Be Aware Of America

Be Aware Of America

Say no to Star Wars, yes to nuclear disarmament!

Indian Holocaust My father`s life and time - Two Hundred Thirty Two
Palash Biswas



We are trapped, Friends!

We are trapped within, Trapped outside!

Indo-US nuclear deal has set the tune of the Disaster inevitable. Post Modern manusmriti and zionist hindu Imperialism has destrooyed everything indigenous. Our geoplitics is endangered as the ruling Brahminical comradors serve the US interests in this subcontinent ensuring Suicide for sovereignity and Freedom! US imperialism is well set to deploy mass destruction weapons in the space implementing Star Wars! Any part of this globe may be targeted any time! The Globe is the colony of US imperialism. We Indians are making a US Navy Engineer, who flied a helicopter in 1991 Gulf War latest Indian ICon as she accomplished the NASA Pentagon combined Mission to make the Moon next US colony!

Blind Ntionalism promoted by Shining Sensex Brand India is annihilating Bharat Varsh!

Be aware of Amerika!

It is not a time to celebrate!

Controversies over the war in Iraq and U.S. unilateralism have overshadowed a more pragmatic and multilateral component of the Bush administration's grand strategy: its attempt to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy and international institutions in order to account for shifts in the global distribution of power and the emergence of states such as China and India. If China and India are not made to feel welcome inside existing international institutions, they might create new ones -- leaving the United States on the outside looking in.Despite these difficulties, it is in the United States' interest to redouble its efforts. Growing anti-Americanism has revitalized groupings of states traditionally hostile to the United States, such as the Nonaligned Movement. To overcome such skepticism, the United States must be prepared to make real concessions. India’s rapidly growing economy and military, and proximity to the Persian Gulf set it apart from all European states in terms of power. Moreover, India’s four most vital national interests mirror those of the United States: winning the war on terrorism, dealing with weapons of mass destruction, managing the rise of China, and maintaining energy security in the Persian Gulf.

Due to these common interests and India’s rising importance in international affairs, Ambassador Blackwill concluded that the United States must deal in increasingly collaborative ways with India, and that Tellis’ report provides an excellent way to begin this process.

Tellis provided an overview of his action agenda in which he emphasized the following points:

• The need for a new Presidential National Security Decision Directive on India

• The possibilities and the limits of U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation

• The terms under which India should be integrated into the global nonproliferation order

• The politics and challenges of the Indo-Iranian-Pakistani gas pipeline • The issue of U.S. support for UNSC membership for India

• The desirable structure of future U.S.-Indian defense cooperation

• The suitability of a new U.S. approach to India’s nuclear weapons, missile, and space programs

• The necessity of enhanced U.S.-India cyber-security cooperation

• The value of a U.S.-India free trade agreement

The widely noted decision to resume F-16 sales to Pakistan and, even more, the largely ignored commitment to assist India’s growth in power represent a new U.S. strategy toward South Asia. By expanding relations with both states in a differentiated way matched to their geostrategic weights, the Bush administration seeks to assist Pakistan in becoming a successful state while it enables India to secure a troublefree ascent to great-power status. These objectives will be pursued through a large economic and military assistance package to Islamabad and through three separate dialogues with New Delhi that will review various challenging issues such as civil nuclear cooperation, space, defense coproduction, regional and global security, and bilateral trade. This innovative approach to India and Pakistan is welcome—and long overdue in a strategic sense—but it is not without risks to the United States, its various regional relationships, and different international regimes.



India's Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs R. Nicholas Burns share their perspectives on how India and the United States view their interests in the emerging international system and how both countries are working towards the construction of a global partnership in a variety of functional and regional areas that include India's immediate and extended neighborhood.

Foreign Secretary Menon assumed charge as India's Foreign Secretary on October 1, 2006. He had previously served as India's Ambassador in Israel, High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, Ambassador in China, and High Commissioner in Pakistan. Under Secretary Burns is the Department's third-ranking official and its senior career diplomat. He serves as the day-to-day manager of overall regional and bilateral policy issues, and oversees six geographically defined bureaus and two functional bureaus. He had previously served as the United States Permanent Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the U.S. Ambassador to Greece.

