once proud and competent career services. These services date back to the good government movement of the 1920s established to end corrupt political appointees and introduce professional competency. The goal: to improve quality of government services for American citizens. Yet today we have a bureaucracy in which political appointees and overpaid contractors and subcontractors proliferate because short term financial considerations, Congress and lobbyists win out over qualifications, professionalism and loyalty.

Diplomacy not troops has been the norm

I was reminded recently by a former colleague that the US normally has conducted its foreign relations through the practice of diplomacy. In contrast, the US military only took the lead in extraordinary circumstances when the nation was under real physical threat. Bush 43^rd badly distorted that balance in response to 9/11. The money flowed into an ever expanding defense establishment because he and his cohorts convinced the American populace that supporting “our troops” and invading two other countries far from home were the only ways to combat a tiny but invasive terrorist network punching well above its weight.

Over a decade later, as the wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan wind down and the troops are withdrawn from those distant lands, the next phase of US foreign policy should be to rebalance the equation back in favor of civilian leadership.

But will this happen? And as importantly, will the State Department – which was and should be the lead foreign affairs agency - be able to handle the tasks assigned? How can this be seriously contemplated with a department in such disarray with a pea-sized vision of tending its own image at home?

Over the years, the US military has conducted an extraordinarily successful public affairs campaign on its own behalf throughout the US from recruiters in shopping malls to defense contractors, bases and jobs in every state to routine briefings for major media and bloggers, multiple offices on Capitol Hill, VIP junkets for members of Congress as well as funding for think tanks, conferences, public and expert advisory commissions and individual researchers.

And State?

In contrast the State Department has done next to nothing. True it retains its traditional five day a week noon press briefing for a small number of accredited journalists, the assignment of a few officers tasked with recruiting minorities for possible Foreign Service careers to universities, one office on each side of the Hill to represent State’s interests to Congress, a few excursion assignments of individual mid-level officers to Congressional offices, a limited number of people-to-people exchange programs which tend to profit foreigners more than Americans and briefing, wining, dining and logistical support for members of Congress visiting overseas.

The tired excuses for doing less with less are budget and personnel constraints and Smith-Mundt, a post-World War II law that prohibits the executive branch from “proselytizing” or propagandizing the American public and that was enacted thanks largely to the Associated Press which, at the time, feared US government encroachment into its then fledgling international news business. Smith-Mundt, however, didn’t stop America’s defense establishment from turning its tattered post-Vietnam image into one in which the troops and its’ actions are venerated – seemingly regardless of their personal behavior or performance in the field.

State will never begin to approximate the sheer manpower of the DOD nor should it. Person for person a diplomat costs far more than most single soldiers. Nevertheless, the skills needed to conduct successful diplomacy do not come cheaply: managing the nation’s foreign policy requires intelligence, cultural, political and interpersonal smarts, writing, rhetorical and negotiating skills, management and technological expertise, as well as a high level of foreign language proficiency.

To help right its house domestically, State desperately needs both cheerleaders and quiet supporters in the provinces - not just a few retirees and lobbyists peddling their wares inside the Beltway as is the case now. Furthermore, the department needs to stop tearing itself apart. And instead of rocking from scandal to scandal, it needs to refrain from making itself a laughing-stock at home and abroad.

The tasks to right the situation require a Secretary who will resolve the myriad of serious internal management problems that now exist as well as mandate the development and implementation of an effective domestic public relations game plan. This means an innovative long term public affairs strategy designed to engage, educate and convince the American people of the importance of diplomacy to their general welfare as the first line of defense just as successful public diplomacy engaged, educated and influenced foreigners abroad about the US and its foreign policy goals throughout the Cold War.

It also means staying home more days to tend to the weeds that are now as high as an elephant’s eye and not to strive to match Condi or Hillary’s voluminous frequent flyer accounts or number of days on the road.

Time is short, Mr. Secretary. The clock is ticking and the ball’s in your court.

See also: The Troubled State of State, WhirledView various posts 2008-2013.

Delhi's Marvelous Metro and What's Missing

2013-06-14T05:00:00-06:00

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Delhi was still the smallish, palimpsest city the British handed over to independent India when I first lived here. I fell in love with the whole of it: the convoluted lanes of old Delhi; the impressive remnants of earlier civilizations; the garden-like beauty of the area now called Lutyen’s Delhi for the architect who designed an add-on to replace Calcutta as capital of the Raj; the Jumna River, lovely at dawn, but even then blackened by sewage; the purple-blossomed jacaranda trees at the height of the hot season; the intoxicating coolness of the first rains of monsoon. I read history. I studied Hindi. I bicycled everywhere.

Things Change

Coming back, again and again, over the years, I saw Delhi change, old bungalows razed, skyscrapers shooting up, residential colonies proliferating, slums ditto, especially on the other side of the river, traffic clogging the roads and spewing plumes of exhaust that mixed with cook fire soot to create a smog that made breathing suicidal. Seeing Delhi evolve, I saw mostly loss and mourned. Like most people who fall in love, I’d wanted nothing to change. I drifted through Delhi like a maiden in a Moghul miniature yearning for an unretrievable lover.

But cities are like people. The richly experienced don’t want to be sixteen again. As for cities, without change they stagnate or die. At best, they become quaint tourist traps. A city that’s confident and full of vitality, however, can preserve a generous taste of history while building boldly for the future. This, by and large, is what Delhi is doing, I think, and the ever-expanding Metro system makes the contemporary version work, despite the everlasting nuisance of the construction process.

Metro Makes a Difference

The river’s still a disgrace. Slums continue to grow. Too much farmland has sprouted satellite towns with soaring buildings or sprawling residential colonies for the moderately or outrageously better off. The sky seldom yields the least hint of blue, but the worst has been reversed: the air is much cleaner, which is good for everyone’s health. Buses run on natural gas. Cars, trucks and auto rickshaws no longer spew inky exhaust. And the declaredly green Metro system keeps tens of thousands of vehicles off the streets. I did a quick count of the motorcycles and cars parked at one line’s terminus: nearly a thousand two-wheelers and about eighty sedans. In fact, something like eighteen Metro stations are served by parking lots where space fills as soon as it empties. Metro may be scorned by the upper classes and it’s irrelevant to the poorest of the poor, but it’s a great boon to the exploding, upwardly mobile lower-middle and middle-middle classes presumed to be transforming India.

My Metro Plan

Visiting Delhi this time, I hoped to let my time-eroded city-of-the-past go. If I couldn’t warmly embrace the new one, I might at least depart with sympathy for Delhi’s latest avatar. Metro, burrowing underground at the center, surfacing at the periphery, would serve as my updated Garuda. My plan was this: at the end of each of the many-colored lines ̶ red, blue, yellow, violet, etc., I’d disembark and survey the outer edges of the city; zipping along underground, I’d play sociologist, learning what I could of and from my fellow passengers. And there’d be this advantage, too: it’s the height of the hot season (over 43 C. equals over 110 F.) and Metro is delightfully cool.

