With apologies to the Beatles, we are – Back in the USSR!

Welcome to the new USSR – the United States of Spying & Reconnaissance. George Bush’s 2006 makes George Orwell’s 1984 really look like “Morning in America”. Shame on AT&T and Verizon for turning over my phone records to Big Brother – I wish Qwest offered service in Maryland because I would switch faster than Patrick Henry could have said “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death”. Henceforth, we all should no longer feel “Orwellian”; Americans must simply feel “AmBushed”.

Speaking of ambushed, we cannot afford to have Bush fatigue set in on us with another 32 months – yes, that is one month for each point of the President’s current approval rating per CNN – left to go in this presidency. Although, it can be rather disheartening when the President himself admits, as reported by Reuters last Sunday that the best moment he has had in his last five years in office was when:

“I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake”.

Last night on his HBO show “Real Time with Bill Maher”, the comedian challenged that assertion saying that the largest perch ever caught in the history of fishing has weighed in at a little over four pounds. So Bill facetiously suggested that the President Bush should be impeached for lying! As the other Bill might have said in a situation as awkward as this, “It depends on the meaning of the word ‘caught’”.

However, I wouldn’t want to get all “caught” up on a little white lie and try to take away from the President what was after all, by his own admission, the best moment of his presidency so far. I am more perturbed by the constant erosion in our liberties during the course of this Administration – this is one mission that we, as Americans, cannot let the President accomplish. That the President is willing to curtail our freedom in order to guarantee it is an oxymoronic policy, which is in gross violation of our Constitution and needs to stop. With apologies to my favorite Beatles, I would rather be “Back in the US, Back in the US” but never “Back in the USSR”. So enough already with all the spying and reconnaissance, Mr. President.

Seinfeld Option on Iran and Biden-Gelb (+Six Neighbors) Plan for Iraq

The latest AP-Ipsos poll finds that “Angry conservatives are driving the approval ratings of President Bush and the GOP-led Congress to dismal new lows”. It suggests to me that even the "war on terror" is taking a back seat to $3/gallon gas for the party faithful. I find this amusing only because all manner of conservative pundits have been singing of the same "law of supply and demand" song sheet after gas broke the $3/gallon milestone again last month for the first time since Hurricane Katrina – only this time around there were no natural disasters to blame! In fact, in the April 28th edition of The Washington Post, neocon pundit Charles Krauthammer head-lined his column “Say It With Me: Supply and Demand”. However, I strongly believe the reasons that we are paying $3/gallon at the pump has more to do with our foreign policy of the past few years than as much to do with the laws of a dismal science.

On the demand side, we cannot do much in the short-term to influence China and India from “gobbling huge amounts of energy” as Mr. Krauthammer calls it. But then the Bush Administration could do far more to curb our own insatiable domestic demand in the short-term – something that Mr. Krauthammer chose not to address despite waxing nostalgic about how we did the very same thing back in the seventies? On the supply side, Mr. Krauthammer is surprisingly silent on the Bush Administration’s current (Iraq) and perceived (Iran) casus belli that is contributing to the steep hike in the price of oil. He offers the perennial long-term conservative answer in “the missing supply of might-have-been American crude” from the “Arctic and outer continental shelf”. I would dare suggest that more immediate changes in our foreign policy could bring about an equally rapid decline in oil prices in short order.

Only a couple of days prior to Mr. Krauthammer’s lesson in macroeconomics, President Bush had announced his decision to tinker with the "supply side" of the oil equation. A front-page story in the April 26th edition of the Post reported:

“Amid growing Republican unrest about the politics of $3-plus gasoline, Bush told the Renewable Fuels Association he will take the unusual step of suspending shipments to the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to boost supply and help hold down oil prices.”

Ironically, in September 2000, Governor Bush had said the following at a presidential campaign stop in Cleveland, and I quote him from the CNN archive:

“Strategic Reserve should not be used as an attempt to drive down oil prices right before an election. It should not be used for short-term political gain at the cost of long-term national security.”