Among the most serious criticisms leveled at the U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation initiative agreed to by President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is that it would enable India to rapidly expand its nuclear arsenal. This criticism rests upon two crucial assumptions:



that New Delhi in fact seeks the largest nuclear weapons inventory its capacity and resources permit; and,

the Indian desire for a larger nuclear arsenal has been stymied thus far by a shortage of natural uranium.

Atoms for War? US-Indian Civilian Nuclear Cooperation and India's Nuclear Arsenal by Ashley J. Tellis, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, suggests both these assumptions are deeply flawed. The study concludes that:

India is currently separating far less weapons grade plutonium annually than it has the capability to produce. The evidence, which suggests that the Government of India is in no hurry to build the biggest nuclear stockpile it could construct based on material factors alone, undermines the assumption that India wishes to build the biggest nuclear arsenal it possibly can;

Further, India's capacity to produce a huge nuclear arsenal is not affected by prospective U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation. The research in this report concludes that: India already has the indigenous reserves of natural uranium necessary to undergird the largest possible nuclear arsenal it may desire and, consequently, the U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation initiative will not materially contribute towards New Delhi's strategic capacities in any consequential way either directly or by freeing up its internal resources; that the current shortage of natural uranium in India caused by constrictions in its mining and milling capacity is a transient problem that is in the process of being redressed. The U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement proposed by President Bush does not in any way affect the Government of India's ability to upgrade its uranium mines and milling facilities—as it is currently doing. As such, the short-term shortage does not offer a viable basis either for Congress to extort any concessions from India in regards to its weapons program or for supporting the petty canard that imported natural uranium will lead to a substantial increase in the size of India's nuclear weapons program.

On July 18, 2005, US President George W.Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a landmark agreement on civil nuclear cooperation that, if implemented as intended, would mark the end of what Jaswant Singh, the former foreign affairs minister, once famously called "nuclear apartheid" against India.This agreement, which offered New Delhi comprehensive access to civilian nuclear technology in exchange for, among other things, voluntarily bringing its power reactors and other civilian nuclear facilities under safeguards, sparked serious controversy in the US. The non-proliferation community in Washington D.C. and elsewhere vehemently criticised the President’s initiative because it turned over 30 years of established American policy towards India on its head. This opposition, however, is not surprising because Bush’s bold initiative topples longstanding proliferation orthodoxy and takes the international nuclear regime in new, as yet uncharted, directions.





India will set up star wars command’

NEW DELHI: India is planning to set up a strategic aerospace command to prepare for star wars and use space for network-centric warfare.

Talking to reporters, Indian Air Force (IAF) chief SP Tyagi said an aerospace command would be set up to lay the groundwork for developing capability to counter space weapons. He said such a command for futuristic warfare could be developed with the help of the country's indigenous space agency.

On whether India had developed a nuclear strike capability, Tyagi said the country believed in "no first use nuclear doctrine" and that IAF was well prepared to retaliate swiftly in case of a nuclear attack. Tyagi said that India was awaiting reply from the US F-16 maker Lockheed-Martin, one of the four major fighter aircraft manufacturers it had approached for buying 126 multi-role combat aircraft. "We have requested information from Lockheed-Martin, he said.

The Bush administration had authorised Lockheed-Martin to compete for the IAF orders, Tyagi said. India is also looking into the Swedish Gripen, the French Mirage and the Russian MiGs. On the China-Pakistan venture to build Super 7 fighter aircraft, the Indian air chief said there was no cause for alarm because India had taken suitable measures to counter it. staff report

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_27-4-2005_pg7_46



Many of us grew up on Star Wars, and some of us, as 10-year-olds on rainy Saturday afternoons, even spent time trying to piece together the story before the story. What were the Clone Wars? How did the Old Republic become the Empire? How could the emperor have defeated what were presumably thousands of Jedi and taken over the galaxy?

Now we know the answer: Deception. Just like in the real world.

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/horton.php?articleid=6041

Say no to Star Wars, yes to nuclear disarmament!