What’s instantly clear is how Metro knits this vast urbanization (some 20 million and growing) into a single city. (Well, sort of, as I note in concluding.) Meanwhile, most everything’s accessible quickly and quite affordably, especially for commuting workers or students with a monthly pass. And after you’ve climbed a hundred steps or ridden the occasional escalator (elevators always available) to the superheated surface, you’ll find an armada of auto rickshaws to take you the last mile. You might find some old fashioned taxis, too, but one of the huge changes in Delhi is the shrinkage in the fleet of yellow-roofed Ambassadors trolling the streets for passengers. The taxi driver who transported me and my luggage from airport to hotel was bitter. Metro’s destroying his business, he grumbled. Often, these past few days, I’ve wished I could avert incipient heat exhaustion and reduce general sweatiness by hailing a taxi and asking the cabbie to turn on the AC. There’s another lost pleasure for those with rupees enough for real taxis. By cab you can feast your eyes on the vistas and tree-lined streets of New Delhi. You may also get caught in the all-day gridlock of Old Delhi.

Old and New Juxtoposed

But emerging into the sunlight via Metro provides some amazing collage-like moments. My favorite so far was the vision of an elegant red sandstone tower thrusting up through the greenery shortly after we’d surfaced on the yellow line heading to the mushrooming city of Gurgaon. It was the 236 foot tall Qtub Minar, dating to the 13^th century, when a Muslim ruler caused it to be built of stone pillaged from a much earlier Hindu temple, some of which also survives. Different, but equally dramatic: the 108 foot polychrome of the monkey god Hanuman that looms over the Karol Bagh station.

Talk about the palimpsest process! In Delhi the past is always poking through. Via surviving buildings and ruins. Via design motifs. Via music and all else that goes into culture. Compare the busy composition of ancient reliefs showing dancers and drummers with the frantic choreography of Hindi film, for example. Only the most obtuse observer concludes that the past is dead in this city. And beyond the tangibles of history stand the great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, supposedly sited hereabouts, whose themes continue to capture the popular imagination.

The Technical Details

So the Japanese picked a winner in the 1990s, when they underwrote a $6.2 billion project with a 60% loan. Statistics for phases I and II, now complete, are as follows: trackage of 128 kilometers; 35 underground stations, one the second deepest in the world; 142 stations in all; fleet of 280 trains, each carrying 2290 passengers, 240 seated, but often packing in hundreds more, or so my own crushed-in experience suggests; train frequency about every five-six minutes; wonderfully clear signage. Technologically, the Delhi Metro planners borrowed globally to build a “world class,” earthquake-proof facility that currently serves 2.2 million riders daily and makes a profit, which means the loan is being repaid.

Up-to-dateness means a lot of things. You can recharge your cell phone while a Metro train is underway ̶ if you aren’t talking or texting, as so many people do, flabby-waisted matrons with bulging handbags on their laps as well as school boys weighed down by book-filled backpacks. During one trip I found myself near a little family, the wife seated, the man standing over her, ear buds implanted, listening to music, I suppose. A toddler shuttled between them, whining. Daddy picked up the child, planted one bud in his child’s ear and presto! a smile of delight and little hands beating time to the music. Contemporary fatherhood on Metro.

Security Matters

There are other signs of the times, too. This is a dangerous world, and entering the very busy Rajiv Chawk station I passed by a guard balancing his machine gun on a low wall of sand bags. In addition, at every station my carry-ons were xrayed while I was wanded by a female officer in khaki. Re security, Metro also offers this protection from more conventional threats: no high speed capsules to be trapped in. Cars connect all but seamlessly. A single corridor runs continuously from train’s head to train’s tail.

Metro trains and stations are reputed to be wholly safe for women travelling alone. (The same can’t be said for all exit neighborhoods late at night. Delhi dailies highlight the horror stories.) What’s more, although women may and do ride in any car, a whole car on every train is for women only. Normally I distance myself from gender segregation, but ladies’ cars (with boarding points designated by ̶ ugh! ̶ pink signs) tend to be less cram-jammed. Bye-bye principles. Hello comfort.

Still, brutal as the crush in the rest of the train may get, young or even middle-aged men are usually quick to cede a seat to pregnant women and or to frail old men. Once, for that matter, a very chivalrous, very ancient gentleman rose to give his seat to this younger, but far from girlish strap-hanger. No way could I accept his seat, but his gallantry shamed a paunchy young man into getting to his feet. That seat I happily occupied.

Other, more innovative points of etiquette have evolved on Metro. For instance, it may seem that no seats are available, but a row of seated women will scootch together to make room for a couple of female standees. What does this tell you about women’s instinct to make the world a better place for everyone?

Gorgeous Girls

Meanwhile, what’s the younger generation coming to, fashion-wise, according to my Metro survey? Pierced noses are out: no diamonds flashing above a nostril. Bindhis on the forehead are out, too. No red dots. No sparkly pasties. And tight jeans are in for the college crowd. Tops run the gamut from tees to smocks, none of which need to cover the arms or tush anymore, though cleavage is clearly not in. School girls are more likely to wear the traditional salwar-kamiz. But their tunics don’t billow. They skim the body, and baggy trousers have been replaced by Nehru-style churidars or tights. And not black tights either. Red tights. Neon pink tights. Cyan and emerald green tights. The influence of Bollywood, perhaps? As for the long scarves/dopattas that used to be worn with a kamiz, forget it. Hair-covering and breast-draping are out, except for the occasional village woman on some errand in the city for which she's likely to have dolled herself up in a sequined sari no city girl would be caught dead in. In so far as the village belle is entering an alien world, the glitter might be seen as battle dress. Good for her.

During all these miles I’ve covered on Metro, I’ve encountered only one woman in an old fashioned black burqa, but even she was not fully conforming. For safety’s sake, or to see the world around her, she’d thrown up the face flap. And then there was the slender girl wearing jeans and a nicely shaped shirt, a combination which (to my Western eyes) looked great on her beautiful body, although she'd also looped a scruffy scarf incongruously around her neck. The purpose of the scarf emerged as she left the train. She swirled it rapidly over head and hair so only her eyes were visible. Would the neighborhood mullahs be satisfied? Not likely.

No Peacocks

Male attire on Metro is pretty boring: jeans for the young, creased trousers for the rest, usually paired with a drip-dry shirt, the uniform of the not-so-affluent white collar worker in the summer. Each trip I'd see a few men who looked to be skilled workers in rumpled, well worn pants and faded shirts or jersies, and once a group of three farmers climbed aboard at an outlying station. Dressed in dhoties instead of trousers, long kurtas and towel-like head-wraps, they spoke in the loud, nasal voices characteristic of the country side. Did they leave their oxen in the parking lot when they boarded Metro?