I think it is foolhardy for the President to expect that, by skipping a few deposits into a reserve that is nearly full, he is going to make any immediate difference to the price of gas at the pump. Although, it could make a difference if he decided to open the spigot to the tune of one million barrels a day every day from Memorial Day to Labor Day? But then he would only be further guilty of fueling our “addiction to oil” – a belated conclusion that he had arrived at in his 2006 State of the Union speech, when he pontificated:

“America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.”

One would imagine that if we are importing this “drug” from “unstable parts of the world”, we should either wean ourselves off the drug or try to stabilize parts of the world from where we get it? In the past five years President Bush has not offered any serious rehab program to wean American motorists off their oil addiction. More distressingly, his foreign policy initiatives have only further “destabilized” parts of the world (Middle East, Venezuela) from where we import our oil.

In an interesting theory, New York Times columnist, Thomas L. Friedman postulates in his May 5th column that there is a direct correlation between rising energy prices and the decline of democracy in, what he calls “petro-ist” states. I would take his theory one step further and suggest that the United States has had a decline in its bilateral relationships with each one of these petro-ist states throughout the Bush presidency. So I would posit that instead of the price of oil, it should be the larger Bush foreign policy – that has brought about this precipitous decline in our bilateral relationships with many of these petro-ist states – that needs to become, what Mr. Friedman refers to as “a daily preoccupation of the secretary of state”. A less confrontational foreign policy would bring about an upsurge in our bilateral relationships with several of these petro-ist states, which in turn would result in a dramatic and faster drop in the price of oil.

With regards to petro-ist Iran, the Wall Street Journal came up short in its April 21st editorial, “Bush and Iran”. They reiterated our long-standing problem with Iran but offered no solutions – something that they have been critical about with the “Bush and Iraq” critics? Unfortunately, the river of bad blood between Iran and the U.S. has been flowing for far too long and far too deep to offer any hope for a serious breakthrough via bilateral negotiations. Unless President Bush can get the international community to agree to prolonged and comprehensive sanctions enforced by a complete land, air, and sea blockade of Iran – he might as well get used to a nuclear Iran, just as he has become accustomed to a nuclear North Korea.

With regards to petro-ist Iraq, Senator Joseph Biden and Leslie H. Gelb (President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations) recently proposed a very reasonable plan in an op-ed in The New York Times. Most of the Biden-Gelb plan for “Unity Through Autonomy in Iraq” makes a lot of sense. However, it did not take into consideration one very important geo-political consideration that is critical to the plan’s success – Iraq’s neighbors. When Saddam was in power he was a constant threat to his neighbors. Once the United States withdraws and with no unifying authoritarian figure in control of Iraq, its neighbors will become a threat to its unity. We cannot forget that Iraq was a country created by the British from disparate nomadic regions. The Turks have had historical issues with the Kurds and Iran will continue to become increasingly influential and meddlesome with the autonomous Shia portion of Iraq. So we need to involve all of Iraq’s neighbors ¬– Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey – upfront in a Dayton-type round of discussions to ensure that the Biden-Gelb plan is destined to succeed.

Conclusion: The Bush Administration must ignore Iran for the rest of its term (I call this the Seinfeld option – “Do Nothing”), as it has ignored North Korea (since the start of the second term), and also immediately initiate another “six-countries” round of talks on implementing the Biden-Gelb plan for Iraq. If President Bush immediately executes the Seinfeld option on Iran and Biden-Gelb (+Six Neighbors) Plan for Iraq, I am confident that we will see crude oil prices sink below $50 a barrel and domestic gas at the pump under $2/gallon by the fall! More importantly, we will witness a more stable Middle East and a concomitant increase in our standing in the world.

