Monday, May 19, 2014

Kriegsvorbereitungstrategien von Bundeswehr Akademie und Auswärtigem Amt dürfen nicht unwidersprochen bleiben !


Außenpolitik-Experten  des Auswärtigen Amts plädieren für eine "neue Abschreckungspolitik gegenüber Russland"german-foreign-policy.com>



Newsletter vom 20.05.2014 - Von Linealstaaten und pazifistischem
Mehltau

BERLIN (Eigener Bericht) - Deutsche Außenpolitik-Experten plädieren in
einem PR-Projekt des Auswärtigen Amts für eine "neue
Abschreckungspolitik gegenüber Russland" und sagen dem
"Vielvölkerstaat" wegen separatistischer Bestrebungen in einigen
Regionen eine "Zerreißprobe" voraus. Auch "Kunst-Staaten" wie Mali
seien "nicht stabilisierbar"; sie sollten deshalb "gesprengt" werden,
schreibt ein emeritierter Professor der Münchner
Bundeswehr-Universität in einem Beitrag für "Review 2014". Das
Projekt, das am heutigen Dienstag mit einer Diskussionsveranstaltung
eingeleitet wird, zielt erklärtermaßen darauf ab, die öffentliche
Debatte über die Berliner Außenpolitik zu intensivieren. Hintergrund
ist die im Herbst gestartete, durch den Machtkampf um die Ukraine ins
mediale Abseits geratene weltpolitische Offensive Berlins, die eine
globale "Führung" Deutschlands und der deutsch dominierten EU
anvisiert. Die Offensive wurde vor allem im Umfeld der Münchner
Sicherheitskonferenz lanciert. In weiteren Debattenbeiträgen für
"Review 2014" heißt es etwa, in Deutschland sei "eine pazifistische
Ideologisierung" festzustellen, die sich "wie Mehltau über die
außenpolitische Handlungsfähigkeit" der Bundesrepublik lege. Darüber,
dass Deutschland "in Europa führen" müsse, herrscht bei dem Projekt
weitgehend Einigkeit.