Wouldn't it be nice if official blue-sky thinking didn't always mean mobilizing finances, scientists, corporations, and even the animal kingdom in the service of global death? Wouldn't it be nice to blue sky just a tad about life? A familiar means of denying a reality is to refuse to use the words that describe that reality. A common form of propaganda is to keep reality from being described.

President George W. Bush will unfurl another "Mission Accomplished" banner, though this one will be rhetorical, rather than one draped across an aircraft carrier. He'll be lauding the creation of a missile-defense shield two decades after President Ronald Reagan first broached the idea, which quickly became known as Star Wars. During his Sept. 30 debate with Democratic contender John Kerry, Bush tipped his hand, saying: "We'll be implementing a missile-defense system relatively quickly."

HOUSTON - Atlantis' seven astronauts reunited with their families in Texas on Saturday, a day after the space shuttle capped a two-week mission with a perfect landing in the Mohave Desert. Sunita "Suni" Williams was especially happy to return to Earth after spending more than six months at the international space station.

"This gravity thing takes a bit getting used to," she said moments after landing with the rest of the crew on a NASA Gulfstream jet around 2:45 p.m. at Ellington Field.

Williams set an endurance record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman at 195 days, as well as the record for most time spacewalking by a woman.

"It's just the time and the place," said Williams, noting she hopes her mission paves the way for more women to travel to space, during a 20-minute ceremony in an open hanger.

The crew was assembled on a stage with a giant American flag as the backdrop. Along with Williams were shuttle commander Rick Sturckow, pilot Lee Archambault and mission specialists Patrick Forrester, James Reilly, Steven Swanson and Danny Olivas. Each offered his thanks to family, ground crew and others in brief remarks.

Despite their opposition to an all-out war between Pakistan and India, the US and its allies have made no more than demagogic noises about the situation. In Britain for example, while there has been much noise about an arms embargo against India export licences continue to be granted for weapons that will clearly be used in the dispute over Kashmir.

The situation doesn’t even make front-page headlines in many places outside the countries involved. Bush’s talks with Russia have had far more prominence in the Western media than this calamity waiting to happen.

One problem with the so-called arms reduction agreement between the US and Russia is that it will not lead to the destruction of missiles or warheads - only limit their deployment. And even then we can be sceptical as to whether its provisions will be carried through. This treaty looks remarkably similar to the Start 2 treaty signed by Bush Senior in 1992 - and never implemented. At the same time, Bush gained the agreement of Russia to go ahead with the Star Wars project.

The conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir did not start on September 11: it began with the partition of the sub-continent in 1947 that created the states of Pakistan and India. The last Dogra (Hindu) ruler of Kashmir agreed that Kashmir should become part of India. The majority of Kashmiris are Muslims, but the elite was Hindu.

Ever since, rivalry between India and Pakistan has been fought out over the corpses of the Kashmiris - many of whom reject both states and want self-determination for Kashmir (see IV 338).

Pakistan and India have fought three fully-fledged wars over Kashmir since 1947 and a mini-war in 1999 at Kargil. Even outside times of war the carnage in Kashmir itself is horrific. Killings by the military are estimated at over 40,000 and more than 700 have died in custody. In addition between 1988 and 1998, militants killed 29,151 civilians and 5,101 security men.

The development of nuclear weapons by both Pakistan and India obviously increased tension. American intelligence sources predict that a full-scale nuclear conflict between the two would leave 12 million dead and 7 million seriously injured - the greatest loss of life the world has ever known.

The post -September 11 situation has raised tensions even further between Pakistan and India. The war drive of American imperialism has given license to state terrorism across the globe, from Colombia to the Philippines as well as obviously against the Palestinian people. In the sub-continent, sanctions that had been imposed on India and Pakistan after they embarked on their nuclear weapons programme were lifted to get them on side in the so-called "war on terrorism".





Star Wars: The Next Generation

Secretary of Denfese, Donald Rumsfeld

Commentary: OPINION: New Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will be President Bush's point man for selling Congress, US allies, and skeptics in Russia and China on a national ballistic missile defense -- a highly dubious system which will cost taxpayers billions and could reignite the nuclear arms race.