Crossing the Persian Gulf

When I spent four months in Doha, Qatar back in 1981 I was advised not to refer to the ocean surrounding the mostly Arab states as the “Persian Gulf”. Apparently, letters from home would arrive in a more timely fashion if the last line of my Doha address read “Arabian Gulf”. In those days, when Arab Iraq was in the first year of its eight year war with Persian Iran, Arab pride was literally causing a big gulf between Muslim nations of the Middle East.

How times have changed? President Bush’s “war on terror” is now rapidly bridging the divide between these disparate Muslim countries. In fact, after we toppled Saddam Hussein, Iran began to accelerate its nuclear program. The leadership in Iran has recently started to get nostalgic about its ancient Persian heritage. We have learned that Saddam Hussein had dreams of becoming a modern-day Saladin. We shouldn’t be too surprised then, if Iranian President Ahmadinejad soon adopts the mantle of Cyrus the Great? In order to earn that sort of reverence from the Iranian people, Ahmadinejad feels the need to acquire the power, prestige, and protection afforded by nuclear weapons.

Sadly, Iran’s determination to proceed along this nuclear path presents a dangerous dilemma to the western world in general and the U.S. in particular. In his April 19th New York Times column, Thomas L. Friedman said it offered us a stark choice between “Iraq II or a Nuclear Iran?” Unfortunately, this is a Hobson's choice. Nonetheless, we might be forced to pick the lesser of two evils for now – a Nuclear Iran? Iraq I established the failure of the much vaunted Bush Doctrine and the inefficacy of preemption. In fact, it produced the opposite effect, which was to increase the belligerence of the “axis of evil” nations. So it’s unlikely that any carrot-and-stick policy attempted by the Bush Administration with Iran is likely to produce any meaningful change in Iran’s behavior. It might be best to put Iran on ice for the next 33 months and let the next President start with a clean slate. In the meanwhile, the Bush Administration should focus on getting Iraq I right – that might even have a causal effect on Iran?

Speaking of getting Iraq I right, I was surprised to read Friday’s Wall Street Journal editorial, “Bush and Iran”. The WSJ editors were apparently not practicing what they often preach to the “Bush and Iraq” critics. Their lengthy dissertation on “Bush and Iran” reiterated the complexity of the problem but offered no solution beyond:

“the President must begin to educate the American public about what is at stake in Iran and what the U.S. might be prepared to do about it.”

Excuse me? The “gulf” between Iran and the U.S. has become so wide and so deep over so long a period, it is unlikely that a majority of the American public is not already aware of the threat that a nuclear Iran poses to the United States. As far as Iran’s nuclear program is concerned, unless we can get the international community to agree to prolonged and comprehensive sanctions enforced by a complete land, air, and sea blockade of Iran – we might as well get used to a nuclear Iran, just as we have become accustomed to a nuclear North Korea.

If we are ever going to cross the Persian abyss, preemption is not an option and meaningless threats must stop at the water’s edge. If President Bush is really serious about making headway with Persia before he leaves office, he could appoint President Clinton as a special envoy to head bilateral negotiations between Iran and the U.S. - with carte blanche authority to bridge the gulf between our two nations!

Kissing Up to India

It looks like Nixon White House counselor John Dean is now seeing a cancer growing on the Bush presidency. At the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing yesterday on President Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping, the Watergate icon suggested, “Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it.” Ouch!

While Bush is certainly unlike Nixon on domestic policy, they do seem to have some similarities on the foreign policy front and I am not talking about the Vietnam-Iraq comparisons that have been made almost from the start of the Iraq war. It’s their shared obsession with Pakistani dictators that confounds me.

Some political pundits have compared Bush’s recent trip to India with Nixon’s groundbreaking visit to China in 1972. However, back then Nixon wanted to befriend China as a counter to the Soviet Union, which happened to be cozying up to India. Nixon thus also chose Pakistan over India and, as the BBC reported last June, “developed a ‘special relationship’ with Pakistan's then military dictator, General Yahya Khan.”