What's Missing

I’m not being snide here. I’ve reached the crux of the matter. Metro is very impressive technologically. It’s obviously very popular, too, with office workers, with tradition-scorning students and solid-looking middle-class women. But here’s my question: although Metro is theoretically accessible to people in poorer colonies and/or slums on either side of the river and even to some fairly rural areas, most riders seem to be doing all right economically. Maybe the poor and those doing low- or no-skilled work consider themselves well-served by buses and commuter trains. But wouldn't they also flock to speedy, air-conditioned metro, if the fare were more affordable? On the other hand, fare-lowering and class-mixing (especially during crush hours) might not please the current clientele and would surely hurt the apparently in-the-black bottom line.

Mass transit is a necessity in a megacity world. But how to do it right? Indian railroads were built on a not-exactly-dead class system, as airline fares prove. Pay more. Travel very comfortably. Pay less and be grateful to get where you need to go. Metro appears to be democratic. Everyone pays the same. But some people are being left out.

Which means my long romanticized Delhi of the past and today’s Delhi aren’t so different. Much to appreciate. Much to mull over.

Tsarnaev, Congress and the FSB - Unanswered Questions Remain Unanswered

2013-06-07T01:00:00-06:00

By Patricia H Kushlis

The April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombing was made to order television drama operating in nearly Aristotelian time from the beginning through the bizarre car chase, shoot out and round-up of the one suspect still alive. The script was almost all too 24/7 media friendly. Perhaps because of this alone, conspiracy theorists abound. So do a myriad of unanswered questions as well as the display of peculiar naivety displayed by several members of Congress who embarked on a recent “fact-finding mission” to the Russian Federation where the highlight of their visit was apparently a high level briefing at Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters (otherwise known as the KGB). This according to The New York Times.

Moscow is normally at its best in late May and early June unless one has an allergy to cottonwood pollen. Then it is not. But presumably our intrepid Congressional delegation either didn’t have such allergies or avoided them by spending the time in the city on the Moscow River encased in air conditioned office buildings, cars (likely from the Embassy motor pool) and luxury hotel rooms also paid for at US taxpayer expense.

Nevertheless, besides a press conference at the US Embassy – as well as perhaps some disappointment – and maybe unexpressed relief because their planned trip to the North Caucasus to have been improbably arranged by action film star Steve Seagal was cancelled at the last minute for unspecified “logistical reasons” – there is no indication that this trip of Republicans and Democrats accomplished much of anything. That is from the American standpoint.

Their FSB briefing reminds me a bit of the story of Catherine the Great viewing a proverbial Potemkin Village in the 18^th century. She saw what she wanted to see. The unidentified FSB briefer filled in no unknown blanks about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s whereabouts, his activities in Russia, the circumstances under which he had left the country or the reasons for his return to the United States before collecting a new passport – purportedly his reason for visiting Russia in the first place. But the members of Congress seemed so thrilled to have had this briefing in and of itself that they seemingly failed to probe deeper.

Question of Competency or Cover Up?

On the one hand, the continued sketchiness of the information makes me question the competency of the FSB in these post-Cold War days unless, of course, on the other hand, it is, er um, hiding something. If the latter’s the case, the meeting with this group of incredibly gullible Congressional representatives was well used for Putin’s own propagandistic purposes. That’s certainly how I read through the nearly cellophane lines of Dale Herszenhorn’s New York Times report of the Congressional press conference at the American Embassy thereafter.

The Cold War Is Over – Long Live the Cold War

When I worked in Moscow a decade before the Cold War’s end – then at the American Embassy in Helsinki as the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War really did end - it was hard to distinguish between what was uniquely Soviet and what was actually Russian. The old saying “scratch a Russian, find a Tatar” has credence, but I also think that much of what was characterized as Soviet at that time was, in reality, Russian under a different name. After all, the Soviet Union was – with a few exceptions like Stalin who hailed from Georgia – ruled by Slavs and in particular Russians.

The Soviets – like their Russian ancestors - were terrific at creating ruses and engaging in subterfuge. Such devices surely fooled many short term tourists. But for anyone who lived there the reality was a different story. The Soviets didn’t even try to hide it. So when I read that Congressman Dana Rohrabacher claimed that Vladimir Putin has been “unfairly maligned in the US” because some Americans still maintained a Cold War mentality that “prevents a level of cooperation that is justified” my hat’s off to the Russian propaganda machine – or possibly even the Russian disinformation machine depending on what was actually transmitted.

The fact of the matter is that the crude exposure and public expulsion on May 13 by the Russians of Ryan Foyle, a CIA operative under US Embassy cover, whose beat was the North Caucasus suggests to me that U.S. intelligence was perhaps dissatisfied with the FSB’s information on Tsarnaev and had begun to probe beyond the official Russian government story, a tale so full of holes and memory lapses it would have immediately sunk to the bottom if it were a ship.

One has to wonder whether the visiting Congressional delegation raised the expulsion issue with the Putin Government. Doesn’t sound like they even delicately asked this question because it would have only gotten in the way of their era-of-good-feelings-at-any-cost message.

Then there’s the tragic Magnitsky affair. Ironically, it was the US Congress itself that initiated and then enacted sanctions (ultimately barring all of 18 Russian officials from travel to the US and prohibiting them from using the US banking system). These individuals – including high level Interior Ministry officials were said to be responsible for whistleblower, lawyer and accountant Sergei Magnitsky’s apparent torture and certainly unwarranted and tragic death in prison in 2009. The Magnitsky Act signed by President Obama in December 2012 – even though it repealed Jackson-Vanik (which the Russians – at the time of its passage the Soviets - had hated from day one). The Putin government should have thanked Congress and the administration for the law’s albeit belated repeal rather than throwing an adolescent temper tantrum because 18 Russian officials were barred from the US (that number could have been much larger) which is what happened.

To date, the Russians have never come clean on Magnitsky’s arrest or treatment thereafter – his trial was a tragic farce, the kind caricatured in the 1930s Bulgakov novel The Master and Margarita in which the devil comes to Moscow and whose storyline and characters every educated Russian likely knows by heart.

Putin’s response to the Magnitsky Act? To ban Russian children from adoption by Americans. But just who loses most in this strange game of tit-for-tat? And then to play a childish and badly done spy games – a blond wig, ancient spy equipment, and a contract to sign – whose kidding whom - in which they also publicly named the US Station Chief at the US Embassy and continue to be less than forthcoming about the information they have on Tsarnaev. This is enough to make one wonder whether they’re looking for an era of good feelings or not.

Hopefully, the Obama administration has had enough experience in dealing with the Russians that it will represent American interests far better than these gullible members of Congress did.

Note to China from India: As Ye Sow....