By William D. Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca

January 31, 2001

When President Bush tapped Donald Rumsfeld for defense secretary, he signaled his intention to assign this well-seasoned Pentagon veteran the task of selling missile defense to Congress and US allies. Although his proposed plan appears to be similar to Ronald Reagan's original Star Wars vision, Bush has yet to reveal any specifics except that it should be able to "protect all 50 states and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas."

Given the serious technical, cost, and arms-control problems plaguing the proposed national missile defense system, Rumsfeld faces no small task.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2001/01/rumsfeld.html

Star Wars, Episode Two

With the Soviet Union gone, the nuclear threat is from 'rogue nations'

By Douglas S. Wood

CNN Interactive

ATLANTA (CNN) -- Seventeen years after President Ronald Reagan first proposed a national missile defense system and nearly 10 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the costly and controversial idea is back on Washington's agenda.

A national missile defense system has both Republican and Democratic support. Congress passed a bill last year that said the United States' official policy is to have a national missile defense and President Bill Clinton signed that bill into law.

But doubts remain over the program, which is projected to cost $60 billion and has failed two out of three tests.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/democracy/nuclear/stories/missile.defense/



Bush's 'Star Wars': India's Abject Capitulation

Praful Bidwai

Tehelka.com, 3 May 2001

New Delhi has made a historic blunder by warmly welcoming President George W. Bush's "missile defence"-based strategic plan outlined in his National Defence University speech on Tuesday.

The statement by the Indian Foreign Office, which describes Bush's proposal as "a significant and far-reaching" effort, is the only official reaction from any part of the world which unreservedly backs Bush's controversial proposal which has otherwise found no takers.

Russia and China strongly oppose missile defence. Even the US' closest, super-loyal, allies such as Britain have expressed reservations about the plan; none of them has endorsed it. Most NATO allies have warned that it could jeopardise global security.

Countries like France and Germany have expressed great wariness and Sweden has offered sharp criticism of missile defences, also popularly called "Son of Star Wars".

India's extraordinary-and thoroughly condemnable-endorsement of Bush's strategic plan marks an abject capitulation on New Delhi's part to aggressive militarism and to preserving, not eliminating, the global nuclear danger. It closes the chapter on India's role as an advocate of nuclear weapons abolition for half a century.

Bush's proposal involves building a so-called defensive "shield"-itself based on missiles, satellites, early warning systems and technologies of interception-which will, theoretically, offer protection from "enemy" missiles. Bush has committed himself to National Missile Defence (NMD)-meant to protect the whole of the US-, and Theatre Missile Defence (TMD)-such as the system the US is planning to build jointly with Japan in East Asia.

He also wants to destroy the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty of 1972, which is a cornerstone of the existing global "security balance". The treaty forbids anti-missile "defences" and many kinds of preparation for them.

The technology of intercepting "enemy" missiles with "killer" missiles is still at a primitive stage of development. Many scientists believe it is a techno-fantasy with deep and numerous flaws such as relying on a bullet travelling at 24,000 km an hour hitting another bullet travelling at the same speed.

Past tests on such systems have largely failed. That's why they have been called "madcap" missile defences.

http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?page=archives_bidwai_capitulation

What is astonishing, however, is the intense criticism emerging from India, particularly from leaders of the BJP who when they were in power had made proposals embodying identical principles to those underlying the current agreement. Irrespective of the details, the A.B. Vajpayee government’s overtures to the US were all premised on the notion that India’s strategic programme could be separated from its civilian nuclear enterprises and various sub-sets of the latter put under safeguards in exchange for access to international nuclear commerce. Unfortunately, the then NDA government put too little on the table and asked for too much in return. The current UPA Government, in contrast, put much on the table, only to gain infinitely more.