Official documents released last year from that era also reveal a strong personal distaste that both, Nixon and Kissinger had for Indians in general. Here is another snippet from that same BBC News story:

One key conversation transcript comes from the meeting between President Nixon and Mr. Kissinger in the White House on 5 November 1971, shortly after a meeting with the visiting Indira Gandhi.

“We really slobbered over the old witch,” says President Nixon.

“The Indians are bastards anyway,” says Mr. Kissinger.

Ouch! As a first generation Indian-American that revelation stung me. Kissinger is revered like a foreign policy god, but I remember him being flummoxed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s diplomatic panache and political skills during the Bangladesh crisis. The same “old witch” ran circles around Kissinger back then as he desperately tried to save Pakistan from humiliation and inhibit the creation of Bangladesh.

Nevertheless, Nixon did make a stark choice – he clearly preferred Pakistan’s military dictatorship to India’s then fledgling democracy. In contrast, President Bush appears to be hedging his bets on the subcontinent – opting for a new strategic relationship with India while continuing to coddle yet another Pakistani military dictator, General Musharraf. This wily leader manages to simultaneously “talk the talk” about Pakistan’s assistance to the United States in its “war on terror”, while he continues to hedge his bets on the future of the Taliban. One can’t imagine that Bush and Condi Rice are naïve enough not to recognize this transparent behavior. I can almost visualize a post-9/11 White House conversation transcript being released in 2025 that reads as follows:

“We really slobbered over that two-timing armchair general,” President Bush remarks.

“The Pakistanis are idiots anyway,” Condi Rice adds.

Ouch! In any event, after 9/11 President Bush probably recognized that it would be impossible for the western world to contain, what Jimmy Carter recently referred to as, a “Pandora’s box of nuclear proliferation” already in progress. Bush found out that this box had been blown open by Pakistan several years prior to 9/11, when their top nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, began selling nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. In fact, this Pandora’s Box had actually begun a slow leak after the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of the Cold War.

By negotiating what President Carter called in the same Post article a “dangerous deal with India”, President Bush is strategically trying to rope in a growing economic and nuclear power on to the Judeo-Christian side of what is quite clearly becoming a political divide along religious lines. Also, it is highly unpredictable as to which side of this religious fault line the old “evil empire” and the remnants of the communist world will come out in the long term. I would therefore counter that not consummating Bush’s nuclear deal with India would be dangerous to the lasting interests of the United States.

Not surprisingly then Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn, co-chairman and chief executive of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, also believes that Bush’s nuclear deal with India would harm the “United States' vital interest” in preventing nuclear proliferation. Surely Senator Nunn must recognize that India has lived without US civilian nuclear technology for over thirty years. There is no reason, aside from its burgeoning energy needs, that India would have a need for US nuclear power reactors. Irrespective of the outcome of this deal, India will continue to honor the principle of nuclear non-proliferation without being an actual signatory to the NPT.

The United States has a lot more to lose from a business and global security standpoint than India, if this deal were not consummated. I would much rather see my native country dependent on the US, than either Iran or Russia, for its long term energy needs. Besides, with the US economy increasingly reliant on communist China, a diversification in our strategic relationships portfolio is long overdue. The new US-India relationship could well turn out to be the only significant foreign policy achievement of the Bush presidency.

So while prominent Democrats are trying to put the kibosh on President Bush’s nuclear deal with India, some renowned Republicans are supporting it. After Dr. Henry A. Kissinger’s old anti-Indian sentiments were exposed last year, he quickly apologized for branding all Indians with a broad brush in such harsh terms. His bona fides were further established recently in an article entitled, "Anatomy of a partnership” that appeared in the International Herald Tribune on March 10, 2006. In a strong endorsement of President Bush’s India policy, the man who once doubted the legitimacy of my birth concluded:

In a period preoccupied with concerns over terrorism and the potential clash of civilizations, the emerging cooperation between the two great democracies, India and the United States, introduces a positive and hopeful perspective.

As the old saying goes “from your lips to God’s ears” – kissing up never felt sweeter – Amen!