2013-06-03T05:00:00-06:00

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The Chinese dragon is frothing at the mouth, according to Delhi dailies. Because Japan is not respecting the cozy monopolistic relationship that China’s been trying to cultivate with India, Shinzo Abe and his government are “petty burglars,” according to official Chinese sources. The despicable, party-crashing Japanese are trying to steal a friend away, as if India, prime player of diplomatic games long centuries before Machiavelli began musing about princes, hasn’t known all along that Pakistan is also a friend of China. And one with much sexier (read: military/strategic) benefits at that. Chinese thinking goes something like this: if Pakistan can serve as a drag on Indian resources and attention, Delhi will find it harder to compete with China in the superpower steeplechase.

The Indian PM Visits Tokyo

So who’s fooling whom? Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went to Tokyo to meet his Japanese counterpart a week ago. He and Abe got along just fine on the personal level ̶̶ as they always have, evidently. Substantively, the encounter was even more successful. The two agreed to facilitate a package of increased economic assistance and accelerated private investment that will come with intriguing military and strategic aspects as well. If deeds follow words, these commitments have the potential to change the balance of power in Asia.

All of a sudden, China looks less irresistible. As the Hindustan Times puts it, “China does not fear its neighbours individually. But it is concerned about them ganging up. Abe seems to want to use Japan’s capacities to enhance Indian power and make it a genuine geopolitical balance to the Middle Kingdom. A close Indo-Japanese relationship would also bring the US into the picture, a trilateral equation that has Beijing gnashing its teeth.”

China on the Move

China will surely do all it can to counteract India’s interesting little coup, which is not complicated by bad memories of Japanese occupation during World War II. On the contrary, Japan supported the ragtag Indian National Army under Subash Chandra Bose, who hoped to use the war to pry India from Britain’s colonial grip. So here’s the worst case scenario from China’s point of view: strengthened ties between India and Japan will doom the long-standing (and intensifying) Chinese strategy of divide-and-conquer in dealing with land border disputes and with South China Sea issues involving rocky islets that may be attached to oil-bearing strata. On the other hand, should China remain unimpeded,long-standing U.S. access to important waters might be curtailed.

Water World

It’s no secret that China has been building deep water ports in poor countries to the East and West of India: Pakistan. Sri Lanka. Myanmar. Good for trade. Good for China’s expanding blue sea navy. Now, according to the Hindustan Times, Japan is preparing to re-militarize and India is a perfect partner. The two countries have already begun bilateral naval exercises, and under the new protocols India would be the first country to import military equipment from postwar Japan: a nifty little amphibious airplane good for reconnaissance and rescues at sea. Finally, the two countries have agreed on interpretations of the Law of the Sea which are not at all to China’s liking.

No Bilaterals, Please

In the past, when members of ASEAN have proposed multilateral arrangements with China, Beijing has spurned the idea in favor of massively unequal bilateral relationships with the pygmies in its supposed sphere of influence. However, if India and Japan stand strong and in agreement at either end of the ring of less powerful neighbors, the countries in between may find it easier to resist China’s more outrageous hegemonic demands. Myanmar has already moved closer to the U.S., and not-so-small Indonesia may find some backbone, instead of reverting to the days when the rulers of Java and Sumatra paid tribute to Chinese emperors.

The Three Beneficials

According to a Hindustan Times editorial on May 30th, the gains from placing the Delhi-Tokyo partnership “on a special pedestal” just now are threefold:

(1) Japan, “still the third largest economy and one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world,” is willing and able to invest in India “on a scale matched by almost no other country.” This includes a $90 billion infrastructure deal for the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor. In return for this and other benefits, the super-bureaucratic, highly protective Indian state will make it easier for Japanese companies to do business in India.

(2) “Japan Inc. is on the hunt for a new overseas home for its factories and plants” as a result of higher Chinese labor costs and a growing tide of anti-Japanese sentiment, much whipped up for political purposes by the Chinese government itself. India’s gain? Jobs. Exports. Capital flows. Some of the companies looking to move investment and productive capacity from China to India? Toyota. Sony. Toshiba. Hitachi. Honda.

(3) Japan and India share “a common concern about the increasingly erratic and unpredictable international behavior of China.” To my mind the editorialist’s choice of words here is odd. For “erratic and unpredictable,” I’d substitute “relentlessly expansive.” China regularly lays claim to chunks of border territory that have been governed from New Delhi for half a century. For instance, while Japan has been sparring with China over the Senkaku Islands, India has been faced with the Red Army’s 18 mile penetration into mountainous Ladakh. In the end, China withdrew, but one can’t help wondering how they could have been allowed to penetrate so far.

Border Issues and the Tibet Card

Whether the intruder is Pakistan or China, India seems to be pretty sloppy about border guarding. A short winter war was required to throw the Pakistanis out of Cargil in Ladakh a little over ten years ago, and who knows what it might have taken to get the Chinese out ̶ major strategic concessions? an exchange of fire? ̶ if a visit from the new Chinese premier hadn’t already been announced.

An interesting conjecture in The Week for June 2^nd suggests that India might have played one of two cards ̶ or both. (1) India could have canceled the visit, a humiliating prospect for such an important visitor. (2) India may have told the Chinese that it wouldn’t be possible to prevent India-resident Tibetan militants from staging potentially violent protests during the high level visit. This, too, would have caused public humiliation. In addition, the visuals would have been delicious fodder for gleeful global news telecasters. Even China’s powerful censorship apparatus would have found find it difficult to keep reports from reaching and enheartening the restive Tibetan population within China.

In the end, the visit took place. All was peaceful, diplomatic platitudes were uttered, and no agreements or disagreements that could be publicized came of it.

Bellicose Press Reactions

More interesting by far than the ritualized official statements were the news analyses and op-ed pieces the visit called forth. A number of them suggested that India’s military position vis-à-vis China is stronger than mainstream international news outlets normally presume. For example, The Week’s R. Prasannan wrote on May 31^st: “I am convinced that militarily the Chinese fear us as we fear them. They fear our BrahMos cruise missiles, the world’s fastest stationed in Ladakh. They fear our superior Sukhoi-30KI squadrons parked in Tezpur and Bareilly, which are a bomb’s throw away from Lhasa and Beijing…[But] China unsettles us, [too]. We fear their mountain trains will bring troops and tanks to Tibet to invade us [and] their barrages will block the Brahmaputra” rendering Manmohan Singh’s home state of Assam “high and dry.” Another writer noted how easy it would be to bomb those tracks and trains with or without troops aboard.

And finally here’s what G. Parthasarathy wrote in India Today: “China knows that India is today facing an economic downturn and a slowdown in its military modernization. It evidently believes its intrusion can be used to coerce India into agreeing to freeze its troop levels on the border. Chinese assertiveness requires that India should review the entire range of its policies on China. It should expeditiously enhance and modernize its military capabilities and improve lines of communications along it borders. This will have to be reinforced by imaginative diplomacy, especially in relations with the US, Japan, Vietnam and its ASEAN partners.”