Recent developments in America, of course, made a world of difference to consummating this outcome. It was Vajpayee’s singular misfortune that he did not have interlocutors possessed of the strategic vision and political courage that characterises the current leadership in the State Department. Were it not for the presence of Counsellor Philip Zelikow, who championed this initiative within the government, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, who shouldered much of the early negotiations with India, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice herself, who not only oversaw the agreement on behalf of the President but also for a few critical hours became the "action officer" actually negotiating its text with Foreign Minister K. Natwar Singh (whose contribution ultimately was indispensable), the now historic accord would never have materialised. It was, therefore, partly an accident of history that this understanding was reached now and not in Bush’s first term—and the BJP, especially in the persons ofVajpayee and Brajesh Mishra, can take full credit for having initiated a process that only the fates decreed would be brought to completion after their departure from office.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Interpreting China's Grand Strategy

Past, Present, and Future

By: Michael D. Swaine, Ashley J. Tellis

China's continuing rapid economic growth and expanding involvement in global affairs pose major implications for the power structure of the international system. To more accurately and fully assess the significance of China's emergence for the United States and the global community, it is necessary to gain a more complete understanding of Chinese security thought and behavior. This study addresses such questions as: What are China's most fundamental national security objectives? How has the Chinese state employed force and diplomacy in the pursuit of these objectives over the centuries? What security strategy does China pursue today and how will it evolve in the future? The study asserts that Chinese history, the behavior of earlier rising powers, and the basic structure and logic of international power relations all suggest that, although a strong China will likely become more assertive globally, this possibility is unlikely to emerge before 2015-2020 at the earliest. To handle this situation, the study argues that the United States should adopt a policy of realistic engagement with China that combines efforts to pursue cooperation whenever possible; to prevent, if necessary, the acquisition by China of capabilities that would threaten America's core national security interests; and to remain prepared to cope with the consequences of a more assertive China.









The following is a summary by Ashley J. Tellis. Click on the icon above for the full text of the report.

Among the most serious criticisms leveled at the U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation initiative agreed to by President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is that it would enable India to rapidly expand its nuclear arsenal. This criticism rests upon two crucial assumptions: that New Delhi in fact seeks the largest nuclear weapons inventory its capacity and resources permit; and, the Indian desire for a larger nuclear arsenal has been stymied thus far by a shortage of natural uranium.

Atoms for War? U.S.-Indian Civilian Nuclear Cooperation and India’s Nuclear Arsenal by Ashley J. Tellis, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, suggests that both these assumptions are deeply flawed. To begin with, the study concludes that India is currently separating about 24-40 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium annually, far less than it has the capability to produce. This evidence, which suggests that the Government of India is in no hurry to build the biggest nuclear stockpile it could construct based on material factors alone, undermines the assumption that India wishes to build the biggest nuclear arsenal it possibly can.

Further, India’s capacity to produce a huge nuclear arsenal is not affected by prospective U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation. A few facts underscore this conclusion clearly. India is widely acknowledged to possess reserves of 78,000 metric tons of uranium (MTU). The forthcoming Carnegie study concludes that the total inventory of natural uranium required to sustain all the reactors associated with the current power program (both those operational and those under construction) and the weapons program over the entire notional lifetime of these plants runs into some 14,640-14,790 MTU—or, in other words, requirements that are well within even the most conservative valuations of India’s reasonably assured uranium reserves. If the eight reactors that India has retained outside of safeguards were to allocate 1/4 of their cores for the production of weapons-grade materials—the most realistic possibility for the technical reasons discussed at length in the forthcoming report—the total amount of natural uranium required to run these facilities for the remaining duration of their notional lives would be somewhere between 19,965-29,124 MTU. If this total is added to the entire natural uranium fuel load required to run India’s two research reactors dedicated to the production of weapons-grade plutonium over their entire life cycle—some 938-1088 MTU—the total amount of natural uranium required by India’s dedicated weapons reactors and all its unsafeguarded PHWRs does not exceed 20,903-30,212 MTU over the remaining lifetime of these facilities. Operating India’s eight unsafeguarded PHWRs in this way would bequeath New Delhi with some 12,135-13,370 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium, which is sufficient to produce between 2,023-2,228 nuclear weapons over and above those already existing in the Indian arsenal.

The research in this report concludes that the total amount of natural uranium required to fuel all Indian reactors, on the assumption that eight of them would be used for producing weapons-grade materials in 1/4 of their cores, would be crudely speaking somewhere between 26,381 and 35,690 MTU over the remaining lives of all these facilities—a requirement that lies well within India’s assured uranium reserves howsoever these are disaggregated. In sum, India has the indigenous reserves of natural uranium necessary to undergird the largest possible nuclear arsenal it may desire and, consequently, the U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation initiative will not materially contribute towards New Delhi’s strategic capacities in any consequential way either directly or by freeing up its internal resources.