http://www.german-foreign-policy.com/de/fulltext/588



China’s Presence in Latin America: Strategy of Gradual Squeezing US Out

Nil NIKANDROV | 30.04.2014 | 00:00

The United States keeps on getting mired in the quagmire of Ukraine’s crisis. Meanwhile China is intensifying diplomatic efforts in Latin America. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has just wound up his Latin America trip. He has visited Cuba, Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil. China’s top leader Xi Jinping is to tour the region in July.
Beijing boasts the relations of strategic partnership with Havana, Caracas, Buenos Aires and Brasilia. That’s what Wang Yi talked about while meeting Raul Castro, Nicolas Maduro, Cristina Fernandez and Dilma Rousseff. Without any exaggeration he was greeted with outspread arms. In recent years, China has significantly strengthened its presence in the region. Many of the states situated to the south of Rio Grande see dynamic trade and investments coming from China as an important contribution into reduction of dependence on the United States with its annoying incessant rebukes and off-handed interference telling everybody what to do. Latin Americans want close cooperation with the Celestial Empire, the state which boasts rapid progress and looking confidently into the future to become a world leader in the multipolar world. 
According to plans, the Chairman Xi Jinping’s visit to Brazil will coincide with the announcement of establishing the joint ministerial-level forum with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), a platform for promoting their comprehensive cooperative partnership, which features equality, mutual benefit and common development, so as to better safeguard their common interests and promote world and regional peace, stability and development. The initiative is unanimously approved by CELAC member-states. The idea of close friendship with China is attractive. The state is nearing a super power status and is involved in hundreds of joint energy, infrastructure, communications, agriculture, science and high-tech projects. The leaders of China, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Costa Rica and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines will be present at the ceremony devoted to the Forum’s establishment. By the end of 2014 the first ministerial China-CELAC working meeting is scheduled to take place. 
The Wan Yi’s visit was mainly focused on practical issues. The special development zone in Mariel, a Cuban port, which is being built with financial support from China, was an issue of special importance. That megaproject under construction 45 km west of Havana is to become a pillar of Cuban development due to the geographic location of the port, remodeled to equip the terminal to receive deeper-draft ships. The project will also attract investment in biotechnology, the pharmaceutical industry, renewable energy, agribusiness, tourism and real estate. Attracting foreign investments is an important contribution into the modernization of the whole country. In Venezuela the parties discussed the diversification of oil and gas sector and the expansion of the welfare program aimed at providing social housing. In Brazil the communications protection of the host country and the states of UNASUR (the Union of South America Nations), especially from interference of US NSA and CIA, was added to the agenda. The Brazil-US relationship has greatly deteriorated following the revelations of Edward Snowden. Washington has never clearly said it was sorry for spying on the country’s leadership, including President Dilma Rousseff. The news about the United States activities made many Brazilians see the reality as it is putting an end to fantasies about equal partnership. 
Many media reported that during his trip Wan Yi discussed the agenda of the sixth summit of BRICS countries with his Brazilian counterpart Brazilian Foreign Minister Luiz Alberto Figueiredo Machado. The group leaders’ meeting is to take place in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza on July 15-17. An announcement of launching a joint development bank with authorized capital stock of $50 billion is expected with great hope. But any signs of constructive steps taken by BRICS are an irritant for the United States. President Obama has failed to establish good relations with the group and Washington has no leverage to influence the organization’s activities. 
The recent example is the United Nations General Assembly’s vote on Crimea in March with four out of five BRICS members abstaining. Every BRICS member has its own reasons not to trust the Obama’s administration expecting it to resort to pressure instead of engaging in a dialogue of equals. 
China has never had any illusions on the account of the North American “partners”. The Asia pivot announced by the United States is seen in China as an attempt to cut it off from the world. South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia and some other countries are sided with the USA. The recent news from the “anti-China” front is the planned agreement between the United States and the Philippines on US military installations to be deployed in this country for the initial term of 10 years. Of course, China takes appropriate measures in response to boost its defensive potential. 
China believes in the expediency of BRICS expansion to counter the West’s financial dominance implemented with the help of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The group set before itself some strategic goals like gradual distancing for the dollar and creating safe cushions against financial turmoil. China supports the Russia’s approach based on the BRICS “transformation from a dialogue forum into a full-fledged mechanism of strategic interaction.” 
As of December 2013, China was the Latin American third largest trade partner. The trade turnover is on the rise in 2014. China has become the leading consumer of the continent’s minerals causing Washington’s concern. It imports oil, iron, copper, soya and consumer goods. The China’s clout grew significantly as a result of the establishment of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) in 2004. The organization is a brainchild of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez created to counter the US-led free trade zone concept. 
The US has lost its financial might struggling for world leadership and involved in overseas wars. To large extent China has taken its place… In 2013 the total amount of China’s investments almost reached $17 billion. It has become the leading trade partner of many states in the region, including Brazil. Only in the period of 2005-2011 Latin America received over 75 billion dollars from Chinese banks. Mainly the money was spent on transport, telecommunications, mine industry and energy projects. 
One of the reasons China gives money to Latin American states is to prevent pro-US politicians coming to power. Beijing is interested in preserving social peace in the countries led by left-wing governments. This issue was constantly kept in focus during the Wang Yi’s Latin American tour. Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and some other states are getting more threatened by subversive activities of American special services. The financial support they get from China becomes an important factor of regional stability.

http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/05/19/china-buy-russian-gas-at-350-380-per-thousand-cubic-meters.html
Tags: Argentina Brazil China Cuba Latin America US Venezue

Russia to develop strategic cooperation with new Indian administration - President Putin

News | 19.05.2014 | 11:51
 
Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated India's prime minister-to-be, Narendra Modi, with the Bharatiya Janata Party's victory in the parliamentary election, the Kremlin press service said.
The congratulatory message of the Russian leader hailed the traditionally friendly relations between Russia and India based on the Strategic Partnership Declaration, which was signed in the period of office of the Bharatiya Janata Party and determined the development of bilateral relations for many years.
"The impressive results of the fruitful joint work confirmed the historic significance of the declaration.
"Extensive mutually beneficial projects have been implemented in the economic, military-technological, scientific, cultural and humanitarian fields," the Russian president said.
Putin said he was confident Russia and India could multiply the achievements of the previous period by joint efforts, Interfax reports.

Anatomy of India’s General Election (I)