The Mild PM Minces No Words

As Manmohan Singh (who's notorious for his almost infuriatingly mild manner) said to Shinzo Abe during his visit to Tokyo, “Our defense and security dialogue, military exercises and defense technology collaboration should grow.”

Maybe it’s time for China to rethink its doubly offensive, aggressive and expansionist foreign policy. The blowback, I suspect, has only begun. Imagine this: India and Pakistan deciding that their permanent state of war is more beneficial to China than to the petulant siblings of South Asia. Would Pakistan’s army allow a normalization of relations to happen this time around?

Novel Suggestion: A Qualified Nominee for America’s Next Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy?

2013-05-25T18:48:40-06:00

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Will persistence pay off or does hope just spring eternal? The former would be nice.

On May 24, 2013, 51 former US Ambassadors and senior US government officials with extensive overseas and Washington experience in foreign affairs wrote to Secretary John Kerry (copying NSC Advisor Tom Donilon) urging the new Secretary to appoint a career foreign affairs professional as the next Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. This position is being vacated by Tara Sonenshine, Hillary Clinton’s final political appointment to the office. Sonenshine lasted less than a year.

The letter signers are right.

The position has been a revolving door since its creation in 1999 in the wake of the destruction of the US Information Agency which left a gaping hole in America’s ability to interact systematically and effectively with foreign publics abroad - a vacuum that the new soft power mandate for the State Department has miserably failed to fill.

As the letter points out, the position has been vacant more than 30% of the time since its inception according to the US Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. It was never occupied longer than the two years George W. Bush’s high profile and controversial appointee Karen Hughes held it soon after 9/11.

None of its occupants have been career officers. All but one was unfamiliar with the ways of the department or really knew how the US government conducts business abroad. In contrast, State's Under Secretary for Political Affairs has never been left without a director for more than 5% of the time and its occupants have been drawn from among the ranks of the highest career officers in the department.

State Department Cultural and Structural Impediments

What the signatories don’t point out, however, is that there are both structural and cultural reasons why the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs position has usually been filled with less than the best – and even these people haven’t stuck around long enough to make a difference if they could have.

Namely, the position has little power – the Under Secretary has neither budgetary nor personnel control beyond a front office that has expanded exponentially since its inception and oversight of three functional bureaus (Education and Cultural Affairs, International Information Programs and Public Affairs) lodged under the Under Secretary.

Power in the State Department concentrates in the geographic and management bureaus: these are the places where money is allocated and all important personnel decisions made.

The dichotomy

Yet public diplomacy’s rubber hits the road overseas –through public diplomacy professional staff working out of Embassies, Missions, Consulates, and Centers. The Under Secretary has no say over overseas public diplomacy appointments (except for certain specialists like reference specialists), staffing or even the qualifications or experience required for assignment as a public diplomacy officer abroad.

In reality, State has allowed public diplomacy to wither on the vine both as a career track and a skills set. No Condi – “we all don’t do public diplomacy now” – most State Department officers never did, never have and never should. They provide other kinds of needed expertise.

The sad truth is that the State Department has never understood nor valued what public diplomacy can offer US foreign policy.

State’s culture is that of secrecy, stove-piped information and rigid hierarchy: traditional diplomacy occurs behind closed doors, with surreptitious handshakes, negotiated treaties, barrages of demarches to foreign ministries, and “no dis” cables. Whereas, public diplomacy is about openness: about sharing information with foreign publics. It is grounded in the view that transparency helps provide the foundation for mutual understanding between peoples of different cultures and upon which traditional diplomacy can more easily operate.

The more successful Ambassadors – including several who signed the letter to Kerry - understand this. They know how to use public diplomacy staff and resources well – if and when they have experienced public diplomacy officers on staff with the resources to draw upon. Because of the Department’s continued mishandling of public diplomacy, such officers are becoming the foreign affairs equivalent of the long extinct dodo bird.

Missing: a Department-wide public diplomacy strategy

A yet to be finalized and publicly available (read-parts-yet-to-be-redacted-to-protect-the-guiltiest-before-release) 2013 inspection of the International Information Programs bureau begins - I understand - with the damming observation that “the lack of a Department-wide public diplomacy strategy tying resources to priorities directly affects IIP’s work. Fundamental questions remain unresolved.. . . Absent a Department-wide strategy, IIP decisions and priorities can be ad hoc, arbitrary, and lack a frame of reference to evaluate the bureau’s effectiveness. . . “

A public diplomacy management review that might have addressed or at least highlighted some of these nearly cosmic departmental short-comings recommended in a 2004 inspection report was never conducted. In addition, the bureau is reportedly overloaded with contractors. As much as, forty-three percent of the staff is composed of indeterminate-term contractors. In the end, such contractors are not a bargain: they cost substantially more that civil servants and it’s clear they do not bring the added expertise needed. To the contrary. And IIP overuse of contractors is not alone in today's State Department.

Alice-in-Wonderland Cascade of Contracters

Instead the picture presented is one of an Alice in Wonderland type cascade of contractors supervising contractors supervising subcontractors. It’s amazing anything gets done. This is a prime example of government waste and mismanagement.

When I left that team-based, free-flowing and creative bureau in early 1998, we had very few contractors, morale was high, equipment up-to-date and its experienced staff of civil servants and Foreign Service Officers at the cutting edge of information technology. The expertise, equipment and morale have eroded over the years since the bureau went under State. We also, by the way, didn’t have the exalted titles bestowed by State on its current occupants - titles that might have looked better on a resume than ours –but we also didn’t have to suffer under bizarre unidentifiable names for offices that sound as if they came out of some weird wizard’s wardrobe.

Yes, it would indeed be welcome and also novel to see a qualified someone appointed as the next Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. He or she will more than have his or her work cut out for him or her. Nevertheless until and unless the State Department’s culture, structure and institutional priorities undergo radical surgery – and it will take the White House and Congress to rethink and redo America’s entire approach to foreign publics – expect this Under Secretary’s door to revolve endlessly.

Three takes elsewhere about the Under Secretary letter:

May 24, 2013 Diplopundit, Former Ambassadors Urge Appointment of a Career Diplomat to State's Public Diplomacy Bureau,

May 24, 2013, Washington Times, Letter Highlights Needs for Public Diplomacy Champion.

May 24, 2013 Public Diplomacy Council, Ambassadors Call for a Public Diplomacy Professional at State Department.

The Asian Pivot and Obama’s Gum-Chewing Problem

2013-05-22T05:00:00-06:00

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The President, it seems, can’t walk and chew gum. The so-called Asian pivot is a case in point, but not the only one.