This conclusion notwithstanding, India does face a current shortage of natural uranium caused by constrictions in its mining and milling capacity. This deficit, however, represents a transient problem that is in the process of being redressed. It should be borne in mind that the U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation agreement proposed by President Bush does not in any way affect the Government of India’s ability to upgrade its uranium mines and milling facilities—as it is currently doing. All this implies that the shortages of uranium fuel experienced by India presently are a near-term aberration, and not an enduring limitation resulting from the dearth of physical resources. As such, they do not offer a viable basis either for Congress to extort any concessions from India in regards to its weapons program or for supporting the petty canard that imported natural uranium will lead to a substantial increase in the size of India’s nuclear weapons program.

Ashley J. Tellis is a senior associate specializing in international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is co-author of Strategic Asia 2005-06: Military Modernization in an Era of Uncertainty.





This unheralded move is well intentioned and well advised, and Washington should redouble its efforts.This tectonic shift will pose a challenge to the U.S.-dominated global institutions that have been in place since the 1940s. At the behest of Washington, these multilateral regimes have promoted trade liberalization, open capital markets, and nuclear nonproliferation, ensuring relative peace and prosperity for six decades -- and untold benefits for the United States. But unless rising powers such as China and India are incorporated into this framework, the future of these international regimes will be uncomfortably uncertain.Given its performance over the last six years, one would not expect the Bush administration to handle this challenge terribly well. After all, its unilateralist impulses, on vivid display in the Iraq war, have become a lightning rod for criticism of U.S. foreign policy. But the Iraq controversy has overshadowed a more pragmatic and multilateral component of the Bush administration's grand strategy: Washington's attempt to reconfigure U.S. foreign policy and international institutions in order to account for shifts in the global distribution of power. The Bush administration has been reallocating the resources of the executive branch to focus on emerging powers. In an attempt to ensure that these countries buy into the core tenets of the U.S.-created world order, Washington has tried to bolster their profiles in forums ranging from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the World Health Organization, on issues as diverse as nuclear proliferation, monetary relations, and the environment. Because these efforts have focused more on so-called low politics than on the global war on terrorism, they have flown under the radar of many observers. But in fact, George W. Bush has revived George H. W. Bush's call for a "new world order" -- by creating, in effect, a new new world order.

When the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and NATO were created in the late 1940s, the United States was the undisputed hegemon of the Western world. These organizations reflected its dominance and its preferences and were designed to boost the power of the United States and its European allies. France and the United Kingdom had been great powers for centuries; in the 1950s the rules of the game still accorded them important perquisites. They were given permanent seats on the UN Security Council. It was agreed that the IMF's executive director would always be a European. And Europe was de facto granted a voice equal to that of the United States in the GATT.

Today, the distribution of power in the world is very different. According to Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, by 2010, the annual growth in combined national income from Brazil, Russia, India, and China -- the so-called BRIC countries -- will be greater than that from the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy combined; by 2025, it will be twice that of the G-7 (the group of highly industrialized countries).





Readers of Aspects will no doubt be surprised at the fact that we have chosen to bring out a special issue apparently not on any aspect of India’s political economy, but on the impending US assault on Iraq. However, we believe the two—India’s political economy and the most important current world development—are connected, and as the current offensive drive unleashed by the US worldwide proceeds, the implications for our region will become clearer.

Even as the US prepares to launch a massive assault on Iraq, it has declared India to be its most important military ally in the Asian region (not including west Asia)—this despite the fact that it has three bases in Pakistan at the moment. The significance of terming India an ally is not limited to the possible use of Indian ports and airports for re-fuelling American ships and military aircraft. India has become an important part of the US strategic order. That order is now focussed on seizing Iraq and some other states in west Asia; tomorrow it will shift its focus to Asia, which it sees as a region of increasing strategic importance.

http://www.rupe-india.org/34/pillar.html