Melkulangara BHADRAKUMAR | 19.05.2014 | 15:50

A neo-Gaullist storms Delhi darbar
The stunning victory of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] in the recently-concluded general election in India needs to be understood from three perspectives – first, the sheer dimensions of the victory; second, its meaning; and, third, what it portends for India’s political economy in the coming five-year period in terms of national policies…
Without doubt, the BJP has secured a historic mandate from the people of India. A victory was expected but not on such a massive landslide. The party won 283 seats in the 540-member parliament, which is by far the highest ever tally in its history. The BJP secured an impressive one-third of the votes. More important, to borrow the words of the party chief Rajnath Singh, the mandate is «comprehensive in geographical spread». The party, which has been traditionally restricted to the so-called ‘Hindi belt’ in the northern states of India has spread its wings nationally and reached all nooks and corners of India. It is of symbolic importance that it secured handsomely half the seats in the northernmost Jammu & Kashmir state as well as won the southernmost parliamentary constituency of Kanyakumari, apart from doing well in much of India’s northeast and making a clean sweep virtually in the western states.
Equally, the party’s pan-Indian mandate comprises support of a broad cross section of Indians, cutting across the divides of Hindu castes and creed. Suffice to say the BJP government returns India to single-party rule in a way that was thought to be inconceivable in the opinion of most observers up until last week. What explains it?
In a country as diverse and complex as India is, simplifying an electoral mandate at any time is a difficult enterprise – especially in a bruising election such as this one has been where emotions were running high and subjective judgment and prejudices cloud rational analysis. Indeed, the BJP mounted a multi-vectored election campaign. But at the core of it was the persona of Narendra Modi who was nominated as the party’s prime ministerial candidate as far back as last September. Through this past 8-month period, the BJP robustly projected Modi as a one-dimensional personality – a decisive doer who brooks no delays, no alibis for non-performance. The idea was to juxtapose Modi with the timid leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Modi presented a development plank of large-scale job creation and high economic growth, which contrasted sharply with the prevailing languishing state of the Indian economy.
The strategy brilliantly worked. Then, there were the subtexts – Hindutva ideology aimed at covertly and insidiously marshaling a Hindu consolidation, Modi’s caste appeal as belonging to the lower strata of the Hindu caste hierarchy, the plentiful local issues at any time in such a vast country and so on. However, the single biggest factor behind the BJP’s victory has been its success in driving home the argument that India badly needed a «change» after the decade-old rule by the United Progressive Alliance [UPA] government led by the Congress Party.
Perceptions matter in politics and in this case the pervasive impression came to be that another five years of UPA rule will be an unmitigated disaster for India. In reality, though, India enjoyed a rare degree of social stability and a significantly high growth of 8.5% through the UPA period and, in fact, an unprecedented social welfare system was ushered in during these past ten years with emphasis on the hundreds of millions of people who live under the poverty line.
However, what tipped the scale hopelessly against the UPA were the spiraling inflation and the hugely embarrassing corruption scandals, which combined to fuel the anger and disenchantment of poor people and the middle class alike against the Congress Party. The Congress Party overlooked that an increasingly restless and aspirational young population is not so much enamored of the welfare schemes as jobs and opportunities for a better life. The fact remains that more than 50% of India’s current population (estimated 1.27 billion) is below the age of 25 and over 65% below the age of 35. As a leading Indian thinker Pratap Bhanu Mehta put it, «It was a deep intellectual failure of the Congress to understand and adapt to changed circumstances. It continued with its politics of low aspiration».
Mehta is spot on when he says, «I don’t think Indians were yearning for an authoritarian leader. There was a sense that in Manmohan Singh we had a leader who was not discharging the leadership role appropriate to his office. There was a yearning for leadership that was inherent to the office». Alongside this failure on the part of the Congress Party to grasp the shift in the mood of a changing India from a «petitional» to an aspirational culture, one cannot entirely overlook that the public perception of Rahul Gandhi as a leader who refused to take responsibility. Belatedly, through the latter half of the election campaign, Rahul Gandhi became forceful and began presenting himself as a hands-on modernizing ruler to match up to Modi’s superman image, but it was already too late.
Having said that, a salience that cannot be overlooked is that the BJP’s campaign was not only choreographed by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh but also conducted by its disciplined cadres. The RSS enjoys a vast network of swayamsevaks (volunteers) and pracharaks (agitators) and Modi himself is an erstwhile pracharak. Again, the BJP appears to have had a virtually unlimited war chest to finance its campaign and, quite obviously, the Indian corporate sector rooted for Modi as a «business-friendly» politician.
All in all, therefore, the Modi phenomenon in Indian politics strongly reminds one of Gaullism in France in many respects – especially, right-wing Gaullism – although analogies of such broad kinds do not hold good completely. In foreign policy, Modi does have a pronounced Gaullist orientation, his main theme being India’s national independence. He fiercely upholds the belief that India should refuse subservience to any foreign power. His policies of grandeur should not come as surprise – the insistence that India is a major power in the world scene and that military and economic forces be established to back this claim.
Modi’s internal policies will be placing accent on social conservatism mixed with a form of populism that draws deep into the Hindutva ideology. Like Charles de Gaulle, he too relies heavily on personal charisma and is riding the wave of popularity in a country that is ravaged by a deep sense of despondency and defeatism. And going by his 14-year record as Gujarat’s chief minister, Modi too has distinct preference for a direct relationship with the people to parliamentary politics. But a notable difference might also be there insofar as while Modi could be scornful of politicians, he doesn’t remain aloof from playing political games.
(To be continued)
www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/05/19/anatomy-of-india-general-election-i.html