Is it really possible that a great power with the formal institutional resources available to the U.S. can’t keep an eye on the Middle East and China at the same time? Especially since the China issue massively involves the Navy and the Middle East far less so?

Or is this really just a presidential problem? Does Barack Obama lack the smarts to juggle a complex agenda or, to use the current jargon, to multitask? Or is he a colossally bad manager? Or lazy? Or more in love with the image than the obligations of being president?

Or, truly frightening to contemplate, is the obviously troubled U.S. system we used to admire rotten and corrupted to the point of irremediability?

No Lack of People

Look at it this way. There are thousands of thoughtful, well-informed people within the State Department, the National Security Council, the many-pronged intelligence apparatus and the Pentagon to gather information, assess its implications, draw up policy and/or action plans and send them up the hierarchy to be dealt with—collated, evaluated, weighed, tweaked, given relative priorities with appropriate resources—and, passing muster, implemented. Could we possibly be reduced to this: able to activate only one department of one branch of government at one time?

Seems to me that a well-managed country that pretends to super power status should be able to deal with the Middle East and with China simultaneously—and also, at the same time, with Latin America and Africa as well as all the global issues that affect the welfare of this and other countries.

If not, the Republicans are right. Thousands of people should be out of a job because they are redundant, which is a polite way of calling them useless.

A Definite Lack of Deft PD

Actually, the apparent inability to multi-task isn’t my only perplexity on the “pivot” front, and I’d like to exhaust those concerns before I return to the question of whether this government can simultaneously walk and check gum (and, one would hope, also be able to blow big beautiful bubbles—excluding the financial sort, of course).

As an old hand at public diplomacy, I deeply do not understand why the administration so blatantly announced that it was shifting its attention, i.e., executing a pivot, to the East, thus implying that the U.S. lacks the resources to handle a full plate of global issues. Maybe the U.S. isn’t equipped these days to wage a two-front war, but any world power worth the name must have the resources to carry out effective diplomacy on a global scale. Otherwise, it’s not a middling power, much less a super power.

What’s more, isn’t it rather dense to inform both friends and non-friends in the Middle East that their neighborhood no longer merits significant American attention? What a wonderful way to dishearten old allies while encouraging trouble-makers to step up their mischief! And how insulting, this the loss of face, of importance, announced to the whole world: old friends no longer matter!

Naturally, this ex-practitioner of public diplomacy can imagine reasons for reallocating resources, but I can’t think of one good reason to trumpet such a refocusing of policy. Why tell the Chinese we’re so worried about their growing wealth and power that we’ll be turning all our attention on the South China Sea? Why put Beijing on the alert? Seems to me that a naive pivoting announcement does more damage to U.S. security than any of the so-called “national security” leaks that the Obama administration (not exactly innocent of administration-favorable leaking) is working overtime to prevent or punish, Wikileaks included. (By the way, the best way to prevent leaks? Classify less cavalierly.)

So what would be the better course in allocating resources and attention? Forget the grandstanding. Be tough or supportive as needed, judiciously devoting to each country or issue the staff time and resources merited, including, needless to say, regard for long and short term needs. Result: no inflated egos, no deflated egos, no red flags, no white flags, no jejeune statements about sticks and carrots, no awkward comparisons. And be aware of nuance: it’s one thing to say you’ll be paying a little more attention to X. It’s another to execute a complete pivot. (Are we tethered here to the President's love for basketball?)

The Mismanaged Benghazi Affair

Measure, reason, skill: none was apparent in the handling of the Benghazi tragedy, which presented the world with the awkward drama of three U.S. foreign affairs agencies trying to evade responsibility. That’s the CIA, State and the Pentagon. Result: a muddle, since the obvious point of convergence, i.e. the Office of the President, didn't jump in quickly enough with some straight talking about the actual situation in Benghazi: things didn’t fall through the cracks; there was no there there, meaning the U.S. presence in Benghazi was cloak and dagger stuff masquerading as a consular outpost, a fact which sort of dribbled out, but not before the Republicans had a chance to dance over the body of a dead ambassador. They continue to do so.

In public diplomacy and public affairs, you can’t have an on-the-shelf script (or big fat briefing book) for everything; sometimes you need smart articulate people with the depth of knowledge, dexterity and good judgement to improvise fast in order to ward off worse evils from wild public speculation.

Neurotic secretiveness, over-compartmentalization and dodgy bureaucratic arrangements lead to waffling. Waffling tends to create more problems that it solves. Someone wasn’t covering the special vulnerabilities of the weird mutant post that was Benghazi. Why? Willful blindness, perhaps. Plus lack of appreciation for the enemy? Neither a wise diplomatic stance.

Cluelessness in the West Wing

The IRS kerfluffle provides another example of administrative incompetence at the highest level: the President’s unimaginative, closest advisors failed to give him a chance to be pro-active vis-à-vis the IRS analysts who devised politically-charged search terms (liberal as well as conservative) to help them (very likely) deal with a plethora of organizations seeking advantageous tax status. The tax people were politically clueless, but their behavior was rational, and the president could have made that case before the Republicans jumped on another politically-resonant issue that refuses to die.

Dogged, devoted IRS people over-worked due to under-staffing caused by ruthless-budget cutting and a monumentally unwise Supreme Court decision in the case known as Citizens United. What a terrific story! But it was trumped before it was played. Doesn’t the President have any savvy public affairs people on his staff?

As for his own tsar-like, godlike, above-it-all stance, not only is it unconvincing, it's unappealing. I can't help thinking of the lifesize cardboard figures that tourists like to be photographed with.

Welcome Cracks in the Edifice of Secrecy

The head of the IRS has resigned, but there’s a more highly-placed head that should be rolling just now: that of Eric Holder, the President’s good friend, who is also the Attorney General of the United States. Holder has tried to make us believe that he had nothing to do with the heavy-handed, broad-as-a-barn investigation of a source feeding into the Associated Press offices. However, if Holder did indeed “delegate” the details of this particular operation, the operation was engineered to work precisely as Holder usually does in his relentless pursuit of non-transparency, always in the intimidating, all but criticism-proof guise of protecting the national security.

In fact, the AP snooping caper is entirely consistent with the Obama administration’s aggressive approach to uninhibited prosecutorial privilege. This Democratic president seems no less committed than his Republican predecessor to the systematic trashing of due process and all other procedural and judicial protections, to say nothing of its lack of respect for First Amendment guarantees of a free press and free association or the derivative right to privacy, all of which used to give us a sense of security as citizens.

Interestingly enough, the Administration acted quickly to deflect attention after the shocking extent of its AP source sweep was revealed. The ploy? Suggesting its support for a press shield law. Ha! Anyone who thinks the Obama people will not gladly let such a bill die must also still believe that this administration will fight to curb the malignant role of the super wealthy in American politics. Sommers, Geitner, Lew: the personalities say it all. Wall Street rules.

Hmmmm—Sorry

Perhaps I malign the Obama administration unfairly—which is to say, for the wrong things. Obviously these people do work hard. They work hard to manage issues they care about. If we don't always notice, it's because they must work as quietly as possible, lest our awareness lead to our much needed opposition.

Bumbling on the surface. Ruthless below.

And meanwhile the President does have a beautiful smile.

There’s an Asterisk in that “Nascent Economic Recovery”

2013-05-20T01:00:00-06:00

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

18 May 2013. The theme du jour seems to be “nascent economic recovery.” That phrase popped up everywhere late April, accompanied by analyses of economic indicators allegedly supporting the theme. 15 May 2013 the Bank of England became the latest, projecting a “modest” but “sustained” recovery for the UK.

It would be very welcome if true. Everyone hopes for the best. No one hopes for the worst. No one enjoys debunking hope. No one wants to bring the economy down by "talking the economy down."

Nor do we want to fool ourselves.

Read the fine print

Commentators seem to rely at least partially on a recent ONS estimate of GDP. ONS estimated the economy grew 0.3% in the First Quarter of 2013 over the previous Quarter and 0.4% over the same Quarter in 2012. But there’s an asterisk for those estimates.

“... this estimate is [based on] around 44% of the total required [information] ... [ONS had] good information for the first two months ... [and an] estimate for the third month which takes account of early returns to the monthly business survey ... [ONS had] between 30-50% at this point ... [Therefore the] estimate .... [is] subject to revisions ... typically small (around 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points ... .”

A lowering by 0.2 would change growth to 0.1% over last Quarter of 2012 and 0.2% over the prior year. Nor is this asterisk the only caution. The final estimate will be based on what actually happened during the quarter. ONS has already published reports in May that cannot be fairly read to indicate growth.

Fact check

You can’t rely on headlines.

Take for example a 10 May release from the Office of National Statistics concerning first quarter 2013 construction. According to the BBC the headline implication was, “Construction data suggests UK avoided a double-dip.” Unless one read the ONS report itself one would not know ONS characterized the data as showing construction during the first quarter was at its lowest level since 1998.

As it happened, the story did not receive a lot of coverage. Originally scheduled to come out Monday it came out instead on on “Take out the Trash” Friday.

The same day provided another example. ONS released reports on the trade balance between the UK and the Europe and also the UK and non European countries. BBC dwelt on the increase in trade with non European countries. As to trade with Europe, BBC characterized that as “flat,” again “suggesting” no double dip last year.

This is what ONS actually reported about trade with Europe:

“There is an increase of 31.8 per cent in the trade gap, the difference between UK imports from the EU and exports to the EU. This is the biggest increase in the trade gap in recent years. This difference is now £6.1 billion.”

Then there was manufacturing and production. BBC described this as “industrial output beat forecasts.” It did -- from February to March of this year -- but year-on-year -- according to ONS -- both figures were lower March 2013 than March 2012, which was lower than March 2011. As an ONS graph makes plain, while there were multiple ups and downs over the last 2 years, the slope of the curve has been down throughout.

The final example is employment. ONS released its report 15 May 2013. BBC focused on a 15,000 increase in the unemployment rate while noting a 43,000 decrease “in employment.” In an online piece BBC noted these statistics aren’t consistent with a picture of a recovering economy. But even this piece did not note the very first thing ONS wrote -- the rate of of working age adults actually in work fell.

I call attention to this statistic regularly. It's not the same as the number of unemployed. It's far more significant in that it puts employment in context. The population grows. The need for new jobs grows, a fact often glossed over in discussions of increases in the absolute number of people in work. As documented previously, the rate of working age adults actually in work declined steadily during 2008-2013.

BBC also noted total pay rises were at lowest levels since 2009. But BBC did not mention regular pay rises were at the lowest level since comparable records began (2001).

15 May 2013 BBC News at 1 led with the Bank of England forecast. BBC News at 6 did mention regular pay rises declined, but folded that information into the tail end of its coverage of the Bank of England’s forecast without highlighting rises were at the lowest level since 2001.

BBC's online piece did not offset the employment news with the Bank of England forecast. The piece painted a fairly bleak picture. But unless you went to the ONS site and looked up the actual ONS report, you would not know even from this piece how seriously ONS itself rated the employment developments it tracked.

Don’t bet your children’s future on hopeful pronouncements

The indicators raise serious red flags concerning both the final First Quarter GDP estimate and the Bank of England’s optimism. It’s understandable why one might prefer good news, why one might search for “green shoots” in all those brown stalks. But before you bet your children’s future on hopeful pronouncements, fact check the headlines for yourself. ONS publishes its own take on its own statistics, readily available on line. That take speaks volumes.

Nawaz Wins: What’s Next in Pakistan?

2013-05-16T05:00:00-06:00

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

The count’s still contested here and there—and loudly, especially in Karachi, which is no surprise. But the outcome is clear: the Pakistan Muslim League (N) won enough seats in last week’s parliamentary election to form a government all by itself. No need for coalition building in Islamabad.

That’s good. One-party government makes it easier to get things done, especially when there’s a responsible opposition to temper ideological excesses. Such an opposition the out-going People’s Party, whose lackluster performance in power made electoral defeat inevitable, has pledged itself to be. Even so, the PPP won slightly more seats in Parliament than the perky new kid on the block, the Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice Party) founded by ex-cricketeer Imran Khan, which had hoped to win a parliamentary majority. The U.S. should be happy. Khan has been very critical of Pakistan's relations with the U.S.

A Milestone

Before we start looking toward the future via a rather murky crystal ball, let’s pause to note an important milestone. For the first time in Pakistan’s history, the 2013 election will allow a civilian-led government to hand the baton to another civilian government. U. S. President Barack Obama has already congratulated PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, and maybe this time—having been granted a third go as Pakistan’s Prime Minister—Nawaz will manage to complete a term in office. In 1999, Chief of Army Staff Pervez Musharraf, with whom Nawaz had just waged (and lost) a high-altitude, mid-winter, mini-war against India, staged a coup and sent him scampering into exile in Saudi Arabia.

A New Nawaz?

“I’ve mellowed.” So says Nawaz, but the world around him may have changed more than he has. To name just a few of the more dramatic events of the past decade or so: the Twin Towers catastrophe in New York; U.S. intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq; the rise of drone warfare; the elimination of Osama bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein; the Arab spring and its messy aftermath; the still raging civil war in Syria; the earth-shaking awakening of the Chinese dragon; the death of Kim Jung Il.There's more, but the point has been made.

A New Military?

Nawaz also faces a different Chief of Army Staff.

Many times during the lead up to last Saturday’s polling, I thought that the level of election-related violence—car bombs set off; candidates, party officials and ordinary people murdered; a high-level kidnapping—must surely have reached coup level. The Army would step in, declaring with the usual paternalistic panache that poor old Pakistan still isn’t ready for democracy. It didn’t happen.

Perhaps the Pakistani military under General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has also mellowed. At the very least, Kayani honored his pledge (or inclination) to keep the Army out of the electoral process, even if that meant the Pakistani Taliban’s selective violence might skew the results toward parties they gauged to be more sympathetic to the Islamist cause. Taliban targets tended to belong to the MQM, the PPP and the AWP, all openly secular in orientation. An interesting note: the PML-N insists that it too was harrassed, as if Nawaz feels some need to show there's air and light between him and the Taliban. Even more important: Taliban threats notwithstanding, people in most constituencies flocked to the polls to exercise their right to vote.

Maybe the Army remained aloof from the elections because Kayani is waiting for a better excuse to show who's boss in Pakistan. A possible cause for a fatal sting: if and when Nawaz moves to initiate a bona fide normalization of relations with arch-enemy India. Ex-businessman Nawaz says he wants more trade, and he has already invited India’s Prime Minister to the inauguration of his government on June 2.

Why would the Army object to this? Simple. Peace with India might shrink the military budget. It might also erode the officer corps’s standing in the Pakistani pecking order. What’s more, should private business take off in a serious way, the many enterprises controlled by well-paid ex-army officers would lose their commanding position in the Pakistani economy. In short, friendship with India and a thriving civilian-based economy would undermine the rationale for the existing military establishment.

The China Factor

But what if a new threat were already on the horizon, another would be hegemon offering another border to police aggressively? Iran, obviously, would not qualify, but how about China in its current high-handed expansionist mood?

Even a neighbor like little Myanmar has discovered that reliance on China’s apparent benevolence can be much too much of an initially good thing. For years China was a reliable, lucrative importer of minerals and forest products, a friend who wasn’t picky about human rights. Then China got overbearing and dictatorial. So the junta in Myanmar started democratizing, freeing the economy and making friends with the U.S. Although a displeased China has begun to stir up the border tribes it helpfully pacified for so many years, Myanmar’s opening to the West continues. President U Thein Sein, will be visiting the White House soon. U.S. human rights activists consider his visit to be premature. Foreign policy realists, watching as China aggressively probes terrestrial and maritime boundaries, are not unhappy. Those realists might also be sympathetic to keeping Pakistan’s army in a state of readiness, more or less allied with India, in a quiet watch across the Himalayas, where the U.S. certainly does not want to deploy its own troops.

There’s another way for Nawaz to keep Pakistan’s military well-funded and content, but it entails continued cooperation in the U.S. war against violent extremists. It also requires Pakistan’s acquiescence in the use of drones in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Carefully handled, this is entirely possible. The Pakistani military, however sympathetic to some degree of Islamization, would hardly enjoy the prospect of taking orders from mullahs, and Pakistan is not always unhappy to be rid of prime U.S. targets. The U.S. can probably get away with not always consulting about targets and timing, but the price will be high in damage to the U.S. image among ordinary Pakistanis. The Americans will always be the fall guys for serious mistakes, i.e, deaths with negative resonance in Pakistan.

Speaking of official visits, Li Kequiang, China’s new foreign minister, will shortly be visiting both India and Pakistan en route to meetings in Germany and Switzerland. Touching base with the new government in Pakistan makes good sense. It also makes sense for the fledgling government in Beijing to get an unmediated feel for the mood in India, where Congress control of the central government is shaky. Of particular interest to Pakistan is that India and China have resolved, for the moment, a spat over their never formalized border in Ladakh.

Pakistan’s borders are equally subject to challenge and have already been adjusted once to China’s advantage. That experience notwithstanding, a cash-strapped Pakistan allowed China to build the trans-Karakoram highway, making possible a land route from western China to the Indian Ocean where China is heavily subsidizing the construction of a deep water port at Gwador. There’s only one problem with this little gift. Gwador is poorly located for trade from and to the populated areas of Pakistan, but it’s a quick and cheap beeline route from Western China to the sea. The Soviets didn't build the Salang Tunnel to make the Afghans happy; they were really building a nifty invasion route. Playing China off against India and the U.S. might seem clever but could be disastrous.

The Kashmir Problem

Re-cementing relations with the U.S. and achieving rapprochement with India won’t be easy for Nawaz, because it’s not clear that Kayani is ready to wash his hands of the militant Islamist organizations the ISI has used as proxies to make trouble for India in Kashmir (and for the U.S. in Afghanistan). No less obstructive, Pakistan’s nationalists and its traditionally Islamist parties are, once again, clamoring for a solution to the long festering Kashmir problem. Solution, in this case, means incorporating the entire territory into Pakistan, including the valley that India has administered, not always wisely, for a half century. Most Kashmiris may be Muslim, but India will not surrender this territory without the equivalent of mortal combat, and (even more interesting) most Kashmiris do not want to join Pakistan. Nevertheless, when Nawaz (or anyone else) proposes to talk trade with India, he will encounter the demand to solve the Kashmir problem first. It's the sort of argument that's habitually used to sabatage the least hint of improved relations between israel and Palestine.

An Existential Moment?

India, trade, China—none of this will matter until the big issue is confronted. Whatever the distribution of power between them, the new civilian government and the Army under Kayani face a watershed decision. They can cooperate to quell an insurgency with existential implications for the present form of government or they can allow the Taliban to overwhelm the status quo. The Army was supposed to have dislodged the militants who had taken control of the Swat Valley. Nevertheless, a zealot almost killed the schoolgirl Malala Yusufsai, who had the good fortune to be med-evaced to the U.K. She will survive to continue to champion education for girls. Will Nawaz and Kayani throw her under the school bus?

Past civilian governments have been too weak to eradicate violent extremism, while Pakistan's military dictators have kept the street peaceful by kowtowing to religious militants. If Nawaz and Kayani cannot cooperate, the tail will soon be wagging the dog. Iran will look like paradise compared to rule by the Pakistani Taliban. We’ve seen the prelude in Afghanistan.

Who is Nawaz?

So how much wiggle room does Nawaz have? And how much does he really want vis-à-vis India and Islamist insurgency? Nawaz himself belongs to a fairly conservative sect. Unlike the Bhuttos, who spent exile in London and the Emirates, Nawaz headed to Saudi Arabia, where support for salafism throughout the Muslim world originates. Outside funding notwithstanding, within Pakistan itself there has never been significant electoral support for Islamist political parties. The recent election was no exception. Even in Khyber-Paktunkwa, the Islamists couldn't capture a majority of legislative assembly seats.

We are, I think, left with a paradox. Nawaz Sharif appears to be a known factor, yet all we really know is that Pakistani policy under the PML-N could go in many different directions, none under U.S. control. In this situation, diplomacy will serve better than drones and CIA sub-contractors. Nor, though many politicians are for sale, will money alone be the deciding factor.